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book--brackets · 21 days ago

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Summaries under the cut

Heist Society by Ally Carter

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre…to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria…to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving “the life” for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected.

Soon, Kat's friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring Kat back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has a good reason: a powerful mobster has been robbed of his priceless art collection and wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat's father isn't just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help.

For Kat, there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it's a spectacularly impossible job? She's got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family's history--and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.

Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi

After the tragic death of their father, Emily and Navin move with their mother to the home of her deceased great-grandfather, but the strange house proves to be dangerous. Before long, a sinister creature lures the kids' mom through a door in the basement. Em and Navin, desperate not to lose her, follow her into an underground world inhabited by demons, robots, and talking animals.

Eventually, they enlist the help of a small mechanical rabbit named Miskit. Together with Miskit, they face the most terrifying monster of all, and Em finally has the chance to save someone she loves.

The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Ten-year-old Ada has never left her one-room apartment. Her mother is too humiliated by Ada’s twisted foot to let her outside. So when her little brother Jamie is shipped out of London to escape the war, Ada doesn’t waste a minute—she sneaks out to join him. So begins a new adventure of Ada, and for Susan Smith, the woman who is forced to take the two kids in. As Ada teaches herself to ride a pony, learns to read, and watches for German spies, she begins to trust Susan—and Susan begins to love Ada and Jamie. But in the end, will their bond be enough to hold them together through wartime? Or will Ada and her brother fall back into the cruel hands of their mother?

Ascendance by Jennifer Nielsen

In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator of the king's long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Four orphans are recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage knows that Conner's motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on a sword's point—he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be killed. But Sage's rivals have their own agendas as well.

As Sage moves from a rundown orphanage to Conner's sumptuous palace, layer upon layer of treachery and deceit unfold, until finally, a truth is revealed that, in the end, may very well prove more dangerous than all of the lies taken together.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi

An ocean voyage of unimaginable consequences... Not every thirteen-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty. But I was just such a girl, and my story is worth relating even if it did happen years ago. Be warned, however: If strong ideas and action offend you, read no more. Find another companion to share your idle hours. For my part I intend to tell the truth as I lived it.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the forest, Xan, is kind and gentle. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster named Glerk and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, Fyrian. Xan rescues the abandoned children and deliver them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey.

One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. To keep young Luna safe from her own unwieldy power, Xan locks her magic deep inside her. When Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, her magic begins to emerge on schedule--but Xan is far away. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Soon, it is up to Luna to protect those who have protected her--even if it means the end of the loving, safe world she’s always known.

Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter

When orphaned, eleven-year-old Pollyanna comes to live with austere and wealthy Aunt Polly, her philosophy of gladness brings happiness to her aunt and other unhappy members of the community.

Paddington Bear by Michael Bond

Mr. and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington, a most endearing bear from Darkest Peru on a railway platform in London. A sign hanging around his neck said, "Please look after this bear. Thank you" So that is just what they did.

From the very first night when he attempted his first bath and ended up nearly flooding the house, Paddington was seldom far from imminent disaster. Jonathan and Judy were delighted with this havoc and even Mr. and Mrs. Brown had to admit that life seemed to be more filled with adventure when there was a bear in the house.

Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke

A dragon. A boy. A journey. Firedrake, a brave young dragon, his loyal brownie friend Sorrel and a lonely boy called Ben are united as if by destiny. Together, they embark on a magical journey to find the legendary place where silver dragons can live in peace for ever. With only a curious map and the whispered memories of an old dragon to guide them, they fly across moonlit lands and seas to reach the highest mountains in the world. Along the way, they discover extraordinary new friends in unlikely places and a courage they never knew they had. Just as well, for the greatest enemy of all is never far behind them - a heartless monster from the past who's been waiting a very long time to destroy the last dragons on earth.

Wings by Aprilynne Pike

Laurel was mesmerized, staring at the pale things with wide eyes. They were terrifyingly beautiful—too beautiful for words.

Laurel turned to the mirror again, her eyes on the hovering petals that floated beside her head. They looked almost like wings.

#best childhood book #poll #heist society #amulet #the war that saved my life #ascendance #the true confessions of charlotte doyle #the girl who drank the moon #pollyanna #paddington bear #dragon rider #wings

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ewanmitchellcrumbs · 1 year ago

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This may be a weird request, but pls hear me out. Could you do something in the format of those headcanons you write for EM characters—like which planet they are associated with—but just describing the character and their role in the series/movie in like 2-3 sentences? Like a trivia of sorts. I’ve only seen HOTD, and while some of his chars can be googled easily, like Osferth or Tom Bennet, the ones like Genyen or Michael are very obscure to me due to not having seen the stuff they’re from yet, and there isn’t always a wiki page available for them. You being the #1 Ewan Mitchell expert, I don’t really know who else to approach with such a thing. Please & I’d be very thankful 🏵💞🍀

Yeah, I can certainly do that for you. Below the cut!

Abraham - features in only one episode of a long running soap opera called Grantchester. The main protagonist of the series happens across a Romani camp. Ewan plays a character who is engaged to a girl named Luella. Luella keeps disappearing off. When Luella's father won't tell Abraham where she's going, he kills him with a fireplace poker. It later transpires that Luella is having an affair with the farmer whose land they're camped on and she doesn't want to marry Abraham at all. He's upset, not only at the loss of his wife-to-be, but also because he was next in line to become leader of their settlement, and has ruined that by killing someone from their community.

Aemond - Second son of Viserys Targaryen and Alicent Hightower. Bit of a twat, resentful because his dragon egg never hatched in his cradle. Claims his dead aunt's dragon, and his nephew gets the arsehole with him and knifes him in the face for it. He loses hie eye, but puts a gnarly sapphire in the socket in its place. Kills his nephew for rocking up to Storm's End and cockblocking him, which starts a war within his family and loads of them die. Gets distracted by a big tiddy witch and spends the rest of the war slinging one up her until eventually him and his uncle commit murder suicide.

Billy Taylor - sweetest little treasure in the world. Works as a bell boy at a hotel called the Halcyon, which quite frankly ought to be shut down for its negligent business practices. Anyway, Billy is sweet on a maid called Kate. When a hotel guest assaults her, he pulls the guy's own gun on him and narrowly avoids getting the sack for it. His mum interferes in his drafting, because she doesn't want him going overseas to fight in the war, so he's stationed at the London army barracks manning the anti aircraft guns. Dies anyway, because he gets blown up.

Billy Washington - hopeless brother of boss bitch Lana Washington. Doesn't have a job, has been refused from the army and feels pretty shit about life. His girlfriend has left him and his flat's a shit state. Because of his mardy outlook on life, a fascist organisation is able to radicalise him and frames him for vandalising a Halal butcher's. They later plant a bomb in his car, with the intention of it going off when he gets out at Farringdon station, where an anti fascist protest is taking place. Lana intercepts him on route, and he drives to Cranstead Gardens instead. He panics in the car, not knowing what to do, and against all advice, ends up opening the door to get out, which sets off the bomb and kills him.

Ettore - on board a space ship with other death row inmates to try to find alternative energy resources. Essentially understood that it's a suicide mission, but the doctor on board is conducting heinous fertility experiments on everyone. They are not allowed to sleep with each other, but have a "box" that they can go into to masturbate. Ettore is generally considered creepy by everyone on board, and he is really perverted - lots of inappropriate staring, etc. One night, he sneaks into the cell of an inmate called Boyse and tries to rape her. When her bunkmate, Mink, tries to defend her he beats her up. Eventually, male members of crew are alerted and Ettore is beaten to a pulp. Mink then stabs him through the eye and he's chucked out of the airlock.

Genyen - Only in one episode of a soap opera called Doctors. Introduced in a Buddhist centre with a senior monk called Jinba. Jinba tells him to go out and collect money for the centre. A doctor from the series runs into him while he's collecting and feels sorry for him because he looks cold. He gives him his lunch and donates £20, which Genyen tucks into his robe instead of the charity box. Jinba sees and takes the money off of Genyen. At this point it seems as though Genyen is being mistreated by Jinba, and the doctor seems to think this too, so when Genyen wants to leave he gives him cash to help him. It then transpires that the reason Jinba doesn't want Genyen handling large sums of money is because he steals. He stole Jinba's bank card when he left and empties his bank account at an ATM. He is apprehended by the doctor though and the police are called.

Jack - from the short, Fire. Jack has an ability where the angrier he gets the more fire he is able to produce. His dad and him have made a living out of stealing cars. Jack runs away when he decides he doesn't want to do it anymore and his dad pursues him through the woods. Gets so angry his fire powers causes him to fell an entire tree.

Jason - from the film, Just Charlie, plays a guy hanging out at a play park. Beats up a girl when he finds out she's trans.

Michael Gavey - a student at Oxford. Befriends Oliver Quick because he believes him to be a social outcast, much like he is. Is a mathematical genius. Is quickly ditched by Oliver when he manages to befriend the more popular students. Incredibly abrasive, outspoken and looks down upon the popular students as he believes them to be "vapid cunts".

Osferth - King Alfred's bastard. Enrolled as a novice monk, but leaves the monastery when he's of age to join Uhtred, as his uncle Leofric had always spoken fondly of him. Not a particularly seasoned fighter, but brave in his own right and extremely loyal. Incredibly kind and maintains his faith throughout, but has some absolutely cracking one lines. "What is smite?" "Well, it's a word, isn't it?" Fucks like a dinosaur, according to the prostitutes of Winchester. Dies when he's stabbed in the side during battle, and it's honestly one of the most heart wrenching scenes I've ever watched in my life.

Poacher - from the short, Stalker, this film is minutes long and Ewan appears in it for seconds and says nothing. Plays a poacher that is in trouble for illegally hunting deer on private land. Just stands there holding a rifle.

Scott - from the film Stereotype. Literally only a voice part - a voicemail of Scott encouraging his friend to beat someone up.

Tom Bennett - a troublemaker that always seems to be attracting the attention of the police. He doesn't want to be drafted into the war, so decides to sign up as a conscientious objector. However, when it transpires that his latest crime is more serious than he realised, he enlists in the navy to avoid going to prison. Is stationed aboard the HMS Exeter and has a canary named Vera, which he takes bets for which ports she'll lay eggs in. Survives the Battle of the River Plate and it matures him. He's short in Dunkirk and ends up in a hospital in Paris around the time that they surrender to the Nazis. Is snuck out and across the Spanish border. In season two, somewhere on his way back home he stopped for a haircut that was administered by a lawnmower. His father died when their house was shelled and he blames his sister for it. He then goes back to war.

Will - from the short Salad Days. Robs people's houses with two of his friends. Discovers a gun in one of them and uses it to hold up a post office. Takes a worker hostage and his friends freak out and run away. He lets the guy go, but when his friend reveals he wants to go to the police about what they did, he beats him up because he doesn't want to go to prison or give back the money they stole.

#asked and answered #ewan mitchell #ewanverse headcanons

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mewpirate · 12 days ago

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General Skin-Taker headcanons !

- he can fit his entire body into his hat .

- he has a passion for baking , even though he cannot physically eat them . The most common little pastries he makes are muffins and cinnamon rolls . He feeds them to his pet cat or the Rubberfishes .

- he and Janice wear outfits that parallel each other throughout the show

- at the start of the series he wears more cartoonish / exaggerated clothing ( like a typical cartoon villain ) but somewhere in the middle and end of the series he wears more formal / clothing that is similar to the time era Janice lives in . It's a way of telling her that he's close to her home world and will get her and Melrose so he can sew their skins onto his cape . Meanwhile Janice will have breakdowns on what is reality and what isn't . It's his way of messing with her , but with STYLE 😼

- he wears zoot suits sometimes

- Skin-Taker as a classical / symphony music fan is great but hear me out . he also is an avid enjoyer of blues / jazz music with a hint of gospel into it . The type of gospel music that's usually sad and used to portray sad emotions about death usually played in funerals .

- this one was taken from @emerson-grimes-apologist , he has long Spidey leg fingers , like the other mother from Coraline . He even prepares his sewing just like her at the start of the movie .

- he has a collection of eyeballs that he just likes to swap around with his own eyes , free eye contacts basically .

- Mrs . Skin-Taker isn't her own person , she's more of a different alias / dragsona to Skin-Taker . Like he sometimes pulls it out for disguise like Bugs bunny style and fails miserably at it for comedic effect, but he also uses it just for the fun of it . ( I was thinking that she can be her own separate person in an au but idk )

- he views the Rubberfishes as a parallel to the Tarantula crew , he can see the similarities to them so clearly that he breaks down sometimes over it .

- yea a few scenes involving him will have him just stare at the camera while someone's talking to him or when he's witnessing a memory flashback . He just stares at the screen for a few seconds standing still until he gains consciousness again . It's never discussed by him or the crew and it's brushed off as nothing .

- he sometimes flicks his ribs up and down like what people do with combs just for the fun of it .

- he has a little chest full of trinkets , most of it are shells and crystals like a Rose quartz for example , which is commonly used to mourn the death of a loved one .

- idk if I said this before but he has a bunch of taxidermy in a room right next to the room of ceramic cats . Both human and animal .

- imma say it again but he prefers using body language than speaking , he uses gentle glances and whatnot

- in one certain scene in an episode he and Horace have manipulated Poppy into thinking he'd murdered his own crew . Shit goes on from there and the episode was never mentioned again .

Slight mention of PTSD warning :

- he is terrified of Red Mary , he has really awful memories of her and would scream at the slightest mention of her .

- surprisingly , when he joined alliances with Horace , the Rubberfishes started getting better and living in better conditions . Even black teeth has developed better cooking skills due to Skin-Taker teaching him .

- he takes his fashion skills very seriously , like full on MIRANDA style from " The devil wears Prada " . Where he can go on full rants about a crew member wearing clothes that do not match . These skills are first introduced and put to skill in an episode where he took over on decorations and dresses for Sunny's quinceanera .

- I've got so many voice claims for the guy but I'm only settling on either Michael from TMA or Will Wood's "Dr . Sunshine is dead" song . Idk I Invision him as a funky but menacing guy .

- at the back of his cave theres a greenhouse where there are butterflies and exotic plants he's planted . It turned into the Rubberfishes hangout .

- people will suddenly run into the cave and will vandalize it for fun . Like y'know kids throwing eggs and toilet paper at an old man's house for funsies ?

- he's like the scary villain character that has so many random moments where it becomes funny at certain times . He's like Jim Carrey in "The Mask " at certain times or Mike Myers in Cat in the Hat live action .

- he loves poetry and singing .

- he has kidnapped Melrose once when she first went to candle cove but then soon dropped her off on a shore because of how annoying she was .

- he loves admiring himself and his clothing , despite other's negative response to it . He's not egotistical , he just finds beauty in death and he is an embodiment of that in the world of CC . He's got some self love for some apparent reason .

- he's kept some pet tarantulas and spiders and rescues them , it's supposed to be a symbol ( Or whatever it is idk ) to Lillian . Like an Ode or whatever , he started doing this in the middle of the series when he starts gaining flashbacks of his previous crew .

#candle cove #candle cove characters #creepypasta #candle cove creepypasta #skintakercandlecove #candle cove skintaker #skintaker

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bunny-with-a-chainsaw · 6 months ago

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FIve Nights at Freddy's AU

For one-shots or headcannons involving fnaf, I'll be using my own interpretations of the characters and story unless you guys say otherwise, and for the sake of people requesting certain characters I will be changing some things while still trying to keep to the canon (may have gone a little overboard for fnaf 4 though, you have been warned). Everything's in order so if you're only interested in a specific character/s just skip to over to whichever game they came from. I will also do any of the human characters as well and keep in mind some fnaf characters are more fleshed out then others so if some of them seem extremely 2 dimensional or don't have that much personality to them like others that's why so sorry about that.

Fnaf 1: The original crew will either be possessed by adults who used to work at the pizzeria or are just sentiant A.I with the souls of the kids hanging around and occassionally taking control. I might post some info about them but the basics are Freddy (42) was a dayguard and acts like the father figure of the group, Bonnie (31) was a technician, Chica was a janitor (25) and Foxy was a waitor (28). They remember who killed them and are still waiting till they can finally take their revenge. Phone Guy's possessing Golden Freddy, and he kinda just chills in the kitchen storage room while getting occasisionally visits from the others while Evan is also possessing the suit as well but isn't really active.

Fnaf 2: The toy animatronics are all sentient A.I including Marionette who has Charlie's soul attatched to them. Same stuff from the fnaf 1 section applies to the Withered animatronics, and the Withers and Toy animatronics get along fairly well. As for Shadow Freddy and Shadow Bonnie, not 100% sure what to do for them but for the sake of this I'm making them beings made from corrupted remnant and gained sentience. This doesn't mean they're evil, they're just a little funkier then your usual spirit. Shadow Freddy tends to be calm and tries his best to keep Shadow Bonnie's chaos under control.

