#and the proto portal too under 2-3 years

[ecto-stone]

Hmm for a DP reboost. I think i would like for Mad,Jack reputation to be ruin permanently in the science world due to the accident 20 years ago.  That why they’re call a hackscientist by many. But it is aknowlege by those who knew them three well, they are possiblity one of the most brilliant mind of their ther time (it just that their target of research is rather absurb)

And that if the Golden Trio (Vlad, Jack ,Mad)  ever comeback together they will able to achived unimaginable thing in a short ammount of time.

[bwabbitv3s]

Good Godfather Vlad AU - Part 5

You are not Alone

Link to Index, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Oh no, no, no, no, no. This can’t be true. This is not happening. He can’t, not here, not now, how is this possible? The bottom drops out of his stomach as it all comes into glaring clarity. The broken dishes, glasses, school lab equipment, all happening out of nowhere. The sudden anxiety, sleeping issues, and odd behaviour they had mentioned. The talk of having to deal with ghosts and avoidance of talking about the ghost hunting of his parents. 

He is so stupid, and it is so oblivious looking back. Those flushes of warmth all this week while catching up with his friends were not just psychological. It was his ghost sense picking up the presence of another ghost. That twitch he had been seeing all day from Danny must be his picking up on him. Wait, no, something is still not adding up. What about the exposure and recovery?

There was no mention of an accident by his parents. No overflow or explosion when it turned on that could have infected Danny. Not that they have mentioned much about the portal due to the delicate nature of his past with them. Danny also does not look like he is recovering or hiding a recovery either. Vlad spent nearly a year in the hospital after his accident with a small proto portal. He was damn lucky that his powers had not begun to show in earnest until the very end of his stay. So how could Danny appear fine yet show signs of having ghost powers?

How could this be happening? What is he is wrong and a ghost is puppeting Danny around in some sick twisted way to torture him. The ghosts that leave the realms are rarely anything but malicious and power hungry. Always ready to attack any weakness he showed in his search for help. This is a new low. Getting his hopes up of not being alone after starting to repair his old friendships. Then to tear it all apart by attacking him using the son of his friends. Forcing him to reveal his secret to them and make it seem like he is a monster. 

No, slow down, breath in for four, exhale seven. Vlad takes a few calming breaths to get the mounting panic under control. Don’t jump to conclusions. Remember what the therapist said. He can do this, just keep breathing and it will help. Stop letting your thoughts run ahead of you and take the first step to find out what is happening, not what you think. First he needs to know for sure of the source of the ghost powers he has been sensing.

“Danny, why don’t we sit down for a bit. The AC over here is a bit strong since they are getting ready for the party. I have always found they turn it up too high.” Vlad asks. 

Danny still looks spooked as he scans the small crowd that had trickled into the gym. It is almost effortless to direct him towards an out of the way table. One hand gently placed on the boy's shoulder. It clicks into place as the thrum of another ghost is blatantly obvious with the contact. He focuses a bit more and can feel that undercurrent of power thrumming with Danny. It feels a part of him like the purr of a cat. Not at all like the trapped static feeling of a ghost overshadowing another. Vlad’s mind races at this new revelation.

The tiredness at the beginning of the trip when he first met Danny makes more sense now. He only had to deal with a few ghosts over the years. Natural portals are rare and most ghosts seem reluctant to go through them. You never know just how long they will be open for and could end up trapped on the wrong side even if you are careful. Those ghosts that did leave them tended to be either very weak or malicious with power to spare the risk. 

He is glad none he ran into fell into the later category until after his own powers were under control. In the beginning it was difficult enough to redirect blob ghosts. From what accounts of recent events of ghost attacks the ghosts Danny had been exposed to were much closer to the powerful and dangerous side. Ghosts that knew that they won’t be trapped in the mortal world with a stable portal to retreat to would not be so conservative in their attacks. 

Just what had Danny had to deal with seemingly on his own? He knows that neither of his parents could know of it. Jack would never be able to keep it a secret from him. Maddie would have show up in person to his home, his feelings be damned, if it was possible he could have a fraction of a clue about helping her son. Just how to approach this without having Danny bolt.  

“Danny, why don’t you sit down. You look a little pale. Have you had anything to eat since this morning?” Vlad asks. 

He gets no answer from Danny and begins to worry. He still seems overwhelmed with searching for some kind of threat. Can he not tell that Vlad is where the ghost feeling is coming from? He can’t remember how long it took him to get more than a generalized sense. He is going to have to go searching for his old notes. 

Danny is able to be coaxed into sitting, despite the obvious anxiety rolling off him, but does not seem to actually hear him. He sits with his back to the wall and facing towards the exits, keeping an eye on his parents. Who have been chatting at the other end of the room with some old classmates. Vlad notices Danny breathing a little fast and the slow self soothing rubbing of his arms has started. He needs to break whatever train of though Danny is stuck in now before it escalates. 

“Danny, everything is okay.” Vlad says softly. 

How does one even begin to try and ask let alone explain this? I know what you are going through as the accident when I last saw your parents also changed me into part ghost is crazy. How do you even start to explain that? Vlad clears his throat and tried to prompt Danny again. 

“What are you looking for?” Vlad tries asking.  

He still is not getting a response from Danny who still is scanning the room looking for some kind of threat he expects to be right there. Just how bad are they ghosts the boy has been dealing with? How often has he sensed something and been unable to find the threat before being attacked? It was bad for himself as a grown man, how much harder it must be as a teenager would be a nightmare.  

“Breath in for four, exhale seven.” Vlad tries.

He can see Danny try a stuttered breath in and out. The crowd that had been trickling in the gym is loud but Vlad can hear it when the wheezing breaths start to sound better. Danny is still looking for threats as he scans the crowd, eyes always going back to his parents. Have his parents as ghost hunters ever been involved? That thought strikes him cold. Later, he can deal with the thought of his old friends being ghost hunters and their son, and himself, being part ghost later. After he helps bring Danny back into the now and calmed down. Vlad steps in front of Danny to block his view of them. Grabbing a chair so he can sit down while still blocking the room from view without having to loom at the boy.Vlad gathers his courage and says something he never thought he would say. 

“There is no other ghost hiding, it is me. I am the ghost you can feel.” Vlad bites out with as much confidence he can muster. 

Danny’s head jerks to stare at him. His eyes flickering neon green. Finally seeming to notice they are no longer standing but sitting at a quiet table. 

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Danny’s voice cracks.Note quite able to mask it as uncertainty instead of fear. 

“You are trying to find the other ghost you can sense.” Vlad says. 

He allows his eyes to flash the bright red from his other form. Letting just a little bit of his ghostly nature come forwards. Danny tenses up immediately at that. The boy bristles in that inhuman way only ghosts can as emotions change the physical body to match. The eyes are always first with them glowing a faint neon green instead of flickering between when he had been uncertain and trying to hide it. The facial features are next sharpening as teeth become fangs to hiss out a warning to Vlad. 

“Who are you and what are you doing to Vlad?” Danny angrily growls at Vlad.

For a moment Vlad is so ver touched that despite only having started to get to know him, Danny is jumping to help him. A little bit of his core warms at that thought. 

“I am not being overshadowed. The accident with the portal had a few permanent changes that did not show up until after I got out of the hospital.” Vlad said. 

He could tell Danny was not believing a word he was saying and why should he? After all, from what little he could gather over the years they were almost impossible. It was what he had jumped to also. Yet, the moment the accident with the portal was brought up  Vlad could see the change. That sharp inhale and holding of breath as it struck a chord. 

“Give it a go. Reach in and you will not find another in this body. It is my own.” Vlad says as he opens his arms. 

He knows that Danny will not believe him without proof. He had not believed it without proof. It is luckily that in this instance proving he is not being overshadowed is easy to provide. 

“Go on. It will take just a moment to prove that I am telling the truth.” Vlad encourages. 

It is not hard to see the conflict on Danny’s face. Try it and he could just be setting him up to an attack at close range. The suspicion of a potential trap warring with the glimmer of hope. Darting quickly the Danny takes a step forwards out of the chair and rached for Vlad. His arm turns translucent as it reaches towards and then into Vlad’s chest. It passes through up to the wrist easily before Danny stumbles unexpecting the lack of resistance before yanking his hand out. 

“How?” Danny breathlessly asks. 

“Going by the lack of a hospital stay, likely much slower and drawn out than your own accident with a portal.” Vlad answers. 

[thequietmanno1]

TheLreads, Vigilantes ch 89, Replies Part 2

1) “RAPPA THERE ARE OTHER CHICKS HERE WHAT WAS THAT COMMENT EVEN ABOUT YOU KNEW THAT NOT ONLY MEN LIKE BEATING EACH OTHER SENSELESS SMH “- I mean, there are spectators and fans in the room as well. It’s not a fighters-only club, she could have just been there to watch the carnage from the sidelines.

2) “Oh yeah Mirko, I sure hope you won’t remember this later on when you become a hero… Although I don’t think you ever got involved with trigger investigations- do you even know that’s part of the job description besides kicking ass and taking names?”- I am 90% sure that Mirko has never done any investigative work as a hero. If she has sidekicks, that’d be almost entirely their job description, along with handling the paperwork whilst she runs around from fight to fight.

