#and she goes out of her way to recruit other ring girls and folk down on their luck like she was

[lukasdoodles]

Some more Oc doodles (Ever + Macho man hehe)

[mnetruinedmylife]

Untitled Gang AU

This is just my need to write an AKB Gang AU combined with shameless Yuunaa. It’s written in mostly stream of consciousness writing, so the topic jumps to whatever connection my brain jumps to, it can get a little disorientating at times.�� It’s also kind of unfinished, but I didn’t want it sitting in a file collecting dust, so here it is.

Warnings: this piece includes: mentions of violence, though nothing too graphic; traumatic flashbacks; mildly sexually charged scenes, though nothing truly nsfw.

 _____________________________________________________________

The town of Akihabara is a place of conflict and contradictions.

Located in the central ward of Tokyo, it has the highest rate of organised crime activity in all of Japan. The police will claim that there are no gangs in Akihabara – after all, the businesses are flourishing and the tourists come in droves, there is no safer place. Yet, every denizen knows that the infamous 48 Gangs originated in there, and it’s even a point of pride for a few.

If the press interviews a resident, they’ll swear up and down that they’ve never felt safer anywhere else. But more than once has a tourist revealed that they’ve been told by locals scuttling about to either stay on the nearby streets north and west of Akihabara train station after dark, or else not go wandering about at all.

The Akihabara sect of the 48 Gangs themselves are full of conflicting information too.

Sometimes, when the residents manage to acknowledge that they exist, one may hear them whisper in hushed tones about how they’re vigilantes, heroes who do the right thing when the police can’t or won’t. But in the same breath they’d tell you to stay away from one particular café in the Hanaokacho district, and the theatre near Taito station. The members of the AKB sect themselves would laugh themselves sick at the term, all the while shooting a defenceless man in the head without batting an eye, because they’re not heroes. They have their own goals, their own plans, most of which revolve around protecting their own, their members, their family, and if some things extend towards heroism, than that’s just a coincidence, and if some things stretch closer to the other side, well, that’s fine too.

Word on the street says it starts during the days when multiple factions ran rampant all over Tokyo. When kids were recruited right out of high school (and some still in it) into the Project gangs and prostitution rings. Some say a man rose up to create a force that could clean up the streets and keep the gang violence where it belongs – between gangs and not involving civilians.

Aki-P they called him, the man who swept up the capitol’s underbelly.

People say also he’s the same man who created the Sakamichi Syndicate and started the bloodiest turf war Tokyo has ever seen. Some say he did it because he gave up on the AKB sect, when they started losing their way and becoming more dangerous than the gangs they rose up against. Others say he did it after losing control of the 48 Gangs, that he was ousted from the inner circle and so created a rival faction as vengeance.

No matter how different the stories get, they all have one similarity. The 48 Gangs are dangerous, the sect in Akihabara doubly so, and anyone who gets in their way, or harms anyone in their sphere, or dares to challenge their grip over Tokyo, take heed and be on the lookout.

They’ll come for you.

__________________________________________________________)

Okada Nana is fifteen when she boards a train from Kanagawa to Tokyo and doesn’t look back.

Kojima Mako and Nishino Miki are similar ages, and in similar situations when they run into each other, having decided to pickpocket the same mark, and the three of them decide to run together. The streets are a little less intimidating with two sets of eyes to watch your back, and two bodies to keep you warm at night.

Mako’s the devious one, with her heart-melting gummy smiles and disarming laugh, she’s able to charm any passer-by and con them out of their hard earned money.

“Sorry sir, I’ve lost my parents, can I please borrow three hundred yen for the train fare?”

It works more often than not, there’s never a shortage of businessmen willing to play hero and help out a stranded school girl. And if she steals the rest of their wallet when they’re not looking, well they usually don’t notice until it’s too late.

Miki is bolder. She takes items right off of shelves when she walks by, and isn’t afraid to go after other street kids who wander into the space they’ve claimed as their own.

Sometimes she’s a little too bold, “Let’s get lunch from there.”

And that’s where Nana comes in. She’s the cautious one, the voice of reason, the brains behind the operations as small and simple as it is.

“We can’t go in there,” Nana hisses, grabbing the other two by the backs of their collars before they do something stupid.

“Why not? The foods cheaper in there than anywhere else in the city,” Miki points out, not unreasonably.

But Nana is adamant, “Yeah for good reason. That café belongs to AKB.”

The innocuous street side café about a minute’s walk from Akihabara station is something of a local legend in the area. Anyone above thirty avoids it like the plague because of the rumours of it being owned by the 48 Gangs, or perhaps it simply just serves the members of AKB. The little number 48 carved into the brickwork above the café doors is a symbol of that.

However, it is popular amongst the youth of the city for that very reason. With many hanging out there to bask in the rebellious feeling of danger, or on adventurous dares from friends. Whispers fly about AKB recruiting from the youth who flock there. A few yankees even claim to be initiates recruited from there. They’re all bald faced liars. No prospective recruit would be stupid enough to loiter in a known gang-owned establishment.  

A few have, however, been known to have been recruited around the station. Our little trio of street rats like to linger around the area, pickpocketing the stupid school kids, the otakus heading to the Gundam café across the street, and the rich folk visiting the golf club on the other side of the block.

They do that for months before they’re approached by a member of AKB.  

Okada Nana is sixteen when Minegishi Minami approaches her and her friends with an offer they can’t refuse.

Her first job is with Mako and two other recruits. They’re tasked with the simple job of delivering a package and Nana has to wonder what’s so important that there needs to be four of them for this. Or maybe it’s not so important, considering there are four barely trained, fresh faced initiates on the job.

They scuttle about the train line, Mako skipping along merrily, Hikari following behind quietly, with Nana and Ayana bickering the whole way. They deliver the package without any issues worth mentioning to one Itano Tomomi at an upscale bar in the heart of the city. It turns out to be cold hard cash, and Nana goes white at the thought of possibly losing that much money. Or rather, what the gang would do to them if they lost that much money.

The next few jobs follow in a similar manner. Nana gets to know the names and quirks of her fellow runners. Innocent, seemingly useless things like:

Iwatate Saho is stronger than she looks.

“Oh god he’s unconscious…are you planning on joining Team K?”

“No, too dangerous. I’m thinking Team B. You know, manning the cafes and the casinos and stuff.”

Mogi Shinobu doesn’t do so well under pressure.

“What the-!? Mogi-san why didn’t you just shoot him?”

“I panicked!”

“I can’t believe you want to join Team A, you’ll die in a week.”

Murayama Yuiri is stupidly pretty.

“Yuiri-chan…We’re half an hour in the wrong direction. You had the map upside down.”

“Sorry! I’m sorry, usually Naa-chan corrects me when I do this, I mean, I’m not blaming Naa-chan! It’s just she…Naa-chan what are you looking at?”

“Err nothing. Nothing, I got distracted.”

Takashima Yurina has somewhat of a crush on her.

“Naa-chan I bought drinks.”

“Where’s one for the rest of us?”

Uchiyama Natsuki knows a ridiculous amount about the law.

“Article 13: every individual has the liberty of protecting his or her own personal information from being disclosed to a third party or made public without good reason.”

“Somehow I doubt beating him up would fly as ‘taking the liberty to protect our property’.”

Apparently they do a somewhat of a good job, because Nana finds herself selected as part of a joint project between all the 48 Gangs. She, Mako and Miki are the representatives of the Akihabara sect and Nana wonders how the hell the upper echelons decided on that.  

“So, what are your specialties?” somehow it falls to Nana to lead this ragtag group.

The Namba sect representative Shibuya Nagisa is actually the oldest (by a few months) but she’s no more experienced than they are – Nana finds out later, the reason why all of the sects sent their freshest recruits. It’s all internal politics, and a mission too important to turn down, but not important enough to ensure successful. In short, they’re expendable and they weren’t even expected to make it home.

The job is in Tokyo, so Nana takes the reigns by default.

She finds that leadership suits her.

It feels like a natural extension of what she was already doing when they were just three idiots on the street, planning operations meticulously so that they come back in one piece, and utilising the skills of her teammates in the most efficient way possible. There are three more idiots to account for now, but she is familiarised with them soon enough.

Nagisa is the strongest in hand-to-hand combat amongst the seven of them, Sakae’s Ryoha the most accurate shot, Hakata’s Meru joins Miki in being the loud charismatic distraction, while Mako and Hakata’s Mio are swift and sneaky with their hands. It’s the perfect team for covert operations. Which makes sense, considering they’re being sent south of the Kanda river, into Sakamichi territory to gather intel on the new gang that’s popped up by the Roppongi hills.

It seems like a simple mission.

Get in, look around for suspicious activity, get out. There isn’t supposed to be confrontation or combat involved.

But no plan survives contact with the enemy, and no one cares about supposed to be’s when there are guns pointed at their heads.

When she’s desperately wrestling with a knife that wants nothing more than to dig into her flesh, when she’s slammed against the wall, breath knocked out of her, when a pair of hands wrap around her throat and squeeze, and her lungs scream as her legs thrash uselessly underneath, her vision blurs, and the terrifying realisation that she won’t actually get out of this situation alive sets in – oh god is that Miki screaming she hears in the background? – the air is rushing out her lungs and –

“Naa-chan. Naa-chan! Snap out of it, you’re not there anymore.”