Fnaf 3: Springtrap is obviously going to be possessed by William while the phantoms will be spirits that take form of the animatronics. They all can barely remember their pasts and most aren't aware of who Springtrap is other then Marionette. Springtrap is either a tired man who's realised after being trapped for 30 years that maybe immortality and toddler slaughtering aren't actually that great, or a cocky bastard who thinks that being an undead furry is the best thing ever and has no regrets. Take your pick lol.

Fnaf 4: The Nightmares are all beings created by Evan's (C.C) own fear and used to be mindless murder machines. Though thanks to Cassidy's help his perception of them finally changed and in return, the nightmares changed as well. They're all now their own person and live in the Nightmare Realm, one of the many pocket dimensions only capable of being accessed through dreams or death. They can come into reality but it takes a lot of energy and being in sunlight hurts. Also Plushtrap is not a child in this au, he's actually the oldest out of the nightmares as well as the grumpiest. It's not his fault he's so short so leave him be.

Sister Location: All of the funtimes except for Circus Baby are sentient A.I. This means Mrs Afton doesn't posses Ballora, as I personally don't believe it's canon since it's only been mentioned that she was made to be modelled after her and not that she's actually inside her. Ennard will have everyone but CB inside of them so I will accept any romantic scenarios for them, though expect them to be indecisive and argue with themselves. Like a lot.

Pizzeria Simulator: Rockstar animatronics are sentient A.I, the scrap animatronics have the same rules from their og counterparts. Helpy's not considered a child (he helps you with taxes and lawsuits, so he's in a similar boat with Plushtrap) and is Michael's best friend. Ultimate Custom Night: William's stuck in his own personal hell cause surprisingly enough, Cassidy didn't enjoy getting killed and being stuck in aFredbear suit for over 40 years. Animatronics there are sentient and are partially controlled by Cassidy, and they're not the original ones, just created by her memory of them or what she knows about others.

Fnaf AR: So basically the way I go about this one is that the animatronics are there in real life, you just can't see them without them uncloaking themselves. They're unable to interact with reality unless they uncloak due to how augmented reality works but this also means you can't hit them until then either. They're all just sentient A.I so they're not the real animatronics, and while some have accepted this others will try to tell you otherwise (-cough cough- Springtrap -cough-), and when you defeat them they just get added to your ever growing animatronic army. They no longer have the ability to physically harm you and you can communicate with them even if they're not there through a texting feature on the app.

Help Wanted: Glitchtrap is going to be William's soul stuck in the video game and not even he's sure how he got there either, some cases will be a parasite in your mind that only you can see for obvious reasons.

Security Breach/Ruin: All the animatronics here are just sentient A.I and not possessed by any souls, so apologies to the Glamrock Freddy = Michael Afton theorists, though I will write for that au if specified as well as the other with Henry possessing him. As for Peepaw… I will write for him in an x reader scenario but unless specified that it's crack I will be silently judging you. I mean he's a grumpy, 80 year-old man that needs a walking stick and in some cases a wheelchair to get around so if you really want to simp for him that badly be my guest, and ship requests for him are allowed purely for the funny hahas (except with Vanessa). Also I'm happy to write him as either William or Mimic.

Fnaf Books: Mainly talking about the Silver Eye trilogy but I'm willing to accept other characters in Fazbear Frights and all the other books, though my knowledge on them is wayyy more limited and will be coming from things I looked up online so sorry if I get things wrong there. No lore changes that I can think of other then small headcannons.

Fnaf Movie: Everything here is the same, with the added headcannons that Mike's father was basically this universe's Henry Emily (why else would he drive several hours for this one specific kid. Old man's quirky but not that quirky. Also Steve is going to be a goofy, nerdy guy even if his partner is aware of him being a child murderer because he's a little silly, and expect rabbits galore in anything set at his place. Meanwhile Vanessa is severely traumatised and has a lot of issues, and Mike's just depressed and insecure af.

#fnaf #one shot #oneshot #fnaf au #fnaf 1 #fnaf 2 #fnaf3 #fnaf 4 #fnaf 5 #fnaf sl #fnaf6 #fnaf pizza sim #fnaf pizzeria simulator #fnaf books #fnaf movie #all the fnaf stuff #I still don't know how to tag #someone please help

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yank-a-ton · 2 years ago

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I keep thinking how Michael gave the feds Trevor's name so he didn't have access to his savings. And Lester and the crew bailed on him right after. Michael telling him to run in Ludendorff was his guilt talking yet it was also a condemnation to a much slower death than just getting shot. Gosh I love these scumbags! How do you reconcile feeling bad for Trevor while also recognizing that he's terrible and kind of deserves it?

Hi im in love with you. that first half of your message means everything to me lol

Thats a hard question. I think the way I reconcile my overall view of trevor is in how much I respect the writing for his character. He's meant to be a horrible individual, absolute hell on earth. But they needed good reason for him to be terrifying rather than having us accept at point blank hes just like that. I think they just did too good of a job in the end lol

It really speaks to how fleshed out these characters are that when you see these glimpses into Trevor's background with abandonment and every type of abuse under the sun, you really feel for the guy. You have these events in the game framed like comedy where even the most diehard gta muscleheads came away from the cutscenes feeling gross or sad. That's a big achievement by r☆. Trevor sobbing on the floor of his trailer after his mother abandons him I think is one of those bigger moments where the majority of players had less of a "haha, Trevor is having another wacky day" response and more of a "huh. That wasnt very fun actually." You see this guy who just wants one person in his life to give a shit, who has these outbursts for attention not caring if its good or bad. It makes him really sympathetic. All while knowing hes a serial killer and probably definitely a cannibal. (And a shit ton of other things. Sorry cousin Floyd)

The first thing we see him do is curb stomp Johnny to death, and we still somehow find a way to enjoy his character by the end of the game. He was written well, and having a universe like gta where every character is a bastard in one way or another, it makes it easy to look past his atrocities for other moments. Little things like him refusing to kill Mr. K right after torturing him stand out especially. He has his own set of morals, mostly hanging on loyalty and honesty, and hes steadfast to them. Its funny cuz your brain sort of goes 'why focus on trevor murdering anonymous hitchhikers in his spare time, when Devon Weston is being a massive dick right now. I hate this guy'

#talkaton #sorry i took so long to answer this was a really good ask #it was hard not to just talk about the stuff you said in the beginning thats one of my favorite parts of the Michael trevor debacle lmao

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n00dl3gal · 3 years ago

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Like Old Times (Father-Son Bonding AU)

A direct sequel to the “Expiration Date” fic, which I’ll link in a reblog. I’ve also posted all my fics in this AU to AO3!! Thanks again to @thetriggeredhappy for their help and just generally being a cool dude, and the Scoutsune Discord server for indulging my brainrot

No warnings beyond family schmoop!

Less than an hour after the bread monster incident, the Administrator called for a ceasefire. “Only while your base is repaired,” she said over the TV screen. “BLU is quite disappointed in this negligence- as am I. Regardless, you may use these three days as you see fit. Go home, stay here- whatever you do, no more bread monsters.” The screen turned off with a click.

Scout exhaled through his nose. He was thankful there was no mention of him or Miss Pauling’s woodchipper.

Spy decloaked behind him. “Less time than I wanted, but c’est la vie.” Scout looked at him over his shoulder. “I’m meeting with an old contact during our break,” Spy said in Italian. “Would you like to come along? It’ll be like old times.”

Scout’s brow furrowed, but he nodded. At least this way, he’d get out of helping Engie and Heavy with repairs. And possibly meeting Miss Pauling’s woodchipper.

“Excellent. Our flight is at 7 AM tomorrow.”

“We’re flying commercial?” Scout asked, also in (more hesitant) Italian.

“Our destination is continental. We’ll leave the base by 5:30.” Scout groaned as Spy started to leave. But- wait, he hadn’t-

“Oi, where are we going, anyway?” he called back in English.

Spy paused to look at him and smile. “Boston.”

“Why do we always get the ass-crack-of-dawn flights?” Jeremy asked groggily, reclining his seat.

“They are the ones with first-class seats available,” Raphael replied. He took a sip from his mimosa.

“Yeah, cuz God forbid you fly coach for once.” Jeremy shifted, trying to get comfortable. “Hey. Have I ever been to Boston before?”

Raphael didn’t answer immediately. His lip sucked in, as if in thought. “Yes. When you were very, very young. You wouldn’t remember.”

Jeremy nodded. He wanted to ask more, there was something Raphael wasn’t saying but… well, he was never a morning person. He fell asleep before the plane even took off.

. . .

It was mid-afternoon by the time they landed in Boston. Jeremy was never fond of long flights; having his legs cramped like that for extended periods of time was murder. He was half tempted to take a jog around Logan International. Raphael, on the other hand, was ushering them both to the car rental. “Can’t even get a stretch in, huh?”

“Unfortunately, we are expected by 4, and I would hate to keep my contact waiting,” Raphael explained in French, accepting the keys from the girl at the counter. “She’s not a very patient woman, in some regards.”

Jeremy huffed but didn’t argue. He just followed his father to the rental, tossing his suitcase in the backseat. “Y’know, the girl at the counter-”

“We will not have time for you to go out on a date, Jeremy.”

“No! No, it was- her accent’s kinda like mine, it’s weird,” Jeremy said. Raphael started the car. “Cuz I’ve only been here as a baby, and I got mine from TV and shit. It’s just… really strange, is all.”

Raphael made a quiet noise of agreement. “Some of the shows you watched as a child were filmed here. It’s not as complex as you think it is.”

“Yeah, probably not…”

The pair lapsed into silence as Raphael drove. Storefronts and high rises morphed into houses. It had been a while since they were in a residential area. RED, for understandable reasons, kept away from civilians.

Raphael took the roads with practiced experience. Sure, it had been implied he knew the area. If he had a contact here- one with a house, presumably- he must’ve spent time here. But this- this was far too familiar. A bit suspicious, actually.

Eventually, Raphael slowed in front of a more rundown Brownstone. Still quite nice, just needed a little work. It felt… welcoming, in a way Jeremy couldn’t name.

“Lotta cars,” he observed as Raphael parallel parked. “Must be a party going on somewhere.”

“Hmm, perhaps,” Raphael said, turning the car off. “Would you mind ringing the doorbell for me? I need to grab something from the trunk. Ask for Sara Jane.”

OK, now Jeremy knew something was up. He was never the one to make the first contact, that was always Dad’s job. Jeremy might be a full-grown adult, but there were some things that didn’t change. This was one of them.

Still, he nodded. He climbed up the front steps and ringed the doorbell. He heard- multiple voices from inside, predominantly male, but they quickly silenced themselves. A TV, perhaps? They really ought to get that flower box on the second story window fixed-

The woman who opened the door was a bit shorter than him, though not by much. She was wearing a simple dress, hoop earrings, and flats. Her hair was dark, curved to her chin. But her nose and earlobes felt… achingly familiar. Like Jeremy saw them all the time.

“Um, hi, I’m looking for Sara Jane? My name’s-” The rest of his speech was knocked out of him as the woman launched herself at him. Jeremy braced for an attack, but quickly realized she was… hugging him.

She was hugging him, sobbing, and choked out the word “Jeremy.”

Wait. He knew that voice. He had only heard it a few times in his life, few enough he could count them on one hand, but he knew it. “M-Ma?” he whispered.

The woman- Sara Jane- Ma looked up at him, still crying. Her hands found his face as she observed him. “Y-yeah, sweetie, it’s me, it’s-it’s your ma,” she said.

“Ma!” he laughed, tears of his own dancing down his cheeks. He hugged her back, practically lifting her off her feet. “Oh my God, Ma! I-I never thought I’d-”

“Oh Jeremy, sweetie, look how tall you’ve gotten! Last I saw you, you fit in my arms! My baby, my handsome baby,” she spoke over him. She rubbed circles into his back as they embraced. It felt so, so right.

Jeremy laughed even harder. “Are you kiddin’? I got it from you, you’re beautiful, Ma!” He stared at her, trying to commit every mole and wrinkle and perfect flaw to memory. “I can’t believe- oh my God, I’m actually meeting you!”

“It was long overdue,” another voice said, as Raphael joined them on the front stoop. “I had put it off for safety reasons, but considering our current, ah, situation… I felt it was worth the risk.”

Sara Jane squealed, pulling Raphael into the hug as well. “You’ve been taking good care of my boy, you promise me, Raphael?”

“Don’t worry Ma, he’s the best dad I could ask for, considering,” Jeremy teased.

“Oh, don’t I know it. Called me up last night and told me to get the whole motley crew together. Even managed to get Melvin to bring his twin daughters, bless his wife’s heart,” she explained.

Jeremy blinked. “Uh- Melvin? Daughters?”

Sara Jane laughed. It sounded so much like Jeremy’s it practically hurt. This was his mother. Lord, he’s finally seeing her. “Melvin’s your older brother, sweetie. Eh, sixth oldest. Bobby’s the oldest.”

“I have a brother?”

“Oh honey, you’re the youngest of eight,” Sara Jane said plainly.

“...fuck,” Jeremy whispered.

. . .

He didn’t just have seven brothers. He had seven brothers, four of which brought their wives, one who brought his boyfriend, and three who brought their kids. And the kids totaled to an additional six, counting the babies.

It was… an admittedly tight squeeze in the living room.

Sara Jane introduced Jeremy. Jeremy had been expecting to be treated like a stranger. He had vanished when he was a baby, after all, and his younger-older brothers probably wouldn’t remember him at all.

And yet, it was like he knew them all his life.

They teased him and punched him playfully and acted so friendly, so familial it nearly made Jeremy break down. He was still crying from meeting Ma, but being dogpiled with so much affection was suffocating. In a good way. He had seen on sitcoms the intrinsic bond between family, and while he felt it with Dad, they also risked their lives nearly daily. But it was real, it was here, and it was wrapping him in a warm blanket.

Despite the chaos and the sheer number of people, Jeremy didn’t feel overwhelmed. He laughed and played along with their jokes, cracking some back when he could get a word in. Scott ragged on his dog tags, he countered by pointing out the hole in his pants. Michael told him he was still a shortass, he replied with “it takes one to know one.” Elliot and Ricky were the closest to actually getting hurt, and that was only because Jeremy elbowed them both so hard they nearly fell over.

For the first time in 25 years, Jeremy understood what “home” meant.

The kids were especially curious, eager to meet their uncle and step-grandfather. Within seconds, young Rebecca- only four years old- was challenging Jeremy to a race around the house. “I’m the fastest kid in the world,” she bragged, puffing out her chest.

“Oh yeah?” Jeremy asked. “That a fact?”

“You wanna test me? I beat Johnny Three-Legs at running, and he’s got three legs!” Jeremy laughed and stood from the couch, letting her lead him outside. “On the count of three, OK?”

“You’re on, pipsqueak,” Jeremy teased.

“Onetwothree GO!” Rebecca yelled, taking off in a sprint. Jeremy knew that, by all accounts, he should beat her. His legs were longer, she didn’t have the proper running stance, and it was his job to be fast. That’s what he got paid to do. But some small voice was telling him to let her win, so he did. “Ha! I told ya!”

“Ya sure did,” he replied, mock panting. “Look at you, a freaking blur on the green. You’re goin’ to the Olympics, kid.”

Rebecca beamed and hugged his leg. “Promise, Uncle Jeremy?” He nodded because, after that display, there was no way he could speak without squeaking like a chew toy.

Rebecca skipped back inside, past Raphael, who was watching on the stoop. “You’re a natural with children,” he observed. “I used to do the same thing when you were that age.”

“Wait- wait, really? You sure fooled me,” Jeremy said.

Raphael rolled his eyes. “What’s my job again, mon lapin?”

“Yeah, yeah…” Jeremy leaned against the railing, watching Raphael’s cigarette smoke in the wind. “Hey. Uh… thanks for arranging all of this. You really didn’t need to.”

“But I did. I meant it when I said this was overdue. I’ve been wanting to introduce you to the rest of the family for a while, but have been unable. Then that whole ordeal with the supposed tumors, and-” Raphael exhaled slowly. “It wouldn’t have been fair to you if you died without knowing them. I would’ve never forgiven myself.”

Jeremy punched his shoulder lightly. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, pops. It all worked out, we’re still kicking, and that roast chicken Ma’s making smells incredible. Everything’s perfect.”

Raphael finished his cigarette and smiled. “Oui. It is.”

. . .

While Sara Jane had been able to get the rest of the family here, it was a school night. Kids needed to be tucked in by 9:30, so most of Jeremy’s brothers were gone by 8. Elliot was staying overnight, as was his boyfriend. Otherwise, the house quickly went from bustling to barren.

It gave Jeremy a chance to explore his would-be childhood home.

He made his way upstairs, pushing open one of the doors. It led- to little surprise- to a bedroom. It was set up like a nursery, with a crib in one corner and a toddler bed in the other. Toys were scattered about across the floor.

