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hakasims · 4 years

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The Most In-depth Analysis of Luca Marinelli’s Characters You’ll Ever Need

You’d think I was done with classifications, but I’m not! There’s so much more I can say about Luca Marinelli’s oeuvre and his magnificent roster of characters. And yes, I’ve made this post before where I highlighted specific tropes that show up in a lot of his movies, but that was surface-level shit. This is an actual exploration of what makes a Luca Marinelli character besides being a kinky little whore. And don’t worry, it’s still in that user-friendly question-answer format because I love you.

Here’s the thing: Luca is a chameleon but he also has a type, and this type is:

✨ a (likely) queer repressed addict with daddy issues ✨

That’s the skeleton. Let’s see how many of his major roles possess that skeleton at all and what flavors they add to the picture.

Disclaimer: I excluded characters with little screen time and Joseph from Mary of Nazareth because he doesn’t deserve rights. Also, instead of going in the boring chronological order, I’m gonna start with the least typical character for Luca and end with the crème de la crème. The results may not surprise you.

Nicky (The Old Guard)

Is he queer? Undeniably.

Is he repressed? No.

Does he have an addiction? No.

Does he have daddy issues? I know we’re all deeply affected by our shitty father figures but I would genuinely question Nicky’s sanity if he were still on that shit at the ripe age of 951. A little tip for daddy-hating immortals out there: just do what Angel did and kill your shitty dad. Problem solved.

Is he violent? Despite doling out tons of violence, he doesn’t have a violent nature and seems uninterested in hating his enemy or delivering retribution.

Does he need a good night sleep? I’m sure nothing helps one sleep better than a Joe-shaped big spoon.

Does he need a good cry? Doesn’t seem like it.

Flavors: A perfect immortal warrior bean in a healthy relationship.

Conclusion: Ironically but unsurprisingly, Nicky is the least Luca-like character.

Guido (Tutti i santi giorni)

Is he queer? I don’t believe so but who knows? If someone told me he’s demisexual, I’d believe it.

Is he repressed? The movie may disagree, but I say yes, obviously.

Does he have an addiction? Not unless you count his romantic relationship.

Does he have daddy issues? His family is so supportive and wholesome it’s almost parodic.

Is he violent? He’s the opposite of a toxic macho dude, but then he has a violent outburst out of nowhere because the movie is bad.

Does he need a good night sleep? He doesn’t like sleeping at night.

Does he need a good cry? Naturally.

Flavors: An adorkable awkward nerd with flowery speech.

Conclusion: I can forgive straightness and wholesomeness but I can’t forgive lack of complexity.

Martin (Martin Eden)

Is he queer? I don’t believe so.

Is he repressed? Yes.

Does he have an addiction? No.

Does he have daddy issues? Not to my knowledge.

Is he violent? When he deems it necessary to be.

Does he need a good night sleep? Sure.

Does he need a good cry? Cry your little heart out, Martin!

Flavors: An arrogant, pretentious, politically confused writer.

Conclusion: A little too straight for your typical Luca, but he makes up for it with being complex and complicated.

Loris (Il mondo fino in fondo)

Is he queer? I don’t believe so.

Is he repressed? So fucking repressed!

Does he have an addiction? Nothing beyond his savior complex.

Does he have daddy issues? He has a shitty dad he’s spent his whole life trying to please, and also his mommy left, so like yeah, obviously.

Is he violent? He has his straight dude moments.

Does he need a good night sleep? Definitely.

Does he need a good cry? Oh yeah, let him cry, it’s good for him.

Flavors: A casually homophobic mother hen.

Conclusion: Ruined by heterosexual agenda.

Lui (Ricordi?)

Is he queer? I don’t believe so.

Is he repressed? Very.

Does he have an addiction? No.

Does he have daddy issues? A big sack of them.

Is he violent? No.

Does he need a good night sleep? Oh yes. To sleep, perchance to dream about anything other than his traumatic memories.

Does he need a good cry? So much.

Flavors: Up-his-butt and pensive.

Conclusion: Leave it to Luca to take a guy who would be an absolute nightmare in real life and turn him into someone I actually want to watch for two hours and see happy by the end.

Gabriele (Waves)

Is he queer? There’s evidence he might be gay.

Is he repressed? I’d bet on it.

Does he have an addiction? Doesn’t seem like it.

Does he have daddy issues? Nobody knows.

Is he violent? No.

Does he need a good night sleep? He probably will with how the movie ended.

Does he need a good cry? At least one.

Flavors: A sweet introverted guy who loves boats.

Conclusion: While not particularly complex, Gabriele has layers and nuances. Also give him a big muscular daddy.

Fabrizio (Fabrizio de André - Principe libero)

Is he queer? I don’t believe so.

Is he repressed? He was before music became his only career.

Does he have an addiction? Alcohol, cigarettes, sex, cheating - take your pick.

Does he have daddy issues? Not as bad as some of the other guys here but he’s heard his fair share of “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed” speeches.

Is he violent? He’s soft.

Does he need a good night sleep? He’s an artist, what do you think?

Does he need a good cry? He’s an artist, what do you think?

Flavors: Fabrizio de André is the flavor.

Conclusion: Even though it’s a biopic, there are still many Luca-isms there. He’s just that kind of actor.

Milton (Una questione privata)

Is he queer? It could be argued that he is bisexual.

Is he repressed? Do you even need to ask?

Does he have an addiction? About half of the breaths he takes are filled with cigarette smoke.

Does he have daddy issues? He seems to have a good and loving relationship with both his parents.

Is he violent? Not by nature.

Does he need a good night sleep? Yep.

Does he need a good cry? He certainly does.

Flavors: A repressed bisexual feeling powerless in a horrible world.

Conclusion: This is proof that Luca can carry a whole entire movie on his sexy shoulders, alone. Also Milton needs a safe and loving triad.

