#I'm terrible at figuring out which bit of my accent is in charge

[aha-my-villainous-thoughts]

My mommy issues can't make their mind up on how to unhealthily channel into my boundary-positive intimacy-replacement faux-fetish sex life... like do I want to be your mommy or do I want you to be mommy? I don't know!! Let's try both and figure it out ig

[mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea]

WIP Game - I'm terrible at just picking ONE, so could I have 'To eat that burning heart out of his hand' and 'I'm coming down fast but don't let me break you' please and thank you! :D

To eat that burning heart out of his hand - this is a current WIP that came from the @marvelrarepairbingo2022's Halloween adoptable prompt 5. Weird neighbor has a secret

It is Stephen Strange/Kaecilius. Anyone who knows me, who knows the twisted Easter Eggy way my brain works will understand that this fic will be full of so many ridiculous fandom-y Easter Eggs. But I don't want to say too much about it because it would give away too much of the secret and the fun. Here's a snippet, though, when Stephen first sees his new neighbor (Kaecilius) before they officially meet:

Life at The Langham went on.  Some neighbors moved out while others remained the same, and in the place of those who left were new faces and names to learn in passing at the mailboxes. 

The apartment next door to Stephen remained empty for almost a year before someone new moved in.  For the longest time, the surgeon believed he would be the youngest tenant on the floor until he was as old as the old people were, and they were long gone.  Then one day, he noticed that incredibly posh leather couches and chairs were being moved in from the service elevator along with dozens of boxes labeled ‘books’.  That had been all he caught when he’d returned from his morning run, and later on his way out to work, Stephen spied the new neighbor standing just outside his door, signing off on the delivery, and while there was no doubt that he’d already paid in full for it – as one did for moving – the impeccably dressed gent handed an envelope over to the mover in charge with what was very likely a handsome tip. 

The newcomer was handsome with lips that pouted naturally and eyes like dravite under the sun.  While Stephen locked up, he caught the hint of a foreign accent, but he couldn’t place it; it sounded melodic, though, and he figured he’d forget it as soon as he left the building for the hospital.  It was on the tip of his tongue to walk over long enough for an introduction, which would include a warning to watch out for their neighborly yenta, but when their eyes met, they merely exchanged polite nods before the new neighbor stepped into his apartment, and Stephen booked it for the elevator. 

If nothing else, with or without warning, at least, Stephen wouldn’t be the only target for attempts at matchmaking. 

Perhaps they could eventually form a battle line to protect each other from Mrs. Weinberg’s well-meaning assaults. 

I'm coming down fast but don't let me break you - This was from a prompt given to me by @chaotic-hypnotic-erotic a while back, 44. “This is a totally inappropriate soundtrack.” The pair I was requested was Emma Frost and Phil Coulson. I'm choosing not to write this as a ship but an association built on mutual trust and respect. The title is from "Helter Skelter" by the Beatles.

It's set during WandaVision. Coulson's obviously alive, and he seeks Emma's help where Darcy Lewis, Jimmy Woo, and even Monica Rambeau are having trouble getting through to Wanda. (I thought it would be good to let Emma in to slap around Wanda's mind a bit - that's a bit of a comic grudge, given in the comics, Wanda was responsible for nearly wiping out all mutants at one time.) Oh yeah, and there are Easter Eggy things in this, too, especially if you're familiar with Mad Men.

Snippet:

Asphalt cut into the knees of her pantyhose, just barely scraping her skin through the tears.

Emma hated pantyhose.

Emma didn't own pantyhose.

"I'd ask why you didn't warn me about that first step, Agent Coulson, but something tells me that your LMD mind will already have some sort of logical quip at the ready," Emma said as she turned and sat down where she'd landed. She shaded her eyes as she surveyed her surroundings.

Westview was a dreadful little town, but considering that it didn't truly exist – not really, not even as an unincorporated hamlet, what Emma could really conclude is that Wanda Maximoff's mind was a dreadfully dull place if this was all she could conjure for herself in whatever mental state she was in.

"Well, now I feel hurt, Ms. Frost. I even prepared the very best of quips for a queen, and you don't even want to hear them," Agent Phillip J. Coulson, former Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., now an LMD and still having A.I. about it, that is Angst Immeasurable, retorted as he walked over and offered his hand to the telepath.

