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chiwhorei · 4 years

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who prays for the headsman?

paring: k. kyoutani x fem!reader

genre: angst, smut, 18+ minors dni

word count: 3.2k

warnings: size kink, crying, oral (f. receiving), major character death, pseudo-incest, stepcest, violence (not a gorey depiction), stabbing, a mention of blood, medieval beheading, angst okay this is sad you have been warned

a/n: Hello! HQHQ monthly collab time, sinners! I’m super excited to share this with you all, it was truly a work of love. All of the other amazing fantasy collab pieces can be found here!

hymns: murder song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) - AURORA, the judge - twenty one pilots

“The girl’s mother and I are to be wed with haste,” Kyoutani Kentarou’s father pats his small head, smoothing down the blond locks, “Be sure to make y/n feel comfortable. She isn’t your blood, but she’s your family now, son.”

From the moment his father brought you and your mother home, still wrapped in thick mourning veils and tears, his cross to bare was you.

You needed barely an introduction before melting into the comfort of Kentarou. Wrapping your small hands around his middle and burying your face against his neck. Your stiff black dress crinkles against him. The contact was a magnetic, instantaneous spell. Like moth meeting flame, and Kyoutani would burn for it until the next lifetime. The bubbling, itching hellfire marring his tanned skin for two decades.

It’s easier to see the resulting moments in pieces. Shiny, silver blade raised high and gleaming in the light, a sharp swipe of the weapon through the stale air, and finally a thump of weight against the ground below. Still, quiet, and absolute. There’s no escaping the headman’s blade.

The virgin light of dawn rouses Kyoutani from a fitful night of sleep, he stretches his arm out to find your form and only catches the empty shell of blankets you’ve left behind. You’re always awake to greet the cresting rays of light as if they need your permission before ascending to greet the rest of the townspeople. You are the end and beginning of each day.

He finds you sat by the stone fireplace, nightdress hanging off of your shoulders and shawl wrapped tightly to keep the winter’s air at bay. You’ve always preferred the springtime. Even so, the smile that turns at the ends of your lips warms his body like the pouring of melted honey. He basks in you for a moment from afar, as close as he ever feels worthy of being.

“How did you sleep?” Your hand reaches out as he moves farther into the cottage’s main room, touching the warmth of his bare chest. Kyoutani pulls you into him, pressing a kiss to your temple and folding your head against the crook of his neck. Your question goes unanswered, as you both already know: there’s never much rest gifted to the headsman.

A tall wisteria tree sits just outside of town. It’s branches are long and decaying. No flowers bloom on a tree the gods have forgotten. But that doesn't deter you from airy footsteps carrying you to it’s base.

“There’s nothing you can do, y/n,” Kyoutani presses, reaching his arms out to ensure you don’t fall, “there’s no fixing rotten roots.”

You scoff, bunching up your skirt at the ends and kneeling at the large trunk.

Where you bound forward without care, your Kentarou is always there to catch you. As you stoop down by the lifeless tree, his stern eyes narrow. You lay your hands against the rough bark, rubbing upwards and back down. All you need is the notion of life. Your eyes shut in concentration, fingers dancing along the coarse texture. It’s there, deep inside, waiting for you to tug at and rouse back to life. You can see it just behind your eyelids, purples and long flora hanging down, surrounding you in it’s beauty.

“H-how did you do that, y/n?” Kyoutani is cemented in shock behind you, where naked, ghoulish limbs once sat are now filled with swaying, violet life.

“I dunno, I get a tingling feeling in my hands. Here,” You pull him down to sit on the ground, pressing your palms to his cheeks. Your touch is like balm on a wound, he closes his eyes and leans in further. His forehead presses against your own. Your hands cradle the sides of his face, thumbs tracing over the soft skin in soothing patterns.

This is wrong, even as a boy no taller than prairie grass; he knows how wrong this feeling is.

“Do you feel it, Kenta?”

Kyoutani’s job isn’t to decide a person's fate, but the blood still soaks his hands all the same. His walk home is always to the beat of heavy, warning footsteps. His figure is looming, shrouded in thick leather and chain medal. The faulted axe hangs by his side, gripped tightly and weighed down with the heavy smell of iron. He counts his sins every night, prays for absolution but still scrubs the blood of strangers off of his arms and wraps you up in them.

“You fucking bastard,” a strangers voice sounds behind Kyoutani like a siren. He hears the rustling of critics followed by the feeling of a stone thrown against his back.

“You murdered my brother. He was a good man and you killed him.” Kyoutani sighs deeply, he knows the blame will fall on him with every swing his blade makes, so any retort is swallowed. There’s never much reason to quabble, as word travels in a small town like water through a sieve.

“I know who you are, Kyoutani Kentarou. Your father was a good man, and your sweet little sister grew up to be quite the-” All reason shatters under Kyoutani’s boot in an instant, feet carrying him in his hecklers’ direction. His clenched fist meeting the man’s eye socket with deadly force, vision blurring and reason fleeting. He shouldn’t be handing out home brewed justice, but there’s no rationale exercised when your name passes through a strangers mouth.

Kyoutani is a strong man, but fighting three against one would be a losing battle no matter what. No matter how noble his intent is, a sharp knife to the stomach is impossible to ignore. The stranger twists the dagger, bringing his face to Kyouatani’s ear.

“Say hi to your dear ole’ dad for me, eh?”

He hears the man’s snide voice against the pounding in his head. He feels cold and far away, falling down a tunnel with no bottom.

“They’ll be coming for you, y/n,” Your lover's voice lilts against your back, but you don’t turn to meet his eyes just yet. Your hands busy themselves against the familiar grooves of bark. The wisteria’s flowers create a sanctuary from the cruelty of the outside world. It’s a sanctuary, but this spot is one of original sin. The first brush of lips sealed fate years ago that will be actualized by daybreak.

“I know, Kenta-” Your soft voice usually calms the blonde man in front of you, but under the plague of circumstance, your words are sharp spikes against his heart.

“Why did you do it then? How could you be so careless? The mark of a witch means only one thing.” Kyoutani’s stern voice cuts you off, holding you in place, “You never think about the consequences of your reckless heart. Look at me, woman.” His body towers over you, broad chest against your back. His hand finds your jaw, pulling it harshly to force eye contact. Darkened brown eyes fall upon your watery ones and his angry facade shatters like pottery in the small space between your two bodies. You sniffle in his hold, fat tears run down your cheeks as you stutter a response.

“I couldn’t let you die, you’re the only family I have left. I- I love you, Kenta.” A sob rips through you, the declaration isn’t a new one, but it’s context is uniquely heartbreaking. Kyoutani pulls you into him immediately, wrapping strong, scarred arms around your shoulders. You cling to him, a piece of history repeating itself as it likes to do, wrapped in each other and the royal purples of wisteria.

Your lips quiver an inch away from his, stained with salty tears. Kyoutani feels the warmth of plush skin dangled in front of him, there’s an urgency rushing through him where he’s usually hesitant. There isn’t much more time. Without consulting the angel on his right shoulder, two large hands cup your face and pull your lips against his own.

Your cries are muffled by the sloppy pull of your own tongue into Kyoutani’s mouth. As his traces over yours with a chorus of nips and licks, his hands fall to your waist to bunch up the fabric against your hips. The action causes your body to press flush to his crotch.

“We have one more night together, Kenta. Please.” Your words don’t need much appraisal, you could ask Kyoutani to pull the skies down with his bare hands and he would tear the blankets off of any gods above without a second thought. One more night.

Kyoutani unwraps himself from around your form to sit down on the spongy grass below. The terrain is soft and forgiving despite its location in the dense forest. He watches you above him, angelically outlined in the soft moonlight. The personification of virtue and goodness glimmering off of you like an aura. The purest beauty to ever exist, and he’s at the helm of it’s destruction.

The sound of your dress pooling at your feet pulls him from mulling over his past transgressions. His eyes follow a line up from said garment to where your bare cunt is nestled between hip bones. His gaze climbs farther, lacerating the memory of every dip and curve so they scar against his heart. He needs to remember everything.

You join him on the soft grass, knees swung on either side of his large thighs. His hands find your hips again, pressing into the flesh as you begin to rock lightly against him. Your movement is disastrous to his resolve, the tension in his body delivers harsh oval bruises against the skin of your ass.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.” Your confessions are accented by kisses against Kyoutani’s cheeks and lips. Your soul, your heart, your everything are each other’s; and tonight is the final assemblage.

Kyoutani’s touch is like scarlet fever against your body, burning in its journey to grope any flesh he could reach. His fingers have to cement this feeling into his fingerprints, after tonight only the phantom pains of you will remain.

“You feel so good Kenta. S-So right.” Your mewls rattle around against his skull, as one palm comes down to meet your heated pussy. The most morally abject sin he’s committed- even counting the heads that roll by his feat every day- is you. But still; he can’t argue the morality of your body writhing naked above him when his cock is already straining angrily against the leather of his pants. His fingers trace down from the hip bone to where your puffy lips sit. It’s amazing how sweet, how soft you are. Where Kyoutani is calloused and harsh, you are smooth and silken. Perfection. Depravity.

