#[okay nOW we've caught up with mix being dead)

[silhouette-anon]

Alright, there’s no way in the amazing digital heck that I’m writing an entire story as a poem, so you’re gonna have to be content with the summary.

…Dang, Elsie spent too long summarizing a very random piece of lore. Enjoy, I guess. I’m not the best at fairy tales, and I WARNED YOU IT’D BE SAPPY.

Many, many years before the modern day, before the Western Drakes claimed the waters off Storm, when what we call the Loch was simply an overgrown forest with no real defining features, there lived a dragoness of air and light. But despite the then-peace of the skies, she was miserable. For though she had many she cared for, they all betrayed her in the end. Family, friends, and even her former husband. To save herself from giving her devotion to another soul, she locked her heart and cast the key into the oceans below, never to be seen again.

Many, many years before the modern day, before The Eastern Skies were ruled by tempest and rains, when the waters were relatively uninhabited, there lived a dragon of abyss and water. He was alone, for nobody wished to live among darkness, and he had hurt everyone he cared for. But loneliness does not care whether you want companionship, so he locked his heart and set the key adrift, never to be seen again.

Many, many days after her decision, the dragoness of the skies was sitting by the shore. Most oceans in those times had many inhabitants, and were just as bright as they are today. Despite this, she had found the one sea that nobody lived in, the one shore where she would not be approached.

Many, many days after his decision, the dragon of the abyss decided to walk along the shore. Most shores in those times were bustling with life, but despite this he found one of the shores where no one lived, the one shore where he would not be approached.

Despite their best efforts, they chose the same beach to alight on. And despite their best efforts, they ended up running into each other. Despite their best efforts, they began to converse, finding that they had much in common, and had seen many of the same misfortunes, and had both thrown away their hearts, never to be seen again. And with that they bid each other farewell.

Despite her best efforts, the dragon of the waters found her key, among the coral.

Despite his best efforts, the dragoness of the skies found his key, washed ashore among the flowers.

And thus they found themselves back on the beach, keys in hand and locks intact. Even still, they did not force each other to open up, handing them back the key that belonged to them.

And thus they each found themselves respecting and quite liking the other, for they had not taken advantage of the opportunity to steal their hearts for themselves.

Despite their best efforts, the two willingly allowed each other to unlock their hearts, their belief in one another well-founded.

And despite their best efforts, despite all the harm that loving others had done to them, they found it within themselves to trust someone again.

Many, many years later, their old home is what we now call the Loch, a tropical, bright body of water adjacent to the ocean, on the shore where they first met. It is home to a large community of dragons, including many that appear from The Forgotten Beyond, many of whom have locks over their hearts, and all of which are of sea and light.

yay symbolism, I think.

Silhouette leaned back as he read the story, taking his time as he read and tuned out the world around him. He always loved these sappy, romance stories. They made him feel happy. A lot of time passed. Sure, it wasn't the longest story in the world, but he read it quite a few times. ...

He had missed something important, though.

[underratedmurder]

“Daydreaming” Arvel Skeen/Reader

Reader gets caught with their eyes closed during watch at the camp, Skeen confronts them.

Stuff in this: Daydreaming, Skeen being a dick, Reader being too coy for their own good, Skeen wants Reader tremendously, making out on the ground, no smut but they get pretty close lmao, tattoo bonding, soft Skeen, pining over Ebon Moss-Bachrach's beautiful eyes, cursing, they have a lot of tension, it is somewhat resolved

WOOOOOOOO okay I'm finally finished, and I can move on to the next one cause yes I'm doing another with him and probably another Richie fic too cause why not.

Enjoy this, I hope it's good. Idk if I like it but I am just being critical of myself I think.

__________________

Cool air rolled over your face from the morning breeze, the sky grey and bright, you could see the light through your closed eyes. You daydreamt of water, pools of it, oceans, rolling waves that carried you to a sun. Warm, and dry. All around you though, you felt the wet chill of last nights rain, moss beneath you and a hard rock by your head. 

Still, you dreamed. Until the light was suddenly dark and you heard the low growl of the man's voice above you.

“Looks like… you're dead,” his voice drones on,”No chance to fight back, no time to warn the others, just dead. And so’s the entire camp,” Skeen grumbled into your ear, his matter of fact tone as present as ever. 

He held his blaster to your temple, hand on your shoulder as you held your hands behind your head.

“This may work on Nemik, but it’s not gonna work on me,” you smiled, eyes still closed as the heat from his face radiated onto yours.

He shifted the blaster, and squeezed your shoulder a bit tighter.

“Oh yeah? And you not hearing me coming, that's not a problem? Sleeping on watch is a dangerous gamble,” you could hear the judgment on his lips, and you finally opened your eyes.

He was dangerously close, closer than he knew you would have normally allowed. 

“I wasn’t sleeping, and I knew you were coming. Just needed my last bit of beauty sleep, before you deprived me of it,”. 

“Beauty sleep, huh?” he questioned, amused.

“Mhm, you could use some. You look fucked up,” you uttered, looking him up and down, though he really didn’t give you much room to do so. 

His chest hovered over yours, his fist still firmly on your shoulder. Surprisingly, he didn’t tire from the position.

He hummed, then titled his head,“I actually work around here,” he sneered pointedly, his eyes staring deeply into yours. 

He looked like pure shadow, surrounded by the light of the sky, his features dark with something that looked like a mix of anger and lust.

“Indeed you do. You… clean my hammock, serve me food, and clean my clothes,” you chimed, barely twitching a smile.

His face looked red, and his mouth twisted.

“You’re such a fuckin bitch,” he let a downturned smile spread across his face.

Something hinted to you that he might have enjoyed this.

Your eyes darted and scanned his face. You tried to remain calm, opting to ignore the convenient placement of his hips and waist by your propped up knee.

“You can get off me now,” you sighed, almost wishing you hadn’t said it. But you were too open right now, in view of the camp. You liked privacy, you hoped he did too.

He sighed, then removed the blaster from your head, shaking it in front of you.

“You’re lucky I don’t pull this trigger,” he held your gaze, still propped on top of you, too comfortable than he should have been.

You sniffed and scrunched your nose, watching his face and waiting for him to get off.

Finally, he rose, grunting as he removed his hand from your shoulder. 

You got up after him, brushing off your legs and right shoulder. You looked over to Skeen, whose face only read irritation.

“Oh come on, it's just rest, Skeen. We all need it. You might as well let me enjoy my time on this beautiful planet,” you mused. It was pretty, but not really what you wanted.

He didn’t look so convinced, “We've been here for months,” he placed a hand on his hip, blaster still in the other, you wondered if he’d ever put it away around you.

“And still you’ve done nothing to make that time any more enjoyable,” you sighed, arms crossed to shield you from the cool wind that blew past you. 

“For you or for me?” he titled his head again, taking a single step forward. The wind whipped the collar of his vest, and you caught sight of his neck. 

You accidentally let your eyes flit down to his waist. He was tall and lean and pretty. Pretty, like this planet, but not light. He was dark, and rough, and not nearly the ocean wave you dreamed of. Maybe he could see that, in your eyes. Or maybe he just saw pure dumb desire.

You didn’t answer. For once, his proximity was hard to talk around.

“You’re awfully leisurely all of the sudden,” he noted, and you could feel his eyes piercing you.

“I was bored,” you forced your eyes to only look at his face.

“How bored?” he tilted his head down, eyeing you like prey, and you couldn’t help but look at his lips.

“Bored,” you stated, stiff but wary to pretend to be comfortable around him, as he seemed to sway in your direction.

He looked at you and smiled. And for a second, you were terrified.

You heard nothing but the beating of your own heart and the wind, until suddenly, his blaster clicked, the safety turned off.

“Turn around,” he grimaced, his tone gritty and angry.

Your heart grew loud in your chest. You swore by every star you might faint from the blood that filled your head.

You turned, slowly but calmly, your eyes locked with his until he was out of view. What kind of sick joke was this? Arvel had his games but this was different, it was aggressive, personal.

The blaster pushed hard into your spine, and a chill ran down your back, warmth leaving your face.

“Move,” he commanded, mouth close to your ear.

You walked. Away from the camp and past the pile of rocks and moss, as his gun guided you.

You were maybe one hundred feet away now, far from the view of the others. A convenient place to die. 

“Here,” he said in almost a whisper, you barely heard it over the sound of your own footsteps.

You halted, face stricken with fear and utter confusion, Shoulders tense and body cold. You missed your place on the rocks.

“Get on your knees y/n,” he sounded like stone, unmoved and emotionless. He said your name for the first time in months. For a time, all you heard was a mumbled “fuckin cunt” or your last name like it was curse.

You lowered, and the blaster followed. Knees on the wet dirt, your hands resting on your lower thighs, you breathed in deep, keeping your head up. 

