#weird how netflix did all that marketing and it just never dropped. wild | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

onlydylanobrien · 3 years

Text

Dylan O'Brien - NME Magazine Interview

Dylan O’Brien: “I was in this transitional phase – close to a quarter-life crisis”

From YA heartthrob to legitimate leading man – how the 'Maze Runner' star hit his stride after a whirlwind decade

Definitely!” hoots Dylan O’Brien when NME asks if he still has to audition. “I’m not Tom fucking Hanks, bro.” He’s clearly amused by our question, but forgive us for thinking the 29-year-old actor gets cast on reputation alone. A decade into his career, and he’s making an impressive transition from teen TV star and YA franchise hero to charismatic leading man.

New York-born O’Brien cut his teeth on MTV’s hit Teen Wolf series, before landing the lead in the Maze Runner film trilogy based on James Dashner’s hugely popular novels. Leading a band of bright young things that included ex-Skins tearaway Kaya Scodelario, Game Of Thrones’ Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, he honed his craft while racking up nearly a billion dollars at the box office. “My career is a constant acting class,” says O’Brien. “To be able to do the Maze Runner movies simultaneously with Teen Wolf was amazing in terms of getting in reps and working my [acting] muscle.”

Now for the sometimes tricky bit. Many actors struggle with the post-breakout period, but O’Brien is making it look easy so far. This year’s Netflix hit Love and Monsters proved he can carry an old-school family adventure, and new film Flashback (out next week) reveals an appetite for weirder, more cerebral work. He stars as Fred Fitzell, a young man reluctant to buckle down to life as a nine-to-fiver with a boring corporate job and a long-term girlfriend (Mindhunter‘s Hannah Gross). When he runs into a freaky-looking acquaintance from his teenage years, Fred becomes obsessed with finding an old high-school friend he used to drop a mind-bending experimental drug called Mercury with. It’s difficult to say any more without entering spoiler territory, but Flashback is a wild ride underpinned by the idea that we can exist in several realities at once. Even if you follow every plot twist, you might not fully understand the end. “Oh, it’s definitely a headfuck,” O’Brien agrees. “There’s not totally an answer to figure out. There’s a lot of different things that people can take from it.”

Speaking over Zoom from his LA home, O’Brien is bright, thoughtful and really good fun to talk to, especially when he relaxes into the interview, but he clearly knows where his line between public and private lies. When he first read the Flashback script, written by the film’s director Christopher MacBride, his “mind was blown” by just how much he related to Fred. “I felt like I was in this transitional phase of my life that was, you know, sort of close to a quarter-life crisis type thing,” he says. “For whatever reason, it was like me and this script were meant to be. I remember reading it and thinking: ‘I am this guy right now.'”

“There were a lot of things in my personal life that were neglected for a while”

When we ask why O’Brien felt as though he had reached a “transitional phase”, he gives an answer that’s vague but not exactly evasive. For understandable reasons, he doesn’t mention the incredibly traumatic motorcycle accident he sustained while shooting the final Maze Runner film in March 2016. O’Brien suffered severe trauma to the brain and said in 2017 that he underwent extensive facial reconstructive surgery after the accident “broke most of the right side of my face”. Tellingly, he’s never really revealed what happened on set or how it affected him.

Today, O’Brien dances around the details of the accident and other issues he was dealing with at the time, but doesn’t shy away from discussing his inner conflict. “You know, it was a lot of personal things combined with at-a-point-in-my-career things,” he says after a brief pause. He says he’d have been going through some of this stuff anyway, simply because of his age, but it sounds as though success intensified it all. “It was like this whole fucking storm of shit,” he continues. “I was simultaneously so fulfilled and happy about these, like, otherworldly and surreal things that I had experienced in terms of where my career had brought me. I had all this confidence and fulfilment and beautiful people [in my life] – such amazing things to experience at a young age. But at the same time, there were a lot of things in my personal life that were unchecked and sort of neglected for a while.”

O’Brien says that in time, he realised he had to “stop for a second” and “re-explore how I wanted my life to look going forward”. In fairness, you can see why he needed a breather: his career took off while he was still a teenager. After his family moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles County when he was 12, O’Brien contemplated a career as a sports broadcaster – his Twitter bio still bills him as a “no longer suffering Mets fan” – then began posting YouTube videos as moviekidd826. A funny, slickly edited skit titled ‘How to Prepare for the SAT in 45 seconds’, shared when he was just 17, shows he was a born performer and storyteller. YouTube success led to him getting a manager, but his breakthrough role in Teen Wolf still came out of the blue. At the time, he was treading water at a local community college and taking auditions on the side.

Still, he has since taken a rather fatalistic view of this career-making moment. “It’s totally weird because, when I think about it now, I don’t see how it could have happened any other way. I can’t picture myself doing anything else now,” he told Collider in 2011. “It was really sudden and a little random, and not provoked by anything. It was just out of nowhere. It wasn’t my intentional doing.” Today, O’Brien summarises his skyscraper career trajectory succinctly. “I guess I just graduated high school and started acting,” he says. “And then I felt like I was just flying by the seat of my pants and never got a chance to stop.” Thankfully, straight-out-the-blocks Hollywood success hasn’t taken away his sense of perspective. When I say how easy social media makes it to compare yourself unfavourably to others, O’Brien jumps in: “Yeah, that’s very true. I was watching the Billie Eilish doc the other day, and I was like, I’ve done nothing. I’m not an artist at all!”

“No one thought ‘Love and Monsters’ was going to be good!”

O’Brien is also self-deprecating when he talks about being cast in Flashback, suggesting it happened because he had such an intense connection with Fred. “I was honestly like, ‘Who is watching me right now?’ That is the best way I can describe how I was feeling when I came across this script,” he says. “Chris [MacBride, director] and I had this conversation that went so well in terms of [my] understanding this script that I think he’d sent around a lot and [that] very commonly wasn’t understood. I think Chris has even said that the night before shooting, he suddenly had this thought, like, ‘Wait, do I even think he’s a good actor?'”

Though O’Brien has firmly ring-fenced elements of his private life, he’s actually pretty frank about his acting vehicles. He readily admits he was expecting a snobbish response to Love and Monsters, a CGI-heavy hybrid of post-apocalyptic action and romcom that dropped on Netflix in April and topped the streamer’s daily most-watched list. “It means so much that Love and Monsters has gotten the response that it’s gotten,” O’Brien says. “No one thought this movie was going to be good.” His blunt honesty makes me laugh out loud. “No one did though!” he says in response. “And so, fuck that. You know, most of the people who say something to me about the movie, they’re like: ‘I watched Love and Monsters, and it was… good?’ And honestly, that just cracks me up.” For obvious reasons, we hastily decide not to share our response to the film – namely, that it was a whole lot better than expected.

In Love and Monsters, O’Brien plays Joel, a survivor of a so-called “monsterpocalypse” that has bumped humans to the bottom of the food chain. Though he’s known in his colony as a bit of a coward, Joel sets off on a treacherous 80-mile journey to find his high school sweetheart Aimee (Iron Fist‘s Jessica Henwick), which means evading the hungry clutches of various supersize grizzlies including a giant monster-frog hiding in a suburban pond. It’s a simple but pretty out-there premise that wouldn’t work if O’Brien’s performance was even slightly condescending. Instead, his unselfconscious sincerity really sells a film that has as much in common with the family-oriented Robin Williams movie Night at the Museum as darker fare like The Walking Dead.

His obvious affection for the project really comes across during our interview today. “When I read the script, I just thought it was so sweet and funny and smart and unique, but at the same time reminiscent of all these movies that don’t really get made any more,” he says. That’s a fair point: Love and Monsters is neither a fail-safe superhero movie nor a slice of classy Oscar bait. “And when they were talking about how to market this movie, it was so funny hearing all these conversations like, ‘How do we actually get people to watch it?'” he adds. “But that’s a big part of the reason I wanted to do this movie: because it felt like something I missed seeing.”

“I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who want to make something out of love”

So in a way, Love and Monsters was a risk for an actor seeking to establish himself outside of a bankable movie franchise and a hit TV show. O’Brien has only made four films since his final Maze Runner outing in 2018, and insists he hasn’t been tactical with his choices. “I don’t have anyone saying, ‘We need to get you in an Oscar vehicle’, or any of that kind of shit,” he says. “I’m really lucky to be surrounded by people who think like me: that you should do what you’re drawn to, and make something out of love.”

He’s recently finished shooting a mysterious crime thriller called The Outfit in London with Mark Rylance. Directed and co-written by Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for his screenplay to Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, O’Brien calls it “quite possibly one of the most special pieces of writing I’ve ever experienced”. He first read the script on a plane and says he “actually stood up and clapped” when he got to the end. Considering O’Brien probably wasn’t flying Ryanair, this reaction presumably attracted a few baffled glances.

Anyway, it must be pretty intimidating walking onto set with Rylance, a multi-award-winning actor revered by his peers – Al Pacino once said he “speaks Shakespeare as if it was written for him the night before” – but it sounds as though O’Brien took it all in stride. He says he’s confident in his abilities, but admits to having a slight wobble whenever he begins a new project. “I’m always sort of re-questioning everything – like, ‘Can I even act?'” he says. “But I think there’s something very natural about that. I think even Rylance could relate to that feeling. Acting is like starting a new year at school every single time.”

At this point in his career, O’Brien has made peace with the fact that some people will have preconceptions about him based on what he’s known for: Maze Runner and Teen Wolf. “People will put you in a box no matter what,” he says. “There was definitely a time when that would get to me, especially when it felt like somebody had a perspective on me that in my soul, I just felt wasn’t accurate.” Still, there’s no doubt he wants to show us what’s really in his soul with more films like Flashback. “If anything,” he adds bullishly, “it just makes me think: ‘Right, I’m really gonna show them now’.”

