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Creep 2 (2017) dir. Patrick Brice

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i lie to everybody, what makes you so special? -from @incangencence for Curtis (from The Mummy meme)

@incangencence / an old meme

"Well, to set the precedent immediately, I am special. Let us make that clear before anything else." Curtis is wagging a finger at Gene as he says this. Something she's certainly picked up on by now is that he's... A bit grandiose, at times. It seems to oscillate, though, according to Lester. She hasn't seen those other moments because Curtis doesn't come crawling out of his crypt of a home when he isn't like this.

Hands move to settle on his hips. He has a pout on his lips. Because, really, does he need to explain himself? He shouldn't have to. She should be able to understand he's different. He shouldn't have to explain that he's special to her!

He's a hypocrite. He lies all the time. He manipulates all the time. It's just - he is special. It's different when he does it. It's different when someone does it to him.

... Right?

"But it's fine." He gives a big shrug, holds his hands out to emphasize it. That's another quirk of his - he's so animated, expressive. "I do not care." He does care. "And I cannot control you. Do as you please." And he huffs, crosses his arms, turns his head away. Dramatic as ever.

He sniffs. "Terrible habit you have curated for yourself, isn't it?"

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read through the “special agent dale cooper: my life, my tapes” book last night and found this gem

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MATTHEW GOODE

by Tomas Falmer for Esquire UK (April 2013)

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Sir, that’s my emotional support unrealistic romantic delusion

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and another thing: since it's relevant to his themes and gives me an excuse to talk about his previous abuse and trauma, what response does jon have to fear?

well, primarily it's freeze. sometimes flight, and even less often is fight, but those are rarer.

how this has come to be in his life is through shutting down around his great grandmother, mary. he learned very quickly with her that you shut up and take whatever it is she says. fight? that results in getting shoved in the barn and clawed up, pecked by crows. flight? oh, she'll follow him, find him. make him eat a fucking rat because you are what you eat, scurrying away like that in the night to escape this place. kneel on rice and pray. beat with a wooden spoon. eat soap for talking back. nearly drowned in the bathtub because you're unclean. god doesn't forgive bastards born out of sin.

so freeze. freeze or there are consequences. freeze every evening at dinner time while getting berated and abused. freeze like your life depends on it because who knows what she'll do next time, and words are safer.

there's also school. it's similar. flight works better, but there's also the next time they'll see you again. there are too many of them to fight. so freeze like you've learned to and maybe it won't be so bad now or the next time. don't defend yourself too much or they'll want to break you even more. become numb.

he learned to dissociate through it.

even when he grew older, it stuck to him. shutting down, not fighting, even though he was stronger than her. he could fight her physically, but he couldn't mentally push himself to. even the way he killed her wasn't physical in the end - he let the crows do the work. he just couldn't fight her.

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I'll make it up to you right now.

He likes that. He really likes that. Too much. As hard as he has been trying to stuff his thoughts away, hide them in some closet inside his mind, the door is opening. It's all cascading out. He's hanging on her every word, whether she realizes it or not. He's gleeful that she's so easy to talk to when he actually opens himself to it. She doesn't seem to mind the eccentricities of himself that he's revealing to her in his drunken stupor.

He keeps imagining her in bed.

"Dreams are a glimpse into the unconscious mind," he replies. He's doing it again. The only times she has really witnessed him seeming excitable before is when he talks about his work, these topics. He was a professor, after all. He can be a tad pedantic. "They can tell you a lot, but only you can truly dissect what they mean."

Once again, there's a pause, this time to put out the stub of a cigarette he's been left with on the bottom of his shoe. He drops it into a can he had the sense to bring to the roof with him - his crows that follow him around will come by, and he doesn't want any of them eating the filters because of his carelessness. He has a soft spot for them.

"Haaa," he exhales. The noises he makes are a combination: he's a bit louder and clumsier with what comes out his mouth when he's like this, but it's also performance. So she has something she can listen to during the quiet moments. "Do you have any thoughts on what any of those dreams might mean? Besides the money, I think that's a given."

