#John mcclane imagine

[lightthewaybackhome]

[vulpinesaint]

becoming a john wick fanboy :) i get the whole american male action film star thing now i'm totally into it

[calicojack1718]

The Rich Inner World of Autism, Its Gift to the World

Autistic people are obsessed with our weird obsessions. Endless hours are spent imagining them. What if, we could harness all of that imagining and make it some productive in the work place or classroom?

April Fools! It’s Autism What? Month, Week, Day… I stumbled during the month of April and didn’t post a weekly article concerning autism. While it is frustrating to me personally, it is not surprising. Many things can derail my plans, the tiniest weakest breeze, a small drop of water, a whiff of faint soap. Really, just about anything. A hair that catches my attention. Anywho, considering I’m a…

[wehangout]

Another @shamelessdvdcommentary requested by the wonderful @suzy-queued with questions made by the amazing @callivich! This one is for Slick back My Hair (You know the Devil's in There)! These are a lot of fun, so hit me up if you want to see this for a different fic 😘

Give us some stats - (when you wrote it, word count, how long it took to finish, is it a one-shot/multi-chapter, etc)

Wrote it in 2015! It’s a long one-shot, and I think my second ever shameless big bang.

What was the initial inspiration for your story?

Okay. Took me a minute. I knew this was inspired by a one-shot I wrote for GW2015 that has since been taken down, but I also knew the one-shot was inspired by something and it took forever to go back and figure it out. Anyway, the initial one-shot was inspired by the Day 7 theme of “Imagine Your OTP – go to the website http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/ and choose a prompt!”. I don’t recall what the exact prompt was (I think digging a grave together), BUT apparently I still have the one-shot posted here on tumblr if you wanna read it! So, yeah, the Big Bang fic was inspired by this one-shot which was inspired by GW2015. Phew. That was a novel on its own

If the story is written from a character’s POV, why did you choose this character?

Mickey. Because I am me.

What was your favourite scene to write?

I’m not sure, but reading back, I really like the scenes with side characters as assasins. Sheila, Jimmy, and Angela. Fun stuff.

How did you come up with the title?

Ugh. This was back when iTunes was a thing lmao. I basically went through all my music, picking out songs I thought might fit the fic’s plot, then went through the lyrics.

Are there any little moments or references you hope readers will notice?

Two! I had fake IDs with the names John Foley and Axel McClane which is a reference to John McClane and Axel Foley – Die Hard and Beverly Hills Cop respectively. And I also had this line “Two inches to the right and it would’ve hit your fucking heart, Ian.” "Two inches to the left and it would have missed me completely” which was reference to The Mighty Ducks. Only one reader picked up on these lol.

Was there anything you struggled to write? If so, how did you overcome this?

The Terry fight scene. And, honestly, I just pushed through it.

Favourite line in the story?

Okay, the “My hero” continuation, but also, back in 2015, I wrote, word for word, “Knew you’d come.” I mean, it’s Ian saying it, but obvi why it’s a fave lmao

What are you most proud about in the story? (plot, characterisation, dialogue, twist/cliffhanger, etc)

I wouldn’t call them twists, but the little surprises that turn up along the way – Sheila being a badass, the texter being Mandy.

Are there any ‘behind the scenes’ info you’d like to share - e.g. what’s going on in a characters head in a certain scene or how you came to write a certain line?

At the end, where Mickey goes to save Ian. Ian’s “goodbye” is legit. Dude was sure they (at least he) was going to die.

Reading back the story now, is there anything you’d change or add?

It’s very quick. I’d probably add more depth to it. (also the title shh)

Would you ever write a sequel to this story?

I’ve considered it, but one half of the dynamic duo gets taken in this one. What other plot could there be?

Are there any ‘easter eggs’ in your story - e.g. references to other stories you’ve written, a trope you often use etc?

I think I did the big Oh moment in this, along with a few others. I think that’s about it.

If you’ve chosen your most popular story, are you surprised by the popularity?

This is definitely not my most popular, lol, but I appreciate the love it’s received!

Were you nervous or excited to post this story?

Oh, always excited

Did you have a beta or a friend who helped you as you wrote?

I did! Again, this was back in 2015 when my pal Ella @hubrisandwax was still around. We had similar time zones, so we’d Skype and write at night (poetry, bitch), and have our own little sprints. She was my cheerleader and beta!

Anything else you’d like the readers to know about the story?

I know this is an Ian and Mickey romance, but I actually preferred the scenes after Ian was taken. Getting into Mickey’s head when he’ll do literally anything to get Ian back? Including torture and murder his own brother? That shit was fun.

[psygull]

What action movie protags do you think would make good ponies? Imagining all these big guys as little ponies is great

REALLY GREAT ASK. ANY ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER CHARACTER DEFINITELY...also less of a Big Action Guy but i'm a big fan of Lance Henriksen and i think he'd make a good pony. also BLADE from BLADE

WAIT. DIE HARD PONIES. horse John McClane would be incredibly funny. hans gruber pony too

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Just had a random thought. While thinking about the “Indiana Jones” original trilogy, I’ve developed a sort of newfound appreciation for the casting of Harrison Ford. My thoughts haven’t necessarily changed on this character, I still think Indy is fun but not that complex of a character, it’s just that now I imagine casting the character wasn’t the easiest thing in the world.

What Indy lacks in complexity, he makes up for sheer leading man charisma. This is a role where you absolutely need someone who can be able to act without saying anything. Because Indy has to be both:

1) convincing as an Everyman protagonist, in that he’s vulnerable and relatable enough that you can convince the audience that he’s not superhuman and is just a regular guy.

2) the coolest man who has ever lived. Someone who can walk into frame and exude “Yeah, I’m that guy” energy.

Harrison Ford really did have that level of charisma where he can be relatable and vulnerable enough to convince you he’s the underdog, but also make you think he’s the coolest person ever. I’ve tried imagining some other leading actors in the role and, honestly, it makes you realize that Indiana as a character needs more than just a handsome leading man.

Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t have been able to convince you he’s an Everyman protagonist. Sylvester Stallone is better at playing more vulnerable, complicated characters like Rambo and Rocky. Michael Biehn is good at the underdog role, but not necessarily at being the cool guy. Keanu Reeves, while I love the guy to death, is too wooden to be the charming, cool guy (he’s better off at comedy and darker roles anyways). Kurt Russell and Clint Eastwood were close, but I think they’re better off at being action hero badasses. Bruce Willis, I think he’s similar to Keanu in that he’s better off at comedy and darker roles (even his most famous action movie role as John McClane just shows he excels in being comedic, not necessarily being the cool guy).

The actors who I felt could’ve done Indiana Jones justice, aside from Harrison Ford, were Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, and Charlie Cox (Daredevil convinced me he could be the Everyman protagonist, She-Hulk convinced me he could pull off the cool guy role). And, if South Korea made the Indiana Jones movies, Won Bin came to mind.

EDIT: I just realized. Pedro Pascal! Just imagine a combination of Din Djarin, Joel Miller and Oberyn Martell.

I think “roguish charm” is what I’m getting at here. It’s actually quite hard to pull off the more I thought about it. For example, while I like David Harbour and his character of Jim Hopper, I don’t think Harbour can pull off roguish charm. I think that’s why Hopper came off so hostile and combative in Stranger Things season 3; Duffer Bros wrote him as Indiana Jones-like, but the end result was more off-putting than charming. As another bad example; Sean Penn in the movie “Shanghai Surprise”. That’s probably the worst example at an attempt at roguish charm.

Anyways, I’m curious. Which actor do you think could’ve pulled this role off convincingly?

[foxilayde]

Imagine spending Christmas with Nathan Bateman at The Compound.

You’ve decorated the house with warm twinkle lights (“honey these are TACKY. I can program the existing house lights to any stupid color”), balsam scented candles (“why’d you get these, we’re in the middle of a FOREST, the place already smells like tree sap”), Christmas music, tinsel, an ornamented tree in the living room (“Jesus, babe what’d I say? We’re SURROUNDED by these things. Did you really have to get Dave to helicopter in a Douglas Fir from Williams Sonoma?…. Yes I know what Williams Sonoma is, it’s on the fucking credit card statement, that’s how.”) You make hot chocolate with peppermint candy canes (“do you know how much sugar is in that cup you’re sipping? No thanks.”)

He’s a bit of a Grinch. He rolls his eyes when it’s your turn to pick the movie for your movie night and you choose “Elf”. He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t touch the caramel popcorn you made either. He folds his arms and grits his teeth when you laugh and quote your favorite lines along with the movie.

When it’s his turn to choose a movie he picks The Shining.

“The fucking Shining, Nathan? The Shining??”

“What? You love The Shining!”

“Of course I love The Shining, but it’s not a Christmas movie!”

“It’s Christmas adjacent.”

“How so?!”

“There’s… snow. And family.”

“You’re absolutely right, who could forget the great heartwarming Christmas theme of chasing your child with an axe through the snow? It’s practically Rockwellian.”

“Jesus. Fine. No Kubrick. How about Die H—“

“I knew you were going to say Die Hard. Fine. Die Hard. Great compromise Nate, really. Nothing says cherishing warmth and peace like C4 down an elevator shaft.”

You fold your arms and sit back against the couch stiffly in a very Nathan-like fashion.

“There is a love b-plot with Holly.”

“I said fine, Nate. Que it up.”

You don’t get up to make the candied pecans you’d been planning on. You seethe and use your frustration to push back your tears. What a jerk.

If it’s any consolation, Nathan isn’t engrossed in the film either. He looks cold, folding his arms for warmth in his thin henley. You’d usually wrap his grumbling ass up in a fluffy blanket, kiss his cheek, and offer him some herbal tea or hot cider (to which he’d unequivocally decline and request a beer instead). But you don’t. You both sit a cushion’s distance apart, unswaddled, unsnacked, and unhappy. Nathan glances over to you about every 10 seconds, his demeanor shifting until halfway through the film he pauses John McClane and asks, “I can’t enjoy the movie when you’re acting like this.”

You tamp down the urge to screech at him like a tea kettle, and instead speak to him in a level sarcastic tone he can relate to.

“I apologize, Nathan. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to want to enjoy something with the person you love, only to have them be rude and cold. Sincerest fucking apologies.”

You don’t look at him, you wrap your arms tighter around yourself and stare at the still frame of Bruce Willis in the air shaft, feigning engrossment.

“I’ve been a dick. I’m sorry, it’s just it’s fucking Q4 and the dev team launched the latest hardware so goddamn late in the fall it’s been a—“

“I get it. I’m sorry you’re stressed. and I’m sorry for foisting all this hokey shit on you.” You gesture around the room to the twinkle lights, tinsel, tree and snowflake paraphernalia. “I should have known you were stressed about work and it wasn’t fair trying to force you to be all Holly Jolly.”

Nathan scoots closer to you and takes your hand in his, playing with your fingers when he says, “work should never be an excuse for me treating you like crap. I’ve been bonafide fucking scrooge, spitting on tiny Tim and shit.”

“Am I tiny Tim in this scenario?”

“Nah. Jacob Marley, without a dou—“

“Shut up, ass!” You shove Nathan’s shoulder and you both laugh. He brings you in for a tight hug and pulls you down to his chest for a cuddle.

“You know what I did for Christmas last year?”

“What?” You finger the texture of his cream colored Henley.

“Promise you won’t tell?”

“I think it’s pretty clearly stated in that NDA that all your intellectual property remains a secret on penalty of death? or something equally dramatic?”

“I was here. Alone. didn’t even realize it was Christmas till I tried zooming Ted about something or other and saw everyone in the office was offline. When I put two and two together I left the lab, drank about a gallon of sake and Sapporo, watched ‘Its a Wonderful Life’, and… cried.”

“You did not.”

“I did.”

“Awww, Nate-y poooo, everytime a bell rings an Angel ge—“

You squeal when Nathan flips you over on the couch, hovering above you, he tickles your neck aggressively with his beard as he playfully peppers the underside of your chin with kisses.

“Penalty of death, remember?”

“Your tender side is safe with me, Ebenezer.”

Nathan looks into your eyes for a few beats. Really stares into them before glancing around the room at all the warm glowing decor.

“The place looks nice.”

You smile up at him, warm happy tears pricking at the corners of your eyes when you smooth your hand down his cheek and into his soft beard.

