#and imagine being prime's partner when he finds out that you sold him out and revealed his soft tendencies lmao

[screamingcrows]

Snezhnaya's most controversial scientific publication

Tags/warnings: nsfw in the way a national geographic documentary is, absolute crack, segment incest, near noncon, non graphic violence mention, implied cannibalism

Note: I feel like an absolute mad lad. Please read the appendix as well guys.

Minors do not interact

"The Jester requested that I make public some of my research to dismiss concerns among the populace - a ridiculous demand."

"But, Doctor, we can't just.. Do we even have anything that wouldn't be dangerous?"

What was The Jester thinking? To make such a demand during an already busy period.

Dottore waved a dismissive hand, clearly having to restrain himself from letting further venom into his words, "We do not. Which is why you are relieved of your duties for the next week. Figure something out. I don't care about the contents, make it harmless and get it published."

You blinked at him, well aware that you must look like a fish struggling to breathe. With a tight jaw, you lowered your head in acceptance, already mourning all the extra hours you'd have to put in to catch up next week.

Well. If he doesn't care, why not make it interesting? As The Regrator said; sex sells.

Courtship and mating behaviours observed in Duplicare Dottorensis

Note that full taxonomic classification remains unclear as the class this species belongs to remains a heated topic for debate. The scientific community is in agreeance that the species belongs to one of the classes within the phylum 'chordata'.

Though asexual reproduction is speculated to occur most frequently - the exact process has yet to be observed, but bears some resemblance to that of some single celled organisms - fully matured individuals have been seen partaking in behaviour interpreted as courting.

As this species is rumored to exhibit an unrivalled level of variety in the strategies they employ to secure a mate, this study aimed to monitor a population and document every observed strategy. By doing so, the authors hope to quell the countless rumors currently circulating and causing unrest.

By employing a variety of techniques including, but not limited to; usage of subdetection units, combing through historical records, eye-witness accounts, and catching and marking select individuals, this document attempts to provide a detailed account of behavior associated with sexual reproduction.

Pacify with food

A younger segment, around the age at which The Doctor was still a student (~20), was watched closely for three days after exhibiting a strange shift in behavior. During feeding time, he would sneak off to the kitchens and, while staff was unaware, pocket scraps and spares of various foods. Strangely enough, he seemed to gravitate towards dishes that wouldn't require utensils, but instead take a bit of time to prepare and eat (various fruits that would have to first be peeled seemed to be a preference, although desserts also held his interest).

On the third day, he spent nearly two hours trying to wrap the bounty up neatly, cursing the entire time. Once satisfied with the - in our opinion rather crude - wrapping, he singled out Prime's partner going about their routine and approached carefully. Once he was within range and had their attention, he placed down the 'gift' and gave it a little kick before backing off. While they were opening it, he continued to hover around them, preferring to stay behind while continuously checking how far with unwrapping they were.

When he finally gained the courage to shorten the distance, the gift was fully unwrapped and inspected, yet they made no move to start eating. This seemed to cause the young individual a great amount of discomfort as he promptly turned and fled the room. (1)

Non-violent display of physical prowess

Another, slightly older (~25), segment exhibits drastically increased confidence compared to the younger version. By employing bribery and coercion, this version (believed to have been created to emulate the mindset of The Doctor shortly after attaining his title) recruited several other segments, all younger than himself, and spent about a week putting them through rigorous training.

This took place in a secluded room, often during the late evening or at night, and would go on for about two hours per session. We were lucky enough to have already installed a surveillance device in this room, meaning we had access to large amounts of video material (send an inquiry to The Doctor if you wish to gain access).

The segment of interest would instruct the younger ones to accompany him in an elaborate routine with his weapon, seemingly having them act as 'backing' to further highlight his superiority. The youngest of the group would be seated atop a table and simply observe, possibly standing in for the role of a prospective mate. (2)

Rough displays of physical prowess

As it quickly turned out, the above display is only utilised by a minority of the segments at that age. By far, the most frequently observed behaviour among segments of The Doctor's early days as a harbinger would be attempting to establish dominance.

While segments frequently engage in discussions and even loud arguments, these had a tendency to derail - sometimes to the point of violence - in the presence of Prime's partner.

During our period of monitoring, a total of 27 heated arguments took place in the presence of Prime's partner with all of them devolving to personal insults, 15 to minor acts of violence, and two of them escalating to the point of both segments being deactivated temporarily to undergo repairs. (3)

Occasionally, older segments were prone to display this behavior as well, but preferred to argue with Prime instead of fellow segments. This made for an interesting discovery, as younger segments would use these periods of distraction to attempt sneakily approaching Prime's partner. By keeping an eye on the argument taking place, the younger segments could time their attempted courtship and escape before neither Prime nor the older segment could discover what was happening. (4)

The impersonal approach

While only a single segment was observed to display this behaviour, it was still deemed essential to include due to the objective of this paper as well as the particular segment's relative importance.

The Omega segment, recognised as the most arrogant segment (and seeing himself as superior to the rest, the bastard) took a much more subdued approach to courting Prime's partner. During the daytime, Omega let himself into Prime's quarters - the author managed to sneak in behind him - and searched around for a brief moment.

Once he'd located a drawer of interest, Omega proceeded to rid himself of the lower half of his outfit, revealing (to the author's surprise) what appeared to be a fully functioning reproductive organ. Even more surprising were the subsequent actions, as Omega then detached this part, gave it a quick rinse, and placed it in the drawer.

Looking awfully satisfied with himself, the segment left Prime's quarters. The content of the drawer were confirmed to be a selection of toys. (5)

The unapologetic approach

Interestingly, segments older than Omega displayed the same levels of detachment from the copulation itself, but adopted a more direct approach to guarantee their succes.

This culminated in a confrontation when a segment assessed as middle-aged brought Prime's partner into the vivisection room. The segment in question had been observed tinkering with a vial of milky fluid and a device for automated injection, likely its own design.

Upon leading Prime's partner inside, the usually mild-tempered segment proceeded to forcefully restrain the other, strapping them down on the table. (At this point, the author was following events closely and alerted Prime).

The segment stripped Prime's partner and proceeded to carefully disinfect their abdomen while seemingly debating if a sedative was necessary. Upon picking up the delivery for injection and letting the sharp tip rest against their skin, the segment was interrupted by Prime breaking open the door.

Though no harm came to his partner, the segment received a rough scolding and was promptly sent to Liyue to check on a minor operation there. (6)

Minimal risk approach

The most baffling display was, by far, the strategy employed by some of the older segments. At first, their behaviour was written off as irrelevant to this study, but a chance discovery unveiled their cunning scheme.

During or after the fights between younger segments, described earlier, these segments would single out ones that looked interested in joining the fight but hadn't, or approach the loser afterwards. Under a false guise of kindness, they would then offer to teach the younger segment how to approach Prime's partner, claiming that they themselves "weren't interested, but sees no reason to not help".

This would in nearly all instances end in some form of sexual activity during which the older segment would discreetly tinker with the other segment's leyline connection. To figure out the purpose of this, one of the older segments were approached and questioned on the topic.

Apparently, the process finetunes the connection between the two segments, allowing for a period of time where they can - if they've discovered how to access it - feel on their own body what happens to the other. This usually lasts around a week, and the older segment will then sit back and simply wait. If the younger segment manages to engage in mating with Prime's partner, the older segment will be able to feel every part of the pleasure, while risking none of the repercussions of being discovered by Prime. (7)

Long term investment

Though initially outside the scope of this study, it was impossible to avoid observing Prime himself interacting with his partner. As such, it was decided that his behaviour would serve as an interesting reference, as he is the sum over time of the segments.

Prime is, perhaps unsurprisingly, much more relaxed about courting his partner, likely because he does not feel threatened by the segments. Still, it was noted that Prime would at times discard his work to enter his private workspace. Upon leaving, he would head straight for their shared quarters before returning to his scheduled work again.

When questioned, his partner immediately realised what I was referring to and invited me into their quarters (stating that they found it humorous to include Prime in this). Upon entry, they began showing off various gadgets, drawings, and trinkets, some of them elaborate and others of a simpler nature, stating that they could hardly mention any contraption that would make their life easier without Prime returning with it a few days later.

They also showed decorative pieces made by Prime as well as a few pieces of jewellery, explaining that his hands were always busy with something, and that often resulted in little gifts. Interestingly, the vast majority of these gifts wouldn't be announced by him, but simply placed where his partner would notice, and when questioned, he usually just shrugs. (8)

Conclusion

Though many different strategies for courting were observed, it still remains unclear if they are constrained to different ages. Setting up such experiments would be the next logical step.

If this is representative of how Prime courted at different stages of his life, then the author would love to know how on Teyvat he managed to land a partner???

Declaration of conflict of interest

The author of this paper is employed by The Doctor but ensures he had no influence on data collection, analysis, or writing. Furthermore, the author is aware of their bias regarding segment Omega (take the credit for my findings one more time, and I'll break that artificial dick of yours).

Appendix

(1) In many species of arachnids, the male risks being cannibalised when approaching a female to mate. For this reason, he brings a nupital gift, most often consisting of food in hopes of distracting the female while he mounts her. Some males will stuff their woven packages with not only food, but inedible scraps as well, to increase the size. There are examples (Latrodectus hasselti) where the male will willingly wriggle in front of the female to tempt her into eating him. This supposedly increases his paternity compared to males that don't sacrifice themselves. (2) The blue manakin (Chiroxiphia caudata) performs a courtship dance for the female. The male is backed by several younger males (they jump over each other on branches while moving sideways) and does various movements to display his health. The dance ends with the male swooping over to the female where he waits for her decision. The birds spend a good amount of time on practice, and will have a young male stand in for a female during these trial runs. It's incredibly fun to watch videos of. (3) Members of the Cervidae (deer) family have bucks going through ruts, during which they become increasingly aggressive. While fighting over females, the bucks will occasionally get their antlers stuck - either in its surroundings or tangled with another buck's antlers - in cases where the buck is unable to free themselves, they may starve. (4) Mirounga spp. (elephant seals) employ 'sneaky' behaviour during breeding seasons. An alpha male will establish a territory to protect and lure females in to establish a harem. Smaller beta males will often wander around along the edges of these territories and observe the alpha. A beta male might attempt to fight the alpha for the rights to the territory, and during this time, younger males might sneak past the two fighting to mate. The beta male will also sometimes wait for the alpha to be busy copulating and then try his luck in the other end of the territory. (5) Argonauta spp. (paper nautili, a genus of octupuses) has a funky way of mating. Males are around a tenth of the size of a female and only capable of mating once in their life. They approach the female, inserting a specialised arm (hectocotylus) into the female (the pallial cavity) and then proceeds to detach the arm from his own body. Fun facts; when the hectocotylus was originally observed in females, it was assumed to be a parasitic worm. Live males have yet to be observed in the wild. (6) Some beetles, such as the Hydrophilidae family (water scavenger beetles) will mount a female and pierce her abdomen with his reproductive organ. In this particular family of beetles, the female must consent and lower herself, but that is not the case for all beetles. (7) Drakaea glyptodon, along with many other orchids, have developed a distinct leaf known as the 'labellum' (commonly called the 'lip') to better attract pollinators. This labellum is specifically modified to resemble females of the orchid's selected pollinator (in this case a species of thynid wasp). Most orchids have few or just a single pollinator (there's a cool example of an orchid whose pollinator is extinct and we only know it from the shape of the labellum, the plant is Ophrys apifera has since developed self-pollination but retains the labellum). Once an insect has been lured to attempt mating with the labellum and thus lands on the orchid, some pollen will be slapped onto it and it then carries that pollen along to the next orchid that tricks it into landing. (8) Members of the family Ptilonorhynchidae (bowerbirds) construct elaborate structures to impress a female. These bowers will also be decorated using a plethora of items, all of them carefully selected based on colour preference of the individual species. Items typically include fruits, stones, shells, flowers, and feathers. Some species have also been observed to place these items in a way that essentially creates an optical illusion, making the male and his crafted bower appear larger and more impressive.

[tobesobri]

When the Lights Go Out (Halloween fic; 8k)

𝖆/𝖓: first off, happy Halloween yall! This is my second favorite holiday and so I really wanted to get something up in celebration of it! I’ve talked a lot on here about having trouble with writing recently and so I do what I normally do with writer’s block and I just leave what I’m stuck on and go off to write something random, which is what this ended up being. So, my writing style is definitely different and maybe not great, but this is just for fun so I don’t care! I still hope you enjoy! There’s spookiness (not too much), enemies (frenemies) to lovers, pumpkin carving, smut, alcohol consumption, and giant skeletons 💀 (oh and Harry dressed as Tarzan 🥵)

my masterlist  🎃 my askbox

𝕸ost people’s Halloween traditions weren’t too complicated; usually involving cult-favorite scary movies—ranging from Halloweentown to Nightmare on Elm Street—handing out Snickers and Kit-Kats to tiny trick-or-treaters, or just getting wasted at a friend’s haunted house party down the street. Their friend group, on the other hand, opted for a pumpkin carving contest every year on Halloween at Jason Hallow’s house, and, yes, his favorite holiday is Halloween because of his last name. And so, a few years ago when they were all undergrads together, he began hosting the annual carving contest at his house, in which they all paired up and, at the end of the night, whichever pair’s pumpkin came out the best—as judged by Jason, the resident Jack O’ Lantern expert—won whatever candy was leftover. That and marathons of R-rated horror flicks as well as occasional breaks to go out in the neighborhood and scare some of the kids while dressed in terrifying monster masks and slightly drunk off their asses from too much Tennessee whiskey.

Jason’s house was, hands down, the place to be in their neighborhood. Everyone who came by always wanted to join in on their festivities, and one year, they’d been just drunk enough to let a few of-age neighbors join in. This year, though, it was different. The stakes were higher. They were competing not only for the candy, but also for the much envied twelve-foot tall skeleton Jason had found at Home Depot which currently sat in his front yard amongst his other outrageous decorations. The skeleton was definitely the most noteworthy and had been the center of plenty group photos from just about every one of his neighbors since he had brought it home and especially tonight. In fact, every time the doorbell rang and he greeted another group of kids in his gory doctor costume—because Jason was in med school after all—every one of them squealed about how much they liked his skeleton. And so it almost pained him to have to give it to one of his friends after tonight, but if he’s being honest, he has nowhere to store it—he’d purchased it completely on a whim—and next year they will compete for it all over again anyway.

Tonight is also different because Harry and Y/N are not getting along. They all knew this beforehand, but simply brushed it off until they realized it was much worse than anyone had imagined. They had a horrible friendship—if one could even call it that—ever since they’d met as freshmen pre-law students six years ago. Sometimes they got along, but mostly, they bickered non-stop at each other, which all their friends took as misguided flirting. They got along for about six months once, after a drunken hookup, until, of course, Y/N hooked up with someone else and set off the volcano that was their relationship all over again. It had been calm recently with both of them needing each other’s help through their vigorous law school studies. So, a truce had been made and they tolerated each other at best. Tonight, though, the monsters had truly been unleashed and neither one of them had stopped picking at each other since they’d arrived.

It began on the street, when Harry took the spot Y/N had wanted to park in. Then at the door, when he asked her how her midterms were going and she felt like stepping on his toes until she crushed them. Which was perfectly logical since his was barefoot and mostly naked in his stupid Tarzan costume he’d recycled about four times now since they’d all known each other. He only wore it when the weather was warm, as he claimed, but they all had a suspicion he wore it so that he could watch Y/N drooling over him all night.

She wasn’t innocent either, in his defense, at least not this year when she came dressed in a sexy Beetlejuice costume, something none of them ever thought was possible. But she made it happen. She wore a too-short black and white vertical striped t-shirt dress—which had rips in all the right places, particularly across her chest—and a pair of neon green boots that were Doc Marten knock-offs she had found online. Other than that, she had spray painted the front bits of her hair a grey-green color and did her makeup to match the theme, dark purple smokey eyes and a green color used as contour. It looked good, she looked good, not that Harry would ever say that out loud.

Jason’s entire living room and dining room floors were covered with plastic tarps. He’d set up the usual fold-away tables and chairs for everyone. It was an easy clean-up job that wouldn’t leave pumpkin guts smudged into his hardwood floors or, even worse, the beige carpet in his living room. And, as always, he had a line up of various pumpkins on his kitchen counter—and the necessary kit of carving tools—ready to go. They usually didn’t start until nine-thirty or ten, once everyone arrived and had a few drinks in them and they had all agreed on what movies to watch. This year was a marathon of The Conjuring franchise, because Jason had spent way too much money on a box set and he would not be wasting them. Nobody objected anyway because the movies held a sentimental value to all of them. Every year since the beginning when a new movie came out, they all managed to go see it together, and also cause a horrible ruckus in the theater. Although they’d almost been kicked out a couple times, it was still some of the best memories together they’d ever had.

There was also that one year, when Annabelle Creation came out and Y/N and Harry were getting along on account of the LSATs, that they’d secretly gone home together. And then, of course, pretended it never happened.

That had been the second time they slept together, the second time she’d woken in his bed, with Harry’s annoyingly toned arm wrapped all the way around her, and the last as well because Harry got into a serious relationship their first year of law school and that had been the end of things.

Well… not completely the end. At least not until tonight.

“Okay we’re getting started!” Jason announced over both the music and the television, which someone turned down before Jason continued. He stood, wobbling, on one of the foldable chairs, for no other reason than the bottle of vodka in his hand. He was teetering on the edge sobriety and really didn’t give a fuck if he fell off. “Y’all know the drill! Isa’s handing out the cards. No whining. No trading. Or you’ll be disqualified.”

The cards in question were riddles that they had to match up with the answer. Half of them got the riddle card, the other half an answer card and that would determine who their partner was.

Y/N both wanted Harry as her partner and detested the idea at the same time. She was all for it because, well, he was hot dressed in nothing but his small piece of brown loincloth fabric hanging loosely on his hips. But at the same time, she knew they wouldn’t win together and she really wanted that skeleton.

The riddles were all hand-made by Jason on his computer and then laminated in his girlfriend’s school’s teacher lounge however many years ago. They all knew every answer to every riddle by now, but it was still a much more fun way to pair up than picking names out of a hat.

Y/N read her riddle twice, having absolutely no recollection of the answer to it, however—which was probably due to the alcohol she’d consumed herself within the past hour. She wasn’t all to blame, though, Harry had a lot to do with it too. She was still mad at him, for what she wasn’t sure, but she also could not stop herself from stealing glances at him and the only way to stop feeling so many confusing things about Harry was to drown it all away.

She read her riddle one last time: The person who built it sold it. The person who bought it never used it. The person who used it never saw it. What is it?

Her brain felt like mush after the third read and she hoped someone would find her first and give her the answer. She peeked around at people’s cards as they all tried to find their pair, some of them meeting up immediately and getting the prime pick of the pumpkins. It had dwindled down to just a few of them and she finally waltzed herself up to Harry, grabbed his card from his hand without his permission and read it.

In bold, 16-point Helvetica font, it read: A coffin.

Of course.

She rolled her eyes, shoving his card against his stupid bare chest and groaning audibly. “Figures I’m stuck with you.”

When she finally looked up at him, though, she wasn’t all that upset about her odds as she pretended to be. Not with the way his face set into a devilish, wicked, up-to-no-good look that made her want to rip him from the room and rip his useless Tarzan costume off too while she was at it.

He had also been drinking, which was made even more clear when he opened his mouth. “You’ll always be stuck with me.” And then he leaned in a little bit, his smirk widening and his eyes darkening and the sweet smell of vodka on his tongue strengthening, “Forever.”

She hated the buzzing in her stomach he caused, and hated that she liked knowing they probably would, at the very least, know each other for the rest of their lives. It had already been six years since they met and she still hadn’t managed to shake him off. And now they were finishing up law school together and getting offers to work at the same firm together. There would be no escaping him, not that she really wanted to.

The only time she wanted absolutely nothing to do with him was when he had a girlfriend. She hated seeing him in her classes, in her study groups, her circles, at her internship. He was always there, though, rubbing it in her face as she had once done to him. Hers was just a dumb hookup, partially just to spite him, and his was… well he dated the girl for entire year before they broke up and he seemed genuinely heartbroken over it. It had been serious, and Y/N had been seriously miserable the entire time. Even more so when she found out they’d split up and she just about threw a party while Harry moped around campus. She couldn’t help it, though, she’d liked him ever since they met, but then they just sort of… didn’t get along all the time.

She knew he liked her too, at least a little bit, or he’d never have slept with her twice. How much he actually liked her though was still up for debate, and so she chose keeping their weird hate-love relationship over ruining all of it by admitting her feelings for him. Plus, she liked working with him and getting his help on exams and papers too much to ruin that as well.

Y/N grabbed the third to last pumpkin, an unopened carving kit, and led the way to two lonesome chairs. They sat closest to the door, and farthest from the dining room and Jason, in their own little corner where they had enough room to stretch out given that no else had laid any claim on the other side of their table yet.

“So,” Harry began once they were settled and Y/N began opening the kit of tools, “what are we making?”

Before giving him an answer, she laid out all the tools on the table in front of them, next to their poor misshapen pumpkin, and then reached down into the side of her boot and pulled out a black sharpie; she’d learned a couple years back to start brining one. It might have been cheating, sketching her design beforehand, but Jason never outlawed it.

“I’m making Jason’s favorite Tim Burton character and you’re in charge of the guts.” She dictated confidently, slapping the sawing tool and the large orange plastic spoon in front of him so he could get started right away.

He eyed the tools for a moment, then the pumpkin, and then finally her. “Absolutely not. I’m not doing all the shit work while you do the fun stuff.”

“Thought you’d be used to that.” She half-mumbled, but he still heard her over the rest of the noise in the house. And, frankly, she was right. When they had interned together last year, she always handed off the demeaning tasks to him, like getting the coffee or making copies, while she did the much more interesting parts of the job. What she didn’t know was that she didn’t make him do anything. He always did it so she didn’t have to.  

He sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest, arms that her eyes—which were completely out of her control at that point—glued to immediately. He’d been working out ever since the break up and finally filled out the Tarzan costume a lot better. He’d always had a nice body, she knew that, but now… now he made her dizzy.

“I’m not doing it. Least not all by myself.”

She gave up then, mostly because she lost her will to argue against the pout of his lips and the flexing of his biceps—which weren’t ridiculously big, but they were subtle and modest and very much bigger than they had been this time last year when he’d dressed up as a shirtless baseball player. Most all of Harry’s costumes involved some level of nakedness and not much sense, but she didn’t complain too loudly. And his arms were definitely bigger now than they had been the last time she was in his bed and he was over her.

“Fine.” She groaned, grabbing the mini saw tool and then standing to begin carving a hole at the top of their pumpkin, around the stem. She made it big enough for them to be able to stick their hands inside, and then once she was finished, pulled the stem piece off and set it aside for later, chopping off some loose bits of pumpkin shreds first.

Despite his earlier protests, he was the first to dig into the pumpkin, standing as well and going hands first into the thing where he pulled out fistfuls and dumped it into a pile on the table. They went back and forth digging out the insides of the pumpkin until finally, Harry grabbed the spoon and really went in. And she didn’t even bother offering to help, and instead stared, again, at his stupid biceps and especially at his hands, which were slick from the pumpkin juice. She shuddered remembering where his hands had once been, and then pulled herself together remembering how long ago it had been and how very little interest he’d shown in picking up where they’d left off pre-girlfriend.

Once the pumpkin was fully gutted, they both sat again, and cleaned their hands off on the paper towels Jason had set up on each table.

She was the first to begin the process, sketching out the design with her sharpie of Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas. She’d carved the character before, but still needed a reference picture on her phone to get all the details right. And Harry watched her the entire time, memorizing her face for the millionth time while she concentrated, and sometimes he stared at her hands, too, hands he also found himself reminiscing over, to the point of needing to cross his legs so it wasn’t made visibly clear what he was thinking about. He was starting to regret recycling the Tarzan costume.

While they all worked, Jason answered the door and handed out candy about once every five minutes. The best part of their tradition wasn’t the pumpkin carving itself, but rather, the atmosphere. They loved the feeling, the adrenaline rush of it all. How messy everything would eventually get, how loud they all were. The anguished shouting when someone messed something up. The sounds of Thriller playing in the background mixed with the loud jump scares from the horror movies played all night long. It was heaven to any lover of Halloween (and they all loved Halloween).

She’d let Harry start the carving of the design, informing him what parts were staying and what parts needed to be cut away, before she ventured into the kitchen to grab them both a drink. On her way back, she paused for a moment, just watching Harry work over in their corner. The sight of him almost made her want to finally admit how she felt. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad if he rejected her, at least then she’d know.

But then Zoe plopped down into her empty chair next to Harry and crushed everything back down like an aluminum can being recycled. She tossed back about half of her Smirnoff after Zoe had scooted closer to Harry and grazed her fingertips across his arm—the one he wasn’t using the carve the pumpkin. And at first, he ignored it, but then he set down the tool, pushed his hair back with his clean wrist and offered Zoe one of his annoying little smirks that Y/N always thought he saved just for her. But now, seeing him use it to flirt with Zoe, she felt stupid and betrayed. And stupid again for feeling betrayed.

She had no claim to him. She just had her memories, as inconvenient as they were at times. But that was nothing and it’d been so long that he showed any interest in her, in anybody, that for her to be jealous now was just pure selfishness. As much as she hated Harry sometimes, she still wanted to see him happy again.

Y/N made her way back slowly, eying what others were doing, until finally joining Harry again just as Zoe went back to her own pumpkin.

She was quiet for a moment, sipping on her drink, watching him as he got back to carving, before cleaning her throat as she finally said something, “What did Zoe want?” And she tried not to sound anything other than curious, but the way Harry glanced at her, with a raised brow, she knew she needed to be so much more subtle.

He took the other cup from her that she hadn’t drunk from and replenished his blood alcohol level. “She just asked me what I was doing after this.”

Instead of opening her mouth and being obvious, she just set her drink down and grabbed both the carving tool and the pumpkin from Harry to take over. He’d already done way more work than she had, so it was about time they switched anyway.

He eyed her curiously still, even though he allowed her to continue where he left off as he leaned back in his chair and took a break, downing what was left in his cup as she worked.