‘Flashback’ is out on digital platforms from June 4

#dylan o'brien #love and monsters press #flashback press #the outfit press

109 notes · View notes

incarnateirony · 5 years

Text

Time for a rant

And some hard fucking truths about this fandom. And shipping culture. And related LGBT issues.

Edit for reblog: Since everybody’s trying to be highkey mad about everything right now, if the cut didn’t warn you, or the title, that this is going to be an unpopular AF opinion you should read all of before jumping to any conclusions, let this edit notice be that. But this post includes a bunch of shit. History I more recently and more fully talked about. The LGBT men I know that won’t touch this fandom with a ten foot pole because of shipping dialogue. And the accidental two season canon Destiel RP troll that we finally snapped and voiced beyond the meta wall from PURE EXHAUSTION.

(related posts in reference: (x) (x) (x) )

we know season great we know season 9 and its potential we know season 10 -- and most of us know its cut scenes humanity, being human, colette, the altar of winchester, the secret admirer, the boyfriends that strapped into the abaddon/colette parallels, all of it we know carver himself wrote the s10 finale and got it to film and then it got cut we know s9 he gave misha a note to play as jilted lovers from the showrunner but then we ask why did this never make it well nobody in fandom was paying attention nobody paid attention to SPN struggling the first seasons nobody paid attention to gamble's era almost getting nuked they all swore up and down this outdated americana show was about to have a queer pairing go canon because, yes, at that point *reads crumbled note* wallpaper

In fact that last one, to this date, no much how much legitimate structural meta or even deadass text current meta fandom breaks down, whether they just study the microcosm of Destiel or the macrocosm of the text with Destiel as a piece of it, can not escape the claims of *reads note again* wallpaper and T-shirts.

one year into Carver who was pulling the show out of the cancellation trashcan and vying for it to continue now that it was on netflix a DUMBASS EXEC wandered into twitter and opted to talk to fans

the goddamn network CEOship had just rotated even

”Well I blame” [disembodied force outside of our own]

no honestly I blame (parts of) pre S9 meta fandom, and I say that as a meta author they had been convincing people of intent for years When these showrunners and even rotating network execs were thrashing for life Like literally even the heads of the CW were changing not even just SPN but some fucking how the “sages” of that era didn’t have any gat damn insight onto how that might influence future engagements So out of the blue a newish network crew gets BLINDSIDED by accusations of queerbait and giant danger articles that are huge PR bombs and it turns into protect the product mode which turned into the new S10 press releases with the spontaneous sexuality field on the characters and half the filmed content ending up on the floor the short end of it is fandom fucked up hard Carver was fighting for them But in result he got a corporate shut down on a product he had ironically exploded globally too well that was earning too much profit too quickly to catch that kind of bad PR Chad Kennedy was a fateful fucking day Ever since then showrunners have had to pitch the idea at corporate when it was a nonissue before And prove why it's a valid move with test groups and marketing You can say "prove it" I really don't have to in this rant, I really do not give a SHIT if you believe me, I don’t CARE if you want to reject what is otherwise logic because I’m not about to throw anybody under a bus I really like not getting people in trouble, but this alone is a glint in the fucking RADAR of how I'm going off.

hell ask yourself why we went from Robbie calling Destiel canon to being eviscerated by queerbait claims because it didn’t fulfill what a specific audience wanted or expected, to deleting his post, to only annual actors free of their contracts daring to talk about Destiel, to corporate shutdowns where it’s crickets until Emily’s return where she’s started YOLO posting about it -- but why, why, why did we go from actual support and discussion to silence that you still rage about

Without the season nine kennedy explosion I'm pretty sure we would have had inarguable destiel canon in season 10 like late s10 Carver passed his torch to Dabb mid S11 where they kept stringing it out and ramping it up within restrictions which is why Dabb runs a very weird fucking line Dabb knows he has no promise of getting it as far as his forebearer wanted or even had written AND FILMED but he will hedge out as many lines, esp with the hand of Berens that Carver originally passed the directorial note with, as he can Wayward was a huge factor in that and tbh my hope died when Wayward died that was a HUGE weight in the network Berens was pulling

I'm at a point where i've conceded to our jane austen novel but want to see how far they take that to completion, though in reality that completion was 13.5/6 that's when I went from like, I passively enjoy and accept this content to screaming into the dumpster it's not the landmark people wanted but story structure wise within how SPN handles it's the sufficient one Recalling Dean's implicative hookups since like season six I mentioned on one hand The fact that they went full circle and bookended it in direct script mirror to Lisa after the S13 lead in would be amply sufficient to het drama and I refuse to enable hets running around the goalpost on queer people I would love better open blunt representation but I also recognize the genre of the show It's something Dean and I struggle with our server actually DeanCas have been canon for a season and a half here but maintaining that without taking a distracting romantic genre tilt or whatever is its own form of challenge We write established relationship openly, without bars, to the point we DMed each other for months like WHEN WILL THEY CATCH ON WTF but the problem, ironically, is that it's so parallel to the show nobody caught on

which really, though it didn't start as a conscious experiment, and was natural tells me everything I need to know even wiping what I knew on production and itk ends even if I just had that it says e v e r y t h i n g I have literally watched people laugh track completely serious content, because it's gay ergo it's funny LGBT people. Shippers.

I wrote subtle lines. They got ignored. I wrote blunt lines. They flew past heads. I wrote lines designed to be overt to the point of painful. They got laughed off. Het culture is a hell of a drug. Both in this RP and in how we interpret romances like DeanCas, even LGBT people and shippers, because people are expecting performative results and statements where either for the former they don't fit the show or genre or for the latter, there's some sort of restriction or imposition but there's authors writing their gay little hearts out and tearing their hair out after.

I've been the author tearing my hair out until I wrote a Cas, explicitly, in a moment, to be as blunt and straightforward and unmistakable as I could, to the point I felt I was bending the character to even make it happen, and debated my options for like ten minutes before doing it, just to free myself of this purgatory. And STILL got a wash of questions wanting me to *confirm* the content they just saw instead of going, gee, that’s PROBABLY WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.

Dabb is fighting the good gay fight and being woefully under respected for it, with Berens as his copilot, carrying a torch given to him by Carver, but people are too wrapped up in a mix of prior bitterness, performative culture, personal demands and shipping culture to see the forest for the trees, because he's deadass just writing an established fucking relationship but people would rather yell either queerbait or destroying the relationship. PR deadass pitched Absence like a het breakup drama and nobody blinked, just yelled how mean it was

Am I hinging my hopes on hammer-on-head-overt-canon-kissing-scene-DeanCas for the final season, no. Would I be surprised if it happened, knowing the execs? No, beyond breaking past corporate walls fandom dropped like a curtain in S9

But considering how "fuck performative culture" Berens is, as a gay man, fangirls absolutely should not fucking expect that either in even the most wild "the chains are broken, burn it all" method

Every queer man I know ships Destiel. Simultaneously, every queer man I know fucking loathes the sum of shipping culture with a vengeance.

Because it's grossly out of touch with MLM and is mostly WLW people trying to speak for what they think MLM should be when we already pretty much have the MLM right there.

YOU WANNA KNOW HOW THE ACTUAL QUEER MEN I KNOW SEE HOW THIS FANDOM HANDLES DESTIEL DESPITE BEING AVID SHIPPERS WHO SEE IT AS CANON ALREADY AND GET SCREAMED DOWN?

And since everyone likes to imagine the straight male audience as some borg, have a straight male friend exploding when someone called a fandom speakpiece a trainwreck. Bless his heart for not getting what queer or bi really mean situationally but his heart’s in the right place

I’m tired. Tired of trying to illustrate this to an audience I realized I have never once in my life been straight-coded enough to incorporate myself to much less understand the lensing of. Tired of watching queer men that I know who love this shit hide away in the recesses of DMs to hide from conversations lest they be accused of being homophobes or whatever by people refusing to read context, and/or just be smacked down by actual homophobes or just deadass rival shippers that refuse to see anybody be happy with something they don’t like in something that was never realistically a rivalry to begin with, because rivalry implies relative equality-ish and while all ships are equal in fanon, they aren’t necessarily in canon, and despite the thrashing and baying of antis this isn’t and will never just be a “fanon ship.”

Unpopular opinion but the biggest enemy to LGBT people isn't hets, it's the LGBT community, because we're too busy invalidating own own content and creators to make a truly unified front against het culture (or in this case, the network), and waving a flag with a lot of letters doesn't do anything to fix that. Yelling online into tumblr doesn’t fix that. @’ing creatives who have no power in this beyond the option to drop any attempt at queer resonant content cold turkey for you all to yell at them about THAT too doesn’t fix it.

No, yes, DeanCas are perfectly valid as Thebian warriors where one is clearly ace spectrum and the other is bisexualish if repressed as long as they are clearly enamored with and engaged with each other; no, nobody needs to fulfill anybody's migrating quota list when every romantic checkbox has been hit already that would be respected if they're het; would coming out statements in this sort of complicated relationship be great, sure, but they aren't in the kind of show that even addresses that and there's no way to make them even perform as the isolationists that they are without breaking or damaging the characters, not in the public eye, not in a show that hasn't shown a single sexual dean encounter for six-plus seasons for any other reason than to highlight a major traumatic problem in his life.

No, I wasn’t “hiding my gays.” My gays just didn’t have their bedroom times put on blast while they even openly made comments about the nature of their relationship everybody flagged down because they weren’t making out in front of everyone, even if that hand *did* drag a shoulder too long, even if Dean *Did* inexplicably drag a naked flatlining human Cas into the FUCKING med bay out of the Dean Cave at like 6 AM in the morning. Yes, your dedication to talking down content is that fucking loud even if you don’t realize it.