He heard Sara Jane sigh behind him. “This was your room, you know.” Jeremy turned to look at her as she flipped the light switch. “That crib… I had put you to bed the night your father planned to fake his death. I was in on the whole plan, naturally. He wanted to hold you one last time, so I said OK. When I woke up the next morning… you were both gone.” She exhaled slowly, grabbing onto his shoulder. “I wrote both of you off as dead, but I knew what had happened. Honestly, should’ve figured it out before then. You hadn’t woken me up crying,” she joked. Her eyes were watering.

Jeremy hugged her, pulling her close. “You never took the crib down?”

“By the time I was ready, Bobby’s wife was pregnant, so I kept it up for my grandbabies. I knew- I knew you were out there, sweetie. Both of you.” She kissed his cheek, squeezing him.

“I-I never got to be a normal kid, really,” he confessed. “I mean, Dad did his best, gave me comic books and board games and stuff, but-but I never went to school or made friends or anything like that. I-I didn’t even know I had a family. It took me forever to even realize I had a Ma. An-and everything I did-” The tears were flowing again, more freely than earlier. “Ya missed me losing my first tooth, and potty trainin’, and all that stuff parents should know about. I-I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Sara Jane wiped his cheek dry. “Don’t apologize for what your father did, Jeremy. And definitely don’t apologize for me not potty training another kid. Besides… hold on, I’ll be right back.” She made her way down the hallway. Jeremy didn’t follow, instead deciding to examine the crib. This was where he grew up. It was a simple crib, obviously well-used. Not worn-down, mind, just… used. It had a history. A history that Jeremy wanted to decode, but unlike his dad’s ciphers, he didn’t have the key.

“Took me a second to find it,” Sara Jane said. She handed him what appeared to be a scrapbook. “Raphael- he wrote when he can. Taught me some basic codes, would send out letters whenever you’d leave a town. Never left a return address, but…” Jeremy flipped through the pages, moving to sit on the small bed. The letters were all coded but appeared to be about how much Raphael missed Sara Jane. Updates on Jeremy’s growth. Letters from a father to his lover and son’s mother.

One page jumped out to him, though. “I remember this,” he said, running his fingers against the paper. It was a simple drawing of a young boy, holding a catcher’s mitt, and a taller man next to him. “I drew this after Dad took me to my first baseball game, for my eighth birthday. I thought I lost the drawing after we skipped town, but- he sent them to you?”

Sara Jane nodded. “And I kept them all. Oh, honey, the day I first heard your voice on the phone- Mikey can tell you, I damn near fell over. You sounded so happy, and even if I couldn’t see you, that’s all a mother wants.” Jeremy leaned against her and she shut the book. “That’s all a mother wants, sweetie. To see her kids be safe and happy.”

“I am, Ma,” he assured her. “I promise.”

They sat like that for a while, with Sara Jane commenting on various letters and drawings in the scrapbook. Apparently, Raphael sent her money when he could- more frequently now that Mann Co. paid so well. She also had a rough idea of their current occupations. “I figure, if you and your father are working for the same company- with his skills, there’s gotta be a whole lot of nonsense going on out in that desert.” Jeremy laughed at that because she wasn’t wrong. “But I also figure since he raised you right, he’ll keep the both of you safe.”

“I keep him safe too, don’t worry,” Jeremy added. “Uh- listen, it’s touching and all you kept the crib, but I don’t have to sleep in it, right?”

They both had a good chuckle over that. Their laughs were in perfect harmony.

. . .

The next two days were a mix of learning the family history and exploring Boston. It was the offseason, so there weren’t any games going on at Fenway, but Jeremy still got a picture in front of the park. Sara Jane took the pair to a restaurant that served “the best damn clam chowder in the contiguous United States.” Which, incidentally, led them to discover Jeremy was allergic to clams. Thankfully they didn’t have to go to the hospital- he just sort of immediately got sick before it passed- but it did suck.

It was damn good chowder, though.

They went down to the harbor where the Boston Tea Party happened. It was crowded with people, resulting in them not staying long. Jeremy was a bit better with crowds than Raphael, but neither was great with them. Came with the job. Getting overpriced memorabilia from a nearby gift shop, though, went over much more smoothly.

When not out on the town, Sara Jane dug out more scrapbooks and photo albums, catching Raphael up on what his stepsons had been up to. She showed Jeremy pictures from Ricky’s first school play to Scott opening up his butcher shop. Graduation pictures, wedding pictures, baby pictures- it was all there, and Jeremy devoured it. He wanted to know these people. He wanted to know his family. And he did. He learned about Michael’s stint in the Navy, Melvin meeting his wife, how Bobby’s son could dribble a basketball for twenty minutes straight. He learned about how his parents met. How Raphael loved each of Sara Jane’s children, even if they weren’t biologically his. How Jeremy wasn’t planned- few of the kids were - but they were both so, so happy to realize he was coming.

He also learned that, while diner food would remain the undisputed king, homemade meatloaf came pretty close.

. . .

The only problem came when it was time to leave. It wasn’t that Jeremy didn’t want to return to work, or leave his Ma behind. Sara Jane wasn’t even torn up over losing her son and lover again. It just felt like there was so much left to say, to do. There was uncertainty as to when they’d be able to return. “We get time off for Smissmas, I know that’s months away but I’ll be here, I promise,” Jeremy swore, hugging Sara Jane for the eighth time.

“You better,” she said, squeezing him tightly. “You have 25 years worth of gifts to catch up on, not to mention birthday gifts-”

“Ma, you don’t have to go that far,” he whined. He was touched, sure, but the thought of that much luggage was truly frightening. Oh God, he was going to have to get gifts for everybody, wasn’t he? What do kids even want for Smissmas?

“Hush, let me spoil my baby,” Sara Jane told him, kissing his cheek. “Oh, Jeremy…”

Jeremy nodded. “I know, but I’ll call. I’ll write, too. Send pictures if I can.”

“I’ll make sure he does,” Raphael assured her. Sara Jane stood to kiss his lips, with Jeremy looking away pointedly. “You have my word, ma petite chou-fleur.”

“Alright, alright- now get going, I don’t want you two missing your flight. That boss of yours sounds like she’ll tear you both a new one if you’re late,” Sara Jane said, shooing them away. “Love you boys!”

“I love you too, Ma!” Jeremy shouted back, for the very first time.

The drive back to the airport was quiet. Jeremy stared out the window, watching his hometown- he had a hometown- pass by. “Hey, dad?” he asked, still looking outside. Raphael grunted to acknowledge he was listening. “One of these days, our contracts with Mann Co. are gonna expire. We’re gonna have to find new jobs.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” Raphael said. He tapped a rhythm against the steering wheel.

“And-and I was thinking when that time comes… maybe we could come back to Boston. Find some gigs out here,” Jeremy suggested.

Raphael sighed. “Unfortunately, being a spy means that you don’t have the option of retiring, Jeremy. Not until you’re unable to complete your job. At that point, though, you’ve probably died a dozen times over,” he explained. “Even if I could retire, settling down somewhere so close to people I care about- I would still have enemies.”

“Right. ‘Course,” Jeremy said. “It’s OK.”

“That being said,” Raphael continued, “you have the luxury of youth and not being tied down to such a career. If you want to find a job in Boston after we finish with RED, there’s nothing stopping you.”

“But people will still be after me, since I’m your son. And you wouldn’t be around.”

“Every child leaves their parents someday. And you’re strong, Jeremy. You can protect yourself and your family.” Raphael smiled. “I don’t believe Sara Jane needs much protecting, but I do worry.”

Jeremy laughed. “I mean, did ya see the muscles on Scott and Michael? Guys can probably bench press a tractor!”

They both chuckled before settling into quietude. Eventually, though, Jeremy had to break the silence. His voice was barely above a whisper. “I love you.”

“I love you too, mon lapin.”

“...so your nickname for Ma is fucking ‘little cauliflower?’ What the hell, Dad?”

#father-son bonding au #Team Fortress 2 #team fortress 2 au #tf2 #tf2 fanfiction #tf2 scout #tf2 spy #tf2 scout's mom #dad spy #thetriggeredhappy #spy x scout's ma #noodle writes

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chrisevansszn · 4 years ago

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A Quick Fling. 🥵

2k word!

18 & up only!

Short story!

Tonight, a group of you and your coworkers are going out to a bar. A group of about eight for a fun night out.

It was a local bar in Boston called “Drink”. You put on a cute black dress and some Gold YSL Opyum pumps. You arrived at the bar around 9:30PM, and the crew was already there. Devin booked a corner in the VIP sections so you all could hang out and chat with no problem. You walked to the section and everyone seemed to be staring at you. Probably because you rarely wear a dress and heels.

“Hi everyone”, you said walking up.

The crew consisted of Devin, Jordan, Michael, Jesi, Matt, Jake, Christina, and Chris. You all have been working as detectives for many years together. You all are practically family.

“Ok Y/N. I see you!”, Matt hollers out.

“Matt cut it out please!”, you blushed so hard, but you were seriously wearing that dress. It was hugging every curve on your body.

Your section came with its own waitress, so you ordered a vodka and cranberry. You found a spot between Jesi and Chris. You chatted up with both until your drink came. It was strong just like you wanted.

“Y/N I don’t think I have ever seen you in a dress since working with you for five years.”, Chris says.

“I know. I am honestly not a dress girl, but I figured I would throw one on.”

“It looks nice.”

“Thank you, Chris.”. You smiled at him.

The conversation turned into work and included everyone. Cases, unsolved murders, the whole nine. The waitress brought over a round of shots for everyone. Everyone then decided to go to the dance floor. The music is good, and everyone is gathered around dancing. You noticed how good Chris is looking in his flannel shirt. You make your way a little closer to dance next to him.

You finished your drink mid dance and decided to go to the bar to get another.

“Can I have Cosmo please?” The bar tender nodded.

“Hi beautiful.”

You looked over and saw a strange man next to you. Way older and not your type. You smile and give a dry hello. He continues to talk to you and you really are trying to ignore him. Come on bartender!

“Are you single beautiful?”

“No, I’m not. I actually have a boyfriend.”

“Well, where is he then? Leaving you here all alone.”

“I’m right here.”

You turn around and see Chris.

“Yep. Here is my man.” You fake smile again. Chris sits on the seat next to you. The man gives you and Chris the side eye. He isn’t buying it. You turn to face Chris and wrap your arms around his shoulders. Chris gives you a smile. He is trying to keep from laughing.

“Baby did you order another drink yet?” You ask.

“No, I didn’t. I can’t stop admiring you in this dress.”

Chris grabs you by the waist and brings you closer in between his legs. What the fuck is he doing?

“Not in front of everyone Chris.” You give him and look and pull away a little.

The man next to you is still staring. Chris laughs. Chris turns quickly and orders him another drink and he turns back around facing you. The eye contact you both are making is nothing like you two have ever done before.

You have to play the role. You step back between Chris’ legs and lean in. He grabs you again and takes you in his arms. You both sing the song that is playing to each other and catching a vibe. You lean in and give Chris a kiss on the lips and you feel him grab your right ass cheek and squeeze.

Now you’re doing too much sir! You like it….not going to lie.

The kiss wasn’t long but enough to make the man walk away. Chris didn’t let go either.

“You can let go now Chris.”

“What if I don’t want to.”

You paused…

“People will talk, and you know that.”

He giggled.

“I will let go this time.”

He releases you. You didn’t want him to. You both take your drinks back to the VIP section and sit. The rest came over shortly behind.

The group continued to drink and dance in the VIP section until the bar closed. Everyone was drunk off their ass and Uber’s were called. You went to the ladies’ room while everyone walked out. A few minutes later you walked out and saw Chris standing close to the exit.

“Chris did you call an Uber?”

“Oh yes, but I wanted to wait on you. I didn’t want you to be by yourself. You know?”

Damn. What a great man!

“Oh, thank you!”

“Feel free to join my Uber ride. We stay pretty close to either other.”

“Sure.”

You both walk outside and notice everyone else was already gone. Your Uber finally arrived. Chris opened the door for you, and you climbed in. He followed suit. The Uber pulled off. You wasted no time.

You leaned over.

“Why don’t I just go home with you instead?”

You rubbed your hand from Chris’ left knee up to his thigh, and then softly across his dick. It had been a while and some pipe is exactly what you needed.

Chris gave you THE LOOK. He took his middle finger into his mouth and licked it and turned and slid his finger up your vagina. You sighed softly. Oh…you are going to give Chris all of you tonight. He penetrated your folds and took everything for you not to moan. He then took his fingers from your vagina and leaned in a little closer. Chris then stuck the same finger in his mouth to taste your waterfalls never once breaking eye contact from you.

The Uber arrived at Chris’ place and you both hope out. He has a nice ass farmhouse on some acres. He grabs you by the hand and you both walk to his front door. You could hear a dog barking from behind the door. Chris unlocks the door and uses his leg to block his dog from running out.

“Dodger back.”, he says gently.

He pushes the door open and allows you to walk in first and then closes and locks the door behind him.

“Hi Dodger.”, you give him a gentle rub.

“Come on Bubba..bedtime.”

Dodger follows Chris down the hallway. Your guess is to another bedroom. You take off your heels in the hallway…fuck it. You could barely walk in them anymore. You see Chris coming back down the hallway.

“Do you want some water or- ��

You instantly grab him and kiss those pink lips. He kisses you back so passionately and pushes you into the nearest wall. You grab his dick outside of his pants and you can feel it getting longer. Chris begins kissing you on your neck and lifts up your dress and grabs your ass and squeeze.

“That ass is perfect.” He says to you. He takes you by the hand and leads you into his bedroom. You push him down on his bed, and then unzip your dress as he watches you. He sticks his hands down his pants and begins to rub his dick. Your dress drops to the floor revealing your perfect breast and laced thong.

“Spin around for me sweetheart.”

You slowly turned so Chris could see every inch of your body. His are fixated on you, all of his attention is yours. You grab one ass cheek and squeeze it just for fun.

“Holy shit.”, you hear him whisper.

You walk over to him and softly kiss his lips. You move over to his cheek, down to his neck, and a quick lick on his right ear. You could hear his quiet moans. You unbutton his red and blue flannel revealing the muscle shirt underneath. His tattoos peeking out and is necklace hanging. A complete turn on. Chris takes off his flannel and muscle shirt revealing his body that is literally a canvas. Tattoos everywhere! Time to kiss them all. You push Chris back on the bed and climb on top.

You move slowly down kissing and licking each tattoo along the way. You unzip is pants and pulling out his long hard dick. He was ready for you, but first things first. You licked Chris’ dick from the bottom up to the tip. You can feel his hands in your hair and hear him take a deep breath. You take his entire dick in your mouth. Up and down, you got giving Chris that super sloppy 6000! You are giving him the two-hand action in the process.

Your puss is throbbing. You wanted penetration immediately. You slid off your thong and climb on top. You slowly sat down on that thick dick and threw your head back. It was everything you needed. Up and down, you went while Chris had one hand on your ass and the other holding your breast. You let out moans.

After some time, Chris grabs you by the waist and flips you over. Now he is on top. He completely comes out of his pants and underwear. He pulls you to the edge of the bed and enters your walls again. As he strokes, he leans over you and gently grabs you around your neck and slightly chokes you. THIS IS YOUR FAVORITE! You’re are literally nose to nose with each other. You stick out your tongue and gently lick the outside of his lips. He giggled.

He then takes his dick out of you and begins to devour you like no one else had. His cooch eating game CANNOT be touched. While he’s eating your soul, he then sticks two fingers inside of you. Your back arches.

“Y/N you taste so fucking good.”

He then flips you over and pulls you up on all fours. He teases you with just the tip in and out, in and out.

“Chris give me your dick now.”

“Say no more baby.”

He rams his dick in your puss from behind and lets out a few moans. Faster and faster, he goes and harder and harder. Your mouth is stuck open and your eyes roll back. Chris continues to fuck you in different positions: on your back, from the side, on your stomach. Who knew he would be able to go so long!

You finally heard him say. “I’m fucking about to nut.”

He groans but not too loud, and you orgasm at the same time. He lays next to you and kisses your shoulder. Chris’ dick was so fucking good. You get up and go to his bathroom to clean up. You walk out and start putting your dress on.

“Wait, where are you going?”, Chris asked.

“Home.”, you say while grabbing your phone to order an Uber.

“Why don’t you just stay for the night?”

“That’s how people catch feelings. This is a business transaction.”

Chris busts out laughing.

“If you say so Y/N.”

He walks up to you and kisses your neck.

“Come to the kitchen with me, so I can get you a bottle of water. We drank a lot tonight.”

You all did. You didn’t even both putting on your heels because you could barely walk without them. You follow him to the kitchen, and he hands you a bottle of Fiji. You phone dings letting you know your Uber has arrived. Chris walked you outside and opened the car door.

“Text me when you make it home…please.”

“Of course. Goodnight Chris.”

“Goodnight Y/N”

He closes the door, and the Uber takes off. You left your panties behind.

