#Judy: *rips a mans brain out of his head*

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

Aww! Baby's first war crime!!

Judy's joining the 'unethical use of speedster powers' list for phasing the brain out of a man's head.

[hunn1e-bunn1e]

Bonten Sanzu Haruchiyou - "CRAZY S/O 2"

🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.

But it's headcannons this time..... so yeah...

Warnings -> Implied drug abuse, Mentions of holding Koko hostage, Implied domestic violence (throwing shit), sex near a corpse, Burglarization of houses, Theft, Misuse of prescription medication, and side effects of drugs.

                                                                                                   

💉•♡•💉•♡•💉•♡•💉•♡•💉•♡•💉•♡•💉•♡•💉

💊 It was mentioned in the first iteration of this but Sanzu and you live together. But he wants his lover to be safe so the both of you live in the nearest neighborhood to the Bonten headquarters. This also helps him get home much faster compared to where you both were living beforehand.

💊 Sanzu will startle you when he holds you from behind and tilts your head back to kiss you while you hold a gun to his head and he holds a knife to your throat. Iconic? Sure. Romantic? Eh...Not so much. Maybe to him though, we'll never really know what goes on in whatever is left of his brain cells.

💊 Often times Sanzu brings his work home to you and let's you watch. If he's in a good mood he'll even let you help. Isn't he such a sweetheart? Although the most he let's you do is help him move the corpse into his trunk once he's all finished. He doesn't want some rando's blood on you even if it make you look really hot.

💊 Kokonoi still hasn't forgiven you for holding him hostage. Especially considering that this was the fourteenth time you've done it already..... He's gotten far more cautious of his surroundings and now completes a threat assessment every half hour without fail. You really have scarred this man.

💊 Sanzu always ends up having to shell out a ton of money on fine china because his lover flies off the handle and throws dishes at him fairly often. It's really starting to take a bit of a toll on his paycheck so he's in the process of trying to convince you to throw less fragile objects instead.

💊 You and Sanzu have in fact made love in the same room as a dead body on multiple occasions... It usually happens about twice a week and he really looks forward to it, actually. Weirdo...

💊 Sanzu actually tends to get his drugs from you. It seems you've developed a hobby of breaking into neighboring people's houses and stealing only their prescription medication. You never go for anything over the counter for some reason and still have yet to get caught.

💊 You bought Sanzu a parakeet and he quickly taught it to say 'Kill the traitors'. Haru Junior still lives with you guys to this very day; just chilling in his massive birdcage and watching 'Judge Judy' or whatever was on the old line up of t.v. broadcasts in the afternoons.

💊 On days when you're feeling more yourself, you'll patch up Sanzu's wounds and help him down from any of his particularly bad trips from whatever drug he'd decided to take this time. Maybe you'd even order take-out from some shitty restaurant on the other side of town and complain about the wait time while you both lazed around on the ripped up some, watching some crappy movies that he rented from a Redbox on his way home.

💉•♡•💉•♡•💉•♡•💉•♡•💉•♡•💉•♡•💉•♡•💉

🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.

Wanna see similar content? Check out my Masterlist!

[dgcatanisiri]

So, something was said in a bit of a video on Cyberpunk that I've been rolling over in my head since. I didn't necessarily agree with it, but it did give me a perspective to consider.

The person who made the video said that the core theme of the game was summed up by the question that Dexter DeShawn asks at the start of everything: Quiet life or blaze of glory?

From that perspective, yeah, I suppose I can see how the game as is fits to that.

But the thing is, that's a failure for what I experience in the game. Which, sure, has some element of the subjective nature of fiction - when it comes to what any fiction makes you think or feel, the audience's individual reactions are always going to be shaped by each individuals own experiences.

So my experiences do not center on asking and answering the question "what do you want, to be remembered as a legend or to fade away?" My experiences tell me that the question is "what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?" Not "how do you want to die" but "what do you want from life that carries on after you're gone?"

It's why I get pissed off about the reactions of V's friends in the suicide ending - they're all angry about V doing this, with even Misty saying "you had a bigger effect on people than you thought." The choice wasn't about them, though - they weren't the ones dying, they weren't the ones who were going to have their brain liquefy. Sure, they're left behind, but because of V being in their lives, completing their quests, they're all in better places now - Panam's reunited with the Aldecaldos, River's reconnected with his sister, Kerry has a new lease on life, and, for all that it hurts her that someone else close to her has killed themselves, Judy has left Night City for good. Plus there's the various gigs and reported crimes that V almost has to complete just to level up, cleaning up Night City as time goes on. V's ripple effect changes lives, the ripples from V being there makes things better.

I look at this game, at this story, I think that the big question is asking to compare what V does throughout to what Johnny Silverhand did while he was alive - Silverhand acted impulsively and selfishly. His one-man crusade on Arasaka became that because he couldn't accept that Alt was taken because of her skills - "they took her to get to me." And he never accepts that he killed her - literally, he rips the cord connecting her to the net before she can come back to her body, HE is the cause of her death, not Arasaka. To say nothing of his bullshit on the bender that he brushes off with 'didn't know the pills would knock you out like that,' as if he didn't wash them down with all the alcohol under the sun, a pack of cigarettes that V wouldn't touch otherwise, and causing a car crash because he decided to finger a stripper while she was driving.

I see all that and think that the game should be about why V can knock down Arasaka while Johnny Silverhand never could - because V makes connections with people, because they set out to help others, even if they are still a professional mercenary. Because their presence in the lives of those around them is about helping them, not taking what they can until the others dislodge them like the parasite they would be in that metaphor, like Johnny Silverhand was.

From the "quiet life or blaze of glory" perspective, sure, maybe the game told the right story. But from my "what do you leave behind?" perspective? It doesn't actually want to ask the questions that come out of it. And those are the kind of questions that REALLY get me from the scenario they set up, of having this cyber-ghost stuck in V's head, and being able to talk about, explore, and parallel and contrast both characters lives and choices.

[katsukikitten]

Synopsis: After a deadly disease spreads rapidly across the globe survival of the fittest becomes an understatement. With violence around every corner you’re left no choice but to do what you must to live besides you aren’t one to turn down easy pickings. So when you come across a huge compound with tons of resources and slow guards you get comfortable. A little too comfortable. Stealing more rare items that make them suspicious that eventually leads to your capture by a mountain of a man who leaves you to the mercy of his vermillion eyed boss. And now all your roads are leading to a dead end.

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, blood, spitting, body horror/gore.

Chapter Six: What lurks in the Shadows? wc 1609

Master List : Here

The voice is raspy and yet song-like, the kind of sound that age and a few too many cigarettes can change. Two books are on the old cart as the figure comes more into view. The old floral dress is tattered, gnarled hands glued  to the tarnished golden metal, a wedding band with a modest diamond on the ring finger pushes the cart more into the light. 

The woman, or Walker, you should say looks different. Skin tight against her bones and for a moment your heart lodged into your throat. Her eyes are missing, nothing sits behind the rims of her glasses, just two dark holes with paper thin skin stretched across her features. Her gray hair is tucked away on top of her head, falling in some places. Floral dress faded from age still in place an old yellowed name plate catches your eye.

Judy

You shudder, quick to try to push her name out of your head. Still you were amazed, you had never seen a Walker so well preserved. She looked as if she stepped out of a museum exhibit with bodies found in bogs. 

For a moment you think she is a Morte as you try not to swallow your tongue. These old ass scissors weren’t going to cut it if she went full Morte. Their strength is uncanny and you’ve only encountered one before. Your brain pushes the memories to the forefront of your mind to analyze for the best chances of survival. Back then you’d watch the shade-like creature rip a group of men limb from limb, never satisfied as it pulled too harshly on tender flesh. 

But Morte’s didn’t speak like Ones. No, Ones said either their final thoughts or something so ingrained in their psyche that not even Death could steal the phrase away. Mortes only screamed, a haunting sound that sounded neither human nor animal. 

Like the screams of a forgotten God that grew so bitter they forgot even themselves. 

It somehow holds your gaze but it doesn’t seem as if hunger drives this one as it is so emancipated for a Walker that you really aren’t sure how this one is living. 

“Would you like some tea?” It asks, coming closer, still pushing the cart of books that never got returned and most likely never would. The creature stops in front of the counter, glasses fused to the bridge of its nose but even if they fell they would still be around her neck with the old beaded croakie.  You could kill it, should kill it but it just stands there. 

No sound coming from it, hardly any movement of its shoulders as it “breathes”. 

Fuck you should really kill it but the scissors feel ten times heavier in your hand than they should as you hesitate for the first time in your life.

“Need help finding something, love?”  