3) “Considering how gas behaves, I’m surprised that you two are fine now. You can see it is denser and sinks to the floor, so in theory it should’ve spread far enough to cover this corner. maybe.”- It seems to be concentrated around the actual ring itself, so whilst Mirko’s a little better off at higher elevation, the outside corners of the room are also a temporary safe spot until the gas gets stronger – plus, this is clearly also proto-trigger, so it seems that you need to get several good lungfuls before your Quirks are affected, and they’ve both taken only trace amounts in their current positions.

4) “WAIT

WHAT- IS THAT KUROGIRI? OR IS IT THE PERSON FROM WHICH THEY TOOK KUROGIRI’S POWER?”-  The butler is here to help his master clean up the mess.

5) “is that afo’s hand reaching in through a kurogiri portal to steal quirks out in the open in an event that is being transmitted online and in the presence of a current pro hero and a future pro hero?

it better not be Furuhashi “- Well, it’s very clearly no longer being transmitted online, but yep, AFO’s done with this place, and now it’s time to reap the benefits before the police make everything too hot to handle. Mirko can be forgiven because she’s clearly not much of a thinker at present (plus I don’t think she noticed the Quirk-stealing) but Knuckles….we’ll get to that later.

(Vigilantes ch 86)

6) “Considering they have a pretty nice place and are even advertising it online I don`t think they are too concerned about what might be found there, I doubt this is AfO`s business, like it seems to be trying to point at.”- Well, not one he’s directly connected to, but one that serves as a suitable lure for his actual operations to rake in the necessary materials…

(Vigilantes Ch 87)

7) “So yeah, that`s trigger, but I don`t think that`s AfO`s business yet, I think this is before he took hold of that thing and started his plans.”- Yeah, turns out….we really misjudged how involved AFO was going to be in the events of this prequel. We assumed he’d never lower himself to the street-level crimes that Knuckleduster and Koichi were investigating until Trigger’s worth had been proven and he realised it was worth stealing, but turns out, he’s been directly involved with refining and perfecting the formula under Garaki’s supervision for years.

Bit of a shock honestly, and I do sorta wish it wasn’t the case? Like, I feel Knuckle and Koichi deserved to be faced off with an overarching Villain they actually had a chance of confronting and beating, but I guess it does fit for the symbol of evil’s far-reaching tendrils to create chaos and disaster on multiple levels of society before he got directly involved with Izuku’s plotline.

(vigilantes ch 88)

8) “And apparently this isn’t exactly trigger, but it might be a prototype of it, before AfO got his potato hands into the mix.”-  Or, you know, hadn’t quite refined the formula to be as effective. Needed some time to figure out what worked and what didn’t

(Vigilantes ch 88)

9) “Yeah so this is definitely no AfO’s doing, like he would care for things like asking permission.”-  On the other hand, this isn’t AFO, and likely doesn’t even know his venue is being secretly used as an illegal Quirk-harvesting/testing ground. He probably just accepted the drugs and took what was said about them at face value, and knows he and the fighters ae being monitored by a mysterious backer, but he likely doesn’t realise the depths to which he’s involved with such a dangerous villain.

(Vigilantes ch 88)

10) “Also, the fuck you guys have batons here for? This is an illegal operation, why are you trying to not intimidate with non-lethal weaponry? Bring the goddamn shotgun on his ass your morons”- Well, these guys are supposed to be badly injured, so it theoretically shouldn’t take that much effort to subdue them – not to mention AFO wouldn’t want the merchandise dying before he can suck the Quirks out of them. (Vigilantes ch 88)

11) “…

YOU

FUCKING WHAT NOW

THIS WAS ACTUALLY AFO’S OPERATION ALL ALONG???

THIS MESS???”-  Well, probably not directly, but he likely had a hand in funding it and secretly supplying them with drugs and resources for him to monitor the effects with, whilst keeping far enough away under a veil of secrecy that there’s no direct connection or any hints that he’s anything more than a shady backer who hid in the shadows.

12) “Oh damn Mirko didn’t even saw Knuckle coming, that just goest to show how absurdly fast he can get when he gets serious”- And given how the warping keeps up with him even from an external viewpoint, just how fast is Kurogiri’s mist/ability to distort space? We are lucky his head’s as messed up as it is by present, cause if he could control this power freely, it’d be a gamechanger.

13) “I would be more worried how Kurogiri is opening portals so fast- I mean, if he closed and opened another one he would end up cutting AfO’s hand, which wouldn’t be a problem for us, but it certainly would for the timeline”- AFO’s also pretty fast himself, especially since he likely has a few speed-enhancer quirks on him now, so he’d likely be able to reach out, steal a Quirk and remove his hand before it got chopped off. Remember that he was fast enough in his prime to steal Quirks in the blink of an eye, and he’s still not yet been crippled by All Might at present.

14) “Okay now, I do have a few problems with that, wasn’t AfO already eyeless by then? Because I don’t think he’s just sticking his hand to get quirks without even knowing what they do, he is a collector but not of trash”- Yes, he’s not lost his oculars presently. No, it’s not a good idea to try and fit this event into a concise timeline, you’ll just hurt yourself. Best to let it go and thing of things happening in a vague “ish-years ago” timeframe, rather than hard numbers.

15) “HOW DID THE GAS DIDN’T GOT HERE YET

EVEN MORE CONSIDERING KNUCKLES JUST MADE A VACUUM TUNNEL FUNNELING IT TOWARDS THEM WITH HIS SPEED DAMMIT KNUCKLES”- presumably the proto-gas stuff is incredibly dense and therefore will take a few minutes to completely fill up the room – not to mention it also apparently requires higher doses of exposure to affect somebody’s Quirk

16) “Alright Knuckles, the fact you’re asking for Mirko’s help immediately leads me to believe you were the one that made sure she didn’t got in trouble for this”- Aaaand that’s about all the explanation we’ll get for how this whole event didn’t wind up a black mark on Mirko’s record.

17) “MIRKO I WAS JUST JOKING

Although I can’t think of anything else you in particular would say in that situation.”- Mirko is a simple woman, with simple needs.

18) “Oh god, please say “a manly philosophy” rather than “punches” “- I would actually love to see Crimson Riot interacting with these two.

19) “OH MY GOD RAPPA PLEASE”- Same braincell, different bodies. 

20) “But then what Knuckles? The police is still on their lunch break, they can’t stop it just because you asked them, that’s not what they came here for”- The line at the donut store can be a real killer, let me tell you.

21) “oh- oh no, I think someone already knows who Knuckles is…”- Knuckles has made himself an above-average nuisance, and now, it’s motivating somebody to try and squash that gnat…

22) “and he didn’t thought of telling anyone that there was a crazy fucker that stole his quirk? I know he wasn’t aware of All Might’s beef against him, but I think that’s the sort of thing you want other heroes to be aware of

You’re telling me that everything that followed and lead to the current arc of the main series… was because Knuckles was a dumbass that didn’t told anyone that AfO was still alive? “- Yeah…uh, basically that’s it. Knuckles, just like with Nomura/number 6 in the present, seems to have this whole bizarre honour code of “the only person allowed to stop you” going for him with the animosity he has towards the VF and its mysterious backer. And yes, he’s unaware of the history with All Might and AFO, but for some reason, he genuinely seems to want to be the one who takes down the villains in the end, despite his powerlessness in the present.

It is honestly weird for him, that he’s consistently making such an irrational decision, but he apparently did/does want to take down AFO. Granted, part of it could be that he wants to ID where AFO is and what he’s planning before informing the authorities so they can send All Might after him, but at other times, like him taking on Nomura solo, I get the sense that he still wants to be the hero and stop the villains, even lacking power anymore.

It’s almost like a bizarre inversion of All might’s character arc in MHA, that Knuckles has trained up a stronger protégée than himself in the new line of work he’s found himself in, but he keeps trying to take on the fight with the villains himself and keep said protégée out of it, to the point that Koichi only has direct dealings with Nomura after Knuckles got forcibly removed from the picture.

@thelreads

[mymadmedleyw]

Death

(ao3), belongs under Certain Moment of Time, could be read independently, just as each for the days will be shorts, but all together forming a whole picture

(As this is the last chapter within the 'Going Angst Week 2021', a little reminder about the right order in reading the chapters chronologically (I suggest CMOT link): 4, 6, 2, 5, 3, and 7, 1)

tw: miscarriage

---

Blood. One could say after seeing it many times, sensing its rusty, salty odour within the air might have lost the sensibility to it after a while. But it never ceased on the weight if it was about loss, about death.

Then it always changed to the horrible, suffocating disinfectant scent with the white surrounding and the sound of silent sobs. Just as this time. They didn't even dare to count for how many occasions they ended up here, broken and devastated.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…" mumbled for like the thousand times the hollow voice. "It's all my fault, I shouldn't have- I shouldn't have-" the sentence trailed off by another chuckling, squeezing hard on his hand that was holding hers, never letting it go.

Every attempt, every hopeful try led back here and- and it just twisted his heart, seeing, again and again, the slightly greyishly paled skin that years ago was beaming. Years ago…

Suddenly the picture of the small child in her arms came back, like that could have been a mirage. Sadly, he was well aware it wasn't, that happened, but- what he had done wrong?