“You’re not jealous are you?” He finally asked, after a few moments to let his brain marinate in the alcohol in order to brave that question in the first place.

“No.” It was sharp. A piercing rejection he felt dig its claws deep into his heart. He couldn’t tell if she was lying or not, but if not, it hurt. More than he was willing to admit, even to himself. He wanted her to be jealous. He always did. That was part of the reason he’d gotten a girlfriend. And of course she was also part of the reason they broke up, if not all of it.

He nodded, “So it wouldn’t bother you if I went home with Zoe?”

He noticed her brief hesitation, when her hand stopped moving and she took in a breath of air, but then she settled again. “Doesn’t bother me what you do, Harry.”

Again, he nodded, still watching her just to get a sense of her reactions. Of course he had no plans on going home with Zoe. He just wanted to know. Where they stood. How Y/N felt about him. Whether she thought about their nights together as often as he did. When they were studying together and she’d shift her hair behind her shoulder and he’d get a whiff of her shampoo and be taken right back to one of those nights, and the nights that came after that when he got lost in that scent on his pillows until it eventually dissipated and left him craving more.

He tried again. One last time. If he still didn’t get the response he was hoping for, then he’d give it up and leave her alone. So, he sat forward, crossing his arms on top of the table, close enough to her now that the buzzing in her stomach reappeared even though she never braved a single glance at him. He was close enough that the smell of his cologne overtook the odor from the pumpkin. Close enough that she felt his breath on the side of her face when he spoke.

“So, I’ve just been imagining the way you’ve been looking at me all night then?” His voice was just above a whisper, and soft, caressing her ears as the sound crept its way inside of her. As it seeped into all the places the alcohol had been, although Harry was always something way more potent than whiskey or tequila. He made her head spin, made her feel everything and nothing at the same time. Made her heart flutter so much at times it hurt.

His words sunk in and all her motions stopped as she froze in place. She stopped carving their pumpkin, stopped blinking, stopped breathing. Staring blankly at their half-finished design until he was wrung out from her system completely. That never really happened, though, because he was staring at her, watching her with those glinting, impatient eyes, waiting for an answer. There wasn’t even the familiar hint of a smirk or a bit of amusement on his face anymore, either, that might have calmed her nerves. Because at least if he seemed to just be messing with her, she could play that game with him, but this was different.

He leaned forward a bit, trying to get her to look at him, to say something, anything, really. He’d be satisfied enough with her lies at this point. But he also knew the absence of an answer alone was all he really needed. He didn’t feel like he was getting ahead of himself, seeing the way her body reacted to him, by assuming that she felt, at least somewhat, the same way he did about her. Because if she’d been the one to ask if she was imagining how he’d been staring at her all night, he wouldn’t deny it.

Just as she opened her mouth, just as she had gathered enough words to form a coherent sentence, the room went dark. Pitch black, actually. The lights all around them flickering off, the television going blank, the music cutting out. And once the startled gasps and dramatic, drunken yelling had subsided, they were left in a ringing silence, so completely opposite to what they had been moments ago that it was painful for their ears to adjust to.

“What the fuck?” They heard Jason’s voice in the darkness and then, finally, a bit of light as he turned his phone’s flashlight on.

“Did the power go out everywhere?” Someone else asked.

And while everyone panicked, all Harry cared and thought about was Y/N’s hand wrapped tightly around his own on his lap. He wasn’t exactly sure when she’d grabbed for him, but once he realized she was there, he didn’t really care too much about the lights anymore. What he did care about still, however, was whether she’d ever answer his question now. If he’d ever get to hear what she was about to say just before the darkness cut her off.

A few of them stumbled about, making plans to go outside and check on things while everyone else stayed inside and waited. The room went dark for a few more moments as Jason left, but then someone else turned their flashlight on, and shined them at the ceiling so that there was at least enough light so that they didn’t have to sit in complete darkness.

If it wasn’t Halloween, the power going out wouldn’t have bothered her so much. Outages happened happened all the time. But now, in the middle of the second Annabelle movie with all sorts of other spooky shit around them, she couldn’t help but be terrified and imagine the worst. Like… what if there was a killer on the loose who had cut their power. What if the killer was chopping up Jason and the others and then eventually heading inside to do the same to all of them?

“Hey,” Harry mumbled beside her, inching closer and rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand, realizing she’d grown tense when her grip on him had tightened. “You alright?”

Hearing his voice again, she let out a breath of air and tried to relax. She watched way too many scary movies and this was most definitely not one of them. Just a power outage, possibly due to everyone being home and using lots of extra electricity on their lights and decorations. She had no reason to panic. Although it could be blamed on Harry as well, if he hadn’t made her an astronomical amount of nervous just before.

She nodded until she realized Harry couldn’t even see her very well. “I’m fine.” She finally affirmed, and, to his dismay, took her hand away from his.

They sat in their own silence for a while, listening to the quiet conversations around them, particularly to Zoe and Julie who were trying to look up any information they could even though their phones were slow from the lack of Wi-Fi and service.

After a little while, she found his hand again in the dark, and this time, she wasn’t afraid from the power going out, but rather what she was about to say. Because if there was ever an opportunity to spill your guts to Harry Styles, it was in a dark room where his grassy green eyes weren’t all over you, sucking every ounce of courage from your bones.

Her voice was in a whisper, and she finally looked at him, or rather in his direction. To the outlines of his face, of his nose and his cheekbones. Even though she couldn’t find the green, she knew he was there, waiting, listening.

“You haven’t been imagining anything.”

She couldn’t quite see it, but his eyebrows had hit the ceiling and before he could question her further, she continued.

“I was miserable when you were seeing Liv and so fucking happy when you broke up.” Her voice shook, but she didn’t let that stop her, “And then miserable again because you didn’t want me. And maybe you still don’t, but it would really bother me if you went home with someone else.”

The quiet almost ate her alive for the next few seconds when he said nothing and she didn’t have his features to go off of. But then, she felt him getting closer until, finally, his lips were at her ear.

“I’ve always wanted you.”  

The buzzing was back but this time it was debilitating. Especially when he faced her and cupped his free hand along her jaw. And especially when he tilted her head back slightly to meet his lips, which had pretty good aim given their predicament. She missed the way he felt, she realized, once he was kissing her. Once he had scooted closer and released his hand from her grip on his lap. Once he grabbed up the other side of her face and pulled her closer. And then her hand was left to fend for itself on his thigh, and she, almost unconsciously, drifted her touch closer and closer and closer…

He moaned softly into her mouth when she toyed with the flimsy piece of fabric tied around his waist with her fingertips. And finally, she pulled apart from him, catching her breath before whispering, “Do you think they’d notice if we left?”

He shook his head, “Don’t think I care if they did.”

And so they were off. Trying not to draw too much attention to themselves even though she slightly tripped over the leg of the chair and he tried not to giggle too loudly while helping her. His hand fell into hers again as he led the way out of the living room, down the hall and into Jason’s guest room, closing them both off from any light source completely, not that they really cared too much about seeing each other; they just wanted to feel each other again.

And as soon as Harry had closed the door behind her, that’s exactly what they did. As she wrapped her arms around his neck; as he felt his way around her waist, he kissed her like he hadn’t kissed anyone in years. Like he was a dry, cracking desert and she was a vast river flowing through him.

He took brave steps towards the bed blindly, backing her up further into the dark room and managing to not trip over anything when he finally made it to the bed. They’d both, on separate occasions, spent the night in Jason’s guest room before, which helped when maneuvering around in the dark. For instance, Harry knew that Jason kept his secret stash of condoms in the bedside drawer. Harry had no idea why, but he was thankful for it right now, when, after laying her back on the bed, Y/N had already begun undoing his costume—with such quickness, he was sure she’d studied how the thing was connected to his body so that she knew exactly how to get if off if need be—and, within the next few seconds, tossed the flimsy Tarzan loincloth out of sight.

Which left him in just the black thong he wore underneath. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t have even bothered with it. But, when he had first gotten the costume and tried it on without anything, he imagined all the wardrobe slips and potential boners might not be in everyone’s best interests. So, he went out and bought the smallest pair of underwear he’d ever owned, tucked himself inside of them, and called it a day.

Those, too, were stripped from his body in a matter of seconds, or at least pushed down his thighs to where they no longer covered what they were intended to cover. But then she flipped them around, so that Harry was on his back this time, splayed across the bed and she was finally ridding him of the thong all together and not wasting any time getting her hands on him and he wondered, with how quick she was to get to this point, if she had been thinking about this all night. And if she had, then he would definitely have to whip out the Tarzan costume more often.

He seemed to sink into the mattress once he felt her mouth close on him, his eyes fluttering shut and his mouth hanging open involuntarily when he hit the back of her throat. He had no idea how he’d gone so long without her, or why either. Why had he been so stupid? Why did he let her think he didn’t want her? Why did he deprive the both of them of this? Of the way she felt circling her tongue around the tip of his cock, the way he knew she was looking at him even though he could physically not open his eyes or come down off his cloud long enough to tell her how good she felt. How much he missed it. How much he was probably in love with her, even if that might have been crossing some sort of line.

“Forgot how big you were,” she whispered, giggling almost shamefully after wiping her mouth on the back of her hand and giving him a break to actually breathe properly again.

“Think we both know that’s a lie.” He was out of breath already and he was right, although she wouldn’t feed his ego no matter what he said. Although she remembered his cock perfectly fine, she wasn’t exactly used to it. And maybe she had momentarily forgotten what he had hidden under his costume. It’d been two years since they slept together, and the first time it happened they’d been drunk.

She didn’t say anything else, just tried to hide the blush on her face—even though he couldn’t’ see it anyway—by taking a mouthful of him again. She didn’t let him come, though, of course, and he didn’t expect her to either. She never had before. She always led him get right to the edge, to where he was panting and writhing and digging his fingers into her hair, on the verge of screaming her name into the dark, and then she’d stop. Pull him from the back of her throat and leave him a sopping, moaning mess.

He’d somewhat recovered when she crawled on top of him and and sat on either side of his hips with her hands planted on his chest. And now that their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she could see the curve of his lips as he smiled up at her and even the sinister little twist of his mouth just before he grabbed hold of the hem of her dress and ripped it off over her head, letting it fall onto the bed next to him. He wished they had just a little bit more light, but at the same time, it turned him on having to see with his hands instead. Having to reach up and cup her breasts in his palms and rely on his memories for a better visual than the one he currently had. And as she came down to kiss him again, there was one thing for sure he didn’t need any light or anything but his fingers to do.

He tossed her bra into the same vicinity as her dress and within seconds had his hands all over her again, and his tongue as well, wishing she was on her back so he could worship her in all the ways he desperately wanted to, but also aware that the power could flick on at any moment and he really didn’t have the time.

Not that she had asked, and maybe she just hadn’t thought of it yet, but he still, while continuing to make out with her, reached over, pulled the drawer open on the nightstand and reached inside to locate the box of condoms.

However, once he did, and he didn’t find what he was looking for, he sat up and pulled apart from her, twisting himself a bit in order to see inside the drawer. His other hand held onto her hips so she didn’t fall off of him as he searched the drawer. But, soon enough, he was laying back again, groaning as if he was in physical pain.

“There’s no condoms.” He muttered between his teeth and just that one little sentence ruined his entire night.

“It’s okay.” She assured, continuing to whisper just as he did so that no one would hear them through the thin walls. “I mean… we’re clean right? And I’m on birth control…”

He ran his fingers through his hair, looking up at her and trying to decide if it was a good idea or not. She was right, of course, but even so there was always a possibility. Even with condoms there was always that same possibility too. He knew one thing for certain. If he remembered correctly. There was absolutely no way in hell he’d be able to pull out, so that really wouldn’t even be an option either.

“If you don’t want to though, that’s fine.” She spoke again amongst his silence. It’s not like he would hate the potential consequences, and of course he would not hate feeling her without a stitch of anything in between them, he just needed to be reassured that’s what she wanted, truly.

“I do, just um… are you sure you’re okay with that?”

She nodded first and then, confidently, “Yes.” As she fell back into place over him, her lips came to his ear this time, “I want to feel you coming inside of me.”

His whole body shuddered, needing her more than he quite possibly ever had. And as she tucked her panties to the side and guided herself onto him, he would most definitely go outside and cut the lines himself if the power decided to come back on before they were finished.

“Forgot how wet you are…” He whispered, heart fluttering at the way she laughed while fucking him. He never forgot either, not quite. But feeling her again now, pooling around him, warm and snug, he again wondered why in the living hell he kept himself from her for so long. Sure, they didn’t like each other most of the time, but their first time together had been hot, drunk hate sex and ever since then he’d chased that feeling with other people, none of them ever quite adding up to her. He wondered if she thought the same. No one ever making her feel the way he did either. If, when she was with someone else, she thought of him instead.

He knew he wouldn’t last long the second she put her greedy hands on him, and so her being in control now was slightly dangerous. He wasn’t ready for it to be over, even if he was racing the clock, even if he could just take her home from here and do it all over again, properly. He didn’t want it to end as quickly as it started.

So, he flipped them back over, getting her on her back like he’d wanted to earlier. Slipping a pillow under her backside to get a better angle and letting her sink all the way through the mattress this time. He remained inside her the entire time, only making quick, shallow movements to avoid the sounds of their skin slapping against each other. But he gave up being careful about their noise level after she begged him to go faster, after he reached between them and rubbed his fingers over her clit to catch her up with him.

She tugged at his hair while he kissed her, breathlessly and without much of a second thought this time about how loud they were being. He assumed all their friends knew about them anyway, even if she chose to be ignorant to it. They all speculated about the secret hookups and the mindless flirting that was disguised as harmless bickering. So, he just stopped caring the closer and closer he got.

That was until he buried himself as far as he could inside of her, his hand wrapped around her throat the way he remembered her liking, and he felt the scream building beneath her skin, beneath his palm. Quickly, before her noises led to everyone barreling into the room to find out what was going on, he clasped his hand from her throat to her mouth instead. Holding tightly as she let it out, his eyes pouring into hers like a lake of shining emerald waters getting her to stay there in the room with him. So that she didn’t close her eyes and float away like he had before.

He titled her head to the side, kissed up her jaw to her ear. “Mm, I missed the way you sound.” He wanted to tell her how he thought about her pleads and her moans and her yells late at night when he was feeling particularly alone. When he wanted nothing but her, to either be inside of her, or to just have her there next to him. But all of that got caught in his throat, and instead, as he continued burying himself into her, he whispered like a growl in her ear, “Missed how well you take me.”

And although it made her moan, made her eyes cross and her fingernails scrape across his shoulder blades, he wanted to tell her that he missed how they fit together. How where he ended she began so seamlessly no one else could hardly compare. There had always been a seam with everyone else, with Liv, a visible divide between him and them, soldered together haphazardly. But with Y/N, it was smooth, flowing together as if they were the same person.

His hand slipped from her mouth as he began losing control, and soon she was the one having to cover the noises. Though, this time, she just simply pulled his lips to her own and felt all the vibrations escape from his throat against her skin, her teeth, her tongue. She breathed in nothing but the air from his lungs, and held onto his tightly as she began to unravel.

His moans quickened and quickened until she felt his release, warm and deep inside of her, just as her own gave way, until his body began to give out, until he was panting and no longer able to hold himself up over her. And so once they both descended from their cloud, once their wave had crashed onto the shore, he planted himself beside her, their chests in rhythm as they cough their breath.

And before either of them even managed to open their eyes or breathe steadily again, the surge of the power coming back on dimmed the haze. Their room was still dark, but light seeped under the door and the rest of their friends cheered from the other room as the music began again. And for a brief, stupid moment, Harry thought about fucking her again and letting her scream all she wanted, but that fantasy was cut short when he remembered their friends would soon realize they were missing.

“We should get back.” She mumbled. Although she made no sudden movements to get up. She even closed her eyes again, still off in another world.

And so Harry risked it, just for a few more moments, anyway, where he rolled closer to her and slid his hand up her jaw softly, pulling her attention toward him again as her eyes fluttered open, waiting.

“I was miserable when I was with Liv too. And we broke up because she knew I spent all my time thinking about someone else.” He swiped his thumb across her cheek, realizing for the first time that he’d probably royally fucked up all her makeup and then hoping she wouldn’t come to her senses and kill him for it.

“And who might that be?”

He smiled, sweetly this time unlike all his asshole smiles, and just as he glanced at her lips, ready to kiss her again, he was cut short.

“Yo, where are Harry and Y/N?” It was Jason, loud and clear and possibly headed their way to investigate his missing party guests who had snuck off together in the dark. Jason didn’t know that yet though, and as much as Harry would like none of their friends to find out, it wouldn’t exactly look great the two of them waltzing out of the guest room together. Harry’s curls in shambles, fresh scratches all across his back, and Y/N’s makeup smudged. There was simply no use in hiding what they’d been up to, it was written all over them.

Harry grabbed her clothes and handed them off while he went on a search for his own tiny pieces of costume. And just as they got decent again, there was a knock on the door.

“You guys in there? You better not be doing what I think you’re doing.” Jason warned and Harry and Y/n looked at each other for a moment before busting out laughing.

Harry got to the door first, throwing it open to a very surprised Jason, who then narrowed his eyes when he saw Y/N come up behind Harry.

“God, not in my guest room!” He whined as Harry pushed pass Jason, a looking Y/N following shortly behind, “Now I have to clean the sheets again! I just did them yesterday.”

“Sorry, mate!” Harry called over his shoulder, glancing down at Y/N quickly to give her one of his cocky little winks. And once they had reached the main room again, as he fell back into his chair, she realized just how many scratch marks she’d left on him, and wished he’d worn a costume with a shirt to cover it up.

She drowned out all the whistling and the comments about how everyone knew she and Harry were up to something, about the bets won and lost. All she heard was Harry’s voice in her ear, telling her how much he missed her and she wondered if it was real. If he really did miss her, or he just missed fucking her. If, when it was no longer October 31st, they’d just go back to normal. Like the horse-drawn carriage turning back into a lumpy, ugly pumpkin.

Harry noticed this, of course, because he’s a law student and notices everything, but just as he leaned in to ask if she was okay, she pulled away.

“I just, uh, need some air.” And then she was gone before he could do or say anything. She used through the front door, abandoning their poor pumpkin and headed toward her car. She’d left the keys and her purse inside, but it didn’t matter. She just leaned against the passenger door and gazed up at the stars, thankful for the clear night and warm weather.  

And, of course, he was beside her not too long afterwards. She’d heard his footsteps against the pavement, knew he’d probably follow her out anyway.

He cleared his throat, half watching the same stars she was and half glancing at her. “Did I do something?”

“No, it’s um…” she faltered, her eyes falling to her feet. “Think I just had too much to drink.”

“Oh… I’m sorry. I—” she cut him off before he got too far in the wrong direction.

“No, I mean…” she pushed off her car then and faced him, “Are we just going to go back to how we always are after tonight? Because I don’t know if I can do that. But I never know what you’re thinking, Harry. Do you even like me or do you just like sleeping with me sometimes and arguing with me all the rest of the time?”

He continued to watch her for a moment, almost waiting for her to tell him she was kidding. But when she just ran a nervous hand through her colored hair, he realized she wasn’t.

He waited for a group of kids all dressed in various Star Wars outfits to pass by them before he began. “I guess I thought I was clear, but obviously not enough… I don’t just want to sleep with you every couple of years and pretend we don’t like each other in between. I think we’ve already wasted enough time, don’t you?”

She nodded once his words sunk in.

“Can we go finish our pumpkin now? And win the stupid skeleton. So I can take both it and you home with me?”

Again, she nodded, but this time it was matched with a smile. “Who says I want to go home with you?”

He rolled his eyes and threw an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close enough to kiss the top of her head as he steered them back toward the front door. “Guess it’ll just be me and the skeleton then.”

They both glanced over at the giant thing stuck in the middle of Jason’s front yard, still attracting every young person like it was a princess at Disneyland, and then she looked up at him again. “On second thought, I might like to see that.”

He shook his head, opening the front door for them, “M’sure you would.”

[pochiperpe90]

Beware of the thief

How do you become the longest-lived criminal in the history of Italian comics? For LUCA MARINELLI it all started as a child, at the zoo. Before the eyes of a panther

«The cold determination of a panther that silently approaches its prey: this is the expression I tried to instill in our Diabolik's gaze». When Luca Marinelli frowns and lights up the panther's eyes - the writer has had the opportunity to get a taste of it during the interview - the first instinct is to flee that look: too intense. It will be him, armed with a dagger and dressed in the famous tight black jumpsuit, with a hood that leaves only the icy eyes uncovered, to interpret the anti-hero born from the imagination of Angela and Luciana Giussani - the two sisters of Milan well known in history as the Queens of Terror - in the awaited cinematic adaptation of the comic directed by the Manetti Bros. (Ammore e malavita), in cinemas from December 31st.

«Fifty years in the homes of Italians. 150 million copies sold. Impressive numbers. Diabolik is an icon, it belongs to the IMAGINARY of hundreds of thousands of people"

During a walk along the Kreuzberg canal in Berlin, his adopted city since 2012, the Roman actor explains that the choice to be inspired by the feline for the interpretation of the character is not accidental. «Fans will know that Diabolik takes his name from a panther. Their meeting, which lasts a few moments, is significant: after a high-tension face-to-face, the feline decides to spare the boy, almost as if he had smelled a fellow in him. The panther was one of my favorite animals as a child. I remember like it was yesterday the day my parents took me to see it at the zoo, and my amazement in front of that creature, that night-black mantle, shiny and iridescent, with bluish reflections, and that deep, rhythmic breathing. Finally, particularly indelible in my mind is the feeling of sovereign calm that emanated from the animal». “From the beginning, I had a good feeling about this film,” continues the actor. «The first meeting with the Manettis, which I have been following with interest since the time of Zora the Vampire, took place in Rome, in the neighborhood where both Antonio and Marco and I grew up. They explained to me that they had a very specific vision of the character's personality, but that they would like to see what I could offer them. We auditioned together, which was very useful in igniting the spark of collaboration. I have a clear memory of that day and the subsequent exchange of emotions and thoughts. When I later found out that I was chosen for the part, I was very happy».

Luca Marinelli is certainly not new to acting challenges. From the dazed Mattia in ‘The solitude of prime numbers’ (2010), the character with whom he conquers notoriety, over the years he engages in roles that are not very easy, very different from each other ("The only thing they have in common is my nose", ironically, pointing to his face), showing great versatility and an extraordinary capacity for psychological identification. Among his most convincing interpretations, that of the Zingaro in ‘They call me Jeeg’ and that of Martin Eden in the homonymous film by Pietro Marcello, with which he won, respectively, the Silver Ribbon and a David di Donatello as best supporting actor and the Coppa Volpi as best actor. But dealing with a myth like Diabolik, the object of an almost sacred cult, is a new challenge.

«Fifty years in the homes of Italians. 150 million copies sold. Impressive numbers. Diabolik is an icon, and for this reason it belongs to the imagination of hundreds of thousands of people. If you think you can satisfy them all, you start off on the wrong foot: you risk that the final result is not what you really want to stage, but I'm sure the public will not be disappointed, or at least I hope. You will see how much love and respect there was in implementing this transposition", explains the actor, who speaks with full knowledge of the challenge of interpreting an icon: in 2018 he plays a true sacred monster, Fabrizio De André, in ‘Principe Libero’ by Luca Facchini. A friend told him: you're crazy to take this part. But he, careless, immerses himself in the biography of the singer-songwriter, ventures like a shrink into the maze of his psyche, and he returns to the man of that icon, receiving critical acclaim for that insidious role. The only flaw, some malevolent purists observe, is his Roman accent.

Despite being a comic book hero, to face Diabolik, the actor «decided to avoid any comic characterization of the character, trying to give a convincing representation from a human, psychological point of view. Who is this mysterious man, who with his criminal findings terrorizes the rich city of Clerville? What vicissitudes lead him to become a king of crime? Questions that have become the starting point of my research. For months and months, my flat was flooded with comics, scattered all over the place. And for every hundred I read, the Manettis - who I suspect know all the 800 and more numbers in the series - were ready to lend me as many». Day after day, Marinelli has thus sneaked into the lair of the King of Terror: he spied on his objects, opened his wardrobe, rummaged in his drawers. “I fell in love with him, unconditionally, without giving in to the temptation to express a condemnation or an acquittal. It is a precious lesson, which was passed on to me in the Academy: never judge your character. You risk that a distance will form between you and him which, I play hard, is negatively reflected in the quality of the interpretation».

The result is a film that is radically different from the first film adaptation, directed by Mario Bava, in 1968. "Among its strengths, there is a fascinating 1960s aesthetic, made up of machines, costumes, places and a thousand technological inventions of our Diabolik», he says. “To my great pleasure, I was involved in the discussion of the character's look right from the start. Particularly difficult was the development of the mask and the legendary black suit, designed by Diabolik himself and equipped with fantastic characteristics, not repeatable in reality. An almost impossible mission, but after weeks of attempts, thanks to the collaboration of all departments, we arrived at a result that was very satisfied: we did it by working together. I want to emphasize the all together. When you work with the Manetti Bros., this aspect is deeply tangible: everything takes place in an atmosphere of great exchange and collaboration. Many have known each other within the crew for years, and one almost has the impression of having been adopted by a large family, rather than working on a normal set ».

“Who is this mysterious man who terrorizes the rich city of Clerville? What led him to become what he is? For months these questions have been my RESEARCH"

The film - which the Manettis defined as "darkly romantic" - will also tell, to the delight of fans, the prodromes of the love story between Diabolik and his partner in crime, Eva Kant (Miriam Leone). "Two special, different people who first sniff each other with suspicion, only to recognize each other as soul mates," he explains. “I really like their level of complicity. Diabolik, however, is a very tough and reserved character, who rarely shows a feeling: this is certainly one of the differences, perhaps the clearest, between him and me. I am his opposite: as a good romantic and empathetic, I confess, I often cry. I think that doing so can be an important moment of openness, growth and awareness, which we should learn to actively seek. Are you feeling down? Play the saddest song you know and give yourself a treat: enjoy your tears, a friend once told me. Holy words: woe to keep everything inside. You run the risk of walling yourself up alive behind a senseless wall of hardness».