“Thanks.”

He continues to stare at you. You suspect there’s a secret vulnerable monologue going on in his head when he stares into your eyes. things he’ll probably never say, never admit, never profess. He’s like an iceberg this one. Most would disregard him as “cold” and move on. But you know better. Even if you can’t see it , you know the depth of him beneath it all.

“Merry Christmas” you whisper

“You filthy animal!” you both say at the same time, hugging each other in a fit of mild laughter.

“Oooh Home Alone. Let’s watch that one!”

“Sounds great.”

You grab the fuzzy blanket, prep the candied pecans, and watch the film; cuddled up all cozy with Nathan as snow falls silently outside the glass walls of your glowing little sanctuary.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

To clarify: This is not a case of both universes existing simultaneously. This is an inexplicably-dropped-into-an-entirely-different-universe crossover.

This is not necessarily about which is your favorite character out of these (although it could be. Who am I to tell you what to do here). This is about what would be the most chaotic, the most cursed, the most barely-justifiable plot-wise. The worst, if you will.

And, since there are far more than ten characters I can imagine dumping into the world of Batman and the Justice League with no valid reasoning, there will be more.

More (or less) cursed options available here

[cdyssey]

Trust Me, Pt. 2/2

Summary: Melissa had to put someone down as her emergency contact.

A/N: Part two, @straperine​, my friend!!! 8K+ words of the most unhinged angst imaginable, but then I wrote a little fluff—as a treat. 

CW: Car Accidents, Medical Procedures, Hospitalization, Alcohol

Part 1 | AO3 Link

In the hospital waiting room, Barbara paces the harshly-lit tiles back-and forth and then back again, likely driving the other two bleary-eyed occupants of the space insane. 

She is beyond caring about other people at this point, though, as selfish as it is, as uncharitable, and as unkind.

Melissa Ann Schemmenti might as well be the only person left in the world.

The wonderful surgeon, a maternal woman who insisted upon being called Njoki instead of Dr. Anyango, had already come out around an hour ago, sat next to Barbara in one of those dreadful hard-backed chairs, and explained it all very carefully to her. When the truck had hit Melissa’s comparatively tiny Civic, her seatbelt had thankfully done its duty and kept her in its seat when she careened into a shallow ditch… however, the external pressure exerted by the safeguard alone probably would have been enough to bruise a kidney. It was not an uncommon injury in a car wreck—a trade off even for not flying through the windshield. But then, on top of that, Melissa’s airbag didn’t deploy, and it appeared that she slammed forward into her steering wheel, which did quick work of lacerating what had likely already been a tender kidney.

Her only remaining one.

This was news to Barbara, who had assumed that she knew most everything there was to know about Melissa: her favorite color (lime green), the names of her fists (John and McClane), the significance behind the saints nigh perpetually suspended around her neck (a gift from her late nana, divine and holy protection). She even knew things that her friend hadn’t explicitly told her, such as the fact that she always had to face the door, hypervigilant against potential threats.

But she hadn’t known this.

“What do you mean she only has one kidney?” She had all but yelped, gathering the collar of her shirt in her clenched fist, rumpling it even further than it had been already. She’d barely given a thought to what clothes she had thrown on, half-pulling on garments at random. She wasn’t wearing a blessed stitch of makeup.

Njoki seemed surprised at Barbara’s surprise, raising a grayed brow, but she didn’t remark upon it.

“Her other kidney must have been surgically removed because there’s some old scar tissue there,” she said in a didactic voice, not dissimilar to the one that Barbara used when she was introducing shapes to her five-year olds for the first time. “But I didn’t see the operation on her medical records, so it may have been done a long time ago.”

Barbara hadn’t known what to do with this overwhelming information except to be distantly hurt that she had never been told about it. Granted, she supposed that there weren’t too many occasions when Melissa could have brought up the detail that she was missing a kidney in casual conversation… but just maybe, it could have been folded into the same discussion that they should have had about her apparently being Melissa’s emergency contact.

Because that was news to her too.

Not as surprising, she grudgingly reasoned.

Melissa probably had to put someone down after the divorce, and she didn’t trust any of her family as far as she could throw them.

But still.

Barbara would have liked to have known.

She would have liked to cherish the knowledge that Melissa trusted her so deeply… even though the very fact that it had remained a secret almost ran counterintuitive to that epiphany. 

Melissa had spent the entirety of their friendship taking care of her in so many ways, from making her feel at home in Philly at the very start to doing her damnedest to ensure that her house didn’t become an empty haunt in all the lonely months after the divorce.

But, in twenty-something years, she rarely—if ever—let Barbara extend those same sorts of extraordinary measures to her.

Not even when she had been married to Joseph, who was an overgrown manchild at best and a drunk buffoon at worst.

Not even when she had finally divorced his stupid ass and seemingly forgotten how to smile for years upon aching years, the gesture never entirely reaching her dark eyes. 

Not even when her nana passed away a few years after that, and she’d ended up falling out with her younger sister because of it too.

So much pain, year-in and year-out, and Barbara had tried to be present for her—bringing casseroles over to her house, embracing her in the teacher’s lounge, taking her out for lunches, telling corny jokes that never exactly succeeded in making her laugh, threading their hands together in unnoticed places, sometimes taking far too long to let go—but it never felt like enough. These gestures were all nice and good, and Melissa was audibly appreciative of each and every one of them, but Barbara, ever a model Christian, wanted to thoroughly save her friend.

Melissa once said she’d kill for Barbara—Barbara was family—but the inverse was precisely true for her.

She’d do anything to drag her friend back from the consumptive darkness, even if it killed her.

“I’m sorry… this is just a lot to process,” she had admitted to Njoki, by then delicately massaging her pounding temples with her fingertips. “Melissa can be”—(so damn stubborn, headstrong, prideful, cagey, self-deprecating, and maybe even self-loathing, quite possibly unconvinced that she deserves to be loved)—“protective about the particulars of her life sometimes.”

“Understandable,” Njoki smiled graciously and let the sticky moment pass.

“But her other kidney...” The only one she had. God, it sickened Barbara. How could she not have known? “Were you able to fix it?”

She dreaded the answer, already fearing the worst outcome, unable to prevent herself from catastrophizing when every nerve in her body was alive with adrenaline and panic and hurt.

She would be brave enough for Melissa not to look away from it—the answer, the future, whatever else this hellish event had in store.

She owed Melissa her bravery at the very least.

“Mhm… I was able to fix it with an emergency partial nephrectomy,” Njoki returned patiently, “which simply means that I removed the damaged tissue from the kidney and did other repairs to successfully restore it to full functionality…”

The surgeon bit her dark lower lip then, hesitating slightly for the first time since the conversation had begun, and the gesture wasn’t lost on Barbara.

“There’s a but in there, though,” she intuited, her mouth abominably dry. She stared at palms, which were slightly red from the way she had been worrying them together for three hours.

Because Melissa had been in surgery for that long of a time—if not longer given the fact that an hour had passed since the accident and when Dr. McGill actually called.

Three godforsaken hours.

And Barbara had endured every second like her own personal hell. They drove through her hands—those seconds, those minutes, those hours upon unfathomable hours. They wounded her tender skin—scourged it even—but she could not stop herself from participating in her own bitter annihilation. 

She could not stop herself from fearing a world where Melissa Schemmenti could suddenly stop existing.

“Yes,” Njoki agreed softly, lightly curling her hand around Barbara’s wrist. Her fingers were cool, and that felt good to her feverish skin, soothing even. “She only has one kidney, so recovery is going to be on the longer side. We’re giving her a hemofiltration treatment while she’s in the ICU to ease the stress on the organ as it starts to heal. But I’m also not necessarily happy with her oxygen output yet, so I’m going to wait to take her off the ventilator for another couple of hours until she’s stabilized.”

“She’s on a vent?” Barbara had inhaled sharply, incapable from keeping the terror and unholy fear from climbing up the rungs of her throat. What she knew of medical terminology wasn’t much. What she knew of ventilators was absolutely terrifying. “She can’t breathe on her own?”

Njoki’s grip on her wrist tightened.

Reassuring but firm.

And kind.

So kind.

“It’s less that she can’t, Mrs. Howard, and more that the ventilator is giving her some help at the moment, so her body doesn’t have to work so hard to do so for her,” she clarified. “We’ll have her off of it in no time—don’t you worry, hon.”

Barbara winced at the use of her surname—the very one she had consciously decided not to change—still attached to the history behind it, wanting to continue to share a name with her daughters, and not wanting to endure the legal hassle of reverting to her maiden name besides… but, at the same time, Howard was inherently a reminder of Gerald. And there was something about the invocation of her ex-husband when she was in the waiting room of a hospital nearly about to lose her mind over her dearest not-just-friend that knifed her between the ribs. 

They’d been divorced for nearly an entire year, and she still felt the need to apologize to him.

For what exactly?

She could not say—in the very same way that she’d been unable to tell him the real reason why she couldn’t leave Philadelphia.

There had only been one reason, really.

One name.

One inexcusable sin.

“I’m going to allow her another hour to rest,” Njoki continued, giving her one last squeeze before finally standing up from the rickety chair, “and then I’ll send someone to come and get you. Does that sound alright?”

“Yes, of course,” she had replied somewhat untruthfully. Every atom in her itched to be wherever Melissa was now, to lay eyes on her for herself, to embrace her, to empirically confirm that she was still breathing, but she forced the facade of Barbara Howard to arise and perform her due diligence.

She smiled at the doctor with all her pearly white teeth.

But when she was finally gone, when it was simply Barbara and the two faceless individuals in the waiting room who were studiously looking away—rightfully lost in their own torments and fears—the kindergarten teacher bowed her head and cried.

She cried because she had apparently almost lost Melissa Schemmenti, and there wouldn’t have been a damn thing she could have done about it. And she cried precisely because she didn’t lose her best friend. She was still on this Earth—alive, tangible so miraculously here—and the guttural relief cascaded through her broken body like a deluge, like a Biblical, almighty flood. She cried because she was so utterly exhausted. She had spent the last three hours in a state of hypervigilance, every microscopic detail that she perceived razor sharp and stinging in the clarity of trauma. She cried because everything hurt—it all did—down to the way that when she glanced at her phone—and it was Melissa’s twinkling eyes that greeted her!—she had to hold back a sob.

She cried because had this been the end—had Melissa gone and left her, had she died—then there would have forever remained an unspoken thing, a wordless specter that perpetually haunted the few inches that unfailingly remained between them.

In Melissa’s music-filled kitchen when they accidentally brushed hips, standing side-by-side in front of the stove.

On Barbara’s soft couch when their shoulders just touched as they coincidentally laughed at all the same parts of a stupid movie.

In the teacher’s lounge at the round table that they both loved, their ankles occasionally glancing beneath their chairs.

Barbara cried about all of these things, having never verbally articulated the importance of even just one of them, a hand carefully splayed over her mouth to keep the carnage from coming out.

It was a quiet affair, of course, because she was conscious of the others—(she was always conscious of the others and their perpetual surveillance)—but the tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and down the weathered planes of her face anyway, collecting calmly on the vertex of her chin.

She allowed herself those five minutes of nearly unadulterated grief.

She indulged the child inside of her who had no recourse except to fall apart, who could only physically manifest these big emotions in the total reckoning of her own body.

And then, just as quickly, with expert precision, she capably mothered herself.

She wiped her streaming eyes on the sleeve of her soft shirt, the mask settling back into its proper place again, and she became Barbara Howard once more, unable to sit with herself and all of her unwanted baggage for very long.

Quite literally.

Which is why she’s been pacing for almost the entire hour, only taking a few sitting breaks before inevitably getting up again, continuing to pace, and impatiently waiting for the moment when the double doors open and someone tells her that she can see Melissa.

When that finally happens—sometime around three—when a nurse appears in front of her and tells her that her wife is starting to wake up, she never fully registers that there is something inherently wrong with such a sentence in the first place.

She just nods—speechless, so grateful—and follows eagerly, every step forward illuminated by the harsh fluorescence above.

—

The ICU is a terrifying place, dimly lit, shadowy, claustrophobic, and frankly alive with ghastly noise. Curtained beds line each side of the unit like stalls from which the intense whirring of machines rises upwards into the air and crashes indelicately upon her ears, but even that electric undercurrent isn’t enough to disguise the moans that frequently surface through the hum like a keen sort of lowing. 

