#and it alone is responsible for 90% of my nightmares as a child

[coochiequeens]

Oh Canada…..two stories in one week? You can do better

Reduxx has learned that a convicted pedophile is the individual who had been protected by swimming pool staff after mothers expressed concerns about his presence in the women’s locker room. Parents and concerned citizens had been sounding the alarm about the man, who some say they had caught watching their young daughters undress, but were told he had a right to use the facilities as a “transgender woman.” 

In February, Reduxx reported that a mother had been threatened with arrest by staff at the Aquatic Centre in Nanaimo, British Columbia, after attempting to remove a male from the women’s locker rooms she said had been acting in a predatory manner towards her children. The man, who she described as wearing a wig and a face mask, had been peeping under the stall into the one where her young daughter had been changing.

Reduxx has now identified the man with the help of members of the community, and learned he is a convicted child sex offender. Jeremy Melvin Carlson now goes by Rylie Otter — sometimes spelling his first name “Rhylie” or “Rhiley.”

In 2019, Carlson, who was 28 at the time, was sentenced to 14 months in jail and 24 months probation for sexual interference against a young person. 

He admitted to touching an 8-year-old girl for sexual purposes on nine separate occasions while in a position of trust from December 2015 to September 2016. According to Vernon news site InfoTel, Carlson told police that he touched the child with his penis and fondled her genitals.

The girl eventually disclosed the abuse to her mother, who reported it to the RCMP. Carlson pleaded guilty to the charges in 2017. He later applied to have his guilty plea withdrawn but did not continue the bid and reverted back to a guilty plea.

The case gained national attention in 2018 when the victim’s mother read an impact statement aloud in court during the sentencing hearing in Kelowna, British Columbia, noting that her daughter had been severely traumatized by Carlson’s abuse.

“As a result of this trauma, (my daughter) continues to have nightmares,” the mother said, as reported by The Daily Courier. “(She) does not feel comfortable walking to school alone or with her siblings … She fears being in public places because she does not want to run into the offender.”

She also said that her daughter’s self-esteem had been negatively affected by the assaults and added: “I feel like I have completely failed my daughter as I was not able to protect my baby.”

While the victim’s mother was reading the statement, Judge Monica McParland dabbed a tear from her eye. This caused defense counsel Jacqueline Halliburn to make an application for the judge to recuse herself due to judicial bias.

McParland later dismissed the application, arguing that the victim impact statement was “highly emotional and moving” and that “there is nothing wrong with the court having a compassionate or empathetic response to it.”

During the sentencing, news outlets also reported that Carlson had started identifying as a woman. He had changed his name to “Rhiley Melvin Carlson” and was taking hormone replacement therapy.

The Daily Courier reported that “uncertainty was expressed in the court concerning whether or not Carlson would serve a jail sentence with men or women, and if sexual offender treatment would be available since it is typically geared toward men.”

The Crown sought a 15 to 20 months jail sentence and two years’ probation. Defense counsel argued that circumstances such as Carlson’s heavy marijuana use and struggles with gender identity and depression warranted a light sentence of only 90 days, despite admitting that he had “poor sexual boundaries.”

McParland felt that a strong denunciatory sentence was warranted in the case, with one aggravating factor being that Carlson has attempted to blame the young victim for the offense. She added that Carlson had to receive psychiatric treatment during his probation and barred him from being alone with children under 16, as well as from places where children under 16 could be present, such as swimming pools, community centers, schools, and daycares. Carlson was also added to the sex offender registry for 20 years.

Despite these conditions, concerned citizens have come forward to identify Carlson as the man who was spotted using the Nanaimo Aquatic Centre women’s facilities and closely watching the young girls. 

In February of this year, Reduxx reported that a mother had come forward after a man in a wig who claimed to identify as “female” walked into the women’s changing room and tried to peer under the changing stall her daughter was using.

The mother confronted the man, who said that he had a “human right” to be in there, and escorted him out of the changing room. When she reported the incident to pool staff, she was warned that she could be arrested and charged for her actions instead. Other local parents also came forward with reports of having run-ins with the man at the Aquatic Centre.

More recently, Facebook users have been sharing around a screenshot taken from a March 20 post about a convicted child sexual abuser in a Facebook group called Predators Of Vancouver Island. The post identifies the man pictured as Carlson and says that he has a current case open against him for another sexual assault on a child.

Reduxx confirmed the source of the photos and received confirmation that the man pictured is indeed Jeremy Carlson, a.k.a. “Riley/Rhylie Otter.”

Two anonymous sources who had encountered the man in the Nanaimo Aquatic Centre changing room also confirmed with Reduxx that it was the same man as the one pictured in the post.

“That’s 100% the person,” one member of the community told Reduxx. “I’m just so upset our justice system isn’t doing anything about it,” the source said. “They can’t charge him, not enough evidence, even though he breached by… not letting the sex offender list [know] he changed his name. Our system is a joke.”

A second source also identified the man in the pictures as having been the one present in the Nanaimo Aquatic Center locker rooms.

“I can anonymously confirm that was the person I saw and confronted in the changeroom watching a young girl change, yes,” she said, adding that she had also been in contact with the police but was told they had “hit a dead end.”

Reduxx also spoke to a concerned citizen who had been trying to get answers from Judge McParland in Kelowna and Crown council in Nanaimo about why Carlson was allowed access to the Aquatic Centre given his restrictions.

“I tried using online court services to see his conditions … and crown had said there [was] a public ban and that cops were well informed of Jeremy’s actions around the island as there were alot of incidents with that person,” he explained. 

“Cops won’t touch it [because] of trans issues now,” he added. “I’m honestly really shocked that the Nanaimo pool would continue to allow [Carlson]… to go there after numerous police were called and file numbers were taken. The police say they can’t do anything.”

Reduxx has reached out to the Nanaimo RCMP for details on whether the investigation into Carlson is ongoing, but did not receive a response in time for publication. This article will be updated in the event a response is received.

Reduxx also reached out to the Nanaimo Aquatic Center and received confirmation from an assistant manager that the matter was currently with police, but that no comment could be given at this time.

Police in Windsor, Ontario have located a suspect in connection to a sexual assault which reportedly occurred at a women’s shelter.

According to a public news bulletin issued today, a female victim had contacted police on April 4 to report that she had been sexually assaulted while staying at an unnamed women’s shelter in Windsor, Ontario. The suspect, who was also residing at the shelter at the time, is alleged to have climbed into the victim’s bed and sexually assaulted her. 

The suspect has been identified by Windsor Police Service as 32-year-old Desiree Anderson, who may also be known as Cody D’Entremont. 

Anderson was the subject of a police search today, but turned himself in just hours ago.

The case bears some resemblance to a crime which occurred in Parry Sound, Ontario just last year. 

In October of 2022, it was reported that a woman was allegedly raped by a sex offender at a women’sshelter after the predator identified as transgender in order to gain access to the facility.

Shane Jacob Green, 25, was arrested on August 24, 2022, by Ontario Provincial Police (OPP). At the time, the OPP issued a notice stating Green had been charged with two counts of sexual assault, four counts of failing to comply with a probation order, and one count of failing to comply with a release order. But it was later revealed that the crimes had occurred while Green was staying in a local women’s shelter.

Despite Canada’s vast size, there is only one known single-sex shelter in the country.

Vancouver Rape Relief (VRR), located in British Columbia, is Canada’s oldest rape crisis shelter. In 2019 it was stripped of its city funding after asserting it had a right to provide services to females only. Trans activists successfully lobbied the city government to make the shelter’s funding contingent on accepting males who identified as transgender. 

As a result of its hardline stance on being exclusively for women in need, VRR was targeted by trans activists repeatedly in incidents of disturbing vandalism which included nailing the corpses of dead animals to its charity shop door.

[impressiverunaway]

Narcissistic Mother...who would have thought that?

Welp. I couldn't tell how long it has been since my last post. But welcome back to my nightmare rollercoaster of a life. It's not all bad, really. Like I promise, it's not all bad. There is so much Good in my life, honestly. Yet, I can't exactly enjoy it all, but I pray for the day that I can come. Patience, right? Within a week, I, broke off a relationship with an asshole/narcissist/both? - after he let me move out of state to take a swim, no, to drown in his lies. Made a 20hr+ drive with a pet, alone, in a stick shift. and? Landed myself back in a home with a psychotic, narcissistic, cunt of a mother. Did I know what I was moving back to? No. Just as I did not know what I was moving out of state in to. My brain just does not work in a normal way. The move did teach me a lot. Luckily, I cut my losses to about a month of time wasted before picking my life back up again here at home. Still a lot of moving pieces to be entirely back on my feet. I learned to set boundaries, ha- I learned my boundaries. I learned my lesson, finally, as to why relationships should not be rushed. That nothing should really be rushed.

"Anyone would have fallen (for his bullshit)" My therapist said. In my mind, I added "but I did not, and I got out.

I could really see my life just...ending...by staying. Living, but so, so hollow. Oh yeah, within this said week, if you've seen my older posts, that guy I was so angry with, running circles in my mind? Yeah-he's back.

I can't believe I pushed him away before.

Looking back, I suspect that the period of time I thought I loved my ex, I was discovering I had serious feelings for him. I did not see, feel, or think that until the day of, or so- that I broke things off with my ex and was on the road in less than 24 hours.

The things I thought about, the things I felt thinking about Him, unworldly.

I'm not going to get into why my ex was a piece of shit, you're just going to have to trust me on it. Probably same with my mom, maybe in time I will share more.... but it seems like a conversation meant for my therapist's ears only.

I'm not rushing anything this time around.

I'm thinking "I'm dumb". And reminding myself that I am doing my best. I pray for the day that I skip over thinking that I am dumb and remember that I am always doing my best at all times.

She's really insane, I don't mean that in an offensive way, how much one person can affect so many people.

Discovering this piece of information for myself has uncovered so much for me.

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

FYI, it terrifies the shit out of me knowing this is who my mother is and always has been.

like, this shit is genetic. I'm as confident as I can be, that I don't have it myself, but what if my child has it? How the fuck would that happen and how tf could I be able to handle that. Is it even worth the risk-If I'm ever able to fully heal and be in a place safe for children.

If I do land in a healthy relationship, with children, will I loose it all because I'm not 100%? I can't put kids in that situation, I can't put myself in that situation without being sure......and how can I be sure? Therapy.

------------------------------------ I am happier when I am not around mother. That's a fact. I have set boundaries- we are now in a roommate type relationship. Strangers. As it should have always been. *snort/scoffs* A boundary, of dozens, I've tried setting in the past. Always scared to be my true self to enforce said boundary due to false consequences. I'm creative, and I've got the vocabulary of a 90's rapper. --------------------

I know I said I wouldn't get into it, but, my Mother.

My own, fucking mother. She will deny it past the days she dies but-

My mother has been calling me a "Bitch" since I was 13 years old. Today, she called me evil,

Pure-evil.

My response?

She is lucky to be my mom.

&

It's a godsend I came from her.

P.S. You're dead to me.

*mic drop* -----------

Till next time, I hope all is well with you. That you are doing better than me. That maybe this helps you in some way.

take care. xoxo

[themonkeycabal]

Wandavision Ep 6 Spoilers

No really, spoilers. 

Previously on Wandavision — Wanda told SWORD to shove their drones right straight up their asses, Vision woke up to the reality that his utopian sitcom life was in fact a dystopian hellscape, their children were extremely creepy, and Agnes was being bizarre as hell and super sus. In the real world, Acting Director Dick was a dick, and Darcy and Jimmy welcomed Monica into their sciencey weird-crime-fighting team. Monica also mentioned an aerospace engineer she knows, which some suggest may be the first mention of Reed Richards in the MCU. I have conflicted feelings about the Fantastic Four. Mostly I never liked them. But, I'm open to revising my opinion.

Oh, and also X-Men 'Verse Pietro showed up suddenly and that was fun.

Anyway. the roommate and I tried to sort out a timeline — so Monica unBlips and goes back to work at SWORD three weeks later. AD Dick tells us Wanda stole Vision's body nine days previously. That means, just three weeks ago Wanda was in the middle of a battle, lost her boyfriend, was Snapped, was then unsnapped to fall right into the middle of another battle. Lost THREE additional teammates. And then sometime in the following week found out a shady government agency had Vision's body and she probably went "OH HELL NO". Because that's what I would say. So she goes to SWORD, dents a few doors, takes Vision's body and swans off to New Jersey. Look, she's been through a hell of a lot in the last couple weeks, is what I'm saying. I don't blame her a tiny bit. But, also, I don't think she's entirely behind this.

10-year old boy plus video camera = the 90s. Obnoxious opening credits. But, you know, I kind of liked them (as a one off). WAYYY better than last week's.

It's Halloween, and *sigh* Billy is breaking the fourth wall and narrating to the camera. There's childish twin bickering as you expect, Tommy's the wild and crazy twin, and Billy's the buttoned up twin. And Pietro is passed out on the couch at 4 in the afternoon. Living his best life. He teasingly scares the boys, chases them around, and there's awkward child acting.

Wanda comes down the stairs in the classic Scarlet Witch costume, and says she's a Sokovian Fortune Teller. Sokovia was more wild than I realized.

Genuinely funny flashback to Wanda and Pietro trick-or-treating in Sokovia as kids, 'the year we got typhus'. lol. Was it the fish that gave them typhus? Or was that just a special treat? Wanda doubts this version of events, and Pietro suggests she suppressed the memory due to the trauma. This gives Billy the chance to tell the camera that mom's been weird since uncle Pietro turned up to crash on their couch.

Next it's Vision's turn to appear in the classic Vision costume. Yikes. Wanda thanks him for humoring her, and he says there were no other clothes in his closet and they have a very weird second where he's not playing along and she's not sure what to do, and then he breaks into sitcom character says something about "just kidding, i know how much you love mexican wrestling" like it's a luchador costume, and then there's some super weird flirting. TMI you two.

Meanwhile, Pietro is a large child and the kids love him, of course. So there's that.

Back to Wanda and Vision, she's ready to take the kids out trick-or-treating, but Vision says he can't go, he's on the neighborhood watch and must patrol the streets ever-vigilant for wild gangs of child hooligans who might TP trees. He's gone off-script and it takes Wanda a second to figure out how to play this. She says it's the boys' first Halloween so he has to be there. Pietro breaks up the almost argument and says he can be a father figure-type and he'll help with the boys. Vision's still pretty off-script but Wanda doesn't fight it but looks uncertain, and he goes off to protect the night — or early afternoon.

Pietro is a child hooligan and wants to go do hooligany things with the kids. Wanda says he doesn't have a costume and he grabs Billy and they speed off only to return dressed in classic Quicksilver duds. Well, cheap-looking, thrown together Quicksilver duds. I laughed. The hair. lol. Good one.

Outside in the real world. The Hex field is still kind of glowing red and making bad force field noises. It only started doing that when Wanda got pissed in the last ep. Oh, goody, it's Acting Director Dick. I've learned his name is Hayward. I don't care.

Blah blah Stompy Mc-I'm-In-Charge blah. Monica is not pleased about the whole trying to kill Wanda with a missile while she was talking to her plan. AD Dick just says "now we know who we're dealing with". Um … what? You tried to kill her and her response was to tell you to go away. Yeah, boy, she's a monster.

Darcy is there to helpfully remind AD Dick that Wanda made him look like the fool he is. ILU girl. "Hey, there he is; the guy who almost got murdered by his own murder squad." Jimmy just makes a 'i'm so disappointed in you and your choices' face at him in the background.

I despise characters like Hayward. They are so tedious. Narratively they are there to incite conflict, but given the situation conflict naturally exists, surely there are other ways to bring up/drive that tension without the trope of the government heavy ready to solve the problem with the most extreme amount of force available to him. OH no! Our plucky heroes will have to find a way to save the day and fight the Man! Can they do it? Boring. It's too bad General Talbot went insane and then died; he could probably give tips on How Not To Be That Guy.

Anyway

Hayward wants to know if Darcy works for him and she's like "dunno my dude", Monica claims her, AD Dick says "which one of you is the sassy best friend" and Jimmy's like, that is quite enough Acting Director Not Very Nice Man. "There's no time to diminish your colleagues when you're about to start a war you can't win." AD Dick just wants to take out Wanda so the whole nightmare ends. Monica's like um, we literally do not know what's going on. Like, for real we have no clue. So that might not, in fact, end the nightmare, Director Murder Britches.

They argue a lot and Director Dick goes off the rails. Dude's like more unhinged than seems warranted. Unless he's just so embarrassed that he pissed himself when Wanda returned his murder drone to him, he's decided SHE MUST BE DESTROYED FOR THE GOOD OF … NEW JERSEY AND MY SOILED UNDERWEAR OR SOMETHING. 

"Captain Rambeau, you are an impediment to this mission!" Oh no! He's gonna tell her all about how hard it was to survive in a post-blip world, all those lucky blipped don't know what it was like! You just can't understand! Monica tells him not to use that as an excuse to be a coward. I'm so bored with this scene. Let me guess, the trio will have to go behind his back to save the day.

"Maybe it's a good thing you weren't here with your mother died. Because, clearly you don't have the stomach for this job." … non-sequitur much? Or is he saying she would have inherited the Director-ship (which should probably not be how that sort of agency works, let's be real). Is this scene five hours long, or does it just feel that way?

The Dick banishes the trio from his base.

"Hayward is way over-stepping his provisional authority". Jimmy Woo, you're so great. Monica says he's up to something. Yeah a tactical nuke and murder. Clearly he doesn't want to actually solve the problem, he just wants the problem to go away with a big show of macho explosions and whatnot. I suspect he might be in over his head, like he was not meant to be Acting Director, let alone Director. Also, he's a boring cliche stereotype and I loathe it.

JIMMY! I legit did not see that coming. He just pure hauls off and clocks one of the soldiers escorting them off the base, to a transport truck or something. Monica seems just as surprised for a second but then she's like "hell yeah!" and jumps in. Darcy sort of stands back and watches. lol. "Why didn't anyone tell me the plan?"

Oh look, it's my shipping container! They put the soldiers in there. Guys, it was for Hayward. Come on.

The trio disguise themselves with ponchos, which is a big step up from the usual MCU disguise of "baseball hat". That was a good bit in Ant-man and the Wasp "it's not a disguise, it just looks like us at a baseball game" (I watched that like last week. I missed Luis). Anyway …

Back in the sitcom world. The kids are ready for their early afternoon trick-or-treating. They're still talking to the camera. It's so awkward. I'm not a fan. I get it's meant to reproduce the very 90s Nick-era sitcoms and so, you know, it's spot on. Still, though.

Pietro is encouraging and supportive. "Unleash hell, demon spawn!"

Dang there are a lot of kids in that neighborhood. Wasn't Vision wondering last episode why there weren't any kids? Is the program correcting itself?

Wanda tries to test Pietro, asking him about some kid at an orphanage when they were kids. Pietro calls her on it, and says he knows he looks different. Wanda wants to know why that is. He says, "You tell me. I mean, if I found shangra-la, I wouldn't want to be reminded of the past, either." Hmm.

The kids speed off with uncle Pietro. Wanda wanders over to talk to neighbor Herb, who has a g-man earbud in and is clearly part of the neighborhood watch. In the background Pietro is stealing all the candy and smashing pumpkins and spraying the place with silly string. The hijinks are so wacky. Wanda tells Herb maybe Vision can help out with the chaos, and Herb says Vision isn't on duty. Oh no, he lied to her!

Herb goes weird "is there something I can do for you, Wanda? Do you want something changed?" Hmmm.

Elsewhere Vision is wandering the wild streets of Westview. He finds people caught in some type of weird decorating loop, the woman seems trapped but aware.

Commercial time!  What the fuck was that. "Yo-magic! The snack for survivors." No, really, what the fuck.

Night has fallen, the twins and the twins walk the streets. Wanda's making the boys give back all the candy they stole. She says Pietro is a bad influence. He says "I'm just trying to do my part, kay? Come to town unexpectedly, create tension with the brother-in-law, stir up trouble with the rugrats, and ultimately give you grief. I mean, that's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"What happened to your accent?"

"What happened to yours? Details are fuzzy, man. I got shot like a chump in the street for no reason." AHAHAHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHA! no really AHAHAHAHAAH! Thank you, Pietro! Holy shit, perfect. That's some delicious shade. I expect to see this gif'd fifteen different ways when I load tumblr today.

"Next thing I know, I heard you calling me. I knew you needed me."

The kids interrupt. And now all of a sudden Tommy can zoom. Character development!

Everyone is so careful to give Wanda what she wants. Why? She's not cruel. Who wants to keep her pacified? And whoever it is cannot possibly be pleased with AD Dick messing things up. Assuming it's an outside or outside-ish force/entity, of course. I mean, I don't think she's doing this entirely, she might be the battery powering it, but despite her thing last episode to get SWORD to leave her alone, she does seem a little confused about the where, why, and how things are going.

"Don't go past Ellis Avenue." Just a kid thing or a boundary of the sitcom control world?

In the real world, our heroes are sneaking through a tent city and into the server room. The scene with Pietro and Wanda discussing his accent is playing in the background. Darcy seems put-out that Pietro was recast. lol. "He brought the wrong face."

Darcy hacks into Hayward's devices. "Hayward figured out a way to look through the boundary." "And he didn't share it with the group." I don't like Hayward. 

Something is blipping on the map on the computer. Jimmy asks if it's Wanda, but Darcy says "it's tracking the decay signature of vibranium". So Vision. Monica wants to know why Hayward is tracking Vision. Well, I'd super like to know what SWORD was doing with Vision in the first place, because they weren't just storing him, they were doing something. So …

Jimmy notices that there are other dots, the ones closest to Vision, who are other residents. Jimmy says the ones near the edge of town are barely moving.

Back to Vision. He's found a cul-de-sac to patrol. Everybody's frozen in place, the street lights flicker. Eerie. They're all dressed for Halloween. Does this mean the field is shrinking, or the effects spreading and so it's closing in, slowing and then freezing people who were earlier moving about just fine? Vision is unaffected by this whatever it is. He turns himself into himself and flies off, up above the town. part of the town is dark, and part alive with voices and laughter.

He spots a car at the edge of town. It's Agnes. She seems frozen-ish, but when he asks what she's doing there, she says "Town Square Scare. Where is it?" all robotic like. Vision helpfully tries to give directions. lol. "Took a wrong turn, got lost" she says.