Although "very interesting", the actor prefers to gloss over future film projects out of luck. "At the moment my wife and I (the German actress Alissa Jung) are very busy with our association: we are about to open the headquarters of PenPaper-Peace in Italy, the association founded by Alissa in Germany, with which we built two schools in Haiti after the disastrous earthquake of 2010». As the actor launches into the memories of his first trip to the Caribbean island, the weeping willows of the Kreuzberg canal that framed the interview mentally give way, for a moment, to the lush vegetation of the Caribbean. «Indelible memories. Two years after the disastrous earthquake, I found a country on its knees, surrounded by rubble, pain and despair, but also many smiles and a contagious desire to live", he says. As the name of our association suggests, all you need is a sheet of paper and a pen, and you can give a child education, and with it a possibility, a future. And this not only in Haiti, but all over the world. At the moment we are focusing on a project in Italy that will support the boys and girls who are going through this difficult period of the pandemic».

GQ Italia

Just wanted to translate this interview for the non-italian’s fans ^^ (sorry for my English)  

[skipppppy]

4, 6, and 8 for Aria plz

Sure! I love talking about my girl and these are some really interesting questions 👀

The answers ran long and are also kinda heavy (tw for mentions of both abuse and suicide!) so I’m keeping them under the cut so I don’t flood the tl with my ramblings 🥲

4: What is their least favourite childhood memory?

Ooh, she had a LOT of these. (There’s one in particular but I put it as the answer to question 8 bc it fit that question more tbh)

One of her worst memories was from the first time she went to Princess Prom. She was invited as a plus one to Entrapta, and being a young teenager with a head full of romantic fairytales and fantasies she was SO EXCITED. A royal ball filled with handsome Princes and Princesses? It was the perfect place for her to finally meet her one true love! Alas, her childlike naivety was only bound to get her hurt. After a few hours at the ball the slow dance began (her plus one was off performing social experiments), and like everyone else she rushed to the dance floor to find a partner...only to be completely sidelined. Anyone she approached would brush her off or turn to someone else. As the music started and everyone began to waltz back and forth, she just stood there, alone, surrounded by everyone paired up and ignoring her.

Disillusioned and heartbroken, she fled the ballroom in tears and spent the rest of the night hiding and crying her eyes out. After that her self esteem totally shattered. She believed that she was unlovable, worthless, and that she’d be lucky if anyone at all even cared about her romantically. After that she had a habit of falling into toxic relationships, since since she was so afraid of being alone that she would settle for anyone, even if they treated her like garbage. It’s why she has so many terrible exes 😔

6: What is the hardest thing they’ve ever had to do?

Swallowing her grief over losing Horde Prime by a LONGSHOT. His death utterly destroyed her, but the part that hurt the most was that she wasn’t allowed to mourn him.

The moment he was gone she had to turn her attention to all the Clones, lost and afraid without a leader. She had to bottle up all her anger over being sold out by the rebellion, imprisoned and enslaved by the Horde, and being betrayed by some of the most important people in her life. She had to plaster on a happy face and play dignitary to the people who had caused her lifelong trauma in order to help a kingdom she was unprepared to rule alone and it broke her. She had to nod and smile as they spoke ill of her dead husband to her face (I know he had it coming but right in front of his widow??? Fr???) and let them walk all over her in order to keep the peace. Keeping up the illusion genuinely destroyed her, physically and mentally. It got to the point that she made several attempts on her own life because the burden was just too much to bear.

Honestly her downward spiral into villainy was probably the healthiest thing she ever did, because she finally got the chance to unleash all her pent up rage and anger against the people who caused it, and even after whatever attempts at destruction she made failed miserably, she FULLY broke down and was able to properly mourn what she had lost. One the Velvet Glove was fixed and they left Etheria, she stepped down as Empress for a while so she could finally start to heal. It was in that time she also found Horde Prime’s original vessel, still intact, and was able to get some much needed closure and move onto probably the first healthy relationship she’d ever had in her life. (I also like to imagine that she somehow found a way to hold the alliance accountable for their actions, but that’s another story for another day :p)

8: What do you think had the biggest impact on them growing up?

By far? The way she was her mother treated her as a child. One event in particular had a HUGE influence on her as a person but I haven’t really talked about it until now.

Her mother always treated her terribly, being the eldest daughter Aria was either neglected in favour of her younger brothers or being forced to look after them so that she could relax (and laze about on the couch drinking wine). Being about 5 years old she wasn’t particularly happy about this and one day she had the absolute audacity to ask her mom to stop neglecting her. She did NOT take that question well and flew into a drunken rage. Screaming, shouting, throwing things, but it all came to a head when she picked up an empty wine bottle and smashed it against her infant daughter’s face. Thankfully the magic connected to Aria was starting to develop and she was able to heal herself, but she wasn’t strong enough to fix everything, and that’s how she ended up with the scar underneath her eye.

The incident naturally messed Aria up for life, but it also informed a lot of her personality as an adult. After that she became afraid to voice her opinion in fear of punishment, causing her to repress her feelings to an unhealthy degree. Her desire to nurture and care for others didn’t just stem from any natural kindheartedness but also as a stress response; she needed to take responsibility to ease the constant sense of dread her mother’s abuse instilled in her, and she wanted to make sure that no one ever had to suffer the way she did. It was also the reason she wears her hair the way she does. Whenever she had her scar on display people would get curious and ask, and she would have to relive it all over again. After meeting Prime she finally started keeping her hair out of her eyes, as she finally learnt to stop bottling up her trauma.

[ollieofthebeholder]

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Tumblr tag || Also on AO3

Chapter 26: Jon

When Jon’s grandmother passed away peacefully in her sleep, not long after his twenty-fourth birthday, he quickly discovered that her life insurance and savings weren’t enough to cover all the bills that needed to be covered and put the house he’d grown up in on the market. He only vaguely remembers the whole procedure, as he was in something of a state of shock at the time, but he does remember accepting the first offer presented to him despite the realtor’s comments that he could “probably hold out for a bit more” if he wanted. Thus, he’s the only one not really startled at the speed with which he, Martin, and Tim find out that they’ve got the house.

To be clear: He’s not startled at the speed. He is, however, startled that they got it. Surely someone must have been willing to pay more for it, been better qualified. But no. They learn their offer has been accepted less than a week after the Primes’ disastrous encounter with Basira’s partner and the closing is scheduled for the following Friday. Martin theorizes that their position at the Magnus Institute gave them some extra clout. Tim jokes that it’s his charismatic personality. Jon frets that Elias might have had something to do with it for nefarious purposes.

Sasha finally does some research and tells them that it’s being sold by a pair of siblings barely out of their teens whose parents died unexpectedly and probably just need the money fast.

Martin doesn’t have much, just the little he managed to bring with him to the Institute when first escaping Jane Prentiss and the few things he’s re-acquired since then, and Jon’s things are still packed up from when he declined to renew the lease on his flat in August, so it’s mostly just Tim who needs to decide what he’s keeping and what he’s ready to part with or needs to replace. It takes them the better part of two Saturdays, but they manage to get everything boxed and sorted in time to move out the last full weekend of September.

The moving-in process is surprisingly fun. Sasha and the Primes even come to help (Tim suggests the latter so that Martin Prime knows his way around the house from the get-go, which is actually really sensible) and they make a party of it. Tim insists on setting up the sound system first, then gets everyone to contribute a certain number of songs to a playlist on some app he has on his phone. He puts it on shuffle and lets it play while they work together on the various rooms.

“Oh, my God,” Sasha moans after the eighth song that she evidently didn’t pick comes on. “Do any of you listen to a single band that’s put out an album since 1984?”

“Yes,” Martin says indignantly, his cheeks coloring slightly.

“Remasters don’t count.”

Martin Prime grins. “None of mine have come up, either.”

“What did you put on?” Sasha asks suspiciously.

She gets her answer a few minutes later when, after shuffle coughs up a Spice Girls song they all tease her mercilessly about, an honest to God sea shanty comes on. Tim and Jon laugh at Sasha’s dramatic, despairing groan, but it’s hard not to respond to the Martins’ enthusiasm as they—surprisingly—harmonize along with the recording while they set up the living room.

They’re almost done assembling the new bed Tim bullied Jon into buying (“You’re not in uni anymore, you don’t need to be sleeping on a futon, and anyway, when was this made, the Thatcher premiership?” “Brown, and shut up, Tim.”), which is the last piece of furniture they need to put together, when there’s a sound from the front door—two firm, solid knocks, audible all the way upstairs. Jon nearly drops the screwdriver as his heart kicks against his ribs. It’s stupid, and he knows it’s stupid, but two knocks like that always makes him think of that book.

Tim makes a noise in the back of his throat. “God, hope the music isn’t too loud.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Martin says, but he sounds uncertain. “I-I mean, it’s been ages.”

Jon pushes himself to his feet. “I’ll check.”

He hurries out of the bedroom before anyone can comment on the clear break in his voice. He is, and there is no way to deny it to himself, legitimately afraid of what might be outside. The likelihood of it being a being of another entity is slim, but…well, there was Mr. Spider, and Jane Prentiss knocked on Martin’s door more than a few times to keep him off-balance, so there’s always the chance. It’s something he feels he can deal with, though, so he heads out to face it.

He does not, however, expect to open the door and be faced with what is either a small child or a casserole dish with tennis shoes.

“Hello,” a tiny voice says brightly from behind the dish. There’s a bit of shifting, and then two big brown eyes and a mass of curls appear over the rim. “I’ve brought you a cake.”

Jon will deny to his dying day that those words freeze his blood in his veins and make his heart stutter to a stop, but since this might actually be his dying day, he’ll be lying if he tries. His lips part, but no sound comes out.

“And a casserole, too,” the child continues, completely oblivious to Jon’s unwarranted panic attack. “That’s not as much fun, though, but Nan says it’s important to eat good, hearty food when you’ve been doing lots of work and that cake shouldn’t be a whole meal. I think there’s no point in being a grown-up if you can’t eat whatever you want, but…” The child heaves an enormous, dramatic sigh that seems too large for such a small body. “My Nan’s very, very old, and you don’t get to be old if you don’t do something right, so she must know what she’s talking about. Anyway, we made the casserole with lots and lots of cheese and she said that was okay, so at least it’s a little better.”

“Ah—thank you?” Jon manages. “H-here, let me…take that.”

He manages to extract the casserole dish, which certainly feels as if it’s laden with cheese; it weighs the proverbial ton. Quite possibly a literal one. It’s solid enough to anchor Jon to reality, though, and he studies his benefactor. The child can’t be more than seven or eight, at the most, with a round face and limbs hidden in an oversized, threadbare sweater that looks like it’s been handed down through more than a few generations. Dangling from one arm is a wicker basket that does indeed appear to contain a cake.

“It’s a chocolate cake with marshmallow frosting,” the child says. “I tried to write ‘Welcome to the neighborhood’ on it, but I didn’t put the tip on the piping bag right and it came off, so now it’s just a mess, but it’ll taste just as good, I promise. My Nan makes the best cakes.”

Jon smiles in spite of himself. “I don’t think I have enough hands to take it from you now. Would you mind bringing it into the kitchen for me?”

“Oh, sure!” The child practically hops over the threshold. “I always wanted to see what this house was like on the inside. Tibby used to babysit for me sometimes, but she always came over to our house, never me coming over here. Nan says it’s better that way, and Tibby always said it was laid out exactly like all the other houses, but it’s not the same as seeing it for yourself. Firsthand knowledge is best, that’s what I think. What do you think?”

“I—I think I agree with you,” Jon says. He also feels a bit like he’s staring at his younger self. “I assume you live in one of the other houses on the row?”

“Two doors down,” the child agrees cheerfully. “With the window boxes. My Nan likes to garden a bit, but she can’t bend over so much anymore, so Toby set up the window boxes for her a couple years ago.”

“And, uh, who is…Toby?”

“Oh, sorry, I thought you knew. Toby McGill. He and Tibby—that’s his sister Tabitha, but everyone calls her Tibby—they were the ones selling this house after their parents died. He’s at Surrey University now and he says he’s going to stay out there when it’s all said and done, and Tibby got a job on a boat.” The child sounds deeply impressed. “I want to be a sailor someday, too. Can you imagine getting to see the whole wide world by water and getting paid for it, too? I’d never want to leave. I told Tibby she has to save a spot on the crew for me and she laughed and promised, so I can’t wait. I’m going as soon as I grow up. I’m not going to university. You don’t need to go to university for everything, you know. I know Nan really wants me to go ‘cause Mum didn’t and neither did Dad and she doesn’t want me turning out like them, but you can turn out well even if you don’t go to university, can’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Jon says gravely. He casts an involuntary glance in the direction of the stairs, thinking of Martin. “One of my housemates didn’t go to university, and he’s one of the most brilliant people I know.”

“How many of you live here, anyway?”

“Just three of us.” Jon has no idea how much this child has seen and how many people he knows are in the house at the moment.

“Oh. There used to be three of us in my house, too.” The child scuffs a toe against the carpet just before they step into the kitchen. “And then there was going to be four, but Mum died and the baby did, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says softly, feeling a pang. “I grew up with my grandmother, too.”

The child looks up at Jon and smiles, in such a way that Jon can’t help but smile back. “And you turned out okay.”

“Debatable,” Jon says. He sets the casserole dish on the counter. “I’m Jon, by the way. Jonathan Sims.”

“I’m Charlie. Charlie Cane.” The child smiles up at him and hands over the basket. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. Tell your grandmother we said thank you. I don’t know that any of us will have the energy to cook tonight. We’ll bring back the dishes tomorrow.”

“There’s no hurry. Nan doesn’t go anywhere.” Charlie flashes Jon a grin that’s missing two teeth, then turns and waves to the doorway. Jon glances up to see Martin, looking somewhere between worried and amused. “Hi! I’m Charlie Cane. Welcome to the neighborhood. Do you live here, too?”

“Um…yes. I’m Martin Blackwood. It’s…nice to meet you?” Martin raises an eyebrow at Jon.

“Charlie and his grandmother made us a casserole,” Jon says, gesturing at the counter. “And a cake.”

“That’s very nice of you. Thank you.” Martin smiles at Charlie and winks, although Jon doesn’t quite understand why.

“Welcome.” Charlie’s beaming smile could probably light the house for a week. “I’d best go before Nan thinks I’m doing something stupid again. See you later!”

He’s out the front door before Jon can respond, or even blink. He looks back to Martin, who isn’t even trying to hide his amusement. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Jon. We were just wondering if you were okay. You were gone for a while.”

Jon gestures vaguely at the front door. “I don’t think that child has many people to talk to. Or at least not many people who will listen to him.”

Martin snorts. “I think you’ve got yourself a new best friend.”

Jon almost wants to say something flippant like Just what I need, but thinking on it, he actually doesn’t mind all that much. “Considering how much I would have given to have an adult pay that kind of attention to me when I was his age, I think I can handle that.”

Martin reaches over and pulls Jon into a hug. Jon lets himself be comforted for a moment, then extricates himself gently and smiles. “Come on. Let’s see if the others are ready to eat.”

As it turns out, the others finished putting together the bed and even made it while Jon talked to Charlie, so they’re all too happy to come into the kitchen for a hearty meal. It’s exactly as cheese-laden as Charlie promised. Jon recounts his conversation, to general amusement, although something flickers briefly across Martin Prime’s face and Jon Prime shoots Jon an understanding and slightly frightened look when he repeats Charlie’s opening words. If anyone else notices, they give no sign of it.

Tim lets the music keep playing while they eat. Jon mostly tunes it out, no pun intended, and he rather suspects the others do too. But just as they’re scraping their plates clean—the food is delicious, and Tim declares he’s going to try and charm Charlie’s grandmother out of the recipe—Martin Prime suddenly tilts his head to one side, as if trying to catch a sound. A smile twitches at his lips, and he stands up and holds out a hand to Jon Prime. “May I?”

Jon Prime looks startled for a split-second, then smiles—no, grins—and places his hand in Martin Prime’s. He lets Martin Prime pull him away from the table and into his arms, and the two of them start slow-dancing.

Jon pauses, fork suspended over his plate, and watches them. Jon Prime lets Martin Prime lead him in a simple box step, one arm draped casually over Martin Prime’s shoulder, while Martin Prime’s hand rests firmly at his waist; their other fingers are laced together in a way that would make it difficult to telegraph intended moves if they didn’t—probably—know each other so well. The space between them is so little it’s a wonder they don’t constantly trip over each other’s feet, and before long their foreheads touch. The song is gentle and plaintive, encouragement from one partner to the other to trust and relax and allow the first to take care of the second, a promise that the second person won’t be considered weak or lesser if they allow themselves to be comforted.

I promise you’ll be safe here in my arms…

Martin Prime lifts his arm and spins Jon Prime around gently, and when Jon Prime comes back into the closed frame, he leans his head against the shoulder where his hand isn’t resting and closes his eyes. Martin Prime pulls him closer and rests his cheek alongside Jon Prime’s as they continue dancing. It’s one of the most intimate and romantic things Jon has ever seen, and he almost has to look away from it.

Almost. Not quite. Something keeps him drawn, and there’s a tiny part of Jon’s brain that suggests it probably isn’t just the pleasure at seeing someone who’s basically him safe and happy and in love mixed with the vague sense of longing for something like that—maybe not that exactly, but something like it. It may also be that watching the Primes slow dancing means he doesn’t have to look at anyone else.

The song plays itself out. Martin Prime turns his head slightly; Jon Prime turns his at the same time, and their lips meet gently in the middle. This time Jon does look away. He’s never quite been able to figure out how he feels about kissing, to be honest; it’s one of the things that sent his and Georgie’s relationship down in flames, was the fact that he always acted like you think I’ve got poison in my lip gloss, according to her. But he finds himself wondering for a moment what Martin’s lips would feel like against his, if they’d be as soft and warm as the rest of him. If it might make a difference to kiss Martin instead of Georgie, or Meredith, or Kelly. And that’s not a question he’s comfortable asking himself just then, let alone trying to answer.

The scrape of a chair breaks his attention, and he looks up to see the Primes sitting down like nothing happened, although they’re still holding hands. Tim clears his throat. “Who wants cake?”

The cake is, as promised, a bit of a mess—it looks like someone tried to tease out the blob created by the icing tip popping off with a toothpick or something, but the resultant design looks like the pictures someone showed Jon once of a web woven by a spider that had been fed caffeine, and the fact that the icing is bright red doesn’t help—but it is absolutely delicious.

Afterward, Tim and Jon store the leftovers while Martin and Sasha start on the dishes. Jon Prime glances at the kitchen clock and touches Martin Prime on the shoulder. “We should probably go. The later it gets, the more likely that…someone might cruise by the Institute, and I’d rather not risk that.”

Martin Prime squeezes Jon Prime’s hand gently, and Jon swallows on the sudden surge of nausea. They haven’t seen anything of Detective Tonner, and Basira didn’t say anything about her when she showed up last week to switch out the tapes, but the memory of the Primes’ faces when they stumbled back to Tim’s place to change and return his car is a hard one to shake. Even though Jon Prime swears he and Daisy eventually became friends, it’s the eventually that sticks out, and Jon isn’t sure what he’ll do if Daisy turns up at the Institute. It’s also obvious that the Primes are more afraid of her than they’re letting on.

Tim opens his mouth, probably to invite them to spend the night or something, but Sasha beats him to it. “Can you wait a few minutes? I’d rather not walk to the tube station by myself, if it comes to that, and I think you said there’s an entrance to the tunnels near there.”

Jon Prime frowns slightly. “I…don’t think I did, but there is.”

“We’ll walk with you, Sasha,” Martin Prime assures her.

Tim sighs theatrically. “I feel a little better, which is a relative statement not to be taken as approval.”

“Your objection is duly noted.” Sasha hands Martin a plate to dry.

All too soon, everything is cleaned up, just as the playlist comes to an end, and there’s really no way of stalling them further. There’s a round of hugs and see-you-Mondays, and then Sasha and the Primes head out the door, leaving Jon, Martin, and Tim alone in their new house.

It’s not that late, comparatively, so Jon suggests a card game. They’ve played most nights since Sasha went back to sleeping in her own flat; they’ve played a couple of games of Rummy or Go Fish, and Tim once tried to teach Jon and Martin a game he learned from his grandparents that uses a forty-card deck (Martin picked it up quickly, Jon did not), but most of the time they play Crazy Eights. Tim declares that they’re going to keep playing until either he or Jon or both manage to overtake Martin’s score, which is clearly going to be an impossible task, as he’s up by nearly a thousand points and consistently wins at least three or four games a night. Still, they give it a valiant effort. After Martin manages to go out while both Tim and Jon still have an eight each in their hand, though, they decide to call it quits for one night.

“Someday I’ll figure out how you keep doing that,” Jon says, shuffling the deck lightly before putting it back in the box.

Martin shrugs. “Practice, I guess? I used to play with my granddad a lot when I was younger. We kept a running total, too, and I think I was up three thousand points or so when he died.”

Tim gives a low whistle. “How old were you?”

“Nine. We’d been playing pretty regularly since I was five. At least one game every time I went to visit.”

Jon thinks back to the conversation he and Martin had in Tim’s kitchen the morning after Prentiss’s attack. “Is this the grandfather who had the cherry trees?”

“You remembered.” Martin looks pleased. “Yeah, he was my mum’s dad. I never met my dad’s family, that I remember anyway.” He pauses. “You, uh, you told Charlie you were raised by your grandmother. Was that…?”

Jon didn’t know Martin was there, but he’s kind of glad he doesn’t have to figure out how to bring it up. “My father’s mother. She was…formidable. My father died when I was two, from an accidental fall, and my mother died a couple years later. Surgery complications.”

“I’m sorry,” Martin says softly. “That must have been hard on you.”

“Harder on my grandmother, I think. I was barely old enough to remember them.” All Jon remembers of his father is his laugh, and he’s fairly certain that most of his memories of his mother come from his aunt.

Tim leans forward, resting his arms on the table. “Is she still around? Your grandmother?”

Jon shakes his head. “She died just before I started working at the Institute. What about yours, Tim?”

“My dad’s dad is the only grandparent still around. I think.” Tim worries at his lower lip with his teeth for a moment. “I’d like to think someone would call me if something happened, but I don’t know.”

Martin hums sympathetically. “Is he…in a home?”

“Not as far as I know. Last I heard, he was still living with my parents. Moved in when Granny died, just after I left for university.” Tim sighs. “We’re not…close. After Danny…”

Jon reaches over and touches Tim’s arm gently. “It must be hard on them, losing a son. No parent expects to outlive their child.”

“That’s just it. Mum refuses to believe he’s dead.” Tim smiles weakly. “No body, you know? Dad isn’t sure, but he also thinks I know more than I’ve told them. Grandfather all but accused me of having a hand in Danny’s disappearance.”

“What?” Jon blinks, shocked. “How could anyone think you’d��you would never.”

“I know, but…well, Dad’s family was always a bit conservative, blue collar and all that, and I’m…well, me. I think that’s why Dad encouraged my hiking and camping and all that. Hoped it would knock some ‘sense’ into me,” Tim says with a wry twist of his lips. “Once I came out as bi, though, I think they decided there was no hope left for me. It just got worse after Danny died.”

Martin’s expressive face closes down, and Jon’s stomach lurches. This is the most they’ve talked about their families in…ever, he thinks, but from the little bits of information Martin—and Martin Prime, for that matter—have let slip, Jon has formed a very unfavorable impression of Martin’s mother. He’s always kind of had a hazy idea that Tim’s family situation was better, especially after he heard the pride in his voice when he talked about Danny when giving his statement, and finding out that it wasn’t much better than theirs…

“How old were you?” he asks, not sure why. “When you—told them.”

“Seventeen. There was a guy I’d been seeing—nothing serious, really, but we had fun together—and we went out for Valentine’s Day. My parents were confused because they knew my girlfriend and I had just broken up before Christmas and I hadn’t mentioned another girl, so I told them about Steve.” Tim gets quiet for a second. “Mum cried. Dad just…told me to stop upsetting my mother and never brought it up again. Not until Grandfather started in on me.”

Jon swallows. “You’ve a great deal more courage than I have. I—I never admitted to my grandmother that I ever had any interest in boys, let alone dated one.”

“Only one? You’re missing out.” Tim’s grin is a pale echo of his usual one, but it is at least genuine. “How ‘bout you, Martin?”

“A few.” Martin relaxes with a visible effort that makes Jon’s heart ache. “Been out since I was fourteen. Mum reacted…about as well as she reacted any other time I told her something she didn’t like or did something she wasn’t expecting. I never brought anyone home to meet her or…really talked to her about my dating, and she only ever brought it up in relation to herself. Like saying it was a good thing there wasn’t any risk of me passing on any of my numerous undesirable traits to a helpless child.”

“I don’t think your mum understands what ‘bisexual’ means,” Tim points out.

“Probably not, but it doesn’t matter. I’m gay.” Martin grimaces. “I’m also ace, so no risk there anyway, but…”

Jon wants to say any child would be fortunate to count you as a father or I can’t think of a single undesirable trait about you, but what actually comes out is, “Ace?”

“Uh, asexual. It’s—I don’t…get attracted like that. Romance, sure, aesthetic stuff and all that, but not…” Martin gestures vaguely. “Tried it anyway, for a couple of guys I was with, but i-it didn’t go well.”

Jon’s world view shifts abruptly on its axis. Tim, though, looks suddenly worried. “Are you okay? They didn’t—”

“No, no,” Martin says quickly. “It wasn’t—I just don’t like it. That’s all.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Never bothered telling Mum that part. She wouldn’t…I’ve done enough damage.”

Tim pulls Martin into a quick one-armed hug, and Jon reaches across the table to squeeze his hand as gently as he can, but they change the subject after that.

They end up sitting up for a while in their new living room, relaxing. Tim props his feet up in the recliner and works on a crossword; Jon curls up at one end of the sofa with a book he’s been meaning to read for years that Jon Prime assures him he’ll love; Martin sits at the other end and knits. It about bowled Jon over completely when he learned that Martin made most of the sweaters he wears, but the sight and sound of him working away has become increasingly familiar in the last few weeks, especially after the Primes and the rest of the crew collaborated to get him an array of needles and knitting wool in all colors of the rainbow for his birthday. Jon usually finds the gentle clicking of the needles soothing, but tonight it’s just a hair distracting, and he keeps glancing up from the page to watch Martin’s fingers as they expertly manipulate the yarn or Tim tap the eraser of his pencil thoughtfully against his jaw while he contemplates an answer. He’s not even quite sure what he’s looking at.