SPN is never going to be a show where the characters distinctly identify "I'm a nonbinary demiman ace-spectrum demisexual" and "i'm an aromantic bisexual with a female inclination", it's just not, stop trying to make it happen, it isn't gonna happen, realistically they are not the kind of people to engage gender politics, they're just going to be themselves. And it's queer, and it's beautiful. Fandom needs to stop moving goalposts because it's becoming more and more transparent. They just need to __. Go to dinner, check, have lingering touches walking past each other, check, admit love for one or the other, check, watches the goalpost run off into the horizon Kiss, you mean kiss, you want them to kiss, but Dean hasn't had that in how many years and what was the framing of the last moment of that.

SPN isn't about romance. Antis are right in that. But romance exists in SPN and one needs to mind the framework of it to not tilt the entire central focus of a genre show. One can have romance without being about romance, but people need to be conscious of what that means before they advocate about it. When Ruby or Anna were around they were dangerously close to becoming "about romance" which is why there was such a goddamn fit because these women were clearly tailor crafted to be plugged into a light/dark parallel in the back of the Impala

They haven't had a kissing-based romance in SPN for eight years. Ten if you cut past Lisa as a literal prop.

And if we wanna demand creator confirmation before we consider ace-y romances valid we'll talk about the biromantic commentary of S8 or the jilted lovers of S9 or the confirmed parallels of S10 or any of the overt shit after that, which got hit by marketing walls. We had that. They got yelled at for queerbait. Because it didn't hit people's quota. So we yet again hit a wall. Shipping fandom exhausts me. And I say that as a DeanCas shipper

I am literally watching people run their own goalposts around all the goddamn time Cas is so much more than becoming background commentary in the back of the impala like ruby and anna were geared to be He's his own goddamn individual, currently all but free of the wants and lusts of man from food to sleep to drink to urination to sex to PBJ, but deeply enamored -- per actual citation on the S8 DVD -- with humanity by proxy of a man he's given everything for Dean is a complicated individual who is growingly aware of his tug and pull with Cas on all emotional spectrums but has never once cheapened him to just being a sexual tool, reasons of which we can headcanon away, but he's never turned Cas into one of his bad coping mechanisms like Porn Star or Amazon or Deanmon's Fling And those, plus one waitress and a vague strip club incident in grief he came home from, sum up his post-lisa excursions, from a man who used to lay a different woman every episode in early seasons WelCoME to mlm cuLTURE In the actual L for love, not lust because kinda like jensen's headcanon of prostitute Dean there's even a chapter of feeling tossed away that's not what it's a b o u t and never was so performative DeanCas enrages me genuinely And if people have a genuine kink okay I guess but like, admit that's what it is. Otherwise assess the actual state and stasis of the characters in play and the cultural/gender issues involved, because it's soooo often either WLW or straight girls looking at MLM and deciding what they think it should be and it m i s s e s t h e m a r k b y a a m i l e and then the gay dudes hide in nooks or get besgieged by fangirls or are a Ben and avoid fandom entirely best Deans I've ever written with were with gay dudes tbh Kemi got the art of it enough to pre-write some scenes before they ever aired but there's elements that just vanish into the aether with either queer women or straight dudes. Different parts disappear Never had a straight girl write a Dean, don't intend to ever try wE nEed RepResEntAtiOn [sweeps hand at the show] if people stop running their goalposts around to the calls of straight girls, homophobes, and shipping culture it's right there. Is it monumental and groundbreaking, no, but SPN started as an outdated callback piece to begin with and has vaulted into the almost-current, so let's check ourselves in what we expect out of it. It's not gonna be a banner. But it's content actual queer men AVIDLY invest themselves in only to be told it's not enough/whatever in a world where there is dangerously low bi male representation, most is gay male, and most of that is hugely problematic stereotype easily replaced by a rainbow lamp wearing a boa and a sticky note pointing people towards plot. And in generous cases, are like Malec, which are a mix of creepy and stereotype. Yes let's nevermind the ancient warlock drawing the 18 year old dude into the allure of his thick eyeliner and glimmer and spandex pants, nothing to see here folks. but somehow we've reached a point as a culture that the above is considered better than "ageless deity becomes enamored with humanity through bond with one man, falling into him regardless of gender, surrendering all it knows to become like that man and protect that man, and becoming like unto a man, and learning the ways of man, through all classic romantic tropes known to man, and even classic endings and bookends of all romances given to man, only to settle in to a stable relationship baseline with a man, after sharing courtship gifts with a man" just because somebody, some fucking where, in a mix of bitterness, homophobia, and goalpost moving decided "public kiss or it doesn't count" even if we're left to wonder how that timeless thing knew what was under his pillow he kept safe that he came into his room and played him to get after a classic romantic gift.

Stop. It.

Yall may be wanting to victim pose because somebody else convinced you that you were a victim here but I’m a middle aged person willing to view history and accept basic FUCKING responsibility.

Because there’s a distinct fucking difference between “victim blaming” and “have some perspective and some basic adult responsibility in the unfolding of history as it happened rather than reframing it post-event because somebody else convinced you that’s what happened”.

The only people anyone is victims of in this fandom is people they took the word of as gospel without them having any sort of actual developmental insight at the time.

You wanna play victim?

Take it up with them.

As a modern meta author that primarily deals with actual legend and theology mytharc with a side of DeanCas structure I STILL run in to walls from antis erected by the people before me that did, indeed, use the methods they whip up as excuses, so if you’re gonna victim pose, I’m just as much of a victim of those people as you are, difference is I wasn’t enough of a follower to believe them when they preached “performative queer canon gospel to meet fangirl hetnorm performative demands of MLM we mainstreamed into our basic expectations because somebody told us to” at the time or now or ever.

In fact, here’s the conversation that LED INTO THIS RANT.

CastielToday at 12:27 AM Old SPN has its values in a form of nostalgia or genre-searching it had a sort of drifter grifter americana vibe the later seasons lost

GarthToday at 12:27 AM Ah, early 2000's

CastielToday at 12:28 AM Well it's more than just year it was definitely a genre piece back then

GarthToday at 12:28 AM No, I know, but shows that span a long time you can track in it where you can tell writers styles started clashing in a way

CastielToday at 12:28 AM and that genre was pretty much dead at that point so even when it was new, it induced nostalgia "This is familiar I miss this where did this go" but in being so oldschool as it aged forward it aged worse and worse against the modern and Misha was the first bolt that really sparked a dynamic shift it was a breath of fresh air that carried it through kripke's plan and almost doubled its respective viewership in scale but still kept the old spirit Gamble desperately tried to capture that spirit but did not understand the actual essence of that spirit and budget restrictions didn't help due to twitter buzz she thought that spirit was "just duh brudders" which is dangerously reductionist

GarthToday at 12:30 AM Hey, Misha saved it in more then one way.

CastielToday at 12:30 AM the brothers were ironic vehicles for that spirit that gave it faces but it was a weird form of american dream that america hadn't realized its dream had warped into 50 years ago the american dream was a 3/2 bed bath and business degree

StarfiraToday at 12:31 AM I don't get how Gamble thought Misha's Cas was expendable. She just couldn't get her mindset out of s1-3 mentality I guess.

CastielToday at 12:31 AM but as that became labored with culture and debt the american dream drifted into freedom, exploration and the road with some sense of familiarity in classics, be it cars or music

GarthToday at 12:31 AM Funny, I can watch some episodes and go "huh... well... it gets better" and that says a lot that I view Se1-3 like that

CastielToday at 12:32 AM Once security was no longer a security, and people became anchored by their illusions of security into desperate survival to maintain that illusion of security, the idea of roadster americana was the new american dream

GarthToday at 12:32 AM Hmmm good point

Aryn Prime #TokenStraight😘Today at 12:32 AM I just looked at spn Facebook comments and geeeezzz

GarthToday at 12:33 AM I keep having to remind myself about a few details outside of SPN because being able to just wait for Netflix to get a new season then rewatch it all from the beginning has made me have a different view then others.

CastielToday at 12:33 AM So especially to the older generation older SPN has a strong nostalgic value you were lik six when it aired so that era is gone to you

GarthToday at 12:34 AM Yeah, 1996 Nov is me

Aryn Prime #TokenStraight😘Today at 12:34 AM One dude on Facebook said he resents that the actors have kids since he heard that part of the reason that it's ending is because J2M want more time with their families Wtf

CastielToday at 12:34 AM Whereas when it first aired

GarthToday at 12:34 AM I first watched when I was 14

CastielToday at 12:34 AM it was reflecting an age lost

GarthToday at 12:34 AM Aryn, wtf?

CastielToday at 12:34 AM to people desperately trying to find it but in reflecting old times it aged very poorly Gamble still didn't understand what made the appeal so regressed it to brothers without that true americana vibe while culling Cas which was a disaster

GarthToday at 12:35 AM See, it's like the same thing on how I can enjoy some older shows while understanding that it no longer works anymore. Older shows don't age well normally. And yeah, Se7 hahahahahahahhahahahahaha man once I stepped back and looked at the details of season 7 during the third rewatch I was like "hmm..... yeah. this sucks."

StarfiraToday at 12:36 AM I graduated high school in 2000 so those of you were kids when you watched SPN make me feel old. LOL

GarthToday at 12:36 AM lmao

CastielToday at 12:37 AM MOOD STAR MOOD

StarfiraToday at 12:37 AM AT LEAST I'M NOT ALONE WITH THESE YOUNG WHIPPER SNAPPERS

CastielToday at 12:37 AM You were probably in the generation that if you had tuned in when it was fresh you would have been like OH I REMEMBER THIS

GarthToday at 12:37 AM LMAO

CastielToday at 12:37 AM I MISS THIS it's not by fluke that Dean's theme song is literally titled Americana

GarthToday at 12:38 AM Ah yes.... the theme song....