Something passes over the sun outside as it makes a quick flash across the room, the glass of the Archives Center catches your attention. Slowly a risky idea forms in your head. 

“I-” You clear your throat as you speak louder, changing your center of gravity for an offensive mode, “I need help finding something. Can you show me where I can find the microfilms?” 

It stares unblinking for a long long time and just as you’re about to strike she turns her head. Slowly moving as she walks in her old kitten heels. The cart squeaks and she leaves a trail of two lines and her footprints in the dust as you follow behind her. She walks into the Archives section with her trusty cart and when she clears the door you reach in and pull it shut, sure to twist the lock up before closing her behind the safety of the intact glass. 

Although you weren’t sure exactly what type of Walker she was, you had some safe assumptions about her. She had the mind of a One, possibly even better as she lead you right to where you would normally find microfilm. Not that you ever gave any Walker a chance to prove its memory to you, you still thought this was a big discovery of sorts. Second, since she is so similar to a One she wouldn’t break the glass to this section, normally something they had to do in hoards. Not to mention if the glass did give way there was still that tightly woven wire that was between the two panes of glass. 

“Shhh dear.” She hisses as she turns her cart around, hitting it against the door a few times. If she had eyes she would be locking them with yours. 

“Would you like some tea?” She asks slowly and almost as if there were hurt in her voice before she bangs against the old wooden door again. You just hope the wood hadn’t become dry rotted as she rattles it again.

“Shh dear.” Followed by “Darn this Dewey decimal system.” 

After a few more times she stops, turning her cart to pace inside the large room. Back and forth the squeaking goes until she is close to the window, staring out. 

Staring at you. It's eerie and yet you force yourself to study her. There was still some old rouge to her cheeks, red lipstick caked onto her dry lips and it looked as if there was still a swatch of eyeshadow despite five years passing with her wandering around in the dark. 

The growl in your stomach paired with the golden rays that stream in from the window alert you to just how much time you had lost wandering around the old dusty place. Occasionally checking in on your new “friend” of sorts. You have a small stack of books in your hands about canning, farming, and living off of the land “off grid” that you skimmed before deciding if they would prove useful or not. Quickly walking towards the exit as you keep the bulky books close to your chest, eyes naturally flickering to the ‘woman’ behind the bars, who gives you a grimace. Guilt bubbles in your stomach before you sigh, walking towards the ledger at the front. Fishing for a pen that hadn’t met its demise in uncontrolled temperatures before writing your name in cursive and in the last box the three books you checked out. With the date bolded in the check out box. 

Glancing back towards the Archives you think you see a faint smile on those red lips before you push away from the counter and out the double doors, scooping up the poor dead bird on your way out. 

As a precaution you flip the door into the lock position before you let it close. Giving the handle a tug to double check the lock, when the door doesn’t give away you set your books down. Stepping into the side garden and digging a shallow grave with your hand for the poor grey avian friend. 

“Rest easy.” You murmur, pouring the dirt back on top before scooping up your books to head back to that stupid rotting manor at the top of the hill.

Bakugou isn’t thrilled with your ‘obsession’ with the library but the people of the town are excited to see these books. As another few days pass you bring children's books, old chapter books and romance novels for those who are looking to kill time. Surprisingly when they are finished with the books, especially the ones for leisure, they swing by Graham’s setting them on the old red wagon Graham told you to borrow. 

The wheels squeak as you drag them over the grassy and crumbling streets. The sound feels ironic. 

Before you can cross towards the library today,  a burning palm wraps around your wrist, giving you a nasty glare. 

“Be home early, shitty woman. Gonna storm heavy tonight ya know how that upsets them.” As if to prove Bakugou’s point the clouds overhead give a low rumble.  You say nothing and break free of his grip heading towards your slice of solitude. 

You pick the lock with ease, reminding yourself to look for a spare key sooner or later before you come through the second set of double doors.

“Hellooo.” You call out, when and why you started doing that you weren’t sure. 

“Shhh dear” Is all you ever get in return but still, it's nice to hear someone greet you without a hint of hostility or greed in their tone. 

“They really liked what I picked this week.” You smile, checking the books back in, even adding in the fake amount of fake money you owed for some of them.

“Would you like some tea dear?”

 “It’s gonna storm tonight so I can’t stay long.” You look up and she is staring at you. Boney hands still glued to the cart, “Any suggestions for me to read?” 

Silence comes from behind the glass as if she were thinking but she never does respond. Not even with one of her normal little phrases. For a split second you wonder if she’s trying to say the suggestion she wants to give but then thunder rolls overhead, sounding closer than before. The storm would make sense for her silence, Ones didn’t take kindly to the rain while twos and threes, hoards, preferred to use the chaos to attack. 

“Shhh dear”  She says with worry before she slips into the dark corner of the room. After another deafening sound of the roaring thunder, rain starts to tap against the roof quietly. Your ears buzz from the sound and faintly you think you hear in such a strained gravelly voice, 

“Shhh dear…bad coming”

[jinxthequeergirl]

Ghost of The Past

Michael myers x reader (Ending 1)

Summary: Halloween always brings back memories from your child hood, turns out memories aren't the only thing coming back