Vision touches her head and she wakes up. "You! You're one of the Avengers. You're Vision. Are you here to help us?" "I am Vision. I do want to help. But, what's an Avenger?"

Hmm. Well, I guess he did say last week that he couldn't remember anything before Westview.

"Am I dead?" she asks. "No, why would you think that?" "Because you are."

What was news coverage after the Snap like, do you suppose? I mean, ridiculous, of course. But, like, I think they had bigger problems then wondering about snapped/dead Avengers, didn't they? Well, maybe not. "WHERE ARE AVENGERS TO HELP US?" or "HOW DARE THE AVENGERS NOT HELP US!" "TOTALLY THIS IS ON THE AVENGERS!" "WE'D ALL BE DEAD WITHOUT THE AVENGERS!" "NUHUH! BOO AVENGERS!" "EXCEPT VISION WHO DIED HEROICALLY, WE ALL LIKE THAT AVENGER!" "TONY STARK AND PEPPER POTTS SHARE THE DECORATING TIPS THAT TRANSFORMED THEIR RUSTIC RESTORATION PROJECT INTO A CHARMING FAMILY HOME".

Agnes starts screaming "Dead" at Vision. She's not coping well. Vision says he's going to try and reach outside town and try to figure this all out. "How? No one leaves. Wanda won't even let us think about it." I SUSPECT YOU, AGNES! Why would Wanda keep everybody trapped and miserable? I could see if she did it on accident, but this implies she's purposefully hurting people. I don't buy it. Agnes, again, seems to be in the right place at the right time to make Vision doubt Wanda. You're a very suspicious character, Agnes.  

She starts to laugh. "All is lost." Vision touches her had and she resets to sitcom Agnes. Somehow she can move again, she turns the car around on Ellis Ave and heads back into town. So, that answers that.

Vision walks across the Eillis Ave to the field beyond.

Meanwhile, Darcy continues to hack. Monica gets a text and says "that's it! My way back into the Hex will be here in an hour." Jimmy's all ready to boost a ride to take her to meet her aerospace buddy. But, Darcy says, nope. Can't do it. Monica's been through the Hex twice, and it's rewritten her cells. "It's changing you." Monica is undaunted. "I know what Wanda's feeling and I won't stop until I help her." Alrighty then.

Jimmy's finally going to get to hotwire a car! But wait, Darcy's not going with them. AD Dick has something hidden behind one last firewall. Darcy thinks it's big and can help them. She's going to find it.

I don't think Jimmy had to hotwire that humvee. It just started right up. Motorpool, pfft - they always leave the keys.

Back in Westview. Halloween continues at Town Square. Pietro asks Wanda where she was hiding all those kids. Whu? Says Wanda. "I assume they were all just sleeping peacefully in their beds. No need to traumatize beyond the occasional holiday cameo, amiright?" What is Pietro. "Hey don't get me wrong, you've handled the ethical considerations of this scenario as best you could. Families and couples stay together. Most personalities aren't far from what's underneath. People got better jobs. Better haircuts for sure."

"You don't think it's wrong?"

"Are you kidding me? I'm impressed. It's a pretty big leap from giving people nightmares and shooting red wigglywoos out your hands." No, really, what is Pietro? "How'd you even do all this?" Hmmm.

"I don't know how I did it. I only remember feeling completely alone. Empty. Just endless nothingness." She looks back at Pietro and for a second he's dead Pietro. Poor Wanda.

Darcy continues to hack Hayward's systems. Cataract classified weapons something something. They're still tracking Vision. Who continues his walk across the field and comes to the hex. He tries to push through it. Looks painful. SWORD rolls out to go overreact at him. He makes it through the barrier, kind of. It's a struggle.

Hayward standing there looking like a jackass "he really does want out, doesn't he?" Like he’s just amused by this turn of events, or watching a lab rat try to get out of the lab. 

Darcy's standing behind watching all of this. Bits of Vision sort of fly off and back into the Hex. Darcy says "oh no!" and runs towards him, screaming for them to help him. Way to give away your sneaky hiding, girlfriend.

In Westview. Billy looks up, he can hear what's going on outside. "I hear daddy in my head. He's in trouble."

Vision calls for help, while SWORD prioritizes arresting Darcy. Phil Coulson would never have behaved like this. Boo to SWORD. Vision is dissolving. It's kind of gross and sad.

Wanda asks where Vision is, and Pietro interrupts "Don't sweat it, sis. It's not like your dead husband can die twice." Wanda wallops him with some red wigglywoos.

Billy sees soldiers and thinks Vision is dying. Wanda stops everything and makes a big red boom. The Hex appears to be expanding. Whoops, now you've done it AD Dick. He runs away like the brave brave guy he is. They leave Darcy handcuffed to a jeep. "Are you serious right now?"

The Hex overtakes Vision and then Darcy. Trapped soldiers become clowns, and we're in the circus. Well, SWORD seems like a circus, so Wanda's not wrong. I'm pretty sure Jimmy and Monica made it, but sadly the bravest Director who ever braved also escaped. He deserved to be a circus clown. Better luck next week, Wanda.

Credits.

Well, I just don't know anymore.

Hayward doesn't care about Wanda, except where I think because of this someone will figure out what he was doing to Vision's body. And Vision is ultimately the thing he cares about in all this. I hope Wanda drops a house on him.

Hmmm.

Quit suggesting I watch Age of Ultron next, Disney. It’s not happening. 

[ma-gic-gay]

Leaving a former assassin turned mob boss alone with his thoughts and anger about his... Whatever him and Carly are, since that seems to change every ten minutes going through what she went through, is a stupid idea. Especially for two hours.

It's either that or confront the fact they've kissed and had sex in the same 24 hours.

Not exactly the most friendly things to do.

This is exactly what he's not supposed to be thinking about, yet it's what he's thinking about while he's sitting in a chair at the hospital.

Turns out that when he's not doing illegal things, he can actually have time to think and not freak out about the cops finding out what happened. Time to think about them and how he doubts they'll ever go back to normal. A one night stand is one thing, a kiss after you get kidnapped and raped is a completely other thing.

Go figure, the one person who he could willingly discuss this with is the same person who he can't right now.

Maybe talking about this with Sam would work?

Nope, scratch that. Even though she's moved on from their relationship, they're not that close of friends and really only hang out for their kids sake.

If this was a year ago, he'd say he should go to Sonny, since he can't go to Carly about it. But then again, if it was a year ago or if Sonny hadn't vanished, been presumed dead long enough for even Carly to believe it (which meant he, by extension, believed it finally as well), last night never would've happened. Not in a million-

Alright maybe it would've happened but he doubts it. After all, a year ago, he was with Sam and Carly was with Sonny.

Does this count as a betrayal, sleeping with her? Not like conceiving a child on his biological brother's grave with the woman who's the reason he's dead. Or knowing that your best friend is in love with someone but sleeping with her anyways out of horniness.

Maybe he's still a little bit mad about those things.

Or a lot bit mad.

Thinking of all the times Sonny's betrayed him is definitely not helping the fact that anger is just about the only emotion he's feeling right now. Notably, that comes with the exception of confused and that one's only because he's seriously confused about what the hell him and Carly are right now.

Just thinking about what she must be going through right now... It makes him so furious he could take someone out for even mentioning the word. Or something negative even in the slightest bit about her.

That last part might be a telltale sign he needs to do an evaluation of his feelings for her but after this. Probably should right now, but he doesn't want to.

Even the mention of what happened to her, which is spreading through the hospital like wildfire (whoever spread that information first is on his shit list and that is not a good place to be), makes his blood boil.

Cyrus did that to her, he decided to treat her like an object. Like she's some disposable thing, that after he had his fun with her she'll be killed to hurt his business competitor. And the fact that he'd managed to scare her, that he'd managed to do something so difficult he thought it would never happen again unless something happened to one of her kids or him. That part makes him want his head on a stick outside his front door.

And the only reason he did it is to hurt Jason, to make him feel hopeless and in despair and angry and hurt. The only reason she went through that is because of him. That's the worst part, for him, that he's responsible for her going through that, that it's his fault. Even though he knows that's not how it went down, that he's not responsible for Cyrus's actions or her kidnapping and rape, that's sure as hell what it feels like. It feels like everything's getting blurry, like the lines he had drawn in his life are bleeding into each other.

Keep her safe, that was always his number one rule. Even if it meant getting hurt himself (which it normally did), keeping her safe has always been his priority. It's why he tries, unsuccessfully, to shelter her from the mob.

When she needed him, really needed him, he couldn't do that for her. He wasn't there when she needed him the most, when she needed him to save her and get her out of that situation.

No matter how you frame it, what he's doing is beating himself up for something that he knows to be his fault. Maybe if he'd been there, sent someone else to deal with Florence and stayed at the house with her, he wouldn't be dealing with this right now. Maybe then, she wouldn't have been kidnapped and raped.

"Jason?" Britt asks him, noticing he's zoned out. "She's fine. Carly's not pregnant and we gave her a pill just in case to prevent against it. She doesn't have HIV or any other STD's, I ran a full test. As far as I can tell, her uterine health is great right now."

"Thanks, for the update," he thanks her, remembering where he is. "Can I, uh, can I go see her?"

"Yeah, the sedative wore off and she's been complaining and crying for a few minutes. She's in room 3115," she tells him, noting the relief and pain on his face. "You doing okay?"

"What matters right now is whether Carly's okay or not." Jason answers her quickly and his feet take him to the room she's in, somehow. He doesn't even know this hospital that well.

That's new.

"I woke up a few minutes ago and they told me they were looking for you, where were you?" Carly asks, aggravated.

"I was in the lobby," he tells her, wiping away her tears as they come. There's a look of relief on her face through everything, which doesn't surprise him in the slightest.

"Why didn't they let you in before the sedative wore off? I thought I'd been taken again, I was yelling for you," the blonde complains.

"Apparently I'm a hard guy to find."

"You have seven black shirts, seven pairs of blue jeans which you haven't replaced since the 90s, and a leather jacket. That's pretty much all you ever wear. I can't remember the last time you wore a suit. Or a shirt with any color in it at all. How hard could it be to find you?"

"You're just saying that because you always know where I am. It's a sixth sense of yours."

"True. Maybe it's time to spice up your wardrobe with some colorful shirts. We could start with blue and then ease into colors like yellow or white eventually," she suggests cheerfully.

"Carly," he warns. "I like my clothes."

"I know you do, but you need more variety in your life, Jason," Carly argues.

"You keep life interesting enough, trust me," he assures her. "I'm sorry for what happened to you tonight, you know that, right? It's my fault, if I'd gotten there sooner or I hadn't left you alone, this never would've happened."

"No, it's not. Cyrus would've gotten me another way, or he might've gone and snatched one of your kids. Danny, Scout, Jake, they don't deserve that. Neither did I, but if that happened to one of your kids? You wouldn't be able to live with yourself and he could've killed them easier. At least with me, I'm alive. Severely traumatized, but alive," Carly says, hugging him gently as to not hurt herself.

"Yeah but if I'd been there to protect you-"

"Then he would've gotten to you another way or waited until you went to sleep or went back to your dull apartment where the only piece of decor is a moss bowl. I'm a target, alright? We've known this for years, and what happened to me is not your fault. It's as much my fault as it is yours. No one deserves what he did to me, not even that dirt bag himself, and you cannot blame yourself."

"He did this to you as a way to hurt me!"

"And if Sonny were still around it would've been as a way to hurt Sonny. He hates me, alright? Cyrus hates me so much he wanted to hurt me, just as bad as he wanted to hurt you. It's not your fault that he's a monster." She attempts to help him see that it's not his fault, but he doesn't.

"The only reason you know about this business is me. Practically every bad thing you've gone through, Carly, is because of me by extension," he tells her, feeling a tear slip out of his eyes.

"You didn't force me to be a part of the business, Jason. Hell, it was your worst nightmare. I made that choice for myself, to marry Sonny and, when he died, helping you run his territory. I knew the risks and I did it for me, for you, for my family."

"For me?" Jason asks, confused. "How do I factor in?"

"How do you factor in? You're my family and you needed help. Of course I was going to help you! Even when you tried to talk me out of it," the blonde continues, smiling widely.

"That help could've come with Max or Milo or someone else."

"And there's a reason it came in the shape of me. You trust me more than them, even with this business," she smiles.

To be continued when school ends because FUCK IT'S BACK NO

@ryleighjosephine

[pallidmask]

To a certain degree you could look at the entirety of Star Trek and go, "This is about neurodivergence. This is about if someone thought a different way, or was experiencing the universe in a different way, or is a conscious entity with an alien frame of reference." And because it's primarily from a humanist perspective, it takes that idea seriously and with empathy towards the people being discussed. ('Devil in the Dark' is probably the exemplar here.) So no wonder it (and other SF/F more generally) is popular with people who feel alienation from neurotypicality. But yeah, I also came from a spec-ed background, and Statistical Probabilities is absolutely reminding me of a bunch of people I've met and been friends with, and to that degree might seem a little heavy-handed as a metaphor for it 25 years later, but in retrospect I think there's an interesting core idea to it, especially if you remember that these people are like this because someone (their parents, presumably) bought into an anti-humanistic ableist ideology (somewhere between whole-hog eugenics, or to use its 90s SFnal manifestation, transhumanism, and regular ableist assumptions of a 'meritocracy') and got them invasive surgeries as a result. So at some level, they've been indoctrinated with this ableist assumption about how society works and what they're 'meant' to do (be better than everyone else!) and in response are told that that's a fake or immoral idea, which nevertheless is one that overhangs and defines your entire life! For a contemporary example, imagine your parents want you to be a child star and got you plastic surgery to make you more conventionally attractive? How hard would it be for you to actually put aside thinking about and judging people based on their looks, or even internalize the idea that appearance should actively be *disregarded* in how you treat someone? And of course Bashir, in *hiding* his alterations, isn't talking about them with counselors or whatever, so *he's* never really getting therapy about it during his formative years. (Unless getting trapped in a nightmare by a Lethean counts as 'therapy.') So untangling the implicit ableism that literally defined his life (remember, he joined the apparently-least-egalitarian organization in the Federation!) hasn't happened. And then he meets Jack. I know many Jacks. I've been Jack. I am extremely cautious when upping my ADHD med dosage because I don't want to be Jack again. And Jack is a pitch-perfect satire of that type of guy. And Jack 100% still believes in that fundamentally ableist set of assumptions about how things *should be* and is resentful at the entire world for not letting him run everything forever. (Because, let's face it, Jack is the kind of person who would trap himself in the Remember Me dimension by overclocking a warp drive if left alone for five minutes. I know Jacks. I've been Jack.) But Jack wants to deal with his feelings of victimhood by proving the ableism right: proving he should be *better* than everyone just because he's "smarter" than them, and that his caregivers (who he resents for dealing with him like he has no self-control, because face it, he doesn't) *are* in the wrong for not letting him do what he wants. He literally plans to determine the political destiny of billions of people he thinks he's smarter than, rather than doing what even the Vulcans* would do - work with everyone else and come to some sort of consensus on policy. And I think that the idea is that that speaks to a part of Bashir - of Jules - that probably still feels deep down like a powerless victim of circumstance rather than someone who is judged by his accomplishments and character. Any good guest character in a show like Star Trek has to, at some level, act as a foil or temptation to the main character, and that's what Jack is.

*who, let's face it, are framed by star trek as 'objectively better than humans' in nearly every 'abledness' category.

There's a thought/theory/whatever I've long had about a specific pair of episodes from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ever since I was a teen, and I'm putting this post out there to see if anybody else had the same thought.

I think Julian Bashir from Deep Space Nine, especially his plotline about having been genetically altered at a young age, is a commentary on neurodivergency.

Bashir is characterized as being highly intelligent, albeit lacking in social insight. He excels in academic matters but frequently finds himself floundering around women, being led by the nose by more charismatic people, and not picking up what other people are putting down. This alone would make him the average stereotypical TV depiction of an autistic person, but what I want to focus on is the episode that provides a canonical reason for these traits: the season 5 episode Doctor Bashir, I Presume.

In this episode it's revealed, or retconned really, that Bashir owes his intelligence to genetic tempering. Bashir originally suffered from a learning disability. He was not as intelligent as other children his age, falling far behind his peers, and his parents resorted to illegally altering his genes to "cure" that disability. As a result he instead became exceedingly intelligent. In essence, it took away a symptom that made his life more difficult, and traded it for one that made him more functional.

That episode on its own isn't a super strong nod towards autism. Though it does establish that Bashir is at least neurodivergent, it's more a discussion on eugenics and the theoretical ethics of removing disabilities through genetics. What I really want to focus on is the sort-of-sequel to this episode, and the only other episode that really focuses on these themes: the season 6 episode "Statistical Probabilities." In this episode, Bashir sets out to help other people who underwent genetic alteration, but for whom the treatments didn't go as well. The people he meets all display symptoms of one neurodivergency or another. One of them is very hyperactive and lacks empathy, another is very childlike despite being an old man, and another is entirely unresponsive.

For me, as someone who grew up in special education, I couldn't help but recognize some of the people I knew. To me, the metaphor was clear: "genetic alteration" was really just sci-fi talk for neurodivergency. Julian was the savant, the high-functioning autistic person who successfully integrated into society, because his neurodivergency gave him intelligence and insight that made him useful. And the others weren't as lucky, struggling to lead normal lives because their symptoms impeded their ability to function by themselves.

Bashir spends the episode trying to prove that the other genetically altered people have something to offer society, that there is a place for them. It felt very on the nose to me. But no one I've seen talk about this pair of episodes ever seemed to have taken from them what I took from them. I can't find anyone else online who interpreted the episodes the same way. Maybe my perspective is very particular, as someone who spent so much time in special education growing up, and who has personally struggled with finding a place where I can offer something to others. But idk. Am I seeing allegories that aren't there? What do yall think?

[myhauntedsalem]

True Ghost Stories and Tales of the Supernatural

1. A Baby Crying

“When I was in high school, my uncle would throw me a couple bucks to help babysit his kids with my aunt. They lived in a two-story house by the water, nice area. The kids were about 3 and 6, respectively.

One day I was sitting in their den on my phone when I started to hear a baby crying. Thinking it was the three-year-old, I headed to the bottom of the stairs to check and see if my aunt was up there dealing with it. I called for her a couple times with no response. The baby kept crying. I called for her one more time, and when I got no response I started walking up the stairs. Then I heard my cousins and aunt playing outside.

All the hairs on my body stood up and I literally felt a chill run down my spine. I quietly turned around, walked down the stairs, got in my car, and drove away. The ‘baby’ was still crying when I closed the door behind me.

A few years later I was drunk at a family party and told my uncle the story. He told me that he and his wife used to hear the baby too, and apparently, the previous owners had a kid die of SIDS in that room upstairs. He’s uber Catholic and had a Mass said for the baby. He said after that it never happened again. Still gives me the willies when I talk about it though.” – urgehal666

2. The Man with the Suitcase

“I was 13 years old and drinking lemonade with my best friend in my kitchen. We were alone. From where we were seating we could see a corridor that leads from the front door to the backyard. We were talking and something made us shut up. We looked to the corridor and there was the shadow of a man walking by with a suitcase. I know she also saw him because we both described the same thing: a tall shadow with a suitcase

Fast forward to a few years later, I had to do a school project with another girl. Again I was alone at home, working on the computer when she arrived. She then asked me where my dad was. When I told her my dad was away, at work, she asked me, ‘Well, then who’s the man I saw walking downstairs and carrying a suitcase when I came in?’

So far, no one else from my family has seen him. I haven’t seen him again ever since, but for a while it really scared the shit out of me to be home alone.” – rraarraarraasputin

3. The Exorcism

“I work as a paramedic, got a call to a church, the retired nun who still lived at the church was having some issues. The priest was attempting an exorcism when the family got a state order to get her into a psych facility. We got her into the back of our ambulance and all was fine. Then this 92-year-old, 90-pound woman ripped out of her leather restraints and started speaking in a voice no human could produce. She then told me that her commander in the war had burned and buried her alive during the war when defending France against the Germans.

The whole presence was terrifying and gave me nightmares for years to come. I told my partner to use the lights and sirens so I could get out of there as fast as possible. During the whole transport, she was speaking in weird tongues.” – rbilly0001

4. The Morgue Door

“Used to work hospital security and we had video cameras accessible in the office.

During body escorts, we kept finding the morgue door open. That was weird because it was a heavy door that could only be opened with a keycard. Pathologists were blaming security and security was blaming pathologists for leaving it open, as we were the only two groups with access. I did a body escort one day, made sure to close the door behind me and went back to work. Not even a half hour later, the office got a call bitching that the ‘last guard left the door open.’

I swore up and down I didn’t and went to check the cameras. The cameras showed me pulling the door shut, pushing on it and then wiggling the locked handle to ensure it was closed. I wasn’t even out of frame from the camera yet before we could see the door swing ALL the way open, hit the wall and then slowly swing shut until it was slightly ajar.” – LilithImmaculate

5. The Haunted Hotel

“Not me but a friend who is a pilot. She stayed at an older hotel downtown Chicago and was studying for her recurrent class which was in a few weeks. While at the desk, deep in thought, she heard people talking and laughing. When she looked up, it got quiet. She said it sounded like it was in the room with her and went back to studying. The noise started off softly and then again sounded like a party was going on in her room. She got up and looked around and there was silence. There were no sounds coming from any rooms, no televisions on, no radios, no people in the hallway – the noise was definitely in her room.

That night around 2 am, she was in bed and felt someone brush strands of hair from her forehead and tuck it behind her ear. She jumped up and turned on the light and there was no one there. She didn’t get back to sleep and bid around that overnight so she wouldn’t be in that hotel again.” – Sandbargirl

6. Echoes of the Past

“When I was little I saw a recurring ghost. She would appear for a split second and then vanish, but I could always perfectly recreate the image.

She was a short little girl wearing a frilly blue dress and a big red bow, blonde hair, blue eyes, large ears. A couple of notable sightings were her looking through my mom’s jewelry box and one peering through our glass door at me (with her hands over here eyes binocular style)

It never really bothered me and these happened for a while. A few years later at my Grandfathers house and we were helping him unpack his attic and I found a portrait of his long since deceased sister.

Not quite the same dress, slightly different bow, but the face was absolutely her. She had died as a child quite tragically so obviously I had never met her, but I did know of her but had never seen a picture of her before.