You prayed to the stars he was just going to teach you a lesson, hold the blaster to your head and scold you for the lazy piece of dirt you assumed he considered you to be. You feared your teasing had gone too far.

Maybe he just really wanted to stay on top of you.

You looked at the sky for a moment, still grey and light. You imagined that place again, but all you could see was a wave that swallowed you, and Skeen, dragging you to the bottom. His arms wrapped around you, fingers pulling your hair. And his eyes, like the clearest parts of the sea.

You couldn’t see him, you couldn’t hear him, and you could no longer feel him around you. His blaster left your neck, and you heard the safety click off.

Your heart picked up again, as you forced yourself to stare forward. Skeens' footsteps rounded on the grass, and before you knew it he stood in front of you.

The shadow was all around you, light abandoned and stolen, you expected death, but met a grey confusion.

You furrowed your brows, as he lowered to his knees just inches from you.

His bright blue eyes were like fire, and the darkness around you was relinquished by an inhuman heat. He looked at you like you were the drink of water in a desert he couldn’t escape, and by stars he actually bit his lip. You by no means saw his teeth, but it was like the opposite of frustrated concentration.

You blinked, “This is an odd way to kill someone,” you heard your own voice shake. You thought about hearing him again, and you wondered what he would sound like, as he was so close, looking at you like that.

“Quiet,” it was barely a whisper, and soothing, something you could dream of. You noticed he was staring at your lips.

“I am quiet,” you replied, your voice even lower, eyes searching his face for an answer to your doubt. 

You saw the last bit of thought leave his face, his mouth agape. You wondered just how he tasted, and it made your mouth water. 

Skeen brought a hand to hold your neck, his blaster lying on the ground. His fingers were warmer than you imagined, but still moist from the air.

In an instant, he brought his lips to yours, breathing in to kiss you. His chest pressed against yours as he wrapped an arm around your waist. You wrangled up your arms to push him, your fingers gripping his vest.

You held him out a few inches, staring at his mouth, red, darker than the pink that filled his face. You jolted him forward, your hand on his neck now, clawing at his face and kissing him with an eager fervor. You slowed at his mouth, and breathed against his cheek when he went to hold your sides, fingers sliding up your jacket and skimming under your shirt. 

You wanted to taste him for real, so you let your tongue reach out to meet his, devouring the kiss like the light and heat that escaped you in the cold. 

His lips were salt and dirt, but his tongue was like bloody coal and steaming rocks. You finally found that warmth.

You reached to hold his lower back, and pulled his pelvis into yours, a low moan escaped his lips, but was muffled by your mouth on his.

You held him tighter, fingers reaching for under his jacket and shirt. When you met his skin he seemed to shiver, and you let your hands crawl up his sides, mimicking the way he had reached for you.

“Ha- shit,” he huffed, a smile spreading across his face. He tilted his head back to breath, and with a single glance of his neck you attacked it, kissing and nipping at his veins.

“Think I’m late for watch,” he breathed, holding onto your neck and shoulder.

“Mhm,” you hummed on the warm skin under his jaw.

“Is this payback for making you think I was gonna kill you?”

"Mhm,” you hummed, more than pleased to take control for a moment. You looked him in the eyes as you let your mouth leave his collarbone. Your lips were wet and hot, his eyes widened.

“Fuck,” he sighed.

“You made me get in the dirt, I’m fuckin’ keeping you here,” you sneered, turning him towards the incline of the hill behind you, still on your knees.

You pushed him down, and he lay there with his vest open and shirt loose. You almost missed the feeling of the pressure of his hand on your shoulder, his body looming over yours, but this was better. Him on his back and sensitive to your touch. 

You straddled his waist, your hands feeling around the rim of his pants, poking under to touch the skin just below his stomach and above his crotch. It was warm beneath his layers, a little bit hairy and soft. You stared at his tan skin for a moment, and saw something beyond the darkness of his tired face. His eyes were dilated and sparkling all the same.

You lowered yourself onto him, pressure on his hips and a hand still playing at his side. He hummed, holding back what you expected might be a whimper.

You sank down on top of him, holding his face, his neck, his arms, holding every part of him and indulging in it all the same as you made his lips pliable beneath yours.

He was breathing out his words, and at once he whispered your name, as your lips parted for a moment.

“Quiet,” you murmured, teasing but your face entirely serious. It seemed to make him dazed, the way you held him down and looked into his eyes when you said it.

You settled into him, letting his hands hold your hips as you grinded slowly on top of him.

“I want you,” he uttered. 

Without a second thought you were pulling at his shirt, lifting it to reveal his heaving chest, and the tattoo that marked it. You were reminded of the one on your forearm, and the memories attached to it. You weren’t even sure if he’d seen yours yet. As your mind wandered, so did your fingers over his tattoo, the marking of the pain and suffering he had endured. You traced it lightly, as his eyes met sheepishly with your own.

“You’ve seen me,” he rasped, watching your hands move across his skin.

“Feels different,” you said absently, and a puzzled look filled his face.

He helped to remove your tunic, and sure enough, there was a tattoo similar to his, on your right bicep. He reached to hold your arm, drawing it, and you, closer to him. Your bare chest on his, you began to feel feverish in the heat between the two of you. 

Skeen held your gaze as he lowered his lips to kiss your arm, tenderly and slow. He kissed again, and again, slowly moving upwards and past your shoulder, holding your back as he went along your collarbone, and fervently upon your neck.

He held himself under your jaw, marking the skin with pulled blood. That wouldn’t be going away anytime soon.

You dipped down to let your lips rest on the tattoo on his chest, kissing just as slowly, and as tenderly as he had. You engaged in the strange ritual, but found it familiar. The tentativeness between you, you had felt it before. When he checked up on you at watch, when he gave you extra food at supper, when he threatened you so sweetly with the prospect of death by his own hands. And when he saw you for the first time, that recognition. Every conversation since then, he’d wanted something. More.

“Skeen!?” A voice cried out, from beyond the hill and where you imagined the rocks to be. It was Vel. 

The two of you scrambled, pulling shirts over each other's bodies, and buttoning garments. Not much faster than you’ve needed to before, being in the presence of enemies, but with far more fear.

You were on the last button of your jacket when Skeen grabbed you by the collar and pulled you to his lips, kissing you hungrily, but quickly. He let you go, and you pulled away puzzled, but unapologetically pleased. 

You smiled slightly, until he grabbed your collar again, and shot up from the ground, dragging you with him.

Vel was just coming into view when you finally got to your feet, leaning forward by the hand that pulled you along. Skeen sauntered towards her, his blaster at his side again. The disguise was up. 

“Found this one playing in the dirt,” he called out, and flung you forward, letting go of your jacket and sending you tripping over your own feet.

You stayed a foot, straightening yourself up and looking back at him, a disgruntled scowl upon your face. You hoped he enjoyed that.

“DId you?” Vel questioned, a look of disappointment complimented her words.

“Looks like they’re more of a dreamer than we anticipated,” Skeen commented, 

Vel just looked at you, as you breathed in and sighed, you didn’t argue. This was punishment for earlier, the real daydreaming, and you knew that.

“You know the rules,” Vel commanded, and you nodded your head.

A pile of laundry and chores awaited you.

You rubbed your neck, and for a moment, Vel caught a glance of you, she really looked for the first time. Your hair, your skin, you saw her eyes flit across your face, and you felt pale. 

“New shirt?” she blurted.

You looked down, noticing the bagginess of the sleeves, and the low cut of the neck. Your eyes flitted back up immediately.

You were wearing his.

You hesitated, eyes wide and mouth agape, what was there to say? Vel gave you a lifted brow and you threw out a “No,” instantly feeling stupid.

You knew if you had said yes, she would ask where you got it and then you’d be in an even bigger hole. So, you resorted to the vague truth.

She locked eyes with you, your anxiety and embarrassment apparent, and she shook her head.

You looked back at Skeen, he was shaking his head as well, covering the smile that creased his eyes.

So much for the disguise.

“Come on,” she ordered, and you followed. Trailing behind in a defeated slump.

She suddenly stopped and turned around, looking past you. You followed her gaze to rest on Skeen, already on his way towards the rocks.

“And Skeen, keep watch,”.

“My pleasure,” he tilted his chin up, his voice calling back like it was an echo from your dream. And for a moment, his eyes left Vel and landed on you.

Silly guy ^

Gifs by @gayvillains

[tobiasdrake]

Uncovering the full truth behind case 1 left me with mixed feelings. The full truth behind case 2 left me heartbroken and emotionally shattered. The full truth behind case 3 leaves me facepalming.

Fuck this guy, man.

They're trying to give him this vibe of "Yes, I did the murder, but I am actually a tragic victim seeking the only justice that exists in an unjust society," thing like they did for the previous two cases.

