#because from the reality side she didn’t know that alan needed to believe that story and yet she still framed it as a suicide to the public

[miswaken]

would also just like to say that I obviously love alice as a character, and I very much do not think she is an inherently bad / manipulative / abusive person — which is unfortunately a take I see pop up in the tags from time to time. yes, lying to alan to get him to bright falls for therapy was wrong of her and she knows that. but I think it’s important to remember that the first game takes place after years of alan being a depressed, self-destructive, and occasionally violent (not with alice of course but still) addict. that doesn’t make what she did right, but she’s human and flawed and was very likely at the end of her rope. the bright falls ballad section of herald of darkness flat out says that alice was drowning under the weight of alan’s worst traits and if he’d noticed and addressed it himself maybe this never would’ve happened. the song also says the trip was the last shot at saving their marriage. things were bad! and I think it’s deeply unfair to pin all of it on her like she was some evil uncaring wife who just wanted to institutionalize him and be done with it. and honestly I think it’s also a bad read to assume that she didn’t try to get him help in less direct ways before that, which he probably refused?

similarly, I have to assume she tried other things before the “make him think I’m dead so he hits rock bottom and finally accepts the worst of himself” plan. there’s six years between when the hauntings start and when alice jumps into the lake. you really think she didn’t exhaust all other ideas before that? based on barry’s emails she jumps sometime in the spring of 2023 and the game takes place in september. so again that’s a couple months of attempts before we see the game loop, and considering dark place time isn’t real that’s gods know how many loops of trial and error before we get to these ones that finally work. I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that the fakeout suicide was her first and only method of guiding alan.

I could write an essay about the “voyeuristic and manipulative” (ty sam lake for using the words I’ve been using lol) nature of alice’s role in the story and how it reflects the very nature of her artistic medium itself. and I do think there’s an element of her being desensitized to the Horrors a bit and she’s definitely tunnel visioned trying to get this right. but again, this is last ditch desperation at play. she’s navigating these horrible life situations and literal nightmare scenarios as best she can while trying to drag alan out of his hole at the same time. and while her handling of it all might not be perfect she is a haunted woman with problems of her own who is simply trying her best!!

[thelittlesttimelord]

The Littlest Timelord: The New Doctor Chapter 8

TITLE: The Littlest Timelord: The New Doctor Chapter 8 PAIRING: No Pairing RATING: T CHAPTER: 8/? SUMMARY: With the Doctor newly regenerated, he and Elise must now navigate their new relationship. The Doctor is an old man and Elise is a headstrong young woman. She is no longer the scared little girl the Doctor saved all those years ago. Will Clara be able to keep them from killing each other?

“Take a punt,” the Doctor told Clara. He was doing some sort of math on one of his chalkboards while Clara sat down near the console.

“Right,” Clara said.

“Your choice. Wherever, whenever, anywhere in time and space.”

“Well, there is something, someone that I've always wanted to meet. But I know what you'll say.”

“Try me.”

“You'll say he's made up, that there is no such thing.”

“Go on.”

“It's…it's Robin Hood.”

“Robin Hood.”

Clara walked up the steps towards the Doctor. “Yeah. I love that story. I've always loved it, ever since I was little.”

“Robin Hood, the heroic outlaw, who robs from the rich and gives to the poor.”

“Yeah.”

“He's made up. There's no such thing.”

“Ah, you see?”

The Doctor pulled a book off his bookcase. “Old-fashioned heroes only exist in old-fashioned story books, Clara.” He thumbed through a few of the pages before setting the book back in its place.

“And what about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. You stop bad things happening every minute of every day. That sounds pretty heroic to me.”

“Just passing the time. Hey, what about Mars?”

“What?!”

“The Ice Warrior Hives.”

“After what happened on that submarine? I don’t think so,” Elise told him. She wanted to forget that adventure. She still had nightmares.

“You said it was my choice,” Clara argued.

“Or the Tumescent Arrows of the Half-Light. Those girls can hold their drink,” the Doctor rambled.

“Doctor.”

“And fracture fifteen different levels of reality simultaneously. I think I've got a Polaroid somewhere.” The Doctor came down the stairs towards the console with Clara following him.

“Doctor! My choice. Robin Hood. Show me.”

“Very well.” He put in coordinates and set the TARDIS in flight. “Earth. England. Sherwood Forest. 1190AD. Ish. But you'll only be disappointed.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“You can’t wear a black dress! You’re not going to a funeral!” Clara told Elise. Clara wanted to look the part and dragged Elise along with her. Clara looked through the dresses and pulled out a green one.

“It’s perfect! It’ll go great with your hair.” She shoved the dress into Elise’s arms. “Well go on, get dressed.”

Elise changed into the medieval style dress. It felt wrong not to be in her leather jacket and boots, but she had to admit that she looked rather good.

“Might have to cover that though,” Clara said pointing at the roses winding down Elise’s neck. She’d still yet to understand why she had the tattoo in the first place.

Clara managed to cover it up with some heavy concealer.

The two women stepped out of the TARDIS.

“Might be a little bit much, but what do you reckon, Doctor?” Clara asked. She stopped when she saw him. Robin Hood.

“By all the saints. Are there any more in there?” Robin Hood asked.

The Doctor noticed how Robin’s eyes lingered on Elise and he moved slightly in front of her.

Clara patted the Doctor’s chest in disbelief. “Is that…?” Clara asked.

“No,” the Doctor told her.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God! It is, isn't it? You found him. You actually found Robin Hood.”

“That is not Robin Hood.”

“Well then, who, sir, is about to relieve you of your magic box?” Robin asked, pulling out his long sword.

Elise nearly rushed forward, but the Doctor pushed her back. He stepped onto the bridge, facing Robin. “Nobody, sir. Not in this universe or the next.”

“Well then, draw your sword and prove your words.”

“I have no sword. I don't need a sword.” The Doctor opened his coat and twirled around to show Robin. “Because I am the Doctor.” Instead, he donned a gauntlet and pulled out a spoon. “And this is my spoon. En garde!”

They started sparring and Clara and Elise watched on in excitement.

The Doctor got the upper hand and hit Robin on the back of the neck with his spoon.

“You're amazing,” Clara praised the Doctor.

Even Elise had to admit the Doctor was rather dashing.

“I've had some experience. Richard the Lionheart. Cyrano de Bergerac. Errol Flynn. He had the most enormous…”

Clara cleared her throat, cutting off the inappropriate comment.

“…Ego.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Robin lunged forward and sliced a button off the Doctor’s coat. The Doctor held his arms out and Robin got ready to strike the killing blow. The Doctor dodged this attack and spun around so he and Robin were back to back. He bumped Robin and Robin fell into the river below.

“Doctor!” Clara said, rushing to his side.

The Doctor polished his spoon on his coat. “Like I said. My box.”

“Doctor?”

Robin was nowhere to be seen in the water below. He popped up behind the Doctor and pushed him into the water.

Clara and Robin laughed.

Elise rolled her eyes and waded into the water. She helped the Doctor up and asked, “Are you okay?”

“More of a bruised ego than anything.”

“I’ll fix your coat later.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Robin led them to a small encampment. “Let me introduce you to my men. This is Will Scarlet. He is a cheeky rogue with a good sword arm and a slippery tongue.”

“My ladies…”

Clara giggled and looked at Elise, who had no reaction.

To this day, the only man to ever make Elise blush was the man in the café after they met Clara the second time.

The Doctor pulled out some of his hair as he bowed and scanned it with his sonic screwdriver.

Will cried out and grabbed at his head. “What do you want with my hair?”

“Well, it's realistic, I'll give you that,” the Doctor told him.

“And this is Friar Tuck. Aptly named for the amount of grub he tucks into,” Robin introduced.

“You skinny blaggard.”

The men around them laughed.

Friar Tuck stepped forward and nearly fell.

The Doctor was on the ground behind him.

“What are you doing?” Tuck asked him.

The Doctor stood up, holding one of his sandals. “This isn't a real sandal.”

“Yes, it is.”

The Doctor sniffed the sandal. “Oh. Yes, it is.”

Robin turned to introduce another one of his men. “This, er, is Alan-a-Dale. He's a master of the lute, whose music brightens up these dark days.”

“Stranger you are welcome here, in Sherwood's bonny glade,” Alan sang. He suddenly cried out as the Doctor stuck him with a needle.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry. Blood analysis. Oh. All those diseases. If you were real, you'd be dead in six months,” the Doctor told him.

“I am real,” Alan insisted.

“Bye.”

The last of Robin’s men was huge.

“And this is John Little. Called Little John. He's my loyal companion in many an adventure.”

The large man stepped aside and a smaller man jumped out at them. The men laughed.

“Works every time,” Will said.

“Oh, I cannot believe this. You, you really are Robin Hood and his Merry Men!” Clara giggled.

“Aye! That is an apt description. What say you, lads?” Robin asked.

His men laughed in response. “Stop laughing. Why are you always doing that? Are you all simple or something?”

Elise was beginning to become annoyed as well, while Clara looked to be enjoying herself.

The Doctor picked up a goblet and poured out the liquid before walking up to Robin. “I’m going to need a sample.”

“Of what?” Robin asked.

Clara quickly pulled the Doctor away from them. “What are you doing?”

“Well, they're not holograms, that much is obvious. Could be a theme park from the future. Or we might be inside a miniscope,” the Doctor told her.

“Oh, shut up.”

“A miniscope. Yes, of course. Why not?”

The Doctor ran over to the encampment, leaving Clara and Elise.

Robin walked to them. “Your friend seems not quite of the real world,” Robin observed.

“No. No, he's not really. Not most of the time.” Clara looked at Robin. “Dark days?”

“My lady?”

“You said that these were dark days. What did you mean?”

“King Richard is away on crusade, my lady. His tyrant of a brother rules instead,” Will explained.

“And the Sheriff. Cos there is a sheriff, right?”

“Aye. It is indeed this jackal of the princes who seeks to oppress us forever more,” Alan said.

“Or six months in your case,” the Doctor quipped.

Robin spoke in a soft voice. “It is a shame to dwell on murky thoughts when there is such beauty here,” Robin said.

Elise felt like she was intruding, so she simply squeezed Clara’s hand and joined her father instead. She glanced back at Clara and Robin talking softly with each other and she felt a pang in her hearts.

The Doctor saw the look on Elise’s face and walked over to Robin. “What time is it, Mister Hood?”

“Somewhat after noon.”

“No, no. Time of year? What season?”

“Oh, Dame Autumn has draped her mellow skirts about the forest, Doctor. The time of mists and harvest approaches.”

Elise frowned. That didn’t seem right.

“Yeah, yeah. All very poetic. But it's very green hereabouts, though, isn't it? Like I said, very sunny.”

“So?” Clara asked.

“Have you been to Nottingham?”

“Climate change?”

“It's 1190.”

“You must excuse me. The Sheriff has issued a proclamation and tomorrow there is to be a contest to find the best archer in the land. And the bounty, it's an arrow made of pure gold,” Robin said.

“No! Don't, don't go. It's a trap,” Clara begged him.

“Well, of course it is! But a contest to find the best archer in the land? There is no contest.”

The men laughed.

“Right, that isn't even funny. That was bantering. I am totally against bantering,” the Doctor snapped.

“How can you be so sure he is not the real thing?” Clara asked.

“Because he can't be.”

“When did you stop believing in everything?”

“When did you start believing in impossible heroes?”

“Don't you know? In a way, it's rather sweet.” Clara joined Robin and his men, while Elise stood next to him.

He looked into her green eyes and saw…was it hope? He was going to show her he could be the Doctor again. That he could be the heroic man she knew him to be.

[thorne93]

Inside the Criminal Mind (Part 2)

Prompt: You’re married to Dr. Spencer Reid of the BAU, and are a distinguished doctor yourself on the team. You’re sent down to Miami, Florida for teaching and as a side request from the FBI, to investigate a string of missing persons. When you think you’ve figured out who the unsub is, your life becomes more complicated than you ever could’ve imagined.

Word Count: 

Warnings: (throughout the fic -->) death, blood, gore, killings, language, disturbing mental notions, mentions of rapes/murder/etc (You know, Dexter and Criminal Minds related business)

Notes: Thank you so much to @arrow-guy, @carryonmyswansong, and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo - without each of you, I couldn’t have finished, written, or properly navigated this story. Each of you helped me fish out details that were incredibly important to me. Beta’d by @carryonmyswansong and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo... Aesthetic by @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo

This is a crossover of Criminal Minds x Dexter. First time writing Dexter.

Also, the timeline is after Season 1 of Dexter, but during season 14-ish of Criminal minds into Season 15. Enjoy!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, I got a job offer,” you started as you picked at your meatloaf.

“A job offer?” Spence questioned from across the table. “I had no idea you were even looking. What about the BAU? What about being together? You and I agreed this was the only way to ensure the other person is safe--”

You held up a hand to stop his onslaught. “I’m not leaving the BAU, and I wasn’t looking for a job. This just sort of fell into my lap.” 

“Is this what Emily wanted to talk about today?”

You nodded. “Yeah. It’s a teaching position.”

“Teaching? I never knew you were interested in that.”

You shook your head. “I’m not. Well. I wasn’t.” 

Spencer and you had been married for eight years. You fell in love quickly when you came to work for the BAU. When you met him, it was like stars shone for the first time in a dark sky for you. He was unlike any man you’d ever met, thankfully. He was kind, sweet, intelligent, and slightly awkward. Almost as if he was made for you. When the two of you met, it was a meeting of the minds. He saw you as his equal, and he was yours. You might not have the IQ of a genius, or read as quickly, but you deduced things faster than anyone else on the team. At first, you were worried he wouldn’t be impressed by you or see you as a peer, seeing as he’s a genius. But that fear quickly fell to the wayside when you realized you had quite a lot in common, especially books and chess. You two bonded over Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as the nerdier side of things such as Star Wars and Star Trek. 