He stoops down as another gust of wind rolls past. He grabs the bottle he's been drinking from. Before he takes a sip, he adds: "Let me know if you want to switch to a life of higher crime - I can help with that."

SHE'S DEFINITELY STILL DREAMING.

Jonathan doesn't laugh or marvel or oooh at Spirit's constant, effortless, thoughtless flirtation. Her attempts to get under his skin, which has always seemed so cold and thick. Provocation comes naturally; encouragement is not particularly necessary. To have it from him, though, is refreshing.

She yawns. Then, she can't help it��his elated state seems to be contagious—she's giggling, too, ducking her chin into her shoulder like she's bashful, like she needs to hide. She is alone in her apartment, underneath her covers. What this means: their effects on one another are limited by an abundance of space. At least, they should be. She's absolutely fucking crazy for letting this syrupy drawl, this inexplicable playfulness, get to her head.

"I'm not trying to offend you, like, at all, but I'll make it up to you. I'll make it up to you right now." She stifles another yawn.

His thoughtful hum, that drawn out mmmm, knocks around inside of her like she's a pin ball machine. The remnants of the noise settle, warm, in her stomach.

"I dream about opening doors. Door after door after door. Sometimes, I dream that I'm flying, and I wake up when I crash to the ground. I see clocks and watches, everywhere."

And then sometimes there is the vast emptiness of a small white room. Sometimes there is the dazed feeling of waking up after a surgery you didn't consent to receiving. There is knowing what happens when we die and hearing about how much it hurts.

"I guess I also dream about, like, making so much money that I can move to another apartment."

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was talking to lye / vitalphenomena about jon's issues with demonizing himself and identity issues, which i've mentioned before, but i thought i'd post about it again in a way that might make it clearer. additionally, i have a few new followers who might not be familiar with this!

so jon. he thinks of himself as monstrous and corrupting, and this is the reason he tries to make people their worst selves - so that they are on his level, because he feels like he is Inherently Bad. this is also part of why he “martyrs” himself to do ✨ unethical experiments ✨ because if it must be someone who does it to better society, it ought to be someone deplorable like him.

this is especially true of people he obsesses over. like. accept me and accept you aren’t good in order to be with me. he has a lot of weird issues surrounding morality and his identity, idealizing vs. demonizing himself, and it’s based around his childhood with his great grandmother who was a religious zealot and really. did a fuckin NUMBER on him. in addition to the abuse he suffered by his peers. he has borderline personality disorder as a result from the trauma. so he just. has a lot of delusions that work together but also conflict with each other at the same time? he can’t keep it all straight in his head. his research is for good, to make people better in the long-run, but he is bad, he doesn't want to be alone, so he tries to make people around him worse. it's kind of. nonsensical.

and in a sense. the shadow work, incorporating your shadow self, it is about accepting the parts of yourself that you are shameful of. the fears you have, you face them. he thinks that accepting you are not good and moral is part of this. all people are like this, to him. he thinks that is healthier, that it makes people more genuine. this is part of the reason he can work with some of the rogues he doesn't necessarily agree with. even jonathan, who has this philosophy, cannot entirely embrace himself unless he has drank enough alcohol or wears the identity of the scarecrow, has his mask on to hide himself. also part of why his research is so important to him - he wants it to work on himself too. this is why he also serves as a lab rat for his experimentation.

then also. as much as he feels he's inherently bad, blah blah blah - jonathan does clearly have a line. he hates abusers/bullies. he targeted and/or killed his abusive peers, his grandmother, his university colleagues, his parents. he tortured a male student who was implied to have SA'd a female student who came to him about it in the Study Hall comic. he specifically picks people to experiment on who he deems as bad in these ways.

but then……. he practices medical abuse, though he doesn’t necessarily view it that way (because CLEARLY it’s meant to be helpful!). he has toxic relationships with people, and they can be abusive, like with becky. so what's consistent about his morals? they're inconsistent.

anyways. this all makes sense in his head. his mind... a labyrinth of delusions!

