#YIPPIE ANOTHER DOUBLE ONE

[eggvlyn]

#OBJECTUARY 23. BAG

wives packing for a trip

[IMAGE ID: Eirene and Nadia are in black line art and a purple monotone color palette. They are both sitting on the floor, Nadia is sitting with an open back pack with a confused look. Eirene is sitting next to a bed with an open suit case on top while holding up a dress and seemingly talking to Nadia. They are both wearing lounge wear and packing their bags. END ID]  

[oswednesday]

i should have made another batch but i was fighting for my fucking life

[the-s1lly-corner]

What would the slashers do with a s/o who has a really disturbing laugh?

(They don't feel ashamed about it though)

G/N reader, pls?

Can be any group of slashers

Various slashers x reader w/ a disturbing laugh

Sorry for the wait!! My motivation to write kinda died BUT I'm having a huge burst right now! Yippie!

Characters: Michael, Brahms, Bubba

Notes: reader is gn, short post

CWs: none

MICHAEL

he... honest to god is not at all phased. if anything he might look at you for a second longer than he normally does- which to be fair he looks at you a lot- before turning away and returning to what he was doing a moment before you started cackling

he simply takes it as another part of you. neither a deterrent or a charm- simply you. and you dont seem to be bothered about it either so why point it out to you? theres simply no point in that

he sees it as just another part of you

BUBBA

see if his brothers didnt have fucked up laughs he would do a double take and look at you wide eyed when you first start laughing around him. but his brothers can sometimes laugh a little... you know... intensely- sure you might outdo them a little in the creepy factor but hes not at all bothered by it!

if anything startles him about it or makes him scared if when you start to laugh so hard the sound comes out in struggled heaves and you start crying from it- he immediately swarms you to try to get you under control before you hurt yourself

sometimes he likes to think your laugh has enough intensity for the two of you

BRAHMS

this man is quite literally obsessed with every single part of you- in both the "awwww he likes you!" sense and the "oooooooh... hes..." way- there isnt really any part of you he doesnt like

except... the laugh... he doesnt hate it but it does throw him for a loop the first few times before he gets used to it. the first time he thought it was a one off. the second.. and then the third time... and he kind of just realizes that you just laugh like that. it takes a while but he does eventually fall in love with your laugh too

he thinks its a little creepy at first but overtime he finds it endearing- its raw and earnest, youre not ashamed about it and youre not holding your mirth back. thats something he can admire

[icypolargirl78]

one of my college assignments required us to draw a room in either 2 or 3 point perspective so i picked swerve's!

i did this in only a few days and i'm a bit disappointed with how the cylinders on the far wall and the table turned out, but critique went well and now i'm finished with the class so yippie! there will be some notes under the cut, nothing important, just rambling about my thought process.

reblogs are appreciated!

okay so first i fucking hate drawing from comic references, i only included five of my references but i had upwards of 20 shots from both mtmte and lost light but lord swerve's layout and furniture shifts so much between artists and shots. like the backdrop behind the engex vats switches designs so much TwT

sometimes it's just a flat wall that has weird pipes and circles popping out of it. like this:

but other times it's like this:

and like they look similar right. but when i'm trying to draw these fuckers, it's annoying. which is why i made the back of the bar a dark void. originally i had a bunch of pipes and stuff but it was too late to do all the lineart for that.

another thing is that the angle of these things

CHANGES IN NEARLY EVERY SINGLE REFERENCE I HAVE. i kid you not i redrew those cylinders like seven times and not once did they come out looking right. i have a new found hatred of cylinders just because of those things. and also from a design standpoint i'm still not quite sure what they do or what purpose they serve.

they're a background element in most shots so it really doesn't matter but my only guess is that they're either parts of the ship sticking through the wall or they store extra engex. either way they do not communicate very well and seem a bit like added fluff. though i will admit that they break up the otherwise very square/rectangular shapes of the bar.

another thing i really like about swerve's is how compact it can be. it's a generally square room with a lowered area right in the centre that can produce a large table or can double as extra floor space. the chairs in from of the bar, as well as a set of tables near the diner styled seats in the alcoves on the side of the room all fold downwards and become flush with the floor! which is really neat and i really like it.

anyways this was a genuinely fun assignment and hopefully i get a good grade for it!

[laulo821]

Hi! I have a little game for you. Here's a list of words:

ratrapáž

montáž

antuka

angažmá

šumafuk

garnýž

ležérní

All of these are real Czech words that come from French. All...except ONE that I made up. Can you guess which one is the fake one I created? :D

YIPPIE! i love games!!

so here are my first ideas: trying to pronounce czech although i have no idea how the inverted ^ sound (between others) and here is what i think

ratrapáž = rattrapage

montáž = montage

antuka = antique (seems kinda strange but why not)

angažmá = ??? engagement??

šumafuk = ????????????????

garnýž = garnir / garnish (english) (unless ý is NOT pronounced i at all lmao)

ležérní = laser (??? aint that english)

so im stumped on 4, 5 and 7 for starters. so . disadvantage.

second idea: what already exists and is borrowed like montage. it is also a russian and english borrowed word so i'm for sure crossing montáž (2) out. same for antuka (3), angažmá (4) and garnýž (6) cuz it'd be a giveaway wouldn't it

third idea: CHEAT and have a czech voice synthétiseur tell me how the words sound ok so i still have no idea what šumafuk (5) is. and i guess ležérní (7) is like léger/légèrement or something so it enters the 2nd idea category: OUT (also i double checked angažmá (4) and it do be engagement so we good)

fourth idea: overthink it since šumafuk (5) seems so far stretched that i can't recognise it, it can't be it cuz you'd make up an easier word. so it is out.

so we're left with (1), ratrapáž/rattrapage. which is a very strange for you to come up with ... since it's not a common one... but maybe you're trying to throw me into a loop ... mmmm ...

fifth idea: overthink it MORE considering it's a game you want to fool me so youre gonna make the word look like another from the list. or make it have czech letters cuz "if it has czech letters it's definetly an existing word". do you think i'm so credule. who do you take me for.

anyways i think you made up ratrapáž and i can't wait for you to prove me wrong and for me to learn more <3

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

thoughts on every gravity falls episode except the last time we watched the full series was back when we had our wisdom teeth removed and they range from actual insightful thoughts to ‘heheh >:]’

first!! honorable mention: the pilot episode! ae always liked this one, though the show we got definitely is much better. also boo-berry

tourist trapped - immaculate intro episode. introduces the characters we’ll be seeing most often, gives us a decent idea of what they’re like (even stan, we get to see him giving the kids stuff for free just to cheer them up), and it introduces the weirdness of gravity falls, all in a pretty well-paced manner. good episode, very good, 10/10

the legend of the gobblewonker - fiddleford introduction episode!! also gobblewonker our beloved <3 the photos of them spending time with stan in the end are so wholesome, they all look so happy, *squeak of delight*

headhunters - so incredibly depressing once you know about ford. is so startled to see a statue of himself that he shouts and falls backwards (is that how he would’ve reacted if ford had shown up in the shack suddenly?). screams and stutters when he finds the statue beheaded, something we never really see him doing, at least not all that often. cries and has to run out of the room when he’s in the funeral. is so happy to get the statue’s head back and put it back on the body. :[

the hand that rocks the mabel - UNCOMFY. it was good! we learn there’s another journal, and it introduces an antagonist we’ll be seeing a lot of. dipper being willing to break up with gideon for mabel because she feels too trapped to do so herself is so lovely, ae love them. episode really nailed the whole icky squirmy bad she was feeling

the inconveniencing - this was our favorite episode for a while, and it’s still one of our top beloveds

dipper vs. manliness - TRANS TRANS TRANS TRANS- oh ahem sorry. got overtaken by a ghost or somethin for a moment there

double dipper - the clones were fun, ae liked them a lot. it’s a very neat concept that a lot can be done with, it was nice to see dipper and tyrone make up and talk, and ae’m very glad they kept dipper 3 and 4 alive to the very end. also ae completely forgot the reason the clones were even made was cause romance or somethin

irrational treasure - ae live for mabel having it affirmed to her that her silliness is not a bad thing, and that’s she’s best just being who she is and not trying to dampen that

the time traveler’s pig - waddles yippie!! also stan turning mabel, who is so depressed she’s been standing in the same place long enough for vines to grow on her and just keeps knocking her head against a pole and muttering ‘waddles’, into a tourist attraction is wild. time travel is confusing, that too

fight fighters - ae am firmly under the belief that stan’s fear was not as cured as he thought it was. mabel and him being on the water tower was neat. we liked those scenes

little dipper - always liked the scene with stan in the mirror maze with gideon. he’s so clever, but then gideon starts breaking shit and stan’s like ‘hEY KNOCK IT OFF’. stan just sort of. kicking him out the door and closing it with such a ‘done with this bullshit’ expression on his face

summerween - another one of our top beloved episodes, and the most nostalgic one for us. we love summerween <3

boss mabel - this was an interesting, but good, one. ae saw some really neat fanart of a scene from it, but ae don’t know who made it and ae have since lost it. basic rundown is that it was art of the scene where the couple look into the gremloblin’s eyes and need to be brought to the hospital, except there was like. a gif of multiple pictures of real eyes in the gremloblin’s eyes. cool stuff

bottomless pit - ae liked the stories :]

the deep end - it was good, we just aren’t that into it personally. it’s like…one of those episodes you put on in the background cause you like it so you don’t mind listening to it but it’s not your favorite enough that you’re going to be distracted by it y’know

carpet diem - ohhhh this is also a very very very good one, yes yes yes

boyz crazy - remember lebam

land before swine - yippie, dinosaurs!! but also a very uncomfortable episode for us, just for. personal reasons

dreamscaperers - wh- there’s two ‘er’s?? since when??