Mattia (La solitudine dei numeri primi)

Is he queer? I personally read him as asexual. Though assigning asexuality to characters who are traumatized is a dangerous path so don’t quote me on this, okay?

Is he repressed? Just the most repressed.

Does he have an addiction? It’s debatable whether self-harm and eating disorders can be considered addictions, but they’re part of his character, and I thought you should know.

Does he have daddy issues? His parents played their part in messing him up which then led to the big thing that really messed him up, though other than that his dad is barely a presence.

Is he violent? Not at all.

Does he need a good night sleep? At least 17 hours.

Does he need a good cry? Oh, so much. He needs all the cry.

Flavors: A quiet genius with lots of guilt.

Conclusion: Can you believe this was his first film role? Our boy is talented af!

Fabio (Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot)

Is he queer? Undeniably.

Is he repressed? You could argue that he is repressed by being limited in his place in social hierarchy.

Does he have an addiction? Amazingly enough, no. He has fixations, though.

Does he have daddy issues? Thinking his father was a loser and not wanting to end up like him is textbook stuff.

Is he violent? Very.

Does he need a good night sleep? Yes please.

Does he need a good cry? He needs to purge his soul from all the bottled up stuff.

Flavors: A campy psycho.

Conclusion: Luca’s most iconic character, so of course he scored high on the list.

Paolo (Il padre d’Italia)

Is he queer? Undeniably.

Is he repressed? I can’t even start listing all the ways in which he’s repressed.

Does he have an addiction? He smokes a lot.

Does he have daddy issues? His issues are more of a mommy variety.

Is he violent? Not in the slightest.

Does he need a good night sleep? He’s the poster boy for needing a good night sleep.

Does he need a good cry? A good cry, a good weep, a good sob, a good bawl, *googles more synonyms* a good wail, a good squall...

Flavors: A self-loathing gay orphan in need of some life goodness.

Conclusion: What can I say about Paolo that all of you aren’t already thinking? Decent film, great character, excellent portrayal.

Mickey (Die Pfeiler der Macht)

Is he queer? Undeniably.

Is he repressed? It’s Victorian England, you guys.

Does he have an addiction? He smokes casually but other than that... eh. And don’t tell me he has sex addiction. He uses his body strategically.

Does he have daddy issues? If what he has isn’t daddy issues, I don’t know what is.

Is he violent? He’s got tons of bottled up aggression.

Does he need a good night sleep? It would be great if he could use the day’s darkest hours for sleeping.

Does he need a good cry? Undeniably.

Flavors: A conniving slut extraordinaire.

Conclusion: A major player in the book (says me who managed like 50 pages), Mickey Miranda was turned into such a nothing character in the miniseries that they needed a truly extraordinary actor to make him memorable. And guess what, Luca delivered.

Cesare (Non essere cattivo)

Is he queer? Not explicitly, but come on.

Is he repressed? Lethally.

Does he have an addiction? He’s an addiction textbook.

Does he have daddy issues? *Jake Peralta voice* Yeah, the guy without a daddy is the one with daddy issues. Explain that logic.

Is he violent? Oh yeah, he’s a rabid little trash goblin.

Does he need a good night sleep? So much.

Does he need a good cry? He’s had his fair share of good cries, but he could always use more.

Flavors: A aimless junkie.

Conclusion: The quintessential Luca. Beautiful.

Primo (Trust)

Is he queer? Listen, just because we don’t see him fuck a dude on screen it doesn’t mean he isn’t a motherfluffing queer icon. It’s not subtext; it’s TEXT.

Is he repressed? Where do I even fucking start?

Does he have an addiction? Oh yeah. And a coke nail to prove it.

Does he have daddy issues? I would need a whole separate post to unpack his daddy issues.

Is he violent? So very violent.

Does he need a good night sleep? Yes, please. On an actual bed in an actual bedroom.

Does he need a good cry? You can just tell.

Flavors: A ruthless criminal with a strong mafia boss potential.

Conclusion: The pièce de résistance of the Luca Marinelli filmography. Not only does he tick every box, he gets bonus points for the excellent wardrobe choices that emphasize Luca’s best features. Primo Nizzuto is everything great you want from Luca, except singing. (Though in my headcanon that whole white car in a snowstorm monologue was a musical number.)

#luca marinelli #the old guard #tutti i santi giorni #martin eden #il mondo fino in fondo #ricordi?#waves 2012 #fabrizio de andré - principe libero #una questione privata #la solitudine dei numeri primi #lo chiamavano jeeg robot #il padre d'italia #die pfeiler der macht #non essere cattivo #trust fx

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rangerboys · 6 years

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slutty spd red starter ! looking for tops, could be anyone tbh. lil santi was horny and went to a gloryhole, and we’ll see how long they can keep the wall between them. friend, family, boss, w/e.

He had a young mouth, he knew it and used it a lot to get away with shit that most people wouldn’t, but young Santiago seemed blessed with impossibly pink lips of a teenager. It was why he had no problem finding someone, as he sat in this odd, off the beaten path gloryhole that was in the back of some adult bookstore he didn’t even know still existed. His lips were slick with saliva and precum, and he was playing up the sounds of gagging and choking, knowing it was turning this dude on, who was fully thrusting against the wall to work at his throat and he was whimpering his youthful little moans as he was taken, knowing a lot of guys that came here had Daddy complexes that Santiago easily fed into. And loved.

#gay smut rp #indie gay smut rp #gay indie smut rp #open starter #SPD RED! ranger (main)#SPD RED! mission report (interactions)

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lovemesomerafael · 5 years

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Destroying The Planet To Save It Chapter 7: Anderson Cooper Hates Me

Source: @teradragonlady

Chapters 1-5 Chapter 6 Read it on AO3

Santiago wasn’t a bad guy. Natasha could have actually liked him; you know, if he wasn’t a flunkie working for a douche canoe possibly bent on mass destruction. He led her right to an entrance to Arias’s “Site B”, about a quarter-mile from the industrial park entrance Sam and Anita had been brought through. First objective accomplished. This entrance was in back of a vacant storefront, a nondescript but heavy metal door that led to a simple stairway down into the complex below. Pleased that it had been so easy, Natasha nonetheless gave Santi a skeptical look.