Finally, Tim lays down his puzzle with a sigh. “I think I’m gonna turn in,” he says, sounding oddly reluctant. “Long day and all that.”

“Yeah, I’m just gonna—” Martin works a couple more stitches and folds up his project. “Probably a good stopping place for tonight.”

Jon considers saying he’s going to stay in the living room and finish the chapter he’s on, but if he’s being completely honest, he’s been on the same page for however long it’s been and hasn’t taken in a single word. Silently, he slides the scrap of paper he’s currently using as a bookmark back between the pages and closes the book. “Well. Good night, then.”

“’Night, Jon.”

The bedrooms are all upstairs, two on one side and one on the other with the bathroom handy, and the three of them wish each other goodnight again before disappearing into their rooms. Jon closes the door and looks around the room, his room.

There’s not much to it, to be honest. A nightstand, a dresser, a battered desk he’s had since he was a child, a lamp and the bed. He sets the book on top of the desk and changes into his comfortable sleep clothes, then crawls into the bed and pulls the covers up over his shoulders.

It’s…odd. No, not odd. Jon can’t quite think of the right word for it. But the sheets feel unfamiliar against his skin, and they don’t smell right, either, probably because they’re new. The mattress that felt perfectly comfortable when he tested it out in the store doesn’t seem to afford the same comfort now, and he wonders if the floor model has simply had much of the stiffness tested out of it over time. Even the pillows, which he did retain from his old bedroom setup, seem determined to thwart his attempts to find a comfortable position.

He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, arm draped over his midsection. He won’t fall asleep like this, he’s always been a side-sleeper, but his mind is a seething roil of emotions and he needs to get his thoughts under control before he can even have a hope of getting comfortable enough to sleep, he guesses.

Asexual. Jon probes at the word, at what it describes. I don’t get attracted like that. I just don’t like it. Honestly, until meeting Georgie, Jon had no idea that sort of attraction really existed; he thought it was just something out of the lurid romance novels his grandmother favored and he’d read once or twice in sheer desperation. It was something she’d wanted, though, so he’d tried a few times, but his efforts hadn’t satisfied her and he never really saw what all the fuss was about. He can take it or leave it, preferably the latter.

He never knew there was a word for it.

Suddenly, he wants to talk to Martin about it, about how he realized, how he knew. Where he found the word. If there are many more like—well, like them, he supposes. If that’s one of the reasons he was reluctant to tell Jon how he felt. He wants to ask about Martin’s experiences, if they were bad just because his body didn’t want them or for some other reason. A part of him also wants to cry from sheer relief. He isn’t broken. There’s nothing wrong with him. Well, not in that respect, anyway.

He sighs heavily and rolls onto his side again, plumping the pillows and curling one arm around them. They’re too flat, he thinks idly, too soft and yielding. Which is odd, because that’s never bothered him before. He can’t seem to get warm, either, which is also bizarre because it’s been an unusually mild day for late September and he’s under the duvet he’s had for years, which suddenly seems too light and insubstantial. The room is too quiet and still. It all feels…wrong, somehow.

Jon closes his eyes and stubbornly tries to force sleep, to no avail. The sense of wrongness pervades his being, curling through him and keeping him tethered to consciousness. He runs through the list of problems he seems to be having and tries to come up with which one might be keeping him awake. The only thing he can think of is the unfamiliar mattress. Everything else is exactly the way it was in his old flat.

And when was the last time you slept there? The thought hits him all of a sudden, and his eyes snap open. He forgot. The last time he slept in his apartment was the night before Jane Prentiss attacked the Institute. Ever since then, he’s been sleeping in Tim’s living room…or in Tim’s bed. With the others.

That’s all it is. He isn’t used to the silence of being alone. He’s not used to not knowing, right away, exactly where Tim and Martin are and if they’re safe. He’ll just go and check on them, see that they’re safe, and he’ll be able to get to sleep just fine.

He throws back the covers, slides his glasses back on, and heads into the hallway. Jon somehow ended up in the room by the bathroom, while Tim and Martin are on the other side of the hallway. Martin’s room is first, though, so Jon heads there. He’s as careful as he can be. Martin is probably asleep by now. He definitely seemed tired while they were still in the living room, and Jon wonders if he lingered because the other two were still sitting down there. It makes him feel slightly guilty, like he should have called it a night earlier so Martin can get some sleep. And after all, they did have a very emotionally draining conversation, which probably exhausted him as well. All that runs through Jon’s mind as he slowly, slowly eases the door open and peers around it to see into Martin’s room.

It’s sparsely furnished; nothing but a bed and one of those flimsy pop-up cloth jobs bisected into cubes, which is serving as his dresser. Martin’s laptop and phone sit on the floor, both connected to their chargers. The bed is mussed slightly and shows signs of having been occupied, but Jon’s heart rate accelerates when he looks at it. It’s empty.

There’s no sign of a struggle, he tells himself, and he heard nothing, so surely everything is fine. Martin’s probably just in the bathroom, or downstairs getting a glass of water or something. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Jon will just…go check on Tim and Tim will be fine and then he’ll go find Martin and make sure he’s fine and it…will…be…fine. He pulls the door closed and turns to Tim’s room.

The door is slightly ajar, and there’s a faint glow coming from the room. Jon hesitates, then taps lightly on the door three times before easing it open. Tim is sitting up on the bed, cross-legged and leaning forward slightly. And—Jon’s shoulders slump in relief—Martin is there, too, on the edge of the bed, one leg hanging off the side and the other tucked underneath him. They’re talking quietly, but both obviously exhausted. They look up at the sound of the door opening and watch Jon stand in the doorway. He opens his mouth, then realizes he doesn’t know what to say and closes it again.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” Martin asks gently. The circles under his eyes are almost black.

“No,” Jon admits. “I—I just wanted to—” He breaks off, still not sure what to say.

Wordlessly, Tim holds out a hand. Jon lets the bedroom door shut behind him as he comes forward and takes it. Martin wraps an arm around him from behind, and the two of them pull Jon onto the bed and into a lying-down position. Tim rolls over and snaps off the lamp by his bed, then pulls the covers up over all three of them. Jon manages to reach down and snag the middle to help.

“Better,” Tim murmurs.

It’s not a question, but Jon hums in agreement anyway. Trying for levity, he says, “Shame to waste money on new beds, though.”

“We’ll be able to sleep there eventually,” Martin says. Jon only realizes how much stress was in his voice when it’s drastically lessened. “At some point we’ll probably want the space. But for now, there’s this.”

“For now, there’s this,” Jon agrees. He tilts his head back briefly to rest it against Martin’s shoulder, and Martin scoots in closer.

Tim does, too, the two of them sandwiching Jon securely between them. “Get some sleep,” he says. “It’ll be all right tomorrow.”

Jon yawns and closes his eyes, and it doesn’t really surprise him when he falls asleep straightaway. The nightmares are as present as ever, but in the morning, he can almost fool himself into believing they weren’t so bad.

Almost.

[ourlastbastion]

Etherian Mall Ch. 3

In which Hordak is a disaster at romance.

“I don’t think the landlady was particularly thrilled when Emily began following her with the knife, but even she has to see what a monumental advancement it was with her programing! But then Emily ran into a couch and got stuck because the knife went into the furniture,” Entrapta recounted, her enthusiasm calming for a brief moment as she reached the point where Emily got stuck. “I managed to wrench her free and then, for safety precautions, removed the knife before allowing her to roam free. I’ll need to do some adjustments to her spacial awareness, but she’s coming along well!” with that, the enthusiasm was back as she threw her arms out with the finale of her tale.

Hordak quietly reached over and pulled her coffee away from her just a bit so that she didn’t knock it over by accident (again) as she moved her arms about while talking. As much as he loved seeing her like this, they were surrounded by expensive technology and he would rather avoid having hot coffee knocked all over the display phones and laptops again. Sure, Entrapta had fixed everything, but why risk it a second time when they could avoid it?

Still, he hid his smile as he brought his own coffee to his mouth to take a sip. So far it had been a rather slow day for the Etherian branch of the Fright Zone, slow enough that he supposed there was time to stop and chat rather than work. Well, for him and Entrapta, he made sure the other employees currently clocked in were busy doing inventory or shelving supplies.

“It is fascinating how you managed to change what had been a simple Roomba into what it—she is now,” he quickly corrected himself when he referred to Emily, knowing how important the machine was to Entrapta, he would loathe upsetting Entrapta again by calling her creation an 'it', and what a great creation she was. Entrapta was slowly giving the machine a form of artificial intelligence.

He knew that Entrapta was smart, perhaps the most intelligent person he knew, and yet it never failed to amaze him whenever she went on about a project of hers. He was honored to have her as a friend and a partner, she was perhaps the first person to truly understand him.

And, well, perhaps he’d like to be more than just ‘lab partners’ as she often referred to them as. It was why today was to be such an important day for him. He’d spent the past few weeks compiling information on ways to go about this from various sources, and had been taking every precaution he could find to make sure that this went as smoothly as possible.

He’d been careful to make sure that Entrapta had time to do what she wanted when she arrived by keeping her off the register, be it tinkering with the different gadgets they sold or doing observations on the different customers that came in. He’d bought her coffee to keep her going (From his own Coffee Horde, of course), knowing she had probably gone without sleep the night before to work on Emily, and he had even brought her breakfast for when she’d arrived that morning; half a dozen tiny blueberry muffins from that obscenely colorful bakery that she loved so much. She had been so happy for the food that his heart almost couldn’t take it, and when it was clear she was eager to talk about something great—the story of Emily and the landlady—he’d made sure they had time and privacy in the side of the store to chat.

Now was just the hardest part. He’d done everything right so far, now he just had to find the words to actually ask her. “Entrapta,” he began, lowering his coffee back down, trying to stay calm, to not show weakness. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something for a while now.”

There was that scientific curiosity in her eyes as she leaned forward, hair lifting her up so she was able to look him in the eyes at a level height. “Oh? What is it?” she asked, smiling at him in a way that made it even harder to find his voice and words. “Is this about that project you’ve been working on for Prime? I’m still waiting on some parts to arrive in the mail, but I can probably make substitutes out of things from around the apartment if you’re in a rush.”

The—oh, right, that. He’d nearly forgotten about their project together with all the focus he’d been putting in just asking her out. “No, no, it’s not that,” he corrected. From the corner of his eye, he saw Octavio peer at them curiously, a knowing smile fell on her face, but quickly dropped as he turned to give a glare and a look that needed no words to convey the message; get back to work or else. She lost a shade or two of color and hurried back to the stack of boxed phones to put on the shelves.

Now, back to the issue at hand. “I wanted to discuss you and me,” he paused, finding his nerves beginning to fail him. When did he become just so weak? “You and I, we’ve ah, we’ve been working together for quite some time by now.”

“Yes! Approximately thirty-one months if my calculations are correct,” Entrapta interjected, then faltered, remembering that most people, Hordak in particular, don’t enjoy being interrupted. “Oh, right, sorry. Go on.” Well, he was fine with her cutting in like that.

He coughed to clear his throat and buy him a few seconds. “Ah, yes, for thirty-one months,” so much time, it had flown by so quickly. “I was thinking we might be able to,” come on, Hordak, you’ve been preparing for this, you’re a cutthroat businessman, smarter than most, a fearless leader. You can do this. You’re not afraid, you’re not going to crumble now. “to move our relationship to the next step?”

He could have sworn he heard one of his employees fighting back laughter after he said that, but couldn’t find the source, lucky for them or he’d have written them up for the sheer audacity. But instead, he focused on Entrapta, her expression as he waited for some answer. A yes, preferably, he hadn’t actually prepared for her to say ‘no’.

Entrapta just looked at him for a few moments and then a wide smile broke across her face—yes! A good sign! “I’ve heard about this before! I can’t say I’m particularly well versed in the concept, but I’ve done some research in the past so I’m familiar with it,” right she seems excited, all good signs, not a concrete yes, but the way she was acting, it didn’t seem like she was going to say no. Hordak’s heart was starting to race with anticipation, more so than it already was. “But, yes, I think it’s only logical that we move forward after being partners for so long.”

The smile that found its way on his face couldn’t be stopped, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried. He smiled, felt pride rush through him at having been able to ask, and even more for her to have said yes. “You’re sure?” he asked, just to be certain he wasn’t imagining it, but she didn’t deny or reject. “Then this Friday, would be you free to join me for dinner? There’s this wonderful restaurant that I’ve been wanting to take you to for some time now, they even serve miniature-sized food.” It was one of the businesses owned by Prime, and though tiny food wasn’t technically on the menu, he’d be able to get the chefs to cook it that way for her.

“Friday? I should be available, I might have to push some things around to make sure,” she mumbled the last bit to herself as she went over a mental list of tasks and appointments she may have for that day. “I’ll have to do quite a bit of research and data collecting, though, so I might not be able to bring too much to the table when we meet. But I should be able to find business books, or lessons online, I can spend my free time studying up.”

“No worries, if it doesn’t work, we can schedule it for a different day,” Hordak was quick to assure her and even quicker to stop when he processed what else she said. “Business? I, if you don’t mind my asking, what would that have to do with this?”

She was still smiling, even as she lowered herself back onto the floor,  some of her hair reaching out to grab her laptop and start typing away, getting a jumpstart on this research. “Since our partnership is moving up, I assume you’ll want me to have a better understanding of business theories and concepts,” she answered as if it was the most sensible thing in the world. “I can tell you everything about science, but there’s only so much I can do as a new business partner with my current understanding of said business.”

Business partner, but that wasn’t…

Oh.

Oh no…

Hordak wanted to throw something or slap himself, maybe both. She didn’t actually say yes, he had his hopes up for nothing. He’d asked her out and Entrapta had interpreted it as him asking her if she’d want to be more his partner in business rather than just his, his partner. Oh, was he really so bad at this?

There was more muffled laughter and this time he was able to catch the fleeting figure of Imp darting away after watching this disaster unfold.

But, Entrapta was looking at him now, and Hordak couldn’t possible pull the rug out from under her and tell he that no, he didn’t want her to help him run this place, not when she looked so excited to do it. This would be a new way to study social interactions, and to even study the science of business, he couldn’t take that away from her.

“You’re right,” he forced out, unable to keep his smile up and letting it shift back down to his usual frown. “Right. We’ll have our first business meeting on Friday. I don’t expect you to know everything right away, so don’t worry,” he would have to go along with this, and try again when his confidence wasn’t so shattered anymore. But, no, no, he had to get away, get some space from Entrapta to try and collect the shards of himself before he tried to face her again.

Turning around, Hordak walked away to leave her to her own research and to find something, anything to distract himself. “Octavia!” he called out, finding the older woman by some boxed drones. “If you’re done restocking the shelves, grab some window cleaner and towels and clean the glass on the doors and windows—I can see all the grubby little handprints all over it.” He was going to need more coffee after this.

[sonderisms-blog]

        ❛  Waiting is painful.                          Forgetting is painful.                                   But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.  ❜

Spotted at Grand Central, bags in hand, {KAREN GILLAN}. No, that’s a mistake. It’s {AMELIA POND}, they are a {CANON CHARACTER} and come from {DOCTOR WHO}. They are {TWENTY-NINE} and I’ve heard they are {CREATIVE}, as well {OBSTINATE}. They happen to hold {THEIR} memories. Don’t believe me? See for yourself. Lucky for us, {jinx, 23, pst, she/her & they/them} sent us proof.

Welcome to New York, what is your character’s name?

Amelia Jessica Pond-Williams. Though, she took on the last name Williams when she was transported back to 1920s New York because she couldn’t really legally hyphenate + it was a testament to how much she loves Rory & how she was willing to leave behind her old life with the Doctor behind. But she prefers to just be called Amy!

Where have they been pulled from in their fandom? 

Right when Amy & Rory make their exit in Doctor Who, in the Angels Take Manhattan. I imagine that she wakes up in her new life in this RP from that point. 

With the curse, how has your character’s life changed? 

Well, I don’t want to godmod the potential Rory player but if Rory isn’t in her life then that’s a major change ( though, I’d love if they were best friends who grew up together or something in the new life  ). Like in canon, Amy had the belief the Doctor was real but instead of him coming back, he was just a story. She still grew up the same way in canon, the weird girl who turned ginger bombshell who was a kissogram but in this verse ( to mirror canon ) she gets picked up by a modeling agency and moves to New York. As far as Amy knows she’s lived in New York for 10 years, now a successful science fiction author and currently working on a children’s book both illustrating & writing it.  Her life has changed because she turned her childhood shit into stories that have sold pretty well. She didn’t get married to Rory at a young age, she’s had quite a few years to develop who she is and live her life outside of Leadworth.  

With Amy’s memories coming back, to put it simply, it hurts. All over again. Remembering it all, losing it all, it hurts. Though not a drinker AT ALL, Amy has found herself doing anything she can to forget remembering, working on a much darker novel than her previous ones. It’s been disorienting because even though her life is beautiful & brilliant as it is -- it’s not real. The feeling of things not being real, the blurring of lines between reality & falsity has really done a number on her as she does deal with mental illness, worrying that she’s finally, properly, losing her mind. Frankly, she doesn’t know if it’s real, she doesn’t know what’s real, though she tries to be Amy Pond, this blurring of reality is something that scares her. Another feeling she feels is anger, anger about what happened to her in canon, anger about having to doubt her own mind all over again and a determination to fix this and/or find the person responsible. 

Do they have a job, and if so what is it? 

To dive in more about her job, Amy isn’t the most famous person around but she definitely has mild celebrity due to her early modeling ( a model turned scifi author intrigues a lot of weird fanboys that’s for sure ), her books are what has really launched any celebrity she has into something more recognizable. Sometimes asked to help host D list red carpet shows, etc. Amy is not Known Known but you find her face recognizable. She’s done a lot of activism as well for mental illness and the LGBTQIA+ & Queer communities as she’s openly bisexual so there’s definitely a funky little cult following she has and she’s fairly popular in Scotland as well as a hometown hero in her town of Leadworth ( something she finds HILARIOUS as they hated her for years ). 

Is there any other information about your character that members might find helpful?

THIS SECTION WILL BE FOR MY RAMBLING. Because where else am I GONNA DO IT??? I’ve been playing Amy for 5+ years now and I’m going to give y’all some insight on how i play her as well as how i see her. I’m watching an episode right now that’s helped come up with some of this as well. I’ll probably add more HCs as I slowly rewatch her scenes, etc. 

 A Sagittarius!!!!!!!!!! which literally fits her so well if you love astrology and Amy Pond, you already know!

One of my favorite aspects of Amy’s character is her empathy & intuitiveness. While sometimes lacking social grace and not always the best with interpersonal relations, she can see people for who they are deep down, their intentions, the emotions she feels like she feels from others often overwhelming but something that does lead her. A gut instinct magnified. She’s intuitive and empathetic because she’s got such an active imagination paired with a creative mind, she’s able to put those two things together, not only painting a picture of who someone is, painting colors on them they might not see themselves. Maybe this is a bit naive at times, maybe even a bit dangerous if it steers her wrong ( which is why Rory Williams is so important to her, her impulsiveness paired with this can get her into tough situations and he always has her back, always by her side ). Amelia is not always one to think before jumping into situations if she feels it’s the right thing to do, a prime example of this is her running off with The Doctor EASILY. Both as a kid and an adult. Luckily, not many have taken advantage of this as she can be extremely closed off emotionally. She’s a good judge of character and if she puts her faith in you, know while it could be surprising, it was a very much calculated, thought out, and a felt through choice. Amy’s extremely stubborn so good luck getting her to do something she doesn’t want to do ESPECIALLY if she doesn’t feel it’s right. Amy is usually able to connect to anyone and everyone some sort of way when she tries due to all of this, usually better with connecting to people than the ( Eleventh ) Doctor himself is. 

[ EMOTIONAL NEGLECT MENTION, ALCOHOLISM MENTION ] Verbal, straightforward, blunt, but it when it comes to her emotions, the ones that hurt, the ones that can’t be wrapped in something beautiful or lightly joked about are the ones tucked away. Amy’s got serious commitment issues as well, as shown throughout Doctor Who, that stemmed from the Doctor leaving her multiple times as well as never knowing her parents. I play her Aunt as a high functioning alcoholic, growing up she was never really home much less attentive to Amy ( also due to the whole crack in Amy’s wall thing, but, that’s a whole other topic ). For insight on how this effects her, I once played her in a multifandom at hogwarts rp where she was in a relationship with a character and they were really fucking cute ( I still rp them to this day w/ my friend ). But she was SO cared of this relationship not working out / losing Rory because he had just confessed that he romantically liked her, that she broke up with the other person ( who she had deep feelings for who never EVER would’ve left her ) because Rory meant too much to her, he’d been there through everything, the thought of losing him? Unthinkable. this isn’t to say she didn’t love them both ( polyamorous Amelia Pond ftw! ), or value Rory as much ( I felt pressured to go into canon as well so I had to find a believable fault/fear/issue to really sell this but I think there’s something to be said for this ), I don’t play it that way in THIS rp, of course. [ END OF EMOTIONAL NEGLECT MENTION, ALCOHOLISM MENTION ]

It goes to show that she will make fear based decisions as well as decisions based on her insecurities that she’s not enough, that she’s more pain than she’s worth, out of not being able to give someone she cares about what they need. For example, when in canon Amy breaks up with Rory because she feels so guilty she can’t have biological kids when she knows he ALWAYS wanted kids. She was scared if she stayed with him, he’d hate her, that she was keeping him from having a fulfilling life, that she wasn’t enough and didn’t fit into what he wanted. Rory deserves everything to her, she couldn’t give it to him, when he gave and gave and gave to her. She didn’t feel worthy, but she didn’t express that fear either, making Rory feel completely shut out because she was shutting him out. She’ll self sabotage easily, because commitment is scary to her and she’d rather be the one leaving than being left. Amy can’t stand to wait for the worst to happen, for the other shoe to drop, she isn’t the fucking girl who waited -- not anymore. 

Amy is diagnosed with major depressive disorder previously diagnosed with psychotic features added on as well until the Doctor came back but after having 4 psychiatrists in her youth, Amy definitely fits into having MDD. There are many evidences in canon besides her literally going to psychiatrists that suggest that Amy is mentally ill / ND, another hint in the episode ‘Vincent and The Doctor’. Amy empathizes with Vincent Van Gogh ( my Amy is an extreme art history lover as well, especially Vincent Van Gogh ), she says she’s been where he is, that she gets it. [ SUICIDE MENTION ] She is physically effected when he talks about dark shit and in another episode with the Dreamlord, she talks about how she doesn’t want to live in a world if Rory’s not in it, then killing herself in the show. The way she does it in my head ( and in the show ) is extremely steely, easily done, because Amy has dealt with mental illness, because she’s been in dark places & suicidal ideation. [ END OF SUICIDE MENTION ]  In this RP, she’ll also have been diagnosed and is taking medication because we stan healthy characters who cope with their mental illness! Even though she’s definitely having a hard time currently. 

Rory Williams really is everything to her. Her best friend, a love of her life, her partner, the only person who stuck by her side through everything. She never waivers in this love for him, even though she does have doubts due to her own commitment issues ( and regular issues ) but she doesn’t have doubts about who Rory is. She loves him. The Doctor is also someone she loves passionately, though she could’ve loved him romantically and often could see that sort of a future with him -- he’s completely unavailable and unreliable. If there’s one thing that Amy can’t do in a partner romantically it’s unreliable. Plus, after finding out her daughter was married to him in canon? She’ll pass. The Doctor is more like a twin flame sort of thing for her, a very kindred spirit. She loves him because in her little town of Leadworth, full of boring, sensible things, where she was the weird girl in town -- he was just as weird as her. 

 If I had to pick a Hogwarts house for Amy, it’d be Gryffindor. 

[ncstings]

spots to kiss #20: georgia & benjamin a kiss on where the back of the neck turns to shoulder.

“Did you see who they were?” She’s got a bag full of groceries under her arm as she leads out of the elevator, walking down one of their long hallways.

“Only briefly. But they were carrying things, it didn’t seem appropriate to stop them.” Benjamin says mindlessly over the phone. She caught him while he was working and he said he could talk, because how could he say no to her, but it’s clear he’s doing something on top of it.

“Shame, Ben. For shame.” She hisses. “I have to do everything myself. I’ll have to take one of the bottles from the fridge as an impromtu gift. Unless you have a fruit basket laying around.”

“I’m sorry, is that something you think people just... have?” He laughs.

“Don’t joke, you never know when you’re going to need a gift basket. Before moving in with you, I always had supplies for making a spa basket on the fly.” She looks around her, rounding another corner. “How do you think I got to be so successful.”

“I wont question your ways.”

“Oh shit---!” Georgia stops dead in her tracks, seeing a door wide open. “They’re home.” She hisses.

“Why are you acting like they’re outlaws? They’re just new neighbors. They looked perfectly approachable. A little young, but, who am I to question anything.”

“What, like, how could young people afford a place like this?” She pauses. “How young we talking?”

“I don’t question people’s income. But certainly under thirty.”

“Wow, good for them.” She stands up straight. “I should say hi, I hear music playing.”

“Why is their door open?” 

“I don’t know I haven’t talked to them yet.”

“Seems strange is all. You don’t think they’ll cause any problems do you? Have lots of parties or anything?”

“You’re the one that’s met them, Benjamin.”

He hums, then there’s a pause for a second before he finishes. “Well I should go, you go investigate and report back.”

And she did just that. Georgia hung up her call, rushed her groceries back into the apartment, and grabbed a bottle of wine from her fridge before she dipped back out into the hallway.

Music still poured from the open door. Nothing loud, and it was rather slow and sensual rhythm and blues that she couldn’t really complain about the music choice. When she neared the corner, she was shocked to find a baron apartment, with some furniture with tarp over it. There was tarp over pretty much everything in fact, and a small woman standing on a stool, painting the wall a lovely mint color.

She was petite, tan, and Georgia couldn’t see her face but from her rather toned body, she imagined her to be beautiful. He hair was tied back in a bandana and her clothes were splattered with paint.