Vlad pressed his forehead on her, taking the same question that he was asking from himself during the past few years. Why he hadn't told her? It was the same damn question, but with a different meaning this time. Time… yes, that it was.

He clearly could remember the day in the hospital bed, staring at the black and white photograph, bringing for them good news again… and then he couldn't tell what had happened, but he had woken up with years of memories in his mind and- and then as he had sat up, holding his throbbing head someone put a hand on his shoulder, asking with the greatest concern if he was okay.

It had needed hours to understand it wasn't a dream, and by lunch – made by the most amazing woman on the Earth – his mind settled too.

As much weird it was, but this was the truth. Madeline Masters. His wife. Also aware of his state – that they, according to his new-old memories, together tried to keep at bay. He knew he lied to her about its seriousness. That she only was informed about the simply side-effects: floating, invisibility and intangibility, sometimes glowing hands – but she had no conscious about the rest, about the other form… (which learning from a memory surprised Vlad too).

He kept then on with that lie, just as with the other one too, that somehow, he remembered a time when everything was different.

It worked for years. To tell the truth, Vlad forgot everything after their first positive test, even after the second, or the third, but-

Then he didn't dare to count. He couldn't recall anymore the days when she was happy – except in that other life. He slowly was destroying her, breaking the sweet image of his love… He tried to tell her several times to give up, but as much as stubborn she was, like feeling she should have been a mother, she never listened.

Then he eventually had run some tests (surprisingly facing with the result wasn't even his worst day, because his worst day was now…). The accident in the lab, five years ago ruined his biology. It was his fault. Vlad had been on to tell her, several times really, that they- that they wouldn't ever have a child, but- but he had been afraid. He still was afraid. He was a coward, fearing to lose her, so then he never told her, but now…

"Daniel…" a hollow, weak breath was formed into a name. "I thought- I chose- I really thought this time…"

"It's okay…" Vlad whispered, fighting against the suffocating guilt.

Daniel… he almost could imagine a view of a boy with her kindness, smartness and maybe with his steel bright eyes, and-

A soft sniffling broke the silence in the room, he knew it would take days and weeks to calm her down (or months, especially that this time she really had hoped…). But then she would return to her obsessed determines, again, not giving up until she would be able to fight for it…

But Vlad couldn't watch it, not again. This time, it had endangered her life too. He just couldn't let it happen, not anymore… especially as the date slipped into his mind. It was the same as on the letter, containing the black and white picture of their second child… she would have been expecting her second and-

He bit his lips as hard as it drew blood, rusty, salty and sinner. The sound of the woman, the so loved Maddie died away in a faint snuffling, undoubtedly dreaming about a great life he couldn't give her… Even though Vlad was conscious of their reality, he still wished to fulfil her dreams…

Wish… suddenly his eyes snapped open, remembering word-to-word to his half-mumbled sentence before everything had changed and he had woken up in this dream (nightmare…).

Would it be that easy? –Vlad wondered, sceptical about such childish way, but then he grabbed on it, tight, as ridiculous it sounded, and he'd have literally killed to make her happy. So then, he opened his mouth, already putting together what he wanted to say, and then-

"Won't work." stopped him an abrupt voice, then the owner cleared it. "I set the rules with Desiree. She is not allowed to grant any timeline-altering wishes, unless I allow it." Vlad blinked at the sudden presence of someone else, searching with his eyes immediately to catch the person, but there was no sign of anyone, just a quiet ticking sound was telling someone was definitely there.

A moment passed in silence, making Vlad wondering about if he hallucinated the voice, but then it spoke again. "Clockwork, by the way, Master of Time – though it's rather a given title than a name. Theatrical, isn't it?" Vlad scoffed at the unmistakable enjoying waving of the words, whoever this ghost was – because, based on the invisibility it was undoubtedly an unearthly creature from the other realm –, he clearly was amused by this scenario.

"What do you-?" Vlad started, frustrated by the spectre's presence and mocking.

"Want?" was Vlad interrupted. "From you? Nothing… albeit your stubborn wish created a glitch that didn't suppose to exist. A knot, that tangled the flow of events, blinding me. In short," the ghost took a break. "you scarred the time." well, that definitely sounded like a lecture… but then, the title slipped into his mind, along with the accounting for: Master of Time.

"You can make it back…" Vlad pieced together. "You can change on the time, change on this all." he couldn't tell if it scared him or filled with him hope, but definitely that drew out a way – more like an alternative – after the wish-one. For a short time, the ticking skipped a beat, like the ghost would have been stuck on a thought, but then talked again.

"Yes, I can change on this all." was Vlad's sentence, almost exactly repeated. He didn't have to be a genius, to feel it wasn't an admitting. "But I won't." was it added, not even a second later. "I might be responsible to watch over the timelines, and every single outcome, but on this, I am afraid, I can't do anything. You created it, it's your duty to fix it, and decide." Vlad stunned. Decide what exactly? This or- that? It wasn't an actual question, he could give the answer easily, but-

Suddenly he averted his gaze from the space where he suspected the ghost was floating invisibly – getting on his nerves by that – then he looked back to the woman, gazing at his wife, and gently got out a long curly lock of hair that fell into her face. She seemed so calm, pale, yes, shattered by the tired wrinkles under her closed eyes, and…

"I see you already made your decision." Vlad heard the cursed voice again. He didn't have to guess to know his eyes were burning red, clenching his jaw and fighting inside to not lash out at the ghost, transforming to his other outlook and end the ghost, it that was even possible in case of a timeless existence. Was it really counted as entertainment for him? This?!

"It's not a decision." Vlad spitted.

"No, it really isn't." said the ghost sternly, accompanied by a sound that gave an impression like an old clock would have been adjusted, bored by the current discussion as if it had been something obvious, or expected. "But I am seeing no future over this certain moment, neither in this time or your original one. Just imagine, how it could be to be blind after millennia. Curious, I was for centuries to learn what it caused. Well, it turned out it was just a desperate hybrid's wish, fighting against his true nature, cornering himself to endless suffering than accepting the new him… comical, isn't it?"

It felt harder and harder to hold back and stay unmoved listen to the words, but as much as he loathed hearing it, if this Clockwork could mean the solution from this, then-

"Besides, what happens now, how you decide, is beyond me, I can't see through it, until it happens." defined the being, at the same time out of nowhere a swirling green-ness formed in the air. It was similar to the Proto-Portal, which Vlad had seen many years ago, but this was enough big for anyone to walk through it. "It's either this time or the other one, the knot you created still makes the connection available. But it has to end. Only one could remain."

Vlad swallowed, lost in the neon colour, like an unescapable doom that followed him everywhere. He remembered his time, his muscles still could recall the seizures, the endless days in that hospital room, and reading about his friends' perfect life against his… the ghost was right, he had been desperate, now he could control his other side, but it could be only thanked to Maddie, this Maddie… in that other world, he was nothing but- he was literally nothing… here, now, on the other hand, he had the love of his life, but still-

Suddenly, he put together no matter how he'd choose, what path he'd take, it would turn his heart a stone, destroying by the ghost's words the other time. But then, he took a glimpse at the resting woman, at his Maddie, silently sleeping unaware of another being's presence in the room, only lost in a dream-world her mind created. For a moment, he wondered about the possibilities, about the alternatives, but then, hard, Vlad realised it was out of the question.

He never felt his limbs as heavy as he stood up from the chair, earlier placed beside the hospital bed, to mean support Maddie after the loss... And he never felt more hatred towards anyone – even towards Jack – that now took over his entire body about the ghost.

"I really hope, you are able to see your so cherished future now." Vlad cursed, the sourness and hurt suffocated him from inside as he took a step towards the greenness.

"I do." acknowledged the Master of Time, but not spilling anything else, what it would mean or how things would turn out. But Vlad knew even if the ghost was aware of some outcome, he wouldn't be informed about those. As Vlad disappeared behind the gate between the two realities, he took himself a promise, to somehow, when everything had settled, whatever it would take, he would find Clockwork and claim justice.

[shipaholic]

Omens Universe, Chapter 1 Part 4

Jesus this chapter kicked my arse for a fortnight. OK, resume.

Warning for cartoony body-horror, just in case.

Link to next part at the end.

---

(last part)

(chrono)

Chapter 1, cont.

Crawly wouldn’t stop snickering. It was getting on Aziraphale’s last nerve.

The cart went over another bump. Aziraphale’s head wobbled off and rolled onto the floor. He shot Crawly an imploring look from near the demon’s ankle.

Crawly tutted and picked him up. “Alas, poor angel,” he said solemnly, holding Aziraphale’s head at arm’s length.

“I appreciate the sympathy, but please could you reassemble me?” Aziraphale dreaded to think how this must look to the driver.

“All right, all right. Mind you, I don’t know how long it’ll stay on this time. There are more potholes out here than on the road to Hell. I keep telling them to get it paved.” Crawly propped his head back on top of his torso. It wasn’t precisely on-centre, but both of them had given up on precision some time ago. Aziraphale’s body was entirely held together by string at this point, and occasionally bits of him swapped places. Right now he had a right foot for a left hand. [1] They had concealed [2] the rest of him under a rug made of animal skins that, he hated to say, was a bit whiffy.