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He's hung up on the story, her insistence, whether she's lying or mad or not. He has heard many a ridiculous thing in Gotham, from Metropolis, from around the world - it's easily true, it's easily delusion, and there really isn't a way to tell. And he's considering all of this, until he isn't. His thoughts come to a crashing halt, like a train desperately hitting the brakes before it hits something in its path.

You are the only person on this world that can help me.

I need your help.

Oh. He's never heard that before. His chest feels tight, and it's hard to place the feeling. His eyes are subtly wider, eyebrows raised, but it's noticeable against his typically flat affect. That chronic blankness is gone. Jonathan doesn't even fully register her question, still processing what he just heard.

"Uhh—" He catches himself, brings a fist to his mouth, and he clears his throat. Swallows hard. She has managed to fluster him, and he feels a strange bashfulness from her words.

Deep breath. Exhale. What did she ask again? Right.

Looking down, now. Fiddling with the fabric of his lab coat. "Just a day."

He wants to be needed. He wants to be needed so badly. That cold, severe nature of his has dissipated into something... Shy. Like a schoolboy needing to perform his best in front of the class. And in truth, he would normally take longer than that to set up, but he's suddenly feeling quite desperate to have her.

"... It takes time, though. It's intense. Do you understand? You will need to stay here until it's finished." And he likes the sound of that, suddenly. "How long it takes is up to you and how much work there is to do."

She had his attention now. She could feel it, burning like a flame beneath the surface of him. It was something she always seemed to know, had always been acutely aware of — when she had fully captured someone’s attention. Especially men. Perhaps because attention was something she had so long been starved of. Still. There was no time for her to savor the sensation, to luxuriate in the little electric thrill it always seemed to stir in her. There was work to be done.

“You catch on quick. Yes. A shapeshifter, and an extremely dangerous one at that. He leaves so many corpses in his wake, they call him The Oncoming Storm. Few people live to cross him twice.” Gene smiled, but it did not quite reach her eyes. “I know how it sounds. I wish I was joking. Or out of my mind. It would probably make things much much simpler, if I was just… paranoid, or seeing things… making it all up. I love a lie as much as the next girl. But for once… just this once, Dr. Crane, because I am very desperate, and you are the only person on this world that can help me… I’m not. And I don’t care what it costs, I need your help.”

Her expression shifted, relief flashing across her face for an instant, before her lips split into a soft, ruby smile.

“How long do you need to prepare?”

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He's smiling. Grinning, even. Baby. He's aware that it's just how she talks, he has heard it before, but he never allows himself to be outwardly expressive about it - happy to hear it. Usually, it makes him act surly, he rolls his eyes maybe (he needs to reject her so that she doesn't reject him), but he doesn't do what he's doing now. The comment about doing whatever she likes in her bed - it earns her a soft "Ooooh!" in return before he laughs again.

He's playful. He's less guarded. He's more likeable when he's drinking, isn't he? It's the lack of anxiety, of worry about how he is being perceived. The only time he can really shake it off is with a few stiff drinks or when he's wearing the mask.

The Scarecrow isn't fucking anxious. Jonathan Crane is.

"Me? Frightened, Spirit? Why, I'm offended." He chuckles, and there's a pause as he takes another drag on his cigarette. Then he laughs again. He's just full of mirth right now, isn't he? "You're funny."

Another pause. Followed by: "Mmmm." He's thinking, considering her words. "I'd like to hear your dreams."

Another thing he's doing: avoiding answering the question. He doesn't have a reason for calling. What he wants is to simply talk to her. Or... Well. He wants a lot more than that, but this is what he thinks he can get away with right now.

IS SHE STILL DREAMING?

Jonathan doesn't ever leave much room for laughter. He's all business. Somber, solemn—yet deluded by grandeur, by some elevated purpose she pretends to understand when she's coked up but couldn't explain in her own words a few hours later. In the moment, he sounds like a competent genius, though; she relies on that perception even when she slowly, subtly panics with the realization that she has no idea what Jonathan is really capable of—what he really wants with her supply. (With her.)