Emma set her hand into Agent Coulson's and allowed him to lifted her to her feet, finding that this new adaptation of him was considerably stronger than the original, though she had always been fond of the Coulson Prime. Once steady on her feet, Emma brushed her soft hands over the back of her clothes and then paused when the style of herself caught her by surprise.

"Thank you, Agent Coulson, for the help, but perhaps you can tell me why I'm dressed like…I belong on that show that attempted to both romanticize and satirize the Sixites?"

They both stared at Emma's sleeveless white dress with pleated skirt, black dots on the right side of the chest, a gold ring belt around her waist, and a black and white kerchief knotted around her neck. Halfway up her forearms were white see-through gloves, and she wore white heels. Emma opened up the black handbag she carried and found the compact she suspected to be there, taking note of her golden hair shorter than she'd worn it for some time, parted at one side and flounced back in gentle curls.

WIP Game

[wanderinginksplot]

Warriors in Red Armor

Previous | Next | Masterlist

Chapter Four

Nora I

Nora was in one of the nicer cells. She didn't like to brag, but she had been arrested often enough to know the difference. And she had the cell to herself, which was new and different. Normally, the Corrie Guard shoved as many beings into each cell as they could manage without crushing anyone.

Soon enough, some of the more violent members of Clone Rights filled the surrounding cells. Even then, Nora's cell remained single-occupancy.

"You gonna get us outta this one, Czajak?" a male Bothan named Esk Meh'reer asked through the transparisteel barrier.

"Of course, Meh'reer," Nora said with a scoff. "We didn't even do anything. This one'll be easier than any of the other times."

"Well, you didn't do anything," Meh'reer told her with a grin. "We may have defaced some property after we saw you get arrested. Nothing too bad, though. Just tore down some signs. Oh, actually, I'm pretty sure Gadi threw a bench."

Nora rolled her eyes at the mention of the exuberant Lasat. "Gadi always throws something. I think she cares more about throwing stuff around than she does about getting rights for clones, but at least she's on our side."

"Hey, our cells share a wall!" Gadi cheered, pushing herself out of the crowd as if she had been summoned. "Want me to see if I can throw this bed?"

"Probably not, Gadi," Nora discouraged. "It'll be a lot harder to fight the charges if we start breaking things inside of the precinct."

"Aw, you'll be able to get us out of it," Gadi told her. "You're the best lawyer on Coruscant!"

Nora chuckled and shook her head, choosing not to tell her fellow protesters that she may not be a lawyer much longer if she kept doing this. Her boss had already threatened to demote her after he had found out about her work. Was it a bad thing that she had a tendency to defend protesters pro bono?

"Nora Czajak," a clone trooper announced, opening the door to Nora's cell. "You're being charged, come with me."

Surprise made Nora slow. The charges were almost never filed this quickly. She had been arrested less than twelve hours ago! Still, the sooner she knew how bad things were going to be, the sooner she could start forming a defense for herself and the others. Gamely, she rose and followed the trooper, admiring his red-accented armor as she went.

When she stepped from the room, cheers erupted from the surrounding cells.

"Go, Nora!"

"Give 'em hell!"

"Pinch that guy's ass while you're in there!"

"Gadi…" Nora sighed to fight back a chuckle. The temptation to laugh grew worse when she turned and found that the trooper had stopped and was staring at her. She couldn't see through his helmet, obviously, but she would have bet that he looked less than thrilled. With her most professional lawyer smile, she said, "Following you, sir."

He shook his head a little bit and kept walking. They passed another red-accented trooper as they walked, and he leaned in a bit to place his helmet's speakers next to Nora's ear. "If you pinch Thorn's shebs, I'll transfer you twenty credits."

"Will that be worth the jail time for harassment, though?" she asked with a conspiratorial grin.

He shrugged. "It would be for me."

"Thire, leave her alone," her escort - presumably Thorn - ordered. "I have to take her to see Stone."

Stone was one of Nora's favorite troopers, and she didn't even need Thorn's guidance to find her way to his office. Thorn gave a polite knock on the door. "Nora Czajak for you, Commander."