“Heaven will definitely know how to patch you up, right?” Crawly eyed the ambiguous collection of shapes under the rug.

“Oh yes. A quick spritz of holy water should fix this up in a jiffy.”

The demon nodded, and draped himself back down on the floor opposite Aziraphale. “Heaven’s really behind the times, here,” he said, in the tones of one recently given a shinier work computer than the coworker he is addressing. “You should tell your side to get into the sixth century. Making us trek miles across a desert wasteland just to drop off a prisoner? Totally inefficient. Practically everything’s a portal to Hell nowadays.” His eyes clouded over thinking about it.

“Heaven has more of a ‘don’t call on us, we’ll call on you’ ethos,” said Aziraphale.

“I remember,” Crawly said darkly.

They fell silent. Aziraphale wished Crawly hadn’t mentioned the prisoner. He’d tried not to look at her since they’d boarded the cart. She radiated an air of sullen martyrdom from the back corner. Crawly had tied her up and chained her to him for extra security with a set of miraculously acquired manacles. He had cursed the chains with supernatural density, pinning the Nephilim to the floor of the cart by the ankle. [3]

Aziraphale forced his gaze away. He wanted to fidget. It bothered him that he couldn’t. He did the next best thing and changed the subject.

“This isn’t a desert wasteland. It’s nice actually. I think.” Turning his head to watch the passing scenery was out, but he was getting a pleasant enough picture. He blinked in the direction he wanted Crawly to look. “Look, they’ve farmed it. Slightly. See, plants. Of some kind.”

“I don’t care about plants, angel.” Crawly did still look, though. His yellow eyes flicked over the scrubby proto-vegetables.

“Humans are clever, aren’t they?” Aziraphale beamed. “They’ve domesticated so much of the Earth’s natural flora. And the results are very impressive.”

“Mm. Bit slow. Let’s help them along, shall we?” Crawly snapped his fingers and a sad-looking tree erupted into vibrant good health as they passed. Oranges sprouted among the leaves. Crawly held out an open hand, and a perfect round fruit fell into it. Crawly’s golden eyes shone, even more luminous than the orange. He nodded approval and tossed it over the side.

Aziraphale gasped to watch it go. “That was wasteful,” he said, plaintively.

Crawly pulled a face. “Don’t tell me you eat the food.”

Aziraphale paused. He hadn’t checked with his superiors whether it was ok to eat the food. He’d just done it. A lot. Which perhaps he shouldn’t admit to the enemy.

“Ugh. Your funeral. You know it goes through you?”

Aziraphale knew, and saw no need to discuss it further. “You should have kept it and given it to her. Humans need to eat.”

The Nephilim shot him a glare that could melt rocks.

“She’s only half-human,” said Crawly. “Maybe she only needs half the food.”

The Nephilim turned her glare on him. Crawly, who had bested her in battle a handful of hours ago, flinched.

“Fine, I’ll get her something before we reach head office,” he muttered. “Which should be sometime later this week,” he added in a raised voice.

The driver cheerfully ignored him. The donkey pulling their cart turned its head to eyeball Crawly. Its ears were pinned to its skull. It had the look of a beast that knew an apex predator was nearby, and was biding its time until it could catch him unawares and stamp him into a pancake. Aziraphale suspected Crawly felt similarly about the donkey. For his part, he tried to be charitable toward all God’s creatures, but there was no denying the animal’s loose definition of walking in a straight line had accounted for half his head-displacements so far.

“I hope no-one Upstairs is looking out for us,” he sighed.

Crawly raised an eyebrow. “You’d be ok, surely? You haven’t done anything wrong. Except fail to capture Heaven’s lovechild, I guess, but they’ll take one look at you and reckon you put up a good fight. Look, if they ask awkward questions, you can say I kidnapped you and the bastard offspring and you did a daring escape at the front gate. Problem solved. If anyone’s in trouble, it’s me. I’m aiding and abetting the enemy.”

Aziraphale sighed again. “That’s not what I mean. I just… This looks rather bad, that’s all. Me, here, in the enemy's presence. No offence. I should be… at least trying to thwart you.”

“Um, rude? I’m the one who paid for the taxi. Anyway, thwart me how? You can only move your eyebrows.”

Crawly was correct. Aziraphale didn’t really want to thwart him. It would be ungrateful. Still, there were… expectations.

“I could bargain with you,” he said. “For Sabrael.”

Crawly tipped his head back and laughed. “You mean Sabrael Junior?”

“That is Sabrael,” Aziraphale said stubbornly. He met the Nephilim’s eyes. He looked squarely into the golden gem in her forehead. “Look, they’re right there. Plain as anything.”

Crawly shook his head. “I don’t think so, angel. I’ve met human teenagers, they’re all reckless and rebellious and pissed off all the time. Does that sound like anyone Upstairs? That’s not an Archangel, that’s pure human adolescent.”

“Sabrael could get a little testy when the minutes weren’t submitted on time -” Aziraphale tried. Crawly cut him off with a look. “Oh, fine. But that is Sabrael’s gem!”

They both looked at it. It glared in the sunshine. The Nephilim glared too, less blindingly.

“If they were discorporated -” Crawly began.

“For fifteen years? And that’s not all,” Aziraphale plunged on, before the demon could come out with a counterargument. “Have you stopped to think what Hell will do to her?”

Crawly’s mouth worked soundlessly before he managed, “Well, that’s not my department, is it? I don’t do interrogations...”

He trailed off. Aziraphale gave him his most guilt-inducing look, with all the parts of his face that still worked.

“Look, she’s doomed either way!” Crawly’s voice jumped an octave. “What do you think your side’s cooking up for her, a welcome home party?”

“We certainly don’t torture people, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Got that in writing, have you?”

“You cannot possibly believe she’ll be better off with you.”

“I can, actually. And anyway, it’s irrelevant. My kill, my keep. Metaphorically.”

“I don’t expect you to understand, but could you try to look at it from doog retaerg eht fo evitcepsrep eht?”

Aziraphale knew that hadn’t come out right. He tried again.

“Dnous I od woh?”

Crawly didn’t blink. Carefully, he pulled back the rug covering Aziraphale’s assembled body parts, and searched through them until he found the angel’s right hand. He held it up and peered at the gem.

Aziraphale felt a flicker of nerves. “Ees uoy od tahw?”

Crawly breathed in and out, steadily. Like a heartbeat, although neither of them required blood or breath. It was calming.

“The crack is bigger,” he said, finally. He placed Aziraphale’s hand back on the seat and tucked the rug back around him.

“Oh?” Aziraphale’s voice wobbled.

“Not by much. You’ll be fine.” Crawly leaned over the side of the cart, squinting into the sun. “We need to go faster, though. Come on, you useless beast.” Suddenly his voice was a snarl. “She only designed you to lug things around. I would know, I was there. Get. On. With. It.”

The donkey brayed like one of the damned [4], and broke into a canter. The cart lurched and bounced from pothole to pothole. Aziraphale kept his head by sheer luck. He suspected they only weren’t capsizing because of infernal manipulation from Crawly.

He probably only had one chance to say this. He thought through each word he needed Crawly to listen to, sounded them out in his head one by one. “...Craw. ...Ly?”

Crawly’s head snapped around. Aziraphale licked his lips and focussed his entire brain on speaking backwards. “...Don’t. ...Hand. ...Her. ...Over. ...To. ...Them.” He paused. “...Please.”

Crawly didn’t meet Aziraphale’s eyes. “Not long now. Save your strength,” he said, gruffly.

Aziraphale sighed. That was all he could do.

~*~

The driver craned her head back. She’d been loyally ignoring every weird thing that had happened behind her since the start of the trip, since the tall skinny gentleman gave her a gigantic tip up front, but now the poorly gentleman under the rug seemed to be speaking in tongues and you had to draw the line somewhere.

“You gents feeling all right?”

“We’re fine,” said the dapper one. He was glaring at Pebbles the donkey. There was something funny about his eyes, but her mind slid away from noticing what.

“Pot-pit etiuq,” said the other one. That was definitely what he said.

“Only…” The driver cleared her throat. This was awkward. “Is he possessed by a demon?”

For some reason, the one in black grinned at this. “Well -” he began.

“On,” the other one said, sharply.

The man in black looked chastened. The driver recalled the size of the tip. She could probably keep ignoring them for now. And if the sickly one got any ectoplasm or whatnot on the backseat, she’d charge them extra.

---

[1] Crawly tried to make a ‘two left feet’ joke, but Aziraphale refused to accept it on grounds of inaccuracy. Ten minutes of arguing preceded fifteen minutes of the demon sulking. It was the low-light of their journey so far.

[2] Or, rather, stacked.

[3] It was doing the same thing to Crawly. It was pretty uncomfortable. He was trying not to let on.

[4] Aziraphale assumed.

---

(Chapter 1, Part 5)

[hydralisk98]

Urya (Brainstorm #0x1)

Urya is a shared universe @hydralisk98 (aka myself) is developing currently to both enjoy himself/herself but also to preparing his/her mind to shift into that world.