But. Like. His motive is that he gave up on liberation, opting instead to rob the bank and then skedaddle. And y'know what? I would grant him that. That's fair. You do you, man. Typically, a bank's money is insured, so it's not like he's robbing real people. There is little relationship between what you have in your account balance and what the bank has in their vault.

But he also shot Shachi for no reason. Utterly pointless. Contributes absolutely nothing to his robbery plan; In fact, he had to add so many extra steps to the plan just to pull off this pointless murder that it ultimately revealed him. We weren't here for the bank money; We were here for the murder. Had he simply robbed the bank and ran, he'd get off scot free.

He got himself caught because he wanted to kill Shachi for funsies. That makes it supremely difficult to offer him the same level of sympathy I had for the Priest or the Theater Trio.

Y'know, this is specifically why bank robbers try extremely hard not to kill people. You rob a bank, you have a fair shot of getting away with it. There's a limit to how much anyone cares when a small percentage of a rich person or organization's wealth goes missing. It's not that big a deal. But once blood has been spilled, the case takes on a whole new level of severity.

Oh, yeah, go right ahead. Have fun. No complaints out of me this time. Fuck him.

Anyways, now that we've remote-murdered an asshole, I still have no idea how we're going to avoid being made into straws. We don't even have a nearby corpse for Shinigami to puppet and do her, "By the way, I came back to life to confess my crimes, OKAY DYING AGAIN!" shtick.

...okay, I was going to make a joke about shoving the least likable member of our group at them and running while they're busy murdering that person. The whole, "You don't have to outrun the bear, you can just outrun the guy next to you" bit.

But the only people with us are Fubuki and Kurumi. I like Fubuki and I've come around on Kurumi. We don't have anyone here who's truly expendable. Yuma, I think you might actually have to be the one to bite this bullet.

Fubuki, Kurumi, run like hell while Dominic is busy breaking Yuma in half with his bare hands.

Wait, what?

Oh ho ho ho you guys are in deep shit right now. Halara's about to choke out Dominic with his own spine.

Oh, Desuhiko! I was just talking about you a moment ago. Your timing couldn't be more perfect. Okay, guys. Plan is to shove Desuhiko at them and then run like hell!

I think Halara's going to drown you in the flooded district if you try to take credit for their work like that.

Nah, man, that's fair. I felt the same way about you. Thanks for bringing us Servan and, uh, Icardi's corpse. <.< Sorry about that. Accomplished absolutely nothing by killing this man. >.> But I knew Servan had to be involved too!

Honestly, he's better off. Not living to enter CTU custody is probably for the best.

Once again, it's not like the Peacekeepers care that much about innocent or guilty. But Halara just beat the shit out of Guillaume's random Stormtrooper, so I think the threat of violence from a Shonen Action Warrior is going to carry us out of here.

Hold up, you didn't know about the bank robbery but you were in the boat helping Icardi rob the bank? Okay, man. However you want to spin this.

I can believe you didn't know about Shachi's murder because a) it's so random and unnecessary and b) the Mystery Labyrinth never pegged you as involved with that. If you helped plan Shachi's death, you'd be dead too right now.

But I have a hard time believing that your involvement was solely limited to bomb-manufacturing.

That's definitely it, Desuhiko. Y'know what? We're all going to head out, but you should stay here and shoot your shot. Go for it, man. This is your moment. I believe in you.

[untoldstcries]

He should have listened to Sarah. His judgment was clouded by the words of his father mixing with the words of his superiors. So many people telling him that this was his fault and he was the only one that could fix it. And he believed them. He believed that he was the one to blame in all of this. Sarah was the only person who told him that it wasn't his fault, but how could she be the only one that was right when everyone else was against them. He spent a year of his life locked away in a basement, all choices taken away from him. Only doing what his father wanted and when he wanted it. There were no windows, not after his first attempt at escape. After that he wasn't allowed upstairs without his father or that woman present. Someone to keep him in line when he tried to be brave and escape.

The first night was the worst, waking up tied to a chair. His father needing to keep Winn restrained until he could trust him. Spending nights cuffed to the headboard because his father had caught Winn picking the lock. Eventually he managed to wear Winn down enough that he would stop trying to escape. His father finally telling him the truth that Sarah had given up, and moved to California. That they were no longer looking for him. After that - well he let the darkness overtake him. There was no hope for escape once he knew Sarah wasn't looking for him.

And now here he was, standing outside the building that he spent months searching for. It took a while to monitor this activity, Winn having to put tabs on Spencer from the bar. It was a lot of watching social media, hacking into emails, text messages, and phone calls. And then he finally got a lead that he could trust, proof that he had finally drawn these guys out of hiding. His name was Marvin, and Winn knew from what he had read that he was the one that had bought the first half of the code from his father. He was trying to get it finished, hiring people to try and see if they could complete it. Because once it was complete, they'd be able to complete a cyber attack across the globe without having to work very hard. A virus that was so dangerous, no one should have the power to use it.

Rubbing his hands together, Winn held onto his service weapon as he went in the front doors. Alex had taught him to clear a room, to pay attention to his surroundings. She hated the idea of him being a field agent, but had taught him a few things when she learned that he had graduated the training. The room was dark, but Winn could see the outlines of the wall, a few shadows of people. Okay there were only two people, he could get around them easily.

Until it wasn't just two people, but instead it turned into four, and then six. Six weapons all pointed at him, telling him to drop his. "We've been expecting you Agent Schott." They knew who he was, this was a set up and he walked into it all alone. There wasn't any back up coming for him. He had purposefully left Sarah and Alex out of this. "Drop your weapon. On your knees with your hands behind your head."

He looked around for a moment, deciding if he was going to try and fight his way out. The chance never came, when two of them had their weapons pointed at him, one touching his back. Getting out of it wasn't an option right now. Or maybe ever. It was time to pay for his sins. Someone had told them he was coming. And only one person knew he was here. The director himself had sent Winn the coordinates to this building. Told him that he needed to get here. Sarah was right, his boss wanted him dead.

His gun hit the ground, echoing around the room. Accepting his fate, Winn lowered himself to his knees and placed his hands behind his head. The guy that Winn could clearly tell was in charge stepped forward, a sickening smile on his face. "I've heard about you. Your father is very fond of that brain of yours." The back of his hand sliding down Winn's cheek, a hand on his chin as he forced Winn to look up at him. "Bragged about you every second he got. And now, you're going to finish what you started."

Winn raised his eyebrow as he looked up at the other. He didn't make a move to try and get out of his situation, but he still had his words. They were all he had for the past year, and he wasn't going to just roll over and do whatever this guy wanted. "I don't think I will. Unlike my father I don't feel the need to roll over and do whatever you want."

He expected the backhand that he got, his head snapping to the side from the force of the blow. "Careful Agent Schott." The hand was back on his chin, forcing Winn to look back into the taller's eyes. "If you don't give me what I want, I'll just find someone else who can give it to me. And while I'm searching, I'll make sure your death isn't easy. No it'll be slow and painful, and then I'll leave you to rot just like your father." Winn kept his head up, not backing down just because this guy felt the need to threaten him. "I'll give you some time to think about it." He felt his own cuffs being taken off his belt, someone behind him pulling his arms down and cuffing them behind his back. And then they were pushing him out of the building, into a car, and they were off.

[nebulousfishgills]

In Reality

Request by @nosfera1 : hiiiii is your request open? i was wondering if i could ask for an angsty wanda x fem!r fic where they've been in a relationship for a year and r is absolutely head over heels with her. r planned their anniversary date and during that dinner wanda confesses that she's only been dating r to move on from her previous relationship the whole time and cant carry it in her conscience anymore? make it reaaally really heart wrenching as possible please. thank youuuuu

Ah, thank you so much for sending in your request!! (Yes, requests are open lol). I'm always excited to recieve a new request, especially for a character I have yet to write for!

I hope I get this the way you want! ❤

Warnings: Angst, feels, fluff (but like, fake?)

ฯฯฯ

"Wan, are you okay?" You asked, noticing your girlfriend looking a bit uncomfortable. Her hands were in her lap, her eyes staring at the table or the wall, and she seemed like she was zoning in and out. "Wanda?"

"What? Oh, yes, dear?" She asked, jerking up from looking at the muted paisley tablecloth.

"I was wondering if you were okay." You repeated.

"Yes, I'm alright, dear. Just a little tired is all." She said, showing her teeth in a smile that almost seemed forced. You chose to ignore it.

"I was going to say, but I didn't want to be rude." You said, chuckling.

"We've been together for a year, we can tell each other anything."

"I'm glad you feel that way."

The waiter brought your dishes not long after that, the thin veil of steam curling off the top of the Italian dishes you ordered. Your glasses were refilled and parmesan was grated on top of your meals.

You started nearly scarfing down your food, the wait having been a little too long without a breadstick refill. You watched Wanda gently cut through the meatballs on the top of her pasta, dividing them into quarters. The delicate movement entranced you for a moment, a bashful smile creeping onto your face.

