#And replaced by a less shocking safety film

[vidreview]

VIDREV: "NO CGI is really just INVISIBLE CGI" by The Movie Rabbit Hole

[originally posted march 19th 2024]

like a lot of folks, i've grown weary of the preponderance of CGI in Hollywood flicks these days. it's all but a cultural tradition at this point to watch John Carpenter's The Thing, sigh wistfully at the goopy silicone animatronics, and say "man, you couldn't make anything like this today." the Marvel/Disney machine has done a lot of heavy lifting to engender this perspective, particularly in the cape department where every aspect of the film is under intense and non-negotiable executive revision until quite literally days before theatrical release (as was the case with Marvel's The Marvels). it doesn't help that this shift has a lot less to do with what's best for any given movie, and a hell of a lot more to do with the lack of unionization in the visual effects industries making them a readily exploitable source of labor. in such an environment, films that nevertheless lean on practical effects are enticing (and, quite often, demonstrably better) enough that we'll sing their praises to the point of hyperbole.

enter Jonas of The Movie Rabbit Hole, here with a genuinely essential series of video essays to slap some sense into that hyperbole and bring us all back down to earth.

one of the more important directors for the development of unobtrusive CGI is David Fincher. i have my fair share of issues with his films, but credit where it's due: they're constantly pushing technology in ways that you absolutely would not expect. there's a crane shot at the start of The Social Network that couldn't be shot with a crane for safety reasons, so instead it was stitched together in post from footage taken on multiple 4K cameras at once. a shocking majority of the blood you'll see in his movies is CGI. the praise i've portioned for his recent films, even as i find him sort of a fundamentally anti-human director, is that he understands that visual effects work best as a supplement to existing footage, rather than a pure replacement.

i share all this to underline my use of the word "essential" in describing this series. i worked in film for a few years, i went to film school, i try to understand the production process as pragmatically as possible. i am under no illusions that Christopher Nolan flicks or the John Wick movies are totally practical. i'm not an anti-CGI evangelist! and yet, even then, i had NO idea just how wrongheaded i still was on the subject until i watched these videos.

Jonas brings 18 years of visual effects experience to bear on a series that feels very much like him trying to settle an argument he's been having for about as long. he has countless examples of films praised for their lack of CGI that relied heavily on their CGI, using the demo reels of effects houses as the smoking gun. Jonas speaks with a plain matter-of-fact-ness that's bolstered just so by an edge of smug frustration, the kind you only get after bearing a cross for years. but it's not just an "i'm right, you're wrong" affair by any stretch. Jonas does a fantastic job communicating a lot of complicated subjects in ways that are friendly to even the most casual of viewers, rarely blaming the audience for their ignorance when studios and market trends are the real culprit. and because he's a veteran of the industry, he's able to interview prominent figures that would otherwise be inaccessible for the average essayist, like Academy Award winning VFX supervisor Paul Franklin.

(and here we come up against a question countenanced more than once on this blog-- where is the line between video essay and documentary? i think this readily qualifies as the former given the first-person direct address shot-in-his-living-room style, yet somehow i feel a bit uneasy with the classification. oh well, a topic for another day)

the most eye-opening section for me is also one of the first, where Jonas confronts the public image of Top Gun: Maverick. i haven't seen this film yet, but i have seen the endless and unqualified buzz about its practical effects. and to be sure, these deserve quite a lot of praise-- they put real actors in real fighter jets for crying out loud! yet in all that crowing, a very important fact totally fell by the wayside: nary a single shot in the film is without digital manipulation. and not just in the basic touch-up sense, removing safety anachronisms and the like. the jets, the cockpits, and the actors themselves were all extensively replaced with digital doubles! i felt like an utter fool when he pointed out that quite often films praised for their lack of CGI will have more VFX artists credited than any other department in production. like, holy shit, it's all right there on the screen? what job were those hundreds of people doing if it was "all practical effects"?

which is the crux of the series' title: "NO CGI is really just INVISIBLE CGI." we have --or perhaps it'd be more honest to say i have-- a tendency to address CGI in binaristic terms. either it's there, or it's not there, right? Fincher's team can put digital blood running down Daniel Craig's face in the shower after he gets shot in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but it's Craig's physical presence that sells it. a film like Top Gun: Maverick makes its bones marketing the spectacle, and because there's such fatigue with CGI-heavy blockbusters any mention of intermediary visual effects carries with it a stain on the authenticity. but really, it does nothing to diminish the practical nature of the photography to also acknowledge how much of what makes it to cinemas is, essentially, an extremely realistic cartoon.

and this is what Jonas's series really exposes for me. a lot of what we're looking at here is rotoscoping, the longstanding tradition of animating over top of live footage a la Disney's Snow White in 1937, though the technique was truly mastered by Max Fleischer in the 1910s. is there some gradeschool nag whispering in the back of our head that a rotoscope is just elaborate tracing? that it's a cheat, because "real" animation is done without reference? (for anyone who has actually worked in animation, this is your cue to laugh derisively)

but the truth is that you do not get one without the other. it takes a lot of planning to film a scene with an eye towards being reanimated, just as it takes tremendous skill to make that animation look good. if Top Gun: Maverick feels viscerally real, it is because the visual effects artists had a real reference to work from. one is not inherently better than the other, more pure or authentic. this isn't the 80s anymore, man. i mean, to get real fucking technical, the instant we stopped shooting on film was the death of "true practicality" in cinema, because a digital sensor must by its nature interpret visual information as raw data and then translate it to something we'd recognize as an image. celluloid film is purely optical, but a digital sensor requires someone (or a team of someones) to write an algorithm to do that interpreting-- which is, inherently, subjective. different cameras have different image processing algorithms, different bitrates and dynamic ranges, to say nothing of custom LUTs and the extensive post-processing required to make RAW footage not look like complete ass. and even now, celluloid cannot be said to be truly pure, because any film shot on celluloid is then digitally scanned, subjected to the exact same post production processing as any other digital film, the final product re-scanned to celluloid to give it a true filmic look, and then yet again digitized for wide distribution (because most cinemas today only have digital projectors).

this is not A Bad Thing! it is simply the material reality of film production in the 21st century. it has many upstream and downstream effects, of course, many of which have negatively impacted the quality of films and television in various ways-- but these are not qualities inherent to digital technology! rather, they are the result of a profit-seeking industry eager to cut corners wherever possible. the existence of CGI is not to blame for the bad CGI in Marvel movies, it's the greedy executives exploiting non unionized labor, forcing crunch at every level with no regard for the human cost, endlessly meddling in the production with their indecisive market-analysis driven brand alterations. ah, the age of the executive auteur, when at last the soulless corporate mindset once commonly decried by artists and audiences alike has been fully naturalized and even embraced by people who call themselves fans, who would sooner throw a director under the bus than say a bad word about Kevin fucking Feige.

it's a pathetic state of affairs, and it can only be called a brilliant act of marketing that CGI burnout in the public has been leveraged to only further erase the essential labor of visual effects artists. Jonas here even points out, much to my slack-jawed amazement, that promotional behind the scenes footage today frequently removes green screens and other indicators of a digital-forward production as a way of unduly acquiring practical effects credibility. as someone who watches a lot of these BTS features, i feel lied to and manipulated, and ashamed of myself for not realizing that making-ofs are just as much marketing as they are educational, often moreso by a lot. it's all just an illusion! and it cannot be repeated often enough that this is an erasure of a historically under-unionized industry, one whose exploitation has been thoroughly documented for years. that this erasure is occurring at a moment when finally, finally, finally corners of the visual effects world have begun to shed the libertarian values inherited from the tech industry and actually unionize is pretty fucking conspicuous to say the least.

i call these videos essential because they reveal a tremendous blind spot in our media literacy, even among those like myself who've studied media extensively. we are, generally, pretty good at identifying the weaknesses in a finished film, but our lack of experience and our credulity towards marketing that doesn't feel like marketing leads us to utterly fail when we attempt to diagnose their cause. when our analysis lacks an understanding of the material conditions of production, as informed by firsthand accounts of those who actually do the work, we cannot help but embarrass ourselves and in so doing blatantly misinform our audiences.

it didn't used to be like this. i remember the late 90s and early aughts, when joints like ILM were praised for their innovations. how often do you hear about VFX houses today? probably only when they go bankrupt. it's such a shame, because what Jonas does in these videos most of all is reveal just how astonishing the work of visual effects artists actually is. these are the perils of an industry whose job is to be invisible, which is why it's so important that their labor be made visible after the fact, celebrated rather than papered over, analyzed extensively rather than mentioned offhand. the truth is that quite a lot of us have been boldly, profoundly wrong about CGI in movies for a long time, and we're well past due for a correction of the record.

all of which is to say that these are some really great videos and you should absolutely go watch them right now

NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: episode 4 came out and it's also great.

[acf-lab]

Analysis of some shock-absorbing shoe materials

At present, there are various kinds of shock absorbing shoe materials on the market, such as rubber, EVA, PU (polyurethane), ACF, PVC, air cushion film, etc., and even a lot of new materials that we have never heard of, but only a small part of them can be used in the field of shoe materials. The following is a brief analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of some materials used in shock-absorbing shoes.

(1) Rubber

First of all, when it comes to shock absorption, no one is unfamiliar with rubber, which is the material of choice for making automobile tires due to its excellent shock absorption and abrasion resistance. However, in the shoe industry, rubber doesn't shine as brightly as it does in the automotive industry. Although rubber has been used in a small number of shoe soles for its shock absorption and abrasion resistance, it has become synonymous with poor quality shoe materials in the eyes of many people due to its heavy quality and unpleasant odor.

(2) EVA

The Chinese name of EVA is "ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer", which was patented by the British C Division in 1938. Due to its light weight, non-toxic and odorless, it has become a perfect substitute for rubber. However, EVA is also far less dense than rubber, which leads to the disadvantage of no abrasion resistance, so when EVA is used in the production of shoe soles, it will be used to indicate that a layer of non-slip and abrasion-resistant materials (e.g., rubber) are affixed to it. In addition, EVA is also widely used in the production of insoles, but due to its poor breathability characteristics, shock absorption effect is general, can not be used as high-end shock-absorbing sports shoes and insoles, and is now gradually replaced by better breathable Aosolite material.

(3)ACF material

The Chinese name of ACF is "Artificial Cartilage Material", which is led by academician Wang Bowei of ACF Laboratory of LinZhi Technology, and through tens of thousands of experiments over the years to improve its physical properties, the highest shock absorption up to 97.1%, so that it has a better air permeability and strong shock absorption effect (performance is slightly higher than the United Kingdom D30), and has obtained 70 patents at home and abroad. With this performance and strong shock absorption effect, ACF has become an excellent material for the production of midsole and shock absorption insole of sports shoes. At present, this material is used in the midsoles and insoles of some sports brands sold in the market for high shock absorption.

(4) PU (Polyurethane)

It is also a common shock absorbing material in shoe materials.PU material has excellent abrasion resistance, elasticity and tear resistance, so it is widely used in shoe sole making. Its excellent shock absorption performance can effectively alleviate the impact of the foot when walking and improve the wearing comfort, and the shock absorption effect is not as good as that of ACF material. However, the price of PU material is relatively high, which limits its application in some low-end footwear products.

(5) PVC material

With its good flexibility and weather resistance, PVC shoe soles have excellent anti-slip performance, which can ensure the safety of the wearer when walking on slippery ground. In addition, PVC material also has strong chemical resistance, which can resist the erosion of some common chemicals. However, the shock absorbing properties of PVC materials are relatively weak and are not suitable for the production of sports shoes that require high shock absorbing properties.

Overall, different materials have their unique advantages, and there is no such thing as the best material, only the one that suits you best. As long as the choice that fits your needs, it is the wisest choice!  Therefore, in the field of shoe materials, we should keep exploring and trying new materials and technologies to meet consumers' constant pursuit of comfort and functionality.

400-6543-699

www.acf.com

[mariocki]

The Finishing Line (1977)

"Two teams line up on one side of the track, and the other two teams are on the other side facing them. When the train passes the Go sign, they have to run across the line. With the train moving at about fifty miles an hour, I reckon they've got about three seconds. The one snag today is that only the judges know what speed the train will be travelling - it could be doing eighty! In which case they have a lot less than three seconds..."

[lilxberry]

Hardly Burglar Material - Bilbo Baggins

Requested by: @donniethescienceguy​

Helloooooooo! Can I have a Bilbo x hobbit wife reader where after Thorin insults him (in the beginning when he arrives) she defends him and Thorins like: are you sure it’s the male Baggins we want?

I mean, I still did as what was requested but man, did I not know where tf this was going lmao

I followed quite a bit of the manuscript of the film, the only alteration is when reader confronts Thorin

Warnings: Nothing really. Asshole Thorin. Terrible writing lmao. 

Words: 1,796

Pairings: Bilbo Baggins x Reader (female reader) (wife!reader)

_______________

You hadn’t expected your quiet evening meal with your husband to be interrupted but when a dwarf, a big, burly, tattooed, balding, towering one at that knocks your door, there certainly isn’t much you can do.

After the dwarf, who introduced himself as Dwalin, had entered your home and devoured your husbands fish dinner, to which you offered Bilbo your own meal, more and more knocks sounded at the door, each one miffing your husband further and further until he had finally had enough.

“There’s nobody home!” he shouted as another sound came from the front door, arms holding up the abundance of weapons the two brothers’, Fíli and Kíli, loaded on to him.

You felt terrible, watching as your husband becomes frustrated, not knowing what to do other than spectate in concern.

He tossed the items down out of his arms as he stormed towards the door, shouting at whoever was on the other side. “Go away and bother somebody else! There are far too many dwarves in my dining room as it is.”

Bilbo closes in on the door. “I-I-If this is some plotheads idea of a joke,” he laughed in disbelief before grasping the door handle in his hand. “I can only say, it is in very poor taste.”

With that, he pulled the door open and in comes tumbling through the doorway a cluster of dwarves, all grumbling and whining at the other to get off of them. Bilbo and yourself, who stood a few steps behind, looked down at the mess of moving bodies on the floor before his feet, dumbfounded expressions on both of your faces.

Movement behind the pile up caught both yours and Bilbos��� attention, and once the tall figure bent down ever so slightly to reveal himself, your face twisted into that of utter confusion as your husband sighs in exasperation.

“Gandalf.”

_______________

Although you were concerned for your husband, you couldn’t help but find the whole situation quite amusing. You found some of the dwarven folk that had invaded your shared home to be quite a fun, entertaining bunch.

Of course, you were concerned about the possessions within your home, hoping that the dwarves leave your home relatively untouched and that your husband wouldn’t have some sort of mental breakdown.

Your uninvited guests had pillaged the pantry of its food. The race of dwarves certainly did have quite an appetite. Even Gandalf had nibbled on quite a bit of food.

The rowdiness of the dwarves had calmed slightly, if only for moment when they downed whatever drink they had. Even the ridiculous and frankly disgusting belching afterwards was calmer than their initial arrival.

Yet that was quickly replaced with plates, platers, knives, forks, and spoons were tossed from one dwarf to another as they sang a merry tune. Bilbo was quick with demanding caution and for things to be put down. Even you were slightly worried for your kitchen utensils.

The dwarves released hearty laughter when you and Bilbo peered into the kitchen and had seen that everything was clean and stacked, Gandalf chuckling along with them as both you and Bilbo simultaneously release sighs of relief.

Then, the atmosphere became tense as three, loud knocks sound at your front door for a final time that night.

The laughter died out instantly and Gandalf spoke quite ominously. “He’s here.”

_______________

You couldn’t really pinpoint what exactly was unsettled you so much when it came to the dark-haired dwarf who sat at the head of the table. Maybe his stature. Possibly his stoic expression.

Most likely the look behind his eyes.

Well, you certainly didn’t like him all that much whenever he addressed your husband.

Most of the conversation between the dwarves and Gandalf became muffled when reaching your ears, certainly seeing no point in listening in on their talk. The second your husbands voice rang out through the room though had piqued your interest and your attention was brought to the conversation.

They spoke of The Lonely Mountain, the dragon Smaug, how they were on a quest to reclaim their home. Gandalf had produced not only a map of some forts but a key, a key the dwarves seemed to become quite excited about.

You also happened to admire the young dwarfs’ courage. Ori.

Then, the topic of a burglar arrived.

“That’s why we need a burglar,” Ori spoke.

“Hmm, and a good one too. An expert I’d imagine.” Bilbo moves back from peering down at the map, holding on to his suspenders.

“And are you?”

Bilbo glances around to behind him before looking towards the dwarves once more. “Am I what?”

“He said he’s an expert!” Oin spoke cheerily. Of course, the dwarf with the horn to aid his hearing would say as such.

“Me? No, no, no, no, no,” your husband started, eyes darting to each dwarf, hoping his point would get across. “I’m not a burglar. I’ve never stolen a thing in my life.”

You nodded your head in agreement. As much as you love your husband, he is quite the stickler for following rules.

“I’m afraid I have to agree with Mister Baggins,” Balin was next to speak. “He’s hardly burglar material.”

You supressed a chuckle as Bilbo, although relieved that someone agreed, looked the tiniest bit offended.

The group of dwarves began to chatter and raise in volume, no words could actually be comprehended by yourself, it all a jumble of noises. Then Gandalf raised out of the seat slightly, his voice booming over the racket the dwarves created.

“ENOUGH! IF I SAY BILBO BAGGINS IS A BURGLAR,” he lowered his voice with each following word. “Then a burglar he is.” Bilbo looked as if he wanted to protest but no words left his mouth.

“Hobbits are remarkably light on their feet,” he continued. “In fact, they can pass by unseen by most if they chose. And while the dragon is accustomed to the smell of dwarf, the scent of a Hobbit is all but unknown to them which gives us an distinct advantage.”

The whole discussion about your husband was unnerving for you. You disliked how your husband was talked of like a ploy in some silly game.

“This quest is no place for gentlefolk.” Thorins’ tone was as if the words left a vile taste in his mouth, clearly showing his disgust for your husband. “He probably wouldn’t last 5 miles away from his precious little home. Look at him, Gandalf! He isn’t made for such things, it’s as clear as day. His big feet and rounded belly would slow us down. Your little Hobbit would cry out for home within a day.”

Your blood boiled with each word he spoke, an anger rising in you which you desperately tried to keep down. Your nails dug into the palms of your hands and your jaw was clenched tightly shut, but enough was enough.

“HOW DARE YOU SPEAK OF MY HUSBAND LIKE THAT?! NO LESS WHILST YOU ARE IN HIS HOME AND IN HIS PRESENCE!”

Your outburst caught the attention of every soul in the dining room around the table. Their eyes settled on your figure that stepped closer and closer to them up to the point where you stood glaring down at Thorin right beside his seat. Even Bilbos’ eyes were wide and looked almost ready to pop right out of their sockets.

“My husband may not be a fighter like you…you BRASS DWARVES! But he deserves no less respect. I will not stand for someone speaking down on my Bilbo in such a manner, even if they are some king,” you all but spat out.

Some of the dwarves looked offended that you spoke to their leader in such a way, others looked thoroughly shocked, surprised that a small thing as yourself had such a fire in you. Gandalf smirked as Bilbo looked like he genuinely feared for your safety. He had witnessed outbursts from you that scared him before, which were quite rare, you barely losing your temper, but for once, he was terrified of the consequences seeing as it wasn’t at him nor a fellow Hobbit.

But it was Thorins’ reaction that had you confused. He seemed…impressed?

Thorin turned towards Gandalf, a smirk of his own forming on his face. “Are you sure it was Mister Baggins you had wanted to join our quest?”

Gandalf chuckled and looked towards you and your husband, you now joined your side, who was silently scolding you with his eyes but nonetheless remaining the concerned, dotting husband. “I was certain on Mister Baggins being the 14th member of your company, but I would highly recommend you take a 15th as I believe Misses Baggins certainly has something of her own to bring to the quest.”

“They both have a great deal more to offer than any of you know, including themselves. You must trust me on this,” Gandalf finished.

Thorin looked at Gandalf and Gandalf at he for a moment, Thorin evidently mulling it over within his head before finally, he spoke. “Very well. We’ll do it your way. Give them the contract.”

Both yourself and Bilbo began to protest as Balin produced the document. He handed it over to Bilbo who unravelled the parchment and began to scan over the words, your eyes peering over his shoulder to read it for yourself.

As Bilbo and you busied yourselves with reading over the document, Thorin had leant over towards Gandalf to whisper within his ear. “I cannot guarantee their safety.”

“Understood,” Gandalf hummed in acknowledgement.

“You’ll be left responsible for their fate.”

“Agreed.”

Bilbo began to read aloud the text, brow furrowed out of concentration, your own face screwed up slightly, straining to peer at the words.

“Terms; cash on delivery up to but not exceeding 1 14th for total profit, if any. Seems fair, uhh-“

“Shouldn’t it be changed to 1 15th if I were to join?” you questioned aimlessly.

Bilbo nodded his head in agreement before continuing. “Present company shall not be liable for injuries inflicted by or sustained as a government, thereof including but not limited to; lacerations. Evisceration?” He unfolds a piece further, reading before looking towards the group with a look of disbelief. “Incineration?!”

“Oh, aye. It’d melt the flesh off your bones in the blink of an eye,” Bofur quipped with ease.

Many more ‘encouraging and reassuring’ words were spoken by Bofur, unnerving both yourself and Bilbo, though you hid it extremely well. The moment your husband passed out, was when Bofur seemed to finally relent.

“Oh dear.” You looked towards your husband laying on the floor unconscious with concern before turning towards the others with a worried expression.

Valar forbid you allow him to go with those dwarves and that conniving wizard alone.

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I mean, I don’t really have anything to say sooooo

If you want to be added to a taglist lemme know

Anywho, I hope you enjoy

As always, constructive criticism and requests are welcomed and greatly appreciated :D

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LOTR / The Hobbit taglist:

@iwazoomingouttahere​ 

[hippohead]

15 and 16 for the kisses list!

hello anon! sorry this took a little while, but here is 15. a fierce kiss that ends with a bite on the lip, soothing it with a lick. enjoy!

read it on ao3

It’s been an entire month since the day he finally kissed Kurt but Blaine can’t stop getting stuck on this: how on earth did he not realise sooner?

Because Kurt is pacing, back and forth and relentless, a monologue about the new Hello, Dolly! film announcement coming out of him like it has to, like if he doesn’t look at Blaine with wide and imploring eyes and say, “-the Barbra Streisand version is right there,” then he might explode. And it’s adorable. It is passion inside of him that makes him puff out his chest and complain, compare, despair over whatever director will ‘ruin’ his favourite film. Lots of films are Kurt’s favourite film.  

Blaine really loves that about Kurt; that he cares about so many things and that they are all his favourite, the contradiction of labeling more than one thing that seemingly completely irrelevant.  