Anyway, the loopy schoolgirl giggles from the fully-grown man, the fully-grown supervillain—Spirit allows herself to remain in a half-conscious haze, certain that when she really wakes up, none of this will have really happened at all.

"I need to sleep at some point, baby." Hopefully baby doesn't make him feel too special; most of her customers are baby at one point or another. Maybe he doesn't know better. Maybe it's nice to pretend she's willing to mean it, right now. "Haven't you noticed that whenever you see me, it's always nighttime? I have to, like, be active when demand is high. And when nobody's asking me for shit, I can do whatever I want, in my own bed."

Talking to him has her more awake, more lucid. Her cheeks are pleasantly warm from pressing against the pillow—from hearing my dear stumble, sloppy but no less intentional, from between his lips into her ear.

The phone speaker crackles as wind whips around him, as he exhales cigarette smoke. It's almost soothing. Like the only kind of white noise she deserves.

"You might as well tell me what you want now. But if I told you about my dreams, you'd be too freaked out to ever see me again."

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Nosferatu (2024), written and directed by Robert Eggers and based on the novel by Bram Stoker.

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for the record;; i go by tigress. --not that it'll matter to you in about 5 seconds

indie. comics based portrayal of DC comic's feral tiger themed mercenary;; Artemis Crock. penned by kat ((25+)). rebooted 2024.

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"Precisely."

Tommy eyes the way Two-Face separates his cereal. He idly wonders if that's part of the duality compulsions, or if he is simply as put off by the food as Tommy is. There's not much to do with it besides poke and play with it before they're all sent back.

"I shouldn't have come back," Tommy agrees. But that's easy to say with a clearer head, with hindsight. He really thought he was onto something when he returned. It just turns out he was on the high of a manic episode and suffering from terrible delusions, that's all. "But I seem to suffer from the same malady as all brilliant minds of Gotham are subjected to - being absolutely and terribly mad."

It has taken him a long time to accept this about himself - the mental illness of it all. Sometimes he's still not sure that it's the case, so he says things like this as a reminder to himself. To keep himself accountable, grounded in reality. It's so easy for him to get carried off into flights of fancy about the true nature of reality, to create more lies in his head that justify his actions.

"Except, and I admit��� I am worse. Because I left. Because I could have never returned. But I have a penchant for not being satisfied by anything." It's his legacy, after all. Jonathan gave him his moniker of Hush because he recognized it so early on - Hush, little baby, don't say a word... A song about a boy who could never be satisfied.

"You might not think so, but I am aware that I'm a fucking idiot for it."

And he certainly does beat himself up for it. That's why he's here of all places, isn't he? That's why he's not in that pretty rehabilitation center in Miami instead. When Tommy wants to leave, wants to live the privileged life of a billionaire who has access to all he needs, he thinks of Colin Wilkes. He thinks of how if he never returned to Gotham, Colin would probably have been placed in a happy home by now. Because even if Bruce did actually deserve all of the terrorizing that Tommy brought him, Colin certainly didn't. He serves as another piece of collateral damage left in Hush's wake. Even before anything got through Tommy's web of delusions, he spiraled when he thought too much about the boy. Now Tommy knows there is quite literally no reason that Colin should have ever crossed paths with him. No amount of mental gymnastics will ever make it okay.

"I'm an idiot for a lot of reasons."

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Tommy Elliot.

The boy who made it out.

People died trying to leave Gotham, for fuck's sake - turning to anything that would give them that little bit of cash to get an apartment somewhere else, somewhere away from the chemical waste that lowered the property value to nothing.

Cheap living brought extremely unfair consequences. It wasn't fair, it was never fair, and it wasn't fair that Tommy fucking Elliot got to sit here like this was some kind of mental health retreat. Two-Face would feel satisfied knocking him around a bit, but Harvey had to remind him that punching someone for their perceived wrongs wasn't going to help him in the long run.