To say you loved Wanda would be a severe understatement. The past year you had been together was the best year of your life. Before, you had been in a slump, everything seeming sad and dreary. You had been having a particularly bad day that day, as a matter of fact. You missed the bus in the morning, so you had to walk to work. Halfway through, it started raining buckets and you had no umbrella. You were lucky your boss was so understanding, else she would have reprimanded you for sure for being late. Still, the woman signed your paychecks; staying on her good side was in your best interest.

While pondering your latest excuse for being late to work again, it suddenly stopped raining.

No, someone was holding an umbrella over you.

That someone happened to be Wanda, offering her umbrella to you to shelter from the storm. You took one look at her and it was as if the color started to soak back into your previously grey world. Not only was this woman going out of her way to help you, she was beautiful as well.

Wanda held the umbrella over your head while you both walked to where you worked (she didn't mind in the slightest; she didn't have a set destination when she started walking). You told each other a few things about yourselves to pass the time. You were working at your current job until you could afford to move to a better part of the city. The apartment you lived in currently had a lot of small problems that would pop up every now and then that would take your savings. Your dishwasher had just broken and you needed to save up to get that replaced.

Wanda told you about things in her life, too. Her brother had died a few years ago in what she called a "tragic accident." Her last relationship had ended pretty suddenly more recently, so she took frequent walks to give herself something to do.

Suddenly your dishwashers woes seemed so nominal.

You arrived at the building you worked at and Wanda bid you goodbye. Though, not before passing you a small slip of paper with a few digits on it you recognized as a phone number. You went pink and walked into your office, sending a text to Wanda as soon as you sat down. You saw each other more frequently after that, going on your first date not long after.

And here Wanda was, sitting in front of you with her steaming pasta and quarter sliced meatballs. You ate your dinners in silence to start, the only noises between you two being the scratches of utensils on plates and quiet chewing.

After a few minutes, you noticed Wanda poking at her pasta with her fork. She hadn't eaten very much. Her chin rested on her other hand, the food on her plate starting to cool down.

"Wan, are you sure you're okay?" You asked. "You've barely eaten anything."

"I'm fine..." Wanda replied, letting out an exhale as if she were holding her breath. She put the fork down and rested her hand on the table.

"Wanda, it's okay. If something's bothering you, you can tell me." You said, resting your hand on top of hers. She took it, rolling your fingers in hers. She pulled her hand back and rested it in her lap, her other hand following suit. She took a breath.

"Y/N, can I tell you something?" She asked.

"Anything, Wan." You said. Wanda took in another breath and looked you in the eyes. That's how you knew she was getting dead serious with you.

"This isn't easy but... I can't keep holding it in. I can't do this anymore." She said.

"Can't do what?"

"This." She wagged her finger in between the two of you. Your breath hitched in your throat.

"What do you mean? You can't do--?" You asked, your voice cracking slightly.

"No, I can't." Wanda cut in. "Listen, Y/N, I'm telling you this now so I don't hurt you worse later on. I can't keep stringing you along."

"'Stringing me along?' Wanda, I don't understand. Don't you love me?"

"I... I... No. It's just..." Wanda bit her lip and averted her gaze from you.

"Just what? Something I did? What did I do, Wanda?"

"Nothing! You did nothing! It's not you, Y/N, it's just..."

"Wanda, are you joking? One year, Wanda! This is our one year anniversary and you're telling me this now??" You asked, the tears streaming down your face through your anger.

"I know, it's not ideal, but I couldn't find time to tell you before!"

"Couldn't? Or wouldn't? You're telling me you lied to me for a year, Wanda. Why?"

"Because I needed a distraction, okay? My last relationship ended badly and I was having a hard time getting over it. I thought you would... provide support until I could get back on my feet." Wanda admitted. Your face got hotter as the realization sunk in. Your voice got low as you continued speaking.

"You used me? You dated me to get over someone else? Is that all I was to you? Just a distraction? A plaything?" You growled.

"Y/N, you don't understand--"

"Oh, no, I understand plenty, Wanda." You stood up from your seat, throwing on your jacket and grabbing your handbag. You looked at the half empty water glass at your seat and picked it up. You examined the water inside for a moment, looking at Wanda over the rim. "I'd throw the water in your face right about now, but unlike you, I have standards on how people should be treated. Like a person with feelings and not something you use to play pretend with."

You downed the rest of the water and put the glass back on the table.

"Y/N--" Wanda said weakly, but you cut her off with a pinch of your fingers.

"Not another word, Wanda." You snapped, before turning around to walk away. "Don't even try to call me."

You burst out of the restaurant and sat down on one of the stone benches out front. You sent a quick text to your friend asking for a ride home, sending the address. Wanda had driven you here.

"What happened to your date?" Your friend asked.

"I don't wanna talk about it."

"Alright. I'm on my way."

You shut off your phone and stared up at the sky. Not a moment later, thunder rumbled above you and it started to rain.

You had no umbrella to cover you.

Finally, you allowed yourself to cry, your tears mixing with the rainwater that dripped onto your face. You let everything out, all the anger and sorrow until your throat went raw.

The headlights of your friend's car pierced through the wall of rain. You stood up and ran over, climbing inside of the heated car. You let out a sigh and leaned back against the seat.

"You okay?" Your friend asked. You didn't reply, just turned to look out the window, the raindrops gliding down it. As the car started pulling away, someone ran outside of the restaurant, screaming your name.

Wanda.

You looked at her as your friend pulled out of the parking lot. Wanda caught sight of you inside the car, watching you leave. You just stared back at her coldly as your friend whisked you away back home.

As soon as you got back to your apartment, you blocked Wanda's number and collapsed onto your sofa. Tears leaked down your face as you fell asleep.

ฯฯฯ

Hope you enjoyed this, nosfera!

As always, requests are open, so send them in!

[doiedreams]

an insect ambush leaves you in camp counselor!Johnny’s care

fluff ద

1.5k words

warnings: none

[4:02pm] s.jn

“Did you take them on their bathroom break yet?” Johnny asks you, as the both of you set up an activity outside for the kids at your summer camp. 

You look at your watch before answering. “Nope. They have about 10 more minutes until their bathroom break. For now, they’re just playing around.” 

Johnny raises his eyebrows and looks at you. “Aren’t our groups on the same schedule?” 

You stop what you're doing for a moment to think, and check your phone for the schedule. Turns out, Johnny is right.

“Geez, I'm terrible at time management...” you say.

“Don’t you have to be good at that to be a camp counselor?” Johnny snickers.

“Whatever. I’ve been doing this for long enough and no one’s fired me for it.”

He laughs at you and returns to his preparations. “Right. Well, some of the other groups are probably having their bathroom break right now so get over there before it gets crowded.”

You take your water bottle, leaving Johnny with the activities to go find your group of campers and take them to the bathroom.

You eventually notify your group of campers about the mix-up and lead them to the bathrooms. The closer you get, you start to hear loud children’s voices, running faucets, and toilets flushing. You then see kids and counselors crowding the hallway in front of the bathrooms.

“This is not gonna work...” you mutter to yourself.

“Sorry, but you're gonna have to take them to the outdoor bathrooms. We've got too many over here.” One of the camp counselors say to you. You nod, turning around to redirect your group of kids outside.

Catching sight of the path leading to the old park bathroom, you groan to yourself. Outside of the bathroom, you would be met with flies and mosquitoes while the inside was smelly, laced with cobwebs around the toilets, and littered with dead bugs and used paper towels.

You come to a stop once you've reached the old bathroom. It’s a small, wooden building with two doors - one on the left for boys, one on the right for girls - and had a small crooked drinking fountain in between them. You can hear the noises of various insects singing from the multitude of trees and bushes behind it.

“Alright, ” you sigh, turning towards the campers. “Who needs to go?”

“Took you long enough,” Johnny says to you as you take a seat at his table with the other counselors. “You missed the bean bag toss competition. It was intense.” His expression was one of seriousness, but his sarcasm was easy to detect. 

“What a shame…” you mutter, shaking your head in disappointment, mirroring his sarcasm. “We had to reroute to the outdoor bathroom.”

“Ew.”

“Exactly.”

Your conversation with Johnny and fellow counselors is disrupted when the site director approaches you. 

“Hey y/n, one of the kids in your group is leaving early and she said she left her bag in the bathroom,” she says. You sigh, knowing you'll be asked to go back to that bathroom again. “Would you mind grabbing it real quick?”

You smile and nod, masking the disgust you feel at the request. Johnny waves you off as you leave.

It’s darker now, and the buzzes and whining of various insects are heard when you get to the bathroom. You shudder as you brace yourself for whatever you may meet on the other end of the door.