Nana eyes fly open, as she dashes up, heart still thudding in her chest. She has to make sure everyone’s okay, what happened to Miki, and oh god Mio was stabbed, and where the hell is Mako, and they lost contact with Ryoha half an hour in, and Nagisa is unconscious, and no matter how deep a breath she takes, it doesn’t seem to be enough. Her chest burns, she can’t breathe and – a hand lands on her shoulder, the accompanying scent of hinoki pine only just barely manages to stamp down the instinct to lash out.

Yuiri’s concerned face drags her back to reality, “It’s okay. You’re home. You’re not there, you’re safe now,” to the little hole in the wall apartment she has (firmly on the AKB side of the Kanda river), to the bed she’s sharing with the pretty distraction on her team. Though, perhaps that would be unkind to say, even if she refuses to think of what they’re doing as anything more than just stress relief, blowing off steam.  

Belatedly Nana realises that she has a death grip on Yuiri’s upper arm, she loosens her grip but doesn’t let go, “S-sorry,” her hands are shaking, she’s trembling and she can’t get it to stop, and Yuiri’s murmuring nonsense things in her ear.

“Why are you sorry? I’m sorry, I’m such an idiot,” Yuiri apologises with a grimace. They’ve established early on that Nana does not like hands anywhere near her neck, that one horrendous mission spoiled that forever, but sometimes Yuiri forgets, and the resulting post-traumatic flashbacks are the most mood-killing thing possible in the bedroom, or sometimes out of it too.

The first time it happens is in a street by the AKB theatre of all places. It’s after a job with just the two of them, when they’re both high on adrenaline, breaths heavy, eyes glazed, still in the heat of violence, fresh from a near-death scuffle. Nana’s not sure who jumps whom first, but suddenly they’re in each other’s space, hands tangled in hair, and tongue against teeth. Yuiri tastes like citrus that night, some kind of lemon mixed, and the deeper she kisses her the more she can taste the metallic tang of blood and the salt of sweat mixed in.

Nana closes her eyes tightly, a low, throaty moan of approval rumbles deep in her throat as her back hits the wall with a light thud, the moan turning markedly louder as the elder girl’s fingers slip inside the waistband of her shorts and shoves them down over her hips. Strong, forceful fingers dig into her and pull her in even tighter as her mouth is once again claimed in a desperate, hungry kiss.

“Yuu-chan,” she moans, gasping at the feel of the other girl’s tongue against her throat.

“Yes?” Yuiri’s lips curls into a smile against Nana’s, she groans low and deep as Yuiri’s hips grinds into her own.

“Don’t stop.”

It’s easier with Yuiri, they understand each other in ways her other teammates simply don’t. Maybe it’s because the most of the others are like what Nana was at first, just street kids and lowly thieves dragged in way over their heads. When Nana and Mako come back from that FUBAR recon mission with their hands soaked in blood, the others look at them different. With wariness in their eyes, with guarded stances, with hints of fear in their faces.

Mako’s stupid grin thaws their hesitance soon enough. But Nana has never been that kind of charismatic. Not in the way that makes other at ease. She’s always been harder, more serious, and that only makes her look much more intimidating now.

“You’re still here?” Nana raises an eyebrow when she realises that Yuiri is still lingering about. These days, most of her team disappear faster than a blink of an eye the moment the job is done, not wanting to be around for longer than necessary.

But Yuiri only looks at Nana like she’s the one being unreasonable, “Don’t we usually go for kakigori after a job?”

“You want to have desserts with me? What, not afraid I’ll snap and kill you?” Nana asks, sadly only half sarcastically, because with the way the rest of the team treat her, it seems that’s exactly what they’re thinking.  

The other girl snorts and actually has the audacity to chuckle, “You’re going to have do a lot more than be traumatised to scare me. I’m sure I’ve killed more people than you.”

Yuiri wasn’t some street kid when she got recruited. She was born into this world, her family neck-deep in the underbelly of Japan, and she’s no stranger to violence. There’s only one other like that on their team, Nana would’ve overlooked Mion entirely if Yuiri hadn’t pointed her out.

“You can always tell when someone’s killed before,” Yuiri says, “It’s in the eyes.”

The months blur into years, and before Nana knows it most of her team have the same eyes, the ones who are still alive anyway. The ones who are left split off into the different teams of AKB eventually. Mako, Ayana, Mogi and Komiharu are sent to Team K, with their dangerous combat orientated jobs and Nana just hopes they keep coming home. Saho and Saki are off in the relatively safer B, the front jobs, manning the café and the casinos and the above-board stations. Yukari and Mion end up in A, and Nana hopes beyond hope that they don’t lose themselves in there.

Nana and Yuri themselves never leave 4. They’re the ones chosen to train up the newbies, and she has no idea who thought that is a good idea. She never actually does anything too important in the gang – up until the moment she accidentally founds an entirely new sect.

She’d been in Fukuoka visiting Mio and Meru, and it’s in Hiroshima, on her way back to Tokyo that Nana manages to get herself recognised and chased. She hated cults with a passion. Why did they have a problem with her anyway? It’s not like the 48 Gangs had territory claimed in Hiroshima –

Ow.

She falls off the fence the she’s attempting to climb over and lands on her back with a dull thud. The grass is soft at least. She spends a few moments just staring up at the night sky, it’s actually quite breathtaking when you’re far away enough from the city lights to appr—

“Are you okay?”

Oh, there’s a kid in pink and purple. A teenager really. Nana can’t tell ages anymore.

“…m’fine. Sorry didn’t mean to land in your backyard,” she says. An apartment complex’s backyard anyway, she realises when she sits up. It’s a rundown building that’s clearly not in official use. It appears there are kids squatting in it.

It’s difficult to tell in the dark, but when Nana squints she can make out maybe two more teens peeking out from behind a window.

“Wanna come inside?” the girl asks, and Nana really really shouldn’t.

A gunshot sounds in the air though, and Nana quickly scrambles to follow the kid inside. Being noble is all well and good, but it definitely doesn’t beat being alive.

When Nana awakens the next morning, she hears furious whisperings back and forth between the teens – and there’s clearly more of them this morning than there was last night.

“—it’s dangerous, she’s clearly a member of the 48 Gangs! You saw that tattoo!” an unknown voice hisses, and Nana wonders when and how they saw the little 48 tattoo on the back of her neck. That’s not usually visible and she’s usually a light enough sleeper to wake up if they touch her.

“Yeah, that means she can help us!” that’s Chiho, one of the girls she remembers half-heartedly greeting the night before. The one with the bruises on her face.

“We can’t trust a gang member!”

“So what else are we going to do? They took Yumirin, we’ll never get her back ourselves!”

Nana’s always had a soft spot for stupid kids. It’s probably why they never took her off Team 4, and how she finds herself hopping all over the setouchi region, rescuing girls from a fox worshipping cult.

Girls who somehow end up forming the Setouchi sect of the 48 Gangs – Sashihara-san comes down from Fukuoka to make it official and everything.

Mogi never lets her forget it.

“Hey Naa-chan, remember the time you went to visit Mio and Meru and ended up playing prince charming and rescuing ten damsels in distress?”  

 _____________________________________________________________)

Might finish it later, might not. Who knows...

[itsbenedict]

No Driver’s License: Session 36

No Driver’s License is a Madoka Magica game I’m running for five players, using a homebrew of Yaruki Zero’s Magical Burst system. It follows five magical girls as they deal with an upheaval in the world’s magic system caused by some strange new three-eyed Incubators. They have to figure out what’s going on, who to trust, and how to put a stop to the cycle of despair.

I post session logs and omakes weekly sporadically, both as a reference for the players and for anyone who wants to follow along with the party’s misadventures.

[adventure log- read from the beginning]

[session 35]

Last time on No Driver’s License, the party managed to beat what should be the final combat encounter. They caused Honoka Midarezaki to witch out, leaving behind only Katou Kimiko, and... well, is that going to be enough? Because... Emiko beat Ibara to snagging Kimiko’s Soul Seed, and the situation might demand further defusing.

So, the big question- are we reviving Kimiko, here?

Emiko vehemently denies any intention of doing so, but... well, Fumi-chan’s still being a little shit.

Ibara points out that they’ve got other options on hand, but Tama-chan refuses to do the reviving, too- she intends to just put her on ice and keep her from reviving indefinitely. And... Nishi’s on her side, here. That leaves zero willing Incubators.

Emiko’s in no hurry, though- she’d rather just have everyone here back the fuck off, please.

There’s more arguing that wants to happen, largely because Emiko and Sakura want to do it- which Ibara is opposed to doing here, now. Yukari and Makoto are more or less behind her, on that count.

Emiko ends up agreeing- she would rather not bring Kimiko back to life here, surrounded by enemies and liable to panic and lash out.

Tama-chan and Nishi try to urge the team to take out Emiko while they have the chance- they sort of haven’t been around for any of the... learning about the cannibals and how they’re maybe redeemable, and just see a chance to put a stop to them. Yukari explains that they want to recruit the cannibals, which... the Incubators are rather surprised by. She explains her plan, but Tama-chan has doubts.

Meanwhile, in the rocket, Makoto and Sakura are catching Hekima up on the situation with the cannibals. She, like Tama and Nishi, is not convinced recruitment is viable- but for different reasons.

Sakura explains that they intend to rewire magic itself to not work that way. Her plan for that, though, is pretty ambitious- her step 1 is “use magic to bootstrap a superintelligence, and have that fix magic for us”.

Answering her questions means looping her in on... the whole Hell Engine thing, and the Devil, and they’re not sure whether to divulge all that right now. An inquiry re: her personal motivations is made, wherein she affirms that all she wants is to survive.