So, not a scary supernatural encounter but rather a heartwarming one knowing the great aunt I never met was saying hello.” – Omni_Omega

7. Alone in the Chuch

“I worked for my church for two years. One day, a coworker and I were closing up the church at the end of the day. By this point, doors were locked and we had checked every room to make sure no one was in the building. The church had two lobbies, one in each side of the building. They were connected with a long hallway lined with classrooms. As my coworker and I were turning off lights and double checking the doors in the one lobby, I looked down the hall and could distinctly see a boy (late teens to early 20s) in a blue plaid short sleeve shirt and khaki pants sitting in the chair. He had his hands folded and was looking at the ground as if in deep thought.

Initially, I didn’t think anything of it as this wasn’t an uncommon sight. I turned and in the second it hit me that we were the only ones in the building. I turned again and he there was no one (from the time that I saw him to when he disappeared all happened in about a second or two). I told my coworker what I saw and we both noped out of there quick.

Being that is was our first unexplained, potentially supernatural, experience, we were both pretty freaked out but we never felt threatened nor was the presence malicious in any degree.” – AgentMarks

8. The Escaped Prisoner

“I worked in a maximum security prison for awhile. I was assigned to central control one night, which is where the camera screens were.

One of the cameras was for the classifications room. I glanced at it and there was an inmate in there. This was super odd because it was two in the morning and nobody was supposed to be in there. Everyone that had keys to that room went home at 5.

Anyways, so this inmate is just sitting in there doing nothing. I got the sergeant’s attention and told him someone was in there and gave him the spare key to the room. He went to go check it out with a couple of other people, but by the time they got there, the room was empty. They searched for like 15 minutes but there was definitely no one in there.” – Bb21297

9. Calls From the Old Morgue

“My colleague used to work in a hospital and would often receive phone calls around 3am but no one would speak at the other end of the receiver. The number was from an extension somewhere in the hospital and when they looked it up, it was from an old morgue nobody has used in a while.” – manicpixiechick

10. The Footsteps

“When I was about 12 our family moved into a new house—new to us, actually quite old. It was in our same village but down a different lane.

Part of it used to be a bungalow so my room and my sister’s room were on the ground floor, down a long hallway. All of the ground floor had walnut flooring and there was a Persian rug outside the door to my room to avoid cold toesies in the morning.

Every night, around 11 or so, I would hear footsteps walking at a fairly slow pace right down the hall, from the end guest suite up past our rooms and away down the hall to the living room.

I was always in bed when I heard them, and so was everyone else. You know how you can tell who a family member is by the way they walk up the stairs, or open a specific door? I knew it wasn’t anyone in my family. Plus, it was the sound of outdoor shoes clacking on the wood and everyone in my family wore slippers inside the house.

I would hear the footsteps start, fairly loud on the wooden floor, way down the hall, come up past my sister’s room and then there would be a pause—while whatever it was walked over the rug. You could hear the gap in the footsteps, about three seconds, then they would start again on the other side of the rug and fade out as they walked down the hall away to the living room.

Then they would come back—same footsteps, break across the rug, resumed on the other side.

I don’t remember ever feeling scared, but I never ever went out to see what it was. I would fall asleep to the sound, it would go on for a really long time. It stopped about 3 or 4 weeks after we moved in and I never heard it again. I didn’t really think about it much after it stopped, but I’ve never forgotten it and as an adult it makes me shiver to remember it.” – KE-1930

[spookyseason24-7]

“Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.” -Wes Craven (on Newstalk)

 A good horror movie is one that sticks with you. One that makes you think twice before turning the lights off when you go to bed at night.  One that makes you nervous to close your eyes in the shower when you’re home alone. A good horror movie is one that sneaks into your dreams.

Off the top of my head, I can list some scary movies that have affected me in the ways listed above:

Older: 

-Darkness  Falls                        

-Nightmare on  Elm Street (all)

-Texas Chainsaw  Massacre

-IT

-Halloween (all)  

-Scream (1-3)

-Misery

-The Grudge

-The Birds

-The Shining

-Beetlejuice  (not ‘scary’ but one of my favs)

-The Exorcist  

-Candyman

-Child’s Play  (1)

-Carrie

 Newer:

-Hereditary

-IT

-The Conjuring

-Sinister (1)

-Evil Dead

-A Quiet Place

-Ready or Not  

-Saw (Excluding the Jigsaw movie)

-Insidious

-Oculus

-Happy Death  Day

-Bird Box

I left some major titles off these lists because this is all based on opinion, and like I said earlier, these are movies that elicited a response from me days and weeks after watching them.

These movies, both new and old, all have some common qualities; *a fantastic score, *original concept, and *good acting.

[Not all witchcraft is evil/dark and the media heavily portrays Satanism as witchcraft, so I just want to be clear that I understand this is not reality.] (Photo by Loren Cutler on Unsplash)

Now let’s talk about the movie that I STILL AM RAVING ABOUT.

Hereditary (2018)

This movie is one of the best horror films I have seen in years. The plot is full of symbolism and nods toward satanic rituals and dark witchcraft. The score is at the bottom of the list of this creepy thriller because it outshined by the acting of Toni Collette (Annie), Gabriel Byrne (her husband), Alex Wolff (son), and Milly Shapiro (daughter.)

Toni Collette and Alex Wolff really stand out in this creepy thriller which is based around the family grieving the death of Annie’s (Collette) mentally ill mother. As the movie progresses, the main characters each begin to have disturbing experiences linked to the sinister secrets that have been passed through the generations of their family. (No spoilers here.)

The fear this movie elicits from watchers is far from the usual ‘jump scares.’ Actor Alex Wolff has said that he suffered from PTSD after shooting.

This movie hits all the qualities that I consider after watching a scary movie:

Original plot (Basic slasher movies are great but vastly overdone now)

Noteworthy acting (Something that should be a given, but I have watched enough B-list horror movies to know that it isn’t) 

Solid score (Music is everything for tone in film)

I watched this movie with my mom, boyfriend and best friend and while I am the only real horror fanatic in this group, here are some of their thoughts on it:

“Please don’t even ask me about this, you know I had my eyes closed for 90% of it and I’m still afraid of the dark corners in my house.” -My mom, who hates scary movies.

“This movie is a subtle horror film with a lot of layers, something you don't find in more conventional horror movies. I have never seen anything like this.” -My best friend who is big into movies with complex plots.

“I just felt so uneasy for the entire thing, like I could sense when something bad was going to happen but was entirely what those bad things were. Shit was traumatizing. You pick good movies babe.” -My boyfriend who falls asleep within the first 15 minutes of nearly every movie we watch together. 

Don’t take my word or their word for it, watch the film for yourself. And then be ready to check all the corners in your house before you go to sleep.

[m1lkt3e]

Idk what to title this as but it’s a WIP for an upcoming fic.

TW for mentions of death and guns

...

Trapped in this...Prison, if you like to call it. But at least I have Soda, my brother on my side. I’m 15 now. Wow...It’s been three years already, three years since *it* happened. I remember it as if it happened yesterday...When I was 12…. ~~~ “Let’s give it E̶̢͕̞̫̞̰̝͙̙͝v̵̻̌ě̶̛̛̘̪̌͑͑͠ȓ̵̲͖͇̙̫̣͙̌̇ͅy̷̛̙̝̻͑̔̓͐̕̚͝͠t̴̩̃̆͊ḩ̸̛̟͈͔͖́̌̆ͅĩ̷͓̑͌̂ň̷̡̻̻̟͔͑̈́̋̅̕͝ĝ̵̛̭̯́̃̒͊̾̑̈̌ we g̷̛͙̞͖͇͋̉̉͂̐̍̒̚ͅǫ̶̥̮̂̑̾̈̄̅͘ẗ̶̖̩̝!̴̘̮̰͙̺̙̫͇̥̃̏͑͂̎̕͘͘ ̴͔̳͑̍͛͒͐̿͆̈́̚Ị̶̣̥͎͖̋ͅt̶̫͈͆͋̿͊̈́̀̽͗͝'̶̧̢͓̦͛̑̀̿ͅs̷̯̥̱̱̲̖̮̯͋̉̑̍̽͗̈́͜͝͠ͅ.̷͇̲̰̻̪̰͆̒͋͘.̴̗̙͐͑̃̔̇͝͝.̶̧̻̘͔̻̺̮͊͒̑̿͊̌͐̉̀͝ ₱Ʉ₦ł₴Ⱨ₥Ɇ₦₮ ₮ł₥Ɇ!!”

Their voice just sounded so...Glitchy, it wasn’t normal either...I vividly remember Yogurt sobbing. Just letting it all out. When they all just let down the gravel...It was over. It was fucking over. The masterminds are dead...We’re free...WE’RE FREE!

The excitement didn’t last long. ~~~ It isn’t *too* bad once you get around it, it’s mostly children around babies to legal adults, like Soda, I’ve haven seen any adults lately...Well except Soda of course.

“Do you feel...Bored?”

“No, why?”

“I don’t know,” I agitated the spoon around the mug in boredom. “It gets a little repetitive, y’know, three meals a day, sleep, then it happens all over again.”

“...Do you just want to escape?”

He was silent.

I found myself silent as well.

“What happened to everyone else?”

“...”

“...I heard that the third game fell into despair and now is destroying the world...Out of all people, why save us?” “Probably because it was their last hope.”

“But...If one god sacrificed themselves and they’re trying to restore hum—cookie life, why aren’t they doing enough?!”

“...”

“...”

Oh. Someone knocked.

I was still short, (Or, to be real, grew 2 inches.) so I still have to use extra support, but it wasn’t as necessary.

“Hello..?”

No response.

“Hello…???”

Ugh.

“Must be some prank.”

“Maybe.”

“Wait.”

I grabbed Soda’s wrist and glanced outside. Streets destroyed, remains littered, just...Ugh.

“Pe—”

“We need to leave.”

“Wait wha—”

“We need to leave, NOW. We’re all going to die here!”

I tugged on him, banging on the door to let us out.

“Let us out!! We’ll die here!”

It was no use.

We'll never escape.

I breathed heavily as I slid down the door, crying. I didn’t want to die here.

“Peppermint…”

“It’s no use..! We’ll be here forever! And—and…!”

“Peppermint.”

“H-huh?”

“You never gave in to despair right?”

“No..Why are you bringing that?”

“You’re 15. 15. You’re still here.”

“I guess you’re right..”

“Good.”

A clank was heard, then something opened.

“The door…!”

I got up, but Soda didn’t move.

“Why are you still standing there?! C’mon! Freedom’s right there!”

“Wait—Pepperm—”

“Well?!”

He sighed as he followed his sib.

——

“We’re out of there….Finally!”

“Do you not realize what DANGER could be out here?!”

“We can find an escape, and we can talk about it from there…but for now...

...Where are we?”

“...”

“I don’t know either, but we can walk around, I mean this place’s deserted anyways.”

We both started to walk, however, I was walking a little slower because I was still a bit out of breath.

“Where do we even look anyways?”

“We can just look around, of course being careful.”

“Ok..” —— “Wait—You never mentioned something.”

“What?”

“Those old wanted pictures...Who are they?”

“Oh them? They’re just the ‘high class’ except its a huge cult that every 4 years of so they all commit a huge massacre that basically kills the entire cookie species unless she makes a new batch, then they all commit suicide after. However, they all faked their deaths and now they’re fucking stuff up.”

“Are—are there any other survivors other than us?!”

“Not sure…”

“Let’s just keep walking.”

It took forever, but we found *some* way to escape.

“All the way over there..?! Shit—I don’t think my conch shell can do anything. Wait— Soda, do you still have your surfboard?!”

“Yeah—”

“Then c’mon! This is the only way of our escape!”

“You’re not thinking this th—”

“I am. Why do you think I’m going through this in the first place anyway?! Clearly the people that we call gods aren’t DOING ENOUGH. WHY SIT HERE AND LET THE WORLD GO TO WASTE WHEN WE SAVE IT WHILE WE STILL CAN?!”

“...”

“You can go your own way. I’ll go on my own.”

He didn’t bother questioning it, he went one way, I went another. —— I keep thinking,

‘How can I even—I can’t fight them all alone. Hell, I don’t even have any weapons to begin with! There’s at least 5 of them, and I’m pretty sure that one of them doesn’t even want to be there!

Are they even that powerful anyway? What the hell am I thinking?! Two of the members are the children of Dark Enchantress...No wonder why about 90% of the world is destroyed.

And where are all my classmates anyway?! I mean I get Squid Ink and Walnut because they’re still in the tower...Or at least one of them is. But where the hell is everyone else?! Mostly Yogurt Cream thought. Wait—why am I even worried about him?! He’s a spoiled whiny brat that doesn’t get far in life!

I’m pretty sure that everyone’s dead, because of them. No no, not the cult members, the ones from the third game, they got brainwashed or something on the lines.

Speaking of the brainwashed, they pretty much destroyed everything. Why wo—SHIT—Oh, nevermind. It’s just a rotting corpse.’

Ugh.

Wait—Is that one of the members? It’s kind of hard to tell…

I hid behind a destroyed part of a random building

“Is that the last of them?”

“Maybe.”

“I think I saw another one down the street, but it might be my imagination…”

“Hm alright.”

“Leader’s going to be proud of this…”

Good. They left.

I stood up, peeked over one last time, then ran across the street to a random building.

I breathed heavily as I felt like someone was behind me…

I’m fine…

Yeah. I’m fine.

They can’t kill me because I’m a child.

Even though I’m 15…

That counts as a child, right?

Someone, please tell me that counts as a child...Right…? Right..? Right?

Right?

——

The red lights dimmed for a second before turning up its brightness, blinding the cookie that was inside for a bit.

He blinked. He was pretty used to it by now.

The room was just red, he was just muttering to himself, a red room, like Satan's hellhole.

The only thing that he could really see was red.

It was just an all-white room with some type of lights that could change color with a remote.

Is this it?

Is this the hellhole he’ll be stuck in?

There is no escape to this anyways.

The lights turned up its brightness again, making him curl up and tried to prevent the lights from blinding him.

The lights stayed like that until it toned down. Not after shutting off after.

Well, the darkness is better than this.

But it wasn’t.

It keeps coming back.

It could grab him by the shoulders and he won’t know it.

He grabbed a hold of his lilac-colored hair with both hands and pulled on it. He couldn’t tell if he was crying or it was just sweat because of how humid the room was. He tugged on it for a bit longer before letting go.

Why was he even here in the first place?

He didn’t know.

It seemed like forever.

…. He forgot where he was at this point.

It just felt like a never-ending nightmare.

“Hey.”

He looked up. The door was open, a bright light blinded his eyes.

“Sorry. The lights stopped working, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll set you free.”

“...”

“Just enjoy the light for a bit while we fix it.”

This could be his chance!

Even though his legs are probably jello at this point, he still stood up and ran. He didn’t bother turning back. Even though he forgot the way the threw him in (Because he either forgot or he’s just stupid)

It was pointless running, but when he finally found the exit, he pushed it—well, not really because he lost all his strength.

He sighed, but he had to go. He can’t be here any longer.

… It was a rather large city, but almost no one was in sight, only drug dealers and loners walking down the street.

He slowed down his pace, by now he was far from the INC. by now.

He stopped walking to put up his hair, then sped walked after.

Zero coins in his pocket.

Fucking excellent.

It was dawn, he felt like someone was following him.

He ran.

He didn’t look back.

Well, he did,

But just to find no one there.

He sighed and kept speed walking.

…

He found a small bench, normally he would REFUSE to associate with anything that’s “below his standards” but this was an exception.

It was the only choice he had.'

He still missed lilac, hell, even Pomegranate. Y’know, the one who basically ruined his life. He just sat there, Just spacing off.

He took off his uniform jacket and tied it around his waist.

He was talking to himself, thinking about how everything Just went...Wrong.

——

Huh?

Is this another town…? And it isn’t destroyed?

Who’s that…?

“Hey!”

The cookie flinched, pretty sure they’re shaking, Wait—have I’ve seen this cookie before...They look familiar…

“Hey...It’s ok! I’m not one of them!”

“T-them?!”

“Um yeah!—The cult leaders? You know them??”

“H-how the hell are you just gonna walk up to a random person and ask them if they know that—that CULT?!”

“Ok ok sorry…But you still look familiar..Have I seen you somewhere before?!”

“Huh?”

“The killing games...Remember…? The project, you uhm...Didn’t wake up aft—”

“D-don’t remind me…”

“S-sorry.”

“Why are you so apologetic f—”

“Wait.”

“...”

“What happened to you..??”

“O-oh that...Uhm wh-where do I even fucking explain?! The entire ‘coma incident’, THAT, and I was kidnapped by some weird cookies that said that I’m ‘Associated with the cult leader.’”

“Hold on, ‘associated with the cult leader’?!”

“Yeah why?? Are you o-one of them too?!”

“W-what?! No! I’m from that building that keeps kids in to prevent further extinction of the cookie species until she makes another batch…”

“Oh.”

“...To prevent what happened years ago…”

“...”

“How come you aren’t dead, like the rest of them..?”

“I escaped.”

“Huh? Escape what?”

“I didn’t get kidnapped from them, but by some foundation that I don’t know the name of…But I would’ve killed myself if I stayed there...”

Oh.

“I still haven’t gotten—Wait, I think I remembered now...Yogurt Cream right?”

“Yeah—Wait, how did you get my name NOW?!”

“It’s been three years, of COURSE I’ll forget.”

“Fair…”

“How—how long had you been there..?”

He took a second to respond, looked like he was about to break down.

“Yogurt….How long have you been there…? When did they—they ‘kidnap’ you…?”

“Literally after a month, after all that happened—”

He broke down.

“W-why..out of everyone, they choose me…”

He looked up to me.

“Why couldn’t they have taken YOU?!”

“ME?!”

“You were associated with the cult leader the most..how aren’t you...you—”

“I WAS STILL A CHILD! I DIDN’T REALIZE WHAT THE HELL THEY WERE GOING TO DO AFTER! YOU CAN’T BLAME ME FOR THIS!”

“...”

“...”

“What did..what did they do?”

“N-nothing really. Just put me in this room and just kept me there for so..long.”

“Well..You’re out now...And god knows if they’re still following you.”

“...”

“Oh, and by any chance do you know this place?”

“No—No of course not. This was just a town that I randomly went to. W-what makes you think that I know where this place is?!”

“Ah, your stupidity is still there. Great.”

“H-hey! I’m not dumb!”

“Ok...You know what a vote is?”

“A..Vote...You still trade those with bear jellies…??”

“You’re hopeless.”

“D-don’t blame me! Blame those idiots that kept me in that prison for god knows how long!”

“That’s fair.”

“WAIT.”

“What now?!”

“We don’t have anything to defend ourselves…”

“Oh.”

“Where do we look..?”

——

Cult.

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Something that summons stuff? Imprisonment? Daily Russian Roulette that leaves poor innocent cookies dropping down dead? Anything?

You may think of a huge number of people, but this cult isn’t the case.

You see, this marks the third year, and usually, the cult doesn’t do the massacre until another year later. However, the Cult Leader, [redacted] was too impatient a full of despair to wait another year to start the massacre, so their twin sister, [redacted] ordered her to keep all the child cookies in a building, originally it was going to be underground, but due to no time and the leader running out of ideas, they choose a 60-floor building to keep them all in.

Oh, and for your information, the cult only has 5 members.

“Russian Roulette anyone?” the leader asked the other 4.

“No.”

“No thanks.”

“This is the third time [redacted], it’s getting boring.”

“Anything that leader wishes!” [redacted] sprouted up.

“Seriously [redacted]?!”

“You’re insane.”

“[redacted], dear, aren’t you bored of Russian roulette…?”

[redacted] leaned closer to her peers, then said in a low toned voice—

“I’ll do anything that [redacted] wishes. It’s our job to have their wishes granted. If they want to start the massacre early, let it be it. If they want to kill the children, we’ll kill the children.”

“I-I’m pretty sure that they don’t want to kill the children, [redacted]!”

“Yeah, he’s right [redacted]. There’s no point in killing the children if we just die altogether and no one’s on this terrible...thing of earth.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Since that’s out the way,” [redacted] slid the gun down the table, perfectly stopping in the middle of it. “Russian Roulette?”

“[redacted] for the 2nd time, no.”

“Ugh fine.”

“Guuuyyys if [redacted] wants to do Russian roulette then we should!!”

“[redacted], were not doing Russian Roulette for the third time this week alone!”

“You’re all boring, I swear.” [redacted] twirled the gun with their fingers and slid it across the room for some odd reason rather than placing it back in its case.

“Why are you so extra for it? All we said was that we didn’t want to play Russian Roulette for the third time this week alone.”

“Got any other suggestions then?!”

“We can ki—”

“[redacted] I swear to fucking god if you say ‘kill the children!1!’ I will unleash my almost whole-life pent up anger.”

“Ok ok sorry.”

“Fine fine, we’ll do it [redacted]. But this is the last time we’re doing it this week, ok?!”

“Oh good.” —— They were all sitting in a circle, with the gun in the middle of it. It was rather dimmed, but they all didn’t care.

Of course, the first to go was the cult ruler.

They pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing.

They sighed as they passed the gun to their twin sister. She pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing again.

This went on until the 4th round.

[redacted] pulled the trigger again.

Click.

“Again…?” At this point they were getting bored, it’s been 3 rounds and no one died yet.

Their older twin gave a low chuckle as they held the gun to her head and pulled.

Click.

“Hm.”

She passed the gun to the youngest of them, he did the same that [redacted] did and pulled.

Nothing.

He seemed to be relieved by that . His lover was next. She pulled the trigger. Another lick was made. The repeated clicking made [redacted] annoyed. There’s more clicking than shooting!

Finally, the last member of the cult went. She pulled the trigger.

BANG.

“...”

“There goes, Alchemist.”

“So you’re not going to do anything about it?! One of your members just died! From Russian Roulette!!”

“It’s despair fueling.”

——

“Where are we going first..?”

“How should I know? We should be a least far from...there..”

“There?”

“...I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s fair...I wouldn’t give advice anyways.”

“Wait wha—?!”

“Nothing.”

“W-whatever...”

“Hey...Since we’re on the topic of the Cu—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ah...S-sorry.” ——

“So what do we do with the body since this was [redacted]’s idea…?”

“Since my sibling isn’t here...I’ll put up a memorial for her…. She was close to them. When they said that ‘it’s despair fueling’, it isn’t ‘despair fueling’. They’re upset.”

“Wait, they’re upset?!”

“Yeah..? if they weren’t almost all of us would be dead by now.”