Clearly not ready for use yet but I would like to eventually provide access to the data under open source licensing. 

IDEAS

Main inspirations from fictional works (Secondary inspirations would take up way too much space so I left that alone at least for a little while):

0x10c

Portal 2 + Portal Stories: Mel

The Alchemist

Hypnospace Outlaw

The Stanley Parable

Zachtronics

Inspirations from OTL’s constructs

?

Characters:

Constant “Klara” Booksword

“Nil” aka the main playable person/entity

Sasha

Charles

Sophia

Valence

Themes: 

“God”

Truth

Soul

Choice

Time

Philosophy

Languages

Methodology

Tonalities:

Didactic

Dramatic

Comical

Ironic

Polemic?

Epic?

Media genres: 

Hypertext

Multimedia demos

Video games

Game modifications (probably as total conversions but embracing some of the initial game design as well)

TTRPG campaigns

Addventures / Suggestion forum -ish game

Fictional setting:

Single planet as the initial scope

A few regions or a single country per focus point

Single constellation as the maximum scope

Escapism & personal Joy & Achievement as motivations

Parallel history scheme (There are minor differences mostly up to the initial anchor point)

Mystery + Intrigue plots

Rare magic

2015-equivalent is the initial anchor point

Young adults (15-30 years old) audience as target audience

Grim to noble scale= Neutral (Middle)

Dark to light scale= Grey (Middle)

Recurrent themes= Coming of age / Circle of Life / History repeats itself

Recurrent conflicts= Political intrigues, “Materialism” vs “Spirituality”, “War” vs “Peace”, “Authority” vs “Freedom”, “Xenophilia” vs “Xenophobia”, […]

Most Civs and City-States= Assyria, Morocco, Portugal, Shoshone, Inca, Babylon, Byzantium, Austria, Polynesia, Sweden, Ottomans, Ethiopia, Korea, Maya, Persia, America, Brazil, Netherlands, Songhai, Poland, Indonesia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Guadalcanal, Nendo, Kelowna, Milan, Yerevan, Mombasa, Zanzibar, Zurich, Sidon, Jerusalem, Vatican City, Wittenberg, Buenos Aires, Samarkand, Kabul, Tbilisi, Ormus, Yangon, Cahokia, Mogadishu, Hanoi, Luanda, Antananavario, Melbourne, Sofia, Chennai, Ragusa, Quebec City, Prague, Lusaka, Tyre, Dijon, Konigsberg, Panama City, Riga, Budapest, Algiers

[Work.In.Progress]

Literature processes:

Non-chronological (Flashbacks and anticipations possible)

Non-Linear (Parallel pattern)

High and low levels of language

Stylistic devices: substitution figures, amplification/insistance figures, opposition figures, omission figures, sonority figures?, analogy figures, thought figures (concession, preterition), […]

Point of view= First person perspective BUT with lots of second person and fourth wall breaking instances (so it is very meta fictional)

Values:

“Love” or Acceptance of the divine truth of reality

Choice

Perseverence

Honesty

Knowledge

Ethics’ sense

Originality criteria= Quite null, which is obviously a antithesis

Intrigue/Suspense= Should more driven by “natural” curiosity than actual aesthetics

Lisibility / Complexity= Should stay quite complex and fancy with little compromise towards accessibility as far as simplifying vocabulary and stylistic devices in the original core material goes.

Scenaristic and metaphysical realisms criteria= Should go somewhat far, as to establish a cohesive universe to which we can actually go there PHYSICALLY altrought at least some details should be left unused in the original core material

“Book-Object”= Emphasis towards portraying it in a way that is as balanced as required

Message(s) of the shared universe’s original core material= Introspection and “Activism”?

Narrative model:

Constant writing his bucket list on paper (elements to become Klara or at least the best version of himself/herself), January 2020 in Canada

Constant realizing he doesn’t know how to manifest it into reality

Constant try subliminals unsuccessfully

Constant researches proven methods for manifestation

Constant asking for help

Constant changes his perspective about how to reach his bucket list goals

Constant gets rigorous

Constant finally becomes Klara

Klara is happy and goes onward in life

Actantial model: 

Constant (also known as “Klara”) Booksword as the subject

“Nil” aka the player, Klara herself and the whole universe as the helping factors

Constant himself and doubt(s) as the opposing factors

Overall process of acceptation as the quest

Klara as the recipient

Constant as the sender

Constant’s wishes fulfillment as the object

Easter eggs:

[Work.In.Progress]

Ideal licensing terms=  Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal for the actual media,  MIT License for the actual software written for it

Actual child projects to work on:

Explaining the metaphysics

12-bit computer system and other odd electronic projects

Software and services derived from my world

Naturalistic conlangs based on a specific proto-language family

Naturalistic conlangs unrelated to any specific language family

TO-DO list:

Sketch the metaphysical model used (aka what actual metaphysics work like, think of it like the mythology of that universe but as actual truth)

Finish basic astronomy of the stellar system

Finish geology and climate

Sketch biology and hominids

Develop and get data from game mods and standalone games’ playtroughts to further the decisions afterwards

Sketch human history from the very start of the neolithic era up to the Boltzmann’s brain era of the universe (focus on 10′000 BCE equivalent to the middle of the 6th millennium AD equivalent)

Determine the actual core TL base

Develop over the details of everything particularly interesting or helpful towards the TL shifting

Target games for modding:

Europa Universails III

Europa Universalis IV

Crusader Kings II

Civilization V Complete Edition

Dwarf Fortress

Catalysm: Dark Days Ahead

Game Dev Tycoon

Half-Life 1

Half-Life 2

Lawgivers

Quadrilateral Cowboy

Democracy 3

FreeCiv

Baba is You

Factorio

Minecraft

Hypnospace Outlaw

Portal 2

Garry’s Mod

Quake

Doom

Colossal Cave Adventure

Notices

Feel free to suggest me anything under the autisticcanadian@yahoo.com email address .

November 1st, 2019 4:40am edition

[buzzdixonwriter]

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood [SPOILERICIOUS]

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is now my favorite Quentin Tarantino movie even though I think a few of his others are better made films.[1] 

But, man, does it ever capture the era and the vibe.  In that sense it's like La Dolce Vita (and in another, like Singin' In The Rain).

I know this era, and I know Los Angeles of the time -- from the Summer of Love in ’67 through the year of unraveling in 1968 to the end of the era in ’69.

And while Hunter S. Thompson’s brilliant Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas marked the official death notice of the Swingin’ Sixties in 1971 (with a few die-hards like the Symbianese Liberation Army literally dying hard in 1974), the truth is 1969 was when it all came to an end.

Nixon won, thanks to his own now well documented treason behavior and to a few million white bigots voting for George Wallace instead of Hubert Humphrey, and (as Thompson himself noted two years later) “with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Now some of you are saying, “But wait -- how can little Buzzy boy -- a mere lad of 13 summers in 1967 and not yet fully 16 when he finally actually visited Los Angeles for the first time in 1970 – how can he know what Los Angeles was like in that era?”

Ah, for that, my friends, we can thank television.

. . .

For those of you too damn impatient to get into the meat of my review of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, just skip this block and go to the next one.

I’m gonna pull a Tarantino here and seemingly meander in order to set up what comes next.

Even though I lived in the rural South (Appalachia mostly but with a few years in the Piedmont of North Carolina), we had this invention called television, and on this invention were these shows.

I’m not talking about Shindig! or Hullabaloo or even The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (though the latter interestingly paralleled in real time the rise and fall of what we now call “The Sixties”).

I’m not even talking about that perennial American Bandstand which started in 1952 and ran a staggering 37 seasons, grinding to a halt only in 1989 at the tail end of the Reagan Era, a pop culture show that lasted long enough for the grandchildren of its initial audience to be watching it when they finally pulled the plug.

No, I’m talking about cheap-ass, under-the-radar syndication efforts like Where The Action Is (itself a spinoff of American Bandstand) and The Lloyd Thaxton Show a Bandstand imitation that relied more on whacky humor, proto-music videos, and local-to-LA pop culture icons.

We’d see these shows (briefly back-to-back during Where The Action Is’ short run) not as cheap entertainment for teens and tweens but rather as a glorious portal into that land of myth and magic:  Southern California.

In particular, Los Angeles.

(It’s not as if nobody ever did this before.  In all its variations from the mid-1950s through Walt’s death in 1966, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color seemed to make every 4thshow either about Disney Studios or Disneyland itself, thus by extension priming the national pump for interest in Southern California.)

Where The Action Is and The Lloyd Thaxton Show needed to squeeze the most out of their bare minimum budgets, and the cheapest way to fill screen time was to convince some local SoCal / LA attraction to let you shoot footage of young kids (with disposable incomes, one might add) having a good -- no, great time at said attraction while listening / dancing to top forty tunes lip-synched by an astonishing roster of talent.

Look, this was back when TV was big but before it became H*U*G*E.  Successful show biz folks made money but they didn’t make that much money, and popping down for an afternoon to lip-synch your latest release for Lloyd or Dick Clark was a sure way to guarantee a few thousand more sales across the country, a few more paid gigs in the hinterlands, so whyda hell not?

