#my mother unlike downey's father actually Tries

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

this is the gentleman jack anon from a bit ago, sorry I dunno why it was anon last time lol- in terms of ur fics reminding me of the show I think it's mainly due to

1) historical queerness - I kno technically most of ur stuff is fantasy but it's basically the same - Annes (eponymous gentleman jack) mascultinity n attire is very reminiscent in vibe of ur discworld fics in my opinion

2) Anne in general really reminds me of Downey bc it's mentioned she had a reputation for gambling / hanging out with soldiers and being rambunctious in her youth but now she's a very mature character and a lot of the plot focuses on her business and landownership deals similar to Downey and running the assassin's guild. also shes really invested in maintaining the status of shibden hall, her historical home which is very similar to Downey's taste for traditionalism and grandeur. Also as characters they're both very into dignity/ courtesy/ 'doing the done thing'

3) theres also scheming and drama and illness which vaguely reminds me of the Sicily plot in thus always

4) Anne's actually a proper nerd aswell and loves to mention her time studying anatomy / art / blah blah in Paris which echoes William 'poisonous plants' Downey n Vetinari the og big nerd

5) also just older queer people which u don't often see in fic n stuff- Anne is in her 40s in the series

anyway that's just a few things that came to mind I could probably write an essay on it but I would defo reccomend u watch it I think it's right up ur lane 💓 (Soz for how long this got hehe)

<3 helloooo 

1) Historical queerness - I do borrow a *tonne* from early modern and late-early modern queerness for Discworld stuff, and Downey in particular (see: Downey’s hats & Florentine mlm and their hats) - and I mean discworld as TP wrote it has no consistency in clothes so there is the late-early modern and early victorian (e.g. Moist & Adora) mixed in with late medieval and early modern (e.g. Vetinari) - I do tend towards the early modern myself because medieval and victorian is overdone 

2) ahhh that is delightful! she is clearly living her best life. But I do appreciate a good #Growth experience with characters - yet ones who never lose their joie de vivre. So, still have a love and lust for life, but you know, also have maturity, responsibility and a sense that there are Consequences for Thine Own Actions. Which us something you rarely see in characters? It tends to be Rake/Louche Living v. Stodge/Do What is Right rather than a more normal mix of someone who once ran wild who learned there are consequences and has appropriately tempered themselves. So they’re still be a mad lad when they want to be but also pay the bills on time and have descent life advice and make good relationship decisions. 

3) ooooooo! this interests me greatly! anyone get suspiciously pushed down some stairs? 

4) <3 <3 ah this Delights me. Downey: Have you heard of this rare mushroom? Vetinari: Have you heard of this super niche linguist? Downey: I love you so much you dumb nerd. Vetinari: takes one to know one. Downey: I will have you know I’m one of the cool kids. Vetinari: mmmk honey. Only because no one knows about your secret sordid plant nerd ways. 

5) YES. OK I LOVE OLD QUEERS. I love them so much. Mostly because i am a 75 year old man at heart. But yes I love old queers and i just - always want more of them. all of them living their best lives. doing what they need to do. just out their. being gay. ugh - be still my beating heart. 

-- 

well! it’s still on my to-watch list and that has been a great booster of it up the list! so good work! 💓 💓 

in cute things; my mom has watched it in an attempt to better understand me since I apparently remind her of the Anne character and she was very excited when she finished it and told me all about it and I was like “thank u you’re great” then she bought me men’s boots. 

so you know, happy 2021 everyone. 

[enchantingkittengaditor]

Deep Water | 00.0 Teaser: Magazine Profile

July 2020:

WATCH OUT WORLD THE OLYMPIANS ARE COMING FOR YOU

Today I got the amazing privilege to interview some of the worlds up and coming super-stars: The cast of the Disney+ series ‘Percy Jackson and The Olympians’

First I sat down with Caitlyn Watson, yes as in that Watson, the middle child of 5 kids is the younger sister of both Alice Watson, the super-star songstress, and Beatrice Watson, the oscar-nominated actress and future Black Widow.

She herself was very polite and shy, while she greeted me like an old friend in her favourite little coffee shop in Oxford, I could see that she was extremely nervous and didn’t entirely want to be there with me. When I brought this up she simply laughed and told me: “I was raised to always be polite to others and hide your emotion but lately that’s just become a lot harder with these interviews and my GP telling me she thinks I can stop my anxiety meds. So, I’m very sorry if it’s at all awkward, I’m just a very anxious person with a complicated past of hurting and tough emotions.”