Sakura only then notices Nishi’s presence, and asks her some questions about hacking the Hell Engine to rewire magic.

Hekima keeps pushing to be told about their mysterious source of Grief relief, not allowing the subject to be changed. They’re... still not sure if she can be trusted, though.

Sakura’s ensuing Heart roll is... middling. Hekima doesn’t exactly react angrily to that, but...

Back at the ranch- I mean, back on the moon but like a dozen meters away- Yukari and Tama-chan are still going at it over the cannibal plan.

Ibara tries to get things back on track.

That’s... good enough for Yukari, who tries to cement that stance. If she can prove they don’t need to eat anyone anymore, will Emiko commit to not doing soul cannibalism?

Emiko’s not really ready to commit to anything, and she’s worried everything is a trick, and doesn’t like how Yukari won’t actually explain what the plan is. Ibara tries to put it in plain language, which gets her a little more cooperative.

Yukari and Ibara describe the Hell Engine and the Devil in... terms vague enough to not give Emiko enough information to fuck with them, but enough to give her something to work with. Emiko’s final stance here is... she isn’t going to just immediately go along with it. She’s going to go home, revive Kimiko, and talk with her and Yoshe as a team about whether this is a good idea, before committing to anything.

That agreed upon, it’s time to go home. Ibara goes and checks on the crew in the perfectly functional rocket ship they have, where they’re still trying to figure out Hekima.

WELL I SURE HOPE SO

Meanwhile, Yukari has one last thing to do before they take off. She wants to get Orino to shrink down the Hell Engine so it can be made portable- and more importantly, able to be hidden from the cannibals if they find out what it is. Seina helps her track Orino down with the pre-existing telepathy connection they made when they arrived.

Ibara and the others, though, are getting impatient- and Yukari can just teleport home, right?

So they... sorta take off without her. Sakura rolls a crit on Heart to pilot it home, and Ibara... assists.

That all goes... mostly well. There are some Things that happen when they land, but let’s resolve Yukari’s quest first:

Tama-chan is here chiding her and calling her an idiot, but mainly about the “telling the cannibals about important stuff” thing, and not the issue at hand. Yukari... takes it as kind of a revelation, though.

Yukari has a whole spiel about how she isn’t sure if Honoka still exists, what that relationship will be like, agonizing over that...

She goes on for a while about how maybe she’s broken and intrinsically evil and just ought to embrace her destiny as a plotting villain who doesn’t care about other peoples’ feelings. Tama-chan sort of ineffectually tries to derail that.

Yukari eventually comes down from her self-loathing high, and decides against pressuring Orino further. Tama-chan still isn’t happy about the cannibal plan, but acknowledges that she can’t really stop it, and vanishes. (By “vanishes”, I mean she self-destructs the Kyubey she’s piloting, and auto-recalls her gem to her base, but same deal plus some gold rings for Yukari.)

Meanwhile, on the way to Earth, some stuff happens. First, Makoto gets in contact with a friend:

Before I can show you what happens when they land, though, I need to rewind to a non-player omake that happened simultaneous with the session. 

Rather than paste the whole thing: Olivia Gumm is in the bunker, working on her manga. She’s mostly on track to meet her deadline, but then Takamine Mitsuki shows up, and starts to ask questions. Olivia draws a fantasy yuri manga which is supposed to be all-ages, but she’s not sure if the Takamines are traditionalists and isn’t sure whether to explain it to Mitsuki. 

Mitsuki turns out to be pretty open-minded when Olivia starts explaining, and from what she says about what her parents have said about the subject, Olivia won’t get in trouble for corrupting their daughter or anything. Mitsuki eventually runs off to ask her mom more about “homerphobia”, and- whoops, then Olivia breaks her pen.

Meanwhile, with Ibara’s delinquent buddies...

After some arguing over whether they’re going to go investigate, settled by Ibara’s sister Nano threatening to sic Ibara on them if they don’t quit making a ruckus, they go and find the source of the knocking.

The delinquents push past the barricade, ignoring Olivia’s horror at having broken Reiko’s rules, and find... no one. She’s missing. (She’s been kidnapped to the moon by the Devil.) Shibu fires off some texts to Ibara:

So, that’s what happened while they were gone. As they re-enter the atmosphere and regain cell reception, Ibara gets those texts.

Sakura lands the rocket in the Gyoen National Garden, the park where Reiko’s bunker is hidden. The thing’s decked out in Somebody Else’s Problem amulets, so they’re fine muggle-wise. Ibara heads down to check in on Reiko and the bunker inhabitants.

As it turns out, Shibu was able to keep Nails from contracting, despite Nails being extremely excited to be told that she has magical potential and could contract. So, that’s a bullet(?) dodged, at least. Everything down in the bunker seems pretty much fine.

Seina also heads down there- with Cho clinging to her arm, in front of her parents, an embarrassing situation that will be addressed in a couple sessions.

After checking on the bunker folk, Sakura is the first to head upstairs and outside, where she meets...

Sakura has... a bit of a breakdown, worrying about her purified trauma tracks. She’s worried about a feeling like life is pointless.

(Sheesh, Hekima.)

Sakura ends up asking Hekima to take a look inside her head, see if she can find out what witching did to her. Hekima is totally up for it, it seems.

They spend a while psychoanalyzing her, through Hekima’s maybe-not-super-reliable lens of pulling on true and false statements and guessing about the underlying neurology. Hekima’s verdict is that Sakura is just... very susceptible to emotional manipulation, prone to mood swings and wild behavior in response to minor stimuli. Hekima, as an old-school magical girl, is more than happy to catalogue her mental weaknesses.

And then... well, Hekima has her mancatcher around Sakura’s neck, and the thing to remember is that this sort of exploratory brain imaging stuff is not the primary function of the ability. The primary function of the ability is to forcibly read someone’s mind. When Sakura says she’s done and asks to be released...

They make contested rolls, and it’s close, but Hekima barely beats her.

(The ability description was cribbed from an unused character sheet Farn made, which I decided to remix a bit to make Hekima.)

So, the result of that is...

She tries to say “I can’t tell you that”, but fails, because that’s a lie- she can tell her that, she just won’t. Instead, she continues on the obfuscation tack.

Then Sakura tries to punch her, but fails her roll.

So... that’s not ominous.

Next time on No Driver’s License: Sakura and Yukari have a heart-to-heart over some curry, and Makoto pays a visit to the cannibals to see how their team discussion has been going. I’m sure this will all wrap up super-neatly.

[alchemistc]

no paper will conceal it

an: if you thought i would fall into the hole of writing holiday fic for kastle, you were right. title comes from sara bareilles song “love is christmas”. 

slightly au in that frank doesn’t kill people, but almost everything else is the same

It’s a terrible idea to chase this story, she knows it even as she leaves her office and heads towards the previously empty lot five blocks from her apartment, the one that had suddenly sprouted a hundred Christmas trees sometime between the hours of 1 AM and 4 AM the morning after Thanksgiving. 

Karen doesn’t sleep, much.

It’s been a week, and in that time she’s seen a trail of young looking men hustle nervously towards the lot, disappear into the trees for a bit, and then appear later with heavy, dark duffels under their arms, looking shifty as they disappear into the night. She’s also seen the frankly ridiculously suspicious black van that tends to park there sometime between 4 and 6, and only ever leaves after Karen has gone to bed, long after the one sad string of fairy lights has been turned off and families shopping for trees have tucked in for the evening.

And then there’s the guy.

Still. He’s there, and there’s something going on, and Karen is determined to figure out what it is. The lot has been empty for years, never been used by anyone but a few addicts too strung out to realize it was visible from every direction. A year ago she’d tried to talk to someone about putting a park in there, or maybe start a garden, but she’d been shot down before she’d even made it through her speech, and she hadn’t tried again.

And now, after all this time, suddenly there’s Balsams and Firs and Blue Spruces and more than likely a crime ring, too. 

She’d told Ellison she was taking a long lunch to get a tree for her apartment, and the asshole had blinked at her, narrowed his eyes, and then sighed and shrugged. Like he believed her. Like it was believable that Karen Page, who practically lived at the paper and who only spared time for drinks with her friends once every few months and who hadn’t spoken to her parents in half a year was suddenly feeling the Christmas spirit.

What she hadn’t told Ellison was “I think a dude with a creepy van is hustling drugs out of the Christmas tree lot by my apartment” because even to Karen that sounded like a crazy reach.

She stops for coffee at the bodega on the corner just to give herself something to do with her hands, and watches the lot while she rips open packets of sugar. 

It’s strange, the way she’s able to watch the swath of humanity pass her by without ever feeling...close to it. She’s been called a bleeding heart more times in her life than she can count, but it’s not that. She’s... perceptive. She sees things. She sees the family rounding the corner, two kids playfully shoving at each other while their parents watch in stony silence, standing just far enough apart that Karen is almost certain dad has been sleeping on the couch for a while. She sees the happy couple wandering by, laughing, hands clasped, and knows that the woman is far more in love than the man. She sees a man in a business suit walk past the homeless guy on the corner, his eyes on his phone and a grimace on his face. 

She sees a kid get off his bike and round the fence into the lot, disappearing between the trees, and slides in after him, waiting, wondering if it was really going to be this easy.

She wanders, for a bit, glancing through branches in hopes of catching sight of her would be drug lord or one of his minions, but no such luck. If it were easy, there would be far more people gunning for her job.