As one thick finger proads against your hole, your hips buck with new resolve. You crave more than just fleeting touches and stolen glances. You want him to let go completely, something he’s only done a handful of times. You need him to.

“I’m not made of ceramic Kyoutani. You treat me like a child, but I’m stronger than you seem to believe.” You use your family name for punctuation, but the sentence comes out melted on the edges when he sticks another digit in to join the first.

“Don’t you think I know that, y/n. Fuck. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known,” a resounding slap meets your ass, jolting you farther against his fingers, “but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t protect you. That’s my job, damnit.” His thumb finds your swollen clit with ease even within his flustered state and presses down, “I failed you.”

You don’t trust your own voice to answer, you know nothing you could say would ease his heart. All you can do is push forward in hopes that one night can make up for the life he’ll have to live without you. Your hands move down to loosen his suffocating pants, wobbly knees digging against the ground as he eases the leather down his legs.

Your hand grabs a hold of his hard cock, stroking from his thick base to reddened tip. The touch is familiar. Something that wracks him with guilt but fills his soul with warmth. It’s always been your touch. Similar to the sparks rendered from striking flint, your touch lights up his every nerve

Kentarou’s fingers move back to work you open for him, your head falls back, causing the fat of your tits to bounce against his chest. His other rough hand comes up to palm your breasts, pinching your hardened nipple and pulling down. You cry out in pleasure at the attention, senses overwhelmed by your lover’s ministrations.

“Please, please do something.” Your voice is desperate against the shell of his ear, pleading for more. More of Kentarou, and naively, for more time.

With a swift, practiced movement, the blonde moves you to lay against the grass. He removes the blood-stained shirt from his chest and kicks off his pants. His body eclipses yours, shielding you from view. You’re surrounded by him, the heady scent of sweat, the sound of the racing heart against his ribcage like a trapped songbird. It’s all Kyoutani, it always has been; your home, your confessional, the safest reprieve and your most vile secret.

Kyoutani’s cock is freed from its confines to slap deftly against his stomach. Your mouth tries to swallow as if filled with dried tea leaves, his size isn’t always the most accommodating. Even so, you lift up on one elbow to curl your fingers around his shaft and groan once again when your pointer finger and thumb don’t meet. Kyoutani opens his mouth to speak but you answer before the words fall.

“Don’t be gentle, Kentarou, ” your dwarfed hand tugs him towards you, creating a dizzying pressure, “I can take it.”

There’s no room for argument in your words, so he dips down to kiss your lips once again. “Let me taste you, y/n. Just one more time.” His eyes hold flames but regard you as softly as possible. You nod in agreement. His lips running down from your neck to your hips, you feel the chapped skin against your own. With each peck, a path of tears follow in tandem. His shaky cries are hidden behind the moans being pulled from your lungs. You don’t acknowledge it, for doing so would just make the wracking pain even worse.

There’s no use speaking of your combined suffering, it’s already dug it’s blade into Kyoutani’s vertebrae.

Once his mouth reaches your wet pussy, there’s nothing left of his conscious. Where guilt usually lies, madness replaces. The first swipe of his tongue is painfully slow, he has to savor this taste, your taste. Your soft, swollen lips are the gods’ manna and he’s been given one last chance to indulge. Kyoutani’s tongue finds your clit and flicks upward, just the way that’s always made you squeal. You’re coating his chin in slick, and nothing else will ever quench his thirst like this again. He could stay in between your legs for the next century, but rips himself away from your dripping cunt.

Your mouth is captured in his again, tongue and cheeks coated in your own arousal. The feeling distracting you from the reddened tip prodding at your tight hole. You suck in a sharp breath as you’re worked open. Every vein and ridge tugs against your snug walls. It hurts, it always does, but there’s nothing that’s ever felt better either. You bite his collarbone in a feeble attempt to keep quiet, nails cresting small shapes against his back as he slides farther and farther in.

“My pretty girl, so perfect for me.” Kyoutani’s hips meet your ass, giving you a moment to acclimate. You’re pulled taut around him, cock dragging against you as he pulls back. He remembers your previous words. I can take it.

His hips slam against you with ferocity. Every expanse of fat on you bounces. Thighs, tits, ass- all moving with the pace he sets. His cock is begging for release with every union of his tip to your cervix. A litany of cries and pleas fill the surrounding air, lilting around to bounce against the drooping flowers.

“Please Kenta, I’m- I’m going to.” Your sentence breaks off at the end but he puts them back together. He coos you, “I know, little one. Let go for me.” He presses two fingers against your clit once more to rub tight circles.

Your toes curl against the grass below you, body locking up as the blood running through your veins is replaced with gooey syrup. Years of tension and shame pull tightly against your body and snap in an instant.

Kyoutani can’t hold off his own orgasm any longer, not with the vice grip you have on him.

Not with the sound of the constable's horses drawing closer to the old wisteria tree.

It’s easier to see the resulting moments in pieces.

Kyoutani’s blade is sharpened meticulously. “A dull axe is worlds more painful.” Even as his heart is being torn from under his breast bone, webs of muscle and tendon snapping like sewing floss the closer he walks to your kneeling form, he remembers his father’s words.

The ringing in his ear drowns out the sound of your sentence being passed, it’s better he doesn't hear the official crimes you are posed with, lest he swings his weapon against the priest instead. He wants to reach out, to untie you and run away, to find a new world. A world where he hears the pattering of little footsteps and sees chubby hands clinging against your apron. A world where he wakes up to your wrinkled cheeks and graying hair.

Shiny, silver blade raised high and gleaming in the light, a sharp swipe of the weapon through the stale air, and finally a thump of weight against the ground below. Still, quiet, and absolute.

There’s no escaping the headman’s blade.

The wisteria tree is the beginning and end. Long, purple flowers sealing fate. Kyoutani pulls reluctant feet to the tree's base, his forehead pressing against the bark. He turns around and slides down to sit against the trunk. His hands roam against the texture of the grass beneath him. He remembers the spindly branches and decaying wood from years ago when he closes his eyes, he remembers your hands clawing back it’s life from the lowest level of hell.

When his eyes open again, they are met with yours. Soft, beautiful, and achingly familiar. You smile, lips turning upwards and teeth peaking out slightly. Your hand reaches out to cup his face, a dull crackle of warmth reaches his skin where forest fires use to smolder. It’s not the same, but it’s you. He knows it’s you somehow. Whether it be a cruel trick from the gods or his brain succumbing to madness. It’s still you. Your warmth is surrounding him again, and it feels almost right.

“Do you feel it, Kenta?” Your voice is warped and echoes like a hollow drum, he can’t help the tears falling in thick streams. It’s you. He reaches out to touch you, but his hands remain empty and cold. You disappear in a second, your face vanishing from where he swore he could almost feel your lips against his own.

You leave him once again and take the bright flowers of wisteria with you.

all writing is dymphnasprose’s original content, please do not repost or modify. do no read my content as asmr.©️

#kyoutani x reader #kyoutani smut #kyoutani kentarou x reader #haikyuu smut #haikyuu x reader #kyoutani kentarou #kyoutani kentarou smut #hqhq server collab #tw: stepcest #tw: death #tw: pseudo-incest #tw: violence #tw: blood #tw: stabbing

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littlemisssquiggles · 4 years

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I have had a fear ever since Salem’s first meeting with Cinder and crew in Volume 4, given what Ruby’s silver eye power did to Cinder and Tyrian sadistically mentioning “eye for an eye” that Ruby might lose an eye, have half her face horribly scarred, lose an arm...considering Cinder’s grudge and the dramatic irony that the two would “match” if that would happen and would be “even”. And considering the show pulls no punches at times...it’s just a fear I’ve had ever since Volume 4 and especially since things are getting much darker. I just want both halves of the RoseGarden team to be okay! Poor babies 😔

Hey there Sweet. To tell you the honest truth fam, I’m not a fan of the whole “Ruby losing an eye” theory that’s become increasingly popular with the FNDM as of this volume.

In my opinion, the CRWBY Writers haven’t done a good job at progressing Ruby’s development as a Silver Eyed Warrior in a manner that feels consistent and feels like it has actually impacted her as a character.

Over the course of the last couple of seasons, I’ve seen these writers introduce the Silver Eyes in the finale of V3 then drop it for two whole volumes without depicting Ruby showing any kind of onscreen interest in knowing that side of herself despite the connection it has to her mother.

They then brought it back in V6 with the inkling that the audience could essentially start to see Ruby begin to focus on training to fully control her unique abilities. They even introduced a mentor character for Ruby to have in the form of Maria Calavera (in place of Ozpin who was actually the one who told Qrow first about the Silver Eyed Warriors buuuut...I digress).