Even though you were the greatest of friends, spending all your time together, it still surprised you when he asked you out to dinner. Apparently to everyone else on the team, it wasn’t a surprise, as Spence had confided his feelings long ago to them and they encouraged him to ask you out. 

After a year of dating, he asked you to marry him. There wasn’t one thing you didn’t love about this man. He was everything you could ever ask for in a husband and more. You two had shared your ups and downs. Dealing with his mother, him going to prison falsely, you working on a book, somewhat like Rossi. It’s all been a lot of strain for a marriage that was just beginning. But each day, you wake up looking at him with more love than before. 

“So what is it, exactly?”

“University of Miami. They’re opening a new course and want me to teach in the Spring.” 

“And you think you might want to do this?”

You shrugged slightly. “I think… I think I’d like a break from the BAU.”

He frowned at you, concern coloring his face. “Is this because of the trial?”

“Ten, Spence,” you reminded in a calm, sad voice. “Ten cases that we solved, that we arrested the bastard and for what? So some hotshot defense attorney could get them off? To paint them sympathetically? To put that seed of doubt in the jury’s head. These are ten people who have just… just walked! They’re out on the streets. I know we like to live in this world where once we capture the bad guy it’s over but the reality is these people aren’t serving time. Justice isn’t being done. After today I just… I need a break from it all. Maybe teaching some people will help remind me why I wanted to do this in the first place.” 

“We do this because even if they don’t get sentenced they’re off the streets and less people are in danger for the time they’re jailed.”

“And what about after they get off? Hmm? What then? They just learn to be craftier, sneaker, erase their trail? Do they go overseas to torment other countries? A few months isn’t good enough, Spence. Not any more. Alan Rochester is out, hell he could be hunting us down for all we know.”

He said nothing. He knew it was true. Both of you knew the dangers you lived in from the possibility of criminals getting out to hunt you or the others on the team down. 

“I know it’s scary. I know it’s tough but just… leaving the BAU to do this…” 

“I’m not leaving, Spence. It’ll be temporary. It’s a needed break.”

“But it’s a break from me, from us. I won’t see you for almost six months.”

“I know that. We can meet on spring break though and I can fly up at least once a month to come see you on the weekends… we can video chat…. I just really think I need this sort of mental break from catching bad guys that might end up being for nothing.” 

“Are you sure this is really what you want? If it is, I’ll support if. Or we could go away on vacation, perhaps?”

You shook your head. “I’m not sure a two week vacation would be long enough, and with our luck we’d be called back after three days.”

A look of powerlessness fell over his face as he slumped slightly in his chair. “I’m just going to miss you, that’s all. We’ve never been without each other. Even before we dated, we always stayed in the same hotel room and now… now you want to leave for five months to a different job in a different state.”

“It’s not like that, sweetie. I just need the break. You teach here. I’d like to give it a go and see if it’ll help me regain some sanity.” 

He bobbed his head, understanding. “I get it. Alright. If you think it’ll help, I’m all for it.”

“Thank you.” 

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

Over the course of the next month, Spencer helped you devise a school plan, a curriculum to which you could go by. You told him everything you wanted to cover, and a book you thought the students might enjoy. You tried to remember professors from college and the way they taught so that you could incorporate that into your lectures. This was daunting to say the least. 

On your last day at the office, everyone was in tears. 

“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” Garcia stated as she walked over to you as soon as you and Spence showed up. 

“It’s not forever,” you reminded with a slight laugh. “Nothing to cry over.” 

“What do you mean nothing to cry over? You’re going to be gone and Lord knows how well Reid here is going to take it.” 

You chuckled. “Spencer will be fine in my absence. So will you. All of you will.” 

“But you crack about half of our cases. Without you…”

“I’m still available for calls during certain parts of the day and all hours of the night. Emily knows this.” 

“Yeah but--”

“But nothing, Garcia. This is okay.” 

She peered at you unsure, but then she nodded, walking into the office with you and Spence. 

“Hey, you ready for this?” Tara asked as she stepped forward, putting her hand on your shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m pretty excited to be honest.” 

“That’s good. We’re going to miss you though.” 

“I know. I’ll miss all of you. I’ll be back over spring break and I’ll try to fly up on the weekends,” you informed Tara, Luke, and Matt. 

“You better, or we’ll come kidnap you,” Luke joked, slightly punching your arm, making you laugh. 

“Is that our new professor?” Rossi asked from behind you.

You grinned, blushing slightly before turning. 

“You’re gonna knock ‘em dead, kid, I know it,” he assured as he walked up. “And we all pitched in to get you this,” he stated as he handed you a wrapped gift. 

A grin popped onto your face as you took it. “What is this?”

“Open it up and find out,” Rossi encouraged with a coy grin making you chuckle lightly. 

You tore into the paper, opening the box, to discover a clear glass apple inside with the words “To your first day of class, Professor Reid,” etched on it.

Tears sprang to your eyes as you laughed. “This is great. Really great. Thank you!”

Before you could get too cozy or caught up in goodbyes, Emily called you all in the conference room for a case. The team had to start a local case, and you helped out all day while you could, but then you had to get home to finish up packing, and get sleep for your early flight. 

You had packed three big suitcases full of the essentials, you would spend the first week down in Miami in a hotel, looking for an apartment in the meantime. Once you found an apartment, Spence agreed to send down the boxes of clothes that you had already put together. 

On your way out of the door though at the office, an agent stopped you, one you had seen a handful of times before. “Dr. Reid?” he addressed, looking at you. 

“Yes?” 

“Could you come with me?” 

You peered at Spence with a curious look before nodding. “Sure. Can my husband come?”

“I believe so.” He took off and you two began walking beside him. “Don’t worry, you aren’t in trouble. The director merely wants to see you before you leave for Florida.”

You nodded, keeping with his pace. He led you two to the director’s office, and opened the door for you, announcing your arrival. The two of you stepped over the threshold and the agent closed the door behind him, leaving only you, Spence, and the director.

“Ah, Dr. Reid, I’m so glad we caught you before you left,” she stated, smiling at you. 

“Is everything alright?” you questioned, slightly worried.

“Oh, of course, of course. I brought you in because I hear you will be working down in the University of Miami?” 

“Mhm.” 

“Well, we have a case I’d like you to look at while you’re down there. Several, actually.” 

She lifted a box off the floor and put it on top of her desk, lifting the lid off of it, exposing a full box of files. 

“These are missing persons that have been going on for a few years.”

You picked up the top file and flipped through it. “Cold cases?”

“Yes, for the most part. Most of them have been in jail, prison, or suspected of illegal activity, never to be seen or heard from again.” 

“Not typical related crimes, such as a gang offing or…?”

“I want to believe that, but this is a high rate of missing people in these sort of circles compared to other cities in Florida.” 

“So why don’t you have the Florida division investigate?” you wondered, peering up at her. 

“We did. They didn’t have much of a lead or much to go on.” 

“What makes you think I will?” 

“You’re the brightest agent we have. You’ll be in the terrain. While you’re down there, we would appreciate it if you worked this case on the side. You have full range to question people. This is a real investigation, it’s not under the radar. Feel free to use whatever resources you need.”

“This… this is a lot to take on,” you commented. “I mean, by myself, that’s just... “

“I’m sure you can do it. If you need to consult your current team, feel free to do so.”

You slowly nodded. “Alright. Thank you. I’ll do my best.” 

She smiled a dazzling grin at you and shook your hand. “Thank you, thank you very much. Check back in by the end of the month, if you don’t mind.”

“I will.”

“Thanks. Have a safe trip.”

“Thank you, I’ll try.”

With that, you grabbed the box and left her office, your husband beside you. 

“So now you’re doing a case, several, all by yourself,” Spence noted. 

You let out a huff. “I guess so.” 

“This is going to be a lot. Teaching, grading, doing this case.”

You nodded. “I know, but I can handle it.” 

He grinned at you and kissed your forehead. “I know you can. I just… I’m just worried. This was supposed to be a break and now--”

“Spence, it’ll be fine. This sort of case won’t piss me off. There’s no one who is going to ‘get away’.” 

With a nod, you two exited the elevators and went home. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tagging:

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[thadelightfulone]

The Firm - Chapter 11

Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10

Summary: Erik has been hired to find an embezzler for an old friend. The whole gang is back at GBI, ready to fight an old enemy and save their friend. 

Pairing: Erik x Black!OC

Genre: Suspense

A/N: *steps up to the mic* Hello everyone! I want to thank everyone who has supported this story. Also, to let you know that this story is coming to a close. I will be dropping a chapter each week until its conclusion. 

LaNyah stares at the older women whose hair is much longer and darker than when she helped her out in the parking lot, however long ago that was. Then she looks over at Laura, who is rocking back and forth, whimpering about not wanting to die. Why would she even ask such a thing? What does Laura know about this woman that LaNyah doesn’t? How does she know her? Did Gina say before her friends arrive? Does she mean Alex, Ashley, Stacey, and Erik? LaNyah tries to hold back her smile and closes her eyes to focus on keeping calm while this lady begins her tale.

Gina sitting in the center of the couch, looks between the two stunned women. “As I was saying, this story took place almost 20 years ago. There was a decorated officer who had a loving wife and kids.” She swoons at the memory of her loving brother. “He was the leader of a special ops team until an unjust allegation was brought against him by a team member. Someone he trusted and chose to be on his squad,” Gina snarls out. “He was under investigation during his last mission, and it would have led to a court-martial.” She rushes out before waving her hands in the air like it didn’t matter, “Anyway, before that could happen, members of his team took matters into their own hands. He was brutally murdered, and someone made it to look like an enemy ambush.”

“How do you know that it wasn’t?” Laura asks from beside her.

Gina taps Laura’s upper leg, “Oh dear, it was too perfect. The killing was too clean, everyone’s story was just so– in sync. Nothing about a military death is like that unless it is a cover-up.”

“Maybe, they were trying to spare the family’s feelings, you know, like friendly fire in combat or something?” LaNyah interjected.

“SHUT UP!!!” Gina shouts, startling both Laura and LaNyah. She takes a few deep breathes and smooths out her skirt, “It was not that. My twin brother was callously killed while overseas by members of the team he built.” LaNyah and Laura share a look, and Laura starts crying all over again.

“What does that have to do with us?” LaNyah somberly asks while staring at the crying pregnant woman over Gina.

Sniffling, Laura nods at LaNyah, “Yeah, I don’t know anyone in the military.”

LaNyah looks away, putting her head down at what Laura said because she knows that is not true for her. She only knew of one person until a few weeks ago. Gina can’t mean any of them, right? She inhales sharply, unaware that Gina has been watching her intently since Laura made that last statement, a small smile forming at the corners of her mouth.

She looks over them, “This is my favorite part,” a full smile breaking through while Gina takes Laura’s hands in hers before continuing. “Which brings me to why you two are here. I am going after those responsible for my brother’s death.” Gina rubs the tops of her hands, “Laura, your fiancé works for one of them.”

Laura closes her eyes at this, tears still falling and mutters, “But LaNyah was supposed to be the fall guy, not Matthew.” Gina’s eyes widen at that.

“When did he tell you?”

“What? Wait, he set me up?”

LaNyah and Gina blurt out at the same time. Laura rolls her eyes at LaNyah, “I told you this was all your fault.” LaNyah opens and closes her mouth before looking over at a laughing Gina. She can’t believe it. Minding her own business and she became the ultimate pawn in someone’s game of revenge. What is her life?

---

“Babe, stay here with Stacey. Let us handle this.” Alex moves to keep Ashley from coming with them. Kill is on the other side of the room, tying his combat boots while talking on the phone. Stacey is at the conference room table, pulling up floorplans to the warehouse. Alex and Kill changed into dark military fatigues in preparation for the battle zone they are entering.

“Fuck that! I already told you what I would do when it came to LaNyah.” She gets in his face, “I need to be there when you find her! So, don’t you dare try to keep me from being there!” Ashley snatches up another pair of fatigues and pushes past him towards the bathroom, slamming the door. Alex stops short as the door nearly misses hitting him.

Kill finished with his last call, turns towards him. “Green, stop.” Alex walks back over to him, “Just accept the fact that she is coming with us. You can’t stop her, and even I wouldn’t try to stop her.” Kill walks by Matt, who has been untied and snatches him up. “Come on. You got some more talking to do.”  

Everyone packs into the fully loaded Chevy Suburban that one of Kill’s connects dropped off after Matt gave them the location for the warehouse where Gina is keeping the girls. Kill throws the keys to Green so he can drive. Bridges jumps into the front passenger seat. Kill drags Matt to the second row of the SUV; he is behind Green, and Matt is behind Bridges.

Once they hit the freeway headed south to San Diego, Kill turns in his seat to look at Matt. Clearing his throat; he waits until Matt’s attention is on him. Matt’s bloodshot eyes make direct contact with Kill. His petrified stare meets Kill’s murderous scowl. Bridges looks back, turning around in her seat to watch what happens between the two.

“I’m only gonna give you one chance to get this right. From the beginning, when you first met Gina and started working for her. GO!”

Matthew sputters to a start, clenching his hands into fists as they sit on his lap. “She didn’t give me all the details at first. All I know is that she was looking for someone to help her bring down Mr. Green. It was no secret that I had gone out for every single special project, and he never picked me. I know he knew who I was, and even my supervisor helped me become a lead analyst so that I would be on his radar. So, it was no love lost on my part to do something to Mr. Green for how he treated me.” Ashley sucks her teeth, “I swear I didn’t know she was after you when I first started.”

“What was her plan for GBI?” Kill asks him.

Directing his answer to Bridges, “She knew you were married to Mr. Green and figured the easiest way to get you was through him and the company. I was supposed to help her embezzle money from various accounts into her offshore accounts. Make sure all roads led back to him, showing that he was stealing from his own company leading to a prison sentence. My supervisor was her first inside man at GBI when she brought me on to begin the embezzlement, and she killed him.”

“So, Alan didn’t just quit as we all thought? Wow,” Green remarked as he listened to the conversation about Gina’s plan to take down him and GBI.  