The crime beat at the Bulletin isn’t so much sought after as it is a place to stick all the idiots who can’t keep their nose out of anything. Karen, for all that she loves this job, hadn’t actually gone looking for it. She’d stumbled upon it, like most of the idiots who’d come before her, and she lived it and she breathed it but it wasn’t... healthy. She’d chase a lead on two hours of sleep and a vat of caffeine, if she had to, and she’d met more than one source late at night: in empty warehouses, in derelict buildings, in dark parking garages, once on a build site, two floors up and a steel beam between her and a twenty foot drop. And she’d done it all in heels. 

Foggy is constantly terrified for her life, but then, so is Karen, and it hasn’t stopped her yet, so she doesn’t expect to be making any concessions for the one friend she still trusts in this city any time soon.

There’s a sort of calm that comes over her, wandering through the trees, her eyes carefully cataloging every face she sees, but it’s not the magic of the season. This is a different sort of peace - the kind that washes over her when she makes a connection no one has made before, when she sends off a final draft to copy, when her byline sends the feds to a piece of shit they hadn’t bothered to check on before. There’s comfort in knowing that her words mean something, in knowing that she can make things happen in a world that mostly just tries to ignore the bad shit that goes on around them every day.

As she’s nearing the back of the lot, she catches the break she’s been looking for. Just beyond the last row of trees, behind the fence they’re leaned against, she hears a door slide open, and a gruff voice mutter something she can’t quite catch. 

Karen shuffles closer, to the edge of the lot, ignoring the needles digging into her jacket sleeve, straining to hear what’s being said.

“...better hear you made it to Curt’s tonight, James. I’m not fucking around here, giving handouts.”

“Dude, I got it. Lay off the drill sergeant crap, Castle.”

Karen waits with bated breath. That’s two names, and if she can just lay low long enough to get a plate number off the van...

“You’re gettin a second chance kid. Don’t screw it up.”

“Jesus Christ, man, I said I got it.”

There’s a shuffle, and a small puff of breath, like it’s been knocked out of someone. The first voice, Castle, says something too low for her to hear, but if she had to make a guess, she’s betting a threat is involved. Another shuffle of clothing, the sound of boots on concrete, and then Castle speaks again, loud and clear and barely a yard from where she stands. 

“Get out of here before you really piss me off.”

The kid books it, and through the branches she can see the duffel tucked under his arm, but the gate behind her is creaking open and Karen busies herself with looking like a normal, perusing customer. 

“Don’t strike me as the Douglas Fir type, ma’am.” Karen swivels in place, nearly sending her coffee flying as her hand drops towards her bag. Castle takes a step back, hands raised. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, but there’s a tic in his jaw like he’s thinking about smiling, and Karen takes her first good look at him. 

The twelve-times-broken nose she’d caught in profile is more striking up close, an interesting quirk to what might otherwise be a fairly unremarkable face. He’s holding her gaze, big brown eyes blown wide as he slowly lowers his hands back to his sides. He’s got a vaguely military haircut - buzzed sides and an inch or so of growth on the top of his head, and a wide, full mouth that is still threatening to break into a smile. 

He doesn’t look like he smiles much, in general, but there’s amusement in his gaze as he takes her in, eyes tracking the fall of her hair over one shoulder and the way her hand is dipped into her pocketbook. He quirks a brow at that. 

“You gonna shoot me?”

Karen blinks. “What?”

Castle blinks back, running his tongue over his teeth as he eyes the hand in her bag very deliberately. “Christ, lady, please tell me you have a permit for that.”

“Why would I need a permit for a handbag?”

He sighs, blows a deep breath out through his nose, and rolls his eyes at her, turning his head away with a shake. “Right. Nothing to see here, folks,” he says with an ironic lilt, gesturing around like they aren’t the only two people in the back half of the lot. “You here for a tree or what?”

The amusement is gone from his voice, and Karen narrows her eyes at him, tucks her tongue into her cheek as he purses his lips right back at her. “I can see why you don’t sell the trees yourself.”

“You make it a habit to stake out a place before you buy something?” 

Karen pulls in a deep breath, tries not to look caught out, but he’s eyeing her more closely, now, something like recognition registering as he stares at her. He takes a step closer, shooting a daring look at the hand still tucked in her bag. 

In a situation like this, most people would bolt in the opposite direction and never return. In the back of her mind, Foggy’s voice is screaming at her to do just that. Karen ignores it and rolls her shoulders back, staying even with his height as he gets closer. 

“Page, right? You’re the Bulletin’s golden girl.” 

There’s derision in his voice when he says it, his voice rumbling over golden like a swear word, and Karen goes on the defensive. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Whatever you want it to mean.”

“Whatever I want it to - you know, you have a lot of nerve, for a guy who recruits kids to sell for him out of the back of a sketchy van and sells Christmas trees as a cover.”

Castle blinks again, and Karen takes a moment to reassess. This is hardly the first time she’s accused someone of something before she has all the evidence she needs. Some of them have even been bigger and scarier than this guy, but there’s something about the way he shifts from foot to foot, something about the way his eyes drag deep into her skin and dig at her spine, something about the way he’d known about the gun in her bag the moment she’d turned towards him that makes her think that maybe this is one of her more stupid decisions. 

The deep chuckle that rumbles from his chest is both unexpected and... comforting. Despite every instinct she has, despite having spent the last week suspecting this man of running drugs out of the back of his sketchy van, Karen feels her guard drop. “You’re fucking crazy, ma’am,” is what he says when he’s done shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. “Jesus, you came out here trying to catch a lead on me, didn’t you? You do that a lot? Chase after a story, no backup, not having a damn clue how dangerous someone could be?” Another quick glance at her, and he snorts. “Yeah you do.”

Again, another sad fact of her life is that this is a conversation she’s had in various forms before, but this one is different, somehow. There’s not a hint of threat in his voice, just a vague disbelief, and maybe a hint of regard.

“I work with vets,” he admits, softly, like it’s a secret. “Boys come back without a clue what the hell they’re gonna do now. Lot of ‘em end up barely scraping by, or living on the streets. I uh... buddy of mine runs a couple groups, rents out rooms sometimes.” He ducks his head, bashful now, and runs his hand through his hair again, a nervous tic that five minutes ago she would have assumed was due to him testing out his supply. “I do laundry, when I can. Put together food, and shit. Give ‘em work, try to get them back in the world.”

Karen pulls at her lips with her teeth, raises the hand from her pocketbook to presses it over her lips, and nods her head even as a disbelieving laugh bubbles over. “And that kid, earlier? You were...?”

“Some of ‘em need a little tough love. I assume that’s what you mean. ‘Cause you were listening to us, right?”

Karen tilts her head, suddenly, achingly curious about this man for an entirely new reason. “Yeah. Yeah, I was listening.”

He chuckles, his head shaking back and forth, mutters something under his breath that sounds a whole lot like ‘unbelievable’ and Karen tracks the way his cheeks lift, the way he shifts, again, like maybe he’s thinking of just turning around and walking away. When he lifts his head again to meet her gaze, the smile is still there, and it’s reaching his eyes, too. 

“Can I buy you a drink?”

Karen stills where she stands, watching his head tilt, something shy and somber behind the smile he wears, something charming about the way he looks at her from beneath his brows. “I just falsely accused you of drug running, and you want to buy me a drink?”

“You got a few screws loose, sure, but you’ve got balls of steel, ma’am.”

Karen is fairly certain she’s never been called ma’am by anyone in her entire life, and she’s never particularly cared for the address, but something about the way his voice rolls over it, gravel and soot rumbling from him - something about it sets her at ease. “It’s the middle of the day.”

“Is that a no?”

“No.”

He chucks his chin up, tilts his head again. “Okay.”

Karen holds his gaze, gives him a crisp nod. “Okay.”

------

“You’re good at this. I can see why the Bulletin keeps you around.” He’s pointing at her with a fry dipped in ketchup, his beer tipped towards his lips with his free hand, and Karen brushes back the curtain of hair that keeps falling into her eyes. 

“What do you mean?”

“Page, we’ve been here an hour and I think you know more about me than my old lady ever did. Hell, if we’d had you in intelligence, interrogation might have fucking worked.”

Karen ducks back beneath the curtain of hair and checks the time on her phone. She’s got a missed phone call from Ellison, and a text that is just two question marks - she shoots back a quick ‘Following a lead’ and doesn’t even feel that bad about the lie. It could be a piece, if she wanted it to be - a profile on a war veteran, a think piece on the lives soldiers lead once they return, it could be any number of things, if she wanted it to be.

She doesn’t want it to be.  

Frank Castle, former marine, honorably discharged after a bullet tore through his skull. Friendly fire, he’d said, though the tone of his voice said there was more to that story. His wife had died of cancer a year after he got home, and Frank had gone off the deep end, just a bit, drinking heavily, starting bar fights (”Isn’t that a felony?” “Sure is,” he’d responded on a self deprecating grin.), generally kicking up a fuss, and he’d lost custody of two kids, a boy and a girl who lived upstate with their grandparents and saw him on weekends and every other holiday. 

He’d started going to his friend Curtis’ group meetings after his court appointed therapist told him if he couldn’t get his shit together he’d never see them again.

“I have a trustworthy face.”

He snorts, his nose wrinkling as he takes a sip of his beer, and Karen bites her lip to keep from smiling too hard. 