Kurt pauses and takes a deep breath, and then starts up again, his argument shifting to Hollywood’s obsession with remakes in general now. There are a million different things that Blaine wants to do; roll off Kurt’s bed and tackle him into a hug, or shut him up with a kiss, or let him talk until he tires himself out and use the time to watch him, understand him, let the adoration in his heart for this boy grow even more. He wants to kick the door closed even though Burt had made a pointed comment about leaving it open, and distract Kurt with his mouth and his hands and his-

All of it – the wanting to do something but not being sure what and the adoring and the wandering thoughts, is not exactly new. It’s always been here, in the space between Kurt and Blaine. It just took him so stupidly long to catch up and figure it out and know.  

Kurt had asked him to stop beating himself up about it after the fourth apology. “We’re here now and that’s what matters,” is what he’d said, and then he’d kissed Blaine in a way that was so sure, so solid, so grounded, that Blaine had felt them twist and plant with roots.

He stopped apologising after that, but it doesn’t stop him from wondering why it took him so long to identify this delicious ache in his chest that’s been here all along, since that first day on the Dalton staircase.  

“Blaine?” Kurt’s voice sounds different – soft, no longer raised. “I’m ranting, aren’t I?”

“Mm,” Blaine nods, a smiling playing on his lips. “Keep going.”

Kurt huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes, more at himself than at Blaine’s teasing.  

“Come here,” Blaine says, all of the tease gone and entirely replaced with plead. He hasn’t been able to get a handle on the neediness that comes with all of the stopped apologies, but he knows the assurance in Kurt’s touch, Kurt’s smile, Kurt’s closeness will soothe him.  

Kurt does – climbs onto his bed where Blaine is resting with his back against the headboard and kneels in front of him, reaching out to curve his hand around Blaine’s thigh in a gesture that is so intimate, he’s not quite sure he deserves it. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Blaine smiles, looking down at the way Kurt’s thumb is moving over his leg, a tiny touch that says, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. “Sometimes I just need to feel you, to remember that you’re real, to know that I didn’t mess it all up.”

There’s something generous about the way Kurt kisses him at that, all softness and willing to give him what he needs. Kurt always looks after Blaine’s insecurities with a feather-light touch and more patience than Blaine’s used to, and he does it again with this murmur: “You did the opposite of mess it all up.”

He lets that settle, tucked away in the corners of him, safe. And then it’s his turn to offer something, “When the remake comes out, I’ll take you to the cinema to see it and then even if it’s good, we’ll get a coffee afterwards and talk about how awful the casting was and how badly it was directed. Okay?”

Kurt grins, “Okay.”

They look at each other for a moment, just look, nothing required or expected. Sometimes his feelings for Kurt take him off guard, like they’ve been building up for so long without his knowledge that the gravity of them shock him. Right now, though, he’s realising that the weight and enormity is for a reason, even if they’re young, even if this thing between them is still running on firsts and newness. The roots are so deep that he can’t move, doesn’t want to, wants to be a tree with Kurt next to him always.  

He wants to ask Kurt if it’s normal to feel like you’ve found the love of your life at sixteen years old. They haven’t even said the L word yet, though, so he doesn’t.

“I like this shirt,” Kurt says, playing with the hem, breaking the intensity of the moment. “You wore it to Rachel’s party.”

“I did. You have a freakishly good memory.”

“That,” Kurt laughs, shuffling on the bed until his legs are kicked out to side of him, bent, his knees needing a break, “-or I just noticed because I had a stupidly big crush on you.”

He knows Kurt is just teasing, lightly, making fun of the pining he had done while Blaine was being busy being oblivious. He’s trying to give him some ease, but suddenly Blaine feels desperate to let Kurt know he wasn’t totally alone in it all. Especially not that night.  

“I noticed, too.”

Kurt looks at him, a little skeptical, as if his memories of that night prove otherwise. And he has a point, really, because Blaine had been an idiot. Actually, he’d been more than an idiot – obnoxious, out-of-his-depth, scrambling. Kissing Rachel, getting stupidly drunk, taking the easy way out instead of acknowledging what it meant that looking at Kurt in that outfit made him feel like he was overheating, on fire, too much.  

“I noticed,” he reaffirms, because he did. "Red shirt, buttoned all the way up.” He lets his finger run up the centre of Kurt’s chest, over the top of his sweater, stopping at the base of his throat. “Black tie,” and he flattens his hand, palm curving around his neck. Slowly, he moves his fingers to Kurt’s shoulder, drags them across his body diagonally, “That fucking harness belt.”

Kurt has been staring at him, stuck on a breath, but the curse word makes him inhale, quickly, like he can’t quite believe it. Blaine’s voice is filthy – far filthier than they’ve ever let themselves get around each other but he can’t help it. That harness belt is what had started his unravel that night, and it’s haunted him ever since.  

He lets his hands fall to Kurt’s hips, follows the curve of them and then down his thighs, “Black pants with safety pins all the way down the side.”

“You remember it,” Kurt says, almost a question but not quite.  

He doesn’t know how to tell Kurt that he more than just remembers it; he knows it, has it traced out in his mind and on-call, a picture, a painting, a portrait. He’s thought about Kurt in that outfit in bed, late, hand down his pajama pants and imagining what would have happened if he had done something that night. It feels like too much to reveal and they’re still figuring out where they’re at with all of that. So, instead, he says, “It was a very good outfit.”

Kurt smiles and lets a little bit of the tension that Blaine has created drain away, and waves his hand in a dismissal, “Yes, well, I was trying to impress someone.”

Blaine’s tone and the look in his eyes build that tension back immediately, as if he’s missed it in the second it was gone and needs it back in the air right now, “It worked.”

And then Kurt is – smirking. He’s smirking at Blaine, as if it’s finally sunk in that his outfit that night had an effect on Blaine, and that it makes him feel powerful, noticed, sexy. “Close your eyes.”

“What?” Blaine asks.  

“Close your eyes,” Kurt repeats, and it’s deep, dark, lower than his voice usually is. Sort of strict. Blaine nods quickly and then does.  

He feels the bed shift as Kurt climbs off it, and then he hears noise – general sounds of Kurt moving around his bedroom before a, “Keep them closed, okay?” and then the door closing. Blaine peeks; he can’t help it. The room has gone silent and his quick glance confirms it; Kurt has locked himself in his adjoining bathroom. He squeezes his eyes shut again and waits.

“Blaine? You can- you can open your eyes.”

Kurt’s voice has lost its lowness, instead filled up with a mixture of nervousness and commitment. He opens his eyes. They immediately blur into something darker, richer, raking over Kurt’s body. He’s standing in the doorway to the bathroom, head to toe in the exact same outfit. Boots, safety pin pants, red shirt, black tie. Harness belt.  

He’s fixed his hair, too, a little bit more styled that it was just before.  

Blaine knows he should say something. Kurt is doing this for him. Entirely for him. His mouth feels dry, though, and nothing feels worthy of being said right now when he could just watch. Admire. Drink him in.

“You know how I feel about repeating outfits,” Kurt says, less nervousness in his tone now, “but I figured I could make an exception.”

“Kurt, you...” but, what? He still doesn’t have a single clue how to articulate what he’s feeling. Kurt looks... hot. He always does but right now unbearably so. He’s noticing him the same way he did that night, but this time he doesn’t have to hide it, bury it, ignore it, distract himself from it. He lets it wash over him and enjoys the thrill it gives him, the way it makes Kurt flush because he can see the want in Blaine’s eyes.  

So he gives up on words; moves across the bed and hops off it, makes his way over to Kurt but keeps the steps slow, careful, on purpose. Grips the harness once he’s close enough, fingers winding around the strap and holding on the way he’s wanted to ever since he first saw it on Kurt. And then he tugs, quite strong, still on purpose.  

Kurt looks happy, triumphant, knowing he’s succeeded in what wanted from this. 

“Can I kiss you how I should have kissed you that night?” he asks, a little desperate.  

Kurt nods, sure, sure, so sure. He’s always been so sure.  

Why hasn’t Blaine?

He wants to start with a tenderness, to ease them into the kiss that Kurt deserves, but apparently his lips have other plans. They’re fierce and insistent right from the start, giving and taking so much, everything, more, more, more. He keeps pulling on the harness as if Kurt could get any closer to him, as if their bodies aren’t already lined up and pressed together.  

Kurt’s hands twist around the back of his neck, tugging too. They are both tugs and pulls and need. Blaine can feel a heat in both of them that he’s never felt before – they've made out plenty; in empty rooms, in the back seat of Kurt’s car, on Blaine’s front porch. Anywhere they could, really. But there had been a sweetness in that making out, like they were just tasting and trying and falling into it, nicely. There is nothing just nice about this.  

He wants more. It feels like Kurt wants more, too.  

They won’t chase more, though, because of the open bedroom door and Burt being upstairs and they haven’t talked about... that. But it makes him feel wild and excited to know that it’s there, under the surface, and that they will get to it.  

He starts to slow the kiss down, loosening his grip on the harness and giving the tenderness that he’d intended to start with. And then he nips at Kurt’s bottom lip, playful at first and then one last one, with more intent, to let Kurt know he doesn’t want to be stopping, but is. And then he uses his tongue to soothe it, glides over the spot he just bit, and kisses him once more. Soft. Tender. Lingering.

Kurt breathes for a moment. He needs to. Blaine needs to, too.  

And then once it settles, Kurt speaks. It’s quiet and reverent and almost a whisper.

“You noticed.”

He did. He definitely did.  

“I noticed.”

[a-crash-in-time-collection]

Chapter 3: Return of the Mysterious Diva

It took awhile for the dark woods to pass the group, desert sand replacing it. It always felt a bit strange to Hat Girl, people always seemed to complain about the desert's heat, yet it never really bugged her. Then again, that simply could be because she was an alien who could more easily handle heat, or this desert was cooler than others. Either way, it didn't stop her from chatting with the others on the way to Dead Bird Studio.

The others informed her about how things on the planet were since she last arrived. It was... the same for the most part. Mafia Town was still Mafia Town. Dead Bird Studio kept making movies, and although slightly more tolerant of each other, DJ Grooves and Conductor still had their rivalry. The captain and seals got a new ship, apparently bigger than before. Alpine Skyline was apparently fine as well, but no one really knew exactly since they kept to themselves.

It made her happy, knowing everyone was still living their lives peacefully. She found herself soon looking forward again, seeing they were now in front of Dead Bird Studios. It felt almost like nothing changed, seeing it. The main thing that was different were two posters on each side of the building. Those posters being for the movies she took part in when she first arrived on this planet. Apparently, her movies were still some of the best the studio ever made.

It almost felt surreal that she was here again, after all this time... She felt herself take a slight breath to calm herself, glancing to her sides slightly. DJ Grooves gave her a reassuring smile, Conductor glanced at her with pride. She felt a ghostly hand remove her hat, ruffling her hair briefly before placing the hat back on. She took another breath, and walked into the building that made her a star.

They passed through the dark hallway, into the reception room. Everything was almost the exact same as years ago, minus the same posters as outside on each wall on each side of the building. The Receptionist owl was typing away at the computer on his desk. The birds there were chatting among each other, Express Owls on one side, and Moon Penguins on the other. Her smile grew slightly as Platinum began glancing around in awe.

"HEY, we're back, Receptionist!" The Conductor called as he walked up to the desk.

"I hear you Conductor, no need to be pushy about it." The Receptionist said, as his typing went quicker, as if to finish whatever he was working on.

"Normally I would agree with your statement darling, but I can't really blame him myself." DJ Grooves said, taking Hat Girl's hand as he walked closer. "One of the greatest stars we ever had has returned. Who can blame him if he's a bit excited."

"Really? The only person I can think of that meets that memo is-" the Receptionist finally glanced over, and although his eyes remained closed, he seemed to straighten up in surprise. "Is that the lil' chiper?"

"Lil' chiper? How many nicknames did you get on this planet, Hattie? Or just, names in general?" Platinum asked as he walked back over to the group, Hat Girl giving a shrug in response.

"Who else do you know that wears a purple and yellow hat almost 24/7?" Snatcher spoke, having shrunk his from slightly to where he was still able to tower the others, but to where he wasn't knocking said others to the side by mistake.

"I'll be takin' her to the back to get her bird passport renewed. Clear out everythin' else in me schedule today." Conductor said quickly.

"Same with me darling." DJ Grooves said, the Conductor huffing quietly to himself. "Oh, and do me a favor. Tell Biddy and Sheryll to bring her over to the picture booth." Hat Girl gained a bit of confusion in her eyes, weren't they already taking her to the photo booth?

"Of course, right away Mister Conductor and Mister Grooves." The Reception said, giving a quick wave to Hat Girl before getting back on the computer.

"This way darling, we'll get your passport ready, then you can choice a movie you'd like to be in." DJ Grooves said, leading her through the doors on his side of the building. The Conductor could faintly be heard mumbling in the background, as he followed them, a rare sight to be sure. Hat Girl found herself glancing around, it was so much like she remembered, yet not at the same time.

"Still can't believe you were in movies without me." Platinum huffed, though it wasn't a serious huff like Conductor's past one was.

"In my defense, I didn't know I was going to be getting a robotic brother when I was starring in them." Hat Girl giggled, smiling slightly as she waved to the owls and penguins that recognized her. It felt a bit strange, walking through the studio instead of just jumping about. Either they built some new pathways while she was gone, or she was always looking for a challenge when she was younger.

"Whelp, here we are, lass!" Conductor said, the large fake golden trophy a few feet away from them.

Platinum froze in his steps, month opening in slight shock. "Woah! Especially when the trophies are that big!" He glanced back at her, to which she rolled her eyes. She loved her brother, and they worked well together. But it takes a few tries to get some facts into his head. Like when the answer he was given was 'no'. But, to be fair, she was guilty of that as well. He turned his attention to the birds. "Where do you two even keep all these trophies!?"

"Well, this one is just a plastic replica, darling." DJ Grooves said, watching disappointment fill the Topbot's face.

"Why do you two have a plastic replica anyway?" Snatcher said, flouting to the top of the fake golden trophy, laying on the top slightly. "Aww, were one of you so insure that you would never win a first place trophy? That's just sooo sad."

The Conductor gave a slight smirk and DJ Grooves, who quickly and magically gained a cough. "Step over here darling, and we'll take the new picture for the passport. I do hope you're more… photogenic with staying still this time around." He said, heading to the camera booth.

"No promises, Grooves." She chuckled as she walked over to where the camera was pointing. She still remembered standing in this exact spot years ago. She made sure not to move this time, despite Platinum making faces at her like a child in the background.

The camera clicked, allowing Hat Girl to breathe a sigh of relief. The Conductor snatched the picture from DJ Grooves and looked at it, glancing back at her with a smile. "You look great, lassie!"

"Daddy!" A voice called before Hat Girl had the chance to say 'thanks'. DJ Grooves quickly got out of the photo booth, as a small blue penguin ran from two moon penguins to him. She was wearing a small pink dress, similar to one she remembered one of the Conductor grandkids wore. She giggled as she got to his feet, as the penguin picked her up.

"There you are, did you miss me, little star?" He asked, booping the young penguin's beak, causing her to let out a giggle. He then turned over to the toppat teens. "This here is Dinenna, my beautiful magnificent little girl!"

"Awwww, she's so cute!" Hat Girl said, walking over to the two slightly. Apparently, things had changed more than she had thought. Still, she wasn't going to let that bug her, as she smiled at the little bird. "Hi there, Dinenna!"

Dinenna looked at her slightly, letting out a small gasp in wonder. She then smiled and pointed to her. "Hat Diva! Hat Diva!" She then reached for her slightly. Hat Girl heard a sigh from the Conductor in the background, apparently he was going to take care of Platinum's picture while waiting for 'this' to be over with.

DJ Grooves chuckled slightly, as he looked back at her. "She's a big fan of yours, darling. She even watch the Conductor's westerns that have you in it."

"Don't think I can't hear ye, peck neck" The Conductor grumbled in the background.

Hat Girl smiled slightly at them both, letting the little one garb her hands slightly. Her ice blue eyes looked up at her in joy, she might be able to compete with the seals.

"Alright, we got the lad and lassie's passport taken care of." The Conductor said, walking back over to the three. He then glanced at Hat Girl. "So, which movie should we film, lassie? I've gotten a few ideas over the years."

"Well..." She began messing with her fingers. "I hope you don't mind, but I was kinda thinking I could do a movie with DJ Grooves first. It would likely take less time, and we do need to get back to the others soon. Besides, I figure Dinenna would like that, won't you?" She said, the little penguin giggling slightly.

The Conductor glanced at DJ Grooves slightly, possibly giving him a glare, before sighing slightly in defeat. "Aright, lass. But yer gonna be in one of my movies next!" He crossed his arms and leaned against a nearby wall. Platinum looked at the bird, giving a shrug before walking next to his sister.

"Well, if we're going to be in one of DJ Groove's movies, maybe we can do something with that parade thing I saw while walking in?" He asked, tilting his head to the side. "It seems like it would be a cool idea, and you looked like you were having a lot of fun while making it, Hattie." He smiled at her.

"That sounds like a wonderful idea, darling." DJ Grooves said, looking at the two of them slightly. Dineanna giggled in his arms, making him pause to smile at her before turning his attention back to the other two. "I still remember watching you leading those Owls around the set, like the leader you were."

"Well, if we are going to do that movie, there are a few things I liked to bring up." Hat Girl said as she looked at him. "We should get finger signs in place for us to use. The band tended to get way too close during the parade. And maybe we should have some extra safety measures in place this time around. I loved running around carefree and all, but things would have been bad if I slipped."

"I do see your point there, darling." DJ Grooves said, rubbing the back of his head.

"You better see the point. It would be awful if they fell and broke all their bones, or gears in Platinum's case." Snatcher stated as he flouted to the group with a chuckle. "Normal I say stuff like that in a joking manner, as I want that to happen. But know I will be seeing you in court if something happens to the kiddo." His voice gained a faint threatening tone, hand making a slight fist that was hidden from the others view.

The penguin gulped slightly. "Don't worry, darling, everything will be fine... now, let's get things ready!" He said, picking up his tone again slightly.

Snatcher flouted besides Hat Girl and Platinum as she was being led to another room. "Don't worry, I'll be at the movie set with you in case things go haywire."

"Wow, I really earned a spot in your heart, didn't I?" Hat Girl chuckled, as Snatcher glanced up at the ceiling, likely rolling his eyes. She didn't remember Snatcher being this... nice... or protective. Did something happen while she was gone that made him like this? She didn't bother asking.

Soon, they found themselves in a dressing room. "Platinum, you head into the one over there, I'll go let you know the plans in a few minutes." The Topbot nodded after a brief moment, and headed into the room, followed by a few Moon penguins. DJ Grooves walked over to a nearby closet, and pulled out her... old Parade uniform?

"Wait, didn't you give that to me?" She asked, tilting her head to the side.

DJ Grooves looked over at her, head tilting to the side as Dinenna reached for the feather on the top of the hat. "Not that I recall, darling."

"Weird..." She said, only faintly noticing some Moon Penguins holding measuring tape to her sides. "I could have sworn you did, it was in my closet when I left the planet... same with a bunch of other outfits I don't recall having..." She glanced to the side, faintly able to catch Snatcher starting to mess with his fingers again.

"Must have been a spare, or something." DJ Grooves said, placing Dinenna on the floor with the hat, before grabbing a roll of red fabric off the wall, comparing it to that of the outfit. "I'll admit, I wasn't expecting you to go with me first darling, but I appreciate it." He looked over at her, giving her a soft smile. "I promise, you won't regret it."

Hat Girl giggled. "I'm sure I won't." She said, pausing as she bent down when one of the penguins asked her too. They quickly marked her head length on it before removing it. This was going to be fun.

-------

Hat Girl adjusted her new hat as she glanced into the mirror Snatcher had summoned for her. Her current outfit was almost the exact same as the one she wore years ago, only fitted to her current size. Platinum jumped into the mirror's view as well, wearing almost the exact same outfit, but the gold and silver parts were swapped in color. He looked at her with a grin, warping an arm around her happily.

"You too look perfect, darlings." DJ Grooves said as he glanced over at them, ending the phone call he was on. Dinenna had to go home, as her mother and him agreed it would be a bad idea for her to stay up late, so he was making sure everything was alright there. He then glanced over the two rows of Owls, who were waiting patiently. "Everyone remembers the signals?"

"Yes sir, we got them memorized... r-right everyone?" One of the owls called to the others, who nodded or mumbled shyly their answers.

"Just don't draw attention to the fact I’m here, I don't want to be associated with DJ Peckneck."

"You're in the shadows of the starting building playing cards with a ghost known for stealing souls buddy, I'm pretty sure no one's gonna notice." Snatcher said casually, placing down a 7.

"Ehhh, fair." He glanced down at his cards. "Uhhh... is ace the best card, or the worst card...? This is why I don't play without me grandchildren."

"Alright Darlings, let's get this movie started!" DJ Grooves called, hopping over to a tower-float thing.

"Let's get my movie career started!" Platinum called, racing to another building as soon as he was given the 'go' command.

Hat Girl chuckled slightly as she raced the opposite direction then her brother, hopping onto the nearby building as the owls followed her. She could hear shouts of excitement from the crowd below, she could hear variants of her name shouted in joy below, it made her feel happy.

"Hey Hattie! Check this out!" Platinum called, reading himself up to a wire. He leaned forward and placed his hands on the wire, doing a cartwheel across it.

Hat Girl rolled her eyes, singling her owls to slow down slightly so she could more easily talk to him. "Yeah yeah, I can do a lot more on those wires, dear brother of mine. Watch!" She said, hopping onto one, doing a front flip as she landed on a nearby rooftop. She glanced over smugly.

Platinum made a grin, and singled for his owls to speed up as he raced to his left. Hat Girl was a bit confused, as she hop back and forth between the 'stage' area and a nearby rooftop to get a better look at the situation. She saw Platinum turn around from the rooftop edge and hop off. Before her worry could fully set in, she saw him grab some flags between two buildings just above the crowd, and used them to quickly swing himself onto the next rooftop.

"I'm sorry kiddo, but I'm pretty sure you just got owned!" Snatcher called as he looked away from the card game, chuckling along with the Conductor. Hat Girl gave a glare, then singled for her owls to speed up while looking at DJ Grooves. Then she gave him another single just from him.

"Start the firework cannons!" He called to a nearby group of moon penguins at the controls. They nodded at him, and began to press the buttons. The canons from the nearby flouts started to shoot out fireworks, and some of the ground crew got more safety tarps ready, in case one of the two were to fall onto the ground.

Meanwhile in one of the shops, a storekeeper glanced at the gems on the counter, then looked at the man. "Sir, we're legally not allowed to accept gems as payment."

"Come on, it's basically keeping change." Reginald spoke, voiced tired yet filled with stress and worry. He and Right Hand Man went looking for the kids, but after hours of searching and Reginald falling into water, they decided they should try and get some supplies for the clan. After all, they had to come back on their own sooner or later. Platinum's battery could only last so long after all.