"Stone! How are you? Did you redecorate the office?" Nora asked, breezing into the office like it was her own.

Stone blinked at her. "Of course I didn't redecorate. When would I have redecorated? You were here last week."

"That is a difficult point to argue," she conceded.

"I'm sure you'll figure out a way," Stone said dryly. "Thank you, Commander Thorn."

As soon as Thorn had left, Nora crossed her legs comfortably and leaned forward to stare at Stone. "So, what's it going to be this time, Commander? A fine, some jail time..?"

"Neither," Stone told her shortly, crossing his arms over his chest. It would have looked more natural if he weren't in full armor - minus the helmet - but Nora had to admit that there was something intimidating about the dull crack of plastoid meeting plastoid. "Command has decided that fines don't seem to work for you. And every time you spend more than a few days in jail, you come out with more violent followers for your Clone Rights group. Then those followers trash the city even worse in your next demonstration. It's a vicious cycle."

"Mm, such a conundrum," Nora agreed. "What's the solution, Stone?"

"Community service."

Now, it was Nora's turn to blink in confusion. "Community service? My sentence is community service?"

"Yeah, a hundred hours of it," he said, shaking his head a bit.

"And- what about the others? What are they getting sentenced to?"

"Community service," Stone repeated, sounding almost as confused as she was. "All of the demonstrators we arrested are serving time. Not as much as you, but it'll all be community service."

Nora opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. "Stone, this is stupid. What is going on? Community service is for parking violations and cursing at shop-keepers. You have us dead to rights on destruction of property, disturbing the peace, and intention to incite a riot. What are you doing?"

"Are you asking for a harsher punishment?" Stone asked with a twinkle in his brown eyes.

"Of course not!" she snapped. "It's just suspicious. Since when does the Coruscant Guard let violations like this slide?"

"Since today," he said with a shrug. "Orders straight from Head Commander Fox himself."

"Head Commander Fox?" Nora asked, distracted by the mention of the clone trooper she had met the previous night. He had been willing to debate her in a cruiser on the way back to the precinct. His method of forming an argument had been clumsy, but his points had been valid. It was a welcome distraction from the unpleasantness of the march's end. And here she was, finding out that Fox was actually the commander in charge of the other commanders. "What was a Head Commander of the GAR doing babysitting a Clone Rights march?"

"Maybe he wanted to come see your model behavior first-hand," Stone told her sarcastically. At Nora's sharp look, he relented. "Fine. Commander Fox doesn't pass duties along. He does everything he asks his men to do. That includes supervising marches, pulling patrols, and booking troublemakers."

Ignoring the pointed implication that she was a troublemaker, Nora changed the subject. "Who is going to be supervising my community service hours?"

"That'll be…" Stone consulted a page in front of him before answering - though how he found a single piece of flimsi in the disaster zone that was his desk was beyond Nora. "Trooper Beam. He's in charge of community service efforts. Poor evaar is gonna have his work cut out for him, supervising your protesters."

"That has to be about seventy people," she argued. "One trooper can't supervise all of us."

"That's his job," Stone said with a shrug.

Nora leaned back, lost in thought. "You know, it would be terrible of me to expect one trooper to supervise all of the arrested Clone Rights members and all one-hundred hours of my own community service. I should really request to be assigned to another Coruscant Guard trooper."

"Who were you thinking?" Stone's voice was filled with wariness.

Nora peered thoughtfully around the room. The morning sunlight didn't even reach this part of Coruscant. Instead, the light from a nearby holo-ad provided the only outside light in the commander's office.

When she felt Stone staring at her impatiently, Nora smirked and answered, "Why, Head Commander Fox, of course."

---

Fox II

It had been a long night, and it promised to be an even longer day. Fox was already on his second set of stims, and he still had an estimated twenty hours before he could think about collapsing in his quarters.

At that particular moment, he was talking to Sergeant Hound about some woman the sergeant was processing. He was trying, anyway. Fox's attention was far away. Part of him was trying to calculate how long it had been since he had last slept while the rest of him was trying to calculate how long he had until he could sleep again.

"So, what do you think, Commander?" Hound asked, bringing Fox's attention back to him.

"You know I trust you, Hound," Fox told the trooper, patting him on the shoulder. "Do what you think is best."