Outside, the sun is already low in the sky, and the buildings cast the streets in deep shadow. In an hour or so, lights across the city will twinkle to life, bathing the streets in that warm glow that only happens around the holidays. Once upon a time, Karen had loved Christmas - the lights, the families, the overwhelming sense of community they’d had in their tiny little town in Vermont. 

“You uh... you doin’ okay there?”

Darting her glance back towards him with a start, Karen starts to nod, and pauses, looking at him in the dull light of the bar. She bites her lip and shakes her head, just once, picking at the label on her bottle. “My brother ran his car off the road two days before Christmas, a few years ago. I uh... it’s hard to get into the spirit anymore, you know? I used to love it. Decorating the tree, driving around the neighborhood to see the lights, going to church on Christmas Eve. I’d wake up early every Christmas morning, even when I got older, and I’d make hot chocolate and sit on the couch with my mug, waiting for everyone else to wake up, just watching the tree.” Blinking through watery eyes, she shoots him a quick smile. "I was a Blue Spruce girl.”

“Maria always took the kids up to cut their own tree. Every time I was home for Christmas, I’d beg her to just get a damn plastic tree. Damn things always got sap and needles everywhere - huge fire hazard too, and I know Frankie and Lisa never watered ‘em. Said she liked the smell, so one year I bought a fake tree and about twenty of those Christmas tree candles.”

“It’s not the same,” she tells him, almost admonishing, and he laughs. His laugh a short, quick laugh, a little rough around the edges like he’s not used to it, like it has to fight his way up and out of his chest.

“That’s what she said. Never even took the thing out of the box. We were up there, very next day, sawing down a tree while Lisa threw snowballs at us.”

“So the trees...”

His head tilts in consideration before he gives her a sharp nod. “They tell me it’s a healthier way to mourn than breaking my knuckles on strangers faces.”

“If I promise to water it, can I get you to tough love one of your guys into lugging a tree five blocks and up three flights of stairs?”

His stare is a little wistful as he takes her in, but there’s an edge to it, too. Something careful, and considering, and not for the first time since he’d startled her that afternoon Karen wonders what he sees, when he looks at her. Not the broken girl who’d left her family behind because she couldn’t face her loss, not the hardass reporter who always got her story regardless of the cost. A few times she’s held his gaze long enough to feel like he’s staring into her soul.

Karen shrugs around his questioning look. “Maybe I need to learn to mourn a little better, too.”

------

Frank ends up loading a tree onto the van a week later, grumbling the entire way up the stairs, muttering about sap all the way down the hallway, and Karen can’t help the laugh that tumbles out of her when he insists on getting the thing set up for her once it’s there. She’d gone down to Macy’s, dropped far too much of her paycheck on string lights and baubles, and she unloads them while he grunts and curses in the corner by her window. 

When she invites him to stay for dinner he only hesitates for a few seconds, and then insists on paying the kid who delivers a bag of Thai food twenty minutes later. 

It’s easy, toeing off her shoes and settling on her couch next to him, flipping through channels until one of them makes a noise of approval around the food in their mouths. He drinks her shitty rose out of a mug with a llama on it, and makes sarcastic comments under his breath that sometimes make her wheeze with laughter, and when they’ve demolished the food he helps her string the lights around the tree. 

“Maria’s parent’s have the kids for Christmas this year,” he admits on his third mug of wine, and Karen reaches across the length of the tree to curl her hand in his. He squeezes back, and for a while the string of lights illuminate their faces as they stare at each other. He’s got a scar, just above his ear, one she hadn’t noticed until the lights hit it just right, and without a thought her hand reaches up to trace it, fingers curling up and then around his ear, and his eyes dip low, almost closing, lashes fluttering and casting sharp shadows along his cheeks. 

“You could come here. I usually get shitfaced the moment I get off the phone with my mom and pass out to It’s A Wonderful Life.”

“Sounds pretty fuckin maudlin,” he tells her, eyes fluttering back open, back she doesn’t move her hand, and he tilts his face into her palm. 

She’s three glasses in herself, and her laughter sounds loud in her apartment, the heady mixture of food and wine and lights and Frank making her feel bubbly and loose and... happy. “Maudlin?”

“I know words.”

She chuckles, again, and leans across the space between them, ducks her forehead against his own and just breathes for a moment.

“Is that a no?”

From this position, she can see the tilt of his lip as it turns up. “No.”

Karen blows a breath out through her nose, slides her hand down to curl around his neck, where she can feel his pulse rushing beneath his skin. “Okay.”

“Okay.” 

------

She pitches Ellison a profile on Curtis Hoyle, two hours after she meets him on Christmas Eve, and over the phone she can hear him raise his eyebrows. “Not your usual thing.”

“I’m branching out, Ellison. Aren’t you always telling me to dig deep?”

“Draft on my desk by the end of the week, then.”

“Can’t,” she tells him, while Frank traces a whimsical pattern up her arm and presses his lips into her neck. “I’m busy this week.”

“What have you done to Karen Page?”

“It’s a...family thing,” she tells him, and sucks in a deep breath when Frank nips at her collarbone.

“Heading to Vermont for the week?”

“Nope.”

“Well this is all very confusing and I’ve had too much scotch to make sense of it, but I’ll figure this out eventually. I’ll see you after New Years.”

“Merry Christmas, Mitch.” For the first time in years, the words are slightly more than a platitude meant to appease the masses.

“Merry Christmas, Page.”

Frank drops her phone off the side of the couch the moment she hangs up, and Karen can’t find it in her to mind.

[eloquenceassassinated]

This just in: MARVEL fangirl weighs in on Wonder Woman

I still can’t be sure how many people actually see my blog, but hey! To anyone who cares, sorry about the long wait. I’ve been on vacation the past few days and hardly had the time to breathe, much less post. Ironic, isn’t it?

So anyway, I said I’d give my thoughts on Wonder Woman as the Marvel fangirl who wants to like DC, so let’s jump right in!

Let’s start with what the movie isn’t, shall we? It’s not a “woohoo, girls rule, boys drool!” propaganda mud-fest in which all of the guy characters are either useless, evil, or gross to make the girls look competent by comparison (sly look at you, Frozen). Nor is it a testosterone-filled smash-‘em-up that only has a female lead because eye candy and reasons. Nor is it a Marvel movie. It doesn’t have the rapid humor, quirky villains, and sensation of history in even the most minor characters that I’m used to, and it tries to tackle deeper themes far more obviously than Marvel’s subtler undertones. It’s not an epic war movie like Lord of the Rings, and it’s not a grand, universe-spanning adventure either.

What it is, is an origins story. And a pretty dang good one at that.

Let’s go chronologically because otherwise I’m going to get lost and go on a tangent. Spoiler warning as we proceed. Act One is spent on Diana’s birthplace and also the most gorgeous set in this entire movie, the hidden island of Themyscira. If you thought the stunties in LotR were good, you haven’t seen the Amazon warriors slide out of their saddles and fire a bow while riding the horse sideways. We meet Diana as a joyful little girl who wants nothing more than to join the adults she sees around her and become a warrior herself. There’s always the inherent problem with child actors, but they couldn’t have gotten much better for young Diana. She’s a joy to see, and you get invested in her wide-eyed fantasies of heroism really quick. Who doesn’t want to be a hero?

It’s easy to see where Diana’s later self-righteousness and one-track mind come in when we see the simplistic world in which she was raised. The world has a fairy-tale flavor to it for Diana—humans good, some gods good, some gods evil, Amazons defeat evil, the end—which makes her utter confusion and disillusionment at the sight of real-life WWI all the more believable later on. Even the exposition dragging down the first twenty minutes seems to be coddling us as viewers as Diana is being coddled. As much as I wish the Amazons got better lines (their characters were so cool, they deserved it!), it does a lot to set up the tone-shift later in the movie.

We’re also introduced to my personal favorite character, Antiope—Diana’s hardcore aunt who secretly teaches her fighting stuff. She’s just all-around cool: rugged, weathered, with awesome battle scars, and an air of kindness and concern underneath all that warrior stuff. While Diana’s mom Hippolyta looks soft on the outside and is hard inside, Antiope is hard on the outside and soft on the inside, which is my favorite kind of character.

So yeah, good stuff and we’re hardly twenty minutes in. We watch Diana grow up, we see that she can cause small explosions by crossing her gauntlets, it’s hinted at that she is something more than meets the eye, and then the interesting stuff happens. An Allied pilot with an American accent (who for some reason is working for the British) crashes his plane into the ocean outside Themyscira. Diana pulls an Ariel and fishes him out of the water, then stares at him when he wakes up on the beach. (I literally sang “Part of Your World” under my breath when I first saw this scene, to the infinite amusement of none but me.) And then it turns out he’s being followed by the Germans. Again with the simplistic flavor, really. What’s more classic bad guy than Germans?

Fight scene on the beach, yadda yadda, spoilers, my favorite dies and so do a heck ton of Nazis. Interesting note: Diana hardly joins this fight. This is a nice detail, especially since we’ve seen how powerful she is before. It brings her down to earth that she’s nervous in her first fight and senses that she’s not safe anymore. At least her aunt wouldn’t kill her in training sessions, but these outsiders wouldn’t think twice. So she hides. The fact that I could pick that up on first viewing is a testament to the writing and the acting. Nice touch.