“No, his job was to find someone who had put in some time with the company and disliked you enough to make her plan a reality, then vouch for me. When that was done, so was he.” He starts to hiccup, struggling to get the next part out. “She said he served his purpose and shot him right in front of me. Not even 10 minutes after I met her.” He shudders and breaks eye contact with the group.

“What about LaNyah?” Ashley jumps in to ask. “Why her?”

Running his hand through his hair, “Convenience, I guess.” Matt shrugs and looks up at Ashley who glares at him, “It was supposed to be Stacey. Gina didn’t care who was in that position; she just needed to know that I was checking their work and would be able to change the reports and move the money. I only had been working for her about 6 months when Mr. Green hired Stacey as his assistant, causing a delay in the plan to search for a new fall guy. Once he hired LaNyah, I passed over whatever information I had to Gina, and she told me when we would start.”

Matthew explains that he only had the background check that HR completed on her. So, it contained the information that Gina would have needed to complete a deep dive of LaNyah, similar to what Kill did when he found out he would be working with her. They all knew what that meant, even if he didn’t.

With LaNyah being new and a personal hire by Green, it made her the perfect scapegoat because everything links her position and working for the company to Green. The money starts disappearing after she began working there, and no one would know because he was altering the reports after she completed her weekly data entry reconciling all the accounts her team handled.

“We started skimming money from the Scholarship account about 3 months after LaNyah joined the company. It would be believable since she needed time to learn the system before manipulating it.”

“So, she’s after Bridges and Green? Anyone else?” Kill asks Matt, wondering if he is the one who gave her the information she needed to track him down finally.

Matt’s eyes lift as he thinks about the question. “You know what, I think she might have, but I have no way of knowing. She only tells me what she feels I need to know when it matters.” He briefly pauses, inhaling deeply, “All I know was she asked me to increase the amount of money we were moving about 3 weeks ago. I told her we needed to be careful because I figured out that Mr. Stevens was here auditing the accounting department.”

“How did you know that?” Green speaks up.

“I am supposed to watch LaNyah, too, and noticed she was meeting with you often before your big trip. Then after you were gone, she was always disappearing to the 35th floor to ‘work’ with Stacey on some project. It didn’t make sense to me because she never stays in the office past 6 like the rest of us. But I do recall walking by her office one Friday afternoon, and she was on the ground surrounded by old reports, muttering to herself.” He loosens his tie, “I never thought she would double-check her work, so that could only mean that she may have figured out what was happening. If that was true, then I knew she probably went and told you,” looking at Green, “and Mr. Green must have hired you to look into it.” Kill nodded his head. “When you warned me to back off of her, I wasn’t sure if you worked for Gina. But I would only see you at GBI, so I guessed you were Mr. Green’s man.”

“When did you tell Gina about Erik?” Ashley asks through gritted teeth. He was the only one she could not find from the entire team all these years, and as soon as she finds him, LaNyah goes missing. Matt hasn’t said anything about kidnapping to make her believe that was part of her original plan. She more than likely planned for her to go to prison along with Alex, leaving Ashley by herself.

“About 3 weeks ago, when Gina called me about doubling the funds, I told her about the audit, and I gave her your name since I couldn’t find much about you on my own.” Matt removes the tie from his neck, placing it in his lap. “She screamed about something –” He jumps in his seat, “OMG, it’s you! She’s after you, too! Said something about you being the missing link.”

“Calm down, Matt.” Green rolls his eyes while watching the man panic through the rearview mirror.

“Gina has always scared me, but that call made me even more paranoid than usual. I just wanted to make sure Laura was ok. I made her go and stay with her mother in Bakersfield, 2 months ago.” Twirling the tie in his lap, “I decided to visit her after the call and walked in to find Gina sitting right next to Laura talking shop like this woman wouldn’t have all of us killed with a snap of her fingers.” Tears blur his vision, and Matt’s voice cracks, “Laura knew I was doing some illegal shit behind Mr. Green’s back, so I came clean about what she didn’t know and told her who she just met. Gina called me back that night and told me exactly how much she wanted to move the next time. A week later, I had everything in place to move more than a million from the account.”

“And it takes two weeks before the money moves from the scholarship account. That was what I saw the night before we came back home.” Green states.

Kill closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, “You were right, Green, she was planning to make her move which is why we saw the major movement from the account. She wanted us to notice.” Clenching his fists by his sides, “We just didn’t know that by the time we saw it, she already had LaNyah.”

“Laura and my son,” Matt squeaks out. Everyone looks at him as he breaks down.

---

Gina moves away from Laura on the couch, focus bouncing between the two of them. This is going to be better than she thought. Laura pissed at LaNyah. LaNyah upset about what she just found out; that she is a doll in this game. And yet, she still doesn’t even know how big a part she plays. With loathing, Gina gazes at her.

Turning to the right, now fully facing LaNyah, Gina’s smile morphs. Gina’s voice laced with all the malice she could muster, “You, Miss LaNyah Cole, have a relationship with every single person on my list.” Laura gasps and shrinks back on the couch, glad she is not in her place. Now, she and the baby stand a better chance of making it out of this place alive.

Tearing up, LaNyah whispers out, “What?”

“My brother was accused of sexually assaulting the only female member on his team, Ashley Bridges.” She stands up and walks to the other side of the table, looking down at both of them. “You both would recognize her by her married name, Ashley Green.”

LaNyah squeaks out, “Ashley! What do you want with her?”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, LaNyah, darling. I did not go through all this trouble for Ashley alone.”

“She wants Mr. Green, too, idiot.” Laura huffs out. LaNyah rolls her eyes at her, growing irritated by this whole situation. She didn’t ask to be put in the middle of this. But it seems everyone around her knew something that she didn’t, and that bothers her.

“You want the whole company to go down?” Gina starts slow clapping. LaNyah puts her head in her hands. Of course, she does. It is why she was the perfect patsy. Blame this on the girl who was like the daughter of the two people she held accountable for her brother’s death.

“You are a brilliant woman, Miss Cole.” She walks to her standalone chair and leans against it, “But you are missing the most important thing or person rather. The only person with the skills to kill my brother like that and clean it up so well. A man who, up until a few weeks ago, I only knew by his nickname, Killmonger.” No, no, no, please do not let it be him. LaNyah’s big, confused brown eyes meet steely grey ones, “Mr. Erik Stevens.”

The tears that she was holding back started rolling down her face. LaNyah clutched her chest with both hands while trying to stay seated in the chair. Her breathing was coming out in spurts between her loud sobs. Gina held her hand up to Laura, who was struggling to get up and go to her. She leans over and starts to rub circles into LaNyah’s back. LaNyah flinches at first but just closes her eyes to find something else to focus on to help her breathe.

“I know, sweetheart. It’s hard to find out that the man you like is a stone-cold killer.” LaNyah’s body tenses at her statement. She peeks over at Laura, who has a look of sympathy on her face as she watches LaNyah breaking down at what she learned. Gina closes her eyes as she continues to speak low, still soothing LaNyah with the circles on her back. “He hurt me, too dear. More than you could ever know.”

---

“Did she pay you well for this suicide mission?” Kill demands harshly, Bridges and Green grimly laugh as Matt turns green. “Matthew, you know if we handed you over to her, she would kill you herself. I mean, she did kill the guy you were supposed to replace when she hired you. The money had to be exceptional, right?”

“3 times my annual salary at GBI,” he meekly responds, “and she told me I didn’t have a choice.”

“Let me guess; she threatened to kill you on the spot? Over Alan’s dead body?” Green interjects. Matt just nods his head. They all shake their heads in understanding. It was gonna be him or someone else. But Gina was gonna execute her plan regardless of how many casualties lined the path.

The mood shifts in the SUV as everyone disappears into their thoughts. Ashley is sniffling upfront, swimming in guilt for putting LaNyah in harm’s way. There was no way she knew anyone was coming for her husband or her, but still, Nyah is like her daughter. And in her haste to find LaNyah something to be in control of and help her build a career, Ashley never considered how Nyah working under her husband could lead to such a moment.

Alex looks over at Ashley and grabs her hand, kissing it. “Stop beating yourself up. You could not have known this was gonna happen. We didn’t know McCoy had a twin who would seek vengeance for his death. There is nothing that could have prepared us for any of this. We deal with it now, together as a team. Just like we always have, ok?” Ashley squeezes his hand in response, not trusting her voice at this point.

Kill looks out at the passing fields, controlling his breathing. Gina knows about LaNyah’s connection to Green and Bridges. What else could she know? If Gina is thorough enough to uncover his identity and know that he was involved compared to the rest of the team, then she knows he was the one who killed her brother. She is gunning for him specifically, but she wants to take everyone down – Bridges, who was her brother’s victim; her husband and protector, Green; and their ‘daughter,’ LaNyah. She is using her as bait to bring all three of them to her. No one is supposed to make it out of there alive, except for Gina and her goons.

LaNyah. How is she handling all of this? If he didn’t push her so hard, he could have been watching her like he was supposed to be. Instead, he had hoped his updates from Stacey, as infrequent as those were, would provide him with enough information to know she was doing fine and safe from harm. But this is something else altogether; she was kidnapped in broad daylight by a maniac with no regard for human life. Kill laughs to himself, just like him back then – one goal, one focus, by any means necessary. He runs his hands through his dreads, grateful that he decided to braid them back today. There is no room for any mistakes here and too many lives at risk. It’s LaNyah or bust. He’ll deal with all the other bullshit later.

Snapping his fingers, Bridges and Matt look at him. “You know you’re done, right?” Matt nods, “Good. You’ll serve time in federal prison, but at least you will be alive to meet your son and maybe save your family.”

Matt sighs, “I just wanted to provide for my family. I understand, but I am grateful to be alive.” He glances up at Green catching his eyes in the rearview mirror, “I’m sorry for everything I did to you, sir. To your business and your family, including LaNyah.” Green acknowledges his apology.

Green turns off the road into an industrial complex, leading to Gina’s warehouse. Kill slaps the back of his seat, an old signal from when Green used to drive during other missions. The mission has started, and nothing else matters until they get back into the SUV. Releasing Ashley’s hand, she watches the two of them, Killmonger and Green. The two men who saved her all those years ago are back and ready to do it all over again. She smiles to herself, and they are going to save LaNyah, too.

“You know she’s probably expecting you?” Matt says that like wasn’t the most prominent thought in all of their heads as they approach lot near the warehouse. Everyone was smart enough to keep it to themselves.

“We know.” Green declares.

“And we are ready for her.” The sound of a gun rack sliding catches Matt’s attention, and he looks over to see Kill holding a Glock.

Chapter 12

Taglist: @killmongersaidheyauntie @muse-of-mbaku @panthergoddessbast @youreadthatright @princessstevens @nahimjustfeelingit-writes @stark-red19 @kreolemami @bidibidibombaclaat  @iamrheaspeaks @missumuch1918 @simplyyamberr @cheychey10142 @ajspencer1892 @chrismarcs @loosewindmill @sydneebleu @semianta @eyeknowmywrites @alexundefined @itsjustmezari @goddessofthundathighs @guccixcucci @kissmyafropuff @gimmeface @fd-writes @jozigrrl @soufcakmistress @scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade @shaekingshitup @localtrapgod @post-woke @theesotericqueen

[sweetsmellosuccess]

Sundance 2021: Day 4

Films: 4 Best Film of the Day(s): Mass

Mass: Predictably, Fran Kranz’ film opens with a shot of a church, but the title turns out to be a reverberating double entendre   —  both the religious service towards forgiveness; and a term commonly used in conjunction with a multiple-homicide shooting event. The church, Episcopal it turns out, is the agreed-to meeting place for two sets of grieving parents: Gail (Martha Plimpton) and Jay (Jason Isaacs), whose teen son Evan was killed some years before in a high-school massacre; and Linda (Ann Down) and Richard (Reed Birney), whose son, Haden, was the shooter, before killing himself in the school library. They have agreed to meet, long after the lawsuits and legal wrangling have been settled, to possibly provide answers and solace to one another. As can be expected, the atmosphere is fraught with tension  —  a setting Kranz, an actor making his directorial and writing debut, expertly mines before the couples arrive, with a kind but overenthusiastic church administrator (Breeda Wool), fretting about the details of the food arrangement  —  and the couples, wary, at first, of letting things get hostile, work diligently to avoid disagreement by staying mild (an arrangement of flowers Linda brings is speculated upon a great deal). Eventually, however, the four wounded parents get down to more brass tacks, Gail and Jay eschewing their therapist’s call for them to avoid “interrogation” questions, to get at the root of what they are after. In truth, as Kranz has the characters cannily come to understand, there are no details that shed new light, no explanations that help rectify what they’ve lost, only a grim understanding that, as parents, they are all subject to the laws of chaos and chance. Unsurprisingly, Kranz has an actorly sense of conflict and explication, but, despite the limited setting (this could easily have been an adapted play), he gives his actors plenty of room with which to work, and the quartet are more than up to the task. They are each terrific, and given opportunity to shine, but it’s Plimpton’s monologue near the end about her son that becomes the film's singular tour-de-force moment, a scene with so many hooks and edges, it sticks to you like velcro. Kranz is careful not to overstep his dramatic boundaries, difficult given the potentially melodramatic elements of the story, and allows his actors enough time to breathe so it avoids feeling polemic or preachy (an early scene with Gail and Jay in the car before they arrive is a scintillating bit of set-up, where words are spoken, but our attention, like that of the characters, is entirely elsewhere). No easy answers, thankfully, just brutal realizations that can’t be avoided.  