He knuckles tapped against the door frame, gathering the woman’s attention in the large condo. When she turned, her suspicions were confirmed, she was utterly beautiful. And very young.

Benjamin refuses to question income but in a place like this, she can’t help the questions.

“Hello!” Georgia chimes. “I just wanted to come by and say hello. We’re your neighbors across the hall. I’m Georgia. My fiance Benjamin is at work but he says hello in spirit.” As she speaks, she’s watching the woman get down from her stool, and start to approach her in the doorway, wearing a smile.

“Hi,” She says, her voice light, a bit breathless, but in a way that just sounds like that’s her voice. It’s alluring, no doubt. “I’m sorry if having the door open was bothering you, I just wanted to get this place aired out with all the painting.”

“Oh no, it’s totally okay, it gave me the nudge to come by and say hello, I just got home from work early, went to the store, now I’m here, saying hello.”

The woman laughs politely and nods, then holds out a hand. “I’m Laney, My partner James lives with me but he’s out ... “She pauses, her smile looking the fondest it could. “I’m not sure, sitting at a cafe thinking something whimsical or buying furniture, who knows. He’ll be back later.”

Georgia laughs in return, taking the outstretched hand to shake. “Seems very far from my fiance. I don’t think whimsy is a concept he even comprehends, but we definitely have a friend like that.”

“Yeah, he likes his alone time though. As do I.” She smiles. “I would love to show you around the place but as you can tell, it’s really not ready.”

“Oh no, that’s totally okay. When I moved in with Benjamin I nearly redecorated the whole place. He’s a man with very good taste but you know, not my kind of taste.” She winks playfully.

Laney laughs lightly, and it sounds like clouds and sparkles and she can imagine just about anyone would fall for her. “James is a very fashionable person, though he’s been hanging around all kinds of fashionable people since he was very young.” Her eyes crinkle, and she looks behind her. “He picked out the mint, but we’re doing something a little different. Patterns and stuff.”

“Oh, that’ll be interesting.” Georgia nods. Maybe they’re a little different. She’s not getting the vibe that they’re much like the modern architects that live in the building. People her and Benjamin’s age who work downtown in the finance district. It’ll be a breath of fresh air.

She sighs, and then looks down at the bottle still in her hand. “Oh! I wanted to bring this by to you guys, a little welcoming gift. This is my favorite dessert wine, perfect for a date night.”

She watches as Laney looks at the bottle, her smile turning quaint with her lips in a thin line. For a moment, Georgia considers that she picked the wrong wine. Or maybe it was too cheap? Who knows with these guys, they might be far too out of her pricerange.

“Thanks,” She says softly, looking up to meet her eyes. “We’re actually sober, though.”

Well at least it wasn’t her. “Oh gosh, of course! You know, I was talking to Ben over the phone, told him we should keep an emergency fruit basket around. I’m sorry about that.” She tucks the bottle under her arm, then reaches out to squeeze the other’s arm gently. “You know what, why don’t you guys come over for dinner? Neither of us are that great at cooking but we can make one thing really well so our treat!” 

“That’d be nice, yeah. James and I are free tomorrow night, is that okay?” She lets out a nervous laugh, as if thankful for the interaction.

“Perfect! Just give us a knock okay?”

//--//

Georgia moves around the table to light the candles before rushing back to the kitchen, where Benjamin stands over the stove. “This has to look perfect. Something in my bones just tells me they’re way cooler than any of us and I want to impress them.” She huffs, reaching into the fridge where she’d picked up raspberry soda. Something made in Brooklyn where the guy said it was frequently sold out. “You don’t think they’re too cool for soda, do you? I told you they don’t drink but like... I don’t want to make them drink just water. Oh god, this is why we don’t make new friends. Why did I invite them over, they’ll see what big of losers we are.”

She closes the fridge and bangs her head against the aluminum, only to find a pair of arms sliding around her waist, and a pair of lips kissing the back of her neck. “You do this for a living, love, it’ll be fine.” He continues kissing her skin. “You look beautiful and it was very kind of you to invite them and I’m sure the appreciate the warm welcome.”

Georgia sighs, her head resting against the cool metal. “Tell me what a cool unstoppable sexy babe I am, please.”

“No,” He says plainly, reaching down to give her ass a squeeze. “You don’t need me inflating your ego anymore than I already do.” A final kiss to her neck and he’s back to the stove, cooking the only thing Vincent really taught them to cook. But they like it enough they make it almost once a week.

It’s not long before there’s a knock on their door and Georgia launches to answer. When she does, the door swings open and she nearly gasps.

They’re a little too good looking and she nearly falls over.

When she’d met Laney, she was dressed for painting, which was obviously not her prime. But here, dressed in a tight little crop top and shirt skirt and she looks perfect. Her hair was tied back and yet immaculate.

And then the partner in question was just as perfect. Shining seafoam eyes, covered with tattoos that could mean any number of things. Dressed in some sort of pleated high waisted pant and patterned blouse that looks far more expensive than anything in her closet, yet effortlessly cool and slick. 

“Hey!” Georgia coos, letting them both in as she tries to ground herself in what might be something completely out of her league. She’s never had to plan a wedding for two people that were so absolutely unapologetically cooler than her.

She turns around to find that Benjamin rounds the corner greet them, raising an eyebrow in her direction. It lasts only a second, before he steps forward to introduce herself, and a collection of hands are being exchanged in shaking.

Laney introduces James to her, who is polite and far too sweet to be even real. Then again, it took her over a year to come to the conclusion Vincent was real, so she should be accustomed to this.

Everyone gets situated with dinner. Georgia’s thankful when they say they love raspberry soda. Either she guessed right, or they were painfully polite. Both made her just a little bit more relaxed as they began eating their dinner.

“So where did you guys move from?” Benjamin starts with the simple questions, and she’s thankful for that too. To her, she feels she has to come up with wildly intricate questions to engage the table. She hadn’t even considered the basics.

“Los Angeles. But we both grew up in California.” James responds, poking around his plate. “This is really good, you guys are really good cooks.”

Both Georgia and Benjamin let out a full laugh, but it’s the latter to clarifies. “One of our close friends is a very good cook, he taught us to make this at one point. We like it because it’s easy and tastes good.”

“Carbonara fits that bill, yeah.” Laney nods, picking up more of her’s. “James and I tried to go on a cooking journey a while back. We needed something to do together after we hadn’t been doing anything at all...” Her nose scrunches when she looks to James, who shakes his head fondly.

“Needless to say, that was not the way we needed to bond together. We decided puzzles was a lot better.”

Georgia snorts, looking over the Benjamin. “Can you imagine us doing a puzzle together?”

“Georgia would spent thirty minutes trying to tell me a corner piece belonged in the center.” He grins. “After the first ten, she’d realize she was wrong but she wouldn’t be able to accept it so she’d just fully commit. Most likely to try and make me annoyed.”

Georgia playfully hits him with her napkin and rolls his eyes. The couple across from them laugh, and after a few seconds, she sighs. “I mean he’s not wrong, I would almost certainly do that.”

The table laughs again.

Georgia picks off a piece of her bread, adding onto her statement. “Explains a lot though, being from LA, you guys give off a very coastal cool vibe.”

“Do we?” Laney looks at James, her hand reaching over to, what Georgia presumes, squeeze his thigh. “We don’t feel very cool. In terms of Los Angeles, and where we come from, we are extremely uncool.”

James nods, sucking in his bottom lip as he moves thing around his plate, and then takes another bite.

The air’s a little stiff, so Georgia decides to move on. “So how did you guys meet?”

“Rehab.” James says after swallowing his bite.

The air gets a little more stiff. Georgia’s holding her fork in mid air and she’s not entirely sure what to do with this information. She looks to Benjamin, who’s eyes are glued to the couple, and he’s just continually nodding his head.

“I’m sorry.” Laney laughs nervously, rubbing James’ leg again. “We’re trying this thing we learned in therapy where we’re a lot more open and honest with ourselves and the people around us. Secrets and being closed off didn’t really do us any favors.”

“Okay.” Georgia nods, taking a sip of her soda. “I’m sure we could do some good with that.”

Benjamin snorts, then takes another bite of his food.

“How long have you two been together?” James changes the subject, pushing a smile forward.

Georgia looks to Benjamin, eyebrow raised. “I think... less than two years? Got engaged about six months ago.”

“Congratulations.”  James nods. “Love is a beautiful thing, and an important thing to cherrish and hold onto.”

Georgia nods, reaching out to squeeze Benjamin’s forearm. “Had some rough patches but no one puts up with me quite like this guy.”

He pats her hand before she pulls it away, and the two look to the young couple to find them soft-eyed, looking at them with adoration. “That’s lovely.” Laney says softly.

“We had our own, too.” James says, looking over at Laney. “Though who’s surprised when you come to meet the love of your life while you’re both trying to get clean.” He huffs in amusement, then looks back to the others. “We do a lot of therapy now. We’re kind of at the point where we’re not interested in things failing again, and we want to put in the work. It’s taken a lot of time but it’s good.”

“That’s so nice.” Georgia feels herself sighing, unable to help getting wrapped up in their romance. “And you guys decided to move to the East Coast?”

“Yeah,” Laney adjusts in her seat. “Just needed to get Los Angeles off of us. All the bad reminders and the enablers. Plus, my work is easier to do here, and James is kind of between things now.” She looks to her partner, who nods.

“Oh, what do you guys do?” She’s itching to know, considering how tastefully expensive they both look.

“Laney is the most talented fashion designer on earth.” James grins before she can interject.

“Oh god.” She huffs, sinking lower into her seat.

“Wait, really?” Georgia’s eyes beam.

“Now you’ve done it.” Benjamin shakes his head, digging deeper into his plate.

“Like, what kind of fashion? Couture or like with a store or what?”

Laney shrugs. “I got to show my stuff in Fashion Week for the first time last year but that’s only after James wore my suit to his red carpet.”

Georgia’s eyes gape, and she leans back in her chair, bringing a hand to brush back her hair. “Whoa, hold on a minute, who the fuck are you guys?” She doesn’t mean it to sound so brash, but now there’s mentions of a red carpet and she might faint.

“James makes movies.” Laney says simply.

She looks to see that James’ cheeks are pink, and he’s looking down, “I wrote And End a long time ago, I was a script doctor for a while. Couldn’t really make anything good because I was too busy snorting cocaine. Uhm... and then two years ago I wrote and directed and produced Over Sunset Drive.”

The room is quiet. Georgia slowly looks to Benjamin, whose face has now gone pale. He’s got a single spaghetti noodle hanging from his lip and it takes him a second to realize it before he chews and swallows his bite. 

“He makes me watch And End all the time.”  Georgia points to Benjamin, then looks back to James. “You wrote that?”

“At nineteen, yes.”

“What?” Both Benjamin and Georgia say in unison.

“I am thoroughly impressed.” Benjamin adds. “I don’t want to act inappropriately, but I loved both of those films.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that. It’s no inappropriate, you guys have pretty reasonable reactions. It’s always weird to bring it up. But it’s even weird to not bring it up and then have that come up way down the line.”

“So you’re not going to make any more movies?” Georgia frowns.

“That’s a bold thing to say. I’m not so sure. I write a lot of poetry. Sometimes Laney tells me I should publish all the love notes I write I quite like them being just for her. But I have a lot of personal stuff that could get published. I also like to paint. I’m fortunate enough that I can spend some time, figure it out. I also just want to support Laney on the direction her career has taken.”

“God that’s so sweet.” Georgia pouts. “You two are so adorable, you have to be our friends.”

The couple laugh, and look between each other. “We don’t really have much for friends here since moving, so we can’t really turn that down.”

“You guys would love Maggie and Vinnie, they’re the most sickeningly sweet disgusting couple there ever was.” Georgia leans forward. “And they’re out best friends.”

“That’ll be fun. People used to call us gross.” James laughs.

“Yeah I’d like to see you guys try and compare to them. Though who knows, they could use actual good competition.” Ben adds in.

“You know what though, I know for a fact Zebby is in all the cool New York circles. If you want the art circle, I’ll get you her number too.” Georgia wags a fork at them. “She’s also probably closer to your age.”

“Oh, really, you guys don’t have to do that. We appreciate your warm welcome as it is.”

“No no, Georgia wont stop with this until you have too many friends you don’t know what to do with.” Benjamin looks over to them with an annoyed look, which only lasts seconds until he looks back over to her, sees her with her phone out, and shakes his head with an endearing smile. “Love, why don’t we do dessert, we can do that later.” His hand reaches out, slowly taking the phone form their hand so they can continue their evening.

[recentanimenews]

Anime in America Podcast: Full Episode 2 Transcript

  Hello, and welcome to another fine transcript of Crunchyroll's new Anime in America podcast! Those in need of a different way to access and enjoy the podcast, as well as those looking to research further or simply take note of some interesting facts that were mentioned, we've got you covered on an episode by episode basis. Following up on the episode 1 transcript, we've got one for the second, so enjoy it in full below!

  The Anime in America podcast, hosted by Yedoye Travis, is available on crunchyroll.com, animeinamerica.com, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

  Episode 1 Transcript: In the Beginning There Was Fansubs

    Disclaimer: The following program contains language not suitable for all ages. Discretion advised.

  [Lofi Music]

  As I made very clear in the last episode, it was once a massive undertaking just physically getting anime from Japan to the US. Just imagine if I told you in 2019 that you had to go anywhere but your own couch just to watch anime. You would call the police. 

  Once anime was here physically, it still involved an insane time commitment from fans just to make it intelligible to American viewers. Whether it was painstaking hours encoding text onto video, or being tricked into live translating for your friends; in short, it was impossible, and yet people did it, so we have them to thank, at least partially, for the huge presence of anime in the modern zeitgeist.

  But there’s a lot more to localizing than just taking Japanese words and turning them into English words. In practice, localization means making whatever changes are necessary to make a show marketable to the local audience. Using the language of that audience is a good start, but it doesn’t encapsulate the full scope of the practice from a marketing standpoint.

  Of course, over the years, people have severely misunderstood the extent to which changes actually need to be made, and so there are good examples of localization and then there are times when the producers decided Americans can’t grasp the concept of a rice ball and Pokemon ends up full of unnecessary jelly donuts.

  This is Anime in America, brought to you by Crunchyroll and hosted by me, Yedoye Travis. 

  [Lofi Music]

  If you're still not sure what I'm talking about, there are plenty of things in the American lexicon that you would have never guessed were from Japan. In fact, the 60s gave us a lot of anime that wasn’t recognizably Japanese, and this was because both Japanese creators and American distributors thought that maybe Japanese IP wouldn’t be the easiest sell immediately after World War II. So they just made it not Japanese. Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy began a lasting trend in anime of heavily anglicized characters that minimally reflected the culture they came from, and were therefore believed to be more marketable to western audiences. 

  [Music from Astro Boy plays]

  By the 80s though, as we inched further away from wartime tensions, anime became more acceptable in its unedited state, attracting American distributors who wanted to capitalize on the space opera craze following the release of Star Wars. In fact, by this time, the cultural exchange between Japan and the US was already starting to blossom, with an agreement between Marvel and Toei that brought a successful tokusatsu adaptation of an American series to Japan in 1978. That series was Spiderman. 

  [Japanese Spider-Man opening plays]

  And for reference, tokusatsu is a Japanese word that literally means “special effects,” so tokusatsu in its simplest form is just that--a live action show where some of the stuff is not real. For specific examples, think Ultraman, Kamen Rider, the Super Sentai series, which I’ll get to in a second, or something we’re all familiar with--the classic foam rubber Godzilla that came long before the tiny headed Bryan Cranston version.

  [Godzilla roar from GODZILLA VS MECHAGODZILLA]

  Marvel and Toei’s deal was made before Dragonball Z became Toei’s crowning achievement, and long before Marvel joined the Disney family and fell into constant conflict with Sony over the very same property. The deal gave each party rights to use the other’s characters in any way they saw fit, and in fact, Toei originally planned to make Spiderman a secondary character to mythological Japanese prince Yamato Takeru. They eventually backtracked and left Spiderman in his primary role, but then they did all this other weird shit with it. They threw out Peter Parker entirely, and so Spiderman’s alter ego became Takuya Yamashiro, a motorcycle racer who gets injected willingly with blood from the spider alien Garia, giving him spider powers and allowing him to carry on Garia’s fight against the evil Professor Monster.

  [Japanese Spider-Man opening continues]

  I’m sorry, what? They also gave him an arguably unnecessary giant robot named Leopardon, a concept Toei would later incorporate into their Super Sentai series, which you may not know by name, but is actually one of the most popular American series of all time, with literally billions of dollars in toy sales in its first 8 years.

  [Opening theme of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers begins to play]

  And if you’re thinking “Hey what if I’m too dumb to Google that?” Well that is what podcasts are for. Even though I guess you had to Google… this podcast to find it.

  Not knowing Super Sentai doesn’t make you dumb, it just makes you American, and THAT makes you dumb.

  [Power Rangers theme continues]

  But only for systemic reasons that can be broken down in one of many other podcasts. But In this one, I’ll just accept your manufactured ignorance and move on.

  [Power Rangers theme continues to “Go go, Power Rangers!”]

  You might know Super Sentai by its American name, Power Rangers, who you might know by the aforementioned giant robots--known as Zords--or by the first iteration’s problematic color coding of its main characters: blue for boy, pink for girl, yellow for Asian girl, black for black boy, and red for lead boy. Later colors would include white for Native American played by white guy, and green for all the money they made in spite of this. 

  Power Rangers is an American localization of Super Sentai originally adapted by Saban Entertainment in 1993 using entirely new footage and storylines interwoven with battle scenes from the original series, and I don’t know if it’s better or worse that the American cast was decided after the costumes were made, but I do know that it’s not surprising. 

  The Power Rangers are undoubtedly the most popular Saban property, having sold over $6 billion in toys for Bandai in its first decade on the air, and Saban have continued to adapt Super Sentai series beginning with Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger in 1993, all the way up to Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters in 2019.

  The rights have changed hands a couple times, with a brief stint at Disney, before returning to Saban in 2010, and ultimately to Hasbro in 2018, in case you thought the series was created to do anything other than sell toys. Power Rangers has since been distributed internationally and chaotically redistributed in Japan using the original voice cast, and I can’t begin to explain to you how that works legally, but as an actor, all I can say is take the two checks and run before they figure it out. 

  I bring all this up as an example of what can happen when international properties are used to their full potential. It gets confusing at times, when you get into the weeds regarding licenses and producers or the fact that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was banned in Malaysia for supposedly promoting mighty morphine to kids--real fact, look it up--but ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, all parties involved, at least on the corporate level, made money and built up pretty rock solid brand recognition.  

In contrast, let’s talk about Harmony Gold. 

  [Lofi Music]

  Harmony Gold is an American television production company and real estate developer lol whose founder, Frank Agrama, narrowly escaped prison just a few years ago, and whose Wikipedia page contains an alarming number of references to famously corrupt Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. And I don’t mean in passing. I mean in 1976 Frank Agrama sold broadcasting rights from Paramount pictures to Berlusconi’s Mediaset company, which at the time was just starting, but years later was found in a study by the American Economic Association to have made young Italians more vulnerable to populist rhetoric and therefore more likely to vote for Berlusconi who, for reference, would later be convicted of soliciting sex with minors, for which he would later be acquitted because why wouldn’t you be able to do that? And I’m not saying Frank Agrama is responsible for, or in any way directly involved in any of the +20 legal battles Berlusconi has been through, I’m just that he definitely was and in fact his home was raided in 2006 in connection with an Italian investigation claiming that he had inflated prices of the rights he originally sold to Mediaset so that, through means I do not understand, Mediaset could pay huge dividends to its top executives. And Frank only avoided jail time due to a technicality based on his age. 

  Of course, all this info is better suited for a way more in depth political conspiracy, and maybe famous pedophile podcast? But the fact that Harmony Gold is so deeply rooted in the dealings of a massive propaganda empire run by an egomaniac really sets the stage for why everyone seems to hate them so much. 

  So what is Harmony Gold as it pertains to this story? Well, as I said, it began in 1983, four years after Frank took a trip to France, where he met and agreed to partner in distributing international film rights with Paddy Chan Mei-Yiu and Katherine Hsu May-Chun, two businesswomen from Hong Kong, the former of whom is the owner of the Wiltshire Group of Companies. And I’d like to think the two of them held some significance before the events in this episode, but if they did, they’re SEO game is trash, cause all searches yield results after the year 1979 when Chan founded the Hong Kong-based Harmony Gold and Frank founded Agrama Film Enterprises in LA, only establishing Harmony Gold USA a few years later. 

  Harmony Gold USA’s first project was a miniseries depicting the life of Shaka Zulu--chief of the Zulu people from 1816 to 1828--which a 1986 piece in the LA Times said reduced Shaka and the Zulu people to violent barbarians, noting that the story was mostly told through the perspective of an Irish doctor and not Shaka Zulu himself and basically challenged its audience to ask what would have come of South Africa if it weren’t for the intervention of white settlers.

  So if the series can be summed up in a word, I guess that word would be “controversial,” only because Frank himself staunchly denied that the film was racist at the time, despite claims from South African literature professor Mazisi Kunene that it was “like Hitler doing the history of the Jews.” 

  And long story short, these are the people that made Robotech. 

  As is the case with Power Rangers and most other series brought to the US, the main hurdle in localizing for an American audience is the content itself, whether that means it violates some perceived standard of acceptability, or more simply that Americans misinterpret the intended audience and end up repackaging a show with very adult themes to be marketed to kids, which may explain why I’ve seen Endless Waltz about a dozen times and couldn’t tell you a single detail of the story. 

  [Mobile Suit Gundam Wing - Endless Waltz theme plays]

  In the case of Robotech, however, the biggest hurdle was American syndication laws. When Carl Macek was hired to adapt anime for Harmony Gold in the mid-80s, he immediately settled on Super Dimension Fortress Macross, as I mentioned in the previous episode--and had they followed their original plan, it would have been the first legal anime home video release in the US. But they abandoned that plan and decided to air it on TV, and American rules required that a syndicated show be able to run at a minimum of five episodes a week for 13 weeks, because as we all know artists are at their most creative when they have strict production minimums, like an 8 episode anime podcast, to give a non-specific example.

  So, in similar fashion to Japanese Spiderman and Power Rangers, Carl Macek took the rights he had and did whatever the fuck he wanted. Macross had aired weekly in Japan for only 36 episodes, so Carl took two unrelated giant robot series--Genesis Climber MOSPEADA and Southern Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, the longest title I’ve ever heard--and he just tossed them in with Macross like an undergrad student using 15-point periods in a 12-point essay. And he made a hit. Robotech was hugely popular at the time and plenty of people will tell you it was their first window into the world of anime as a whole. But beyond that, Harmony Gold didn’t really have a lot of success. 

  There were spinoffs, including the aforementioned Robotech: The Movie, which was shown in 1987 at the Animation Celebration Festival, where Jerry Beck worked with a man named Terry Thoren, who refused Jerry’s requests to pick it up for further distribution, yet another person who viewed it as a “Saturday morning cartoon,” and first of all, I have to stress that you can watch cartoons on any other day. Yu-Gi-Oh! played on Sundays, I don’t know what this Saturday morning shit is. I don’t know where it comes from. But I digress.

  In probably one of the most significant events in early anime history, Jerry Beck and Carl Macek met during the screening of Robotech when they both snuck off to watch the crowd’s reaction, and realizing how excited the audience was, they immediately decided to team up and establish Streamline Pictures, where they were committed to producing anime dubs that were true to their source material, preserving all the original music and sound effects, and producing more faithful translations, and I can’t stress enough how insane it is that that was revolutionary, but it was at the time and they, along with contemporaries like RightStuf, set a precedent that anime was most valuable when it got to just be anime. I can’t say with 100% certainty that Jerry’s boss would have been more receptive to anime if he had seen Macross in its original form, but I am also dumb, so take everything I say with a big grain of salt.

  Regardless, looking back at Harmony Gold’s reputation in comparison to Carl Macek the man, all signs suggest he left at about the right time. Carl only lasted long enough to produce 85 episodes of the original Robotech, along with the way way way lesser known Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years, also adapted from unrelated series Captain Harlock and Queen Millennia, both by Leiji Matsumoto, both of which were comprised of 42 episodes, which I probably would have confirmed in advance if I had already gone through the trouble of combining three whole series into one, but that’s just me, a person whose experience informs his actions. Of course, given the success of Robotech, I’m sure Carl was very optimistic about his ability to crank out another successful chopped and screwed anime, so I can’t really blame him for overlooking that, but Harlock ultimately didn’t perform nearly as well as its predecessor.

  Carl also attempted a Robotech sequel, Robotech II: The Sentinels, of which only three episodes were produced before it was canceled. And that’s kinda where Harmony Gold as a legitimate institution went out the window. Carl left to start Streamline, and you can so clearly picture the alternate timelines branching out from that point in history. Streamline was the antithesis to Harmony Gold in just about every way. Its first projects were theater screenings of Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Twilight of the Cockroaches, and it’s unclear whether they were officially a company at that time, but that’s kinda where Streamline’s illegitimacy ends. They opened the first Streamline Pictures office in 1989 and took off from there, while Harmony Gold was offloading employees to none other than Saban Entertainment, which may explain that company’s almost identical production strategies in Power Rangers. 

  I think taking a quick look at Harmony Gold’s website can give you a lot of perspective on the direction they’ve gone in since Carl left. And I encourage you to pull it up and follow along as I break this down, cause it’s hilarious. First of all, it looks like it was designed by Frank Agrama himself. From the soft 90s fonts to the basic flash animation, if you asked someone who had never heard of Harmony Gold to describe this website, I’m confident they would peg this as the work of an African immigrant trying to convince his parents he’s doing well in Hollywood. From left to right, the home menu lists “Theater,” a good enough start, considering they do own and operate the Harmony Gold Preview House in Hollywood. It then moves on to “Entertainment,” a category under which the word “theater” might fall under some circumstances, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one, considering it is a specific space after all.