Warning: swearing, this ending involves lots of death and murder

So this has just been sitting in my drafts cause its kinda bad but its been so long since i posted writing so here

~~~~~~

"Michael!? Where'd ya go!?" You yelled into the open door, you huffed after a few seconds and pulled up the skirt of your princess costume to make your journey up the house steps easier.

 "Michale come on! All the good candy is gonna be gone if we do go nooww!" You whined stomping your foot, now yelling up the staircase for your friend. Suddenly there was a scream from upstairs, it startled you for a moment.

"Judy!? Michale!?" You quickly ran up the stairs to investigate. Stopping at the top of the stairs when you found him standing in the door frame of his sisters bedroom with a kitchen knife dripping with a dark red liquid. 

"M...m...mich...michale!?" You stuttered nervously, stumbling backward away from him slightly. 

"This isn't a fun...fun game anymore...tell judy to stop it....Stop it michael!" He slowly moved twoard you before slashing at you. you yellped just barely dodging the blade, it caught the sleve of your costume ripping it. "MICHAEL!" he slashed at you again you slid and fell down the stairs face first. "Y/n!? Oh my god!" You looked up seeing mister and misses myers running up the drive way through the still open door.

Miss Myers scooped you off the floor holding you close checking you for injury and clearing your tears. "Michael what have you done!?"

You sat up in bed quickly trying to shake the memory. It was dark now, the only light coming from the tv filling the room with dim blue light.

The phone rang,pulling you from your half sleep filled brain. "Roofus, scram!" You shooed the cat away from the table the phone sat on and answered it. "Bout damn time."

"Hello to you too PJ." You said sarcastically.

"Yea yea hello, good evening,all that crap listen throw on some clothes that slightly resembles a costume and be ready in the next half hour we've got a party to go to!"

You rolled your eyes.

"No thank you, I don't do that shit remember?"

"C'mon!!! Just one halloween party, I promise you one hour and we can leave and I dunno do whatever boring thing you want to do."

"I appreciate the offer but no thanks."

"Ugh Fine, can you at least switch with Jamie? Shes watching her neighbors kids tonight and she would much rather go."

You sighed. "Sure whatever."

"You're the best, listen I'll be there in like 20 to come get you and make the switch be ready!"

Rolling your eyes again you hung up the phone.

Briefely catching what the news was saying about an escaped mental patient before shutting it iff and going up to change.

Carefully walking up the stairs so that you didnt trip in the dark your sock stuck to something wet and sticky at the top.

"Oh god! ROOFUS how many times Have I told you! To take your kill...out..side…" you trailed off when you looked up at your bedroom door to see the said cat dead and pinned to the door.

It's blood dripping down the door and pooling below it.

"Oh fuck!" You yelped, slipping back onto the floor.

You scooted back slightly hitting something that wasn't the wall.

You let out a frightened whimper and slowly turned to see what you had hit.

You looked up to see a white faced mask starting down at you. You let out a scream and scrambled back almost slipping down the stairs but the masked stranger caught your ankle.

"No stop! Get off of me!" He slid you across the floor away from the stairs, dragging you through the blood. Nervous and fearful tears spilled down your face as he did so. He was about to reach down and grab you but you kicked him back giving yourself the advantage to stand up and run down the hall.

The kick only phased the man momentarily, maybe for a second at the least because he had stood to his full height again and was wedging himself in the doorway of the room you were attempting to lock yourself in.

"Go away!" You screamed pushing your back against the door to attempt and stop him. "Please leave me alone!" He stuck a hand in trying to gain leverage but couldn't reach anything.

Finally he  pushed his way through the door sending you across the room, you hit your head on the end of the bed post but crawled over to your parents nightstand grabbing the letter opener that sat there and holding it up in an attempt to defend yourself.  

The man stood towering over you tilting his head in amusement and curiosity at you.

"What do you want!?"

He gave no answer, only stared. Your sobbing racked through your body as you shakily held up the small weapon.  "Please go away!" You said losing your edge.

He approached you slowly causing you to stumble back into the nightstand, tipping the lamp over.

He grabbed both your wrists and lifted you up off the ground. "No,no,no! Let me go!"

You thrashed and kicked in his hold accidently losing the letter opener.

Despite your struggling he stayed grounded and barely moved, still only tilting his head at you.

He seemed to get annoyed with you and released one of your wrists but still held you up by the other. His now free hand reached out and grabbed your face stopping it from moving and forcing you to look at him.

Your cries were muffled as he pinched your cheeks together and your hair, slick with blood covered your face as well.

He made an almost Displeased sound and set you down firmly but still held your arm tightly, grounding you almost so you couldn't escape, it didn't matter you were too scared too anyways. His hand released your face and moved to swipe away the hair, then gingerly brushed against the bloody bruise on your forehead. You hissed in pain and pulled back.

That upset him, because he grunted and tightened his grip on your arm, you clenched your jaw in pain but refrained from doing anything else in case it upset him further and he broke it.

His fingers trailed from your head injury down your face and rubbed away a few tears.

You allowed it to happen because, what else were you to do? But your eyes looked everywhere but him. Suddenly you felt him pull you closer and wrap his arms around you in a hug of sorts.

It wasn't very comfortable, he was too strong for something like this and dumbly unaware of it because you almost couldn't breath.

You felt him shuffle with you still pinned against him.

He adjusted so that he was sitting on the bed and you were in his lap. You gulped slightly once he finally freed you from the hug now he simply just stared at you and pet your hair.

"W….who...who are...who are you?" You shakily stuttered out, your eyes glancing up at him before quickly turning to look out the window.

The man gave no reply but simply cupped your cheek before taking one of your hands and placing it on his masked cheek.

"Do...do...you want me to take it o..off?.." He nodded slightly and you did so ever so carefully, Gasping a little when you saw his face.

"Michale?" You drew back slightly causing him to grab your waist and pull you closer.

"How...wh…" Your head was spinning more than before as you looked at him.

His face was rouged and stern looking but the moonlight that came through the window gave it a softer look.

"I'm...I'm sorry." You offered as your hand traced the scar across his eye. "I didn't...know….you scared me!" His head leaned into your touch the same way a cat would when you pet it. You felt a smile form at the corner of your mouth as he did so.

It must've felt nice, to have human touch after so long of being locked away.

"Yo! Y/n!?" The loud booming voice and knock on the door startled him causing him to grab your hand and rip it away from his face.

You glanced out the window seeing some of Pj's friends parked outside they banged in the door. "Y/n!? Pj sent us over here! Where are you!?"

You screamed as he tossed you off of him angrily.

"Michale, no! Stop!" He pulled a shiny butcher knife from the back of his jump suit and held it tightly.

"Michale please!please don't do this!" You got up and ran as he swiped at you, only making it a foot out the door before he grabbed you, covering your mouth and muffling your scream and he plunged the knife into you.

You fell back into his arms looking up at him, you choked on the air and looked up at him.

He scooped you up and placed you on the bed, you reached your hand up to his face one last time and kissed his cheek. You wheezed as he pulled the knife from you, he stood beside the bed watching you bleed out. "Goodbye Michael..." Feeling every part of you grow heavy, and darkness consumed your vision. The last thing you could see was him placing the mask back on before everything was completely black.

[lavellane]

8 for mona and judy please maam

"Shit! Motherfucking goddamn shit!"

"Hold still, V!"

"Fuck!"

Amidst the commotion, the knife is the first thing to fall. It tumbles precariously off the kitchen counter, clattering to the floor and splattering pink frosting all over Mona's four-hundred-eddie boots on impact.

It also sliced her finger open, but her boots are designer, while her hand cyberware is not.

Judy, unsympathetic to the now filthy shoes Mona spent two months saving for, captures the other woman's hand with both of her own in an instant, holding her as gently as her squirming arm allows for.

"Would you quit moving? Jeez, V, it was a butter knife, you gonk. You're barely even bleeding!" Mona's finger throbs dully in Judy's hands as if in protest.

"Oh – barely bleeding? That ain't as much a comfort as you think it is, babe."

"Don't babe me. I've seen you ganked by knives three times that size without breaking a sweat. Quit your crying and run it under the tap while I get you a band aid."

Johnny, showman as ever, finds this moment ideal as any to materialize onto Judy's coffee table. "Girl's got you there, V," he drawls, slow and smug as Mona shifts to run her finger under lukewarm water. "Nice attempt at getting a sympathy fuck, though. Bonus points for flare, as always."

'I don't need sympathy for that, jackass,' Mona retorts, though she has to work to bite down a grin. 'And I don't know what to tell you, man. The duller the blade, the worse it burns. There's a metaphor for life in there somewhere, probably.'

Johnny scoffs. "Let me know when you find it, so I can blow my non-corporeal brains out first."

'Psh. Everyone's a cynic.'

"You're goddamn right."

"Found it!" Judy's voice, soft and relieved, echoes from the bathroom where she emerges a half second later, brightly coloured packet in hand. "You didn't bleed to death in my kitchen while I was gone, did you?"

Mona smiles and brings her uninjured hand to Judy's cheek as she returns, her thumb brushing stray hairs back in place behind her ear. "Nah. You know me – I had to fight to stick around. For you, of course."

"Oh, of course," Judy laughs, though she leans into Mona's touch with a soft sigh. "My hero, huh?"

Johnny throws his head back and groans dismally.