Her stomach clenches, the column of her throat, as she catches a glimpse of a patient on a ventilator—not Melissa, thank God—but she knows that her friend must look similar, spidered with so many crawling appendages.

The nurse, a young lady named Cecily, silently gestures for Barbara to follow her down the corridor of beds on the right.

Before they reach the very last unit there, which is also initially eclipsed by a floor length curtain, Cecily gently whispers prepare yourself as though this is something achievable when one’s best friend—(and partner, confidant, companion, family, sole reason for staying in Philadelphia, guilty pleasure, greatest what if)—is behind that curtain, vulnerable and so broken, picked over and picked apart. But she only nods, distantly aware that it’s just something that the nurse has to say to be polite.

And so, Barbara Howard takes a deep breath and rounds the corner.

And she nearly falls to pieces where she stands.

Because there is Melissa Ann Schemmenti—a woman who always insists on looking so damn alive —thoroughly diminished in a hospital bed, washed out in a paisley-studded hospital gown. She is crisscrossed and scissored and swallowed up by so many colorful wires and tubes. Lines ribbon her arms, snaking around them and plunging inwards, connected to at least four different IVs that are swinging gallows-like from a singular pole. A row of stitches, neatly taped, rakes her colorless cheek, and the bottom of an empty catheter bag just pokes out beneath the blankets on the left hand side of the bed.

All of this Barbara Howard might have been able to live with, rationalize, and capably endure as part of the minutiae of what it means to be in an intensive care unit, were it not for the big and ugly tube erupting from the side of Melissa’s mouth, leading to a dreadfully bulky machine.

The ventilator.

Every rise and fall of the second-grade teacher’s chest is too perfect, too controlled, too precise.

Mechanical.

“Melissa.” Her name, the lilting three syllables of it, comes out shattered on her tongue. Barbara is desperate, unhinged at all of her carefully articulated seams. She’s scrambling to her side, unkeeled, unraveled, and so utterly unmoored. “Oh, sweetheart."

She stops just short of reaching out and touching her, though, suddenly afraid to do so—unable to stomach the thought of hurting her even one iota more—but then Njoki, who has just arrived, moves to the opposite side of the bed and gently shakes her head, her hands primly tucked into the pockets of her lab coat.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Howard,” she says. (It takes everything in her not to visibly recoil at the innocuous usage of her full name again.) “You can go ahead. See? She’s looking at you…”

And so she is.

Melissa’s olive eyes are half-lidded with exhaustion and likely a slew of painkillers too, purple half-moons edging them like elongated shadows, but even still, she’s clearly staring at Barbara, something of distress in those dark depths, something of unmistakable fear.

The younger teacher has always hated doctors—distrusts them, suspects that some (if not most) of them are quacks, won’t even go to her yearly check-ups unless Barbara nags at her to do so. Remembering all of this with a pang, she reaches out and runs her fingers through the familiar mane of red hair splayed all around Melissa's face in dull and lifeless tangles, tucking a stray strand behind her ear... behind the ventilation tubing...

“I’m here, sweetheart,” she murmurs as a single tear lances down the side of her face, falling somewhere onto the whiteness of Melissa’s sheets. With her free hand, she grabs the other woman’s closest hand—so careful not to disturb the IV port—and squeezes lightly.

“I’m here. I’m here.”

Melissa, with what little strength she seems to possess, squeezes back. There is dried blood still crusted around her painted nails, and the sight disturbs Barbara. They’d gone to get mani-pedis together just last week, and Barbara had never laughed as hard as she did when the technician had scrubbed Melissa’s feet with a pumice stone, and she’d erupted into unreserved giggles, surprisingly ticklish.

Endearingly so.

“Ms. Schemmenti and I—” Njoki starts, but Barbara quickly interrupts.

“—Melissa,” she says gently, glancing back at her friend, who hasn’t pried her glazed eyes away from her yet. “She prefers to be called Melissa… and it’s perfectly fine if you call me Barbara...”

Mrs. Howard—though she has long served Barbara well—does not have a place in this hospital, not here, not in this fragile moment, not by Melissa Schemmenti's sickbed.

Njoki nods once, her eyes warm and commiserating.

“Melissa and I, then, have come up with a system for communication while she’s still intubated,” the doctor continues with a slight smile. “I don’t want her moving her head too much, so we’ll go by blinks in response to questions until we can get her off the vent. One blink for yes and two blinks for no—right, Melissa?"

For the first time, Melissa’s gaze darts over to Njoki, and she blinks once and rather slowly to indicate that she’s understood.

Easy enough. 

Maybe, when all of this is behind them, years and years and innumerable years down the road, they will both be able to laugh about how this is the least Melissa has ever talked in all her sixty-years.

(Maybe, though, that wound will always be too tender to ever jokingly prod, and Barbara will treat any reminder of it like a cardinal offense. This is the day, the hour, the night, when she almost lost her. That will never not hollow her out to her bones.)

“Are you hurting, sweetheart?” Barbara asks, slowly lowering herself into the chair next to Melissa’s bed. It’s as uncomfortable as the ones in the waiting room, so she leans forward a little and presses her elbows into the mattress of the hospital bed for support, still holding on to her friend’s hand, though, refusing to let go.

Not now.

Never again.

Melissa blinks once and then twice, but the agonized way that her brow is furrowed over her eyes easily tips Barbara off to an alternative and very distinct possibility.

“Are you lying to me, Melissa Ann Schemmenti?” She asks in her most serious teacher voice, the one she only uses when she catches her kindergarteners trying to stay awake during naptime. And when she receives a thorough eye roll and then an accompanying blink in response, she can’t help but hoarsely chuckle in such a way that it's clear that she’s rather close to crying.

“As inappropriate as ever, I see.”

Another blink, and the corner of Melissa's bloodless mouth nearly twitches, but there is a tube in the way.

There is a ventilator.

The smile slips away from Barbara’s own lips at the unpleasant reminder, and before she can stop it, another tear falls from her eye. She hastily swipes at it—doesn’t think it’s her right to be so damn emotional when she’s not the one lying in the hospital bed with one barely working kidney and a machine dispassionately breathing for her.

“I apologize,” she says thickly, and she leans down to impulsively press a kiss against the other woman’s bruised knuckles. “Silly me. I shouldn’t be so upset in front of you…”

Melissa blinks once.

And then twice.

And then three times, staring at her expectantly, but Barbara glances up at Njoki instead, her dark brow pinching somewhere in the middle.

“Three blinks?” She muses aloud. “What would that be…?”

Njoki seems confused herself, pulling a hand through her long braids as she thinks on it.

“Mmmm, could be analogous for maybe?” The surgeon suggests, at which point Melissa squeezes her hand again, this time a little more insistently than before.

Barbara looks back down again to see that she’s blinking thrice once more, the expression in her eyes impatient, frustrated at not being understood. She frowns sympathetically; it has to be an utterly alienating experience to be entombed in one's own body.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she murmurs, now rubbing soothing circles into the other woman’s clammy hand with her thumb. “I’m not sure what you mean. You’ll have to tell me later...”

She receives a look that quite plainly says, What aren’t you getting?  

But nonetheless, slumping her shoulders resignedly, Melissa blinks once anyway, which she assumes is most closely translatable to an affectionate, Fine, dummy.

“So how long will she have to be on the vent again?” Barbara asks, now addressing the question to Njoki, who is adjusting a dial on the main IV pump. Whatever she does seems to produce an immediate and tangible effect on Melissa because she moans with audible relief.

“Just increased the dosage of morphine you’re receiving,” the doctor explains, briefly placing her hand on Melissa’s other arm. “Should help with any pain you’re feeling, hon… as for the ventilator”—she looks at Barbara again—“the team who does early morning rounds can reassess in a few hours while I’m in another surgery. If they’re satisfied that her vitals are stable, I’ll give them the go ahead to extubate her.”

Melissa tightly closes her bruised eyes at this, her nails suddenly digging into Barbara’s palm, sharp and terrified.

“I know,” Barbara interprets readily. “You don’t like that answer…”

It scares you to be so thoroughly dependent upon another.

Upon an unthinking, brutalist machine.

You’ve never known of a fight that you cannot handle with nothing but your own two fists.

You always think you have to survive the worst alone, Melissa.

Why is that?

Who taught you such a terrible way of existing in this world?

Barbara knows that even if Melissa wasn’t on a ventilator, she wouldn’t have been able to answer either of these questions aloud. They’re far too vulnerable, demanding the second grade teacher’s total honesty, and Barbara knows that it would be hypocritical to ask that of her when she can’t even fully offer it herself.

“But I’m not leaving you, you hear?” She goes on, her voice suddenly constricted, a hundred emotions thick. “I promise.”

Even though the effort looks a little painful, Melissa opens her eyes again to deliver one blink.

Two.

And then three… that same elusive response, and Barbara frowns, feeling guilty and lost. She knows Melissa so intimately, and yet, whatever she is attempting to convey with these microgestures is as baffling to her as some arcane language.

“Mhm,” she placates lamely. “Yes, of course. I see...”

But she still doesn’t get it, and Melissa isn’t stupid. 

She blinks twice in blatant admonition, and Barbara can almost hear what she would have said.

No, goddammit, she would have laughed. You definitely don't.

—

The critical care team extubates Melissa around six that morning after a weaning test is successful; her oxygen saturation has risen, and she’s been heavily struggling against the vent for a while, trying to breathe on her own. Barbara holds her hand through the entire process, whispering soothing words into her ear as she tries not to cry at the sight of Melissa coughing and coughing, her throat inflamed from the intrusive tubing. The resident in charge immediately replaces the life support apparatus with an oxygenated mask, and it’s a sign of the younger woman’s utter exhaustion that she doesn’t buck against yet another restrictive measure.

She just stares at Barbara from the depths of glassy eyes for what feels like an eternity before finally closing them, less falling asleep than succumbing to it. The kindergarten teacher kisses the side of her hand again and continues to temple it with her own, rocking back-and-forth in her deeply uncomfortable chair. She prays to God for at least another half-hour after that, asking Him for His mercy and His healing, for His continued hand of protection on Melissa; she pleads and pleads and so desperately pleads, hoping that the voice in her head scrapes against the infinite (and sometimes depressingly remote) heavens. 

When she has done all the prostrating herself before her Lord that her overtaxed mind can handle, she simply sits still and vainly fights against the fatigue that is threatening to overwhelm her own body, focusing on the rhythmic beeping of the intravenous fusion pump that is decorated with a nauseating number of IV bags—all playing a part to sustain her best friend’s life.

Beep.

Surely it’ll be okay if she closes her eyes for just a minute… she won’t fall asleep… she just needs a moment to collect herself, to recenter her shaken core…

Beep.

Nothing bad will happen if she allows herself a brief respite; thinking otherwise is just a byproduct of the remaining adrenaline that is slowly working its way out of her system.

Melissa is stable.

Melissa is (likely) going to make a full recovery.

Melissa is the strongest person she knows.

Beep.

Despite her best efforts, though, Barbara feels herself starting to drift off, and she is unable to drag herself back from the depths, her consciousness floating out to that vast and welcoming sea of darkness. The last productive thought she feels her brain entertaining has to do with her friend’s three blinks, which no one had been able to satisfactorily decipher. She doesn’t think it’s Morse code or some other professional equivalent, nor does she think it’s maybe like Njoki had suggested. Melissa has always hated the tepidness of that word, preferring a straightforward yes or no…

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

I and love and you.

The epiphany—agonizingly simple though it is��suddenly breaks over Barbara's head like a cresting wave, nearly pulling her back to the waking world with a fierce and overwhelming  joy. She smiles in her twilight state, eyes still closed…  

“I love you too,” she murmurs sleepily, only dimly aware that Melissa can’t currently hear her.

Perhaps they’re constantly saying those three words to each other, her and Melissa...

... just always doing it when the other isn’t able to fully understand.

—

She wakes up to the sensation of someone gently pulling a thumb across her jaw—over and over again, tracing the outline of that sharp bone with a practiced touch. The action disorients her—reminds her so powerfully of her late mother who had once soothed her when she was sick in the exact same way, but then the clinical smell of the hospital hits her: sharp, astringent, acidic.