"Really? Thank you, sir!" Hound said, face brightening.

Briefly wondering what he had just agreed to, Fox turned away and was immediately met with Commander Stone beckoning him over.

"Sir, I need you to come speak with the woman I'm sentencing."

"You know you're the one in charge of sentencing, Commander Stone," Fox reminded.

"I know, sir, but she's requesting that you oversee her community service personally," Stone told him.

Fox's brows lifted before he could stop the expression. "And that is Trooper Beam's area." Honestly, what was the point of dividing the Coruscant Guard into departments if everyone was going to ask him to do their job anyway?

"Yes, sir, but…" Stone sighed, looking more defeated than Fox had ever seen him. "Can you please come tell her that? She won't take my refusal as a proper answer."

Fox shook his head, but started for Stone's office. "Who is this woman?"

"Nora Czajak."

"Kriff, no," Fox refused before he could think better of it.

"You're lucky I'm not easily offended, Head Commander," Czajak said, appearing in the doorway of Stone's office.

"I won't oversee your community service," Fox snapped.

"Maybe you should step inside, Commander," Stone wearily advised. "She has a full argument ready."

Well, he could at least hear her out. Fox entered Stone's office, immediately feeling as though a trap had been sprung when the other commander shut the door - with himself on the outside. Fox cracked the door open enough to peer out. "Stone, aren't you coming?"

"Kriff, no, Commander," Stone denied. "I'm going to get some caf and maybe some alcohol. Good luck."

When Fox turned back around, he found that Nora had seated herself in Stone's chair behind the Commander's desk. Everything was a power game for her. Since he refused to give her the satisfaction of asking her to leave the seat, Fox walked to the transparisteel window beside her. He peered outside, as if an advertisement for nerf steaks was the most interesting thing he had seen all day.

"I still won't oversee your community service," Fox's tone was blunt.

"You look like hell," Czajak's tone was also blunt, and he almost turned to look at her, but caught himself in time. "Don't you sleep?"

Even the mention of sleep was enough to make his eyes burn. "I'm a busy man, Czajak. Too busy for sleep and too busy to supervise community service hours."

"Maybe you should sit down before you fall down, Commander."

He scoffed, still staring out of the window. "I don't need your pity."

A moment later, a hard bump against the back of his knees had Fox falling backward into a chair he vaguely recognized as the one that sat behind Stone's desk. Czajak stepped around him, shaking her head, and sat down in a guest chair. Fox frowned. She had given up a position of power, the implied high ground in this office.

"I think you should be the one to oversee my community service," she started.

"I disagree," Fox countered.

"You are the one who decided that community service was the right answer for members of Clone Rights who were arrested, yes?" He nodded, already searching for the trap in her question. "How is it fair for you to put that much work on your trooper in charge of overseeing it? He didn't ask for so much responsibility."

Why was this woman always fighting to infantilize him and his brothers? "I assure you, Beam is fully capable of withstanding the stress."

"Well, I would hate to put him in such a bad position," Czajak mused. "I probably would feel so guilty that I would skip all my community service appointments."

"Then you'll be arrested for failure to appear."

"And I'll be sentenced to jail time, in which I will gain more followers," she said with a satisfied smile. "That's the fear, correct?"

Kriffing Stone and his running mouth. Fox gritted his teeth. "If you fail to appear for appointments, I will take the appropriate measures to ensure that you pay your debt to society."

"I'm sure you would," Czajak agreed easily. Too easily. "However, would it not be more simple to agree to oversee my community service yourself? We could avoid all of the unpleasantness for the low price of one-hundred hours of your time."

"You couldn't afford that low price," Fox snorted.

Czajak's eyes glinted in amusement. "How about this, then? Your men rave about your leadership and how you never ask them to do anything you wouldn't be willing to do yourself. I know most of your men consider me to be the worst of the worst. I received the highest number of required community service hours. By taking on the responsibility of… well, of me, you would be proving that your willingness to do all aspects of the job is true in every situation."

Fox's head ached as he tried to find a way of refuting her point. It was a solid argument and she knew it from the way she was smiling at him. He suddenly understood why Commander Stone had refused to come to this part of the meeting.