CastielToday at 12:38 AM It was a whole beautiful craft

StarfiraToday at 12:38 AM I'm actually in between Dean and Sam's ages

CastielToday at 12:38 AM But it had to get with the times and Gamble took it in the worst direction possible

StarfiraToday at 12:39 AM I was born in 82

CastielToday at 12:39 AM Carver... people have their issues with carver but IMO he recovered the show as well as he could with the plate he was handed in the times he was There were still problems sure

GarthToday at 12:39 AM It's gone through some ups and downs, yep.

CastielToday at 12:39 AM but to boot out of Gamble era into the modern world was no small task The WAY HE HANDLED THE PR he basically was like THAT SHIT WAS A HOT MESS AND I FLUSHED IT but eloquent it was some shit like REWATCHING THE LAST FEW YEARS I REALIZED THAT OUR LORE HAS BECOME A BIT DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW SO I DECIDED TO REVISIT MORE FAMILIAR ELEMENTS

GarthToday at 12:40 AM When the people working on the show go "shit, I forgot to make notes"

CastielToday at 12:40 AM It's not that Carver didn't make notes

StarfiraToday at 12:40 AM Oh man were so ecstatic when Carver was announced as a showrunner. Ultimately, he let me down in s9 and s10 but s8? Season 8 will always have a special place in my heart.

CastielToday at 12:41 AM it's that there was no kind way to voice that Gamble was a disaster He had a three year plan and for reasons™ got even derailed in that plan and half of it ended up in the cut footage Destiel fandom do not like hearing my take about it I'm a shipper but I recognize

StarfiraToday at 12:41 AM Is season 8 perfect? Nope, but I don't think it's easy to describe what breath of fresh air it was after the shit show of season 7 to those who weren't there when it was airing live and binged through it

CastielToday at 12:41 AM yall fucked up b a d nobody will ever own responsibility for it but carver's intent is clear as day on the creatives wall and season 9/10 became a fustercluck as a result I want everybody in this room to think about this from a creatives angle, first carver then corporate Carver said when he joined he had a three year plan with final notes on his desk from the second he walked in the door again he entered in season eight We know what happened seasons eight, nine, ten on screen

GarthToday at 12:43 AM Yeah, Star, I don't have as many problems with the seasons as others do because hello Netflix, but I can see where the issues are after some explaining and some insight into the PR stuff that happened with the fandom points at Min and others like her

CastielToday at 12:43 AM we know season great we know season 9 and its potential we know season 10 -- and most of us know its cut scenes humanity, being human, colette, the altar of winchester, the secret admirer, the boyfriends that strapped into the abaddon/colette parallels, all of it we know carver himself wrote the s10 finale and got it to film and then it got cut we know s9 he gave misha a note to play as jilted lovers from the showrunner but then we ask why did this never make it well nobody in fandom was paying attention nobody paid attention to SPN struggling the first seasons nobody paid attention to gamble's era almost getting nuked they all swore up and down this outdated americana show was about to have a queer pairing go canon because, yes, at that point reads crumbled note wallpaper

GarthToday at 12:46 AM Urgh, gotta go help with dinner prep. Mom doesn't like me being on Discord lately so I'm going to have to cut out now guys. Min, I'll catch up to your info drop afterwards lmao

since that still surprising some people too.

198 notes · View notes

steve0discusses · 5 years

Text

Yugioh S4 Ep16: Rex and Weevil Do Not Understand “Rock Bottom”

Hey guys.

Hey.

So... kind of crazy out there, right?

Well, you know what they say. When life gives you lemons, you watch Netflix.

Anyway, Yugioh is racing down this canyon that should be going up alongside the 101 and through the middle of many cities. Don’t worry about it.

And then I found out the name of a card I haven’t seen yet and wow it’s a name.

I’m really glad that Rex Raptor, dinosaur enthusiast, has just no idea how to name dinosaurs and does so like a 6 year old child. Hornsaurus.

(read more under the cut)

So this episode is mostly about Rex and Weevil’s tragic backstory, and thankfully, it’s really not that tragic. We’ve had SO MANY bizarre and weird backstories under our belt, that to have a completely normal one is just...wild to me. They’re so freakin normal.

And on the way, our train just...

OK Train...anyway, I’ll do my best to show which scenes are flash back and which are not, but like bear with me because it flashes back like every other scene it feels like.

So Rex waxes long about that very short time in which he and Weevil were the best ever duelists in Japan (other than Kaiba, I guess, who they failed to mention in this flashback.)

(I used to have a very soft performance fleece sweater the exact same shade as Weevil’s jacket there, popped collar and everything, with piping outline. Don’t judge me, it was the 00′s, I’m just shocked that Weevil also shopped at Old Navy.)

(However I have no idea what’s going on with Rex’s three layers of clashing outfit styles that he has going on. A turtleneck under a thick button up jacket under an open fringe jacket is so much of a 90′s vibe.)

Up until now, bro has been PRETTY SURE every episode that Rex and Weevil are originally from America. I don’t know how I feel about being so right on the money about this one when the episode outright said that they’re from Japan. I don’t really want to out-Yugioh my brother, because at some point, I’ll accidentally let slip that in writing this blog I have accidentally gained all Yugioh knowledge, just like Noah did that one time when he was stuffed into that brain orb.

Just please don’t don’t ask me how this game works, I still have absolutely no idea.

Weevil and Rex had adoring fans in two-shaded polos exactly just like the type I used to wear in high school. But, their fans all left them the moment Weevil lost one single game against Yugi Muto.

Harsh. But granted, I feel like the people of Domino have rabbit memories and if you aren’t actively in the news every day because your blimp got abducted by sea pirates, then who the hell is EVER going to know who you are?

But youknow, Rex and Weevil are pretty sure that dodging getting murdered by Pegasus was actually their last shot at fame. It’s over forever. They’re done. Done until they beat either Joey or Yugi which...very specific, but, it would make you somewhat famous if you did that by simultaneously destroying the Caltrain.

And Weevil is like gunning for the King of Games title but...apparently no one in this episode wanted to mention to Weevil that the “King of Games” moniker actually went to Raphael?

That he needs to beat Raphael...not Yugi Muto?

Nobody?

Nobody feels like mentioning that neither Yami nor Yugi could possibly still be King of Games and that Weevil has no really good reason to be here? I mean it would save Weevil a lot of time. It would also save me a lot of time. We could just walk off this train and go back to what we were all doing before this happened, but nah, lets keep the lie going, because apparently Yami can’t bear to tell the truth, just like his host.

Waiiiit, isn’t Rebecca the King of Games because she beat Yugi in S1?

It’s the freakin Malfroy/Elder wand, it’ll be important in Ch 40 I’m sure of it. I’m sure they’re not going to just...forget...all of the people that beat Yugi before.

Man. Maybe that’s why Yugi is so hell bent on keeping tabs on Rebecca? Just to youknow...make sure she doesn’t tell anyone that she hella beat him that one time because otherwise Kaiba would have lost his freakin mind (again) that Yugi lost that title basically the same afternoon he came back from Pegasus’ island.

Also Rex and Weevil once charged for headshots and this makes them vile, terrible people for some reason.

Apparently this is a bad practice? I mean if you’re famous enough please charge for head shots, you need to make money between playing cards. Take it from this jaded artist, always sell out so you can save money for when you will absolutely get carpal tunnel.

Whatever. Back to Rex who is certain that he is not famous anymore because he lost to Joey.

S4 and still everyone is certain that Joey is bad at cards. Joey will just never be free from this.

It was beautiful anime food for like ten seconds until he did this. How dare. Literally though, how did he do that? Was that burger made out of potato chips?

Can we talk about what a freakin crime it is I can’t watch my Nick at Night retro shows on Netflix or Hulu? Like hell I’m going to get a third streaming service so I can watch and admire how bad “I Love Lucy” aged. I want to see how incredibly off-putting Fonzie is as an adult. But nah. Not even allowed. You can only watch Cheers.

Cheers. What am I? 65? Cheers wasn’t on Nick at Night. My Mom watched Cheers. Gross.

This show trying to convince me so hard that Rex and Weevils lowest point wasn’t when they were 5 seconds away from being set on fire and having their soul removed by Maxamillion Pegasus.

Like for reals, the lowest point for ANYONE (except for the Ishtars) on this show was when they were trapped on that island, without any camping supplies, surrounded by human skulls, Bakura pre-exorcism, and so many other duelists who were probably going to eat them had the tournament gone 24 more hours than it had.

The island that also had a basement that was entirely full of cultists who absolutely murdered a guy right in front of us.

Like when they finally got out of the island’s huge ass forest, their dinner included a soup filled with Pegasus’ eyes.

I would have gotten pissed on by like 70 stray dogs to get off that island, y’all.

So one of the best things about this blog is I don’t have to worry about the restraint of a.) looking professional b.) the fear of sharing my actual real deal opinion. Everywhere else I post, I can’t share anything. I’ve come to terms with this, and so I hide my hot takes deep, deep within this Yugioh blog and the only people who suspect my art rage are like...y’all in the corner of Tumblr who do not care about what I’m talking about.

++++++++++++THIS IS MY HUGE RANT ABOUT ART POLITICS AND ART BITTERNESS FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS. WE’RE QUARANTINING SO MUCH OVER HERE DUE TO THE VIRUS THAT I AM GOING A LITTLE BIT HOUSE CRAZY+++++++++++++++

But like MAN I need to mention something. Both Joey and Rex are completely off base. Both of them.

