#Which ply is best for home?

[sylvanply2024de]

Which ply is best for home?

Your home is a haven, a reflection of your taste and a space built to last. When it comes to building or revamping your living area, choosing the best plywood in 2024 is crucial. At Sylvan Ply, we understand that navigating the diverse options can be overwhelming. But worry not, for we're here to guide you through the perfect ply for each area of your home!.

[sylvanply1234]

Which ply is best for home?

Your home is a haven, a reflection of your taste and a space built to last. When it comes to building or revamping your living area, choosing the best plywood in 2024 is crucial. At Sylvan Ply, we understand that navigating the diverse options can be overwhelming. But worry not, for we're here to guide you through the perfect ply for each area of your home. Get in touch with us to learn more.

[sylvanply]

Best plywood company in India

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[lightseoul]

endearment

synopsis. first, second, and third instances; it's official, there's something going on with bakugou and you're determined to find out.

cw. fem!reader, pro hero!katsuki, aged-up (26 yrs old), established relationship, a lot of cursing

word count. 1.9k words

The first time it happens, you don’t think too much about it.

“Bakugou,” you call out from where you’re snuggled on his corduroy sofa. “Can you pass me some tissue?”

From the bathroom, you could hear a faint ‘tch’.

The sound of house slippers colliding with the tiled floor grows louder and louder until he finally emerges with a roll in his hand, which he promptly tosses to you.

You catch it—barely—and grin when you feel the thickness of the 3-ply roll, no doubt a staple in Bakugou Katsuki’s pristine apartment unit.

Go figure.

He’s circling the coffee table and plopping down next to you when your phone rings.

Confused, you pick up your phone to see a picture of you and Kirishima from your last get-together—his caller ID. Curious, Bakugou peers over your shoulder, frowning upon seeing his other best friend’s name.

“Isn’t he on patrol right now with Midoriya?” you ask.

Bakugou shrugs. “Answer it.”

Humming an okay, you click the accept button.

“Hey, Y/N! Is Bakubro with you right now?

You eye Bakugou, who’s pretending to be disinterested and not at all eavesdropping. “Yeah. What’s up?”

Kirishima laughs, “Can you tell him to check our group chat? Limited edition All Might merch just dropped.”

At that, you chuckle. “Got this Ei. He’s actually just beside me right now. I’ll make sure to tell him. And tell Izuku I said hi.”

You can practically hear the smile on his face when he says: “Thanks, bro! You’re the best.”

With that, you press the end call button and turn slightly to regard Bakugou, who’s now staring at his hands on his knees, what looks like a scowl etched on his face.

You poke at his side, trying to be playful.

“Aren’t you curious about what he had to say?”

He shakes his head before standing up and heading—again—to the bathroom.

Huh.

The second time it happens, it leaves you and your friends bewildered.

“And so that’s how yesterday’s patrol ended up with me getting a special interview with TBS,” Mina says proudly.

You chuckle, amused. “That’s amazing, Mina.”

From where she’s seated beside you in the booth of your favorite bar, she grins. “Yeah, well I try!”

Kirishima, who’s sitting opposite the both of you, chimes in. “You have to tell Bakubro that story.”

“Where is he, anyway?” Mina asks.

You squint, looking through the glass windows of the bar. “I think he’s still searching for a parking space.”

At that, Mina cocks her head to the side in confusion. “But it’s been a while since you guys arrived?”

“Yeah…”

You pick up your phone, thumbing through the contacts until you arrive at the one marked with the red asterisk.

Emergency contact.

You’re in the middle of quickly typing out a where r u when Mina, the ever meddling Mina, peers over your shoulder unbeknownst to you.

“You named his contact…Bakugou?”

Attention divided between texting and talking with your friends, you retort lamely with: “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” Kirishima pipes up. “It’s just that couples usually save each other’s contacts as sweet pet names.”

Mina nods in agreement. “For example, I have Ei saved as baby, with a red heart.”

Before you can even defend yourself, let alone playfully gag at the nickname Mina has given Kirishima, Bakugou appears at your table, sitting down at the booth next to Kirishima and in front of you, uncharacteristically quiet.

When you lock eyes, you raise your eyebrows ever so slightly— denoting a question: everything okay?—but he doesn’t sustain eye contact.

Instead, he stands up again quite abruptly.

“Restroom,” he explains curtly, stuffing his hands in his pockets before walking away, leaving the three of you speechless.

The third time it happens, it happens in his childhood home.

You didn’t expect to meet his parents this early on in the relationship; you haven’t even been together for a year. Yet Bakugou was determined to introduce you to them, said something about his sharp intuition telling him something or whatever.

Which is how you now find yourself in the living room of the place where he grew up, poring over photo albums like how dehydrated animals in hot climates pore over water.

With his mother, of all people.

“And this is him when his quirk first manifested,” Mitsuki explains, speeding through the pages of the album whilst grinning. You can’t help but grin back.

She points to a rather old photograph on the last page. “And this one is him playing baseball in 8th grade.”

Intrigued, you move closer to see the picture, smiling when you spot him, crimson eyes and ash blonde locks sticking out like a rose amidst the thorny bushes—impossible to miss.

Wanting to fill the air, you offer: “Bakugou was a very cute kid, Mitsuki-san.”

In a flash, she looks up at you, a puzzled look decorating her beautiful features, instead of the look of gratitude you were aiming for.

When you look back at her with confused eyes yourself, she asks, “You still call each other by your last name?”

“Oh—I—uh…”

You eye Bakugou who’s in the kitchen, chopping fresh vegetables for the salad, as per his mother’s instructions.

You convince yourself that he’s got to be out of earshot.

Stumbling over your words again, you scramble for purchase. “Well—”

To your relief, Mitsuki only laughs good-naturedly in response, cutting you off.

“Don’t worry, Y/N. I know my Katsuki can be a bit intimidating sometimes, but inside he’s a real softie who appreciates the little things.”

You could simply nod in response.

From the kitchen, Bakugou announces: “I’m going to the restroom. Start eating without me.”

A fourth time does not end up happening.

Instead, you find yourself riding the elevator to the rooftop of Bakugou’s apartment complex, where he’s already waiting for you.

‘I’ll just go ahead’ is what he said after both of you finished cleaning the dishes from dinner. ‘Make sure to catch up’.

Before you know it, the elevator doors slide open and you step out, suddenly becoming acutely aware of the heavy feeling now sitting in your stomach.

Will you finally figure out why Bakugou’s been acting a bit off lately?

You immediately spot him, back turned against you, and arms folded across his chest, resting on top of the railing.

Slowly, you walk towards him, ultimately situating yourself to his right.

A tense—albeit not uncomfortable—silence falls upon you.

Neither of you says anything until you pipe up with: “Is there bad news?”

At that, he finally turns his head to look at you. “Hah?”

You school your expression into a pensive one. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“What?” he exclaims, his entire body now facing you in a frantic hurry. “No!”

You chuckle. “Then what’s with the bad news face?”

“Bad news face?”

Nodding, you continue. “The face you make when you hear or are about to deliver bad news. It’s the more solemn iteration of your scowl.”

“What—” he scoffs, although he sounds pleased, “—You’ve fucken memorized my expressions?”

You shrug sheepishly.

When he doesn’t say anything in return, you prod further. “How bad is it?”

He huffs, breaking eye contact. “No bad news. Just—it’s…shit, never mind.”

“It’s just me,” you remind him. “It’s okay.”

With your reassurance, you can see his body relaxing a little bit, though he still refuses to say anything.

A few more seconds of tense silence pass before Bakugou finally looks you straight in the eye.

“Why the fuck do you call me Bakugou?

You stare at him. “...because it’s your name?”

Whatever he wanted to hear from you, it sure wasn’t that.

He scoffs. “Yeah? Well, why do you call shitty hair Ei or shitty deku Izuku? Have I failed some fucking test to qualify for first name privileges?”

“What are you talking about?”

This is what made him act weirdly the past week?

“Don’t make me say it again, woman,” he spits, although there’s not much venom coating his words.

“God,” he combs through his hair in frustration, “this is fucking humiliating.”

“I call you Bakugou because that’s what I called you back when we were just friends,” you try to reason. “Also, I…I didn’t want to start calling you Katsuki out of nowhere.

“I didn’t know you wanted me to,” you finish, voice small.

“Who said I wanted you to call me that?”

 You shoot him a knowing look.

You stare at each other for a few more seconds before he groans in defeat, turning to face the city skyline instead of you. You follow suit, opting to look up at the stars that seem to be twinkling extra tonight.

Moments pass with neither of you saying anything.

You gently bump his shoulder with yours.

“For what it’s worth,” you start, “I don’t think there’s anything to be embarrassed about.”

He only grunts in response. You press on.

“The fact that you just told me all this…I don’t know. It makes me happy. It’s sort of like saying you care enough about our relationship to communicate even the most ‘humiliating’—your words not mine—of concerns.

“Of course I fucking do, dumbass,” he retorts. “Wouldn’t have confessed to you if I was just gonna chicken out at some point like a loser.”

You smile at him and his words, and you hope your adoration translates to your face, because the thing with Bakugou is that sometimes you have to deliver the message without having to utter the words—all to preserve the moment before it’s adulterated by shame.

“Right,” you look at him, “why don’t you call me by my first name?”

“Figured I haven’t earned it yet,” he says bluntly.

Amused, you push forward. “And how were you planning to earn it?”

He shoots you a glare. “By being the best fucking boyfriend, that’s how.”

At that, you cannot help the delighted laughter that erupts from you.

He side-eyes you, annoyed, though a smile manages to crack through the facade.

“Stop laughing at me.”

And when you don’t: “Hey.”

“Sorry, sorry,” you exclaim, trying to catch your breath. “I’m just happy.”

He studies you for a beat, eyes fluttering across your face as if he’s searching for something. You feel yourself grow warmer under his piercing gaze.

There’s a pregnant pause before he finally says: “Call me Katsuki.”

You grin, “Okay, Katsuki.”

At your mention of his name, the scowl plastered on his face eases a little into a neutral—borderline happy—expression.

“And I’ll call you by your first name…” he declares, “if you’re fine with it or if not, just forget I said that.”

You take his hand and squeeze it before he can ramble some more.

“Sounds good to me, Katsuki.”

bonus:

“I swear,” you argue while putting on your shoes, “I can ride the subway, Katsuki.”

“At this hour?” he snorts.

“Best fucking boyfriend, remember?” he sneers as he obtains his car keys by the doorway. “Just let me do this for you.”

You relent, knowing better than to fight with Katsuki on the matter of your safety, when suddenly a brilliant idea dawns on you.

Straightening up, you say: “I don’t think I saw you drinking water after dinner, Katsuki.”

“What?”

“Go hydrate yourself,” you command.

At that, he grumbles but submits to you anyway, walking back to his tidy kitchen.

Once you see that he’s in the middle of chugging down a bottle, you call: “Katsuki?”

He grunts—the best he can do while downing a bottle of water—in response.