The Monkees tried covering the same territory on prime time, but as popular as that show was (and it stands up well to this day albeit more as an artifact of its time), it felt just too slick, too packaged, too ersatz compared to the scruffiness of Where The Action Is and The Lloyd Thaxton Show.[2]

Add to this almost weekly illustrated news and culture stories of SoCal / LA and the youth movement delivered to even the most remote rural homes via Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, and The Saturday Evening Post, and it was pretty much hard not to be aware of -- and influenced by -- Los Angeles culture in the 1960s.

And if like little Buzzy boy you were interested / intrigued / enthralled by that culture, there was a virtual tsunami of sights and sounds to wallow in, even if you lived 2,467 miles away.

On my first visit to Los Angeles in the summer of 1970, when I had just stepped off the airliner, when I was no further into the city than the gate of the airline terminal, I looked around, took a deep breath, and realized:  I’m home.

. . .

So here’s the plot of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood:  

Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a fading TV star, frets over his career.  

Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), his stunt double buddy, tries to boost his spirits.  

Rick lives next door to Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), a vivacious young actress married to a world famous director.  

Cliff the stunt man bumps into members of a crazy criminal cult.  

Weirdness ensues, but everything ends happily (except for three of the cultists).

A conventional movie would have put points 1, 2, & 3 in Act One, made point 4 part of Act Two but then stretched that act out with a big pointless chase and a few small fights, and finished with point 5 as Act Three.

20 pages / 80 pages / 20 pages

Not our lad Quentin.

A screenwriting guru once observed It's A Wonderful Life has a traditional 3 act structure only it's constructed so act 1 occupies 80% of the picture. Likewise Casino opens with virtually a 45 minute documentary on the casino business so they won't have to stop and explain things as they go along with the main story. 

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is like that: Two hours to build up to a literal life-or-death moment in order to show that for all their sins and short comings, Rick and Cliff would not merely survive but be worthy of survival.

(Most "assemble the squad" movies have a similar structure only they disguise it by indulging in hijinks along the way viz The Dirty Dozen spending most of their movie just training.)

Points 1, 2, 3, and 4 above are Tarantino’s Act One, and based on the 161 minute running time, I’m guessing it occupies the first 130 pages of the script.

Point 5 is his Act Three, and I’d say 20 pages sounds about right there.

But what about Act Two?

That’s the beauty of this story.

Act Two is about ten minutes long and is told mostly with narration (provided by Kurt Russell, who may or may not be speaking in character as Randy, the stunt director).

The crisis point in Rick and Cliff’s story is not that they’ve intersected with the Manson family, it’s that Rick decides their friendship must end. 

Now, ostensibly this is because Rick’s new Italian wife, Francesca (Lorenza Izzo), wants to cut expenses and move out of his home in Benedict Canyon and into a condo in the San Fernando Valley, a move that we know from Rick’s earlier statements that he would find shameful and a mark of his slide in status , but the unspoken reason may be that the volatile Francesca learned of Cliff’s own troublesome past (see below) and wants nothing to do with him.

So Act One tells us who these two guys are, explains their relationship in part, hints at an elephant neither wants to acknowledge, and carries us to a point where they can no longer continue as once they had.

Act Two consists of the final decisions the two make as part of this friendship, not really wanting to break it off, Cliff clearly hurt by Rick’s abrupt dismissal, yet trying to have one last good time together before parting, ostensibly not forever but…yeah, forever.

Their respective decisions impair their ability to respond to the dangers posed by the trio of killers in Act Three.

. . .

Let’s talk about Rick Dalton for a moment.

Leonardo DiCaprio proves himself to be one of the gutsiest actors of all time, playing a whiny, petulant, rude, brusque, self-involved, over-anxious crybaby of a man…

…and getting us to admire him because despite his myriad character flaws, the sonuvabitch has two things going for him and the first is a fierce dedication to his craft.

A conventional movie would cut the scenes of Rick practicing his Lancer dialog all by himself.

Tarantino realizes the audience needs to experience that in full, because otherwise they won’t appreciate his frustration at blowing his lines during filming the next day.

And when he blows his lines, Rick erupts in a epic full-bore meltdown rage aimed at himself and himself alone.

And this points to the second thing Rick has going for him:  Rick knows when and how to accept help, and is thankful for it.

Without the lengthy scene of him practicing at home (and drinking too much in the process), audiences would dismiss Rick blowing his lines as par for the course.

We need to see Rick make a conscientious effort to prepare for his role, see him screwing up by getting hungover, see him blow his lines, then see him correctly shouldering the blame and taking positive steps to overcome his error and deliver an outstanding performance.

The help that Rick accepts in this scene comes from “Maribella Lancer” a.k.a. Trudi Fraiser (Julia Butters), a child method actress who refuses to break character between takes. (This is one of the most delightful scenes in the film and well worth the price of admission alone.)

Despite a rather awkward-bordering-irritating meeting, “Maribella” / Trudi feels empathy for Rick as he inadvertently confesses his own career anxiety by talking about a pulp Western he’s reading.

That he can accept this empathy from a child stands well in Rick’s favor.  It shows he actually listens to others and accepts their feedback and input.

And it pays off for both of them when Rick not only comes back from his lunch break meltdown all fired up and determined to give an outstanding performance (which he does), but also when we learn he suggested a bit of business for “Maribella” / Trudi that delights both her and the director (Sam Wannamaker, a real life actor and TV director of the era, played in this film by Nicholas Hammond).

And when “Maribella” / Trudi tells Rick that his acting was some of the best she’s ever seen, he’s genuinely moved to tears.

We may shake our heads at some of the stuff he does, but we like this guy.

. . .

Part of the headshaking is due to his relationship with Cliff, his stunt double / majordomo / best friend.

Rick often seems like an arrogant prick with Cliff, seemingly bossing him around, acting like Cliff is at his constant beck and call.

We’re about two thirds of the way into the film when we learn that without Rick to champion him, Cliff would pretty much be persona non grata in Hollywood.

Cliff is known throughout the town (and Hollywood ain’t that big, folks) as a wife killer.

While some (such as Rick) argue he was absolved of any criminal intent, there’s no doubt he deliberately and personally caused the death of his wife, he didn’t merely have an accident that left her dead.

He’s a wife killer.

Most of the people in town assume he got away with murder.

Francesca, despite being an Italian starlet, may have heard the stories from other Americans working in Italy and that is the real reason she laid her foot down re Rick selling his house and abandoning Cliff as his friend.

Hell, even nearly blind old George Spahn (Bruce Dern) holds him in contempt.

Cliff can’t get hired in town unless Rick asks for him to be employed as his stunt double.

Even then he runs into strong pushback, viz Randy the stunt director who is reluctant simply because he doesn’t like the vibe Cliff gives off, and is especially reluctant because his wife, fellow stunt coordinator Janet (Zoë Bell), nurtures an enormous hate-on for Cliff based on the presumption he did indeed murder his wife and get away with it.

Cliff blows his chance of working his way back into Hollywood’s good graces by getting in a fight on the set of The Green Hornet with Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) that caves in the side of Janet’s car.

But what’s crucial in that scene is Lee explaining his refusal to fight: “My hands are registered as lethal weapons. We get into a fight, I accidentally kill you. I go to jail.”

“Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight, they go to jail,” says Cliff.  “It’s called manslaughter.”

Sounds like Cliff may know what he’s talking about from personal experience.

When Lee learns Cliff is a wife killer, his reluctance to fight him disappears.

Nobody in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood disputes Cliff killed his wife, they dispute if he got away with murder or not.  In view of his comment on manslaughter to Bruce Lee, the coroner’s verdict may not have been murder or accident but justifiable homicide

We don't know what happened on the boat in the flashback scene with him and his wife (Rebecca Gayheart). 

If she attacked him with a weapon (the spear gun they carried onboard or a knife or a wrench or whatever) and he defended himself from her attack but unintentionally inflicted a lethal injury on her, then both a charge of manslaughter and verdicts of "not proven" or "justifiable self-defense" are possible.

We don't know, and that ambiguity is what makes Once Upon A Time In Hollywood such a morally and ethically complex film.

(When I next see the film, two things I'm keeping tabs on the contents of Rick's store room and when Cliff's various scars appear.)

. . .

And Sharon Tate, the third leg of this triad?

She is depicted in this movie by Margot Robbie as light and as airy and as harmless as dandelion pollen blown on the breeze.  She is a perfect wish fulfillment character, not merely because so many men desire her, but because she appears to live a blissfully stress free, rewarding, and happy life.

This is where real life collides with “reel life” and if you haven’t guessed by now, we’re up to our necks in spoiler territory.

You have been warned.

For audiences half my age, Charles Manson (Damon Herriman) is vaguely known in a Jack the Ripper-ish sort of way (i.e., a really, really bad guy who did some really, really terrible things but just what they don't fully know) while Tate is unjustly forgotten.

The glory of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is that for however briefly, for however artificially, it lets Sharon Tate come alive again and enjoy the happy ending she deserved.

What is that happy ending?

To be honest, we don’t know.

At the end of the film she meets Rick, recognizes him from his TV shows, and the implication hangs in the air that she’ll introduce him to her husband, Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha) who in real life at this stage of his career had not yet descended to drugging and raping 13 year old girls.