“Wait, where are you taking me? What kind of place is this? I don’t know about this…”

“Relax, Mami, it’s all good. My boss is a paranoid rich dude. This is just one of his facilities. You can trust me, I’m a security guard,” he smiled.

“Promise?”

“Of course.”

From his perch on a rooftop down the alleyway, Clint watched and waited. He knew he was going to lose comms with Natasha soon as they traveled very far underground, and he would need to enter the complex. But he wanted to give them a good head start. After that, remaining undetected would be a matter of luck.

The stairway was long and dim. Sam hadn’t been wrong about how far underground this place was. When they finally emerged at the bottom, Natasha saw that they were in the garage-like space Sam had described.

“OK, listen,” Santi said, turning to her so he could speak quietly. “Like I said, you’re not supposed to be here. So Imma have to hide you somewhere. Follow me.”

Santi led her along one concrete wall of the vast space, past trucks painted to look like Con Ed service trucks, a couple of panel vans with logos of businesses on their sides, and several cars. The metal door he approached opened with a combination Natasha instantly memorized, and she followed Santi down a bare concrete hallway lined with the pipes and conduits Anita Herrera had described. Natasha saw what Anita had meant. There was an inordinate amount of electricity running through this hallway.

Natasha was glad to note that the door to which Santi led her didn’t squeak, and did have a lock that could be thrown from the inside. It looked like a little employee lounge of some kind, sad and spartan, but apparently well-used. She took a moment to be grateful that, as annoying as Tony Stark was, the work environment he provided the Avengers beat the shit out of this painted-concrete cellar.

“OK. You’ll be all right here. Just lock the door after I leave. Most of the people are gone this weekend, so there’s just a few of us guards. I’ll think of a reason to tell them not to come in here.”

“Wait, no- you’re not leaving me alone here, are you? I mean…” Natasha put on a vulnerable look she knew from long experience to be irresistible.

“I gotta. I’m supposed to be patrolling. There’s cameras. Mostly, nobody watches ‘em but, I mean, they’ll notice I’m missing after a while.”

“But what if they catch me here?”

“You lock the door, and let me take care of the rest.” Natasha had taken a seat on a stained, utilitarian sofa against one wall of the small room, and Santi actually knelt down beside her. It was a sweet, protective move. She supposed she’d feel guilty for what she was about to do, if she bothered with things like guilt anymore.

“Well, how many other guys are here? Are they gonna try to get in?”

“There’s only five of us, and I told you, I’ll make up some excuse for them not to come in here.”

Natasha didn’t look convinced. “Do you think it would be OK if I smoked a little weed? It’ll calm me down.”

“Sure, that’s fine. We do in here, sometimes. No cameras.”

She pulled a small plastic container from a pocket of her jacket and set it on the table, popping open the lid to reveal a tiny one-hitter lying in a bed of what was technically marijuana, although Tony Stark had objected loudly to even allowing anything that weak in his building. Plucking the tiny pipe out carefully, Natasha looked up at Santi with a grin as she packed a hit. “Here. You deserve it, after what you did for me. Careful, though. This stuff’ll knock you on your ass.”

“I don’t know, man, weed makes me sleepy,” Santi objected, but not very strongly.

“Huh,” Natasha shrugged, taking her hand back from where she’d offered the one-hitter to him. “Makes me horny,” she murmured just before setting it between her lips and lighting it, sucking in the smoke.

As expected, that got Santi’s attention. “Yeah, that, too.”

“You smoke before? Because, like I said, this stuff is kinda strong.”

“Don’t worry, Mami, I can handle it.”

When she offered it to him a second time, he took the small metal pipe, seeing nothing but the promising little smile she gave him. Certainly he didn’t notice her switch the one-hitter with another that had been up her sleeve.

They each took two hits before Santi was unconscious. Natasha laid him down – he seemed like an OK guy, really, and it had to look like he’d just fallen asleep from the marijuana – before she spoke to Clint.

“You in?” She asked, the microphone in her earring picking up everything.

“Yeah,” she heard him respond in her earpiece. “I’m on the stairs, just outside the door.”

“It opens into the underground garage Sam told us about. Hang on. I’m gonna go up there. I’ll let you in when it’s clear.”

“Copy that.”

The drug she’d used on Santi would keep him unconscious for around four hours. This part had been easy, but the rest was pure improvisation. Natasha smiled. She was good at improvisation.

There were no sounds in the hallway as she cracked the door and listened. Since she didn’t have a key, she smiled as she used the specially-designed jewelry Clint had given her for her navel piercing to lock the door behind her. Dang, that thing came in handy. She’d have to remember to thank him for it again.

Maybe. Or maybe he’d think she was trying to remind him of their time together on Eleuthera, where she’d gotten the piercing to begin with. Holy shit, but they’d been drunk. Much of that week after Budapest was a blur, although not enough of it. Not the part where she’d told him she loved him, too. Not the look in his eyes when she’d later pretended not to remember.

The door to the garage area was open, which gave Natasha time to spot the guy coming toward her and plaster a huge smile on her face.

“Hi!” She called to him when he noticed her, her unexpected greeting stopping the motion of his hand as he reached for something on his belt.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Natasha. I came down here with Santi? But, um, we were partying and” - she giggled drunkenly - “he passed out.”

“He what? He brought you down here? And now he’s - Where is he, that hijueputa?”

“Break room. But don’t be mad. C’mon, we were just having a little fun. I mean, this place is a drag, you know?”

The guy, short and barrel-shaped, marched right past Natasha, grabbing her wrist on the way and beginning to drag her into the hallway toward the room where Santi was. She let him, continuing to giggle softly.

“Don’t be mad. Hey, what’s your name? I’m Natasha. Oh, wait, I told you that already.”