A Glitch in the Matrix: By this time, documentary filmmaker Rodney Ascher has carved out a sort of niche for himself: As with Room 237, and The Nightmare, he has gathered up fringe thinkers displaying a sort of group psychosis in order to explore other ways of seeing, and interpreting, our world. His docs don’t come down on either side of a given conundrum  —  are any of the far-out, would-be explanations of The Shining in 237 the least bit sensible? Is it possible in The Nightmare for people experiencing the horror of sleep paralysis to share in the same horrific vision?  —  but he carefully doesn’t contradict any of his subjects either. His new film, an exploration of what’s known as “simulation theory,” concerns a pattern of thought described back in 1977 by the heavily adapted science fiction author Philip K. Dick during an appearance in France, suggesting, Matrix-style, that all that we think we see and know is actually an intricate virtual reality, brought to us by an unseen technological force. True to his form, Ascher interviews numerous applicants to the theory  —  many of whom portrayed by VR avatars in their own homes  —  including scholars, practitioners, and skeptics, and bolstering their arguments with an assortment of other media, from Minecraft, Philip K. Dick-based films, and crude computer animations, to video games, and youtube videos. The views are intentionally conflictive  —  one subject suggests the very idea of such conflict is the basis of the simulation  —  and anything but conclusive, but, of course, that’s the very point. Less unsettling than The Nightmare, one of the few true horror movies of the documentary genre I’ve ever seen, save for the account of Joshua Cooke, who pled guilty to killing his parents in cold blood after cementing his belief that the ideas portrayed in The Matrix were completely real. Listening to his step-by-step description, from prison, of his descent into madness, and where those impulses took him, is to drop into first-person shooter psychosis.

Coming Home in the Dark: Both Australia and New Zealand are blessed with spectacularly beautiful land that is filled with wide-open, terrifying vast spaces in which any amount of evil may lurk. In dark, violent films like Wolf Creek and Killing Ground, all that beauty and space is turned on its head by far more chaotic inclinations, rendering brutally effective, and stomach-churning sadism as a means of displaying the horrible duality of the land. Kiwi director James Ashcroft attempts to add to this cinematic legacy with this film, a murder-abduction sort of thriller, in which a family on a camping trip in the wilds, is brutalized by a pair of killers they come across. In a twist that at least one of the killers, Mandrake (Daniel Gillies) would have us believe is a coincidence, it turns out the patriarch of the family, Alan (Erik Thompson), used to teach at the abusive orphanage school in which both Mandrake, and his partner, Tubbs (Matthias Luafutu) suffered as children. It’s not a believable conceit, which Ashcroft seems to readily admit, but because it makes the connection, the film attempts to work as a kind of metaphor for the violence which we didn’t perpetrate, but also did nothing to stop. Mandrake as an avenging angel, foisting Alan’s lack of empathy back onto him in violent spades. It’s difficult to fault a film for not being transgressive and shocking enough, exactly, but despite the theatrics of the situation, and Mandrake’s coldly comic engaging of the couple in “regular conversation,” it doesn’t have the heart to be as effective and unsettling as it needs to be. It plays it too safe, which saves the audience from being plunged into the all-too-realistic terror of, say, Killing Ground, but also dilutes the stronger point it wants to make about systemic brutality.

The Blazing World: Related to the 17th Century Margaret Cavendish novel in basic concept, Carlson Young’s feature debut walks a wobbly line between linear narrative, and neo-gothic opera  —  only with a soundtrack instead of singing. The story concerns a young woman, Margaret (Carlson), who loses her twin sister to a drowning accident as a child, but has imagined ever since that her sister lives in some alternate vortex of reality, heralded by a grinning demon, Leonid  (Udo Kier, of course). Coming back to her childhood home before her battling parents (Dermot Mulroney and Vinessa Shaw) move out altogether, Margaret meets some old friends, does some drugs, and finally enters the fantasia-like world that Leonid has been beckoning her to for most of her life in order to find her trapped sister. There, she must amass a series of keys, plucking them from demon versions of her parents, and confront her own guilt and pain in order to unlock her twin and set everyone free. It would be easy to say Young’s reach far exceeds her grasp, but the fact that she was willing to attempt such an audacious project says something about her artistic chops. And for every moment that hits wrong, there are several more that work in interesting ways. Her aforementioned use of music, and sound design invokes a kind of Kubrickian aesthetic, and her commitment to her vision is palpable. This likely won’t be the best film she ever makes, but it does portend to a filmmaker worth keeping an eye on, going forward.

Sundance goes mostly virtual for this year’s edition, sparing filmgoers the altitude, long waits, standing lines, and panicked eating binges  —  but also, these things and more that make the festival so damn endearing. In any event, Sundance via living room is still a hell of a lot better than no Sundance. A daily report.

[gumnut-logic]

Thunderbird XL (Part Two)

I’m feeling better now and so I was able to get my teeth into this today. It is not turning out to be what I expected it to be, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

This fic is a sequel to Thunderbird X. Part One of Thunderbird XL can be found here.

This fic is heavy with MAJOR SPOILERS FOR 3.25 &3.26. Please be warned. It is using a lot of material from these episodes at the moment, but ultimately it is a continuation of Thunderbird X and may deviate slightly from canon for that reason. Or do whatever the heck it wants to because all my fics do that, damnit.

Many thanks to @scribbles97​ for the advice and read-through. This does contain the bit from this morning, but there is lots more to follow.

Two was so familiar it hurt.

One was his daydream, but Two was his reassurance.

Virgil didn’t say anything as he helped him through the corridors. A mop of black hair was his only sight as he looked down at the big man under his arm.

The shoulders supporting him were far broader than he remembered. It slowly began to sink in exactly how much he didn’t know. The uniform was familiar. The green baldric and kit. The tools were new and Jeff frowned at them as if to accuse them of betraying his faith in his knowledge. Why Virgil felt he had to carry a screwdriver around with him everywhere, he had no doubt his son could tell him if he asked.

But he didn’t.

They arrived at the room he expected and it was with some relief that it was what he expected.

It wasn’t until Virgil velcroed him to the bed that he saw the dent in the ceiling. “How did that happen?” It was out before he could think twice.

Virgil looked up from the tray of supplies that were not designed for an antigravity environment and frowned at the bulkhead above them.

“Oh, the exo-suit.”

“What was the exo-suit doing in here?”

Virgil pulled out a palm scanner and began a methodical examination. “Got myself trapped in it. Tried to get myself out. Didn’t go well.”

Jeff stared at the side of his son’s head, but didn’t ask the obvious question as Virgil stared at the hologram of a very battered old body above the bed.

Virgil’s hitched breath was the only sound in the room.

“I-I need to give you some supplements. A painkiller would probably be a good idea.”

“No, son. I can last a little longer. Need a clear head.”

Brown eyes caught his for just a moment before looking away. “There isn’t much else I can do until we get you to a hospital.” Virgil turned away, once again fiddling with equipment, unwrapping a hypodermic needle and fussing with a small bottle of liquid. “This is a basic dose of necessary vitamins and minerals.”

Virgil’s eyes were on anything but his father and the hologram above him.

Jeff reached over to one of the many patches on his suit and unwrapped the seal on his arm. “You’ll need to secure it again.”

His son blinked but said nothing, administering the dose to his father and rebinding his suit with tape. “We need to get you a new uniform.”

“It is enough for the moment, Virgil. We need to get back up top and get out of here.”

He saw the hesitation flicker across that longed-for face. “You’re lying down on one of the medbeds in the cockpit. You’re going to let the medscan finish so when we reach home, we have enough data to know what we have to do.”

Jeff eyed him. The changes were subtle. The confidence level was much stronger, more assured, despite the situation.

“Virgil, we need you up here.”

John’s voice would forever be music to his ears.

“FAB.” A swallow, and Jeff could see his son visibly gather himself. “C’mon, Dad. We have a rescue to complete.”

Detaching him from the bed, Virgil again wrapped his arm around his father and helped him through the great green ship.

Both Gordon and John were in the cockpit. The medbed had already been deployed and was ready waiting.

It very quickly became clear that he had no say in whether he was going to lie on it or not.

Virgil’s directions stood for no argument and to be honest, Jeff didn’t really want to put up a fight, but there was so much to see! After so long alone with only rock and the same broken ship to stare at, everything was so rich in colour.

And his sons. His beloved sons.

He watched their every move, part of him still unable to believe that they were really there.

Virgil fussed, obviously fighting his own demons. Gordon chattered incessantly, but Jeff was so happy to hear and see him, he had no protest.

And John, his saviour…Jeff had never been one for the musical arts, that was always Lucy’s department, but to hear his boy’s voice free of static and interruption…

Reality threatened to fracture.

So, he obeyed his worrying sons and lay down on the medbed. Gravity, wasn’t a factor at the moment, but when they reached Earth it was going to be a definite problem.

Reached Earth?

He swallowed a lump in his throat as Virgil was finally urged to the pilot’s seat and the great ‘bird around them came to life.

He had to see this, so he sat up on the bed and watched.

John contacted the Zero XL. The name of the ship that had brought his boys here felt wrong, as if he had been aboard the Titanic and was now being saved by the Titanic II, but the moment the ship answered…

Brains.

The joy in the man’s stuttering voice had Jeff’s heart stuttering along with it. Not only had his boys come all this way, but Brains as well?

The Brains he knew wasn’t a physically active man. His specialities were academic. He had never been comfortable in space or even aboard the Thunderbirds he had designed, yet here he was, out here where literally only one man had gone before.

Jeff’s heart swelled almost to breaking.

John cut off the connection and that voice was gone. Only to be replaced by those of his sons as they coordinated the return trip.

Scott was clearly in command, but Virgil had his own responses and John was sharp and sure. Gordon sat back quietly, his stream of excited words apparently spent, but his posture was active, as if he was ready to move at a moment’s notice. He turned, looked at Jeff and smiled, his eyes glittering in the overhead lighting.

It became apparent very quickly that his boys’ skillsets had advanced considerably while he was gone.

Which really? Was to be expected, but time and memory were two different things.

The red of Thunderbird Three coasted effortlessly between spinning and colliding rocks, One and Two following best they could.

“Who taught Alan to fly like that?”

Gordon snorted. “He’s pretty much a natural.”

“Dad, you need to lie down flat and let the medscan finish.” Virgil threw it over his shoulder and Jeff got the impression that if the man didn’t have to fly his ‘bird, he would still be fussing.

“You sound like your Grandma.”

His mom.

Mom.

Virgil’s tone lightened and his voice was grinning. “Yeah. Who is always right.”

Hmmm. Perhaps some things hadn’t changed.

-o-o-o-

He did lie down eventually, if only to stop his second eldest from fretting. Gordon turned around at one point and whispered that if he didn’t do what Virgil said, things could get scary. Apparently, he was speaking from experience.

So, the medscan was completed and the nagging stopped.

But then they arrived at the Zero XL and Brains refused to respond. It appeared that his Titanic analogy may be far too possible.

Was fate really going to do this to him? Dangle rescue and then snatch it away?

And leave his boys stranded with him?

Then International Rescue responded.

Situation called, examined, orders issued, resolution found and executed.

A moment of panic to a moment of shocked stillness. The Zero XL floated silent in space, the emptiness eating it with its lack of light.

For all its nomenclature, the ship looked nothing like its predecessor.

Was that Thunderbird Five on its bow?

“Thunderbird Two, I need options. How do we get onboard?” His eldest’s son’s voice was a balm against the emptiness. “The docking ports are still closed.”

“I’m working on it, Thunderbird One.” John’s voice was ever so calm. The communications expert flicked a switch on the dash. “Eos, do you read?”

“I’m here, John. Though I would appreciate you never doing that again.”

His son sighed. “You were safe, Eos. We’ve gone over this before.”

The female voice was strident. “That is all very well for you to say, you weren’t the one being shot at.”

Jeff frowned. Who else was aboard the Zero XL? The voice was unfamiliar and sounded very young.

“We have a time limit, Eos. Do you still have access to the Zero XL’s systems?”

“Some. You did do damage with that little trick.”

“We need to dock, Eos.”

“Do you have the password?”

“Eos!”

“You did say I should work on my humour.”

Despite the playful tone, it appeared that Eos knew what she was doing as the Xero XL at least partially came to life, sections opening. He watched as Alan slid Three into a port at the rear. One settled into something similar, and then Two slipped under the ship’s belly and docked with a soft thud.

Virgil spoke briefly with Alan and his ‘bird was secured.

The moment Virgil was out of his pilot’s seat, he was beside Jeff, unstrapping him.

“Gordon, meet with Scott and secure the ship.”

“FAB.” The aquanaut’s eyes sparkled at Jeff again as Gordon briefly touched his shoulder before turning sharply and leaving through the rear door.

John was still sitting in his chair, speaking to the woman who continued to be both efficient and difficult.

“Who is she?” He said the words quietly, but Virgil heard him, his head coming up with a small smile.

“She’s Eos. John can fill you in.”

“Okay.” There was obviously a story there. “So, what’s with the EMP weaponry?” He arched an eyebrow.

Virgil’s smile vanished to be replaced with a frown and he looked down. “Brains designed it after the incident with the GDF’s rescue robots.” He cleared his throat. “A lot has happened.”

Quiet. “I’m sure it has.”

His son’s frown was targeted at the bed’s readout before Virgil reached over and lifted Jeff gently off the mattress and set him floating vertical again. “How does that feel?”

Jeff smiled just a little. “It does the job.”

Regardless, Virgil slipped his arm around his waist again and led him out of Thunderbird Two.

The difference between the interior of Two and the Zero XL was vast. He went from reassuringly familiar to alien in moments.

He missed the green immediately.

“Who built it?”

“Mostly Brains.”

“Mostly?”

Virgil didn’t answer and Alan joined them, again reaching out to hug Jeff, chattering just as happily, if not more than Gordon earlier. Virgil didn’t join in, but neither did he let go.

And then they were at the bridge of the ship. Virgil let him go and Brains was smiling up at him. It was so good to see him.

“It’s good to see you, Jeff.”

His own name forced his heart into his stomach. The man was an older version of his business partner, but his expression, his complete lack of stutter…it had been eight years, but Jeff Tracy had worked so many hours alongside this man, he knew him.

And it wasn’t him.

There was only one person it could be and for a split second, part of him wailed at the injustice that Gaat had followed his sons out here to corrupt these moments as he had corrupted everything else ever since he had met the man.

“It’s good to see you, too.” And he offered his hand.