“Can I call you babe?”

Bakugou chokes on his spit.

tagging. @katsukis1wife @rinalou @loverboyrin @brunnetteiwik @beabe19

[druidx]

Silverhooks and Strongmount Districts

Silverhooks and Strongmount are two twin districts in the outer ring of Toreguard which butt up against the West Canal Trunk.

This makes both districts strongly predisposed to the movement of goods. However, wealth in Toreguard tends to travel from the inside out. So while Strongmount deals with prime goods, Silverhooks deals with more basic ones. Both districts also have shipwrights available - however, traveler beware, one is more likely to be swindled West of Shiverstaff Bridge...

In particular, Silverhooks has developed into a hub for fishers, gutters, net and line makers, and other sundry associated industries. The fish are either river-caught, or are transported from Navale, on the coast, using magical freezing techniques. While there are many fish markets scattered around the district, the majority of the fish prepared here is taken by barge into the center rings of the city.

Due to these industries, one can also find several small chapels and temples in this district dedicated variously to:

Solinthar - Patron of Mariners,

Hydana - God of All Waters,

Aqualis - God of Rivers,

Deep Sashelas - God of the Oceans,

Sukh - God of Storms,

Ichthys - God of Fish and Lord of Sea Creatures

Silverhooks, partly due to its high population density being squished against the outer city wall, also has a rather unsavory reputation. Buildings are shabbier, certainly, but the people being rougher is no more true than any other district of the city where wages are low and the cost of living high.

Strongmount, by comparison, is far better off. The homes are larger, all buildings have better upkeep and are less packed. This is mostly to do with the presence of several large merchant complexes, owned by influential families, which can be found on both banks of the Strongmount Canal. These merchants deal with higher priced goods far in excess of what a labourer of either district could normally afford. They bring the goods in, sort, then redistribute either via the main trunk, or overland through the Western Inner Gate (out of frame for this map).

The secondary reason for the lower density in Strongmount is the influence of an Elven commune. It is no secret that Elves revere nature and have brought several 'isles of green' into Toreguarde. One such is this commune, a long strip of green all along eastern edge of the district, against the inner wall. While it may seem just as cramped as it's twin in Silverhooks, this is majoritively down to the presence of trees and bushes which scatter the area.

While the commune itself stretches the length of the inner wall, it starts by the waters edge, where devotees of Yondalla - sometimes revered as the separate goddesses Iatro, of healing, & Usrel, of peace, - grew Her church. The clerics here are well known throughout Toreguarde as the best healers and midwives. While this reputation allows them to charge much higher than the going rate for their services, rumour has it they will never turn away a sick child. In addition to the healers in the church, there are many apothecaries and herbalists in the Eleven commune who also ply their trade, often for a much smaller sum.

[sunriseverse]

(busts through the wall) DID SOMEBODY ASK FOR DMBJ PROMPTS??

i want something sunrise but i want it to be dumb/silly. i know it's a serious au but it's about three fools so it should still be possible.

okay you said something silly. and i THINK "xiaoge who literally purrs" counts, but. i couldn't help but get feelings in it </3 wu xie's pov because i realised i'd done xiaoge AND pangzi's pov for sunrise but not wu xie's yet. (also this got LONG i am so sorry..........)

-

The first thing they do after they get Xiaoge back from that fucking rift in Changbaishan is fall into a tangle of limbs and sleep for ten hours straight.

Well, no. The first thing they do is bundle Xiaoge, who has somehow in the last decade lost the thick, fur-lined coat he’d been in when he and Wu Xie had come up here that last time, into a thick, heavy, coat that smells faintly of smoke, which had been shoved into one of the saddlebags to make it take up as little space as possible. The second thing they do is herd Xiaoge, who looks less and less distant and dazed as the moments pass, in front of a fire and ply him with the best food they can offer, here, so far from any city and proper kitchen amenities. The falling into a pile and sleeping for what feels like glorious, golden days is closer to the fifth or sixth thing that they do, but Wu Xie sort of loses track somewhere along the way, because Xiaoge’s presence, an absence rent into the very core of his being, of the world, for so, so long, is intoxicating, and Wu Xie keeps losing track of his thoughts.

“Tianzhen,” Pangzi says, knee knocking against his, warmer than the crackling fire between them, and doesn’t say anything more; just tilts his head towards Xiaoge, who’s half-buried in the voluminous folds of the coat they’d foisted on him. It makes Wu Xie’s throat lock, tight and painful, the way that, even now, after so long spent keeping him at arms length, Pangzi is still the man he loves; still one of two people who understand him in a way no other does, in a way that renders spoken communication unnecessary. With a shuddering sigh, Wu Xie lets his eyes slip closed. The threads between them—ones that Wu Xie had feared, for the past few years, would snap and break; leave Xiaoge stranded to a world Wu Xie couldn’t even imagine, to die with a mind slowly bending, breaking, shattering; leave Pangzi, one day, to snap to the horrifying awareness of it, of that break, of the bond between them, carefully nurtured, built on an aching, all-pervasive trust, not only fraying, but rent apart because of Wu Xie’s carelessness, because Wu Xie hadn’t been careful enough to keep it alive—flicker at the back of his mind. Glow, nearly, with an indescribable incandescence, a pulsing sense of warmth, of home. 

He spent long enough unable to see a way past the end of things, of a life beyond the plan; now, it’s time for him to try and make things right. He opens his eyes and smiles at Pangzi; lets his hand settle on his knee, and, for a moment, squeezes, just to let him know he’s there. And then, raising his voice, he says, “Ah, Xiaoge, come here. You’re going to freeze like that.”

Xiaoge blinks, slow. As if he hadn’t even realised he’d been sitting so far away. Then, gangly figure uncurling, he crosses the too-large distance—small as it is in reality—, and Wu Xie shifts to leave space between himself and Pangzi for Xiaoge to slot into. He does—easily, as if he’d never forgotten how; as if he’s coming home. The glance Wu Xie gets out of the side of his vision shows him Pangzi’s eyes are just as misty as his. 

So, no; sleeping together isn’t the first thing they do, technically. But it’s important enough that it feels like it.

The bedrolls they’d brought along are the type that can be combined together; Wu Xie does so while Pangzi tells Xiaoge about the terrible snowstorm they’d had to brave through on the way there, replete with taking care of a snow-blind Wu Xie in the cave they’d taken shelter in. “Our Tianzhen,” he says, with a smile and a shake of his head. “Terrible luck.” It makes Xiaoge smile, small and barely-there, and the image makes Wu Xie’s lungs burn with something he hasn’t felt in years.

Actually clambering into their makeshift bed is fairly anticlimactic; all of them are too tired to be prickly about space, or limbs, or anything besides curling close to each other. Wu Xie winds up on one side, Pangzi in the middle, and Xiaoge on the other. If this were a real bed, Pangzi would lovingly and dramatically bully Xiaoge into the middle, but a real bed is also safe in a way that being up in the mountains isn’t, and they’re both well-aware of Xiaoge’s vigilance, undulled by time. Well, no—if Wu Xie’s theories about the Hiveside are right, then he might be even more vigilant than he once was. And Wu Xie—he tries not to think too much about why Pangzi let him be on the outside.

The horses, settled down on the other side of the fire, whicker at each other, the sound a subtle hum in the night. Wu Xie lets out a breath, and settles; pillows his head on Pangzi’s chest, slings his arm across to brush fingers across Xiaoge’s side. Under him, Pangzi lets out a muffled laugh, but doesn’t comment. Xiaoge doesn’t sigh, but Wu Xie can feel the tension that bleeds out of him at the combined contact, and he curls inwards, so he’s facing them.

It’s not hard to fall asleep like that; ten years of vigilance are nothing in the face of the warmth and safety trickling down the slowly-widening bond between them. Once, Wu Xie had stood in the boiler room of a great, snaking black train. At the time, he’d been too busy thinking about other things, but right now, all he can remember is the warmth—and the heat of it pales in comparison to this, tenfold.

Some time later, he slowly swims to consciousness in the dawn light, pale, the world around them tinted a dilute blue. Under his head, Pangzi’s chest rises and falls, a slight wheezing snore drifting from his open mouth. Wu Xie’s own lips are wet with the beginnings of drool, and he reaches a clumsy hand to wipe the traces of it away. There’s a low, steady rumble that permeates the air, and his eyes snap open, his body already moving as his mind hurtles, full-speed, across a plan to get them all out of here, away from the impending avalanche—and then he catches sight of Xiaoge, long limbs pulled up and curled against Pangzi’s side, only one, slitted eye visible through the fringe of his hair, and he realises the sound is coming from him.

Pangzi, disturbed by the sudden scramble, cracks his eyes open and lets out a grumbling complaint. “Aiya, Tianzhen, you’re letting the cold in. Get back here, will you? You’re going to freeze our poor Xiaoge.”

Wu Xie blinks a couple times. “Right,” he says, hasty and belated, and gets back under the covers, only for Pangzi to drag him closer so he’s practically laying on top of him. “Hey!”

“Maybe that’ll teach you to move less,” Pangzi says, softly vindictive, and then yawns, eyes scrunching up. “...Xiaoge, is that you?” He drags Xiaoge closer, and the rumbling increases, both in intensity and pitch. The sound goes a little hitching as Xiaoge’s head lands on Pangzi’s chest, a mere hairsbreadth away from Wu Xie’s own. His eyes, no longer narrow, flash in the low-light. The rumbling is loud enough Wu Xie can feel it in his bones.

“Mn,” Xiaoge says, the sound overlaid over the rumbling. 

It takes a moment for Wu Xie to sift through his still sleep-addled thoughts to process it. “Are you...purring?” he manages, eventually, and reaches out a clumsy hand to press against Xiaoge’s chest. It rises and falls beneath his touch, rattling. “Since when can you do that?”

Xiaoge blinks at him. “Always,” he says, as if it should be obvious. Pangzi, beneath them, chokes on a laugh.

“Oh.” Wu Xie processes the words, blinking a few times. “Then why did you never...”

Xiaoge shrugs. “Forgot,” he says, the words quiet, and Wu Xie’s throat tightens. Under them, Pangzi stills, a quiet sigh slipping out. His hand comes up to card through Xiaoge’s hair, and Xiaoge’s eyes slip closed.

“Like a cat,” Pangzi says, fond and amused, after a long moment. Xiaoge doesn’t open his eyes, apparently content with the designation. Wu Xie’s lips twitch. “Who knew our Xiaoge’r was so cute.”

Xiaoge, clearly unbothered by the comment, keeps purring. Wu Xie’s mind is far too sleeplogged to figure out how the fuck that even works—is it a mechanical process that just sounds like purring? Is he tapping into the tech that lines his body? Is it instinctual? On purpose? 

“Your thoughts are too loud,” comes Xiaoge’s quiet voice. “Go to sleep.”