Two-Face poked his cereal, separating the rice pieces from the wheat pieces onto opposite sides of the dish without putting much thought into it. The milk was watery.

"You never should have come back."

Harvey had wondered what it would be like if he left. Sometimes he thought he would give anything to do just that. Sometimes the thought of being anywhere repulsed him. What gave him the right to leave this place? He belonged here. He belonged here the way trash belonged in the dumpster.

He belonged here because it was a mess. He had wanted to heal a wound that existed before he did, and now he couldn't even heal himself.

Gotham couldn't heal him either. She tried.

"You made it out of Gotham. Not everyone who wants out gets out, but you did. It was easier for you than - most people, sure, but you had a whole fucking life going out there. All you had to do was not come back."

Sometimes he wondered if it was the water in this city that poisoned all of their lives this way, but that was beside the point.

"But you had to, because you had to - right? That's the cycle you're in. Whatever blood is in Gotham is in you, too."

It's unfortunate that she eats her children, isn't it?

Sense and nonsense. Two-Face doesn't make a great conversation partner.

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he's the worst man alive he's the love of my life he's covered in blood he's weird about god and he's a lot, he's not perfect, but most importantly he's bisexual

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There's a brief pause on the other end of the line. Processing. And then there's a series of goofy giggles, which seem extremely out of character for the Jonathan that she has gotten to know. He's too serious and strict. It's her first clue for what is in store for her on this phone call.

"You're generally dreaming at noon?" he asks. Her second clue: there's something in his voice that is different. Something of a light slur to match her own, but it also has a drawl to it. Southern. He hides it ordinarily, makes him feel like a goddamn hick, but one too many drinks takes away his self-awareness in this regard.

Jonathan has been drinking all morning. By the time he has finally made this call, he has picked up and set the phone down multiple times, trying to resist the temptation to dial her. But she's in his head. This is how he gets when he starts to fall down a rabbit hole with someone. He wants and wants and wants.

There's some feedback from a breeze gliding through. In his depressive spiraling, he has made his way up to the roof of the warehouse he has set up operations in. Currently, he's chainsmoking his third cigarette. There will be more.

He tut-tuts into the phone. "And here I was waiting until a reasonable hour to call, but you're sleeping. I suppose I could call later..." But he doesn't really want to let her go right now. "But it sounds like your dreams weren't all that kind to you, my dear."

@threadpull // jonathan

SPIRIT DOESN'T SLEEP OFTEN. However! People always seem to want to interrupt her doing those few hours of rest she does manage to sneak into her busy schedule of partying, dealing, fucking, etc.

Most often, it's Harris busting down the door over something trivial, like hundreds of dollars she owes or some man she shouldn't have pissed off (some man other than Harris, I mean). She wishes she could tell herself how nice it is to feel wanted, in those moments, truly sought after by somebody, but—fuck. For once, sleep is an even higher priority than her insatiable need to be needed.

Her phone buzzes, lights up.

Incoming call: scare cerow

Half-asleep, she can't remember them making any plans on this day, at this hour. She has no plans at all! That's why she's alone, in bed, trying to repair her brain by getting in some decent REM. She rejects the call. She snuggles into her beat-up, mascara-stained pillow. (Laundry should have also been on her agenda for today. It was not. Her pillowcases, faded and rough to the touch, will remain Like This.)

Incoming call: scare cerow

Holy shit. Hang up!

Incoming call: scare cerow

Incoming call: scare cerow

As he must have anticipated: Spirit, worn down (and, yes, sickly curious, a little gleeful), relents. She accepts the call.

Slurring and barely conscious, she mumbles into the phone: "I was dreaming I had to move, and there were so many stairs. We couldn't find the apartment. What the fuck?"

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Jumps the scary man @threadpull

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I'm not gonna hurt you. But I can't help you anymore either.

ADRIEN BRODY as László Tóth & ALESSANDRO NIVOLA as Attila The Brutalist (2024) dir. Brady Corbet