Cautiously, you open the heavy door and peek into the bathroom, searching for the bag without fully entering. Paranoid at the buzzing sounds outside of the bathroom, you subconsciously duck your head as you enter. The last thing you want is to come across a bug of any kind.

You find the pink, dirty bag in the third, and last, stall of the bathroom, grab it, and rush out the door. When you step out of the bathroom, you sigh in relief but soon detect a faint odor coming from the bag.

You can hear more buzzing.

You unzip the bag and peak into it, revealing an overripe banana as well as some crackers and brown napkins.

Caught off guard by a buzzing sound right next to your ear, you swat at the air next to your ear and zip the bag back up. God, how you hate insects.

You can now hear an even louder buzzing on both sides of your head. You shake your head, just as a puppy would after taking a bath, and wave at your ears hoping to blow away whatever was bothering you.

The exposed skin on your legs begins to itch, and now you're beginning to freak out. Looking down at your legs, you find the source of itching. Pesky mosquitoes.

The itching quickly spread to your arms and face, and now, you’re beyond freaked out. 

You let out a shriek, frantically running back to the camp building, clutching onto the bag.

“Woah woah woah! Are you okay?” You hear a counselor ask as you run toward the building. 

You pant for air as you swipe at your itchy skin, trying to get rid of any mosquitoes that may still be on you.

“No, I'm not!” you cry. You drop the bag to the ground and kick it in front of you as you cover your face. “Just give this to the site director, please.”

Before your fellow camp counselor can say anything else, the site director comes out of the building and gasps. 

“Goodness, y/n, what happened to you?” She takes the bag from the ground and hands it to the other counselor. “Take this to the kid with her mom, would you?” The counselor hurries off with the bag.

The site director takes your hand and leads you into the building. You pass the table Johnny’s sitting at and your wounded state immediately grabs his attention. 

“Y/n, what happened to you?” he asks, hopping out of his seat worriedly .

“Take her to first-aid, please,” the site director orders.

Without any hesitation, Johnny takes your hand and guides you to the first-aid office.

You and Johnny enter the office and he closes the door behind you. Seeing as it’s the staff’s lunch break, the office is empty and Johnny helps himself to cupboards and cabinets with ointments and bandages.

The multitude of mosquito bites on your body has begun to swell up, and you wince at the sting when you reach up to touch your face.

“Careful, there. I don't want you irritating the bites more.” Johnny says gently. “Sit.”

You take a seat and watch as Johnny looks for something to heal you up. He pulls down a first-aid kit, inspecting a tube of ointment, before pulling up a seat in front of you.

“You look like you know what you're doing,” you remark. Johnny laughs, bringing a small smile to your face despite the ache.

“I really don’t.” He pulls out his phone and types something. “I just choose to trust Google.”

With the guidance of the Internet, he instructs you to wash your face, arms, and legs, before using an ice pack to reduce the swelling. As you wait for the swelling to go down, you explain the series of unfortunate events to Johnny, getting cut off every now and then by his jokes and teasing making the atmosphere a lot lighter for both of you.

“I think it’s time to put this on now,” you say, reaching for the ointment and putting down your ice pack. 

“Here, let me do it,” Johnny says, grabbing the tube before you could. You cock an eyebrow at him, then comply. He takes your arm and applies the cream on spots of your arm, muttering a soft apology each time you hiss at the sting. Fiddling with your lanyard, you watch him attend to your needs quietly with your arm in his hands.

Before he could move on to your other limbs, the door opens, revealing the nurse of the camp.

“I heard one of the counselor’s needed my attention.” She smiles at you before glancing over at Johnny. “But it looks like you're already being attended to.”

Johnny smiles shyly at the ground and lets out a laugh.

“You should make him your assistant. He’s really good at this,” you tease.

Johnny puts down the first-aid supplies and stands up. “I’ll let you take it from here,” he tells the nurse. Before leaving, he turns back to you and says, ”Tell me when you’re done. I’ll get some of the others to form your personal Insect Defense Squad.”

“How thoughtful of you,” you say, rolling your eyes. ”Thanks, I’ll definitely need it.”

“You’re very welcome.” Johnny says smugly.

And with that, he leaves you with the nurse to get your bites healed. You seem to forget the itch and sting of the bug bites, instead dwelling on the lasting touch his fingers left on your skin.

a/n: Inspired by @philosopher-of-fandoms​ :

This was just for fun I couldn’t help myself 😭 I saw the post and said screw it why not lmao.

proofread by: @sleepyyangyang​ and @give-seconds​ <33

[canonconspiracy]

Dying Together And Drinks (Murphy x Reader)

Fandom: The 100

Fanfiction By: @rmorningstar21

Pairing: John Murphy x Reader

Warnings: Swearing, Severe Injury

Cross posting on Wattpad and AO3 (@rmorningstar21)

__________

At first, when you were left injured in the dropship, you just lied there.  Everyone was gone, and your wound made it so you would be unable to stand, unable to move.  Murphy had made sure that you would die, and the fact that no one had taken out the bullet that was allowing you to bleed eternally, you knew that with everyone gone, you were done for.  

Somehow Raven, who had also received a bullet from Murphy, was taken away by the same men that gassed the rest of the camp.  You had not seen them taken away, but hiding behind the metal inside the dropship, you were unseen by the assailants. In that sense, maybe you had gotten lucky.  

When you heard movement, you reached for the gun nearby, pointing it at the only place of entry of the dropship, when your eyes landed upon a bloodied, beaten John Murphy.  Your lips visibly frowned upon the sight of the limping boy, heart clenched with fear of uncertainty as the boy had been the one to shoot you in the first place.  

"What are you doing here?" You spat weakly, your teeth fresh with blood as your eyes watched the boy make his way in.  

Murphy held his hands up weakly in defeat, his lips in a frown as he laid his eyes upon you.  "Dying, same as you," he said simply, that little bit of Murphy sass still apparent in his voice as he spoke, no matter how badly injured he was.  

If you weren't in so much pain, just maybe you would have let out a sarcastic chuckle.  Instead, you tossed your gun off to the side, before moving yourself to as much of a seated position as you could muster.  "If you can get close enough, just maybe I could get the restraints off you," you said softly, struggling to speak as you did, but your eyes were set upon the bloodied brunette.  

He took no time getting over to you, though it was a struggle.  You reached into your pocket to pull out a knife, taking his hand with your own as you cut the bounds that were upon his wrist.  His eyes that caught your own were almost shocked as he felt his hands freed, massaging his wrists as he backed away from you, returning to the spot that he originally was.

There weren't a great deal of words shared between the two of you before you began coughing up blood.  You felt as if you were drowning, your eyes widened as you coughed. Blood trickled and spilled from your mouth as you struggled.  

"Hey, hey," Murphy said quickly, getting over to you as quickly as he could.  "Get on your side, now." He started to move you, and you struggled initially, before allowing him to fully turn you to your side.  "There, just like that. Are you okay?" 

You allowed yourself to cough all the blood out that you possibly had to cough before your eyes glanced back into his deep brown eyes.  In a shaky tone, you asked, "Why are you helping me?" 

His lips curled into a half smile, saying, "I don't want to die alone." 

"I'm likely going to die before you, you know," you said with a soft, pained chuckle.  

This time, he sat beside you, laughing pained and sarcastic as well.  "You're reassuring," he said sarcastically as he sat by your side. "Why are you being so nice to me?" 

You sighed, sitting up as much as you could try and muster.  "What made you like this, Murphy?" You countered. "My parents didn't love me, but I don't go around killing people." 

"My parents loved me," he countered, a frown on his face.  You could almost see tears forming in his eyes as he spoke, and your own eyes softened at the sight.  

"Then what, pray tell, made a boy whose parents loved him into a killer?" You said, before watching his eyes water just a tad more, causing you to frown.  "I mean, I really want to know, Murphy." 

You watched the boy's pained brown eyes almost overflowing with tears, truly showing you into his soul as he looked at you.  "He gets the flu," he started off, his voice full of melancholy, mixed with the rough tone of a man that was tortured mercilessly.  "Then his father steals medicine that it turns out wouldn't have helped, and got floated for it. His mother turns to drinking. Before he find her lying in a puddle of her own vomit, she tells him that he was the one who killed his father." 

Your heart tightened at his words, and you absently reach your pained hand out towards Murphy.  He flinches at the initial touch of your hand against his own, but does not pull away. "I'm sorry, Murphy," you murmured softly, your eyes averting as you spoke, directed towards the floor of the drop ship.  "If it means anything, I've never actually hated you." 

"I shot you," he muttered out, his brown eyes glancing back over to you.  "I've held a knife to your throat."  

Admittedly, the list of wrongs that he had done to you was long, and he could have gone on, but he had also done positive things for you as well.  Through the short time that you had all been on the ground, it had been about survival. Everyone had done bad, and it was not just John Murphy that had killed.  Thinking back to who he killed, even when he tried to hang Bellamy, it was all revenge. Being hung was not something you could just forgive and forget, and in a sense, you could understand that.