Like I’ll be real, because of the sudden extra time I have on my hands, I was originally ranting quite a bit about art culture and stuff and I will admit it was projecting somewhat onto a TV show that was written before the recession and the gig economy basically came and laid a huge dump across the creative industry.

However, I really, really, really don’t like it when people naively say “I’m successful because I did the research, I did the work, and then I got a following despite doing no marketing at all,” LIKE HELL YOU DID, DUDE. And there’s certain places I go where this is the mantra of a hell ton of ppl who don’t believe in luck, and I have to just suck it in because they succeeded at a young age. Because inversely, if anyone doesn’t succeed right away--clearly they don’t work hard enough, right?

I won’t dig into real world stuff because that’s...the real world and the real world is a bummer, but even in the universe of Yugioh there’s this crazy disparity in duelers that the people on the top refuse to acknowledge and the people on the bottom have absolutely no way to cope with so they become insanely bitter about it.

Mai has mentioned that despite all of her hard work and success--because she isn’t the top 4 duelists of Kaiba’s tourney--no one knows who she freakin is. The card industry is so toxic, that even KAIBA dropped out.

And even without Kaiba to compete against anymore, Mai still wasn’t able to get in there to fill that void. The void that also has Marik and Odion in it, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure Marik will never touch a card ever again and might be back to living underground or on a boat in the middle of no-where. And we don’t even need to mention Bakura, right? Bakura who should have also been here to fill the void of fame, but his face probably only comes out fuzzy on camera like people haunted by that girl from the Ring. So we’ll just ignore Bakura, that makes sense, I can accept that canon.

But really...it’s just Joey and Yugi at the top of the crop when there should have been room for at least 4.

So, it’s interesting that the Oricalchos in this situation is the “get me popular quick” drug that will somehow give Rex and Weevil what they need for automatic success because I see people desperately looking for this SO MUCH online. I have seen so many post “This is how I got 100000 followers in 100 days,” and it’s always the same story that isn’t so much about hard work, but more how to game a broken system until all other competitors are invisible. And then there’s the hidden factor about...luck...that really offends people although we all know that it exists.

But just remember I’m not allowed to have this opinion that luck...exists...So if anyone asks, I never said this.

And also...if Rex and Weevil had any support up until now from these kids who have been stuffing them in the trunk for over a dozen episodes, they wouldn’t have done any of this.

So talking as a jaded Millennial, I’m not gonna judge you if you take your Oricalchos, if you know what I mean. Everyone has their reasons, and no one’s too good not to ever do it, lets be real.

+++++++++++++++END OF THIS RANT, WOW, I WANT TO SAY THAT WHILE SLAPPING A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE IN A GENTLE MANNER+++++++++++++

So I realized something. This cliff face is sort of an iconic train, but it’s the wrong train.

This is the Amtrak in the middle of Nevada/Utah, pretty sure. I know that shade of orange. I’ve done the Nevada drive a lot.

And part of the reason I’m even sleuthing into this is because as an artist I like to see where art inspiration comes from. It doesn’t just come from a void--they clearly did research and I just want to find out...how it happened.

So anyway, like I said last time, the Amtrak is in charge of the Caltrain management, although the Caltrain is not part of Amtrak. And so you get similar paint jobs--it’s just that Amtrak has blue topped cars, and the Caltrain cars are typically red. Yugioh safely did red, white and blue, which both cars do, to an extent, being American trains.

It’s possible that they decided to look up scenic trains in California and were like “this one looks neat.” This one is also named the “California Zephyr” which makes it seem super Californian but in actuality it goes from Emeryville, California to Chicago. Only problem is that Emeryville is North of Oakland, and we’re supposed to be taking the train “to the airport” when the airports are in Oakland or San Mateo. This train doesn’t go to the airport. You just drove by the airport.

This train also doesn’t go to Florida. Chicago is North, way north. This train exists to be a slow, scenic train for old tourists who want to sleep in cramped spaces or jaded millennials writing their award winning novel. It has no other purpose.

So, it doesn’t at all match anything story wise...but it looks cool. They would never take this train if the world was going to end, and Rebecca wouldn’t know it exists, but, it looks cool.

But anyway, onward to the next episode. I’ll be kind of bunking in my home for a while since my entire area basically shut down, so maybe I’ll get the next updates done earlier than usual? Maybe even catch up on my backlog? hm. Possibilities.

And if you just got here, this is all the Yugioh recaps in chrono order.

#Yugioh #ygo #Yu-Gi-Oh #recap #photo recap #episode recap #yugi muto #yami #train #joey wheeler #tristan taylor #rex raptor #weevil underwood #S4 #Ep16

19 notes · View notes

searchingwardrobes · 5 years

Text

Own Worst Enemy: 4/5

Finally, @killiancygnus, I have part four of your birthday fic! You said you were buckled up for the angst, right?

Summary: Killian Jones can’t figure out why he’s waking up in a cold room in a tux with his best friend Emma Swan in his closet. Maybe we need to rewind the night … Based on the song “Own Worst Enemy” by Lit. The idea of the game is for Fran to choose which lyrics I tackle next. Part four is based on these lines:

and now you're gone

It’s no surprise to me, I am my own worst enemy

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

And guess what, Fran? I’ve got part 5 almost finished for this line: Cause every now and then I kick the living shit out of me

Tagging the usuals (I hope): @jennjenn615 @kday426 @snowbellewells @let-it-raines @welllpthisishappening @kmomof4 @winterbaby89 @teamhook @bethacaciakay @optomisticgirl @whimsicallyenchantedrose @delirious-latenight-laughs @resident-of-storybrooke @thislassishooked @wellhellotragic @branlovestowrite @shireness-says @ultraluckycatnd @xhookswenchx @distant-rose @tiganasummertree

“So let me get this straight, little brother. You and Emma got drunk and decided to . . . get married?”

Killian groans, taking fistfuls of his hair and tugging. “It would seem so.”

Liam’s pacing nervously back and forth across his living room, lecturing him like he’s a teenager again. But honestly, none of his words are penetrating Killian’s brain. How can they when all he can keep focusing on is the fact that Emma left so abruptly? Liam had extended his hand and helped her up off the floor of the closet that had been Killian’s when he was in high school. The Pearl Jam posters were still hanging inside. Emma had swayed to her feet, groaning as she clutched her head.

“What am I wearing?” she had grumbled. Then she had looked over at Killian on the bed in his rumpled tux and covered in her lipstick. “Oh shit!” she had cried, and before he could even open his mouth, she was racing out of the house so fast Killian was surprised she hadn’t left skid marks.

*****************************************************

“Okay, back up, you did what?”

“I don’t know.” Emma whines, grabbing one of Ruby’s throw pillows and pressing it against her face.

“You got married?”

“Maybe?” Emma mumbles from behind the pillow. “We got drunk and we kissed at the docks, and then, well, it all got a little fuzzy.”

“Well, okay,” Ruby says plopping down on the end of the couch with her laptop, fingers flying over the keys, “so . . . let’s look into this . . . uh oh.”

“What?” Emma says, struggling to sit up and see her friend’s computer. “What do you mean, uh oh?”

“Maine has no waiting period on marriage licenses. You could get one and then get married five minutes later.”

“Shit.” Emma flops back onto the couch. “And I thought you getting back together with Victor and setting fire to the bathroom was the wild part of the night.”

“I didn’t get back together with him. After we hooked up in the bathroom, I went home with a guy whose name I can’t remember.” Ruby says all this casually, still scrolling through a Google search.

Emma arches a brow “Seriously?”

Ruby rolls her eyes and lobs a throw pillow at Emma’s head. “No, actually, Victor and I came back here and fell asleep on my couch watching some zombie show on Netflix. I’m just not sure how to process that you had a wilder night than I did.”

Emma groans as she hugs the pillow to her abdomen. “No waiting period, huh? Are Killian and I really married then?”

Ruby sighs and pats Emma’s thigh reassuringly. “Oh hon, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.

***************************************************

Killian exhales an irritated breath as he tries for what feels like the fifth time to do his bow tie. He knows how, his hands are just still shaking. Last night is something he can’t stop thinking about. Nor Emma’s departure afterward. He’d never seen such a panicked look on her face.

“Killian?”

He turns to see his brother leaning around the doorway.

“Are they ready for me?”

“No, not yet,” Liam sighs as he enters the room, holding out his cell phone. “It’s Emma. She called my phone. Says she can’t reach you on yours.”

Killian searches the dresser in front of him, then pats his thighs and jacket pockets with a frown on his face. “Shit, my phone must be lost in my old room somewhere.”

He takes the phone from his brother, who leaves the room with a sympathetic gaze. Since he’s alone in the room, he turns it on speaker phone and sets it on the dresser so he can wrangle the stupid bow tie. David and Mary Margaret will be through with their pictures any minute and the wedding coordinator will be coming to get him.

“Swan?”

“We didn’t get married.”

His hands freeze on his tie. “Umm . . . “

He can hear her sharp exhale of breath as if she’s irritated with him. “We didn’t get married –,” she repeats, “we couldn’t have. We would have to go to the municipal building to get a license, and they wouldn’t have been open.”

“I know,” he says, giving up on the tie, his entire body deflating, “I checked.”

“And there aren’t any 24-hour wedding chapels in driving distance either,” she continues as if she hasn’t even heard him.

“I know that too.”

“Oh.”

There’s a long silence between them, and Killian picks up the phone to turn off the speaker and presses it to his ear.

“Listen, Swan, what happened last night revealed -”

“Stop. Don’t say anything, please. We were drunk, that’s all. It didn’t mean anything.”

“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you, it meant something to me.”