But once we talked a little more she started to open up about herself and the madness that apparently rules the Watson house, even telling me that one day I should do a profile on her and her sisters and see where they grew up for the last few years. According to her, her castmates are some of the sweetest people I will ever meet except for Harrison who is quote “A total and complete twat with anger issues who is trying to clean up his act,” apparently with the help of her co-star Robert Downey Jr.

She was very humble and told me about her roots, having originally been born in the New Zealand city of Invercargill, she spent her first few years on her father’s family’s ‘Highland Station’ which at that point mainly functioned as a christmas tree farm and an animal sanctuary, though know it’s a natural park protected by the New Zealand government since her mother inherited the land, presumably when her father died though she didn’t really mention him much.

She then apparently moved to the outback when she was 3 for 6 months due to her father’s inability to keep a job in New Zealand. That was before moving to Cambridge for 3 months with her mother and sisters while her sister Dorathy was born, they then moved again to the Caribbean where she spent the rest of her childhood until high school while her older sisters moved to school with her cousins in the UK. Apparently, around 2011 - 2012 there was an incident involving her father but she didn’t mention him beyond this point.

After spending years in the Caribbean her mother relocated her family to Oxford, near her sister and her family, as 3 out of 5 of her kids were at high school, this is the point that Caitlyn met most of her current friends and co-stars.

The only reason I included any of this is that it is the most in-depth look into the Watson girls’ childhood.

When I asked her about the idea of being famous she said that it was never her dream, she actually used the very British phrase ‘cup of tea’, and that she was proud that her sisters had achieved their dreams but never imagined that she would join them in the crazy world of fame, instead she said she would have preferred to stay in the background cheering them on and becoming a lawyer or architect that becoming famous herself.

Overall my time with her led me to believe one quote I got from her co-star Jasmin was very true about her:

“Life. Life is cruel and unforgiving but not as unforgiving as the wrath of a teenage girl. Especially when said teenage girl has the fury of a thousand fires hidden beneath layers and layers of walls built up of years in the fray of the spotlight.

“That’s what Caitlyn Watson’s heart is like. It’s been like that since she was 11. Since her eldest sisters became famous, one as an actress and one as a singer. But no matter how famous they became she was always comforted by the fact they still had to share a room with her when they were at home.

“But Caitlyn will never let anyone know that unless they were one of her friends or her older sisters.”

Unlike Caitlyn, Jasmin happily lets people know what’s on her mind, often going on rants on twitter about something on her mind whether or not others care about the matter, though often several tweets long she often gets straight to the point.

My meet up with her was very different, instead of meeting in a hidden gem of a café we met and a roller rink where she still works. When I asked her about skating she stated, “It’s not my thing at all but my brother loves it and it paid well so it meant I could save for Uni and still go to school and get all of my homework done on time.” 

She also seemed very polite but instead of shy she came across as confident as Sharpey Evans from ‘High School Musical’ but a thousand times as nice.

From my day with Jasmin, I learnt a lot about how someone can be into both death and life in the form of flowers. She showed me around all of her favourite places in Oxford including a cemetery where she says she often comes to contemplate life and the quality of doing her homework.

I also got to see her go on one of her useless rants, this time about why we should all just give up and become moss after she found a headstone in the cemetery with her name on it. Though I reassured her it couldn’t have been her’s as the date was over 200 years ago.

Overall That day I learnt that she is overdramatic to the extreme but in the best possible way and will instantly welcome you into her family with open arms. But she is also like any other teenager as she is addicted to her phone and social media, though she does spend a lot of time on her phone trying to help people or keeping in touch with her fans. I even learnt that she has a rule: if any fan DMs her she has to reply within 72 hours or she has to sit with Harrison in every class they share for a week. But when I tried to ask her about this she just said “You’ll see. The whole world will see.”

So on that note, I will stop talking about her and start talking about her co-star Brenten, who voices Grover Underwood.

Now, I was warned that I might lose my hearing by both Caitlyn and Jasmin if I met up with him during his band practice so instead, I met up with him at his father’s music store where he excitedly showed me all of his favourite records, most of which were released well before he was born.

He was also asked, by his father, to show me some of the instruments he could play and give a demo of them, which is where I see why Caitlyn and Jasmin gave me the advice they did. Though I can see why people have been giving his rave reviews online for his music because he is a truly talented musician.

My day with him went as well as the other two but to me, it wasn’t as interesting as he himself wasn’t as interesting conversationalist. Though the one interesting fact I did learn from him was that he is the only cast member actually from American. But like everyone else didn’t grow up in America instead of spending most of his childhood in the Caribbean before moving to Oxford in summer 2019.