Maybe he will call you up soon to come back and pick them up….

I hope you enjoyed! Follow for more! 💛

#chris evans #chris jamal evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans x reader #cevans #marvel #andy barber #defending jacob #captain america #stevenomad #fanfiction

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djchika · 3 years ago

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Title: Perdition of Their Own Making Rated: E Tags: Alternate Universe - Dark, It's not as dark as I expected it to be but ymmv, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Graphic Torture, Murder Husbands, Kidnapping, Body Modification, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Evil A/N: Happy Halloween! Finished for @riproswell but more importantly written for @im-the-punk-who because we all need our comfort characters to be evil sometimes.

(Also on AO3)

And there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder; and there was a great earthquake, such as there had not been since mankind came to be upon the earth, so great an earthquake was it, and so mighty.

Roswell, New Mexico was once a tourist trap. A city of fifty thousand humans, a legend that few truly believed, and three harmless aliens that no one knew about.

Then there were three harmless aliens and one psychotic alien-murderer.

Then there were three harmless aliens, one psychotic alien-murderer, and a secret government facility full of alien-prisoners.

An explosion and a lightning bolt later, it was back to three harmless, homeless aliens.

For a quick second it seemed life would go back to being relatively normal.

But then Jesse Manes got a paramilitary operation involved.

“We’re reporting live from Roswell where just before sunrise a blaze consumed a popular local haunt, the Wild Pony. One casualty has been declared with sources claiming the dental records match those of the proprietor, Maria Deluca. Witnesses say that the cause of the fire was an accident brought about by a freak lightning storm—”

The six of them stood vigil over the wreckage long after the camera crews and the first responders cleared out. The bright morning sun an affront to the grief and ash and soot.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Alex croaked out. He’d been crying. They all were.

Liz gave him an even gaze that prickled at the skin on the back of his neck. “No. It doesn’t.”

Nothing as human as grief could ever stop Liz Ortecho.

She sniffed out a lead, then another. By the end of the week they had Maria back.

Or at least what was left of her.

Kyle was taken in broad daylight. An immigration issue. Nevermind that Kyle had been born in the same hospital where they took him.

It was Alex who found the lead that time.

Correction.

They let him find it.

After Caulfield, Alex was well acquainted with the ins and outs of restricted facilities. About experiments and prison cells and operating theaters straight out of a Stephen King nightmare.

Having first hand experience. That was new.

They weren’t gentle as they strapped him down. Didn’t put him entirely under as they sliced him open, grafting pieces of the beautiful, hateful alien glass that he’d found in the Valenti cabin onto the nub of his missing leg.

He’d kept the artifact secret. Afraid it would be the thing that finally took Michael away from him for good.

The irony that he might die because of the glass wasn’t lost on Alex.

Or the irony that he’d been trained to withstand being tortured for information when all the information his captors cared about was in his skin and blood and bones.

There was no spark of hope when he saw the stoic figure watching from the observation deck, saw his father, but Alex called out nonetheless. Desperately grasping at the humanity he hoped still existed in the man that raised him. His pleading turned into whimpers, into screams, into raw, choked out groans until his mind forced him to black out.

Hours later, the sterile cold stirred Alex into consciousness and it was Jesse he first saw. Standing over him, smiling proudly as he murmured about the great sacrifice Alex was making for his country.

Alex gathered what little strength he had and told Jesse to go fuck himself.

When the doctors came back for more, Alex barely let out a sound. He was deep in the quiet of his mind, dreaming of tearing Jesse’s jugular out with his teeth.

He was never meant to survive. He was a lab rat. A guinea pig. The doctors barely contained their surprise when the alien glass willingly merged with his body, when he didn’t reject the mechanical leg they’d fashioned to work with it.

Alex welcomed every second. Keeping their focus on him meant they weren’t hunting the aliens. That he was keeping Michael safe.

They kept him in a makeshift pod in between procedures. Letting him marinate longer and longer as their interest waned. He’d been in the pod for a solid two weeks before they pulled him out again.

The agony that hit him was new.

Raucous noise scraped against Alex’s ears, the harsh buzz of the overhead lights, the sharp grating sound of metal against metal.

The sounds overwhelming his senses that he crumpled to his knees.

A giggle tore past his lips at the thought that he might finally be losing his mind.

They hauled him onto the table, buckles clanging like church bells as they strapped him in. He was left alone, but he could still hear the voices clear as day.

“We’ve gotten everything we can from him.”

“What do we do now?”

“Master Sergeant Manes gave specific orders before he left. Dispose of the subject then go after the three. We know better after the first attack. The girl first. The other two won’t fight back if we have her.”

All the previous noise disappeared into a swirling blackhole as blinding rage swept over his vision.

No.

Not Michael.

They’d carve marks into his skin. Make him scream his throat raw. Take more and more and more until there was nothing left.

Alex would die before he let that happen.

An explosive charge pulsed through him once before it ripped through his veins, blowing out every bulb in a ten mile radius and tearing through the straps that held him.

He was ready when the first person came for him. Then another. And another.

It shouldn’t have been easy to snap a neck, to break a bone, crush a ribcage, and yet somehow it was. Alex didn't leave any of them alive. He was focused on a singular mission — wipe Michael’s existence from their memory.

Dead men tell no tales.

He was barely conscious by the time he’d gone through every room in the facility, but he remembered—

Remembered gore. Remembered viscera. Remembered screams.

None of which were his.

He remembered staggering to a console. He remembered locking them all in with him. Remembered typing out a crude program to destroy any mention of Michael and Max and Isobel.

He remembered slumping to the floor.

Remembered pain. Remembered vomit. Remembered tears.

All of which were his.

He remembered—

He remembered the ground as it shook. Remembered the safety he’d felt because he knew. He knew.

He remembered seeing Michael.

And then it was black.

He slept.

For days. For weeks. For months.

Alex’s body wasn’t entirely human anymore, but the human psyche could only endure so much trauma before it receded into itself.

He slept through Max healing him. He slept through Isobel coaxing his mind open. He slept through every visit of the nurse they’d made to dress casually after Alex attacked the first one.

The only time he stirred was when Michael was around. Eyes following his every movement, fingers gripping his hand tight when he was near.

He found out later it was actually twenty four days. Twenty four days before he pushed himself up of his own accord, his gaze drawn across an unfamiliar room to the only reason he came back at all.

“Michael?”

His voice was barely a whisper, nothing more than breath vibrating through disused vocal chords, but Michael seemed to have sensed the shift in the air, his arms already around Alex before Alex even finished saying his name.

Scalding hot tears trailed down his cheeks, relief practically choking him as he gripped Michael’s shirt. He’d done it. He hadn’t hallucinated the end to his nightmare. He’d kept Michael safe.

Alex had kept Michael safe.

Hysterical laughter bubbled out of his chest despite the tears still flowing freely down his cheeks. He’d killed to keep Michael safe and he’d do it again.

Michael pulled away with nothing more than an amused shake of his head, his own face wet with tears.

“I can feel you, you know?” he asked, placing a hand against Alex’s chest. “It’s how I found you. You drove me to my knees with how much you wanted to protect me.”

Alex realized for the first time that the relief surging through him wasn’t just his. It was his and it was Michael’s, their emotions coalescing into a singular pool under Alex’s ribcage.

Curious, Alex dipped into it. He heard Michael gasp and then—

Remnants of a paralyzing fear.

Deep echoing anger.

A chasm of grief.

Alex soothed it all. Poured every inch of love he possessed into the cracks that had been left behind. Etched a promise into his soul. Into Michael’s.

“I’d burn down the world to keep you safe.”

“We’ll do it together.”

Alex surfaced grinning.

No one was going to touch either of them ever again.

Roswell had descended into hell while he was gone. Homes deserted. Businesses boarded up. A town populated by the ghosts who decided to stay either by choice or necessity. All of it a perdition of their own making, pushing the aliens closer and closer to the brink with every loss.

Homes obliterated.

Parents driven out of town.

Maria speaking in riddles only Isobel could understand.

Kyle still missing.

Alex’s own disappearance.

And Liz—

Liz wasn’t dead.

Not quite.

It was Max who took him to see her.

Liz was in a similar room as the one he’d woken up in. A gigantic, lavishly decorated room among dozens of other gigantic, lavishly decorated rooms in the mansion they had commandeered. Only Alex had been in a bed that smelled of grief and rain. Liz was in a hospital bed, hooked up to a machine that made her glow pink and purple and blue.

His mind flashed unbidden to the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe perched on the Ortecho’s altar.

“They came for us three days after they took you,” Max said, his sandpaper voice a stark contrast to the tender brush of his knuckles against Liz’s cheek. “They destroyed the pods, our houses, leveled the junkyard. They chased us into the desert. Liz — she, she took a dart that was meant for me. It had a serum that was meant to neutralize our powers. Only in humans — it caused her cells to degenerate.“

Alex understood the machine now. Without the pod there was nowhere to keep Liz in stasis the way they did for Isobel.

“Her heart kept stopping,” Max clenched his jaw. There was no desire for absolution in his voice. Nothing but a simple stated fact. “I had to save her.”

Alex nodded once. “You killed them all.”

“There was no keeping our secret after that. The town turned on us. People I’d known since I was eight looking at us like we were strangers, like we were dangerous .”

Max looked at him, a dark humorless smirk on his face.

“Guess they were right.”

“Wyatt Long was first,” Michael recounted as he stroked Alex’s hair.

“Wise choice,” Alex hummed distractedly. He couldn’t stop touching Michael, his fingertips moving from his lips to his neck to his torso, greedy with the need to know he was real.

“An easy choice,” Michael said with a small laugh. “He made the mistake of stalking Isobel. Then it was a couple of his friends. The mayor’s son. The mayor himself.”

There was no inflection in his voice. Like he was rattling off a list of classmates they’d seen at the reunion rather than a list of lives Max had taken to keep Liz alive. Unlike the pods, the machine Michael built required an external power source. It required Max. Only Max wasn’t an endless fount of energy even with the desert massacre.

Alex’s fingers roamed over Michael’s biceps, his forearm. He traced over the groves of Michael’s left hand, still unused to the smooth skin.

It was a painful sort of parallel that both of them were made whole without their consent.

The thought dissolved into wisps of smoke when Michael brushed his lips against Alex’s temple. As if he’d sensed Alex’s discomfort and done it instinctively.

“It’s still a three person job keeping Liz in stasis,” Michael continued, oblivious. “I need to keep making adjustments and Iz still has to find people for Max to drain. She thinks it’s funny when she can convince them it’s the only way to make Roswell great again.”

“I’ve learned a few tricks at torture camp. I can amplify her powers, air it through a frequency so that people come to her—” Alex propped himself up on one elbow prepared to dive into a detailed explanation when suddenly a chair flew across the room and into the wall, the pure rage that echoed from Michael trembling right through him.

He raised his eyebrows in question.

“I hate it when you talk about the shit you went through like that,” Michael grumbled.

“It’s my trauma and I’ll laugh if I want to,” Alex sang softly. He nodded towards the shattered chair. “Is that what you’ll do to my father when we find him?”

“Yes.”

The smile he gave Michael was all teeth and sharp edges. “Good.”

Alex had always believed Isobel could rule the world if she set her mind to it. Turned out all the assistance she needed were a few dozen radio towers and one world class hacker.

“How’d it go?” Alex asked as Isobel flounced into the section of the mansion that he and Michael had taken over as a workshop-slash-command center.

“The Governor was ecstatic to welcome me as Roswell’s new mayor.”

Alex raised an eyebrow when Isobel continued to stand there, smirking like the cat that ate the canary.

“He has a little crush on me,” she admitted. “So I fucked his wife.”

Michael rolled his eyes. “Didn’t Max tell you to stop playing with your food?”

“She wanted me almost as much as he did,” Isobel replied with a shrug. “The only thing she wanted more was to kill her husband in his sleep.”

“And will she?”

The grin that broke across Isobel’s face was both beautiful and terrifying. “Our friend the Vice Governor will receive a nice little promotion by next week.”

Alex wasn’t entirely human but he didn’t have the kind of powers the aliens had either. His bootleg version was unreliable at worst, erratic at best. The one thing he could count on was the connection he had with Michael.

He didn’t realize that it was that connection, that protection that fed into whatever power he had.

Not until he was walking down Main Street alone, a freedom he’d only been allowed after he was able to take down the combined attacks of Max, Isobel and Michael in their training sessions. Even so he could feel Michael gently prodding their connection. As if making sure Alex was still there.

Because of that, it was curiosity not fear that made him pause when he heard the click of the firearm.

He found a group of men harassing a young woman and honestly Alex would have let them live. Probably broken a few appendages. Permanently cut off one in particular. Only they didn’t take kindly to his interruption. A shot rang out and suddenly a bullet had sliced open his shoulder.

Alex touched his fingers to the wound and it came away sticky with blood, the copper color of the desert sand as the sun descended on the horizon.

In the distance the air crackled with electricity.

The idiot waved the gun at him. “Walk away man and I won’t shoot again. She ain’t none of your business.”

“This is my favorite jacket. Do you have any idea how hard it is to break in new leather?” Alex snapped as he shrugged it off to assess the damage.

There was a muttered curse. A prayer.

It was only then that Alex saw the crisscross of lines shining through his shirt, up his neck, down his arms.

“Y—you’re one of them.”

Alex’s face split into a grin, the planes of his face lit unnaturally by the faint glow of his scars.

“Not really, but they’ll be here soon enough.”

The woman had run off the moment she found an opening, Isobel had taken their new friends to Max, and Michael had mostly held his tongue when Alex refused to let Max heal him.

Mostly.

“That’s going to get infected and your arm is going to fall off,” Michael said, unable to help himself after seeing Alex eye a tube of superglue. They were both fresh from the shower and while Alex’s wound was clean and ready for bandaging, it still needed stitches.

“Max is barely on his feet trying to keep Liz alive and no doctor is coming near me.”

Michael ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Fine. If you don’t want Max to heal you then let me do it.”

That made Alex pause. “Since when can you heal people?”

“I never have,” Michael admitted, sitting next to Alex on the bed and giving him a soft, sweet kiss, “but you’ve always been my exception.”

Alex rolled his eyes fondly at the cheesy line but nodded.

There was a moment when Michael hesitated, his hand hovering a little too far to be effective, but Alex placed his hand on Michael’s, drawing him close.

Michael cupped Alex’s cheek with his other hand and in the next breath, liquid gold bloomed over Alex’s skin.

He barely noticed as muscle and sinew reformed under Michael’s touch. A lightning storm of overwhelming love was sparking through him, from him, leaving Michael-shaped burns in its wake.

Alex was grateful to know it wasn’t just him, a moan rumbled in Michael’s chest and suddenly his lips were on Alex’s, tongue sliding into his mouth, wet and dirty while his other hand moved down, groping every inch of bare skin he could reach.

It took no time before Alex was on his back, Michael riding him, one hand still on Alex’s shoulder as he rocked his hips, slow and steady, driving them both crazy in a feedback loop of pleasure.

Alex trembled, lights flickering around them as his control loosened. “Michael— I— I’m—”

“I’ve got you, darling,” Michael promised. “I’ve always got you.”

They rescued Kyle on a Friday.

Michael didn’t think it counted as date night.

Alex figured they could kill two birds with one stone.

Or a whole flock of them as the case may be.

Red warning lights flashed overhead as he and Michael walked hand in hand down the underground facilities’ corridors. Alex hummed softly to the beat, easily introducing the sound of Michael snapping soldiers’ necks into his symphony.

“We should go dancing.”

“Anything for you.” Michael winked cheekily as he wiped a splatter of blood off Alex’s cheek.

Kyle was in a slightly better state than Alex had been, but it still took two weeks before Isobel was able to reach into his mind without getting flung across the room.

When he finally emerged it was to Alex sitting at his bedside. Going from an endless slumber to leveling Alex with a heavy gaze. Contained within was an intimate knowledge that drove a blade right between Alex’s ribs and lodged itself there for them both to see.

“He took you too.”

Alex gripped Kyle’s hand tight. “I’m going to kill him.”

In another life Kyle would have counseled against it. Would have lectured Alex about the Valenti Code, about doing good and taking the high road. In this one, Alex stared into the broken eyes of a boy he once called his best friend and found a kindred spirit.

“Do it slowly.”

In the end not even his code could save Kyle’s soul.

Kyle was the key to getting Liz off the machine. It didn’t stop there. There was too much at stake. Too many times that they’d been caught off guard.

They razed the organization that had been out to get the aliens. Expanded their control beyond the city limits. Persuaded politicians and billionaires and warmongers into their fold. They had the power. All Isobel needed was their will.

Jesse Manes eluded them through it all. A cockroach surviving a nuclear holocaust. He might have had the tenacity to outlive them, but Alex made an oath. A Manes Man was always a man of his word.

He felt it before the program even let out its telltale ping. A shiver up his spine telling him that everything was falling into place. That this new world they’d created would soon be the one he’d promised to Michael.