"Look sir, I can tell something's going on, but I can't just give all of this for gems or gold." The storekeeper, glancing at the supplies that were sitting to the side of the counter. Some packs of food, bottles of water, tools, and a few tents. They glanced back at him. "If you don't have anything you can actually use to pay, you have to leave."

"But I..." Reginald let out a groan, glancing over at Right Hand Man.

Right Hand Man sighed as he reached in his pocket. Normally they would likely have just stolen it all, but Reginald refused too. He didn't want to risk them making Hat Girl look bad. Made things a bit more annoying, but he was sure he would adapt over time. He pulled out his wallet and placed some cash on the table, as Reginald had forgotten cash existed. "Alrig't, 'eres yer money. Now we'll be goin'."

"Ohhh, you're from the metro..." The shopkeeper placed their arm in front of the items before the cyborg could garb them. "News flash, your type of money doesn't work here either, pons only."

"Pons?" Reginald asked, confused by the term, before it clicked. This was an alien planet, which meant they had a completely different money system. If they wouldn't accept gold or gems, or the cash they had, they couldn't get anything from the clan... panic began to fall on him as he tried to find words.

"Come on, Reg." Right Hand Man said, holding his husband's hand once he saw panic enter his eyes. He gave the shopkeeper a slight glare, before garbing the money and leading Reginald to the door. It was getting late... they needed to get back. He was a bit annoyed to find the streets filled, which would not make leaving any easier. "It's gonna be alrig't, Reg, we'll figure out w'ot we need to do."

"H-How can you be so sure Righty!?" Reginald asked, some tears forming faintly in the corner of his eyes. "No past leader has ever had to deal with something like this, so I can't use them for guidance! The clan is all going to look to me, hoping I have a way home, but I don't! I can't even keep an eye on my own kids!"

"Easy Reg, easy..." Right Hand Man said, moving some hair out of his lover's eyes. "S'ould 'ave been t'e one keepin' an eye on t'em, knowin' 'ow busy ya would be." He faintly noticed a shadow passed by overhead, but shook it off as he kept his focus on Reginald. "Ya need to trust me, ok?"

"I hope you're right..." Reginald sighed as he glanced at the ground. He could hear the cheering coming from Penguins around him, and giggling, shouting, and taunting from up above. There were two voices that seemed stuck out to him...

"Bet you won't can't do this, Hattie!" A energetic voice called, causing both men to look up at the sound.

"Platinum?!" Reginald asked in shock, as he saw the topbot jump across to one of those large float tower things.

"Wha's the lad doing near the rocket?" the Conductor asked, having longed given up on the card game at this point. Platinum sent a sign to his Owls to have them temporarily stop, as the canon began to glow red. He tapped his foot slightly as he wanted for the faintest sights of a firework. Once one was about to launch out, he jumped over the cannon hole, just barely avoiding being hit. "Wow, the lads really got some skills."

Fear filled Reginald's eyes in a second. "P-PLATINUM TOPBOT COPPERBOTTOM, GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!" He shouted, but was muffled by the cheering of the crowd. He could feel fear itself swimming through his blood, especially when he spotted Hat Girl jumping onto a wire before bouncing up again. "YOU TOO, HATTIE!"

Right Hand Man watched in worry, what were they doing? "Hat Girl, Platinum! Get down now!" He shouted.

Unfortunately, the two were unable to hear their fathers' worried calls, and kept racing around the buildings with the owls following them.

"T'at's it." Right Hand Man groaned, his feet gaining rockets under them as he lifted into the air. He flew over to the two. "Hat Girl! Platinum! Get over 'ere!"

Snatcher caught the flying man out of the corner of his eye, and was naturally confused. He then noticed he was heading to where the teens were, and had to act. He flew over to him, quickly garbing the man by the leg. "WELLLLLLLLLLL... What do you think you're doing?" he coughed slightly "FOOOL!"

"W'ot t'e-" Right Hand Man looked behind him, seeing a large dark figure with glowing eyes smirking at him. He growled, he didn't have time for this! "Let me go! T'e kids could get t'emselfs 'urt if I don't stop t'em!" The ghost didn't respond, just shook his head with a chuckle like he told a joke. Right Hand Man reached for his leg, trying to get it free.

"Oh there's no need to worry sir. As the actor's lawyer, I can say that they aren't going to get hurt anytime soon." Snatcher said, placing a hand on his chest.

"Actor?! Lawyer!?" Right Hand Man shouted as he looked up at him. "Don't know w'ot yer goin' on about!"

"Simple, these two are filming a movie, and I can't have you interrupt them rudely like that."

"It's alright, Snatcher darling. We got enough footage for the movie." DJ Grooves called, as he singled for the filming crew to stop, and for the kids to come back.

Hat Girl and Platinum both raced back to where they were, chuckling all the way. It was only when Hat Girl looked over at the phantom did she notice the cyborg with him. "Snatcher, what are you doing with Papa?"

Snatcher's face went blank as he processed the information. "This is... your father? ...How can you stand being raised by someone so boring!"

"I honestly don't know!" Platinum called up, replacing his parade hat with his normal topbot hat. "No offense Pops, but you're kinda a killjoy."

"A 'killjoy' because I try to protect ya bot'" He called, as he looked at the phantom, before the name Hat Girl called him sunk in. "'ait... T'is is the g'ost who's song I sing for ya, Hattie?!" He shouldn't really be surprised, he knew the ghost wasn't the best person, based on the lyrics. He honestly didn't know why Hattie even liked the song, but it always seemed to cheer her up.

"Yea! Isn't he super cool! Just like Grooves and Conductors are! And everyone on this planet!" She called up happily.

"Righty! Are you and the kids ok!?" Reginald's voice called from the ground below, even more worry inside of it than before. Hat Girl and Platinum glanced at each other, another type of worry growing on their features. They completely forgot about their dads.

The cyborg sighed slightly, as he called out. "Yea, just 'ang on a second!" He then glared at the ghost holding him. "Will ya let me go get my 'usband, t'en we can all 'ave a... proper introduction to eac' ot'er." He mumbled slightly, he rather just garb the kids and start heading back, but that wasn't going to let this ghost let go.

Snatcher glanced to the side slightly with a hum, as if in thought, before shrugging and letting go of his foot. "Sure, why not. You're staying next to my forest anyway, might as well get to know you since you'll be staying here awhile."

The Conductor finally raced out of the shadows next to Grooves, a bit curious at this point. Right Hand Man disappeared from sight, only to reappear with the worried toppat leader in his arms a few seconds later. Reginald quickly, yet somehow gently, raced out of his husband's grip and over to his kids, hugging them both. "You two had me so worried! Are you hurt, you better not be hurt!"

"Relax Dad, we're fine." Platinum said, a slight embarrassed tone in his voice, as Reginald backed away after a moment's hesitation. "We've just been chilling with some of Hattie's friends. Oh! We're also going to be in a movie."

"A movie?" Reginald asked, before shaking his head slightly. "You two should have at least told me or Righty first! I fell into the ocean looking for you earlier!"

"In our defense, you would likely have said no if we told you." Hat Girl said, adjusting her Family Badge on her normal hat before placing it back on.

"Oh, I know for a fact I would 'ave said no." Right Hand Man said, crossing his arms with a huff. "Ya could've gotten 'urt or lost. 'nd Just because ya were on t'is planet before doesn't mean it's any safer for ya t'an ot'er Toppats members."

"The lassie is much more capable than you give her credit fer. But as a father meself, I can see yer worry." The Conductor said, getting the attention of the toppat leaders. "Name's the Conductor, and the Penguin right here is DJ Peckneck."

"DJ Grooves." The penguin corrected, giving a slight glance at Conductor, who just gave a grin in response. He then looked back at the two. "Sorry about keeping your kids for so long, darlings. We just got a little excited when we found her, and didn't think of how her family would react."

"Wha's with the long apology. I would just say 'Sorry' and that'd be that." The Conductor said.

"Ehhh, it doesn't help that we only really mentioned the whole 'crashed on here with the clan' situation to Snatcher." Platinum said, rubbing the back of his head slightly.

Reginald took a few breaths, finally allowing himself to fully calm down after what felt like, and likely was, hours. He then smiled tiredly at the three from this planet. "Well, it's nice to finally met you all, Hattie talks so fondly of you all. My name is Reginald Copperbottom, and this is my Right Hand Man."

"'Ello." Right Hand Man sighed, as he glanced at Reginald. "I 'ate to cut t'is s'ort, but we s'ould be gettin' back to the clan. T'ey're probably worried about us all."

"Awww... but I don't wanna leave yet! There's so much we can do!" Platinum said, eyes glowing faintly in the dark.

"Yeah! And besides... " Hat Kid glanced at the birds and phantom, not finding the exact words. It seemed like she was worried...

"It's alright, Darling. I need to get home anyway. Hazel will kill me if I stay out too late." DJ Grooves said jokingly.

"Aye, same here. I got a busy train schedule tomorrow." The Conductor said, glancing at Hat Girl with a smile. "Besides, ye need to get things with yer... clan, figured out anyway. After that, we can work on our movie!"

"After askin' us first." Right Hand Man stated, a slight glare in his eyes. "I'm not lettin' Reg 'ave anot'er panic attack because t'ey disappeared."

"You really are no fun." Snatcher said, shaking his head to the side slightly.

Hat Girl smiled at them all slightly. Everything was going to be fine...

-------

Burt turned away from the sleeping form of Fredrick when he heard footsteps. He shined the flashlight over, glancing around before his mind took in the figures he saw. "Oh, chief, boss, you're back with the kids."

"Yeah... did anything happen while we were gone?" Reginald asked, sighing as he glanced around. There were a few fires set up, the children sleeping on beds close to each one, while one adult stayed up with a flashlight and a bucket of water near them. Most of the other members were asleep under the broken pieces of the orbital station. A few were still up around what was basically 'medbay' now, likely doing some final checks before heading to 'bed' themselves.

Burt shrugged. "Nothing really. We just got a few fires up and are switching between resting and making sure they don't spread. But uhh, you could probably see that already." He glanced at the small boxes Hat Girl had. "Are those some supplies?"

"No, just two outfits Hattie's friend made for 'er and Platinum." Right Hand Man said. It was true, DJ Grooves allowed the two to keep the outfits. Said to keep it as a welcome back gift. "Store wouldn't accept gold, gems, or cas'. So we're gonna 'ave to find anot'er way to get t'e stuff we need."

"Forgive me for asking, but uhh, why not just steal the supplies?"

"I didn't want to risk making a bad impression to any of Hattie's friends." Reginald sighed, glancing back at Burt. "Besides, based on what Hattie told us in the past, nearly everyone here has a 'trick' they could use to hurt us, even if they don't really mean to. Stealing just seems like a bad idea."

"Bet you some people never thought the leader of the toppat clan would ever say that." Platinum chuckled slightly.

"Well, uhh, do you have any idea what we can do to get supplies?" Burt asked, glancing to the side slightly before groaning. "I'm going to be a wreck without my coffee tomorrow... I blame you, Fredrick." He said, glancing back at the sleeping Toppat.

"Oh! I got an idea!" Hat Girl stated as she glanced at Reginald. "It's a bit away from here, but maybe we can head to Mafia Town? See if we can trade some of the gold for pons, they have a lot of both."

"Well, we did find a boat earlier we can use to get there... " Reginald glanced at Right Hand Man. "What do you think?"

"'onsently? We don't really 'ave anot'er c'oice." Right Hand Man sighed, before he yawned slightly. "W'otever we're doin', we s'ould 'ead ta bed. Can't do anythin' w'en yer basically a zombie."

Reginald nodded as Burt looked at them. "Calla placed some blankets for you all by the power grid. Said you all would likely want to stay close together until you get your actual rooms back."

It took a few minutes to find said power grid, but once they did, they all got settled in. Well, the best they could, as some of the broken walls made the area a bit crowded. Platinum adjusted his position, since there wasn't much room for him to properly stand, before plugging into his charger and turning off for the night. Reginald, Right Hand Man, and Hat Girl stayed close to each other in a nearby corner, having decided it would probably be best for them to sleep together, at least for tonight.

"You know things are going to be ok here, right?" Hat Girl asked as she looked up at them slightly. "My friends won't let anything bad happen to us. There's no need to worry."

Right Hand Man replied with a tried mumble, as he shifted slightly to get more comfortable. Reginald let out a yawn, and brushed some hair out of her eyes, smiling softly at her. "We know, Hattie. We know... Adults just tend to worry about things more than you do. Especially when they're in charge of the clan." He shook his head slightly as he closed his eyes, Hat Girl following suit soon after. "But we have each other... and that's all that matters..."

-------

Snatcher watched the crashed orbital station sight from a distance. He knew the kiddo was bound to leave once again. No contract could make her stay. Why... how did she even worm herself this far into his non-existing heart?! He knew part of the answer, sure, but was that alone enough to make him feel like... this? The fact it felt like part of her was always here didn't help either. He sighed as he floated back down, heading to his tree home. Everything will be fine. He would just have to... enjoy all the time he had with her. Maybe make some extra time as well, if he had too...

Just small little things like a missing tool every now and again... No... that would be cruel... he was already known for being cruel... but to the kiddo? Could he really bring himself low enough to prevent her from going home once again? He'll just have to see what the future has in store... Maybe time will surprise them all...

[caltropspress]

FEEDBACK LOOP #7: Curly Castro’s “Weapon 13X” featuring Breeze Brewin

There was a very old man, an old white man out in the crowd, and he started screaming and crying like a baby and he kept crying and he said, “God damn, God damn, what is this God damn country coming to that the niggers have got guns, the niggers are armed and the police can’t even arrest them!” He kept crying and somebody led him away through the crowd.

—Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns (1962)

Gun flash beats the child’s head in, maniac teeth dance in a bloody grin blue lies, badge confessions, yng dude dead just beyond his mama’s arms

—Amiri Baraka, “Stop Killer Cops”

Police said Cleaver and Hutton were holed up at 1218 28th Street with two 9 mm automatic pistols, two AR-15 and one military-type M-14 automatic rifle, and a large supply of ammunition, some armor-piercing.

—Berkeley Barb, Volume 6, Number 15, Issue 139

1.

“Weapon 13X” is a diptych. Two verses; one pivot—or volta, for you bookworms. Curly Castro is first with a séance that summons the mysteries of Clarence 13X and Weapon X. These nullified variables and Roman numerals come together in an elixir mix so potent that it would make Aes Rock choke on the amalgam. Castro opens the fission gate and discharges two-hundred forty thousand mega-therms on the city of brotherly love, the city of bombs from above onto a 6221 Osage Avenue row house. Shameek just got bust in his arm, leg, leg, arm, head. The Black man is God personified, and Logan is regenerative. Adamantium claws. Mathematical jaws. Science dropped and experiments performed. Spark this like metal does when dragged across concrete.

2.  “Harriet would grab her balls, / This my gun, and this my rifle.”

Harriet Tubman gets cast by Kubrick for Full Metal Jacket, recites the Rifleman’s Creed, but it was actually a pistol she kept buried within the folds of her calico. She sallied forth seeing visions from the overseer’s heave of a weight—made her skull snap. Don’t sleep. “When the caliber’s inside you,” you can’t necessarily count on ��the muzzle smoke revival.”

3.

Quelle Chris provides production, lest we forget his 2019 Guns album with its Dada-bullet, double-barreled barrage album art. The title track armed to the teeth: “Ain’t no cracking that code, / Ain’t no safety on locks, / Might as well get you one, / Procrastinating will get you popped.” The machine gun funk outs finks and COINTELPRO cooperators, conspirators, dispiriters. Here, Castro’s got those same turncoats and sucker MCs in his sights, so to speak.

4.  [The oppressor] teaches the Negro that he has no worth-while past, that his race has done nothing significant since the beginning of time, and that there is no evidence that he will ever achieve anything great. (Carter Godwin Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro, 1933)

Castro makes a promise, provoked by those who came before him, those who brandished firearms in the faces of their enemies:

We never will disarm: these are the lies that you were sold, When your glory tripped up, you trade your weapons in for gold. With Yakub in the schools, trade your dreams, knowledge folds. Found the tome, Mis-Education Negroes…

Dr. Yakub sloshing liquids in the lab—Bunsen burners explode and the lab leak is viral whiteness. Tricknology replaces Biology. Castro is looking back while moving forward. “Doomed to repeat it”-type forewarnings. He knows the ledge and also wants his people to.

5.

aim     get your sights & its sound in abstract or journal movements to a peace settlement

dude shot my man

dead,          precious lord blow off theres no willy in th blues theres no you.

—from Tom Weatherly’s Maumau American Cantos (1970)

Castro is a “gunhand, cybernetic with spray cans, / Basquiat, baklava, Mau Mau.” That’s likely an intentional malaprop—surely his militant stance calls for a balaclava. Even still, Castro doesn’t stutter. He will still sh-sh-shift his voice on you—the dynamics of his delivery raise stakes and get guttural, scraping against sewer plates. He’s potent, even if Basquiat’s pistol appears flaccid with its hand-scrawled linework. In another piece, Basquiat starts the decolonization process at the point of a safari helmet. The image detonates.  

6.  Free country? Man, I should fuck you up for sayin’ that stupid shit alone.

“This film is a call to racial violence!” a film critic shouted at Roger Ebert after a screening of Do the Right Thing. She worried Bed-Stuy would set fire to theaters, but Lee’s 1989 film wasn’t The Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913. An amerikan psychotic turn to theater violence would be postponed until Aurora in 2012, and it would be white violence, which would come as a shock to none who have tracked the trajectory of white violence. Displacement is white violence, too. White violence is a sine qua non for gentrification. And so Castro allies himself with “Buggin’ Out battle brownstone houses, some Bird fans, / While Mookie turns the radio up and launched the trashcan.”

7.  “We are the weapons.”

Of late, Castro has consistently been proving you’re out your depth, with verses so allusive they suggest a strong “Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith, nobody blink. / They don’t now who the fuck that is” vibe. So what, though? At this point, Castro’s a vet, an elder. The youngins need to catch up or cash out. Get KRS-One bookish, kiddies, or be left behind. Be the weapon or never prosper. Create your own mythos: “Omega built a mother by the sun and Cyclops sent / a blurred Baraka poem capable to raise the dead. / Yet instead I use the sword...”—with Wu-Tang pronunciation of the w in “sword,” of course. History moves backwards and forwards at the same time. Language is lost and recovered. The poem is “blurred” because it’s been duplicated on a mimeograph—a machine that involves a “drum.” The words are ink-smudged. Baraka’s former partner, Diane di Prima, shouted, “"Power to the people's mimeo machines!” Accuse and attack, Baraka sloganeered. We’re talking about agency—by hand-crank, handgun, or mic check.

8.

Castro creates imagery like Emory Douglas did with paint: painfully bold and saturated with color like blood soaks clothes. Baraka called Douglas’s art a combo of “expressionist agitprop and homeboy familiarity,” which applies to what Castro does on the track. I quote Mao who called literature and art “part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause,” and Mao quotes Lenin who called lit and art the “cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.” And Baraka also said Douglas’s work:

functioned as if you were in the middle of a rumble and somebody tossed you a machine pistol. It armed your mind and demeanor. Ruthlessly funny, but at the same time functional as the .45 slugs pouring out of that weapon.

The Panthers were trapped and tear-gassed in a West Oakland basement. Eldridge Cleaver told Bobby to go out naked—unarmed as the day he was born not quite eighteen years earlier—but he emerged from the burning house fully dressed, with dignity, and he was searchlighted and shotshotshotshotshotshotshot dead.

Castro needs Brewin to make the cypher complete—a two-man killarmy using loud words in quiet wars, no silencer.

9.  “Before blurting out, try analysis, brother.”

Breeze’s Yo, listen… at the start of his verse is comparable to Sir Thomas Wyatt intoning Whoso list to hunt… to begin his 16th-century sonnet. The amalgam here is less Five Percenter plus clandestine government experimentation and more a deconstruction of the both violent and sexualized language of braggadocio. “Anything you say isn’t played like Miranda Rights,” and so we’re already with our hands behind our backs, silenced by an pig officer’s gag order. The competition doesn’t get played; they play themselves.

Sir Thomas Wyatt sets it off like so:

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas, I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow.

Breeze has wanted to stay pleasant to the ears—you know, like Lauryn Hill phone sexing—so this isn’t new territory but rather a well-worn path. Wyatt’s wearied and “so sore” by “the hunt,” the pursuit of his love interest, even though he knows “where is an hind.” Still, “as she fleeth afore / Fainting [he] follows.” He can’t help himself.

Love is lost within violent pursuit. Breeze speaks of a “plan to strike” and “zero in” on a “target,” his quarry. He and Castro are “talking about broads often, no doubt, / We broad and burly as hell, / Brag about the hunt, you was jukin’ a girly gazelle.” Breeze’s assault is dizzying, a salvo from all angles: “Hit ’em with some counter clay rebuttals that’s subtle but still befuddle if dude slow.”

10.  “It’s nothin’, I gotcha, and that’s word to Super Lover Cee.”

Super Lover Cee and Casanova Rud’s 1988 single “Girls I Got ’Em Locked” articulates the carceral embrace of “locking” a girl down, which—consequently—requires violence to enforce: “Don’t ever touch a girl owned by me or I’ll ruin ya’, / Slap you with my mic simultaneously as I’m doin’ ya.” The girl is commodified, and Super Lover Cee takes a proprietary attitude toward the relationship. If you overstep, you’ll be ruined, that is, you’ll fall. And while you’re prostrate, you’ll be slapped with the phallic mic simultaneously. Is the Super Lover doin’ her or you, though? What’s truly getting him off? That hypermasculine posturing skews homoerotic. Breeze Brewin laughs at you for subscribing to the nonsense: “Dag, if that was what you believe then your world be a hell.”

11.

Liberal discourse suggests policing your impulses. Put down the gun—don’t touch it. “Touchy subjects,” like racism (apparently), get the “We need to have a conversation” treatment. Look, don’t touch. Don’t touch the exhibit of stolen artifacts—those Benin bronzes in the British Museum. Beneath the topic of orignoo gunn clapping, Curly Castro’s track is about the x’s and o’s of eros as well. Many gestures meant to protect women are merely some other man staking his claim, adorning her with “diamonds in letters plain,” as Wyatt writes of the collar around the deer’s “fair neck.” Wyatt’s sonnet warns against overstepping (or even half-stepping). The collar reads Noli me tangere (touch me not)—she belongs to someone else. It’s a bad touch example. Like his fellow Indelible J-Treds, Breeze Brewin is the living circle-circle-dot-dot: nobody can touch him.

12.