However even that was squandered since in the end, we neither received any further information on the Silver Eyed Warriors (outside of the brief titbit on their ties to the God of Light) nor have we seen any further moments of Ruby actually training to use her powers. Instead what we got was a rushed moment of triumph of Ruby using her powers against the Leviathan.

And despite showing that Ruby’s powers didn’t 100% work against the Kaijuu Grimm---proving that Ruby still needs more training, what happens after V6 going into V7? Ruby’s training to become a full-fledged Silver Eyes get dropped yet again and what’s worse is that her so-called mentor character---Maria gets side-lined and relegated to the team Granny Uber Driver despite showing much more promise than that.

At this point, if the showrunners were to have Ruby lose an eye then I honestly would hate it. And this is coming from someone who considers Ruby as one of her favourite characters in the show and was more than excited to see her grow into a Silver Eyed Warrior.

What good would Ruby losing an eye do for her development NOW if the show hasn’t been steady with that aspect of her story up until this point?

To me, it’ll just feel like something that was done for pure “shock value” without much thought as to how it can and will continue to develop the character in the long run and I’m not going to like it for that reason. Ruby losing her silver eyes or an eye---what will the showrunners do with that, huh? Have Ruby suddenly decide to take urgency to her training to use her Silver Eyes seriously after not showing an interest in continuing her training since her arrival in Atlas?

What good would that be now if they haven’t been consistent with this at all for Ruby’s side of the story? But then again, these are just my thoughts and opinions on that matter. Pardon my saltiness on the subject. I just personally don’t like how Ruby’s Silver Eyed Warrior story is being handled at all. While I do like some elements to it (like the introduction of Maria and how the power connects Ruby to her mother and feelings over her death), it’s doesn’t change the fact that the inconsistency in how it was told is really bugging me.

And the popularity of “Ruby losing an eye” doesn’t change my stance on it. However, since this theory is popular with the FNDM. I’m going to humour it for a bit here.

Hypothetically, if something horrendously bad were to befall Ruby and her eyes then I personally would rather it be a case in which Ruby’s eyes become severely damaged during an altercation with Salem.

Let’s say…Salem used the same black magic she used on Oscar last episode to burn Ruby’s eyes. Not enough for her to lose vision entirely like Maria but enough that it becomes a huge impairment to her abilities as both a Silver Eyed Warrior and a huntress as a whole.

Imagine a scenario where…Salem damages Ruby’s eyes to a point where the little rose can’t use her silver eye powers without the risk of losing her vision completely. So basically this is an ultimatum that Ruby has to live with for the rest of her life.

What would she do if she had to sacrifice a part of herself and the very lifestyle she dreamed of becoming to save the world?

Imagine if…Ruby is placed in a predicament where in order to defeat Salem and save Remnant, she needed to use her Silver Eyes. However due to her injury, she can’t use her Silver Eyes without losing her ability to see entirely. And if Ruby loses her sight then how was she going to be a huntress?

In previous seasons, Ruby had proclaimed that she always wanted to be like the heroes in the fairy tales she loved as a child. And according to Yang back in V2, Ruby has always wanted to become a huntress. She’s no different from Pyrhha Nikkos in that regard.

But what good would Ruby be as a huntress if she lost her eyes. How would she be able to help protect the world if she becomes blind to it?

Would Ruby be willing to make that sacrifice if that was what it took to help humanity? Would she trade her eyes for the world?

Would she give up being a huntresses and subject herself to being a blind woman for the rest of her life if it mean humanity could live another day without the tyranny of Salem or her forces? Would Ruby do that?

If something were to happen to Ruby’s eyes then I rather it’d be something like THAT. I think an arc like that could be very compelling for Ruby’s story.

Let’s say, at some point for V8, Salem deploys George---her Hound to go capture Ruby Rose this time. Since Oscar was resilient in withholding the truth about the Relics from Salem despite how many times she and her associates dared to break him---Salem decides to try a different approach.

Let’s say…after peaking into his mind, Salem learns that Ruby Rose is someone important to Oscar. Thus Salem has Ruby captured while using Oscar as bait. Like imagine if…Salem gets Ruby to willingly surrender herself over to the Hound to be taken away under the premise that no further harm will come to Oscar should Ruby give herself up.

Imagine a scene in which…Salem once again has a weakened Oscar Pine restrained by the Hound as he is forced to watch helplessly as the Wicked Witch brandished his beloved rose before him; proceeding to cause Ruby immense physical pain by torturing her with black magic all the while a poor tear-stricken Oscar is screaming for her to stop harming Ruby.

Like I’m picturing a moment where after Salem tortured Ruby with dark magic, she then used the same power to cause harm to Ruby’s eyes.

Like imagine…Salem holding Ruby by the throat, threatening to strangle her to death or snap her neck with one hand while the other covered her eyes as the Wicked Witch slowly burned Ruby’s eyes with her black magic while she cried out in sheer agony. And it is in this moment where Oscar finally yields; telling Salem about Jinn while practically grovelling to her on his knees to stop her from harming Ruby further.

Imagine if…a scene like that were to happen in the canon?

I’m not a fan of physical torture of characters. Scenes like that tend to make me feel very uncomfortable after a while of watching, particularly if it involves my favourite character or characters. But given the tone of this volume and what was seen from last episode, it wouldn’t surprise me if something like I just described were to happen.

If breaking Oscar physically and mentally isn’t enough for Salem to get what she desired out of him then the next alternative is to toy with his heart. It wouldn’t surprise me if Salem perceives the faith and compassion that her Ozma (cringe)---and by extension his successors---harbour for humanity as his greatest weakness. One that she is more than willing to exploit, especially when fuelled by petty (ass) revenge.

All in all, I want our two, smaller more honest souls to walk out of this volume unscathed as well, fam. However, again, given the tone of the last episode and this season thus far…I’m not so sure anymore. But we’ll see how the episodes go moving forward.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

#squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #ruby rose #rwby rosegarden #rwby theories #rwby volume 8 theories #rwby volume 8 spoilers #sweetgm2

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ageofgeek · 6 years

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Infinity War Thoughts and Review

First, I'm going to start off with a non-spoiler review (above the read-more).

So, after seeing Infinity War last nigt, I am actually traumatized. I feel like I'm in the 5 stages of grief, and I'm still in the Denial phase because the ramifications of this movie haven't set in yet. I am still so fucking shocked by what happened in that movie. And while I will undoubtedly be entering the next phase - Anger - fairly soon, I am going to try to be somewhat coherent and logical about this, so I'm gonna talk about the movie in broad strokes (again, no spoilers!).

First of all, Marvel did a great job at balancing all of those characters. I know a lot of people were very concerned about 30+ superheroes in the same movie, but they did a great job. As much as I hate to say it, they were very smart to "center" the film around Thanos, and then use his quest to get the infinity stones as the grounding for the rest of the characters and their missions.

That being said, this movie was an emotional rollercoaster. Goddammit. Tragic, gut-wrenching moments were quickly and almost abruptly followed by Avengers-typical quips and humor, and there came a point in the movie where my brain was like: "Alright, yep, that tragic thing just happened, time to wipe your tears and move on because the movie is already 10 steps ahead of you while you're still reeling.". And while that sucked for someone like me, who wants to cherish every single one of my babies, it did create an emotional environment wherein you felt the urgency. When tragedy struck, you didn't have time to mourn or think or become angry, because the stakes were too high. And I had the feeling that what I, as an audience member, was feeling, was similar to what the characters themselves were feeling. As these awful things happened to the people that they love, Thanos is still growing more powerful every second, and those characters had to swallow painfully, maybe shed a small tear, and move on. And that was one of the most tragic parts of this movie for me: the way that things had become so dire that individual lives didn't - and couldn't - matter anymore, not even to the people who love them the most.

In general, I wouldn't say that this film was enjoyable to watch - much like I wouldn't say that open heart surgery would be enjoyable - but it was definitely an incredible film. High intensity, beautiful cinematography, some stunning visual effects (and some less so - see: Thanos' bulk and height compared to the other, non-CGI characters), and there was a real loyalty to the arcs and lives of these characters. The ramifications of Infinity War will definitely need to be addressed in the 3 Marvel films that follow (Ant-Man and Wasp, Captain Marvel, and finally Avengers 4), and I'm looking forward to theorizing frantically on the Internet for the next year as to what will happen next.

And now, let's move on to the SPOILERY discussion. AGAIN, SPOILERS ARE AHEAD: BEWARE!

God, alright, let's start at the beginning.

Opening up on the Asgardian refugee ship being attacked by Thanos, I just, god. That entire scene destroyed me, right off the bat. First of all, Heimdall's death was so upsetting (and Thor's reaction to it was so painful), but here's a question that a lot of people have been asking: What happened to Valkyrie? Did she leave the ship before they got attacked? God, I really hope Marvel doesn't give her the "Sif and Jane" treatment - it seems like women in the Thor movies always just get forgotten and brushed off, which, wtf?