They reached the door and the guy tried to pull at it, surprised to find it locked.

“Oh, oops! I think I musta done that.” More giggles.

The guy pulled a key ring from his pocket, fastened with a long, drooping chain to his belt loop. He kept iron fingers around Natasha’s wrist as he roughly unlocked and yanked the door open. Santi lay peacefully sleeping on the couch, even as the guy began cursing him in Spanish and trying to shake him awake.

“No, c’mon… let him sleep. He’s just stoned. He’ll be fine. You can see he’s breathing and stuff.”

The guy turned to Natasha. “You gotta get out of here. You’re not supposed to be here.”

Natasha smiled beatifically. “I know. Santi told me. But we weren’t doing anything, and he said your boss wasn’t here right now, so no one would care. Are you mad at me?”

“I just gotta get you out of here. Come on.”

“At least tell me your name.”

“Alejandro. You sure he’s just stoned?”

“Yeah. We were smoking this.” Natasha pulled out her plastic container. “You want some?”

“No. Come on.”

“Please, Alejandro? Because I got dumped by my boyfriend tonight, and if I go back to our apartment, he’s gonna hit me. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and Santi was nice to me. I just needed someplace to sort of hang out, get my head together, you know? Please don’t make me leave. I’ll stay right here. And I’ll share my weed with you.”

“I don’t think I want any of your weed. Look what it did to poor Santi,” Alejandro said, but he was grinning. Natasha knew then that she had him. Clint would just need to be a little patient.

Twenty minutes later, Clint was sitting on the bottom stair, chin in hand, when Natasha opened the door from the garage area. “’Bout time,” he groused.

“I know, but there are only three left. And if we’re lucky, we won’t meet any of them. Let’s get going.”

For twenty or thirty minutes, Clint and Natasha had free rein to look wherever they liked. Natasha would enter a room, find the cameras, and make sure she and her unhappy countenance were very visible to whoever might be monitoring them as she disabled them. After that, Clint would enter the room and they would investigate it thoroughly. Everything they found was in Spanish, which wouldn’t have been much of a problem, except it was also in some sort of code. There was really no way to tell what this place was for from what they’d found so far. All they could do was photograph everything and hope they could figure it out later.

And then there was a loud commotion as two men came running down the concrete hallway toward the room in which Clint melted into the shadows under a desk and Natasha stood, seemingly alone, gazing around.

“Who the hell are you?” One of the men asked in heavily-accented English. “’The fuck you doin’ to our cameras?”

“Hi! I’m Natasha.”

“What the hell are you doing here? How’d you get in here?”

“It’s kind of a long story. I was partying with Santi and Alejandro? But they passed out and now I’m bored and I don’t know how to get out of here.”

“Why the hell are you trashin’ all our cameras?”

“I don’t like them. There’s no privacy in the twenty-first century. We’re all too comfortable being watched every second. You wanna help me with the revolution?”

The two men held an incredulous, furious conversation in Spanish while Natasha stood a few feet away, a perplexed look on her face.

“Hey, guys, I don’t speak Spanish, you know? I’m not trying to steal anything. I just came down here because me and my boyfriend had a fight, and I met Santi, and I didn’t have anywhere to go…”

Clint was cramped and impatient waiting under the desk, but he was at least mildly entertained by how easy it was for Natasha to work her spell on these idiots, too. When they were both passed out on the floor, he was actually a little embarrassed on behalf of his gender.

They found the fifth and last guy after another half hour of exploration. This guy wasn’t about to fall for Natasha’s weed trick, however, because he was behind a door with an electronic lock she should not have been able to open. He ended up getting Clint’s knee in his face, which meant that they had to dose him with the drug Clint had brought in a case attached to his belt. The poor guy wouldn’t remember anything about how he ended up in the bunkroom Clint and Natasha found. They could only hope he would deduce - from the stories the other guys would tell and, of course, from his nudity and the position in which he found himself - that he, too, had met Natasha. He could probably claim bragging rights, because it would appear that he had gotten further with her than the other guys had before he passed out, fell off the cot, and broke his nose.

The machine he was there to guard made absolutely no sense to either Clint or Natasha. It filled the cavernous room, and was clearly the destination for all that power. It was shaped like a square, stepped pyramid, which caused Clint to dub it the Chichen Itza machine, with a level of panels near the top glowing a sickly green. The dry, ozone-scented heat in the room explained why the machine had its own cooling system, which was one of the reasons it was housed behind locked doors. There was nothing that indicated to Clint or Natasha what it did, though. All they could do was take video and photo after photo of it from every angle, both close up and panoramic, and hope Bruce and Tony could make some sense of it.

Once they’d finished that, they just had to find the place where the cameras were monitored, to make sure they left no video evidence of their escapades for anyone to find later. Finding the monitoring station wasn’t much of a challenge, nor was reprogramming the system to double-record the next few hours and replace all the recordings in which Clint or Natasha appeared.

The problem came when they discovered there was a sixth guard.

*****

Jarman Arias’s plane wasn’t as nice as Tony Stark’s. Sam made a little face at the thought of a guy like him having preferences in private jets. Anita noticed the look and leaned in. “What’s the joke?”

Sam smiled. “I was just thinkin’ I like Stark’s jets better.”

She looked around. “Oh, I don’t know. This one doesn’t suck.”

There were only four other people on the plane. All of them were Hispanic, and they all clearly knew each other. The six passengers were sitting together in a group, enjoying a sumptuous lunch served impeccably by the cabin attendant. The other four seemed happy to include Sam and Anita in their conversation, speaking English for Sam’s benefit. They laughed and carried on as though the party had already started which, in fact, it already had in that they were all drinking a Colombian ale that went perfectly with their broiled whitefish. There was plenty of flirtation, although the flight hadn’t been long enough for the others to determine how far they could go with Sam and Anita. Some couples were more exclusive than others, after all.