Mona’s too caught up in Judy's eyes to dignify the noise with a response. "I may have overreacted, just a bit. It surprised me, that's all. When Frosting Attacks – title of your new BD?"

"Uh . . . we can work on it," Judy snickers. Gently retreating, the smaller woman opens up the packet, revealing a rainbow assembly of children's band aids, each one more colourful and adorable than the last. "Best part of getting injured at my place? You can get patched up and dripped out. Superheroes or princesses?"

"Damn . . ." V squints between the two, red and blue contrasted with pretty pinks and purples, and bites her lip. "Loyalty to my look makes me think superheroes on principle, but . . ."

"But the princesses are cute, yeah?"

"Cute as shit."

Johnny sighs. "How the fuck are you a veteran Night City merc, V?"

"Fuck it, I'm going with superheroes." She winces just a little as Judy rips the plastic off the adhesive, wrapping the width of it gently around Mona's finger. She admires the bandaging job as Judy steps back, already somewhat attached to the entourage of caped, spandex wearing heroes it depicts. "Yeah, I like it. I already have one princess in my life, anyway. More than enough for me."

Judy snickers, but her blush is unmistakeable. "You're too goddamn sweet for your own good sometimes, you know that?"

"Holy fuck." Johnny makes a gagging noise, loud enough to echo around in her skull. "I can't fucking believe she didn't dump your ass just for saying that."

"I could be even sweeter . . ." Mona's voice lowers to a murmur, trailing along Judy's jaw with her thumb, "if you felt like kissing it better."

Judy catches her bandaged finger as it migrates down her neck, pressing it slowly to her lips with a smirk. "Like this, you mean?"

"Come to think of it, I think I might've hurt my lips in the commotion, too. Among other things."

"Really? It it's that bad, maybe you should lie down. Let me . . . take a look at you for a while."

"You read my mind."

Johnny shakes his head before flickering out of vision, already settling into some corner of Mona's mind that might otherwise afford her some semblance of privacy. His voice, distant and muted, rings out as he departs.

"Don't know what I expected from a girl who calls you pumpkin unprompted. Fuck it, I take it back. You've got game, kid."

'Told you I didn't need sympathy,'' Mona answers cheerfully. 'It's all charm, choom. Just something I was born with, I guess.'

[tcm]

Van Johnson: The Leading Man with a Boyish Charm By Susan King

If Frank Sinatra was the favorite singer of bobbysoxers in the 1940s, Van Johnson was every teenage girl’s dreamboat. And for good reason. He was adorable: tall, athletic, freckle-faced with reddish blond hair, a warm smile and a charming screen presence. He was the perfect boy-next-door any mother would want her daughter to marry. In fact, when he went to the New York premiere of A THRILL OF A ROMANCE (‘45), a Technicolor romantic comedy also starring MGM’s aqua star Esther Williams, he was waylaid by the bobbysoxers who even ripped the buttons off his shirt.

Johnson was also a lyric in the Prehistoric Man number in ON THE TOWN (‘49): “What has Gable got for me and Mrs. Johnson’s blond boy Van, I want a handsome Joe from ages ago, a prehistoric man!” But he was more than just a pretty face. He more than held his own opposite Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne in his first major starring role in the romantic fantasy A GUY NAMED JOE (‘43), and he was moving as a real-life flier who loses his leg in the stirring THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO (‘44).

In my L.A. Times interview with him in 1991, Johnson, then 75, told me, “I never expected or thought about the movies. It was a never-never land out there. It was soooooo glamorous.” During his years under contract with MGM, he noted that he would pinch himself to realize he was in fact a movie star. “Every day I drove on the lot, I looked up at Leo the Lion and I couldn’t believe it was me, this little kid from Newport, R.I., up there with all of those famous people. I never got over it.”

Born in 1916, Johnson’s childhood was less than idyllic. His alcoholic mother abandoned the family when he was young. His Swedish-immigrant father was cold. But young Johnson found solace in the touring companies that appeared in Newport. After he graduated from high school, he went to New York. He was 19 when he got a part in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1936, followed by roles in the musicals Too Many Girls and Pal Joey. He came to Hollywood to do the 1940 film version of TOO MANY GIRLS.

It was Lucille Ball, star of TOO MANY GIRLS, who introduced him to the MGM casting director Billy Grady. Johnson recalled in a 1963 interview that Ball told him, “I’m going to introduce you, and at least you’re going to act like you’re the star I think you are.” Johnson began to work his way up the MGM ladder when he got a role in A GUY NAMED JOE. But he nearly died in early 1943 when his DeSoto convertible was struck by another car. He suffered a fractured skull, major facial injuries, a severed neck artery and bone fragments that pierced his brain. After several surgeries and several months, his forehead was left with major scars. He also had a metal plate put into the left side of his head.

He later remembered he was told he had been nearly decapitated. “But I never lost consciousness. I spent four months in the hospital after they sewed the top of my head back on,” Johnson noted. MGM wanted to replace him, but Tracy and director Victor Fleming insisted production be halted until he was well enough to return to work. And a star was born. Ironically, bobbysoxers would abandon him in 1947 when he married pal Keenan Wynn’s ex-wife. His popularity waned but he continued to work usually doing three or four films a year.

I think he did some of his best work once he lost the matinee idol moniker in such films as the World War II drama COMMAND DECISION (‘48); William A. Wellman’s gritty acclaimed World War II action-drama BATTLEGROUND (‘49); THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS (‘54), a romantic drama based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Babylon Revisited” and most notably in the classic THE CAINE MUTINY (‘54), which also starred Humphrey Bogart as the maniacal Capt. Queeg. He also drips with charm in IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME (‘49) and the perfect partner for Judy Garland in the delightful musical remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s romantic comedy THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (‘40). MGM didn’t renew his contract in 1954, so he went to Columbia to do such movies as the romantic drama THE END OF THE AFFAIR (‘55) with Deborah Kerr. Johnson also starred in a dual role in the truly bizarre NBC musical The Pied Piper of Hamelin, which aired Thanksgiving weekend in 1957.

In the 1960s, Johnson not only had two bouts with cancer, he saw his film roles dry up. So, he began touring in such musicals as Damn Yankees and The Music Man. He said in an interview why he turned to theater: “Because the phone didn’t ring. Because the film scripts were getting crummier and crummier. Because I sat beside my pool in Palm Springs one day and told myself, ‘Van, you’ll be 45 this year. If you don’t start doing something now, you never will.”

Besides doing an occasional movie, Johnson appeared on countless TV series, movies and miniseries, earning an Emmy nomination for the ABC miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man. He returned to Broadway in 1985 in Jerry Herman’s Tony Award-winning musical La Cage Aux Folles and that same year he appeared in a small role as an actor in Woody Allen’s enchanting THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (‘85). “These are supposed to be my September years” he once told an interviewer. “I’m supposed to be at home enjoying them, but I still love to tour.”

When I interviewed Johnson, he was in town to appear in a production of Show Boat in Pasadena. He was set to play Cap’n Andy, a role he had done several times. Even at 75, he still was boyish and charming. But I felt bad for him. He had damaged his ear drums after flying with a cold and was extremely hard of hearing. And he was fighting a bad case of bronchitis. Johnson never went on stage because he developed pneumonia before opening night. He retired in 1992 and died at 92 in 2008.

Though many actors bristled being under contract, Johnson confessed in a 1985 interview he loved his years at MGM. “It was one big happy family and a little kingdom,” he noted. “Everything was provided for us, from singing lessons to barbells. All we had to do was inhale, exhale and be charming. I used to dread leaving the studio to go out into the real world, because to me the studio was the real world.”

[bibliocratic]

Hi! Your fics are so amazing and I absolutely adore them ❤️ I have a fic prompt, though not the most novel, but in a reversal to Martin waking up w Jon gone, I propose Jon waking up post-160 to find Martin gone. Maybe after a nasty attack, so Jon’s extra tired and didn’t feel Martin leave and he has a hard time getting around! Regardless of whether you write this, thanks so much for sharing your fics!

(you are so kind and lovely, and this is an excellent prompt - thank you for sending it!)

post 160 apocalypse, jonmartin, hurt/comfort

content warnings in the tags

Wake up.

Jon breathes in a cold and smarting frost, and for a terrifying knee-jerk of a moment, he thinks the air panting and pluming from his mouth is fog.

The taste of Peter Lukas' last furies stick tacky under his tongue. This is a dream but then the world has grown so dream-like lately.

Jon curls up, nightmare-knocked and blinded by the confusion of being awake, clenching the covers over him like a den, like a hibernation, and wonders why the bed is so cold, why the room is so marred with quiet.

Wake up, something tolls in him with the furious clatter of church bells, wake up.

Dread itches over his skin, like there is something small and gritty and scraping in his eye.

Wake up.

Jon gasps, moans something that could be a 'no' as there is a sliding pulse and eyes pop open like boils on his skin, like the drip of hot wax skittering over the bruised and burned tapestry of his body, slit-shaped goat pupils expanding his vision panoramic.

The Eye wants to See something, and it will not take his exhaustion as excuse.

– Something is absent from us. –

The impression slicks over him, the dense oil of it poorly pervading the water of him.

– The front door was opened recently. – 