gideon rises - spoilers, he, in fact, does not. also poor waddles :[

scary-oke - ae like this one a lot!!! that’s it! ae like it! it’s good!

into the bunker - idk shifty seemed kinda like. murderous. and intentionally traumatizing. to us. more than anything

the golf war - poor sergio man. honestly the first thing that comes to mind when watching this episode is 1. pit colas have actual pits in them and 2. pacifica getting yanked backwards into the bushes

sock opera - puppet boy puppet boy you’re the one ae glooooooooooovvvvveeee

soos and the real girl - melody intro!!! also soos has a cousin that looks almost exactly like him but is significantly less desirable

little gift shop of horrors - ae liked stan’s stories. also he canonically kidnapped someone and put them on display

society of the blind eye - gives much more characterization to fiddleford plus a bit of his past. the scene of him accepting it and thanking the kids for helping him is so heartwarming

blendin’s game - ae invoke gLOBNARRRRRRRRRR

the love god - ae’m sure you can guess our thoughts on this one

northwest mansion mystery - ae love this one just for the characterization and growth it gives pacifica. main reason that she’s one of our top favorite characters

not what he seems - FERAL SCREECHJNG (POSITIVE)

a tale of two stans - 12/10. it was the best of times. it was the worst of times

dungeons, dungeons, & more dungeons - this is where one of our favorite ford quotes came from

the stanchurian candidate - we never really liked this one. not sure why. it’s just not for us, ae guess

the last mabelcorn - very good episode! very very…imperch

roadside attraction - is it bad that we consider stan getting baited and fucked over by a spider lady the best part of the episode

dipper and mabel vs. the future - top favorite episode of all time. our number one

weirdmaggedon one - oHHHHHH SHIT

weirdmaggedon two - mabel and dipper. pat pat. you agree

weirdmaggedon three - sobs it’s so perfect…stan :[ and the credits ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

y’know. ae think making this list was a good idea. reminds us why we love this series so much. yeah, the fandom sucks, but that was never what it was about. it was about the world and the characters and what it all means to us. and what it means to us is everything <3

[candyredterezii]

Any fresh new recs for the upcoming spooky season Dani? I still have to watch Reanimator but Ginger Snaps and Jennifer's Body were fire for last year!!

HELL YEAH HERE WE GO

Renfield - Nic Cage dracula. Does anything else need to be said? Okay yeah it's p gory, p funny, sooo enjoyable honestly.

Orphan: First Kill - Even if you haven't seen the first Orphan movie, it's ok, cus this is a prequel !! There's like. Multiple twists and the big one really fucking got me CHOKED. Suspenseful and such a fun ride 2 watch

Bodies Bodies Bodies - A modern murder mystery dark comedy, def is like ... Kinda cringe if you take it too seriously, but I don't think the movie is even trying to with a lot shit but. I had fun with it

Frankenhooker - I judged the movie by it's cover at first, but no this is one of my favorite movies. I fucking love it okay.

Evil Dead Rise - Okay, at the end of the day? It's a super fun movie. If you're not like.. An Evil Dead Purist and can just like, turn that side of the brain off for a bit, it's a fun movie. Gory and fun as hell

Frogs - I'm just gonna post a Letterboxd Review of this movie that sums it up perfectly

One Cut Of The Dead - Listen. I recommend going in absolutely blind into this movie. Don't even read a synopsis or anything. I went in blind to this and it definitely makes the experience 100 times better

Popcorn (1991) - I only seen this once but like, I remember being very interested in the story. Takes place at a horror film festival at a theater where shit happened in the past ... And it happens again! IIRC Main Character is also tied to the tragic backstory of the theater unknowingly .. hmm!!

Demons (1985) - Another movie where people are trapped in a movie theater, yippi!! But this one is produced by our guy Dario Argento !!!!!! Some demons end up infesting the theater and turns everyone one by one UHOH

M3GAN - I don't need to say anything do I.

Freaky (2020) - If you appreciate acting talent/performances ? This is a double hitter. A serial killer and high school girl end up switching bodies - antics ensue!

Last Night In Soho - It has it's issues, sure, and it's p long iirc? But man, I was interested the entire damn time.

Autopsy of Jane Doe - A mortician and his son work the graveyard shift trying to figure out the cause of death of this seemingly untouched body of a Jane Doe, found half buried in the basement of a home where the entire family inside was mutilated. Things ensue!

but yeah thats like. all the ones that i see that r p recent on my letterboxd that i could recommend for some spooks n fun ig!!

[uglyduckling339]

KY'S LIFE IS STRANGE DOUBLE EXPOSURE NONSENSE LIVEBLOG: Episode 5

(spoiler warning OBVIOUSLY)

tutorial episode 1 episode 2 episode 3 episode 4

So i took a minor (like a week long) break after ep 4 bc ugh but im back now :D

highkey after that SHITSHOW of an ep (4), i dont even remember what the plot is nomo

max jumped into the storm ! okay girl yodo

chat im gonna be so fr this entire ep was hella confusing. it was a nightmare but not? it was real but not? what the fuck happened

anyways 2 moons 😍 it's to signify that the universes are indecipherable rn

HER JOURNAL ENTRY AW :( "i'm playing it with somebody new now"

i'm lowkey scared of this nightmare scene. LiS' scene was literally HORRIFYING

wait is safi like in a diff world from us

okay yes rhis is 100% a nightmare jesus fuck

pompedo text but cat is so cutesy

WARREN?? OH MY GOD

another glitch lmao, mose's cig is puncturing through the ash tray

YO HE GOT SAFI'S LINES.

POSSESSED MOSES??

Okay this is highkey cool

OH MY GOD IT'S SAFI NOW?? WOAH

OH. SHES IN OUR MIND TOO ! DUH

max take a selfie quick get her out

BLUE BUTTERFLY?? DONT FUCK W ME RN.

dog is this real or fake. im so lost.

WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES 🗣

oh my god

oh my god

oh

my

god

BLACKWELL

um. why is it max and safi 😭 thats so random

it's giving me and my mutuals when we quote LiS ngl

highkey this is funny to watch

i'm so using this scene for a tiktok

oop girl u dont got no power nomo

OH ALSO !! TRAUMA YIPPIE

i feel like this would've hit better if they js redid the og scene w nathan and chloe but wtvr

JOYCE KATE AND VICTORIA??? OH MY GOD

i bet chloe's gonna be the last text in this

guys i forgot how to universe hop lmao

GO FUCK YOUR SELFIE??? THE BINDERS??

for yalls info, jeffershit got to 24 girls according to the binders on the table

WOAH RACHEL ON THE WALL

more trauma yay

"he is selling you for parts" ?

OH MY FUCK. THE SEAT.

OH MY GOD

"I'm not 18 anymore" YES !! YES MAX ILYSM

yeah okay so lucas is violently compared jefferson. broski one is WAY worse n it's not lucas i fear

the camera shaking was crazy omg

YESS FREE URSELF MAX !!

why's there a giant ass tree here lmao

MORE SITS 🗣

yall know damn well how much i fw these sits

apparently safi spoke but i couldn't hear the audio for her, i could only read the subtites ?

also the music has gotten highkey fire tbh.

it's giving Before The Storm vibes

one huge complaint about this game is the lack of dialogue between characters. in LiS u could spend ages talking to every single minor character and now beyond cut scenes theres like. reggie diamond vinh and loretta n thats it.

AH WHERE DID YALL COME FROM

this gotta be a nightmare bro yall keep jumpscaring me

Reggie !! my fav !!

bro what is a time vortex.

yay that totes made sense ! 10/10 explantion

poor reggie i love him sm :(

VINH !! MY OTHER FAV

Omg wait so they all remember both worlds?

woah okay sick

brother move ONNN. she dont like u

nobody:

max: maybe you should focus on what's in front of you (me) and move on (towards me)

LMFAO GWEN'S JS CHILLING OUTSIDE MID-STORM

ngl that's such a mood. Me too girl.

jesus so like max is gonna have to tell EVERYONE about her powers after this

AHHH CHLOE TEXT

"so tired of being sorry" max :(

LMFAO? VINH/MOSES ROMANCE AU OKAYY

YO WHAT THE HELL

Chloe in the Dark Room core

I HAVE SO MANY COMMENTS BRO WHAT

um okay we're gonna move on from that polaroid but. okay man. enjoy his telescope ig

woah this is a new place

oh my gosh this is a post-storm motel

WAIT OKAY SO i chose bae>bay, what happens in bay>bae for this scene??

this is making me sad guys. chloe come home

oh dear god please not another dorm time loop

bro what is max on abt this is very clearly the same fucking room💀

ohh the painting is diff.

its still the same room tho

FUCK U MEAN THIS IS A DIFF ROOM BRO ITS THE SAME AS THE LAST 2

okay actually i lied. cleveland doesnt have a hot plate

OH MY GOD IS THIS THE FIRST ROOM POST-BREAK UP :(

why is this bitch YAWNING so much. wake up.

woah wheres the color

THE WALLS ARE FAKE?? WOAH

okay yeah girl take a nap. no problem. totes time for a break. right now. mid-storm.

omg it's like her sense of reality is slipping

OHH okay fine. thats why they're the same room. that's kinda chill ig

N E B U L A

baby wake up this is a nightmare

oo double sits !!

fucking bitch ass fuck ass fucking dvsidhjdjd

loading screen.

max not hiding her powers core

this game is SO pretty btw. i love the sky

"i need her" U ALREADY GOT 2 WHOLE ASS LOVE INTERESTS. DOWN GIRL

these doors are so trippy damn

all that for her to be right behind us. cool

okay i like safi now that she's normal again

OKAY CONFIDENT MAX !! ILY

wtf they are soo gay in this ep

i'm genuinely gonna crash out over these loading screens oh my fucking lord

safi is literally chloe w superpowers

yeah okay she kinda got u there max..

oh great Safi's magneto again

oh hell no. max snap on her please. beat her ass into sense

safi out here planning the damn avengers innitive lmfao

what am i even agreeing to.

yes mr nick fury (safi) 🫡 i will be there to join your superpowered team🫡

oh yeah i forgot yasmin is like bleeding out rn

oh my god :( chloe reached out :(

MAX ANSWER HER?? LMAO WHAT

oh fuck yeah guys remind me to watch a video of this part bc i missed what max said abt the text

it's kinda symbolic how in the most peaceful scene we've seen with max, she still hears chloe's voice from likely the worst day of her life. like a symbol for how her trauma will never be fully gone, she's just living around it.

okay ik i was rambling this whole time about wanting her to have a breakdown but honestly this is what i actually wanted :( max healing ily

also tessa rose jackson is an absolute BEAST musically. holy shit

OH so the world's merged? hm

ig it's cool that they remember everything now, max isn't alone w the memories this time.