And it all comes rushing back to her in jagged fragments.

Oh, God.

Melissa.

The wreck.

Those untenable hours in the waiting room.

The ICU.

She bolts upright, limbs half-flailing, and is suddenly confronted with a sight that reconfigures her insides: Melissa, looking like death warmed over, but even still and all the same, smiling that damned crooked smile—the one that Barbara loves so well. While she was sleeping, they apparently replaced the oxygenated mask with cannulas that have been threaded into her nostrils and around her ears. But she’s still covered with as many lines and tubes as ever, and the presence of them unnerves her.

Barbara blinks a couple of times as her eyes adjust to the dim lighting.

“Melissa,” she simply says, relishing every phoneme of that holy name.

She’s so powerfully relieved that she will have every opportunity to continue saying it.

Melissa, Melissa, Melissa.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” the younger woman rasps, her voice hoarse from the ventilator, barely audible, but it’s still the sweetest sound Barbara has ever heard. She will never forget the sight of her on that machine for as long as she lives; it will stain her vision like an anemic afterimage every time she so much as closes her eyes at night; she will nightmare the staccato beats of Melissa’s heart being measured out by a rhythmic monitor. 

And she will thank God every day that He spared her.

That He let her have this one good thing.

This miracle.

Melissa, Melissa, Melissa.

“Hello yourself,” Barbara chokes out, sudden emotion throttling the stem of her throat. “You gave me quite a scare there, you know.”

“Gotta liven things up a little every now and then,” Melissa tries to chuckle—as is one of her favorite defenses against any sort of uncomfortable sentiment—but the familiar gesture immediately costs her. She begins to cough, her pale face suddenly splotched with small patches of red, and the beeping on the heart monitor starts to pick up. Barbara, her own heart plummeting into her stomach, reacts swiftly, splaying a sturdy hand on the younger woman’s chest.

“Breathe,” she instructs in an almost calm voice, but the word breaks at the end, her facade slipping, her poise. She cannot stomach seeing Melissa Schemmenti so helpless; it is an untenable contradiction, an oxymoron that she cannot capably resolve. “Mhm… that’s it, sweetheart. Inhale. Exhale. In and out.”

And beneath the weight of her palm, she feels Melissa’s breathing begin to slowly even out, the rise and fall of her chest regulating itself again. Relief cascades through her, comorbid though it is with the heartache, and the interplay of these two polarized emotions settles inside her like a stomachache. When the beeping on the cardiac monitor finally returns to normal, she briefly dips her head against the railing on Melissa’s bed, grounding herself against its coolness and steadiness, closing her eyes against the rising nausea.

“Sorry,” Melissa apologizes, her voice indistinct. The exertion of the coughing spell has thoroughly depleted her; there is nothing left of rosiness in her cheeks; gone is that inappropriate twinkle in her eyes.

All that is left is apology and pain.

Barbara doesn’t know why the younger woman has always felt the need to apologize for something she didn’t do. She can conjecture, of course—can guess that it’s a side-effect of having been told that it was her fault all of her life. Joseph was especially bad in this regard, foisting the most egregious of his indiscretions onto his ex-wife’s overburdened shoulders.  

He has supposedly matured since then—has assumed total responsibility for what he so recklessly broke in the first place—and Melissa, being a good Christian, has generously forgiven him. She even calls him just to chat from time to time...

But Barbara hasn’t.

Forgiven Joseph, that is.

God forgive her for it.

“Nothing to apologize about,” she forces herself to lift her head from the railing and smile a wane smile; it feels stiff on her lips, tense and unnatural; it stretches her mask of a face into a new and unsustainable configuration. “You’ve had a long night.”

“So have you,” comes an immediate rebuttal, so tender and concerned. Indeed, the intensity of the other’s penetrating gaze makes Barbara suddenly realizes that her hand is still on Melissa’s chest, and blushing slightly, she withdraws it—idly smoothing her blankets instead.

Of course, the second-grade teacher quickly follows this charged moment with yet another quip: “You look like shit, Barb.”

“Me?” She snorts incredulously despite herself, despite knowing what Melissa is trying to do. “You’re the one who’s lying in a hospital bed looking like, like...“ But she stops short, faltering, stumbling on her next words.

The expression she had nearly been about to use was like you’re knocking on death’s door, but she finds, at the threshold of this teasing irreverence, she cannot follow through. She cannot be like Melissa and turn the severity of what happened tonight into just another throwaway joke.

“Like what?” Melissa prods quietly, sensitive to the change in the conversation.

Or, maybe more accurately still, sensitive to any changes in Barbara herself.

“Like… you nearly died,” she shudders, her voice folding in on itself, seismically collapsing. And there are unbidden tears in her eyes yet again.

There is the raw and visceral grief of having almost lost Melissa Schemmenti.

She withdraws both of her hands, using one to grip the fabric next to her stomach, using the other to swipe her forearm across her eyes, as though that will help, as though that will do anything but prolong the inevitable.

Which, granted, might be what the both of them do all of the time in their separate and intertwined personal lives.

Prolong the inevitable.

Familial heartbreaks.

Broken marriages.

This unspoken thing between them.

“You nearly died, Melissa,” she goes on, still shielding her leaking eyes away from the other woman, “and I don’t know what I would have done in light of that fact.”

The proclamation lands heavily in front of them both.

It is an ugly, pitiful thing.

And it whimpers.

It wails.

“It… would have been... hard,” Melissa swallows, her voice uncertain, as though she's just now realizing how close she had been to the end herself. Between being on the operating table, waking up on a ventilator, and trying to recover from the ordeal of both of these traumas, there probably hasn't been space enough for her to fully process the night's events—excluding the times she’s been consciously trying to repress them all with a laugh, of course. In the back of her mind, Barbara wonders if there’s some implicit faux pas she’s making by discussing the hypothetical of Melissa's death even when she's right in front of her, clearly and miraculously and so thankfully alive.

“Yes,” she replies anyway because they’ve gone all of their damn lives without ever once saying exactly what they mean.

And she can’t take it anymore—Melissa almost died and all of her nerves are so brutally exposed.

Melissa almost died, and things still haven't changed between them; there is still something dividing them, unbearable inches.

“But y’would have gone on, Barb," she valiantly replies. "Life would have gone on, even if—“

“No,” Barbara cuts across her ferociously, finally lowering her arm to see that Melissa is staring at her from wide and watery eyes too, her face still leached of all its exquisite color. She looks less like a person than she does a corpse, less like a corpse than she does a ghost: insubstantial and wispy, one exorcism away from total dissolution. “Don’t even suggest that, Melissa. I would have never been able to move on from you. I would have been so... so lost.”

And there would have been no coming back from that.

She knows herself entirely too well.

She would have wasted away in the absence of Melissa Schemmenti. She would have let it all, the sixty-seven years that she has spent meticulously constructing the mythology of Barbara Howard—mother, wife, woman of God, devoted teacher—crumble to dust and ashes, returned to mire and clay.

“And what does that matter, huh?” Melissa croaks, and the stubborn woman tries to prop herself up on her arm, but she’s stopped short by all the wires and tubes, and perhaps (hopefully), the withering glare that Barbara levels at her. “I’m still here, aren’t I? And according to the doc, I'm not leavin' anytime soon. You don’t have to imagine a world where I’m not in it.”

The other teacher attempts a smile that almost instantly falls flat on her chapped lips, but she extends her nearest hand all the same, palm facing upwards—an open invitation of platonic communion, yet another reification of their well-established status quo of just being friends—but Barbara wants more than that.

She wants more than the stolen glances and the almost touches and the secret words that languish on the tips of their guarded tongues.

She's nearly seventy-years old and she has only recently wondered what it means to be selfish in a glorious, unabashed, and unrepentant kind of way; she wants a whole  lifetime.

Barbara slowly stands up then, ignoring the dull ache in her arthritic knees, and simply stares at Melissa, the light wash from a nearby machine staining her face a sad and desolate blue—the same color as a mottled bruise.

"Barb, what are you—" Green eyes widen, the pupils in them entirely blown.

And as the tears that have been threatening to obscure her vision finally spill over her long and dark lashes, she leans down, with exquisite tenderness, and kisses Melissa Schemmenti's forehead. Eternity stretches between them, infinity wrapped in the moment that her lips meet the other's feverish skin, and she is the sole witness to the exact moment when Melissa's eyes glaze over too.

"I don't want to imagine a home without you in it anymore," Barbara whispers, drawing back. "I realized as much tonight."

Perhaps even well before she received that damned call.

Perhaps sometime or another over these last twenty-something years.

She just could not say the words aloud; they were impossible to think, much less articulate.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry"—and she bows her head, ashamed, verklempt, overwhelmed, and undone—"for having not said it sooner..."

She's been a coward, hiding behind the veneer of her wedding ring up until very recently, ultimately hurting herself and Gerald both.

(She's been a good, Christian woman.)

Melissa reaches upwards then, disturbing the nest of varicolored wires that spiral around her milk-white arm, and palms Barbara's cheek, her thumb gingerly resting against the side of her jaw.

"Always slow on the uptake," she chuckles as tears trickle down her scraped and battered face like a soft, April rain. Barbara tries to wipe some of them away, but they continue to fall anyway, as though the spillage is endless, a long drought finally ended.

Rejuvenation can only follow.

Spring.

"Forgive me, sweetheart," Barbara implores again, sniffing noisily, as Melissa lightly cradles her face.

"You keep acting like that's something only you've gotta apologize for."

"Isn't it?" She doesn't dare to be hopeful—doesn't dare to believe that Melissa feels the precise same way that she does about all of the missed opportunities and untaken roads and lost years—but even still, the relief prematurely leaks into her voice anyway.

"Nah," Melissa grins, the crooked gesture somehow both beautiful and tortured all at once, "we're both complicit here."

"Oh."

And then, whether Melissa is drawing her downwards, or Barbara is taking initiative and leaning in, regardless, they're suddenly brushing lips like everything about this moment is fragile and delicate, like the time they have been afforded is precious, like they are making up for all the times they have never kissed before, like they plan on kissing every day from now on—as long as they both shall live. It is slow and lovely, pained and more than a little sad; they're both hyperaware of Melissa's current physical limitations, careful not to exceed them. The rhythmic whirring of machinery, the hiss of the oxygen filtering into Melissa's nose, the lines that entangle their hands like so many dozens of snares, serve as perpetual reminders of where they are, and what it almost cost them to arrive to this bliss in the first place.

Barbara tastes the salt of their intermingled tears and suddenly dreams about how one day, when the younger woman has sufficiently recovered, she would like to take Melissa with her to the sea, where they can wade into the warm waters, chest deep beneath the moon, and bask in its silvery glow. She will drag her fingers through that damp, red hair and tell her that she is so lovely.

She is beloved.

But at least for now, they're confined to this oppressive hospital and to the fact that Melissa could have very well died last night; indeed, the weight of that particular knowledge presses upon them both like a shared and bloodied wound.

Oh, how they anoint each other's lips with their own, though, in jubilant defiance of this unspeakable grief, and in doing so, begin to heal.

—

Later that same day, when Njoki and the rest of Melissa’s care team are satisfied that she’s fairly stable and that her kidney function has mostly returned to normal, they move her from the ICU into a regular room on the second floor, where she'll stay for a couple of days for close monitoring. And upon Barbara’s polite, if a little embarrassed, request, kind orderlies obligingly shove two hospital beds together with the rail lowered between them.

And for the first time in both of their lives, Barbara and Melissa lie together in the same (kinda-sorta) bed.

But it will not be the last time—they're both damn sure of that.

And once Melissa is finally out of the hospital, the next time will be under far better circumstances.

For naturally, Barbara Howard plans on taking her home.

Until that eagerly anticipated moment, though, she just holds her, laying an arm across that soft, warm belly, careful not to disturb any of the many lines that are still attached to her companion, conscientious of every wire and every trickling tube.

And for her part, Melissa is astonishingly good at finally letting herself be held, perhaps too tired to fight the sensation, or perhaps realizing that it isn’t such a bad thing after all to be cared for so intimately by another. At one point, when Barbara is idly skimming her fingernails up and down the length of her arm, Melissa even admits that this is nice.