You squeezed his hand gently, reassuringly as you said in your weak voice, "We've all done shit since we've been down here.  I'm not going to say you're a fucking angel, or thank you for shooting me, but you've done what you needed to do. I can't condone every action, but I can understand them." 

"I didn't mean to shoot you," he defended raspily, his grimace prominent upon his face.  "I saw you at the hanging. Even after I threatened you, you were trying to get me down." 

You could feel a few tears drip from your eyes at his words, and took in a sharp breath.  "I'm sorry I couldn't stop it from happening, really. You may walk around camp like the local badass, but I didn't think you killed Wells.  Even if you had, what they did was too much." 

"I kind of wish it didn't go this far," he said softly, a whisper that wondered whether or not he wanted you to truly know how he was feeling.  "You're the one person that's seemed to care." 

"Well, we'll both be dead soon anyways," you said with a melancholic chuckle, your breath wheezing slightly as you spoke.  Your eyesight had already begun to blur, lack of blood taking its toll upon your body as you sat beside him. The warmth in your body was slowly draining as the blood did.  "But, in hindsight, I wish we got to spend some more time together." 

Murphy moved closer to you, clearly feeling the temperature change in your skin, resting your head upon his lap.  He stroked your hair gently, tears dropping cautiously from his eyes as he held you. Partially from the blood loss, and partially from the fact that you did not mind it anyhow, you allowed it all to happen without a fight.  He whispered to you, "Y/N, please, don't you die on me yet." 

Your world was blurry, but you were still breathing for the time being when the calvary had arrived.  Though you were not sure who had walked in, your eyes closed as Murphy was stroking your hair comfortingly.  "Help her!" Murphy exclaimed, referring to you.  

You felt your heart speed up for a bit as you were removed from your comfort, actually missing Murphy's surprisingly gentle touch.  Your vision was replaced with Dr. Griffin as she checked you out, initially saying, "Y/N, you're going to be okay," in a soothing, motherly nature.  "What happened to you?" 

"I-I got shot," you said weakly.  

Abby checked out your injury, telling you that you would need surgery and that you would need to be brought on a stretcher.  Shortly afterwards, you, Abby, and Murphy were joined by Bellamy and Finn. Murphy walked at your side, as with his injuries he was still limping and unable to carry the stretcher.  

"T-thank you," you whispered to him as you were lying on your back, head turned to see him.  "In case I die, you know." 

"You're not going to die," Murphy snarked, a light smirk across his lips.  "You're a fighter." 

***

Murphy was right, of course,and you had to spend days waiting for him to return to Camp Jaha.  You had to wait even longer for Murphy to be let out of interrogation, as Finn had massacred a handful of women and children.  It felt like forever since you had seen the sarcastic asshole last, until he popped right down beside you at the table.  

You gently sipped the moonshine, glancing your eyes over to his brown eyed gaze.  "I'm fully pardoned," he started off with, as the two of you sat with Clarke, Bellamy, and shortly joined by Finn.  "The pardons for the 100 extend to what has happened on the ground." 

You allowed your lips to slip into a smile, and you acknowledged him with your eyes.  For whatever reason, though you were so excited to see him, you could not seem to utter a word to him.  He returned the same look, though, and it melted you inside.  

He proceeded to make enough snarky comments between the group to be told to leave the table, shortly followed by yourself.  "I-I've been waiting to see you again," you said sheepishly, though your voice was almost too low for even him to hear.  

"I see you made it through surgery," he said back to you, a slight smirk on his face.  

You chuckled, saying, "I had something to look forward to once I got out, so I couldn't really die on that operating table." 

"Oh?" Murphy replied sarcastically.  "What, you found a boyfriend within the time I've been gone?" 

"You wish," you said sarcastically with a chuckle.  "Maybe I went crazy from blood loss, because I was actually looking forward to seeing you again." 

"You've got to be kidding me," Murphy said rolling his eyes, though his smirk was turning into a little more of a smile as he glanced over to you, taking another sip of his moonshine.  "What, I shot you and you fell in love with me?" 

"In your dreams, Murphy," you chided sarcastically.  "It takes a little more than almost dying to win my affection, thank you." 

"Well, I have some other ideas," he replied, his voice getting almost suggestive as he spoke.  

You rolled your eyes, saying, "Not holding a knife to my throat again, right?" 

"Hey, I'm not a psycho," Murphy scolded lightly, causing you to laugh.  

You reached for his hand, placing yours gently on top of his as you did.  A bit of blush formed upon your cheek at the feel of his calloused hand below your own, especially since he did not pull away.  "I'm kidding, jesus, Murphy," you said softly.  

Murphy's brown eyes flickered to your lips, and back up into your eyes, as if he was asking you politely.  This was a shocking action from Murphy, but nonetheless, the two of you began leaning in closer to one another, until the gap was fully closed.  You could taste the moonshine against his lips, and moulded yours to his as the two of you kissed. Feeling him smirk into the kiss made you blush just a little bit more.  

You wished that it did not end when it did, but unfortunately you could hear someone clear their throat behind you.  Bellamy was standing behind the two of you, his arms crossed in disapproval as he watched the two of you separate. An annoyed look blossomed on Murphy's face as he noticed who was creating the hindrance towards the two of yours lips colliding once again.  

"So, you two?" Bellamy scoffed.  "Really?" 

"Do you have a problem, Blake?" Murphy chided.  

You rolled your eyes, before the two of them could get into another stupid fight, standing up to be in front of Murphy, in between him and Bellamy.  "Yes, really," you said confidently. "If it weren't for him, I would have died in that drop ship hours before anyone got there. I know you boys don't see eye to eye, but I don't see where you have any reason to jump in on our affairs." 

Bellamy let out an annoyed huff, knowing he couldn't step into anything that would piss the guards off, leaving the two of you alone once more.  You turned back to Murphy, who had a somewhat impressed smirk upon his face. Watching as he stood, you felt his arms slip around your waist firmly.  

"You really pissed off the king," he chided playfully, nuzzling his head into your neck as he spoke.  

You chuckled softly, curling into him a bit as the two of you stood.  "He's not the king of our society anymore," you said softly. "And after all, who cares?  He'll get over it eventually." 

"Would you prefer to go somewhere a little more private?" Murphy suggested, knowing it was getting late anyhow.  

You hummed in reply, nodding as you did so.  Hand in hand, the two of you made your way back to your room, which was mainly adorned with the pile of discarded pillows and blankets that you had made into a bed.  "I know it's not much, but it's better than nothing," you said softly.  

The two of you had not gotten overly frisky this night, instead, actually getting to know one another while lying comfortably in one another's arms.  He stroked your hair gently as the two of you spoke, enjoying the soft feeling of your hair against his skin. You told him about you, and how your parents were only present until a little bit before you were put in the sky box, as they had been much like his mother.  

Lying peacefully in one another's arms, soft kisses were shared with chapped lips, as well as secrets you had never told anyone of the 100 before.  To think, you almost died merely a few days prior, in the presence of the same person who warmed your bed now. The two of you eventually drifted off into slumber, and though the tough John Murphy would never admit it, he had been the happiest he had been since he arrived on Earth - even the happiest he'd been since he was sick.

[movienotesbyzawmer]

August 26: Mission: Impossible III

(previous notes: Mission: Impossible II)

Another one I haven't seen since it first came out (fifteen years ago!), but I remember liking it. Other than the exciting new personnel in the cast and in the director's chair, I really can't remember any details about this.

The director is, of course, J.J. Abrams. He comes in scalding hot from his television work, most notably Lost, and is making his feature directorial debut here before eventually directing what is currently the top-grossing movie of all time in the US. There was reason at the time to expect an improvement over the spotty second entry, but what does it say that I can't remember anything at all… okay let's start it.

You know how movies often love to tease the audience by opening with a really really exciting scene that's supposed to blow your mind and make you go OH my GOD like HOW did we GET to this VERY EXCITING SITUATION and then they jerk it all away and start from the beginning, this movie begins with that. That and very "modern" shaky shaky handheld camera stuff. I don't like that handheld stuff but whatever.

After the credits it's clearly back to before-problem. Ethan is having a chill dinner party with his girlfriend who is not Thandie Newton but who is definitely being tortured by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the opening tease.

That is subtly interrupted by a covert request to meet at a convenience store for some espionage and, perhaps less subtly, a lot of exposition. Very unnatural dialogue lets us know that Ethan is not in the field any more, he is a trainer, but one of his trainees is in trouble with PSH and will he help please. Also that was his fiancée not his mere girlfriend. That is a much more elite status. High stakes OMG.

Off to Berlin, and I'm reminded that the previous movie didn't do as much globetrotting; it was pretty much in Australia the whole time. I like location diversity.