“Y-yeah, you’re right [redacted]...”

“Hm.”

“I’ll go talk to them. They open up to me more than most of you here.” [redacted] walked out the door, stepping over Alchemist's body.

[redacted] followed her, also stepping over the body.

~~~

“[redacted]?”

“...”

“Can we talk? It's important.”

“...”

“[redacted]?” She sat next, but kind of far from them, “Are you ok?”

“...” Nothing. “...Yeah.”

“Really…? Your tone says otherwise.”

“Mmhm.”

“Please actually talk to me.”

“I’m fine.” They turned to her. They open up more with their sister than anyone.

“Stop lying.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re being stubborn. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“...”

“Mom was right. I should’ve sent you instead of him. It’s a shame that I was your twin anyways.”

They walked out immediately after. [redacted] sighed and closed their door.

[redacted] laid down and hugged onto a pillow, nearly crying too.

——

“Where—where are we..?” I asked him, he seemed shaken up a bit but I didn’t realize.

He didn’t respond.

“...”

“Are...You ok..?”

“...Yeah.”

“Hm...M’kay.”

“Wait...Do you recognize this building..?”

“Wait... what..?”

“That one.” I pointed to a 50-story building. “Do you...Recognize it?”

“N-no...I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You sure..?”

“...Yes.”

“...Ok—hold on... Who’s that..?”

“...fuck.”

I turned to him, “What was that..?”

“Nothing. You heard nothing.”

“...Doesn’t that look like someone...Clearing a...Dead bod—”

“WILL YOU STOP TALKING ABOUT IT NOW?!”

I jumped, “Ok ok! No need to get aggressive…”

“Oh...Look who it is...My dear brother.”

“...”

“Hmm? You know this person?”

“...Unfortunately.”

“I believe we never met..Peppermint is it?”

“Huh? How’d you know my name?”

“My twin knows all about you..the traitor right?”

“Traitor..?”

“Yes…”

“Wait...I don’t know your name...So how can I trust you..?”

“Oh right...My apologies...My name is Pomegranate.”

“You already know my name so...I have a question…”

“Hm?”

“You know Yogurt? You called him brother earlier…So are you two related in any way?”

“Don’t bring—”

“Oh yes...Him and [redacted] are related to me...However, something happened between our childhood and I somewhat remained.”

“How’d you...remained? Were you the favorite child or something?”

“Possibly so…”

“Please stop talking about it…” Yogurt muttered under his breath, but neither of us heard him.

“Are there other people inside?”

“Yeah...If you were looking for the cult after all..”

“Wait...The cult?!”

“Yes. If that’s what you’re looking fo—”

“Yes. That was exactly what I was looking for.” I lied.

-Random time skip-

Pomegranate followed both of them into floor 49. It was pretty high up, as you can tell, you’ll get a great view of the destroyed city with dead bodies and blood everywhere.

“The leader is...Somewhere. They’re just upset.”

“Fair.”

“I don’t think you’ve heard of the others yet…” Pomegranate lowered her voice.

“Are they here?”

“Hold on. Stay here with my brother...ok?” I nodded as she walked off to a separate room.

“Why does she call you your—Hey…! Where’re you going?!”

He didn’t answer as he walked back to the elevator.

I sighed…

Pomegranate came back with two other cookies, who I’ve seen before...But I forgot their names. Definitely seen them before…

“Wait…Isn’t this the kid that the leader wants us to kill?” One of them asked.

“Wait what?! For what?!” I stepped back.

“Well get to that later, anyway, these two idiots members are Mint Choco and Cocoa.”

“Wait, what about that part that one of them said?! That the leader wants to kill me?!”

“Oh, [redacted]. You’re just in time...We were just giving introductions too…”

“...”

Seems like they’re not in the mood.

“Well, Uhm....This is my younger twin...Lilac aka the cult...leader.” it was awkward for a bit until they spoke.

“I could’ve done it but..thanks.”

They didn’t seem too grateful about it. About the time Yogurt came back, he wished that he would’ve just stayed there . “I-I thought you D-DIED—?!?!”

“Died..? You already forgot that those two games were simulators correct?”

“I—”

“Besides,” They sat at a near table, “how’d you escape..?!”

“W-why the fuck should I tell you?! You’re the last person I trust—!”

“I’ll just go…” I stepped back a bit, trying not to alarm the Cult.

“Where���re you going..?!” one of them grabbed me by the arm.

“Hey. We still need you for our family business~!” The leader said clapping their hands together.

“What?”

“What ‘business’...?”

“I know for a fact that there isn’t any ‘family business’.”

“Huh?! What are you talking about?! What family business?!”

“What? You don’t know what I’m talking about?!”

“No. What are you talking about Lilac?!”

[dweemeister]

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Italian director Sergio Leone made a name for himself worldwide with the Dollars trilogy of Westerns starring Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name. These movies, along with Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), had more stylized violence than the typical Hollywood Western, and audiences flocked to see what some waved off as pulp novelties. During this period, an idea had been reverberating in Leone’s mind; no longer could he ignore his imagination’s wills. Leone’s success led him to spend ten years working on this passion project, even declining an offer to direct The Godfather (1972). Based on The Hoods by Harry Grey, Once Upon a Time in America is a gangster epic filled with betrayal, crime, graphic violence, and regret. The film alternates between three time periods: the late 1910s/early ‘20s, the final three years of Prohibition from 1930-1933, and 1968. It is Leone’s most ambitious project after a thirteen-year absence from filmmaking, and his last.

In New York City’s Lower East Side, we follow a handful of young Jewish boys who engage in petty thievery, grow to complete contracts for organized crime, and later make their fortunes bootlegging during Prohibition. The film centers on David “Noodles” Aaronson (Robert De Niro as adult Noodles; Scott Tiler as a child). He is first seen in a Chinese opium den in 1933 after seeing three of his friends’ corpses – burnt beyond recognition – whisked away from a crime scene. A non-diegetic telephone rings during this wordless montage – a blaring, ceaseless ringing serving as an aural pang of guilt. That guilt will be gradually explained as the film progresses. Soon after this opium-induced retreat, Noodles will depart New York City for Buffalo. He will return decades later, his hair and soul fading, after receiving a suspicious invitation. Once Upon a Time in America’s first half concentrates on Noodles’ childhood, alternating with scenes from his 1968 return. The film’s second half intercuts between Prohibition and 1968.

Noodles’ boyhood friends are the protagonist’s de facto family. They include Patrick “Patsy” Goldberg (James Hayden as adult Patsy; Brian Bloom as a child), Philip “Cockeye” Stein (William Forsythe as an adult Cockeye; Adrian Curran as a child), Dominic (Noah Moazezi), and Maximillian “Max” Bercovicz (an excellent and up-and-coming James Woods as adult Max; Rusty Jacobs as a child). Fat Moe (Larry Rapp as an adult Moe; Mike Monetti as a child) is not part of the gang, but is nevertheless a friend who knows their secrets. The film also features Noodles’ young love interest, Deborah (Elizabeth McGovern as adult Deborah; a debuting Jennifer Connelly as a child) and friend/underage prostitute Peggy (Amy Ryder as adult Peggy; Julie Cohen as a child). Also appearing in the film are Joe Pesci (whose unclear role in the film is heavily downplayed in the European cut), Burt Young, Tuesday Weld, Treat Williams, and Danny Aiello. Louise Fletcher's cameo appears only in the most recent restoration.

Before continuing with this review, I want to note that there are multiple versions of Once Upon a Time in America available to viewers. Leone’s film debuted at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival with a runtime of 229 minutes (the “European cut”). For the American general release one week later, the film’s distributor (the Ladd Company, via Warner Bros.) cut the film to 139 minutes without Leone’s permission or input. The American theatrical cut – which was released on VHS in the 1980s and ‘90s and sometimes appears on television – rearranges scenes to play in a strictly chronological structure and removes essential plot details, essentially butchering Leone’s directorial intent. A 2014 Blu-ray release of Once Upon a Time in America includes additional footage bringing the runtime to 250 minutes, but the additional footage – due to the degradation of the original negative – appears worse for wear. This review is based on the European cut, which is the recommended print for all those seeing this film for the first time.

With a screenplay by Leone, Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, and Franco Ferrini, Once Upon a Time in America is told through the lens of an unreliable narrator in Noodles. How one views the film changes radically depending on which period should be considered the “present”. If the viewer interprets Once Upon a Time in America as using the 1968 scenes as its anchor, the film is an old man’s reverie – where a lifetime of guilt is revisited and ghosts are confronted. In this interpretation, are Noodles’ memories of his childhood and young adulthood sanitized to spare him further pain? How does he square with all the pain he has been responsible for? Or perhaps one might view Once Upon a Time in America using 1933, as Noodles retreats to the opium den, as the anchor. Here, the 1968 scenes become an opium dream or a nightmare, a painful future that may have been. If indeed this is an opium-induced dream (which would make the 1968 scenes nothing but a hallucination), does that make the childhood scenes even less genuine than in the former interpretation? That Leone and his writers never force the viewer down either avenue speaks to its thoughtful screenplay.

No matter how one reads this film, it requires complete attention. Characters age over fifty years, friendships are formed and destroyed, and innocence is forever lost. Whether it is viewed as an old man occupied by his violent past or a young gangster attempting to smoke away his pain, Once Upon a Time is awash in regret. As much as viewers might sympathize with Noodles, Leone’s film portrays Noodles’ violence as the result of terrible choices influenced by his friends. Granted, there is one occasion where he kills in self-defense. But even that killing is laced with rage and revenge. Faced with the choice between his friends and the money involved with their operations and being with Deborah, Noodles will attempt to have both. Deborah’s disapproval of the gang’s behavior – her opposition becomes more tacit as she ages – assures that Noodles retain some semblance of a conscience as Max’s arrogance permeates through all their friends. Neither fully committing to the appeals from Deborah or his friends, Noodles will lose both.

In the film, smoke or steam is usually present just before or during moments tinged of bittersweet memory. Whether emanating as puffs from an opium pipe, the steam billowing from New York City’s manholes on a frigid day, or discharges from a passenger train, it is a demarcation of an event that will irrevocably affect Noodles’ life. Potentially, due to the film’s openness to interpretation, smoke or steam may also herald moments where Noodles’ memories are most suspect – through conscious reframing of his story or opium-influenced phantasms. Either way, certain narrative threads are left incomplete, raising questions over whether those dangling characters and subplots were Leone’s original intention. Perhaps Leone here is acknowledging the voids in human memory – people and things half-forgotten. Unlike its genre counterparts, Once Upon a Time in America leaves little space for comic relief. Any levity in the film is snuffed out almost immediately due to monstrous lust, performative masculinity, or Noodles’ weariness. The elderly Noodles is stone-faced, wrapped into a world frozen in time the moment he boarded that train to Buffalo. His pain is omnipresent in Once Upon a Time in America. Even in the earliest scenes of his childhood, the years of rumination can be felt in the film’s deliberate pace. Robert De Niro and Scott Tiler, respectively, embody the older Noodles’ sorrow and the younger Noodles’ conflicted feelings.

Like American Western films, the gangster genre is rife with mythologizing and, at times, a glorification of their protagonists’ violent lives. Where Westerns over the last half-century have deconstructed their role in the American mythos, the gangster film – probably because gangster films were never as ubiquitous as Westerns at their respective pinnacles of popularity – has not done so nearly as much introspection. Before Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) and especially The Irishman (2019), Once Upon a Time in America stood mostly alone among gangster films as a rueful examination of its protagonist’s violent lifestyle. The film consistently undermines its characters’ celebrations and successes with the consequences of their prior actions. Those consequences weigh on Noodles still.

But Leone is not entirely successful in this regard. Once Upon a Time in America has two overlong rape scenes – both of which turned my stomach the longer they went on – following a fruitful robbery (this one follows an unsettling submissive fantasy by its victim) and a glamorous date, respectively. The two rapes are committed by Noodles; both scenes serve to highlight his descent into depravity rather than express a minimal concern for the victim. Once Upon a Time in America, already uninterested in developing its female characters beyond sex objects, frames Noodles as a husk of a man because of the murders and robberies he has committed, not his treatment of women. Just because the film has adopted Noodles’ viewpoint – in his childhood and young adulthood, he cannot differentiate between objectification and love – does not mean Leone and his screenwriters can wave away his misogyny as secondary to his violent tendencies. His misogyny and criminality are distinguishable, but both were learned from the same people and environment. This dynamic persists even from the first moment that Jennifer Connelly appears as the young Deborah. There, Deborah sexually teases the young Noodles in a way that neither reflects her personality as a child or as an adult. Is that the result of the opium clouding Noodles’ memory or is it Noodles’ obsession with Deborah?

Once Upon a Time in America is beautifully shot by Tonino Delli Colli (1966’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1997’s Life Is Beautiful) and edited by Nino Baragli (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West). Like a photograph that has faded somewhat but still captures the likeness and character of its subjects, the brown environments and warmly-lit interiors capture the spirit of these neighborhoods of New York City’s Lowest East Side. Life is hardscrabble here, with those born into the prevalent poverty rarely escaping from it. Their Jewishness, verbally and visually, is strangely downplayed by Leone. The film’s long takes – several last over thirty seconds – without any cuts from Baragli allow the viewer to reflect on its changing characters, internalizing the film’s scope and depth of Noodles’ introspection. For the 1968 scenes, the browns are mostly replaced by overcast grays in exterior and interiors. The colors, no longer as warm or as diverse, help the film navigate its temporal and tonal transitions.

Ennio Morricone’s powerful score does even more to strengthen the film’s emotional power. The recently-passed composer, best known for his work on Leone’s Dollars trilogy, was a classically-raised/taught, jazz-loving experimenter whose sound could be bold and brash. Upending expectations for what the Western could sound like with anachronistic electronic elements and guitar, Morricone suspends any anachronisms for his Once Upon a Time in America score. The viewer will hear an odd pan flute (not Morricone’s decision) and diegetic/non-diegetic jazz music, but the defining aspect of the score is its romantic minimalism. One does not associate minimalism with grand emotions, but the score’s romantic minimalism – encapsulated by “Deborah’s Theme” – does not preclude the pathos it evokes. The rests in the lushly-orchestrated “Deborah’s Theme” (according to Morricone himself, despite the cue’s name, it can also be interpreted as the film’s main theme) reflect Noodles’ silent longing and remorse. Even at mezzo piano with no dialogue or sound effects present, Morricone’s cues pierce the soul. As longtime collaborators, Leone respected Morricone’s talents, allowing his friend and colleague’s music to be the star for long stretches. Leone allows Morricone to envelop the viewer in its textural splendor. The orchestral renditions of “Amapola” and The Beatles’ “Yesterday” are effective in placement and arrangement. Whether it is his theme for childhood and poverty, for the film at large, or for Deborah, Morricone’s score to Once Upon a Time in America is an essential part of his film scoring career – a career that spans so many titles, that most of it has not been heard outside of his native Italy.

Before and when making this film, Leone intended to direct two films running around 180 minutes each. Convinced by his producers to whittle Once Upon a Time in America to the 269-minute version that should be sought for a first viewing, Leone was horrified to hear that the Ladd Company – frightened by the runtime and (justifiably) the rape scenes – decided to eviscerate his film. When word eventually (and inevitably) reached Leone’s North American fans that they would not be receiving a version of Once Upon a Time in America that respected Leone’s authorial voice, the film bombed at the box office and was savaged by most anyone who saw it. To some critics including the Chicago Tribune’s Gene Siskel, Once Upon a Time in America’s American theatrical version was the worst film of 1984; in an about face for those same critics, the European cut was the best film of 1984. Eighteen minutes of footage for Once Upon a Time in America have still not seen the light of day due to continuing legal entanglements surrounding them. Leone’s ardent admirers remain hopeful for their eventual inclusion on a future print.

As he challenged the tropes of American Westerns, so too did Leone subvert what might be expected from a gangster film. Or, perhaps with a cynical grin, Leone is challenging the essence and veracity of cinematic narrative. Once Upon a Time in America is an underappreciated, imperfect movie whose reputation continues to grow the further removed it is from its botched release. America’s traditions of tall tales and melting pot storytelling make villains and bystanders of the unsavory characters contained within. Haunted by a past that cannot be changed, Noodles attempts to reclaim his life’s story from those who have written it. As the viewer, we project our anxieties and insecurities onto images spliced to make narrative sense.  Authorship disputes and the struggle between legend and fact permeate cinema. Seldom do they converge as movingly as they do here.

My rating: 9.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[cardentist]

I’ve been seeing people ask about the age gap between moomin and snufkin for a little while now, with some people going so far as to label it pedophilia outright.  I responded to someone asking about it politely recently and I think I went over it in enough detail and with enough sources that making it it’s own post could do some good.

that said, that’ll only work if people are actually able to see it in the tags, which won’t happen if tumblr knows that there are links. so to get around that I’m going to put parenthesis around the dots in all of the links and bold them, like this: staff (.) tumblr (.) com if you want to get around that then my original response is here:  cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/185261475458

but alright, here we go first off, snufkin is canonically younger than little my ! from the official moomin website: Snufkin is Little My’s younger half brother – Little My is older than Moomintroll, Sniff and Snufkin, whose parents only meet each other when Little My is already born. moomin (.) com/en/blog/snufkins-family-tree/ with that in mind, I don’t see many people question whether little my is on the same footing as moomin emotionally (even though she’s the most likely to be significantly older than moomin jdlksj) so it's strange that people do it for snufkin

as for snufkin’s age in relation to moomintroll there are a few things to consider first being snufkin’s backstory that’s revealed in moominpappa’s memoirs, that being that his father (the joxter) met his mother (the mymble) around the same time that moominpappa met moominmamma and sniff’s parents (the muddler and the fuzzy) met, with little my having already been born this already makes it far more likely that snufkin is around the same age as moomin, but that’s further hammered home by how snufkin is portrayed and treated in the novel itself. he’s very much on equal footing with the other kids in behavior and is actively treated the same as the other kids by moominpappa, he even refers to snufkin that way ! he’s also very much so engrossed with the joxter, taking pride in the similarities between him and his dad, insisting that moominpappa only tell him the truth about the joxter, and occasionally referring to the joxter as his “daddy,” all of which are pretty heavily coded as being childish, or at the very least as not being as jaded as an adult in his position might be I’m sending the screenshots as links for size conservation: imgur (.) com/RD8xCWz imgur (.) com/LJYmo58 imgur (.) com/lerDoUA

overall it’s pretty clear that snufkin is being put on the same level as moomin and the rest of his friends by moominpappa, and snufkin himself views moominpappa and joxter as adult figures

the second thing to consider is that ! snufkin’s relationship with moomin would be, Really Really Weird if there was a significant age gap, even when viewed platonically. and I mean this both from the perspective of us observing it from the outside and from the adults in universe not having any qualms with it

for instance, the first winter after moomin and snufkin met they hibernated together, with moomin’s room even being officially recognized as also being snufkin’s room !

moreover, they’ve outright slept in the same bed together in the 90s anime during a sleepover

the moomins are an absurdly nice and welcoming family, but letting a grown adult man sleep next to their child for three months after they’ve only just met him this summer is a bit much even for them fjksld

it’s also worth noting that it’s made clear that their relationship is just as important to snufkin as it is to moomin. they both view each other as their best friends, which would be weird for a child to feel about an adult but just, Way Too Uncomfortable for an adult to feel about a child. the fact that snufkin relies on moomin just as much as moomin relies on snufkin is more or less the lesson he learns in moominvalley in november kjflsd, which there’s an excellent analysis of here: milky-red (.) tumblr (.) com/post/184933769573

then there’s also the spring tune, which I’ll admit I’m more familiar with the 2019 adaptation than the original, but they both exist somewhere along the extended moomin canon so fkljsd it’s more or less all about snufkin’s need to be alone vs his need to be with other people, or more specifically with moomintroll. while he doesn’t outright acknowledge it, not yet, his need to be with moomintroll is just that, it’s become a part of his nature just like his need to wander and his need for solitude, and one that he’s trying to come to terms with

in the 2019 adaptation snufkin outright hallucinated moomin telling him that it was okay that he wasn’t ready to come back yet, all while holding snowdrops, flowers that snorkmaiden would later tell moomintroll “herald the return of loved ones” while the 2019 version definitely leans into snufkin being more outwardly emotional, it’s also worth noting that the part of the novel this scene is referencing is well, I mean look at it kjfsld

and then of course the argument with teety-woo the 2019 adaptation puts a lot of emphasis on snufkin being physically uncomfortable around teety-woo, uncomfortable with having company at all and with how forward they are. this is especially notable as it’s something that comes up later in snufkin and the park keeper, where he ditches moomin at a party and then has to take time for himself. both because he needs to cool off after being overstimulated/overwhelmed at the party and because he very actively feels guilty over leaving moomin, though he doesn’t admit that fact outright. this is especially driven home when moomin comes up with the plan to break snufkin out of jail, as when he chooses a punishment for snufkin we’re shown a flashback to the party and snufkin says “I suppose it’s all I really deserve.” he not only thinks that moomin is punishing him for leaving him but actively accepts that it’s his fault for needing to leave him, or perhaps just for leaving without saying anything

with that in mind, it’s especially worth noting that snufkin’s lines about being able to go back to moominvalley whenever he wants and that maybe he won’t go back at all are lead up to by teety-woo riling snufkin up by invading his space and ignoring his body language to the point of very genuinely upsetting snufkin, and then is punctuated by teety-woo bringing up that it would hurt moomintroll. and when the argument has wound down and he’s come back out to play for teety-woo and sees that they’re gone it’s pretty obvious from his tone and facial expression that he regrets snapping at them, most likely feeling that he’s driven them away

this is then followed by snufkin feeling physically ill from loneliness, him desperately looking for teety-woo, and the nightmare sequence. which, is very explicitly about his fear of being both forgotten and replaced, not just in moominvalley but by moomin specifically the scene even goes so far as to have snufkin abandon his harmonica, his very excuse for not having gone back to the valley in the first place

while he’s afraid of losing his nature, of losing his freedom, the idea of moomin pulling away from him scares him even more.

moomin is an incredibly important part of snufkin’s life, one that he’s had to learn how to tailor his previous lifestyle around. one that he finds worth changing how he lives his life over. while it’s certainly not entirely out of the ordinary for an adult to have some kind of positive relationship with a child, enjoying their company and enjoying acting as a mentor, for an adult to emotionally rely this heavily on a child would just be, inappropriate and unhealthy for both parties