“We haven’t been to one of Jarman’s parties before,” Anita said to the group, just after feeding Sam a bite of perfectly-seared asparagus. “What should we expect?”

The other four laughed knowingly. “Hope you’ve gotten some sleep, and have healthy livers,” one man answered with a wink. “Because you’re about to learn why God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Sam whistled. “Always wondered what those folks got up to,” he grinned.

Sam and Anita learned nothing about whatever Arias might be up to on the flight. The group wasn’t in the mood to talk about anything substantive. They only wanted to flirt and laugh. What little the two were able to learn suggested that these people, at least, weren’t expecting anything big or world-changing to happen anytime soon.

In the meantime, Sam found himself falling naturally and easily into a habit of sitting close enough to Anita that they were always touching. For her part, Anita created several searing moments of meaningful eye contact between them combined with a soft, secret smile that Sam felt south of his belt line. The effect was outwardly a very convincing picture of an established couple who were very attracted to one another. Inwardly, for Sam at least, the effect was to turn him way the fuck on and make him wish desperately that they were going to the Keys to be alone together.

The group was met at the tiny private airport on Marathon Key by a sleek, white limousine that whisked them quickly to a set of ornate, manned gates in a long wall made of rock and shell. Inside the wall, Arias’s villa proved to be exactly that. It was massive, with balconies everywhere, and the fact that it had its own private beach was immediately obvious. The eight-foot-tall wall surrounded the entire property, extending all the way into the water. Sam and Anita shared a look that, to others, would appear to be just silently communicating their awe at the scene. Sam knew they were both noticing the overwhelming security.

There were people everywhere, wearing bright colors and carrying drinks. Many of the women were scantily dressed – there was an abundance of bikinis – while the men tended to skew older and wore more business casual clothing. Sam wasn’t surprised by that. He was surprised by the fact that there were probably as many armed security guards as there were uniformed waiters. Why’s a guy need armed security guards at a party, if he’s legit?

Almost instantly, Arias emerged from the house and walked over to the limo to greet his newly-arrived guests, specifically Anita. He welcomed her in rapid, jovial Spanish with an overly-friendly embrace and a double-cheek kiss. Only when he’d spent long minutes slobbering over her did he turn to Sam and his other guests.

“Mr. Wilson, how delightful you could make it,” he said, slapping him heartily on the back. “One of my staff will be out soon to show you to your room, and they’ll take care of your luggage. My home is yours, please take advantage of my hospitality. Would you like a drink?”

Arias waved a waiter over. Sam said, “Thank you for flying us out. Your jet is… something.”

“Yes, isn’t it? I grew up in a portazo, a slum, and I’ve never forgotten where I come from. That’s why I like the finer things now, and I like to share them with my friends.”

“Well, then,” Sam smiled, “I’m glad to be considered a friend.”

The oily simper he received in return raised the hair on the back of Sam’s neck. “Nonsense. It’s something of a coup to be able to call the Falcon my friend, and to welcome him to my home. So the pleasure is mine, parcero.”

Only after Anita coyly suggested that she was wearing too much clothing for the Keys did Arias reluctantly allow her to accompany Sam to the room assigned to them. Her slacks and gauzy, sleeveless top were actually very attractive and entirely appropriate for the weather, but not for a young woman in this crowd. In this crowd, she really was overdressed.

Their room was as ostentatiously luxurious as the rest of the huge house promised. Sam thought the bed could have comfortably slept 5 or 6 people and, given the environment, wondered whether it ever had. Anita stood near the center of the room, seemingly checking email on her cell phone. What she was actually doing was scanning for surveillance equipment, which she was not surprised to find.

“Anything going on?” Sam asked as he unpacked the few days’ worth of clothes he’d brought.

“Someone sent me a funny video,” she answered. “Wanna see? It’s got audio, too.”

“Nah. You and your cat videos,” he responded, seemingly absently, acknowledging her message that the room was under both video and audio surveillance.

She went into the bathroom, still looking at the screen of her phone. “Bad news, Sam,” she called from inside.

“What’s that, Babe?”

“I got no signal in here.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Well, you’ll live. You’re too attached to that thing, anyway.”

So. No surveillance in the bathroom. Good to know for several reasons, Sam thought.

From the moment she and Sam re-appeared, Arias kept Anita plastered to his side. She wore a red bikini which Sam knew was going to fuel his dreams, covered by an open, lacy, white robe that swirled around her when she walked in her matching kitten-heeled mules. Sam’s loose board shorts were far less revealing, but his short-sleeved, button-down shirt hung open to reveal a firm chest and abs that Anita had commented on very favorably.

It was, of course, the plan that Anita would stay close to Arias, but Sam found himself deeply concerned, and even more jealous. He and Anita had just started… whatever it was they’d started. He wasn’t remotely in the mood to see some other guy all over her. And Arias was all over her. He plied her with drinks (which she was very good at discreetly spilling) and kept an arm around her and a hand on her waist or hip almost continuously. Although it made Sam furious, he did notice that Arias made sure to introduce her to everyone they spoke to, and he’d overheard enough of the introductions to know that he usually added some tidbit about how he knew them. It was intended to impress her with the width of his influence and his impressive social contacts, and she was playing along beautifully. The more dazzled she seemed, the more he bragged, making it that much easier for her to gain information.

Meahwhile, Sam went into party mode, and began to meet people. It wasn’t hard. Everyone was drinking, and many of the guests recognized him, which made for an easy icebreaker. More than a few of the guests made overt passes at him, and Sam smirked to think how easy it would have been to fill up the bed in the room he was sharing with Anita. Given his natural charm, he had no trouble gently putting off amorous advances while still managing to gather a great deal of information. Between Sam and Anita, the afternoon and evening were very productive.