– The temperature of the room has dropped three point two seven degrees. – – Something is absent from us. – – There is a cave twenty miles north-north-west and the ground surrounding it is sunken, subsumes the unwary that it draws to swim through ground they know is hard until their fingernails break and they choke on soil, beached and bloated with dirt in their lungs. – – A bird in the far distance, whose beak has twisted and stretched like a pointed sabaton, it spears through bodies and laps at the blood with its hideous tongue as they writhe and bleed out, and tonight it has caught two people this way. – – Something is absent from us. –

Jon opens his blinking, feeble human eyes. Feels around with his finger tips, feels the cool sheet next to him, the unoccupied imprint on the pillow.

Martin is not next to him.

“Martin?” he breathes out, hearing his damaged windpipe expel the sound with a laboured croak, like broken bellows. “Martin – christ – Martin? Martin?”

He cannot make a shout but he feels the intent of it as a build-up in his chest. He sits up and grinds his teeth down on a shout. His stomach concave with his fasting, battered with bruising. Martin dragged the creature off him and burnt his own palms in the process, impaling it on the molten tines of a garden fork,  and all Jon had smelt was cooking meat as he'd been pulled to safety.

“Martin,” he says, and his legs, treacherous, traitorous, human, weak, give out under him, his knees slamming painfully against the hard-wood flooring and his ever-stretching vision swimming.

– Martin Blackwood is not in the kitchen, nor the bathroom, nor any rooms of the house, comes the tide of the voice.

– A man thirty miles away was ripped apart five minutes ago by a woman who looked like his dead sister, and he didn't scream as it ate his offal. These are his final thoughts: Marn? Marnie, but yea're dead, yea're dead Marn. –

– Martin Blackwood is not in our sanctuary, our sepulchres, our dominion –

– We did not traverse his fog-knotted dreams tonight, nor skim our fingers through the surface of them to taste the sound of them –

Jon tries to shake his head free of Seeing for a moment, so he can think, croaks out another Martin that is dismissed and dispersed amongst the gloom of the house. It's not night, not really, not when there is no such thing any more, but it's the closest thing they get in this world.

His arms shake as he levers himself up to standing, hobbling on his bandaged, fire-scoured leg. He almost drops again, but catches himself on the post at the end of the bed, grimly forces himself back up.

– Martin Blackwood did not leave us willingly –

– Martin Blackwood has been stolen –

– Martin Blackwood is thirty-three years old and six months and five days and he has told six people in his life that he loves them –

“Tell me something useful,” Jon hisses, blinking away tears at the raw agony that doesn't serve to dull his mounting panic. “Tell me where he is.”

Knowledge coats the inside of him like a slick, a spillage, a  catastrophe far from land, and Jon grits his teeth as it strikes over him.

– Martin Blackwood on foot could have travelled a distance of two point six eight miles maximum in all directions. –

– Your last words before sleep were you must be exhausted. His last words before sleep were pressed against your hair, and they are the same words he prays against your scalp every night, I love you. Stay safe. Sleep dreamless. –

– There is a brook ten miles away that sings, and its waters are deceptively deep, shadows stretching out under the surface, waving like pondweed. –

– Martin Blackwood is whittling something for our birthday when he thinks we are asleep –

“Useless,” Jon snarls at himself, almost sobbing at the inanity of it, how little help his curse can provide him, how little he can protect those in his care. He tugs the door open wider, wincing, gargling with a cry as it pours down his throat, into his lungs. “Where....”

Eyes bloom as he flounders, blossom as he drowns.

He Sees in a deluge.

– Marija Blackwood kept his first tooth in an old ring box that they lost when they moved to London –

– Martin Blackwood's chances of surviving a direct attack from an suitably powered entity is less than fifteen percent –

– Martin Blackwood is talking to a man on the road who is not a man. The man lured him from our borders thinking he would be undefended –

Jon is staggering into shoes, his movements punch-and-judy ragged, jerked on worn-down strings. Every motion tugs and tears at his injuries – we could rip its statement from its pretence of lips, we are always so hungry aren't we, and it has dared to steal from our horde of one – and Jon bites down a whimpering cry as he feels the burst and pop of more eyes that push forth, wavering and shimmering like ill-formed soap bubbles, that coalesce in the place of skin like frogspawn.

A limping run out of the door. The path down to the mud-track at the bottom of the stumpy hill is swathed in dark, but Jon's Eyes glower in black-light, splayed wide as moth patterns, and nothing will dare touch such an Avatar.  

Jon's pained steps get faster. He stumbles, catches himself on dirt-ripped palms, drags himself up. The thing inside him that is both him and not him is uncaring for the agony of his body as it turns more of his skin to its purposes, as his edges become less, as he pours over himself in a slick of bubbling sight and more eyes flex open like the maws of sea anemones  as he strives to see, to See.

Martin's back is to him when he gets to the lane at the bottom of the hill on which their cottage presides. He's decked in his pyjamas, the hem of them soaked with dew and grass-strains. His feet are muddy and scratched up from walking down this track unprotected.

He sways like he's dizzy. His body is shaking and he doesn't turn around.

“Look, Jon!” he says, sounding ever so pleased, if anything buoyed with delight, even though his voice creaks, even though his hands are curved into trembling fists. “It's – you won't believe it, look, it's Tim, he found us, all the way out here.”

The man who is not a man studies the archivist solemnly. There are enough pieces of him slotted together to make an inventory of a human body, though they are jumbled, ordered wrong. He smiles out of his stomach, a fat, gluttonous grin.

He is a metre from Martin, not making any motion closer. He is enjoying the taste of Martin's confused terror too much.

Jon's Eyes ring his body like an aperture. The last of his skin has flaked away for a final bulbous, flexing eye to join the gelatinous whole of his vision.

Martin laughs at a joke. It is far too high.

“No, I can't believe it either!” he says, looking at the thing that does not even mimic the appearance of Tim Stoker, whatever is being shoved into Martin's struggling brain. He is smiling, a big bright beaming curve of a thing, even though his eyes are beginning to well up with desperate despairing  tears. “We thought, god, Tim, we thought you were dead, how did you – ?”

“Martin,” Jon murmurs out of a body part no longer a throat, rocking dazedly on his unsteady limbs. “Martin, turn away.”

“I – ” Martin replies, still smiling. His eyes won't turn away from the man who is not Tim, even as they widen in grief, and he swallows and more tears flow down his face. It is clearly impossible for him to follow the impulses of his own contorted brain. It is clear he is trying. “I – it's Tim, Jon.”

– The Spiral cannot have Martin Blackwood –

–  Martin Blackwood cannot come to harm –

– Martin Blackwood belongs to the Archives –

“Martin,” the Archivist repeats with a gargle of hungry static. “Turn away and don't look.”

Martin closes his eyes as commanded, almost dropping as his legs are finally able to move.

The Archive takes its statement messily, hungrily. Gets it all over his pyjamas, Martin's feet, the spatted dirt of the road.

He is no longer starving.

“Jon – that – that was – ” Martin's holding a horrified sob in his throat. His shaking has worsened, and Jon is both sated and exhausted down to the marrow of him. He straightens out his leg, rubs at the newly healed skin at his throat, feeling the unsettling sensation of marbles rolling back under his skin.

“I was so worried,” he manages to gasp out, “Martin, I woke up and – ”

He doesn't manage to finish the sentence. Martin, shell-shocked, quaking, Martin, nods. Understands. Near falls against him as he buries his face into Jon's neck.

They lean on each other as they make their way back to the cottage.

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

The Wizard of Oz: The Story

At first glance, the plot of The Wizard of Oz seems pretty simple and chock full of clichés.  A girl from Kansas and her dog find themselves in a wonderful land, and meet a Cowardly Lion, a Tin Man, and a Scarecrow, traveling on a feel-good journey to find the titular Wizard of Oz, the only person who can send Dorothy home.

Pretty straightforward and obvious, right?

Well, there’s a bit more to it than that.  (Spoilers below, so on the off chance you haven’t seen the movie, go check it out and come back when you’ve seen it!)

Here’s the setup:

The film opens with Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) and Toto running along a road in the dull, brown land of Kansas.  They are running just ahead of their bike-riding, witch-like neighbor, Ms. Gulch, who is trying to have Toto put down for biting her.

Dorothy, in an understandable panic, tries to tell her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry (who she lives with) about the situation, but they blow her off.  She turns for advice instead to three farm hands, who express sympathy and interest in the problem.  It is here where Aunt Em tells Dorothy to find somewhere where she won’t get into trouble, and here where Dorothy sings the most famous song in all of cinema.

Now, we’re already looking at quite a lot of setup that will be hugely important later.

First, the templates for the future characters of Oz.  Ms. Gulch and the three farmhands are introduced immediately with clear personality traits that will be echoed in their Oz counterparts later on.  Ms. Gulch is appropriately antagonistic and witch like.  The three farm hands quietly display the traits upon which their dopplegangers will be fixated: brains, heart, and courage.

Then there’s that song.  Somewhere Over the Rainbow, while being a song with seemingly little to do with the story has a lot to do with Dorothy’s character.  Feeling pushed aside, ignored, and helpless, Dorothy’s famous song is a window into her desires: leaving and finding a place where her dreams will come true.

Long story short, there’s a lot of foreshadowing in this scene.

Ms. Gulch (Margaret Hamilton) arrives on the scene with a sheriff’s order to put Toto down.  When her aunt and uncle do nothing to stop it, Dorothy takes Toto and attempts to run away from home.

She doesn’t get far.

She is stopped in her tracks by a kind, traveling con-artist fortune teller (Frank Morgan).  The fortune teller, by looking through Dorothy’s things to surmise enough about her situation, uses his crystal ball to cause Dorothy to believe that her aunt is in serious trouble.  Worried, Dorothy races home just in time for a cyclone to strike, knocking her on the head and carrying her, Toto, and the house, into the skies, along with Ms. Gulch, who transforms into a witch aboard a broomstick.