The final person I talked to was Harrison, who voices Percy himself. I was warned that he could be a bit temperamental so I went in prepared. Though he was very polite, I could see where they were coming from. He seemed to have some sort of underlying anger issue.

When I asked him about his co-stars he had some very interesting things to say. For example when I asked him about Brenten he stated:

“Brenten’s a great guy, he’s really focused on his music and I admire his passion and continued dedication to music. He’s really passionate and he’s really fun to hang out with. We do hang out outside of all of this we often try to comprehend our homework together, which just ends up with us playing one on one basketball or footy.

“But most of the time the girls are there so we get told off by Caitlyn for not focusing on our work which just makes us continue to goof off until she gives up.”

As for Jasmin, he said:

“Jasmin is just one of the guys she tried to join the guy rugby team at school and is thus far the only girl to be able to join a rugby team in the A-class in the whole league that the school is in. She hangs out with us whenever she can’t hang out with Caitlyn and the others. She’s also been helping me by giving me advice on how to handle my emotions and how to react to other people. She’s also helped me get in touch with people who can help me control my anger and get it out on the field instead of on others.

“She’s really is amazing she helps everyone she can and wants nothing more than to improve the world from where she found it. She is also very scary so don’t mess with her or you’d be completely insane. She can flip a switch from being the sweetest most innocent person alive to being a ripper out of the vampire diaries in less than a second if you mess with her friends or family. It’s honestly terrifying.”

Though when I asked him about Caitlyn he wouldn’t shut up, he truly seemed like a love-struck teenage boy, which I guess he could be. Some of the highlights include:

“She’s one of my best friends and she sees through my bullshit and calls me out on it, I don’t know what I would do without her,” he said slightly blushing at the mention of her, “She’s about 98% of my impulse control and without her I think I would have punched everyone in the city by now.”

“She’s my best friend. I don’t really believe in soulmates, but if I did and they did exist, I believe she would be mine. Maybe not romantically but platonically.”

“I would love to date one of my best friends I think that the bases of any good relationship.”

“She’s such a sweetheart, she may think that she’s a badass but really she’s a kitten in a human suit. I mean she also has a bunch of cats so that’s probably where that influence came from.”

“The weirdest experience on set was when Rick, Brie and Tessa decided that there was going to be an end credit scene in the final episode of the final season of the underwater kiss scene thing. So me and Caitlyn agreed and when we had to film it in front of the green screen I remember she was completely terrified, so I took her to the side while everyone was getting everything ready and I asked her why she was nervous. I remember she said ‘I’ve never kissed anyone before, and I don’t really want my first kiss to be on camera.’ So I decided in less than probably a second I was going to kiss her just so her first kiss wasn’t going to be on camera and I remember afterwards her sisters threw popcorn at us and laughed because they thought we were being complete idiots. It was a lot of fun to shoot that day.”

But enough about the possibly budding romance forming between theses two star crossed teenagers. It’s my personal belief that these four amazing teenagers are going to change the world whether or not that’s for the best they’re coming. So watch out world! The kids of ‘Percy Jackson and The Olympians’ are coming to get you.

Photo Sets From The Shoot:

Brenten (Caleb McLaughlin):

Jasmin (Amandla Stenberg):

Harrison (Jake T. Austin):

Caitlyn (Olivia Holt):

The Watson Sisters (Alice - Taylor Swift, Beatrice - Florence Pugh, Dorathy - Sophie Nelisse, Ellie - McKenna Grace):

The Entourage of Friends & Cousins (Kenzie - Kira Kosiran, Lola - Kelli Berglund, Arya - Selena Gomez, Sansa - Amber Heard, Melisandre - Danielle Campbell):

September 2020:

The Watson Sisters Have Landed Themselves In Deep Water!

Once again the pop princess Alice Watson has landed in deep water but this time she’s dragged her younger sisters Beatrice and Caitlyn into as well.

This morning it was announced that their father, long to be thought dead, Jason Franks would be put up for re-trail on the charges that landed him in jail.

In late 2012 he was tried and found guilty of murder, rape and parental abuse by English courts and sentenced to life imprisonment. While we don’t know many details as of yet we do know that all three of the eldest Watson sisters will have to testify in court as they apparently did before, though this time the trail is going to be public meaning they are going to be allowing press into the court.

While it is not known whether or not the girls have spoken to their father since he landed in jail, it was commonly thought that he was dead. Which is why these three have landed themselves in deep water, as they have been leading the media on for years playing along as though their father was dead.

It is as of now unknown when exactly this trial will take place but it is known that Alice has delayed the production of her next album, much to the disappointment of her fans, to allow for the trail in her hectic schedule. It is also rumoured that the production of Caitlyn’s new mysterious Marvel show will be delayed as will the production of Beatrice’s new movie.