But moving on - fuck, Loki's death destroyed. Right off the fucking bat, I was sobbing at this fucking movie. Goddammit. I knew that it was probably gonna happen, but it didn't make it any less painful (also, oh my god, Thor screaming through the gag when he died and then crawling over to his body and cradling him, god that FUCKED ME UP). I mean, there are already a few good theories floating around which argue that Loki could have escaped death once again (i.e. why didn't Loki's corpse revert to his Jotun form after he died? Also, why would he just foolishly try to attack Thanos with a knife? He knows Thanos' strength better than almost anyone else (except Gamora and Nebula) - he would not have just barreled ahead and attacked him! There's also the point that while Hulk and Thanos were fighting, Loki went off screen, and when he returned, he was all jovial and did the ballsy (and foolish) stab move. Why would he be that confident, unless he had a plan and had already saved himself?). But anyway, that’s enough theorizing. Even if Loki did die for real, I will be smiling through my tears because he died a hero. They didn’t fuck up his character development from Ragnarok - he died trying to save his brother and his people. He died embracing his family, and all parts of his identity (”Prince of Asgard...rightful king of Jotunheim...Odinson”). Even if he is dead for good, I’m proud of my boy.

...

Now, switch to Tony(!!!) and Pepper(!!!!!!!) jogging in Central Park, talking about their wedding and babies!! I actually squealed during that scene. FUCK I love them. Also, the fact that Tony specifically mentioned that he dreamed about Pepper being pregnant makes me think that she actually is, because we’ve been told ever since Age of Ultron that Tony has somewhat prophetic dreams/visions, for some reason. If he was right about Thanos, why isn’t he right about this? Just saying! (Oh god, please let Avengers 4 have Tony and Pepper’s baby).

Doctor Strange comes through the portal and we have the Science Bros reunion hug :’) God, they haven’t seen each other in 3 years, and Bruce’s confusion over the breakup of the Avengers was both funny and sad. And Tony’s face when he says “Steve Rogers” - not “Steve” or “Cap” or “Capsicle”, but his full fucking name. The divorce is still real and apparently, NOT RESOLVED IN THIS MOVIE because THEY NEVER EVEN FUCKING SPOKE TO EACH OTHER. I came out of that film saying to myself, “...Wait, there wasn’t even the flip phone call?! Bruce called Steve, and it was off screen! What the fuck???” Dammit, Marvel, why did you play me like this? There better be fucking resolution to this conflict in Avengers 4.

Anyway, the first fight scene with Ebony Maw was pretty awesome, because Stephen and Wong’s magic was cool but we ALSO GOT TO SEE TONY’S NEW ARMOR!!! Our entire theater began to cheer when his armor began to come out and aghh, it was so beautiful, I’ve been waiting 5 years for this moment!! It seems like he still doesn’t have Extremis, but still, the nanobot armor is a great improvement (all of the phasing that that armor could do was awesome!). And Peter’s introduction, of course, was great. And my emotions! when Tony basically told Peter to let go of the spaceship and trust him, and Peter did and he got the Iron Spider armor! (which, holy shit, I love it, A++).

Also, when Tony got on that ship and Pepper called and she was so upsettttt, okay, i need to move on, that was too painful

...

Switch to Vision and Wanda in Scotland, POST-COITAL!!!! FUCK my Scarlet Vision heart in this movie was fucking fulfilled and also broken, god, I love them so much. I just, the fact that they’ve been visiting each other for 2 YEARS and secretly dating and hE ASKED HER TO STAY AND SHE DID, fuck, I love them, why is this movie so cruel to my babies?

Ok, but also, how many fucking times does Vision get stabbed in this movie? He gets stabbed twice(?) in the fight in Scotland, and then a third time in the woods of Wakanda at the very end. Which, there wasn’t an explanation as to how the Black Order’s weapons were able to pierce vibranium? I guess there was kind of the implication that the bonds between Vision’s neurons/molecules were weakening, so weapons could slip through?

Anyway, the introduction of Team Cap to fight off Proxima Midnight was pretty awesome, ngl. I pretty much forgave them at that point (although not entirely. Still a little mad at Cap).

...

But then they go home to RHODEY! Which, yes, I grinned and wiggled in my seat when I saw my baby following in the footsteps of his best friend and pissing off Ross. Although, still pissed that Rhodey didn’t put up more resistance to Team Cap before seemingly forgiving them? Like, even if Rhodey forgave them for what they did to him personally, there’s no way that he wouldn’t have given them shit over what they did to Tony at the end of CACW. Come on now, Marvel. I have to wonder, based on what Don Cheadle said in an interview, if there are deleted scenes where Rhodey is more standoffish towards them at first.

...

This is where things kinda get a little muddled in my head, because things were moving so quickly, it was difficult to keep track.

At some point, the Guardians were introduced again, and they stumbled upon Thor and split up.

Thanos took Gamora because she knew where the soul stone was, and tortured Nebula to get that info out of her.

They went to Vormir, where the soul stone was, and WHAT DO YOU FUCKING KNOW, Red Skull is there. That cameo honestly shocked the FUCK out of me. I sat there with my mouth open for at least a full minute, that just caused my brain to short circuit, goddamn. I was honestly wondering if they were ever going to bring him back (since the Tesseract doesn’t necessarily kill you, it’s the space stone, it just teleported him), and his appearance in this movie actually reminded me of his role in Avengers: Assemble, when he uses one of the stones(?) to become “Cosmic Skull” or whatever? Yeah, anyway.

So, there’s no way that Gamora is dead for real, right? Like, that’s some bullshit. THAT. IS. BULLSHIT. MARVEL. I don’t know if Zoe Saldana’s contract ran out, but there is at least one more Guardians movie and there’s no fucking way that she isn’t in it, come on now. Same with Groot (although that happens at the end). Gamora’s death feels a bit more final, though, compared with the “dust deaths” that happened at the end, so I don’t know. Dammit, that one hit me hard (and I wanted to punch Thanos for shedding that single fucking tear, lol, FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE).

...

Everyone goes to Wakanda while Tony and co. are on Titan, and the dual final battles begin.

Shuri is there (YAY!), and so is Okoye, being a badass, and M’Baku, and T’Challa!! It’s only been a few months since we saw Black Panther, but fuck, I missed them all.

Shuri is a fucking sassmaster with Bruce (and Tony, by proxy), in Vision’s body composition (although, didn’t Ultron technically make the body, and Bruce and Tony just finished it and integrated it with JARVIS and the mind stone?). Anyway, whyyy did this movie give me hope like that by them desperately trying to find a way to save Vision while also destroying the mind stone? Fuck you.

Wakanda’s defenses hold up SUPER WELL, like, lol, fuck you Proxima Midnight and Cull Obsidian, if it wasn’t for T’Challa decision to open the barrier to give Shuri more time, they never would’ve gotten in to Wakanda. And then there’s the big fight scene, which was awesome! I loved the 3 women team-up against Proxima, with Okoye, Wanda, and Natasha. That was, ungh, fuck, I was so aroused by that scene. GIVE ME AN ALL-FEMALE MARVEL MOVIE, YOU COWARDS.

...

Switch back to Titan, and there was a very important scene with Stephen that I forgot to mention. He used the time stone to look into millions of possible futures, and they only win in one of those universes. That is SO. IMPORTANT. because Stephen is absolutely about the greater good, we saw that on the ship when he said that he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice Tony and Peter for the time stone.

So the fact that Stephen then GIVES THANOS the time stone to save Tony’s life is SUPER IMPORTANT. Because if there was only one universe, one set of events, where they won, then you better fucking believe that Stephen is going to follow that universe TO THE LETTER. Why would he get all sentimental now to save Tony’s life? No, there are either 2 ways to interpret Stephen’s actions: 1) In the universe where they won, it was necessary for them to “lose” first by Thanos getting all of the infinity stones. Thus, despite what the others on Titan thought, Stephen never intended to subdue Thanos and take the gauntlet, and really only intended to eventually “give in” and give him the time stone. Or 2) The only way to defeat Thanos is for Tony to be alive. Tony is instrumental for Thanos’ eventual defeat, and so, Stephen thought it was a necessary sacrifice, to give Thanos the time stone in exchange for Tony’s life, and thus, the chance to defeat Thanos for good.

I’m kind of leaning towards the latter, although both are certainly possible. The fact that Thanos KNEW Tony - specifically calling him “Stark” when they first met, and saying that “we are both cursed with knowledge?” - fuck that really points to Tony having cosmic significance here, and I am INTO it. I’m kinda worried that they’re gonna have some sort of Harry & Voldemort link(?), where Tony has been having visions for the past 6+ years about Thanos, and Thanos has been having similar visions about Tony? IDK, but I’m definitely gonna be reblogging a shit-ton of theories regarding this.