And so it is.

And so it shall always be.

The setting sun leans against the square window with a relieved sigh, amber and honeyed gold.

They talk a little about everything and nothing as they patiently wait for seven o’clock when they can finally watch Jeopardy! together on the boxy TV mounted in the corner of the room. Melissa recounts what she remembers of the accident; she’d thankfully reacted quickly enough to avoid swerving into a tree, but the alternative had been careening into the ditch—that was when she’d slammed into the steering wheel as the car violently tilted downwards.

“Damn piece of shit,” she pouts mutinously. “I outta sue Honda’s ass for that airbag not deploying.”

“Amen,” Barbara vehemently agrees, her chin nestled against the younger woman’s shoulder. “They owe you big time."

When Barbara tentatively asks how she’d lost her first kidney—(after spending at least ten minutes ranting and raving about having never been told that crucial fact in the first place)—Melissa only chuckles, which makes Barbara immediately suspect that this is yet another thoroughly traumatic event in Melissa Schemmenti’s sordid life that is about to be tragically underplayed.

Much to her chagrin, she is absolutely correct.

“Lost it in a game of cards.”

“A game of what?!” Barbara nearly cries, briefly forgetting the intimate geometry of their bodies.

“Dammit, Barb. My eardrum!”

“Sorry"—she lowers her voice—"but, girlfriend, what?"

“Listen,” Melissa shrugs casually as Barbara massages the skin beneath the other's ear in silent apology, “it was no big deal. Needed some money to pay off some student loans, and I was, uh, young and dumb, and that was a very high paying game. Fuckin’ Tony Artino, though, a stronzo if I've ever seen one, cheated when he was dealin’ the cards.

If Barbara could do so without disturbing the other woman, she'd be emphatically shaking her head in disapproval right about now.

Mm.

“Every time I hear a new detail of your younger years, I’m very much alarmed,” she says, thinking about how this is somehow even worse than the story of a twelve-year old Melissa having had to take all five of her younger siblings out to the woods one night because her paranoid father had thought the mob had come to call.

It had not, in fact, been the mob.

It turned out to be a very lost pizza delivery guy.

“Yeah, well, that’s why I don’t say most of this stuff aloud,” Melissa teases, glancing over her gowned shoulder at Barbara. “Don’t wanna upset your delicate constitution, hon.”

“Well, quit that,” Barbara immediately retorts, as studiously solemn as Melissa is facetious. “I don’t want to find out any more dark secrets from some doctor in a waiting room at three in the blessed morning, Melissa. I want to just know your truths—all of them.”

“Even the ones that involve me gettin’ into illicit organ gambling poker games?” Melissa arches a not entirely serious brow, though her tone has slightly shifted, raising itself into the form of an implicit, tentative question.

Do you really want all of me?

Even the ugly parts?

Even the parts that most people run away from?

And Barbara’s definite, resounding answer is,“Yes, even those. I want you in your entirety, Melissa Schemmenti.”

Ugly parts and all—anything and everything that makes you human.

That makes you my Melissa.

My lovely Mel.

"That makes you a masochist, I think," comes yet another quick witticism—(she should really start calling them Schemmenti-isms at this point)—but she can tell that Melissa is genuinely moved by the sentiment, the strange gravity in her voice betraying her, the tightness with which she squeezes Barbara's hand.

"No," Barbara murmurs, so softly, against the shell of Melissa's delicately formed ear. "I think that just means I plan on taking my role as your emergency contact very seriously. You've made it my business—nay!—my moral duty to worry about you... to care for you with everything in me, Melissa. Let me do that then. I want to do that."

She gently cards her fingers through that rich and vibrant hair as Melissa seems to formulate her response to this against the background noise of the steadily beeping heart monitor and the pneumatic hissing of the oxygen that is still being supplied to her. Barbara is supremely comfortable with the silence—quite patient with it now that she figures that she and Melissa have all the time in the world to finally get things right.

"Trust doesn't come easily to me," she finally says, and there's a hint of warning in her voice, as though she's alerting Barbara to this long-ingrained trait of hers for the first time, as though nearly three decades of friendships hasn't made her well-aware of the fact that the younger woman approaches the world like everyone she meets is doing a good job of hiding their knives.

Barbara gets it.

Sometimes, she absolutely feels the same.

"Me neither," she admits quietly, still playing with Melissa's hair, now twining a curl around one of her fingers, now just as idly letting it go. "I've always been terrified that my honesty to others would be used against me... or else, my candor would eventually backfire in some other karmic hand of fate."

"Yeah." It's just a monosyllabic reply, but even still, Barbara hears the weight of it.

Melissa knows precisely what she's talking about.

The lived experience of being vulnerable before another and agonizingly paying for it.

"But we'll just have to learn how to fully trust each other together," she insists, trying on the role of the idealist for once. She wonders after all these years of resisting the  very idea, if Janine hasn't been rubbing off on her anyway. "We already have an excellent foundation already; now we're just building up the walls, brick-by-carefully-placed-brick."

"Hah. You always know how to make it sound so damn achievable," Melissa chuckles tiredly, even as she leans further into Barbara's embrace, apparently growing comfortable within it.

Secure.

"Perhaps it is this time," she smiles softly against the crown of that scarlet head. "When the two of us put our mind to something, there is little that can be done to stop us, you know."

"Oh, I know," Melissa only says—still skeptical, perhaps—but nonetheless gentle and entirely fond. 

Jeopardy! comes and Jeopardy! goes, and between them joking about how Ken Jennings reminds them a little of Jacob and competing over who gets the most correct answers, Barbara has probably never had so much fun in a hospital in her life. Melissa wins—just barely—but that’s because Barbara is rubbish at anything to do with pop culture categories.

(Who in God's almighty name is Christine Baranski, for instance, and what exactly does she have to do with ABBA?)

When the show is over, though, both of them start to feel the weight of their exhaustions dragging at their aching bones—Melissa especially. After the night nurse comes in to administer some more pain medicine to her, she settles in Barbara’s arms, her breathing becoming heavier, her eyes starting to droop to a close despite her best efforts to stay up and also watch Wheel. When a long time passes without the younger woman saying something, Barbara assumes that she's asleep and decides to settle down herself, flicking the TV off, and tracing vague patterns into the back of Melissa's thin gown.

Even though she won't want to, she'll likely go home for a little while tomorrow... shower... make a soup for herself and Melissa... pack a proper night bag... and then come back to stay again. She'll also need to spend at least a few hours on the phone to placate each of her daughters, as well as so many other people besides. When she'd called Taylor earlier to tell her about why she had to cancel dinner plans, her eldest had immediately freaked out over the prospect of her Aunt Mel being hurt. And then Taylor had told Gina, and Gina had told her grandmother on her father's side, and Gerald's mother Hannah—Barbara's kind but notoriously interfering former mother-in-law—had seen fit to put it in on Facebook that Melissa needed prayers, tagging Barbara in the post, and now everyone at Abbott knows that Melissa is down and out for the count too. Janine has texted her at least five times that she's seen since she last picked up her phone.

So, yes, she'll have a busy day tomorrow trying to make sure no one barges in on an unsuspecting Melissa.

Or, well, the both of them together.

They'll tell their friends and family in their own time assuredly.

Soon even.

But she has a strong feeling that both of them would like to remain in their infinitesimal pocket of forever—just the two of them—for a little while longer.

It's nice here—safe.

Melissa has always felt like home.

As she turns these plans over in her tired mind, s he's incredibly surprised when not even ten minutes later, Melissa unexpectedly breaks the silence again.

“Barb?” She asks, her voice comically thick with drowsiness.

“Yes, honey?”

“Did ya ever flippin' figure out what three blinks meant?”

Barbara can't help but laugh, pleasantly caught off guard by the question; she had passively wondered if Mel had been too zoned out and drugged up to remember those failed exchanges in the ICU but apparently not.

“It took me awhile," she confesses.

Hours. 

Months. 

Years upon lonely years. 

Decades even. 

Almost all the time that the two women have known each other and pretended that friendship was the only mutual language that they spoke. 

“But I made it there in the end,” she finishes, pressing a light kiss against the side of the other woman’s head.

Three blinks.

Three words.

"I love you," she utters it so easily, like she's been saying it for quite sometime now.

I love you and I love you and I love you.

Maybe, if she's lucky, she'll echo this refrain throughout eternity.

[bearpillowmonster]

Garfield Movie Pitch

*sigh* seems like a lot of people didn't like this one so let me try and pitch a new one.

First of all, let's cast JSchlatt. I don't like Frank Welker as him (I like Frank just not as him), he sounds miserable but too monotone, more or less the same as Jon Barnard before him. Chris Pratt is different enough but it's just Chris Pratt. So I think there's a balance to strike.

I even want to change his color palette. I like the grunge look as it gets dirty like that picture but when it's not, I want it to be neon orange like he's wearing a safety vest.

I want his personality to be consistent. An introvert type that stays in all day, hisses at the sunlight like a vampire, peeks through blinds when someone walks by. He doesn't care for fans, he just wants to live a simple life in his swamp- I mean! Home.

We can keep our opening with Garfield's origins, I'm not personally a fan but I understand why it's there, baby Garfield and all, marketing.

John is basically his agent, taking phone calls, setting up pictures, etc (afterall he's based on Jim Davis) Garfield is already known by everyone, he's a superstar, he has merch. His own cups, plushes, even telephones. But his work has slowed down. Garfield's not "old news", he's still known and he's not looking to be relevant, he has other 'imitators' already doing that, Grumpy Cat for example. He didn't just have lasagna stacks, he had money stacks.

He's not really old news, he's still there and everyone knows him but he sort of has a trash factor about him. You see, he hasn't put any work into his fame or stardom, nobody's been buying new merch, he's just been the same old boring Garfield living his day to day. His merch gets raggy, it's so old, everyone's already had it in their basements for years. All this fame and he's still lonely.

It sets up John to get busier and busier, less time for Garfield as he makes his living. As time's gone on, Odie's appeared and Nermal and Jon gets married to Liz, some to keep him less lonely.

He's a tsundere and doesn't want to admit that he misses him but he awaits his return. When it comes Monday again, John has to leave again. Sometimes every day seems like Monday because he'll have to work weekends.

His journey is based around stopping those endless Mondays. Sounds sad but that's the point, Garfield has depression that's never been diagnosed. He goes to the vet after some weird stuff happening to him and the vet tells him that it's stress. They try to come to the root of that stress to which Garfield eventually realizes by flipping channels on tv and seeing a bunch of references "John Connor" "John Rambo" "John McClane", he can't escape it but there's nothing that they can do about it, Jon still has to work, he still has to pay bills, there's no lead way, he tries getting another job but can't, this is what he's known for now, he's too prolific.

They try hiring someone to do the job for them but the boat sinks because now Jon is depressed being home all the time, he doesn't know what to do with his time, he can't live like Garfield because he's not him. He just loves making cartoons, that's why he started, that's why he took on that role in the first place and got Garfield popularized. No other comic does it for him.

Garfield doesn't even know where exactly Jon works but Nermal suggests checking LinkedIN, but given that his corporation spans the globe, Garfield has to venture outside and find him. Jon will also become trapped at his job so he can't go home, like Severance, going through mazes and losing what day it is. The one coworker will read a book called "I didn't know I was burned out."

During Garfield's adventure, he sees people that he knows nothing about and apparently nobody knows anything about him, he's just a chosen icon to represent. I imagine him going to Mexico, dressed in hat and poncho, expecting a desert, only to realize that it's a lot more than that. It's a civilization and these people know him, speaking Spanish but he can't speak it. There's graffiti of him in places that he's never even heard of.

Garfield gives up a few places in and decides to go to the source to stop not just Jon's Mondays but America's. Washington D.C.

The villain tricks him into thinking he likes Mondays but he finds out it's actually a Tuesday, he just overslept.

Also everyone who works on this movie will work a 4 day work week to further drive the narrative.

[defat1]

Die Hard 6: Dig Your Own Grave

Had a dream last cycle and @frankly-ludicrous begged me to tell Tumblr so here goes.

Imagine a world where Die Hard ended just slightly differently. Hans Gruber, terrorist turned failed heist mastermind, escapes dramatically with a quip to McClane that he'll have his revenge. Christmas is saved, the movie ends.