“What?” He can perfectly imagine her shaking her head. “I mean, that’s ridiculous.”

Killian presses his eyes closed, his jaw clenching. He knows he may scare her to death, but he can’t hold in his feelings any longer. “No, it’s not. I love you, Emma.”

“Is this about the . . . the making out? I mean, it’s fuzzy, but I remember it. You’re a good kisser, I remember that too, but . . . that’s all that it was. Kissing. Drunk kissing.”

Killian drops down onto the edge of a chair in the corner. “Emma,” he says in a gentle voice, ”I’ve loved you since the first day we patrolled together. The rum just gave me the guts to act on it.”

The phone went dead in his hand.

******************************************************

“And now the best man and maid of honor dance!”

The look that Emma gives Killian as he turns towards her on the dance floor is frightening. She’s done an amazingly good job of avoiding him so far today, but even Emma won’t cause a scene when it’s David and Mary Margaret’s special day. So acting as if she’s on her way to the gallows, she shuffles to Killian and sticks out her arms robotically. He arches a brow at her as he takes a stiff hand in his and rests his other at her waist. Emma takes a step back.

“What kind of dancing is this?” he growls.

“Six inches,” she snaps back, gesturing at the air between them, “you know. I thought an old-fashioned gentleman like you would be familiar with that old rule.”

“Come on, Emma be mature about this.”

“Fine,” she concedes, tossing him a pout to rival the one that Roland, the six year old ring-bearer, gave to his mother Regina when she forced him to put on his bow tie.

“It’s just one dance,” he bites out, clenching his jaw, “and you didn’t mind dancing with me last night.”

Her eyes flash, and he knows he made a tactical error. She tries to step away, but he tightens his hold on her and bends to whisper in her ear.

“For David and Mary Margaret.”

The song seems to last an eternity and the second it ends, Emma flees the dance floor.

*******************************************************

Killian leaves the wedding as early as good manners will allow for the best man. Not that Emma cared about etiquette when she made her exit. Even from across the room, he saw Mary Margaret’s brow furrow when he maid of honor hugged her goodbye. When Killian takes his leave, David is more direct.

“Are you and Emma okay?”

Killian flashes his best smile, not wanting his friends to have reason to worry on their wedding day. “Of course we are.”

David crosses his arms and scowls. “You were dancing weird.”

“Weird?”

“There was like three feet between you. Like you both had halitosis.”

“Six inches, actually, and it’s not like we had a choice to dance.” Killian wincee. Not exactly a festive attitude for the best man.

“You didn’t mind dancing last night.”

He really hopes his face isn’t as red as it feels. He ducks his head and starts to scratch behind his ear. When he sees David’s eyebrows rise, he remembers what an obvious tell that is and drops his hand back to his side.

“We’re fine, mate, really. You and your bride should focus on your newly wedded bliss, not me and Emma and our roller coaster friendship.”’

David gives him a smile and a slap on the shoulder, and Killian lets out a breath of relief. He knows his friend will grill him when he gets back from his honeymoon, but at least he and Mary Margaret will enjoy the rest of the reception. They are both far too compassionate.

Even though it’s the last place he wants to see right now, Killian swings by his brother’s place and searches his old room for his phone. Despite the wedding, if there’s an emergency, he might get a call from Graham. His brother hasn’t touched the room, and the bedsheets are still rumpled. Two bottles of rum stick out from beneath the bedspread. Crushed flower petals litters the carpet, and Killian has a flash of memory from the night before. They were at a 24 hour market that had pitiful bouquets of flowers for sale by the register.

Come, Swan, every bride needs a bouquet.

At least they hadn’t actually gotten married. Or slept together. Funny that he wasn’t sure of the first but absolutely certain of the second. When it comes to Emma, there are some things he knows he would have no trouble remembering, regardless of how much he’d had to drink.

He finds his phone on the bed, underneath one of the pillows. The battery is completely drained, of course. When he gets home, he plugs it in and sets it on his nightstand. He then proceeds to lay there staring at the ceiling for hours. No matter what he does, he can’t stop berating himself for so thoroughly screwing things up with Emma. At four am, he gives up and reaches over for his phone.

The battery is at one hundred percent, so he powers it up. The first thing he notices is a new lock screen. How he’d managed to change it in his heavily inebriated state he isn’t sure. It’s a selfie of he and Emma at the market buying her bridal bouquet. They’re both laughing, and Emma is brandishing the flowers like a sword. He can’t help chuckling at it. Once he unlocks his phone, he finds more pictures. They’re surprisingly good for two drunken fools. There’s one of Emma blowing him a kiss in that ridiculous Madonna costume. There’s one of them in the Bug, dressed up and ready for their “wedding” with Emma brandishing a ring pop on her hand. He shakes his head, laughing again. Then in the next picture, Emma is kissing him on the cheek, and his chuckle turns to a groan. Unable to look at them anymore, he tosses his phone to the side and flings his arm across his face.

He loves her so much it physically hurts.

**************************************************************

Killian is unapologetically a depressing, lazy bum on Sunday, binge-watching Stranger Things and never leaving the couch. He tries to call Emma, but it goes straight to voicemail every time. He doesn’t even bother leaving a message. He isn’t having this conversation unless he and Emma are face to face, and come Monday, she won’t be able to ignore him anymore.

Or so he thinks.

He arrives at the station at 8 am sharp, and is beyond shocked to see Emma’s yellow Bug already in its usual space in the lot. He’s only just walked through the door when he collides with her. She’s carrying the contents of her desk in a cardboard box. His shocked gaze alternates between her face and the box in her arms.

“What the hell is this?”

Emma chews on her bottom lip, and her expression is clearly panicked. He knows that look, and it suddenly all falls into place.

“You’re quitting,” he says, “and you tried to sneak out of here before I got to work this morning.”

Emma balances the box on one hip while she pushes her hair out of her face. “Come on, Kil, you knew my friend Merida has been begging me to come work with her. As a private investigator, I can set my own hours and eventually make more money. Plus, she’s got room at her place in Boston.”

“And you decided this when?” Killian’s voice is rising, but he can’t help it. “In the last 24 hours?”

She shrugs. “Merida called yesterday, and I figured I needed to stop making excuses.”

“Bullshit.”

Emma’s eyes flash fire. “Okay then, want the truth?”

“Yes, actually.”

“I can’t work with someone who’s crossed the line of a working relationship.”

Killian grabs the box out of her hand and sets it on the ground. When he rises, he steps right into her personal space. He can tell from the tense set of her shoulders that she wants to take a step back, but she stubbornly stands her ground.

“Also bullshit.”

She rolls her eyes. “Then believe what you want, but it’s the truth.”

“No, the truth is, you’re running because you can see a future here. A happy one, and that scares you.”

Emma crosses her arms and scowls. “Let me guess, with you?”

They’re both breathing heavily, the frustration between them palpable. Killian deflates, however, gentleness enfusing his voice. “Yes, actually.”

Her eyes widen for a moment, but then she blinks and shoulders past him to grab her box. She mumbles something about David and Mary Margaret and how it’s time to move on herself, basically words that don’t really make sense, and then she’s out the door.

All he can do is stand there and watch her toss the box in her backseat then slide behind the wheel. He’s said what he felt; he won’t chase her. She drives away, and the breath leaves his body.

She’s gone.

#cs ff #cs modern au #interactive birthday fic #for killiancygnus #for her birthday #own worst enemy

30 notes · View notes

mrmichaelchadler · 6 years

Text

Home Entertainment Consumer Guide: October 4, 2018

10 NEW TO NETFLIX

"Billy Madison" "Blade II" "Blazing Saddles" "Chappaquiddick" "The Devil's Advocate" "The Green Mile" "Monty Python's Life of Brian" "Mountain" "Mystic River" "The Shining"

7 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD

"Andrei Rublev" (Criterion)

It's funny how classic directors can ebb and flow into the national conversation. I feel like I've heard Andrei Tarkovsky's name more in 2018 than in many recent years. Some years everyone thinks everything is "Hitchockian" or "Kubrickian." Perhaps Film Twitter is expanding its auteur vocabulary because I've seen several recent films, including "Annihilation" and "High Life," compared to Tarkovsky's work. Did Criterion somehow know this was going to happen, thereby timing their HD upgrade of his epic "Andrei Rublev" for late September? Probably not, but you never know. As for the release, it's a beauty, including both versions of the film, a few documentaries, and new interviews. Some of the Criterion upgrades are merely that (imports of special features with an HD transfer) but this is more like a brand new release. After all, Andrei Tarkovsky has never been hotter.

Buy it here

Special Features New high-definition digital restoration of the director’s preferred 183-minute cut, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray The Passion According to Andrei, the original 205-minute version of the film Steamroller and Violin, Tarkovsky’s 1961 student thesis film The Three Andreis, a 1966 documentary about the writing of the film’s script On the Set of “Andrei Rublev,” a 1966 documentary about the making of the film New interviews with actor Nikolai Burlyaev and cinematographer Vadim Yusov by filmmakers Seán Martin and Louise Milne New interview with film scholar Robert Bird Selected-scene commentary from 1998 featuring film scholar Vlada Petric New video essay by filmmaker Daniel Raim New English subtitle translation PLUS: An essay by critic J. Hoberman

"Leave No Trace"

Debra Granik's first film since "Winter's Bone" remains one of my favorites of 2018 and loses none of its remarkable power on second viewing at home. It's just as phenomenal as I remember when I saw it at Sundance. This is a gentle, truthful tale about a father and daughter growing apart, a division deepened by his severe PTSD. Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie gives one of the most genuine performances of the year, and Ben Foster nearly matches, finding a more subtle register than the one for which he's most well-known. This is a beautiful movie, one that I hope everyone gets a chance to see.