*****

Joss blinked her eyes open, squinting against the afternoon light coming in the window. Hmmm. Hospital room. Why… Oh, yeah. She looked down and immediately saw the cast on her right forearm and hand. No surprise there, she’d known something was broken. She also felt the pain in her left side as soon as she moved to shift position. Which is when she turned her head to see Bucky asleep in a chair next to her hospital bed and holding her left hand. She couldn’t help it. She gasped in surprise, waking him.

“Bucky,” she mumbled, finding her throat scratchy and her voice weak.

He grinned sleepily at her. “How you feelin’, Kiddo?”

Joss noticed with a slight shiver that he didn’t let go of her hand, but rather squeezed it. She thought for a moment before answering. “A little sore, I guess. How’s Singer?”

“He’s in ICU. Expected to be OK, but he lost part of his right leg.”

“Damn,” she hissed. “That’s rough.”

“You’ve been out of it for a while. What do you remember?”

Joss squinted. “I remember that President Lattimore is dead. I remember needing to stay with his body, and you telling me to go to the hospital, but then you got very blurry, and… Nothing after that.”

“That’s because you were all busted up inside. You had surgery. They had to take out your spleen.”

“My… Wait, I was usin’ my spleen. I don’t want it out. I like my spleen.”

“Yeah, well, you had a broken floating rib that stabbed into it. Damn near killed you. Which is why I’m pissed as hell at you. You felt a hell of a lot worse than you told me, Joss. If you woulda bled to death because you were trying to be a hero, you’d have died of stupidity.”

She smiled wanly. “Well. It’s nice to know you care, even if you can’t land a plane for shit.”

“I am not joking around here! I been sitting here for hours waiting for you to wake up so I can yell at you about how reckless that was.” He certainly didn’t look like he was kidding. The thundercloud in his face rivaled those that had brought down the Quinjet.

Joss frowned. “Singer and Lattimore were in trouble. There were only four paramedics on site at the time. They needed our help.”

“We would’ve done all right. Woulda maybe cost Singer a few minutes, but that wouldn’t have changed anything for him. Obviously, it wouldn’t have changed things for Lattimore. It wasn’t worth you lying to me.”

“I didn’t lie to you. I never said I was fine.”

“You never said you were bleeding to death, either. You had to know how bad -“

A nurse came in at that moment, making Bucky and Joss realize their voices had risen a bit.

“Well, Ms. Emerson, you’re awake. Good. I’ll let the doctor know. How do you feel?”

“Suddenly like a four-year-old,” she muttered, glaring at Bucky.

“Well.” The nurse said, and now she turned to glare at Bucky, too. “I need to examine my patient, Sir. I’m going to have to ask you to excuse us.”

“I’ll just wait outside,” he said, standing and letting go of Joss’s hand.

“Maybe you could come back tomorrow,” the nurse said, disapproval dripping from every syllable. “Ms. Emerson needs her rest.”

Joss was a little woozy to begin with, and the idea that Bucky looked disappointed that he couldn’t stay with her made her stomach swoop like she’d crested a hill too fast in her car. But before she could think of a way to ask him to stay, he left without a word. The nurse leaned down and began to take back Joss’s sheets, which blocked her from seeing Bucky’s regretful backward glance.

Joss endured the nurse’s exam in resentful silence. That was not the way she’d wanted to end her last conversation with Bucky. She knew he wouldn’t be back; he obviously had better things to do. He’d just hung around so he could tell her what an idiot she was for not admitting how hurt she’d been. As if she’d had a choice.

There’d been things that needed to be done at the crash site. It wasn’t like she had never planned to go to the hospital. Of course she had. She wasn’t stupid. But she didn’t get a chance to tell him that, which meant that now she’d be going through the rest of her life knowing that Bucky Barnes, stupendously hot and surprisingly sweet superhero, thought she was a careless twit. Great.

“Can you rate your pain for me?” The nurse asked. “Give me a number between one and ten.”

Joss wanted to ask whether she was talking about her stupid wounds or her heart. Either way, the answer was the same. “Maybe a six. Seven.”

“Sounds like you better let me give you some pain medicine.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

While the nurse was gone, Joss sat staring at the blank white wall facing her hospital bed. Her head was reeling, but she had no way to judge how much was blood loss and how much was everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours. The President had died on her watch. She was going to have to answer a lot of questions about that. They would no doubt be asked politely, and she’d probably be buried under endless platitudes about how she’d done everything right, and it wasn’t her fault, and it could have happened on anyone’s watch, blah, blah, blah. It would all be the most transparent bullshit. Every single person who had ever heard of Adam Lattimore – basically the entire planet – would blame her, and they’d be right.

Not to mention the fact that Joss actually found herself mourning the smarmy old perv. She was surprised as hell to realize that she’d actually kind of liked him. Damn. Worse, she knew she’d have to face Mrs. Lattimore. The woman was entitled to an apology, at the very least. She deserved to hear Joss acknowledge that she’d failed him. Joss wondered if her nurse would give her a shot of morphine before she had to have that conversation.

And what the hell was going on with these storms and tornadoes and that earthquake? There was no way the storm they’d been caught in was natural, which meant there was somebody out there who could create a freaking tornado. That was just fucking terrifying. She understood now why S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers were involved, although not what any of this had to do with the President or that event. And, by the way, had she actually just woken up holding hands with Bucky Barnes?

The nurse returned with a syringe, which she quickly and efficiently screwed into a port in Joss’s IV. Not two seconds later, Joss could feel the effects of whatever the drug was.

“Whoo,” she said. “That’s, um… that’s… wow. I forgot to tell you I’m a lightweight.”

“Don’t worry. It’s only half of what you can have, if you need it. We want to be sure your pain is well controlled.”

“I’m not worried about pain. I’m worried about seeing flying elephants and shit.”

“Well, if you do see any, let me know. I’ll have them removed.”

“Appreciate it.” Joss settled back against her pillows and watched in fascination as the nurse squiggled and walked on a floor that was definitely at a strange angle. She giggled a little as she found herself alone and, suddenly, very stoned.

She didn’t notice Bucky come back in a moment later.