Wu Xie, for once obedient, surrenders. Surrounded by the warmth of the men he loves, he slips back into sleep.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Avital Norman Nathman at Rewire:

Within hours of Vice President Kamala Harris’ announcement that she had chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Donald Trump’s followers mockingly dubbed him “Tampon Tim.” Named for a recent Minnesota law that provides free menstrual products in public schools, the opposition took joy in deriding a man who signed a bill that addresses a very real public health need. I can’t be the only one who has had to stuff scratchy, one-ply toilet paper in my underwear after an ill-timed or unexpected period while in school. In fact, I know there are others like me, because as a teen, not a month went by without a friend asking if I had a spare pad or tampon.

In the days after the Tampon Tim moniker gained momentum, many friends shared their own stories of menstrual malfunctions and humiliations, where access to free supplies would have been a lifesaver. According to Alliance for Period Supplies, which leads a national network of more than 140 independent, community-based nonprofits working to end period poverty, 86 percent of people who menstruate have started their period unexpectedly in public. So to find out that Minnesota public schools are now stocking bathrooms to ensure that students, teachers, and staff have the supplies they need? I don’t think it’s shameful in the least. It’s exemplary.

However, conservatives took a cursory look at the law and decided to run with the sensationalized spin that Walz was forcing fourth-grade boys to have tampons in their bathrooms. Grasping to find some way to sell this to their base, they infused a “trans panic” on the public health policy that states Minnesota public schools “must provide students with access to menstrual products at no charge. The products must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12 according to a plan developed by the school district.” The language actually provides schools with flexibility, and nobody is being forced to use any products.

[...]

The shock and outrage over boys as young as 10 coming across a pad or tampon while at school is just a smokescreen for transphobia—because yes, there are most likely nonbinary or trans students, staff, and faculty who now really appreciate having access to health-care products they require. And perhaps, some schools will provide products in their boys’ restrooms, but as the mother of a teen son who “bravely” uses the bathroom in our home with unfettered access to tampons and pads of various sizes, I can tell you that the boys will be alright. Worst-case scenario, these young dudes get some free toys to play with. But best-case scenario, they grow up thinking of pads and tampons as boring and normal—because they are.

In our house, menstrual products aren’t dirty, gross, or shameful, just items needed on occasion. When I asked my son if he had heard of the Tampon Tim nickname, he thought it had actually come from the Harris camp as a positive endorsement, and laughed at the thought of anyone using it to ridicule someone.

[...]

Minnesota is not alone. The state joins Hawaii, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, and Oregon in providing state-funded, free period products in public schools. Ten other states, along with Washington, D.C., require free products to be available in public schools despite not offering funding, and eight other states (including conservative-leaning ones like Alabama, Arizona, and Georgia) have no state mandates, but do provide funding for schools that want to offer free products. So while online critics may be attempting to attack Walz, more than 50 percent of states are tackling this public health need.

Why are the right obsessed with lobbing tampon attacks against Tim Walz? Their campaign against menstrual equity is part of their campaign of reinforcing traditional gender roles.

[terrence-silver]

Terry meeting readers family for the first time please

---

If Terry brought you home, oh, some fifteen years ago to meet his family or his father, freshly out of his green military fatigues, while not agreeing with Terry's choice of partner (then again, there were few would would've pleased the draconic old man in the first place, if any) he would've still had this contradictive notion that you, irregardless of your unsuitability, are begrudgingly something Terry was innately owed to have if you were what he wanted. Having served his country, having wasted precious time in Vietnam away from the family company and all affairs of their household, the way his old man saw it --- having sat in the drudgery and danger of captivity in some backwater jungle dump, risking life and limb when he could've been taking over the firm --- the least life could do as direct payback is give his boy whatever the heck his boy wanted and then some, even if he could've done much better for himself. Such was Silver Sr. All unimaginable contrasts and oxymorons. All 'you owe me this, I'm cashing in on that.' All capital and reparations. The true originator of the words Terry often repeated; Nothing's for free. This is a notion he carries with himself, into the venue of the fateful meeting --- He is entitled to everything he wants. He's entitled to you. Your folks. The family cat and dog.

The white picket fence of your own bubble of suburbia, if he so pleases.

He pleases. He does.

And getting everyone to not just like him --- no --- adore him --- is child's play right off the bat. The vintage sport's car parked out front, a deliberate signal and indicator he could take care of you bound to soften your mother, all mothers, who deep down want a good, secure life for their child as he kisses her hand, ever the gentleman, handing her a bouquet of flowers, peppering her with some softcore wooing she undoubtedly hasn't received from anyone in years. A flex of muscles for you father; a way to impress, conquer, establish himself as the prime shark in the pond as they talk fishing...fishing at Lake Tahoe, at Terry's private vacation resort. One of many. Humbly. He promises your uncle work. Your aunt a trip to the Bahamas at an exclusive thermal hot spring five star hotel to cure her swollen bunions --- offers to help your mom in the kitchen several times (which she, for as much as she was flattered, refuses) and fuck, if he has to promise the next door neighbors a harem of bare ass Hawaiian masseuse girls, then so be it. But, Terry's out to claim and win, and it doesn't take him more than ten minutes (and he does count down the time in his head, having made a bet with himself) before the dining table is set for him like the center of the universe and your whole family is crowded around him, listening to him intently, like some many curious children, plying him with food and drink, smothering him.

He was owed this.

He was owed much, much more.

He was owned a cushion under his feet and your mother actually, disbelief of all disbelief's, places one there for him because she is convinced the wooden parquet of the living room will be cold for him, in spite of the fact he was already given a pair of house slippers, right after serving him with another slice of her signature pie as an appetizer before the main course, beaming after he declared that he might have a Michelin star chef in his employ, but the lovely hostesses' level of cooking by far outmatches it and pretty much everything he's ever tried.

You shoot him a speculative, silent stare.

What?

They all loved him.

Almost like you knew that by the end of the evening, your family will practically offer you to him, like a gift. Insist that he accept you, in spite of the saccharine efforts to win them over, which clearly, weren't quite as tacky as they seemed if they were working. Tell you that you brought home a really good one this time around. That you brought home the best one this time around, in fact. Terry knew that you knew. Not that he thought you were trying to escape him, but taking precautions never hurt anyone. There would be no escape. Not when your family would think the worst of you for it.

That you're fickle.

An ingrate.

He, the one who got away.

-"Another slice?"-

Your mother asks and like melted butter, he smears her with flattery.

She too, in a sense, belonged to him. He could flatter her all he liked.

-"Not if you wanna have my cook back home fired, ma'am."-

Terry wipes his lips with a handkerchief and the older woman erupts into a fit of giggles as she shakes her hand, semi-dismissively, semi-playfully towards him, only for you to fidget by his side, interjecting, like he figured you would. -"You know, mom, it was a beautiful evening, but we really should be going. It's a long drive out to Glendower Avenue and our chauffeur is waiting in the car."- You announce and the sudden stiffness at the table is deafening. Bullseye. Your own family gives you a death glare that nearly makes him chortle --- he tactically suggested Charles, the driver, be invited in for drinks to make himself seem egalitarian, and your family. with humanitarian efforts like that, liked him so much throughout the duration of some thirty minutes or so that the very prospect of being prematurely parted from him was a cause for agitation. It's like you just broke the news that Santa Claus wasn't real or something. Truth of the matter was, Charles was perfectly equipped with everything he needed in the vehicle, but, oh, what a ploy. -"Going? But you only just got here."- Your father grumbles, setting down his fork, giving you a long, hard look of disapproval, clearly won over by those Lake Tahoe stories. Your own old man, doing all of Terry's work for him. Perfect. Your own mother too. -"Yeah, you only just got here! Seriously!"- She adds, shaking her head, salad bowl in hand, verbally cornering you. You only just got here and we haven't even made arrangements for your wedding yet, Terry imagines her saying, even though, by the way things were going, he predicted he wouldn't have to do much imagining. Instead, he plays into it, and he plays clueless too.

All of this?

It was an investment.

An investment to having you by his side.

Ensuring you stay there with every hook he attaches into you.

One of those hooks could be your own flesh and blood.

-"We really only just got here."-

He turns to you, acting the role of a sympathetic suck up, repeating your parents' words back you, and then tension at the table instantly lifts when they all start nodding their heads at his statement and muttering, like they thought him the sensible, mature party. They love me. I'm owed that shit. Terry thinks again, reaching over for you hand and squeezing it atop of the dining table for reassurance, feeling your skin drenched in cold sweat. They'll love me so much they'll ensure you and me are and remain a sure thing.

[nancypullen]

Montmartre

How do I describe Montmartre? It sits high above Paris and has been home to the greatest creative minds in history at one time or another. From Renoir to F. Scott Fitzgerald, they all gathered here to celebrate a bohemian lifestyle and feed their creative juices. Artists, writers, dancers, prostitutes, pretty much anyone who wanted to escape came here and they were welcomed. After a long period of wars, famine, and general misery two Parisians in exile, Hubert Rohault de Fleury and Alexandre Legentil, promised to build a new church if God saved France. Apparently he did, and the big, beautiful Sacré-Cœur (Sacred Heart) was built smack dab in the middle of all the heathens.

At first they thought, "there goes the neighborhood", but then they just kept right on doing their thing and Sacré-Cœur did its thing. How's that for an incredibly brief summary? We love it here. There's music, art, wonderful food, beautiful shops, and the vibe doesn't seem to have changed over all those centuries. Street after street you'll find artists plying their trade. Want a quick sketch of your own face? You can stand right in the street and have it done in minutes. I didn't. Why would I want my face?

Mickey was busy snapping away with his camera so I pursued my hobby which is helping the local economy. THis lovely shp sold locally made olive oil soap with every fragrance you can imagine.

Those baskets at the doors hold bags of dried lavender that smelled wonderful. 5 euros for 3 bags! The gentleman running the store said they had a huge summer harvest.

This post is a bit of a mess, somewhat disjointed, but it's late and I just want to get it done - so pardon me if I jump around.

We stopped in at a place we remembered from our last visit, The Museum of Montmartre, a wonderful collection of paintings throughout the history of the village by names I recognize and some I don't.

That building is separated by a garden from a second building, all parts of the museum. The garden is quite famous...

I told Mickey to get on the swing and look, but this was the best he could do.

It's a really peaceful and lovely spot.

From these gardens you can look out at parts of Montmartre that are humming along as they always have. Look at this little vineyard!

Down at the bottom of that vineyard is a coral colored building, called Lapin Agile.

The Cabaret du Lapin Agile was a favorite spot for chansonniers poets (singer/songwriters) and artists to meet. Carco, Apollinaire, Courteline, Max Jacob, Renoir, Utrillo, Modigliani, Braque, and Picasso were mentioned as regulars. In 1875 the painter Andre' Gill painted a sign showing a rabbit jumping out of a pot, "The Rabbit of Gill" ( le Lapin a Gill). It was transformed into the then natural"Agile Rabbit" (le Lapin Agile). Anyyywayyyy, The Cabaret du Lapin Agile is the last operating artistic cabaret.