Buy it here

Special Features Creating Leave No Trace - Featurette Deleted Scenes Behind the Scenes Vignettes Location Scout Photo Gallery

"The Naked Prey" (Criterion)

Academy Award nominee Cornel Wilde stars in this adventure film, which he also directed and produced, reportedly based on the life of John Colter, an explorer chased by Blackfoot warriors in Wyoming. The script for "Naked Prey" was Oscar-nominated but if you're thinking this is a relatively obscure choice for Criterion, especially when compared to the other two films in this column, you're not wrong. The company often includes at least one film a month that you probably haven't heard of or at least haven't seen in a very long time, to go with it's more widely-acknowledged collection of classics. Such is the case with "Naked Prey," a film that reportedly earned mixed reviews on its release but is now considered influential both in its focus and brutality. Roger himself was not a fan. Buy it here

Special Features Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray Audio commentary from 2007 by film scholar Stephen Prince “John Colter’s Escape,” a 1913 record of the trapper’s flight from Blackfoot Indians—which was the inspiration for The Naked Prey—read by actor Paul Giamatti Original soundtrack cues created by director Cornel Wilde and ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey, along with a written statement by Tracey Trailer PLUS: An essay by film critic Michael Atkinson and a 1970 interview with Wilde

"A Raisin in the Sun" (Criterion)

When Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun in the '50s, do you think she had any idea it would become a staple of American theater, and regularly adapted for film and television? The play has really stood the test of time, and it's still produced in near-constant rotation around the country, but Criterion has gone with the original, and still-best, film production of it, starring Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, and Louis Gossett Jr. Regular readers of this column know that I'm always curious about the timing of Criterion releases. So why "Raisin" now? Well, it's clear that the themes of the play still resonate today, and perhaps the company is responding to criticism that their collection is largely full of white filmmakers telling white stories. Whatever the reason, "A Raisin in the Sun" remains essential to the story of American theatre in the '50s and '60s and this is a great way to bring this seminal work to a wider audience.

Buy it here

Special Features New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray Interview from 1961 with playwright/screenwriter Lorraine Hansberry New interview with Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine Episode of Theater Talk from 2002 featuring producer Philip Rose and actors Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis Excerpt from Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement (1978), with a new introduction by director Woodie King Jr. New interview with film scholar Mia Mask, coeditor of Poitier Revisited Interview from 2002 with director Daniel Petrie Trailer PLUS: An essay by scholar Sarita Cannon and author James Baldwin’s 1969 tribute to Hansberry, “Sweet Lorraine”

"Solo: A Star Wars Story"

If you ask a certain sector of the movie-going public, they'll tell you that "Solo: A Star Wars Story" was a massive bomb. They'll claim that negative feelings about "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" caused a backlash against "Solo" and the box office reflected that, leading to the lowest-grossing "Star Wars" film of the modern era (and that includes the prequels). The truth is that "Solo" likely wasn't as impacted by "TLJ" as it was over-saturation. There was a time when a "Star Wars" movie was an event, which is inherently more difficult when one is practically still playing in theaters as a new one comes out. There's also the fact that, sorry, "Solo" isn't very good. One can see the struggle behind the scenes that led to Ron Howard being brought in to helm the pic, and the result is a film that's only sporadically entertaining (and horribly under-lit). The Blu-ray is solid, as they often are for "Star Wars" films, but I think the lesson to take from "Solo" is that any universe loses its luster if we visit it too often and the best thing this franchise could do after "Episode IX" would be to go away for a little while. Absence makes the Wookie heart grow fonder.

Buy it here

Special Features Solo: The Director & Cast Roundtable Team Chewie Kasdan on Kasdan Remaking the Millennium Falcon Escape from Corellia The Train Heist Becoming a Droid: L3-37 Scoundrels, Droids, Creatures and Cards: Welcome to Fort Ypso Into the Maelstrom: The Kessel Run Deleted Scenes The Millenium Falcon: From Page to Park

"Three Identical Strangers"

2018 has been an amazing year for documentaries. Films like "RBG," "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," and now "Free Solo" have become surprising arthouse hits, finding devoted fans. I'm hoping that the trend brings people to one of the best docs of the year, a hit at Sundance and the Chicago Critics Film Festival earlier this year, "Three Identical Strangers." This is one of those WTF documentaries that keeps unfolding new secrets and revelations as it progresses. Without spoiling anything, the craziest part of this story is not what you think it is. It's not merely that three identical triplets found each other after years apart. There's more to this tale than any writer could possibly devise. Check it out and see for yourself.

Buy it here

Special Features Audio Commentary with Director Tim Wardle and Editor Michael Harte Q&A with David Kellman, Robert Shafran, Brenda Galland, Ellen Cervone, and Director Tom Wardle Photo Gallery Trailer

"X-Men Trilogy"

The MCU may be thriving but the "X-Men" franchise is in a weird phase. The "Dark Phoenix" trailer dropped last week only for the movie's release date to then be pushed back. People just don't seem as excited about "X-Men" as they used to be, but that shouldn't stop superhero fans from going back to the beginning, Bryan Singer's wildly influential first film about Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, and company. Christopher Nolan gets a lot of credit for influencing where the market is now, but Sam Raimi and Bryan Singer deserve just as much, if not more, for creating the templates for the modern superhero movie. The first two films in this trilogy are phenomenal, and they hold up beautifully in these new 4K editions. The third film? It was horrible then and it's horrible now, another film that can be used as a template for what NOT to do in the superhero genre.

Buy it here

Special Features Audio Commentaries Behind-the-Scenes Footage Deleted/Extended Scenes The Mutant Watch Animatics Character and Production Design Stills

from All Content https://ift.tt/2IEsQSy

1 note · View note

spyvstailor · 7 years

Text

This little ditty is going out to @meanwhile-in-the-hall-of-doom, because holy hell you are a frickin’ cool person and I’m so blessed to be mutuals with you.

Jon bets Eddie he can’t score a date from Selina on Valentine’s Day of all days. It’s not a matter of money, it’s a matter of pride.

“Alone? On today of all day’s? That’s sad, Jonathan!”

Seated by himself in a dark corner of the Iceberg, Jonathan Crane peered over his glasses at Edward Nygma as the man flopped into the booth across from him.

“I’m not alone,” Jonathan returned coolly.

“Because you have me,” Edward grinned.

Putting his book back up between them, Crane cleared his throat. “Because I have Dostoevsky and orange brandy.”

“How dull,” Edward stated. “I like a good Russian drama as much as the next man, but you bore me sometimes.”

“I can’t hear you from my happy place,” Crane murmured.

A question mark cane hooked over his book and dragged it down, Edward’s grinning face on the other side.

“How can you tell when a well is not a well?”

“How can you tell when a Crane is not interested?” Jonathan demanded, shoving the cane away and returning his book. “Answer, he puts his fucking book back where it was.”

“Tsk, language, Jonathan Bartholomew Crane!”

“Bartholomew is not my middle name,” Crane grumbled.

“Angus? Fester? Julian?” Edward asked. “Carter? Matthew?”

Dropping his book with a sigh, Crane leveled Edward with a look that had been known to kill men cold in their tracks.

Edward, not easy to scare, beamed. “It’s Matthew, isn’t it?”

“Edward--”

“No, that’s my name. Come on, Jon, focus.”

“Edward,” Crane went on firmly. “Are you alone this Valentine’s Day?”

“Of course not,” Edward declared, pulling a Raymond Chandler book from his inner jacket pocket. “You have Dostoevsky and I have Chandler.”

“Wonderful,” Crane grumbled.

As the two men turned to their books, about to delve into their novels, Selina Kyle, all hips and glossy black hair, paraded by in a dress that looked like something that would make a claustrophobic panic, all snug in the right places.

Both men looked without looking, keeping their eyes on their books, but knowing full well which booth she settled in with her arm candy.

“Mind your wallet,” Edward joked.

Crane grinned darkly. “Mind your heart with that one.”

“Oh, Crane, she’s a lovely woman. Does she...scare you?”

“The last time I felt fear was when you sat down at my booth, Edward.”

“Does this make me the new Master of Fear?”

“What it makes you, is a very real threat to my personal space.”

“Sure you love me, but you’re not in love with me.” Edward teased.

Exhaling slowly, Crane said, “I wonder,” he began, “how a man manages to get Selina Kyle to go out with him on Valentine’s Day. He must be a very important man.”

Distracted enough, Edward pondered this. “I bet he’s rich.”

“Do you think Selina so shallow?”

“Not at all, but she doesn’t pick Salisbury when she could have sirloin.”

“And what does that make you?”

“Kobe,” Edward grinned.

“Then how is it,” Crane went on, “that she’s with him and not you on this day of all days?”

“Selina and I?” Edward laughed.

“You are Kobe, aren’t you?” Crane inquired. “You are worthy of a date with her, are you not?”

Not a fool by any length of means, Edward Nygma quirked a brow at him and angled himself in the booth to glance in Selina’s direction.

“What’s the wager?”

Crane grinned viciously. “I want your cane.”

“My cane?”

“I bet it’s one of a kind. Very hard to find.”

Edward frowned. “And what do you offer?”

“Three bottles of toxin.”

“No deal, I want your mask.”

“My mask?” Crane demanded.

“Can’t poison a man with a mask, can we? The last time I was just walking down the street, an innocent bystander, when what hits me? Dr. Crane’s not-so-amazing fear toxin. I was tripping for days.”

Crane beamed proudly. “Oh dear.”

“So? What’s the stipulations?”

“You can’t inform her of the deal, you have to shake her current male companion and get her to confirm that it’s a date with you before one in the morning.”

Edward checked his pocketwatch, before clicking it shut. “Verbal confirmation?”