TIMBID GUY AND GOTH GIRL AW

reggie <3 loretta <3

okay so loretta's grown on me soo much. she's obvi annoying but she doesn't mean actual harm n she's kinda nice

and reggie my fav ! i love him sm

i may have forgotten reggie and vinh fucked (?). yeah my bad man

i'm still so confused. what was real and fake in that storm? what do they specifically remember?

"do u feel 2 ppl fighting in ur mind for the truth" (or whatever tf loretta said) nope ! skill issue on ur part girl

oh wow max asked for consent before snapping pics of every1!! rare sight fr!

that feeling when u post pictures roasting ur students and friends but don't respond to chloe elizabeth price's text

ALSO :( I MISS IRIS :( WHY WOULD U GIVE HIM AWAY :(

is it bc the text. that wasn't real max, i promise ur cat didn't fr send hate to u

good god how does diamond know abt our powers bro

WAIT DO THEY ALL KNOW ABOUT HER POWERS??? HOW DID I MISS THAT?? DID THEY LIKE TELL US THEY ALL KNOW??

max is HARSH with these captions

lmao "Vinh in his natural habitat ; A bar'

bro i love gwen sm. what is that pose😭

NOW HOLD UP MOSES. I DID N O T GIVE MY SEAL OF APPROVAL. ALL I DID WAS LET HER LEAVE TOWN. THAT'S IT.

no hate but why is diamond here and not reggie?? reggie was WAY more involved with this supernatural stuff then her

okay and that's the end of the game !

jk actually there's an end-credit scene (because it's the MCU apparently)

cool so diamond has magic. and safi just happened to know purely bc of a nose bleed. radical 😐👍

guys if u wanted to announce the avengers you could've referenced LiS2 or true colors instead; that's also ok instead of making another character w powers.

IM DYING BRO i've been making avengers jokes and then all i see is a fucking "Max Caulfield Will Return" screen😭😭😭 this is a joke there is no way yall are serious rn😭😭💀

okay um tryna lock back in now, i've got a couple notes:

so overall, this game was VERY if-y. it had some good moments, but the storyline was super unstable and it felt like they didn't really know what they were doing while writing it.

I liked the concept of a multi-versal murder mystery, but once they drifted away from that and started spiralling into the weird Super-Safi storyline it got kinda confusing to follow along

I truly think they had a really great idea with this game, but the weak plot-twists and boring storyline absolutely bombed it. (I guess you could say that the only murderer in this "murder mystery" was the game's plot killing itself)

I also think it had a really lovely messege about overcoming trauma, and I liked how they treated Max's PTSD with the storm (plus her heartbreak from Chloe was actually well handled, which was a huge concern for me when I heard abt it). I think her Dark Room trauma was treated kinda weird bc of the time vortex thing but honestly that was more of a plot-clarity issue over a conceptual problem.

At the beginning, I was HEAVILY judging the music. Maybe my tastes have changed in the past month or sum but now the music isn't that bad (I still HATE the intro song tho) and I actually like the new vibe this game brought to the LiS world. It was def different from the OG LiS game but I feel like thats a good thing since a huge portion of this game is proving that Max isn't that same teenager anymore. She's changed, the world around her changed, and so her new game is a reflection of that.

Also, the cat content... I LOVED customizing the cat, but I thought the add-on was gonna be more obvious and didn't even realize that I had missed the actual content until I went into the trophies menu after playing lmfao😭😭

I have like a million more comments abt this game but I feel like I got all my major stuff out already so I'm gonna stop rambling lol. I still have my pricefield rant/analysis i'm working on and I'll probably make some small comments while I platinum the game but this is it for my live-blogs !! Thank you to my hundreds of adoring fans for sharing these out to world and to the actual 3 people who interacted and decided to try and deciper my insanity ! 🫶

[timetakillgod]

No WIP Wednesday this week, I'm still busy working on some dnd stuff but! As a compromise I'll share the recent description I finished under the cut :3

The door opens with shutter and hiss as mechanism inside releases a small burst of air that allows the door to slide open. First thing you notice is past the balcony is that there is a humaniod figure floating between two glowing cyndrical pieces. It is blue and providing all the light that is in the room. Upon closer inspection you notice you can see the wall behind it through it's body. Letting your gaze wander you take note of the two chairs positioned in front of some sort of orange stained glass, you have a strange sense that it should not be dim.

As you look around the nook that house the stained glass you notice buttons and levers of all sorts some of which are connect with tubes. There is one set of buttons aligned directly with the stained glass all the same color, but like with everything else covered in dust. These nooks, they house wires and nobs of all sorts mirroring one another on either side of the floating being.

If one decides to walk further in- to the edge of the balcony and its double stairs that lead to the floor housing the nooks- then they can see before them a table in the center. On it holds tools and oil stained cloth, but upon it a prize most wonderful. An engine, at least most of an engine, you can tell the boat might need stabilizers but that is an easy fix once the engine is attached.

As you approach the being it seems to bob, it's surface glitching in and out as it comes to life. You hear it's voice, cold and static filled as it surronds you.

yippie! One down three to go!

[spiderlilyvalley]

If you're interested in the makings of this piece, I have a few bits of trivia about some of the elements in it. One of my favorite things to do in all of my art is incorporate religious imagery, which becomes pretty clear by the last two panels LOL.

Anyway, I want to go ahead and start with Simon's design-- he's made to represent Jesus, so I wanted to incorporate his brown skin, long black hair, and skinny body to represent the image of Jesus as a young boy. Another aspect of Simon is his connection to the nature of the island, and the fact that his skin has slight crosshatching emphasizes the blend between himself and the world around him.

One of the parts that I'm like "hehe im so artsy" about is Simon's leaf crown. Instead of having a crown of thorns, as Jesus has, he has a leaf crown. Both of them represent essentially the same thing, however; mental anguish and being doomed to die. Thorns are only added at the very end, after his eyes turn dull like the Lord of the Flies'.

A strand of hair goes in the middle of Simon's face to separate his extremely bright eyes from each other-- he is split down the middle of himself, battling his spirituality and his desire to appear more human, and therefore more likeable in the eyes of the boys. That or I liked how it looked.

Anyway, some fun little easter eggs: On page 7, on the left side with the Lord of the Flies, the intestines turn into a double headed snake, a symbol of duality and wisdom. These reappear in page 9 and 11 as Simon's hallucinations get worse.

On page 15, there are small black dots on Simon's body. These are obviously the flies, but they are also where Jesus is nailed when he is put on the cross. The hands, the feet, and the chest. I thought making that panel look like a crucifixion would be too on the nose, so I thought having upturned hands, a common sign for repentance, would be alright too.

Page 16 has Simon passed out at the bottom of the panel. This is a direct reference to the statue, "Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb," which has been recreated a lot.

The reason I didn't put the lord of the flies in the middle of his body, as the angel is, is because he represents the devil, and therefore is not at his side-- he is wanting to drag Simon into hell by the feet.

Another fun little easter egg is that the butterflies only reappear in the last panel, drinking Simon's sweat. That poor guy! Anyway, thought it would be fun to give a little insight on some of the things I did in this piece... yippie

Simon's Conversation With The Lord of the Flies

Definitely not my usual content, but I thought I'd share to tumblr too.

This was done without any planning/layouts, with only pen. It's very experimental because I was experimenting with different ways of shading and comic panel layout so... bare with me there.

I love Simon very much, and the interaction between him and the LOTF is my favorite scene of the entire book. I made this in a week long frenzy for my AP Lit class and... well, here it is.

(Also, sorry for any formatting/text issues, it's very hard to take good pictures of warped paper...) 🪰 🐷

[deaths]

first meeting

just a short like, thing, establish lore. i haven't written any fiction in a... really long ass time. but first meetings between me and aki yippie!

Aki waited. Makima was surely up to nothing good, having a meeting about introducing a new member of his squad. With Denji and Power being enough trouble. Surely, she understands that he is at his limit for partners. Let’s try to be positive, if this person he is being put with isn’t incompetent it shouldn’t be a huge problem, maybe they’ll even help balance things out.

Hearing the familiar clack of heel on title, he tensed up slightly, putting his arms behind his back. There seemed to be a second pair following, maybe that’s them? But why are they wearing any form of heel? They must know what this job entails.

“Mr. Hayakawa.” A familiar voice from a familiar redhead woman spoke out, he was too in his own thoughts to hear the door open. Aki does a polite bow toward Ms. Makima.

“Good morning, Ms. Makima. I hope your ride here was a good one.” He stops his bow to try to look at Makima and the stranger following.

They were… something, to say the least. At first glance, he already knew he was with another troublemaker, again. Trying not to make a soured look on his face.