Let’s bring it back to Little Bobby Hutton. When Eldridge Cleaver told him to leave the ambushed basement naked, he was thinking of Bobby’s safety. He thought the extreme measure of appearing on the street without clothes would be enough to convince the pigs he wasn’t armed. Cleaver was naïve to think so. Bobby Hutton was right to emerge clothed. In doing so, he rejected the indignity of the auction block, the lynching, the mutilation and spreading of souvenir flesh. The searchlight made Bobby Hutton the subject of a spectacle, yes, but he refused to consent to the psychosexual desires of white supremacy. He refused the castration ritual. Little Bobby Hutton, in effect, threw down a challenge to the cops: Use your imagination once again. Try to think of a few situations where your own weapon might be used against you…used against you…used against you.

Images:

Emory Douglas, The Black Panther, Vol. IV, No. 78, 1971 (detail) | Weapon X (detail, issue unknown) | Emory Douglas, Rat Subterranean News (1970) | Harriet Tubman with gun sketch | Anti-Mau Mau British propaganda poster | Newspaper headline from Negroes with Guns | Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (date unknown) | Jean-Michel Basquiat, Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, and Amorites on Safari (1982) | Screenshot from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) | Two images from the Berkeley Barb, Volume 6, Number 15, Issue 139 (1968) | Emory Douglas, The Black Panther (miscellaneous poster) | Medieval depiction of the hunt (unknown) | Image detail from the Berkeley Barb, Volume 6, Number 15, Issue 139 (1968)

[temilyrights]

in this space with you

Summary:  Jack Sloane x Reader. Ellie and Reader stumble across Jack on a date. Jack assumes that Ellie and Reader are on a date themselves. 

Word Count: 4422

A/N: This was meant to be angsty and then became fluffy and cute and honestly that never happens with my writing...Light angst, fluff, emotions, the usual. As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated:) Enjoy! 

Read on AO3

“This was a great idea.” Ellie praises between a mouthful of food. It was Tuesday evening and you already couldn’t wait for this week to be over. You’d caught a case in the early hours of the morning, and it’d been nothing but hell. Lying witnesses, cryptic descriptions of what the Lieutenant was working on. It just seemed like no matter what leads you followed someone was blocking your path. Everyone was frustrated but when it hit 8 o’clock and the leads were dying out, Gibbs had sent you all home. 

Apart from home didn’t sound like the best idea, not when your mind was still spinning from the case. You’d noticed Ellie’s hesitation as well. Alcohol would usually be your go-to, but it was Tuesday and you needed to be sharp for tomorrow so, instead, you’d agreed on dinner. You hadn’t realised how hungry you were until you arrived at the restaurant and the smell of food filled your senses. Your mouth was practically watering by the time your lasagne arrived.

“So much better than drowning myself in alcohol.” Ellie laughs at your quip, placing her fork down to take a sip from her glass of wine, the glass stops inches from her mouth as her jaw hangs open in shock. “What?” You frown. 

“Ok, don’t look now but Jack’s sitting at a table by the side of the room...I think she’s on a date.” Ellie’s voice drops to a low whisper and you swallow roughly as an odd feeling rushes through you, a mixture of disappointment and jealousy which has no right to appear. Ignoring Ellie’s ‘don’t look’ you turn around and feel your heart drop into your stomach when you see Jack’s hand entangled with a man’s as they sit across from one another. You kind of recognise him but don’t know where from and the fact you could only see the left side of his face wasn’t helping. You know you’re staring but can’t seem to get your head to turn away. Her hairs tucked behind one ear allowing you to see the smile on her face. She’s wearing the same beige blazer from work but instead of the matching slacks, she’s paired them with blue skinny jeans. “Y/N?” Ellie’s voice is full of confusion. You take one last second to take in the scene before plastering a smile on your face and turning to face the concerned blonde. 

“Do you recognise him?” You ask, hoping Ellie will just pick up the conversation and let your odd reaction go. 

“He works at the NSA. He’s the analyst we worked with last month.” You nod as you think back to the case. His name was Matthew? Michael? Marshall? Something boring and easily forgettable. You couldn’t imagine why Jack would ever even consider a date with the man. He was nice looking, sure, but he’d been dull and pompous as hell and definitely not good enough for Jacqueline fricking Sloane. “What’s happening here?” Ellie’s watching you closely, eyes examining you as she tries to work it out. 

“Nothing.” You try to sound unbothered, shrugging as you return to your food but Ellie’s eyes just narrow staring at you until suddenly her eyes widen in surprise. 

“You like Jack?” It’s said in a terrible attempt of a whisper. Panic rushes through you as you jump further upright in your chair. 

“No.” It’s said too quickly, and your voice is like 3 octaves too high for it to be believable. “I-I’m just surprised Jack’s on a date with him of all people. Didn’t he drive you insane on the case? He was so far up his own ass I’m surprised he could see anything.” 

Ellie snorts a laugh. “Sure, he was annoying but he’s handsome,” Your face scrunches up and Ellie rolls her eyes playfully. “He is! And maybe he’s nicer outside the office.” 

“Yeah, maybe.” You sigh, dropping your fork onto your plate suddenly no longer hungry. 

“Oh wow, you really like her.” It’s a statement, not a question. The sympathy in Ellie’s voice makes your voice catch in your throat. 

You cough in an attempt to clear it. “It’s just a crush. Harmless, I’m basically over it already.” It’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told Ellie. You’d had a crush on Jack since the moment she’d turned up to NCIS 3 years ago and it’d only grown since so there was definitely no chance of you just getting ‘over it’ anytime soon (but you could dream). 

“So, if I was to tell you that Jack and Mark were currently kissing,” Your head swings around, a blush covering your face when you realise the two of them were not kissing and were instead just chatting. “It wouldn’t bother you at all.” Ellie’s voice is full of mirth, a shit-eating grin on her face that just earns her a glare in response. “I’m sorry.” 

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not, but that’s only because now I’m thinking about it, the two of you, It makes sense. There’s always been something between you both, none of us really understood what it was, but this makes sense.” 

“You’re reading too far into this. I don’t even know if Jack likes women, and even if she does...She doesn’t like me, not like that.” 

“How can you-” 

“Can we just drop this? Enjoy the rest of our dinner.” Ellie wants to protest but instead, she sighs and goes back to her food. You smile, taking a bite from your own food which is now slightly cold. “How was karaoke night with Nick?” 

Ellie doesn’t try to protest again, instead, describing Nick’s terrible re-enactment of ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. It’s not long before you’ve both finished your meals and begin to make your way out of the restaurant. You’re too preoccupied telling Ellie about the lunch you’d had with your mother the previous weekend that you don’t notice that Ellie’s led you around the long way just so you have to pass Jack’s table until it’s too late. 

“Jack, fancy seeing you here.” Ellie’s voice is gleeful. You glare daggers into the back of her head but she only smirks when she turns to face you. You were going to kill her.

“Ellie, Y/N.” Jack’s voice is full of surprise, her cheeks heating up as she looks between the two of you and her hand slips away from Matthew’s? Michael’s? You couldn’t remember his name and truthfully you didn’t care. Your glare has subsided, instead replaced with an awkward smile as you try to think of a way to hurry out of the restaurant and to the safety of your car. “What are you guys doing here?” Jack’s eyes narrow. 

One of your brows raises, a smirk tugging at your lips. “We had dinner like one usually does when at a restaurant.” Ellie snorts. Jack’s eyes are still flicking between the two of you as if she’s trying to put together a puzzle she doesn’t quite understand. A waiter goes to pass you, your arm comes to rest on Ellie’s back as you move her closer to the table to allow him to pass. Jack’s eyes zero in on the contact, her lips pressing into a thin line.

“Mark, Hi.” The man who you’d half-forgotten about speaks up, extending his hand to Ellie to shake. 

“Right sorry, Yes this is Mark my-” Jack clears her throat. You shake his hand, probably gripping it a little tighter than you should as you plaster a smile across your face. 

“Date.” Mark grins and honestly, you want to punch him.

“Yes. Date.” 

“Well, we don’t want to intrude,” Ellie says as if that isn’t exactly what she was doing. “We’ll see you at the office in the morning.” 

“Bye Jack, Michael.” It’s petty, and Jack will see right through it, but it’s worth it for the way he stutters to correct you. Jack’s eyes are narrowed but you just smirk at her. 

“I’ll see you both tomorrow,” Jack says. Mark’s hand reaches out, tangling their fingers back together. It makes your chest ache and you quickly avert your eyes, all your humour gone as you follow Ellie from the restaurant making sure to never turn back around. 

Ellie starts talking the second the door shuts behind you. “I mean she totally likes you right? There was no other-” 

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” You cut her off, really no longer in the mood for this and cursing yourself for ever even suggesting tonight. You should have just gone home, maybe alcohol would have been the better option, probably would have hurt less. 

“Wait, Y/N.” Ellie starts to follow after you, distress filling her voice. 

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.” You manage a small smile, which Ellie returns, before turning back and making your way to your car. 

You ignore the pit in your stomach. Try to block out the images of their hands intertwined and Jack’s smile. Try not to think about them back at the restaurant, about the possibility of them kissing, about Jack settling for some mediocre man that definitely doesn’t deserve her. You take a long shower, allowing your tears to mingle with the water and then put on your comfiest pyjamas, wrapping yourself in a blanket and settling on the sofa. You pick out a movie on Netflix and hit play, snuggling further into the pillows as you allow the film to distract you from your thoughts. 

You wake up at 5, still on the sofa, having fallen asleep at some point during the movie. You chuck on your gym clothes, pack your stuff for the day and make yourself a cup of coffee before heading to work. It’s barely 6 when you arrive. You head straight to the gym, dumping your bag in the corner as you put in your headphones and crank your music up high and let loose on the punching bag.

You head up to the bullpen a couple of hours later, freshly showered and now donning a work-appropriate outfit, one that left you feeling confident and ready for the day. “Morning, Gibbs.” You say, smiling when you notice the man sitting at his desk. You put your bag away and take your own seat. 

“You’re here early.” He comments, looking at you from his desk. 

“Not really it’s already 8 o’clock.” 

“And your car was already here when I arrived an hour ago,” Gibbs smirks, eyes curious.

You shrug. “Wanted to get in some exercise before work.” You walk over to Ellie’s desk, grabbing the case file you knew she’d had the night before. You flick through it as you sit back down, focusing on the folder and finding new leads instead of Gibbs’ interested eyes and the fact you could hear the elevator opening and the familiar click of heels making their way to the bullpen. 

“Mornin’ Jack.” 

“Good morning, Gibbs, Y/N.” You look up long enough to flash her a small smile before returning to the folder in front of you. You can feel Jack’s eyes flicking to you as she speaks to Gibbs. “Is Ellie in?” 

That gains your attention, the way Jack’s trying to sound casual but it’s anything but. You look up just as Gibbs responds. “No. Why?” He’d noticed as well then. 

“Oh, just wanted her opinion on something.” Jack swings on her heels, her voice too light. The elevator doors ding open again, Ellie and Tim make their way over, laughing.  

“Good morning.” Ellie sings, she heads straight to your desk and hands you a cup of coffee. “Sorry for last night,” Ellie speaks quietly so not to be heard by anyone else. 

“It’s fine, really.” You smile softly. “But thank you for the coffee.” You take a sip of the drink, humming in delight. Jack’s glaring at Ellie the whole exchange, watching your soft smiles and quiet words makes her blood boil, her hands grip so tightly on her bag that her knuckles turn white, but by the time you look at her she’s got a slightly strained smile on her face.

Jack points in the direction of her office. “Well, I should get to work.” She waves goodbye and starts to exit. 

“Jack, didn’t you want to talk to Bishop?” Gibbs calls after her, halting Jack’s steps and causing Ellie’s head to perk up in interest. 

“Oh, right yes, uh, are you alright if we go to my office?” 

“Sure.” Ellie shrugs, getting up from her desk and following Jack from the room. Both you and Gibbs watch them leave, both confused by how Jack was acting. 

Ellie returns about 15 minutes later. Her eyes are filled with determination as she hurriedly makes her way over to you, grabbing you by the arm and dragging you in the direction of the elevator. 

“Ellie? What’s happening?” You try to protest, eyes wide in shock. Ellie doesn’t respond, just pushes you into the elevator as Jimmy exits. 

“Hey, guys-” Ellie slams the close button, cutting off Jimmy’s words before hitting the emergency stop.

You cross your arms over your chest. “Ready to tell me what the hell that was about?” 

“I think Jack thinks we’re dating.” Your mouth drops open and you can’t do anything but stare at Ellie in shock. “She got me to look over some paperwork, but she kept asking questions about last night and just us in general.” 

“Like what?” 

“Like if we did anything nice after dinner and if we have plans together anytime soon. She was trying to be subtle but when I told her we were planning a weekend away she looked about ready to snap the pen in her hands in half.” 

“We aren’t planning a weekend away.”

“I know that, but she didn’t, and I wanted to see what her reaction would be,” Ellie smirks, shrugging. “I know I said I’d drop this, but Y/N I really do think she likes you.” 

“She was literally on a date last night. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t.” You roll your eyes, trying to stamp down the hope that you could feel brewing. 

Ellie’s smirk only widens. “A date which I asked her about, and she said she wasn’t seeing him again!” 

“Doesn’t mean she’s interested in me. What’s his face was dull as hell.” 

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Mark! And are you serious? I swear to god if you don’t go and see her, I’m going to go tell her myself.” 

“You wouldn’t dare.” 

“Wanna bet?” You both stare at each other, waiting for the other to back down. There was just no way Jack liked you. Surely, she would have said something if she felt anything for you, she’s not the type of person to wallow in her feelings. Although she was more touchy with you, you’d always put that down to the fact you were good friends. You think about the way her head had rested on your shoulder when you’d been around her house the week before watching some shitty tv show she loved. You think about the way even at the office she always touched you in some way, a hand on your back, on your shoulder, on your arm and even occasionally a small grip to your hand before she let go. She didn’t do that with anyone else.

 If you went and talked to her at least there was a chance to gauge the situation without admitting anything. You sigh, dropping Ellie’s gaze. “Fine.” 

You glare at the blonde as she grins. “Yay.” She disables the emergency lock and presses the button for the next floor. “Now, go talk to her.” You get off the elevator, Ellie descends the stairs and you avoid looking at her, and the curious eyes you can feel on you from the bullpen as you make your way across the landing and down the corridor to Jack’s office. 

You stop outside, wringing your hands before knocking on the door. “Hey.” Your small, unsure smile is reflected back at you when Jack lifts her head. 

“Hey. Everything ok?” 

You take a couple of steps into her office. “Yeah. I just wanted to speak to you about something.” 

“Sure. Take a seat.” Jack signals to her sofa. You make your way over, kicking your shoes off as you bring your feet up, wrapping your arms around your legs and resting your head on your knees. Jack shuts her office door before making her way over, she pauses by the chair opposite you. “Are you here to speak to me as a psychologist or as a friend?” 

“Friend.” Jack nods, bypassing the chair and taking the seat next to you on the sofa. A smile tugs at your lips. She isn’t wearing shoes, probably kicked off somewhere behind her desk like usual, so she crosses her legs, sitting sidewards so she’s facing you. You shuffle round to face her two, putting your head back on your knees. Jack’s eyebrows are furrowed in concern and you want nothing more than to lean over and kiss the worry away. 

“What’s up?” 

You chew your lip, noting the way Jack’s eyes momentarily focus on the action before she’s meeting your eyes again. It gives you a little confidence. “Ellie told me if I didn’t talk to you, she would.” At the mention of Ellie’s name, you see Jack’s walls slam up, her smile faltering and you realise Ellie might have actually been right. A smirk tugs at your lips. “I’m not dating Ellie.” 

Jack’s eyes widen in surprise. You think you see a glimmer of hope shining in them but she’s looking away before you can be sure and when she meets your eyes again her walls are back in place. “Ok?” Jack says, prompting you to continue. 

Your nerves come right back. The next step was going to involve you admitting to Jack that you liked her in some way and once that happened there was no going back, no matter if she returned your feelings or not. You don’t realise you’re fiddling with your fingers until Jack’s hand reaches out to cover them. 

“Hey.” Jack’s smile is soft as she waits for you to meet her eyes, only continuing talking once you do. “You know you can tell me anything.” Jack’s thumb rubs soothing circles on the back of one of your hands. 

You take a deep breath, lifting your head from your knees and moving to copy Jack’s crossed leg position. Jack pulls her hand away from yours but before it can retreat all the way back to her lap you cover it with your own and then very slowly link your fingers with hers, watching closely to see her reaction. Jack’s mouth hangs open slightly in surprise, her eyes darting between your eyes and intertwined hands. 

You chuckle awkwardly. “You know, I was so content just suppressing these feelings...but then I saw you at the restaurant with your hands interlocked with his and suddenly my heart was in my stomach and all the feelings that were under lock and key came bursting out and all I wanted to do was steal you away from the douche, that by the way, totally doesn’t deserve to even be in like 10 feet of you let alone on a date.” Jack releases a watery chuckle along with a playful roll of the eyes. “But I couldn’t do any of that because I’m your friend, and friends aren’t meant to get jealous of their friends being on dates.” 

“They aren’t?” Jack’s lips twitch into a smirk, her voice barely above a whisper. “Guess I missed that memo.” 

“Yeah, I think Ellie would agree.” You tease, voice as quiet as Jack’s. Her cheeks prickle with heat but her eyes don’t leave yours. You don’t know when it happened, but you’ve moved closer to each other, Jack reaches out and cups your cheek. You instantly lean into the touch, loving the way Jack smiles and her eyes twinkle.

She hums. “I guess friends probably shouldn’t want to kiss their friends either.” You swallow roughly as Jack’s gaze falls to your lips before slowly making its way back to your eyes. “I suppose we aren’t just friends then.”

“Hmm...That seems like a theory that needs testing out.” Your eyes darken, tongue darting out to wet your lips in anticipation. With a laugh, Jack tugs you closer, your breath catches in your throat as she stops centimetres from your lips. Your heads are titled, her heavy-lidded eyes darting between yours and your open mouth in question. Your hand goes to the back of her neck and you close the last bit of distance. The kiss is soft and slow and, despite your slightly awkward crossed-legged positions, better than anything you’d ever imagined. Your hands tangle in the hair at the nape of her neck as you explore one another’s mouths. It’s over too soon, Jack pulling back slightly to rest her forehead against yours. You’re grinning like a maniac but you’re too happy to care. 

“You’re so beautiful.” Jack breathes. Your cheeks heat up from the combination of her words and the intensity of her gaze. You pull her back in, placing a soft peck on her lips. Jack stops you from pulling away, releasing a breathy “Nuh-uh.” and bringing you right back to her lips. The kisses heat up as she pulls a throaty moan from you, tongue seeking entrance to your mouth. She finds her way into your lap, moans erupting from both of you as she grinds her hips down and cups your breast through your shirt. 

You pull your mouth away, both of you breathing heavily. “Work.” 

“I really don’t care about work right now.” Jack grinds her hips again to prove her point and you’re so tempted to say screw it but you know this case is important. 

“You will when I inevitably get a message telling me to get my ass back to work.” And you weren’t about to start something you couldn’t finish. Jack sighs, knowing you’re right. She goes to shuffle off your lap, but you stop her with a hand to her waist. Jack brow raises, smirk back on her face. You take a moment to admire her. Her slightly ruffled hair from where your hands had been, swollen lips from your kisses. She was stunning.

“Y/N?” Jack asks, eyes softening as she reaches out to cup your cheek. “What are you thinking?” 

“I like you a lot, Jack. I just need to know if this, us, is something you want.” Tears build behind your eyes as your insecurities rush through you. You needed to be sure that she felt the same things you did before you let yourself fly away on cloud 9...before you got hurt. Jack clicks her tongue, eyes unbelievably soft and full of emotion as she places a hard, passionate kiss against your lip. When she pulls back, she makes sure your eyes are open and on her before she speaks. 

“Yes Y/N, I want this. I want you.” A tear escapes your eye and Jack wipes it away, leaving a kiss in its place. She moves to your other cheek, placing another kiss before capturing your lips again. 

Jack’s office phone starts ringing, and she groans, placing one last peck to your lips before getting off your lap and making her way to her desk. “Jacqueline Sloane.” Your eyes trail over her body as she perches herself on the edge of her desk. She’s wearing one of her fitted pantsuits. It’s dark green with a white shirt underneath and honestly, it should be illegal to look that good. You couldn’t wait to get her to your house, have the time to explore every inch of her skin, see her laid out underneath you with messy hair and a satisfied smile. God, she was-

“Hey!” You jump as a lollipop hits you in the chest. “What was that for?” You pout, taking the lollipop out of its wrapper and placing it in your mouth. Mm, your favourite. 

Jack puts the phone back in its holder. A brow raised as she huffs. “Oh, Please. As if you weren’t just undressing me with your eyes.” Your cheeks pink, as you make your way over to Jack. You pull the lollipop from your mouth, twiddling it between your fingers as you smirk.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“I know you too well to let your innocent act fool me.” Jack pulls you to stand between her legs, hands resting on your hips. 

“Oh no!” You fake gasp, humour seeping into your tone. “Can’t have you knowing all my secrets.”

Jack hums, her voice lowering to a sultry tone that makes your legs wobble. “Baby, I already do.”

“So not fair.” You mutter. 4 words, a sultry tone, and her smirk and you were already putty. Jack’s office phone rings again. She leans over and grabs the phone, keeping a hand on your hip so you don’t move away. 

“Jacqueline Sloane.” 

“Tell Y/N to get her ass back down here. She’s not getting paid to make out with you.” Gibbs' gruff voice rings through the phone. Jack’s head tilts back, pure laughter escaping her throat as your face heats up. 

“I’ll send her down.” Jack doesn’t wait for a response, just hangs up the phone. A devilish smirk on her face when she faces you. “I think we should make that a game, how many times in a day can we make out without getting caught.”  

“Make it a competition and add in how often we can distract each other as well.” 

Jack’s eyes darken. “Are you prepared to lose? I happen to have quite the competitive streak.” 

“Oh, I know. All the more fun.” Jack’s toes curl as you capture her lips, drawing moans from her throat as you nip at her lip. Jack’s hands tighten on your waist as she tries to pull you closer, but you pull out of her grasp, breaking the kiss with a smirk. “Got to go to work.” You place the lollipop back in your mouth, leaving Jack as her swollen lips hang open in shock. 

“You play dirty.” 

“Oh, baby.” You grin as Jack’s eyes darken, nostrils flaring. “You’ve got no idea.” You close her office door behind you, basking in her frustrated groan as you walk back to the bullpen with a skip in your step and a smirk on your face. 

[myhauntedsalem]

The Titanic and the Paranormal

There are many supposedly haunted places in this world, and most of us may think that these spectral forces gravitate towards dilapidated old houses or scary forests in the middle of nowhere. We have this image of what haunted should be, and most often it all comes down to a place or thing with a tragic history and death orbiting it, through whatever means producing these alleged haunted phenomena. The seas also have plenty of this, and there is perhaps no greater tragedy on the ocean than the deadly sinking of the now infamous Titanic. Here thousands of people died a horrible death, and it should go without saying that this doomed vessel has generated its fair share of strange phenomena over the decades.