When the house lands, it’s in an entirely different place. Gone are the brown-grey tones of Kansas, replaced with bright color and vivid imagery of Munchkin land.  Dorothy emerges from the house to be greeted and hailed as a hero by both the Munchkins and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Dorothy has slain the Wicked Witch of the East when her house fell atop her, and freed the inhabitants of Munchkin land.  Cue song.

Dorothy is understandably confused, especially when the dead witch’s sister, the Wicked Witch of the West (Also Margaret Hamilton) turns up to claim the powerful ruby slippers that belonged to her sibling and are currently sticking out from underneath the house.  

Glinda transports the slippers onto Dorothy’s feet instead, enraging the Wicked Witch of the West, and causing her to swear vengeance for her sister.  Not powerful enough to hurt Dorothy in the presence of Glinda the Good, the Wicked Witch vanishes in a flash-bang of smoke.

All Dorothy wants is to get home.

Glinda assures her that she can get home by going to see the most Powerful Being in All of Oz: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz of the Emerald City.  She can do this, of course, by following the Yellow Brick Road.

Cue another song as Dorothy skips her way out of town, down the road, and towards her goal: getting home.

Already we’re seeing some irony here.  Not fifteen minutes ago, Dorothy’s goal was to get Somewhere Over the Rainbow, to be in a magical place. Oz is as magical as they come, and Dorothy was immediately beloved and befriended, and yet, worried for her family (especially her aunt) the goal seems to have flipped; now her desire is to return home.  This is unusual for both a fantasy movie and a coming of age story, and The Wizard of Oz is both.

Even stranger, throughout the story, Dorothy never wavers from this goal, leading directly to the lesson at the end.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Dorothy comes to a fork in the Yellow Brick Road by a cornfield, where she meets an unusual figure: a scarecrow (Ray Bolger), stuck on a pole. Dorothy immediately goes to his aid, helping him down and listening to his woes: he has no brain, which he explains through song.  (Aren’t musicals wonderful?)

Dorothy has a solution.  She suggests that he joins her, so that he may ask this Wonderful Wizard for some brains.  He agrees, and they continue along into a grove of apple-trees.  Dorothy, being hungry, goes to pick an apple, only to realize that the trees are alive, and aren’t happy about having their children ripped from them and eaten in front of them.

They don’t word it like that, but that’s the gist of it.

The Brainless Scarecrow takes action, enraging the trees to instead pelt them with the apples, no doubt breaking the hearts of several parents who witnessed their children used as ammunition.

Mission accomplished, Dorothy moves to collect the apples when she stumbles on something else interesting: a man made of tin, rusted nearly solid.

Sensing another opportunity to help, Dorothy uses an oilcan to restore mobility to the Tin-Man (Jack Haley), who thanks them and expresses his own problem: he has no heart, and this just about moves him to tears.

It moves him to song, anyway.

In the end, Dorothy suggests that the Tin Man join them in their journey to Oz, so that he may ask the Wizard for a heart, and he agrees.  The Wicked Witch appears again, this time as a more sincere threat, revealed through a demonstration of her fireball-hurling abilities.  She disappears in another puff of smoke, and the Scarecrow reveals that fire is his only fear, as it is the only thing that can truly destroy him.

The group continues on into a deep forest, full of ‘lions and tigers and bears’ (oh my!), and are suddenly jumped by a Lion (Bert Lahr). They scatter in terror before his might, all except for little Toto.  Faced with this challenge of a tiny dog, the Lion pounces after him, to the outrage of Dorothy, who viciously slaps the Lion on the nose and scolds him. The fierce Lion responds to this attack by bursting into tears.

The Lion explains, in a song, that what he wants most in life is courage, sealing out our rule of three.  He too joins the group in the desperate hope that the Wizard will give him the courage he desires, and the three emerge from the forest, across a field of poppies.  There is a brief and pointless attack by the Witch, deflected by Deux Ex Glinda, and the group merrily makes their way to the Emerald City.

The guy at the gate briefly stops them, but lets them in after seeing Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers and hearing that they know Glinda the Good.  Cue another song, this time describing the joy it is to live in Oz, however they are cut short by the main conflict kicking into high gear: The broomstick-riding Wicked Witch of the West blazes a smoke trail in the sky that says simply: Surrender Dorothy.

The lack of comma is a little confusing as to whether Dorothy is to surrender, or if the people of the Emerald City are supposed to surrender her, but either way, the idea comes across pretty clearly.  In the face of this danger, the message returns from the mighty and wise Wizard of Oz: he won’t see them, due to the danger Dorothy has brought.

In desperation, Dorothy starts to cry, mourning her situation, which, despite three new friends, is pretty bleak.  Her outburst convinces the Wizard’s guard to let them in, where they meet the famed Wizard.

He’s pretty scary, all right.  He insults the group for a few minutes as the group stutters out what they want (a brain, a heart, a home, the nerve), and then lays down his deal: He’ll give them what they want if they bring back the Wicked Witch of the West’s broomstick.  

Left with no other option, Dorothy and Co. head into the forest after the witch, and here I want us to pause for a moment and look at where we are in the story.

For one thing, this is kind of a weird structure for a movie. The setup is fine, a girl finding themselves in a magical world is a normal fantasy format.  The main antagonist was introduced quite some time ago, but she hasn’t really been too much of a threat until now.  We got a few reminders to let us know she’s still in the movie, but we’re really just now getting to see the main ‘conflict’, Dorothy vs. the Witch, and we’re really close to the end of the movie.

It almost seems like we’re just now entering third act climax after a very long first act of rising tension/inciting incident.  It feels as though we’ve skipped right over a second act. The quest to defeat the witch, which in other stories would be starting at the end of the first act, is at the beginning of the third.

The ‘quest’ wasn’t even for Dorothy’s own sake.  She’s doing this because the Wizard is giving her no other choice.  Dorothy isn’t a fantasy hero in the normal sense.  She just wants to get home, and there’s no sense of ‘good vs. evil’ struggle in this film.

So where are we in the story?  Where we are right now is a scared, but determined, little girl doing whatever it takes to get home, with three friends and her dog at her side, marching into the woods to kill the Wicked Witch of the West, a powerful woman who’s been trying to get at her this whole movie.

The Witch’s horde of flying monkeys arrives in the forest, carrying Dorothy and Toto off, mauling the Scarecrow, and subduing the Lion and Tin Man.

Once in the Witch’s castle, threatened with her dog’s death, Dorothy agrees to let the Witch have the slippers, but wouldn’t you know it, the slippers won’t come off her feet.  Enraged, the Witch locks Dorothy in a tower with an hourglass that is counting down time until the Witch kills her.  (The reason she didn’t do it right away is that ‘these things must be done delicately’.  Maybe she needed a spell or something to do it with the Ruby Slippers on her.)  During her imprisonment, she is shown images of her aunt, worriedly calling out for her.

Meanwhile, Toto gets away and rushes to fetch help: the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion.  After putting the Scarecrow back together and surmising what must have happened, the trio immediately decide to go rescue Dorothy.

In a display of brainlessness, heartlessness, and gutlessness, they sneak into the Witch’s castle to save their friend, beating up three guards and taking their uniforms in the process.  Seconds before the hourglass runs out, the Tin Man finally gets to use his axe and chops down the door to the room Dorothy is locked inside. Their reunion is cut short, however, by the Witch and her guards, who, after a brief chase, manage to corner them.

The Witch gleefully informs Dorothy that the Witch intends to kill them all, one by one, saving Dorothy for last.  Making good on her promise, she sets the Scarecrow on fire, which, as previously stated, is the one thing that can really kill him.

Horrified, Dorothy grabs a nearby Deus Ex Bucket of Water and douses the Scarecrow, putting him out and saving his life.  In the process, the Witch gets soaked too, and let’s be honest, you all know what happens next.

“You cursed brat! Look what you’ve done! I’m melting! Melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness…”

So the Witch vaporizes away, leaving Dorothy and Co. stunned and surrounded by the Witch’s guards, who thank Dorothy profusely for murdering their leader.  They gladly give them the broomstick they were sent after, and the gang immediately heads back to the Emerald City, full of joy and confidence.

Once they arrive back in the Wizard’s presence, however, he immediately begins wavering on his deal, telling them to come back tomorrow.

Dorothy, having recently (if accidently) vanquished the most feared person in all of Oz, is having none of it.  She stands up to the Wizard and is just setting in on giving him a piece of her mind before Toto rushes to an ignored corner of the room, pulling back a concealing fabric and revealing a scared little man behind the curtain, working frantically at his machinery in an attempt to draw their attention away from him.

The man (also Frank Morgan) admits the truth: he is the Wizard of Oz, and has no wonderful powers whatsoever, but he does stave off their anger with a few items from our world, where he is apparently from.  To the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion, he bestows gifts that officially grant them the traits they were ‘lacking’.

A diploma, medal, or clock won’t get Dorothy home, however, but the Wizard has an idea.  He arrived in Oz several years ago by a decidedly less fantastic way than Dorothy had: he had come by hot air balloon, and it just so happens that it is in perfect condition.  The Wizard decides that it is time for him to go home as well, and offers to take Dorothy with him.  Of course she accepts.