“It was, thank you Mr. Hayakawa.” Makima put away her trench coat onto the coat hanger. She walked to her desk, standing in front of it. “Rio, may you close the door?” She smiled slightly.

Closing the door, Rio then walked forward to the side of Aki. Aki wasn’t sure if he could be more annoyed at the situation Makima has put him in, once again. From first impressions, this person was wearing chains with their uniform, surely against some dress code policy. This person was probably not religious, but bare multiple religious symbols in their jewelry. And is that, a dog collar?

Breaking his train of thought, “This is Rio, you will be helping them get the ropes until we can find a unit to put them into.”

Rio looked towards him, taking a small glance. What the fuck, he’s so pretty? They do a double take. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes. They can’t help but stare. Trying to take in all the small details of his side profile. A small blush takes over their face.

“Ms. Makima,” God his voice is heavenly- “I can’t deal with another problem child. I hope you understand where I am coming from.”

Oh, he’s a dick.

“I understand completely, Mr. Hayakawa. But I saw it best to put them with you.” Makima, unchanging in her opinion.

“Can I put a request to put them with Himeno’s unit for now? I don’t mean to argue, I just am dealing with Denji and Power as well.” Aki puts his arms behind his back. His tone is unreadable, his face emotionless.

“I think she would get trained best with you, Aki.” An uncomfortable silence fills the room, Rio really didn’t want to start an argument, especially between their two higher-ups. Makima cuts the silence with a knife, “They’re not a devilman or any situation like Denji’s. I feel it’s best for them to get training from someone like you, a professional.”

Aki’s mind slightly eases. Well, if they’re not anything special, and Makima wants me to, I can easily take care of this. They’re just… something. As long as they’re serious about this position. I shouldn’t be so quick to judge, people can… dress how they want.

“I’ll make sure to do my best then, Ms. Makima.”

Makima smiles softly.

Rio and Aki fully face each other for the first time, Aki’s eye contact deep and a bit intimating, staring down at them. “Hello,” Rio quickly bows in politeness. “Well, my name is Rio, I guess all you need to know is I’m contracted with the flame devil. I hope we can get along.” They put out a hand.

That was… awfully polite, Aki thinks, feeling a bit embarrassed for calling them a problem in front of them now. “Hello, Rio. Call me Mr. Hayakawa. I hope we can too.” Aki shakes their hand, up and down three times, nothing more. If memory recalls, the flame devil is a rather chaotic force, he wonders how on earth someone got contracted with them of all devils.

[elisabethdenis]

11 days of productivity

First of all, you should know that I held a guilty feeling in my poor little body for not posting my productive activities everyday since I started the 100 days challenge. As if not posting meant not doing. How evil are those thoughts? 

To be bruttaly honest, my sheets have turned to a shroud. My body feels numb, I have no desire to do much, my motivation is hiding under the carpet. It is spring in New-Zealand and the rain is inevitable. My hair have been washed twice with lemon and almond oil to hydrate my scalp. I bring coffee to my lips 1-3 times a day for a bigger push in the butt. The laundry cycle seem infinite but I’m okay with it because I enjoy looking at the clothesline slowly moving in the wind. I bought 3 jars of ice cream and a few tablet of chocolate. My favorite treat was $140 worth of books. Moroccan and Brazilian literature. And the yellow Grapefruit book of Instruction by Yoko Ono, what a gem! 

This country is finally catching up on other continent. The division is real and that could partially be the reason why gliding in the unknown is getting harder and harder. I can still hear myself say a year ago: oh, I don’t mind lockdown, I’m a hermit anyways. Let me take it all back today. I miss sitting at cafés and being held by all of my friends. I miss not being pointed at because my choices are different to others. 

Japanese anime and oversea correspondences are softening most of the disaster. But I’ll still need a few plasters. My status of ‘illegal immigrant’ in this country is the cherry on the top. The process is taking the time it needs to take and I try everyday to learn to wait well. These words were written on a piece of paper on my friend’s wall the other day: If you have to wait, wait well. I’m trying. This is the closest to being deported that I have ever been and the reason being is: immigration New-Zealand do not think that my relationship is credible. What a pinch on the heart. My partner and I will keep on fighting to prove the purity of our love. This is insulting, mostly very sad and it makes me want to jump over the border and get the fuck out of here. I waited 4 months so far, I can wait another one. 

Oh, and I can’t go to an artist residency I was very much looking forward to go to, because I am not double jabbed. That was quite heartbreaking to find out.

In the midst of this storm, I’m attempting writing my very first manuscript. My goal this month was to achieve 8 draft pages. Which I have, yippy! 4249 words. While I’m writing these fictional stories which are taking place in 4 different countries in Africa, I got very interested about the continent as I never set a foot there. I find it extremely difficult to write about a place I have not been. My curiosity lead me to speak with an author from Ghana (Prince Mensah), which helped me so much in terms of giving me directions to dig deeper into the Liberian civil wars and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He took a genuine interest in my poetry and my short stories which was very flattering. Small victory for me, a pet in the back! Following our conversations, I watched ‘Hotel Rwanda’ and ‘Shooting dogs’ - both about 1994 Rwanda genocide. Last night, I watched ‘Pray the devil back to hell’ which is a documentary about the ladies who have brought peace back to Liberia after the last civil war. Such atrocities made me look around my house thinking, fuck I’m such a brat. My vaccine and immigration worries are nothing compared to a husband being butchered in front of his wife while his daughter is getting raped. My heart goes to the thousands of people who got hungry, displaced, dishonored, burned, mentally assassinated and killed. 

Danielle Foster is my creative mentor for the next 9 months. She has a master in contemporary arts and works for Creative Waikato. Each month, we pick 4 small goals for me to tick off the list, to eventually, achieve my 4 main goals (manuscript, exhibition ‘think twice, it’s not alright’, walk the walk me with to me, repeat ‘geodynamic slumbers’). I write these in keywords because they are still brewing... Once they come to life, I’ll totally expose them on social platforms.

 The end of the month is right here and my 4 task are dead and gone: write to my uni teacher, write 8 draft pages, get the texts from my 6 model-gals, get an interview on the phone with 4 people living in the 4 countries I’m writing about.

My current 2 penpal friends are located in Canada and the other is in Japan. I’m writing to both of them with my favorite Japanese pen: Pockey. I have no idea how I will send my next letters because all of the post offices here are closed. It is quite special to get to know someone a little better every month, from a piece of paper with words on, and small gifted objects. Human connections are everything to me. They keep me going. 

This is goodbye for now, I shall return in a few days, I’m afraid it will be impossible and unwanted, to write everyday. 

Hugs xoooooooxx, we all need more of them

[thelordofdarkreunion]

Magnificent Scoundrels- We’re the Best

“This is Unit Delta-5-9!  We need immediate reinforcements!  We’re getting torn up over here!”

“Copy that, Delta-5-9.  Who are the hostiles in your area?”

“Commander Shepard is here!  Repeat, Commander Shepard is here!”

“Copy that.  Anyone else?”

“There’s one guy in some sort of silver armor.  With a spear!  He’s tearing up our guys like it’s no problem!”

“...repeat last.”

“Yes, he’s got a spear!  And there are these two guys in trench coats, too!”

“What are they doing?”

“Uh… dancing?” “...”

“And there’s some other guy, too.  He’s moving too fast for us to track, and… where did he go?”

“Hello.” 

“Wha-” [Several gunshots are fired.  Transmission ends.]  -Transmission Intercepted from Attacking Force Delta by combined Quarian/Starfleet/Mechanicus operatives

“The elevators in this place are so goddamn slow.”  Shepard shrugged at Drake, a move which made him bump against Vir.  

“Yeah, I know.  Cramped, too.”  

“Got that right,” muttered Quill as he jostled for position with Cooper.  Drake sighed and activated his wrist computer.  

“Might as well do something useful.  Ordelphine!  Saul!  Whoever the hell’s up there.  You might have heard, but we have problems down here.  Every available crewmember is to deploy with full… everything.  Heavy weapons, heavy armor, tell Garang to wear the power armor, and get Kraiker, Mark, Oliver, and Muelka to get down here with all their stuff.”  He paused for a moment, then pressed the transmit button with almost indecent haste.  “And tell Muelka to not set anything on fire!”  He shrugged at Shepard and Quill’s curious expressions.  “I think it would be best if my crew and I were remembered for saving the Citadel, not blowing it up.”  Vir shrugged and nodded.

“Makes sense.  Actually, I ought to get my crew down here too.”  He tapped the communications button on the side of his Iron Eye helmet.  “Simone!  Cannon!  Get the Marines, Valhallans, and Drev clan down here!  This is a full battle.  Extended combat operations, so be ready for that.”

“Understood, sir.  I…  uh… Conn wants me to tell you that… “A vampire masturbating in front of a mirror.  Bet you didn’t see that coming.”  What the hell?  Conn, you little-”  Vir shook his head.

“It’s fine.  So as long as he stays there.  We don’t want to freak too many people out.”  

“Yes, sir.  Although that means I’m stuck with him,” responded a slightly put-out Simone.

“Have fun!” replied Vir with a bit too much cheerfulness than was required.

“I’m sure I will, sir.”  Vir released the comms button on his helmet and shook his head again.  

“I’m not so sure I want to meet Conn,” intoned Quill.  

“Take my advice and just… don’t,” replied Vir.  Quill nodded. 

“Fair enough.”  he rubbed his chin for a moment.  “At least I don’t have to contact anyone.  Everyone from my ship is in the other elevator.”

“Maybe you should have gone with them,” muttered Cooper as he jostled against Quill once more.  

“No.  Drax is there, and he takes up way too much space as it is.”  Shepard shook his head at their banter, and activated his comms as well.

“Miranda, get the ground team down here.  The entire ground team.”

“Should I come along as well?” replied a woman’s Australian-accented voice.  Shepard considered for a moment.