The rescue of the played-by-Keri-Russell former protégé is not a stealthy one. They plant a bunch of blowy-uppy things around the rusty warehouse where they're torturing her and cause chaos to help them get to her and shoot their way out. There is no mask-craft so far.

After a cocky moment where Ethan demonstrates that being down to only one bullet was just fine with him, there's a cool shot where a closeup of Ethan has a nicely-framed surprise explosion behind him.

Much splody. So much splody. Maybe M:I3 is the one that should be remembered as The Splody One. There are rockets toppling wind turbines being negotiated by chasing helicopters. But the most suspenseful issue is that KR has a secret surprise blowy-uppy in her bloodstream. A race to maybe do something about it doesn't work and she dies. I remember predicting her death to my friends before the movie started, but it didn't make those friends like me any better.

Worth noting that J.J. Abrams is not wrong to apparently think we will think all the wind turbine imagery will look pretty neat.

Before dying, KR sent a postcard to Ethan, and not even in a normal way, in a "Hi is this Rollo Tamassy? I was given explicit instructions to let you know there is a delivery for you in dead Keri Russell's mailbox" kind of weird way. The postcard had a blank microdot hidden under the stamp. Feels slightly eye-rolly. Simon Pegg is now in the movie now, though, so that's cool.

Ethan had to have a serious talk with Julia about how serious his life is or something, and they get married like right there in a storage room! Then Ethan and the team go to the Vatican and do a heist there. It's an okay heist that involves seeming like bickering Italian van drivers and then changing into different costumes. No masks though. They still look like themselves. J.J. Abrams clearly told people, "why should I watch the other Mission Impossible movies when I literally made Alias".

They shoot magic sticky pebbles near cameras to make them not work, this is important to their method, but I'm not sure how this is supposed to end, aren't they kidnapping PSH or something?

0:47:57 - Welly welly well, what have we here, they have the mask machine! We actually see it 3D-print a PSH mask, now we talkin

Ooh, and we also get to see a whole thing about the voice disguise technology, Ethan has a PSH mask on and he forces the real PSH at gunpoint to say a script to teach the tech thing his voice, but it's not ready in time when he has to say stuff in disguise and there is suspense there, I like it!

They successfully completed the heist of stealing PSH from the Vatican, even though we didn't see exactly how they transported his sedated body out of there but okay

"Whoever it is I'm gonna find her and I'm gonna hurt her", we're seeing PSH be a villain on a level that one really doesn't see very much.

Ethan responds to that by doing an odd thing that I guess would be described as "dangling him from the bottom of a plane that is flying up in the air and therefore scary". He's trying to figure out what "rabbit's foot" is, which we heard about in the opening tease. We still don't know what it is. I've known for fifteen years apparently and even I don't know what it is so

The next exotic location on our tour appears to be the bridges connecting the Florida Keys, and things get splody again! Rocket bombs destroy the bridges they're on plus also some of the vehicles that are around. Right before that happened we saw the secret video message that KR had hidden in that microdot pre-her-unfortunate-death, and it was the news that the spy executive we've seen a couple of times, played by Lawrence Fishburne, is secretly a bad guy. So the rocket-equipped military force that is recklessly decimating bridges and automobiles is probably under Spy Executive's direction. Kind of rash doing all this destruction.

Oh, I remember that shot! Ethan is running away from a car that is the victim of a rocketplosion, and the force of that throws him in a way you don't see very much, it was probably hard to make it look that good. There are other cool shots in this sequence too.

Oh I like this I like this… the bad guys that are under the direction of Spy Executive have apprehended Ethan just after he found out that PSH kidnapped Julia. He has 48 hours to do a "rabbit's foot" something for PSH in order to save Julia, but he's all restrained and has a strange mask on, but what I like is that Billy Crudup, who is Spy Executive's lackey, did a trick that required Ethan to read his lips. BC knows what's up and is helping Ethan, it's exciting.

1:21:53 - Ethan has escaped and met up with his crew (hey, we have hardly even seen Simon Pegg, what is up with that), and they're doing a heist plan, and it involves drawing skyscrapers on glass and the camera angle matches the actual skyscrapers and it's pretty cool especially when he's doing geometry and actual mathematic calculations to plan some kind of corporeal transfer between two skyscrapers.

That scene is followed by a very impossible-looking shot of Ethan on top of a Shanghai skyscraper; it zooms in from way far away and then circles him and stays on him having a conversation with Ving Rhames, all one shot.

Then a very exciting sequence, the one that was planned for so academically before; Ethan does a super crazy run off the top of the building, and the bungee thing he's attached to does cool looking stuff to get him to swing to the actual building that is his destination, but it's on a sloping thing and he slides down it and there are bad guys he has to shoot. His job is challenging.

I keep forgetting to note this but I do keep observing with satisfaction that the score is all orchestral and traditional, none of the neo-slickrawk of the last two.

Things happened so fast that I didn't quite comprehend how all of his leaps and swings resulted in him obtaining the "rabbits foot", but I guess the thing that looks like a cartridge-container for a pneumatic tube conveyer that has a thing with a radioactivity symbol on it is that. What even is.

The meeting to do the exchange of Julia & "rabbit's foot" is set up and pretty quickly we're caught up to the tease from the beginning. We now are enjoyably frustrated that Ethan thinks he gave them the "rabbit's foot" but dude is asking for it and it's like wut dood I gave it? That ends with PSH seemingly shooting Julia and BC showing up and clearly being in cahoots with the bad guys after all. And it was a fake Julia in a masky-mask, the real one is still okay somewhere. Masked-and-now-dead woman is someone we saw as PSH's translator at the Vatican and the expository dialogue that helps us know this is so artificial-seeming that it reminds us that elaborating on who that really was is kind of pointless and laborious.

This long monologue by BC, mixed too quiet again, also tries to explain his point of view, but I can't quite get it. He says something about the "rabbit's foot", are we supposed to know what it is yet? He mumbled something about a "middle eastern buyer".

1:44:45 - Somehow Ethan was able to get Simon Pegg on the phone after biting his way away from BC (SHHH NO TIME TO EXPLAIN), and then he gets to the top of a suburban Shanghai house and a shot is really cool showing that and it moves and follows him in a cool way, and then the subsequent shots of him running through the streets are cool, he's on the phone with SP who is telling him exactly which little city streets to turn into.

Just as he has found Julia and is maybe going to rescue her, he gets a big headache and we remember that he has the same mini-splody in him that killed KR, and PSH shows up, pretty bad news. PSH delivers his threatening dialogue in a vividly psychopathic way.

PSH's end is dumb, especially on paper. He turns is back on Ethan, who is easily able to jump him and fight him. The fight spills out into the street and a lucky car accident seems to fatally maim PSH while leaving Ethan unharmed. Meh.

The final resolution involves trying the idea they had at the beginning that didn't work with KR, where some kind of on-purpose electrocution death preludes the micro-splody death and then you just have to be good at reviving the person. And it almost doesn't work… but then it does oh my god it does

There is a very very pleasant shot of Ethan and Julia strolling through a Chinese village with a canal bridge and it really is nice looking and I want to go there and stroll like they are strolling.

But then they're back at HQ or whatever and oh, I guess it turns out BC was the only secret bad guy and Spy Executive was good enough and they're all on good terms and Ethan and Julia go on a honeymoon the end. Oh, and the final exchange cheekily reveals that we will never know what "rabbit's foot" was. Creative? Cop-out? Who's to say? (insert why-not-both gif)

So what's to remember about that movie? Was it indeed better than MI:2? I guess a little; there are several little annoying things from both of the first two movies that are absent here, so that's refreshing… but also some of the plot contrivances don't improve on what we've seen so far. Some very very very ambitious visuals! That's the real thing I want to make sure not to forget about this. The previous one had John Woo's signature visual style, but none of it matches the accomplishments of the cool shots in this one. I might have preferred a little more playfulness with the espionage stuff, but if I recall correctly the series doesn't really return to that form.

(next: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol)

[betsynagler]

1.8 Insults a Day

On inauguration day in 2017, which was also, sadly, my birthday, Damon and I were feeling shitty about the world, and so one way we decided to resist was by creating a Twitter bot called About a Bully, with the handle @insultingdonald. For those of you who don’t know what a Twitter bot is, it’s a Twitter account that you digitally alter to run automatically. Most bots tweet on a regular schedule or in response to certain stimuli, like people tweeting at it who want to see what it will come up with when it answers them. You can make it generate its own material if you know enough about AI (although if you think you know about AI and you don’t you can end up creating something like this, so it’s best not to fuck around), or you can create a bunch of material that it can mix up according to formulae you give it and send out at random. The material we chose for About a Bully was Trump’s insults, but rewritten so that they are directed at him. So if you follow @insultingdonald, about three times a day you will see it tweet out things like “Trump is a liar!”, or “Sleazebag President Donald Trump,” or “Never in the history of our Country has the ‘president’ been more dishonest than he is today.” If you're familiar with our current president, you will recognize a lot of these tweets for who they are typically directed at. For instance, from time to time you'll see something like “Donald Trump, who I call Pocahontas,” which refers to Elizabeth Warren, or something about “FAKE TRUMP,” which fills in for his many tweets railing at the media, and of course lots of “Crooked Donald”s — which you'd have to be living under a rock to not know was in its original form “Crooked Hilary,” something that also comes up at lot because he’s still regularly tweeting about her this way, two and half years after the 2016 election, especially when he’s feeling defensive about the Mueller probe, which is basically always.