I'd like that framed for my kitchen.

We continued our pleasant stroll around Montmartre, enjoying the music that drifted down each street. Check out that mural of Toulouse-Lautrec, famous for his paintings and posters of the Moulin Rouge.

I'm going to fast forward this. We'd eaten a light brunch today so we stopped for dinner earlier than usual, around 5:30. We ate at Le Grenier and it was delicious. MIckey was craving beef bourguignon and was happy to see it on the menu.

My salad with roasted goat cheese on toasted baguette slices was out of this world. The vegetables here always taste like they went out back and plucked them from the garden. A light drizzle of balsamic made it perfect.

A bit later , as the sun set, we were glad we'd eaten early because the cafes and restaurants filled up quickly.

Yeah, my night time photography stinks. We sat and listened to this guy for a few minutes because A) he was entertaining ad B) I was tired.

After that, Mickey took a few more photos of spots that he wanted to snap at night and we headed down the hill to catch the metro back to our apartment. We made just one quick stop at our favorite macaron store for a treat. Delicious!

And that, my friends, is a wrap on this day. We had waffled on whether o not we wanted to visit Versailles tomorrow and it looks like we may not have the time. Dare I say next time? Good reason to come back, right? The only tickets still available are for 2pm and later and Versailles is sort of an all day thing. We wouldn't want to rush. So, thankfully there are a million other options here in beautiful Paris, and we can play it by ear. C'est la vie! I'm off to bed to dream sweet dreams. I hope you do the same. Sending out loads of love tonight. Until tomorrow - stay safe, stay well. XOXO, Nancy

[scotianostra]

On 18th January 1812 The Comet, built by John Wood and Co at Port Glasgow, the first commercial steam-powered vessel in Europe made her trial trip.

Later in the year it made the first passenger-carrying steam sailing in Europe, from Port Glasgow to the Broomielaw, and then back down to Greenock, greatly reducing the journey time. History was made. Bell advertised in a local newspaper “The Greenock Advertiser”

The Steamboat Comet Between Glasgow, Greenock and Helensburgh for Passengers Only

The subscriber, having at much expense, fitted up a handsome vessel to ply upon the River Clyde from Glasgow, to sail by the power of air, wind, and steam, intends that the vessel shall leave the Broomielaw on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays about mid-day, or such hour thereafter as may answer from the state of the tide, and to leave Greenock on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the morning to suit the tide.

The fare was “four shillings for the best cabin, and three shillings for the second.” allthough by the look of the boat, they must have been pokey wee things.

Famous passengers included Walter Scott and James Watt, in 1816, visiting his home town of Greenock in old age - by this date Bell offered a return trip from Glasgow to Rothesay, which Watt undertook.

Bell had the Comet lengthened and re-engined, and from September 1819 ran a service to Oban and Fort William, via the Crinan Canal, , a trip which took four days. On 15 December 1820 the Comet was wrecked in strong currents at Craignish Point near Oban, with Bell on board. No lives were lost. One of the engines ended its working days in a Greenock brewery, and is now in the Science Museum, London.

The Comet was the forerunner to the Clyde Steamboats, the only sea going one left today is of course the Waverley.

The west coast route initially proved successful. However, in December 1820, Comet experienced groundings at Ardgour and Corpach before continuing to Oban in an unseaworthy state.

Following repairs, Comet set sail once again on 15 December 1820 but was soon wrecked at Craignish Point. The ship is believed to have split in half just west of Crinan. A navigational error had caused it to run aground in the fast tidal waters of the Dorus Mor

Thankfully, Comet was carrying no passengers at the time of its loss, apart from Henry Bell himself. He and the crew managed to scramble safely ashore/

[sylvanply1234]

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[sylvanply]

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[russos-one]

“As I sit down to write this letter to you all, I don’t quite know where to begin, or how I feel. There’s sadness, of course, that in a few short weeks this will all be coming to an end. But every time I think about you – about what we have achieved over the last 12 years, together – I can’t help but smile. Because you made it. You made the experience, this journey that we have been on, far greater than you will ever know. There is nothing more special than the love between a team and its supporters, and I can’t ever thank you enough for what you’ve given us over the years.

I think back to those humble beginnings at Staines. Wheatsheaf Park might seem like a million miles away from what we’ve built at Kingsmeadow, but to me it was the start of something magical. A small, but dedicated, home fanbase quickly became a small travelling army. Those chants we heard at Wheatsheaf Park soon started popping up at Donny. Then Birmingham, Manchester, wherever.

You know I did everything I possibly could to make it the best experience for you, pushing the club to put on buses, even funding trips myself over the years – and plying you with wine gums and mints to keep you sugared up! More than that, I wanted to provide you with a team that’s reflective of you, a diverse group that we can all see ourselves in. One that is proud to represent the badge, that would run through brick walls for each other and do anything to achieve success. Because that’s what you would do for us.

We’ve created so many magical memories together. From the first FA Cup win at Wembley, quickly followed by a first WSL title at Staines, to those early Champions League trips – something special was building, and it’s just gone on and on from there. Honestly, there’s too many highlights for me to list.

When I think of the journey we’ve been on, I cannot imagine what it would have been like without you. We had a taste of that during Covid, and football just wasn’t the same. I feel sad that you weren’t able to be with us for the Champions League semi-final win over Bayern Munich, and I honestly believe it would have been a different experience if you’d been there with us in the final. But to come out of the other side of that with an FA Cup final at Wembley against Arsenal, on a cold afternoon in December, and being together again is something that will always live with me.

I love that you’ve created a community for yourselves, starting at Wheatsheaf Park and then onto Kingsmeadow, which has become like a fortress because of you, and now Stamford Bridge. As we’ve grown, so have you. Wherever we go, you’re there with us in huge numbers, developing your own memories from supporting the team across the country and Europe, over land and sea (and Leicester!). You’ve been amazing to our players throughout that time, and I know you’re going to keep creating memories together long after I’ve gone.

I want to thank you for all the songs, which kept me going so many times on the bench. I especially want to thank you in those losing moments, which fortunately there haven’t been too many of. I always heard you. Always. You show your appreciation for the team no matter the scoreline or how the game has gone. That’s what true fans are.

You’re the lifeblood of this club, the heartbeat, and I think you’ve been the envy of the entire league with the support you’ve given the team. I look forward to being one of you at some point, with Harry alongside me.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for making this the experience of a lifetime.”

[clownsindresses]

Long fiber art post incoming!

Made my first ball of yarn!!!!!

So super excited about it, and perhaps the best part is that it was made completely out of scrap yarn, the reason I wanted to learn to spin in the first place

It's an acrylic blend, if not 100 acrylic because I couldn't find a few labels. It was so cool to make little rolags on my "carding combs" (dog brushes) and I think they look like cursed caterpillars

I learned a huge amount from this. I kinda got lazy in one of the singles so it's messy, and I had extra of the other single. But that just meant that I learned how to do a plying bracelet! I think I actually like plying that way more than just a normal ball. This also means that the smaller skein is made of the better, more even spun single

One of the singles also got to travel to Arizona with me when visiting family, where I also got some of my first truly ✨fancy✨ fiber that didn't come in my starting kit. It is so so pretty and I'm crazy excited to use it, especially because I've realized I really like the look of two separate colored singles plyed together, plus I got my first batt, which was super soft

The store was also my first experience ever being in a fiber shop. Everyone was super nice and they also apparently ship online which I'm super excited about, since I've been looking for a fiber shop and they seemed quite affordable with good quality. Plus they were super open to helping and talking about anything you needed or didn't understand. Also saw my first spinning wheel irl at a giant antique store. Way too expensive plus it would've been super hard to get home, but it was beautiful and I kinda wanted to cry about not getting it, even though I know it wasn't a good idea to buy it

I was hoping to find fiber or spindles there considering it was a huge place, but sadly, there was nothing. I did get some sewing patterns that were nice though

Lastly I want to ask for ideas. I have about 111 yards split between two skeins of my first handspun yarn, ( and , respectively), but no ideas of what to make with it. It's a nice combo of pastel green and pink with occasional brighter bits. It's generally thin, maybe a bit heavier than sock weight? But there are slubs and thicker pieces every so often, especially throughout the larger skein. I generally crochet amigurumi but I'm open to making most things. I'd love to make something to hold onto for a long time since I'm a sentimental person. All ideas are appreciated but Tumblr is glitched so I can't reply to any comments or make my own, on even my own posts, so reblogs are totally welcome since they make it easier for me to respond

Thank you for reading this excited, but very long, post! -Estar

[darkmacadamien]

Whumptober 2023, No. 2: Thermometer

It starts with a tickle in the back of his throat.

Well, technically, that isn’t true. Really, it starts when Jamie is young, growing up in a council estate, shoved tight like sardines with a bunch of other little kids that would wipe their dripping noses with their shirtsleeves instead of tissues because tissues weren’t a fucking essential, were they? It started with broken heaters and bad insulation and threadbare clothing and staying so fucking cold, all the time, that sometimes he forgets what it’s like to be warm. And together, it all starts with Jamie getting the flu for the first time when he turns five years old and him not being able to get rid of it since.

They say that the more often you get sick with stuff like the flu, the easier it’s supposed to be on the body, yeah? The less likely you are to get sick again, especially with all the shots and stuff that the doctors tell you to take to stave it off.

Unfortunately, Jamie has only ever found the exact fucking opposite to be true. Every time January rolls around, like clockwork, Jamie catches the flu. It don’t matter if he’s gotten the vaccine (which he does, every single year, like it’s ever fucking helped him), it don’t matter if he stays five feet away from anyone with anything resembling a sniffle; hell, it don’t even matter if he manages to avoid stumbling across a single sick person all fucking year.

He’ll wake up, middle of the month, with a little tickle in the back of his throat, and then he’s down for a week with a fever from hell. Never mind the fact that he’s an elite athlete and that his immune system ought to be fucking peak, yeah? And it only seems to get worse each year (and he can hear his mum’s voice in his head now, Jamie, love, that’s not how that works, but that’s sure how it fucking feels like it works, not that he’d ever curse at his mum like that).

Mum, bless her heart, used to coddle Jamie to death when he was sick. She’d bundle him up in their warmest blankets, ply him with warm tea mixed with fresh honey and lemon juice (the kind they couldn’t really afford, but only the best for her sexy little baby, innit), and then she’d run her fingers through his hair until he could fall asleep, even if it meant she got sick too. But Jaime’s mum picked up so many extra shifts that she rarely caught when Jamie got sick ‘cause by the time she’d get home, Jamie would be asleep. Didn’t help matters any when Jamie started hiding it, ‘specially as he got older, ‘cause even though his mom tried to play it off, they couldn’t really afford for her to miss work like that. So most of the time, he’d just take care of it himself, even if his Dad happened to be around, ‘cause his Dad’s solution to a sore throat was downing a shot of pure liquor, yeah?