“Verbal will acceptable or if you manage to get her to leave with you.”

“Deal,” Edward said, offering him his hand.

Crane shook.

“And, Crane, don’t think yourself smart, I know who the man is and how long Selina’s been seen around with him. I love a good game.”

“Hm,” Crane returned to his book.

It wasn’t about the silly mask, or Selina Kyle’s date, it was about his pride. Edward Nygma did not lose.

He sauntered to the bar first, ordering himself a whiskey and hunkering down. It was early still, he had four hours and he was patiently waiting for his opportunity.

After thirty minutes, he glanced over to find Crane tapping his watch, Edward raised his glass to him casually, not at all concerned.

After another twenty minutes, Selina got up from her booth and headed for the restrooms, that was when Edward pounced, getting to his feet and wandering over to position himself at the entrance of the hall, near a love tester machine that beeped every two minutes.

After three beeps, Selina emerged looking fresh faced.

He went into his song and dance, hiding around the corner and peering out into the lounge.

“What’s your deal?” Selina inquired.

Edward jumped and turned, spying her, he beamed. “Oh, Selina,” he gasped. Crooking his finger, he motioned for her to join him in his hiding place.

She followed him curiously, but looked a little angry about it.

“See that woman out there?” He pointed to a mousy looking, bookish sort who sat at the bar by herself. “She lives in my building.”

“Does she?” Selina demanded. “And why do I care?”

“Her names Gertie, has this yippy little ankle biter,” he went on. “She’s been pestering me for a date all week.”

“You shouldn’t be so picky, Eddie,” Selina purred. “A man like you should be grateful for what he can get.”

She moved to leave, but he held out his hand politely to stop her.

“Listen,” he whispered. “She once called the ASPCA on an alley cat who chased her dog. She is not nice, kind of creepy.”

“Eddie,” Selina said, “last year you kidnapped the Mayor’s wife and held her in the middle of a labyrinth full of puzzles and games. I think you two will be fine together.”

He beamed. “You remember that?”

“Bye, Eddie,” she moved to leave again.

“Wait,” he said. “Just...help me out, Selina? Please?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Please?”

“I just..need her to think I have a girlfriend,” he explained.

“Nope,” she murmured, making a hasty exit.

Edward’s initial plan fell through, so he trailed after her.

Selina went right up to the woman and Edward almost fell in love with how vicious the woman was when she looked the poor mousy woman in the eye and said, “he’s right here. Have at him.”

As Selina moved on, Edward exchanged a look with the confused woman. He waved his hands in front of him and followed Selina back to her booth.

Crane sat there with her date, raising his brandy to them.

“Lina, babe, this is...sorry, what did you say your name was?” The man asked.

What was the man’s name? Edward tried hard to remember it, he had seen him in the financial pages once...Steven? No...Jeff? Jeffrey?

“Claude Rains,” Crane said with a grin.

“Oh, right, Claude,” the man - was it Barstow? Bentley? - said.

“Claude was just telling me that he works in graveyard market investments.”

“I’m a specialist, I recognized Luke Vecchio immediately from his article in the financial section, that piece about the unstable market of foreign trade companies bordering the Pacific Rim. Powerful piece.”

“Good market if you can break into it, investments ripe for the plucking,” Luke declared. “Of course, heavy losses if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Edward snored loudly, snapping his head forward. “Oh! Sorry! Was I doing that thing where I snore sarcastically because the conversation was incredibly boring? I hate when that happens.”

Selina eased into the booth beside Luke and sighed. “Luke, Abbott and Costello were just leaving.”

“No, Claude,” Crane corrected calmly. “Claude Rains.”

“It’s Claude, babe,” Luke corrected.

Edward beamed at Selina’s hard, almost pained look, he shot his hand out towards Luke. “Bela Lugosi, you know Lin-Lin and I grew up together!” He flopped into the booth beside Crane, holding his hand out to Crane. “Bela, Bela Lugosi, how the hell are you?”

“Claude Rains, I’ve been better,” Crane replied taking his hand.

“I’m getting a bouncer,” Selina announced, standing up.

“Oh no, babe, it’s fine,” Luke exclaimed. “So you and Lina grew up together huh? Bet you have some wild tales?”

“Oh, she was a real hellcat,” Edward said. “Used to kiss the boys and then push them into the mud. Do you remember, Lin-Lin, that one time you peed your pants and then jumped into a puddle to cover it up?”

Selina’s eyes became pure venom as she bore holes into his skull.

Edward, never one to shy away from danger, grinned.

“Bela Lugosi...” Luke murmured. “Babe, where have I heard that name before?”

“Tell him, Lin-Lin, she says it so adorably, tell him what I do!”

Luke’s grin died a little and he licked his bottom lip. “Geez, you guys are pretty close huh?”

“Well, she sees me on nights she has free, we usually just...you know, Netflix and whatnot.”

Selina shook her head slightly, but she wasn’t beaten. “Bela organizes and directs child beauty pageants.”

Beside Edward, Crane perked up in the booth. Suddenly this became a whole lot more interesting that Dostoevsky.

“That’s...okay,” Luke said.

“Lin-Lin, do you remember Jeff Barstow’s sixteenth birthday? Now, don’t be jealous, Luke, but Lin-Lin was my first time.”

“It was fifteen minutes in heaven,” Selina explained. “He only lasted three.”

“She’s just that good, Luke. A little too good, you know?”

“Bourbon, bring the bottle!” Crane shouted to the server as she wandered by. He wanted to thoroughly enjoy the moment.

“Come to think of it,” Edward went on. “You were my second and third time, weren’t you?”

“And you lasted three minutes each time.”

“Then one time in high school and that weird weekend in college. You remember, with the whips and leather?”

“I remember dominating you, yes.”

As the server brought the bottle of bourbon, Crane shoved it across the table to Luke. “We will have the wing platter, ranch dressing and another orange brandy. Ranch dressing?” He addressed Luke, who looked so lost, the man shrugged. “Yes, ranch dressing will be fine.”

“You sure did like calling me daddy.”

“They’re fine, thank you,” Crane said to the startled server.

“You asked me to call you daddy.”

“Because I knew you had a weird thing for your father.”

“Edward,” Selina snarled, pushing to her feet and dragging the man off by his suit lapel.

Crane watched the two, as Selina yanked Edward down to her level and laid into him properly.

“So...uh...you like baseball?” Luke asked conversationally.

“No.”

Luke nodded.

“You’re not going to let them make a fool of you like this, are you?” Crane asked.

“What?” Luke asked. “I mean...they’re old friends.”

“He’s been inside her.”

“It’s her body,” Luke returned.

“Are you a pacifist and an idiot or just an idiot?”

Luke frowned. “Hey, man!”

Crane stared him down for a moment, the wing platter being lowered between them.

Taking one, Crane tore into it delicately. “Eat a wing, Luke.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Eat. A. Wing. Luke.” Crane warned him darkly.

Reasonably frightened, Luke took a wing and gnawed on it.

“If you hadn’t started this all by being cold and completely unhelpful-!” Edward shouted over the Valentine’s night din.

“Cold and unhelpful? You were up to no good the instant I spied you!”

“That is a vicious lie!”

“Is it?”

“Well...ah...it’s not nice!”

“Take your goddamned cane and your creepy assed friend and get the hell out of my booth!”

Crane inhaled indignantly, before realizing she wasn’t wrong. Selina was many things, but she knew when an egg was rotten.

“You...” Edward’s pointer finger raised, then dropped. “You are spiteful and unkind.”

“Gonna let him talk to her like that, Luke?” Crane spurred the man on.

Luke gnawed quietly on his wing, eyes wide with confusion and fear.

“Today you are no longer a lion of the financial district, but a mouse cowering in a field, Luke.” Crane said, thoroughly disappointed in the man.

Sipping at his orange brandy, Crane angled his head, cricking his neck.While he was distracted, Luke slipped out of the booth and hurried off into the crowd. Crane considered going after the coward, but he, well he just didn’t care.

“I am not paying this tab,” he murmured, taking a few wings in his hand and easing out of the booth with his orange brandy.

“You know, at least you have someone for Valentine’s.”

“You don’t even like people, Eddie, and aren’t you...dating Crane or something?”

“I...am...not.”

“Heartbreaker,” Crane murmured as he passed behind them. It was only then that they noticed the empty booth.

Selina stuck her hand out in the direction of it, her face beyond angry.

“How long were we fighting for?” Edward demanded.

“I’m wearing La Perla,” she declared. “For this?! An empty booth!”

“I don’t know what that is,” Edward growled.

“Oh, Edward Nygma doesn’t know something! Call the friggin’ papers!”

“I’m sorry, Lina, I don’t know...shoes? So sorry, I don’t read Fashion Times! I guess I get mentally depleted after reading Cat Fancy, but apparently you have the mental energy for both.”

“You’re a louse.”

“And you read Cat Fancy!”

“So?”

The two sort of deflated, Selina running a hand through her hair, Edward sighing and tapping his cane on the floor.

“We may have gotten carried away,” he admitted.

She shrugged.

“What is it, underwear?”

“Yeah.”

“That was my next guess.”

She folded her arms.

“Expensive?”

“Yeah.”

They were quiet again.

“It was worth it,” she admitted softly. “Kind of fun.”

“Wasn’t it?” Edward declared, laughing. He instantly grew sombre at her disapproving look. “I mean...it was alright.”

“So what was up with Crane lurking around?”

“I can’t discuss it. All you have to do, is leave with me right now.”

She sighed. “What the hell, my date ran away.”

#There you have it!#I cut it short because it was just...not ending.#Cripes #Riddlecat #Spy writes horrible fanfiction.

36 notes · View notes