Strong arms wrapped around his shoulders and Alex sank into them easily. They had a whole universe left to conquer, but first he had family business he needed to finish.

Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. So it is to be.

#malex #rip roswell #alex manes #michael guerin #roswell nm #tv: rnm #deej writes #deej writes malex

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sassycordy · 2 years ago

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Hmm… I have been overloading Stargatelov3rs asks recently and during one of our discussions she brought up how you have a headcanon regarding the Daedalus being broken so they don’t have any easy access to earth.

First off, that idea is amazing, and second, could you expand on it?

Completely understandable if not. <3

so i haven't been as active, but i did see some of those conversations, and y'all were getting into some good stuff ahah. and yes ofc! i am the queen of long-winded rants so buckle up, folks aha.

so for some background, we were recording a new ep for our podcast, and as most of our listeners know, we all tend to get off topic pretty often lmfao. and so i went on this long ass tangent about how season one of atlantis is the best season of the show! regardless of personal feelings because it's the only season that truly sticks to the original premise. the premise being an expedition of humans travel to a new galaxy and have no connection to earth; therefore, they have to fight this new alien threat all by themselves.

I love atlantis and the franchise as a whole so much. I wouldn't be here if I didn't. but I'm also pretty vocal about all their shitty decisions lol. and unfortunately, there were a lot of those in atlantis! I don't know why the writing team thought it would be a good idea to keep that original premise for ONE season. I rly don't, but it drives me a little insane ngl ahha.

the reason season one is hands down the best of the show is because, throughout those 20 episodes, there is real tension. it rly feels like the team is barely scrapping by for most of the season, and watching them scramble on their own is what carries most if not all of the dramatic tension. and all of that excellent groundwork and foundation is immediately stripped by the second season. to clarify, it's not that the daedalus came to save atlantis at the end of the season. that's fine. it's the way the daedalus is used that ruins everything. (the daedalus is always there after season two to save the team whenever the plot requires them to).

so i came up with an idea to fix all of my issues with season two and the other season as well! i suggested keeping the finale of season one the same. at the eleventh hour, the daedalus shows up and basically saves atlantis. but instead of being able to go back and forth for season two, the hyperdrive breaks, causing colonel caldwell and the entire crew to become new residents of atlantis. this essentially changes very little about season two, except it brings back that dramatic tension and adds even more internal conflict to the base. now we have more people! but they weren't prepared for this expedition ooooooo. instead of that random ep where the team is on the daedulus being murdered by a computer virus, we could have an off-world & base dedicated ep! where we can see firsthand how much of an adjustment this is. colonel caldwell and elizabeth are clashing, john has to train new military personnel who have no idea what they're doing, and rodney is working with new scientists who don't listen or respect his leadership role.

you could even keep the original structure of the second season! the daedalus can be on standby, able to make small jumps to rescue the team if need be. but instead of just miraculously showing up and saving the day, this time, it actually makes sense lol. i think this change could do a lot for the show and its characters tbh because there’s so much they could’ve done with it! and maybe after half a season, the hyperdrive gets fixed. and half of the crew decide to leave with caldwell to get back to earth to warn them about the wraith. so the end of season two could be the team Finally having enough power to dial earth when something goes wrong. maybe michael sabotages it? or hell, maybe even the team decides to cut the transmission bc earth wants them to come back! im very much an atlantis should’ve been an independent colony stan lol (at least we’ll always have fic aha).

anyways sorry this is so long, and I hope this makes sense <3 it's a lot easier to rant when I don't have to type all this up ahah. thank you for asking this question tho !!!! I love talking about ways to fix atlantis lmfao cause while there's a lot to love, there's also a lot to critique ahah.

#sassy cordy responds #stargate atlantis #atlantis as an independent colony my beloved #listen i love that sg1 and atlantis found their comfortable niche but sometimes i wish the writers cared more about pushing the envelope #while still keeping that stargate vibe ofc #universe im glaring at you ahah #sorry universe you know i love and defend you but that show is .....#well that’s another post entirely ahah

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suttttton · 4 years ago

Text

Growing Pains

Febuwhump Day 1: Mind Control

***

“You knew what you would find here, didn’t you?” Annabelle asks, leaning back against her kitchen counter, looking over Jon with eyes far too predatory for his liking.

“To be honest, I expected more spiders,” Jon says. He’s seated at Annabelle Cane’s table, in Annabelle Cane’s flat. Annabelle Cane is making him tea. He came here of his own accord, and even though he can feel his heart in his throat, he refuses to regret this decision. Hadn’t he long ago decided that answers were worth the fear? Isn’t that how he’s made every decision, since Jane Prentiss attacked the Archives? Since he read the wrong book and narrowly escaped being devoured by a monster?

Annabelle smiles, crosses her arms. “Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t here, Jon.”

Jon swallows. “Right.” His voice is faint.

“And yet you came anyway,” Annabelle says. “Do you know why?”

“I, uh… I thought I’d ask you—something. For a statement. Maybe.”

“And you thought I was likely to give you one?”

“Well, you invited me here, didn’t you?” Jon snaps, stiff politeness finally giving way to trembling anger.

“I did,” Annabelle says. She comes closer to Jon, and it’s all he can do not to flinch away from her. “Give me your hand,” she says, holding out her own to take it.

“Why?” Jon manages, even as he’s already extending his bandaged hand toward her.

She gives him a flat look, closes her eyes, takes a breath. His hand is trembling slightly, caged between her two hands. She opens her eyes. “Because our patron is worried about you,” she says. And then, her voice low with anger. “You will not compel me again.”

“Our patron?” Jon says.

Annabelle nods, her attention occupied examining the bandages on his hand. He tries to pull away, but he can’t. He can’t move his hand at all. She runs three fingers over the surface of his palm, and Jon holds back a squeak of pain at the gentle contact. “Jude did a wonderful job,” she murmurs, more to herself than to Jon. Then she looks at him, smiling. “And Martin did a wonderful job with the bandages.”

She releases him, and Jon jerks his hand back, cradling it to his chest. She steps even closer, and he’s frozen in place as one of her hands goes to his throat. Even over the bandages, she traces a line exactly where Daisy’s knife punctured his flesh. “Daisy’s is more impressive, though.”

The kettle screams, and she steps away to finish preparing the tea. Jon can suddenly move again, and he curls his arms around himself. This isn’t like meeting Jude Perry or Mike Crew. He wasn’t on even footing with them, either, but with Annabelle, it isn’t even close. He considers running, but he’s terrified that he’ll find himself unable to move if he tries to act on that thought.

“Why am I here?” he asks. He’d grown used to the small sliver of power his questions gave him. It’s terrifying to lose that.

Annabelle sets a mug of tea in front of him. He picks it up, takes a sip. He didn’t decide to do that, but it’s happening anyway. She sits down across from him, takes a sip from her own mug. “The Mother of Puppets is fond of you,” she says. Like that explains anything.

“You mean, the—spiders?” Jon asks, dread growing in his stomach.

“Knock, knock,” Annabelle says, smiling at him over her mug.

A jolt of fear rushes through Jon, and he takes a deep breath, steadying himself. “But that isn’t—I belong to the Institute, the, the Eye.” Jon still has so many questions about the Entities, so many things that he doesn’t know, puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together. But he knows that he doesn’t belong to the spiders. He escaped them.

“Sure,” Annabelle says. “But the Web claimed you first. You’ve been running around, collecting your marks like a good little Archivist, all inspired by your desperate curiosity, your gnawing fear that you won’t be able to put all the pieces together in time. It’s all very Beholding-flavored.” She wrinkles her nose, and looks at Jon, still with that sly smile. “Much better for you to strengthen your connection to the Web. Your fear will feed us. You’ll have our gifts.”

“So this is, what, an invitation?”

“Sure,” Annabelle says. “If you want to think of it that way.” She pauses. “Of course, invitations presume that you can deny them, and free will isn’t exactly the Web’s strong suit. The Mother of Puppets wants you to be ours, so you will be.”

Jon opens his mouth, to ask what the hell that means, but Annabelle cuts him off. “You should probably be going now.”

Jon stands up, not of his own accord, and starts toward the door. Annabelle follows. Before he leaves, she plants a hand on his shoulder, and he just barely manages to not flinch away. “Jon,” she says, and there’s something different in her eyes now, replacing the sly teasing tone she’d taken before. She looks… concerned. Sad, even. “There will be some growing pains,” she says. “Just do what the Mother wants. It’ll be alright.” She squeezes his wrist, and then shuts the door.

He doesn’t decide to go back to the Archives. The Web decides for him.

***

“Good morning,” Martin says, bringing in tea, as he does every morning.

Jon smiles at him. “Good morning, Martin.”

Martin looks at him for long enough that Jon starts to frown. “Martin? Did you need something?”

“What?” Martin blinks. “No, sorry, I—You just look… really good. Better than you have since—Well, since you got back from your… vacation, I guess.”

“I suppose there’s no snappy way to say, ‘time when you weren’t coming into work because your boss framed you for murder and the cops wanted to kill you,’” Jon quips. “But yes. I feel better.” He lifts the statement on his desk. “Feels like we’re finally making progress towards something.”

“And your hand, and—It’s all healing well?” Martin asks.

Jon nods, flexing his hand slightly beneath the bandages. “I think I’m starting to get a bit of feeling back? Which is probably a good sign.”

“Probably,” Martin agrees. “I still think you should’ve gone to A&E.”

Jon nods, a little embarrassed. “Yes, well… if it gets worse, I’ll take your advice.”

“Alright,” Martin says. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it.” And then he leaves, smiling because, for the first time in recent memory, Jon actually seems as fine as he claims to be.

Jon wants to scream. He wants to curl up beneath his desk, arms wrapped around himself in some semblance of comfort. He wants to be held—Martin or Georgie or Tim, or someone. He wants the release of it, warm arms grounding him as he shakes apart entirely. He wants to beg the others to please, please help him.

Instead, he smiles at them when he sees them in the break room, when he asks them to look into certain details for him. He sits in his office, calmly reading statement after statement, finding as much information about the Unknowing as possible. He goes home and watches movies with Georgie, and laughs at all the right parts. None of it is his choice, and he is so, so scared. Scared of what the Web is planning. Scared that he will be nothing but a puppet for the rest of his life.

It’s strange, being so constantly terrified, but showing no physical symptoms of fear. His heart rate is normal. His hands and voice are steady.

It doesn’t escape his notice that they all like him better, like this. Unburdened by the weight he carries with him. He desperately wishes for one of them to notice that it’s wrong, that he’s wrong, but he knows they won’t. Even if they did notice, he isn’t certain they would want him to go back to what he was before.

It’s almost a relief when Breekon and Hope grab him. He chooses to fight them, kick out his legs uselessly as they tie him up and toss him in the back of their van. His heart is hammering, adrenaline firing. It’s exhilarating, but there’s no room to rejoice in his newfound freedom. He has to find a way out of this, but—

There is no way out. Nikola delights in reminding him of this, whenever she comes to see him. They tie him up in a dimly lit room, surrounded by horrifying mannequins that sometimes move. His binds are tight, as is the gag in his mouth, and though he can struggle against them, it’s clear he’ll never manage to wriggle out of them.

For a while, he expects someone to come rescue him. Maybe Annabelle, although if he really thinks about it, it’s more likely that the Web would simply manipulate someone else into coming. Maybe his assistants would come, if they can find him. (If they decide he’s worth rescuing.) He’s wanted by the Eye and the Web, and clearly that counts for something. Surely they wouldn’t just abandon him to be skinned alive by the Stranger.

But no one comes. It’s hard to keep track of time, but Jon knows it’s been a few weeks, at least. Long enough by far for a rescue party to come, if they ever planned on coming. He wonders if the Web is enjoying this, if this fear is Web-flavored enough for it. Maybe it set him up for this. Maybe it’s actively preventing him from escaping.

He’s allowed to cry now. He can even scream, if he wanted to, although the gag makes it kind of pointless. Nikola enjoys when he cries.

Michael comes, and then Helen replaces him, and Jon can see the spidercracks of the Web behind it. Helen opens her door to him, and even if he wanted to take his chances with the Stranger, the webs in his mind give him no choice but to accept her offer.

At least Helen only toys with him a little bit before depositing him back in his office.

He lays on the floor for a long time, staring at the ceiling, expecting at any moment for the vise-like grip of the Web to take hold of him once more. It keeps not happening. His breath starts to come faster and faster, so he forces himself to take deep breaths, but that only makes his shaky breathing sound louder in his ears. It’s all so loud, his breathing, his heartbeat. Even the electricity humming in the walls, the soft rattle of the air conditioner.

He brings a hand to his face, and his eyes are filled with tears that immediately start tumbling over his cheeks. A sob hitches in his chest, and he almost smiles. He’s wanted to have a breakdown for so long, and now—it’s almost pleasant, losing control of his emotions in the safety of his office. No one around to jeer and laugh at him. No spiderwebs forcing him to keep smiling.

Another sob hitches, and he suddenly feels much too exposed. He pulls himself under his desk, relishing the darkness, the smallness. He brings his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around himself. Lets himself cry, burying the sound as much as he can. He doesn’t want the others to hear.

The door opens, and he lets out a soft gasp, biting down on his sobs. He holds his breath, willing himself to be quiet, to not be heard, not be found. He’s petrified that being found will mean his break is over, will mean the Web comes back, invading his mind.

It’s Martin. He comes in, humming quietly, and sets something on Jon’s desk. He starts to leave, and then—

Jon suddenly takes a sharp inhale, unable to hold his breath any longer.

Martin’s footsteps pause, hesitantly.

Something in Jon’s brain—the spiderwebs, he knows—pulls at him to be quiet, to let Martin leave, to not bother him with this. But it’s been so long since Jon’s seen Martin, and he just—He just wants to see him. Even if it means he has to smile. Surely, surely Martin will see that something is wrong, won’t he? The thought brings fresh tears to his eyes, and he says, “Martin?” His voice is thick with tears and rough from disuse.

“Wha—Jon?” Martin says. His footsteps move quickly to the other side of the desk, and he crouches down. “Oh my god, Jon! What happened? Where have you been?”

“Circus got me,” Jon says with a watery smile. The Web hasn’t taken hold yet. And it’s so nice to see Martin, soft and warm and safe.

“This—this whole time, you’ve been with the Circus?” Martin says, sounding horrified.

Jon nods. “How long have I been gone?”

“A month,” Martin says. “Christ, are you alright?”

The spiderwebs tell Jon to send Martin away, to claim that he’s fine. But the compulsion isn’t as strong as it was before. It’s a request, not an order. And Jon is… He isn’t fine. He hasn’t been fine in a long time.

Besides, it’s not like Martin somehow missed the dirty tear tracks on his face.

“No,” he whispers, curling up tighter into himself. The shaking is back now. A month. A month of intruding hands rubbing lotion into his skin, constantly reminding him of their plans for him, telling him how much it would hurt, letting him hear the horrible screams of their other victims.

“Can I touch you?” Martin asks, and Jon nods.

Martin pulls Jon into his arms, both of them still partially under the desk. He’s warm, and his words are soft as he runs a soothing hand up and down Jon’s back. Jon buries his head in his chest, crying until he’s all wrung out, until nothing remains inside of him.

“Sorry,” Jon says, still sniffling slightly, his voice thick. There’s a damp patch on Martin’s shirt now, and Jon flushes a bit, looking at it.

“It’s alright, Jon,” Martin says, still holding on to him. He isn’t shifting impatiently, or acting like Jon should move away, so Jon doesn’t. He rests his head on Martin’s shoulder, exhausted, and Martin continues rubbing soothing circles into his back.

***

Jon wakes up on the cot in document storage, tucked in under several blankets. He spends a hazy moment wishing Martin were there with him, and then the spiderwebs re-exert themselves in full force and he is getting out of bed. Well. He hardly expected the break to last forever. He was lucky to get this much, really. The terror has lessened, and it feels like he can think in a straight line for once.

He heads out of document storage and towards the break room. It’s dark in the Archives. Everyone has left for the day, except for Martin, who didn’t want to leave Jon alone. He’s run out to fetch them both dinner, and will be back shortly.

The Web steers him to the utensil drawer, which is a disorganized mess, as always. He thinks about his feelings for Martin as he digs through it, the deep fondness he feels for him. He’s still holding on to a bit of hope that Martin will save him from this, he realizes.

He finds a knife, and pulls it from the drawer, and suddenly he is very focused on what the Web wants from him. He sets the knife on the counter, and then rolls up his left shirt sleeve. With horror sinking into his gut, he sets his arm on the edge of the sink, picks up the knife again in his right hand. He holds it firmly, tight enough that it makes his newly-healed scar ache.

He knows what’s about to happen. He tries to stop it, but it’s like trying to stop gravity. His hand doesn’t so much as tremble as he slices into the soft skin just below his elbow.