So, when Jamie wakes up with that stupid fucking feeling, he already knows what to do, ‘cause it’s always the same old song and dance. He pulls on a soft pair of trackies and a loose jumper and shuffles out the door a little earlier than usual, ‘cause he wants to see the doctor before the rest of the lads come in; like hell is he missing training without a doctor’s note, ‘specially after what happened last time.

Still keeps him up at night, sometimes, the way Lasso had yelled at him.

The doctor seems a bit surprised to see him so early, but she’d been there last year when he’d come down with the flu, so she don’t stay surprised long.

“Hey doc,” Jamie croaks, wincing from the soreness in his throat. “Think I got the flu.”

“Yeah, I’ll say,” she says, and sends him home with the good cough syrup (the kind that probably ought to be a controlled substance, with how woozy it makes him) and a promise to let the coaches know he’ll be out for a few days.

Roy notices Jamie’s absence like how you’d notice the absence of an annoying fucking fly after it’s stopped buzzing around your head, mostly because you’d swatted the fucker out of midair and now it’s stuck to the nearest hard surface, flat like a pancake with twitchy little legs.

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

Unfortunately, Roy has done no such swatting (at least recently), so he has no fucking clue why Jamie isn’t at training right now. Similar to how Roy hates annoying fucking flies that buzz around his head, he hates not knowing when Jamie Tartt is up to things he shouldn’t be.

“Where the fuck is Tartt?” Roy barks midway through training, when he and the rest of the coaches are all standing on the sidelines doing that bullshit with their arms where it looks like they’re discussing plays but really, they’re just making the lads do what-the-fuck-ever so they can gossip like old ladies.

“Oh, you mean Jamie?” Lasso asks, in his typical jovial Yankee tone, like he wakes up and eats fucking sunshine and sprinkles for breakfast. Oh, how it pisses Roy off.

“Who the fuck else?” Roy grinds out, clenching his jaw.

“Whoa, now, don’t blow a fuse there, ROY-G-BIV. I was just checking. Hey, speaking of fuses, that reminds me— Coach, you remember that one time we were driving down the highway, and my old truck started making those funny noises?”

“Sure do, Coach,” Beard says.

“Well, as it turns out—"

“Stop,” Roy says. “I don’t give a fuck. I’ll ask again: why is the Prince Prick of all Pricks not here right now?”

“Just to make sure,” Lasso says slyly, “you’re talking about Jamie, right?”

“Fuck!” Roy shouts. “We just fucking went over this.”

“Yeah, I know. Just wanted to see what would happen,” Lasso admits, before fist-bumping Beard like they’d both been in on some amazing fucking joke. Fucking Yankees.

“Anywho, he came in pretty early this morning to see the doc. Looks like he’s come down with the flu, so she sent him home,” Lasso says.

“The fucking flu?” Roy asks. He can’t remember if that’s bad or not, ‘cause one of the perks of having a doctor for a sister is that he rarely gets sick. “Is he going to die, or some shit?”

“Oh, no way,” Lasso says, waving his hand dismissively. “He’ll feel pretty crummy for a couple of days, but he’ll bounce back pretty quick.”

“I see,” Roy says grimly, and promptly fucking forgets about it. If the little prick isn’t at risk of dying, then he really doesn’t fucking care.

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

Except, as it turns out, Roy really does sort of fucking care. It sticks in the back of his mind, like when you step in gum and you can’t seem to scrape it off your shoe. Maybe a normal person wouldn’t die from the flu, but Tartt was a fucking idiot overachiever and would find a way somehow.

Roy dials his sister. “What the fuck do you do for someone when they’re sick?” he asks as soon as the line connects.

“Hello, Roy, I’m doing well, thanks for asking,” she says. “And it depends. Sick with what?”

“The fucking flu.”

His sister makes a sympathetic noise, low in the back of her throat.

“What’s that fucking noise? Is he going to fucking die?” Roy asks.

“Jesus, Roy, no,” his sister says. “There’s just not much you can do for someone with the flu. Just watch their temperature and make sure they’re getting enough fluids. Warm soup might make them feel a little better, but mostly you just have to wait for it to pass.”

“Well, that’s fucking shit,” he tells her. “Oh, and tell Phoebe I said hi,” he tacks on, before hanging up.

He shuffles into his kitchen and starts setting out the ingredients for a simple chicken soup. Fucking homemade soup for a fucking prick. Fucking unbelievable.

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

Roy gets waylaid briefly by the fact that he doesn’t have Jamie’s address, but he’s not a fucking quitter (rather, he’s quite a determined individual with enough soup to feed an army), so after a phone call and a promise to Higgins that he isn’t going to use the information to kill the little prick, he’s pulling up to Jamie’s house. It’s fairly modest, as far as homes for professional footballers go, mostly because Jamie could probably afford to have ten houses just like it. Roy’s only sort of expecting a life-size marble statue of the prick sitting in the front yard, but he’s gratified to find that, for the first time in perhaps his entire life, Jamie had gone the sensible route and stayed simple.

Roy marches up to the front stoop with a glass jar of soup tucked under his arm and bangs on the door with the side of his fist, pointedly ignoring the doorbell.

When Jamie fails to come running to the door within thirty seconds, he knocks again, and again, and again, and then finally, he gives in and presses the doorbell hard enough that he hears something inside the mechanism crack.

Roy takes a step back and taps his foot for a couple of seconds. When it becomes clear that Jamie isn’t going to be answering the door anytime soon, Roy begins devising a plan to break in.

He doesn’t have to devise long.

“I bet there’s a spare key under the doormat,” Roy mutters, and yeah, of-fucking-course there is, Jamie’s an idiot, so he picks it up and lets himself in.

Finding the kitchen isn’t difficult, and neither is finding a large pot, so he portions out some of the soup, puts it on the stove to reheat, and then sets off to find Jamie.

After a bit of wandering (and a lot of judging Jamie’s choices for interior design; the sheer amount of animal print is actually obscene), he finds him in an upstairs bedroom, face down in a bed with perhaps the ugliest headboard he’s ever seen in his life. There’s a small trash can next to the bed, piled high with wrinkled tissues, and a half-filled water bottle sitting on the dresser.

Jamie, for his part, is completely knocked out, though he’s very restless, tossing and turning every few seconds like he can’t get comfortable. Roy walks over and pokes him firmly on the forehead.

Jamie blinks up at him blearily. “Roy?” he asks, his voice sounding completely wrecked.

“You sound like shit,” Roy tells him. “Open your mouth.”

Jamie obeys, and Roy sticks a thermometer under his tongue. “Wha’ th’fuh are y’doin here?” Jamie asks around the thermometer.

“Shut the fuck up,” Roy barks. “You’ll fuck up the reading.” He grabs Jamie by the jaw and adjusts the thermometer again until it’s sitting to one side of that weird bump that everyone has under their tongue, just like the really tiny instructions that came in the box had told him to.

A few seconds later, the stupid thing beeps, so Roy slips it out of Jamie’s mouth and nearly passes out at the reading on the screen.

He takes his phone out and dials his sister again. “He is fucking dying,” Roy accuses.

“I am?” Jamie asks, sounding devastated.

“Hello again, Roy,” she sighs. “What’s the problem now?”

“His temperature is 101.7 degrees, which means he’s fucking dying, and you and Lasso promised that he fucking wasn’t but this stupid fucking thermometer says otherwise.”

His sister sighs again, long and low and disappointed. “What mode is it in?”

“Mode?” Roy asks. “Fucking, temperature-taking mode. What the fuck do you mean, mode?”

“No, Roy,” she says, sounding long-suffering. “Is it in degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit?”

Roy examines the screen, squinting his eyes so he can read the tiny text.

Jamie scoffs. “Granddad—”

“Shut the fuck up, Tartt,” Roy barks. “Dying little boys with bad hair don’t get to speak.”

“I don’t even get no last words?” Jamie asks.

“Fuck no,” Roy says. “It’s in Fahrenheit,” he tells his sister.

“Then he’s fine, Roy. He’s running a fever, but that’s normal with the flu.”

“You’re sure,” Roy asks.

“Who’s the one with the medical degree?”

“Fuck off,” he tells her. “Tell Phoebe I said hi,” he adds, before hanging up.

He and Jamie stare at each other for a moment. “I brought soup,” Roy says.

Jamie lights up like a Christmas tree. “Mint,” he says, and flings the duvet off his legs, making like he’s going to get up.

“Stop! I’ll bring it up here.”

Jamie stares up at him, all wide-eyed and pathetic like a kicked dog, so Roy marches downstairs and spoons a small serving into one of Jamie’s least offensive ceramic bowls. He marches back upstairs, only slightly less aggressively than before, so he doesn’t spill any of the soup, and sets the bowl in the cradle of Jamie’s lap.

Jamie dives in on it, foregoing the spoon altogether, sipping straight from the bowl like an animal. He winces at each swallow, probably from a sore throat, but he seems to be enjoying it anyway if his pleased hums are anything to go by.

“Thanks, Coach,” he says, in between gulps.

“Yeah, whatever,” Roy says, secretly relieved now that he’s ninety percent sure the little prick isn’t actually dying.

By the time he finishes the soup, Jamie is heavy-lidded and yawning again, so Roy takes the bowl out of his slackening hands and sets it on the dresser next to the bed. He readjusts the comforter around Jamie, tucking it under his body tightly, and grabs another blanket from the end of the bed when he notices that Jamie is still shivering.

It doesn’t take Jamie long to nod off again. Roy looks at him, studying the steadiness of his chest as it rises with each breath, committing it to memory. He looks soft and young in his sleep, Roy thinks.

A wave of fondness rushes over him suddenly, and Roy chokes on it like acid rising up in his throat.

Honestly— fuck this prick for making Roy care about him.

He takes one last long look at Jamie, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, and leaves the bedroom, clicking the door shut quietly behind him.