Then the Amazons hold a congress to see what they should do with the pilot, whose name is Steve Trevor. Nice little note from a writer’s standpoint: no one character has a casting vote in the course of action. This is a dynamic I saw first in the new Voltron cartoon, and it’s stuck with me as a tiny, genius little writing trick for world immersion. If Cap or Tony says “we’re going to Leipzig”, everybody packs up and goes to Leipzig, but even Queen Hipolyta is reasoned out of her initial plan (to kill the pilot) by other characters like the unnamed Amazon senator. Main characters get input from lesser characters throughout the movie, which is much like conversations in real life. Since when did one person call all the shots un-challenged? They don’t in this movie.

We’re also introduced to the iconic lasso, which is apparently not Diana’s to begin with, just a thing the Amazons have lying around that happens to be useful for vetting folks. They also give it a pretentious name like “Lasso of Something” that completely slipped my mind and probably freaked Steve Trevor out. He gives the Amazons the skinny on WWI—the Great War, at this point—and Diana is confused. Get used to that. It will be her default for the rest of the movie.

They decide not to kill him, Diana insists that they need to go kill Ares and shut down the war, and Hippolyta is like “no way hon” and that’s the end of the conversation. Also, get used to the whole “gotta kill Ares” thing. Also going to be her default. Like I said, one-track mind.

Then comes the part of the show where we make awkward sexual jokes and innuendos because Diana is a grown woman who has read all about but never seen a man. Steve Trevor is bathing in a pool thing that actually looks pretty sweet, and Diana walks in on him and doesn’t leave because of course, and she forces him to form an escape plan with her basically. There’s this bit where he awkwardly segways from talking about physical differences to talking about the watch he left on the edge of the tub, and it’s just so out of the blue that it’s gotta be setting up an ironic echo or something. Then Diana leaves and suits up, which involves this really cool scene in which she scales the outside of a tower to grab a sword and freaks out a cow in the process, and by the time she gets back, Steve is dressed. Then they head to the dock to steal a ship.

Now comes my least favorite scene, followed closely by the dumb thing with the watch. Hippolyta rides down to the dock to tell Diana “don’t do this”, and Diana is like “i’m gonna do this”, and Hippolyta is like “fine have the hat of your dead aunt who was much cooler than me, don’t forget that you suck for this, bye felicia” and then she rides away. I guess there’s something deep there about parents letting their children out of the nest when the time comes or something like that, but I just kind of hate this scene, so whatever.

One boat ride later and they’re in London. Diana calls it “hideous”. I laughed. They did a lot to get you into the mood of the era, from soldiers enjoying their last day before shipping out to the front (CA:TFA flashbacks here) to the pollution from smoke-stacks to the vintage cars rumbling around the place. It always astounds me when movies find period set-pieces like that and make them look like they sprang straight out of yesterday. Maybe I just don’t know enough about the process of getting vehicles for props, but it’s still impressive.

More awkwardness ensues because Diana’s signature outfit is not modest to WWI-era Brits. Steve’s red-headed secretary, Emma Candy, makes an appearance for some comic relief. We get the sense that Steve is falling for Diana because of course he is. Then there’s this great scene in an alleyway where Diana stops a bullet with her gauntlets and beats the ever-loving crap out of a few German spies who were dumb enough to apprehend Steve in London and still use their German accents. Diana can now handle combat with under a half-dozen opponents at once! Yay! And Steve gets the last punch in.

Oh, forgot to mention that? Back in exposition central, we learned that Steve stole a notebook with a formula for a new German hydrogen gas. The Germans have had it out for him ever since. Steve tries to get that notebook to his superiors, but that fails epically and Diana’s presence alone disrupts a war conference. (Hidden Figures flashbacks here.) And that’s before she opens her mouth and calls the generals asinine cowards! There’s a little bit of tactical mumbo-jumbo thrown around that makes you think that maybe this will turn into a political thriller/espionage film, but sadly, it doesn’t. Diana’s hard-headed determination to end the war by smashing pretty much prevents that.

But she’s also dissing the entire Allied war effort and telling the commanders how much they suck, so we get the sense that maybe she’s got a bad idea of how to handle this whole thing after all. Steve certainly thinks so, and they both start butting heads over a plan of action right about here.

Diana yells a lot when she gets riled up. This is also a problem in Britain.

The one thing they do agree on is that peace needs to be the end result, so they get the support of Sir Patrick Morgan and go to a bar to recruit Steve’s buddies Charlie and Sameer. (CA:TFA flashbacks again.) Okay, around this point I just started seeing a lot of Captain America parallels. 

Dumb kid is stubborn enough to think he/she has to go out to war.

Dumb kid throws him/herself straight into it.

Dumb kid butts heads with superiors.

Dumb kid goes to a bar to form a team. 

Dumb Kid and Co. go out and do badass stuff.

But that’s where the parallels end for now. In this case, there’s no bromantic banter that will haunt me “'til the end of the line”, and it’s not a montage of epicness as much as a slow burn.

We first head out into the wilderness to meet Chief, Steve’s other friend who can get them across the front lines. (I don’t have a GIF for him, sadly.) Chief, a Native American smuggler, explains to Diana that he’s living out in the European wilderness because it’s the one place he can be free—“in danger is better than being a slave”. 

(I have to admit that I’m not a history buff and don’t know a lot about the treatment of Native Americans during the War, but at least one article I’ve read says that while the war effort pinched the land holdings of their reservations (and it’s problematic enough the kind of land on which some of those reservations were built), some Native Americans were actually quite willing to enlist to support America and the Allies. There were tensions and scandals all around, but outright oppression seems to be in short supply. Could Chief have lived in a community where the pinch hit hardest? Could he be mistaken about how bad he really has it? Maybe. In any case, it’s only touched on and then the movie moves on, so we will too.)

Then there’s Charlie. (No GIF for him, either.) Overly Sarcastic Productions on Youtube has pointed out that the fashionable mental disorder to have in fiction nowadays is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Earlier generations used to have alcoholism, but that’s since gone out of vogue. If something tragic happens to a character nowadays, they’re likely to have stress, panic attacks, and all manner of tragic personality changes resulting from the trauma. Cue Takashi Shirogane.

Yeah, the dweeb with the nose scar. I love him.

The problem is—and Shiro is an excellent example—fictional PTSD is a romanticized version that elevates the trauma to a superpower, with Laser-Pointed Amnesia and The Devil Within to get the character a secret advantage in combat through improbably relevant flashbacks and adrenaline-fueled combat moves. (I love TvTropes, sorry.) Their personality will likely remain the same, a likable character who hardly loses control unless it’s helpful (Shiro again), or they’ll be turned into a darker, broodier Troubled But Cute version of themselves with enough potential for hurt/comfort to drag in the fangirls. Cue Bucky Barnes, and, yes, I am one of those fangirls. Bite me.

Charlie just takes all of that and…crushes it. Mercilessly. His disorder makes him have nightmares that cause him to yell and snap at Diana when she tries to help, and then slink off into the woods with his gun. It makes his hands shake when he tries to take a shot with the rifle and snaps him out of focus in the middle of a fight. I mean, if you were stressed all the time, how would you react? Being emotionally, physically, and mentally wound up at all times will bring out the worst in a person before it brings out the best. It’s painfully, scathingly realistic, and I have to give the writers and actor props for making me take a step back and think about my fanfictions and things like that.

As Sameer later explains to Diana, “we’re all dealing with our demons, and that’s his”, but even more interesting is the fact that Diana, who left her home to fix problems, is being introduced to problems that she can’t fix quickly—or can’t even fix at all. That goes on to be the next big conflict in the movie.

(More brief reading confirms my suspicions that PTSD wasn’t a well-understood condition around the time of WWI. While some scholars were making leaps and bounds towards understanding it, the prevalent view of PTSD was that it was simply cowardice in the soldiers, and even the most knowledgeable psychiatrists, who knew that the condition was brought on by the emotional strain of war, thought that PTSD was more likely to develop in soldiers who were “weak” or “cowardly” to begin with. Soldiers were rejected if experts thought they had a predisposition to this “cowardice”. Charlie wouldn’t have been able to reenter active duty after his previous tour even if he tried; Sameer, in this case, would either have to be extremely well-read or extremely compassionate for his time to think of Charlie as anything other than a troubled coward. Again, however, the movie touches on this and then moves on, and so will we.)

This is the part where Diana sees problems she can’t fix, from wounded soldiers awaiting an amputation to civilians hurried from place to place who have lost homes and loved ones because of the war. It’s all thrown together in one heart-breaking scene that parallels the nausea I felt in seeing the aftermath of the plane crash in the first episode of Lost. So many hurting, screaming people, and Diana wants to help them all, but Steve herds her on because she can’t. Then they’re in the trenches, and it turns out that Steve brought her there because he figured if Diana wanted to fight, she’d fight like all the other soldiers. 

But she doesn’t.

There are few trailer shots which are genuinely awesome in the final movie and lots of shots that get old once you’ve seen the trailer ten million times, but I assure you that the scene of Diana taking the German bullets as she stands in no-man’s land is one of the most compelling things in the whole movie. Not five minutes on the war-front and she is literally taking fire on behalf of the soldiers in the trenches behind her, inspiring them, protecting them, and proving to them that taking back what they’ve lost can be done, and then she charges ahead, flicking the bullets back with her gauntlets and literally clearing the way for the guys behind her while she charges on hell with no hesitation. The score behind this scene is that orchestral, inspiring stuff that makes a girl feel like she’s watching Lord of the Rings again, and you can almost feel the Germans quaking in their boots and wondering who and what the actual heck this person is.

And then the good guys have the bad guys running and they take back the trenches. Everyone is cheering and yelling and all feels really, really good.