While I will repeat that most facts are as of now unknown some of the things we do know are as follows:

The Watson Sisters will be testifying in court (as of now it is unknown whether or not it is against or for their father)

Their father will remain in prison until the trial

Their father has a record of criminal offences such as selling drugs in nightclubs when he was in the airforce stationed in Canada.

The court date is set around March 2021

For now, that is all we know but until the date is set and the record is cleared it’s likely that these three girls will remain in hot water.

September 2020 - March 2021 A News Title Timeline From Their World.

The Watson Sisters Announce a Book That Is Said To Set The Record Straight

Caitlyn Watson, ‘I never told anyone anything to do with my father except that there was an incident.’

Alice Watson, ‘I don’t want to comment on whether or not he abused me.’

Beatrice Watson, ‘Go the fuck away, leave us alone, we just want to buy school clothes and deal with this in peace.’

Beatrice Watson Swore At Journalist In Front Of 8-Year-Old Sister

Alice Watson’s Instagram Has Lost Over 20 Million Followers

Caitlyn Watson Said To Possibly Be Fired From Disney

The Rock, Obama, Robert Downey Jr. And More Come To The Watson Sisters’ Side.

Celebrities And Fans A Like Applaud The Watson Sisters’ Bravery To Come Foreward In New Book

‘Their Book Shows People It’s OK To Come Forward If This Happens To You,’ Says Brie Larson

‘What Life’s Like’ By The Watson Sisters Is A Must Read For Everyone

‘What Life’s Like,’ Is Now The New York Times Bestselling Book Of The Month

‘What Life’s Like’ Has Soldout Says Publishing House.

‘The Real Victim Here Is Us, The People,’ Claims Fox News

Thousands Of Fans Show Their Support Of The Watsons By Stopping Media From Getting Into Court House

The Heart-Breaking Testamony Of Caitlyn Watson On Her 17th Birthday

The Watson Sisters’ Father Has Been Sentenced To 3 Lifetime Sentences In Prison

‘We’re So Proud Of Each Other For Getting Through That’ Says Beatrice Watson

‘I’m Now Just Going To Go Back To Mum’s Have a Cup Of Tea And Hug My Cats,’ Says Alice Watson As She Leaves The Courthouse With Her Sisters

‘I’m Happy It’s All Over Now And My Girls Don’t Have To Worry Anymore,’ - Laura Watson

We interrupt your scrolling to bring you an... AD!

[throwaway-sinfulwriter]

The Same - Chapter 7 - 4/6

Sitting in Dr. Brown's living room, Malcolm and JT question her until she finally begins to divulge.

"Was Alice Downey taking LSD on your order?" Bright asks the woman, a small tape recorder in his hand. The throw pillows on the chairs and couch reminded him of his father's eyes. He tries not to look at them too often, focusing on Elaine instead.

"This isn't 1963, Detective. I can't make anyone do anything." For a moment, he and JT share a look.

"Except, you can. With your credentials and authority, you could make anyone do anything. How long did these experiments last? How many students participated in them?" The pillows were mocking him. They were simple, a blue to green gradient with shimmery thread and sparse beads.

He questions her, mouth running on auto-pilot as his mind slowly drifts off to another place. He sees recognition in her eyes as he lists off what they know about their suspect.

Bright faintly hears the name Dominic Render as his eyes glaze over.

Malcolm fully spaces out.

He couldn't get his father off of his mind. Shutting his eyes, Malcolm remembers every glance Martin had ever gave him. How his eyes darkened when annoyed, lit up when he was joyful. How straight and perfectly white his teeth were when he smiled.

"-right?"

Malcolm just wants to sit here, and think about things he usually never allows himself. Just for a moment. A sinful, forbidden moment. Think of his father's hands, how they were still bigger than his, even when he was fully grown.

How his father would put on records and play classical music to dance to, how he read sonnets to him as a child. Doctor Whitly taught him to play the piano at a young age.

He was remembering the small details, the ones that hurt to think about when his father wasn't there.

Martin loved the rain. He would always make Malcolm hot chocolate and read to him when it rained. Kept him warm, even when a storm was raging outside.

"Bright? Bright? Malcolm blinked his eyes open, and instinctively clicked stop on his tape recorder.

"Uh.. sorry. I'm just.. uh.. I'll just.. I'll go wait in the car." He stood and walked outside, sighing as the cold air hit his face.

He was thoroughly embarrassed about losing himself like that. Making a fool of himself in front of JT, who already hated his guts.