But fuck, when Tony was stabbed. WHEN TONY WAS STABBED. I literally almost threw up. Like, I was kinda prepared for it, but fuck I really was not. I WAS NOT PREPARED, AT ALL. Just, his face when he was stabbed, I just wanted to cry and hold my baby and wrap him in a blanket burrito and NEVER LET THANOS TOUCH HIM EVER AGAIN. I can’t even really talk about that scene, because it fucking destroyed me and I don’t want to think about it.

...

Wow, and back in Wakanda, we have another heartbreaking scene, fuck me in my fucking asshole. Wanda having to destroy the mind stone, and thus, Vision. WOW. WOWWW I was crying so fucking hard, FUCK, why do I love Scarlet Vision so much, this movie wouldn’t have been so painful, goddammit. I also want to wrap them both in blanket burritos, because this is so unfair.

But, the good thing about Thanos using the time stone to get the mind stone back is somewhat a good thing, because Vision’s body was no longer destroyed - he just had the mind stone ripped out of his head. He’s an android - as long as his “corpse”/body is still intact, there’s the possibility for them to retrieve the mind stone and resurrect him. So, I kind of have tentative hope for Vision? But I don’t know.

...

And then. We get to the very end.

Thor comes in and stabs Thanos (which, thank God) (also, i totally forgot to mention that whole subplot with Thor, Rocket, and Groot, along with surprise cameo, Peter Dinklage??? What the fuck? I mean, I wasn’t complaining, but I was super shocked).

But Thanos is able to snap his fingers and then he disappears...and they all begin to turn to dust.

This was such a bold move by Marvel, I can’t even explain it. Like, even if it all gets ret-conned and they’re all brought back to life in Avengers 4 or some shit, it’s still a SUPER BOLD MOVE to end one of your biggest movies with HALF OF THE PROTAGONISTS DYING INSTANTLY, and the antagonist seemingly WINNING.

But, another part that was very important - before Stephen faded away, he told Tony that “this was the only way”, which again, only supports the theory that Stephen knew exactly what he was doing and that this was the only way for them to win.

Honestly, watching all of them die was really painful. Bucky, Sam, Wanda, T’Challa(?!?!?!?!), Stephen, Peter Quill, but...

As many people have already said, my heart broke when Peter started fading away in Tony’s arms. Fuck that scene fucked me up. As someone in the theater said, “HE’S JUST A KID, MARVEL.” Like, goddammit. And the fact that he felt it coming because of the spidey sense?? Wow, how much more painful can you get, I hate this!!! And him falling into Tony’s arms, oh my god, just kill me already. I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t even think about it anymore.

Just. Ugh.

...

Alright, I’m done. That’s my thoughts. It ended on such a sad and hopeless note, I honestly don’t know where to go from here, other than read fluffy fanfiction for the next few months and reblog the shit out of theories and metas.

FUCK. This movie really fucked me up.

#mine #avengers 3 #iw spoilers #marvel #rant

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ratherhavetheblues · 6 years

Text

INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘CRIES AND WHISPERS’ “She’s already beginning to rot…”

We’re off and running with another breathtaking film by Ingmar Bergman, namely, Cries and Whispers (1972). The nature of this production entails, as usual, thrilling motivations most of us had never thought about. And here we must put into the mix, as never so emphatically before, that the uniqueness of that delivery entails being without any effective allies. We have encountered, in the films by Bergman so far, a species of more or less thriving upon that neglect, a warrior sensibility. But enfolded within that tang, we are also alerted to partaking of the powers implicit in cooperation, cooperation with those who don’t and never will, give a damn for what a figure like Bergman would live for, however chaotically.

Our film today attends remarkably to that estrangement, and, as a result, lingers with the personnel in such a way as to garner from (some of) them a direction to love. The film’s saga involves two protagonists; and we choose here to spotlight one, a woman, namely, Agnes, who has already died from cancer in the earlier part but conveys her golden moment at the film’s final seconds, by way of a diary, read by Anna, her long-time housemaid (though presented by the diarist’s voice-over). The event recorded involves desultory Agnes being paid a visit to the family manor (under her keeping) by her two sisters whom she has allowed to more or less overtly treat her as a non-entity, as she was treated by her mother. Braced, as the latter were, by her long-term illness, there is a moment of vision emanating from their ramble upon the palatial grounds, strewn with golden leaves. “It’s wonderful to be together again… Suddenly we began to laugh and run toward the old swing that we hadn’t seen since we were children [when kinetics were at least as favorable as frozenness]. We sat in it like three good little sisters, and Anna pushed us slowly and gently. All my aches and pains were gone. I could hear them chatting around me… I could feel the presence of their bodies, the warmth of their hands. I wanted to hold the moment fast, and thought, ‘Come what may, this is happiness. I cannot wish for anything better. Now, for a few moments, I can experience perfection. And I feel profoundly grateful to my life which gives me so much…” (Those visiting angels having—along with Agnes’ skittishness—tossed divided but meritorious Anna to the sharks.)

The full-color composition (unique up until this time for Bergman) needs to be broached, along with the previous films, as a positioning of the urgency of fearlessness. With this particular vehicle, however, we’re on the hook to attending most closely to the apparatus required to fully show what’s ticking here. Therefore, as usual (but not quite the same), we posit, “How new is new?” You’d never have gotten from him anything explicit about the possibility that gigantic and unprecedented change has begun to make inroads and that that uprising (but tempered) is where art attains its stature. Apart from playing the movie game that the single work on tap must stand entirely on the basis of the screen being watched, there would be, however, the understandable discomfort that—unlike the folk reservoir of normal filmic presentation—matters of reflective complexity, generally assumed to be the purview of science and other academic disciplines, have become necessities. Just because the entrenched classical rational experts would utterly dismiss any validity not certified by their practices, does not disable a figure like Bergman to take matters into his own accomplished hands, in his own medium of communication. As such, his work being an extended research of sensibility, the various steps of his disclosures comprise, unlike the normal, disparate entertainments, a constant, expanding investigation, very germane to earlier discoveries. Unlike conceptual building blocks of a technical nature, Bergman has at his disposal, not only a manifold of dramatic sensibility by way of his screenwriting and Sven Nykvist’s cinematography, but a cadre of performers the varying roles of which, from-film-to-film, increase a current of intent or temper a performer’s previous apparition, for the sake of comprehending the volatility of discernment and its creative capacities as a co-host of the cosmos.

Cries and Whispers carries along another cinematic power, namely, the efforts of other filmmakers the work of which being variously able to leverage the efforts of Bergman. Our film here devotes vast areas of a range of red walls and accessories for the interior of the palatial estate. In 1965, Michelangelo Antonioni launched a venture, namely, Red Desert, the redness of which speaking to widespread malignancy and malaise. In the Jacques Demy musical films, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and Donkey Skin (1970), the settings have been enhanced by pronounced color saturation, for the surrealistic sake of overcoming a profoundly inadequate mainstream. On such templates we’re treated to our guide’s “cyclotron,” the ingredients of which consisting of acrobatics and an impossible trick of juggling—as wild and wonderful in 1972 as it was when launched in the film, The Seventh Seal, in 1957. The first protagonist, Agnes, a spinster and amateur painter, nearing the end of a long struggle with cancer, at the end of the nineteenth century, has drawn to her family heights her two sisters and their spouses, but without their children. The gulf between her horror and their easy anticipations is not the main gulf in the picture. The actress playing Agnes, namely, Harriet Anderson, starred, in 1960, in a film called, Through a Glass Darkly, as Karin, whose husband, a medical doctor, so detests her unconventional physicality that he nudges her toward believing she is schizophrenic and belongs in a mental hospital. She loses her equilibrium during the stresses of a family reunion, comes to a default position in claiming to have seen God to be a giant spider; and infers, as a promising rally, that she should leave her family and do some independent thinking in that rather incongruous sickbay. One of the sisters, Maria, a decorative seductress, is played by Liv Ullmann, who, in 1966, six years before our current puzzle, played the part of a decorative, notable actress coming to a crisis and opting to enter a mental hospital in the guise of having lost her interest in speaking. This silent Elisabet, in face of annoyance from a presumptuous medic and also some street smarts and affection, climbs to a portal where the trick of juggling (making the best of a clumsy talent pool) rears its head. The oldest sister, Karin, is performed by actress, Ingrid Thulin, who, in the film, The Silence(1963), portrayed an overbearing nit-picking prig and prude who teeters close to emotional collapse but draws upon a reservoir of majoritarian dominance. In our current picture she has to be probed carefully, being in fact the other, and more important, protagonist. Though in a flash-back we see her slashing her vagina with a shard of smashed wine glass and rubbing the blood over her lips in annoyance with her insectile husband, billed as a “diplomat,” she does have what might not be an A-game but acrobatic skills to ponder.