I hope in “reel life” that never happens, just as I would hope that Polanski’s criminal moral failing would never have materialized in the real world had Tate and her unborn child lived.

We just don’t know.

We assume Rick will meet Polanski, and from that meeting his career would shift to A-list motion pictures, and his dreams of success and security would come true.

We just don’t know.

Would Tate herself have gone on to bigger and better roles?

The odds are not in her favor.

As the writer David Gerrold said:  “Hollywood uses up young women as if they're disposable.  It is one of the worst things about the industry.”

Very few female actors of that era enjoyed a sustained shot at A-films, especially if they were regarded primarily as eye candy.

By the time of her murder in real life, Tate had a good role in a minor but good movie nobody saw (Eye Of The Devil), a good role in a major bad movie everybody saw (Valley Of The Dolls), and provided eye candy in three mediocre movies (including The Wrecking Crew, part of the gawdawful Dean Martin “Matt Helm” series[3]).

Her career might well have stalled out as so many other promising young starlets’ careers stalled out.

We’ll never know.

But even a stalled career would be preferable to what really happened to her.

. . .

A lot of people get second chances at the end: The four[4] at the Tate house, for sure, but also Rick (who finally gets to move into Polanski's circle) and Cliff (who has atoned for killing his wife either by accident or a well staged murder).

But y'know who else gets a second chance?

Charles Manson.

Cliff sees Manson at the Tate house but never learns his name. When he visits Spahn Ranch, he hears constant references to "Charlie" but never meets him since Manson has taken the family's children on an outing to Santa Barbara.

He recognizes Tex (Austin Butler) and Susan Atkins (Mikey Madison) and Patricia Krenwinkel (Madisen Beaty; many people mistake her character in this scene for Squeaky Frome, played by Dakota Fanning in an earlier scene) from his visit to the Spahn Ranch, but for all he knows they've come after him for revenge after he beat up Clem (James Landry Hébert) at the ranch. 

Since Cliff was out of the country for 6 months stunt doubling for Rick in Italy, the lapse in time is accounted for: They waited until he returned.

When the hit team doesn't come back and there's no news reports of a mass murder, Manson knows his plan failed and has an opportunity to flee the LA area, either by himself, with a small group of followers, or the entire Family.

If the police do trace Tex and the women back to Spahn Ranch and they do confront Manson on this, Manson can feign innocence.  If they bring up Cliff's visit and fistfight, Manson can say he knew the three were angry over the incident but he never knew they plotted revenge.

With the three would-be killers dead and Linda Kasabian (Maya Hawke) presumably fleeing LA to escape the Family there's no link between Manson and the attack on Rick's house.

Manson is in the clear.  The police consider the matter closed (movie star kills three drug crazed hippies; why look further?) and Manson gets a breather to ponder his next move.

Maybe he realizes how close a call it was.  Maybe he realizes he's got a nice little scam going with the Family.  Maybe he focuses on that and becomes a garden variety cult guru who, with viral marketing, becomes a prominent New Age personality.

Stranger things have happened...

. . .

To be honest, I approached Once Upon A Time In Hollywood with some trepidation when I heard the ending would not synch up with reality.

Tarantino most notably did this before with Inglorious Basterds, but most of his movies occur in the Red Apple universe, so named after a popular brand of tobacco that appears in those films (I can’t remember if Red Apple products appear in Jackie Brown and have not seen either Kill Bill movie).

The Red Apple universe almost-but-not-quite synchs up with ours.

The biggest and most obvious deviations from the norm is Inglorious Basterds, where Tarantino wipes out Hitler and the Nazi high command in a fiery climax later echoed in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, but Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction suggest a world far more immersed in its own pop culture than we are.

The Hateful 8 is another Red Apple universe film (again specifically referenced in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood) that strongly implies Abraham Lincoln survived the assassination attempt against him and negotiated a post-Civil War peace that saw the Confederate states reunited with the rest of the country much sooner than actually happened but in return saw them agree to full emancipation and equality under the law of all formerly enslaved people.  There's still a lot of racial tension in era of The Hateful 8 but there is also an explicit acknowledgment of equality under the law.

As such, race relations in Tarantino’s films Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood do not synch up with the reality of our own era.

. . . 

On the one hand, there’s not as much carnage in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood as there is in most Tarantino movies.

On the other, there’s just as much only we don’t recognize it for violence because it’s presented in the form of  “play acting”.

It’s not real.

It’s all a movie (or a TV show).

Or so we think.

Even Manson’s own killers debate this point, one of them arguing that all American TV shows “except for I Love Lucy” glorify in murder and violence, so why not visit murder and violence on those promoting it?

Really, what separates the violence of bounty hunter Jake Cahill (a name that’s an amalgam of two John Wayne Westerns:  Big Jake and Cahill, US Marshal) from Rick Dalton playing Jake Cahill from Leonardo DiCaprio playing Rick Dalton playing Jake Cahill from the violence of Leonardo DiCaprio playing Rick Dalton at the “reel life” climax?

And what do we make of Brad Pitt playing Cliff Booth who doubles for Rick Dalton (as played by Leonardo DiCaprio) playing Jake Cahill, especially in the end when Cliff’s under the influence of LSD and isn’t sure if what he’s experiencing is real?

You tell me.

. . .

Tarantino’s flamethrower beats Chekov’s gun

By this I mean if you need a flamethrower in act three, you set it up and pay it off in an entirely different context in act one or two, but you also establish however obliquely that it’s not impossible for it to be present though uncommented on in act three. 

We see Rick Dalton use a flamethrower in a film; we see a flashback and hear him say he practiced long and hard to master the weapon. 

This fits in nicely with Rick’s character, both poking fun at him for not being the tough guy he portrays onscreen yet establish his willingness to learn a dangerous skill if it enhances his performance.

After all, he could always request Cliff, his stunt double, handle the flamethrower in that scene.

Dalton is also established as a person who collects memorabilia about himself, reinforced repeatedly though not always blatantly thru the film (viz Cliff bringing in a huge framed poster of one of Rick’s Italian movies just prior to the climax). 

So when Rick pops out with a fully functional flamethrower at the end, our suspension of disbelief goes, “Yeah, he’d still have that”.  (When I next see the film, I’m paying close attention to the contents of the storage room prior to Cliff fixing the antenna; if we don’t see the flamethrower stored there, Tarantino missed a bet.)

Part of the genius of this film extends to the trailer.  

There is a big honking clue to at least part of the climax when Rick is shown using the flamethrower and the images freeze frames while a title announcing it as Quentin Tarantino’s 9th film is superimposed.  That’s brilliant marketing as it preps audiences for what would otherwise be a deus ex machina before they've even seen the movie.

. . .

re the flamethrower and Cliff’s scars: This is a film that will endure multiple repeat viewings just to catch all the details. There's a shot of Cliff driving down the 134 Freeway that if you aren't a Los Angelino you won't recognize he's driving past Forest Lawn, thus prefiguring the ominous background of the film. 

When Pitt goes to see the elderly George Spahn at the infamous Spahn Ranch, he passes by two photos of Zorro and the Lone Ranger -- both with masks over their eyes -- as Squeaky tells him "He's blind."

The background is filled with posters and billboards and books and magazines and memorabilia, some real, some ersatz.

That being said, I do not think it will age well.

To the degree it skillfully recreates an era, that will be studied.  

But as time puts more and more distance to the actual events, the impact of the film will lessen.

Casablanca loses some impact when we aren’t aware of how vicious the real life Nazis were, but in the context of the story they’re big enough bastards for us to understand why it’s important to stand up to them.

After The Fox is a delightful comedic romp that is hilarious even if you don’t know anything about Italian neo-realism, but if you do know anything about Italian neo-realism It.  Gets.  Even.  FUNNIER!

But you really need to know what happened on August 9, 1969 at 10050 Cielo Drive to fully appreciate what Tarantino hath wrought.

Like 2001:  A Space Odyssey, future generations of viewers will appreciate the skill and artistry employed, but they just won’t get why it makes such an impact today on many viewers.

 Gordon Dickson wrote a classic sci-fi story back in 1962 called “Three Part Puzzle”.  Without spoiling it, it’s safe to say a big hunk of the story’s appeal lays in the efforts of aliens to comprehend why human children are delighted by the old fairy tale of The Three Billy-Goats Gruff.

To the aliens, the story contains a simple, straight forward message:  Wait until your strongest team member arrives before engaging an enemy.

What they don’t understand is the morality behind the story.

To the aliens, goats and trolls are all equal, there is no reason to take delight in the victory of one over another.

But to humans…ah, to humans there’s a far deeper, much more important message than a mere tactical stratagem.

This is the risk Once Upon A Time In Hollywood will face in the future, that audiences as yet unborn will come to see it as a big, goofy buddy action movie in which two friends (and the wife of one and the dog of another) take on a trio of killers, dispatching them in spectacular fashion.

The catharsis may be lost, and in losing that, so will be lost the heart and soul of the film.

Enjoy it now while you can.

  © Buzz Dixon

 [1]  I rank Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, and The Hateful 8 above it in terms of cinematic quality.