In my dream, John McClane and his buddy, oddly also bald, openly bisexual, and entirely too ride-or-die energy, Actual Mark Wahlberg as Mark Wahlberg, are on a vacation to Paris. Not sure where, there were catacombs, it doesn't matter. There's a masquerade wedding set to take place in the catacombs, they were probably there for that. They're getting some food and chatting about how hard the last few decades have been on McClane, Marky Mark is fully manic talking about some wild events, it quickly becomes apparent that they have history.

Bomb goes off. Everyone ducks for cover, McClane starts doing the thing he apparently has been doing for a while.

(My dreams are very cinematic, I swear this is exactly how it went)

It soon becomes apparent, as McClane mows through one terrorist after another, that these guys aren't exactly upper crust professionals. He finally gets injured by a guy who is, inexplicably, holding two hunting rifles akimbo and firing from the hip. As McClane retreats, we cut to our villain, who we finally find out is a very tired, very very upset Japanese man who is doing a passable imitation of Alan Rickman. Then you realize, as he starts yelling at his men and expositing, that this is Hans Gruber, 2 decades later, and this is the latest movie of an entire series of Die Hard movies where Hans Gruber is the villain and John McClane is that pest that fate keeps putting in his way.

John McClane isn't chasing Gruber anymore; that probably stopped in the third movie. Hans tells his men that he got plastic surgery and worked on a master plan for 10 years in Japan, and it just so happened that John McClane was there that weekend for some award ceremony, and Hans Gruber lost another elite team. Hans Gruber is out of elite teams, and he is trying to impress upon these morons that if they don't do exactly as he says, all of them are dead, just like everyone else who crossed John Motherfucking McClane.

The movie-dream continued a while. Mark Wahlberg lived through the initial mass shooting and is way, extremely too hyped to help McClane, up to and including offering to be a human knockout gas bomb delivery system in the form of surrendering himself as a hostage. Gruber frantically searches for the Mcguffin he is here for while imagining the grim reaper Willis around every corner and curve in the catacombs. McClane is leaning towards the school of Tropic Thunder instead of John Wick. It's a blast, like a fragment of the 80s got blasted into orbit, glassed on re-entry, and landed in the modern box office reeking of gunsmoke and holiday spirit. And it's clear the series are holiday movies, each a different major holiday, and this one, where McClane has officially become Gruber's reaper, is clearly the Halloween entry, an end to a franchise that paints the hero as the horror movie slasher he is.

Then I woke up. Even I don't get the ending to the Die Hard series we deserved. I could have made up an ending, but I think I'll leave it up to you. Imagine a world where Die Hard wasn't trying to be serious, and end it how you want.

[cannibalcoyote]

Simon Gruber: Am I Worth Anything?

Imagine being John McClane's youngest daughter, and running away to Germany after your parents start fighting again and your dad moves back to New York. What happens when Simon Gruber finds you on the streets:

-This is set after the second movie, but before the 3rd. I have the reader at age 12-

They'd started arguing again, everything was going so good too, Dad had moved here to LA and everything. I don't know what caused all of this, I thought they were happy, I thought everything was fixed... but I'm wrong as per usual.

Mom has us staying with her, but I'm honesty feeling so alone, even with my siblings around. They both are a few years older than me, so they either bully or ignore me, but neither is my friend. Dad was helping us figure this out, but that all went to waste after he left. They started being cold again, acting as if I don't exist. I know this separating is effecting them as well, but at least they have each other, I don't even have mom here to confide in since she's always working.

I try to call dad sometimes, but he's always drunk and usually thinks I'm mom, sometimes he doesn't even give me the chance to talk, just picks up the phone and starts cursing. He's never treated me like that before, sure, sometimes he just picks up the phone and responds that way before knowing it's me, but is that really an excuse? The separation must be hurting him as well... I wish I could help him, but I don't even know how to help myself. 

Sometimes, late at night, I think about what occurred leading up to dad leaving. I remember them shouting at each other, trying to get my brother and sister to take sides. They choose mom either way, I just stood in-between, how could they make me choose? The looks of disdain coming from all sides made me wither, I felt hated, unwanted. Maybe things would be better if I leave?

_______

I left home, it may sound really stupid, but maybe things will be better if I stay at dad's for a little bit; surely things couldn't be worse than staying with my mother and siblings.

The train ride was costly and took around 3 days for me to arrive in New York; my packing was light, just my back pack with a few changes of clothing, all my savings, my ID, some food and a notepad and pen. I didn't want to pack to much because it would make it harder for me to slip out of the house unnoticed, so I just stuffed my backpack and went for it - I probably should've packed other things, but it's too late now.

New York was interesting, I was quite young when we moved to Los Angeles, so being back is a new experience. The buildings are tall and overbearing, they make you feel so small, and the crowded, busy sidewalks only emphasize that point. 

I pull out the map from my pocket, dotting what street I'm on, and then charting the best way to get to my father's apartment. His apartment is a bit away from the station, about 20ish blocks, but I've got enough daylight to make it before nightfall.

Before beginning my trek I pull out my walkman, restarting the CD, it's the Station to Station album by David Bowie - I had to beg for a whole 2 months before my father finally gave in and bought me the walkman, he later gifted me this CD upon noticing how Bowie is my favorite musician. It's a nice reminder that my father cares for me, whenever I'm feeling lonely, I'll listen to this album.

I'm weaving my way through people, trying my best not to run into anyone. The sun seems to be setting a lot sooner than I thought it would, but that must be due to the time difference, I must've forgotten to account for that. Either way, I'm over half way there and the sun is just beginning to set, that last thing I want is to be caught after dark on the streets of New York - I especially don't want this as I am currently an unattended child.

I finally arrive at my fathers apartment, pressing the buzzer at the door, hoping he'll be home and let me in.

"Who is it?" I hear an annoyed voice answer, but I still sigh in relief.

"Dad?" My voice sounds so small, hopefully he still heard me.

"Y/N?" I don't know how to describe it, but it seems like so many emotions smashed into one word: relief, anger, happiness, anxiousness. So many that they overwhelm me.

"Yeah, it's me, can you let me in?" I don't get a verbal response, but hear the door being unlocked. I push open the heavy door, making my way inside the lobby. I head over to the elevator and push the up button, waiting patiently for the doors to open. I'm startled by the abrupt opening of the door from the stairwell, staring at the door as I watch my father come bustling out of it. He looks tense and rushed - a mess if I'm being honest, looking around quickly before stilling when he spots me. 

His movements are fast, he catches me off guard when he pulls me in unexpectedly for a tight hug. I'm surprised, but accept the contact, it's been so long since I've seen my father after all. As he holds me, I can't help but smell the alcohol on him, though I know mentioning it could be disastrous.

We separate and head into the now awaiting elevator, the ride up was quick but surprisingly quiet; I expected some sort of conversation, but maybe he's processing? The walk from the elevator to his apartment felt uncomfortably tense though, like something suddenly angered him. Either way, it made me feel uneasy.

As soon as I enter, I go to speak, but am cut off by the harsh slamming of the door.

"What the hell do you think you're doing!" He questions in a raised voice, he's angry, that much I can tell.

"I-" I begin to respond, but have no time as I am immediately cut off.

"Leaving without telling your mother, wandering the streets of New York at night! How the hell did you even get here from LA, no airline would let you board unattended?"

"I-I used the amtrak." I explain in a shaky voice, averting my eyes from his gaze and staring down at the dirty floor.

"What were you even thinking? Coming over here?" His voice is solemn now, and it makes me more uncomfortable than when he was yelling.

"I thought that... maybe I could stay here for a while?" I respond sheepishly, but hoping - no, praying - that he'll let me stay.

"Stay? Here, with me?" He questions incredulously.

"Please?" I whisper, glancing at him hopefully.

"What? No, you can't stay with me." He looks at me like I'm crazy, I suddenly feel very out of place, like I can't find anywhere that I'm allowed to exist. It's an astounding experience, especially when I've always felt so comfortable with my father.

"But..." I begin, trailing off as I try to think of what to say.

"But what? Don't tell me, you thought you could leave your mother and come live with me, that it would be as easy as showing up on my doorstep unannounced?" I can tell he's making fun of me, his tone gives it away.

"I-" I begin once again, only this time I'm interrupted.

"Well it's not! I thought you were smarter than that? You're going back to your mother's first thing tomorrow, you understand?" His shouting is scary, he's never acted like this towards me, though I have seen a few interactions like this between him and my mother.

"Dad, no, I want to stay here!" I all but beg, wide eyed at his words.

"I don't want you staying here, I don't want you anywhere near here!" My hearing goes silent after that, but there's an obnoxious ringing... Did he just say that? That he wants nothing to do with me, that he doesn't want me anywhere near him?

He says a few more things, but I don't care enough to hear them, all I can manage to do is stare straight forward in a daze. I travelled so far, but not even my father wants me around anymore.

I was right, I should've just disappeared; I'm the catalyst of every fight, had I never been born, maybe they would still be together?

I don't remember much that happened after, just my father rolling his eyes as he drags his palm tiredly over his face. He walks me to the spare bedroom and tell me to get some rest, but I don't think I'll be able to sleep after the words we traded.

I'm not quite sure how long I lay in that bed before I hear my father talking from the living room, I tiptoe out of bed and look through the cracked door, he seems to be on the phone.

"You think I wanted her here! Listen Holly, I'm sending her back on the train tomorrow, alright? Make sure she doesn't comeback to New York." He sounds tired, annoyed, upset... I guess he really doesn't want me here, but I know my mother doesn't want me either.

I wait until my father's all but drunk himself to death, it's around 0100 in the morning before he's passed out on the couch, empty bottles on the coffee table. I cling tightly onto my backpack, walking to the front door as quietly as possible, opening the door slowly before sliding into the hallway and closing it with a dull 'click.'

The ride down was eerie, and it became even more so when I exited the apartment building. The darkness enveloping New York made the environment look quite scary, especially with only the light from the full moon and some blinking lamp posts to light my way. There was still some people out walking, most were either drunk or homeless, so I tried to pass by silently and unnoticed; my goal is to reach the airport before sunrise and buy a ticket out of the country, anywhere as long as it's not here.

I would've preferred to hail a taxi, but I can't risk not having the funds to afford a ticket, though neither of my parents want me, they still have an obligation to find me. Since I'll be paying for the flight in cash, there'll be no tracking where I went, unless the person selling me the ticket remembers my name, face, and flight destination; but I highly doubt they'll check the airports first.

When I finally arrive, the sun is just beginning to raise above the horizon, the streets are getting a little more busy with 6am traffic, and there is now light foot traffic along the sidewalks. 

I was coming up on the airport, I can tell because the planes kept getting louder and louder. I'd been thinking during my entire walk on where I wanted to go, it would be suspicious for a 12 year old to ask what flights are available to anywhere, especially without an adult present. 

I've chosen to go to Germany because I've always loved the language and have wanted to visit since I was 5; I've also formulated a story should I be asked any questions. I'm going to say that I'll be visiting family in Cochem, Germany. I remember reading about that beautiful place in a travel magazine, it looked nice enough and I also can't remember any other place. If they want more info, I'll say I'm specifically visiting my Uncle who lives there, that I'll be staying there for the summer. They shouldn't be asking much after that though, so I should be all good.

I push open the terminal doors, and immediately locate the booth where you can purchase a ticket. The lady behind the desk looks nice, she sounds polite as she finishes up talking with another employee before turning to me. She looks a little surprised to see just me, but she quickly recovers.

"Hello, how can I help you?" She questions sweetly.

"Hi there, I was wondering if you have any flights today heading over to Cochem, Germany?" I respond, I try to sound mature, but I'm not sure if it worked as I notice her raise her eyebrow humorously.

"Well, let me check real quick." She clicks a few times on her computer, tilting her head as she shuffles.

"There aren't any flights to Cochem since they don't have an airport." She states.

"What does that mean?" I ask, scrunching my eyebrows as I think my plan may be ruined.

"It just means we find the closest airport to their, and that looks to be Frankfurt Hahn Airport; it's only about 15 miles away." She states nonchalantly, but I'm sighing internally. 15 miles, after how long of a flight? I'll need to get a map too if I don't want to get lost.