He lets out a cry of pain, or fear, but continues to carve into his arm with the tip of the knife. He’s cutting deep into his flesh, and he doesn’t want to look as blood pours out of him. But he can’t look away.

After an eternity, Jon is finally allowed to drop the knife. It clatters into the sink, leaving a trail of blood droplets behind it. He stares at the wound for a second. Even obscured as it is by blood, he can tell it’s a spiderweb. A message. A punishment.

He feels suddenly nauseous, salt flooding his mouth, and he sinks to the floor, breathing deeply, trying not to be sick. There is so much blood.

A soft pull at his mind, almost gentle. Don’t let Martin see.

He doesn’t want to know what the Web will do to him, if he refuses. There isn’t much time before Martin gets back, so he has to hurry.

He’s still dripping blood everywhere, so that’s the first step. Stop the bleeding. The first aid kit is nearby, well-stocked as always. He grabs it down from the shelf, and then wets a few napkins, which he uses to clean off as much of the blood as possible. It hurts, and he has to sit down before he finishes. It’s a bit tricky, wrapping his own arm in gauze, especially with his right hand injured as well, but he manages, adding layer after layer until he can no longer see the blood soaking through.

He rolls his sleeve down. The bulk of the gauze is visible through his shirt, but hopefully Martin won’t notice something he isn’t looking for.

Jon wipes down the table, the floor, the sink, until he can no longer see any blood anywhere. He washes the knife and drops it back in the drawer. And then he sits down, taking deep, even breaths. He should probably go lay down again, but he doesn’t think he can make it all the way back there. Not on his own.

He puts his head down, and a few minutes later, he hears the stairs creaking with Martin’s return. He hears his footsteps receding as he heads towards document storage, hears the soft creak of the door. And then the steps get louder, until Martin pokes his head into the break room.

“Oh, there you are,” he says, a relieved smile on his face. “Sorry for leaving you. I didn’t think you would wake up. I brought dinner,” he says, holding up the bag of takeout clutched in his hands.

Jon smiles in return. “The Eye told me,” he says.

“Oh, that’s—creepy,” Martin says.

“Sorry,” Jon says, his eyes flicking back to the table.

“It’s fine,” Martin says, sitting down across from him. “How are you feeling?”

The Web isn’t controlling him, but it hardly matters. “I’m fine,” he says. “Feeling better.”

***

They finish eating, and Martin insists on staying the night with Jon in the Archives. He insists that Jon sleep on the cot, even though the break room couch is much too small for Martin to sleep on comfortably.

Jon wakes up, and the fresh wound on his forearm has bled through the gauze, staining not only his shirt sleeve, but also the rest of his shirt. He’s covered in blood, so much that he can’t possibly hide it.

And he can hear Martin, already awake and moving around in the Archive.

Jon stands up, trying to decide what to do. If Martin sees the blood, he will ask questions, and there is no good way to explain the design so intricately carved into Jon’s arm. He needs fresh gauze, and a fresh shirt, but his extra clothes are in his office, and the first aid kit is in the break room.

He decides to make a break for his office, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders to hide any blood Martin might spot. Before he can move, however, the door to document storage opens, and Jon freezes.

“Hey Jon, I wanted to ask—” Martin stops, and for a moment they’re just staring at each other. Martin opens his mouth again, panic writ large on his face. “Jon, is that blood? What happened?”

“I—um—”

“Was it the Circus?” Martin asks, stepping closer. Jon flinches away from him, and he stops. “Okay, just—Jon, that looks really bad.”

“Yeah,” Jon manages, his voice coming out in an almost-laugh. Martin’s look of concern only grows deeper.

There’s no way for Jon to salvage this, no explanation that Martin will accept. Martin can’t know about this, can’t know about any of this. The Web might hurt him, if he becomes a danger to it.

And then—

He suddenly can see the exact strings he needs to pull in Martin’s mind, to make him ignore this. It’ll be easy. Martin won’t even know he’s done anything.

It’s the only option.

For the first time, Jon uses the spiderwebs. Martin’s eyes go blank and glassy for a single horrifying moment. And then he blinks, and looks at Jon. Jon is still covered with his own blood, but Martin doesn’t notice it at all. He looks vaguely confused for a second, before he gathers himself. “Sorry, lost my train of thought,” he says with a small laugh. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go get something for breakfast. I know you usually just skip it, but there’s a nice cafe not to far from here, and I thought it would be… good.”

Jon wants to cry. He wants to tell Martin everything, ask for his help. But Martin can’t help him. Asking will do nothing but hurt both of them.

Instead, Jon smiles. “Sounds wonderful,” he says.

#tma #tma fanfiction #febuwhump #febuwhumpday1 #my fic #self harm cw #blood cw #kidnapping cw

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iprefertheterminsane · 4 years ago

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So. Im in the BFU/Watcher fandom now.

Have to admit it's a little weird. I rarely ever have dared to venture into RPF realm simply because it seems like a whole lot more commitment and self-control than it would require for a Fictional Fandom (though I do not regret a moment of it. My prior hyperfixation had been the GOmens fandom, and true to word the Unsolved fandom are one of the most controlled and respectful fandoms I have ever been in, minus the anti Vs shipping slight, of course. We're not perfect). My sister isn't a huge fan of it, and while I don't need to justify myself to anyone, its made me think on what really lured me in, and I think I've got it.

1. Middle aged men

2. The chemistry and comfort these two real life people have bring me a level of comfort that soulmates and love can exist beyond a romantic periphery.

3. Despite their apparent childishness and "immaturity" (a lot of people, including the men themselves, feel more at ease calling them Boys instead of Men), Shane and Ryan are also extraordinarily competent and skilful at their jobs. They individually rose through the ranks of BuzzFeed at an impressive pace-and in Ryan's case, at an impressively young age (he was around 25 when he proposed the idea for Unsolved, at which point both men were already executive producers). After barely half a decade working they managed to score one of the greatest hits BuzzFeed could ever hope to produce, co-managing a loyal fan base strong enough to gain the confidence of leaving a megalith media production company to establish their own, and through a skeleton crew and three man team with BARELY any prior business knowledge, it fucking worked.

-IT IS AT THIS POINT WHERE I WANT TO REMIND YALL THAT THE COMPANY WAS ESTABLISHED DURING THE DOGSHIT 20's, they had been thrust right into the worst year of the century with a spanking new company, and not only had they survived without having to lose any of their skeleton crew nor assets, they also managed to win Gold YouTube status (a million subscribers) within this period they are FUCKING impressive okay?

3. The chemistry is fucking UNREAL. I know I've said it before, in point 2. Their chemistry is fucking bonnie and Clyde, Fred and George, I saw it in David Tennant and Michael Sheen but as mild celebrities who are YouTube video producers with active social media accounts, that bond sits more clearly in the public eye and it's fucking FASCINATING. Before Shane and Ryan I didn't think I actually ever Did think that a bind like theirs could actually exist in real fucking life. They are two sides of a literal coin-workaholic, overworking overthinkers, and somehow complete opposites. At his lowest, Ryan moves like a tornado, and he will keep going until his body Literally gives up in him, while on the other hand Shane, in his own head, will just, stop. They boost and encourage each other in all the ways they need the most. Their thoughts are simpatico, and they simultaneously have enough self awareness and life experiences to deal with shit gone bad and how to maintain that brilliant friendship. The level of trust the have in each other is something straight out of storybooks, the kind of love that get soldiers killed on the battlefield and make mother's and daughters into murderers.

4. They are very silly and they give me the serotonin.

5. Pretty!!!! My pretty boys!!!!

6. On the other hand they are just also very decent people despite their sarcasm and morbid sense of humour. They're humble but confident, professionally tactile and kind. They seem to also have wonderful relationships with family. Not to be taken lightly in celebrity circles.

Tldr; idk man I just think they're kinda cool.

#buzzfeed unsolved #shane madej #ryan bergara #watcher entertainment

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defensefilms · 4 years ago

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Defense Films Lists His Favorite TV Characters Of All Time

5. Chris Partlow- The Wire

The ending of The Wire paints Chris Partlow as something closer to a serial killer.

He wasn’t. None of his hits were done out of pleasure, curiosity or even impulse. Every one of those bodies helped the Stanfield organization become what they became, even the one on Michael’s stepdad.

What Chris represents is reliability and capability. The ultimate “get shit done” guy. Out of all the characters on the show, none were more dependable or crucial to the success of the institution they served.

Lester Freeman was capable but not a good politician and ultimately a nuisance to his superiors. Bill Rawls was incredibly capable at his job but he was power hungry and ambitious. In season 5, Gus Haynes is the most capable man in the news office but the problem was that Gus questioned authority and didn’t “go with the flow” when the office decided the paper needed a “refreshing” of how they cover the local news.

Chris didn’t have any of these handicaps impeding the people he served.

He recruits the foot soldiers for the Stanfield crew, even training them himself and Marlo had something akin to a small army at his disposal as a result. He organized his sub-ordinates, handled all surveillance when Marlo’s crew was under investigation at the start of season 5 and took care of incoming shipments after they established a direct line to the Greeks.

When the task required finesse or subtlety, like the time he stole Sergey’s picture from the court office, he was more than capable of that too. When Marlo is questioning how to address the murder of one of his dealers, he listens to Chris and chooses to retaliate on the perpetrator directly rather than targeting everyone on his corner.

Marlo truly comes to rely on Chris in matters concerning Omar Little. Every step of how Marlo wants to get back at the near mythical larcenist, is first passed by Chris. Chris takes this as his number one job throughout the show. Anything concerning Omar is handled with brutal efficiency, tact and an almost out ouf place sense of professional pride.

That’s Chris’ most endearing quality. Through all the blood, guts, scheming, lying, betrayal that comprises Baltimore’s underworld, all of which Chris is very much a part of, he has a pride in how he approaches the day to day business aspects of what he does.

Stringer Bell is arguably the best second-in-command in the show’s run but he was dishonest, ultimately harming the survival of the institution he served and damn near going rogue.

Chris doesn’t share such qualities as blind ambition or selfishness. He understands that trust is all he has in this game. When the indictments eventually come down and Chris is facing a life sentence he doesn’t complain or even raise the possibility of turning state witness. Instead he ends up on the yard along side Wee-Bay. Marlo in turn makes sure that Chris’ people are taken care of financially.

Many of the men that serve in the various institutions depicted in the show could learn a thing from Chris Partlow. When the time came, he fell on his sword and did so in full acknowledgement that this is where it all leads. There’s a kind of honor in that.

4. Tony Soprano- The Sopranos

One of the biggest misconceptions about The Sopranos was that it was a story about a gangster. It wasn’t, or at the very least, that would be an over-simplification of what the story actually contained.

What it was was a story about a man and his family, both biological and criminal. That’s the tie the binds all of the story’s narratives together.

Another way of looking at Tony’s story is one of leadership. Having ousted his Uncle Junior from the seat of power, season 2 and onwards, as far Tony’s criminal life is concerned, focuses on what happens once you get to the top.

While the show’s creators gave you plenty of grizzly, violent scenes, what leads to those is the story of a man struggling and failing at leadership.

In every season, Tony has to deal with a problematic figure, employee or subordinate.

Season 1 was his Uncle and the idea of old fashioned leadership. Then in season 2 it was the ever-acerbic Richie Aprile, representing a generation older than Tony’s, that still feels entitled to something. Seasons 3 and 4 gave us Ralph Cifaretto, the only one among the men I’m mentioning that actually earns his status and then in season 5, it was his cousin Tony Blundetto.

Each of these problems is uniquely stressful for Tony because of how they pull at the threads of both his family and criminal life. With the exception of his Uncle Junior, he kills all of them.

By that metric, Tony is in fact a very poor leader.

He doesn’t really deal with the Richie Aprile problem because his sister beats him to it. He doesn’t willingly promote Ralph Cifaretto even though Ralph earns it and is the only one among the candidates with any real intellect and business savvy. In both the cases of Christopher Moltisanti and cousin Tony Blundetto, Tony allows favoritism and nepotism to cloud his judgement and ironically both those men die at Tony Soprano’s hands.

This paints a picture of a tyrannical man, slowly devouring everything around him because he’s got to be in control. Worse yet, his need to be in control doesn’t actually lead to smarter long term decisions or better people management.

Tony’s relationship with Ralph in particular is built on professional envy. He feels entitled to Ralph’s race horse winnings because “why should his subordinate benefit more from anything than he does?”. He then proceeds to take ownership of the racehorse itself without assuming any of the costs of owning the animal. Then to top it off, he steals Ralph’s girlfriend purely because he has the status to do it, even digging in to Ralph’s personal life in order to justify doing so.

Textbook mismanagement. Every type of managerial violation you could imagine.

So how does Tony handle it when an employee is actually being a problem on a criminal/business level?

He rewards Tony Blundetto’s deception after the Joey Peeps killing by letting him run an already profitable gambling joint. He promotes Christopher to “made guy” even with his drug problems being well known, and he promotes Bobby Baccalieri, partly at his sister’s behest and partly out of spite.

It was fun to watch on screen but you’d hate to work for Tony Soprano.

How does that translate to his family? What kind of leader is Tony at home?

Season 3 does well at examining Tony as a father/paternal figure starting with his relationship with Jackie Jr, which is built on concern at first. Then later it starts to make Tony anxious. Before Tony decides to push nature towards taking it’s course, when Jackie runs afoul of men in Tony’s charge.

His relationship with AJ is also a bigger part of the show as the seasons go and it’s not much better in as far as the leadership or guidance that Tony offers. We can waffle on about AJ’s failings as a spoilt teenager but the real problem is that Tony doesn’t see himself in AJ.

That’s the first step to any failure of leadership. An inability to find common ground or identify with the people you’re leading.

We won’t go in to how hypocritical it is because the entire way that Tony entered the mob life is because he himself was a mob prince and his father’s status definitely paved the way for him.

Hypocrisy. That’s the other key to failure in leadership.

All these negatives added up to make the most fascinating television character in over 20 years. A constant stream of contradictions and watching a man say one thing but do another was it’s own experience and you didn’t realize what a horrible human being you were watching until you saw the show over and over again. A scary observation that implies people are either blind or really comfortable with evil and narcissistic behaviour.

3. Noah Solloway- The Affair

Out of all the characters on this list, this one was hurt most by writers hitting a ceiling in how much they could say about the character or how much they wanted to say. Divorced men don’t really have that much representation, so if you’re writing a character that so strongly linked to that one particular event in his life, you may hit a ceiling if you don’t actually have real life examples to work with.

They had the right actor, the right story and it was the right time in human history to tell this story, it just felt like they didn’t follow through on really speaking on the plight or rise of guys in Noah’s situation.

Anytime I watched The Affair, and unlike most, I was pretty loyal to it despite what reviews told me, I identified with Noah. All those other characters didn’t make sense to me the way Noah did.

The story begins with my man being stuck in a rut, the kind of middle age funk married men tend to fall in to, so he drives out to visit some folks and while he’s there he happens to meet a baddie. Story of every man’s life. Only he does what you’re not supposed to do and sacrifices everything he has so he can be with the bad-bad.

Then my mans starts popping off with his book writing, gets a publishing deal and in his 40′s, he starts achieving his highest career peaks. See this is important because it shows that the writers understood the subject matter really well, as well as the demographic they were talking about.

Then the next season, they go in to some murder mystery plot, Noah ends up in jail somehow, almost as if the writers and producers didn’t feel confident that they could tell Noah’s story without the theatrics/murder mystery element.

The other danger that the writers probably didn’t want to indulge was rewarding the character with any kind of happy ending or positive outcome. Noah’s infidelity serves as the jumping off point to all of the story’s unfolding plots, mostly depicting the impact on the lives of his immediate family, a handful of which play out in sad dramatic fashion. So the writers likely felt like Noah couldn’t win at the end.

In the 1930′s when gangster films were first being made, they would commonly feature PSA messages at the start warning against criminal behaviour. 1931′s “Little Caesar” starring Edward G Robinson, features a warning at the end that makes it clear the film’s producers and writers needed the character to go down in flames at the end, to prove the moral point that “crime doesn’t pay”.

A writer’s moral obligation and the times in which they live can lead some to write the ending that makes a moral point rather than writing the most dramatic or honest ending. I think Noah Solloway kind of suffered from this.

I don’t know.

There was a chance to explore modern men in a way that most stories fail to. They had the foundation. They knew enough about who and what they’re talking about. However it didn’t manifest in the telling of the story.

I’m not saying Noah needed a positive ending, it’s just that the one we got was not the most fitting nor did it wind up ending the story honestly or even dramatically.

Noah Solloway should have got the Tony Soprano treatment in as far as how much the writers explored his inner world but instead the show’s creators decided it didn’t matter. They didn’t answer the question of why this happens to modern men.

If nothing else Noah Solloway can be a blueprint or foundation for those telling this story in the future.

2. Ciro Di Marizio- Gomorrah

About as slimy and as low down as a television character can possibly be. Ciro represents Machiavellian criminality pushed to it’s extremes.