"Fine," he ground out, voice low and harsh. "I'll oversee your community service. I don't know why you're being so insistent about it, but it won't be fun. You'll show up when and where I tell you, and stay as long as I deem fit. And if I hear a single complaint from you, I'll toss you in a cell, new followers be karked. Understood?"

"Perfectly, Commander," Czajak agreed. She was all demure compliance now that she had gotten her way. "Please notify me with the details of our first meeting."

"Consider yourself dismissed," Fox growled at her.

Czajak winked and rose to leave. As she opened the door, Fox heard Chase say, "Ouch! That one pinched me!"

"We talked about this, Gadi!" Nora lectured, leaving Stone's door to close behind her.

Fox rubbed at the lines between his brows. For his own sake, he took a moment to breathe before he had to go deal with whatever that was about.

---

Ransom I

"Okay, the Commander said I was cleared to deal with you as I see fit."

The sentence may have been worded as a threat, but Ransom could sense no malice in the trooper's tone. It didn't matter either way. She had been arrested too many times to count. There was nothing this pleasant-faced officer could do that would frighten her. Well, short of throwing her to his massiff. Even then, she was certain that she would do a great deal of damage before it could take her down.

"Whoa, what's with that face?" he asked, and Ransom immediately smoothed her expression.

"Just waiting for this to be over."

"I also treasure our time together," he smiled, reaching out a hand as if to pat her on the arm. Ransom was a comical distance away, seated on the other side of a wide desk, and she raised one eyebrow in his direction.

"Good news is that I think I've finally located your file," he said, not deterred by her lack of response. He hadn't been all day, actually. Ransom wasn't willing to work with him at all. She believed that he shouldn't need to read through a history of her life to know that the alterations to her cybernetics were illegal and needed to be removed or licensed. Instead, the trooper - who had cheerfully introduced himself several times as Sergeant Hound - had used a biometric scan to track her file.

"Ransom," Hound read from the display. He stared at her for a long moment, dark brows furrowed. "Your name is Ransom?"

"Your name is Hound," she fired back immediately. "Are you sure you want to start this fight?"

"Yeah, but most civvies have a last name."

"Why would I need a last name?" Ransom asked with a frown. "To keep from being confused with all of the other cybernetically-altered Coruscanti women named Ransom?"

"...That's true," Hound conceded. He turned his attention back to the screen and Ransom tensed a bit at what he would find. She braced herself for any number of unpleasant responses. In the past, she had seen everything from pity to awe to disgust, but he simply scanned through the documents - she had a lot of them - and nodded. "Well, you're being charged with disturbing the peace, but that isn't worth jail time or any significant fine. The Head Commander has been on a real community service kick lately, so we'll get you signed up for some of that."

"I'd rather take the jail time," Ransom spat out.

"No you wouldn't," Hound said seriously. "The jail is rough. Full of unsavory characters, terrible food, bad lighting. Plus, your job wouldn't take too kindly to you spending time in jail. None of them ever do. Don't you want to keep working at…" he checked the screen again, "...Red Squad?"

"Red Squad wouldn't fire me for being in jail," Ransom assured him.

"You can't know that for sure," Hound argued. "Trust me, community service is the better way to go."

"I do know for sure, actually," Ransom argued, unsure of why she was pressing the issue.

"Why, you sleeping with the boss or something?" he asked, tossing the datapad to land on the desk's surface.

Ransom smirked a bit at that. "Only in the occasional dry season. I am the boss. Owner, actually. I run Red Squad."

Hound laughed at that, and it was such a rich, cheerful sound that Ransom almost didn't mind that he was laughing at her. Almost.

"Your name is Ransom, no last name, and you own and run a business called 'Red Squad'. Are you secretly a clone trooper?"

"If I ran a squad, wouldn't that mean I outranked you?" Ransom fired back.

"Probably," he said, seeming unconcerned. "It would make you a captain, at least."

"Well, I already have a better-regulation haircut than you," she tried again. She had yet to see a member of the GAR rise to the bait about ranks - particularly the implication that a civilian outranked them - but clone troopers were notoriously fastidious about their appearance.

Hound raked a hand through his too-long hair and grinned at her. "Yeah, it's been a while since I visited the barber. Is my hair distracting you?"