“Yes.  Tell Joker not to get the Normandy too beat up while we’re gone.”

“Understood, Commander.”  Cooper looked over from where he was pressed against the glass.  

“So, we have that down.  Now what?”  Shepard activated a button, and a glowing orange hologram sprang to life around his left arm.  He pressed something else, and a map of the Citadel came up.

“We’re here.” He tapped near the Council chambers.  “There’s a pretty hefty attacking force outside, fighting C-Sec officers and Turian shock troopers outside.  We clear the attackers, set up a space where shuttle reinforcements can land, and proceed from there.”  Everyone nodded.  

“Well, that’s a better plan than most of what we do.”  The group looked at each other speculatively.  

“Yeah.  Yeah, it is,” said Quill.  “Reminds me.  Have I ever told you about the time where I saved the galaxy with only 17% of a plan?”  

Elsewhere on the Citadel

It was decided that Master Chief would take up the rear, as eight feet of muscle and Mjolnir armor would be a reasonable deterrent for most pursuers.  There had been a short but intense argument over who would lead, but Kirk had suggested a combined force of bodyguards to placate everyone.  

Now, a group of various bodyguards led the delegates through the under-tunnels of the Citadel to safety, with Cain, Kirk, and Solo sprinkled throughout the formation.  The delegates murmured to each other, careful to not let their words be overheard.  Each had groups of powerful special forces soldiers at their command, and each was wondering what to do with them, or if and when to deploy them.  

“Councillors!  We are under heavy fire!  Some of the C-Sec officers have turned traitor, and the attackers are taking more of the Citadel.  We need reinforcements!” came a desperate cry over the communication systems.  Sparatus, the Turian Councillor, replied immediately.  

“Hierarchy soldiers are currently on the ground.  We’ll send more, but it will take a while for their shuttles to get there.  You’ll have to hold,” he replied curtly.  Several other diplomats heard the exchange.  Normally, many would not have lent their forces to the fight, but if it meant the difference of getting out alive or dead, it wasn’t even a question.

“Captain Faro, this is Thrawn.  Deploy our troopers immediately.  Have TIE’s escort the shuttles.  Keep the Destroyers in a holding position.”

“Captain, this is Agent Omicron.  Have the ODSTs ready to drop immediately.”

“Watch Captain, this is Inquisitor Vail.  Order the Scions to deploy in high altitude grav drop.  Have the Kill Team and the Assassins ready in the teleportariums.”

“Captain, this is Marder.  Have the Pilots stand ready in their Titans and be ready to deploy.”

Elsewhere on the Citadel

The elevator sounded a clear, high ding! and the doors slid slowly open.  

“Fucking finally,” muttered Drake.  The next elevator over sounded a similar chime and disgorged Quill’s crew, looking none happier than the Scoundrels over the slow ride down.  The sounds of gunfire and screams filled the air from just beyond the indoor plaza at the foot of the Council Chambers.  “Well, back to something I know better.  Actually…”  Drake’s face turned into a sly grin.  “Tali!  Scotty!  Can you two give me control of the P.A. system?”  

“Why do you want the P.A. system?” came Scotty’s, well, Scottish bur.  

“Uh… psychological warfare?”  There was a pregnant pause on the other end.  Drake tried again.  “For funsies?”  

“...fine.”  There was another pause.  “You have control Drake,” came a very tired sounding Scotty.  

“Wonderful!” replied Drake, utterly delighted.  “Now, here comes the fun part.”

------------------------------------------------

Major Viter of the Turian Hierarchy cursed as a bullet chipped the wall he was kneeling behind.  The Cerberus attackers and traitor C-Sec agents had his combined forces of Hierarchy soldiers and loyal C-Sec agents pinned down in front of the Citadel Tower.  They had held well enough for the past ten minutes of grueling firefights, long enough to give the Council and the other delegates enough time to escape.  Viter didn’t care much for the other diplomats, but he had been ordered to hold, and death was a preferable alternative to disobeying those orders.  Another volley of fire raked the wall, and he shrank back from it.  Cerberus was getting crafty.  They knew the Hierarchy shock troopers were far superior to the C-Sec agents under his command, so they endeavored to keep the Turians pinned down for as long as possible.  Not good.  He turned to his left and yelled at his communications officer.

“Where are those reinforcements?  We can’t hold the tower without them!”  

“They’re still ten minutes out!  And that’s not including the time it’ll take the shuttles to find a safe landing zone!”  Viter cursed.  “But someone said we have additional reinforcements en-route.  Some kind of special team,” added the communications officer.  Viter calmly shot down a traitor C-Sec agent who was stupid enough to poke their head in the open before turning back.  

“What kind of special team?”  But before the comms officer could replay, the Citadel’s P.A. system fizzed to life.  Cerberus, C-Sec, and Turian soldiers looked up with confusion as an unmistakably human show tune started to play.  

“Yippie yay!  There’ll be no wedding bells for today!”  There was a flash of electric blue, and a Cerberus trooper took a shot to her head, which promptly melted, complete with horrifying screams from its wearer.  Viter looked back to the Tower’s entrance.  Standing there was a black haired, black coated human wielding a silvery, triple barreled rifle.  Flanking him was another masked and trenchcoated human, a small (about up to viter’s knee), rodent-like creature holding a full-sized machine gun, and… Commander Shepard.  Back from the dead?  To borrow a human expression: Oh boy.  This just got interesting.

  As the abominably cheerful tune continued to play, a figure clad in solid grey metal armor and some massive, bare-chested, grey and orange humanoid alien ran past Viter at speeds he didn’t think were possible for a biped to produce.  He did a double take.  They were holding a spear and two knives respectively.  Did they have a death wish?  The Cerberus and C-Sec attackers seemed to think so, as they stepped forward as one to cut the running figures down.  

With no warning, a man wearing a strange set of advanced-looking armor materialized beyond a Cerberus trooper wielding a machine gun, drew a pistol, gave a cheerful “Hi!”, blew the back of the trooper’s head apart, and disappeared.  Farther down, a Cerberus combat engineer looked down at his chest, where a lithe blade appeared through his breastbone.  A green-skinned alien woman gave him a surreptitious wink, and, before his comrades could react, faded into oblivion.  

Within the space of a second, the attacking line devolved into panic.  The gunmen behind the running figures opened fire, forcing the Cerberus personnel to keep their heads down as the two sprinting figures collided with them at full tilt.  

The grey figure’s spear slid through a trooper’s neck armor joint, producing a gurgled sigh as he crumpled to the ground.  The silvery figure spun around, and with pinpoint precision, impaled another Cerberus trooper through the joints of her armor.  The massive grey humanoid went flying into a group of traitorous C-Sec agents with reckless and utterly terrifying abandon, stabbing wildly.  

The green-skinned woman appeared once more, and gracefully cut down two Cerberus soldiers with just as many strokes of her keen-bladed swords.  The Turians and loyal C-Sec agents were now all firing at the disorganized attackers, Shepard was killing with horrifying, lethal accuracy, the rodent-creature was cackling maniacally as it fired it’s huge machine gun, the two trenchcoated men were dancing along to the music over the P.A. system while firing off precise, perfectly timed-to-the-beat shots, there was a walking tree now that was impaling people with wooden growths from its arms, and the man in advanced armor, who had been appearing and disappearing was now running on the walls, almost horizontally, supported by only thrusters on the back of the suit and a hand held out for balance.  In short, utter mayhem.  

The man hopping from wall to wall jumped down and kicked a Cerberus trooper with enough force to crack her helmet.  The grey armored man and green-skinned woman impaled two more opponents with perfect synchronicity.  Viter overloaded a Cerberus soldier’s shields, then shot him in the head.  The last enemy, a panicking traitorous C-Sec agent, turned and ran, only to be gunned down by the black coated human.   

The grey armored figure removed their helmet to reveal the cheerful face of a green-eyed, blond-haired human man.  Shepard and he walked over to Major Viter, who turned and stared at them with an expression that was equal parts confusion, shock, and gratefulness.  

“I’m assuming you’re the team that was sent to assist me?” he asked.  “Pardon me asking, but who exactly are you?”  Shepard opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the black coated man.

“We’re the Magnificent Scoundrels, and we put the laughter into slaughter!”  Shepard’s mouth moved spasmodically for a few moments before the blond haired man stepped in.

“Don’t… don’t listen to… him.”  The black coated man shrugged.

“Yeah.  I get that a lot.”  Shepard rolled his eyes.

“We’re a team made up from a variety of different governments present, and we’re here to help take back the Citadel.”  Shepard looked around, experienced eyes taking in the mayhem around them.  “What now?” he asked Viter.  Viter’s mandibles moved in an expression that Shepard recognized as turian thoughtfulness.  

“Well, we press on and clean up the Citadel.  But we,” he gestured at the group, “Can’t do it alone.  We’re going to need help.”  Shepard and the blond man shared a knowing glance.  

“Don’t worry, ‘cause help you’re going to get.” 

If you have any comments, questions, concerns, criticisms, questions, or requests, feel free to tell me.  For the curious, the song is called “Jingle Jangle Jingle.”  I recommend finding the Fallout New Vegas version ‘cause apparently it’s the only remastered version on the internet.  

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

photos by Frank Ockenfels

The Long Journey and Intense Urgency of Aaron Sorkin's 'The Trial of the Chicago 7'

by Rebecca Keegan September 23, 2020, 6:00  am PDT

The director of the Netflix film, which stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Redmayne and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, reveals why it took nearly 20 years to get the project about the politically motivated prosecution of protestors made and why it couldn't be more timely: "I never imagined today would go so much like 1968."