As Gaat reached to shake, Jeff could see fear in his eyes. Perhaps that was what kept the bastard going all these years. A need to prove that he wasn’t afraid, that he wouldn’t run again when faced with the one man who had managed to prevent him from succeeding all those years ago.

The grip of his limp hand closed the deal.

Jeff spun the man around, wrenched his arm up his back and shoved him face first into the bulkhead.

-o-o-o-

End Part Two

[danwhobrowses]

Why Star Wars: The Last Jedi Deserves More Respect

So after a handful of posts I think it’s time to bring back this one, the conflict was that I was considering reviews for Pokémon Sword and Shield as well as a review for Rise of Skywalker, but the latter made me think that this is an opportune moment to talk about the previous entry.  Like The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker has had divisive opinions, frankly I liked the film but I think TLJ was the best of the sequel trilogy, and I am going to explain why

Fair Warning, within this there’s gonna be spoilers for Rise of Skywalker, possibly Mandalorian, maybe Solo and definitely The Last Jedi...this will also be very long

So I know straight away that this is gonna get heat, there has been constant times where me saying that I liked TLJ has been considered trolling or ‘bait’, honestly I find myself baffled that people can hate it so vehemently, believing that the story is and I quote ‘the worst sequel ever’. While it is clear that Johnson had a different vision to Abrams, that was not a bad thing, a lot of the criticism the film gets are quite hypocritical in contrast to the Original Trilogy which is held to so much esteem, so to start I’m going to break that down. Small Disclaimer before I do: People are allowed to dislike things, not saying that if you do dislike it you are doing something wrong, just pointing out that it’s not wrong to like the film either. Disowning before Watching The first thing I think turned people off of TLJ was the interview Mark Hamill had before the film came out, people misconceiving his comments that it’s not the journey he expected seeing of Luke to mean that this is not a film he would approve of. The same almost happened with RoS with Abrams comment which was abridged to imply that Abrams disowned TLJ as well - he did not - but in a society where we want to home in on flaws and criticize before even seeing that was too wide a door left open. So without fault, TLJ already had a group of people set on disliking the film because it would be different to how they and Hamill wanted it to be and because it’s not exactly like the decanonized ‘Legends’ continuity - despite people being fine that Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker had been merged to make Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens. It’s easy to point out that if you go into something adamant to dislike you’re going to get your wish, so the first point of order is to give something a chance to impress you, you can’t criticize something because an actor didn’t think it’d go that creative direction, Hamill did not hate this movie and people disliking their content does not automatically make it bad, Stannis from GoT hated the show, Alan Moore hates everything but that doesn’t mean Watchmen was bad, the actors for C3PO and R2-D2 hated each other but that doesn’t mean that when they acted their bond wasn’t great.

The ‘Luke is not Luke’ Criticism Hamill’s comments ease nicely into one of the main critiques that fans felt that Luke was not the same character he was in Return of the Jedi. People criticized his disconnection from the force which included tossing his lightsaber away in the opening scene, the Rashomon sequence where Luke considered striking down his own nephew - a move that ultimately turned Ben to the Dark, drinking green milk and that his last stand was a projection rather than a solid encounter. You know what I say to those criticisms?

They are bollocks, absolute nonsensical criticisms made to try and dismantle the best character of the movie. Hamill delivers his best for Luke in TLJ and his character arc is brilliant. I watched Blind Wave (a great youtube reactor channel) react to TLJ and the members noted how it was great that Luke had a character arc, something I wholly agree with. Luke was around 23 in Return of the Jedi (since the galaxy uses the standardized dating of Coruscant which has the most earth-like cycle), if you expect a 23 year old to have no room left to grow in the next 30 years of his life then I don’t think anything’s gonna get through to you, Luke is meant to be different, because since Jedi a lot of shit has happened. Luke’s discarding of the lightsaber shows his disconnect with the Force, something that had allowed the First Order to paint him as a myth and rendered everyone near-unable to find him, only tracked by the galactic map to Ahch-To from his past days of discovering remnants of Jedi past. Next let’s bring down the Rashomon sequence, the 3 tales of Ben’s turning. Initially, Luke painted a picture that he sensed that the darkness was too late, Ben woke and attacked him. Later Ben paints that Luke is lying, and that when Ben awoke Luke was there with his Lightsaber drawn with intent to kill him. The third story admits that both are correct, Luke drew his lightsaber in sensing the darkness, and Ben awoke to see it and retaliated.

This story peeves people mainly because they say that in Jedi ‘Luke was willing to fight for a single hope of light in his Father but was willing to kill his nephew for a bad dream’. A ridiculous comment that waters down and ignores the bigger picture though. For one, while Luke wanted to save his father and sensed good in him, he still ended up cutting his dad’s hand off, the indication that much like his father Luke - as he had always been in the Original Trilogy - was still susceptible to his emotions, including the negative ones. The other reason this statement is foolhardy is because they don’t listen to Luke’s narration, where he explains that it was a fleeting moment of panic and arrogance, his ego as ‘Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master’ took over when he sensed that Ben was already turned by Snoke, and it was only for a split second which he immediately regrets. It’s this moment that snowballs into why Luke disconnects himself from the force, his ego as a saviour to Jedi led to the downfall of his nephew - which led to his best friend and sister separating, the rise of the First Order being like a second Empire and the massacre of most of his other jedi students, he realised that this was the same ego that led to the previous Jedi’s downfall to Vader and Sidious and thus came to the conclusion that maybe the Jedi way is not the right way. Not only is this a brilliantly done tragedy for the character but it’s a progression that identifies with public opinion of jedi ways and the pompousness that led to Anakin’s turn to the dark side as depicted in the prequels. The use of Rashomon also connects to the Jedi/Sith connections to Samurai which was a great touch by Johnson. The green milk scene was a weird one I’ve seen being criticized, like people are fine with Calamarian fishmen but a Tatooine/Naboo humanoid can’t drink green milk? I think I need to remind you that Luke drinks blue milk on Tatooine, he is a moisture farmer as well, the ‘green milk’ scene was a depiction of how Luke survived on Ahch-To as Rey followed him, his lifestyle disconnected from the force as he lived as basically a farm boy. I don’t know why people got so mad about the colour of milk but you can’t expect those nuns to have fed him roast porgs every day The final criticism is his last stand, something I will touch on a bit later as well. In terms of Luke, people were disappointed that it wasn’t Luke actually there and while yes it would’ve been great to watch Luke tear down AT-ATs luke the EU, but he literally says that he won’t do that

it’s not a matter of can’t, it’s a matter of him strutting up to the army of the First Order will not end the war, most people don’t even know if he exists. Showing up will have inspired the resistance yes but if Luke was shown killed or captured that hope would then be instantly diminished, and Snoke and Ren would definitely be going for Luke’s head to make that so. This is why Luke goes via projection, instead of his ragged hermit self where he’d likely die similarly to how Kenobi did, he demonstrates a highly advanced force power to display himself as a clean-cut warrior who shrugs off the full might of the First Order’s arsenal and humiliates its brand new Supreme Leader, while disappearing. That stand does the Resistance far better than him showing up in person, because now the legend of Luke Skywalker lives longer than he does, he inspires a new wave of Jedi who understand his sacrifice and rebels who have just seen how one man can expose the weakness of the First Order. Luke’s last living gesture is one that inspires hope, before he becomes one with the Force at peace. If anything that is as beautiful as it is tragic of an end for Luke, but by no means is that bad. The Rose Tico ‘Issue’ Luke wasn’t the only character to get on the wrong side of criticism, undoubtedly Kelly Marie Tran got it the worst. Despicable people flocked to harass her over her character, throwing about racism just for that added content of being a horrid human being. Her character, Rose Tico, was a newly introduced character from the Resistance who joins Finn and Poe’s arcs, her main non-racist criticism is her act of saving Finn from the Laser Battering Ram ‘She has this stupid speech about saving people with love while a laser battering ram breaks down the door to kill a bunch of people’ A common theme seems to be that people are taking things the absolute wrong way. Rose’s journey with Finn is an interesting arc where she seeks to make sure her sister’s sacrifice - caused by Poe’s rash personality - is not in vain while accompanying a ‘hero of the resistance’, what she is unaware of is how her assistance relates to Finn’s journey as he tries to live up to the esteem she sees him in, he had always considered himself a defector rather than a rebel. Rose (and DJ) open his eyes to a reality that not everything is black and white, he left the First Order in TFA because he believed that they were ‘wrong’ and so by default the resistance had to be ‘right’ but TLJ challenged Finn to see both sides and make a choice for himself, a choice that is made thanks to Rose. However, his embrace of being a rebel is why he is adamant to try and sacrifice himself for the laser battering ram. I have to point out that until Rose stepped in I thought Finn was gonna die, I thought it really ballsy and a little disappointing that they were gonna kill him off, I also knew that the ship would not stop the battering ram so it was actually a relief that Rose did save him.

I think people dislike it for that reason though, they felt that Finn dying would’ve been a more shocking narrative turn and because Rose saved him she is to ‘blame’, I also believe that people didn’t like the relationship because Finn was clearly still on Rey and not everyone was on the Reylo boat or it got in the way of FinnPoe being more than just a bromance (side note, at the start of RoS I thought they were sailing on the ReyPoe for a moment, though I’m not mad about how they went), but again, that shouldn’t be the fault of Rose’s character. Rose clearly was inspired by Finn’s reputation and grew fond of his personality the more time she spent with him, likewise Finn found himself wanting to earn her esteem and taking care of her, it’s actually a shame that Rose’s role gets heavily reduced in RoS, because I do feel like Rose could’ve filled Jannah’s role (nothing against Jannah or Naomi Ackie of course) with the Canto Bight horse-things instead of the Kef Bir horse-things. So to conclude this section, Rose was good in this film, she served a purpose to grow Finn as a character and most constructive criticisms against her revolve around things either out of her control as a character or without would diminish her character role completely. The Communication Issue between Holdo and Poe Alright, let’s throw some hands up before I rub them together. I agree that Holdo should’ve told people the plan, I do dislike it when a movie creates conflict made by a lack of communication. But, he will say rubbing his hands together, this does not ruin the film. It’s worth reminding that Poe is recently demoted for reckless behaviour, the Resistance’s entire offensive fleet was destroyed due to Poe wanting to destroy one Dreadnought Ship. A reasonable punishment for Poe on his arc to realise that being a leader is more than just winning a battle, but more on that later. So Holdo comes in, new squadron she barely knows because she’s taking over for Leia, she has a plan that she and Leia know but are the only living members who know now. So why doesn’t she tell Poe? It’s quite simple, not only does the novel imply that she’s figuring out if there’s a mole - which is understandable because the First Order must’ve watched Star Trek: Into Darkness and thought ‘hey we could track ships in hyperspeed too!’ - but she’s also trying to enforce Leia’s punishment to Poe. Poe is in this shit because he refused to listen to orders, so Holdo is basically telling Poe to listen to orders, something he refuses to do and starts a mutiny. It is frustrating yes and we side with Poe because he’s the more familiar character, but had Poe just proved himself a trustworthy person who is learning from Leia’s last decree before she went into a coma she would’ve told him. This also transitions nicely into the next criticism people have Canto Bight and the Cryptographer Goose-Chase Poe’s plans of mutiny starts with sending Rose and Finn to Canto Bight, at the behest of the massively underused Maz Kanata, to find a Cryptographer so that they could disable the hyperspace tracker. People hate this scene mainly because it segue’s from the plot, it’s high on CGI and reminds them of the Prequel Trilogy

Now I can’t really contest the CGI but it was nothing bad, CGI still gets used well and the visit to the Casino aided in time for Rose and Finn to establish a relationship, have some lightheated BB-8 moments, introduce DJ the speech impediment ‘wrong hacker’ and continue to drive the shades of grey theme Finn is about to learn about. People never seem to criticize that they put their faith in the wrong guy because it leads to a more interesting conflict, so it’s strange that they hate this transition so much. The Brevity of Snoke and Phasma Two characters introduced that promised to be big deals were killed off in The Last Jedi, the nature of them both was a brave scene that many felt dropped the ball on these characters. And while I am inclined to agree on Phasma at least, Snoke’s death was actually a great turn. Before RoS we were none the wiser on who Snoke was, now we’ve seen it we know that he was basically a mass-produced puppet by the emperor...not the best of closures I’d admit but the anger towards Snoke being killed off is actually hypocritical ‘All Snoke does is sit in his chair and die’ You know who else sat in his chair and ‘died’, ol’ Sheev Palpatine. People are quick to criticize that Snoke was hyped up but barely got to show anything when Palpatine only really demonstrated the force twice in the Original trilogy before being thrown into a pit of apparent death, we allowed the Emperor a pass because we learned more about him through novels and future movies, and that’s something we eventually find out from Snoke as well.