However, while the departure is taking place, there is a scuffle involving Toto and a cat, and the balloon takes off with the Wizard, but not Dorothy.  The girl is now in complete despair about ever getting back to Kansas, and even though she’d be welcome in the Emerald City, she’s coming to the realization that there’s no place like home.

Cue Deus Ex Glinda.

The Good Witch arrives in their midst and tells Dorothy something that probably would have been helpful before if not for The Plot: The Ruby Slippers that Dorothy has been wearing could have taken her home any time she wanted, simply by clicking her heels and saying ‘There’s no place like home’.

(I wish I had a pair of those.  That’d make social gatherings much less uncomfortable.)

Dorothy tearfully wishes her friends goodbye and with Toto in tow, follows Glinda’s instructions and wakes up in familiar, gray Kansas, surrounded by her aunt, uncle, farmhands, and Professor Marvel.  It was all Just A Dream.

Contrived?  Maybe. Or maybe not.

A lot of people have quite a few problems with the ending of the Wizard of Oz (besides the Scarecrow’s math slipup, which we aren’t addressing today).  For example, if Glinda knew the slippers did that this whole time, why send Dorothy on this dangerous adventure and have her murder a Witch?

(Or maybe it was Manslaughter.  It was accidental, after all.)

For a while, I subscribed to the theory of it just being an easy way to end the story.  In the original book, the Good Witch who sends Dorothy off and the Good Witch who helps her get home are two different people.  I just assumed that the scriptwriters just crammed them into one person, didn’t realize the Adaptation Induced Plothole, and just hoped no one would notice.  (I didn’t like this movie for much of my childhood, and I was rather cynical towards it.)

However, when I watched it again, I had another thought.

First off, this entire adventure was a dream, and if we can accept talking lions, scarecrows, and men made out of tin, we can sure as heck accept the fact that Dorothy’s subconscious wasn’t thinking of a plot-sensible way to get home.

Secondly, and more important thematically, this way home matters to Dorothy’s journey.  In the beginning of the first act, we see Dorothy’s desperation to be elsewhere, somewhere where her dreams come true, somewhere brighter and Better than Kansas. And then she gets her wish.

For any other fantasy hero, this would be amazing.  She immediately is hailed as a hero and makes three good friends, defeats a villain, and has the opportunity to stay behind in this magical land where she has learned so much.  But what does Dorothy say at the end?

“If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, l won’t look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn’t there I never really lost it to begin with.”

Right from the beginning, as we’ve mentioned, all she wants is to go back home, to be with her family and friends, and to be content with the life she had.  Her ‘Hero’s Journey’ isn’t learning to strike out on her own and be Independent.  Her ‘Hero’s Journey’ is gaining the same things her friends did: brains, heart, and courage.

She proves her own intelligence, her own caring, and most importantly, her own bravery.  She learns agency.  In the beginning of the story, she is helpless, running away from her life because the adults in her life are unable to help her.  The story of Dorothy is of being able to affect where you are in life, not by escaping, but by dealing with your problems yourself.

By initially going to the Wizard to be sent home and finding out she had the ability to do it herself, Dorothy realizes that she has power and agency in her own life, and that she can’t, and shouldn’t, totally rely on others to fix her problems.  So in a way, it makes sense that she had to go through all of that before she could go home.

By the same token, she’s also learned that she belongs with her family at the moment.  Dorothy is still a child, and does spend a good deal of the movie worrying especially about her aunt.  Where she begins the movie feeling swept aside by her family, Dorothy realizes how much she cares about and needs family and friends in her life.  She has learned to be self-sufficient, but not alone.

That’s a pretty good message for a kid, and indeed, for people of all ages.  With that in mind, it makes a lot of sense that people have kept coming back to this film for its heartwarming story.  There’s a reason this movie is a classic, after all.

In the upcoming articles, we’ll be taking a look at some more of the fascinating facets that make up The Wizard of Oz, so please, stay tuned for next time!  Thank you all so much for reading and feel free to message me with your own thoughts. I hope to ‘see’ you in the next article!

[judeloski]

💀  * [ ella purnell + demi female + she/her ] —— have you met judith ‘jude’ loski? they are a twenty-one year old junior currently studying fine arts. they live on farrow house, and word around campus is that this capricorn is creative + magnetic, as well as contradictory + morbid. i wonder if they’ll make it out alive. a skull pattern stained onto fine china, flowers plucked too soon, red wine staining the seam of your lips.  [ ooc: pepper. twenty four. she/her & est. ]

ABOUT THE MUN.  hey baby, hey baby, hey baby, hey baby, here’s twenty dollars!

hello it is pepper again with my second muse because i have no self control. depending on whether or not i can handle this amount of muses i might drop one but for now i am hype!! i have had jude living rent free in my head for like ??? a year at least, and this is the first time i’ve gotten to play her so i’m living large! the entire inspiration behind her is inspired by my creative writing teacher in uni so this is a shout out to you jen i love you!! okay that is all. 

BIO.  kidnapping tw, death tw, child neglect tw. holiday candles that smell just like your years as a feral child in the forest!

i was gonna write a nice sexy bio but honestly my brain is offline rn so i don’t think that’s gonna happen, instead, welcome to these sexy bullet points. 

judith evianna loski was born approximately two minutes prior to her twin sister juliette elenora loski during a frightful blizzard in londan, england. while judith popped out of her mother kicking and screaming bloody murder from day one, moment one, juliette was a docile baby. she was so sweet and quiet that the doctor’s had to check her breathing more than once. while, of course jude made her presence, and her posession of a working set of lungs and killer set of vocal chords, known to everyone within a ten kilometre radius. let’s just say the loskis knew the difference between their daughters instantly. 

which was fine. jude and julie liked being different anyways. where jude was colour coded green, julie was colour coded blue. while julie was always thrilled at the prospect of a new dress or doll, jude was known for covering such gifts in mud or paint until they were utterly recognizable or suitably ruined. where julie was sweet, and quiet, and shy, jude could fill a room with just her presence, could make a friend in a sea of strangers. the fact was, jude always had what julie lacked, and for the most part vice versa. they fit together like two puzzle pieces, and they complimented each other perfectly. and despite their differences, both their parents adored them unconditionally, and equally for the first six years of their lives. 

which of course meant the girls were spoiled rotten. how could they not be? damon loski was an english gentleman coming from very old, very lucrative oil money. he ran his business like a hobby and yet the loskis still had more than enough money to buy an island or two, especially considering annette’s status. annette loski was a french photographer, and a talented one at that. her work was desperately sought after and world renowned for it’s beauty, and so in her own right, annette was more than well off. and thus, the twins were more than well off, and even if they couldn’t quite understand the concept of that yet, they definitely understood that they could have whatever they wanted just by asking for it. they understood that wherever they went they were to be accompanied by a nice man or woman who was supposed to keep them safe. and they understood that because of mummy and daddy’s jobs they weren’t allowed to play like the other kids did. but as young as jude and julie were they never truly understood why.

that was until three weeks after the girl’s sixth birthday. jude remembers the whole thing like it was yesterday. it was snowing that day and it was that thick puffy snow that made everything seem quiet, the kind that made it hard to see too far ahead on the path you were trekking. the loski twins had taken advantage of the weather to slip between the fingers of their caretaker for the first time and go to the local park. their escape with thrilling, a game of espionage turned reality and the two girls basked in their victory as they made snow angels and twirled and twirled in the snow. that was the day jude had set out to swing higher than she ever had before and demanded that julie watch. and her sweet sister, as submissive as she was, had never quite learned how to say no to jude. so while jude swung and swung and swung, julie stood and watched her from across the park by herself, eyes wide and innocent as she warmed up her numb fingers with her breath. until she wasn’t. alone that is. jude remembers spotting the woman approaching julie. she remember seeing them talking. she remembers the warm clouds her own breath made, almost in sync with the breaths huffing past her sisters lips, foggy up the air before her eyes and obscuring her view. she remembers julie taking the woman’s hand. she remembers the two of them moving to leave the park. and she will never forget that heart stopping moment of quiet, of confusion and fear as her swing slowly came to a stop. she remembers losing julie in the blur of the snow that day.

eventually the police found jude huddled under a tree a block away, still calling her sister’s name into that eerily quiet snow storm, blue lipped and half frozen to death as she shook like a leaf. jude came out of that experience with phemonia. julie didn’t come out of that experience at all. 

well, in all honesty there was no way for the loski’s to know that. after all, they never saw julie again. for all jude knew, her sister could be alive and well, living a new happy life where she had no memory of having a sister. where she had a family that was whole for no reason other than she doesn’t remember it falling apart, and where she loved and was loved in return. it was always so easy to love julie. so honestly, it was entirely possible. 