When writers plot a character’s trajectory, they often fill it with moments that make the character more endearing. Exploring the relationship the character may have with a child, friend or spouse that makes you see the character’s more genuine/compassionate/likeable side. The writers of Gomorrah did plenty of that with Ciro.

However, they didn’t hesitate to show you just how off-the-rails and downright evil Ciro could be.

What’s funny is that Ciro is defined by loyalty and servitude when the story begins. He is a capable captain and rises to 2nd in command when the Savastano family needs him to. However the death of his close friend and mentor changes him for the worse and he goes ham.

What follows is betrayal and Ciro basically masterminding a coup of the Savastano clan but the levels of paranoia that his new found power push him to, make him question whether it was all worth it. The world burns around him and a kind of justice is restored when Gennaro is able to take back power and restore the Savastano name.

That’s one aspect of the show that Ciro truly exemplifies in that he rises to the top but the throne never truly feels like it’s his.

He is Iago-like in his ability to understand the weaknesses of people around him. He proves himself more cunning, capable, strategic, murderous and even business-minded than almost every other character. Every character except for Pietro Savastano (the man he betrays) and Gennaro Savastano.

The show goes to great lengths to put forth the idea that crime families in Naples are on the same level as the pope. True modern day monarchies. Royal families that have the power to benefit or harm anyone around them. People bow their heads to them when they walk in public and use reverential terms when addressing them. They will often have salons, jewelers or restaurants cleared out so they can enjoy the establishment in ostentatious privacy.

When you look at it like that, Ciro was always an outsider. The difference between just sitting on the throne and being born of the throne.

In that way maybe Ciro’s story is about redemption.

He eventually sides with Gennaro Savastano again, helping him get his wife and daughter back after they’re kidnapped. He does this by essentially lying to/duping a crew of young dealers from Florence to fund this hostage rescue and then he offers himself as a sacrifice when the Florentines demand blood.

At his best Ciro served the clan and went to great lengths to restore what he had destroyed.

1. Marlo Stanfield- The Wire

Is there any greater?

Sure there are characters like Tony Soprano whose world and whose inner thoughts the audience gets more familiar and intimate with. Within the same shared universe as Marlo is a character like Stringer Bell and the writers of the Wire go to great lengths to understand and convey his moral conflict as a drug kingpin turned wannabe real estate tycoon.

Marlo is something purer though.

You don’t need to know his inner-most thoughts like Tony because his utmost desire is simple, he wants to be the top kingpin of Baltimore. What more do you want?

He does not share Stringer’s moral complexity because unlike Stringer he is not conflicted at all. He’s not a drug dealer playing businessman, he’s just a drug dealer and that’s all he ever wanted to be.

From the start of season 3, it was fascinating watching this man move about on the screen with a confidence reserved for the richest and most talented. Indeed Marlo proves he has both in bundles.

He outwits the older drug kingpin in Stringer Bell by maintaining independence from the Co-Op. He matches Avon Barksdale’s war effort step-for-step after Avon comes home from prison. He outsmarts the wily, Proposition Joe in order to learn how to launder his money and then get access to the Greeks.

It was fascinating watching Marlo avoid pitfalls, monopolize Baltimore, out-think his older counterparts and grow his empire to the scope that he did.

There’s a youtube video that compiled all of Marlo’s scenes from his 3 seasons on The Wire and it pretty much plays like a feature film. Watch it here if you dig Marlo as much as I do.

You’re not watching a drug dealer become a kingpin, or at the very least that’s what I believe. It has more to do with watching the younger generation upset the order, and in a lot of ways that’s what Marlo represents. From the moment Marlo shows up, all old agreements are null and void. He does this over and over again throughout his story. Constantly upsetting the order and establishing his own.

Indeed Marlo isn’t aware that this is what he’s doing. He’s acting on ambition, arrogance and naivety.

It speaks volumes that most of the characters on this list have on-screen relationships that explore their personalities, like the aforementioned Ciro’s relationship with his daughter. Marlo has none of that.

Marlo’s most revealing relationship is his rivalry with Omar Little, a man he only ever encounters once. The continuation of their feud happens because Marlo refuses to let any perceived slight towards him slide. One way of looking at what this shows is that Marlo is both egoist and perfectionist, the latter of which is actually very prized personality traits in today’s business environment. The combination of the two is actually commonly seen among CEO’s and top executives.

Marlo shows every weakness and drawback of youth while exposing the follies of the more seasoned and experienced in his field. A walking contradiction in that way.

#tv show #hbo #the wire #the sopranos #the affair #gomorrah #chris partlow #tony soprano #noah solloway #ciro di marizio #marlo stanfield

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ichayalovesyou · 4 years ago

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The Undiscovered Country (Live Reaction)

CAPTAIN SULU OF THE EXCELSIOR CAPTAIN SULU OF THE EXCELSIOR CAPTAIN SULU OF THE EXCELSIOR EVERYONE STFU HE DESERVED HIS OWM GODDAMN SHOWWWWW!!!! “Should we report this?” “Are you kidding??” I love him so muchhh

Oh this one is gonna be about racism isn’t it? Yup. I know people judge Kirk for his prejudice against the Klingons in this movie, and I wanna clarify that it’s still not okay, but I just... look back on all of his experiences with Klingons, and he became less and less chill with them as they kept doing stuff to him and his crew, torturing Spock, Sherman’s planet, torturing Chekov, the ugly decisions in A Private Little War then on top of that they killed a son he never got the chance to connect with because his ex never allowed him custody. They almost cost him the chance to bring Spock back on top of that too. I’m not saying it’s not right, and whether it’s justified is subjective, but I also know he learns his lesson in this film. It makes me think of Katara’s arc in S3 of ATLA, how much she hated (understandably) Zuko and the Fire Nation, how she almost killed the man who killed her mother, but then didn’t. If we can love her still with that character growth, I see no reason to suddenly hate Jim.

“Logic is the beginning of wisdom Valeris” god I love Spock, he’s grown so much ☺️ also maaaaan everyone is old now lol, wait?! Where’s Bones?! Oh there he is! Oh wow I can smell the traitor on Valeris she is acting extremely shady! Oh hey it’s General Chang!! I’ve heard of this guy!! Apoliticality hall of fame up in here huh ST? Damn. Klingons love them some Shakespeare lol. Nice Scotty! Ohhhh Chang that was a loaded question, oof thanks for saving your grumpy husband. Ooooh man I love dinner scenes like these, the tension, the delicate conversation, the unspoken words ugh hell yeah. Oof!

Chancellor made a DAMN good point there! Calling Kirk out on his shit before they left! Yessssssss!! Lol everyone is hung FUCK WHAT JUST HAPPENED??? OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK!!! That Zero G effect is cool as fuck! Oh no oh no oh no oh no the war is being staged oh god oh no oh shit oh shit ohhhhhh no!! Ohhhhhhhhhh shittttt this is B A D. Ok so Klingon blood is pink? Huh.

Even with Jim’s prejudice he still values this peace than he does his feelings and that is a Captain Kirk ass thing to do. Bones being fucking AWESOME! Ohhhh nooooo, I liked Gorkon 😔 “Don’t let it end this way Captain.” Wowwww that was cool ass last words. “I sympathize Mr. Scott” growth 🌿 oh hey Sarek is back! Federation has an alien president now? Neat! Also I freaking LOVE Gorkon’s daughter, I am also growing progressively more confused by their kinda over exaggerated behavior in future TV shows? (I imagine they probably had a fanatical ideological takeover, kinda like the Vulcans and Surak but... violent.)

The defense attorney sounds like Michael Dorn??? I know it’s not him but still? OH MY GOD IT IS???? Cool! His name is also Worf? Weird. Awww Bones he’s GOTTA stop making me cry like this I can’t even do this oh man he’s breaking my hearrrrrt. Oh wow they really just listing everything “bad” Jim has ever done huh? Damn. CAPTAIN SULU IS BACK oh and he’s gone again damn. Ooooof penal colony punishment yiiiiikes, seems the Klingons have as outdated a prison system as we do now 😬 oh so Spock is distantly related to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Neat. Oh Spock don’t trust Valeris, I know you don’t know better yet but still 😬😬😬

Ooof this whole person thing is super interesting?? Who is this WOMAN whose informing them McCoy & Jim, I love her! I love this political intrigue murder mystery stuff!! Those Wargs look AMAZING wow, loving seeing TOS crew with a budget love it! “Not everyone keeps their genitals in the same place Captain.” OH MY GOD 😂😂😂 oh it’s McKirk hours boys, and awww even in a Klingon prison Jim’s prejudice is decaying. McCoy is DUDE WHAT IS WITH YOU?? And I agree, even as an old man Jim is a lil’ bit it a slut. WAIT CHRISTIAN SLATER???? That was a weird cameo. Even after he made out with that lady he was like “damn, what is wrong with me??” Lol

WAIT IS MATIRA A CHANGELING?? That transformation was VERY gooey?? I mean I know there are a bunch of shapeshifter races but still???? Hey watch McCoy is gonna give out from the cold first cuz he’s a southern damsel just you wait. Aaaaaand it took 5 minutes! 😂 he’s immune to dinosaurs but vulnerable to cold. Bullshit Uhura doesn’t know Klingon??? What was that?!?! Oh she’s not a Changeling. TWO KIRKS AGAIN???? How many times is this now, four? 😂😂

Now they’re close enough to kiss lmfao KISS DAMNIT! Aw. Uh oh. I have never, NEVER seen Spock this posed off ohhhh my god. OH MY GOD HE JUST SMACKED THAT SHIT OUT OF HER HAND. Ooof I need to sit down (I say sitting down) way to frickin kick Jim right in his soul with his own words damn Valeris... wow this is so GOOD, fuck. Oh man, the amount of personal strength, feelings of hatred and betrayal, and circumstance it takes for Spock to FORCIBLY meld with someone when we all know how he feels about consent 😨 this is like, the only ONLY situation I can imagine him, in character, EVER doing this to anyone. Wow... wow. Oh my god. OH MY GOD. Ohhhhhh wow, that’s gonna haunt Spock for the rest of his life... fuck.

SULU IS HERE TO SAVE THE DAYYYYYYY WE LOVE HIM!!! Awwww look at these too poor idiots regretting their moral transgressions :( they’re so married. Over here examining prejudices and stuff, I need to study this screenplay oh my goddddd. This is so GOOD oh my god. Kittomer Accord hours!! Here we go! Oh MAN Chang is a cool ass villain!! Here we gooooooooo!!! EXCELSIOR IS HERE TO HELP!! Aw Spones out here flirting before they go save peace in their time, love that! This battle tastes like a beautiful marriage between Balance of Terror and Conscience of A King 😍 YEAH SCOTTY!!! And thus, Kirk completes his character growth. Lol and then everyone claaaaaaped.

Man, Sulu and the Excelsior really deserved their own his Star Trek show, something I hope they will someday remedy! Awwww that little love letter to TNG and all future Treks at the end heck yeh ☺️

#star trek #star trek vi: the undiscovered country #the undiscovered country #Star Trek tos #star trek tos movies #tos liveblog #liveblogging

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northernindigenousbeautyhailey · 3 years ago

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TAMRA JEWEL KEEPNESS.

FEW CHILDREN IN CANADA JUST VANISH. Fewer still stay gone for longer than a couple of days. Some are found alive, others are hurt or killed, but rarely does a child simply disappear. The RCMP’s National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains database lists 147 missing children, in a country of more than 35 million people. Of the sixty children under the age of twelve, a quarter are thought to have been abducted by their parents. A large portion of the others were lost to apparent accidents or misadventure, falling through ice or swept away in the pull of wild rivers, their bodies never recovered. The database shows twenty-four children in the past sixty years who have inexplicably disappeared. Because there are so few, we know them. In Edmonton, there is Tania Murrell, six when she vanished while walking home from school for lunch in January 1983. In Toronto, Nicole Morin, eight when she disappeared from a condominium building in July 1985. Michael Dunahee was four years old when he went missing from a playground in Victoria in 1991. In Regina, there is only Tamra Keepness.

THE LAST TIME anyone saw Tamra, she was five years old, with bobbed black hair and soft, round cheeks. In one picture, she wears a T-shirt dotted with flowers, standing against the colourful collage of a classroom wall. Her smile is broad and open, her eyes lively. She was so smart that her mother called her “my little Einstein,” so feisty that when a little boy pushed her once, Tamra shoved him right back, and harder. She liked playing Mario Kart on Nintendo and climbing her favourite tree, down the block from her house.

July 6, 2004, was the first time Sergeant Ron Weir would hear Tamra’s name. He was getting ready to leave on vacation that day when he got an urgent call back to the police station. Weir was a veteran cop with the Regina Police Service and head of emergency services, which included search and rescue. In a meeting, officers from the major crimes unit laid out what they knew: sometime between the night of Monday, July 5, and the morning of Tuesday, July 6, a five-year-old girl had gone missing from her home in central Regina.

Weir had been a police officer for twenty years. He knew that kids often went missing and turned up safe a short time later. Sixty-five percent of missing children and teens are located within the first day, and almost 90 percent within the first week. But Weir also knew that Tamra was too young to get far as a runaway. Patrol officers had already checked the neighbourhood to make sure Tamra hadn’t wandered away or ended up at the house of a playmate or relative, as was often the case with missing children. They’d found nothing. Even in the early hours of the investigation, Weir suspected this case would be different.

TAMRA LIVED with her mother, stepfather, and five siblings at 1834 Ottawa Street, a shabby brown-and-white two-storey with a windowed porch at the front. The house stood between 11th and 12th avenues, just east of downtown Regina. The neighbourhood was a mix of long-time elderly residents, young families drawn by low prices for heritage houses, and ramshackle homes where residents struggled with poverty and addiction. The area was sometimes known as the “low stroll,” a place where women and girls sold their bodies for drugs or booze and men drove around looking to buy them, circling the neighbourhood in trucks and station wagons. Many of the women and girls who lived or worked in the area were First Nations, like Tamra. Long before calls for a federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women would dominate the political conversation, women were going missing from those streets. It was from that same area that nineteen-year-old Annette Kelly Peigan disappeared in 1983, followed by eighteen-year-old Patsy Favel in 1984 and Joyce Tillotson in 1993. Two years later, two young white men picked up a woman named Pamela George, sexually assaulted her, and beat her to death.

The last public development came in November 2014, when a Reddit user posted to the website a scrawled map with the words: “Location of Tamra Keepness, check the wells.”

Tamra’s house was less than a block from the Oskana Centre, a halfway house for federal parolees, and not far from the Salvation Army’s Waterston House, a residence and shelter inhabited by former inmates and men struggling with drugs, alcohol, and psychiatric issues. Residents of both facilities had been responsible for serious attacks in the past. Just four months earlier, convicted violent sex offender Randy Burgmann had lured a woman into his room at Waterston House with alcohol, before violently sexually assaulting her and leaving her beside a dumpster to die. The Oskana Centre had previously been home to both serial rapist Larry Deckert and Billy John Francis Whitedeer, who began committing violent sexual offences on children when he was ten years old. A few blocks farther was the Ehrle Hotel, one of the worst bars in town, from which patrons spilled soggy and staggering onto the sidewalk, and which appeared regularly in police reports and court testimony.

Police also had serious questions about what was happening at 1834 Ottawa Street. There was a broken window and blood spatter in the porch. Social Services had been involved with the family since not long after the oldest child was born in 1993, and there had been more than fifty reports made to crisis workers, most often about Tamra’s mother’s use of alcohol and drugs, and neglect of the children. Her mother’s boyfriend had a history of violence and domestic assault. In most cases, investigators knew, children are hurt by people closest to them.

POLICE STARTED with a thorough search of the area immediately around the home, then cast their efforts outward in an expanding grid. As the sun rose on the morning of July 7, 2004, the search effort intensified. First, there were ten officers, then twenty, then more. Some officers accompanied trained volunteer search teams; others questioned family members and potential witnesses, going door-to-door gathering leads or chasing down tips. The RCMP training academy provided cadets, and members of the public soon began arriving on their own to help.

Police set up a command-centre bus in the parking lot of a nearby church, from which Weir co-ordinated the search. Though it was an urban environment, the terrain posed serious challenges. The area was filled with overgrown yards, empty houses, piles of garbage. Tamra weighed forty pounds, and stood three foot five. There were so many places a child could hide or get trapped or be held, where a child’s body could be concealed or dumped. Searchers in orange vests worked in grids, knocking on doors, inspecting junked cars and crumbling garages, peering under discarded mattresses and piles of wood, looking down manholes. Police stopped garbage pickups, checking all the bins in the neighbourhood, the trash putrid and reeking in the summer heat. Some bins had already been emptied, so plans were made to search the dump as well.

And what if she had been taken farther? Not far away were industrial areas, large abandoned lots and buildings, Wascana Creek, and beyond that, the vast Prairie. With a thirteen-hour head start, someone in a vehicle could have had Tamra in Vancouver before she was reported missing.