We get to know a lot about Agnes during what seems a rare uptick in her palliative days. Maria, eliciting a measure of placid juggling in lieu of a preamble of gut-wrenching acrobatics (thereby being a pale shadow of Elisabet), proposes taking up her ongoing readings of Charles Dickens’ novel, The Pickwick Papers, to which the invalid replies, “Oh, I’d love it!” Though roughing up a doleful soul for her choice of pleasure would be pretty cheesy in most cases, here there is nothing short of dynamite in this disappointment, as the installment catches fire. “Chapter 34, in which Mr. Pickwick thinks he’d better go to Bath and goes accordingly” [that a sponge bath administered by the sisters has closely preceded this remark hopes to alert the viewer that they should read into the text something pertaining to Agnes’ stature]. “ ‘But surely, my dear, sir,’ said little Parkin, as he stood in Mr. Pickwick’s apartment… ‘Surely you don’t really mean, really and seriously now… and irritation apart… that you won’t pay these costs and damages?’ ” Pay the cost, or forever lost. Or: cover an ongoing acrobatic demand or commit a horror on the order of self-mutilation.

By way of reveries of her childhood, from out of confinement in that blood-red homestead, Agnes shows us that the singular life of paying the costs is not for her and that some of that redness is her contribution to that plague-ridden realm. (Along with the introduction of acrobatics, in The Seventh Seal, there is a plague in the land.) There is an omnibus flash-back, centering upon her mother, which constitutes a ground zero as to her remaining a wimp. Liv Ullmann, acting in double-duty here, becomes the Venus of the preceding generation, one of a series, no doubt, of spoiled, precious airheads. There she is, in elaborate apparel, with a tiny Agnes in thrall and kept at a distance, as if the less than pretty girl would reduce her heights. “I loved her at such a jealous extreme! I loved her because she was so gentle and beautiful and alive and so pervadingly present. But she could also be cold, playfully cruel… and rebuff me … [shades of Ullmann’s gorgeous Elisabet, in Persona, rebuffing her ugly little boy]. I wish I could see her again…” [That’s easier than she thinks.] That dotage being the linchpin of the action’s catastrophe. Thereby she misses the pertinence of a cut to a magic lantern party, at Twelfth Night, involving a “Wicked Witch,” and also the trickery (of the “Hansel and Gretel” saga on tap—an “impossible” trick being the bedrock of her best (and ignored) prospect. She does not, however, miss the constant attentions to Maria, played by Liv Ullmann’s young daughter, during the party, leaving our minor protagonist fretting from a distance. “I was the only one who couldn’t join in the merriment.” After a cut, Agnes, hoping to effect a more rounded picture of her home life, proceeds with, “Another time, I remember … I hid behind the curtain and in secret watched her arrange roses on her writing table. Suddenly, she saw me and, in a gentle voice called me. Uncertain, I went up to her, thinking that, as usual, she was going to scold me. But instead she gave me a look so full of sorrow that I nearly burst into tears. I raised my hand, put it against her cheek. And for that moment we were very close.” That was frail Agnes’ sense of the moment. The camera, on the other hand, does not lie in showing that, while the little girl felt to be loved at last, her vastly cheap mother was beholding her like a thorn in her side, a hopeless cause.

This latter vignette ends with a cut to the patient in her final stage. The intensity of the death throes tends to eclipse the real problematic that that was a pariah who was at the early stages of being under a gun that would never go away, necessitating extreme measures. Before leaving her to myopia and cries and whispers, we must appreciate those factors which might have been decisive. Anxious as Agnes remained, about her position in the scheme of her family, there was wanton neglect of the scheme of her more telling life. Raising a rather feeble gesture in the order of painterly beauty, our protagonist/ victim consistently fussed about her family, and lost the world. Her wild animal braying from a pain now killing, though hard to behold, opens a portal of sensuous energy buried way too long. The film begins with the grace and bounty of the grounds of that funerial confinement. First, as a calm dawn begins, we see hundred-years-stout tree trunks in silhouette, tracing to upper branches carrying our glance amidst those configurations, and presaging those compositions of innovative art which have nothing to do with deletant domesticity. The dashes of sharp sunlight playing over that initial scene carry their vivacity into the following stage, whereby the morning mists shower another prospect, this time steady rays of light alighting upon the greenery. Another cut shows a statue of Orpheus with his lyre being part of a sunny park where the positions of the trees and the dispositions of the leaves induce a deep breath. From there, another unseen region, namely, the interior of the mansion with all asleep, shows what it can do. To the beat of ticking sounds, we are given a tour of Age of Enlightenment clock faces, the textures of their grounds, the variety and motions of their hands, along with bronze embellishments like a child angel looking through a telescope, and also a Medusa as a pendulum; and mathematical mechanism. As if this offering, unseen by the players, were not enough to contemplate, we should hold on to something even more evanescent. Along with a red ground to begin, there is the almost inaudible chime of a triangle. As it strikes, sporadically, it brings along that motif of synthesis on the grounds of acrobatics and juggling, that exigency Bergman is so right not to let go. That gunning forward toward advantage (an Age of Enlightenment key word) is a Mr. Pickwick outrage which Agnes subscribes to, and comes to a silent crescendo in that reverie of the three sisters on the swing. Maria and Karin flanking the protagonist going nowhere. Here was the geometry, but where was the music?

You’re not likely to believe this (before I explain), but a lady with a measure of mojo was on the swing, namely, Karin, the one being unreasonable with the broken glass. (You’ll see that she, like promiscuous and cruel, Anna, in the film, The Silence, would not be someone you’d want to meet; but someone worth studying. And sharing the name of the protagonist, in, Through a Glass Darkly, would also be bemusing, at least.) Whereas that “Twelfth Night” flow of jealousy was shown from Agnes’ perspective, there was a very brief moment showing a young Karin, also not in the holiday spirit. Whereas Agnes has rather frantically here become a student of her opulent family, there are ways of indicating that Karin opts for a very different response. In real time, she’s introduced as the unsmiling, taciturn foil to Maria’s “diplomatic” charms, “humanly” honed by a history of affection, and comfortable in her role as generous care-giver, along with Agnes’ needy appreciation. (Her diverting resumption of throwing herself at the doctor during a visit to Agnes may not have gone well; but the quantification of her maneuvers ensures lusty profits notwithstanding. Here we must recognize that the Anna in, The Silence, looks pretty good, by comparison.)

She catches brief but quite remarkable fire from the deadly intensity of the closeness of death, and proposes giving Agnes a sponge bath, during a lull in the agony. Rather startlingly, Karin, too, is lifted by the occasion, producing smiles and a surprising level of serenity in her motions. Where did that come from, all of a sudden? Perhaps the quiet one has a sustaining history of her own. Earlier in the night, in a dark room where she was reading by a gaslight, possibly something more weighty than Dickens, she calls, Anna, “Do you hear?” The busy and faithful servant, whom we have come to regard as close to a saint, admits, “I only hear the wind and the clocks ticking.” “No! It’s something else!” Karin insists. “I don’t hear anything, why?” the usually acute stalwart maintains. So nonplussed is the odd-one out, she rather misses the mark in describing her confusion: “I’m freezing!” (In the aforementioned film, Thulin/ Ester is seized by chills, fleeting, as compared with her sister’s sweltering in face of a totally inadequate dispensation.) Then there is Agnes complaining to Anna, “I’m freezing…” Soon she is dead; and while Maria backs off and falls apart, Karin, along with Anna, composes the corpse on her deathbed, the three sets of hands upstaging all the sculptures in the building. Thereupon, a modest embrace of the freezing sisters. The triangle mingles with that workload, a feat of passion brooking no relentment but seeing much to celebrate. The flashback of cut-throat diplomacy surfaces there, with some cut-the-crap clarity going forward. As she ponders upon that instrument of pain, Karin tells herself, “It’s but a tissue of lies. It’s a monumental tissue of lies…” (recalling the unhelpful declaration of Tomas, which pushes a suicidal parishioner over the cliff, in the film Winter Light [1962]). Also noteworthy, there is stressed Karin slapping Anna (helping her with her bedclothes before the coup de grace), losing her nerve for a moment. Karin quickly apologizes; and the elite servant and companion does not accept the apology.