Malcolm enters the car, resting his head on the back of the seat and taking a few deep breaths. He just needed to get back into control. Become closed off from his emotions.

He knew how to do it, his heart was just hurting so bad he didn't know if he could. Malcolm needed to escape from his mind. Focus on something else.

JT. How long had the man been calling out for him while he was trapped in his childhood memories? Seconds? Minutes?

He didn't know. Bright sighs, his tired eyes refusing to rest as he fiddled with the car door. In fact, he knew nothing about JT. Only that his humor was incredibly strange, and he did not like Malcolm.

The driver's door open, and said man hopped in the car. "Elaine is settled down for the night with some chamomile."

Malcolm nodded, pushing down the discomfort at the mention of tea. His mother always tried making it for him, but he refused to drink it. It was how his father drugged his victims.

Tea laced with ketamine.

Needless to say, Bright was more of a coffee fan.

"Hey, what happened in there? You completely zoned out." JT asks, hands on the steering wheel.

He shrugs. "Yeah, that happens sometimes. My body can shut down at times."

"Gil and Dani are off looking for Render. He wants me to stay on Professor Bad Trip."

Malcolm stares at him.

"That means you can go home."

He doesn't respond to that. "What does JT stand for? Joseph? Jake? Jason? Julian? J-"

JT interrupts him.

"I don't think you're stakeout material."

Bright shakes his head. "I'm a chronic insomniac. I was made for this."

JT looks past him, observing Elaine's house. Only the porch and living room lights were on.

"How many kid's brains do you think she scrambled to get that house?" Malcolm glares at him, crossing his arms.

"…Sorry." He says reluctantly. "I know she's your people "

The profiler next to him hums, non-committal. "No. You're my people."

JT gives him a certain look, and Malcolm raises his eyebrows. "Tell me why I'm wrong."

"In the service, we have a hierarchy." So, JT had been in the service. Malcolm had guessed this the first time they had met, but now his assumption was confirmed. He smirked lightly.

"Your rank earns you respect. It's the same for cops, y'know. I have a badge. But you don't respect me."

Irritation grows in Bright. How could the man be so daft?

"Listen.. when I was a kid, a cop came to my house and took the bad guy away. He saved me. Saved me from hell on earth, from a lifetime of fear. There is not a single person that respects the badge more than I do, okay?"

Malcolm is uncomfortable with opening up to JT, but he knew that he had clear this up now, to prevent anything from happening later.

"Any respect I haven't given you is what you've been giving to me. You've been an absolute dick since I started consulting, and it's really not helping any of us. Including yourself."

"I'm doing my best. I might not have the most orthodox methods, and I know I come off as strange to you, but I do my best to get justice for everyone. Just like Gil tried to give my family justice." Tried being the keyword.

He doesn't want to get too emotional, so he runs his hand under his nose and sniffs.

"I need to ask Dr. Brown a question. For the profile." He exits the car.

-------

Sitting in Doctor Elaine Brown's living room, Malcolm Whitly opens up about his case. It was quite sad to call his life a case, but that was what it had been since he was 10 years old.

Legal documents, testimonies, and news articles. It wasn't much of a life for a child. And it didn't lessen as he got older. People had always expected he would turn out like his father.

"Your case is a testament of the humans mind to endure trauma."

Malcolm winces. Ouch. Not exactly the support he had been looking for.

"Uh.. thanks? I guess? Was that a compliment?" Elaine just raises her eyebrows and drinks more of her tea.

Bright shudders in his seat, the scent of chamomile in the air.

He continues on, telling her about his "controversial" repressed memories, and everything he had been diagnosed with.

She asks him if he believed he had been drugged, and Malcolm nods, fingers tapping in a rhythm on the arm chair to stop the tremors.

"Have you ever smelled chloroform?"

"..Well, it's not my drug of choice." She gives him that look, a look that his therapist gave to him often. He knows he's deflecting, okay, but he's not very comfortable talking about this with anyone.

Unlike his therapist, Dr. Brown continues on.

"It has extreme chemical notes, but it's actually quite sweet smelling."

He swallows hard. Thinking of his father's clean, crisp cologne with a hint of chemical and sweetness.

"A familiar smell can trigger repressed memories."

Malcolm stands from his chair, going over to a desk in the far side of the room. Fingers resting on his hip bones.

"Do you have any fears?"

He asks, shuffling through the papers on the desk. Looking at different files, with graphs and charts. Dr. Brown doesn't say anything about him going through her things.

"I have regrets." She says, and Malcolm turns to look at her curiously.

Elaine continues. "If your memories are blocked, it must be because your mind is afraid of something in your memories. You'll need to overcome that fear to access them."