"Hardly," Ransom snorted, pressing away the spark that had lit her belly at his waggling eyebrows.

"Good, then let's talk about your community service," he said. "Normally, you would be in the care of Trooper Beam, but he's recently experienced a flood of requests. I have it on good authority that he has some three thousand hours of community service to oversee after today, so I'll take care of supervising your hours. I'm thinking forty should be more than enough for something as minor as disturbing the peace. Give me your comlink information and I'll contact you for scheduling."

Ransom felt her eyes fly wide before she could bite back the response. "No."

"No?" Hound asked with a pouty sort of frown.

"You're an ARF trooper," she tried again.

Hound beamed warmly at her. "Great job! The average civilian doesn't even know what an ARF trooper is, let alone how to recognize one."

"I'm not an average civilian," Ransom told him, the response flat. "But my point is that you're an ARF. I don't want to do any community service that has to do with massiffs."

His dark eyes softened and warmed with understanding, and Ransom hated it. She didn't want - didn't need - anyone's pity. In her irritation, she lashed out. "So throw me in jail if you want to, bucket head, but I refuse to work with those beasts."

"Hey, I get it," he sympathized, face still kind. Ransom wanted to put her fist through it.

"No, you really don't," she snarled. "I'll-"

"Everything okay in here?" another trooper asked, ducking into the small office.

"Yeah, just chatting," Hound said easily, as if Ransom hadn't been in the middle of threatening him. "What are you up to, Stone?"

"Head Commander's in my office with the Czajak woman," he explained. "I needed to lie low."

"Makes sense to me," Hound gave a sympathetic grimace. "Ransom and I are going over community service options. You're usually in charge of bookings. Care to explain the process?"

"Oh, uh…" Stone hesitated. Ransom would bet that he hadn't expected Hound to actually need help. "We try to match civilians with their skills and interests."

"So you wouldn't force someone to work with an animal they have a strong dislike towards?" Ransom asked sharply, full of skepticism.

"Absolutely not," Stone answered with finality. "And if you mean the massiffs, a lot of civvies are uncomfortable around them. They're not even an option for community service, so there's no worry about that."

"Thank you, Stone!" Hound said, voice cheerful. Looking more than a bit confused, Stone gave a short nod and left. "Feel better?"

"If you knew working with massiffs wasn't an option, why didn't you tell me that?" Ransom crossed her arms over her chest.

"It seemed like you weren't really interested in listening to me," he said with a shrug.

"So you won't need my comlink information after all," she summarized.

"Now, no one said that," Hound hedged. "I can still supervise your community service."

"How?"

"Hey, I do other work around here!" he said, clearly defensive. "I can trade shifts around, pick up some duties cleaning streets or… working with- um, old people..?"

"I think I'll pass," Ransom told him with a snort.

"Suit yourself," Hound shrugged. "In that case, I'll still be the one supervising the licensing process for those cybernetic alterations."

Ransom was ready to argue, but something about the look in his eyes warned that he wouldn't give in so easily. Telling herself she would get a new frequency as soon as she was done registering the alterations, Ransom gave Hound the information he needed. She couldn't leave the precinct soon enough.

---

A/N - There! A full chapter without one Hound POV! Are you proud of me? I'm proud of me. And with this chapter, we've set up all of our couples! Though I might end up having to make a one-shot or side fic with Stone since I love him. This is also one of the longer chapters of this story, so congrats for getting through it!

[watching-pictures-move]

Put On Your Raincoats #20 | Squalid Motels and Desperate Gals, courtesy of Kim Christy

This review contains mild spoilers.

When I first heard of Kim Christy, I knew I had to delve into her work. Here is someone who was involved in the drag scene in the '60s and went on to direct and produce pornography from the '80s onward. She's also a trans woman director (and occasional actress), which is not just unusual in golden age pornography but even mainstream cinema today. Unfortunately, figuring out where to start was a challenge. There's a very good interview with her on the Advocate but which doesn't really delve into her directing work. So I did the highly risky and ill-advised move of scanning through the titles in her filmography and trying to pick out ones with interesting sounding premises. Even this was a challenge, as a lot of her movies sounded like they didn't have a terrible amount of story. (A good many of them also had certain slurs in the title, which are unfortunately common in trans pornography.) So out of the crapshoot of movies I picked, I can't say I really got to the bottom of what makes her work interesting or even gelled to most of them, but hopefully I can convey what makes the ones I did take to interesting.