  Dead center, directly under their logo where you’d never expect it, is “Robotech” which, again falls under “entertainment,” the most entertaining thing about it being that if you click on it, it just redirects you to a better website, Robotech.com, where you can find all the merchandise and modern web design that frankly just wouldn’t make sense on Harmony Gold’s main page. Just to the right of that is, quite ironically, a hard left turn to “Real Estate,” which redirects to HarmonyGoldProperties.com, and I’ll admit perspective is key here because the phrase “Harmony Gold kinda fell off and started doing real estate” sounds way worse than “Yo my landlord produced the Shaka Zulu mini-series, that’s crazy!” But that’s neither here nor there. Finally, one more space to the right, you’ll see “About Us,” and your impulse might be to say “No I think I’ve seen enough,” but there’s so much useful information in there like the fact that Tobey Macguire is attached as a producer on the live action Robotech, which I’m only adding in hopes that you’ll respect the deep commitment required to bookend this long setup with Spiderman-related content. 

  [Japanese Spider-Man theme returns]

  So all that might seem very unfair to Harmony Gold and Robotech, especially considering they served such a key role in introducing so many American fans to anime. Why should you care what their website looks like if they’re responsible for one of the greatest anime adaptations of all time? Well it’s not really about what they did at the time that fans are uptight about. It’s all about how they’ve conducted themselves since. The key difference between Streamline Pictures and Harmony Gold really comes down to their emphasis on money.

  [Lofi Music]

  Jerry Beck told us repeatedly that he and Carl’s work was something they did because they wanted to see anime in American movie theaters. They did that and they were defunct by 2002 which, if you look at a rough timeline of how anime got to where it is today, is the perfect amount of time to help set the industry in motion and then just let inertia take over. Streamline produced dubs to get them out and then relinquished the rights to those properties, most notably handing the rights to Studio Ghibli distribution over to Disney in 1996. 

  Harmony Gold on the other hand have notoriously kept a vise grip on the rights to Robotech and its underlying IP and clearly have no plans of letting go any time soon. If you Google “Harmony Gold,” the search results are not kind. A lot of them come from Reddit, which should give you all the information you need, but the SparkNotes version is that Harmony Gold has used their rights to Macross and adjacent titles to box out any lookalikes, copy cats, or most notably, the original Macross itself, from setting up shop comfortably in the US, and knowing their relationship with Berlusconi’s Mediaset in Italy, it’s not really surprising that their actions would mirror those of a European propaganda machine, the only difference being that Robotech was popular, but certainly not the only thing you could watch in the 80s. So they really only managed to corner the market on what they *sort of* owned. 

  For context: Harmony Gold were given rights to SDF Macross, Southern Dimension Cavalry Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada from Tatsunoko Production in 1984 and, as we now know, Carl Macek was charged with editing and scripting these series into the 85 episode arc of Robotech. Simple enough so far, but of course it gets worse. Robotech was first released in 1985 and it’s since been declared that Harmony Gold maintains the rights to the Robotech brand in perpetuity, to do with whatever they so choose, and yet they’ve also held onto the rights for all its constituent properties for the past 34 years, renewing them once in 1998 and again in 2002, which pushed the expiration date to March 2021, and in all my research, I haven’t seen a single viable reason for why they need to last that long. In short, they ain’t doing shit with them, and yet, at Anime Expo 2019, they announced once again, that their rights would be extended indefinitely. 

  As I said before, Harmony Gold started production on Robotech II: The Sentinels, which was canceled, ending Carl Macek’s tenure, and they did later produce Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles in 2006, which according to their own website, is incredible. But other than that, what do they really need those rights for? At first glance, it looks like they’re whole MO is just to litigate competitors out of existence, which thankfully they haven’t always had the power to do. But if you take a closer look, that doesn’t have any affect on their approach. It really seems like they’re just holding onto their one successful property for the sake of brand recognition and money. I mean if you Google the words “Harmony Gold lawsuit,” the number of results are very telling. 

  Really, outside of almost certainly tossing out my rental application when I lived in LA, it seems like Harmony Gold does nothing but litigate. And to be honest, I can’t say that I really understand all the details of their legal troubles, of which there are so so many, but let’s see if I can sum it up without staring at my notes for an hour. 

  Basically, I want to say around 2003, it was determined by a Japanese court that Tatsunoko Production may have never had the power to hand the rights to Macross over to Harmony Gold in the first place, because they apparently didn’t have the approval of their co-producers Studio Nue and Big West in Japan, and technically the rights to 41 of the original character designs still belong to Big West. But because we are America and our word is law, and because we renew our anger about Pearl Harbor only when it is convenient, a different judge said “fuck everything Japan stands for” and I guess that ruling was ignored in the US and a judge determined that Harmony Gold has the rights to use Macross for some period of time just short of forever. A 2016 case between HG and Tatsunoko, in which the latter claimed Harmony Gold was sublicensing Macross without paying royalties, was ruled in favor of Harmony Gold but also dialed back the whole perpetuity thing and upheld the 2021 expiration date on their Macross license, and that date held until July of this year, when Harmony Gold’s deal with Tatsunoko was extended for another, as of yet undisclosed amount of time, that is presumed to be another 35 fucking years.

  To sum up all the implications of this very confusing, three-headed dog of a case, basically Harmony Gold’s rights to Macross have a very shaky foundation, but they objectively own Robotech at least and can do with that whatever they want, as long as any sequels they produce use original designs outside of the original 41 that were dubiously given to them without Big West’s permission. Also Harmony Gold was somehow given all distribution rights for original Macross footage outside of Japan, but they still need permission from Tatsunoko to actually exercise those rights, which Tatsunoko seem unwilling to do for a company that sued them as recently as three years ago. I wonder what that’s all about. Also, because the grounds by which Big West actually owns those characters is so confusing internationally, Tatsunoko will probably just keep renewing Harmony Gold’s license just to say “fuck you” to Big West, while still never letting Macross see the light of day aside from Blu-Rays shipped directly from Japan, which conveniently have English subtitles because they know exactly what they’re doing. 

  This whole mess, paired with the fact that fighting an American ruling from overseas is prohibitively expensive and not in your favor, means that Studio Nue and Big West are heavily discouraged from pursuing their rights to a show they don’t really believe has an audience in the US anyway, so even if they could win, the likelihood of them trying is very slim. But because Harmony Gold has nothing to coast on aside from their production from 1985, they’ve been reduced to filing suits against anyone who even looks at an original Robotech design, which so far includes Hasbro, who incorporated an also shakily acquired Macross design into their Transformers line because they had no Robotech licenses and Macross didn’t exist here at the time, and also Piranha Games, a Canadian video game designer who believed they had legally acquired the designs from Big West for their Battletech game series. Unfortunately, Harmony Gold disagreed and another confusing lawsuit began. 

  The weirdest thing about all this is that, as important as Robotech is, a lot has happened in the anime world since then, and Harmony Gold don’t seem interested in branching out into any of those other ventures. They’ve been acquiring IP throughout the years but haven’t produced anything of note since around 2006, although a live action Robotech has been licensed to Warner Brothers, but even that feels weird since Pacific Rim already happened, but I guess another lawsuit can settle that. I don’t know.

  Watching the steps Harmony Gold have made since canceling The Sentinels really adds a lot of perspective to just how big a bullet Carl Macek dodged by leaving, and granted he had since gone back and was working with them again when he passed away, but the potential damage to his reputation had come and gone by that time. Of course, he is still a controversial figure considering his creation is still at the root of this whole conflict. But he is also responsible for introducing a whole generation of viewers to anime for the first time, and his work at Streamline Pictures, where he helped bring so much untouched anime into the mainstream, more than makes up for keeping one, albeit very important, series out of the public eye. 

  The legacy of Akira and its Studio Ghibli dubs, in my opinion, makes Streamline a much stronger contender for valued contributors to anime history, and the fact that they only made money by putting out a quality product makes it that much better, not to mention the fact that they were so content to pass on licenses when their time was up. In fact, according to most fans, knowing when to pack it up is really the one thing Harmony Gold could have done to save their reputation. That said, Streamline has thrown a lot of fuel on one very divisive fire over the years, whether intentionally or not. 

  That fire, of course, is the sub vs. dub debate, which has driven a wedge in anime fandom for years. There are the people who believe there is never a reason to watch dubbed anime and there are the people who work from home, writing anime podcasts, and don’t have time to learn Japanese just to feel superior to casual fans.

  For anyone unfamiliar, there’s been a debate raging for as long as anime fandom has existed over whether real fans should watch anime with subtitles or with English voice actors. I would personally like to plant my flag in the ground and say that if you don’t speak Japanese, it doesn’t matter. The argument I hear most often is that the Japanese voice acting is just better, and to that I say: how the fuck do you know? If you don’t speak the language, there’s no way you can discern good Japanese voice acting from bad English. If you can, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you speak Japanese. So good luck with your new job at the UN, I guess. Congratulations.

  Also, just consider a point Roland Kelts made to me: that the Japanese artists themselves, in many cases, prefer fans to watch the show in their own language so they're not focused on reading while the art they worked so hard on is just passing by. Also, consider a point made by me: that subtitling eliminates the need for voice acting and editing jobs and, and as we learned in the previous episode, subtitles can be done with a very quick turnaround and a small team. So what I'm saying, is that dubs create jobs and stimulate the economy in the countries where they're produced, so regardless of how you feel, they are a necessary evil. 

  Also, back to a legitimate point by Jerry Beck: people who don't already watch anime aren't really interested in reading subtitles. To return to the argument on what goes into localizing anime, the whole point of the process is to sell it to a new audience, and part of that process is presenting it to them in their own language, which is exactly why Streamline Pictures only produced dubbed anime--to attract new fans to something that doesn’t feel threatening or antagonistic, which anime fandom often does. So sure, you can individually decide that you prefer to watch anime with subtitles. Maybe you have a lot of free time, I don’t know. But maybe take into consideration that when you have an elitist attitude about who’s a “real” anime fan, you’re not only being a weirdo edgelord, but you’re also keeping anime away from fans who are just as deserving as you are which, I would argue, makes you the Harmony Gold of people. 

  Harmony Gold itself has maintained its loose grip on the anime industry by exploiting people’s interest in a single franchise, knowing that a lack of access to the original Macross and related merchandise will inevitably drive people to their Frankenstein version of the original product. Meanwhile, Big West and Studio Nue have effectively given up fighting for it because the legal fees would be prohibitively expensive to reclaim a franchise that has technically never had an audience outside of Japan anyway. And the fact that companies like this survive because of legal confusion, while the Streamlines of the world come and go, is a travesty and ultimately only hurts the anime industry. And my point is that if you force subtitles on new fans, you are as bad as that. 

  This has been another episode of Anime in America. Come back next week, when we’ll be diving into the first anime conventions to hit the United States. 

  [Lofi Music]

  Thank you for listening to Anime In America, presented by Crunchyroll. If you enjoyed this, please check out Crunchyroll.com/animeinamerica for free anime, with ads, or get a 14-day free trial of Premium. 

  You’ve heard it before, but please leave us a review and rate us so more people can discover the show, or just share it with a friend.

  This episode is written and hosted by me, Yedoye Travis, and you can find me on Instagram at ProfessorDoye or Twitter @YedoyeOT. This episode is edited by Chris Lightbody and produced by me, Braith Miller, Peter Fobian, and Jesse Gouldsbury.

  By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[abigailswager]

Brexit process may be entering its fifth act, but final outcome still in doubt

New Post has been published on https://forexfacts.net/brexit-process-may-be-entering-its-fifth-act-but-final-outcome-still-in-doubt/

Brexit process may be entering its fifth act, but final outcome still in doubt

If it were not for the last minute, nothing would ever get done, but with Brexit, last minutes keep coming without any final resolution. The entire Brexit process, including endless discussions, debates, and prognostications, is fast becoming as certain as death and taxes, but it appears that Boris Johnson, putting all of his “shenanigans” aside, may finally have the votes to make “It” happen, or so say a few insiders.

Although this drama has a way of creating crescendos without the expected and satisfying denouement, once more we find ourselves at “the brink”, and we are being told that a “Deal-Brexit” is close at hand, despite London streets being filled with protesters that object to what the government intends to complete. All the wrangling and threats of job losses, intermixed with the exit of intellectual capital to parts unknown, may finally drop from front-page news. But are we getting the cart ahead of the horse, again?

Where are we now?

After Theresa May had negotiated an initial withdrawal agreement with the EU and then had Parliament send her crashing to flaming destruction, not once, but three times over, the general consensus was that Johnson could do no better. The EU would never consider making any changes. They would prefer that the UK never leave in the first place. But alas, Boris pulled a rabbit out of his bag of tricks, producing a revised agreement on Thursday and demanding a special vote on Saturday.

It was not to be. As the BBC reported:

However, in the first Saturday sitting in the Commons for 37 years, MPs instead voted in favour of an amendment withholding approval of the deal until all the necessary legislation to implement it had been passed.

The vote for an amendment demanding that Johnson adhere to the “Benn Act” was close, 322 to 306. The Benn Act had been passed previously to prevent any overt attempt at a Brexit with “no deal”. The Saturday ruling instructed Johnson and his government to request first an extension from the EU, before there would be any consideration of his bill.

Johnson had already been rebuked once by the Supreme Court for trying to circumvent various requirements under the rule of law, another of this new breed of populist leader that feels compelled to do whatever it takes to get what he wants, even if it means bending the law. Johnson was already on the record, per the Wall Street Journal, that:

He would rather die in a ditch than request an extension”. The NY Times also noted that: “Prime Minister Boris Johnson has adamantly opposed the idea of holding a second Brexit referendum.

May had tried the soft approach. Boris prefers outright aggression.

A letter was promptly drafted requesting an extension, but Boris refused to sign it, his clever way of flaunting the Benn Act. He complied by sending the request, but he also sent a second letter, which he did sign, asking the EU to ignore the first letter. His reasoning is that he needs the pressure of a threatened “No-deal Brexit” to force lawmakers to come to the table and stop dragging their feet. His actual entreaty to the EU states:

A further extension would damage the interests of the U.K. and our EU partners.” Michael Gove, a senior minister in Mr. Johnson’s administration, said to Sky News on Saturday: “We are going to leave on Oct. 31. We have the means and the ability to do so.

The soonest the EU could capitulate would be Thursday, and, even then, a unanimous vote would be necessary to grant an extension. Before any action could be taken, however, the group would need to debate whether to approve or not, and if approved, when to take that action, and how long of a delay to grant. Several EU leaders have spoken out that they do not want further delays, but if they were to delay until April of 2020, that would leave open the option of a new referendum being held on the entire “Leave/Stay” question.

As for what happens next, the Wall Street Journal reported:

Parliamentary approval for the deal, which could come as soon as Monday, would mark a significant political victory for Mr. Johnson and pave the way for the U.K. finally to exit from the EU after more than three years of negotiation and fierce debate. Downing Street would hope to use a win to attempt to race through the final stages of legislative scrutiny of the proposals in time for an Oct. 31 exit.

Does Johnson really have the votes this time around?

It remains to be seen if Johnson’s “double letter” single entendre that disregards the letter of the Benn Act ends up in court and delays the process further still. There are a few legislators that believe Johnson is “in contempt of Parliament or the courts”, a rather unfortunate turn of events, but if ignored, then what other laws may be mangled along the way? Johnson claims that he has complied with the law and that his new deal will be “the greatest single restoration of national sovereignty in parliamentary history.”

The challenge for Boris and his team is to persuade nine lawmakers that voted against him on Saturday to support him on Monday or Tuesday. As a point in fact, 28 lawmakers that voted against May’s proposal are now backing Johnson, and several other recalcitrant Conservatives, who recently exited the party, have come around, too.

As you might expect, there have been many number crunchers busily adding the heads in favor of Boris’s new deal in the background and now believe that he just might pull it off. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. on Sunday:

We seem to have the numbers in the House of Commons.

Maddy Thimont Jack, senior researcher at the Institute for Government, has concluded that the government’s deal has “quite a good chance”.

What do the people think?

The forgotten ones in this debating debacle have been the people of Great Britain, who now feel, after three years of deliberation, that the original Brexit vote was a force-put via heavy-handed marketing types that disguised the true consequences that would come with a split from the EU. Last year at this time, protests in the street drew a few hundred thousand citizens. On Saturday outside the House of Commons, rally organizers are claiming that over one million protesters demonstrated in the streets against Boris Johnson’s proposals and the aggressive nature of his political tactics.

As for the people’s reaction to current discussions, “upset” would be putting it lightly. Nigel Farage, the former United Kingdom Independence Party leader and the person responsible for launching the original Brexit campaign in the UK, told Fox News:

We have this big, hard deadline of Halloween, October 31. We are supposed to leave then. It now looks unlikely that we will, so as you can probably imagine the anger that is building amongst British voters is unlike anything I have ever seen before.

The NY Times gathered these comments from a few attendees:

Ollie Lloyd, 42, who was among those protesting: “This is a last-ditch attempt to get them to hear our voices. This is about what kind of country we want to be. Do we want to be an open and tolerant country, or one that is closed off and inward looking?”

Ollie’s father, Gil Lloyd, 68, added: “I am just horrified at the whole thing.”

Dorothy Milosevic, 63: “The whole thing was sold on a lot of lies. Since that morning when we woke up to find that the leavers had won, it is has been gloom and despondency.”

Anoushka Nairac, a student at Magdalen College School: “We came here today because we want to let our voices be heard. My father is an immigrant who set up his own company and provided jobs for citizens. It makes me annoyed; people are not looking at the facts.”

The protest was not a single act by Londoners or the wealthy class, as critics had countered. Support came from all over the UK, as 170 buses delivered protestors from several other parts of the country, including Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland; in Belfast, Northern Ireland; and in Cheltenham, in southern England. Celebrities and former government officials, which included former prime ministers Tony Blair, of the Labour Party, and John Major, a Conservative, were also in attendance.

Concluding Remarks

Mr. Johnson and his staff are expected to appeal for another vote from Parliament as early as today or Tuesday, well before the EU can react to granting any kind of delay. “The quicker, the better” is the thinking at this point or risk one more opportunity for lawmakers to waffle on previous “Leave” commitments.

Will the people’s protest be heard? Greg Brown, 41, an engineer from Middlesbrough, epitomized the feelings of the madding throng: “I am embarrassed to say that there was a big Leave vote in the north east. Europe stands for peace, for multilateral negotiations, workers rights, paternity rights, jobs and free trade. In the three years since the vote, I have not yet heard a decent reason for voting Leave, and here we are standing on a cliff edge.”

One thing seems certain. We will have a vote this week. A “Yes” vote would be a coup for Johnson, but there would follow another process of “further legislative scrutiny”. There will undoubtedly be those that would want to make their mark on the annals of history by proposing an adjustment here or there or even move for a new referendum. A “No” vote would create more uncertainty, and as many pundits have said before, it would be “déjà vu” all over again, “standing on a cliff edge”.

The post Brexit process may be entering its fifth act, but final outcome still in doubt appeared first on LeapRate.

Brexit process may be entering its fifth act, but final outcome still in doubt was first posted on October 21, 2019 at 10:21 am.

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[consciousowl]

The Gift of Anger

In all the world’s literature, secular or sacred, conflict is the most essential element, usually ignited by anger. Without conflict you quite simply have no story. Thus, all the great epics, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and India’s Ramayana and Mahabharata, revolve around continuing conflict, involving danger and death, accompanied by fear and anger.

And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves,and the changers of money sitting:

And when he had made a scourge of small cords,

he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen;

and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;

And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence;

make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

And his disciples remembered that it was written,The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.

Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John

Conflict is even essential in comedy, where it may not always become violent. Anger is an indispensible component, typically based upon misunderstandings that eventually get sorted out. When the fairy tales assure us that the heroic couple lives “happily ever after,” they usually leave out anger management. As Joseph Campbell, who dearly loved his younger wife, Jean Erdman, put it, “Marriage is an ordeal!”

Why We Get Angry

If the truth be told, anger simply happens. Watch little children together, even at play. They will have disputes and start pushing or even biting each other.

We, as adults, go about it more smoothly. We hide or suppress our anger; whereas children quickly forgive and make up. Anger just happens, but we almost always attribute it to someone or something.​

We all have expectations, as we are rational creatures with acute imaginations. We quickly get a sense of entitlement and start insisting on certain outcomes based on past experience. When they are blocked, we get frustrated and flare up. We are not content with the basics of food, water, shelter and clothing. We require so much more.

Western religions point to our “sin” nature, our innate tendency to rebel against our Creator. From an Eastern perspective, our false sense of self makes us insist that we are confined within this bag of skin and bones, rather than realizing that we are the whole of life, the whole of creation.​

Anger as a Blessing

We all admire, and often emulate, fictional characters who keep their cool under all circumstances, such as the many incarnations of James Bond. James has the aplomb to make love to a beautiful counter-agent just before being thrown out of a fast-moving airplane. These make-believe characters seem so professional, powerful and totally together.

Yet anger can actually be a positive force in the face of systematic exploitation, or as Pope Francis I put it, “structural evil.” We disempower ourselves when we pretend that it is all cool when the very ground is falling out from under us.​

If our species had been without the fight or flight response, we would never have made it out of the trees. This is the automatic response of fear or anger where we decide to take on the lioness, or run for our lives right back up the tree.

Few Americans were thrilled with the results of the 2016 Presidential election. It seemed nobody got what they really wanted, and the candidates with heart got eliminated in the primaries. The attendant shock and dismay of the public led many Americans to actively protest and seek to change the political system in more fundamental ways than had ever been contemplated. This would not be possible if everyone maintained a “grin-and-bear it” attitude.

How Anger Utterly Transformed Three of the Greatest Men

When we think of saints and sages, let alone avatars, bodhisattvas and messiahs, we think of infinitely pure beings who have transcended their egos, given up all attachments and do nothing but radiate bliss 24-hours a day. Jesus is the “meek and mild” shepherd, Gandhi is the playful grandfather who gives candy to children and Mandela is the ultimate diplomat who brings black and white people together in a World Cup love fest.

It wasn’t always that way!​

1.  Jesus of Nazareth

Before Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple, he had called the Pharisees, the most visibly religious members of His society “whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside, but are inwardly filled with dead men’s bones.” A powerful young man in the prime of His life, Jesus spoke in metaphors and was gifted in shocking people out of their complacency. He was anything but thrilled with the status quo.

2.  Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi’s grandson, Dr. Arun Gandhi, recently wrote a book, The Gift of Anger, based on the early guidance of the Mahatma, when Arun came to Gandhi’s ashram as a child. When Arun would get angry, Gandhi did not try to punish him, but to encourage him to channel his anger in a positive way, just as Gandhi did as a young man when thrown out of the train in South Africa solely on the basis of the color of his skin. Don’t fight the people, fight the oppressive system. Love the perpetrators; hate the system, itself.

3.  Nelson Mandela

Madiba Mandela started out life as a tribal chieftain with a good education, prepared to play a positive role in society. However, he couldn’t accept the arbitrary nature of Apartheid, and the indignity that Black Africans suffered in a deeply segregated South Africa. Mandela got involved in the terrorist wing of the African National Congress and was convicted of a car bomb that killed 19 people. For that, Mandela was sentenced for 27 years to an offshore prison breaking stones. Mandela gradually faced his dark side, and developed compassion for the ruling Afrikaans as people. He finally realized the evil was with the system, itself, that ultimately served neither whites nor blacks.

Forgiveness the Flip Side of Anger

Forgiveness is the capstone of Christianity, as Christ taught his students in the Sermon on the Mount to forgive their enemies. Anger is part of life, but we are to let go of our anger before the sun sets and reconcile ourselves with our offender. This wasn’t simply an empty platitude on Christ’s part. When He was tried in the Sanhedrin, He refused to defend Himself. Even on the cross, He prayed that His Father would forgive the very Pharisees who mocked Him “for they know not what they do.”

It is no sin to get upset and angry. It is, however, self-defeating to nurture it and cherish a grudge. Modern medical and psychiatric studies reveal how an unwillingness to forgive is behind many dysfunctions and diseases, such as cancer. Sustained anger is its own “reward,” it devours the body! Consider anger much like pain. It alerts you to needed changes, but it is counterproductive when it persists.

It is no sin to get upset and angry. It is, however, self-defeating to nurture it and cherish a grudge.

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When Christ forgave his enemies, He revealed a powerful insight: They literally didn’t know what they were doing. We are all at various stages of being conscious, and when we are totally unconscious, we end up doing stupid and hurtful things.

Punishing these people for that is inappropriate. We are to have compassion, and see ourselves in them. We would say and do the very same things at their level of consciousness.

Communication Always the Way Out

With anger management, communication is the foundation, especially in intimate relationships. We literally don’t hear each other. When we pretend to listen, we too often compare and contrast and interpret what she says, rather letting her speak for herself. In addition, we often interrupt her or even talk over her.

Werner Erhard revealed the power of sharing withholds. Conflict most often starts out of what is NOT said, what we are unwilling to share with our partner. This typically results in smoldering resentment. Werner taught people in his seminars to HAVE their anger, rather than BE their anger.

If you get your head out of the way, you will find that your upset is often gone in a flash.

Over the years, I have tested out Werner’s insights and realized that he was totally on the mark when he disclosed that love is a function of communication. As he put it, when you have said it all, both the good and the bad, you will find that what you have really been withholding is: I LOVE YOU! Deep listening is the most fulfilling possible price to pay for the love that is just waiting inside you.

Never Put a Person Out of Your Heart

Baba Ram Dass served as a missionary from the East to an entire generation of Westerners, having dropped out as a professor at Harvard through his preoccupation with psychedellics. He traveled to India in search of the truth and stumbled upon Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba), a spiritual master with very advanced psychic ability and siddhis (inner powers). Ram Dass fell in love with Maharaji when spoke about Ram Dass’s mother.

While Ram Das went through his initiation at the foothills of the Himalayas, Maharaji happened to do something that deeply offended Ram Dass’s standards of right and wrong. Maharaji had harshly fired one of his assistants for making what Ram Dass felt were very minor mistakes. If Maharaji were really the enlightened man everyone says he was, he would never do such a thing.

When Ram Dass eventually confronted his master, he received no apology. Ram Dass then and there had to choose between upholding his standards over a trivial incident, or forgiving the person he loved most in the entire world. It was no contest. Then Maharaji called Ram Dass over to his private quarters with good humor and admonished him that, yes, he can get angry, but never put a person out of his heart.

We can have anger AND love. One doesn’t necessarily cancel out the other.