none of this even getting into the fact that their relationship is pretty heavily queer coded ! I, would probably go on for far far too long and there’s more that I wanna get into (and the links themselves are gonna take up more than enough room) so here’s links to references and analysis of a queer reading for these characters both in and out of universe ! moomin (.) com/en/blog/who-inspired-tove-when-creating-snufkin/ cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/184309504683 cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/184352468223 cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/184529809803 cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/184126897018 cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/184305305518 cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/185023635288 cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/18424873269 jamiewoolleyart (.) tumblr (.) com/post/185073023200 cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/185066154973 cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/185199096163 I don’t think I need to go over why an age gap between these two would be uncomfortable under the lens of them being queer coded. though with that in mind,  it’s worth noting that snorkmaiden has been depicted as thinking that snufkin is cute or flirting with him in both the comics and the 1990s anime cardentist (.) tumblr (.) com/post/184569294298 imgur (.) com/7EDJ9Rt

the anime has more leeway in that snufkin is more or less just playing along while she’s having memory issues, it wouldn’t be too strange if snufkin were older than snorkmaiden here. but in the comic snufkin blushing and being “wooed” is the Punchline. the comics are more adult sure, but I don’t think tove would just casually make jokes about pedophilia 

thirdly, I think that ultimately snufkin only comes off as more worldly because his upbringing was so dramatically different from moomin’s ! all we know for sure about his past is that he was abandoned when he was very small, so small that he didn’t have any memories of the mymble or his other siblings

it’s possible that he was raised by somebody for a short time, but it’s never mentioned in canon and he certainly wasn’t raised there for long. snufkin had to grow up faster than moomin did simply for the fact that he had no one to take care of him, and his worldliness stems from having more life experience than someone his age usually would and from independence being both a need for his survival and ultimately something he didn’t get to choose for himself at the start, even if it’s what he wanted for himself later

and ! for my final point ! the ages for the moomin characters, while generally consistent with their relationships to each other, are not set in stone. they’re heavily implied to be different depending on which versions you look at, both between adaptations and between the novels and comics and sometimes the novels themselves. tove played around with canon as she pleased jfklsd

the comics especially have no qualms showing moomintroll smoking and drinking, getting in fights over snorkmaiden’s hand, and just overall being more adult, which isn’t too shocking since the comics were more adult oriented, as I mentioned earlier

moreover ! it’s more or less canon that moomin is outright an adult in moominvalley 2019, as the team has said that this version of moomin was supposed to be older, he’s very much so voiced by an adult who is using an adult voice, and he outright calls himself an adult moomin in the show !

so it’s very likely that moomin is, at the very least, a late teenager to young adult in much of canon, with snufkin being close in age

feel free to add onto this with more analysis and sources if you have them and the time !

[rt8815]

OC Ask Game

I was tagged by the amazing @illegalcerebral

I put a Keep Reading link because this is looong.

1) Name (and why you chose it if you like) McKinley Campbell Durand. I named her after McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters. However, the “in universe?” reason that will be given - which I haven’t written yet - is that McKinley and Campbell are family names from a few generations back.

Campbell comes from the Gaelic words for ‘crooked’ and ‘mouth.’ I just like the name. Here’s a post (that I had to rewrite because Tumblr’s a dick and wouldn’t let me edit the typos in the original. The rewrite had typos too! Blargh!) that discusses her first and last names. I thought it would be funny for her full name to consist solely of last names.

2) Fandom and how they fit into the story Criminal Minds. She works at a D.C. museum practically around the corner from the J. Edgar Hoover building (as indicated in “Let It Bleed”). That’s a tiny hint that it’s the National Museum of African American History & Culture, but I don’t think I’ll mention it very often, if for no other reason than I’ve never been to the NMAAHC and don’t want to describe it inaccurately.

The official story is that Spencer and McKinley met at the museum (again, in “Let It Bleed,” which is probably the least favorite thing of mine that I’ve written). However, they’d met once before, and texted a few times after that. Because my brain is all over the place, and because I’m telling the story in non-chronological order, I haven’t written their first meeting yet. The only details I’ve revealed thus far are that it was nighttime in a park, McKinley caught Spencer off guard and made him fall to the ground, and whatever they talked about set Spencer straight and lifted his spirits. Also, a swingset was involved. Beyond that, I’ve inserted McKinley into the plotlines and events of the show, with necessary alterations, and there’s a ton of domestic Spencer and off-duty team stuffs.

3) Do they have any family? Biological family: daughter Sophie and son Jason; her Mom (no name yet); maternal grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins; and her estranged father (no name yet). Chosen/found family: husband Spencer; the BAU.

4) As a child, what did they want to be when they grew up? When she was a toddler, McKinley wanted to be a pediatrician (a doctor just for kids?! Cool!) or an ophthalmologist (she’s worn glasses practically her whole life). As an older child she aspired to be an entomologist or herpetologist. In her teenage years she considered a career in forensic pathology or criminal psychology. While earning her BA in English, she discovered that Public History was her true calling.

5) Their greatest dream To be a good Mom. To inspire learning in others.

6) Their worst nightmare Losing her family; having to see her father again.

7) Strengths Empathy, insight/self awareness, forgiving nature but knowing when to cut her losses

8) Weaknesses McKinley struggles with imposter syndrome.

She can be very mean. I mean, downright nasty cruel, verbally. This is rare though because, and I’m paraphrasing a future bit of dialogue here, anyone whose behavior could arguably warrant such a response is beneath her notice and not worth the effort. She’s more likely to close the door on someone. When she’s removed a person from her life, she is done. They become literally nothing to her. McKinley will rightly claim that this is about self-preservation and boundaries, but she really takes it to the next level.

9) What would they chose between: morning and night, sweet and savoury, beaches or meadows, cities or countryside, winter or summer, Christmas or Halloween (sorry, Spencer!), movies or TV shows, action or rom-com, clowns or vampires, stars or the moon (both!), cocktails or pints [Neither. McKinley doesn’t care for cocktails or beer. Scotch, brandy, rum, and dry wines are her poisons. She’s been known to add Kahlúah to vanilla ice cream, Baileys Irish Cream to coffee (she wants to try Drambuie next), or make hot toddies when she has a cold (obviously not mixing any alcohol with any medicine)]

10) How do they relax? Reading, or having Spencer read to her; knitting; listening to her records or playing her guitar; exercising with Boogie so she’s exhausted enough to sleep that night; baking and cooking

11) What makes them angry? Injustice, apathy/indifference, ableism, willful ignorance

12) What makes them afraid? The awful things she’d possibly do under duress; her family getting hurt or worse; spiders and other bugs that bite and/or sting

13) What is a moment from their childhood that has shaped who they are? It’s not a single event, but growing up with an abusive parent has certainly had a lifelong impact on McKinley. You’ve heard the expression “once bitten, twice shy?” She’s “once bitten, there’s no twice because you no longer exist.” She’s working on that. It’s also cultivated empathy, though, and is part of the reason she volunteers in the hospital’s rehab wing.

14) Do they have a sense of humour? Intellectual humor, pop culture references, puns/Dad jokes, science jokes. Sometimes morbid.

15) What do they value in their friends/loved ones? Honesty and empathy

16) Do they have any pets? An Aussie Collie/Border Aussie named Boogie-Woogie. He’s her first child.

17) Worst memory? Probably the day Meadows shot her and she thought she’d never see Spencer and Penny again.

18) Best memory? The days Sophie and Jason were born. Minus, y’know, the agonizing pain of labor and delivery.

19) Do they have any tattoos? (If no would they get one?) Nope and nope

20) If you could write them into another fandom, which one would you choose? If I knew the MCU better, I’d love to write her in as a Stark Tower employee! She’d be an anthropologist and would study alien societies the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. have encountered. She’d naturally be drawn to Loki, initially in a professional capacity (they quickly discover they relate to each other on a personal level as well).

He’d first find her annoying: “Why are you pestering me, Mortal? Surely you’d rather interview my oaf of a brother?”

“No, not even remotely. He only ever wants to discuss battles he’s won. There’s so much more to Asgard and the other realms than that. I want - I need - to learn your literature, your science, your culture and history. You’re well versed in all of these subjects and you’re an excellent teacher.”

He stares at her impassively over his mug of tea, but his heart - that Judas of an organ - flutters slightly at the compliment. And how can he say no to a fellow scholar?

“I prefer your company to Thor’s too. You have this calming presence. Thor’s sweet but he’s also obnoxiously loud and brash and he always hugs me even though I keep telling him I don’t like it. And he’s constantly swinging his hammer around, which makes me think he’s overcompensating for something.”

Loki nearly chokes on his tea. Yes, this mortal is considerably more tolerable than others.

“Very well. Friday evenings at 6:00, my chambers. Arrive late and suffer my wrath.”

From that day forward, whenever Thor tries to hug her, he gets mildly electrocuted.

Did I accidentally sorta kinda write a drabble? Would anyone be interested in making this a collab? That’s what they’re called, right? (Can you tell I’ve given this some thought? Haha! I have even more details in my head.)

21) Do they like their job? (What else would they do if they could?) She loves it! Hmmm, what else…? A librarian maybe. Or animate and produce an educational cartoon series.

22) What is their sexuality? Demisexual

23) Do they believe in love at first sight? Soulmates? One true love? McKinley believes in “seeing the potential for a good relationship at first conversation.”

Yes, although she feels that term has become overused and poorly redefined.

People can find love again after it’s been lost.

24) What music do they listen to? Has that changed over time? I actually recently answered an ask about this. Yes, she grew up on what passed for country in the ‘90s. God help her, she had a boyband phase in junior high.

25) Can they cook? What food do they love? McKinley does pretty well in the kitchen. She loves a wide variety of food. She grew up in the south, so tons of carbs/comfort foods. She loves Thai, Japanese, and Indian food. She cooks up Middle Earth-inspired dishes (ha! nerd). She’s especially proud of a seed cake she bakes.

26) What are their hopes for the future? For her family to be healthy, safe and happy. To be debt free.

27) How do they react to being threatened? It’s a coin flip. McKinley might curl up like an armadillo and hope the predator gets bored and leaves, or she might kick the stool out from under them and cause their chin to slam into the bar and crack several teeth.

28) What is their love language? McKinley and Spencer both exhibit the Acts of Service love language, because just saying “I love you” isn’t enough. You ought to show it. She’ll randomly bake doughnuts for Spencer or play guitar for him in bed, and he’ll take care of laundry, dishes, and any other chores he sees need doing.

Quality Time is important for them too. Once a month, Luke and Penny babysit so Spencer and McKinley have a day alone together. It doesn’t really matter what they do. The point is it’s just them.

It caught McKinley by surprise how much she enjoys physical affection, given that she can be touch averse but holy moly she was more touch starved than she realized. She lives for snuggles and makeout sessions and playing with each others’ hair. When one of them doesn’t want to be touched, they hook their pinkies together.

29) What do they find most challenging in relationships? At work? In general? At work she struggles to gain her colleagues’ respect (think “Boy Genius” treatment except she has lady bits). In general, she struggles with trusting people.

30) What do you as a creator love best about writing this character? Giving her everything I wish I had but don’t.

Bonus: Include a link to your favourite work with this OC or write a small drabble.

October 12, 2021

Warm sunlight filtered through the curtains, gently rousing Spencer from a pleasant sleep. Just when he’d decided to get up, he felt the mattress dip behind him and his wife’s breath fanning over his ear.

“Who’s the birthday boy?” whispered McKinley.

Spencer smiled softly but feigned being asleep.

“Who’s the birthdaaay boooy?” she repeated, bouncing slightly.

“The good-looking guy to your left?”

“Happy Birthday!” she laughed, pressing kisses along his neck, suddenly shifting the mood from playful to sexy.

“Would the birthday boy like his birthday present?” she asked as she lifted the covers.

“Well, look at that - it’s already unwrapped!”

[thesoundofnat]

Still fixing all the cracks

ENDGAME SPOILERS AHEAD

Summary: When May reappears after the snap, it’s in front of a moving car. She survives, but needs to stay at the hospital for a while. Where else is Peter supposed to go but to stay with Pepper, Tony and Morgan?

A/N: I turned an angsty prompt from @insane-sociopath slightly less angsty by having May (and Tony!) survive. I hope you like it!

Warnings: Endgame spoilers, nightmares, hints at trauma and PTSD.

Words: 2 100

Tony had known May Parker had vanished after the first snap, and as awful as it sounded he’d been grateful for it. The pain he’d been feeling after Peter had turned to dust, disappeared right in front of him, had almost broken him. He couldn’t imagine how May would’ve felt, losing someone who was her own flesh and blood. If he was to lose Morgan now he was certain he’d go insane.

Not that his love for Peter was any less because of their lack of a blood relation. He would still kill and die for that kid.

Point was, he was grateful May hadn’t had to go through it. It hadn’t been fun.

“Mr Stark?”

Waking up at the hospital, a model of a prosthetic arm on a table across from him courtesy of Bruce, had been jarring. Partly due to the pain and the drugs, but he’d been so sure he was hallucinating Peter being back for the first couple of days that he’d hated his brain for doing that to him.

“How am I alive?” had been his first sentence. The second a demand to see Pepper and Morgan, even though Pepper had been sitting next to him, her trembling hand holding his own. Only something like this could’ve turned Tony Stark into a confused mess, Rhodey had joked, his eyes wet.

“Mr Stark?”

Tony’s body had barely been in any shape to keep his heart going. They all called him a miracle. A once in an existence type of survival.

“I did it for you, you know,” Tony had said to no one in particular, because truly it didn’t matter. It hadn’t mattered and it would never matter.

“I’m so mad at you,” Pepper had said one evening or morning or midafternoon (Tony hadn’t been keeping track). “You could’ve died.”

Tony had smiled, or at least had tried to smile. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“The worst part is that, if you hadn’t done it, you would’ve lived with that regret for the rest of your life.”

“I can’t seem to calm down, can I?”

Pepper had stroked his face. “I’m sure you’ll be calm now.”

“Mr Stark?”

“Hmm?”

Peter - the actual real life alive Peter - must’ve said his name at least three times before he’d realized. Tony focused his gaze on him; took in the tears streaming down his face. “Shit, Pete-”

“It’s nothing bad!” Peter said, sniffling, panicked, voice too loud in the quiet hospital room. “It’s just… well, Aunt May reappeared and-”

Shit, shit, shit.

“An accident and-”

How the hell could life take away the last blood relative that precious kid had?

“She’ll be out in a couple of weeks and-”

“Wait, hold on, back up.”

Apparently May had vanished into dust in the car and reappeared in front of another one, breaking several bones as Earth had welcomed her back. Typical. She’d be fine, but she was going into surgery and wouldn’t be able to leave the hospital for a while.

“I don’t know why I’m such a mess,” Peter said, still his rambly self, after everything.

Tony, only days into his new life post snap, blinked at him. It was, unfortunately, all he managed before the drugs knocked him out again.

When he woke Pepper had made a decision for all of them.

“He’s staying with us until his aunt is back on her feet,” she said. Tony didn’t protest. Why would he?

“I could just crash at Ned’s,” Peter said for the hundredth time, but Pepper shushed him. Tony could tell she’d handle teenage Morgan with no trouble.

By the time Tony got to go home, Peter had been staying there for two weeks already. May’s condition, though not entirely life threatening, had been worse than they’d thought. Peter tried to not let it show how worried he was, for some reason, but it was all but written on his face. Tony, weak and constantly exhausted, felt so helpless he nearly cried.

“I like him,” Morgan said, the two of them alone in Tony’s bedroom, just about avoiding spilling the juice of their melting popsicles onto the bed sheets.

“He’s nice, eh?”

“Very. He makes me laugh.”

“Ah, a comedian. Maybe I just never appreciated his weird gen Z humor.”

Morgan didn’t provide his to her strange remark with any response. Tony had to resist the urge to wrap her in his arms every other minute. As close as they were, he was sure she’d start getting annoyed at him eventually.

He had no idea how much she knew. How close he and the world had been to being entirely ruined. He prayed to god she had no clue, but she was smarter than any kid he’d met (and to be fair, than some adults as well).

If she knew, she hadn’t told him.

“What do you think about him staying with us?” Tony asked her, attempting to sound casual.

“I think it’s fun.”

“But do you miss it just being us?”

“A little,” she said, swallowing the last of her ice cream. “But it’s okay. I like him and he needs us. That’s what mommy said.”

“Mommy’s right, you know.”

“She says he’s like your son.”

Tony doubted Pepper had worded it like that, but he tilted his head anyway. “I care about him.”

“Why did he never come visit before?”

Crap.

“He was away, for a bit.” Tony smiled, ignoring the sudden rush of emotions. “I’m happy you finally got to meet him.”

*

“Mr Stark, you have a daughter.”

“Yes, Pete, we’ve established that.”

Morgan’s feeling toward Peter were nothing compared to Peter’s delight and utter surprise at Tony having put a child into the world (or well - Pepper). Every so often, usually after Tony and Morgan had interacted in any way, Peter would repeat these words. Tony wasn’t sure if he should be offended at the awed tone or not.

“How was it?”

“How was what?”

“When she was being born?”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure you’re asking the wrong parent here.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “I mean, how were you feeling?”

Tony shrugged. “I was a complete mess, to be honest. Crying and laughing and pacing all over the place. When I first got to see her-” He broke off, clearing his throat. “It was the best moment of my life.”

Peter’s smile could light up the whole goddamn world. “I wish I had been there.”

Tony reached for him, pulling him into a half-hug. “Me too, kid. Me too.”

“But I’m here now, and I’m gonna be the best- uh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What were you about to say?”

Peter had turned red. “I was gonna say big brother, but I felt like- well, I didn’t want to-”

“Of course you’re her big brother, you nerd.”

“Oh.”

Tony snorted. “Well, she did call you my son.”

“Did you correct her?”

“Nah.”

This time Peter’s beaming face was turned downward, bashful.

Tony ruffled his hair. “Come on. Let’s go make the queens of the house some dinner, shall we?”

*

The weeks of Peter’s stay had some dark moments, mostly consisting of Tony’s body not cooperating or Pepper’s heart breaking all over again if she remembered almost losing him or Tony thinking of the moment Peter turned to dust, over and over. It was sleepless nights and trips to the hospital for check ups and visits and all the while Peter feeling guilty for enjoying his stay when his aunt was alone in an empty room.

“You’re there about 90% of your days,” Tony told him. “She doesn’t expect you to do more. In fact, I think she’d kick both your ass and mine if I allowed you to sleep in those torture devices to chairs.”

Tony went to visit her without Peter at times, when he was in school. They didn’t say much because it wasn’t needed.

“I’m sorry you had to spend five years without him,” May said one day, her hand gripping Tony’s perpetually trembling one. The prosthetic one was steady.

“We fixed it,” he said, voice hoarse and slightly too quiet.

“I’m so glad you did.”

“We lost some along the way,” he added, his mind on Natasha, as it often was.

May gave his hand a squeeze. They didn’t speak again for a while.

*

Having a teenage superhero in the house meant helping them with - and forcing them to do -  homework and making them promise to not be out to late and “no, Pete, Spider-Man isn’t needed tonight.” Maybe he was being hypocritical, but at least he could laugh at each look Pepper shot him whenever he reprimanded Peter for things he’d probably done himself.

It also meant running into him when they were both wandering the house in their sleepless states, both confused, both feeling too much with no relief in sight. Tony had been surprised seeing Peter the first night, but, despite his saying he had nothing to make him feel like this really because the snap hadn’t lasted five years for him, Tony couldn’t blame him.

“I’m sure it was traumatic in ways you can’t explain,” Tony said, remembering the hysteria just before he vanished. “And to be fair, the whole goddamn battle was a mess. I’d be worried if you weren’t having trouble sleeping, as much as I wish you didn’t.”

“Does it hurt a lot?” Peter asked then, eyes on Tony’s trembling arm.

“This? Nah. It’s just my body not being as strong anymore. It’s getting better.” Tony hadn’t told any of them of the times he’d entered his lab trying to create something only for him to scream in frustration and not go back in days. His prosthetic arm was working just fine, but the rest of him, parts he’d gotten so used to using whenever he built or tinkered around, were still recovering. That was what Tony said, at least. No one had promised him his old body back. He reckoned he couldn’t really expect them to lie so awfully to him.

“I’ve never been as scared as I was when I saw you sitting there, arm practically crumbling-” Peter cut himself off. “Sorry. Jesus. You probably don’t wanna hear about that.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Talk.”

“I can’t.”

Tony understood.

Some nights, Morgan found them, blinking up at them in the light of the kitchen, confused. “Daddy?”

“Hey, pumpkin, why aren’t you in bed?”

“Why aren’t you?”

And Peter would grin, whenever the tiny little four year old would be smart with her genius father. Tony’s heart was never as full as it was in those moments.

And then, it was over. May, recovered, got to go home and bring Peter with her. They all knew it had been coming.

“You’re sad, aren’t you?” Pepper said the first night without him.

Tony nodded. “A bit. It’s silly.”

“It’s not.”

“Maybe not.”

“You can visit him this time, you know.”

Tony laughed, so loudly he must’ve startled Morgan, wherever she was in the house. “I know.”

“I’m gonna miss having him in the house,” Pepper said. “It wasn’t the same being in the Tower or the Compound. People feel so much closer here.”

“It’s because this is a normal house, which apparently is what normal people live in.”

Pepper laughed. “Domesticity suits you.”

“I try.”

“I know.”

She always did.

“How are you?” Peter asked a couple of weeks later. They hadn’t seen each other since he’d gone back home.

“Me? Doing better. How’s May?”

“She’s doing much better.”

“And how are you?”

Peter didn’t reply immediately, eyes finding the street they were walking next to. “I’m doing all right, mostly.”

“Ah.”

“No new nightmares.”

“But old ones?”

“Always the same ones.”

“I know the feeling.”

If Tony could take all of Peter’s pain and trauma, he would, but he knew that wasn’t possible, so he did the next best thing.

“Let’s grab some ice cream. I think that daughter of mine has made me addicted to that stuff.”

Peter laughed. “I miss her.”

“Well, then I think it’s about time you come visit her, hm?”

“Just say when and I’ll be there.”

“No need. You can show up whenever you want, as long as it isn’t in the middle of the night. Unless it’s an emergency, of course.”

“You say that now, but I bet you’ll raise an eyebrow at me when I walk in on your date with Pepper.”

“As if we won’t have enlisted you to babysit Morgan to begin with.”

“Happy won’t be happy. Hah, that was unintentional.”

“Happy will have to learn to share his duties.”

They were gonna be okay.

[devil-may-write]

Day off [Fic, DMC, One-shot.]