“What’s funny?”

Joss was probably surprised to hear his voice next to her, but she was too high to know for sure. “You… Hey. You’re Bucky,” she drawled, grinning crookedly.

“I get that all the time,” he smiled, taking the chair next to her bed again. “Did we just have some narcotics?”

“I did. I don’t know about you.” Joss giggled again at her own joke, then became suddenly overly serious. “I didn’t expect to see you back in here.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“I thought you already did. I thought you’d already be on your way back to New York.”

Bucky frowned. “Why’d you think that?”

“Well, because. You’re all gorgeous and famous and stuff, and you got your chance to tell me what a dumbass I am, so I just figured you’d be...” She extended her arm, rolling her hand in a way Bucky guessed was intended to convey, uh, leaving maybe?

“I want to make sure you’re all right. That OK with you?”

Joss tilted her head, scowling adorably and clearly trying to figure out the answer to his question. “I don’t know.”

Bucky wasn’t sure what to do with that. “What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know how good an idea that is. For me. Because I really have a thing for you. Like, bigtime.”

Bucky blushed and looked down at Joss’s blanket, smiling almost shyly and giving an embarrassed laugh.

“Is it because you crashed me in a plane?” Joss asked, oblivious. “Because I didn’t really mean what I said. I’m sure you can land a plane. I’m sure you can do pretty much anything, I mean… look at you. Why do you look like that, anyway?”

“Uh…”

“You got those big, pretty blue eyes, and that ridiculous jaw, and holy fuck don’t get me started on those lips. You should see what people on YouTube say about your hair. It’s graphic, Bucky. Gra. Phic.”

“OK, Joss, let’s maybe talk about something else now. That medicine work? You still hurting?”

“What, you don’t want to hear about how beautiful you are? Don’t pretend you don’t know. Of course you do. How come I can’t say it?”

“Because you’re gonna be mad at me for hearing it, that’s why.”

“Do you know what I think you should do? Oh, this is a good idea. It is. I think you should kiss me. Then when I never see you again except on TV, at least I’ll be able to remember that you kissed me once.”

“I’m not so sure you’re gonna remember any of this…” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. OK, I’ll kiss you. But not right now. Later. When you’re not quite so medicated.”

“It’s OK. I know. I’m inse- inconta- interconti- No, that’s not it.” She frowned in concentration. “In-con-se-quen-tial. Inconsequential. That’s why you don’t want to kiss me. I don’t blame you. You can lift entire airplanes and I don’t even have a spleen.”

“What? You’re not inconsequential.”

“Compared to you, I am. You’re on cereal boxes with that guy. You know, that, um… Steve. Steve America. No, that’s not right…” Joss’s voice faded as she tried valiantly to figure out what she was trying to say.

“Joss, you are not inconsequential.”

“By next week, you probably won’t remember we even met. I’ll be back to obscurity, and you’ll be dating a Kardashian.”

“I don’t even know what that is. And that’s not fair, to either one of us.” Bucky reminded himself that she was wasted on pain meds and didn’t know what she was saying. He couldn’t be mad at her, although he didn’t appreciate her implication.

“Plus I let the President die. Am I on CNN yet? Does Anderson Cooper hate me? I know those jackholes at Fox News hate me. I can just imagine what they’re saying about me. But I feel bad if you don’t want to kiss me and Anderson Cooper hates me.”

“I do want to kiss you, and I’m sure Anderson Cooper doesn’t hate you.”

“Do you think Rachel Maddow would take my calls? She seems cool. She might let me explain.”

Bucky laughed. “I’m sure she will.”

Joss looked at him again. “Damn, you’re cute. You really want to kiss me?”

“Yes. I really do.”

“You’re humoring me because you crashed me in a plane.”

“A little. But I also think you’re cute, and I truly want to kiss you.”

“Then do it.”

“Not when you’re soused on painkillers.”

“See? You don’t want to. You’re all buff and supersoldiery and pretty and you’re too cool to even be in my hospital room. Why are you in here again?”

“Maybe we should watch TV.”

“OK. But not Anderson Cooper. He hates me.”

#The Avengers #Captain America #The Winter Soldier #Natasha Romanoff #The Black Widow #Clint Barton #Hawkeye #Sam Wilson #The Falcon #Bucky Barnes

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siliconwebx · 6 years

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Simple & Boring

Simplicity is a funny adjective in web design and development. I'm sure it's a quoted goal for just about every project ever done. Nobody walks into a kickoff meeting like, "Hey team, design something complicated for me. Oh, and make sure the implementation is convoluted as well. Over-engineer that sucker, would ya?"

Of course they want simple. Everybody wants simple. We want simple designs (because simple means our customers will understand it and like it). And we want simplicity in development. Nobody dreams of going to work to spend all day wrapping their head around a complex system to fix one bug.

Still, there is plenty to talk about when it comes to simplicity. It would be very hard to argue that web development has gotten simpler over the years. As such, the word has lately been on the tongues of many web designers and developers. Let's take a meandering waltz through what other people have to say about simplicity.

Bridget Stewart recalls a frustrating battle against over-engineering in "A Simpler Web: I Concur." After being hired as an expert in UI implementation and given the task of getting a video to play on a click...

I looked under the hood and got lost in all the looping functions and the variables and couldn't figure out what the code was supposed to do. I couldn't find any HTML <video> being referenced. I couldn't see where a link or a button might be generated. I was lost.

I asked him to explain what the functions were doing so I could help figure out what could be the cause, because the browser can play video without much prodding. Instead of successfully getting me to understand what he had built, he argued with me about whether or not it was even possible to do. I tried, at first calmly, to explain to him I had done it many times before in my previous job, so I was absolutely certain it could be done. As he continued to refuse my explanation, things got heated. When I was done yelling at him (not the most professional way to conduct myself, I know), I returned to my work area and fired up a branch of the repo to implement it. 20 minutes later, I had it working.