In October 2019, hundreds of protesters marched down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue toward the Hilton, chanting phrases like "No justice, no peace!" and "A people united will never be defeated!" as police in riot gear descended on the crowd with billy clubs and tear gas. Earnest and energized, clad in 1960s period costumes and flanked by vintage police vehicles, this group thought they were acting out the past, staging a scene from Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7. As it turned out, they were performing the future, too.

Sorkin’s film, which opens in select theaters Sept. 25 and hits Netflix on Oct.  16, tells the story of the riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention and the circus-like trial of political activists that followed the next year. Thanks to Hollywood development hell, the movie is arriving 14  years after Steven Spielberg first mentioned the idea to Sorkin but just as its themes and plot points — civil unrest, a self-proclaimed "law and order" president’s vilification of protesters (Nixon then, Trump now), the police’s excessive use of force, tensions within the Democratic Party over how far left to move — have become bracingly current."I never wanted the film to be about 1968," Sorkin says in an interview over Zoom from his house in the Hollywood Hills on Labor Day weekend. "I never wanted it to be an exercise in nostalgia or a history lesson. I wanted it to be about today. But I never imagined that today would get so much like 1968."For only the second time in a career spanning nine films as a screenwriter, Sorkin serves as director with Chicago 7, helming a sprawling ensemble cast that includes Eddie Redmayne as anti-war activist Tom Hayden, Sacha Baron Cohen as Youth International Party (Yippie) provocateur Abbie Hoffman, Succession’s Jeremy Strong as counterculture figure Jerry Rubin and Watchmen’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Panther party co-founder Bobby Seale. There are undeniable parallels not only between the film and the present political moment but also between the performance-art activism of the actors and the men they’re playing, most vividly Cohen, who, like Hoffman, has made a career of political self-expression through comedic stunts, including crashing a far-right rally in Olympia, Washington, this summer while pretending to be a racist country singer. (Cohen, who shoots most of his satirical projects incognito, impishly calls reports of his appearance at the rally  "fake news.")Eight months after Sorkin filmed the protest scenes in Chicago, Abdul-Mateen was marching in Black Lives Matter protests in West Hollywood, as was Strong in Brooklyn. "There’s power when a lot of people come together to protest out of anger, out of frustration," Abdul-Mateen says. "Everybody has a role in the revolution; this film shows that.

"Though the movie feels crafted for this political moment, it was born of another. At Sorkin’s first meeting with Spielberg, "I remember him saying, 'It would be great if we could have this out before the election,'" Sorkin says. The election Spielberg was talking about was 2008’s, when Barack Obama and Joe Biden faced John McCain and Sarah Palin.The film hit multiple roadblocks, beginning with the 2007-08 writers strike and continuing as financing faltered repeatedly, a fate illustrated by the more than 30 producers who can claim some sort of credit on Chicago 7. It took another unscheduled detour this summer after Sorkin finished it as the pandemic worsened, and the odds of original distributor Paramount mounting a successful theatrical release before the Nov. 3 election seemed increasingly slim. For some involved with the film, there is a question about the ethics of Hollywood inviting audiences to return to theaters before a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available. "

There’s a moral quandary that we, the motion picture business, have to be careful that we don’t become the tobacco industry, where we’re encouraging people to do something we know is potentially lethal," says Cohen.Before his visit to Spielberg’s Pacific Palisades home to discuss the project on a Saturday afternoon in 2006, Sorkin knew next to nothing about the Chicago 7. The federal government had charged seven defendants — Hoffman, Rubin, Hayden, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, John Froines and Lee Weiner — with conspiracy for their participation in the protests against the Vietnam War outside the Democratic National Convention. (Originally the men were known as the Chicago 8 and included Seale, who asked to have his trial separated from that of the others and postponed so that he could be represented by his preferred lawyer, who was ill; that trial never took place.)

When Spielberg proposed a movie about the riots and the trial that followed, Sorkin, who was 7 in 1968, said, "'You know, that sounds great. Count me in.' As soon as I left his house, I called my father and said, 'Dad, do you know anything about a riot that happened in 1968 or a crazy conspiracy trial that followed?' I was just saying yes to Steven."Despite his ignorance, Sorkin was a logical choice to write the project: Having penned Broadway’s A Few Good Men and its 1992 film adaptation as well as the long-running NBC series West Wing, he’d shown a flair for dramatizing courtroom procedures and liberal politics, and he turned in his first draft of the Chicago 7 script in 2007. Originally, Spielberg planned to direct the project himself, but by the time the writers strike was over, he had moved on and a number of other potential directors circled, including Paul Greengrass, Ben Stiller, Peter Berg and Gary Ross, though none was able to get it off the ground. "There was just a feeling that, 'Look, this isn’t an Avengers film,'" Sorkin says of the studios' move away from midbudget dramas and toward action tentpoles in the 2010s. "This isn’t an easy sell at the box office. And there are big scenes, riots, crowd scenes. How can this movie be done for the budget that makes sense for what the expectation is at the box office?"As the project languished, Sorkin tried writing it as a play, ultimately spending 18 months on a fruitless effort to fashion a stage treatment. "What I didn’t like was having a script in my drawer," he says. "I was just thinking, 'Jeez, this is a good movie and it feels like it’s stillborn.'"It was the confluence of two events that ultimately revived the film with Sorkin in the director’s chair in 2018 — the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the 2017 release of Sorkin’s well-received directorial debut, Molly’s Game, which doubled its production budget at the box office. "This is before George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and police protests or confrontations," Sorkin says. "This is just when Donald Trump was musing nostalgically about the old days when they used to carry that guy [a protester] out of here on a stretcher and punch the crap out of him."With Trump’s throwback rhetoric lending the subject matter a new timeliness and Sorkin’s directing chops confirmed in Spielberg’s eyes, the movie moved forward with its screenwriter at the helm.

Cross Creek Pictures came in to finance, and Paramount bought the domestic rights. But all those years in development had left an expensive imprint on the project — a jaw-dropping $11  million had been spent on casting costs, producing fees and the optioning of Brett Morgen’s 2007 documentary about the event, Chicago 10, leaving just $24  million for the actual 36-day production.

One way Sorkin attempts to achieve a sense  of scope despite that budget is by intercutting real black-and-white news footage with his dramatized protests. He rounded out his large cast with a deep bench of experienced and award-winning actors including Oscar winner Mark Rylance as defense attorney William Kunstler, Oscar nominee Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as prosecutor Richard Schultzand, Oscar nominee Michael Keaton as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark — with the filmmaker and many of his actors working for scale. (Abdul-Mateen and Strong both became first-time Emmy winners Sept.  20.)Sorkin shot the protest scenes on location in Chicago and built a courtroom set in an old church sanctuary in Paterson, New Jersey, because none of the available courtroom locations in the Garden State conveyed the scope he wanted. "If we’re saying the whole world is watching, I want a packed courtroom for six months full of press and spectators," Sorkin says. "I wanted the big, cavernous feeling of the federal government and its power coming down on these people."

Julian Wasser/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images           "The movie is tribute to the bravery of the protesters of 1968 [pictured] and today in Belarus, on the streets of America, in Portland," says Cohen.            

Among the vestiges of Spielberg’s original plan was the casting of Cohen as Hoffman, which required the London native to affect a Boston accent and return to a subject he had studied as an undergraduate at Christ’s College in Cambridge, where he wrote a thesis paper about Jewish activists during the civil rights movement. At 19, Cohen had interviewed Bob Moses, the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which Hoffman was involved in before he founded the anti-war Yippie movement. "Honestly, I was very proud of the fact that Jews were involved in the Black civil rights movement in the '60s, and there wasn’t much written about it," Cohen says, explaining his youthful scholarship.

There’s a clear line to draw between Hoffman’s 1960s theatrics — which included throwing fistfuls of money into the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange and vowing to levitate the Pentagon — and Cohen’s contemporary TV and film pranks. Perhaps among Cohen’s most memorable and pointed gags was getting Vice President Dick Cheney to gleefully autograph a waterboard kit, which the comic did while posing as an admiring Israeli anti-terror expert for a 2018 episode of Who Is America?, his Showtime series. “What I wanted to do was to show that he was proud of torturing," Cohen says. "I could not believe how happy Cheney was to be sitting next to an uber-fan. So, yes. Ultimately in the shows and the movies that I do, I’m trying to be funny, but yeah, I’m trying to get out the anger that I have within me."

Cohen sees Hoffman’s unorthodox protest methods as pragmatic. "The Yippies were underfunded, and he was using theatricality to gain attention for his aims," Cohen says. "He wanted to stop the war. And how do you do that? You use stunts and absurdist humor to try to effect change." The actor estimates that, after researching Hoffman, he pitched Sorkin hundreds of lines the activist had really delivered. "As an annoying person with a lot of chutzpah, I was emailing Aaron every other night until morning, 'What about this line? What about this line?'" Cohen says. The writer-director, known for his exacting prose, politely tolerated the suggestions while largely sticking to his own script.

As Rubin, Strong is playing Hoffman’s conscientious jester sidekick, a role wildly different from the tragic, wealthy approval seeker he portrays on Succession. Strong added some of his own dramatic flourishes, including painting words on his chest for one courtroom scene and bringing a remote-controlled fart machine to disrupt Langella’s imperious judge. "I wanted to channel as much as possible that spirit of the merry prankster and of joyous dissent," Strong says. Hoffman and Rubin’s real-life personae were so large that Sorkin at times asked his actors to dial down their faithful portrayals, requesting, after one particularly jubilant take, "less cowbell."