Malcolm notes this, vowing to remember that fact once the case was over.

He turns, eyes raking over the room. Meticulously looking at every detail, trying to find something that would aid him.

His eyes catch on a glass display of tribal masks, and his head tilts. Something clicking in his mind.

"These are.. interesting." Bright says, going up to the case and staring at the one displayed in the middle. There were four in total, but he couldn't tear his eyes off the one.

"What is this one?" He asks, finger poised just inches from the glass case.

"It's African." Malcolm exhales through his nostrils, trying not to snap at the woman. He knew that. He wasn't an idiot.

"It's an artistic interpretation of Lucifer." A cold shiver travels from the base of Malcolm's skull to his tailbone.

"Has Dominic Render ever been here?"

"Yes, he along with many other students.. he.. he was always fascinated by those masks.."

Malcolm sprints back to the desk, gripping the folder with the copy of the notes left by Render.

One thing he hasn't understood earlier was the circular shapes Dominic had formed with his words. At the time, separately, it hadn't made much sense.

But now..

Bright moves the papers around, his own panting breath loud in his ears. Stepping back, he looks at all of the papers. They form a face. His head snaps to the left, at the Lucifer mask, and back.

"He wants you to understand him. To find him." Dread washes over Malcolm as he quickly takes a picture of the papers and shoves his phone back in his pocket.

"This is where he's planning on killing you. It has sentimental value to him."

"S-something's wrong." Dr. Brown tells him, and his heart drops to his stomach as he turns to her. She's sweating, pupils dialated. "My pulse is racing, my thoughts are shifting. It-It's the tea. The chamomile."

Malcolm rushes over to her, biting the inside of his cheek so hard the bitter taste of blood fills his mouth. He should have known to not trust the tea. Dammit.

At least it wasn't ketamin. If it was, he wouldn't be able to function. Wouldn't be able to help the woman.

He ignores the pain at the thought for now, hesitantly placing his hands on Elaine's arms to get her out of the chair. His stomach flips unpleasantly at the touch.

"You've been laced with LSD. We need to get you out of here." Bright leads her to the door, and goes to open it when all the lights cut out.

Left in the dark, the only sound Elaine's drugged babbling and his own panicked breathing, Malcolm knows what he has to do.

"Come on, let's go back." He pulls her away from the door, and she holds onto him, pupils unnaturally dilated. "Shh, shh. Come on. Sit back down.."

"Stay here. Don't go anywhere." Bright tells her, making sure she doesn't get up, and leaves the room.

Outside, in the hallway, is a record player. A record is already sitting in it.

Malcolm takes out his phone, ringing JT. He waits in tense silence until the man finally answers.

"JT. Dominic Render is in the house. Get in here." He hangs up, not waiting to hear the man's response. Malcolm would have to go find the mentally ill man, prevent him from getting to Dr. Brown.

Thankfully, due to his father's love of classical music and all things retro, they had a record player in their home. He and his father used to dance to Frank Sinatra.

Thank you, Martin. Malcolm thinks as he turns the player on, pressing the needle onto the record.

He flinches as rock music started playing. It was definitely no Sinatra, and it hurt his ears quite a lot, but hopefully it would delay Render.

The loud music should confuse the man, and if Malcolm was lucky he might hallucinate due to sensory overload. A part of Bright feels guilty for undoubtedly causing a mentally ill man more pain.

But, thinking back to the Professor's empty head and the many blades next to Carl Mitchell, Malcolm can't take any chance.

Malcolm stops by the fireplace, grabbing a fire poker and holding it ahead of him like a weapon.

Walking through the house slowly, hands in front of him, Malcolm tries to talk Render down.

"Dominic Render!" He calls out over the booming music, trying to hide the fear that was bubbling at the surface. Malcolm couldn't let the man to have the advantage.

"No one else needs to die." He comes around the corner, muscles tensing in anticipation of the killer being there. He isn't.

Where could he be?

Malcolm goes over the entire house, not finding the suspect. That only leaves one place.. upstairs.

"I know how you feel. I've had my fair share of nightmares."

He begins slowly ascending the stairs, his breathing erratic and undoubtedly afraid. His palm runs over the wooden railing of the staircase. It does little to calm him, but Malcolm memorizes the grain of the wood underneath his hand.

"But they trapped you inside yours, didn't they?" Bright prided himself in his skill of talking people down, getting a Masters in Psychology hadn't just been for show. He reverently studied conversation, and the act of talking to a person who was dangerous.

It helped him in the sociopathic aspect (he was not a sociopath, he just had tendencies). He understood empathy more, though he could not accurately emulate it without looking quite robotic.