But it’s not done yet. They still have to take back the town and free civilians. That’s when the Howling Com—I mean Diana and the Crew have their moment to shine. It’s adrenaline-filled combat from then on out, and I don’t remember it well enough to let you know what happened, but I remember that it was great, Diana threw a tank, and the part with the lasso was absolutely sick. Everybody should have a big, stupid grin when they watch a superhero battle, and this was The Big Stupid Grin Battle. It’s at this moment you feel, “Yeah—she knows what she’s doing now.” They bring out Diana’s electric guitar theme from BvS for the battle you’ve seen in the trailers, and it’s okay. I’m not much for the riff myself, but it doesn’t stick around long enough to grate. Then Diana kicks a guy through a window and I remember that I laughed in glee. It was great.

The part where Charlie can’t shoot a guy is here. We also see how much Steve pays attention when he uses a trick that he saw Antiope do to launch Diana into a church steeple to take out a sniper. It feels genuinely good when the dust settles, the music fades out, Diana walks out of the rubble and looks down the tower at the civilians on the street below her, and they all start cheering and yelling in Finnish. She saved them! She’s the hero she wanted to be! Life is good. 

The crew celebrates by getting their Squad Pic taken on an old camera and dancing, singing, and drinking a little with the residents of the town.

There’s Sameer, Steve, Diana, Chief, and Charlie, if you wanted to see them.

Then we hear Sameer’s backstory, that his dream is to be an actor, but he can’t pursue it because of his color. I asked Wikipedia, and it turns out that Sameer is a French Moroccan man—thus his prevalent use of French when he’s not speaking English. It’s funny how Sameer at first strikes you as a sleazeball until you get to know him and realize the tight box he’s in that he can’t overcome.

Color-casting is still a thing today (to go back to Voltron, my guy Josh Keaton mostly does voice acting because despite his undeniably photogenic face he is “too ethnic to be white and too white to be Hispanic” according to TvTropes), and what strikes me as funny is that the colors of Bremmer, Taghmaoui, and Brave Rock definitely had an impact on the casting of these characters. So color plays a part in casting roles, but I wouldn’t call that racism outright. It’s pushing “minorities” out of lead roles because of their skin color that I think is where the injustice lies. But movie creators aren’t going to broaden their scope for their casts unless they think an audience will buy a movie with a non-traditional lead. Question for discussion: who else wants to see more non-white leads in movies that don’t explicitly deal with the racial problem? Who else wants to see more female leads in movies that don’t deal with gender dynamics? I know I do. It would be fun to see Hollywood shake it up a little.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the movie! More romance follows because reasons, I guess. And then Steve starts to put a plan together to destroy the gas the Germans are making. He tells the Squad that they can go, but no! They’re bosom buddies now, and they’ll work even without pay! That’s good. We need our secondary characters for a while yet, even if they’re mostly here to bring up relevant social issues. Okay, so I’m a bit salty about that. They’re fine characters, but somehow I walked away feeling like they were there to be mediums by which the creators could bring up social issues rather than characters to suggest a history and deeper personalities.

First thing we need the squad to do is ride horses through the woods and doubt Diana. Well, all but Chief. He thinks Diana may be right, that Ares is behind all of this. Charlie is unconvinced, and Sameer is cautiously hopeful. They all seem to represent the sides of Steve’s mind battling it out, whether to believe Diana’s tall tale and trust her to finish this or not. We’re not told yet what he’s decided, or if he’s decided at all. Get used to this theme of belief, because it’s going to be important.

Emma got them information that the guy they believe is Ares, General Ganondorf, is going to be at a—what? What did I—? Oh, Ludendorf! I meant Ludendorf. He’s going to be at a big bad guy gala with all of the top bad guys. So the Squad is headed there. Diana is back to her pig-headed obstinacy and insists that all that needs to happen is she has to get close enough to kill Ares, while Steve wants to find out where the gas is so that he can destroy it. Chief steals a car and both Sameer and Steve pull out their acting skills to get into the gala, and Diana disappears and steals a rich snitch’s dress.

Steve flirts in a German accent to almost get the gas’ inventor, a psychopath with a cool face mask named Dr. Isabel Maru, to give up the location of the gas. (Side note: Doctor Maru’s nickname of Dr. Poison is the most cheesy thing in the movie, second maybe to Ludendorf for camp, until I read up on the Wonder Woman mythos and found out that Dr. Poison is a classic villain from the franchise. Hey, don’t judge. I’m getting into this via the movies, not the comics. Also, the idea of fictional characters like Red Skull and Dr. Poison alongside real historical figures like Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorf will never not be hilarious.)

Diana’s appearance in the gala almost ruins it for Steve. Ludendorf taunts Diana with like every trick in the book to say “I’m the villain!” without saying he’s the villain, Steve just barely stops Diana from hacking his head off, and then as part of the party festivities the Germans gas the village that Diana just saved.

….Wait, what?! Hell, that’s dark!!

So…yeah. Diana goes to the village to get a look at the devastation and the gas…oddly doesn’t affect her, whereas it makes Steve gag and choke whenever he gets within smelling distance of it. They are very upset with one another at this point, so upset that Diana has a “realization” that Ares has corrupted Steve too, to stop her from killing Ares before this could happen. Sensing that he’s lost her, Steve directs Diana to the Chief’s smoke signal, because he’d asked the Squad to keep tabs on which way Ludendorf had gone while he himself went after Diana. So she takes off, and on top of that, she takes his horse.

She tracks Ludendorf to an airport (because it’s…oddly always been an airport lately), and succeeds in killing him with her sword, the Godkiller, on the roof of a watchtower. All is quiet, and it should be over, right?

Wrong. Faceless goons are still unloading the gas into bomber planes. Diana is distraught because the one thing she thought would work, didn’t. Steve finally catches up with Diana here and tries, one last time, to get her to help him destroy the gas. (In hindsight, I realize that I have no idea how Diana could have helped with that, but I guess Steve must have had some kind of a secret plan.) She refuses. She can’t imagine why they’d go on with this destruction when Ares is dead. I think it’s here that she cites her mother’s warning that “the world of men does not deserve you”, and, in one final moment of desperation, Steve blurts, “Yeah, well, maybe it’s not about deserve! Maybe, it’s about what you believe.” He begs her one last time, saying he has to go, she doesn’t budge, and he reluctantly leaves to join the Squad.

It’s then that the real Ares makes his appearance. Yep, bait and switch! Turns out he was masquerading as Sir Patrick Morgan all along. And that is a shocking twist for all of four seconds because to be honest, I half-called it from the beginning, and it is unhelpfully on the Wikipedia page.

Ares acts in the exact opposite way of how you’d expect the god of war to act, which could either be genius or a let-down and for me was a bit of both. He does the whole “break her by talking” thing instead of fighting her for half the final battle and creeps her out with biblical references when she throws the Lasso of Truth around him. He monologues about how he wanted to show Diana the horrors of war and humanity so that she would join him and destroy all humans because she’s his sister by Zeus and pretty much the only person who could. (Yay, villain exposition! That’s not an old and tired cliché at all!) Also, Hippolyta’s a fat liar. Moving on.

You may have heard that the CGI in the final battle is extremely lacking. I’m here to tell you that it definitely is. Ares’ battle design reminded me of my dad’s pre-internet Doom 2 Dos-Box game (which is not in the GIF above, but I found it and figured it would be appropriate). The ripple effects from the heat definitely didn’t help, and that mustache was a mistaaaaakeee. Ares literally fell from Olympus with that awful caterpillar on his face. Good land, it looks so bad. 

The final battle is mostly bright lights clashing on bright lights, and after the epic armies-clashing-on-armies feel from Themiscyra and the World War’s front to the super-powered hand-to-hand that would make Cap stop and notice, the light beams feel old, tired, and lazy. I think the one time I grinned in the last battle was when Diana did a cool new thing with the lasso. Anytime the lasso came out, it was great, but otherwise—meh.

And then we get to the gut punch. One thing this movie did better than CA:TFA was set up the sacrifice in the plane. I don’t know how Sameer knew the plane was on a timer, but the fact that it was gave Steve Trevor’s decision a lot more credibility than Steve Rogers’, and the Squad’s desperation to stop him when he was just in arm’s reach from them was heartbreaking. At any rate, they had to squeeze in one last CA:TFA parallel before the deal was done. Steve presses his watch into Diana’s hand (told you it’s an ironic echo) and mouths something that she can’t hear, and while Diana is fighting Ares with existential crises, Steve pilots the plane full of gas into the air, pulls out a lighter, takes a deep breath—and blows the whole thing to hell, himself inside.

So…yeah. My second favorite died too. Oops.

Diana understandably loses it. She charges through the German ranks in a slo-mo rage. Ares encourages her, going on about the depravity of humans, and then Ares makes one fatal mistake.

He disses the dearly departed.

Diana will stand for none of that crap and won’t even kill Dr. Isabel Maru when given the chance. She tries to recall Steve’s last words, and in her mind they are “I can save today—you can save the world. I wish we had more time. I love you.” So, faith in humanity restored, she spares Dr. Maru, lightning-blasts Ares to hell with levitation and the gauntlet trick, floats in the air in a crucifixion pose for a sec, and then floats back down to earth. All of the Germans are un-brainwashed suddenly and take off their gas masks, smiling at each other and the Squad, so I guess Diana was right.