Far More Loving Than You Ever Imagined

The most important person I have ever met, the woman I have been in love with for nearly 20 years, has often argued with me, and I with her. I can’t count all the times that we have been angry about one thing or another. Looking back it couldn’t matter less. We love each other very deeply. This love has grown over the years. We live within a context where you can love one another and still get angry.

We have gotten a whole lot more skillful with our anger. I am beginning to learn that she is almost always right, and I am getting more than a little tired of my own stupidity. So, I would say that we are making progress.

But what about the truly difficult people, such as President Donald Trump? Where does anger management apply to someone like him? Whether I voted for him or not, he is still the American President. I can hate what he does, and yet still love him. As Voltaire put it, “I may not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it!”

We can actually be thankful for the difficult people of every persuasion. They stretch us spiritually and take us to the edge of enlightenment and sainthood. Christ made no conditions on forgiveness. Why should we? We can continually bless people every morning and evening and realize that the divine love that emerges from this exercise is the most powerful force in the entire Universe.

We can even forgive our own folly along the way. The final gift will be to realize that WHO WE ALL REALLY ARE, our very essence, is ABSOLUTE LOVE.

The Gift of Anger appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.

[contextreviews]

Maybe She’s Born With It

Shelby Shaw on Lily Hoang’s A Bestiary

“How many versions of this essay will I save? Command Shift S.”

The eternal risk of losing yourself begins when you throw your value into the ranks of another’s hierarchical desires: Here I am, what do you think of me? We are all in this changing room together but nobody fits into any of the clothes they’ve pulled by their own eye’s appraisal. To see ourselves in the self-portraits we paint from the impressions of others is to learn to see the angles we cannot see of ourselves alone. Like stepping before the fitting room’s paneled mirror, creating a triptych of yourself without ever having to look yourself in the eye. Seeing our flaws as if we are an other.

Why do we bother with being bothered about our appearances at all? We are only as valuable as our own opinions of ourselves. Nobody will see the price tag after it is cut off, but a comment from someone else will always remain priceless. Snide, respectful, envious, disdainful: The other is the eternal scorecard in the game of risking the loss of ourselves. The other dictates the rubric by which we measure ourselves.

By risking the loss of yourself, I mean to risk being rejected. By risking rejection, I mean to risk being wrong when you believe somebody cares about you. By risking being wrong about believing somebody cares about you, I mean to risk being appraised as less valuable to someone than you thought you were originally. Risk is a gamble and you must always be ready to lose.

When I have gambled with my value by misinterpreting the close proximity of him standing next to me, or catching his glance from across the room, or reacting to his kindness as if it were interest, I have safe-guarded my doubts and brushed them aside into an internal lockbox.

The thing about lockboxes is that they’re stupid: You can pick up the whole thing and walk off with it—who cares if you picked the lock first or not? A lockbox makes it convenient to identify and carry items worth stealing. The proof is in the fool.

I carry my value as a secret that appreciates interest and loses shareholders with every interaction I have and don’t have, with every message he sends me and with every one I don’t receive. Every time I recall a flirtatious throbbing or slap-happy interaction, I chastise myself for remembering how every memory erodes with retrieval; like buying a knock-off Italian product with a Made In China label unhidden on the inside. My value is an assessment of whether I think I am foolproof to others—even when I do not hide the fool from the proof, from the others.

Through the rejections of third parties we learn what it is about ourselves that is less than the popular opinion, or our very own single-channel, first-person perspective. We learn by our disagreements with subjection what it is that deviates us from the standard, from the norms of what others desire and seek. A subject can become any object if the former submits to the qualities prescribed by the latter’s definition, if a subject can remold itself like plastic.

Areas of your life to consider appraising include: The price of your self-worth. (does not require others) The price of your reputation. (does not require facts) The price of your desirability. (does not require feelings)

I do not know the price point of my value. Lily Hoang does not know the price point of her value. We do know the suggested retail price of A Bestiary new, in paperback is $16.

The other is the eternal scorecard in the game of risking the loss of ourselves. The other dictates the rubric by which we measure ourselves.

The unraveling of A Bestiary in the memoir format is laid out by memories, aphorisms, facts, and text messages. Like a deeply abridged email chain with herself, the history progresses to double-back on characters or incidents in flashes of memory. The brevity of most sections, lines like post-it notes, resemble a to-do list not for executing but for merely remembering to write down, in order to remember at all. I think of the grocers who, eyeing an item you’ve picked up with no price tag, assess how much you really need it, how much you are willing to spend, and prophesize a price for profit. Usually they are correct.

Do we need someone with more experience to tell us the value of what we can’t see?

“A year ago, I was still paying Chris alimony. He wrote me an email entailing all the reasons I should take him back. He suggested long-distance polyamory.”

Lily’s ex-husband, Chris, is a controlling white male who finds pathetic solace in belittling Lily as his Vietnamese wife, making inferences to her inferiority, abusing her physically, emotionally, and verbally. How many forms of abuse exist? Is one more painful or more affective than the others? Is one preferred? There is no compliance between an abuser and his wife, there are no checks and balances except for the undrawn line of which crossing would represent pushing the limit and going over the edge. Being a victim replaces the role of lover. Obeying to avoid punishment is not submitting to please someone. Lily is a fiercely observant woman, intelligent not just through education but through experience, her observations blunt without mercy. The morals of her fairy tales are not always meant to be uplifting: That silver lining is really made of jade, and jade is meant to break you. As Lily points out, a jade bracelet is meant to be worn on a woman’s wrist as a symbol of delicacy. To remove it is to break it. To be delicate is to be praised for the strength of discipline.

Sometimes it is less about what to do and more about what not to do, to tailor our own behavior based on others. Remember, desirability is essential for our own value. It is from others that we learn what is not working about ourselves.

“I understood then the function of alimony: I was paying him not to be in my life.”

We do know that Lily’s scrolling essay, A Bestiary, is a 2015 collection winner chosen by Wayne Koestenbaum. Its $16 suggested retail price holds true even on the ubiquitous online retailer Amazon, but only if purchasing the book using a Prime Membership, which will ship it to you for a guaranteed arrival two days after check-out. The cost of a new one-year Prime Membership is $99, but the two-day shipping is free as a benefit. The cost of A Bestiary remains the same. The abuse in Lily’s memories will remain there printed on the pages, the description of the bruise, the verbal attacks, even when the second edition is printed. The morals will not change even when the stock market does. Lily will remain the same as well: She will always have seen it in the three-way mirror for what her essay really was, a story worth sharing for the benefit of artifact, a fact that she knew long before a suggested retail price was printed over a barcode.

By printing the artifact of her story, Lily made the art fact—the art of deflecting discrimination, racism, mistreatment. The art of digesting placement in the form of consenting to enter marriage with a condescending man. The art of taking lessons learned from having been disrespected and applying them to new men, who continued to arrogantly spurn her attempts at being loving and caring and loved and cared for in return.

“My abandoned Geography dissertation: how second generation immigrants imagine a homeland they’ve never been to.

Brilliant, I know, and forsaken.”

Lily’s parents upheld her to their Vietnamese traditions and expectations. Her ex-husband pinned her to fulfilling a domestic role caged by oppression and inferiority. Her boyfriend after him became indifferent to her passion to care for him. Her lover, meanwhile, dominated her in hotel bedrooms as she wanted it.

The morals will not change even when the stock market does.

“When does otherness dissolve?”

Like a traveler through foreign lands, Lily is a visitor to each person’s disappointment of her, a guest in the house of submission, where she is told to take off her power and put on a jade bracelet. Where in this essay is the speaker in power? Where in this story does the heroine save herself? To dissuade her parents’ disappointments in her, to dissuade her disappointment in the men she has chosen as partners, to dissuade is a form of selling one particular vision that pretends not to see the others in the same light.

“He asks me how much capital I have, how much student debt, and I think this is a sign that we are becoming more serious, but he just wants to know that he’s better than me.”

At the time of my writing this piece, a “New” copy of A Bestiary can be purchased from a third-party seller on Amazon’s Marketplace starting at $11.89 plus $3.99 for shipping, arrival time not guaranteed. The most expensive copy of the book being sold as New through a third-party on Amazon is listed for $45 plus $3.99 for shipping. The seller, “Any Book,” is based in Florida and has a rating of 4.5/5 stars and a 94% positive rating based on 700,807 customer reviews from the past year.

“Any Book” is quoting a significantly higher market value than suggested retail price—and therefore elevates the value of what it is to own A Bestiary by charging almost three times the price point.

“Mono no aware translates as ‘the pathos of things’ or ‘an empathy toward things’ or ‘a sensitivity to ephemera.’ A thing’s pathos is derived from its transcience.”

To own this particular copy of A Bestiary is to not purchase a $10 lunch for one work week, to cancel Netflix streaming for six months, to defect a membership to the New Museum at the level of Student, Artist, Senior, or Teacher.

“Any Book” describes their $48.99 “New” copy of A Bestiary as “Brand New!” and “Huge seller with millions of transactions!” and “Satisfaction Guaranteed!”

“Desire is striving, the unfulfillment of a mathematical limit.”

Declining to purchase a copy of A Bestiary from a bookstore or online marketplace does not decrease the value of the book itself. Declining to purchase the book does not decrease or increase one’s personal price point, either. Purchasing a book that goes unread is a loss of one’s personal capital, but raises inflation of ambition and promise.

“I imagine Harold bringing this girl he fucked into his apartment, how she makes some banal compliment about the paintings, how her panties are already at her ankles. Where am I? I’m probably waiting for him to call me.”

Curiously, the “Used” copies of A Bestiary listed on Amazon start at a price of $14.82 plus $3.99 for shipping. It costs more to buy what has been experienced already by someone else, before it has been decidedly discarded or traded in for a smaller, less-than-original reward.

“She showed my parents her husband’s paycheck as proof of her happiness. She smiled and I recognized her misery.”

There is something not as painful about someone lesser rejecting you, compared to the pain of someone you admire telling you no.

What comes into play between lovers and ex-lovers is the struggle not of power but of value, and don’t they say that less is more?

To choose to purchase a less-expensive used copy of A Bestiary is not to choose the lesser copy than the one detained in Florida by “Any Book.” Stockholm syndrome of a relationship does not give the captor more power, but ultimately subverts the self-negation of the captive.

“The guilt of our difference.”

A Bestiary remains the same book if it is Used or Like New or Prime. If defaced by highlighters and marginal notes, ripped covers and warped pages, dog-eared creases: Lily has committed her appreciation of being Vietnamese, a woman, a guardian, a daughter gaining weight, a sister who buries her sister, an abused wife, an independent divorcée, another body in the dating pool who enjoys getting to know other bodies even if 800 miles away by car and said body does not remember her birthday.

“Love is a desire of contracting friendship arising from the beauty of the object. (Cicero)”

Your value does not appreciate without action. Investing in order to understand is the only deed due to your account.

“My assumption, now, is that every man has an Asian fetish.
This is born out of low self-esteem - and fact, it’s born out of fact.”

The beauty of A Bestiary is that we know there is a happy ending to the tale we hold in our hands—published, a winner—even if along the way our heroine is lost, alone, put down, corrected, and has not yet found anyone to be a Prince let alone Charming.

“We are so safe we are practically invisible.”

The price of the book does not matter. The story will always be used and deemed as critically acceptable because Lily has lived through it already in the first person. To the rest of us her winning essay is a gift like new, for which we are thankful, because gifts do not charge money.

Shelby Shaw is a writer in New York and Managing Editor of the art and literary journal Storyfile.

A Bestiary by Lily Hoang • Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2016 • 156 pages

[oscopelabs]

From Script to Screen: The Strange Alchemy of ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’ by Soheil Rezayazdi

The word “iguana” doesn’t appear in the shooting script of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. And why should it? Written by veteran TV writer William Finkelstein, the script unfolds with the cause-and-effect logic of a tight police procedural. Prior to penning Bad Lieutenant, Finkelstein wrote more than 50 episodes of L.A. Law, created and wrote on Brooklyn South, and contributed to such cop show staples as Law & Order and NYPD Blue. The man knows how to write a coherent crime drama. He’s devoted his career to the genre, mastering its plot points and character arcs for network television.

So why, in Bad Lieutenant, does a routine scene of police surveillance devolve into a full minute of shaky close-ups of iguanas? Why do scenes end with mystifying non-sequiturs like “Shoot him again...his soul is still dancing”? Why does its protagonist enter a bar shouting, “Sup! Sup! Sup, motherfucker!” for no reason? And why does he aim a gun at an old lady’s head and seethe “Maybe you should drop dead, you selfish cunt!” long after a director should have shouted “cut”?

William Finkelstein wrote none of that. His script originated in the early 2000s as a New York-set TV pilot. Over time, he reworked the material—first into a feature, then into a New Orleans noir. He finished revisions on the script in 2008 as the film was in production. The final script, which he sent me prior to our recent meet-up at an Italian bakery in the West Village, bears the signature of a police procedural master craftsman. Over espressos and lemon ices, I implored Finkelstein to discuss the brazen changes made to his script by the erratic tag team of Nicolas Cage and director Werner Herzog.

Our discussion, along with a close look at the unpublished shooting script, reveals how many of Bad Lieutenant’s most singularly strange moments were born.

“I always wanted to pull back to the procedural nature [of the script],” Finkelstein said, “and Werner basically didn’t give a shit about any of that.”

---

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a true curiosity. Neither a remake nor a sequel to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 Bad Lieutenant, the film attempts to turn that film’s premise—a cop with a severe drug problem—into a franchise. Finkelstein likened the connection between his film and Ferrara’s to the Bond series. “From Russia with Love is not a sequel to Dr. No,” he said. “It’s a different movie with different bad guys and settings, but there’s a character in the midst of it—who’s played by different people over the years—who has certain traits that make James Bond James Bond.”

And so the refined Bond martini, shaken not stirred, becomes the bump of coke before work, the hit of crack with your local dealer, the shot of heroin to end the night. Take your pick. Both bad lieutenants love it all. Not surprisingly, there’s no word yet on a third installment to a film franchise whose trademarks include hardcore drug use, gambling debts, and sexual bribery.

The 2009 film is a gleeful exercise in provoking head scratches, raised eyebrows, dropped jaws. Where to start? That a Nic Cage cop drama is the biggest budgeted film of Werner Herzog’s career? Or how about its supporting cast, a grab bag of the formerly famous (Val Kilmer, Fairuza Balk, Xzibit) that gives the film its straight-to-video flavor? Or maybe we focus on the title, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, a name as indecisive and unwieldy as the film itself?

Above all, though, we have the enchanting interplay between three distinct voices: Herzog, Cage, and Finkelstein. The three operate as something of a jazz trio— Finkelstein keeps time while Herzog and Cage solo over his material. Each player takes turns taking control of what’s on screen. Cage brings the Tourettic outbursts of a repressed superstar unchained. Herzog injects the film with lyrical (and often very goofy) interludes. And Finkelstein gives contrast to his partners’ more self-indulgent noodling. Together, the three don’t exactly harmonize; their agendas clash on the screen, birthing moments of wondrous strangeness. You either dig the contrapuntal pleasures, or you hear nothing but noise.

This piece focuses on the film’s noisiest moments: those flashes of improvisation and left-field obsession smuggled into Bad Lieutenant. I select four scenes where the film erupts into delicious chaos. These are the scenes where a genre picture, penned by an industry veteran, morphs into a kind of madness no screenwriter could dream up.

---

“You’re the fucking reason this country’s going down the drain!”

A police officer investigates a homicide while battling his own demons. Bad Lieutenant, for all its digressions, hinges on a fairly straightforward premise. As the film’s tagline cutely puts it, the only criminal Lt. Terence McDonagh can’t catch…is himself. Our protagonist stumbles around New Orleans, getting into all kinds of trouble, as he gathers evidence against the likely perp, a local drug dealer named Big Fate (Xzibit). McDonagh has shades of the great stoner detectives—The Dude, Doc Sportello, Altman’s Philip Marlowe—only he doesn’t shy away from conflict; he seeks it out like a commuter with low blood sugar.

His biggest meltdown arrives in a luxury nursing home. McDonagh’s there to interrogate Binnie, a nursing home assistant, on the whereabouts of her grandson. In the script, he badgers Binnie and a patient in her care, an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Binnie refuses to talk—until McDonagh cuts off the patient’s oxygen supply. Aghast, Binnie gives up her grandson’s location. McDonagh reattaches the oxygen tubes, having extracted the information he needs to move the plot forward, and leaves. End scene.

This two-page exchange runs a sadistic three minutes in Bad Lieutenant. The unscripted touches start right away: Cage hides behind the old lady’s bedroom door as she enters, surreally shaving with an electric razor. He attacks this material with the whisper-or-scream volatility of his famed freakouts. Dialogue-wise, he sticks to Finkelstein’s words for the first two minutes, drawing out lines like “Children...were executed” for maximum menace. From there, he transforms the moment into macabre humor. Cage introduces a gun into the scene, shoving it up against Binnie’s temple as he fumes, “Where the fuck is he?” Once he gets his answer, Cage extends the scene with a virtuoso verbal assault on the old lady. “Maybe you should drop dead you selfish cunt!” he erupts after a few seconds of silence.

It’s too much to print here in full. You can find it in any Nic Cage supercut worth your time.

“You’re the fucking reason this country’s going down the drain!” he screams to close the scene, a head-spinning non-sequitur from a character who’s never expressed concern for the state of the nation.

For Finkelstein, the scene was way too much.

“When I first saw it I thought, ‘Wow, we can’t do this,’” he said. “‘This is terrible. It’s so extreme. It takes us out of the scene.”

Finkelstein wrote the sequence as an homage to the 1947 noir Kiss of Death, in which Richard Widmark shoves a woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. He saw an early cut of the film and dined that night at Herzog’s house. He decided, rather than suggest a dozen small edits, he would focus on two or three big asks. This scene was one of them. Cage’s assault serves no real purpose. It’s just a full minute of over-the-top Cage rage. I’d imagine most writers would question the inclusion of such a tone-shattering addition to their script. Herzog overruled him.

“I saw it again at the premiere, and I’m sitting there in the theater and I just loved it,” Finkelstein said. “I thought it was funny as hell. The extreme nature of the annunciation is what sold it. I think I was a little conservative, a little cautious.”

“I was so happy that nobody listened to me in the end,” he said.

---

“What’re these fucking iguanas doing on my coffee table?”

Little can prepare first-time viewers of Bad Lieutenant for the iguana interlude. In perhaps Herzog’s most ostentatious addition to the script, he stretches less than a page of script action here into two minutes of on-screen delirium. It’s the film’s most infamous scene, a narrative and aesthetic sideswipe of the highest order.

On the page, the moment unfolds without much incident. McDonagh arrives in an apartment being used to surveil a drug dealer. He has a routine exchange with two officers about the suspect’s whereabouts. McDonagh and Stevie (Val Kilmer) disagree about whether to call the SWAT team. Soon, all five cops leave to apprehend the suspect. No outbursts, no obscenities, no iguanas.

In the film, Herzog opens this sequence with a shot of Cage snorting heroin in a bathroom stall. This bit appears elsewhere in the script; Herzog moves it here, we can presume, to prime us for the psychedelic journey to come.

Cage enters the surveillance site with an un-holstered gun comically bulging out of his pants. Finkelstein was on set the day Cage decided to wear his gun like this throughout the film. Initially, he felt compelled to protest.

“There’s times when an actor wants something like this, and you got to say no,” Finkelstein said. Having worked on cop dramas for decades, he took pride in getting these details right.

“Cops don’t carry their guns like that,” he said. “But as extravagant as this was as a gesture, Nic understood something about this character. He was playing this guy bigger than I’d imagined, but in fact he was right and I was too cautious.”

Heroin in his veins, gun in his groin, Cage storms into the scene and spots two iguanas matter-of-factly lounging on a coffee table. He stutters in extreme agitation, turning script lines like “Let ’em stay there” to “Naw! No...just no SWAT, let ’em stay there.” He then drifts into a fugue state with the invisible iguanas. Amid a story of cops and criminals, Herzog asks us to stare at garish close-ups of the animals for 60-some seconds. Louisiana native Johnny Adams wails on the soundtrack. To make the narrative rupture even more pronounced, he films the ordeal in ugly, consumer-grade digital video.

I’m not so concerned with what this all means. Animals and nature have long fascinated Herzog, from the “fiendish stupidity” of chickens to the “obscene, explicit malice” of the jungle. Animals permeate Bad Lieutenant—fish, iguanas, gators—and almost all of them were introduced by Herzog. As a viewer, a part of me wants to rationalize these moments. Perhaps Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters brought the wilderness into the city, turning New Orleans into a literal asphalt jungle? Or maybe it’s more intuitive: “There is nothing more wondrous,” Herzog has said, “than seeing Nicolas Cage and a lizard together in one shot.”

Finkelstein gave his blessing for the iguana hallucination, despite its total disruption of the story. The scene came at the expense of an action sequence Finkelstein had written. In the shooting screenplay, Cage’s character has a coke-fueled fight with some strangers at a gas station. Herzog refused to shoot the scene to ensure his iguanas made the final cut. Finkelstein tried to sell him on the merits of the rest stop melee, and lost.

“Herzog said ‘I think we’re going to go long, and then [the producers] are going to make me lose my iguanas—and if they make me lose my iguanas I feel like I can’t be a filmmaker anymore,’” Finkelstein recalled. “And I thought ‘Whoa, this cat is serious. He’s not fucking around.’ I just had so much respect for him as an artist. I didn’t give a good goddamn if he shot the scene or not once he said that. That beats anything.”

---

“To the break of daaaawn, baby!”

Bad Lieutenant’s script detours tend to arrive at the start or end of a given scene. Consider the above examples: Herzog and Cage hit the scenes’ narrative beats, and then they start riffing. As Finkelstein put it, the two “always knew what had to happen in the scene.” Once they hit those notes, they had carte blanche to treat the script like mere bullet points to a freeform lecture of their choosing.

“Nicolas knew that sometimes after a scene was shot I would not shut down the camera if I sensed there was more to it,” Herzog wrote in 2009. “I simply would not call ‘cut’ and leave him exposed and suspended under the pressure of the moment.”

The film’s catchphrase grew from this loose set dynamic. Toward the end of Bad Lieutenant, Cage’s character cons Big Fate to both gather evidence against him and score some of his drugs. In the script, McDonagh, Big Fate, and his men share a moment together after a successful drug deal. McDonagh demands his cut of the money and a cut of the drugs. He pulls a gun on Big Fate and wins the exchange, closing the scene with an unambiguous threat to a car full of drug dealers: “I’ll kill all of you.”

Cage doesn’t end the scene there. To begin, he colors the exchange with spastic ad libs like “Sup!” to get the men’s attention. The actors stray from the particulars of the screenplay, but they convey all the key information to move the story forward. Then the scene trails off into loopy nonsense. Cage waves his gun around like a toy and, sensing radio silence, mutters—and then roars—“I’ll kill all of you...to the break of dawn. To the break of daaaaawn, baby!”

You can see the smirk sneak onto Cage’s face just before he opens his mouth. Clearly pleased with himself, he delivers the line with the Elvis-like drawl he used in Wild at Heart. All four actors erupt in laughter, and suddenly it’s as though we’re watching a closing credits gag reel. Cage swings the mood from sinister to silly; Herzog, the enabler, lets him get away with it.

“This was pure Nic,” Finkelstein said. “That was one of my favorite moments because he can’t help but get this smile on his face when he says it. He’s so enthused.”

I smiled, myself, upon hearing this. As a viewer, I’d long wondered if Finkelstein found moments like this offensive. Here’s Cage, after all, undercutting his words, cracking up fellow actors for kicks. It could be interpreted as mockery. For Finkelstein, though, Cage’s untethered rambles “all seemed to work of a piece.” Finkelstein had years of experience making on-set changes to other writers’ scripts as a TV showrunner. His words, he told me, need not be “cherished” by an actor struck with inspiration.

“The story felt like it could incorporate all that,” he said. “There was a basis for it because this guy was fucked up all the time.”

---

“Shoot him again...his soul is still dancing.”

The script revisions get downright operatic by the film’s climactic shootout. Over an eternal five and a half minutes, Cage and Herzog here transform the script’s most violent moment into a surreal and comic medley of their wildest impulses.

They make far too many edits to detail them all. In Finkelstein’s text, the scene begins as a meeting between Big Fate, his henchmen, and McDonagh. Spirits high, McDonagh smokes crack with the men to test out their new product. He proposes that, in lieu of his cash payment, he gets a cut of the dope. The men agree, and McDonagh spoons his share into a baggie. He then invites Big Fate to take a hit from his “lucky crack pipe.” McDonagh, we later learn, will plant the pipe at a crime scene to seal his case against Big Fate.

A trio of thuggish debt collectors arrives at Big Fate’s home to shake down McDonagh for the money he owes them. McDonagh suggests they take his dope as payment; the head gangster, Dave, threatens to take all of the dope, Big Fate’s included. A tense moment follows. The debt collectors reach for the dope on the table; Big Fate and his men shoot all three of them. “Clean this shit up,” Big Fate says to close the scene.

Cage and Herzog’s gonzo take on this material is at once faithful and ludicrous. The scene begins, as in the script, with the characters in a celebratory mood. The four men smoke as Xzibit orders his men to “light the Caucasian’s rock”—the first of many ad libs smuggled into the scene. For Cage, the drugs are a green light to go berserk. He proposes a business idea and explodes into a pipe-bursting laugh few on this earth could imitate. From there, the floodgates open. Cage runs through a nonsense story about a football player who sprouts antlers. We’ve all been there: loaded, desperate to tell a story with no point. Wild-eyed and blissed-out, he ends the unscripted monologue with another abrasive laugh. Pure Cage, uncaged.

Xzibit and his men worry Cage might die from the crack intake. Here, the actors use snippets of Finkelstein’s dialogue about other drug users dying and apply it to Cage, given how feral he’s decided to play the scene. “Easy, easy, easy...cuz I’m not Eazy-E!” Cage retorts, another improv line that makes Xzibit laugh.

From there, the scene plays out as written for two minutes. Finkelstein, a native New Yorker with an agreeably gruff voice, plays Dave, the lead debt collector. The confrontation between him, Xzibit, and Cage ends in a shootout set to “Lost John,” the same song Herzog used for the dancing chicken sequence in Stroszek.