It also helped in his career as a profiler. He had many personal conversations with killers, which was especially easy due to his background. Malcolm was quite good at subduing killers, talking them down from suicide after they had been caught. Showing at their trials, convincing them serving time was better than death.

He wanted to use this skill to help Dominic Render, but so far the man had yet to show. This worried him. Bright not be able to talk him out of it.

"..Dominic, I know you're scared." Malcolm reaches the top of the staircase, walking towards a closed doors on the left. "I am, too."

The door opened, and the next thing Bright knew, he was being hurtled backwards, into a picture on the wall. He feels the glass shatter as he hits it, all breath leaving his body. Hitting the wall so hard, his knees wobble.

He fights back with the fire poker, holding it in front of him so Dominic couldn't stab him. Malcolm pushes against him, giving him enough space to get away from the wall.

Dominic's hand hits the wall, and Bright is behind him. He grabs Malcolm by the shoulders, trying to get him down the stairs so he could subdue him properly. This doesn't work well, as Render's elbow comes back and hits him in the face. The hit causes his shaking knees to give in, and he collapses to the floor.

Render stands over him, pressing him with his foot to the edge of the staircase.

"This is how I respond to fear."

He crouches over Malcolm, raising his blade.

Malcolm's eyes go wide, pure, unbridled fear in his eyes. This is it. He's going to die. Dominic is going to kill him, take his brain and.. and what? Do what with it? He didn't know, there was no time, he couldn't even open his mouth for his last words-

There's an incredibly loud bang, and Render is off of him, a warm splatter of blood on his face. Unlike the time at Quantico, when the feelings that followed were resentment for a person that could be saved, all Malcolm felt was satisfaction.

If that was how Dominic reacted to someone who was trying to help him, he couldn't imagine how he would react to someone prosecuting him.

He doesn't wipe the blood off of his face, sitting up calmly and looking back. Dr. Elaine Brown is standing on the staircase, shotgun still in hand.

"I-I did it. I killed him." Something twists in Malcolm's chest, and he slowly desends down the stairs. There's a large crash somewhere in the house and then a cry of, "Police!"

JT enters the archway near the staircase and raises his gun. "No!" Malcolm tells him. "No. Wait."

"Elaine, you're in the middle of an intense psychedelic episode. I know it may seem like a lot right now, but in the end it's just going to be a bad trip." He manages to take the gun from her, taking out the bullets and turning the safety on, throwing it to the side.

"You can't run from the fear. You just have to.. fall into it, okay? You did this." He gestures up the stairs at Render's body. Cold and lifeless. "You have to live with it now."

[spideycentral]

Tony Revolori on Letting Go in the Audition Room, ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming,’ + Wes Anderson

When Tony Revolori’s father, Mario Quinonez, was a 14-year-old in Guatemala, he received his first pair of shoes. When Revolori was 15, he became the first person in his family to visit Europe, at the invitation of Wes Anderson, to audition for a film that eventually won four Academy Awards.

The opportunity was the fulfillment of a dream his father had initially had for himself, though he never advanced beyond working as an extra after immigrating to America. “He was too shy to actually be on camera and say lines,” Revolori explains while sitting in the Beekman Hotel’s Fowler & Wells restaurant in mid-May. But once Quinonez became a father, acting seemed a good way for Tony and his older son, Mario Revolori (they use their paternal grandmother’s name professionally), to start saving for college. “ ‘I would love for you guys to be actors, but I would never force that upon you,’ ” Revolori remembers his dad saying.

It was two years before Revolori’s trip to meet Anderson that his dad sat him and Mario down to ask, “What is it that you love?” The boys chose acting and music. (Revolori also sings and plays four instruments.) “He was like, ‘Great. Well, that’s your 9-to-5 job now,’ ” Revolori recalls. From then on, the family drove the 60-mile round trip from Anaheim, California, to Los Angeles “more than seven times a week for auditions,” with the duo “getting rejected a thousand times a year.”

Then they auditioned for an untitled Wes Anderson project. The director considered tapes of thousands of kids from numerous countries for the role of Zero, the teenage lobby boy who engineers the prison escape of his concierge mentor (Ralph Fiennes), kills his would-be killer (Willem Dafoe), and inherits the Grand Budapest Hotel. Two possibilities emerged—Mario and Tony—before Anderson sent the latter a plane ticket.

As an unaccompanied minor, he remembers, “I stayed there for 17 hours while the flight there was 14 hours, both ways.” He returned to the States without the part. Instead, Revolori and Anderson exchanged many emails. “I would tape myself doing the whole entire script,” he says. “It was basically pseudo-rehearsal,” and he began to think of Anderson “very much like a godfather to me in terms of acting.” Four months later, he got the offer for the film that would lead the young talent not only to the 2015 Oscars, but to “Dope,” the Sundance Film Festival hit that was so well attended, James Franco “couldn’t get a seat” and stood in the back for one screening.