[grigori77]

2023 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 1)

30.  SICK – the year’s first real horror cinema surprise was also one of its VERY FIRST standouts period, a brilliant little streaming sleeper from Peacock which snuck in under the radar but EFFORTLESSLY captured my attention AND the darker parts of my imagination.  Best of all, though, it was SO COOL to see legendary revisionist horror screenwriter Kevin Williamson return to the “big screen” again after spending so long plying his trade on TV – I was VERY MUCH the target audience for Scream when it came out, I just ATE UP his delicious post-modern deconstruction of the slasher genre and its subsequent follow-ups (although Robert Rodriguez’ The Faculty, his fantastic take on alien invasion movie tropes, remains my very favourite of Willaimson’s creations to date), even if it did lead to a fresh sub-genre which, paradoxically, became increasingly tired and toothless as the years progressed.  In the end, I think it’s probably A GOOD THING he took a step back – he just needed a chance to rethink things and find a fresh angle to come at the genre … and BY THE GODS has he ever found one with THIS.  Interestingly, for Williamson at least, the Pandemic couldn’t have come along at a better time, giving him fertile ground indeed in which to grow a particularly potent darkly comic slasher which EASILY lives up to his masterworks.  Taking place in the early days of the original outbreak, when the first Lockdown was just starting, infection alerts and self-isolation were only just becoming a major thing and everybody was PANICKING over how much they really DIDN’T yet know about what was REALLY going on, the setting was already ripe for some pretty intense, chaotic storytelling … so adding a brutal serial killer with a penchant for killing off the idiots who flagrantly flaunted the COVID safety restrictions and purposefully went out of their way to pretend things were the same as normal was a slick move.  The main bulk of the narrative revolves around three college kids in some nondescript part of the US – Parker (Blockers and The Society’s Gideon Adlon), a well-off party girl who’s looking to make some major changes in her life, and her best friend Miri (up-and coming R&B artist Beth Million), who go to Parker’s family’s expansive country home to quarantine in comfort, and Parker’s newly-EX boyfriend DJ (Man of Steel and Teen Wolf’s Dylan Sprayberry), who turns up ostensibly to try and patch things up between them but may simply have come for an opportunistic hook-up – who are targeted by a killer who subsequently hunts them during a night of fraught tension, smartly staged stalk-and-slash set-pieces and a hefty dose of Williamson’s characteristic jet black-but-enjoyably geeky sense of humour, which is this time pitched to a particularly sharp edge of biting finger-on-the-pulse satire given the rich socio-political real-life material he’s able to mine here.  The small but extremely potent cast are all BRILLIANT, although the film really is DOMINATED by Adlon, who once again shows that she’s destined for GREAT THINGS INDEED in the future with a brilliant turn that runs an impressive gamut from irresponsibly entitled brat to vitally determined survivor once circumstances have fully driven her to take proper responsibility for her childish behaviour, making for a compellingly sympathetic young heroine we find easy enough to root for.  It probably helps the man behind the camera is John Hyams (All Square, Alone), son of legendary genre-hopping director Peter Hyams, who shows he’s definitely inherited his dad’s impressive skill by crafting a lean, tight and precise slice of thrilling cinema which takes full advantage of a tight budget and (mostly) a single location, which results in a brilliant little comedy horror gem that I’d heartily recommend folk hunt down on streaming, or at the very least keep in mind for Halloween …

29.  HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE – it’s always nice when a sharp little indie banger sneaks in under the radar to place on one of my lists for the year, and this impressive critically acclaimed underdog thriller definitely shaped up as one of the year’s most memorable examples.  It’s a very low-fi, gritty down-and-dirty procedural slice-of-life thriller about a motley collection of eco-terrorists banding together to sabotage an oil pipeline in West Texas, focusing almost entirely on this core group of disillusioned youths played by eight uniformly EXCEPTIONAL actors each handing in genuine (ahem) dynamite performances.  Ariele Barer (Marvel’s Runaways), The Revenant’s Forrest Goodluck, American Honey’s Sasha Lane and Marcus Scribner (probably best known as the voice of She-Ra & the Princesses of Power’s Bow) are the undeniable stand-outs here, but all of these kids are ON FIRE throughout, showing they’ve got truly BRIGHT futures ahead of them indeed, while Irene Bedard (Smoke Signals) also impresses in a supporting turn as Joanna, an FBI agent who may be onto their plans … the film bounces between the varying points of view amongst the characters, gradually unveiling their motivations to commit a morally complex terrorist act through a series of scattered flashbacks punctuating the planning, execution and aftermath of the bombing itself, with writer-director Daniel Goldhaber (Cam, here co-adapting Andreas Maim’s incendiary non-fiction novel with Ariele Barer herself and Cam’s co-writer Jordan Sjol) weaving a suitably taut and atmospheric slowburn path throughout the flawlessly executed narrative, the film brilliantly building its wire-taut tension to a rewardingly cathartic climax which is as provocative as the challenging subject matter.  This is a film that asks some VERY BIG QUESTIONS and delivers some suitably complicated and rightfully TROUBLING answers, a razor sharp piece of indie cinema which definitely deserves the critical acclaim and cult hit status it’s earned …

28.  COCAINE BEAR – gods, if EVER there was a true story that seemed TAILOR MADE for cinema, it’s the bizarre tale of Cokey the Bear, AKA Pablo Eskobear, an American black bear that died after ingesting 34 keys of cocaine that were dumped out of a smuggler’s cargo plane over the Tennessee wilderness in 1985.  That being said, it’s not a huge surprise it’s taken Hollywood SO LONG to actually get it made, perhaps it’s just TOO CRAZY a concept for it to have been made before now.  Ultimately, the film takes A LOT of liberties with the truth to instead craft an entertaining story, but in the end that’s definitely the smart move, simply using the concept as a springboard to craft a gloriously batshit horror comedy with a JET BLACK sense of humour populated by an offbeat collection of quirky characters.  Keri Russell stars as Sari, a nurse and single mother who has to brave the woods in order to find her young daughter Dee Dee (The Florida Project’s Brooklyn Prince), who’s playing hooky in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest with her best friend Henry (Sweet Tooth’s Christian Convery) right when Cokey goes on her drug-fuelled homicidal rampage; meanwhile, recently bereaved widower Eddie (Solo’s Alden Ehrenreich) and his best friend Daveed (Straight Outta Compton’s O’Shea Jackson Jr.) are two drug cartel enforcers reluctantly scouring the area in search of their lost product at the behest of Eddie’s overbearing St Louis drug kingpin father Syd White (the late, great Ray Liotta, to whom the film is dedicated); and then there’s hapless but dogged Knoxville detective Bob (the venerable Isaiah Whitlock Jr.), who knows he can bust White if he can just get his hands on the evidence.  All three parties converge in the park while the bear wreaks merry havoc in Elizabeth Banks’ third film as a director (after Pitch Perfect 2 and the CRIMINALLY mistreated and overlooked Charlie’s Angels reboot), which looks like it might FINALLY get people to start taking her serious BEHIND the camera as well as IN FRONT of it – this is a proper laugh-riot of a film which is also delightfully non-PC, and it’s liberally peppered with impressively blood-soaked effects to thrill the gore-hounds as well as an impressively well-realised digital animal character in the eponymous drug-addled beastie.  The cast are brilliant too, Russell and Ehrenreich both particularly impressing in their respective nominal lead roles while the kids are EXCEPTIONAL (particularly Convery, getting to gleefully overact as one of the most hyperactive-yet-not-irritating kids I’ve ever seen on screen), and it’s both enriching and a little heartbreaking to watch Liotta once again act his socks off in one of his very last film roles; that being said, several of the scenes are thoroughly STOLEN by the irrepressible Margo Martindale, who’s clearly having the time of her life in one of her most gloriously OTT roles as foul-mouthed, much put-upon park Ranger Liz.  Ultimately this is a horror comedy where the balance is definitely tipped very much in favour of the laughs over the scares, but that’s fine, because with a concept this batshit bonkers we were always gonna find it too funny to ever be remotely scary, so the end result is one of THE FUNNIEST MOVIES I ran across in the cinema all year, rightfully revelling in its own inherent irreverence.  It’s just about the most fun you could ever expect it to be, which is just what you want from a movie about a cocaine bear, really …

27.  THE FLASH – oh boy … yeah, this one is gonna be a COMPLICATED talk.  This was one TROUBLED project from day one, from the major shake-ups surrounding the Joss Whedon-compromised Justice League film and the subsequent mess THAT unleashed, through the whole conflicting debate over Zack Snyder’s original vision for the DCEU, and then the eventual collapse of the Cinematic Universe itself, this film, originally entitled Flashpoint (which personally I like A WHOLE LOT more, actually, since it really does pay DIRECT reference to the actually storyline they went with) went through a whole collection of incarnations and reiterations and, for a while, it was starting to look like we might NEVER see it hit our cinema screens at all … and that’s without even mentioning star Ezra Miller’s ongoing legal troubles and essential CANCELLING after their continued outrageous, unacceptable off-set behaviour, which looked set to torpedo the film all on its own.  Honestly, I have to admit I was MYSELF a little wary going in, not because of these particular problems but more just the prospect of what I would actually do if, in spite of all this, I actually still LIKED IT … unfortunately for me, that was VERY MUCH the case, which is why we’re here in the first place. 

But I must forge on, and so I’m gonna just take this film on ITS OWN face value and ignore the external problems … at least until THE END of the review … because The Flash is, actually, pretty fucking GREAT.  Barry Allen (Miller) is finally coming into his own as a fully-fledged member of the Justic League, even if this does frequently mean he’s essentially cleaning up the extreme messes left behind when Batman/Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) gets involved in particularly BIG potential world-shattering events, as brilliantly illustrated in the film’s suitably SPECTACULAR opening set-piece, which does a BEAUTIFUL job of not only letting us know EXACTLY what this incarnation of the Flash is actually capable of, but also revealing Barry’s own distinctly unique, offbeat and, frankly, really rather ADORABLE personal style of superheroism.  Then the plot itself kicks off when Barry’s father Henry (Ron Livingstone), serving life in prison for the wrongfully-convicted murder of Barry’s mother Nora (Pan’s Labyrinth’s wonderful Maribel Verdu), sees his latest (and, it looks like, FINAL) appeal fall flat due to a crucial new piece of evidence turning out to be useless, and Barry decides he's had enough of ignoring a particularly potent aspect of his superpowers –

the ability to run SO FAST that he can actually GO BACK IN TIME!!!  So he races back to the day of his mother’s death and tweaks circumstances so that she survives, only for Barry to then get punted off track before he can return to the present by an unknown entity within “the Speedforce” which then lands him in 2013, just days before Earth’s invasion by the hostile Kryptonian forces of General Zod (Michael Shannon), as seen in Man of Steel.  Still with us so far?  Yeah, well it gets EVEN MORE complicated, cuz it turns out that, while his mum is now STILL ALIVE, Barry hasn’t got his powers in this universe, which means that he has to reform the Justice League himself in THIS timeline in order to defeat Zod.  Except that there are FAR MORE consequences to messing with time than Barry ever took into account set to make things all but insurmountably complicated for him to succeed … beyond this we’re getting into DANGEROUS spoiler territory, beyond the fact that these new developments give rise to whole fresh and very complicated ideas of alternative universes somewhat akin to what the MCU’s already started experimenting with (which is also, actually, something that the DC comics universe does ALL THE BLOODY TIME), which gives rise to whole new incarnations of beloved characters from the established DCEU, some of which HAVE already been revealed in the trailers and beyond, but others not so much, so … yeah, anyway, it’s a glorious MESS of a narrative, but somehow this film does a REALLY IMPRESSIVE job of navigating this jumble in an impressively coherent and breezy way that ultimately makes this a whole lot of fun to watch, actually.  Of course, the lion’s share of the praise for this HAS TO go to screenwriter Christina Hodson (Birds of Prey & the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) for wrangling the UNHOLY MESS of development done for the previous incarnations into an actual WORKING script, which was then brought to life with suitably brave and adventurous SKILL by director Andy Muschietti (Mama and It Chapter One and Two), but the uniformly EXCEPTIONAL cast shoulder a good deal of that responsibility too –