jude would like to believe that was true. even if in that scenario it would undoubtedly mean that jude got the short end of the stick. 

you see, after julie’s kidnapping anette and damon’s marriage fell to pieces over the years. the trauma of losing a child can do that to you, you know. during that time, as her parents bond splintered apart at the seams, jude remembers hearing her grandmother tell her mother to keep it together for jude. to stick out out for the child she had left. 

her mother left them both in the middle of the night without warning less than a week later. so, jude supposes she wasn’t quite enough to hold things together. 

jude might have been comforted by the fact that she still had her father if he could even look her in the eye. the fact was, jude looked exactly like julie and julie and jude were always both told they were dead ringers for their mother. jude was a physical reminder of literally everything her father had lost, and he didn’t take that quite well. suddenly damon’s hobby of a job became his life. anything to not be home with his ghost of a daughter. 

now the doom and gloom of all this might make it seem like jude took all this trauma and just got really down in the dumps about it. that would be incorrect. jude took that trauma, buried it very deep and only ever used it to fuel her art but otherwise completely ignored it altogether. there’s a difference. one option requires years of therapy and the other can be dealt with pretty easily with years of denial, even if you’re forced to go to therapy anyways because your twin sister was kidnapped in front of you and that kind of thing generally gets you a ticket to therapy for life. very different. 

jude isn’t sure if it was that trauma, her parents name, the fact that the news of her sister’s kidnapping was pretty spread all over europe for about a month, or even unlikely enough her talent that launched her art career, but something did. maybe it was a combination of everything. but either way, jude loski was able to find herself with her own small art gallery opening at the tender age of thirteen. and her success in the art world only grew from their, her art galleries and portfolio growing and growing until the point that jude was able to find herself with a place at holloway. and considering there wasn’t much left for her in england anyways, considering her father barely spoke to her and her mother was gone like the wind, jude decided to go. 

and that’s all i got for now, and also i’m tired but if you want to plot give this a like and i will slide into your dms.

HEADCANNONS.  *aggressively makes tea*

here is her pinterest board. 

do not call her judy,  

hates her birthday and hates snow storms understandably. is a big fan of rain though. particularly enjoys thunder storms. 

is allergic to bees but is super chill about it. had an allergic reaction when she was fourteen that her dad was too busy on a business call to notice was happening. the nanny ended up being the one to stab her with the epipen. 

has pretty bad nightmares and night terrors sometimes and hence generally likes to sleep when the sun is out if she sleeps at all. because of that she tends to seem pretty nocturnal. you can probably catch her at the library in the middle of the night. 

loves weird little knicknacks. like voodoo dolls and like shrunken heads or like other weird stuff you find in the corners of antique shops and stuff. her side of her dorm is probably full of them so rip to her roommate. 

really loves skulls and other modern kind of contradictory things on fine china. learnt to make the designs herself cause there isn’t nearly enough of them, but she just does it for herself as a hobby like she doesn’t sell them or anything. 

learnt to weld on a whim. catch jude in her dorm welding things to make sculptures out of metal. 

bisexual as hell theydies. 

spent a lot of her teenage years with her godmother but i’m too tired to get into that rn i might add to this later

loves poetry and novels, but likes the flowery shit yk, the stuff that makes you feel something. 

is a good student for the most part but is horrible in math and science. sits in on english and classics courses for fun though. 

is v english and therefore very particular about her tea. 

i do headcannon that julie is fine and okay and just living that finding carter life so if anyone was wondering yeah she’s out there somewhere and alive with a new kidnapper mom yk 

a bit witchy. the kind who washes her door in rosemary and sunwater because she believes in that kind of thing and doesn’t understand why people don’t. that said, she doesn’t believe in god even a little bit but she goes to church every sunday anyways just to admire the stained glass and ask very specific questions to spark debate. she also just genuinely likes the vibe of jesus. not god, but jesus, she’s cool with. 

unfortunately is a dirty smoker. smokes nicotine and weed. probably vapes. 

the type to quote poetry when she’s drunk or high. can be very annoying because she always thinks that she’s like transcended into another world. 

i have a feeling in my heart that she’s really bizarre and she was really bizarre as a child after losing julie. big lilo from lilo and stitch vibes yk. just weird and sentimental and lonely. 

has a pet rabbit named julius. 

doesn’t tend to talk about her dead missing sister so unless you think your muse would know about it she probably wouldn’t tell them i’m ngl 

as for personality i have no clue!!! this is my first time playing her so i’m gonna figure it out yk

WANTED CONNECTIONS. I kinda need a hug but I’d rather DIE than let anyone know I am a human being that desperately craves intimacy

CHILDHOOD FRIEND. please. they can be from anywhere okay i will make it work i live for childhood friend connections. 

ENEMIES. i mean why not 

BEST FRIENDS. again, pls.

CONFIDANTES. someone she trusts, we love to see it 

EXES. i have a feeling that jude is one of those ‘i’m gonna leave before you leave me’ kind of people, so she definitely could have self sabotaged this kind of thing

MUSE. self explanatory but consider this: please. 

CRUSH. jude has a crush on your muse or vice versa

FAMILY FRIEND. self explanatory, but it could be wild that’s all i’m saying. 

and other stuff ofc, but my brain is so tired y’all i have to knock out

[treadmilltreats]

Stuck on Stupid I've been hearing this a lot lately from bunch of my readers and girlfriends, that we all seem to be stuck on stupid. What I mean by that is we have been hurt, used and  abused. We have been an afterthought, we have been ghosted, cheated on, lied to and yet when a good man comes along we can't see him for what he's worth because we're still stuck on stupid. Even though in our heads we know what stupid looks like, we know what stupid sounds like, we remember what stupid did and even if we are learning to know  our value, for some reason our hearts does not see any of that. Our heart keeps telling us how much we miss them, how things remind us of them, how maybe there might be another chance... It's almost like there's two people in your body, the one person with the brain telling you "Are you joking? Do not remember what this man did to you? Remember how many times you cried because of him, you do you know that he's going to hurt you yet again because he's proven that to you over and over" And then here's this other person living in la-la land saying "oh he might have change...oh but don't you remember how wonderful it was? Remember when he told you this or that...  you're beautiful or he wanted to spend 50 years with you, remember all the times you laid in bed and talked for hours or all the good times you shared together" And you think wasn't that good? How many of us have men who are willing to step up, who do the right things, who say the right things, who text you every morning just to say good morning or good night and sweet dreams? Men who are willing to step up yet we are still stuck on stupid? Too many, as I am finding out lately..way too many... yet we still do this... I know I am not alone on this stupid train and I still wonder why we do this? Why we keep thinking of them, why when we run into them it's like a punch in the gut, like all the air is sucked out of you and your standing there gasping even when your head is saying run, your heart won't let you... When you think your good, when you've thought you've moved on, when your heart is starting to heal and BAM! Here he is yet again ripping that newly healed scab off. Yes, we have heard it all from friends and family, he's no good, move on, you deserve better, he's an asshole....yes, we know all of that...believe us we've cried too many tears for that man and lost too many nights sleep over him, this is nothing new...we know...we get it... Now we are just trying to tell our hearts this, to recognize this fact. It is a day by day process, we need to dig deep and try to figure out why we think it's okay to keep being treated like this, maybe it's that we are being rejected and we are trying to get them at all costs, maybe we have issues, like me of trying to win love like I've always done, starting with my grandma, to my best friend, to my ex husband, patterns I keep repeating in my life. Maybe it's low self esteem, you don't think your worthy or no one else will come and so you settle, whatever the reason we need to address it and we need to fix it, because being stuck on stupid is not an option anymore. I did not stay in a loveless, abuisve marriage for 24 years to be treated bad yet again now that I am free. I am human, I am learning and growing each and every day and I know my worth and what I want from my next relationship, I want it all, I expect it all...why? Because I give my all that's why and I expect the same in return. So this time I will not settle no matter what my heart is saying, I am going to be Judge Judy and overrule that shit! So too all my queens out there, remember we are all learning and growing together, it's okay if we slip and fall sometimes, as long as we pick ourselves up and know what we have to continue to strive for and it's surly not being stuck on stupid! "Be the change you want to see"   "And just when the caterpillar thought his life over...he turned into a beautiful butterfly" ***Now available*** My book The blessing in Disguise Selling on my website: Http://www.treadmilltreats.com And on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0692437398/ref=mp_s_a_1_13?qid=1462358109&sr=1-13&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=the+blessing+in+Disguise http://www.am6azon.com/gp/aw/d/0692437398/ref=mp_s_a_1_12?qid=1434452632&sr=8-12&pi=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70&keywords=the+Blessing+in+Disguise My weekly Youtube page, please subscribe: https://youtu.be/LDSXCFJVnzM Twitter: treadmill treats Instragram: treadmilltreats Facebook :treadmill treats