When the RMS Titanic set out on its maiden voyage it was considered to be a grand wonder of engineering and the pinnacle of passenger liners, unparalleled in opulent luxury and comfort for its time. A British ship operated by White Star Lines and designed by the architect Thomas Andrews, the RMS Titanic was the largest ship on the seas at the time, just about the largest ship ever, and had the most cutting edge technology and facilities ever seen on a passenger liner. The colossal ship was fitted with all manner of bells and whistles, including fancy radio transmitter equipment, and it was actually one of the fist ships ever to start using the new SOS distress signal, which would replace the signal CQD (come quick, danger). The imposing ship featured revolutionary safety features for its time, including an ingenious system of interlocking compartments and remotely operated watertight doors, among others, and when it inexorably set out from Southampton to New York City on its very first voyage the Titanic was widely touted as being wholly unstoppable and “unsinkable.”

When this behemoth of a ship departed on April 10, 1912, under the command of a Captain Edward Smith, it was to much joyous fanfare and publicity. The Titanic departed with over 2,200 passengers, many of them some of the wealthiest people in the world, and others were emigrants from all over Europe eager to go off to start a new life in the faraway, promised land of the United States. It was a truly historic event, demanding attention, and at the time no one would have thought anything of the fact that despite its advanced safety features it was woefully short of lifeboats, with only enough to carry around 1,178 people under ideal conditions. After all, the lifeboats were just a formality, right? Surely nothing could ever sink the mighty Titanic. Or so they thought, and the rest is history.

On April 14, 1912, the Titanic was making its way through the Atlantic at high speed around 375 miles from the coast of Newfoundland in the early hours of morning when it struck an iceberg that promptly robbed the ship of its popular title of “unsinkable.” Many of the watertight compartments that had been hailed as groundbreaking technology immediately were smashed wide open, and the crippled giant began to sink at a steady rate. In the ensuing panic and chaos, the problem of the lifeboat shortage became painfully apparent, and many of these had the added problem that they were difficult and time consuming to launch. Indeed, many of the scant lifeboats went out into the frigid seas only partially loaded, leaving others to their impending doom. Eventually the gargantuan ship broke apart and plunged down below the waves with an estimated approximately 1,500 people still aboard.

When the another ship called the RMS Carpathia came to the ship’s aid, it was able to rescue around 700 of the survivors, with the rest disappearing down into a watery grave to rest at the bottom down in nearly 13,000 feet of water, where the ship remains to this day. Indeed, for decades the exact location of the wreck remained a mystery in and of itself, with it not being discovered until 1985. The sinking of the RMS Titanic is one of the worst, most tragic maritime disasters in history, and at the time it shocked the world. Since that fateful morning, the Titanic has gone on to become one of the most famous ships to ever ride the seas, and has been the subject of countless films, books, and documentaries. It is by far one of the most well-known wrecks in the world, and it is perhaps no surprise that it has drawn its fair share of tales of the paranormal as well.

Weirdness seems to have hovered around the vessel even before it was even launched. According to an April 12, 2012 Associated Press article, in 1898 the American author Morgan Robertson wrote a novella called Futility, which features in its first half a ship called the Titan, and which besides the similarity of the names of the vessels displays a wide variety of spooky, seemingly prophetic details and uncanny parallels between the fictional Titan and the real Titanic. For instance, both were nearly the same size and could go the same maximum speed of over 20 knots, and both of the ships were deemed unsinkable and were subsequently sunk by hitting icebergs, in mid-April no less. In addition, both lacked enough lifeboats to save all of the passengers, and even the novella’s opening sounds as if it could easily be talking about the Titanic, saying:

She was the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men. In her construction and maintenance were involved every science, profession, and trade known to civilization.

When Futility was first released, it was met with a resounding lack of interest, due to the fact that it is actually not seen as being very good, and Robertson was mostly considered a bit of a hack. The book itself mostly devolved into an improbable tale of survival for the alcoholic protagonist, with Titanic historian Paul Heyer saying of Robertson and his work, “He’s not exactly a great literary stylist. Moralistic tone, implausible situations, poor character development. The only saving grace of the novella is intriguing information about the ship and her fate.” Indeed, it was not until after the historic disaster that the book got any sort of fame or recognition at all. Considering all of these eerie details in a book written years before the real Titanic set sail, in the wake of the disaster it did not go unnoticed, and Robertson was widely hailed as having prophesied the sinking of the ship with some sort of precognitive abilities. This has been explained away by skeptics as being pure coincidence, as Robertson was an avid writer on ships and the sea and Heyer has said of this:

He was someone who wrote about maritime affairs. He was an experienced seaman, and he saw ships as getting very large and the possible danger that one of these behemoths would hit an iceberg.

Whether Robertson was really psychic or not is unknown, but what is known is that this is just the beginning of the weirdness surrounding the Titanic. Considering the sheer loss of life and the traumatic circumstances of the disaster, along with the fact that hundreds of these bodies were never recovered and remained lost at sea, it is perhaps no surprise at all that the very wreck of the Titanic is said to be haunted. There have been numerous reports of ships passing the area of the Titanic’s resting place off Newfoundland seeing glowing or flickering orbs of light both above the water and darting about beneath the waves. This phenomenon is reportedly often accompanied by inexplicable radio interference, and even submarines passing the area of the wreck have apparently had such interference, as well as phantom SOS signals that seem to come from nowhere.

One ship that was passing the site of the wreck even had a sighting of a ghostly apparition said to be a victim of the RMS Titanic. In 1977, the liner SS Winterhaven was passing through and on this evening Second Office Leonard Bishop was showing a passenger around the ship who seemed to be absolutely obsessed with every detail of the vessel. As the tour went on, Bishop noticed that besides this intense interest in his ship there was something off about the quiet, soft-spoken man he was guiding around, but he wasn’t sure what at the time. After the tour, he did not remember seeing the man again, but the strange aura of something not quite right made him memorable, and Bishop would not forget the mysterious stranger’s face. It would not be until years later when Bishop by chance saw a picture and claimed to know the man in it, much to the shock of the person who had showed it to him. It turned out that unbeknownst to Bishop the picture was of Captain Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, who would have been long dead during their tour.

The ghost of Titanic captain Edward Smith actually seems to get around, as he has been reportedly seen from time to time on other vessels passing the area of wreck as well, and he is even said to haunt his childhood home in Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, England. The previous house owners, Neil and Louise Bonner, rented the house out for over a decade, and they say that there had been numerous reports from tenants over the years of paranormal activity at the house. Banging, whispers, and other anomalous noises were common, as well as roving colds spots, inexplicable floods in the kitchen, and most shocking of all a full-bodied spectral apparition of Smith himself seen in the bedroom.

In addition to the hauntings of the wreck site and the home of the Titanic’s captain are the numerous hauntings that seem to revolve around artifacts and relics from the wreck, and museum collections with such items tend to be magnets for inexplicable ghostly activity. One of the more active of these is the “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition,” at The Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, which houses a large array of over 300 items from the sunken ship and is ground zero for a whole plethora of unexplained phenomena. Visitors and staff alike supposedly frequently report strong feelings of being watched or followed, as well as disembodied voices or footsteps, or being poked, prodded, or pushed by unseen hands, in addition to sightings of shadowy apparitions lurking in the halls and corridors. The attraction’s artifact expert Joe Zimmer seems to be particularly tormented by these wayward spirits, claiming that he constantly experiences having his hair or clothes yanked on or his name whispered when no one is there, and he says he has even heard phantom music playing.

One of the more well-known of the apparitions of the Luxor exhibit is apparently the ghost of Frederick Fleet, who was the lookout on the RMS Titanic who had spotted the iceberg that sank the ship and had warned the crew. Although Fleet was one of the survivors of the tragedy, he would forever have feelings of guilt afterwards, and this plus the death of his wife in 1964 drove him to commit suicide by hanging himself at his home in England. Fleet’s spirit has been reported as haunting the Promenade Deck of the exhibition, although why this ghost should appear all the way over in Las Vegas remains unclear. There is also the apparition of a young woman in a black old-fashioned dress and with her hair in a bun who is regularly seen on the premises.

A strange incident with a ghost allegedly happened on the very opening day of the exhibition, when a photographer was getting ready for the event. He claims that as he was setting up he was surprised to see a woman in period clothes come walking down the grand staircase, which was odd because as far as he knew, no one else was supposed to be there and he had not seen anyone else arrive. Thinking that perhaps it was an extra dressed up in period clothing for the purpose of the grand opening he asked her if he could take her photo on the staircase, but she did not say a word, merely standing there in an apparent trance before vanishing into thin air.

Some of the strange incidents at the Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition have apparently been caught on film and audio as well. One example is a strange sequence of events concerning a photo of Bruce Ismay, who was the chairman and managing director of the White Star Line. One morning the staff opened the exhibition to find the photo inexplicably lying on the floor of the entryway and carefully propped against the wall, reportedly still pristine and undamaged. Baffled by how the photo could have possible gotten there during the night, surveillance footage was reviewed, which showed the photo appearing to shake on its own before being taken down and put against the wall as if by unseen hands. Paranormal investigators to the exhibit have captured orbs of light and shadowy images as well, and there have been several EVP recordings made of what appear to be the voices of Titanic victims.

Another collection of Titanic pieces that seems to be haunted is the Titanic Aquatic exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium, in the United States, which also has intense paranormal activity similar to what has been experienced at the Luxor exhibit, including ghost sightings, strange noises, period music from nowhere, and phantom hands grabbing, nudging, or pulling clothes or hair. Spookiest of all is a creepy ghostly old lady who is said to dwell within a replica of one of the Titanic’s cabins in the exhibit, and is not shy about suddenly appearing to startle visitors before blinking away again. Paranormal investigator’s and the Syfy Channel’s Ghost Hunters have examined the exhibit and found definite signs of paranormal activity, as well as made recordings of EVP phenomena at the site. As to why these ghosts should latch onto these relics from the Titanic, Dianna Avena, founder of Georgia Paranormal, has said:

It just makes sense that, especially with the Titanic exhibit, there would be residual paranormal energy. When you have a strong emotional imprint, there could be some energy attached.

Perhaps the strangest tale of a haunting related to the Titanic has to do not with any artifact from the doomed ship, but rather a replica of it. Retired architectural draftsman Wyatt Jason Moore, from Portsmouth, Virginia, managed to painstakingly build a 200 lb. model of the RMS Titanic over the course of 9 years and an estimated 17,368 hours of work, which was an ambitious project he became obsessed with after watching the 1958 film A Night to Remember. He began studying numerous old photographs of the Titanic, incorporating every detail he could into his grand vision, and he found himself spending hours and hours a day toiling away on his creation.

The end result was a lifelike replica of the famous ship, accurate right down to each individual stairway and hall. When his masterpiece was finished he decided to take some photos of it and that was when strange things began to happen. As he took his photos, he could hear anomalous noises coming from the massive model sitting in his home, and later mysterious entities began to appear in his shots. He would say of one of the startling images he took:

I couldn’t make it out until I looked at it very carefully and I found it was a bald headed man with a handle bar mustache, and I said to myself, what’s he doing there?

In addition to this creepy ghostly man were a spectral man and woman looking out of another porthole just above the lifeboats. At around the same time as these events, Moore says that doors around the house began to mysteriously slam shut or open even when no one else was there, but he says he is not scared of the entities, he just thinks they are lost souls, saying “Maybe it was someone that was aboard the Titanic that found a new home for himself.” Skeptics have been quick to point out that the photos are nothing more than a reflection and trick of light, but Moore insists that the portholes on his model don’t feature glass. Moore has tried to sell the haunted Titanic model on Craigslist, but found no takers, perhaps because of the exorbitant $263,000 asking price, but he hopes that a museum will take it at some point. They might as well, because it seems any museum with genuine paraphernalia from the actual Titanic is haunted anyway.

The fate of the RMS Titanic is one of the worst seagoing tragedies of all time, and it seems somewhat fitting that it too should have its own odd tales of ghosts and hauntings. It is an aspect of the tragedy that does not get much coverage but is nevertheless still out there, lurking in the shadows. Does the fateful sinking of this once glorious vessel and its rusted, decomposed remains infused with the paranormal just as any old haunted house would be? What is going on with these rumors and scary stories? These are perhaps mysteries that we will never really understand, confined to the dark just as the hulk of the Titanic lies sitting down in the murk beyond the light of day.

[inkdrinkershadowsinger]

Thoughts/ Background The Deathly Hallows Part One

We get this first look at the new regime. If something were ever done  like a fanfiction where Muggles did find out, you could copy this speech word for word, and it would have the same effect.

We see the Muggle family murdered, and then you see

Harry looked out that window countless times to see his “family” leaving on trips or outings without him, but this is one that he can’t take with him, no matter what.

To be fair, Voldemort would torture the Dursleys for fun merely because of what they are.

This just seemed out of character for Petunia. She hasn’t talked about Lily in anything but derogatory terms for years, and then suddenly she’s “my sister”. Please. Then again, the shock of being forced out of her home, with her family, but without Harry, the special one, like Lily was might have triggered some old memories. We never really learned what the whole relationship between these women were especially when they were older. I just don’t care for Petunia overly much. Dudley, on the other hand, exhibits some potential.

This is also a nod to the books, Mr. Weasley here isn’t merely tinkering with his workshop, but fashioning a way for his family to communicate with one another, and for others to communicate with the Order when things get bad. He is planning ahead.  

Hermione had to do something here that most people, one, wouldn’t have had the skill to do properly, and two, would have been incredibly hard on them. She vanished all thoughts of her from her parents minds. She took a very logical step and executed it for the safety of her parents. She did what was necessary, and her logical brain made that possible.

Snape just blows through the wards around the Dark Lords home because he is a bad ass. Then the look on his face when he sees Charity Burbage is just heart wrenching. You can think of any number of backstory for these two that you want. But she specifically refers to Severus as her friend. Not her co-worker.

The Malfoy’s are not amused. This is the stiff upper lip of the aristocracy, and also, the fact that they are both extremely uncomfortable and frightened.

The only thing Pius is thinking is, “Don’t let the snake eat me. Don’t let the snake eat me.”

A wizard or witches wand is one of the most important things to them. It is an extension of their body. They have it since they turn eleven. It is always beside them, and to use another person’s wand is both extremely intimate and vile when you consider taking this extension of someone away.

How Snape looks at her….. He shows his emotions on his face as much as Draco in this scene for me. He might have perfected that frightening teacher gambit because his emotions are so full and available on his face. He perfected that scary act because he couldn’t have people looking at him for too long or else they would see everything.

Harry packs up nothing from this room. He has Hedwig and his trunk, presumably.

He looks in his cupboard one more time. The place where he spent so many years. The toy soldiers are still there. The sword here in the toy’s hand looks like a wand.

Love Mad-Eye

I’m sorry, but you can’t even see the scarring on Bill’s face. That always pissed me off. He is shown for four minutes maybe in this movie, they could have made him look like he did in the books, truly ravaged.

Tonk’s pregnancy. Another nod to book readers.

Hermione is sneaking up on him while Mad-Eye talks to Harry. She is eyeing him as Harry is preparing to monologue.

Mr. Weasley is guarding the doorway just in case behind Fred and George.

Harry knows this is serious, but still can’t hide his fascination here.

Tonks is calming Remus in the background because he knows that they all are about to undertake something that could be very dangerous.

“I know Ginny was lying about that tattoo.” Another nod to the books. I love these. I live for them in this movie and in the next one.

Harry lets Hedwig out to fly one more time. He probably thought that she would go off without him, and meet him at the Burrow, but animals are so receptive that she stuck by her friend because she knew that something was off.

Sirius, in a very real way, brought Harry to Pivet Drive, rescuing him from people still loyal to the Dark Lord, and then Sirius’ bike takes him away, and rescues him from the Dark Lord.

Hagrid takes the bike to a Muggle road where they could in theory hide in plain sight, just like Harry did at the Dursleys.

That must have been one powerful stunner to knock Hagrid, the half giant out.

Do we ever really get this phenomenon explained fully? Why Harry’s wand acted of its own accord, and defended himself against Voldemort? Is that because of the twin cores? Because Voldemort was using someone else’s wand.

Mrs. Weasley is such a strong character. To have to stay home, and take up the position of watcher and waiter and potential triage if help is needed. It took almost more courage to stay behind then it took to go.

Why did Mundungus flip? What offer was made for him to be swayed to the other side. He is old enough to have lived during the first war he would have known what it was like back then.

Mr. Weasley must be having some serious flashbacks right now about losing someone. He was married to Molly who lost both of her brothers in the first war. They were twins, and now his twin son has just been injured. I wonder how close the four of them were? Odd purebloods who wanted to fight against the oncoming horde. Did they house them or the Marauders at one point in time? Did Arthur provide cover for them? This is why we need the thing, and so, I did THE THING if you would like me to send you some of the thing, message me.

Harry is presenting some very valid points here. They need to get going, but Ron is showing some rationality here that is uncommon for Gryffindors. He is saying, “Let’s take a second, and try to think this through.” A vast contrast from what happens later on.

The Burrow looks more modern and less cluttered in this movie compared to the second. Then again, this is after the fire in the sixth film, and thus, in theory, they have lost a lot of their possessions. Things would look differently.

Ginny is a minx, and I love it. “You ain’t gonna pay attention to me? You really think so?”

Harry is changing his tune about weddings after he sees Ginny in that dress.

George winks at them!!!! That always kills me. Before he gives Harry the “Older brother” look.

George two seconds later, “I’m going to get a commendation.”

The deluminator finally making another appearance.

As a bookworm, I can think of no better gift then someone who loves books giving me an annotated copy of their favorite book.

I like that the fact that the sword of Godric Gryffindor can come out of the sorting hat seems to be common knowledge.

They have guards outside of the tent.

Hagrid and Madam Maxime.

Is that Fleur and Bill’s cake behind Hermione? Or something else?

Nice close up of the symbol.

If that is the cake, I feel like it probably does something spectacular to make it more grand.

You can see Mrs. Weasley behind Aunt Muriel being the fantastic mother of the groom making her rounds.

Death Eaters AK first, as questions never.

The waitress is me at work…. Lol if only we could wear air pods and block everything else out.

Harry, you know your girl Hermione has got your back.

Harry is very practical here. I don’t think he cares one way or another about whether these death eaters live or die.

Hermione is the best at spells is the same as saying she is the best at everything.

You can see Hermione having a flashback to her parents here.

Who created these wizarding laws? It would have Voldemort if they could have kept the trace on Harry. How do they enact these laws? Enforce them? What magic is used in their creation?

This is the first time that Harry has been back in Grimmauld Place since Sirius died. He goes to Sirius’ room first. I wonder why Mrs. Black did rid everything of Sirius’ presence from her house after he defected. Did she have some sort of hope that he would come back?

The nameplates on their doors are so different. Sirius’ is plain and boldfaced. Regulus’ is curvy and fluid, full name present.

Look at Grimmauld Place in Ootp and then look at it now. Mundungus robed the house blind. I wonder how he managed to make out with so much when Kreacher was there. Unless Kreacher was under some sort of enchantment to not harm any wizard in the household unless directed otherwise. It seems like something that house elves would be forced to comply with.

He calls him little master Regulus,,,,,,, I will never forgive the filmmakers for not letting the creatures have their final stand at Hogwarts in the movies like they did in the books.

Neville is just fed up with this bullshit. He’s a pureblood. He knows that he is too valuable to the new regime to incapacitate. But this still takes some guts.

The statue in the atrium has been replaced with wizards crushing the muggles and creatures.

The way that a corrupt regime tries to take over is by not only changing the narrative in the media, but by also changing the culture. They change the art and the books, the burn whatever they don’t like. They make you think that something has always been there even when it has just been replaced. Think 1984 by Orwell.

Umbridge is just so pleased with herself. She needs another vacay with the centaurs.

The way that Ron looks Hermione makes me want to sob. It is so beautiful.

Okay, how long in advance did Jk Rowling plan this series? It is not a surprise to me at all that she went ahead and is now writing the Cormoran Strike detective novels. Her mind works in deep layers of plot and intricasies of detail that I can barely fathom. She must have been planning this for years. To have the resurrection stone open not at touch, but when Harry puts it to his mouth because that is how he caught his first snitch in the first novel. This woman is a bloody genius, which is why I reading The Cormoan Strike novels and taking notes son, I’m not sleeping on this woman anymore.

Mundungus is sneaky, but Hermione is smart as shit. None of them are fooled by his idiot act.

I love Dobby. And Kreacher. Without these characters, the story of Harry Potter wouldn’t have been as good as it is.

When I watched this movie, I was like, dang!!! Of course, it is Umbridge.

These high ranking ministry officials are the definition of getting too comfortable. You really about to let yourself get abducted in broad daylight.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione taking out the trash.

What happens if a Muggle wanders into this bathroom? Or a Muggleborn who hasn’t got their Hogwarts letter yet? Do they think they are just taking a wee, and then get spat out at the Ministry of Magic? That would be quite the story.

I love that Harry and Ron don’t even question if this method of getting to the ministry is going to work or not. They just automatically stand in the toilet.

Also, the statue makes it seem like the Muggles are fighting one another. That would be something that Voldemort’s regime would want. They would want it to seem like the Muggles are low, petty creatures who would rather save their own skin then another of their kind. It would inspire a sense of community even subconsciously among those that saw it.

Poor Ron. Didn’t they research these people? They got two high ranking people, and then poor Reg Cattermole.

Where Ron gets out of the elevator. These office doors? Look almost like entrances to banks or crypt vaults. Very secure looking.

I know this is another actor acting like Harry, but that was a pure Harry Potter face when they saw Umbridge.

That pamphlet reads: Mudbloods and the dangers they pose. Perfect Pureblood Society./ They are mass producing propaganda.

I wish some mention of this being a WWW product could have been put out there.

Umbridge would be OCD. She is the type that needs to be in control of everything, and that would translate into her surroundings.

These books in Umbridge’s drawer look old. They don’t look freshly printed. And why would such a neat freak have old books in her desk? These might have been from the first war with Grindlewald. When Muggles attack. Mudbloods: How to spot them. These could easily be reworked into new propaganda. Umbridge is a racist who relies on “research” to assert her ideals.

Umbridged marked out Mad-Eye’s, Sirius’, and  Dumbeldore’s faces in red ink like she was crossing something off of her grocery list.

Ron is this close to his dad, and yet, he can’t say anything to him. It might have led somewhat to him feeling like he does later on, and eventually heading out.

Ron and Arthur have the same sense of humor and I love it.

Arthur was ready to throw down with Runcore as Harry. Mr. Weasley gets a lot of flack for being soft, sweet Arthur, but he definitely has a side of steel when he thinks that he or someone in his family is being hurt.

The death eater trials seen back in Goblet of Fire were full of paperwork, trying truly to determine guilt or innocence. This trial, there are no witnesses, hardly any paper work, and no proper jury. Clearly a farce. Umbridge is judge and jury. She is absolutely horrid and I hate her.