I've had the word "writer" on my blog description for a while now so I figured that I'd start sharing some of the things I've written for once :> I originally posted this on ao3 and ff.net as the second chapter of a series comprised of fan-servicey oneshots that I intended to be 90% lighthearted. Looking back, I realized that this and the first chapter were haphazardly written, so I decided to retouch them and went for this one first as I felt that it was the one that shamed my Creative Writing teacher the most :--( The title's also kinda meh as I never really intended for each chapter to have a title hnnggg

I took a reaaaally (*cough* years *cough*) long hiatus from creative writing for personal reasons so there's obviously quite a lot of rust for me to shake off :--( Granted, I do think that this was a marked improvement from its original version and I know that the only way to get my groove back is to keep writing, so write I shall. Oh and I edited this meticulously but I still have a habit of missing small errors so I'm sorry if you still find any ;_; I'm just a headass ;_;

If anything, I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it :--)

-----------

The Orphanage was as quiet as a mouse today. Kyrie had taken the kids out to the zoo, caving into their demands after weeks and weeks of begging. Meanwhile, Nero and Nico took another job, leaving without so much as a whisper. With mentions of illegal devil arms being sold out on the streets, it seemed that the up-and-coming devil hunter wouldn’t be back for some time.

For Vergil, it was a rare moment of solace. With all his housemates out for the day, the older Son of Sparda took the opportunity to read and meditate on his poetry in peace. While he didn't necessarily despise companionship, he was unable to lie to himself and say that all the wild antics his companions kept getting themselves into didn't disturb him. As someone who was used to being alone, he enjoyed the solitude; it gave him time to be alone with his thoughts for he certainly couldn’t do so when the children kept asking him to "do the thing" with Yamato again.

Everything was proceeding according to plan. As he was busy soaking up William Blake in the living room with the refreshing sounds of silence in the backdrop, he was starting to think that perhaps this was going to be one of those rare, peaceful, uneventful days.

Until he heard someone ring the doorbell.

Vergil was many things, but impolite wasn't (mostly) one of them. With great reluctance, he slammed his poetry book shut and moved to see who his unexpected visitor was.

The local couriers had already finished delivering the latest batch of newspapers around Fortuna, and neither Kyrie nor his son were expecting any packages to be delivered today. He had encountered what the humans called "girl scouts" at one point, but they fled in fear when he demanded to know which master they served, furthering his suspicion that they were simply demons donning the guise of little girls in order to get closer to their prey. Perhaps they had returned to exact their revenge. If that was the case, then it was fitting that the children weren't present today. He could go all out without worrying about major collateral damage.

However, what greeted him when he opened the door was worse than any demon.

"Heya, 'Verg!”

It was Dante. His brother; his arch-nemesis. The smell of pizza, alcohol, and broken dreams oozed from his unwashed coat and shaggy hair, while his face wore the same shit-eating grin that haunted Vergil in his deepest, darkest nightmares. After what happened in Redgrave city, they were mostly on better terms with each other, but his little brother’s wild shenanigans and extroverted demeanor still annoyed Vergil to no end. He was like a 12-year-old child living in a 40-something man's body.

His reaction was immediate and decisive: he slammed the door shut in his face.

Vergil was about to turn around and return to his poetry when the doorbell rang again. And again, and again, and again. The utter buffoon was mashing the doorbell. To his annoyance, his younger twin brother was nothing but persistent. He didn't know why he was here, or what he wanted from him, but he decided that he'd rather get it over with as soon as possible so that he could return to his peace and quiet. The sooner he was gone, the better.

“What?!” Vergil threw the door open, almost causing his brother to get knocked off his feet.

"Really, Vergil? Really?" The devil hunter regained his balance. "Is that any way to greet your brother?"

"No, but it is how I greet pests who interrupt my peace and quiet." Vergil seethed. "Why have you come here, little brother?"

"I wanted to hang out with my big bro.” Grinning, he held up a plastic bag. “I even brought snacks."

Vergil observed that the bag his little brother carried was full of goodies: junk food, and bottles of what he assumed to be alcohol, all of which were most likely stolen from a nearby convenience store considering Dante's current financial status. He wouldn't be the least bit surprised if law enforcement would arrive to raid the orphanage later.

"Then I am afraid that your journey was in vain, brother," he said. "For I am currently not in the mood to entertain any guests on this wonderful, peaceful morning, especially not ones as disruptive as you."

Vergil closed the door again, this time a little slower. Halfway through, Dante suddenly stopped it with his foot.

"Come on, Vergil." He pleaded. "I came all this way just to hang with ya!"

"Then our souls are once again at odds, Dante!"

The older sibling pulled on the door with as much strength as he could muster, but his little brother had the same idea. They were locked in a battle of wills, with one side refusing to give way to the other.

Just like always.

"I don't have any new jobs today and Nero told me that the kids weren't around!" Dante responded. "When was the last time we sat down and talked or laughed over our jokes, or just drank some orange juice?"

Vergil made a mental note to hit his son the next they met. The fool, his own flesh and blood, had inadvertently betrayed him.

"And can you please just open the door?” the younger sibling yelled. “My goddamn foot hurts!"

Vergil fully intended on making him suffer, but relented and complied with his request.

"The last time we sat down and talked was when we were children," he said with a stern, as-a-matter-of-fact tone. "And if my memory is correct, it ended with both of us having a fistfight outside of the house."

"Oh yeah." Dante gave his big brother a friendly tap on the chest. "That was definitely your fault, though. I was supposed to get that last slice of cake."

Vergil glared in response.

"Okay, okay, fine.” The younger sibling threw his arms up in exasperation. “The point I'm trying to make is that you were gone for a long ass time and since we're not trying to off each other anymore like we used to, I figured that it'd be the perfect time to start acting more like normal siblings, you know?"

"And how certain are you that I won't sever your head when your attention is elsewhere, little brother?"

Awkward silence suddenly fell on both parties like a bomb had been dropped between them. The wind howled, as if waiting impatiently for Vergil to drop the punchline to his joke, but none came.

“T-t-that was a joke, right?” The devil hunter stammered.

"Yes.” Vergil nodded. “That was my attempt at humor."

"You should really work on your jokes."

"Perhaps I should."

"So are ya”-Dante clicked his tongue-“gonna let me in or not?"

Vergil sighed. Deep down, he knew that should he refuse, Dante would pester him until he gave in. Perhaps he was a 12-year-old child stuck in an old man's body. Either way, his hopes of having an entire day all to himself would be ruined, and he supposed that there were worse things that could happen today that didn't involve his dear little brother.

"Very well.” Vergil stepped aside, allowing his brother passage. “Make yourself at home."

Dante gladly accepted the offer. Unbeknownst to his big bro, however, he had ulterior motives today.

While he wasn’t lying when he said that he wanted to spend time with Vergil, there was one question that was always on the devil hunter’s mind: who was Nero’s mother? It was a topic he always brought up whenever he could, but it was also one that Vergil loved avoiding. Every time their past conversations would lead to that, the older twin shot it down faster than a bullet, mostly by changing the topic. Call him an insipid gossip, but his big brother’s peculiar reactions only threw more gasoline into the unquenchable blaze that was his curiosity. He wasn’t even close to getting him to confide his secret, but today was going to be different; Dante felt it in his old, aching bones. He had the entire day to find a hole in his bro’s armor. Plus, this time he brought a secret weapon: alcohol.

Walking into the living room, he wasted no time in picking a spot on the couch to plop down on, with Vergil following suit. The older twin made another mental note to ask Kyrie to give the couch a proper scrubbing when she arrives home later; it would be unfortunate if any of the little ones would sit on the spot his brother infected with his filth.

The younger twin promptly opened a fresh bag of junk food from his loot bag. As he devoured his prize with loud, disruptive crunches, his older brother could already tell that he was going to regret this decision.

“Want some?” He held out the bag to his brother.

Vergil was perplexed by the illustration of a large, triangular object that was displayed on the front side. He had heard of this 'junk food', but was never able to try any on account of Kyrie's insistence on keeping them away from the orphans.

Dante noticed his big bro’s quizzical expression.

"You haven't seen a bag of Doritos before?" he asked.

“My son often keeps these junk foods away from the children at Kyrie’s behest." Vergil answered. “I have seen him eat in secret, but I did not have any interest in asking for any.”

"Go on." His little brother urged, shaking the bag for good measure. "It won't hurt to give it a try."

Vergil hesitated at first, but slowly placed his hand in the bag and fished out a single Dorito, nibbling on the piece as a way of testing the waters. The moment it made contact with his tongue, Vergil felt as if a wave of colors washed over his mouth, painting his grey and colorless palettes with a captivating myriad of bright colors. It was the first time he had tasted such a thing and already his taste buds were in ecstasy from finally being given the honor to behold this hallowed object.

"Good, right?" Dante asked

"Indeed." Vergil chewed. "I am in awe at how exquisite this 'Doritos' tastes. May I have some more?"

The devil hunter tossed his big brother an unopened bag of Doritos, which he caught effortlessly and wasted no time in tearing open like a starving wolf descending upon an unsuspecting deer in the wilderness.

“See, isn’t this just perfect?” He moved closer to his brother, reaching out to casually place his arm on his shoulder. “The sons of Sparda, finally not trying to kill each other, just chillin’ like two normal dudes.”

“No.” Vergil slapped his arm way. “You are an eyesore. To add to that, you smell like the corpse of an animal who has been left in a garbage bin for too long.”

”I don’t smell that bad, do I?” Dante sniffed at his own coat. “Nah, you’re exaggerating. I took a shower before leaving.”

“In the sewers, perhaps.” Vergil scoffed.

Ignoring his brother’s scalding remarks, Dante scanned his nephew's living room. It was a little messy, but that was expected when you were living with a gaggle of children. To her credit, Kyrie was clearly doing her best to make the place look as spotless as possible despite the circumstances.

His attention fell on a framed picture of Nero, Kyrie, and his brother, taken in what he surmised to be the wreckage of one of the old Hell Gates during his run-in with Sanctus and his insane doomsday cult. From the looks of it, it seemed that the new governing body that replaced the Order of the Sword had converted it into a tourist site, almost as if they conveniently forgot that it was responsible for the deaths of thousands and cost the city millions in damages after it unleashed a horde demons on them.

"I see that the photo has caught your attention.” Vergil said between bites "That was taken last week when Kyrie insisted that they bring me along for shopping."

"How’d it go?"

"Horrible." Vergil answered bluntly. "I wanted to use the Yamato to procure a piece of jewelry that Kyrie could not afford, but Nero punched me with such strength that I was knocked out."

Dante bit back a laugh.

“He does have a mean right hook, I’ll give ya that,” he said. “Say, did they really turn what’s left of the Hell Gates into tourist sites?”

“It appears so.” Vergil answered. “They have become quite the popular destination here in Fortuna. Nero tells me that what happened in Redgrave caused demon-related phenomena to become quite popular, especially on what young people call ‘social media’.”

“Facebook, huh?” Dante walked over to the photo, examining it further. “I never really liked using it. Kyrie tried to make me an account once, but the first thing I clicked on was a link to a virus or whatever and it crashed Nero’s PC.”

“Then we share the same sentiment.” Vergil nodded. “All this new-fangled technology and the babble that comes with them confuses me to end. To this day, I still have no idea what a ‘hashtag’ is or how exactly one uses it when they wish to type in a message.

“I remember a time when this hashtag was just a sign used to connote numbers. Now, it is in tags or trending pages. Bah. I will never understand this new generation. They enjoy making simple matters complicated.”

“Simpler times, bro. Simpler times.” His younger brother concurred. “They even have this website where they limit the amount of words you can put on a post. How dumb is that?”

“About as dumb as you are, little brother.”

Stealing a glance at the booze he had smuggled in, Dante decided that now was the perfect time to attack. The ice had been broken. Operation: Nero’s Mom was just given the greenlight to proceed.

“We’re getting old, Vergil.” Dante returned to his seat. “The world’s moving on without us.”

“Perhaps.” Vergil licked off the bits of cheese that were stuck on his fingertips. “If anything, I simply wish to understand what a hashtag is. I cannot rest until I find out how it turns a text blue when it is used.”

”But you know what doesn’t get old?”

His older brother stared at him expectantly, waiting for him to give the answer to his own question.

“Booze,” Dante said.

“Specifically, whiskey.” He held up one of the bottles that he pulled out of the plastic. “I brought more than enough.”

Vergil sighed. He knew exactly what his little brother was suggesting.

“No,” he said without a hint of hesitation. “No drinking.”

“But I can’t help but feel that something’s missing.” He insisted. “My heart says that this moment of brotherly bonding is enough, but my soul yearns for more!”

“Your soul is in dire need of an exorcist, it seems.”

The regret that was creeping up on Vergil was now at a full-blown sprint. He knew not what shenanigans his little brother had in mind but knew enough to predict that, as always, it wouldn’t end well for either of them.

“Little brother, it is far too early for alcohol.” Vergil rubbed his temples. “Unlike you I do not require alcoholic beverages to enjoy my moments of leisure.

“Too early? It’s eleven o’clock!” Dante replied. “C’mon, pull that stick out of your ass, big bro. You gotta live a little!”

“I would rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon than live like you.”

“You know what they say: alcohol is what turns a boring ol’ conversation into a party.” He stood and began to pace around the living room in a dramatic fashion. “How can our souls attune with one another if we don’t take a little drop of alcohol to loosen up?”

“Whoever said that is a fool and you are an even bigger buffoon for quoting such drivel.” Vergil placed the bag of Doritos on the empty spot beside him. “You are free to consume as much alcohol as you wish so long as you clean up, but leave me out of it.

“I’m sure you are well aware of Nero’s temper. Attracting his ire would be unwise.”

“Come on, ‘Verg.” Dante moved closer to his brother, jokingly putting on his best puppy-dog-eyes expression to poke him further. “Just one glass?”

Of course, Dante had been in enough drinking sessions to know that the “just one glass” mantra was a load of crap. “Just one glass” always turned into “Okay, another one but for real this is the last one.” and the cycle repeats ad infinitum. If his gamble paid off today, Vergil would fall into that same vicious cycle, which meant that he’d be more than likely to spill the details about his old flame now that he was a little loosened up or just outright drunk as a skunk. The devil hunter always had shit for luck when it came to gambling, but he legitimately felt that lady luck was on his side today. He was going to bet high and win big.

On the other hand, Vergil recoiled in horror. Terrified, annoyed, disgusted, and angry were just half of the words he’d use to describe his catharsis. Seeing the face his brother was trying to put on was akin to staring into the nebulous maw of the void itself. He wanted to throw-up on the spot, but that would mean amplifying his brother’s already pungent smell of decay, so he opted to hold it in as best as he could despite his feelings of utter disgust at the sight.

His brother’s persistence bothered him greatly; the fool would never stop bothering him about it until he conceded. His presence was already an annoyance as it is, but just as he did not wish to amplify the smell of death by covering him in vomit, he also did not wish to be annoyed even further by his constant bugging. Besides, as he much as he hated to admit, he did miss the feeling of having a drink. He wasn’t a heavy drinker by any means, but he still enjoyed a little alcohol from time to time, and part of him wasn’t opposed to tasting even just a single drop. In a strange, twisted way, Dante was correct: it had been some time since he had a drink.

Perhaps it would be best to humor him for now

“Fine-” Vergil let out a long, deep sigh- “I’ll have a glass, I suppose.”

“Alright!” Dante’s expression brightened. “Does Nero have a bottle opener here somewhere or are we going to use Yamato?”

“Left cupboard.” Vergil replied. “The glasses for drinking are on the right.”

Dante disappeared into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with two glasses of whiskey. Vergil was surprised that he didn’t hear the contents of the cupboard crash into the floor. Taking into account of how much of a buffoon his little brother was, he half-expected him to leave a trail of destruction in the kitchen the likes of which no one has ever seen before.

“Here ya go, big bro.” Plopping back down on the couch, he handed him the other glass. “Fresh from the bottle.”

“How much did you pay for this?” Vergil examined the brown liquid. “I am surprised that someone with such gargantuan debts was able to afford premium alcohol.”

“Hey, the grocery I bought it in was selling it for half-off.” Dante shrugged. “Wanna go ahead and draw first blood?”

“If you insist.”

The older twin started with a small sip. It had been some time since his last taste of alcohol, but the feeling was just as he had remembered: warm, somewhat calming, like something was slowly lifting away the burdens that weighed heavily on his shoulders. Unlike his taste test earlier with the junk food, this was him reconnecting with an old friend, repainting the sections of his palette that were otherwise left neglected through years of disuse.

“Well, well, little brother." He smirked. “Despite your constant buffoonery, it seems that you aren’t completely devoid of intellect.”

“Quality stuff, I know.” Dante took a swig from his share. “It’s expensive as hell, but it’s worth it. Hits you like nothing else on the market.”

“I must concur.” His brother replied. “As much as it pains me to say so, you have fine tastes, brother.

“The last time I tasted alcohol this exquisite was somewhere in the east prior to my visit here in Fortuna all those years ago.”

“This sounds fun.” Dante raised his eyebrows. “Wanna tell me all about it?”

“If I must.” Vergil took another sip from his whiskey. “I would prefer not to, but I presume that I have no say this matter regardless.

"So, it all began when..."

Vergil recounted his tale, with Dante listening intently. As the two brothers were getting lost in their banter about the older twin’s untold experiences, they found themselves drinking more than they intended to, pouring glass after glass after glass. It was a stark contradiction to Vergil’s initial proclamation, who was already on his third refill. Eventually, they started branching out to different topics, which ranged from the mundane to outlandish. This went on longer than they expected, with time wordlessly evaporating in the backdrop.

Dante was beginning to notice that Vergil was a little loose now, to say the least; he was acting less haughty and more candid. He swore that his older sibling was even turning red as a tomato, but he couldn’t tell. After all, he wasn’t one to talk: he was already the feeling the hit of the booze himself. The devil hunter fancied himself to be a pretty decent drinker, but this stuff was no joke. He bought this solely to get the elephant in the room drunk enough to spill his guts out. Vergil didn’t drink as feverously, but he was still going at it more than he probably cared to notice. On certain occasions, he would become lost in thought and start droning on about things outside of the current topic. Hell, he was even starting to smile a little more than usual, which was a weird thing to see from someone whose default facial expression was a frown.

Before they even realized it, the sun was already beginning to set on Fortuna, and their faces were already flushing red from how much they had been drinking up to this point.

“In the end, we lost both the cake and the money.” Finishing his latest tale, Vergil poured himself another round. “It caused quite the ruckus.”

Dante burst out into fits of uncontrollable laughter. His brother wasn't an airhead by any means, but his attempts to reintegrate into modern society always resulted in utter hilarity.

”Don’t sweat it, big bro.” He wiped away a small tear in his eye. “Being a dad’s tough.”

“It is.”

"How is that workin’ out for ya these days?”-The devil hunter gulped down the last of his current round-“Being a dad, I mean.”

Vergil was silent for a moment. He stared off into the distance, combing his brain for a response that seemed distant to him. The older half-demon never really considered himself a ”father”, by any means; Nero would call him dad or pops and he would occasionally refer to him as son but from his perspective, their relationship was more akin to close housemates than family members. It was still an awkward topic for the both of them, to say the least.

Seeing this kind of reaction from his brother was a rarity, but it was a good sign, nonetheless. Lady luck was truly on Tony Redgrave’s side today.

"It is still a very foreign feeling to me." Vergil finally answered. "As always, Nero tries to act like we are a normal family. However, even now I still find it very perplexing that he is my son. He is loud and brash and has no sense of subtlety.

"I wonder why?" He shot his little brother a dirty glare.

"Don't look at me.” Dante shrugged. "The kid was already like that when I first met him. Angry, hot-blooded, always looking for a fight. He punches really hard, too."

"Yes." Vergil nodded. "But at the same time, there is something about that boy that I cannot explain. It's as if there's a part of my soul that resides inside him. I am unable to see it, but I feel it."

“You two couldn’t be any more different, but the kid’s definitely yours, big bro.” He gave his brother a wink. “He even has your eyes.”

Vergil was silent for a moment, as if lost in contemplation. He suddenly found himself feeling wistful. It was odd for him to be this sentimental about a past he barely cared about at the time and as sure as he was that this was simply him being debilitated by the alcohol, he still wasn’t able to stifle these almost alien emotions he was starting to uncover.

He finally said, “Brother, may I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“How did you find my son?”

Dante refilled his glass of whiskey before beginning his tale.

"To be honest? By complete accident," he said. "When Lady tossed me a job about some serious stuff that was goin’ on down here that involved Devil Arms, I sent Trish to infiltrate the Order and get some dirt on 'em before moving in to do business. On the way, I saw this white-haired kid take care of a bunch of demons before going to some ceremony. It was good stuff.

"I barge into the said ceremony and killed the old dude who was running the show. There was obvious panic, a lot of screaming, but I didn't expect him to jump out of the crowd and start attacking me. We had a bit of a tussle, and he beat my face in with that arm of his which, by the way, hit really hard, but I got away. He started chasing me, though. Nero was an angry son of a bitch, so I had to knock some sense it to him more than once but like you said: spirit. I saw a lot of you in him."

Vergil smiled. Perhaps Nero has taken after him more than he initially thought, especially with how much he manhandled his uncle.

"I never even knew I had a son before I departed Fortuna," he said. "In truth, I never expected that one would confront me the way Nero did atop the Qliphoth. Perhaps I wasn't as resistant towards the desires of the flesh as I thought I would be back then."

There it was again. That sullen expression, as if his very soul was plucked from his body by an unseen force. He looked lost in thought, dreaming of someone or something in a distant memory that he could no longer attain.

"Yeah, well even you were young once, big brother.” He patted him on the back. “Don't let it get to ya."

This was it. The path was now open, and Dante wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip his grasp; he was going to ride this sudden burst of good luck all the way to the jackpot.

"Since I answered yours, do you mind if I pop a question of my own?" he asked.

“If you must.”

The devil hunter scooted over towards his brother. Vergil tried to move away, but found himself pressed against the couch’s armrest. His little brother was so close that he feared his coat would melt the moment it touched his on account of all the filth that had most likely accumulated on it from weeks of being unwashed.

“So, who was the lucky lady?” Dante whispered.

Vergil choked on his whiskey. At that moment, he realized his fatal error: he had been droning on so much that he inadvertently opened pandora’s box once more.