Miller may be problematic in real life, but there can be no denying that he is FUCKING BRILLIANT in his signature role, crafting a hyperactive, ultra-awkward social misfit of a superhero that us various underdog kids just can’t help rooting for, while it is a MASSIVE pleasure to get to see MY PERSONAL FAVOURITE Batman return as this AU’s altered version of Bruce Wayne, the legendary Michael Keaton himself again proving why he really is THE VERY BEST VERSION of the character out there (and I will accept NO ARGUMENT AT ALL about that, I swear you can all FIGHT ME on this particular hill upon which I am determined to DIE if I must), and Livingstone and Verdu bring an IMMENSE amount of pathos to their characters throughout which makes it ABUNDANTLY CLEAR why Barry tries SO HARD to save them both, and it’s also great fun getting to see Michael Shannon back as the Big Bad here again, I always really liked this spectacular scenery-chewing version of Zod.  For me, though, the biggest win here has to be The Young & the Restless’ Sasha Calle, making her big screen debut as the most impressive and DCEU-consistent incarnation of Kara Zor-El, aka SUPERGIRL, that we could ever have hoped for, she’s a truly AWESOME creation, EASILY as badass as Henry Cavill’s Supes but also a good deal more complex as a character too.  Ultimately it’s a shame that circumstances mean that we likely won’t get to see more of her in future projects, much like Keaton’s returning Batman, as they’re definitely the unexpected heart and soul of the film, easily delivering in the most impressively iconic set-pieces and memorable character beats.  Indeed, this is SO BLOODY BRILLIANT all round as a film – from its spectacular action sequences, through its frequent gleefully anarchic screwball humour, to a variety of impressive jaw-dropping game-changer twists in the narrative – that the fact that the DCEU itself is officially over and all of this means PRECISELY ZERO in the face of where it’s all going in James Gunn’s incoming Cinematic Universe reboot makes this feel all the more ultimately pointless, which lends any viewing a bittersweet aftertaste no matter HOW enjoyable it all is.  I mean granted, it’s NOT perfect (there is, famously, some pretty clunky CGI that ALMOST takes you out of the experience, especially in the climactic sequence when we see the timelines start to collide), but then very few of the DCEU movies HAVE BEEN anyway, and this one still works just fine for what it is.  So it may not have any actual VALUE for the series moving forward, but it’s still a really great movie that MORE THAN deserves to be seen for its own merits, and I highly recommend you give it a chance anyway.  At least Gunn and co have seen the sense to keep Muschietti onboard for their reboot (namely helming the new DCU’s Batman reboot The Brave & the Bold), and if they’ve any more sense they’ll bring Christina Hodson back for more too …

26.  THE EQUALIZER 3 – Director Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington have had a long and extremely fruitful working relationship, from their earliest collaboration on his best-known film, Training Day (which finally landed Washington his long-overdue best actor Oscar, although many of us agree that it SHOULD have gone to him a few years prior for The Hurricane), through the EXTREMELY impressive remake of the classic western The Magnificent Seven, to their most lucrative and long-running collab to date, a series of feature adaptations of a cult classic TV thriller show from the 80s which has now reached its THIRD instalment and STILL seems to be running at full steam with no sign of flagging.  Indeed, this just might be THE BEST ONE YET … Washington once again effortlessly delivers a coolly sophisticated, often understated but still typically deeply nuanced turn as Robert McCall, the former special-forces soldier turned SOCOM operative who reemerged from self-imposed faked-death-retirement in the first film in order to deliver bloody retribution for the brutal assault of a young girl, only to subsequently find a new calling as a freelance guardian angel for the weak and powerless who have nowhere else to turn with a dangerous problem.  This time round his antiheroic adventures has brought him to Italy, where the ill-fated end of his latest operation sees him near death from a bullet in his back, being nursed back to health in the remote coastal town of Altamonte.  It’s here that he finally finds that true peace that’s so long eluded him as he recovers from his injuries, but he finds himself ultimately dragged back into the fray when a

Camorra crime outfit from Naples, looking to expand their operation to new territories, starts trying to exploit the townsfolk that Robert has grown so close to beyond their breaking point … ultimately this is a more slowburn, understated affair than the previous two films, but that actually proves to be this instalment’s greatest strength, allowing us to get closer to our Equalizer than ever before, as well as the people he’s driven to help, which makes this BY FAR the most emotionally investing film in the trilogy, and makes us root for Robert like never before as we wait for him to FINALLY bring the pain to these Mafioso thugs.  That dam-break, when they finally come, is as viscerally intense as we’ve come to expect from the series, but thanks to the additional groundwork this time round the kills and cathartic payback delivered feel more satisfyingly substantial, while the film’s greatest pleasures ultimately lie more in the anticipation as Fuqua cranks the tension tighter and we edge further forward in our seats.  Once again, the supporting cast all shine through, with Andrea Scarduzio (Colour On the Cross) giving great bad guy as subtly reptilian Mob boss Vincent Quaranta, ably backed up by Andrea Dodero (Thou Shalt Not Hate) as Vincent’s vicious, jumped up thug of a little brother Marco, while Gaia Scodellaro (CentroVetrine) and Eugenio Mastrandeo (From Scratch) deftly show us what’s so worth fighting for in this town as effervescently friendly local café owner Aminah and Altamonte’s principled but pragmatically fair sole Carabinieri Gio Bonucci; the biggest standout, however, is Dakota Fanning as Emma Collins, the smart and dogged FBI agent who ends up tracking Robert down following his involvement in the opening showdown and uncovers a whole nest of previous overlooked criminal chaos.  At the end of the day though, this is ONCE AGAIN every inch Washington’s film, the erstwhile star clearly enjoying himself immensely in one of the best and most iconic

roles of his career, although this third instalment looks like it might be the last Equalizer with him in the lead since it becomes abundantly clear that it’s looking to wind things up for Robet’s final adventure in a suitably satisfying way.  That being said, there’s definitely room, interest and clear demand for more from both the fanbase AND the creatives here, with the pervading theory being that we may be going back to the early days of McCall’s time with the CIA, in which case the obvious choice moving forward would be to let John David Washington step into his dad’s shoes as young Robert.  In truth it’s the only smart choice …

25.  ANT-MAN & THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA – coming off the back of 2022’s decidedly hit-and-miss big screen slate for Disney and Marvel’s current flagship property, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, THIS past year’s first MCU release had A LOT of eyes on it.  Gods know, I definitely had TWO OF ‘EM … and it probably wasn’t the best title to be laying all this weight on, either – the Ant-Man movies in particular have always been a bit of a marmite property within the larger universe, with as many detractors as fans, which definitely didn’t help things here.  If this turned out to be third time unlucky for Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang and the rest, it could spell much larger disaster for the MCU overall, or at the very least signify that the cracks are definitely growing beyond the studios’ capacity to patch ‘em up on the run.  So I’ll admit, I went into this one with a whole lot of trepidation … was it unwarranted?  Well, being completely honest … not ENTIRELY.  Tried-and-tested comedy director Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man films have always been a pretty mad collection anyway, as much a full-blown comedy sub-franchise as the Guardians of the Galaxy movies or Thor under Taika Waititi, but even so they still managed to keep ONE FOOT on the ground even while the rest was set EXTENSIVELY in the Quantum Realm, but this one has somewhat jumped the shark.  Granted, part of this film’s particular OTT outlandishness and unabashed WACKINESS is down to narrative necessity – giving too much away plot-wise unfortunately runs the risk of dropping some MASSIVE spoilers, but it’s at least safe to say that the lion’s share of the story takes place ENTIRELY in the Quantum Realm this time, and it’s a place which is A WHOLE LOT DIFFERENT from anything we might have imagined from our very brief visits in Ant-Man & the Wasp and Avengers: Endgame.  For a start, it’s A WHOLE LOT BIGGER than we thought it was, and MUCH more heavily populated by some truly WEIRD SHIT … the film also has some major heavy-lifting to do with regards to setting up the Big Bad for Phase 5 and 6 both – Kang the Conqueror (The Last Black Man In San Francisco and Creed III’s Jonathan Majors), a Multiverse-based Thanos level threat we first encountered (sort of) in 2021’s runaway hit first season of Loki.  This at least is one of the areas in which the movie definitely SUCCEEDED – ultimately problematic as he may have become since the film’s release, Majors at least did a commendable job of establishing one of the franchise’s most interesting and effective supervillains, a near God Tier Bad Guy who’s clearly gonna give the whole Avengers roster a run for their money when they finally come face to face with him (in whatever recast form he ultimately takes).  The plot, such as it is, is pure scrambled bananas, a heavyweight mindfuck it’s best to just DISENGAGE the brain to go with in order to get proper enjoyment

out of – this is definitely a cinematic GUILTY PLEASURE, and trying to take it even remotely seriously immediately draws the eye to a thousand gaping plot-holes and glaring narrative stumbles.  At least the patented stunning, primary coloured visuals, winning sense of humour and cavalcade of delightfully wacky set-pieces (the clone-spawning “probability explosion” sequence is a particularly overblown, super-trippy highlight with an unexpected tear-jerk factor built in) are all fully functional and behaving correctly, and the thoroughly endearing cast all deliver admirably with nary an off-note hint of miscasting – Rudd and Evangeline Lilly (returning as Hope van Dyne AKA the titular Wasp) are both still pitch perfect, while it’s nice to see Michael Douglas and PARTICULARLY Michelle Pfeiffer getting to do a whole lot more this time round as Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, and the glaring Michael Pena-shaped hole is ALMOST filled by a few other quality comedic turns from the likes of deadpan laugh-MASTER Bill Murray and David Dastmalchian (here returning in a VERY interesting but also very DIFFERENT role to what we’ve seen from him here before), as well as a surprise returning face (ahem) from this trilogy’s past.  Meanwhile, alongside Majors there are other similarly noteworthy series newcomers who make BIG IMPRESSIONS, from Z Nation and The Mandalorian’s Katy O’Brien (who’s been a growing favourite of mine for a little while now), who’s a completely EPIC badass I wanna see A LOT more of in the future as hard-nosed Quantum freedom fighter Jentorra, to Kathryn Newton (Supernatural, Freaky), making the role of Scott’s now (pretty much) full-grown daughter Cassie ENTIRELY her own, and she’s clearly got a MAJOR future ahead of her in the MCU herself now she’s started carving out her own super-powered secret identity (roll on Young Avengers, I say!).  The movie may be another flawed, somewhat unwieldy and occasionally downright CLUNKY beast, but the franchise is still managing to stand up where it counts, and compared to the likes of Thor: Love & Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever it definitely holds up a good deal better in its own right.  Most of all, though, it’s A WHOLE LOT of pure, unadulterated FUN, which is ultimately exactly what you want from a big primary-coloured superhero blockbuster.  In the end, it still remains to be seen if the MCU can be clawed back from the brink it’s still teetering perilously on the edge of, but despite all that’s still wrong with it, this is at least a VERY SMALL step back in the right direction …