"We have a flight leaving at around 0900 with a few seat openings." She continues, showing me the available seats.

"Alright, that works." I state, handing her the cash for the ticket, waiting as she prints it out and hands it to me. I smile in thanks before wandering off to check in and head to my boarding area, I've got a while before my flight, so I guess I'll make myself comfortable.

I don't remember the flight too well, I mainly slept through the flight, having sparse moments of wakefulness when they brought us food and drinks. The people I was seated beside were a kindly older couple, they kept me company and checked in on me; I think they just saw a child alone on the flight and wanted to make sure I wasn't scared or anything.

They would try to talk with me, but I think they realized how tired I was and just let me sleep. They were rather nice, even walking with me off the plane before they separated to go to baggage claim; I didn't need to as I only had my carry-on.

I quickly bought a map from the convenience shop in the airport before heading off on my trek, its around 5am and the sun has yet to rise. The temperature is around 60ºF, so I'm not too cold, I actually welcome the chill as the movement will warm me up in no time.

_______

I've been in Cochem for around 3 weeks now, and I must say that I really should have thought this through. I swapped all my USD over into euros, but I barely have enough to afford food everyday, not to mention I have no place to stay, hotels are far to expensive to even think of. Learning german has also been more complicated than I thought, I assumed it would be easier since I'm immersed in the culture, but it's all just been one big shock for both my body and mind.

Some of the shop owners have started to recognize me; I think they have their assumptions and know I'm homeless, sometimes they'll give me something to eat free of charge. I also can't risk speaking to them in english, I can't risk anyone knowing I'm from the United States, that would only heighten their suspicion on why I'm here instead of in the US. So, for the time being, I'll just have to come off as mute until I learn the language.

_______

It's been a particularly harsh past few days, the temperature has been dropping lower than usual, and my deteriorating clothes haven't been doing much to conserve my body heat. The local children have also taken to terrorizing me, I think they've been making fun of my clothing and muteness (I am now able to mostly understand them after some tutoring from a friendly shop owner).

Sometimes, they'll try to grab my bag, I've had a group of them chase after me just because I wouldn't let them steal my backpack. Their parents either don't notice or don't care, either way, I'm on my own.

They haven't caught me yet, and I can't say what they would do to me if they did. Would they just grab my bag and leave? Or would they want to hurt me for having the audacity to run? Maybe they just chase me because they find it funny, or maybe I have good reason to evade them?

It was actually during one of these chases that I ran into the man that would come to replace my father over time.

It was routine at this point, a group of 6 or so kids would spot me and give chase, I would see them coming and take off.  So far so good, I'm dodging the adults that go on with their lives, trying not to get hit by cars as I sprint across the road.

I'm doing really good actually, I turn around to catch a glimpse of them, they got stopped at the road by passing traffic, yes!

I look forward just as I turn a corner, running straight into someone, they are larger than me, barely being affected by the collision. I, however, had toppled down to the ground , scraping up my palms on the ground as the flail out to catch me.

Tears well in my eyes at the stinging pain, I can feel as the grit and dirt dig into the wounds as they rub against the cobblestone. I quickly glance up and see a tall man with short blonde hair, his eyes are a striking blue; they make me think of my father's eyes, how his aren't as striking as this man's.

I observe his expression, his eyes widen only slightly, showing his surprise about being barreled into so unexpectedly. He looks very professional in what I can best describe as a business casual suit, but something about him makes him seem like more than what he shows. This strange man, he holds an air of authority, power, I could almost describe him as threatening.

My thoughts are drawn away by the trampled footsteps behind me. I quickly scramble up from the floor, ignoring the pain in my hands as I snap my gaze to the corner I had rounded. I look just as the others come around, they halt as well at the sight of me and this adult. 

I lock eyes with the groups leader and immediately begin sprinting down the road, I can hear them giving chase immediately, shouting that no one cares enough about me to help. The tears already welled up in my eyes begin to cascade down my face; they're right, not even my own family wanted, how could I expect that strangers from a different country would want me either?

In my moments of self-pity, I step into a crevice, I was unprepared for the change in level and feel my knee giving out. I tumble to the ground in a flurry, scraping my limbs against the harsh ground. I curse at myself, attempting to stand, but this fall may have done me in, my legs feel like they are on fire, and my left ankle feels heavy and stiff, as though it was being strangled.

Looking up, I notice that I've fallen in a rather secluded area of town, almost no foot traffic here at all, so these miscreants will have a field day, I wonder what they'll actually do now that they've finally caught me.

They surround me, two of them ripping my backpack from me despite my struggle to keep hold of it. The leader marches forward and shoves me, allowing them to grab the bag away. They unzip it before turning it upside down, shaking everything out onto the floor.

We watch as clothes, food, paper and pens tumble out. They look disappointed when nothing else appears, what were they expecting, cash? As if I have any left...

The leader and his lackeys roughly lift me from the ground, having to hold me up since my legs have stopped functioning. Just as they're about to speak, a stern voice erupts from behind them.

"Aufhören (Stop)." They all freeze, the boys looking back to see who interrupted them. I look as well, though it took a lot of effort.

There, standing imposingly a few steps away is the man with the blue eyes, I ran into him, what is he doing stopping these boys from hurting me?

"Was (What)?" The leader questions, he tries to sound stern as well, but I can see him shrinking away when the man steps closer.

"Verpisst euch, lauft zu euren Müttern (Fuck off, go run to your mothers)." He growls in a deep tone, I can feel the disgust in his voice when speaking to these boys. 

They apparently don't need to be told twice, they release me, allowing me to crumple to the floor as they bolt away in the opposite direction. I feel dazed after everything that happened, but looking down at the ground, I can't help but feel despair swelling in my throat. Among the content of my bag was a picture of me and my parents, they're smiling and happy, and so was I. That was our last photo together before the fighting started again.

I reach out and grab the crumpled photograph, gently bringing it up so I could cradle it. I glance at the stranger as he steps closer before kneeling down. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't for him to begin collecting my belongings and putting them back into my bag. 

I can tell he has his suspicions upon viewing my dirty clothing, the toothpaste and toothbrush, as well as the bits of old food wrapped up for later. He finishes zipping up the bag before gently placing it in front of me.

"Wo ist deine Mutter? Dein Vater (Where is your mother? Your father)?" He questions with a concerned tone, I glance into his eyes before quickly looking away. He's very intimidating, even when he's being so nice.

"Weg (Gone)." I reply solemnly. My parents may not be dead, but I don't plan on ever going back, they're better off without me.

"Nun, wer ist für Sie zuständig (Well, who is responsible for you)?" He asks again, hoping that someone is out there looking after me. I sadly, can't give him that answer, it would be wrong to lie to the man who saved me.

"Nur ich (Only me)." I respond, avoiding eye contact at all costs. I'm terrified, what if he turns me into the authorities, or puts me in an orphanage? Or worse, what if he takes me back to New York! 

"Nur Sie? Hier draußen (Just you? Out here)?" He sounds shocked, his eyebrows scrunch up in worry, a distant look appearing in his eyes. He tilts his head in thought, of what, I'm unsure. He stands abruptly, and I'm sure he's going to leave, allow me to be alone again; but I'm the shocked one now when I notice his outstretched his hand.

I analyze it for a few seconds, wondering whether I should accept it, what happens if I do accept it? Is this a mere action of kindness before leaving me, or will this lead to more actions occurring? So many questions in my head silenced when I reach out and place my hand in his, allowing his firm grip to pull me off the floor. 

My legs are still regaining their senses, but he supports me as I try to remember how to stand. I look down at my legs and notice the scrapes and cuts along them, mostly localized around my knees as they are what I fell on during my tumble. I shift my gaze up to my hands, they are so small against his,  knuckles scraped and bleeding from sliding against the ground.

I tilt my head at them, so many injuries in such a short span of time, how will I fix them? I don't have any bandages on me, and I certainly can't afford to buy any.

"Komm, ich bringe das in Ordnung (Come on, I'll fix it)." I just nod my head, who am I to rebuke against his orders, especially after how he's treated me?

"Wie ist Ihr Name (What is your name)?" My words are slow as I try to remember what to say, I am doing better at understanding what is being said, but have trouble speaking the language. I can see the man raise an eyebrow, I almost think he won't answer me.

" Simon. Und du (Simon. And you)?" He states, walking with me through the town market, grasping my hand tighter when he notices the group of boys that had been terrorizing me cross the street.

"Y/N." I respond quietly, it's almost a whisper. It's been so long since I've spoken, let alone this much; I haven't said my name once during my stay here, so it's a strange feeling.

_______

After that day, Simon took me in, cleaned my wounds and bandaged them, gave me a hot meal to eat, and a room to rest in.

He unofficially adopted me after a year, explaining to me that I'm like a daughter to him, and that he want me to see him as my father. He didn't have to ask though, I've seen him as my father since the day we first met.

The first months were hard if I'm being honest, I had no idea how to act around a father figure, especially not after what happened with my actual dad. I was a lot more skittish, scared of maintaining eye contact, terrified by the slightest raise in his voice. Those behaviors began to melt away when I realized he wouldn't push me away, that he actually invited my company and tried to do things that I enjoyed - such as painting with me, or taking me into nature so I could write poems in the serene environment.

He asked me quite early on who my parents were and what happened. I was afraid that if he knew they were alive, that he would send me back to them; but I never was able to lie to him. I told him the truth about my parents, who they were, why I ran away, etc. He talked to me about it, and actually explained to me the dark history between his brother and my father.

He was empathetic towards me, explaining that he had similar feelings of displacement when he was staying with his family; it felt good having someone that could relate to me. He would reassure me during times of self-hatred, comforting me, stating that I was never the problem, that my parents should've never made me feel that way. He promised me that he will never allow them to treat me like that again.

The adoption was a quiet affair, he had documents for me falsified so that it stated I was a German citizen that he adopted out of the orphanage.

Yes, I know they were falsified, and I know all about his side of business; he told me the night beforehand what type of person he was, as well as the types of jobs he does. I'll admit, he caught me off guard since he's quite amiable, but I suppose everyone has sides that no one understands.

Some of his close friends that he works with were there to witness my adoption, they were polite and friendly as well. I had never felt more accepted in my life than I did when I was with Simo–my father, and I don't plan on ever letting go of this feeling. 

[doubleaspectrum]

Oldboy Hallway Fight Analysis

So, I recently watch Oldboy. The 2003 version, not the remake. Seriously, why do people even make those anyways? Remakes only make sense if the original creation sucks and you’re giving things another try to fix it. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Right? Well, OLDBOY AIN’T BROKE!

Sorry about the tangent, I just really don’t get why media outlets keep trying to improve on something that already worked. Most of the times they make things worse. Heck, if anyone can find an example that improved on a success, let me know.

Okay, I’m done this time. So, the reason I was pointed to Oldboy is because my eldest sibling showed me the famous hallway fight scene. At the time, I didn’t see how it ended, they stopped at the first moment Dae-su is knocked down and the gangsters start to crowd him.

So, of course, I figured the obvious answer, no matter how skilled Dae-su could be he’d lose the fight. Skill doesn’t account for much if you’re overwhelmed. Imagine my surprise when I was told that he wins. My jaw dropped. How could he win with those odds?! Only someone like John Wick could win and even then, he’d being using a gun! Well, when I saw the scene itself in its full glory I understood why, and my goodness I loved it!

Now, to go with the beginning parts I saw, they were good, but they were also rather par for the course when it comes to action movies.

There’s a degree of martial arts with Dae-su dancing his way into the crowd.

There’s a part where he fights pragmatically by taking a human shield.

And when he first gets crowded, he gets right back up and starts charging the crowd.

And while this is great, I’m sad to say this isn’t unique. Any other action movie character can do this. There’s no shortage of martial arts films, and we’ve seen heroes like John McClane and John Wick (there’s no shortage of Johns either) tank plenty of hits and manage to keep walking on both feet before the movie ends. So, what is it that makes Oldboy so unique? Don’t worry, I’m getting there.

The first part that really impressed me was Dae-su getting knocked down the second time. You know what he does?

He slams his hammer into his opponents’ feet!