“What’s wrong, Vergil?” Dante placed his empty glass on the floor. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Er, I cannot seem to recall.” Vergil crossed his arms. “It did happen a long time ago, after all.”

“Come on, I know you’ve got something for me.” Returning to the photograph, Dante held it up towards his brother. "Who did you hook up with to get this kid?

He stalled by pretending to recall his memories in silence, but he knew that he was starting to run out of time. He needed to think of something right now.

In most cases, Vergil would find a smooth way out of this situation. He would take control over the conversation and shift it towards something else, gradually burying the original topic in a pile of mundane ones until it was laid to rest for the time being. Dante would exhume it in preparation for their next meeting, but the outcome was always the same either way. However, this case was different when one considers the copious amounts of alcohol coursing through his veins that clouded his train of thought. Hijacking the discussion was exactly what he planned on doing right now, but what he had in mind was far from eloquent.

“Before I give my response, allow me to retort with mine." Vergil answered. “What about you, little brother?”

“Excuse me?” Dante blinked.

Vergil’s expression unnerved him. His grin was unsettling, like it was full of malice and scandalous intent.

“Where is your child?” His older brother sneered.

“A kid?” Dante put the photo down and shrugged. “Never had one, never even thought of having one. My job doesn’t really give me time to settle down and raise a little rascal, does it?”

"So, you are surrounded by a gaggle of beautiful women." Vergil continued. "Lady, Nico, and perhaps others you have crossed paths with inside and outside your line of work, and you still have not conceived a worthy heir to our father’s bloodline?”

“I get that." Dante sighed. "But I’m too busy, okay? I’m supposed to be the one protecting the human world or whatever, so a kid’s definitely out of the question.

”I mean hey, we have yours and he already has Kyrie, so the line is saved. There’s no need for another kid.”

“I see, I see.” Vergil nodded. “A fine answer, dear brother, but I believe that you are simply hiding a much, much more different truth that you do not wish to admit.”

"And what would that be?"

“Perhaps the truth is that”-Vergil walked over to his little brother, stopping at an arm’s length away from him.-“You are yet to pop your cherry, so to speak."

With that, lady luck had packed her bags and left for the nearest ferry out of Fortuna. The heat rushed to Dante’s face as he found himself on the receiving end of a topic that he was not keen on discussing, especially with his big brother. He tried to dig up a cool comeback, which was his supposed specialty, but found nothing except the cold, hard realization that his composure was completely broken.

Normally, a shallow, off-handed question like that wouldn’t bother the devil hunter in the slightest, but the booze in his system made it hard for him to think rationally, and he wasn’t just going to let the fact that his brother called him a virgin slide. They were both too drunk to even think about how petty starting an argument over this issue was for men of their age.

“O-o-of course I’ve had sex.” He stammered. “I just don’t have a kid, that’s all!”

Vergil, however, was having none of it and was already consumed by laughter. You didn't this see him this jovial much and, admittedly, in other circumstances, Dante would have felt a small trickle of joy to see his brother this happy. It was rare, like seeing an albino animal in the wild, or a Riot with a stubby tail: there was a sense of wonder that was attached to it; a once in a lifetime find that you'd treasure for the rest of your life.

But right now, all he wanted to do was bash his goddamn face in.

"Oh, dear brother." Vergil was wiping away tears. "Don't tell me that you're incapable of charming a woman?"

“I’ve been on dates before!”

“Then how about satisfying one?” Vergil sneered.

The sight of his little brother becoming flustered pleased him greatly. Dante's face was an even redder shade now as he struggled to mask his embarrassment. Oh the poor fool. Vergil was loving every second of this.

"I see how it is." He gave his brother a hard shove. "You had a one-night stand and got a kid out of it, so now you think you can act all high and mighty, don't ya?”

“Mother always said that I was the more handsome brother.” Unfazed, Vergil retorted. "It appears she was correct."

“We literally have the same face." Dante shot back. "We're twins, dipshit!"

"But I am the more charming sibling." Vergil responded. "With your face and that odor, it is not surprising that women are not attracted to you whatsoever."

"You're delusional." Dante seethed. "Living in the underworld for decades does that to ya."

"And you are in denial, little brother."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am not!"

"Admit it, Dante." Vergil flaunted. "I have inherited our father's charm more than you have, and I am much better at pleasing my partner in bed."

"Are you implying that I'm bad at sex?!"

Dante felt a nerve pop. He wasn't just going to stand here and take this shit from him. The younger brother wanted nothing more than to wipe that his smug expression off his face and make him choke on his words.

"It's not an implication." Vergil locked eyes with his sibling. "It's a fact."

They were both acting like children, but were too drunk on expensive whiskey to care. There, in the living room of the orphanage, a stand-off was taking place. Mirroring what happened atop the Temen-Ni-Gru all those years ago, the sons of Sparda stared each other down, neither willing to give the other ground. The tension was palpable. The silence was deafning, in a way: there was a calm before the storm where one could hear the drop of a pin even if it happened across the street.

Dante conjured his Devil Sword out of thin air. Its blade pulsed in a sickening red glow, signifying that it was ready and able to carry out its wielder's wishes. Seeing nothing but red and the blue hue of his brother's coat, he was determined to make him choke on his words.

The younger son of Sparda raised his weapon and pointed it at his older brother.

"You take that back." He threatened.

Vergil was unfazed and turned to retrieve his own weapon. Yamato was leaning snugly beside the couch, but now it was in its master's hands, unsheathed and poised to cut through whatever Vergil wished to destroy. He didn't intend on using it for the entire day even just for travel, but a change of plans was in order. Holding on to his staunch pride as the eldest sibling, he was determined to teach this insolent little pup a lesson.

"Empty threats mean nothing to me, Dante." Vergil retorted, assuming a battle stance of his own. "But you already knew that."

With the powder now lit, it was only a matter of time before it exploded.

-----------

The Devil May Cry van was steadily rolling down the streets of Fortuna with its proprietors at the helm. Nico took the next right, passing by the pizza place that served as their landmark; they were already a few blocks away from home.

On the front seat, Nero had just finished counting the cash they hauled in from their latest gig. Another day, another devil arms deal busted. This kind of job usually entailed a big fight with someone who knew how to use their new toy (to some degree), but in this case they were lucky that the thugs didn't know how to use their stuff and ended up killing themselves before the fight even started.

"Easiest paycheck ever." He slammed the briefcase shut.

"You bet your ass it was." Nico blew a puff of smoke out the window. "Those dumbasses didn't even know what the hell kinda heat they were packin'!"

"Yeah well, that just means more cash for us." The young devil hunter leaned backwards. "If all the jobs we took went down this smoothly, we'd never have to worry about getting hungry ever again."

He was glad that things sorted themselves out when the dumb bastards started to slice themselves in half by accident. He needed the money, but he hated this kind of job; it always made him feel more tired than he should be after everything wrapped up. Getting to go home with the sun still up was rare for them nowadays, but he welcomed it all the same. Kyrie and the kids weren't going to be home soon, which meant that he had the house all to himself. His dad was the only one left holding down the fort, but he'd sooner eat his own shoe than consider that Vergi of all people would be the one to cause any trouble.

"...in other news, a local grocery store has become the victim of a robbery that took place earlier this morning. Witnesses and CCTV footage have all confirmed that the criminal, who appeared to be a shadowy humanoid wearing a long coat, ran straight into the establishment and started stealing various junk food and several bottles of alcohol in plain sight, leading many to speculate that demons wer-"

At the mention of demons, Nero shot out of his seat and turned off the radio.

"I was listen' to that, shit-for-brains!" The mechanic snapped, tossing the burnt-out cigar to her partner out of spite. "What the hell do you think you're doin'?"

"Look, can we just not hear anymore talk about demons today?" He sighed. "I wanna block all that shit out from my head and just relax for once, okay?

"Whatevuh." Nico rolled her eyes. "Can I at least switch to the music station?"

"Sure, go ahead." Nero flicked away the burnt-out cigar that landed on his jacket. "It'd be nice to hear something that ain't your annoying accent for once."

"Hey, fuck you, asshole." Nico cursed. "Your jus' jealous cause your voice sounds dumb an' borin' in comparison."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say."

With music starting to flood the van's atmosphere, Nero drifted off and began to imagine all the things he could do without the children or Kyrie around. Maybe he'd go to the rec room first to boot up a videogame, or he could relax on the couch with a cold can of beer to help ease his nerves a bit. He usually wasn't allowed to drink any liquor, but there wasn't anyone there to stop him now. Oh, maybe he could do both. Both would probably be the best. Drinking some good beer wh-

A sudden brake snapped him out of his dream world, causing his skull to collide with windshield.

"Nico?!" He rubbed the spot on his head that had hit the glass.

"Don't lose your tits, hotshot." The artisan tossed another cigar out the window. "Get off your butt and look a' this."

Nero was back on his feet and peering outside through the windshield. He immediately saw what caused Nico's distress: the front door to the orphanage was open. Not just open, but it hanged from its hinges, like someone had forcibly done so during a struggle. Not only that, some of the windows were broken, and pieces of furniture were scattered along the street.

Frustration started to bubble inside him. He was looking forward to having peace and quiet and leisure greeting him, not the face of whatever ugly son of a bitch had decided to sniff around their home.

"What happened here?" Nico wondered out loud.

"Definitely wasn't a girl scout, that's for damn sure." He removed Blue Rose from her holster. "And here I thought that I'd get the day off."

"What the hell are ya talkin' about?" Nico pointed at the carnage "Your dad probably killed whatever knocked on your door, dumbass!"

"Maybe." Nero got up from his seat. "We won't know until we find out and I'm not gonna leave things on a gut feeling when we're living with a bunch of children who'd follow a stranger if he had candy."

Turning to his partner, he grinned.

"Hey, driver? Keep the meter running, will ya?" the half-demon teased.

"Just get the fuck outta here and do what you need to do." Nico flashed him a middle finger.

Dismounting the van, Nero revved Red Queen to life. With Blue Rose in hand, he slowly approached the orphanage, taking care to assess the situation properly and avoid any surprises that may have been left for him if there were any.

"This is your fault, you idiot!"

"You were the one who provoked me!"

No, I didn't! You did!"

"Foolish little brother! How dare you place all the blame on me?"

He heard bickering from inside. It was his dad's, for sure, but he swore that he also heard Dante.

The young devil hunter threw caution to the wind and made a beeline for the doorway. Upon entering, he felt an artery pop upon witnessing the horrors that had transpired inside his own home while he was gone.

A Category-5 hurricane had ravaged the orphanage. Leaks had sprung everywhere; holes dotted the walls and ceilings like they were blocks of cheese. As with the scene outside, pieces of broken furniture were thrown around everywhere, and the wall that seperated a portion of the living room from the corridor was no more. The ceiling above the dining room had collapsed completely, causing everything in the guest room to scatter all over the ground floor, including the bed. It was one hell of a ruckus.

"Dad?! Dante?!" He called. "You guys okay?!"

"In the living room, son!" Vergil answered.

We're upstairs!" Dante shouted. "Don't believe him, he's tired!"

Vergil and Dante began to bicker again, but Nero was too focused on the matter at hand to make out what they were saying. He dashed towards the living room with urgency, worried about the safety of his dad ad uncle, and...

He stopped dead in his tracks. This time, he felt all his arteries explode at once as pure, unadulterated rage began to course through his system.

The living room was a right and proper mess, but the highlights of this destruction were his dearly beloved father and ever-reliable uncle. Dante was sprawled on the floor, impaled with Yamato and looking like he had been fighting an entire army of demons by himself the whole day. Vergil, also looking like absolute shit, was high up on the wall, held in place by the Devil Sword Dante that was embedded in his chest. They looked utterly exhausted from their fight. Nero could spied a bottle of whiskey, as well as several broken ones that were scattered around the scene. They got drunk and had a fight while everyone had their backs turned.

The two brothers immediately ceased their bickering and turned in sync to see Nero, their precious little boy, with an expression of pure hatred that would make even Mundus himself turn around and run back to his mother.

"Oh shit." Dante uttered.

"Welcome home, son!" Vergil faked a smile. "How was work?"

Nero was in hysterics. He laughed at the absurdity of it all. This was much, much worse than he imagined it to be. The orphanage was beyond trashed. They were already in the red with the finances as it is, but now all the money they had left was going straight to fixing the mess that these two had left behind.

"Hey dad, hey Dante." He pointed at the still-intact bottle of liquor. "Watcha got there?"

"Er, a smoothie?" His uncle let out a weak laugh.

"Wrong answer, motherfucker."

Nero's voice was calm, but his maniacal grin said otherwise.

With a bright flash of purple, the young half-demon shed his humanity and assumed his Devil form, opening his ethereal wings to their full wingspan.

"Alright, assholes." The arms that grew out of his wings cracked their knuckles in anticipation. "Which one of you is payin' for all this shit?"

Dante raised his right hand.

"Okay, okay. So, here's how this is gonna work." Nero approached his loving family, making sure that each step was slow and deliberate. "I'll be using my left hand on ya and only my left so that after I'm done, you'll be conscious enough to pay me from your fucking hospital bed. We clear on that, old man?"

"Please don't kill me, Nero." Dante begged. "It was your dad's fault."

"Show me mercy, son. I beg you." Vergil chimed in. "It was your uncle who started this."

"Oh, it doesn't matter which one of you did this or that." Nero cackled "'Cause as far as I'm concerned, you're both gonna need more than just a Gold Orb when I'm through beating both your asses!"

With that, the arms on Nero's wings reached out and grabbed both brothers by their collars.

-----------

Nico was enjoying her 'cigs when she saw Dante fly out the window and land hard on the pavement.

"Nero, please!" he pleaded, trying in vain to crawl his way out of the carnage.

One of the arms from Nero's wings reached out to grab him by the ankle, slamming him around the street like a toy before pulling him back in through the same window he flew out of.

"Who told you I was done?! Get your fuckin' ass back here, old man!"

The mechanic took one last whiff of her cigar. Tossing it out in the street, she rolled up her window and turned on the radio again.

"What a bunch o' weirdos." she mused as the music began to fill her ears, drowning out the anguished wails of Nero's father figures.

[sightlessdarkcorner7]

50 Couples On The Creepiest Sleep Talking/Said In The Dark of Night

After reading these sleep talker stories from (Ask Reddit) you are going to have trouble falling asleep with your partner.

My husband is OUT OF CONTROL with his sleep talking. You almost can’t call it sleep talking, because you would swear this MFer knows EXACTLY what he’s doing. It isn’t just talking. He gets up out of bed, will literally be walking around the house doing things like he’s totally aware. Could hold a full conversation with you. It takes a minute to realize whether he’s awake or not, he’s so sure of himself. So probably the scariest thing was one night we’re knocked out, it has to be like 3 am, and his big ass BOLTS out of bed like I’ve never seen in my life, waking me up and frantically yelling, “WE HAVE TO GO NOW! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE! FOLLOW ME! HURRY UP!” I literally go into full panic mode and start trying to grab things and get my dogs, all while trying to ask him WTF is going on, but he’s SO serious about this that I just trust that there must be something bad happening. Within a minute or so I noticed that as frantic as he was walking around, he wasn’t really DOING anything, just kind of going in circles. At that point it clicked that he wasn’t really awake [I had been woken up from a dead sleep too obviously] so I started saying his name over and over and telling him it was okay, and he kind of just snapped out of it and was like oh, sorry about that…

I was told by my SO that I said, “Give her a lobotomy, right through the temple.”

SO: Shhh be quiet. She’ll hear us. I ask who. SO Response: The woman who lives here. Shhhh she’s in the hallway.

Sat up at a 90 degree angle and said, “Violence causes and solves all problems.” Laid back down and said nothing else.

Woke up to go to the bathroom one night. As I move to get up my boyfriend goes, “Don’t go out there…” Thinking he’s awake and joking with me I go, “Oh yeah, why?” He sits upright eyes wide open and goes, “SHE’S out there.” I held it for the rest of the night.

Woke up the whole house shouting, “Where is the head?! Where is the head?!”

He did that sit straight up in bed thing that I thought only happened in movies then shouted, “They’re coming for my skinnnn.”

I talk in my sleep, and my girlfriend told me this story after we woke up. I had evidently, turned toward her, shook her with my face, and yelled “They took my god damn arms Johnny!” before slumping back over and going back to sleep.

Not my SO but one of my friends’ mother used to talk in her sleep frequently. Apparently she was petting her boyfriend’s hair and telling him all the ways that she could kill him and make it look like an accident. Told her about it in the morning and she just laughs and said they weren’t bad ideas.

My wife has the occasional night terrors. One night she woke up screaming thinking something was in the corner of our room. Really freaked me out cause I woke up to her trying to escape through the wall while pulling her lamp from the socket and throwing everything off of her nightstand. My dog and I just looked at her super confused. Dog noped out of the bedroom and slept in the guest room that night.

My boyfriend has PTSD from his time in the Marines and what they did overseas. The other night, I had my arm around his waist and he patted my hand and said, “You’re never going to make it out of here. You’re just another casualty about to happen. You’re going to die and luckily we’re married because you have life insurance.” .... we are not married.

“I wanna tear all your skin off your body… then maybe you’ll be quiet.”

My stepfather in his sleep:”I’ll will kill you, you bastard.” It was in the beginning of their relationship, my mum was a little bit scared.

A few months ago my husband was mumbling in his sleep, I asked what was up, he replied very clearly and loudly, “A CORRIDOR OF SEVERED HEADS.” I slept with the light on.

The first time we ever slept together I woke up to him looking at me. “Hand me my spear. I will kill you now,” he said. Then he closed his eyes and laid back down. I thought about it for like 5 minutes, decided I could take him, then went back to sleep myself. We dated for 6 years.

He sat up, pointed to the darkest corner of the room, and said, “There’s someone there!” I frantically said, “What do you mean?” And he insisted “There! There’s someone standing right there!” He then proceeded to lay down and go back to sleep as I used my phone light to check the dark corner. There was no one there.

He’s still watching us. He has no eyes.” Well, so much for sleeping tonight.

“They’re out there.” He says, eyes closed. “Who?” I asked. He shrugs, and uses both hands to gesture to the dark window. “Them.” We’ve had people in our yard before, so I had to look!

I wake up to hear him mumbling indistinct words, followed by “sudden infant death syndrome.” I was 7 months pregnant at the time.

My husband, almost every night, yells out “help…help…HELP” in his sleep. If I wake him when he does it, he’s hysterical until I can calm him down. It’s crazy.

“Don’t move or they’ll get you.” He says he doesn’t even remember having dreams that night.

Soon after having a child, my wife sat upright in bed in the middle of the night, shouted: “My baby! What has she done?!” and lay back down.

“Don’t worry about the lady in the corner.”

When we first got together, my (soon-to-be-ex)SO would scream at his ex wife in his sleep, saying things like “shut the fuck up you stupid bitch, I should kill you”. Now he screams those things at me in his sleep.

This wasn’t an SO but a guy I had a fling with. He abruptly began speaking gutteral gibberish in his sleep, then in his guttural voice shouted “I SAW HIM,” then continued the gibberish. Think straight-up horror movie demon voice. I think the devil took over his body for a moment.

My ex used to grind her teeth, talk and move a lot while sleeping. One night she was making this weird noise with her throat and me, being a light sleeper, woke up and decided I was going to get up and go to the bathroom when she suddenly snapped her neck and turned her face towards me and said real quick “the witch has arrived” and then turned her face away just as fast and stopped moving. I spent the whole night lying down wide awake trying not to piss myself.

My husband frequently sees things in our room in his sleep that are not there. Giant spiders on the wall, snakes, squirrels. He’ll wake up and tell me to get out of bed so he can find whatever it is he “saw”. One time he jumped out of bed and looked under the bed for snakes. My favorite was when he pointed to the corner of our bedroom and said there was a giant spider. He then proceeded to run out of the bedroom yelling, “I’m out this bitch, I’m out this bitch”. He doesn’t even talk like that normally. He’s also punched me in the back multiple times in a row because he was dreaming of fighting someone.

“We’re not alone,” at 3 am while camping in the 100 Mile Wilderness.

My SO has laughed in his sleep. Doesn’t seem creepy, but when you’re sleeping in dark and quiet room, and wake up to someone chuckling, then creepy is an understatement.

One night he repeatedly screamed “GET THEM OFF ME!” while biting his own arms. Alarming to say the least.

I’m not sure what’s more terrifying than your SO sitting upright and saying, “they’re here” only to collapse back into their deep slumber.

Screaming, “I am going to kill you Motherfucker!”

My SO used to (not as much over the years) speak German in his sleep. So, since I understand very little german, I’d catch a few words here and there and ask in the morning… It usually was something like “run”, “kill” ect. He had the strangest dreams/ nightmares.

I am the talker, my BF is weirded out by it in general… one night I sat up and creepily whispered “Help Me.”

He kissed my forehead and then said, in a really creepy sing-songy voice, “They’re coooooming, the terrorists are coooming! Dont worry though, they wont bang you.”

Violently shakes me awake “Don’t move. DO NOT MOVE.” Whispers: “We are covered in bees. Stay very still.” Turns over and falls sleeps.

My brother and I shared a room growing up. I would always wake him up with my sleep talking so he convinced my Dad to record me in my sleep. I said one very clear and loud sentence that night. “Go until you die.” No clue what I was dreaming about.

My ex once asked Her: “Do you see them?” Me : “Who?” Her: “The children.” That was a big nope!

Not words, but a laugh. My husband has, on more than one occasion, laughed in his sleep. But it’s not a normal laugh… It’s either a lot deeper and slower (almost insidious), or it’s a higher pitch (sometimes up and down rapidly with the pitch) and kind of staccato. Neither laugh sounds like him when he’s awake. It’s unsettling, but fortunately, it doesn’t happen too often.

I had an ex girlfriend who’s first language was Welsh. When she spoke in her sleep, bitch sounded like she was speaking in tongues.

Not 100% a talking in her sleep story but… When my SO is stressed she has dreams about spiders crawling everywhere. One night I was reading and she was asleep, she suddenly sat up and just stared at me. I asked her what’s up?

My wife doesn’t talk in her sleep, but I did wake up once to her sitting up, leaning over me and staring at me Paranormal Activity style. It was terrifying, and she has no recollection of it.

My fiancé is Chinese and didn’t have the best upbringing there. It is common for her to yell in a distressed tone in her sleep random Chinese phrases.

“We need to decapitate them and take them back to the lab.”

My SO informed me one morning that he had woken up in the middle of the night with my face inches from his, my finger in his ear and I was apparently whispering, “I just need to get in, let me in!”

“Are you texting demons?” Oddly high pitched laugh. “You’re friends with demons!”

My SO said she was going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. On her way back, I said, “It’s following you” and went back to sleep.

I’m the sleep talker but the best I’ve ever been told about was, “NO!! None of them have heads!”