Umbridge must get a serious tick anytime anyone says the word, “Lie”.

Ron is trying his best to get this lady understand that they are facing tough, unfair times. I hope that they took the advice and got the heck out of dodge.

Copies of Harry’s face hiding Harry’s face from view is amazing.

They land in such a calm looking place, but the reality is that everything has just got a heck of a lot harder. They have been forcibly evicted from Grimmauld Place, and now, one of their number seriously injured. Everything just went from bad to worse soon to be deplorable.

I like that Harry refers to Voldemort as Tom here. Saying, “You Know Who” makes it seem like he is far removed from the rest of humanity, but saying, “This belonged to Tom’s grandfather. This belonged to Tom himself.” That humanizes this monster like figure, both in that it makes it seem like he can be defeated, but also that, it makes it seem possible that he can be redeemed which seems to be what Harry at least attempts in the eighth film.

Harry just looks at Ron, like, “Yes, fucker, it does bother me.” It takes very little time for people to start turning.

Like, why didn’t they just tell Ron that they had a run in with snatchers. Shouldn’t he have been alerted to any new threats?

Are there really just miles of abandoned trailers somewhere like that?

Hermione is keeping the peace the best that she can, but she has a lot against her, the two fragile, male egos not the biggest concern.

I never liked this scene of them fighting each other in the woods. But it sort of turns that feeling of fighting for pretend or something to do to really trying to harm each other, and letting the resentment that the two men feel towards each other and towards other people come to the surface.

They cut the scene of Ron and Hermione skipping rocks out of the final version of the DVD, and I have always hated that because it is so cute.

When Ron leaves, Harry is truly terrified that he is going to hear two snaps of apparition, and that Hermione will leave him too.

She ties her scarf around the tree because she hopes that Ron will come back and see it. It reminds me of that, “Tie a yellow ribbon round an old oak tree…”

The contrast in the tent here between this tent in all its beige glory and the tent that was used in Goblet of Fire at the Quidditch World Cup is stark. One is clearly bright and fun, and this one, like their circumstances is just bleak.

I know that JK Rowling loves this scene, but I don’t. I always thought that it was out of place in this film. Hermione is just torn up because Ron, someone who she has deep, deep feelings for of friendship and something more has just left them, her, and Harry decides that now is a great time for a dance. And the way that Harry looks at her is just a little too personal for me. It feels like the end of the world. The only justificiation for that look that I can think of, is Harry is feeling so hurt by Ron that he intends to wreck what is left of their friendship before Ron can, and what faster way than ruining what Harry knows Ron feels for Hermione. That is a really dirty interpretation though, so, Idk. It’s better to think it is just an odd scene and odd acting on DR’s part.

I feel like Harry and Hermione had a renewed sense of determination to start getting stuff done since Ron left. They wanted to try and make progress, subconsciously thinking that somehow that might get them all back together. Work so you don’t think, maybe.

You can see the snow start to fall at the end of this scene, and then they apparate into a snow covered Godric’s Hollow.

I love Harry’s insistence that he is not going to polyjuice himself or anything like that because he wants this visit to Godric’s Hollow to be authentic.

The Peverell tombstone, a nod to the books that I don’t think gets fully explained in the films.

So, Nagini is a horcrux. Nagini was once a person. Nagini is a snake and Voldemort’s familiar. Now, we know that animals can be transformed into goblets and plates or whatever, but animals can be transfigured into a person? That’s what happened here with Bagshot, right?

Bathilda Bagshot straight up had a blue steel picture of young Grindlewald in her house. And I don’t blame her. This version of Grindlewald is far superior.

Skeeter’s book, another nod to the book.

She is speaking parseltongue , but Harry only hears English. This is where, us, the viewers, promptly start freaking out.

Harry gets thrown into a baby boy’s nursery then proceeds to fight against a piece of Voldemort’s soul. Irony.

THE DOE!!!!

Some people deal with tension using humor. Ron is one of those people. I am another.

Some people deal with tension with conflict. Harry is one of those people.

It looks like the piece of Voldemort’s soul in the locket literally tries to beat down on Harry, but it is rebuffed by the piece of soul that he already has inside of him.

Locket Hermione’s voice here is so different then her actual speaking voice.

This scene where locket Hermione and locket Harry are making out makes me want to vomit. It is so cringey that this was even included in the movie tbh.

“HEy,,,1,/ehdzjh,samdlas”

Ron’s like, “Mate, when we walk up I need to hold the destroyed horcrux and the sword, you know, for maximum effect.”

I like that they said that Ron was at a pub instead of home with the Weasleys like he was in the books.

“Just my name.” The way Ron says this makes my heart melt. It says so much in so few words.

I like that there is magic in this universe, and then there is magic. There is that little ball of light that floated from Sirius’ lips when they were being attacked by dementors in Prisoner of Azkaban, there is the veil in the department of mysteries, and the ball of light that Ron talks about here. Explanations are provided for so much in this series, but there are still magical things that even the characters don’t know the whole of.

Hermione is like, “Heifer, please, you ain’t getting any of my time yet.”

I have a feeling that Hermione is right for the next ten years after the behavior you have exhibited Ronald Weasley.

Luna. My baby. My girl.

The fruit on the plants are floating. If I grew up in house like this, in a place like this, I would believe in a lot of things that other people may not. It seems like a place where imagination is really allowed to flourish.

The animation used for the “Tale of the Three Brothers” is absolutely stunning. It is why people have it tattooed on their skin. It’s breathtaking.

He says, “The most powerful wand ever made.” He doesn’t say created. There is the theory that it did come from death, but then that the brothers were merely fantastic inventors. I don’t know which the truth is, maybe some of both. It would make a wonderful fanfiction.

At the wedding at the beginning, both the Lovegood’s are wearing yellow and they’re bright and happy, and then you have this scene where everything is dark and gloomy. Some beautiful non-verbal storytelling.

You can see just how wrecked Xenophilius is. He is desperate to get Luna back he is wandering into an attack zone.

People who are desperate don’t have the reason available to think, “Oh, what if these people don’t actually care about my concerns.” They have a single track mind in getting what they want.

Grindlewald is still a cocky bastard even after decades in prison. This old man looks more the badass than Depp.

Fenrir Greyback is just standing there, second fiddle to this random, purple scarf wearing snatcher. What the heck?

This scene always baffles me. Lucius has seen Ronald Weasley and his family for years. Lucius taunts Arthus on a regular basis. Lucius has heard repeatedly that Hermione and Ron are Harrys friends from Draco for at least six years. They KNOW FOR A FACT that this is Ron and Hermione, who do they think the third person is going to be?????????? It should have been a high enough possibility based on their presence alone to call the Dark Lord, but none of them do it because they have to make sure????

Draco has stared at this face for SIX years. I mean, Draco is just prepping himself to lie this whole time if he can get away with it.

Bellatrix ain’t no fool though. She figures out about the stinging jinx. The only thing that saves them is her seeing the sword.

Snape is the best potions master around. All of them probably have heard of veriterserum, and none of them thought to have it on tap?

It pisses me off to no end that we didn’t get to see Pettigrew strangle himself.

Dobby is a king!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When I saw this, I died.

Dobby is like, “Harry Potter, sir, duh.”

WE MISSED OUT ON A LUNA AND DOBBY BROMANCE AND I AM FUCKING FURIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like having Pettigrew just pass out or whatever was such a cop out, but I understand what it would have done to the tone that had already been established in this sequence.

Even then, Draco isn’t ready to fall into line with Bellatrix’s plans.

Dobby is a king, and I love him.

DOBBY HAS NO MASTER. DOBBY IS A FREE ELF. DOBBY HAS COME TO SAVE HARRY POTTER AND HIS FRIENDS.

I love Dobby. I want to cry no matter how many times I watch this scene because he is so small and vulnerable and honest, and he just loves Harry so much. And he did so good. And he saved them, and Harry wants so badly to save him back, but he can’t.

Harry has just lost so many people. In the next film, when he is speaking to everyone in the house Harry seems almost militaristic in his approach and demeanor, but when you think about what has just happened, Dobby’s death, that harshness and straight to the point approach seems more realistic and warranted definitely.

This scene where Voldemort breaks into Dumbledore’s grave: I read something that commented on Voldemort like hovering over Dumbledore’s body to get to the wand. Then it was like, well, he could be straddling him. I have honestly never been the same since. I laughed so hard.

[primedirection]

Anniversary -Part 2

Post mobbing

It's been two and a half days since the fight and you still haven't spoken to one another, but Harry caves first.

Under simpler and more normal circumstances it was hard enough not being able to speak to you. But this time around the situation bears an immense weight. Because this wasn't just giving him the silent treatment or obnoxiously avoiding rooms he occupied, you actually left. Though once he was alone to stew in his thoughts, he couldn't blame you.

You never asked for this.

On a night that you were meant to be celebrating your love for one another, it was his baggage that intervened. And no matter how much he wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to his following, he couldn't deny that they crossed the line. Mobbing just him was one thing but to do it when he was with loved ones was another.

Harry sent a text concerned about your whereabouts merely an hour after he calmed down. By sunrise he was sick with grief, guilt, and worry. Substantially increasing due to Anne and Gemma also calling to check on you both and informing him of a particularly disturbing video gone viral on all media fronts.

One from your dinner of the girls he was kind enough to take pictures with. As it turns out they had been filming your table for awhile. Adding disgusting commentary of how much they hated you and joking about acts of harm they'd do to you if given the chance. Harry felt disgusted with himself when one of them finally suggests going over to do it and they all get riled enough to agree. Harry genuinely hates himself when hearing them discuss aloud their plan of attack. From this perspective he's able to see just how intense the impact is when you're pointedly elbowed off your chair from behind and then literally walked all over.

Only just to surround him with false praises of adoration and excitement. He feels even more ashamed that he didn't hear or see it before. But he's glad to see those girls get startled when you get back up with a vengeance and curse at them for their barbaric behavior. Teetering on the edge of dignified restraint and justified retaliation. But unfortunately he stepped in and practically dragged you out of the restaurant. The girls laugh to themselves and congratulate each other before the video abruptly ends.

The worst part of it all was that they really pulled the wool over his eyes and succeeded. He really went home and lashed out at you! Didn't even ask if you were okay nonetheless check to see if you physically were alright. He was too focused on their feelings and the backlash you'd get when the story got out to be honest.

The world already ridiculed your relationship enough, as if you didn't deserve him and he didn't want anyone to have any justification to feel that way. But this was just... He fucked up on so many different levels.

After watching the video he called you shamelessly nonstop, leaving voice mails and paragraphs of text messages apologizing. Eventually he stopped, empathy clouded his better judgment and made him realize that you probably just needed time to process everything.

On the opposing end you felt absolutely no urge to engage. Every social media account was overwhelmed with notifications from family, friends, and strangers alike. Gemma and Anne even tried to call but you simply didn't accept them based on the fact that you didn't know what to say or how to explain the situation. You didn't want to lie and say you're fine because honestly you aren't.

If you weren't hurting emotionally or embarrassed before, then watching the accursed video certainly brought on a slew of feelings. Not to mention the physical aspect of the damage.

When the adrenaline completely wore off, the dull pain you thought was bad doubled by tenfold. So excruciating and abnormally painful for just falling down, that you sent yourself to the emergency room. A full day in the waiting room and an x-ray later, you come to find out that your lovely dinner guests gave you a minor spinal fracture. Luckily enough it was just a stable fracture, which meant the best case is wearing a back brace for several weeks and no necessary surgery. Though now the worst case is that and being bed ridden as a safety precaution because the doctor also made the alarming discovery that you are four weeks pregnant.

It was impossible to pretend that you haven't been holed up for the past couple days in your best friend's guest room. Bawling your eyes out from the extravagant self pity party you were throwing yourself. Trying to wrap your head around the whole situation. How were you supposed to face anyone? Especially Harry.

It's on the third day from your split, that you are forced to figure it out because none other than Harry turns up just after your bestie leaves for work. Damn near banging at the door like there was a fire, but that more or less had to with the amount of time you took to answer it. You almost didn't, but the neighbors here were nosy enough and didn't need a show.

With the chain lock still on you barely peek through the crack of the door. Almost immediately he lunges forward, bracing his hands on the door frame trying to get as close to you as possible. It was kind of satisfying to see that he looked as miserable as you felt. In an old ratty T shirt and sweat pants with his hair in extreme disarray. His eyes bloodshot and tinted the same irritated pink as his nose and cheeks. Apparently he'd been crying. "Thank God, are you alright?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Can't get ahold of yeh any way else. I've called I've texted— been worried bloody sick to be honest. Can we talk?" His voice is thicker with more rasp than usual.

You wanted to ask if he had been drinking but thought better of it. "Think you've already said enough."

Harry's heart plunges to his toes so fast he audibly chokes on a sob. Sending his desperation into overdrive, "Y/N please, I jus' wanna explain- five minutes. That's all I'm asking."

You stare back at him for what feels like an eternity, debating whether or not if allowing him in was the right thing to do. Literally and metaphorically. He hurt you in a way that made your physical assault pale in comparison. So you're not entirely sure what possesses you to eventually close the door and remove the locks.

Upon reopening the door Harry's not as aggressive as he was before and instead waits for you to openly invite him inside. Eyes on the ground and hands shoved in his pockets.

It's while you retreat to the living room that he sees the massive cargo covering the majority of your torso. A protective vest of sorts. Although on the areas it doesn't cover on your back. He's able to see dark purpling bruises under the straps of your tank top just above your shoulder blades on each side. It makes him sick to his stomach. "Yeh had to go to the hospital?"

"Yeah, was in a lot of pain after the initial shock wore off. Good thing too because I have a minor spinal fracture," you explain and Harry's face loses all of it's color, ”The doctor said I endured the same impact as being in a car accident. Thankfully though I just need to wear this back brace for awhile."

Guilt consumes him like a flame to a torch, to the point that he almost doesn't want to continue inside any further. Because this was solely his fault and he really didn't even deserve to be in your presence. It felt horribly wrong.

He waits until you're sitting down as comfortably as you can on the sofa to speak, "Love, I can't tell yeh how sorry I am."

At the tone of his voice tears start to brim in your eyes against your will. You blink them away on a deep shaky breath and scoff, "So now I'm your love? I wasn't when I left. I was a crazy lunatic bitch you couldn't take anywhere."

His eyes clench shut at the reminder of his insensitivity, unable to withstand the disappointment in your gaze, "I didn't mean tha'—any of it, I swear. I was just being a dick cos' I knew yeh were right. Jus' didn't want to admit it"

Hearing the words aloud was bittersweet. Truly. Your emotions jumble as such, making some tears fall only to wipe them away furiously. "And what? Now you're here because of that stupid video and suddenly feel sorry for me? Well guess what? I feel humiliated enough, I don't need your pity to—”

"S'not about pity, I was wrong Y/N. So wrong." Harry's jaw clenches as he forces himself to sit across from you. Seeing you like this was out right painful and he didn't know how exactly to deal with it. He expected you to still be upset but in an angry curse him out sort of way, not the puffy eyed and anxious trembling hands type of way. "I figured tha' out long before I saw tha' fucking video. The way I reacted was the worst thing I ever could've done to yeh." He has to take a deep breath to calm the tightening in his chest but his tears come rolling down his cheeks anyway. He wipes them away hastily with the back of his hand though more are quick to replace them.

At the sight of his trembling chin you fold your arms and force yourself look away. The emotions bubbling in your chest and his own brings you to the verge of tears again.

"I was fucking atrocious to yeh and for what? For always looking out for me when no one else does? Or always being there when I need yeh to be? I failed yeh huge Y/N. Your safety should be my biggest priority and I'm the one that compromised it. If they had planned that with weapons you could've been..." He could hardly stand to think about it.

"Worse," You shudder at the thought subconsciously folding your arms over your stomach. "Neither of us knew that would happen."

You're reasoning only guts him more, "There's no excuse. You've been nothing but supportive and accommodating and so incredibly loyal... I took tha' for granted and m' so fucking sorry Y/N. I need yeh to know that. You mean literally everythin' to me, and I can't stand that I mucked this all up."

"You know how much I love you Harry. Even on our worst days but I'm not gonna lie that hurt, that like really hurt me..." Tears completely blur your vision now, and it's becoming more and more futile to talk through the constricting tightness in your throat. You reach up and press tight to your tear ducts in order to make it stop but the sobs start to slip out too. It's almost like not wanting to cry but crying anyway makes you cry even harder.

Harry wants so bad to hold you, to rub your back in comfort or in the very least hold your hand. But he knows better. Instead his fingers dig uncomfortably into his thighs, "Fuck, I know Y/N. I know."

You take a sharp breath to speak through the pain, "And I know how much the fans mean to you. Hell I love em too, they make me feel like I'm one of them! I'd never want to turn you against them or make you feel like you have to choose between us. All I wanted is for you to know when to draw the line sometimes, not just for me but for yourself. You give so much to people and I can't stand it when it's taken advantage of."

Harry shakes his head, choked up all over again hating the fact that this was supposed to be about you and here you are still defending him. He'd be a plum fool to lose you. His best friend, lover, defender, and supporter all wrapped into one. No one ever has and never would compare. "I'm so sorry love,"

"So you've said," You retort sniffling, a little annoyed that that's all he's got to say for himself.

"Well I genuinely mean it, you're so strong sometimes I forget that you might need me." His fingers rake anxiously through his hair, "Obviously I don't deserve yeh but I can't lose yeh either Y/N. Tell me what yeh need and I promise whatever it is I'll do it—whatever it takes."

He made it sound so easy but that's not the world you live in. "How am supposed to trust you won't do that again Harry?" You cry despite your attempts to remain stoic, "You're supposed to be the one I can lean on for anything and after that I honestly don't know if I can..."

He knows that you have every right to feel the way you do, but the needy and selfish part of him doesn't understand your resistance. He's apologized and currently begging for your forgiveness and yet he still can't seem to get through to you. He's beginning to feel hopeless. "I know words can't fix everything, but please just give me a chance to prove it to you. I'm upping security, I've filed restraining orders, and consider the charges pressed! I swear to God I'll-"

"I'm pregnant." You blurt out.

You didn't think it was possible but the tension in the room intensifies. Silence takes over and it's quiet enough to hear a pin drop. It makes the flutter of butterflies from high strung nerves in your belly feel like earthquakes. Also doesn't help that Harry's expression changes a minimum of three times in a matter of seconds. Confused to surprised to tormented to incredulous to sad to confused again and finally to an emotion that you can't even place. Apparently unsure he heard you correctly, "What?"

You bite your lip nervously, "I said I'm pregnant. Four weeks. Found out when I went to the doctor,"

He swallows so hard it's audible, staring directly at you and yet his gaze is distant. Somewhere else completely until he blinks and the water works start flowing again. "Can I?" He asks no louder than a whisper reaching out for you with trembling hands and grabs yours in his before you can even answer.

Bringing the back of them to his lips repeatedly somehow steadies his nerves. Because within he was raging. One of the most significant moments in both of your lives had been robbed of happiness and tainted with strife because of his baggage. The way you responded earlier suddenly makes total sense now and once again he couldn't blame you. He utterly refused to be robbed of another again.

Harry presses a hard kiss one last time before dropping your hands to shift closer to you. Close enough to cup your cheeks lovingly, since he doesn't trust himself enough to wrap his arms around you without causing pain. "I don't expect you to accept it or forgive me overnight. I understand that I really hurt you and that's just not realistic. But I am sorry Y/N. I'll spend the rest of my life doing whatever it takes to make it up to you—both of you. If you'll have me?"

In that moment all you register is burning. The burning in your eyes that make your tears pour down, the burning in your chest and throat as the heavy sobs rack through you, and the burning flush of your skin from being so overwhelmed with emotions. Because he was right, it wasn't going to magically fix everything but for right now it was enough. He seemed really genuine and sincere in his remorse and that was a good place to start.

You ultimately nod quickly and as best as you can without putting too much strain on your back, lean in to bury your face into the comfort of his neck. Confessing sheepishly, "I'm scared Harry,"

He can't squeeze you back as tight as you both want but there's still the same amount of comfort when he cradles the back of your head, "Shouldn't be. Cos' m' certainly never going anywhere and neither are you if I have anything to say about it."

Now that the threat of you leaving was somewhat gone he found it difficult to be scared of much else. With you he felt truly invincible. His grin even became shit eating at the thought of finally unveiling the ridiculously carrot studded ring currently hidden in his sock drawer. "Thank you for this by the way, s'best gift I could've ever imagined... Well opposed to mine but you'll get it when we get home."

You want badly to laugh at that and smile even because you are indeed relieved but you can't stop crying. Clutching onto his sides for dear life since they are the best you could reach. "I need you Harry, now more than ever. You understand that right?"

His chest rumbles with a hum before he pulls back to kiss you firmly on the forehead, "Won't let yeh down lovie, I promise."

AN: Hopefully this lived up to expectations idk send me your thoughts. I want all the smoke lol Xx.

[sanvers-supercorp-is-wayhau-blog]

Tonneau Covers

You have purchased a pickup truck. This is a great car. Its main advantage is endurance and unpretentiousness. This is a car for all occasions. But the owners are interested in the question - what to do with an open body? This issue becomes especially relevant when it rains, snow falls or leaves fall. After all, they have to be carried in the back of their pickup truck, and then also removed. But this is not the worst. Worst of all, nothing can be left unattended in an open box. After all, it can easily be stolen. And sooner or later, the owners of pickups come to the conclusion that you need to somehow close the body. Nowadays, a lot of options are offered. These are for Toyota Tundra https://truckpowerup.com/best-tonneau-cover-for-tundra-crewmax. Let’s try to figure out which ones we have.

1. Where are you from and why

Very often in the car markets of our country you can find universal cars. One of these is a pickup. It falls under category B and less often C. This is a light truck that combines unpretentiousness, carrying capacity, cross-country ability, comfort. And therefore there is nothing surprising in the fact that now very many choose this particular car. But ten years ago, a pickup truck was considered a car for farmers. But today he finds his fans among the city dwellers. Automobile manufacturers in America and Europe are very actively filling our market with various pickup models. And if earlier we often saw such cars only in American films, now more and more often you can see a pickup truck on our roads. And its SUV options make it even more popular.

2. Types of Kung

Sooner or later, almost all owners of pickups come to the conclusion that installing a kung is not a whim, but a necessity. This is the most popular way to cover a pickup truck. It is believed that capacity increases with it, and it perfectly protects the load. But, despite its large size, it does not so much increase capacity. It contains a lot of small things, but overall things simply will not fit there. This is not a common name for a car accessory. The word “kung” is just an abbreviation: a unified body of zero (normal) size. Manufacturers of different countries have their own names kunga. In Europe it is “hard top”, in Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand - “canopy”, in America - “cap”. Kungs can be divided into several types. We will focus on such: Full Boh, Star Box, Canopy .