Sorkin’s script draws a sharp contrast between Hoffman and Rubin’s campy methods and Hayden’s more reserved approach to the anti-war movement, with the tensions between Hoffman and Hayden supplying the film’s key relationship in a kind of begrudging brotherhood of the peace movement. To learn more about Hayden, Redmayne studied remarks that Jane Fonda, who was married to the activist and politician from 1973 to 1990, made upon his death in 2016. In his own life, Redmayne is cautious when it comes to discussing the role that he, as an actor at the center of a huge studio franchise (Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts) might have in political life. "I find it endlessly challenging," Redmayne says of navigating his public activism. "There’s the elitist thing. It’s speaking up on climate change but being conscious that you’re traveling a lot. One has to be aware of one’s own hypocrisies, because they can be detrimental to something you believe in. So sometimes I find that I have to live my life and speak to my advocacy in a way in that it’s around friends, family and people I know rather than making something public."

Abdul-Mateen has begun his acting career largely associated with fantastical roles, like Dr. Manhattan on HBO’s Watchmen, Black Manta in Aquaman and Candyman in the upcoming Jordan Peele-produced remake of the slasher film. Playing Seale represented a chance to do more grounded work and to depict a man who had loomed large during Abdul-Mateen’s childhood in Oakland, where Seale co-founded the Black Panthers in 1966 and later ran for mayor. Seale’s inclusion in the original Chicago riots indictment was controversial and strange — prosecutors accused him of conspiring with men he’d never met after visiting Chicago that week for only a few hours to deliver a speech. For the prosecution, Seale functioned largely as a prop to tap into the fears of white jurors and white Americans watching the news coverage, and during the trial he had no attorney. "I wanted to key in on, how did Bobby Seale survive this trial?" Abdul-Mateen says. "How did he survive the gross mistreatment by the United States government, and how did he go through that with his head high and not be broken? It was an exercise in finding my pride, finding my dignity."

In one scene, Seale is brought into the courtroom bound and gagged, and throughout the trial he is kept separate from the white defendants. "Although it was meant to be a humiliating act, I walked out with my chest high, with my head high. Bound and gagged and everything else. It would be very dangerous for a Black man in that time, even sometimes today, to show the proof of the wear and tear that oppression can take on a person, because that can be seen as a sign of weakness, and a sign of weakness is an open door that it’s working." For the moments of lightness that Cohen and Strong bring to the movie, Abdul-Mateen supplies ballast. "It’s important for the right reasons and at the right time to make art that makes people uncomfortable," he says.

Niko Tavernise/NETFLIX. On the set, from left, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Rylance, Ben Shenkman, Aaron Sorkin and Eddie Redmayne

Spielberg has remained involved in the film "in an emeritus role," Sorkin says, "from giving me good script notes to casting to notes on early cuts of the film." He also showed up to the New Jersey courtroom set. "When you have to direct a scene in front of Steven Spielberg, you’re not at your most relaxed necessarily," Sorkin says. Spielberg did not, however, take an executive producing credit on the film and declined to be interviewed about it.

The decision to switch to a streaming release came after an early summer marketing strategy call between Sorkin, Paramount chief Jim Gianopulos, other Paramount execs and some of the film’s producers. "At the end of the call, Jim said, 'Listen, we don’t know what the theater business is going to look like in the fall. We have troubling data telling us that the first people back in movie theaters are going to be the people who think that the coronavirus is a hoax,'" Sorkin says. This was clearly not the intended audience for a movie whose heroes are liberal activists. "I said, 'I don’t think the Idaho militia are going to be the first people coming to this movie,'" Sorkin says.

The group agreed to explore alternatives and gave Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Hulu 24 hours to watch the film. After a bidding war, Chicago 7 landed at Netflix in a $56  million deal against its $35  million production budget, with a robust marketing campaign and promise of a theatrical release. "We knew we didn’t have the option of 'Let’s wait a year,'" Sorkin says. "This is what we’re thinking about and what we’re talking about right now, and it just would have been a real shame to not release it now."

After Chicago 7 opens in limited release, Netflix will add more theaters in the U.S. and abroad throughout October, expanding upon the film’s premiere on the service, a strategy akin to what it provided Oscar best picture nominees The Irishman and Roma, albeit in a wildly different theatrical environment.

As Hollywood opens up to more production, Sorkin, and many of the Chicago 7 actors, have begun returning to work. Abdul-Mateen has been in Berlin for The Matrix 4 and Redmayne in London for Fantastic Beasts 3, while Sorkin is shooting a West Wing reunion special at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown L.A. that will premiere on HBO Max in October as a fundraiser for When We All Vote and include video appearances by Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton and Lin-Manuel Miranda

For the real-life Chicago 7, the denouement consisted of ultimately being acquitted of conspiracy. Judge Hoffman sentenced Seale to four years in prison for contempt of court, one of the longest sentences ever handed down for that offense in the U.S., but those charges were overturned on appeal. Just three of the original eight defendants — Seale, Froines and Weiner — are still alive, but the legacy of the case lives on in contemporary protest movements. "The movie is tribute to the bravery of the protesters of 1968 and the protesters of today in Belarus, on the streets of America, in Portland," Cohen says. "These people now are risking their lives, and they’ll continue risking them."

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/the-trial-of-the-chicago-7-aaron-sorkin-and-stars-on-films-timeliness-to-election-and-why-everybody-has-a-role-in-the-revolution

[monster-bait]

Silly question, but for the characters of Weekend (boys and girls), favorite smells and why? Stuff like that always tell so much about a character and their past, i just think it's neat :)

“Silly question” they said! More like “the literal best question that’s shown up in my inbox in over a week!”

Ris: coastal smells of the little sea side village where her parents took her on vacation every year growing up. They wasn’t a lot of money for extras after her private school was paid for, but renting a small cottage on the ocean was a tradition they kept. Salty air, sea weed and drift wood, the fishy smell of the tide rolling out—it smells like comfort and nostalgia

Ainsley: the smell of old books, new books, used books, thrifted books...his apartment is just STACKED with books. He’s got nothing against ereaders, but he likes the tangibility and feeling of permanence of a leather binding: he is now a part of that book’s history, and if it had a story to tell, he would be included. 

Also: the curious mix of industrial floor cleaner, starched uniforms, and a whiff of old stone—the museum where his mother worked when he was growing up and the endless hours he spent there.

Lurielle: a candle she bought shortly after moving into her house in Cambric Creek. It’s nothing remarkable, just a run of the mill mall store candle—coriander and jasmine and lavender—but she burned it every day. When it ran out, she bought another one, then another one and another one. When the candle store discontinued the fragrance, she was bummed, but moved on to something new...but there’s something about that blend, coriander and jasmine and lavender, that smells like home. Her home, her reclamation of her life, her independence, the first step on her road to self love. She’d love to be able to find that candle again.

Also: the smell of Khash’s closet. It’s stupid how much she likes putting his clothes away, but she can’t help herself. She lectures him about sending his clothes to a service, rolls her eyes at his insistence that taking advantage of the dry cleaning and laundry service in his building’s lobby saves him valuable time that he spends with her, but she loves the smell of the crisply pressed shirts and double-starched collars, the expensive leather of his shoes and smooth wool of his suits, and the smell of him, permeating everything.

Khash: clay dust and sweat and pipe tobacco; wood smoke and ceremonial herbs being burned in a brazier; the clean aquatic smell of fishing holes surrounded by towering pines — basically all smells of his childhood and upbringing: his grandfather coming home from the mines, clan gathering around huge bonfires, telling the stories of their forebears and burning the sacred herbs, fishing with his cousins in the back woods.

Also: the kitten-soft cashmere throw on Lurielle’s sofa, that always smells like her soft perfume and a yippy little dog

Silva: the soft Oriental perfume that lived on the dressing table in her grandmother’s room when she was just a little elf — it was heavy and regal and she would spend so long staring at it that her grandmother would give in and dab a tiny bit behind her long ears. Spicy and floral and entirely too heavy, she would feel like a queen the rest of the day. She would never in a million years wear something like that now as an adult, but the smallest whiff takes her back to childhood.

Also: the undefinable smell of Tate’s skin. She’s sniffed a dozen different colognes and aftershaves and skin tonics, and nothing comes close: he uses sandalwood-scented products, but there’s something else there when she pushes her nose to his neck, something that makes her feel as though she’s standing in a open field under a wide, blue sky, just at the precipice of a great forest. It’s wild and free and entirely unique to him, and she’s completely addicted to it.

Tate: a little more complex, because scent and taste are his big memory triggers and every single thing on the Clover menu evokes something, but beyond that:

The ancient wood of the Pixie, worm-eaten, water-damaged cellar and all. He loves the clean smell of the bar, the oiled and sealed floors, the way she smells after it rains—earthy and damp. She’s the only thing in the world that’s entirely his, and he loves the smell of every inch of her.

Old fashioned violet dusting powder. It’s powdery and soft and smells like safety and love.

Silva’s hair. She smells like summer rain and forbidden happiness, and he will stay awake long after she’s fallen asleep to bury his face in her hair and inhale.

💖💖💖

[sambergscott]

a peralta guarantee

“I promise I’ll come home safe, Ames. That’s a Peralta Guarantee.”

(missing scenes from 7x08 - amy worrying about jake)

hUge thanks to johanna for inspiring this fic and helping when i had a lil breakdown halfway through

When he approaches her desk mid-afternoon with a decaf coffee and the white chocolate chip cookies she’s been craving from the bakery across town, she knows he’s either a) broken something, b) wants something or c) has bad news. She narrows her eyes suspiciously, detecting an excited bounce in his step which can only mean it’s b and c; he wants something she’s not going to like.

“Hey, babe,” he tries to play it cool, clearing a butt-sized space on her desk on which to sit. “I come bearing gifts.”

“What do you want, Peralta?” She cuts to the chase.

“Damn it, you know me too well,” he mutters. “OK, so, here’s the thing: Doug Judy’s gettin’ married. He invited me to his Bachelor Party this weekend and I know he’s a criminal, Ames, but I really wanna go. Like, so bad. Would you be cool with that?”