To start with the most slight, the two Divine Atrocities movies are basically a collection of sex scenes. There's a theme of dominant women running through them, but otherwise there isn't much tying together in terms of staging, aesthetics and the like. The segments have titles like "The Leather Lass Tamer", "Rubber Rampage" and "Ms. Degradation", but truth be told, nothing here is terribly shocking. So there isn't a lot to either of these movies, but if you're watching it for those reasons, they're enjoyable enough. A few of the segments feature trans performers, and I did find that Sulka had a nicely imposing screen presence in her scene, and while Sugar Nicole briefly threatens her partner with her "big black cock", I did like that for the most part the movies don't discern between these scenes and the ones with cisgender performers. In the eyes of Kim Christy, there's room for everyone in this great sexual melange. Also notable is the threesome scene with Janey Robbins, who (after likely reading Dan Savage's column) tells one of her partners, "If you don't find a different way to fuck me, you can forget it, I'll have to find somebody else", and in the first time in the history of civilization, gets mad at her male partner for not climaxing quickly enough. "You always say it'll only take a few minutes. Time is the only thing I can't replace, and it always takes too long."

A bit more substantive narratively but less interesting is Momma's Boy, with a premise that you can guess based on the title. Tantala Ray presides over a brothel set during an indeterminate period, where she presides over her girls and also her son, who mysteriously became a deaf-mute at a certain point of time. Why did her son become a deaf-mute? Will we ever find out? Spoiler: it's incest. Tantala Ray does have a weird enough screen presence to make her parts watchable, but this has none of the charge that, say, Taboo brings to the same material. (It's worth noting that Ray in this movie, looking like a debauched queen of Mardi Gras in one scene, is a camp villain while Kay Parker plays her role straight in the other movie.) As it's shot on video, the movie is not very nice to look at, and the dirt cheap production values make it unclear whether this is supposed to be a period piece. Some of the dialogue is amusing ("Oxford?" "Guess again." "Princeton?" "Try Biloxi Tech, my sweetie."), and there is some old timey music and one of the clients wears an ascot at one point, so it's not a totally squalid affair. (It's classy, see? He's wearing an ascot.) As the son, Jerry Butler does a cringe-inducing lisp, but I did chuckle at his last line.

A bit easier to recommend is True Crimes of Passion, where Janey Robbins plays a private detective (cheekily named B.J. Fondel) who invariably bungles her investigations and winds up in sex scenes with the people she's supposed to be investigating. "Out of the fog and into the smog" begins the overwrought voiceover, which truth be told doesn't compare to the likes of Chandler but I guess the effort is nice. The first case involves her investigating the wife of a minister whom her client suspects of infidelity. Surprise, surprise, it turns out the wife has a girlfriend with whom she has dominant sex. Thanks to Robbins' investigative prowess, she gets found out and forced to join the proceedings and ends up getting her client, a Dan Quayle looking motherfucker in a cowboy hat, captured as well, which leads to an incredible burn.

"The lord will punish you for this."

"The lord already has, he gave me you for a husband."

Also, when Robbins is forced into cunnilingus, she says over narration, "Oh Christ, I'm not even sure I've seen one of these things up close", and yeah, okay, Janey.

The second scene is probably the most notable as it features Christy as a performer. Robbins visits her friend to investigate a death threat against her friend's brother (also Robbins' ex), and the twist can be deduced when you start wondering why a seemingly minor character gets an unusually large amount of screentime. The scene features a trope that likely isn't terribly sensitive by modern standards, but I get the sense from that Advocate interview that Christy isn't too hung up about such things and one must concede that the film is a product of its time and genre (and within that context, there's a lot worse out there). The last scene has Robbins spying on her neighbour in hotel to get some industry secrets, which leads to some really awkward dialogue about champagne and then a threesome involving her client and mark. Like the work of Yasojiru Ozu, this scene breaks the 180-rule, but I guess if this is your thing, you might enjoy it. At the very end, the mark just gives up his secrets to the client. The secrets of male bonding sometimes elude me.