2.1 Full Box

This type of kung gives the pickup a sporty elegance. But its functionality is not lost at all. This kung visually smoothes the angle between the cabin and the trunk. Thanks to this, your car becomes more stylish and takes on a complete look. The main advantage of Full Box is its tight key cover closure. This protects the body and cargo from damage and guarantees its integrity and safety. And also moisture, dirt, dust and other garbage do not get inside. Inside the Full Box there is a boot light . The back door opens thanks to gas springs. This allows you to keep the door open and subsequently provides convenient loading and unloading of luggage. This type of kung is made of plastic, and it is equipped with roof rails for luggage. The front part of the kung is equipped with brake lights and an aerodynamic arc, and is attached directly to the car body. The back is designed to open and close.

2.2 Star Box

For those drivers who want to make their pickup truck attractive and significantly change their appearance, they can’t find a more suitable accessory. Star Box is made of very durable fiberglass. This kung increases body volume, and is also a full-fledged part of your pickup. Its tailgate window and side windows are tinted. Mounting Star Box on the pickup body occurs without drilling. The body structure is not violated. This is done thanks to special fasteners, and the cabin sits well on the sides. The life of this kung is increased due to the fact that the inner part is very resistant to damage.

2.3 Canopy

Those drivers who need a simpler option should choose Canopy. This is a simpler version of the kung in comparison with the previous two. But it should be said that a car with such a kunga model looks like a real SUV. To install Canopy, you do not have to warp the body in any way or drill. And all because Canopy has a special installation package. It greatly simplifies installation, while without any harm to the body. This kunga model is equipped with a rear door and a handle with a lock, spoiler and panoramic side windows. The rear door opens with a gas shock absorber.

3. Material

A very wide range of materials is used in the production of kungs. The choice can be made from fiberglass to steel, and even aluminum. Recently, it is noticeable that compositions that combine steel structures and plastic are becoming increasingly popular. The inner frame is made of metal, and externally the kung is already covered with plastic. This tandem of steel and plastic protects your body from corrosion , deformation and increases the durability of the structure.

3.1. Kungi from plastic

A very large number of body parts of modern machines are made of plastic. Plastic is very light and technological. The most economical solution for pickups are precisely plastic kungs. But at the same time they quite effectively carry out their functions. Plastic kungs have their advantages. These include low thermal conductivity, versatility, maintainability, as any minor damage can be repaired with polyester resin. But there are also disadvantages. The main disadvantage is that a full back door is simply missing, this role is played by tempered glass, shock absorbers and locks.

3.2. Steel Kung

For the manufacture of steel kung using the method of cold pressing. The main advantage of steel kung over plastic is their strength. SAMMITR is the only metal kung producer in the world. This company is located in Thailand. For metal kung there are no temperature restrictions. The metal doesn’t care what the temperature is outside, and the plastic becomes prickly and brittle at temperatures below twenty degrees. Steel kungs are very reliable, durable, because metal does not lose its properties after a while, which can not be said about plastic kungs. They are also very durable, their metal casing can withstand higher loads. Nothing can happen to metal unless it is scratched during shipping. The steel structure is very strong, and therefore allows you to load the kung from above.

3.3 Aluminum kung

Such kungs are suitable for those drivers who use their car for traveling long distances, for traveling or for robots in difficult conditions. Aluminum kungs are extremely hardy and durable, which contributes to the transportation of goods on the roof. They are not afraid of shock, temperature changes, vibrations. They are not a replacement for plastic. This is a completely independent product.

4. Covers for a body

You can not omit such a question as a cover for a pickup truck body. This is a good alternative to kung. Lids for the body are well suited for the transport of small loads, they can also give your car personality and perfectly protect your load. The modern market offers a lot of options for pickup covers. For example, vinyl three-section tents, covers made of different materials that open at different angles, metal shutters and much more. They differ in strength. Some may have a thickness slightly larger than that of the awning, and some can withstand two ATVs if they can withstand the sides of the car, but that’s another matter. The lid gives the pickup a sporty look. Lids are fastened on the sides of the pickup with clamps. Covers for a body have a lot of advantages. This is the safety of the contents of the body, and the protection of the cargo from bad weather conditions, and the ability to use the lid as a platform for transporting cargo. But there is a drawback. Perhaps he is only one: a long installation and dismantling.

5. How to choose?

You need to choose a cover for your pickup very carefully. It is necessary to take into account many points: is the cover chosen well that protects the body from dirt and is it airtight; Does the tailgate block Is the lid locking mechanism complicated? whether there are spare parts for the cover, such as shock absorbers, hinges, locks, gasket and others; whether the cover is securely attached to the body; is the cover durable and how resistant is it to loads, shock, vibration and other aggressive influences; whether a large load can be transported from above on the lid; and also easily whether the cover chosen by you can be removed if necessary. Make your choice right!

[septic-dr-schneep]

JSE Commission - A Claim Of Belonging

Summary: Commission for @jacksinsanity. Anti lures Jameson to an unusual meeting place, though not for the reasons the gentleman may expect.

A/N: Warning for violence.

Although Jameson had been introduced to vast amounts of knowledge about the world every single day for the past year, he still couldn’t help but retain the same awe and wonder at all of these new contraptions that made modern life so easy. The coffee pot was no exception. Jameson still vividly remembered the day Schneep had showed him all of its unique parts and their functions.

“Is a very simple little process, Jamie, one I do every day! You let the good doctor show you,” he urged, his voice reflecting so much warmth and eagerness to teach as he gestured for Jameson to lean down beside him. “The first electrical drip brewer was created by one of my proud people, Gottlob Widmann, in 1954! They replaced those bitter old coffee percolators in the 70’s!”

To Jameson, those bitter old percolators had been a staple, but he couldn’t help but smile at the doctor’s enthusiasm—and frankly it was astonishing at how quickly the coffee spilled into the mug once he pressed the button. The warm brew he was sipping now tasted positively delightful, even if he would have preferred tea, and he couldn’t help but chuckle when he realized there was foam lingering in his mustache. It was too bad that he had no one to share the laugh with, though; all of the others were gone for the day. Jameson expected Schneep would be sneaking home for lunch, despite hospital policies. Maybe they could share a cup then.

Once the steaming mug was only half full, he set it aside, tapping his fingers thoughtfully on his knees as he considered what he could do to entertain himself. The television was dark and silent before him, but the last time he had tried to use it on his own, he had set all of the channels to French. He had already tended the garden this morning and he’d read his favorite book at least three times over by now.

Perhaps he should put more time into learning how to use his phone. Chase had tried to introduce him to so many new thingamajigs all at once (“A wristwatch? By golly, I’ve got a pocket watch that serves just fine!” “Why on earth would I need a contraption to track my number of steps? I should hope I can count ’em myself!” “I know precisely when I need to wake in the morning, Da, I don’t need any ol’ radio clock screaming at me; that’s not a device to be fond of!”) until at long last the overwhelmed gentleman had insisted that he pick just one. Chase had opted for what he called a “smart phone”.

I don’t see why the intelligence of the mechanism matters; I’m the intelligence making use of all its bells and whistles! That said, he’d become a bit more accustomed to all of the clicking and swiping, and it was nice to be able to keep in contact with the others through text. To that end, he sent a brief “Miss you!” message to Chase. Less than a minute later he was a little taken aback by a ping and a vibration in response. Chase rarely ever responded that quickly!

As soon as he reopened it, he saw that his hunch was correct. It wasn’t Chase who had texted; it was a number he didn’t recognize. Since when were telephone numbers so long? It trailed off the screen: 010011010110000101110011011101000110010101110010…Brows furrowing, he took one more sip of his coffee before opening it.

?: Jem! Are you free to come to the northeast district? Warehouse 31. There’s something all of us want you to be a part of!

The northeast was a rather unseemly side of town. Why on earth would they want him there after warning him against it so many times? His fingers hovered over the keyboard, but the longer he stared at the message the more uncertain he became. He couldn’t think of any reason why—A sudden prickle of pain down the nape of his neck made his ears pop and he startled, pressing a hand to the source with a wince.

Chase wants to film a haunted video in one of the northeast warehouses this year. He’s been excited about making it for months. Of course you remember that.

“Oh! Confound it all, how could I have forgotten Chase’s video? He’s only spoken of it for months now!” he scolded himself, shaking his head and typing hurriedly back.

JJ: Indeed! I’ll order an Uber and be there soon!

?: :)

The thirty-first warehouse was in a ghastly state, Jameson mused, tsking in disbelief as he peered through the Uber window up at the large structure. Rust and decay riddled its surface; who knew what it must look like inside? Even the driver seemed skeptical, but he was more than willing to accept Jameson’s money for it.

“Be careful out there,” he cautioned as goodbye. Jameson merely tipped his hat as he drove away. Chase and the crew would probably be setting up their equipment inside; his mind was wrapped up in what part the older Ego might ask him to play in it.

On impulse he brought himself to knock on the large doors, coughing and waving in annoyance at the cloud of rust that was blown off by the motion. Oddly, it didn’t look like they had been opened in some time! It took a bit of force from his shoulder to widen them enough that he could slip inside. Intimidated by the length of the shadows within, however, he slowed, resisting the urge to wring his hands in his nervousness.

“Da?” he called out gingerly. “If you attempt to spook me now, I’m going to be very cross!”

“On̵ t͞h͘e ͞contra̧ry, b͝o͟y͝… I҉ d͢o̢n’t̶ n̛e̢ęd ̧t͢o̵ try,” a gleeful, chillingly familiar voice echoed somewhere before him.

The moment of paralyzed, terrified realization was a moment too long. Gasping, Jameson lunged back toward the doors—safety, freedom, help—but the Glitch was there behind him, seizing him by the throat with a vice grip that tore right through his collar and flinging him deeper into the darkness. He landed hard, somersaulting to a stop in a cloud of dust that made him choke and wheeze as all the air was knocked out of his lungs.

“I’m so ̡gl͡a͠d ͠y̧o͟u c̡am̵e̛ wheń ̢I͢ ̡c͢a̶llèd you, pup͞pet͟. I͡t͠ ̶wo͟u͝ld h̢àve been i͞nc̡o͟nven͘ie͢nt if I ͞ha̛d needed ͝t͟o͏ come for y͡óu mys̶el͝f…A m͝ast͡ęr ͠s͠h͟ould ̡n͡ev͢er be f͠or͘c͜ed̡ to f̀et́ch thȩi͞r pet.”

Mouth dry, heart galloping dizzily in his chest, Jameson struggled to scramble back on his elbows and then onto his trembling legs, keeping the Glitch in his field of vision. “I’m no one’s pet!” he gasped. “Certainly not one of yours, you madcap! W-Why’ve you brought me here?!”

Head twisting grotesquely, Anti beamed, spreading his arms out in a mockingly inviting gesture. “T̷o͟ ͘c͞e͝l̢eb̶r͘a̵te.͟ Your͠ birt̢hda̧y͟ is͠ ͘approaching,͜ ̛li͡t̢t̷l̛é ́o͟n͜e…th͜e àn͝ńìver҉sary of͡ the͝ ̵day̨ I͞ c̷a̧me ̨t͠o͝ ow̴n ͞you̵.”

Shaking his head violently, Jameson blinked in fearful disbelief. It was a mistake; as soon as he looked again, mouth open to deny it, Anti was out of sight, and without warning a pair of large, invasive hands clamped onto his shoulders from behind. He barely had a chance to register them before he was being hauled off his feet and thrown back first into one of the roof’s massive support pillars. Something in his abdomen fractured on impact, drawing a soundless scream of agony as he landed and curled into himself.

Anti cackled at the sight, his form spitting and buzzing like a cloud of enraged bees as he lunged on top of him, seizing twin handfuls of the younger Ego’s vest and shirt and ripping them away in a few effortless tugs. Yelping in alarm at the violation, JJ tried fruitlessly to struggle, but a resounding fist to his face sent stars through his vision and ended most of his struggle.

The next thing he knew, Anti was dragging him across the coarse, icy floor, the rust and seams in the floor panels scraping painfully at his bare back and waist. Spitting blood from his split lip, he thrashed sideways as much as he was able and then lifted aching arms to scratch at the hand fisted into his hair. The Glitch seemed unaffected.

“Stop! Agh! Antisepticeye, s-stop!”

“No̵t̴ ̧u͠nt͠i͢l͜ ̶yo͠u’vę be̸en͡ gi͟ven ̴y��ou͞r͜ ̡gift!” With one more wrench to his puppet’s mane that set his scalp on fire, Anti tossed him forward. Jameson braced himself for a third thunderous landing, but as he tumbled head over heels he was shocked to discover that there was a soft heap of unknown padding underneath him. Straining to sit up, he wrapped his arms around his throbbing stomach and wheezed, the harsh breath disturbing the strange pile of feathers. He didn’t have a chance to ask what they were for. Anti glitched once more, violently and abruptly, and then he was lifting a steaming industrial bucket over his head.

“Y̡our gif̴t, J͝a͡mes͠o̢n Jac҉k̀son̡—We’re ͢goín͟g͡ to̡ ta̷ke ̷p̡ar̶t̴ in a good o͜ld-fashiơn͢ed҉ ͝tr͝a͡di̢ti̧oņ. It’s o͡nę ̕I'm ́s̡ure yo҉u’ll bȩ f͟a͝mil̶iar ͜w̛it͞h͜,” he hissed, heaving the bucket and its contents down with a resounding splash. Jameson screamed as the hot tar made contact, scalding every inch of him as it poured down in waves. Thrashing and flailing, aura storming wildly with the agony no one could hear, he blindly tried to dive somewhere, away, but Anti’s voice and his fists and his heavy boots bombarded him.

“Yo҉u’r̢e͠ w̡͜o̴r̵̡͟thl҉͜ess̛! Y̛͡o͠͞u’r̡̛̛e̴ ̧̛͝n̢̕ot̵͜hi̴̢n̵͠ģ̛! My̕͢͢ ̀͘p̢e͢t̡! H̡ous̸̶͡e̢bŗ̷o̵k̵̶e̷n̨̧! T͢his ͟is̨ ̢w̡h̷e͝r̴e ͠you belo͟ng͡!”

The feathers caught in the tar, sharp and endless and smothering as they clung to his burning skin, choked him and caught in his streaming eyes. In the end the excruciating barrage was too much, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think—Then there was darkness.

When he woke, his bruised and burning body was struck with the bitter chill of the fifty-degree night air. His hands were bound behind him, sticky back plastered to a pole of some kind—a streetlamp. Its light sputtered disorientingly over his head, so he ducked it, letting his eyes close and coughing to dislodge the ugly taste of blood and tar from his mouth. Within moments, the coughs became strangled sobs that tore at every wound. “Hh…help me…p-please, please, s-someone help me…”

“Jamie?! Jamie!” That voice and the footsteps approaching from across the asphalt forced his tear- and tar-streaked face up, causing Schneep to falter, his own face transforming in horror. “Oh—oh, no—” He didn’t waste any more time than that, kneeling hurriedly behind him and drawing out his scalpel to tear through his bonds. “Is okay, little one, is okay, the good doctor’s got you!”

A few days later, Jameson lay silent and tearful in his medical bed, picking at a loose thread on the blanket that served to hide the vast swathes of bandaging over his legs. Schneep was perched beside him, brushing practiced fingers through his tangled hair, intending to soothe. The morphine and diazepam hadn’t been as kind to him as either of them had hoped during the endless icing and stripping of the tar; neither of them would forget anytime soon how he’d rocked his raw, blistered forehead into his seared knees and cried at the bottom of the bathtub.

“Jameson…” Schneep spoke up softly, luring the gentleman out of his pained thoughts. When JJ’s eyes met his, he paused to swallow before knitting his brows and continuing. “This is going to be the first birthday I celebrate with you. You…you know where I was this time last year. I feel a lot back then like you do now, but I—I am not going to let you stay in this place.”

Jameson perked up at that, a lump already forming in his throat, and Schneep shifted closer.

“I will protect you this Halloween, and we will celebrate you,” he whispered with a trying smile, shaky yet earnest. “Marvin and I will bake you a cake—three tiers, four—and we decorate it with candy corn. Chase will get you your very favorite ice cream, raspberry ripple, and Jackieboy will make all the balloon animals you want. We will sing for you, ‘He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’, and we will make you feel loved!”

Fresh moisture was already welling in Jameson’s eyes, though he wasn’t sure what it was for, the ache in his body or the longing in his heart. Schneep was quick to cup his cheeks, thumbing the tears away.

“Because you are loved, Jamie. You don’t belong to him. None of us do or ever will. We belong with each other, and that’s where you are staying, okay?”

With a shuddery breath Jameson managed a nod, letting his battered face rest there in the older Ego’s kind hands. “…Okay.”

[loveissupernatural]

"The Man Behind the Mask"

Pt 1                      

Peter Parker x reader

Warnings: None

Summary: You’ve recently moved to Queens, New York after your father finds a new job with the U.S. government handling alien affairs in the city. You’ve grown up in a small town, and it’s your junior year of high school; culture shock takes a whole new meaning when you’re saved by the famed new web-slinging Avenger - and when you meet a new group of friends at Midtown High that seem to always be hiding something. But things quickly get personal.

Masterlist

You sigh angrily, throwing a decorative pillow with all of your might at your new headboard. It bounces pitifully on the bed before it lands on top of one of the many cardboard boxes you have yet to unpack. You didn’t want to be here.

“Hey now,” your mom scolded jokingly, appearing in the doorframe of your new bedroom, “what did that pillow ever do to you?”

You didn’t smile, despite her teasing. You were mad at her, at Dad, at the whole situation, and you wanted her to know. Ya know, just in case the screaming tantrum you threw when they broke the news of your move wasn’t enough of a clue.

“Where’s Dad?” you ask in a monotonous tone, crossing your arms and sitting on your window sill, avoiding her eyes and looking out over the begrudgingly-nice view you had.

“He’s just gone into the new office, sweetie,” she answered, her tone guarded. She crossed her arms as well and leaned against your doorframe. “He wants to make a good first impression with the new director.”

“So he drug us here and isn’t even going to help us unpack?” you spat. You knew you weren’t being entirely fair but right now you didn’t care. Your father’s new job offer uprooted your entire life - not that you didn’t want to be happy for him, but your own misery was a monster that was quickly growing. With every minor inconvenience since you’d crossed the New York state line, the monster devoured it as fuel.

“I realize you’re not happy, and that you don’t want to be here,” your mom said quite suddenly, all traces of lightheartedness gone from her voice, “but this change is happening. It’s happening right now. We’re a family, and this is the opportunity of a lifetime for your dad. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the people you love, Y/N.” You still refused to look at her, eyes glued to a colorful clothesline hanging a few feet below you. “Look, you left your friends, your life… I know. I had to, too. But Y/N, if you want to make the most of this, you’re gonna have to change your attitude. And you are not - I repeat - you are not making your dad feel even more guilty than he already does. This makes him happy. Alright?”

You sighed again, knowing she was right, chewing on your lip as if nursing your broken pride. You hummed in acknowledgement, refusing to give her the satisfaction of apologetic words coming from your lips. She was right, but that didn’t change the fact that you’d been wronged.

It was a mere three weeks ago when your dad made the announcement at dinner over a cold box of pizza that you were moving. At first, you weren’t upset - a new house a little further away wouldn’t be so bad. People moved all the time. You could still see your friends. But then he said those two words: “New York”. As in, halfway across the country New York. As in, you’d be lucky to see your friends once a year New York. As in, every person you knew, every nearby family member, every road you knew like the back of your hand was gone New York. It was all gone. Replaced with skyscrapers and traffic jams and the occasional alien attack.

As soon as the words “New York” fell from your father’s lips, your heart detached itself from your ribcage and fell into the dark pit your stomach had become.

“We’re gonna freakin’ die, Dad. Haven’t you seen all of the alien attacks in New York City?! What in the hell makes you think moving there is a good idea??” you had insisted, hysterical.

He sighed, suddenly looking ten years older. “That’s just it. That’s why we’re going. The Department of Defense has a lot of positions opening up there, Y/N, and they headhunted me. It’s a huge raise. It could be really good for us.”

“No, it could be really good for you,” you corrected through slitted teeth. Both of your parents regarded you with shock. You were a good kid, a respectful daughter. You rarely talked back and they almost didn’t know how to register your sudden hostility. But your dad bounced back first.

“I’ve given this a lot of thought, Y/N,” he began, and you could see the vein popping in his temple. “Your mother and I thought long and hard about this. We know it’s scary, we know it’s a big step. *We know*. You’re in shock, we weren’t expecting you to take it well. But you will not be disrespectful.”

“Disrespectful?! You wanna talk disrespectful?” you yelled, shooting up from the dinner table with a clash of glasses and silverware. Your hands were fists on the tabletop. “Disrespectful is having no consideration for anyone but your wallet. What about me? What about my friends? What about Grandma and Pop? What about all of your friends? This - this is all I’ve ever known! I was just voted captain of the soccer team this year!”

“Now, Y/N, calm down,” your mother tried to coax you, but it was in vain. You were fuming.

“No, I will not ‘calm down’, Mom!” you cried. “I’m graduating in two years! Can’t - can’t you just wait??”

“The job offer is now and it’s fleeting,” your father said. His voice was rising, too. “And I’ve decided to take it. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to deal with it.”

Before you said something that would get you in serious trouble, because you could feel the hot-worded anger boiling in your throat, you stomped out of the dining room and locked yourself in your bedroom. You’d screamed into your pillow until your voice was gone, you’d cried until there were no tears left, you’d thrown every pillow and punched every blanket until you were out of breath. None of it dulled the ache in your chest and the ice in your stomach.

With tearful goodbyes to your friends and family, and death glares at your parents, you’d hopped into the enormous white moving truck and watched your entire life fade away in the rearview mirror. All of it was gone, and you were empty except for the prickling coals of anger heating your veins. It’s all you could feel.

“I’m gonna finish unpacking the living room and order some take out,” your mom stated, pulling you from your memories. “Eat or don’t eat. Pout in your room all night. Or come out and get some of your favorite food and maybe calm down for a second.”

You didn’t reply, and after a few minutes, you’d turned to see that she’d disappeared. You fully planned on locking yourself in your new room, but your growling stomach disagreed with you. Trying to ignore it, you grabbed the TV remote out of your nightstand drawer and clicked it on. The cable had been set up a few hours beforehand, and you hoped that a nice sitcom might take your mind off of your disintegrating life.

The screen came to life and before you could change the channel, a man swinging from webs in a bright red and blue suit overtook the screen, a news woman’s voice urgently reporting as much as she could without running out of breath. You immediately sat up in bed, crawling closer to the TV screen as if you needed a better look. It was him, the guy you’d heard about all over the news for the past year. Not living in New York didn’t make you ignorant about superheroes, especially ones that had anything to do with the Avengers. They all fascinated you, to be honest.