“PUT IT AWAY. NOW.” (This was only our fourth night sleeping together and I didn’t even have anything out…)

Initially he just mumbled something I couldn’t understand. I turned around to face him and asked him what he had said. He responded in his sleep “don’t worry about it” and then laughed in this villainous way that I’ve never heard him use while awake. It honestly creeped me out.

[ladyofdecember]

Rusty Venture’s Timeline (SPOILERS!)

This is an updated list of Rusty’s life and timeline up to the beginning point of the show starting. The new dates we’ve been given from Season 7 and the new art book are added here but some dates are conflicting with others due to the nature of the information we’ve been given. Beware of spoilers, obviously, if you haven’t watched recent episodes or read the book yet!

Rusty is born (Probably 1964)

Jonas Sr. at some point sleeps with Mz. Quymn and she has a daughter, Tara Quymn.

As a child, Rusty was kidnapped a lot for ransom and Jonas Sr. and Team Venture have to come and save him. So much so that Jonas Venture Sr puts a tracking device in one of his molars, unbeknownst to Rusty. We know that he did not start accompanying his father and Team Venture on adventures until he was 3 years old (1967) (Now Museum Now You Don’t, Past Tense)

Jonas Sr. at some point sleeps with The Blue Morpho's wife who is The Monarch's mother. (1967) (Arrears In Science)

The Monarch is born (1967) (Arrears In Science)

Rusty is shipwrecked on an island and went to Spanakopita for the first time (Spanakopita!) Set sometime during Jackie Onassis’ wedding, around Oct 20, 1968. Age 4

At some point Rusty meets Hector Molina and they become good friends. Hector even comes to live with them for a bit(?) (Self Medication)

At some point, The Monarch and Rusty meet each other as children (S.P.H.I.N.X. Rising) We know this occurs after the statue was built and placed on the compound’s front lawn and prior to The Monarch’s father and mother dying in a plane crash since they were present at the time. This puts their rough ages as Rusty at probably 7 and The Monarch at 4. 

When Rusty was 8 years old, the Action Man played a prank on him by throwing a fake grenade at him. When his dog, Scamp 3, ran over to it, Rusty panicked and threw himself on top of it to save his dog’s life, and in turn became injured by it piercing his kidney. He had at this point, lost two previous pet “Scamps”, which he chose to continue to name the same way each time. The original Scamp was sent into space by Jonas years before. 1972

Jonas Sr. begins having multiple “key” parties at the compound and Rusty and Tara spend a lot of time together when he is age 10 (1974) before something separates them for more than 20 years. (Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman)

Unknown date - Rusty spends many nights awakened by the Action Man holding an empty gun to his head.

When Rusty was ten years old, he wrote a letter to The Herculoids, calling them hippies for not fighting in Vietnam. (Twenty Years To Midnight) 1974

Also sometime around the age of 10, Jonas is building Gargantua I and Rusty is seen in filmstrips helping him. (Careers In Science) 1974

The Monarch’s father, The Blue Morpho, died in a plane crash when he was 8 years old (1976) just a few months out from his September birthday, when he would turn 9 (Arrears In Science)

Jonas rescues The Blue Morpho from the plane crash site and turns him into Venturion (September 30th, 1976) (Arrears In Science)

June 23, 1977 (at age 11) Rusty is attacked by the Bicentennial Man/Venturion, the robot Jonas has been working on as a product of Venture Industries, who tries to kill him by choking him to death. Rusty begins having many recurring nightmares about this event. Venturion is destroyed by Kano, then later stolen by Dr. Z. He then went off the grid for a year, and returned as Vendata later on in 1977. (Bot Seeks Bot, Arrears In Science)

Rusty has a prom at the Venture Compound, graduates from his learning bed and then goes to college all at age 17. (1982) He remained at college for an unknown number of years until learning of the news that Jonas Sr died on Gargantua I on April 9th, 1987. (Now Museum Now You Don’t, Past Tense, Arrears In Science)

The day that his father, Jonas Sr., dies Rusty immediately leaves college (drops out) and heads back to Spanakopita for the first time since he was a kid (about 20 years later). Jonas dies on Gargantua I on April 9th, 1987 so Rusty dropped out of college in 1987. (Arrears In Science) Rusty goes back to Spanakopita every year around the same time and brags he hasn’t missed a Spanakopita in “20 years”. (Past Tense, Spanakopita!) Rusty is complaining that his roommate is a freshman so he has to be at least a year above freshman year. Rusty says that he went to State University “in the 80′s”, (Pomp and Circuitry) Rusty says he had been friends with Mike for more than a year. He also mentions Mike was obsessed with Coco from Fame the year before, meaning that they can’t have attended college prior to 1980. Rusty is most likely referring to the T.V. show and not the movie Fame so this places them in their freshman year between 1982 to 1983. We also know that Rusty was < 24 in college due to his statement indicating that he didn’t have sex in college, until after he left college. (Past Tense)

The Monarch, having attended college at the same time as Rusty and Brock, most likely begins his life long arching due to some incident happening in college which Rusty does not or can not remember. He tries to blow Rusty up with a bomb while he is in the science lab but ends up only succeeding in blowing off his lab partner Underbeit’s jaw. Underbeit still blames Rusty to this day due to the fact that Rusty had skipped class that day due to his father’s death and his leaving college. April 9th, 1987 (The Invisible Hand of Fate, Arrears In Science)

Rusty then takes over Venture Industries as the sole heir 1987. He inherited his father’s fortune and went to Little Italy in New York to purchase a very expensive speedsuit, “THE AMBASCIATORE”, from Ezio. He never went back for it once it was completed, until after he inherited J.J.’s fortune about 20 years later. (Hostile Makeover) This is most likely due to his having to return to State University once flush with his inheritance and pay for the damages to the science wing. Finding that he has run out of most of the money already, he therefore couldn’t return to pay for and pick up the speedsuit from Ezio, instead returning home to try to be a super scientist and make money.

Rusty gets a bodyguard assigned to him by the O.S.I., Myra. This may be simply due to The Monarch’s constant threats and attacks. (The Invisible Hand of Fate, Shadowman 9: In the Cradle of Destiny, I Know Why The Caged Bird Kills) 

The Monarch begins routinely attacking Rusty now that they are out of college but this appears to be a solo act of his and his alone. His hostility seems to have only grown since college since whatever happened between them happened in college. Myra is always there however thwarting his attacks. (The Invisible Hand Of Fate)

Rusty loses his virginity at age 24 presumably with the boy’s true mother (not Myra) as Rusty uses condoms when he has sex but not back then. (Past Tense, Powerless In The Face Of Death) Probably in 1988

The boys are born sometime afterward by some unnamed mother, who is not Myra.

Rusty later has sex with his bodyguard, Myra (I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings)

Myra gets arrested eventually when the boys are only about a year old and still in diapers and she gets taken away by the O.S.I. Brock becomes their bodyguard, assigned as a punishment by the O.S.I. (The Invisible Hand of Fate) Rusty meets Billy Quizboy Whalen when he is 16 years old. (1989)This is the first time, having been introduced by Pete White, his former college friend. Billy goes on to know him for the next 20+ years, maintaining a close friendship. (Are You There God? It’s Me Dean)

Brock becomes Rusty and the boys’ bodyguard in the late 80's. (The Invisible Hand of Fate, Go Team Venture Art Book)

Unknown - Rusty shows Brock the clones that he has made of his sons (Perchance To Dean, Go Team Venture Art Book). They are still babies at this point and alive and well as Rusty tells him it takes pressure off of Brock having to bodyguard them. He shows him because, as Rusty tells him, he is going to be his new bodyguard so we can assume it was probably the day Brock started. Their hairstyles and clothing indicate late 1980′s

About a year(?) later Rusty either dates or just sleeps with Nikki Fictel and she has Dermott (Everybody Comes to Hank’s) so we know the boys are older than Dermott technically if not for all their deaths and rebirths and that Brock was already the Venture’s bodyguard during the time that Rusty is sleeping with Nikki (Perchance to Dean). Dermott is now however the exact same age as Hank and Dean (due to their constant dying and rebirths). We learn from the special that Dermott is seventeen, the same age as Hank and Dean (From The Ladle To The Grave).

Sheila tells The Monarch that they have been arching Rusty since “Marky Mark had a funky bunch”, so for a very long time. This would mean they started arching together around 1991. The Monarch had already been arching Rusty alone secretly for a long time.

Gary tells Sergeant Hatred that he has been storming the Venture Compound since the 90′s. If Gary was kidnapped by The Monarch and his henchmen when he was 15 (Home Insecurity) we can assume that The Monarch along with Dr. Mrs. The Monarch and their various henchmen have been arching Rusty at the compound since 1991. (Operation P.R.O.M.)

Unknown - Rusty develops an addiction to using amphetamines/”diet pills” on a routine basis which quickly becomes a problem leading Brock to be the one to watch the boys/be the responsible one more often than not.

Then a lot of time passes and the boys die a lot through various circumstances, the boys die at least 13 times (Powerless in the Face of Death). Brock mentions that Myra had hurt the boys at one point in the past so it is possible that she was responsible for their initial deaths. (I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings)

We then we open with the pilot episode of The Venture Bros (The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay)

I’ve completed this with a bit of speculation on my part for the times plus info pulled from this handy dandy timeline from The Venture Bros Wiki. A lot of info has been pulled from the wonderful @21derful who has been instrumental in nailing down years and dates for this ever present work in progress.

Any comments, suggestions, edits to the dates or other info is welcome! Please help to add on!

[justlvckyviral-archive]

Hey all, so it’s Alex again this time bring you my little angry chihuahua Lucky. It’s been a hot minute since I last wrote him and I’ve made a couple of changes to make him fit the RP’s premise better so I’m still trying to work out a few of the new details. He’s kind of the worst and I hate him already but he’s also one of my all time favourite muses to write so please come love him. Also if you’re looking for angst, look no further since he’s basically a vessel for all of those plots. As always like this post if you want to plot or anything and I’ll come bother you, or just pop up in my IMs or on Discord!

「 LEE MINHYUK, CISMALE, 26, BRING ME THE HORIZON 」┈ did you read that latest viral gossip issue on JIHUN ‘LUCKY’ PARK?  he is the LEAD GUITARIST/BACKING VOCALIST in DAYBREAKER, one of my favorite ALTERNATIVE ROCK groups. they’ve been releasing music for EIGHT YEARS now, but viral gossip has only been talking about them for the last THREE YEARS. get this, i think i heard HE ANONYMOUSLY LEAKS STORIES (INCLUDING OCCASIONAL FAKES) ABOUT HIMSELF TO THE MEDIA IN ORDER TO KEEP HIS BAND RELEVANT. they’re known as the FIREBRAND of the music industry, since they have a rep for being  LOYAL but QUICK TEMPERED, but who knows. maybe that will change once they become #1. 

TW: Alcohol, Addiction, Traffic Accident, Loss of Limb

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’ve accidentally written a small novel again, so I’m going to split it down into four key sections. Personality, Personal History, Career History and Other. I’ll also just throw a tl;dr at the top because good grief is this a lot. His plots page is here if anyone is interested, so if something catches your eye please come shout at me!

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

tl;dr

Kind of antisocial guitarist in a metalcore turned alt-rock band. Raised in the UK. Punk af. Really short fuse that gets him into a lot of trouble. Sees the music industry as a game and knows how to play. Every move and response is calculated. Plays up to the media perception of him as some sort of villain. Doesn’t really trust people, especially if they’re famous. Super jaded, super bitter, super cynical. Rich parents who were never around. developed a drinking problem after being signed. Involved in a serious traffic accident shortly after third albums release that led to the loss of his left leg. parents paid to bury the story. relocated to america and checked himself into a rehab clinic. first album was a flop. second and third better. fourth blew them up. really doesn’t like where the sound is heading for five, but feels like he owes his band mates so is sticking it out. has a three piece side project that is highly political (27club VC: The Fever 333).

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

PERSONALITY:

Firstly, and most importantly, Luck doesn’t like you. Lucky has never liked you, and he probably never will. He might respect you, or even be kind of neutral towards you, but never more than that.

There are very few exceptions to that rule, with the main ones being his bandmates and his siblings.

Has some serious self loathing that he’d never actually admit to.

Lucky considers himself a punk, an activist and a musician. In that order.

Has been describes as a journalist’s wet dream and a lawyers nightmare.

Values authenticity above all else. Both his and other peoples. Despises people who are fake (lol irony) and hates it eve more when other people call him fake.

Calling him a sell out or anything along those lines is probably not a good idea.

His first instinct is that people are only trying to get close to him to take advantage of his success and popularity. Probably because he does exactly the same thing to everyone else.

Loyal to a fault. If by some miracle you make it into his inner circle he’d actually take a bullet for you. He’ll always have your back.

The fact that he is so short tempered causes him so many problems? It doesn’t take much to light the fuse, and when he explodes things tend to get messy.

Which means that a lot of people are kind of scared off? And the ones that aren’t are just as volatile as him.

Absolutely no filter. Lucky will tell you exactly what he’s thinking or what he means with no regards for the consequences or your feelings.

Voted most likely to start a fistfight over something dumb five years in a row. Still holds the title.

Comes across as kind of frosty and callous even when he’s trying not to.

Has a serious problem with people taking advantage of others.

He is painted as kind of a villain type character in the media? But like, the villain you love to hate. I don’t know what the international equivalent is, but I’m thinking sort of like Trent Reznor in the 90s?  Kind of plays up to that trope, but he pretty much fits the label without trying.

Does not know what a healthy relationship looks like. Platonic, romantic, even familial: there’s always a catch.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

PERSONAL HISTORY:

Brace yourself for this because my boy has not had a smooth ride.

Jihun was born is Daegu, South Korea but moved to the UK (Specifically Sheffield) before he was old enough to start retaining memories. 

The second eldest child of two property tycoons with more time and concern for their business than their family, he was never close to his parents.

Childhood wasn’t exactly unhappy. His grades were decent enough to get by and having seven siblings meant that he was never without company. Despite hiring staff to watch over them, Lucky kind of grew up fast and felt a sort of almost parental responsibilty

As time went on and their parents became more and more distant from him and his siblings, he slowly grew to resent them.

By the time he reached his teenage years, Jihun began to see exactly how his parents did business. Shady backroom deals. Questionable partners. Bullying or bribing their way out of any trouble. 

They weren’t exactly good people.

He’d become increasingly jaded, bitter and cynical beyond his years and isolated himself from the few friends he had outside of the family.

He was convinced that they were only trying to get close to him because of his family’s money: After seeing how corrupt his parents were he’d lost a lot of faith in most people.

It was around this time that he also discovered his love of punk rock.

The scene in Sheffield was pretty small, but he instantly connected with the anti-establishment values and aesthetics. He threw himself in head first.

It didn’t take long for him to teach himself guitar (Four chords and the truth) and form the band that would go on to become Daybreaker. [See: Career History]

Though things started off well enough. They played shows, eventually got signed to a new small imprint of Universal and began releasing material.

Over the course of several years however, Lucky got himself involved in some pretty serious stuff. What started as casual drink quickly transformed into a cru to help deal with his new found fame. He developed a serious problem with alcohol.

Between the pressures of effectively raising his family, maintaining a career as a full time musician and trying to fit into a scene that was, he now realise, extremely toxic, he struggled to cope.

The sheer catharsis of punk rock had proved to be an effective coping mechanism, but for Lucky it had already reached its limits and so he sought solace elsewhere.

It reached a point where he was having his stomach pumped on a regular basis.

The turning point came one night in November 2014. Lucky was considerably over the blood-alcohol limit, and shouldn’t have been walking let alone driving.

And yet he found himself behind the wheel of their tour van with a member of their road crew in the passenger seat.

They were involved in a serious collision: a head-on crash with an oncoming truck. Frankly neither of them should have survived, but the passenger escaped with a few broken bones.

Jihun wasn’t quite so fortunate. As well as several broken ribs and a skull fracture, his left leg had to be amputated below the knee. With the aid of a prosthetic was eventually able to walk again, but it was the hardest period of his life.

He didn’t talk to anyone for the first three weeks of his recovery. Just sat there expressionless. 

When he’d first come around after the surgery and he was informed of what had happened he was told that he was lucky to be alive, let alone that he would be able to walk again. It was a them that kept resurfacing throughout the recovery process and one that has stuck with him ever since Hence why he goes by Lucky.

Once he was back in the world, something began to bother him. There had been no coverage of the accident despite him being a relatively prominent public figure.

As it turns out, that was his parents doing. They’d paid to get the story buried as well as any and all charges that could have been levelled against him. 

They would later claim that this was for the benefit of his career, but Lucky remained fairly certain it was to keep their names away from the bad press.

Since then his relationship with them has been complicated. He still doesn’t approve of their methods, but they also potentially saved his career. And could ruin it at any moment.

Needless to say it proved quite the sobering experience. Lucky knew that he needed to get clean, and so checked himself into a rehab clinic in LA. This was probably the second most difficult period of his life.

He completed the program and decided to relocate to America permanently. Hollywood was probably not the best place for him, but it was a damn sight better than Sheffield.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

CAREER HISTORY:

And now that all the trauma and angst is out of the way, lets talk about angry music.

Lucky’s first band, RedBtn, were awful. I mean truly terrible. Sure they were only 14 at the time, but the bassist could barely play and the vocalist couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

Needless to say they were not together for very long. It was long enough to spark a passion for performance in Lucky, and two years later he went on to form the group later known as Daybreaker.

They were marginally better. Gathering a small following in their hometown, their scrappy, rough around the edges take on metalcore was heavier than most other bands on the market.

Something else that set them aside was their aesthetics. It made them almost like black sheep of the scene. They looked too polished to be accepted by the hardcore kids, but sounded far too aggressive for a more mainstream audience.

This was a pattern that would continue until late into their career. 

Someone saw something in them though, and it didn’t take long before they were signed to  a small imprint of Universal.

Despite having some devoted fans, including Lucky), their first record (A proxy of Count Your Blessings) was almost universally panned. It was a Christmas miracle that they weren't immediately dropped.

By the time the second album (A proxy of Suicide Season) came around they were widely regarded as posers and dismissed by the rock community at large.

It was around this time that Lucky realized that the music industry was one big game, and in order to get anywhere they’d need to learn how to play.

From that moment on every action and potential response was calculated with a ruthless efficiency.

Every friendship, relationship, public appearance, quote, photograph. Everything was optimized to increase their presence and make them more visible.

And so Lucky decided that the best way to get more eyes on them was to cause controversy. As the defacto spokesperson he started showing a more confrontational side to the press, calling out critics and fans alike.

He would leak stories about himself anonymously.

Eventually he would take this characterization t the extreme. He has been pictured in physical altercations as well as the subject of a defamation suit all to keep their brand relevant.

The media began to paint them as villains: a band turning on their own scene with no regard for their peers or their fanbase.

He’d taken complete control of the narrative, and they were eating out of the palm of his hand.

It tended to divide people. You either loved Lucky, or you hated him.

It definitely worked though. The album received (Admittedly still muted) praise and secured their future for at least one ore album cycle.

It was during the production of their third album (A proxy  for the one with the stupidly long title) that Lucky went through his dark phase. The rest of the band remained mostly sober whilst he struggled.

He doesn’t remember much of the recording process and doesn’t really know the songs. If they ever slip one into the setlist, he has to go back and re learn it.

This was also the point in time where his relationship with the press began to sour. Whereas he had previously tried to pull attention towards him, at this point he hated the invasiveness.

They began reporting that he may have had a problem, and he furiously denied it, going so far as to issue take down notices and cease and desist orders.

Of course it only served to boost their infamy, and the album was their first to be widely lauded. They were on their way to major league success.

And then, one night in the middle of a November UK tour, the accident happened.

The tour was cancelled due to a ‘family emergency’ and the band went into a media blackout. Despite his insistence that they simply replace him and carry on, they waited until he had recovered before emerging into the spotlight once more.

After Lucky decided to permanently relocate to the US he was sure that, as much as he’d valued his time with the band, their time together was over. Imagine his shock then, when some of them decided to follow him.

Shortly after completing rehab, Lucky locked himself away in the studio, working on what would later be dubbed the crown jewel of their discography (A proxy for Sempiternal). The album detailed a lot of his struggles in a very coded way.

With lost time to make up for, Lucky returned to the character of the music industry’s cartoon super villain. He once again began leaking stories about himself to the press anonymously, fabricating many of the details.

There were certain topics that remained off limits. The accident. His addiction. His stint in rehab. Anything and everything else was fair game.

The record relaunched them into public consciousness in a bigger way than ever before.

Currently the band are at work on their fifth album (A proxy of That’s The Spirit) which is shaping up to become an even more commercial sounding album.

Lucky isn’t entirely on board. In fact he hates it, and considers it to be selling out their core values. But at the same time, he feels an obligation to see it out. 

His bandmates had risked their careers and stuck their necks on the line for him: who was he to throw that away because a guitar tone isn’t distorted enough

Because of this, Lucky decided to put together a side project. A supergroup of sorts (Although if he were to hear you call it that he’d seriously kick off.). A three piece punk rock band, 27club are a super high energy, extremely political group combining straight up hardcore with rap influences (VC: The Fever 333) [SIDEBAR: If y’all haven’t listened to letlive or The Fever 333 and you like rock music you're missing out. Jason Butler is the best singer of this generation Change my mind.]

Daybreaker will always take priority, but this gives him an outlet for angrier music, as well as a place to air his political leanings outside of interviews.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

OTHER:

Strong sense of social justice and regularly exercises that. Has a tendency of taking his activism a step too far.

Considers himself bisexual, but has never officially labelled it. Has been in public ‘relationships’ with both male and female partners

Has a boat load of tattoo, including the straight edge x’s on the backs of his hands

Vegan.

Rides a motorcycle which he loves more than he would his first born child.

Has three dogs. Two Pomeranians named Rollins and MacKaye, and a Boxer named Atticus