When they were not speaking to police, members of Tamra’s family waited anxiously on the fringes, watching the searchers, eyeing the growing assembly of reporters and news crews holding out microphones and pointing camera lenses. “It’s not like her to go off by herself,” said Tamra’s father, Troy Keepness, sitting on the front steps of his ex-wife’s house, his voice tight with worry. “We’re trying to do our best to get her back.”

Weir worked in the command-centre bus, surrounded by maps and whiteboards. A scribe logged every aspect of the search in real time, recording ideas and progress. No one wanted to break, not for food or rest. Everyone knew the situation grew more serious with every passing hour. As the heat of the day gave way to evening, Weir stood outside and looked up. A strong wind had come in, and storm clouds were spreading, darkening the Prairie sky.

The next day, police strung crime-scene tape around Tamra’s house and the one next door, drawing it through the back alley and across six garages, long slashes of yellow dividing the street. Officers guarded the perimeter while forensic investigators went in and out of the house in boots and masks. “While we don’t have any direct evidence that Tamra has come to any harm, we also don’t know where she is,” police spokeswoman Elizabeth Popowich told reporters. “And if, in fact, this comes to a point where we determine that she’s come to some harm and it’s because of a criminal act, this location could potentially be the scene of some evidence.”

THERE WERE three adults in the house that evening: the children’s mother, Lorena Keepness; her boyfriend, Dean McArthur; and a family friend named Russell Sheepskin, who had been staying with the family. All three had come and gone during the night, and investigators were starting to question their movements. There were no signs of forced entry to the house, and there were gaps, inconsistencies in their timelines that didn’t make sense to investigators.

The story the three told publicly, compiled from various interviews, was that Lorena and McArthur got into an argument while watching a movie on Monday evening, and McArthur and Sheepskin left the house around 8:30 p.m. to go drinking. The men returned briefly to drop off a bottle of formula for the baby, then left again. Lorena went out around 11 p.m, kissing Tamra goodbye before she went. The oldest child in the house was ten-year-old Summer, the youngest was Lorena and McArthur’s nine-month-old baby. Lorena returned briefly to check on the children and then left again around midnight. At about 3 a.m., Sheepskin returned home drunk and saw Tamra sleeping on the couch. Not long after, McArthur got back to the house and assaulted Sheepskin on the porch, punching him through a window and then stomping on his head. (Both men later said the fight had nothing to do with Tamra.) Sheepskin walked alone to the hospital to get stitches, and McArthur went to stay at his aunt’s house a few blocks away. Though it should have been a short walk, he said he got lost and kept passing out as he walked there. He didn’t arrive for at least two hours, until 5 or 5:30 a.m. Meanwhile, Lorena got home around 3:15 or 3:30 a.m., climbed in through a window, and passed out on the couch. She said that she got up to undo the latch on the door for her mother around 8 or 9 a.m. and that the two eldest children, Summer and Rayne, left on their own in the morning to attend a summer day-camp. Lorena didn’t realize Tamra wasn’t there until about three hours later, when the five-year-old didn’t come downstairs. At 12:16 p.m., a family member called the police and told them Tamra was missing.

Rayne, who was eight, said he had gone to bed squeezed into the space between the wall and mattresses piled on the floor in an upstairs bedroom. He told his mother he felt Tamra get up at some point, the slight movement of a child’s weight. All he could remember was that it was light outside.

FRIDAY WAS hot again and wet from the previous night’s rain. An odour of decay hung in the air around Ottawa Street. Tamra had been gone three full days and become national news. Her picture seemed to be everywhere, hanging on street poles and store windows. In news stories, she became “missing five-year-old Tamra Keepness,” but more often she was just Tamra, as if we knew her. The front page of the Regina Leader-Post spoke directly to her, asking, “Tamra, Where Did You Go?”

Tips flooded in to police. On the street, there were rumours that Tamra had been seen at a dollar store with an older woman. Business owners in the neighbourhood said detectives had been looking for a middle-aged white man named Roch or Rocky, but police wouldn’t confirm whether that was related to the search. Lorena and McArthur said they gave police the names of five people they thought could be suspects, including a man who had befriended Tamra and later been discovered to be a pedophile. For a while, there was even a theory that Tamra had never existed at all, that she had been a scam to get extra money from Social Services. (Hospital records proved that was not the case.)

Searchers were coming from around the province to volunteer, streaming into the city from towns and First Nations communities, motivated by the faces of their own children or grandchildren to help in whatever way they could. “I’ve got a boy, and he’s twenty-one,” said Jerry Scott, one of the volunteers who joined the search. “And if he left, I’d go nuts, too.” Around the city, people organized vigils and barbecues, brought water and snacks for the searchers, wrapped ribbons around trees to show their support. Some left teddy bears and angels on the steps of Tamra’s house. Days of intensive searches had turned up lots of items that seemed as though they could be connected—clothing, a child’s shoe—but none of it belonged to Tamra. “I’m starting to go on different conclusions, like maybe someone took her, I don’t know,” Troy Keepness said. “I just hope nobody would hurt my daughter.”

WHEN Tamra had been gone a week, police announced they were suspending the ground searches. At a press conference, Regina police chief Cal Johnston announced a $25,000 reward for information and vowed, “We will find Tamra.” Police questioned sex offenders living in the area and obtained surveillance tapes from convenience stores, bars, gas stations, and the Greyhound bus depot nearby. Johnston confirmed that “criminal interference with Tamra is a distinct possibility” and drew attention back to Tamra’s house and family. “There were comings and goings from the house that night that remain not fully explained to our satisfaction, and we continue to ask those questions,” he told reporters. He would not elaborate.

Tamra’s family was growing increasingly angry at the police, and the strain of the situation was starting to show. Lorena told reporters she’d signed consent forms for police to search her house and had given her DNA, but still she felt as if they were focusing too much on her family and not enough on trying to find Tamra. She was angry that police hadn’t closed the highways out of the city and that there was no Amber Alert because police said it didn’t meet the criteria. “I’m fed up,” she told reporters. “They are wasting time. This is my little girl we’re talking about.”

The family was growing frustrated with the media, too. Lorena’s mother yelled obscenities at reporters one day, and on another, members of the family nearly came to blows with a TV reporter doing a live update from the front lawn. They had been watching the news inside the house when they heard the reporter imply what many in the city were already wondering: If not someone in that house, then who?

On July 19, two weeks after Tamra had been reported missing, police charged McArthur with assaulting Sheepskin the night Tamra disappeared. McArthur told reporters he had been interrogated for twenty hours, not about the assault, but about Tamra and about what had gone on inside the house that night. “It was always the same questions, and they were assuming that I knew the answers to those questions, but I didn’t know the answers, and I still don’t know the answers,” he said. “I would never hurt a hair on that little girl’s head.”

Two days later, Tamra’s brothers and sisters were removed from the home by child-protection officers. Tamra’s twin sister wore messy pigtails and clutched a colouring book and a yellow blanket as two women led the children away down the front steps of the house. Neither government officials nor police would say whether the children’s seizure was related to Tamra’s disappearance. When the children were gone, police searched the house again.

One night late that summer, Tamra’s father, Troy, showed up at the house with a baseball bat and confronted her stepfather, McArthur. Troy was charged with assault, though McArthur later said police “got things misunderstood.” “Everybody’s looking for answers,” he said. “We more or less talked.”

LORENA KEEPNESS was fourteen years old when she ran away from her home on the White Bear First Nation, 200 kilometres southeast of Regina. She had been in residential school for about three months, but that wasn’t what did it. For her, it was the same ugly stuff at home. She found her way to Regina. When her mom tried to take her home, Lorena wouldn’t go. She lived on the streets instead.

She had her daughter Summer Wind when she was twenty, her son Rayne Dance not long after. It was after the ultrasound for her third baby that she walked home in a daze and told her husband, Troy, “We’re having twins.” She kept repeating it until it sunk in, and then they just stood together in the kitchen and laughed. Her mother said “Way to go!” but Lorena told her, “They came from God. Not like I planted those in me.”

The babies were born on September 1, 1998. Fraternal twin girls, each weighing more than six pounds, carried almost right to term and curved around one another like pieces of a puzzle. Lorena and Troy split up when the twins were little, and after that, the girls stayed sometimes with their mother, sometimes with their father or with other relatives. Lorena and Troy each struggled with substance abuse, and their lives were sometimes too troubled and unstable to have the children with them. At five, Tamra was bold and courageous, and protective of her twin sister. Once, Lorena heard a soft knock in the middle of the night and opened the door to find the twins standing there. The children had left their father’s house and walked four blocks back to Lorena’s in the middle of the night, Tamra leading her sister by the hand as they found their way through the dark. REGINA POLICE received more than a thousand tips in the first six weeks after Tamra’s disappearance. At one point, a Volkswagen van that had been stolen the night Tamra disappeared was found burned outside the city. A jail guard told police she and a former inmate had stolen it, picked up Tamra, and then dumped the child’s body in a ravine on the Muscowpetung First Nation. Ron Weir led a week-long search on Muscowpetung, draining multiple beaver dams with compressor pumps, while searchers slogged through water up to their hips. The jail guard later confessed she had made up the story. She was charged with mischief and wrote a letter apologizing to the police. In court, her lawyer said she had been trying to get her abusive boyfriend locked up again.

Returning from medical leave to the police department in the fall of 2004, superintendent Troy Hagen could feel how Tamra’s disappearance was weighing on his colleagues. Hagen noticed it in everyone he spoke to, from the police chief down, whether they were involved with the case or not. Sergeant Rod Buckingham, one of the lead investigators, was among those who felt the growing frustration. “It’s a mystery,” he would say. “And I don’t like mysteries.”

Officers had spoken with more than 6,000 people by then, but there had been no arrests, and leads were drying up. Shortly after, a special task force was struck to re-examine the case, to see whether anything had been missed. The name of the project was iskwesis ayishowak e mamayahi, a Cree term meaning “little girl bring people together.”

TWELVE YEARS LATER, Lorena Keepness spends her days doing odd jobs and picking bottles, trading them in at the depot for cash. She is forty-three and lives with her eldest son in a rundown shack of a house on Victoria Avenue, a fifteen-minute walk from Ottawa Street. Lorena’s children were never permanently returned to her custody after the disappearance, and the three babies she had after that were all taken by Social Services, too. Tamra’s twin sister is seventeen now. Lorena says she is an athlete, smart and beautiful. Lorena lost her family pictures when someone threw all her stuff in the garbage a few years ago. The only photos she has of Tamra now are the ones on missing-child posters.

Tamra’s twin and her older sister, Summer, don’t want to be interviewed. Neither does Tamra’s father, Troy. McArthur couldn’t be reached. Lorena needs a six-pack of Black Ice beer to talk. She doesn’t really want to be interviewed either. She has never liked reporters or their questions, and it hurts to talk about that time. “But part of me wants to,” she says, as her face crumples. “Part of me needs to share what the fuck happened. Someone stole my child.”

Lorena has heard many theories about what happened to her daughter. Some believe Tamra wandered away and was abducted by a driver cruising the area or that she got lost, then crawled in somewhere so small she has never been found. Other theories focus on the adults in the house that night. Some officers will say off-the-record that they think Tamra is in the dump but that they just couldn’t find her in the mountains of debris. Many in the city believe that Lorena and McArthur sold or traded Tamra to pay off a cocaine debt. Lorena has heard that one the most. One night, she was at a bar and heard some women talking, loud enough so she could hear. “Yeah, she sold her kid for dope. She has a whole bunch of babies. She has kids just to sell them for drugs.” Her friend told her not to listen, but Lorena couldn’t ignore it. She swore at the women, promised she would get them for even thinking she could do that to her child. They met at the same bar again the next day, and that time they fought, a tangle of hair and fists. One of them had a knife and slashed her twice on the back of her arm. More scars to wear for life. It wasn’t the only time. One night, she was attacked in Moose Jaw. Not long ago, a woman shouted “Baby killer!” at her across the street.

Lorena and Dean McArthur are still together, on and off—“more on than off,” she says. Police tried hard to turn them against each other, but she always believed him in the end. He may be all kinds of things, she says, but he’s not a baby killer. “If I thought he did something to my daughter, I would have killed him myself,” she says. “I think the police were just so sure. They figured, ‘These guys are a bunch of nobodies. She did her own child.’ They already had their conclusions drawn before they even tried to look for anything.”

The suggestion she could have had something to do with her daughter’s disappearance still pushes Lorena to the point of violence. You can see her eyes flash, her muscles tighten at the question. But she holds back— it’s not worth going to jail. She’s had enough of the police, has grown used to the accusations. In the past twelve years, she’s repeated her story publicly many times, and it has never really changed.

REGINA POLICE have never released full details about the investigation into Tamra’s disappearance, on the grounds that it remains an open case that they still hope to solve. In an interview, Troy Hagen, now Regina’s police chief, would not speak about any working theories or confirm any specifics of the investigation, including whether one of the people questioned about Tamra’s disappearance had failed a polygraph test. Instead, Hagen echoed what police have said since the beginning: That there remain important unanswered questions about the comings and goings from the house on Ottawa Street that night. That they will continue to investigate every tip. That they won’t stop looking for Tamra until they find her. He pointed to cases in the United States where children have been gone for years, sometimes decades, and then been found alive. In Canada, twelve-year-old Abby Drover was held in an underground bunker in Port Moody, British Columbia, for six months after being abducted by her neighbour in 1976. There was an intensive search of her community—including by her abductor—but she had been only feet away from her house the entire time. She was found alive. It seems impossible, but it happens. “I refuse to lose hope,” Hagen says.

The years since Tamra’s disappearance have exposed the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. Suspected serial killers are facing charges in the Prairies, but there has been no public indication that Tamra’s disappearance may be connected to any of those cases. Hagen said police have also explored a possible connection with thirteen-year-old Courtney Struble, who disappeared from Estevan, a city 200 kilometres from Regina, four days after Tamra was last seen. Investigators initially believed that Struble was a runaway, and she had been gone for seven years before RCMP announced that her case had become a homicide investigation. No one has ever been charged, and her remains have never been located. Hagen says it’s strange to have two unsolved missing-children cases linked so closely in time and geographic proximity. He says the possibility of a connection was “very much” explored by police, but there doesn’t appear to be a correlation. The police investigation into Tamra’s disappearance is one of the largest and costliest in Regina’s history, but Hagen says it has never been about the money. If there were more leads or work for investigators, the police chief says he would reconvene the task force “in a heartbeat.” But the flood of tips has slowed. The reward for information that leads to finding her, now $50,000, sits unclaimed. The last public development came in November 2014, when a Reddit user with the name MySecretIsOut posted a scrawled map with the words: “Location of Tamra Keepness, check the wells.” The person later wrote that the map belonged to their grandmother and had come from a great-aunt who had visited an inmate in Alberta. “We, like many others, haven’t forgotten about you, Tamra, and continue to search and hope you are found,” the person posted. Police searched twenty-one wells around Muscowpetung but found nothing.

Sheepskin died on January 1, 2009, “with his family by his side,” according to his obituary. Many of the police officers who worked on Tamra’s case have retired or moved from the department to other jobs. Hagen says he thinks of Tamra whenever he is walking through the forest, not looking for her but always half expecting to see her there. Sometimes he looks at people he passes on the street, examining their faces and imagining what Tamra might look like now.

THROUGH THE YEARS, Lorena has developed her own theories about what happened to her daughter. These days, she mainly wonders about a drifter who used to stay with them, a woman Lorena knew from when she was a girl. A woman who sometimes told people she was pregnant even though she wasn’t, who Lorena knew by one name but whose medical documents said something else. The woman was around so much that Lorena’s children called her Big Auntie. Big Auntie had been staying at the house before Tamra disappeared, but left after she and Lorena had a falling out. Lorena says it took a long time to realize Big Auntie wasn’t coming around any more. When she did, she put word out on the streets, but no one there had seen her either. Big Auntie didn’t even show up for her own sister’s funeral in Regina a few years back. Lorena says she told the police about Big Auntie many times, but doesn’t know whether they ever found her, or whether they even looked. “She’s just gone now,” Lorena says. “Same time as my child.” Maybe it’s something. Or maybe Big Auntie is missing, too.

When I ask Lorena whether she thinks Tamra will ever be found, she struggles for an answer. “I don’t know,” she says. “But can I tell you about a dream I had?” There are two, both so vivid it’s as if they were real. In one, Tamra is inside a big house in a city Lorena has never seen. There are silk clothes draped around, and broad windows, and Tamra is upstairs, sitting on the edge of a bathtub putting on stockings. She is grown, with dark, shiny hair like her mother’s but cut straight all around. In the other dream, Tamra is still a little girl, running into her mother’s arms. “There you are!” Lorena says. “There you are!” She picks up her child and holds her, until Tamra wriggles free and is lost again.

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