Soon afterward, WWI itself ends. Not every problem is resolved. Sameer doesn’t get an acting role, Charlie doesn’t suddenly have pristine mental health, Chief’s people aren’t liberated, and they don’t get Steve back. That’s all a good thing. That’s how the real world works. Diana, Emma, and the remaining Squad are, however, all friends by the end of the movie, and unconditionally accept one another. And as the movie closes, she reminds us that she stays and she fights because it’s not about deserve, it’s about what you believe—and she believes in love.

And that’s all great until you remember that they did the whole World War thing again in about twenty-five years. Jk jk

Hey, don’t be mad! I’m joking!

So what did I think? Personally, I think it was cool. A bit of a change of pace from what I’m used to. I wish they had taken more time to hint at the background of the minor characters and do a bit less philosophizing, but for what the movie set out to do, I feel like they did a good job. The writing was a solid A-, A at best, the score was up to par and even exhilarating in places, the actors and actresses seemed like they had fun, and the stunts, effects, sets, props, and shots could be beautiful and stunning. I enjoyed watching Diana grow and change as a person, and easily got invested in her. I’d like to see her again sometime.

Does it measure up to my Marvel dudes? Personally, nah. Not really. But it’s good. It’s a really, really good movie. I liked it, and I love Diana.

Tl;dr: Wonder Woman isn’t the best movie of all time but it’s still pretty bomb, guys, and you should watch it if you like movies that are fun and kinda pretty and make you think a little.

[johnnyonespur]

Things I’ve learned from British Folk Ballads

Don’t ignore warnings. If someone tells you to beware of Long Lankin, friggin’ beware of him. If someone tells you not to go by Carterhaugh, stay away. Same goes for your mother asking you not to go out hunting on a particular day. Portents about weather, particularly when delivered by an old sailor who is not currently chatting up a country maid, are always worth heeding.

If someone says that he’s planning to kill you, believe him.

If someone says he’s going to die, believe him.

Avoid navigable waterways. Don’t let yourself be talked into going down by the wild rippling water, the wan water, the salt sea shore, the strand, the lowlands low, the Burning Thames, and any area where the grass grows green on the banks of some pool. Cliffs overlooking navigable waterways aren’t safe either.

Broom, as in the plant, should be given a wide berth.

Stay away from the greenwood side, too.

Avoid situations where the obvious rhyme-word is “maidenhead.”

The flowing bowl is best quaffed at home. Don’t drink with strangers. Don’t drink alone. Don’t toss the cups or pass the jar about in bars where you haven’t arranged to keep a tab. Drinks of unusual or uncertain provenance should be viewed askance, especially if you’re offered them by charming members of the opposite sex. Finally, never get drunk and pass out in a bar called the “Cape Horn.”

Members of press gangs seldom tell the truth. Recruiting sergeants will fib to you shamelessly. They are not your friends, even if they’re buying the drinks. Especially when they’re buying the drinks.

If you’re drinking toasts, mention your One True Love early and often.

If you’re a young lady, dressing yourself in men’s array and joining the army or the navy has all sorts of comic possibilities, but you yourself aren’t going to find it too darned humorous at the time.

If you are an unmarried lady and have sex, you will get pregnant. No good will come of it.

If you are physically unable to get pregnant due to being male, the girl you had sex with will get pregnant. No good will come of it. You’ll either kill her, or she’ll kill herself, or her husband/brother/father/uncle/cousin will kill you both. In any case her Doleful Ghost will make sure everyone finds out. You will either get hanged, kill yourself, or be carried off bodily by Satan. Your last words will begin “Come all ye.”

Going to sea to avoid marrying your sweetie is an option, but if she hangs herself after your departure (and it’s even money that she’s going to) her Doleful Ghost will arrive on board your ship and the last three stanzas of your life will purely suck.

If you are a young gentleman who had sex it is possible the girl won’t get pregnant. In those rare instances you will either get Saint Cynthia’s Fire or the Great Pox instead. No good will have come of it.

New York Girls, like Liverpool Judies, like the ladies of Limehouse, Yarmouth, Portsmouth, Gosport, and/or Baltimore, know how to show sailors a good time, if by “good time” you mean losing all your money, your clothes, and your dignity. Note: All of these places are near navigable waterways. In practical terms this means that if you’re a sailor you’re screwed (and so are any young ladies you happen to meet). See also: Great Pox; Doleful Ghost.

If you are a young lady do not allow young men into your garden. Or let them steal your thyme. Or agree to handle their ramrods while they’re hunting the bonny brown hare. Cuckoo’s nests are right out. And never stand sae the back o’ yer dress is up agin the wa’ (for if ye do ye may safely say yer thing-a-ma-jig’s awa’).

Never let a stranger teach you a new game. No good will come of it.

Sharing a boyfriend with your sister is a bad plan.

Having more than one True Love at a time is a non-starter.

If you’re a brunette, give up.

Not that being a blonde will improve the odds much.

If your name is Janet, change it.

If you are a young lady and an amorous soldier, sailor, ploughboy, blacksmith, cavalry officer, or other young man fails to stop the first time you tell him he’s being too bold, knock off the maidenly protests and take more direct measures. If saying “no” the first time didn’t stop him, you’ve no reason to believe that twice will work any better.

Professions to be particularly wary of: clerks, salty sailors, serving maids, blacksmiths, highwaymen, gamblers, rank robbers, stonemasons, soldiers, tinkers, and millers. Anyone described as “jolly,” “bold,” or “saucy.” Supernatural creatures are best avoided. If they can’t be avoided, they should be addressed respectfully. If a supernatural creature sets you a task you’re well and truly screwed.

If you are a young lady and a soldier promises to “marry you in the morn,” it means he’s already married. And has kids. And he’s not going to marry you anyway. Even if you’re pregnant. Which you will be.

If you’re a young unmarried lady with child, and your pregnancy embarrasses or inconveniences someone else, consider yourself a sitting duck. Don’t meet with your young gentleman alone, or at odd hours, or in isolated locations, even if he says he’s taking you to be married. Next thing you know your Doleful Ghost will be telling your mother all about it. While he may say “Come all ye….” in the last stanza or two this will be small comfort.

Young ladies who feel uneasy should always act on their feelings. If in your good opinion you fear some young man (however handsome, rich, and well-spoken) is some rake, depend upon it: He’s a rake. Rakes will protest that you have them all wrong. They’ll be fibbing. Never go anywhere with a rake, particularly to isolated spots. See above: Doleful Ghost.

If you are a young lady and someone arrives to tell you that your boyfriend was slain on a foreign battlefield, take it with a grain of salt. Especially if you’re carrying a broken token.

If a former significant other turns up unexpectedly after a long absence, don’t throw yourself into his/her arms right away.

That goes double if they refuse to eat anything.

Triple if they turn up at night and want you to leave with them immediately.

Have nothing to do with former boyfriends who turn up and say it’s no big deal that you’re now married to someone else and have a child. If their intentions are legit, that’s got to be a problem. If it’s not a problem, their intentions are not legit.

You are justified in cherishing the direst suspicions of a suddenly and unexpectedly returned significant other who mentions a long journey, a far shore, or a narrow bed, or who’s oddly skittish about the imminent arrival of cockcrow.

If you are a young lady and you meet a young man who says his name is “Ramble Away,” don’t be surprised if, by the time you know you’re pregnant, it turns out he’s moved and left no forwarding address.

A fellow who’s a massively accomplished flirt hasn’t been spending his time sitting around waiting for his One True Love to come along. Furthermore, odds are poor that you’ll turn out to be his One True Love who will reform him.

If you arrange an assignation with your new sweetie, a little foot page will be listening in and will carry the news to exactly the last person you’d want to hear the story.

If your girlfriend insists that you go back to sleep after some odd sound woke you, it’s time to dive out the window and run for the hills right then.

If you’re hiding in the hills, don’t inform anyone exactly where you’re sleeping, particularly not an attractive member of the opposite sex.

If your girlfriend serves eels in eel broo, make sure you see her eat some first.

Informing your current significant other that you’re about to be wed to someone else is … risky. Even if you’re doing it as a joke, or to test their love. Especially if you’re doing it as a joke or to test their love. Testing someone’s love in general isn’t too bright.

Not even sending a talking goshawk to tell your significant other that the engagement is off will help you. You’re going to find yourself at the bottom of a well full fifty fathoms deep. A Doleful Ghost may get involved.

If, after you inform your current significant other that you’re to be wed to someone else, he or she suggests that the two of you meet in some lonely spot for one last fling, do not go.

Inviting your old flame to your wedding is a bad idea.

If your old flame invites you to his/her wedding, leave town.

If your old flame shows up uninvited at your wedding, start eyeing the exits. There’s a chance he/she is a Doleful Ghost. Be that as it may, no good will come of it.

If you’re out hunting, make sure of your sight picture before you pull the trigger/loose your bow. Especially so if you’re near a navigable waterway or the greenwoodside.

Do not allow the words “I wish” to pass your lips.

Avoid oaths, particularly when you’re near navigable waterways or the greenwoodside.

If the jailer indicates his willingness to take your gay gold ring to carry a message to your sweetheart, see if he’ll take that same gay gold ring to leave the door open and look the other way for five minutes while you or the sweetheart (as appropriate) escape.

Always use the buddy system. “Bare is brotherless back,” as Grettir the Strong put it; and if Grettir was worried about going places alone, you’d better worry too. So bring a friend with you. Friends keep bad things from happening. If things go badly anyway, you’ll need their help. And if things go well (hey, it could happen), it’ll be nice to have a friend along to share the laughs