Easily the most accomplished and enjoyable film from Christy that I watched was Squalor Motel. It combines the sexual variety of the other films with a sense of camp and grounds it in a distinct, memorable location. There isn't much more "plot" than the other movies, as it's basically about a motel concierge doing her job over the course of a day, but as it follows her bumping into a variety of (usually horny) guests and finding herself in amusing (and unfailingly sexual) situations, there's enough of a narrative through line that it feels like a "real" movie where the other movies strained for similar effect, and the movie uses a soundtrack of icy synths and jazz that sounds like imitation Angelo Badalamenti to give it all an alluring vibe. I'm gonna make a wager that David Lynch would have liked this movie. Look, I have no idea what his viewing habits are or what sends his motor running, and the thought of him jacking it furiously to this or any movie is not something that brings me pleasure. But this shares some of the campy tone and surface qualities of his works, and I also wanted to leave you all with that image.

Why does the motel have its own house band (to whom people try to listen to while they engage in all kinds of sexual congress)? Why is Jamie Gillis made up like a vampire and trying to sell marital aids? Why does the one guest's blow-up doll turn into a real person (and prove, uh, extremely vocal during their scene)? Why is the owner wearing a pig mask and a tutu while he spies on his guests? Why is everyone laughing at the newlywed? Why is the one scientist with a Hitler mustache and his shrill-voiced assistant conducting experiments (read: having a threesome) with Tantala Ray? And how are most of these things taking place in the mysterious Reptile Room in the middle of the motel? With an extremely winning Colleen Brennan in the lead role (sporting a pair of thick glasses, a Lucille Ball updo, and a big, toothy smile), we'll have a pretty good time finding out. Like a lot of hardcore movies, this is pretty episodic in structure, but its distinct atmosphere gives it a nice sense of momentum as it drifts from scene to scene.

With its nice production design (and the fact that it seems to have actual sets, rather than being shot in what I assume are people's homes like in the other movies), Squalor Motel feels a bit more upscale and lavish than the average porno. While I don't have any budgetary information handy, I do know that the production had an assistant director, Ned Morehead. To what extent he contributed to the movie's DNA I can't say for certain, but the directorial effort of his I watched, also produced by Christy, had many of the same qualities. Desperate Women starts off feeling pretty stylish with its spraypaint style opening credits (although it loses a bit of style when it misspells star Taija Rae's name as "Taja Rea"). Taija Rae plays a reporter who ends up wrongfully convicted for a murder and thrown in brutal women's prison presided over by the sadistic Tantala Ray, who seems to get her jollies from spying on her prisoners as they get it on or abusing them with the help of her dimwitted guard. During such incidents, the guard frequently ends up ejaculating on her uniform as a source of comic relief. (One such scene ends with a shot of a photo of Ronald Reagan.) I must however disclose, without revealing too much about the shameful inner workings of my hopelessly degenerate mind, that the denouement of scene involving Ray, her guard and Sharon Mitchell did not leave me unmoved. Mitchell plays a prisoner who befriends Taija Rae, and it's worth noting that despite being one of the best actresses in classic porn, she's saddled here with an atrocious Hispanic accent and at one point sings a bit of "America" from West Side Story.

By porn standards, this is actually quite well produced and has a relatively sturdy narrative. (I must however note that one scene has a blatant ejaculation-related continuity error.) Women in prison movies tend to be pretty squalid affairs in general, at least in terms of production values, so this doesn't feel too far off from the real thing and offers more explicit versions of the same pleasures, while its sense of humour gives it a nice campy quality. Tantala Ray especially delivers in a pleasingly over the top performance as the teeth-gnashing villain (the camera often frames her severe face in wide angle close ups), and say what you will about Sharon Mitchell's accent, I did like seeing her pop up in here. With all the flamboyance and excitement around her, Taija Rae almost becomes a supporting character in her own movie, although I must confess that I found her character's hopeless naivety pretty cute. ("I didn't wear rubbers, it's sunny out".) With a fun cast, a firm handle on the genre's pleasures and a groovy soundtrack, this is a pretty good time.