[2]  In real life, for reasons too involved to go into here, Charles Manson actually got a courtesy audition for The Monkees; he was never seriously considered for a role and if I remember correctly, the show had already been cast by that point but the formal announcement had not been made. Nonetheless, if the quantum physics hypothesis of alternate timelines is correct, somewhere there’s a universe where Charlie Manson is a beloved 1960s pop culture icon and people still talk about the infamous Peter Tork murder cult.

[3]  Do yourselves a favor and track down the original Matt Helm novels by Donald Hamilton.  They’re far superior to the crappy movies.

[4]  There were actually five victims that night but Steven Parent, who had been visiting the property's caretaker William Garretson at the property's guest house, was shot in his car as he prepared to drive away. Garretson, apparently under the influence of drugs and / or alcohol, first claimed to have slept through the horrendous attack and was a prime suspect until forensics cleared him.  (Years later he admitted to witnessing part of the attack and doing nothing for reasons he never made clear.)  Tarantino left Parent and Garretson's presence out of the film presumably because it would have been too much of a diversion to explain them if they weren't going to be victims.

[themadcapmathematician]

all i know abt transformers is the shia movie and the fact that darren criss plays one in the cartoons i think? should i get into transformers is what i'm asking

Oh god this is my favorite question. I’m not sure how to answer it but its my fave. Pull up a chair. I hope you’ve got some time on your hands.

The short answer: yes. You should at least give it a try. Transformers is a 30+ year old muti-media franchise that gets rebooted almost every 3 years so it basically has something interesting to offer almost any fan. If you end up not liking it that’s cool but there’s a lot to try before you decide.

The long answer is: yes you should and here’s why and here’s a rough idea of all the options you have to sample. I’m about to go on a long rant anon so you can check it out now or later or whatever but I’m just warning you ahead of time.

The basic Transformers plot (which I’m sure you know but I’m gonna go more in depth in a minute) is that a race of giant robot aliens who can turn into vehicles and other things have been engaged in a civil war that has lasted millions of years. This is the basic plot that all tf franchises spawn from although some explore slightly different subject matters. If that doesn’t appeal to you I mean there /might/ be a few other things you might find worth sticking around for because there’s just so fucking much of it, but you’re welcome to turn back now because that’s the basic things tf has to offer: giant robot aliens, cars and planes, fighting, some drama. Those are what tf is best at, with some variation.

It has a very active and long lived fan base and each section of the fan base is interested in different stuff with some crossover. There are people who literally only care about collecting the toys, people who wont try any other series except g1, people who only like the comics, etc. Etc. You’ll probably find people who like what you do pretty readily. If you like the toys there are toy forums and blogs. If you like the cartoons there are forums and blogs made for that too. If you like the comics, same. There’s a pretty active following of the comics and cartoon series on Tumblr alone; I would try searching the #maccadam tag since most tf activity has been moved there since the bay movies came out. Id also use the tf wiki liberally because it has pm all the information you’ll need to know about the fandom and the canon lore. There’s also plenty of fan fiction on Ao3 and ff.net if you’re into that and pm anyplace that hosts fan art has tf fan art.

Now there are several series, including comics, cartoons, the Michael bay films, the cartoon movie, spin off books, and video games. I’m gonna go over my personal favorites because I like and know them best but there are more than these if you’re interested in digging deeper.

(More under the cut)

G1: there are a lot of forms of what fans refer to as Generation 1 or G1 but if you live in the US its likely they’re talking about the very first cartoon series.

Summary: the autobots and the decepticons stripped their planet of resources and went looking for a new planet to continue surviving on. They both crashlanded on earth where they lay dormant for millions of years until conveniently awakened somewhere during the 1980s, where they continue their war all over again

Why you should try it: listen its cheesy as hell and full of nonsense plotlines and animation errors but not only is it good fun but at least watching an episode or two might give you a decent grasp on what spawned this enormous franchise in the first place.

G1 movie: this movie was a game changer. Its technically right in the middle of the g1 cartoon but it works as a standalone film too. while it has many trappings of the cartoon its better animated and has a more consistent and dramatic story.

Summary: Optimus Prime and Megatron fight, OP dies (yes he fucking DIES for the very first time. thousands of 10 year olds bawl their eyes out), Megatron gets mortally wounded, and the Matrix of Leadership (aka an autobot holy item/macguffin [this is the proto-cube btw]) has to choose a new leader.

Why you should try it: decent animation, classics lines, tons of 80s rock music, and it establishes a lot of tf conventions that would be carried over to all series that come after it.

Beast Wars: haha the 90s couldn’t be left out of the transformers fun, now could it? This was one of the first all-cg cartoon series in history and while its not much to look at nowadays, it was a big step in the 90s.

Summary: the series doesn’t center on Optimus Prime and Megatron but their decendants. The war is long over but some factions are starting to clash once again. Several members of these factions do the whole “crash land on earth while fighting” thing except they wake up during times before humans and instead of taking vehicle modes, they take animal forms, thus the name.

Why you should give it a try: it establishes the idea of Sparks for the first time, it has historical significance in the cgi realm, and it has a decent storyline with interesting characters. If you can muscle through the 90s-computer-animation look it might be the show for you!

Transformers: Animated: I dont think its a secret that this is one of my favorite tf series of all times. It was the first cartoon series I ever watched of tf and it also features my favorite toy line.

Summary: Optimus Prime is much less a war hero and more of a ..janitor really. He flunked out of the academy and spends his time repairing space bridges. One time during repairs though, they stumble across the Cube and just their luck, Megatron and some nearby cons are looking for it. They portal away to earth where they, you guessed it, crashland, until they’re awoken sometime in the future and go on adventures in futuristic Detroit.

Why you should give it a try: I like tfa’s art style and story and characterisation best tbh; Optimus is younger and more unsure of himself but also more earnest, with more visible baggage. The rest of his team feel like a ragtag band of misfits (which I have a weakness for no lie lmfao) who are still trying to find their place in this conflict and the future ahead of them. Sari is also one of the more beloved human companions and the show’s take on classics characters feels fresh and interesting, and the interpretation of the autobots and decepticons themselves is surprisingly nuanced.

Transformers: Prime: remember that 90s animation? Kiss that shit good bye my friend. This cgi is some beautiful shit. More than a few fans wish tfp is the art direction the movies had taken, storyline aside.

Summary: the autobots are already on earth, staking it out and fighting a more subdued sort of conflict with the cons. One day they get some human kids involved and stumble across some conspiracy shit and it all spirals out of control from there.

Why you should give it a try: great animation and atmosphere, gorgeous character designs, a solid interpretation go the characters, and it offers a more serious take on the story over all.

Rescue Bots: I’ve noticed this show doesn’t make the list a lot which is a shame? It has a much younger audience than any of then other series but its still quality and one of my fave tf series.

Summary: the ship of four non-combatants who were left in stasis before the war detect a transmission telling autobots to go to earth, so it…goes to earth. There they wake up on some island and are told they’ve gotta start building a repatoire with the native species…but they can’t reveal that they’re sentient aliens yet.

Why you should give it a try: ok ok, most of the series are made for 7-12 year olds with the teen and adult fans sort of in mind, this show…is a show made for pre-K kids, no joke. Its a lot less…murder-y, and this is especially saying something because it came out at the same time TFP did and in fact is supposed to take place in the same universe!

BUT, but it has a consistently well-written story and characterization, it addresses stuff I never thought it would, and its a nice break from the ridiculously high stakes of the other series. Honestly Rescue Bots is great and I wish more people talked about it because its a series totally worth watching, certainly as much as any of the others.

More Than Meets the Eye comics: there are a lot of comic series but so far this is my favorite one lol

Summary: the war is over, Optimus is done with everyone’s shit and splits the matrix in half, giving one to rodimus and they other to bumblebee. And what does roddy do with his newfound matrix half? Decide he’s going on a quest of course! And who better to go with than literally every unqualified misfit the autobot and neutral factions have to offer?

Why you should give it a try: ridiculous shenanigans, horror, drama, intrigue, strong characterisation, and a killer aesthetic. Damn it may not always give me what I want but its got a lot of exactly what I’m always looking for.

There are some video games (Fall of Cybertron, War For Cybertron, Transformers: Devastation), other comic series (Robots in Disguise, G1/UK comics), and the Robots in Disguise cartoon, however I don’t have a decent enough grasp on them to describe them super well I just know they’re pretty good and have had people recommend them to me. You’re welcome to try those as well of course.

Also if you’re into toy collecting or want to get into it there’s a lot of materials you can read and such but my personal advice is pretty simple:

1) go to walmart, target, a store that sells collectibles, a convention, or a garage sale

2) buy a cheap toy that you like. Don’t spend over like $20

3) decide if that was a fun experience or not and if you like having this toy or not

If you liked it enough to keep buying, then congrats, toy collecting might be right for you! Do your research, Don’t blow too much money too quickly, take it easy, have fun.

But yeah sorry this is really long but I do hope you consider giving transformers a try since I know I love it a lot and it really has a lot to offer. I hope this wasn’t like…a crazy response. That a crazy person might give. And that I didn’t scare you away or anything XS

the key is to try some stuff and have fun and if its not your thing that’s cool too! Have a chill night anon