Back to the aftermath of the death, we see Karin going over the prosaic (but not necessarily prosaic) task of checking the costs. Her hands and the sensuous grey paper mean business, not as usual. She takes in hand her pince nez reading glasses and slightly flips it upward and downward to the bed of paper constituting but one type of nitty gritty. (The protagonist in First Man [2018] has been seen to be closer to pay dirt flipping a pince nez than hopping around the moon.) Then she gives a spin to that shard of glass, beholding its ripple in the gentle light. At this juncture of rich destiny, Maria comes into the office, and her perception of the moment of vision ignites more mysteries. “Karin, I want us to be friends. I want us to talk to each other. You read much more than I do, you think much more than I do. Your experience is far greater… Couldn’t we devote these days to getting to know each other, finally?” Not wanting another brutal smash like the failing with Anna, she listens to that creature she knows only too well. “We could put our arms around each other… We could talk together for days and nights on end…” (Here we’ve been put to the test to compare how doubting Tomas, in Winter Light, came to put up with “togetherness” maven Marta.) Karin, feeling caught up in a dilemma that can’t work for her, gets up from her desk and heads for the door—an acrobat paying costs of depth which only begins her “thinking.” Holding her back in her exit, Maria—a diplomat of some efficacy—calls out, “It’s easy to do, but I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” After a cut—accomplished, as always, by a blood-red cloud, that emblem of possible efficacy—there is Karin, confused and pensive. Maria comes in, again, finding her sister reading Agnes’ diary. Now a bit more forthcoming, she reads, “ ‘I received the gift anyone can receive in this life… a gift that is called many things…togetherness…companionship, relatedness, affection…’” [the visual is Anna, by Agnes’ bed]. “ ‘I think this is what is called grace…’” Maria, who was wandering about when the reading was given, moves to touch Karen’s shoulder, and finds the latter spinning away from her. “No, don’t touch me. Don’t come near me!” Togetherness becoming an outrage due to the effort of paying the costs cheek-by-jowl with refusing to pay the costs. Maria, aka Elisabet, comes behind Karin, in a facsimile of the Persona sisters. Maria touches Karin’s cheek and the latter, though backing off, does not repel the approach as before. Soon she is allowing herself to be caressed by that functionary of skin. However, she soon insists, “I don’t want you to do that… I don’t want you to be kind to me” [because I have no resources to be appreciative toward a coward like Maria]. “I can’t! I can’t stand it!” (The optics, particularly the lighting, preserves the uncanny tonal spike, in face of Karin’s melodramatic tailspin, for instance, “It’s like being in the greatest hell. I can’t breathe anymore. All of that guilt!”) After a battlefield fade, Karin apologizes for her “lost control,” and the prosaic “formalities” of selling the property occupy their conversation. No generous consideration for Maria occurs to the other one-note sibling in the room, a sibling unique in the film’s universe for possibly becoming a true aristocrat. Groping for that elusive stature, she tells disappointed sentimentalist Maria, “I’ve often thought about suicide.” (Here we have her less than compelling default stand, by comparison with the man frightened to suicide by the prospect of China gaining nuclear weapons, in, Winter Light.) Then she brings up her husband’s slight that she’s “clumsy”—“I fumble!” Now a glutton for the sensational that goes nowhere, she turns on her slack sister having, for once, had an inspiration. “You thought our talk would be different, didn’t you? Do you realize I hate you? And how foolish I find your insipid smiles and your idiotic flirtatiousness… You understand? Nothing can escape me… for I see it all… Now you learn how it sounds when Karin talks!” (This latter weakling flourish is exactly the one Alma the nurse directs upon Elisabet the silent goddess [Liv Ullmann], in Persona. Having reached an almost complete self-embarrassment, our protagonist cries out, and Maria, who had been reduced to tears, rushes to her; and hears from the “all-seeing,” “Forgive me!” Unlike Anna, Maria does forgive, and the togetherness/ grace catches fire; but not for very long. With a Bach cello composition evoking primordial relatedness, we behold the pair lovingly illuminating their kinetic best, the associated shut-down of sound endowing the tete-a-tete as similar to a Botticelli painting. They whisper in each other’s ears as if revelations of hidden forces had been released. In close-up, Maria seems pensive; in close-up Karin seems tentative and adventurous. This elevated effort comes to an end as colliding with Anna’s last-ditch enlistment of the sisters to steady her fears of poverty. She inhabits the cusp of Agnes’ being no more, and calls upon, first circumspect Karin and then sentimental Maria, to soothe the lost sister. Her prefatory fanfare—“Don’t you hear it?”—stands in stark contrast to that, “Do you hear?” of Karin, which Anna can’t take seriously. Karin is the first one summoned, and her harsh reception to old-style mysticism quickly brings the interview to a halt. “I won’t accept involvement with your death. Perhaps if I loved you… but I do not love you… It’s pure morbidity, disgusting, meaningless. She’s already begun to rot…” The meeting with Maria becomes the latter’s running away in terror. The departure of the funeral party is notable for Karin hoping to sustain the confluence her acrobatics finds essential; and for acrobaticless Maria treating that fling as if it were only a fling. “Could we hold to all our resolutions?” Maria, perhaps a bit miffed by her sisters’ acceding to her deadened husband’s making Anna walk the plank; but transparently back to her mode of gyrating mush, makes a cardboard smile and lisps, “Dearest Karin, why on earth shouldn’t we do that?” Resuming the venomous treatment by Elisabet toward ardent Alma, in Persona, she carries on with, “It’s that everything seems different since that evening.” Karin quietly remonstrates, “I think we’ve become very much closer… What are you thinking about?” The lifetime baby doll, tries, “I’m thinking about the conversation…” “No, you’re not,” the friend in need asserts. Thereby the woman always on the go rephrases her thought, “I was thinking about how [her cuckold husband] Joakin hates it if I keep him waiting… I have no idea why you call me to account as if I were on trial for my thoughts, Karin. What do you want?” In close-up, Karin looks down in disarray. “Nothing,” is what she realizes she must expect—from Maria; but what about the world at large?

Popping up during the funeral formalities, we do get a little fizz from the world at large, surprisingly in the form of the local bishop. (Karin’s diplomat. in a post-mortem moment, counts them as lucky that the clergyman has the flu and therefore their being spared his presence at the dinner following the burial. Looking closely, we see he’s hale and hearty and floats a little white lie to avoid a party of ghouls.) You’ll recognize a fascinatingly tempered version of the rally of Tomas, in, Winter Light. As with Algot the sidekick, there are sextons and candles, here at the entryway to Agnes’s resting place. What you will notice, first and foremost, is that this first swing of the death ritual is light on the big powers and remarkably a weighty eulogy to rather underwhelming Agnes, as if she were on the hunt of something which very few have hazard. “Could it be that you gathered up our suffering and agony into your body. Should it be that you leave with you this hardship through death. Should it be that you meet with God… [Algot slipping when he goes beyond the wonderment that venerable safety nets won’t do. Hence the overestimation of old-timey good news, somewhat upstaging a hard and nourishing magic.] … as you come to that other land… Should it be that you find his countenance turned toward you there [the nature of sensibility being not something to take for granted while sitting on a ruinous scenario]. Should it be that you know the language to speak… So this God may hear and understand… Should it be that you then talk with this God… [the conditional tense here, like that of Algot’s heresy, a weird and wonderful push-back upon millennia being stupefyingly inadequate, while spilling over to wooden humanitarianism and science!]… and he hear you out. Should it be so… pray for us… Agnes, dear child, please listen to what I have to tell you now. Pray for us who have been left in darkness… left behind on this miserable Earth, with the sky above us grim and empty…” [Agnes’ diary being on a very distant page from this dip to formalities]. The last word of this singularity dressed up to seem more of the same is an instance of great theatrical irony. “Her faith was stronger than mine.”

#ingmar bergman

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s0020442 · 8 years

Text

Post L. Synopsis & Script

100 word synopsis: Psychological Malfunction

The year is 1952, Christopher Wood, a 22-year-old British man has suffered from multiple severe mental disabilities including Schizophrenia, Delusional Disorder, Psychosis and Chronic Depression since the age of 15. From this age, he was forced to live the rest of his life in a supposedly ‘non-operating’ psychiatric hospital by his previous domestically abusive parents. He now suffers even greater than he did as a youth…

Christopher visions that he lives his life in various different ways to of which he feels is the true ‘reality’. However, these are episodes of ‘non-reality’ of which occur in his head... Suffering from flashbacks and unrealistic imagery forming within his head, he finds it difficult to accept reality.

Script

Below are the scriptures I had put together using my film plan as a basis in order to support me in the full construction via the Celtx Online software. This was extremely helpful as it allowed me to generate a Shot List and base design for a Storyboard of which I will implement into a later post.

Psychological Malfunction: Film Plan

- Opening title screen with production company and candidate details-

- 0:01-0:07 Introduction- Darkened footage of trees and other aspects of a forest leading up the asylum (focus location), a low wind-like track runs in the background to create a sense of uneasiness.

- 0:08-0:14 Establishing shot of the asylum presented.

- 0:14-0:20 Tracking shots alongside the corroded walls and wide angles on darkened rooms are screened to convey the true daunting effects the asylum offers within.

- 0:21-0:25 A long shot of Christopher Wood sat on a wooden chair within the interior is used to introduce the focal character and the poor conditions of the environment around him. Additionally, a close-up from the side conveys his desolated facial expressions.

- 0:26:0:31 Following on from the close-up of the protagonist, as a montage of small snippets of his head shaking and moving uncontrollably occur to reflect how his insane mind is taking over him physically.

- 0:32-0:35 A loud knocking on Christopher’s cell door can be heard from the previous scenes, at each knock (set of 3), the shots jump cut closer and closer to the door and of his mouth as his lips tremble in utter fear.