Captain Phasma on the other hand was a sad disappointment, after one brush with death already she returned to basically be killed off again as a symbol of Finn shedding his ties as an ex-stormtrooper and embracing the role of a rebel. This is not really the fault of Johnson though, everyone seems to be more content with the alternate scene where Finn exposes Phasma’s actions for TFA, but that was a choice from the cutting room. While we can be disappointed that Phasma didn’t leave enough of a mark on the trilogy, we can always hope for prequel stuff as we had with Boba Fett, an equally wasted character in his main trilogy who could theoretically be in The Mandalorian (only a theory, nothing is concrete), but if we are willing to love the Original Trilogy despite similar issues we hate on TLJ for then aren’t we being hypocrites? tHaT’s nOt HoW tHe FoRcE wOrKs If you try to pick on Rian Johnson for ‘not getting Star Wars’ directly you would be in for a world of punishment. Two major force powers that get used in The Last Jedi is the ‘Force Skype’ and Force Projection, however both are basically using the same techniques, one is connecting minds while the other is connecting one mind to an individual place. It’s immediately told to us that this is an advanced technique but this is not something Johnson has made up. In the EU this ability is called Simifuturus or just Doppelganger, practiced by Luke, Dooku and Yarael Poof. Rey and Ben’s Force Skype is also used in the EU called Force Bond, Chain or Jedi Kinship, the ability had been fine in beloved Star Wars games Knights of the Old Republic I & II, the Clone Wars and Rebels series and aplenty of novels. For the legitimacy of these abilities cannot be contested. The fact that the ability kills Luke shouldn’t be criticized either, Luke is projecting himself light years away on Crait, with a copy of Han’s dice in a much more polished form, he physically interacts with Leia and takes on a barrage of AT-M6 blasters - turbolasers that can destroy speeders and ships with one hit - and two lightsaber slices, remember Ben felt the impact from Rey’s blaster on their first Force Skype, so Luke carried the feeling of all that damage and strain on his body and maintained his projection. So not only did Luke’s dying moments lead to an incredible display of using the Force but also one that forced him to sustain an immeasurable amount of damage and still manage to bide the resistance time to escape. Leia Poppins Ah yes, the Mary Poppins moment. I dunno how I can explain this one so easily but how about this. Leia is force sensitive, we have known this since Jedi, so to see Leia use the force was a massive moment, but she’s floating in the vacuum of space so there is no ‘up’ she is basically pulling a heavier object than herself in a vacuum, using it as an anchor so she can get to a blast door. As to why she survives in space, you can survive up to 2 minutes in space without a helmet, it is horribly painful though, it’s also worth reminding that Leia is not a human like you or me and if the Force can heal (as shown in The Mandalorian and RoS) then why can’t it keep Leia alive a bit longer in Space? She ends up in a coma anyway so I don’t see why complaints are rife here, she survives barely and it’s not like they knew Carrie was going to die sometime after the film was completed, they obviously had more plans for her so it would’ve been wrong to kill her off there when we were already killing Luke off. Did Disney Ruin Star Wars? This is a statement I’ve heard a lot in regards to TLJ, Solo and RoS, which is weird though, people were fine with Disney doing TFA, Rogue One and The Mandalorian, Mando’s journey with Baby Yoda proving that the utility of fanservice - something the trio get loathed for - can be enjoyable and it bodes well that the director of some episodes is doing an Obi Wan film. The phrase ‘Star Wars Fatigue’ also came about from post-Solo reviews, which I have expressed is dumb because MCU do 3 marvel movies minimum a year. But the reason Solo got low box office figures wasn’t because it was bad, it’s because it was released around the same time as Deadpool 2, it was left to the sharks without a chance to succeed. So no, Disney have not ruined Star Wars, if anything fan perception has damaged the franchise with people hating it because it’s not the Original Trilogy or it’s too much like the Original Trilogy, the same can be said for the EU. RoS is quite similar to Dark Empire but because Disney retconned most of the EU it’s the enemy, but let’s be honest, does anyone want the continuity to be that Chewie gets blown up? I doubt that. So WHY does The Last Jedi deserve more respect I think the mixed reviews of Rise of Skywalker has proved that maybe TLJ got a harsh end of a stick, even with Abrams’ vision back at the helm the film proved to be divisive and personally quite safe. This is probably why I liked TLJ the most, Johnson went to challenge things and build off of the previous movies as a whole, nothing really was safe, it took narrative risks that opened the door to a lot more things.

We explored Rey’s connection to the force and her desires for answers being unable to be sated by it because she’s expecting more from her level of learning, we also have Snoke’s gambit to bond Ben and Rey together to strengthen both, Ben strengthens into a more mature state but continues to conflict in a less whiny way, even relenting from trying to kill his mother. We also got some ‘reverse Jedi’ stuff with both Ben and Rey adamant that the other will turn but instead of turning one another, Ben’s hatred however proves too great for Rey to accompany him which leads to Ben getting a villain promotion to Supreme Leader. We have a solid arc for Finn, Luke and Poe as he finally learns to take care of others, because as Rose was saying, sacrificing yourself is not going to beat the First Order, heroes are great but dead heroes win nothing, protecting others is the essence of the Resistance and that’s what a leader is meant to do. Hell, we even get a little Hux stuff, the way he slowly considers shooting Kylo Ren while he’s down and his constant abuse culminating in the rather obvious RoS reveal that he’s the spy. Unlike RoS, TLJ thrived on giving every major character worthwhile arcs like these which all ended up entwining in the climactic showdown, while tertiary characters did end up getting underused there were still windows for them to do more in the next episode which was taken out of Johnson’s hands, but he laid a lot of groundwork for the story to be taken multiple directions, which is actually quite difficult when you’re midway through a trilogy and on the 8th outing of a saga. In addition, the film provided Hamill’s best performance as Luke Skywalker, giving him a fitting end to his journey which explored almost every dimension of a Jedi’s character; training, temptation, losing faith and redemption.

I also loved how Johnson described the Force in TLJ, it wasn’t about Dark or Light, the Force was the Force, an energy that flows through all that is harnessed by the force sensitive, even Force Ghosts. And using the Puppet Yoda was a great and fun addition, and it makes sense that he can fire lightning, because Force Ghosts are one with the Force, they flow with the flow of nature. We got lore and demonstration of great powers that made the ‘holy shit’ moment of Kylo Ren stopping a blaster shot mid-flow look like novice work. And while we’re talking about ‘holy shit’ moments

You cannot deny that TLJ had some absolutely breathtaking visuals, moments in this film are some of the best moments in Star Wars, a combination of intensity and hype from Luke’s standoff with the First Order to Holdo’s hyperspace ram, Ahch-To’s real-life setting was also beautiful as were the design of Crait from its Icicle foxes to its salt speeders leaving a red path of smoke

This film looks beautiful and the story is multilayered with character development, worldbuilding, good action and gutsy plot twists, you know everything people (rightfully) praise The Mandalorian for. It’s definitely not a film where you’d find yourself bored and when you set aside your fan theories and the illusion that the Original Trilogy was Flawless save for the Death Star plot hole you will find this movie a lot more enjoyable. Now I don’t want people saying it’s a ‘Don’t Question, Consume’ sorta thing, it’s a matter of accepting that there are flaws but not allowing it to ruin the experience, because The Last Jedi embodies a lot of the essence of Star Wars old and new, it is probably the best that the New Trilogy has provided and it is certainly worthy of respect.

[popcorn-for-dinner]

I don’t want to wait for my dad to die, to cry.

If my dad died today, what would I say? What would I wish I had said?

Sat in the darkness of my movie theatre, as Alan Silvestri’s sombre score begins to swell, I can feel my neighbours on the brink of breaking down- some had already been weeping for a solid five minutes. Then, as if to break those of us still holding it together, Tony Stark’s pre-recorded hologram gets up from his seat, stares directly at his wife and daughter and proclaims “I love you 3000”.  

All I could think about at this point was how far he (Tony not “Iron Man”) had come and how rich that journey had been. As if to buttress my point, a minute later, Tony’s memorial floats across the lake, adorned with his first arc reactor- a call back to his first appearance in this sprawling cinematic universe. When Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) had gifted it to him in Iron Man 1, she had inscribed on it “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart”.

Boy, did he!

In the lead up to last year’s Avengers: Infinity War, I discussed the paternal relationships portrayed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (coincidentally, Infinity War is a film in which a father throws the daughter he loves off a cliff, to her death. Father issues? What Father issues?). Some criticisms levied against that piece were that it was too long and bloated. So, my response? A sequel, naturally.

With that article, I wanted to highlight that we all have our different parental issues- even superheroes have them! These issues were not peculiar to us individually. Naturally, we might feel this way but they were so commonplace in fact, that the biggest franchise in the world was examining them in their billion-dollar entries.  

What I had not thought about though, was what was next? I had not fully considered what happens after you acknowledge your issues. What do you do next, is it important to do anything, can I (please) just revert to auto-pilot? In a cruel twist of art imitating life, I had failed to consider the aftermath, because I had not yet reached that point of “after”. How could I write about a journey I had not yet taken?

Which brings us to here and now. During (yes, during) Avengers: Endgame, I began to see just how unfinished my writing was and as I continued to mull the themes over, this spiritual sequel began to take shape. I also noticed that just as Marvel had posed the question for my first article, they had also provided the answer for my follow up. So, because I am nothing if not consistent (read: one-dimensional), Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) will once again serve, one last time, as both muse and avatar as I discuss the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) portrayal of healing during the aftermath. 

Healing can only begin when you confront your shit.

Deflection is easy. Deflection is safe. However, the true “after”- the needed healing, can only begin when we’ve been able to acknowledge and confront the issues.  

Tony Stark had a very tumultuous relationship with his father. Slowly, over the course of the earlier MCU instalments, we are given an idea of how this relationship grew from unrequited admiration/attention in Tony’s adolescence to estrangement and eventual resentment. After spending his childhood with a distant father and being “shipped off” to boarding school at the earliest convenience, Tony has no reason to believe that his father even likes him, much less loves or respects. This lack (and subconscious search) of validation would end up guiding Tony’s actions in his adulthood, both the applaudable and the self-destructive.

In Iron Man 2, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) gives Tony some of his father’s research which he had left specifically for him. It is in those research documents that he finally finds the validation he had been searching for his entire life- that direct vote of confidence from his father. In this direct-to-video address, Howard Stark (John Slattery) expresses belief in his son’s untapped potential while also, subtly, explaining the reasoning behind some of his actions.  

This is a rare feat. Many aren’t afforded that kind of insight into their parent’s thinking while they are alive much less decades after they’ve died. Tony was able to have a real confrontation with his past and as a result, the issues it had borne.  

As a side note, it is important to address that while it may be the method being discussed, this “direct confrontation” is not the only way to begin our healing. What is universal though, is the domino effect any meaningful confrontation can have. In Tony’s case, the closure this brings finally helps him get rid of the chip on his shoulder and kickstart his own healing process- a process we see begin halfway through Iron Man 2 and finally come to a (satisfying) conclusion in Avengers: Endgame.

Much like his tech, Tony Stark was always evolving, improving. From that moment in the cave in Iron Man 1 when he decided to be a better person, he was constantly on a path of self- improvement and in Iron Man 2, his relationship with his father was added to the checklist. With the earlier detailed confrontation, he was provided with some much-needed clarity. It was almost as if, immediately, in the back of his head, the emotional cogs began to move smoothly after years of disharmony. With the chip off his shoulder, things seemed easier. Slowly that paternal toxicity in him began to dissipate. He was no longer relying on the crutches he once had, and the healing truly began.

What we would then witness was that, with every succeeding movie, a more “fatherly” side of Tony began to appear. His healing process wasn’t explicit or in your face, he just slowly became better.  

Tony, of course, spends a large portion of 2013’s Iron Man 3 with a 12-year-old kid (Ty Simpkins) in a father-son, buddy cop relationship but it wasn’t until he recruited a teenage Peter Parker (Tom Holland) in Captain America: Civil War that we would see just how far he had come. Crucially, this doesn’t happen until Tony reaches a viable, satisfactory, conclusion to his arc with his father.

Ready or not, you have to move on with your life.

Time isn’t going to wait for you. Eventually, life is going to catch up with you. So, you need to start the healing process as soon as you can because it’s a life-long mission.

Tony Stark’s introduction in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War is during an augmented reality session. This particular session is set on the final day he sees his parents, the day they die. Towards the end, his mum breaks the fourth wall of the memory and implores young Tony to say something to his father because it’s the last time he will see them. He doesn’t argue or deflect, he isn’t sarcastic, instead he says to Howard, honestly, “I love you, Dad” and informs his mother that he knows “he (his father) did the best he could”.  

Sure, Tony engineered the situation, but that’s more growth than most of us experience. The silent healing at the back of his psyche had now got Tony to a position where he was comfortable telling his father he loved him and acknowledging that he probably did the best he could, mistakes and all. He didn’t say this because he felt it was expected of him but rather because he had got to a point where he truly believed it. Yes, his (real) father couldn’t hear him but he could say it. He could make this admission to himself.

For his healing, this was a conclusion he needed to reach before being able to successfully move on with his life. In the larger picture of the MCU’s story, this was an admission he had to make to be effective in the two very important relationships that were about to occur in his life- the first being with a certain precocious teenager from Queens.  

After enlisting Peter Parker, Tony assumes guardianship over him. Peter, also trying to fill that Uncle Ben shaped hole in his life is eager to impress “Mr Stark” and receive his validation- not unlike a young Tony trying to impress his father. Having done the necessary healing, Tony is now in a place where he can be that father figure to Peter. He now understands not only, how it feels to be the son of a distant father but also the reasoning behind the actions that might have made his father come across as distant.  

Knowing that life is never going to wait for us, it is incumbent on us to be serious about our healing. Because without it, we’ll just step back into life, into relationships, with the same hurt, ignorance, pride that will only serve to continue the wheel.  Like Tony in the cave, we need to make a decision to do better, be better.  

Don’t wait, cry now.

What was most indicative of Tony’s healing, was his self-awareness. At one point during an argument with Peter, Tony catches himself and mutters “Gosh, I sound just like my dad”. It’s the type of self-awareness that only comes as a result of doing the healing work.  

Like Tony, many of us take too long to confront the complexities in our parental relationships. We now find, that at this late stage, we are wistful for the relationship that could have been. We mourn the vulnerability that was skipped on, the laughs that were not shared, the emotions that were not laid bare, the cries that never were.    

This is why Tony’s augmented reality session was always important. It was his way of creating a model reality where he confronted his issues in time to have a good relationship with his dad, if only for just a second. It provided him with the opportunity to finally let go of his baggage and honestly and wholeheartedly appreciate his father, knowing “he did the best he could”.

With the results of his private healing in tow, he is now able to be a good surrogate father to Peter and real father to Morgan (Alexandra Rabe). We see that, to Morgan, Tony is everything he wished his dad was to him- affectionate, understanding, present. It may seem obvious that he would be the father he wished his father was but as we tend to see, that is rarely the case. What is more common though, is a continuous perpetuation of the cycle. Of course, it isn’t always intentional but without proper attention to the emotional scars, hurt kids become hurt adults who, via releasing their pent-up pain, raise hurt kids. Spokes on a wheel.  