The Rick Famuyiwa film about sweet, high-achieving ’90s-lovers out of Inglewood, California, who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time launched a studio bidding war and was nominated for the festival’s Grand Jury Prize. Casting director Kim Coleman had Revolori try out before anyone else, but in total, he “auditioned for the project maybe 20 times,” he says, reading with different potential co-stars. Once again, at the very end, he was pitted against his brother. This would happen a third time, for a recurring role on the combination live-action-animated series “Son of Zorn,” which was canceled in May after one season on Fox. “That was the one time my brother audibly said, ‘I fucking hate you. This is bullshit. It’s unfair,’ ” admits Revolori. “I was like, ‘It 100 percent is, but I’m going to take the part.’ ”

Last year, around the time he was filming his latest project, “Spider-Man: Homecoming” (out July 7), Revolori had an epiphany. “When you walk into an audition room, and you go in with such desperation that you want this, they smell it and they’re like, ‘Nope, immediately no,’ ” he says. “The thing that happened that pushed me over the edge was auditioning with a couple of people, and then them saying, ‘Oh, no, we’re not going to cast you because you’re brown.’ So I said, ‘Fuck this,’ and the next audition I went to, I didn’t give a shit.” He booked that job. Now, he sometimes cold-reads on purpose. “When you don’t need [the part], they want you so much more,” he explains, especially if you “mix that in with confidence, not arrogance.” Since relaying this discovery to Mario, Revolori says, “he’s been booking nonstop.”

“Spider-Man: Homecoming” will bring together a cadre of Marvel heavy hitters, including Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), and Vulture (Michael Keaton). Revolori auditioned to play the best friend to Peter Parker (Tom Holland), Ned Leeds, but was awarded a larger role in Flash Thompson, Parker’s high school rival who eventually becomes Agent Venom. The casting marks the 21-year-old’s first unlikable character.

Without being asked, Revolori says he gained 55 pounds of muscle to play Thompson, who’d been reconceptualized for this film as a rich kid rather than a jock. Still, he reasoned, “I’m not white, I’m not blond [with] blue eyes”—as the character was in the comics—“but I’m me, and I’m going to do my best to emulate that character for you guys, because this is who it’s for.”

Until he joined the Spider-Man franchise, Revolori says, “I’d never been in a place where it takes you two hours for four takes of a scene, just because they have all the stunts.... I felt like I couldn’t get in a rhythm.” On the plus side, “They can afford to be a little bit more lenient and say, ‘Well, what if we try this? We can change this scene completely.’ ” The same can’t be said for indies. “It’s a lot different,” he says. “You work on something like ‘Dope,’ you drive yourself to set, [work with] a very small crew, and you’re all just working day and night as hard as you can, there are no breaks…. You’re on your feet and you’re moving—’cause you have to be.”

On this new role in “Spider-Man,” he says, “I feel like that’s a better move for my career. I want to be respected by my peers and be a prestige actor.” That’s not to say he wants to remain solely in front of the camera; he also wants to direct one day, as well as stay active in the theater. (In February, he made his West End debut in Stephen Karam’s play “Speech and Debate,” about a teacher-student sex scandal.) “I also don’t mind doing superhero movies and what makes kids smile,” he says.

Despite his many illustrious collaborators, Revolori’s most valued piece of industry advice comes from someone he met only once. His mother works at a restaurant in Studio City, and around the time he and Mario told their dad that their passion was acting, she called home to alert them that Dick Smothers—half of the legendary comedy duo the Smothers Brothers—was there having breakfast with his wife. Thanks to YouTube, “I was a huge fan,” says Revolori, so he and Mario dashed over.

“We walk up to him and we shake his hand and we talk to him, and it’s amazing!” Revolori gushes. When they informed him that they were budding actors, Smothers (who once gave a 22-year-old Steve Martin a job) said, “ ‘You guys remind me a lot of me and my brother [Tom],’ ” and proffered this bit of wisdom, made especially poignant by the fact that Smothers later declared bankruptcy: “ ‘Treat everyone like they’re the most important person in the world. Because guess what? Tomorrow they might be. Yesterday they might have been. Today they will be.’ ” As an early teen, Revolori says he replied, “ ‘Great, yeah, yay, woohoo, thank you!’ But as an adult, I understand that so much more now. And so that’s what I’ve tried to carry with myself as much as possible.”