It sounds like the main problem here is that the dude was a territorial dingus, but also his complicated approach literally stood in the way of getting work done.

Simplicity on the web often times means letting the browser do things for us. How many times have you seen a complex re-engineering of a select menu not be as usable or accessible as a <select>?

Jemery Wagner writes in Make it Boring:

Eminently usable designs and architectures result when simplicity is the default. It's why unadorned HTML works. It beautifully solves the problem of presenting documents to the screen that we don't even consider all the careful thought that went into the user agent stylesheets that provide its utterly boring presentation. We can take a lesson from this, especially during a time when more websites are consumed as web apps, and make them more resilient by adhering to semantics and native web technologies.

My guess is the rise of static site generators — and sites that find a way to get as much server-rendered as possible — is a symptom of the industry yearning for that brand of resilience.

Do less, as they say. Lyza Danger Gardner found a lot of value in this in her own job:

... we need to try to do as little as possible when we build the future web.

This isn’t a rationalization for laziness or shirking responsibility—those characteristics are arguably not ones you’d find in successful web devs. Nor it is a suggestion that we build bland, homogeneous sites and apps that sacrifice all nuance or spark to the Greater Good of total compatibility.

Instead it is an appeal for simplicity and elegance: putting commonality first, approaching differentiation carefully, and advocating for consistency in the creation and application of web standards.

Christopher T. Miller writes in "A Simpler Web":

Should we find our way to something simpler, something more accessible?

I think we can. By simplifying our sites we achieve greater reach, better performance, and more reliable conveying of the information which is at the core of any website. I think we are seeing this in the uptick of passionate conversations around user experience, but it cannot stop with the UX team. Developers need to take ownership for the complexity they add to the Web.

It's good to remember that the complexity we layer onto building websites is opt-in. We often do it for good reason, but it's possible not to. Garrett Dimon:

You can build a robust, reliable, and fully responsive web application today using only semantic HTML on the front-end. No images. No CSS. No JavaScript. It’s entirely possible. It will work in every modern browser. It will be straightforward to maintain. It may not fit the standard definition of beauty as far as web experiences go, but it will work. In many cases, it will be more usable and accessible than those built with modern front-end frameworks.

That’s not to say that this is the best approach, but it’s a good reminder that the web works by default without all of our additional layers. When we add those additional layers, things break. Or, if we neglect good markup and CSS to begin with, we start out with something that’s already broken and then spend time trying to make it work again.

We assume that complex problems always require complex solutions. We try to solve complexity by inventing tools and technologies to address a problem; but in the process, we create another layer of complexity that, in turn, causes its own set of issues.

— Max Böck, "On Simplicity"

Perhaps the worst reason to choose a complex solution is that it's new, and the newness makes it feel like choosing it makes you on top of technology and doing your job well. Old and boring may just what you need to do your job well.

Dan McKinley writes:

“Boring” should not be conflated with “bad.” There is technology out there that is both boring and bad. You should not use any of that. But there are many choices of technology that are boring and good, or at least good enough. MySQL is boring. Postgres is boring. PHP is boring. Python is boring. Memcached is boring. Squid is boring. Cron is boring.

The nice thing about boringness (so constrained) is that the capabilities of these things are well understood. But more importantly, their failure modes are well understood.

Rachel Andrew wrote that choosing established technology for the CMS she builds was a no-brainer because it's what her customers had.

You're going to hear less about old and boring technology. If you're consuming a healthy diet of tech news, you probably won't read many blog posts about old and boring technology. It's too bad really, I, for one, would enjoy that. But I get it, publications need to have fresh writing and writers are less excited about topics that have been well-trod over decades.

As David DeSandro says, "New tech gets chatter". When there is little to say, you just don't say it.

You don't hear about TextMate because TextMate is old. What would I tweet? Still using TextMate. Still good.

While we hear more about new tech, it's old tech that is more well known, including what it's bad at. If newer tech, perhaps more complicated tech, is needed because it solves a known pain point, that's great, but when it doesn't...

You are perfectly okay to stick with what works for you. The more you use something, the clearer its pain points become. Try new technologies when you're ready to address those pain points. Don't feel obligated to change your workflow because of chatter. New tech gets chatter, but that doesn't make it any better.

Adam Silver says that a boring developer is full of questions:

"Will debugging code be more difficult?", "Might performance degrade?" and "Will I be slowed down due to compile times?"

Dan Kim is also proud of being boring:

I have a confession to make — I’m not a rock star programmer. Nor am I a hacker. I don’t know ninjutsu. Nobody has ever called me a wizard.

Still, I take pride in the fact that I’m a good, solid programmer.

Complexity isn't an enemy. Complexity is valuable. If what we work on had no complexity, it would worth far less, as there would be nothing slowing down the competition. Our job is complexity. Or rather, our job is managing the level of complexity so it's valuable while still manageable.

Santi Metz has a great article digging into various aspects of this, part of which is about considering how much complicated code needs to change:

We abhor complication, but if the code never changes, it's not costing us money.

Your CMS might be extremely complicated under the hood, but if you never touch that, who cares. But if your CMS limits what you're able to do, and you spend a lot of time fighting it, that complexity matters a lot.

It's satisfying to read Sandi's analysis that it's possible to predict where code breaks, and those points are defined by complexity. "Outlier classes" (parts of a code base that cause the most problems) can be identified without even seeing the code base:

I'm not familiar with the source code for these apps, but sight unseen I feel confident making a few predictions about the outlying classes. I suspect that they:

are larger than most other classes,

are laden with conditionals, and

represent core concepts in the domain

I feel seen.

Boring is in it for the long haul.

Cap Watkins writes in "The Boring Designer":

The boring designer is trusted and valued because people know they’re in it for the product and the user. The boring designer asks questions and leans on others’ experience and expertise, creating even more trust over time. They rarely assume they know the answer.

The boring designer is capable of being one of the best leaders a team can have.

So be great. Be boring.

Be boring!

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