Perhaps because of how perfect and apparent a conclusion the AR session was to the arc, I found the time travel sequence in Avengers: Endgame very surprising and equally impactful. Tony, after all he’s been through, all he’s learnt, is now face to face with his father. This isn’t a home video or a billion-dollar augmented reality experiment, it’s the real deal.

The Tony from a decade prior might have been sarcastic, snarky, deflective. But not this one. Not this Tony who knows his dad’s real feelings and motivations. Not this Tony who’s done all his healing work, who’s lost his adopted son and fathered a daughter. No, this Tony is honest, raw, emotional, thankful even.  He is appreciative of the life he’s had. He understands what his father is going through and will go through. He is (finally) at peace with the issues that arose because of both he and his father’s insecurities, and willingly accepts all he has become because of them.

And is that not the goal? To be able to reach a point where we can now look into their eyes and understand where they are coming from. To be at peace with all that we are and all that they were/are. To be able to finally accept and understand the importance of all the rough edges in creating us as rounded human beings. It should be the aim but like any other desired goal it requires work to get there. Sometimes even, unpleasant work.  

As Tony exemplified, everyone (even seemingly irredeemable billionaire, playboy, philanthropists) deserves to confront and conquer their issues and mend a tense relationship. While it will be tough, I write this with the hope that I have inspired someone to begin their own healing process. While yours is most likely not going to involve a billion-dollar AR experiment or time travel, you have the power to begin today.

It is admittedly easier for some than it is for others but like every other thing, it begins with starting. So, pick up a phone, send an e-mail, book an appointment or if you want, just start by yourself, in your head. Your confrontation can take any and many forms and I am ill-equipped to tell you what is best for you. There’s no manual on how to do it, what I have learnt though, is that the only important thing is that you start.  

“I thought my dad was tough on me, but now looking back, I just remember the good stuff” 

                                                                           -Tony Stark, Avengers: Endgame

Here’s to us, eventually, remembering only the good stuff.

Bankole Imoukhuede

@banky_I

[searchingwardrobes]

Natural Opposite 8/16

* Before writing this fic, I did some -not a ton, but some - research on Dancing With the Stars. Every source I looked at said that the pro dancers on the show are forbidden in their contracts from getting romantically involved with their partners. That's why relationships are only ever "rumored" until after the season is over. While many hook ups have happened - even marriages - nothing is ever official while filming is happening. That doesn't stop the hosts from asking questions, of course, but the dancers and celebs are usually coy about it. Until this season!!! I don't know how many of you watch DWTS, but Alexis Ren told her partner Alan that she was developing feelings for him - on camera. The following week, Alan told her he had feelings for her to, and kissed her! On camera! Believe me, this has NEVER happened before! Derek Hough even got in trouble ages ago when compromising paparazzi pictures came out of him and his partner. I based my fic on what I knew of the show in the past as a fan and through my research. So thanks a lot DWTS for making me seem like I don't know what I'm talking about!

* Once again, many thanks to my artist @optomisticgirl. There isn't chapter art this week, but some AMAZING stuff is coming that I can't wait for ya'll to see!

* And my beta, @distant-rose, was incredible. Her insights on Henry's character especially influenced this chapter. So thanks, Ro!

Also on Ao3

Tagging @bethacaciakay @teamhook @kmomof4 @snowbellewells @whimsicallyenchantedrose @kday426 @snidgetsafan @delirious-latenight-laughs @jennjenn615 @followbatb @onceuponaprincessworld @hollyethecurious @ohmakemeahercules

Chapter Eight: See the Light

Emma snuggled into the corner of the couch with a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. A box of pizza lay open on the coffee table. She honestly couldn’t believe she agreed to this. The rules on how much time partners on the show could spend together was hazy. Romantic relationships were expressly forbidden in everyone’s contracts. However, there were no strict guidelines to prevent them. And honestly, since rumors of romance helped ratings, the producers typically looked the other way.

So the fact that Killian Jones was currently sitting on her living room floor playing video games with her son wasn’t a shock because of contractual agreements. No, it was a shock because Emma Swan didn’t do things like this. She didn’t invite men over to hang out and eat pizza with her and Henry. She enjoyed hanging out with her fellow pros on set, but that was as deep as things ever went. One night stands were also common in Emma’s social life, but she had strict rules for those. It was never anyone she knew (even a first name was more than she needed or asked for), and she never brought them home. Most of her one night stands happened on tour while Henry was spending the summer with Ingrid; a way to release pent up frustrations with her social life.

Killian groaned as he dropped the video game controller in his lap, and Henry fist pumped in victory.

“Hey,” Killian protested, gesturing at the screen, “in my defense, it’s been awhile since I played one of these. They’ve gotten way more complicated. Am I right, Swan?”

Emma shrugged when he turned to her for back up. “I don’t know, or maybe you’ve never had game.”

“Oooh, good one mom!” Henry laughed.

“Ouch,” Killian said, pretending to grimace with genuine hurt, “how quickly my partner turns on me!”

“That’s because I’m her kid, right Mom?” Henry replied with a grin.

Emma smiled back. “True. And because you’re my kid, I also have to tell you it’s bedtime.”

“Aw, Mom!” Henry groaned. “I thought we were gonna watch some Star Wars.”

Killian slapped his hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Maybe next time, lad.”

His words caused Emma’s throat to constrict, and she felt a sudden, familiar urge to flee. Killian had talked her into doing this because he said they had to celebrate their great scores. She never expected him to bond with Henry or expect a “next time.”

Henry, however, had no such qualms. “Sweet,” he said, giving Killian a fist pump. Then he brushed a kiss to Emma’s cheek and whispered in her ear, “Thank you, Mom! The kids at school are gonna die!”

Once Henry’s door shut behind him, a slight awkwardness descended on the room. Killian glanced her way, ducking his head when she turned her gaze intently into her mug of cocoa. She took a sip as he grabbed some of the pizza boxes and took them to the fridge.

“I wonder why Elsa’s not home yet,” she muttered. The words fell flat. Why should he care where her roommate was?

“You want these boxes taking up your fridge, or should I get some aluminum foil or something?” Killian asked, pausing in front of the open refrigerator.

Emma waved her hand. “Oh, just shove the boxes in. Henry will scarf the rest down in no time.”

Killian nodded and did as she asked. Then he shuffled awkwardly in the middle of her kitchen. “He’s a good kid, Henry.”

Emma smiled wistfully. “The best.”

Killian eyed her a bit warily as he came closer and eased down next to her on the couch. He was treating her as if she were a skittish animal who might bite him. She rolled her eyes. This was ridiculous! They were in each other’s personal space constantly rehearsing and dancing. Why was it awkward now? Emma shifted away from the corner of the couch and offered Killian half her blanket. He shook his head that he was fine, but the gesture had its intended effect. He relaxed and settled back against the couch, flinging his arm across the back of it, his hand resting just behind her shoulder.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked.

Emma hesitated, biting her lip.

“I think I’ve earned it, don’t you?” he asked her softly.

She set her mug down on the coffee table. “I thought my life was an open book. With everything reality TV has dug up.”

Killian nodded. “Aye, but you managed to keep some things private.”

Emma held her breath, clutching the blanket in her fists. Henry’s dad. That was the only thing he could be referring to.

“Why is your name Swan and David’s isn’t?”

Emma let out a long, relieved breath. If Killian picked up on her emotional reaction, he didn’t let on. “That’s simple, really. He’s an optimist. I’m not.”

Killian tilted his head. “Meaning?”

“He still clings to the hope that our parents had a good reason for doing what they did. I just can’t. Who leaves their babies on the side of the highway? We could have been killed!” Emma toyed with a frayed edge of the blanket. “Our names were stitched into our baby blankets. We both still have them, actually. David thinks it’s a sign,that they loved us.” Emma shrugged.

Killian nodded thoughtfully. “Has he tried to find them? I mean, I’m guessing it’s possible if you know their last name was Nolan.”

“Yeah,” Emma answered as she picked up her mug again, “social workers found records at a local hospital of twins named David and Emma Nolan being born a week before we were found. To a Ruth and Robert Nolan. But they must have changed their names or something, because after that, they completely fell off the grid.”

“So they don’t want to be found.”

“Exactly.” Emma agreed, sitting up and clutching her mug tighter. “I’ve tried to tell him a million times to drop it, but . . . every once and awhile, he starts digging again. Ingrid’s the one who loved us and accepted us. She’s the one who gave us a home.”

Emma stared off in the distance, thinking back to the dance class she and David took at the Boy’s and Girl’s club. They were eleven years old and in a group home. Ingrid volunteered her time teaching the dance lessons. Emma always loved how patient she was, so calm. Her gentle smile when she told Emma that she had raw talent was like someone offering a cup of water in a desert.

“I hated how people judged Ingrid,” Emma said aloud. “They tried to make it seem like she only cared about grooming David and I for stardom. Elsa too. But it wasn’t like that. She wasn’t some crazy stage mom. We all just love to dance.”

“What about your other sister, Anna?”

Emma chuckled. “I’m surprised you even know about her.” Emma cut her eyes to look at Killian. “Did you cyber stalk me?”

He shrugged and gave her that disarming smile of his. “I had to learn a little bit about my partner. And actually, I have a confession.” He took a deep breath, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “I was a fan. When you were on So You Think You Can Dance. When I said I was hoping it would be you, I meant it.”

Emma blinked, her throat suddenly going dry. “You . . . were a fan?” she finally squeaked.

Killian raised his hands quickly. “I’m not saying I had some celebrity crush.”

Emma exhaled loudly and they both laughed. “Good, I was starting to worry you were a stalker.”

“No, I always liked that show. The performances are so incredible.”

Emma’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Thank you. But you said before you never watched Dancing with the Stars. So why do it?”

“I know Regina told you. This is Neverland’s final season. Do you know how many TV stars have one hit show and little to no career afterwards?”

Emma abandoned her mug for good and leaned against the back of the couch, shifting to face him, “A lot, now that I think about it.”

“Exactly. And a lot of times it’s because people see them only as that character they played. Captain Hook is a larger-than-life role. I wanted people to see that there’s more to me.” Killian shrugged. “And I know the tabloid stories haven’t helped. I won’t lie – I got caught up in the sudden fame at first. Partying almost every night, keeping my romantic entanglements . . . casual.” He blushed as he glanced her way. “So you were right about me, Emma. But Rose and other friends helped snap me out of it. And I’ve left that all behind. I’m trying to be a better man.”

Emma tapped the arm of the couch. “You don’t have to defend your past to me. I get it.”

Killian seemed to visibly relax at that. “Good. So . . . your other sister?”

Emma nodded. “Anna. Well, poor thing was the clutz of the family. Tried dance classes when she was little, but it just wasn’t her cup of tea. Anyone who claims Ingrid was just adopting kids with dance talent should see her with Anna. She’s the reason Ingrid moved out to Colorado.”

“Really?”

“Mhm. Anna and her husband Kristoff run a ski lodge out there. They’ve got four rambunctious boys who are seven, five, three, and eight months.”

Killian whistled, his eyebrows raising to his hairline. “She’s got her hands full!”

“Which is exactly why Ingrid’s out there. She needed the help desperately.”

Silence fell between them, but not an awkward one. Emma rose and took her mug to the sink, pouring the last bit of hot chocolate down the drain. Once she’d rinsed it and set it in the dishwasher, she turned to find Killian up and collecting his jacket.

“I should probably get home,” he told her, “we have to start a whole new dance first thing in the morning, right?”

“Right,” Emma agreed with a nod and followed him to the door. She was genuinely surprised that he hadn’t pried about Henry’s dad. It also made her like him a bit more. As a friend, anyway.

He opened the door, then turned to her with a light in his eyes and mischief in his smile. “It was a lovely evening, Swan,” he told her, taking her hand and lifting it to his lips. His eyes never left hers as they lingered there for half a beat.

Emma scowled and snatched her hand away. “Why do you have to go and do that?”

Killian’s eyes widened. “Do what?”

“Get flirty like that. We were talking, and having a nice evening, and then you have to go and ruin it.”

Killian arched a brow at her. “And how did I ruin it, exactly? I merely thanked you for the nice time we spent together.”

“This wasn’t a date,” Emma hissed through her teeth.

He sauntered closer to her, leaning down to whisper in her ear, his breath fanning hot across her cheek. “And yet, you’re the one who brought up the subject. You sure it didn’t feel like a date?” Killian pulled back, grinning at her scandalously, his tongue darting out of the corner of his mouth. “Or were you waiting for a goodnight kiss?”

“You’re full of it Killian Jones,” she snapped, giving him a firm push out the door. “I’m not so sure you’ve changed at all.” Then she slammed the door in his handsome, cocky face.

Emma jumped when she turned to find Henry standing in the hallway behind her.

“Why were you so mean to him?” Henry accused. “I like him!”

Emma sagged against the door, rubbing her forehead wearily. “He’s an actor, Henry. You can’t trust him.”

Henry stood there, regarding her silently for a moment. “I think he likes you, Mom. And not every guy is like my dad. Not every guy’s gonna leave you.”

Henry didn’t wait for her to respond. He just turned and went back to his room, shutting the door gently behind him. Emma turned and pressed her forehead to the door with a groan. She couldn’t figure out Killian Jones. There were times he was full of swagger, then other times he was sweet and even a bit nerdy. Sometimes he seemed he wanted to be her friend, then other times it felt he wanted more. Then there were times he flirted outrageously and it seemed all he wanted was to get in her pants.

Emma pushed away from the door, resolute. It didn’t matter. They had a show to win. And after that, they would go their separate ways. She loved Henry, but he was too young to understand what men like Killian Jones were really like.

************************************************************

Emma dashed up and down the corridors backstage, swearing under her breath. This was the last thing she needed right now – a missing partner. She was already having to deal with a thick blonde Rapunzel wig that weighed a ton and a gimmick for their routine which hadn’t worked at all in dress rehearsals.