- 0:36-0:42 Terrifying flashbacks within Christopher’s mind occur of the previous abuse he suffered from his parents before his imprisonment within the asylum, a series (montage) of screams can be heard throughout to indicate how they’re nightmarish visions.

- 0:43-0:48 After this montage sequence of flashbacks, “Oi!” can be heard from the doorway of Christopher’s asylum room, his acknowledgement can be identified by the same close-up from prior to the flashback sequence. A POV shot is used in a tilted upwards movement to show Christopher looking upwards to the asylum keeper throwing scraps of food in a bag down by his feet.

- 0:49-0:56 Christopher crawls up into a corner of the room away from the food, an attribute belonging to depression is that of starving yourself, this creates the realism of this characters mental conditions. This is shown in a longshot (high angled) and a close-up of him shaking rapidly.

- 0:57-1:07 Cuts to the interweaving storyline of Andrew Wood, the long-lost brother of Christopher through various POV angles running towards the asylum in urge to save him. Layers of static over the footage occurs to convey a sense of similar genetic connection of insanity between the two.

- 1:08-1:16 Cuts back to Christopher within his cell from a close-up as he shakes rapidly in fear. After around four seconds he shuffles closely towards the food in a backwards track movement and takes it. An upwards tilt from the scraps shows him eating it.

- 1:17-1:22 The screaming sound of one of the other patients can be heard, an over the shoulder shot is used behind Christopher, he rushes towards the door of his cell to find out what’s occurring on the other side.

- 1:23-1:27 From a POV perspective of Christopher, we as the audience visualise the horrifying physical mistreatment of the ‘Wretch’ character by the Psychiatrist.

- 1:28-1:34 More flashbacks begin to take over the mind of Christopher of the domestic abuse from his parents as he relates to the pain the Wretch is going through when being beaten, these are presented as previously, through a montage of different shot types within the house location. A broad range of darkened, nightmarish visuals and weapons of which his parents used will be focused on by the camera in close-up shots.

- 1:35-1:40 The scene cuts to a low angled medium shot, focused on the Psychiatrist as he says I hope you die rat!” to the Wretch.

- 1:41-1:44 The cut after this shot refers to a side angle close-up of Christopher as he repeats “hope” to himself after hearing it from the Psychiatrist.

- 1:45-2:04 A quick zoom into the eye of Christopher from a close-up is done alongside hearing a suction of wind-like sound. The scenes cut to the visually captivating setting of a variation of shots where Christopher has a ‘happy memory’ of himself and Andrew playing football when they were youngsters. These shots are rather still and slow to reflect the contrast between this ethereal/dreamlike memory to the previous flashback nightmares. It’s essentially a total juxtaposition from the horrifying visuals within his head, prompted by the word of “hope” being said.

- 2:00-2:05 The previous sequence cuts to the psychiatrist and the Asylum Keeper who discuss further daily beatings and mistreatments to the remaining patients, Christopher Wood being the next on the list. This is presented through an over the shoulder shot of the Psychiatrist.

- 2:06-2:12 A close-up in a pan-like motion shows their record book notes on Christopher Wood’s patient file.

- 2:13-2:17 From a low angle shot, the Psychiatrist and Asylum Keeper are seen examining the notes and making an initialisation for the ‘Cell Check-up’.

- 2:18-2:25 Shot reverse shot (medium close-up formats) is used between the Psychiatrist and the Asylum Keeper of which the Asylum Keeper says “you know what to do.” The Psychiatrist acknowledges and walks towards a cupboard.

- 2:26-2:34 A still shot from behind shows the Psychiatrist retrieving a crowbar from the cupboard, a close-up of it being twisted in his hands is shown shortly after. The camera stays still as he walks away.

- 2:35-2:45 The camera cuts back to a POV shot of small montage snippets of Andrew making his way through forestry in the finding of Dunmeir Asylum, the last shot of this series of snippets is of him stopping completely as he has flashbacks…

- 2:46-3:26 30 seconds of a happy memories through Andrew’s perspective occurs through vivid, captivating imagery of his young-self playing board games with his brother Christopher.

- 3:27-3:31 After a flash effect on screen, the dreamlike scenes cut back to reality.

- 3:32-3:37 A forward track behind the Psychiatrist (following him) shows him walking with the crowbar towards Christopher’s cell in determination to terminate him from the patient list completely. A tracking shot from the side is also used alongside this after a cut as he proceeds quickly.

- 3:38-3:43 A POV shot from the perspective of Andrew is used by the entrance of the asylum, the camera is shaky indicating a sense of urgency.

- 3:44-3:51 After a jump cut, the POV shots continue in a montage format with static interruptions at each cut to convey the corrupted mind of Andrew within his almost ‘insane’ determination to save his brother from the asylum.

- 3:52-3:56 Crackling and static effects are used throughout a montage sequence of different shots of various interior rooms of the asylum alongside screaming patients and their violent acts against the walls and objects within.

- 3:57-4:00 A still medium shot from behind introduces the rapid abuse from the Psychiatrist with the crowbar. A high angled close-up of the cell walls focusing on the crowbar as it raises from each ‘swing’ by the Psychiatrist, Christopher’s screams can be heard alongside this.

- 4:01-4:04 Again, the scenes cut back to the POV shots of Andrew as he rushes through the asylum, searching each room in desperation to find his brother and save him. The same crackled static effects are used throughout these montage clips to convey his mind corrupting as he proceeds throughout.

- 4:05-4:10 A depth of field backwards over the shoulder shot (from the front of the Psychiatrist) shows the Asylum Keeper blurred in the background standing in the doorway of Christopher’s cell laughing as the Psychiatrist continues to rapidly beat Christopher to a pulp. Christopher’s screams begin to continue.

- 4:11-4:14 These screams sound bridge over to Andrew approaching closer through POV shots.

- 4:15- 4:55 After the Psychiatrist and the Asylum Keeper leave once satisfied with their attack, the rest of this entire sequence conveys the intercutting/switching of shots between Christopher and Andrew. Christopher is conveyed sobbing and occasionally screaming from the suffering of the Psychiatrist’s physical abuse. Continuous flashbacks flicker of domestic abuse with his parents and of what he has been put through during his input within the asylum. He bleeds and cries. These shots are much slower now, concentrating on now how much Christopher has no longer a rapidly processing mind of insanity as his mental and emotional pain is much beyond this now. Andrew fights through the Psychiatrist and the Asylum Keeper which black his path to Christopher’s cell.

Two different endings (4:56-5:20):

Death in Reality:

- 4:56-5:06 Christopher crawls towards some broken concrete/glass on the floor (in the corner of his cell besides the walls) of which he had previously been self-harming with (when he’s introduced at the start scars will be highlighted up his arms), this is presented through a high angle shot and a close-up from the side of his ‘desperate’ facial expression.

- 5:07-5:11 Andrew continues to shout/call for Christopher and does not receive a reply, all the asylum patient’s screams can no longer be heard. POV shots are used in longer shots now rather than quick snippets within a montage sequence to convey a sense of a highly dramatic atmosphere as there are no more cuts to Christopher...

- 5:12-5:16 The POV cuts to Christopher rushing towards a small room of which he hasn’t discovered yet, he looks around the corner…

- 5:17-5:20 An over the shoulder shot of Christopher is used as he’s leant against the wall of his cell with his head on a tilt as his brother enters the room.

“It’s All in Your Mind”:

- 4:56-5:20 Christopher is shown rocking back and forth, crying and having the occasional flashback of abuse from chaotic moments and events of the past, this process will be sped up to indicate a sense of what goes on in his mind is uncontrollable, progressively more and more flashbacks build up over time and begin to get quicker and quicker when shots cut from Andrew to Christopher. These begin to flicker through his mind rapidly as he screams at the top of his lungs, this comes to a sudden stop very suddenly and unexpectedly, and blends into the first shot of which introduced Christopher at the start, a long shot of Christopher Wood sat on a wooden chair. A close-up shot from the side is then used for a few seconds…it was all in his mind.

Patient File Designs:

Christopher Wood:

Robin Blake (extra):

Dunmeir Asylum Photograph (prop used by Andrew Wood):

Links to my Creative Investigation:

To represent my focal character in a way that the audience feel sympathy for the mental pain he suffers from, I had decided initially to give him no dialogue in the script but that the other characters mistreat and abuse him severely. Their lines had to have an aggressive impact in production, in my script I ensured that their roles were truly sadistic to convey this idea of a nightmarish world and a corrupted psychology, not just from the perspective of my protagonist but others too, this was done to create a ‘relationship’ with them all.

David Lynch’s scripts and locations would have been carefully thought out to convey realism in a surreal environment within productions such as Eraserhead and The Elephant Man. These were clearly all highly successful productions as they could manipulate the audience’s emotions and have a great impact in expressing various social concerns i.e. the mistreatment of the mentally ill/disabled.

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