You watched in amazement as the suit-clad Spider-Man swung through buildings, landing on top of an eighteen-wheeler with ease and stopping a large-scale bank robbery. The entire account was filmed by a mixture of news cameras and blurry cellphone cameras alike. One thing was for sure, you’d forgotten all about your bad mood.

“Spider-Man, despite his less-than-legal way of scooting around police, was the reason these criminals are behind bars right now,” a news correspondent insisted. “Police had lost the trail halfway through the chase! Without Spider-Man, these guys would probably be leaning back with their feet up in an abandoned warehouse somewhere, fanning themselves with their stacks and stacks of stolen money, Grace!”

The interviewing news anchor, apparently named Grace, nodded. “On a different note, let me ask you, Mr. Blair, what do you think of all these rumors that Spider-Man is officially part of the Avengers?”

“It’s possible, Grace,” Mr. Blair conceded. “I mean, not long ago he was swinging around in a hoodie. Now he’s got a full-on suit, looking pretty spiffy if you ask me.” He laughed. Grace smiled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy, whoever he is, got some kind of backing from someone. Whether it’s the Avengers, who knows? All we know is that he helped out Tony Stark during his little, uh, dispute with Steve Rogers.”

Grace’s grin widened. “Thank you for joining us, Mr. Blair. We appreciate your input, as always.”

The words of the newscasters faded from your ears as you focused on all of the different clips playing of Spider-Man. He was pulling people out of a burning building, then he was taking on at least five different guys twice his size, letting a frightened mother and her two small children run to safety. He was so quick, knowing what the men in ski masks were going to do seconds before they did it. You sucked your bottom lip underneath your top teeth.

You’d done your research on New York, and it wasn’t long before Spider-Man became the answer to almost every Google search. Besides the occasional random story on a new construction piece or movie being filmed in Times Square, Spider-Man was all over the internet. You’d heard of him, of course, but it’d slipped your mind that you’d be moving to a city with its own bonafide superhero. If there was one tiny thing you didn’t mind about moving to Queens, it was that. As much as you wanted to meet the web-slinging hero, part of you hoped you were never in a situation where you had to.

“Y/N,” your mother called from the kitchen. “Please do me a favor and walk to the corner store right down the street and get some of that soy sauce that your dad likes so much. I wanna have it ready when he gets home.”

You groaned. “Why can’t you go get it?”

“Because I’m not sitting around watching TV,” she called back. “Now go.”

You groaned loudly and slipped on your tennis shoes, grabbing your purse and speed walking out the door. You avoided your mother’s eyes the whole way.

While walking through the apartment building’s lobby, you begrudgingly admitted to yourself how nice it was. You’d lived in a house back home, but the apartment was the same size at the very least, and ten times fancier with a large kitchen with granite countertops and large bedrooms. If you didn’t hate the move so much, you might even feel like you’d upgraded.

You asked the clerk at the desk where this corner store was, and he pointed out the window to your left. “Go down a block or two and it’s on your right. It’s called Sherman’s.”

You mustered up a smile and thanked him, and it must’ve been convincing because he smiled back. You walked through the double doors into the noisy cityscape, taking a deep breath and smelling less car exhaust than you’d expected. You began your trudge to the corner store.

You passed by people on your way, none of them looking up to smile at you or even nod a greeting. You even accidentally bumped a guy’s shoulder and he barely glared at you before walking off - you didn’t even have time to apologize. Maybe the whole New-Yorkers-are-rude thing wasn’t so far from the truth.

By the time you’d found the corner store, which took longer than you’d expected, went inside, found Dad’s favorite soy sauce (which also took longer than expected), and grabbed a few small things for yourself, it was almost dark outside. You shivered at the breeze as you stepped out of the door, hearing the faint jingle of the bell. The sun was quickly retreating. You looked around, noticing the sidewalks had emptied considerably. You decided to hurry home, not liking the dark in this new place.

With your hands full of groceries and your purse hanging limply by your side, you struggled to walk as quickly as you might have liked. Your building wasn’t even in view yet and it was getting darker by the second; the street lights were turning on. You sighed heavily and tried to pick up the pace.

An apple that you’d stuffed into the bag last minute before approaching the check out counter suddenly slipped from your bag, along with a pack of cookies and your dad’s soy sauce, which thankfully was in a plastic bottle and didn’t break.

“Fuck,” you cursed, probably more loudly than you should’ve, rolling your eyes and setting down your belongings to pick up your mess. Five second rule with the apple, you wanted the damn thing.

You stood up after picking up the cookies and soy sauce, looking for your neglected apple. It wasn’t on the ground.

“You drop something?” came a hoarse voice from behind you. You turned around and jumped, a filthy-looking man smiling teethily at you; and it didn’t look kind. The apple was in his dirty, gloved hand. He did not extend it to you.

“Uh… you can have it,” you said quickly, your voice sweet and obviously frightened. His smile only grew and it did far from comfort you.

“I’ll tell you what,” the man said, and you suddenly caught a whiff of his vile breath, “you give me your purse, and I’ll keep my little buddy here in my pocket.” Every muscle in your body froze. He pulled his tattered coat back to reveal a handgun, gleaming black and threateningly in its dingy pocket.

This couldn’t be happening. On your first night in New York, in all the places you could be, you were here, a block away from your very nice and seemingly-safe apartment building, being mugged. Of damn course. This would only happen to you.

Your mind was racing a million miles per second. Could you run? Would you make it? Could you scream for help? All of your options seemed like a bad idea as his menacing grin grew even larger, the gun still gleaming threateningly in his visible pocket. He could see you working out all of your options.

“I wouldn’t run if I were you, baby,” he chuckled, even though it sounded more like a wheeze. A shiver ran down your spine at the sound. “Even a pretty thing like you can’t outrun a bullet.”

Your purse and it’s belongings weren’t worth your life. You fully intended to hand it over, but you were frozen. Your muscles wouldn’t move. Fear nailed your feet and hands right where they were. And the menacing figure towering over you was growing angry.

“Are you deaf or somethin’?” he demanded, and suddenly the barrel of the gun was being waved in your face. “Do I gotta spell it out for ya? Give me your God damned purse or your brain is gonna be scattered all over the sidewalk!”

You were shaking. Tears were flowing freely down your cheeks, and you don’t even remember when they started. Your groceries lay forgotten on the ground.

“I - I - please don’t -“ you stuttered, but he didn’t let you finish. He yelled obscenities at you as he pushed you forcefully to the ground in the adjoining alleyway, pointing the gun right between your eyes. You sobbed on the ground, no way out. Your purse was in his grubby hand now, he had what he wanted. But you’d pissed him off.

“You dumb bitch,” he spat at you, and you heard him click off the safety. “All you had to do was give me your fucking purse but you’re gonna stand here and cry and waste my fucking time?! I should shoot you in the fucking head.”

You couldn’t see through your tears now. The streets were deserted, there was no one near enough to save you from a gunshot before they heard it. You were gonna die in this stupid city before you were even here 24 hours, and you were gonna die alone. Your lifeless body would end up in a dumpster somewhere with half of your skull blown to bits. You suddenly weren’t angry at anything or anyone anymore, you just wanted to go home.

He rose the gun, indifferent to your tears, and put his finger on the trigger. The damn heathen looked excited.

BOOM

You screamed, flinching, squeezing your eyes shut, waiting for the pain to come. But it didn’t. You gasped, opening your tear-filled eyes, to find the would-be-murderer on the ground, groaning, the gun knocked out of his hand.

And standing over him was none other than Spider-Man.

“Now that’s no way to treat a pretty lady,” the masked hero shook his finger, kicking the man’s face when he tried to sit back up. You stared in wonder, your tears forgotten. His voice was higher than you’d expected, almost like he was young. Much younger than you’d thought. His frame was lithe, thin, but muscular. You couldn’t believe your eyes.

“Fuck you, freak,” the mugger spat at him, blood running from his nose earnestly. Spider-Man seemed more disappointed in this comment than angry.

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” he asked, shaking his head, but didn’t wait for a reply before he shot a web directly over the man’s chapped lips. He kicked him again, and the mugger slumped over, out cold.

You watched in amazement, everything almost moving in slow motion, as Spider-Man stepped over the criminal’s body and turned toward you, approaching. He was even more glorious in person. He knelt down, now eye level with you since you were still sitting on the ground in shock, hands and knees bloodied. His large white eyes auto-focused, squinting, like he was looking you over for injuries. You couldn’t help but smile a bit at how damn cool that was.

“Are you okay, miss?” he asked, extending a hand to you to help you up. You gladly took it, your mouth hanging agape at the sight of him. You held to his other arm to steady yourself, and you were surprised at how soft the suit was, but it looked invincible. You suddenly remembered the newscasters’ conversation about his upgraded suit.

“You - you’re - you’re him,” you stated dumbly. His mask’s eyes squint like he’s smiling.

“That’s me, just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” he said, spreading his arms and making a little turn. He somehow made it seem humble.

“He was gonna shoot me,” you stated, again, dumbly. Your mouth hadn’t caught up to your brain yet, you were still reeling. You felt lightheaded, adrenaline weaning away.

“I wasn’t gonna let that happen,” he said with a little shrug, like it was the simplest thing in the world. His voice was kind, it was like honey.

You hastily wiped your tears, suddenly incredibly self-conscious. You felt like a damsel in distress, which was exactly what you were, and you didn’t like the feeling. You felt weak.

“I’ve only been here 8 hours and I managed to get mugged and meet the famous Spider-Man?” you laugh, almost to yourself.

“Whoa, 8 hours? You’re not from around here, are you?” His voice was painstakingly sincere and curious.

You were in an alleyway, with an armed mugger knocked out cold, having your first conversation in New York, with Spider-Man. This was your life?

“Just moved here actually,” you smiled, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear. The attention he was giving you was making your cheeks very red and there was no way he wasn’t noticing.

It was evident he was smiling under the mask. He was definitely noticing. That just made you redder.

“Well, it sounds like you’re a magnet for trouble. What’s your name?” His voice was so damn sweet.

“Y/N,” you said a little too quickly.

“Why don’t I make sure you get home okay, Y/N?” he suggested, bending down and retrieving your groceries and purse for you. Your apple looked positively pitiful. You gladly took your purse and one of the grocery bags, while he insisted on carrying the other.

“Probably not a bad idea,” you laugh lightly, and you felt even more lightheaded. Your stomach was full of butterflies. “Who knows what else could happen to me in the next block?”

Then it all happened so fast. Just as you turned to head for the sidewalk, Spider-Man pushed you behind him, web slinging from his wrist toward the mugger that was supposed to be out cold. During your conversation, he’d managed to sneak toward his gun and aim it toward you two. But before any shot was fired, his wrist was webbed to the brick wall, along with his other wrist, his mouth still covered in the white sticky substance as well. He yelled and cursed unintelligibly underneath the web gag, his face pink in anger.

“Come on, man, really?” Spider-Man asked exasperatedly, rolling his eyes. Your heart was pounding but Spider-Man was as calm as if he were just talking about the weather. He was strong and lean in front of you. You tried your very hardest not to stare or enjoy his hold on you too much - after all, ogling him after he’d saved your life twice was hardly polite.

He turned to you again, much closer this time considering the fact he’d been your human shield - was he human? - and ran his hands up your arms before settling at your shoulders. For someone so strong his touch was very gentle.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized, almost sounding bashful. “Are you okay? Again?” His masked face was so close, you could see the tiny, tiny lenses that made up the whites of his mask’s eyes. You gulped.

“Uh, y-yeah. Totally fine,” you lied. Your heart was thumping so hard it was like it was trying to escape the prison of your ribs.

Spider-Man’s head suddenly turned, as if listening to something you couldn’t hear. A few seconds later, you barely heard it - sirens in the distance. Someone must’ve heard the gunshot and called the police.

“Aaand that’s my cue to go,” he told you, shrugging in an apologetic way as he backed further into the shadow of the alley.

“Wait!” popped out of your mouth before you could stop it. What did you want him to wait for? So you could hug him? Kiss him? Thank him? Grovel at his feet in appreciation? Some combination of all four? He’d already shot a web at a nearby fire escape and was readying to swing away. He turned at your sudden outburst.

You ran toward him, wrapping two arms around his neck and hugging your face to the side of his own. The mask was so soft and you could feel his cheek upturn into a grin. After a moment of shock, he returned the hug with the arm that wasn’t holding his web.

“Thank you,” you whispered as sincerely as you could.

“Y-yeah,” he said, seemingly a little embarrassed, and you felt satisfaction seep through you. You were grinning like a fool when you pulled away, and he looked at you for a second more before disappearing with a few flips and jumps over a nearby rooftop.

Pt 2

[son-of-crows-and-rats]

don't pit two bad bitches against each other, CGI can be really useful for things that just can't really follow the laws of physics, or are way too uncanny when you try. That being said, the less practical effects used, the worse the acting. Sometimes characters' shocked and amazed faces at seeing a theme park, or a dragon, or things like that aren't acting but just the actors seeing those pieces for the first time. Contrast that to an actor pretending to look around in amazement when in a completely empty green room. Even for fully CGI characters where the actor or prop is completely edited out and replaced, giving actors clear direction on where to look makes it much easier for them. To compare current situations using, let's say, a hypothetical movie series embodying a lot of the current issues with the industry, you would have characters walking onto a barren, desolate world to watch their loved ones die. The actors, however, are only given small sections of the script, told incredibly vague descriptions of the scene and their role in it, and then just put on a simple costume because it can be edited later, and do the scene with equally confused actors in a giant blank green room. Acting is reacting, and because it's so much harder to react to something that isn't there at all, every time practical effects are ignored for CGI, the acting, which is a central part of any film, goes down the drain. CGI in combination with specifial effects can be great! It can add life to dummies, make spaces feel infinitely larger than they are, completely defy the laws of reality, and secure really cool or tragic scenes without compromising the safety of the actors. But it's best used when adding some extra life to practical effects, otherwise everything else just feels hollow

Marvel movies have completely eliminated the concept of practical effects from the movie-watching public’s consciousness

[one-of-us-blog]

Never Say Never Again (1983)

Today Drew is forced to watch and recap 1983’s Never Say Never Again, the completely noncanonical James Bond adventure that features the final appearance of Sean Connery in the franchise. Remember Thunderball? Well, would that movie be like if Bond was in his fifties, Largo was a video game playing nerd, Domino was just sort of there and Fiona Vulpe was absolutely out of her damn mind?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, you’re killin’ me, buddy! I was totally choked up during your Golden Girls retrospective! I’ve always thought about this project as something for the two of us, so the idea that it also turned into something that you got to include your family in really tugged at my heartstrings. You’ve done the Girls proud, Agent 0069! And, I have to say, I breathed a sigh of relief when I read your first recap for The Golden Palace. This series both very similar and very, very different from its predecessor, and I had no clue how you would take to it. I feel like it’s a sign of good things to come that you didn’t completely hate the pilot, but I’ll be on the edge of my seat each week to see how your feelings toward the show change! Speaking of continuations that nobody asked for, though, it’s time for me to tackle this outlier in the James Bond franchise!

Buttocks tight!

Screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr., Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais, film directed by Irvin Kershner

We start off without a gun barrel sequence, and there’s no prelude scene before Lani Hall jumps right into “Never Say Never Again”, the film’s less-than-rousing theme. This time around, Bond is sent to the health clinic because he fails a training mission (maybe because he’s 52). This M (Edward Fox) doesn’t have much use for 00 agents, and Bond’s spent more time teaching lessons to junior agents than getting his hands and/or dick dirty in the field. M orders Bond to get back into shape while Miss Moneypenny (Pamela Salem) is there for no reason and contributes nothing to the movie.

Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera), this movie’s version of Fiona Vulpe, arrives at a SPECTRE meeting. Hey, we haven’t heard from SPECTRE in a long time (sort of)! Blofeld (Max von Sydow) sends Blush to harass an American pilot named Jack Petachi, who happens to be staying at the same health clinic Bond is at. Bond catches Blush in the act, because she’s insane and awful at stealth missions. Bond, who, to be fair, is also awful at stealth missions, immediately makes his presence known while Blush is having the pilot scan his iris into a machine so they can make sure the horrific replacement eye he’s been outfitted with will pass a retina scan. Blush recognizes Bond on sight because he’s the worst secret agent on the planet and sends an assassin to kill him. The assassin is much stronger than the aging Bond and has half a dozen chances to take the spy out, but he’s a dumb henchman so Bond eventually gets the better of him. How, you ask? By throwing his own urine sample into the assassin’s face. Bond’s piss is strong enough that it stuns an assassin long enough for him to fall back onto a shelf of glassware which kills him.

M is pissed and Bond isn’t interested. The pilot uses his truly repulsive transplanted eye to pass a retina scan which results in a pair of nuclear bombs being loaded onto a jet. The pilot drives away, Blush drives up beside him and throws a snake into his car to cause him to crash and die. Blush is worried about the snake’s safety and retrieves it, but if she’s so worried about it maybe she shouldn’t have thrown it into a car that was about to crash through a brick wall. Blush plants an explosive and blows up the pilot’s car, so maybe next time she can just throw the bomb in instead of involving the snake to begin with. The nukes are fired off the unsuspecting jet and retrieved out of the ocean by SPECTRE.

SPECTRE sends a message to world leaders and holds the world for ransom. M is told to reinstate the 00’s, and Bond gets a briefing on Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer), formerly Emilio Largo. We jump over to see Largo being gross in general and possessive of his girlfriend, Domino Petachi (Kim Basinger). Bond meets with an absolutely insufferable version of Q referred to as Algernon (Alec McCowen) and then heads to the Bahamas (maybe he’ll visit Quarrel Jr. on the way) where he meets the equally insufferable Nigel Small-Fawcett (Rowan Atkinson) whom he tasks with gathering intel on Largo. The manic Blush throws herself into Bond’s arms and gets him onto a boat, where she immediately sleeps with him. The sex scene lasts for about fifteen hours, and then we’re treated to another seven hours of scuba diving. My favorite part of Thunderball was the long, drawn out scuba scenes, so I’m tickled pink to see one in this film as well. Blush plants a device on Bond which causes a shark to head his way. Couldn’t have just shot him in the head, huh, Fatima?

After this scene is finally over, Blush is living her best life and dancing around when she catches sight of Bond and the fisherwoman who reeled him in out of the ocean. Blush really is awful at her job and still insists on putting a bomb in Bond’s room instead of just shooting him. Bond’s busy screwing around in the fisherwoman’s room, though, so Blush continues to be the worst at her job. Small-Fawcett informs Bond that Largo’s yacht is headed for Nice, France, and there Bond meets up with a French operative named Nicole (Saskia Cohen Tanugi) and our old friend Felix Leiter (Bernie Casey). It’s been a while, Felix! Bond and Leiter ogle Domino through a telescope while she dances on the deck of Largo’s yacht, and Bond poses an employee of a spa Domino visits. While posing as a masseuse as an excuse to manhandle her, Bond figures out that Largo will be holding a charity bond at a casino.

Nicole drops Bond off at the casino where Blush is waiting for him. She sends her own driver off to kill Nicole while Bond threatens to kill the doorman in order to get into the charity event. Bond reunites with Domino and the two are spotted at the bar by Largo. Largo challenges Bond to a game of Domination, a video game rip off of Risk that gives the player an electric shock when they lose points. The game looks, no joke, fucking bonkers. Bond gets his asses handed to him the first few games, but Largo eventually loses. Bond and Largo both view Domino as property, so as a prize for winning Bond is allowed a dance with Domino. Bond lets Domino know her brother’s dead and had been working for Largo, because in the middle of a dance surrounded by hundreds of onlookers is the best time to receive devastating news.

Largo invites Bond to lunch the next day and he goes back to his villa to find Nicole drowned in a waterbed. Bond chases after Blush on a motorcycle but is eventually captured.  I really can’t stress how absolutely insane Fatima Blush is. She has the manic energy like nothing I’ve ever seen. She frantically demands that Bond declare, in writing, that she’s his number one sexual partner, and Bond uses the explosive dart hidden inside a Q Branch fountain pen to blow Blush to hell. Leiter arrives and the two agents head for Largo’s yacht. Leiter is prevented from entering, and Bond doesn’t seem to mind. Largo was ready for Bond and reminds him they have a lunch date for tomorrow. Bond tells Domino about what happened to her brother and she tells him about the Tears of Allah, a necklace Largo gave her. Bond kisses Domino to make Largo jealous, then sneaks into Largo’s little man cave and sends a signal to MI6 telling them the yacht is headed for Palmyra in North Africa. Largo accuses Domino of betraying him despite her having no agency in this movie and torments her about her dead brother before having her sold as a sex slave to some racist caricatures of Middle Eastern men. Fantastic. Bond is chained nearby, and Largo reveals that one of the nukes is hidden in Washington DC.

Bond gets free thanks to a Q device and rescues Domino. Bond rides a horse off a cliff and he and Domino are rescued by Leiter. Turns out that Tears of Allah necklace Largo gave Domino was a map to the second bomb’s location. Why would he…? You know what, never mind. Bond and Leiter use jetpacks for no damn reason to reach some underwater caves, where they find Largo and the second nuke. Leiter and his team take on Largo’s henchmen while Bond goes after Largo and the nuke in a chopper. Bond chases Largo underwater and Domino arrives out of absolutely nowhere to shoot Largo with a harpoon while Bond disarms the nuke.

Bond and Domino relax in a pool afterward. Small-Fawcett arrives on behalf of M to beg Bond to return to active duty, because without him in the field the fate of the civilized world is at stake. Anyway. Bond and Domino make out after Bond declares he’s never taking up spying again.

The End

~~~~~

Yikes. This one was real bad. I didn’t like Thunderball to begin with, but this rehashing of it was even worse. None of the jokes landed, the self-referential dialogue felt pandery and the whole movie reeked of desperation and spite. On some level I enjoyed Blush’s manic insanity, but she was a cardboard cutout of a character. Largo was turned into a smug nerd in this version, and don’t even get me started on the MI6 crew. A lot of people know about the Bechdel test, but there’s another litmus test for movies called the Sexy Lamp test. Until the end scene where Domino shoots Largo, which, again comes out of absolutely nowhere, this movie did not pass the Sexy Lamp test. Even on a technical side, the effects for this one sucked. I know they were trying to be cutting-edge with Domination, but I have to think that even in 1983 people realized that game was dumb as hell, beside the fact that it had nothing to do with the rest of the movie. I could go on forever, but needless to say I did not care for this movie. The one good thing about it was that we got a Black character who didn’t die by the end of the movie courtesy of this version of Felix Leiter, but even he couldn’t keep this brick afloat.

I give Never Say Never Again Q on the Five Q Scale.

Tune in soon for Eli’s recaps of “Promotional Considerations” and “Miles, We Hardly Knew Ye”, the next two episodes of The Golden Palace (the second of which I have very, very strong feelings about), and after that I’ll be back with my recap of A View to a Kill, the next James Bond adventure and the last to feature my beloved Roger Moore.

Until then, as always, thank you for reading, thank you for saying never and thank you for being One of Us!