Which brings me to something that I didn't anticipate when we created this bot. Because Damon is the coder in our duo, I do most of the analog end of our work. To maintain About a Bully, this means that I am the one who has to go in every few months and collect and adapt Trump’s insults, which means I have to comb through months of his tweets at a stretch. Given how industrious he is in this one area (as opposed to pretty much anything else, other than maybe watching Fox), that generally means I spend several hours immersing myself in…well, just garbage. A stream of pure, steaming, foul-smelling offal. At least that’s how it feels. 

This is not what most people experience when they follow the president on Twitter. For them, he’s just one person in their feed, that flow of tweets from all of the people they follow, that appears basically in real time. If you're following maybe 200 people, one of whom is Trump, you'll see his tweets mixed up with everyone else’s, popping up a few times a day — which is why lots of people I’ve always assumed are sane, like some of my friends as well as Jordan Peele, Chris Pratt, Chris Rock, Seth Meyers, and John Cusack, who don’t have to follow him for work like journalists or politicians presumably do, can tolerate following him (although the comedians do also need to generate material, so there’s that). 

But if you go to Trump’s Twitter page and read three to six months of tweets at a stretch, the picture is very different. First of all, you see just how much he repeats himself, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and just keep going with the overs. He hammers away at the same claims, complaints and attacks, day after day — sometimes the exact same, when he retweets himself, as he frequently does, or when he uses his regular slogans, like some version of “THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.” He also repeatedly uses the same words or phrases, such as

exciting 

beautiful

tremendous  

great

smart

sacred (this one’s especially bizarre, given all that we know about him)

special 

NO COLLUSION

PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT (ironic)

not smart / low IQ (also ironic, for someone who threatened his high school and college not to divulge his transcripts or SAT scores) 

crazy (okay, let’s just say they are all ironic)

disgrace / disgraceful

conflicted (used to describe someone or something that has a conflict of interest, not someone who feels conflicted. Yeah, took me a while to figure that one out, since my reaction was always, “I don't really think Bob Mueller is conflicted at all about the Russia investigation.”)

dopey 

fake or FAKE 

failed, or failing 

illegal

dishonest

lying or lyin’ 

Crooked, as I already mentioned, always capitalized because it’s always used as part of, or a substitute for, Hilary Clinton’s name. 

Whether this repetitiveness is a strategy or something of which he's unaware, or a combination of the two, is hard to say since we can’t actually go inside his mind (although reading his tweets gets pretty close, which, again, is why I feel covered in filth after doing it for a few hours). Regardless, it is mind-numbing, and thus hard not to read as both the work of someone absent-minded and slightly deranged, and propaganda. Especially because, second, his tweets are just full of flat-out lies, which he also repeats. This is a technique we’ve seen perfected at Fox News and then passed on to the entire Republican Party as “staying on message,” but it’s especially necessary if you’re trying to generate a "fact” out of thin air. Here are just the ones that he said so far today:

“The Wall is being built and is well under construction.” People on both sides of the aisle (most blatantly his friend and foe Ann Coulter) have pointed out repeatedly how untrue this is. 

“We are apprehending record numbers of illegal immigrants - but we need the Wall to help our great Border Patrol Agents!” Impossible, since only 521K were apprehended in 2018, and the trend is downward overall, from a high of 1.5 million in 2000. He actually claimed himself that the numbers were down throughout 2017 and 2018, as proof that his border policies were working, and has only now 180-ed on that to prove we have a “state of emergency.”

“Both the Judge and the lawyer in the Paul Manafort case stated loudly and for the world to hear that there was NO COLLUSION with Russia.” What the judge actually said was that Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence this election,” which is not at all the same thing, and the lawyer who said there was no collusion was Manafort’s lawyer, who also claimed he wasn’t guilty of bank fraud or cheating on his taxes, two things of which he was just convicted.

And this is not an unusual amount, since, according to the Washington Post the president averaged 15 false claims a day in 2018. 

Third, his tweets are full of incorrect grammar and spelling. Typos like “hamberders” and “Covfefe” have become the most famous instances, but nearly every tweet has something wrong with it. There's erroneous capitalization (most of which he claims is for added emphasis, but in the case of, for example, “Where are the new Texts between Agent Lisa Page and her Agent lover, Peter S?”, what is there to emphasize about Texts?). There is the weird/incorrect use of punctuation, like dashes and scare quotes where they don't belong and missing apostrophes where they do (here's one that contains all three!: “Without strong Borders, we don’t have a Country - and the voters are on board with us. Be strong and smart, don’t fall into the Democrats “trap” of Open Borders and Crime!”). And there are the most basic mistakes like spelling “lose” as “loose,” “heal” as “heel” (very Freudian), “there” as “their” and vice versa, “too” or “two” as “to,” etc etc. Of course with any of these, you can say that lots of people make these kinds of mistakes, but you must always remember, they aren't the president of the United States.

Which is what's so remarkable and disturbing about diving into this stream of spew: it’s yet another appalling example of something we've just accepted Trump does that you cannot imagine any other president would have been caught dead doing, of something that is not normal that we've just gotten used to. Even W, who we all thought was not the sharpest tool in the shed, knew enough to delegate things he wasn't good at (and if the world as we know it is fucked because he delegated too many of them to Dick Cheney, that’s not because Cheney was not competent at achieving what he wanted, but because he was). Trump’s Twitter feed shows him not only to be just as stupid and arrogant as you think — because he figures that all of this thoughtless, repetitive crap that comes into his head and then out of his tiny fingers is exciting, beautiful, tremendous!, just as it is, and thus doesn't need to be vetted or edited, even when it potentially obstructs justice or reveals information damaging to national security — but even more self-promoting, defensive, childish, crude, and vindictive, and obsessively so. It's the feed of someone who so believes that the only truth is what he wants it to be, and that he can make the whole world that way if he just continues to hammer it into submission, repeatedly, day after day after day. And on a lot of those days, it seems that America keeps proving him right. Republican lawmakers are certainly trying.

Perhaps the saddest thing that we’ve figured out since 2015, when the New York Times started collecting his insults (and we give them full credit for tracking this phenomenon before we did), is that Trump has averaged 1.8 per day. And that means, since he actually can go for days without an insult if things are going well for him or if he just feels like retweeting other people (and we only include the insults that originate with him), that the concentration of insults you’ll encounter on a given day can often be an impressive four or five. Now, I’m sure we all know people who average more insults than this — the worst bully you ever encountered in junior high, the most horrible boss you ever had, the crazy neighbor down the hall who made your life hell, Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh — but again, none of these people are the President of the United States, to whom we somehow chose to give more power than anyone else in the nation, and in doing so, perhaps the world.

One other thing I noticed this time around, though, was that there are now a lot of people trolling Trump. More people who are anti-Trump than pro respond to his tweets these days, and there are people who do it relentlessly. Sometimes they have cogent arguments with evidence to support them, but a lot of the posts just include memes and name-calling. Then the MAGA people troll the trolls, and then other people troll them, and on and on, until all the yelling and insults surrounding his feed become a reflection of it. It’s sort like what our bot does, only we created our thing to purposely hold up a funhouse mirror to Trump’s tweets and point out their ugly absurdity, whereas this flow of comment bile just shows how he's actually reshaped so much of the way people “talk” about politics now into a warped reflection of himself. And yes, you can and must also blame the internet for that, and Newt Gingrich, and Steve Bannon, and Roger Ailes, but Trump is their golem, the ultimate manifestation of what we let them do, brought to life in such horrible fashion that many days it still doesn’t seem real to me. And then I go read his fucking tweets.

I used to think that if your average Republican — not his die-hard supporters, because I've given up on them — read his feed the way that I do, with all the repetition and lies and mistakes, and repetition of the lies and mistakes, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and hopefully you get it now, they'd recognize how appalling it is that Trump is our president, and realize they can't vote for him in 2020. But now I think maybe they'd just see it all as normal, as the way we talk about issues, the way we talk about each other: us vs. them, good vs. bad, my truth vs. your truth because I make mine real, everything justified in this zero-sum conflict which is best expressed not in conversation, but in insults. And where do you go from there?