She conjures up a mental pro and con list. On one hand, Doug Judy is The Pontiac Bandit, known felon, committer of God knows how many crimes, an overall bad dude. On the other, he’s Jake’s friend, singer of the smush songs CD in the glove box of their car that they always forget to take out, giver of the Le Creuset pot she adores. He’s always been nice to her and—.

“Sarge?” Gary interrupts her decision-making process with a quick question about a perp he just brought in, snapping her back to reality. She’s a Police Sergeant, her job is to serve and protect the city they call home and as much as she loves cooking her mom’s beef casserole recipe in Judy’s awesome wedding gift, she has a responsibility to bring him in.

“I’m sorry, babe. I just think it’s a bad idea.”

His face falls, his disappointment coming through loud and clear.

“What were you expecting me to say? Ignore the million arrest warrants out on this guy, many of them submitted by you, so you can drink beer and go to strip clubs?”

“You’re right,” he sighs. “You’re obviously right. Man, being good at your job sucks.”

She nods in agreement. “Remember last month when I had to shut that binder store down for running a secret drug dealing operation out back?”

“How could I forget? You cried for three days straight.”

“They had the best binder collection I’ve ever seen!”

(It was actually what was so fishy about it. In four trips to buy pregnancy binders, she hadn’t seen any of the founding members of the Brooklyn Binder Babes blog — Mary Sue, Catherine, Margaret or Jane — once. And there’s no way a stationery start-up would attract such long queues without their recommendation. It was a pretty easy solve from there).

“The point is, you can’t go to a criminal’s Bachelor Party.” She pats his hand. “You’ll just have to come maternity clothes shopping with me instead. None of my jeans fit me anymore.”

“As much as I would love to, you can take Kylie. I’m going to the party.”

“What?” She double-takes. “Jake, did you not listen to what I literally just said? We’re cops. We cannot be friends with criminals.”

“But we can be friends with informants who have helped us catch numerous, even bigger, more dangerous criminals,” he says with that look on his face, the one he gets when he finds a loophole that he can use to his advantage. She recognises it from home videos Karen has shown her where, instead of tidying his room like she asked him to, seven year old Jake shoves everything under his bed and carries on enacting a police chase with his race cars. “Captain Holt has given him immunity before, so technically I should be able to go party it up with him in Miami!”

“Wait... It’s in Miami? Miami... Florida?”

It’s a stupid question, she knows. Of course he means Miami, Florida. It’s just... they both promised on the flight home that they would never, ever go back there. After everything that happened with Figgis and not knowing if they’d ever see each other again, a statewide travel ban seemed a good way to put it all behind them, focus on all their future moments together, not on all the moments they missed.

“This isn’t like last time,” he reassures her. “It’s only for a weekend and then I’ll be coming straight home for snuggles with you and —,” he lowers his voice to a whisper because they haven’t told anyone she’s pregnant yet, “the baby.”

Her eyes fill with tears and she bites her lip so hard to stop them overflowing in front of all her uniformed officers. It’s pretty clear that he wants to go and she never wants to be one of them wives who control their husbands’ every move. All she wants is for him to be happy. And if going to Doug Judy’s Bachelor Party makes him happy, he should go, no matter how much she hates the entire state of Florida. She agrees, on one condition: “You have to text me hourly updates to let me know that you’re still alive.”

“Don’t I text you constantly anyway?”

“I guess so,” she sniffs.

He lifts her chin so she’s looking him in the eyes. “I promise I’ll come home safe, Ames. That’s a Peralta guarantee.”

“You better,” she warns, tears suddenly flowing down her face at the thought of him not coming home, not being there to watch Property Brothers with her, not raising their baby and proving to everyone what a great dad he will be.

Used to her extra strength pregnancy hormones shifting her emotions from 0 to 100 faster than John McClane can say “Yippie-Ki-Yay, motherfucker”, he pulls her into a tight hug, careful not to crush the precious cargo that is behind said mood swings.

He strokes her hair and whispers that he’ll be home before she knows it and that nothing, not even the worst state in the country, will tear him away from her.

When it’s time for him to leave, she follows him out to the street and, after a brief argument over the fact he packed his bag before he OK’ed the trip with her and another hormone-induced cry when his cab shows up, reluctantly waves goodbye.

True to his word, he texts her before the car is even out of sight. Miss you already 😘.

--

Her phone buzzes periodically throughout the rest of the day.

In a meeting with Holt and Terry: flying on mark cuban’s dope ass private plane!!!!! ✈️

Cooking dinner: florida is HOT (not as hot as u babe, dont worry)

Doing her crossword in bed: g’night ames, g’night baby, love u both SO MUCH

She smiles, tells him she loves him too and braces herself for the barrage of drunk texts and selfies coming her way.

--

Sleeping without him sucks. The bed is cold, her pregnancy pillow is not as good of a cuddle buddy and she tosses and turns all night worrying about him, where he is, what he’s doing, whether he’s safe.

Her eyes finally slip shut around 1 am when her phone buzzes. Again. And again. And again.

She tries to ignore him, bury her head under her pillow and go back to sleep, but the messages keep coming thick and fast. She groans, giving up and unlocking her phone.

There are 47 new messages from him.

Forty-seven.

Her initial annoyance at being woken up quickly disappears as she scrolls through the thread. He’s mostly sent her random, meaningless emojis and keysmashes, interspersed with the odd “I love you”, “you’re my best friend” and “I’m thinking about you” that warm her heart. He mentions something about their proposal, about crying with Doug Judy, which obviously makes her cry too.

(Dumb pregnancy hormones).

By the time she reaches the bottom, he’s sent her 10 more.

She decides for her sake — and the sake of all of her officers who would have to deal with a tired, emotional pregnant lady — to turn off her phone and reply to him in the morning.

She returns her phone to her nightstand, settles back into a comfortable position and closes her eyes.

She lies motionless for what feels like hours, unable to fall asleep. She tries the breathing technique her brother David brags about constantly, counting sheep like little Matthew, even reciting police codes like Teddy used to go to sleep after sex. Nothing works. She’s still awake.

She turns her phone back on to see what Jake’s up to now, only to see his messages ended abruptly with a caterpillar emoji over an hour ago.  

She immediately panics, dialling 911 into her phone.

Her thumb hovers over the green call button.

She’s heard thousands of crazy operator call stories, frequently reminded the general population to only call in a genuine emergency and watched the YouTube compilations for fun. She deletes the number, positive that if she told an operator her husband was missing because she hadn’t heard from him while he’s at a Bachelor Party, she’s positive she would be added to those videos.

In an attempt to stop her spiral, she contemplates the possible scenarios in which his constant texts would cease.

Scenario 1: He’s living in the moment and has put his phone away (something she has been encouraging him to do lately to reduce his screen time)

Scenario 2: He’s very drunk and has completely forgotten about his promise

Scenario 3: He used up all his battery texting her and his phone has died

Scenario 4: He’s fallen asleep (although a quick check of Trudy Judy’s insta reveals the party is very much still in full flow)

Scenario 5: Judy’s criminal buddies have killed him and thrown his body into the ocean

Once the thought pops into her head, no amount of squeezing her eyes shut will make the image go away.

Holt giving an emotional eulogy about wearing ties and being an amazing detective/genius.  

Some rookie taking over his desk.  

The sympathetic looks when she tells all the other moms in baby group that her husband died.  

Usually Jake is there to hold her when her nightmares get bad. She rolls over, expecting to see his kind eyes and soft smile, the untouched side of his bed only serving to make her cry harder.

She can’t lose him. Not yet. Not until they’re old and grey, and maybe not even then. She spent so long denying her feelings for her dorky partner, rueing every missed opportunity to be together, and when they finally, finally took the plunge, she had never been happier. She can’t lose him yet. They have so much more life left to live.

She can’t lose him because he promised her he would come home safe. He guaranteed it.

She clings onto the tiny grain of hope like one might cling onto a raft in the middle of the ocean.

He would never break a Peralta guarantee.

--

Her phone finally buzzes again an hour later.

From: Unknown

Ames, it’s me, Jake. Judy’s buddies found out I’m a cop + destroyed my phone. So sorry I couldn’t text before. Hope you didn’t worry too much, although I know you probably haven’t slept. You can stop worrying now. I’m safe. Love you + see you tomorrow.  

Love you too, she responds, yawning as she places the phone back on the side table.

Relieved that he’s OK, and exhausted from all the worrying, she falls into the easiest sleep she’s ever had.

--

Before she knows it, it’s the next afternoon, Jake’s keys are turning in the lock, he’s dropping his holdall on the floor and rushing to her side to kiss her all over her face.

“I missed you too,” she laughs, kissing him properly.

“Sorry it took so long — Doug and Trudy made me fly commercial —.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re home now. That’s all that matters.”

“I’m never leaving you two again,” he swears.

“You’ll have to leave us eventually to go to the bathroom and stuff,” she points out, raking her fingers through the unruly curls that she so hopes their baby will inherit. “Just don’t go back there.”

A solemn understanding passes over his face and he nods. “Never again. Not even if our kid wants to go to Disney World. We’ll take them to the California one instead.”

“Smort,” she says, stealing his line and in an instant, that familiar grin is back.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

A dozen memories flood back, of oldies in short shorts and shuffleboard and Doug Judy getting away again. Of noice and smort and saying “I love you” for the very first time. Her eyes fill with tears — dumb pregnancy hormones strike again — as she buries her face in his shoulder.

“Let’s go to bed,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and lifting her bridal style to carry her to their room. He places her carefully onto the mattress and flops down next to her.

She snuggles into him, eyes closing once more. “Did we even get an invite to the wedding?”

“Not even close,” he sighs.

“Damn it. I would’ve loved to see that trainwreck.”

“You and me both, babe. You and me both.”