Now this is a stroke of genius! From what I’ve seen of hydraulic press videos, everything likes to hold its shape before enough force makes the substance break in its weakest spot. This applies to the process of hammering a nail. Now, you may get those situations where the nail proves to be the weaker substance and you’ve got a bent nail, but ideally the wooden board is the weaker substance and it gives way when slammed. Now with these principles in mind, tell me what happens when a human foot is stuck between a swinging hammer and a concrete floor.

Now, if a hammer was hitting a floating limb, it would hurt but would go with the swing, but with the concrete floor as a brace, where does the force go but into the foot? It was at this point I realized that Daes-su wasn’t just fighting harder than a gang of thugs, he was outsmarting them!

On a slight side note, I have read a copy of Sun Tzu’s the Art of War, specifically without commentary. So, I remember the advice that you should know both the enemy and yourself to judge your capacity for victory. So, when I say that Dae-su was outsmarting his opponents, I made sure to judge their intelligence accordingly.

The next key part of the fight is that Dae-su gets stabbed in the back and collapses.

This lulls his opponents into a false sense of security, and they start to wonder if he’s dead. One important thing to mention, they don’t take the knife out. Now, if you have basic medical knowledge (or in my case, have read the Worst Aid page on TV Tropes) then you’ll know that what kills someone isn’t putting the knife into the body, it’s the blood loss when the knife is removed. So, when the thugs start wondering if they’ve killed a guy without removing the knife, you can assess how smart they are.

This actually plays into the greatest part of my analysis. You see, Dae-su takes everyone by surprise when he gets up and keeps fighting; from there the atmosphere changes. Suddenly, the gang doesn’t rush him all at once anymore.

They keep their distance, they back away more often, and push each other.

All around, they don’t want to get close to him. And that’s when I understand, none of them are particularly smart so as far as they can tell, some guy they just killed has come back to life and is still kicking their asses! To put it simply, they’re scared. And that makes all the difference. Suddenly this isn’t a simple fight anymore, Dae-su has engaged several opponents at once in psychological warfare, and he’s winning.

Thus, my question was answered. How did Dae-su win the fight? He wasn’t just a juggernaut or a martial artist like any other action hero; he won through tactical genius. He turned unfavorable situations into brutal counterattacks, he used his enemy’s lack of intelligence to catch them off guard, and most of all, he terrified the crap out of an entire group. Normally, we’d be worried about how much sense a fight scene can make, but when I saw this fight, it clicked together and I loved it all the more.

[darkfrog24]

When someone has a question like this, it's important to answer it seriously. There's a lot going on with why liberals think Trump supporters are stupid, and Peni Delina Bedard's post is a good place to start.

I have relatives who are Trump supporters. They're good people. In 2016, my uncle would laugh and say, "He's saying what everyone is thinking!" That kind of guy. Donald Trump promised, among other things, to get them a tax break. So I'm speaking from here.

There's something that conservatives keep doing that makes it look to us like you're lying and something that liberals keep doing that makes it look like we've missed the point: 1) We ask you what you want. 2) You give an answer that's close but not exactly it. 3) We take your answer at face value and propose actions to make it happen. 4) You guys go "That's not what we want! That would only make things worse!" 5) We assume you were lying in step two and that your real motive is to cause whatever outcome will result from not taking the actions in step three. You see this a lot with abortion and gun control. You guys seem really upset about this whole (2) "saving babies" thing and we don't agree with you that fetuses are babies, but (3) we come up with plans for sex ed and IUD programs and we have evidence that they work, but this only (4) seems to make you more upset, so (5) we figure that saving babies isn't really what you care about and assume that oppressing women and keeping poor people poor is what you really want.

There are a couple reasons why this keeps happening.

A) Liberals do a lot of moral reasoning from consequentialism and conservatives do a lot of moral reasoning from virtue ethics. We all use both, but each side skews more one way. The short version is that liberals think the purpose of government is to create the best outcomes spread out among the largest group of people and conservatives think the purpose of government is to create a society in which people get better outcomes if they make morally good choices. It's okay if most people lose as long as losing was their own fault. This guy has a wonderful take on it. It's not that conservatives think they'll all be billionaires someday. It's that they think there's honor in getting what wealth and position you do have.

B) A big part of the liberal, progressive mindset is faith in evidence. If there are multiple scientific studies saying things like, "This vaccine is relatively safe" then, to us, that's almost as good as seeing it with our own eyes. Our problem is that it's very hard to imagine how someone wouldn't think this way. We remember being kids who didn't understand how the scientific system works, so we imagine that people who don't believe in science just don't understand how it works.

In 2015 and 2016, Trump communicated with conservatives using theatrics. He created an image, like a fictional character in a movie. He painted himself as a savvy businessman, an unstoppable winning machine feared by enemies and adored by women. We thought you knew it wasn't real. It was like if Bruce Willis were running for president. We thought you knew he was Bruce Willis and not John McClane. Bruce Willis can't kill a helicopter with a car when he's out of bullets. John McClane could only do it because he lives in a scripted world.

But then Trump had four years to show us the substance underneath the flash, and it turned out he can't govern. He postured and told President Enrique Peña Nieto that Mexico had better pay for the wall or else just cancel their meeting. In a movie, this is where the meebly secondary character would give way to the force of the hero's personality. The real-life Enrique Peña Nieto cancelled their meeting.

Then there's Joe Biden. He doesn't look like much, but he's great at working behind the scenes, grinding out deals between people who don't always agree with each other, laying down track for plans that won't show until later. And we can look at his work with veterans' benefits and infrastructure and we can see, "Ah yes, here is evidence that Biden governs reasonably well. The results speak for Biden's ability to get results."

We have had four years to see that Trump can't govern, that his policies are not only cruel but ineffective. There is evidence, lots of it, right in front of your eyes. Why don't you believe it? Do you just not understand?

He didn't get you your tax cut. He didn't restore American values. He didn't give us a high-winning economy. He didn't do the things you said you wanted done.

So I think the liberal side is justified in wondering what it was that you really did want.

An anguished question from a Trump supporter: ‘Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?’

Peni Delina Bedard · August 31, 2019  ·  The serious answer: Here’s what we really think about Trump supporters - the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don’t… That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought “Fine.” That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, “Okay.” That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, “No problem.” That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, “Not an issue.” That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn’t care, you chirped, “He sure knows me.” That when you heard him illustrate his own character by telling that cute story about the elderly guest bleeding on the floor at his country club, the story about how he turned his back and how it was all an imposition on him, you said, “That’s cool!” That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw. That when you heard him brag that he doesn’t read books, you said, “Well, who has time?” That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, “That makes sense.” That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, “Yes!” That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man’s coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, “What a great guy!” That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, “Thumbs up!” That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, “That’s the way I want my President to be.” That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they’re supposed to be regulating and you have said, “What a genius!” That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, “That’s smart!” That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, “That makes sense.” That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, “falling in love” with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, “That’s statesmanship!” That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “Well, OK then.” That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise. What you don’t get, Trump supporters in 2019, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it’s also…hear me…charitable. Because if you’re NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.

[kvibestudios]

Crafting Unforgettable Film Characters: Techniques and Insights

To create film personalities that make a memorable impression, comprehending the complex process of character creation is crucial. Characters need to develop, revealing more profound aspects that engage viewers. By focusing on character growth, filmmakers inject vitality into their creations, ensuring they remain memorable.

Character Development

Character Arcs: A character arc represents the transformative journey that characters experience, often captivating audiences. Consider Andy Dufresne from "The Shawshank Redemption"; his evolution from a banker to a determined prisoner exemplifies a well-crafted character arc.

Psychological Depth: Characters with complex psyches, rich motivations, and backgrounds create bonds with the audience. Max Rockatansky in "Mad Max: Fury Road," with his tormented past, illustrates the power of a detailed psychological framework. A character's history is crucial for understanding their present behavior.

Perfect characters often lead to monotony. Engaging characters, like John McClane in "Die Hard," attract us with their flaws and vulnerabilities, making them relatable and human.

Screenwriting Tips

Screenwriting goes beyond dialogue—it’s a tool to highlight character traits at every level. Distinct traits and attributes help them stand out. Think of Sam in "The Lord of the Rings," frequently addressing Frodo as “Mr. Frodo,” which subtly emphasizes their social dynamics.

Character names ought to be distinct to avoid confusion. The Bridgerton series serves as a valuable example, arranging sibling names alphabetically to prevent bewilderment. Ensure names are unique to facilitate audience connection.

Crafting Techniques

Quirks and habits give characters vividness. Indiana Jones's fear of snakes acts as a memorable quirk that integrates smoothly into the storyline. Characters' relationships often enrich narratives and unveil deeper elements of personalities. "Midnight Run" thrives through its vibrant character interactions.

Contrasting characteristics add layers to character authenticity. Imagine a hardened detective who composes poetry—such contrast invites intrigue and depth. Concurrently, consider placing characters in high-stakes situations, offering tangible goals and challenges that test their resilience.

Examples from Acclaimed Films and TV Shows

Let’s explore how New York and New Jersey productions have highlighted character depth. "The Sopranos," originating in New Jersey, explores Tony Soprano's complex range, from family man to mobster. New York’s "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" intricately examines Olivia Benson’s journey, establishing her as a timeless character study. Similarly, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" delivers captivating arcs, depicting Midge Maisel's transition from housewife to comedian, demonstrating flawless character evolution.

Best Practices and Insights

Focus on detailed backstories.

Build psychological depth by integrating motivations within character transitions.

Enhance uniqueness through recognizable quirks.

Leverage relationships to uncover deeper narrative layers.

Drive plots by challenging characters with significant stakes.

Applying these techniques can enrich character depiction in modern filmmaking.

Bringing Techniques to Life

Conduct character interviews: Examining individual character nuances can reveal hidden traits and motivations. Develop intricate backstories that mirror their current personas. Craft contrasting traits that facilitate relatability.

Emphasize character relationships: These interactions offer narrative complexity. Establish memorable quirks, like James Bond's martini inclination, which remain in memory and propel the storyline forward.

Developing film characters capable of captivating imagination involves profound development, distinct screenwriting, and intentional crafting. By employing these strategies, onscreen characters can resonate far beyond the closing scene.

#FilmCharacters #Screenwriting #CharacterDevelopment #NYNJFilm #MemorableCharacters

Master the art of character development by visiting https://www.kvibe.com

[kingjain]

Hans Gruber Fall Nakatomi Plaza Die Hard Ugly Christmas Sweater

Yippee-ki-yay, Christmas! The Hans Gruber Ugly Christmas Sweater is more than just festive, it's a statement. This sweater isn't just about looking festive, it's about channeling the spirit of John McClane, the ultimate underdog hero.You're not just wearing an ugly Christmas sweater, you're wearing the symbol of resilience, wit, and a healthy dose of "screw the bad guys." Imagine yourself at the holiday party, surrounded by the usual suspects: the boring sweaters, the generic Santa hats, and the forced smiles.Then, you walk in.You're wearing the Hans Gruber Ugly Christmas Sweater, and you're not just blending in, you're standing out.You're a conversation starter, a beacon of holiday humor, and a subtle reminder that even amidst the chaos, there's a hero inside all of us. This sweater isn't just a fashion statement, it's a celebration of the film that redefined the holiday action genre.It's a nod to the iconic lines, the unforgettable characters, and the timeless themes of good versus evil, family, and the true meaning of Christmas. Here's why you'll love the Hans Gruber Ugly Christmas Sweater:  Make a statement: You won't be blending in with the crowd.This sweater is a bold choice for those who aren't afraid to stand out.  Spark conversations:Get ready for questions and compliments.This sweater is sure to be a talking point at any holiday gathering.  Show your love for Die Hard:Let everyone know you're a fan of the classic Christmas movie with this unique and quirky piece of apparel.  Perfect for holiday fun:Whether you're attending a party, watching a movie marathon, or just relaxing at home, this sweater will keep you feeling festive and ready to celebrate. The Hans Gruber Ugly Christmas Sweater is more than just a garment, it's a symbol of holiday spirit, resilience, and the joy of celebrating the classic films we all love.So, grab yours and prepare to have a "Yippee-ki-yay" Christmas!

Get it here : Hans Gruber Fall Nakatomi Plaza Die Hard Ugly Christmas Sweater

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Related : https://kingjain.tumblr.com/post/722178716969648129/yoda-star-wars-floating-black-baseball-jersey