24.  THE PALE BLUE EYE – largely sneaking in under the radar on Netflix to start the New Year off, the latest offering from highly acclaimed indie writer-director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Black Mass, Antlers) is, much as we’d likely expect from such a consistently varied, genre-hopping filmmaker, a strange, unique and deeply intriguing beast of a film.  Adapted from Louis Bayard’s well-received speculative fiction novel about a young Edgar Allan Poe aiding the investigation of a bafflingly macabre murder in the US Military Academy at West Point in the early 1830s.  Christian Bale returns with typical stoic, intense and magnificently brooding megawatt presence for his THIRD leading man tour of duty for Cooper (after Out of the Furnace and Hostiles) as Augustus Landor, a former West Point graduate-turned misanthropic former detective brought in to lead the investigation into the brutal hanging and evisceration (with additional heart-removal) of a young cadet that’s baffling the faculty and local police, which is soon compounded when additional bodies start piling up.  He’s aided in his endeavours by another cadet, the young Poe himself (played to PERFECTION by Harry Potter’s own Harry Melling, continuing his meteoric and deeply impressive rise to prominence with another TOUR-DE-FORCE performance here), while the clues lead to a variety of deeply troubling twists and revelations as well as an intriguing collection of suitably odd and often highly charismatic characters played by the sterling likes of Lucy Boynton, Toby Jones, Simon McBurney and a fascinatingly unusual turn from Robert Duvall, although the real standout here is a truly MAGNIFICENT career-best performance from Gillian Anderson.  Cooper piles on the story’s doom-laden gothic atmosphere to great effect throughout while cranking up the slowburn and deeply uncomfortable suspenseful tension throughout, while the plot is nothing short of MACHIAVELLIAN in its levels of ingenious labyrinthine intelligence, dropping an ultimate denouement that you really have to be paying SERIOUS ATTENTION to see coming, and the production design, costumes, period detail and, most of all, the thoroughly MOODY bleak-midwinter cinematography make for a freezing cold but thoroughly rewarding feast for the eyes for the most discerning film-fanatic.  Altogether Cooper’s delivered another winner, and I hope he continues to make films this good well into the future.

23.  DOOR MOUSE – Avan Jogia may be best known as an actor in fare like Caprica, Zombieland: Double Tap and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, but his debut feature as a writer-director definitely shows he’s got a lot of potential as a genuine filmmaking talent moving forward.  This is an edgy, offbeat and enjoyably quirky little indie oddity that CLEARLY doesn’t care to play by anyone’s conventional rules, telling its unapologetically DARK and dirty little story the way IT WANTS TO without ever trying to spell its message out for the viewer.  Riverdale’s Hayley Law is, as ever, simply MESMERISING as Mouse, a tough, hard-bitten burlesque dancer looking to make a better life for herself as a comic book creator, only for fate to throw a wrench in the works for her when girls at her club start disappearing under mysterious circumstances.  Her resulting investigation leads to the shocking realisation that they’re being kidnapped into a life of sexual slavery, and it looks like she’s going to have to make a bold and very dangerous choice in order to effect a rescue … as always, Law simply OWNS the screen, powering the story along with equal parts guarded bravado and well-hidden wounded vulnerability, and she’s ably supported by the likes of Keith Powers (Straight Outta Compton) as Mouse’s best friend Ugly, the club’s unassuming but VERY capable bouncer, the great Famke Janssen as Mama, the club’s owner and Mouse’s laconic mother figure, and Jogia himself as her ex-boyfriend, local drug-dealing hood Mooney.  The plot twists and turns with suitably pulpy skill while Mouse’s comic book bleeds into the narrative through striking imagery and quirky little animated episodes, while the film tackles big, dark themes with an unflinching eye and refuses to deliver easy answers, particularly in the cathartic but suitably JET BLACK ending.  This is a hell of a debut for a promising new filmmaking talent, then, and I’d LOVE to spend some more time with Mouse herself if Jogia and Law are willing …

22.  SHAZAM: FURY OF THE GODS – it’s interesting that, at least on here, the DC Cinematic Universe (AKA the DCEU) has managed to stand up so well this past year, especially given the recent MAJOR upheavals that have rocked the franchise as a whole.  Not least because said Universe is essentially about to get hit with a Hard Reset under the guidance of new DC Studios CEO James Gunn, so none of this even MATTERS any more going forward … certainly this fact has NOT been lost on cinemagoers, who were already starting to pull away when Black Adam came out in late 2022 and subsequently seemed content to STAY away IN DROVES for this one, likely waiting to give it a go in the privacy and safety of their own homes once it hit streaming.  In a way this sounded a pre-emptive death knell for the DCEU which I was genuinely sceptical about it recovering from … which is a shame, because 2019’s Shazam! was one of the franchise’s BEST FEATURES, a gleefully anarchic post-modern deconstruction of the overblown superhero antics the franchise largely glorified before while never taking itself particularly seriously but simply playing itself with just the right amount of knowing wink-and-nod.  Even more of a shame, then, that this follow-up has proven to be SUCH a performance TURKEY, because it’s JUST AS GOOD as the first one, taking all the lessons learned from the first movie to heart and delivering more of everything that really WORKED once again while trying something new and fresh to expand on this little corner of the Universe with impressive aplomb and consummate skill. 

Returning director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out) once again delivers in HIGH STYLE and customary spooky flair as he and returning screenwriter Henry Gayden (Earth To Echo, There’s Someone In Your House), along with Fast & Furious franchise lynchpin scribe Chris Morgan, expand on the adventures of coming-of-age young hero Billy Batson (Andi Mack’s Asher Angel) and his (still unnamed) superpowered alter ego (Zachary Levi), alongside his now similarly gifted teenaged foster siblings, as the Daughters of Atlas – Hespera (Helen Mirren), Kalypso (Lucy Liu) and Anthea (Rachel Zegler), a trio of immensely powerful but (somewhat) morally dubious classical Greek goddesses – come to claim their powers for their own in order to rejuvenate the Tree of Life and punish Mankind for its wickedness.  The usual existential high stakes, then.  Angel and Levi are, once again, ON FIRE here, the former star of Chuck in particular once again proving what an undisputable comedic MASTER he is while they both deliver MAGNIFICENTLY in the dramatic moments too, while their returning co-stars and sterling veteran support are once again just as great as before, It’s Jack Dylan Grazer particularly getting to really SHINE this time round in a particularly WEIGHTY role that nonetheless once again manages to utilise his own impressive comedic talents to full effect too, while it’s also GREAT to see This Is Us’ Faith Herman get a much more expanded role this time round as the irrepressible Darla; Djimon Hounsou, meanwhile, also gets a lot more to do as he returns as the enjoyably crabby and pompous Wizard Shazam, who’s none too happy with Billy for breaking the staff last time round and setting this all off in the first place.  The Daughters, meanwhile, are FANTASTIC antagonists, Liu and Mirren clearly enjoying the opportunity to be flamboyant, majestic and over-the-top in proper Shakespearean

style, while Zegler invests “Anne” with a good deal more moral fibre and complexity as the most sympathetic (and ultimately conflicted) of the trio.  Sandberg and co again deliver IN SPADES on the action, atmospherics, gorgeously exotic design and sheer creativity which made the first movie such an unexpected treat, while also delivering more of that winning, sometimes downright SCREWBALL BONKERS humour to keep it entertaining and let you know that, just like its predecessor, this film knows FULL WELL how ridiculous it is and is fully prepared to just OWN IT.  The end result is, ultimately, one of the best of the closing slate of DCEU films, which just makes it even sadder to think that they probably won’t continue the story once the franchise reboots.

21.  GODZILLA MINUS ONE – as much as I LOVE the new efforts of Warner Bros’ impressively robust Monsterverse Expanded Universe to bring the greatest big screen kaiju of them all to life, I am not even REMOTELY surprised that it took a Japanese writer-director to truly get right down to the heart of the character with what feels like the truest, most respectful and, quite simply, VERY BEST big screen reworking of the classic original to date.  Mostly I just count myself lucky I was able to find a showing at my local cinema that I could actually get to – this is definitely one of those features that really does DESERVE to be seen on the BIG screen.  Writer-director Takashi Yamazaki certainly has an impressive track record, having helmed the likes of Space Battleship Yamato, The Great War of Archimedes and Lupin III: The First, but even so, this came somewhat out of the blue to not only become a MASSIVE, runaway hit in Japan but also in foreign markets, particularly blowing away western audiences who are universally praising it as one of THE greatest movies of this decade so far.  All right … from a purely critical point of view, I may not quite think THAT about this, but this IS an EXTREMELY GOOD FILM, Yamazaki guiding an impressively game cast and clearly deeply committed crew to create a work of rare emotional power and uplifting intensity that tells a breathless tale of the unbreakable power of the human spirit even in the face of HORRIFIC cataclysmic events … a theme which has, of course, remained close to the hearts of the Japanese ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which famously directly informed Ishiro Honda’s beloved original.  This time round, Godzilla is a pure, monstrous and thoroughly TERRIFYING force of nature throughout the film, a devastating and unstoppable mutated aberration created by the fallout of America’s H-bombs, which is unleashing unfathomable chaos across post-World War II Japan, leading a band of desperate civilians to take matters into their own hands and attempt a desperate stand to stop the horror before all is lost.  Ryunosuke Kamiki (probably best known for his years of work as one of Studio Ghibli’s key voice actors) proves a compellingly fallible hero as deeply traumatised failed kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima, who finds himself battling internal demons even worse than the monster he’s up against in the real world, ably supported by Minami Hanabe (The Great War of Archimedes) as Noriko, the spirited young adoptive mother that Koichi takes in after returning from the war and forms a tight bond with, Hidetaka Yoshiaki (Always: Sunset On Third Street) as Professor Kenji Noda, the former Naval weapons engineer who becomes Koichi’s mentor, and Munetaka Aoki (Rurouni Kenshin) as Sosaku Tachibana, a former Naval fighter mechanic suffering from his own deep-seated traumas after the War.  This is an interesting departure from the classic Kaiju cinema recipe, because while the Big G is definitely a powerful and potent threat that casts a very BIG shadow over events here, Minus One is ultimately less of a monster movie than a movie with a monster IN IT, Yamazaki preferring to focus on the human story and concentrate our attention on the horrors these people have to endure at the unfathomably massive claws of this terrible creature, certainly physical but predominantly mental and emotional.  That’s not to say it ain’t suitably potent in the action stakes, EASILY delivering some suitably THRILLING set-pieces while the creature himself and the chaos he unleashes is portrayed with impressively executed visual effects flair … it’s just that, ultimately, this is a film which is much more of a triumph of GREAT WRITING, peerless direction and awards-worthy performances from an astonishing cast.  In other words, it’s just a really GREAT FILM, period.  Which makes this something TRULY SPECIAL after all, I guess …