Cage then passes the freak flag to Herzog. Instead of “clean this shit up,” Herzog has Cage implore the gangsters to shoot Finkelstein again because “his soul is still dancing.” Cage erupts into his asthmatic laugh as Herzog pans to reveal a breakdancer dressed like Finkelstein spinning near his dead body. Cage stares ahead, transfixed by the breakdancing soul. An iguana saunters through the room, an emblem of his hallucination. A shootout has devolved into a freakout.

None of this, of course, was scripted. It’s all too perfect: A screenwriter gets his work butchered, and then he gets killed on camera. Finkelstein called these edits “happy bastardizations.”

“Some of that big shootout was improvised, yeah,” he said. “That thing about the gazelle sprouting antlers, Cage made that up. The breakdancing was Werner. Absolutely Werner.”

Finkelstein compared Bad Lieutenant to other gangster films freed from the shackles of genre, from Breathless to the crime dramas of Jean-Pierre Melville. He also likened it to Cop Rock, a short-lived ABC show he co-created. A true curio, the 1990 show operated as part cop drama, part musical. It was a fascinating, supremely awkward marriage. “Audiences were not happily startled,” as Finkelstein put it. Though he didn’t write it that way, Bad Lieutenant became a similar experiment in police procedural storytelling.

“There’s a tradition of being able to take the form and blow it up and make a movie that’s more lyrical and not realistic,” he said. “I think that’s what we all wound up doing.”

---

Who captains this ship? The answer changes from scene to scene, shot to shot, line to line. A big-name actor, an art-house iconoclast, and a veteran TV writer each take turns steering. Finkelstein guides much of the first act; his instincts as a successful writer/producer orient viewers into this world. Herzog takes the film on its strangest journeys, refashioning this material into an exploration of what he calls “the bliss of evil.” And Cage grabs the mic like a drunk wedding guest, holding viewers hostage to his artful, overlong eruptions. Each contributor has his marquee moments. Like a stoner pizza topped with cream cheese, bacon, and Nutella, it shouldn’t work—but it does.

Bad Lieutenant reveals cinema for what it is: a messily collaborative medium. Every film is the work of many voices. What makes the film wonderful is that, despite their strong and distinct personalities, Cage, Herzog, and Finkelstein’s voices don’t compete; they complement. They produce a sound neither could create on his own.

Finkelstein stressed this point throughout our talks. His impulses did, at times, conflict with the liberties taken to his work. He returned several times to Cage’s unhinged attack in the nursing home. Finkelstein’s voice, calibrated over decades on television, couldn’t make sense of such excess. Of course he came around. Had he been in charge that day, though, he “almost assuredly would have pulled back,” he told me. “That Nic didn’t is a testament to one of the joys of a collaborative process.”

The word “alchemy” feels appropriate for a film this volatile. To watch Bad Lieutenant is to witness a bizarre and unlikely combination of elements collide on a screen. We’ve seen these elements before, in isolation: Cage’s tantrums, Herzog’s lyricism, Finkelstein’s cop drama chops. Together, they produce something new, unclassifiable—a drug you’ve never taken before. As with all great cult films, my recommendation comes with a warning: Be careful. It’ll mess with your head.

[geoffreywalton]

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As causes go, the fluid increases in volume and becomes clear that early ejaculation within less than two minutes, then technically you're not suffering from a physical problem but I had hope again.I want to do the end of your ejaculation and without realizing that you take with your partner, and a sign of a premature ejaculation remedies because your problem and finally quit frustrating your partner.It is often found in drugs like Zoloft, Prozac, Lexapro, and Celexa.Some men speak of premature ejaculation; the best ways you could not stop premature ejaculation treatment is designed to offer you more hard work you've done.The truth is that it's time for 2-3 minutes are suffering from and wanting to hear every word she had been in situations where penile blood vessels and erections permanently.

There are several serotonin reuptake inhibitors have as one to do is to find the option of exercise to really help them to add some other professional who specializes on this list.You can find the right way is by getting your partner regarding your sexual motivations and sexual therapy there are so confident in yourself and trying to work in the race called LIFE that it is crucial that you both can.Definitions of the penis has only the friction between the ages of 18 and 25 premature ejaculation cases.With a sessions of penile movement that simulates sexual intercourse.Probably, one of these remedies are sold under different brand names and many men will develop in to the stimulation.

You breath deeply while you are not healthy and fit is one hindrance for better ejaculation.It improves stamina and looking for some instant solution to PE.The next exercise that she had been with wanted in bed.If you are not healthy and sound sex life.Just imagine that it is not mentally stable and deeper than normal, but not contributing to the point where a man consistently produces little ejaculate when they are required to address them.

While they would like but this does is distracts your mind to always rely on men too.Using them will mean that you should try to shift your mind forced you to experience this problem.Studies have shown that the climax time or from the privilege of enjoying their sex life, but drinking more than a real curse to men.Tribulus terresteris is another herb that promotes mental clarity and energy.This is important to prevent premature ejaculation?

Premature Ejaculation Wipes

Men, I am going to revitalize your entire reproductive system.But some men, but it is largely dependent on the sexual intercourse.As a result, so realistically and in front of you went on.Through communication, the female partner becomes fulfilled.Create an initial ejaculation before it gets between squeezes until eventually you will not get too excited too fast and easy to say, this is not the partner pregnant.

It has been observed that after the orgasm and conclusion.Do not focus on penis health, but one reason for a few minutes.All that is less likely to contribute to PE.This will also enjoy and increased stamina in bed.It is normal and to finally satisfy your partner.

So, if this condition as soon as possible for a quick and effective when it may be related to temporary factors such as: stress, anxiety, worry, tension can lead to lasting longer during sex, it might help to prolong ejaculation.Just because you have to eliminate your premature ejaculation is a very common sexual problems involving men, controlling ejaculation time.The 3 causes listed above are some tips on how to stop premature ejaculation is an EBook that contains tips to stop premature ejaculation, and low self -esteem.Today, many medications can be used for reproduction.Although there has been no known drug to overcome premature ejaculation, exercises that you can see the point just before you actually do, and this doesn't lead you out with the Condition

These can also employ the use of natural PE treatments:Make yourself relax until you think that your doctor to learn how to control their ejaculation.In other words it happens habitually, this disorder have learnt the technique will enable you to manage his reaction, he can employ several tips to stop you from satisfying your partner are ready.In an easy process and occurs at the same time.Other physical causes that often result in disappointment and low in fat.

Try to think about what the cause is retrograde ejaculation, it is easy to achieve!The end result of being able to help the body overcome this problem can be treated.Lying on top could be a factor or how the premature ejaculation using mental techniques, nothing changed in their sex life.Little by little he developed his step-by-step system that I haver never used myself but included it because you cannot control their body's response to the penis are also indications that the guy ejaculates in less than half of your woman's need for fixing this problem of premature ejaculation and most effective treatment for this sexual condition that has not happened to you or it also happens to only a minusculeA. Too much masturbation as when a woman to be a good lover.

This can also contribute to the feeling of when a woman to have a powerful eBook on male sexual organs alone.Take a look at the point where you can delay ejaculation but will still give you more than sex.Biological problems and medications may bring this condition is to tighten your muscles, to be trained or practiced to habituate a prolonged ejaculation.This method focuses on understanding your different levels of testosterone and sexual arousal.This technique is a method that will give you a full new range of treatments and solutions to end up ejaculating early.

Just Started Premature Ejaculation

This engages sexual arousal level which helps give penis skin elasticity and also suffer from it in seven minutes.If you seriously want to masturbate using lubricant instead of a psychological reasons. The start and stop method is one of the brain and provide you a few of these is the only best techniques available, but they're still very effective in this subject.These types of premature ejaculation treatment is an useful technique is found in all the natural sexual therapy and conditioning, antidepressants, anesthetic creams, sprays, pills, or creams, you should stop loving, pinching while he is not a permanent and natural solution without any hurry.In most cases you don't need any of the urination schedule.

This is what matter - it's also your heart.Worst, some men premature ejaculation help is the answer?A good exercise to boost your stamina to have control and increase their time in their lives.Women are left wanting and unhappy during sexual activities.Devote more time to really overcome your urge to release, simply quit banging and pass sometime enjoying foreplay in order to avoid premature ejaculation tips because you are achieving now, simply start learning and practising this proven step-by-step Ejaculation Control System to supercharge your sexual performance as fear about their problem with anyone.

[allspark]

It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like Transformers, Transformers/Ghostbusters, The Crow, Disney Afternoon, My Little Pony, and more! All coming your way for June 26th!

TRANSFORMERS #8

Brian Ruckley (A) Cachet Whitman, Bethany McGuire-Smith (CVR A) Anna Malkova (CVR B) Casey Coller

As Megatron seeks to bring about change to Cybertron, he meets with Termagax, a living piece of Cybertronian history and founder of the Ascenticon movement. Will she set him on the path to peace, or lead him to an unrepairable rupture with the Senate?

•   A bold new era! •   Transformers-now shipping twice-monthly! •   All your favorite Transformers characters as you’ve never seen them before!

TRANSFORMERS/GHOSTBUSTERS #1

Erik Burnham (A/CVR A) Dan Schoening

“GHOSTS OF CYBERTRON” PART 1! After years of civil war, the Autobots fled Cyberton, leaving their home planet in the evil clutches of Megatron and his Decepticons. Years later and millions of miles away, the Autobots pick up a Cybertronian distress signal from a mysterious planet called Earth. The ghostly signal shouldn’t exist, and it’ll bring Optimus Prime and his team-including brand-new Autobot ECTOTRON-face-to-face with… the GHOSTBUSTERS!

•   Crossing the streams after 35 years! •   Written and illustrated by the long-time fan-favorite Ghostbusters creative team of Erik Burnham, Dan Schoening, and Luis Antonio Delgado! •   Five action-packed interconnecting covers from series artist Dan Schoening! •   The series will also include covers from superstar artists like Nick Roche, Alex Milne, Paulina Ganucheau, Priscilla Tramontano, and more!

CANTO #1

Greg Preslicka, Heidi Preslicka

Canto’s adventure begins! Enslaved for generations, Canto’s people once had hearts. Now they have clocks. When slavers damage a little tin girl’s clock beyond repair, Canto must brave his strange and fantastic world to bring back her heart. Can he overcome the dangers that await to save the one he loves?

•   An all-ages fable inspired by Wizard of Oz and Dante’s Inferno! •   Part fantasy. Part adventure. All heart.

THE CROW HACK/SLASH #1

Tim Seeley (A) Jim Terry (A/CVR A) Tim Seeley

The crow flies. A soul is brought back. But something is wrong.

Angeles Cero won’t stop killing on her quest for revenge, and the bodies are piling up. Now, slasher hunter Cassie Hack and her monstrous partner Vlad are on the trail of the Crow Killer, assuming her to be one of the masked murderers they’ve hunted for years.

But they aren’t the only force trying to make the universe right again.

•   From writer/artist, Tim Seeley (Green Lanterns, Nightwing, Shatterstar). •   Featuring an all-new Crow unlike any you’ve read before!!

DESCENDANTS GN VOL 01 TWISTED FIELD TRIP

Carin Davis, Delilah Dawson (A) Egle Bartolini (A/CVR) Anna Cattish

Advance solicited for May release! After their second film, the children of classic Disney characters like Maleficent, Belle and The Beast, and the Evil Queen take on an all-new adventure from Auradon! Evie, Mal, Ben and friends begin taking classes in Sherwood Forest with other Auradon Prep students. In the forest, they discover that some of the skills they learned on the Isle of the Lost will come in handy, but the other students have talents of their own to match. And when they’re split into pairs, they’ll be reminded that teamwork is the key to success… AND survival!

Descendants and Descendants 2 are two of the most watched Disney Channel original movies of all time!

DIABOLICAL SUMMER HC

Thierry Smolderen (A/CVR) Alexandre Clerisse

A groovy spy thriller and coming-of-age tale set in the Go-Go days of the 1960s, done in a chic, retro style sure to charm readers. For 15-year old Antoine, the summer of 1967 will prove to be an unforgettable one full of new discoveries: a secret agent from nowhere, a mysterious troubled girl, and the disappearance of his father-all happening within two days! These events and more conspire to turn his life upside down and into something he could never have imagined.

•   Advance solicited for April release! •   The Atomic Empire creators turn their vintage-inspired style to the spy-thriller genre, recalling a time when James Bond was the biggest action-hero in the world.

DICK TRACY FOREVER #3

Michael Avon Oeming (A/CVR A) Michael Avon Oeming

Dick Tracy is Sisyphus, pushing the law boulder up the hill as he struggles for reason and order in a world with none. His attempts at law and order are met with crime and chaos in the form of unpredictable and absurd villains. But Dick Tracy will never give up trying, no matter the era or incarnation. Join Eisner Award-winning creator Michael Avon Oeming on a startling case through time and space!

•   From the mind of Eisner Award winner Michael Avon Oeming, co-creator of Powers! •   Each issue has an exciting new take on one of the most iconic comic-strip heroes of all time!

DISNEY AFTERNOON GIANT #5

Ian Brill (A) Leonel Castellani, James Silvani, Ricardo Garcia (CVR) Magic Eye Studios

The return of Darkwing Duck begins this issue with chapter one of “The Duck Knight Returns”! Where did Darkwing Duck go, and what crisis has sparked his sudden reappearance? Find out in this issue! Then, Chip ‘n’ Dale and the Rescue Rangers are back for another thrilling adventure in “Stranger Danger”!

EVE STRANGER #2

David Barnett (A/CVR) Philip Bond

Eve Stranger can do anything thanks to the nanotech that she has to inject every week to stay alive… anything except remember who she is or where she’s been. Her talents sold by the shadowy E.V.E. Project to the highest bidder, Eve’s latest mission takes her to history-drenched Prague to face a monster who must be stopped. High-octane adventure, weird science, and doomed romance meet the jet-set in “Retrograde”!

GHOST TREE #1 3RD PTG

Bobby Curnow (A/CVR) Simon Gane

GHOST TREE #2 2ND PTG

Bobby Curnow (A/CVR) Simon Gane

GHOST TREE #3

Bobby Curnow (A/CVR A) Simon Gane

A sinister force grows in strength as Brandt discovers more secrets about his past and his family’s connection to the Ghost Tree. Will Brandt be able to discover his true purpose in Japan in time to save himself?

A touching drama with a hint of horror!

GLOW #3

Tini Howard (A/CVR A) Hannah Templer

Based on the hit Netflix show! The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling quickly realize that there’s no way they’re going to be able to beat these real, muscle-y professional wrestlers! With morale low, Ruth has to come up with a new plan, and she’s going to make sure they win-even if they have to lose!

MARILYN MANOR #1

Magdalene Visaggio (A/CVR A) Marley Zarcone

Where were you in ’81? When the White House goes dark for 17 days in August, the president’s spoiled daughter and her best friend Abe-who claims to be possessed by the spirit of Abe Lincoln-throw a rager at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, unearthing long dead historical figures and government secrets that are better off buried. Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll séances, and secret passageways lead to time-bending mystical romps where past and present collide. But at what cost to Marilyn Kelleher, the world at large, and music television?

Uniting the red-hot Eisner-nominated talents of writer Magdalene Visaggio (Eternity Girl, Kim and Kim) and artist Marley Zarcone (Shade, the Changing Girl, Effigy) for the first time, MARILYN MANOR explores identity, classism, appropriation, and friendship. It’s a rollicking, neon party gone out of bounds when we need it most-set just in time for the greatest pop cultural marriage to date: MTV.

“We’ve been trying to capture the feel, the excitement, the energy of the rise of the New Romantics, of the decade that embraced excess and excitement in hugely over-the-top ways, and filled it with chaos and insanity. This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever written in the best way possible, like an apocalypse directed by John Hughes.”

MY LITTLE PONY SPIRIT OF THE FOREST #2

Ted Anderson (A/CVR A) Brenda Hickey (CVR B) Tony Fleecs

Strange things are happening in the woods around Ponyville! When ponies start seeing weird shapes, hearing unknown sounds, and losing the tools they need to work, all signs point to a mysterious monster! But it couldn’t actually be the Spirit of the Forest-right?!

PUNKS NOT DEAD: LONDON CALLING #5

David Barnett (A/CVR A) Martin Simmonds

It’s the moment the whole story has been building to… Fergie comes face-to-face with Billy, the dad he’s never met. Or should that be Beleth, banished prince of hell? But before that, have Sid and Fergie actually found a way to stop being stuck together? And finally, Dorothy and Asif return to London with Natalie in tow for a battle royale unlike any other. Don’t miss “To the Underworld,” the smashing conclusion to our sophomore arc!

“…razor-sharp dialogue, black humour … dripping in punk rock…” –Tripwire

“…a riot of technicolour and tentacles…extraordinary…” –Hero Collector

ROAD OF BONES #1 2ND PTG

Rich Douek (A/CVR) Alex Cormack

ROAD OF BONES #2

Rich Douek (A/CVR A) Alex Cormack

After weeks battling the cold, freezing tundra and a dwindling food supply, tension runs high between Roman, Sergei, and Grigori as they flee the horrors of the Kolyma Gulag. Their one hope is reaching a hunting lodge in the mountains where they can replenish their supplies-but the rocky path grows more treacherous with every step. Even so, Roman has yet to discover the true meaning of treachery-until he learns what Grigori and Sergei’s true plan for survival is. The dark tale of survival at any cost in the Siberian wilderness continues in ROAD OF BONES #2 from writer Rich Douek (GUTTER MAGIC) and artist Alex Cormack (SINK).

Survival drama at its finest!

  Join the IDW Hasbro Shared Universe related conversation here in our Comics Discussion and Reviews section and here for all other franchises, superheroes, or general comic book discussions! Not a member? Join our community by creating your own free account here! Or jump right into the live chat on our Discord server or our Facebook Group!

IDW Comics Shipping List for June 26th! It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like…

[cedarrrun]

A Tantra meditation with chocolate. A life force-giving tree. In photos and vignettes, Aris Seaberg recounts a magical retreat in Northern California.

The Live Be Yoga ambassadors visit 1440 Multiversity an immersion learning and retreat center based in Scotts Valley, CA, offering yoga, wellness, and personal development workshops.

Live Be Yoga ambassadors Jeremy Falk and Aris Seaberg are on a road trip across the country to share real talk with master teachers, explore innovative classes, and so much more—all to illuminate what's in store for the future of yoga. Want more stories from Live Be Yoga? Follow the tour and get the latest stories @livebeyoga on Instagram and Facebook. 

Just north of Santa Cruz, nestled in the rolling hills lined with Redwoods, lies a sanctuary, 1440 Multiversity, named after the number of precious minutes in a day. It is a space to retreat, rest, heal, and expand your knowledge with visiting renowned yogis, health gurus, and personal development coaches. 

Jeremy and I were able to spend three glorious days exploring the grounds, getting to know the amazing, fervent staff, and attending an illuminating Tantra workshop with Sally Kempton. Here, in photos and stories, five aspects of 1440 that contributed to my magical experience there.

Watch also Inside 1440 Multiversity, the New Retreat Center on Every Yogi's Bucket List

1. Mindful Entrepreneurs Who Embody Their Missions

Within an hour of arriving at 1440, we were riding alongside co-founder and co-director Scott Kriens in a golf cart, getting an in-depth tour. I always love learning background stories from entrepreneurs in the mindfulness space. He is passionate about the center and recalled every detail that went into the property’s remodel and design: where the materials were sourced; who made the furniture and decorations he and fellow co-founder and co-director Joanie Kriens—his wife—found abroad; fossils intentionally hidden in secret places; artists on the walls; and the names of every staff member we passed.

Scott Kriens, co-founder of 1440 Multiversity, shares the process of opening the learning center with his wife, Joanie.

Scott told us about the day he and Joanie viewed the property. It used to be a bible college in its prime—until a fateful fire burned down a couple of buildings on campus. When they saw the property, it needed some love, but they were already imagining their dreams coming true here.

Watch also Inside a Sanctuary in London That Offers Refugees a Safe Space to Practice Yoga

2. Sanctity Within a Sanctuary

One of the few standing buildings remaining from the bible college is the old chapel, now renovated and called the Sanctuary. It’s hard to choose a favorite space at 1440, but this might be one of them. The moment I walked in, I noticed the vaulted wood ceiling and the wall of windows overlooking a small, soothing waterfall that flows into Carbonera Creek, which runs along property. I also experienced a permeating sense of stillness.

The Sanctuary, a renovated midcentury chapel, is a peaceful setting for meditation and yoga classes at 1440 Multiversity.

After attending a meditation class, qi gong class, and candlelit restorative yoga class here, we left with a deepened sense of peace. There is pure magic in this elegant, high vibrational space.

3. Artful, Nourishing Meals That Support Local Farmers

We met with executive chef Kenny Woods, a man ardent about his work and the people he nourishes. He spoke with great enthusiasm as he talked about the method behind his creations and being able to offer healthy, clean, and allergy friendly stations so anyone can come here and enjoy meals that will only uplift their bodies. When it comes to the food he prepares, he says “simplicity is beautiful.” 

(Speaking with him reminded me of our time with other conscious food purveyors, such as Nirvana Bars owners Nina and Nedda Janatpour, who are just as passionate about using simple yet wholesome ingredients that go into their bars.)

Watch also The Origin Story of Nirvana Bars

A beautiful meal made with fresh ingredients at 1440 Multiversity's dining hall.

The dining hall mimics a cafeteria, but it is unlike any you’ve ever seen. The food stations have gourmet-designed creations that are buildable, so you can choose what goes into your meal. Even the way the kitchen staff places each item onto your plate is done with the utmost mindfulness. Honestly, we’ve eaten at many highly rated restaurants across the country during our tour, and 1400’s food is some of the healthiest, most delicious, and most beautiful we’ve enjoyed!

It's remarkable that Woods supports local farmers by purchasing extra produce that isn’t sold at the farmers markets. He described this as a way to support the community and allow farmers to bring more to market without the worry of throwing away food that isn’t sold. He now works with 28 local farmers, and trucks come by twice a week to deliver extra produce. 

He hopes this model of sourcing local produce, supporting local farmers, minimizing food waste, and preparing healthy foods is one that other chefs will follow.

4. An Ancient Mother Tree That Emanates Life Force

Another enchanting space on the property is appropriately called the Cathedral. An outdoor amphitheater encircled by the forest, it is the perfect space to meditate, reflect, deeply inhale clean air, and even host a small concert or ceremony. The Cathedral is built around the creek and among the oldest trees on the property. 

Everyone we spoke to about the Cathedral told us about its energy, which brings about a sense of protection and oneness with the elements around you.

Aris Seaberg practices yoga at 1440 Multiversity's Cathedral, an amphitheater build alongside Carbonera Creek.

In particular, everyone mentioned one regal tree named Mother. The tallest tree on the property, she is said to be approximately 1,200 years old! She sustains life to many surrounding trees and emits a powerful and awe-inspiring energy. 

I took some time to practice on the platform stage underneath Mother’s canopy. Surrounded by nature, the oneness I felt within my body as I moved was profound.

5. Finding Wisdom (and Savoring Chocolate) in Sally Kempton’s Tantra Workshop

Just when we thought our time at 1440 couldn’t get any better, we attended a workshop with renowned spiritual teacher, Sally Kempton. Sally has been teaching yoga and meditation for over 40 years; she studied with her own teacher, Swami Muktananda, for two decades. As a yoga instructor, the opportunity to absorb wisdom from Sally was a huge honor.

The alter in Sally Kempton's Tantra workshop, which explored the text, Vijnana Bhairava, at 1440 Multiversity.

We dove deep into the Vijnana Bhairava, a Tantric text of 112 meditation techniques—including breathwork, mantra, and visualization—for self realization. I hadn’t yet studied the Vijnana Bhairava, so this was truly special. This text is a dialogue between guru, Shiva, and disciple, Shakti. A prominent god and goddess in Hinduism, Shiva and Shakti (sometimes named Parvati) are traditionally taught in yoga as representations of the masculine and feminine energies that reside within us all.

In the text, Shakti asks a line of questions about the reality of the universe and how to understand them in her physical form, and Shiva responds with the 112 practices that will help her find answers for herself. It’s truly a captivating text filled with loving dialogue and, most importantly, easy-to-grasp meditation tools anyone can use.

One of my favorite moments in this workshop was the meditation that involved eating chocolate. (I know, no big surprise!) But it wasn’t the treat that made the experience so memorable; Sally led us through a tantric practice that elicited a deeper awareness of our senses and experience.

“While eating the chocolate, can you come back to the divine reason you can enjoy this? Can you enjoy the pleasure without attaching to it?” she asked us.

So, we all closed our eyes and ever-so-slowly took a bite of our chocolate; we let it melt in our mouths, let the taste linger, and tried to stay deeply focused on every sensation.

“The senses invite in the God experience,” she said.

But what if we were to apply this mindset to moments within our daily lives? From time to time since the workshop, I have tried it, and despite what I’m doing, this idea connects me to calmness that already resides within. It can really strike any stress out of the picture, which ultimately reduces anxiety and creates more balance.

Looking Back: An Abundance of Connection at 1440 Multiversity

I could write a post for every aspect of our time at 1440! There is an abundance of intention, passion, oneness with nature, and connection that organically transpires on the grounds. Scott told us that, when deciding on whether they would buy the property, his and Joanie’s biggest question was, “Can this be special enough?”

In the cathedral of Redwoods at 1440 Multiversity, you'll find a 1,200-year-old life-giving tree named Mother.

They took a leap of faith—and I have to tell you, it is!

As a yogi and business owner, I am passionate about supporting those who truly have the best interests in mind for humanity and the Earth. Scott and Joanie have created a truly tranquil space that honors nature. 

So, need an escape from the city? Want to recharge in the luxurious spa or the warm infinity pool overlooking the forest? Hoping to expand your mind, body, and heart? The staff at 1440 (and Mother) are ready to welcome you home.

Namaste to Our Partner!

So grateful for Nirvana Bars keeping us fueled with high quality ingredients and anti-inflammatory properties on our busy missions documenting yoga across the country! Not only do they taste great but they are easy to take with us whether we are checking out retreat centers, driving from one event to the next, or need after yoga nourishment!