It was Disney week, and Killian had been both relieved and excited when they had been assigned a waltz to “I See the Light” from Tangled.

“I was worried they would make me Captain Hook – the cartoon version,” he had told her honestly.

“What?” she had teased. “Waxed mustaches and perms aren’t your thing?”

Despite the door slam to his face at her apartment, Killian had gone right back to their usual friendly, sometimes snarky banter. The only stress, honestly, this past week was the pressure they felt to deliver another high scoring routine. It may have been why Emma decided to open their number with Emma in a tower. Literally. It involved wires and the two of them actually rappelling down the side of a fake tower. Seriously. What had she been thinking?

And now it was only ten minutes till show time, and Killian had disappeared. Suddenly, Belle crashed right into Emma. She wore a blue dress identical to the one her namesake wore in the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast. She and Jefferson were doing a quickstep to “Bonjour,” with Jefferson as Gaston. They really had cast everyone perfectly, including Killian, who made an excellent Flynn Ryder.

But suddenly, Emma realized that Belle was trembling and crying. “Belle? What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I – I didn’t mean to cause any trouble . . . I was looking for Jefferson . . . “

Emma hurried past Belle when she saw Killian behind the brunette, shoving Robert Gold into a wall. Killian held the other man, who was dressed like Facilier from The Princess and the Frog, by the front of his shirt.

“Killian!” Emma called out. “What the hell?”

The snarl that had marred Killian’s face melted when he saw Emma. Belle ran past her then with Jefferson at her heels. She ran forward and pulled gently on Killian’s arm. He allowed her to pry him free of Gold.

“He’s not worth it, Killian, please,” Belle spoke to him gently, “you’ll only get yourself in trouble.”

Killian deflated and nodded, giving Belle a tremulous smile. Then he turned to Gold and got right in the man’s face.

“I’m honoring the ladies’ wishes. A quality of a gentleman that I suggest you learn.”

Killian turned away, jaw clenching even as Gold laughed sarcastically. Jefferson shoved the older man in the shoulder and told him to shut the hell up before escorting Belle towards the dance floor. As she and Killian fell in step behind them, she elbowed him in the ribs.

“So, you, uh . . . want to explain what that was all about?”

Killian rubbed his jaw and continued scowling. “It just angers me when a man won’t take no for an answer.”

Emma’s eyes widened. “If Mr. Gold has hurt Belle, the producers won’t stand for it. I mean she needs to –“

“No,” Killian assured her quickly, “it isn’t that. He just keeps pestering her to go out with him. She tried to be nice at first, but it’s gotten to where he just won’t leave her alone. I caught him taking her by the arm just now, and when she tried to pull away . . . “

Emma squeezed his bicep, as they neared the wings. The introduction was already playing, and they had to make their appearance in less than five minutes. “Hey, I get it. The man’s a jerk, but you’ve got to calm down. Think of it as acting. Okay, Flynn Ryder?”

Killian grinned down at her, slipping easily into character, his hair falling rakishly over his eyes. “Are you ready for the smolder?” he teased.

Emma rolled her eyes, but was secretly relieved to have such an utter professional as a partner. They came out on stage doing the little bit they had practiced. A stagehand gave Emma her prop: a frying pan, and she made a big show of threatening Killian with it while he waggled his eyebrows charmingly. The rest of the cast was announced to roaring applause. Disney week was always popular.

Luckily, their dance came early in the show. Emma wanted to get their risky stunt out of the way so they could enjoy the rest of the afternoon. Killian came to the tower and made a show of calling up for “Rapunzel” to let down her hair, then grasped onto the vines snaking around it to climb up to her. They embraced at the window, then repelled down the tower together on the system of wires. Once at the bottom, they unsnapped the harnesses and started the waltz.

Once the opening stunt was out of the way, Emma fully enjoyed their waltz. It had been the easiest dance style for Killian to pick up, having done it on episodes of Neverland. Emma felt like a true Disney princess in her lavender gown, and the lanterns dangling from the ceiling washed the entire dance floor in a romantic glow.

“All at once, everything is different,” sang the studio band as Killian sank to one knee. Emma sat on the knee he offered, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her forehead to his. “Now that I see you,” the singers crooned the final line of the song.

Emma cheered, shaking Killian’s shoulders excitedly, knowing it was the best they had danced it. The studio audience agreed, cheering and surging to their feet. The cheers soon turned to boos, however, when Blue complained about the elaborate opening, telling them they should just stick to the waltz. Tiana and Teach weren’t all that thrilled with the stunt either, and in the end, they got two 8s and one 9 (from Tiana, of course). Emma was more frustrated this time than Killian, and as soon as they suffered through a short interview with Ashley, she stalked backstage in irritation.

Killian found her leaning against a wall backstage, her arms crossed tight around her. She knew the cameras couldn’t be far behind. It didn’t stop Killian from putting his arms around her and resting his chin on her shoulder.

“I think we killed it,” he told her.

Emma sighed and rolled her eyes.

“You know I can actually feel it when you roll your eyes at me?”

That managed to get a chuckle out of her. He eased her around to face him, gently lifting her chin so their eyes met.

“I just feel like I cost us a better score with my stupid tower idea,” Emma said, gesturing with her arms in irritation.

Killian shrugged. “The scores were still pretty good.”

“But we’re favorites now! The judges are going to keep nitpicking us, and I let the pressure get to me this week.”

He pulled her into a hug, and even though she knew this would probably end up in the recap footage next week, she let him.

************************************************************

The studio audience and the celebrities were shocked when it was announced that no one would be going home this week. The pros, on the other hand, pretended to be shocked. There was always a “non-elimination” week, and nine times out of ten, it was Disney week. Killian turned to her with a grin and a hug once the taping was over, but Emma was less enthusiastic.

“That means there will be a double elimination next week, so don’t get cocky, Jones.”

Liam came out on the dance floor to join them, giving them both hearty hugs. “Great job, little brother!”

Killian opened his mouth as if to correct him, then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth his breath. “Thanks,” he said instead.

Liam’s eyes suddenly lit up as he glanced over Killian’s shoulder. “Belle! Lovely to see you again! You were perfectly cast, of course.”

“Thank you,” Belle replied, grasping her skirt and making a little exaggerated bow. “With my name and a vlog called Beauty and Brains I was sort of asking for it.”

“Have you two watched Belle’s youtube channel?” Liam asked Emma and Killian. “It’s incredible! She gives young women fashion and makeup tips but also recommends classic literature for them to read.”

Killian glanced at Emma, his eyes alight as he quirked a brow. “And my brother is watching a fashion vlog . . . why? Need eyeliner tips, Liam?”

Liam turned a bright shade of red and started gaping like a fish. Belle, meanwhile, smiled up at him beneath her batting lashes. “I think it’s sweet,” was all she said as she took his hand and gave it a squeeze. Jefferson called for her then, and she dashed off, leaving a bewildered Liam behind.

“Liam,” Emma said, clearing her throat, “I thought you’d be heading back home by now.”

“Umm . . . I’ve . . . decided to stay a bit longer,” he murmured distractedly, his eyes still fixed on Belle’s retreating form.

Killian gave his brother a little shove. “Then go talk to her, you git.”

Emma and Killian both laughed as he nervously approached the petite brunette. Emma turned her head from studying the elder Jones brother to study the younger one. His face was relaxed, his eyes filled with delight as he watched his brother smile and laugh with Belle. As if he felt her eyes on him, Killian turned to her suddenly. She blushed and glanced quickly away.

“It was the smolder again, wasn’t it?” he teased. “I really can’t control it, you know.”

Emma rolled her eyes and punched him lightly in the gut. “And what I wouldn’t give for a frying pan right now,” she quipped.

[tiawritesgood]

Jurassic: The New World, Chapter Three

Claire’s blaring phone woke her and Owen from their fitful sleep.

“Did you find Maisie?” Claire asked as an answer.

“What? Maisie is missing?” Karen responded.

Claire sighed. “I’m sorry, Karen. I should have called. Maisie… we think she was kidnapped this morning.”

Owen tried not to be disappointed. He climbed out of their bed to use the bathroom while Claire spoke with her sister.

“Oh my God, Claire! How did this happen? Who took her?”

The reality of the situation sunk in for Claire. How dare she sleep while her daughter was missing? She’d been a mother for a day before the unthinkable happened. Whenever Claire was in charge, something terrible happened. Why hadn’t she learned her lesson with Jurassic World? After Maisie is rescued, Claire would leave her and Owen to live without Claire around to screw it up.

“Claire, where is your head? Come back to me.”

She sighed. “I don’t know what to do, Karen. We went to sleep after the cops left.”

“And now you’re refreshed and ready to find that little girl. Listen, Claire, the boys and I are coming over. We’ll help you search for Maisie.”

“Thank you, Karen,” Claire said.

Owen climbed out of the miniscule bathroom. “How is Karen?”

“She and the boys are coming over.”

He nodded. “Good. We need all the help we can get.”

“I’m a terrible mother,” Claire blurted. “You would be better off without me.”

Owen sat down on the bed and laughed. “It’s been less than twenty-four hours, Claire.”

“And Maisie is missing, then we went to sleep!”

He rubbed her back to try and calm her down, but Claire pulled away. “Listen, Claire,” he said. “There was nothing we could have done at five in the morning. Three hours of sleep cleared our heads. We’re ready to go.”

“We should have started looking three hours ago!” Claire cried.

“And done what? Scoured the woods? We know she’s not out there. Someone took her. Knocked down InGen’s door? That would have gotten us arrested. We’d be no help to Maisie from behind bars. Don’t beat yourself up about this. It’s not your fault and it’s not mine.”

Claire sobbed. She’d cried a lot the last few days. First, it was about the court appearance and worrying Maisie would be taken away. Now, it was because Maisie had been taken. Just not by the courts.

“What if we don’t find her?” Claire asked. She finally allowed Owen to wrap her in his arms.

“We will.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Owen adjusted them on the bed so he could look in Claire’s eyes. “We made it out of Jurassic World. We made it off Isla Nublar when it was basically exploding around us. We got out of Lockwood’s Estate. If we can get through all that, we can find our daughter.”

Claire knew she’d have to hear this over and over again before she believed it, but for now it was working.

A knock on the trailer door drew them out of the moment. Karen threw her arms around Claire the second she opened the door. “Oh, Claire. I’m so sorry. Tell us what we can do.”

Claire took in her nephews behind her slender sister. The boys got their father’s brunette hair and height. Zack towered over her and Gray seemed taller than the last time she saw him. Had it only been two weeks? They had come to pick up Maisie for the weekend so Claire and Owen could have some alone time. It felt like a lifetime ago.

“Hey, Aunt Claire,” Zack said, taking his turn to hug Claire. He hugged Owen, too, as soon as his mom released him. Gray’s hugs were tighter than his older brother’s. It reminded Claire of the day he arrived at Jurassic World and surprised her by wrapping his arms around her waist. They’ve become much closer since that day. Claire didn’t want to be an island anymore. She wanted to connect with people, especially her family.

“You boys know a lot about computers?” Owen asked when their reunion was over.

Zack nodded. “I pretty much live on mine.”

“Me, too.”

Owen smiled. “Good. I need the two of you to do some research to help us find Maisie.”

“We’re on it.”

Zack opened his backpack and pulled out two Apple computers. “Gifts from Dad the last time he was too busy to take us for the weekend.”

Claire winced. Karen and her husband had tried to work out their problems after the park incident, but they ended up divorced six months later. The boys’ father was supposed to see them every weekend but he bailed on that obligation too many times to count. With Zack in college, their father pretty much disappeared from Zack and Gray’s lives. He still paid child support for Gray, at least.

“Do you guys have wifi?”

Owen and Claire looked at each other. The cabin would have cable and internet, but the trailer did not.

Zack caught the look and laughed. “No worries. We have hotspots on our phones.”

“Good, good,” Owen said. “Once the cabin is ready we’ll be out of the dark ages, but…”

“You don’t have to explain yourself Uncle Owen,” Gray said. Owen liked when Claire’s nephew used the title. He hoped one day they would make it official, though every time they got closer, Claire pulled away. Owen worried that Maisie’s kidnapping might be the end of what they had finally gotten back.

“Thanks, kid,” Owen said. “I need you both to search out Maisie and see if you can find anyone who might want to take her. Then we need you to investigate InGen and Biosyn. Tell me everything you can find about the two companies.”

“On it,” Zack said. He set up the kitchen table to get to work. Gray plopped down on the stool across from his brother and opened his laptop. “I’ll start with a few basic Google searches on Maisie. Gray, you look into InGen and Biosyn.”

Gray nodded and disappeared into his computer. With that taken care of, the adults left the boys in the trailer so they could talk without disturbing their progress.

“What do you want from me?” Karen asked. “Should we set up a search party or something?”

“You two stay here in case the officers come by or call with news,” Owen said to Karen and Claire. “I have someone I need to meet.”

Claire scrunched her brow. “Who?”

“I’ll tell you if any good comes out of it.”

She frowned but nodded anyway. “Be careful.”

Owen kissed her cheek and twirled his van keys around his finger. The used Dodge made more sense than his old truck, which they traded in a week after Maisie came to stay with them. Claire’s sedan was more practical, but the van had more leg room for long drives. It would also have more space should their family grow in the future.

Claire watched the van’s taillights until they were completely hidden by trees.

“I know this is a ridiculous question, but are you okay?” Karen asked.

“I want Maisie back,” Claire told her sister. “But I’m terrified of what happens when we do have her back.”

Karen nodded. “Parenthood is scary and hard. At least you and Owen have each other.”

That made Claire smile. She did have Owen. If the way he protected the boys at the park and Maisie at the estate were any indication, he was going to be an amazing dad. She was lucky to have him by her side through all of this.

“I don’t want to mess things up for them. I feel like all of this is my fault.”

“Oh, Claire, you know deep down that isn’t true.”

Claire wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “I keep telling myself that, but everything I touch goes wrong. The park, the rescue operation, now Maisie…”

“If you say they’d be better off without you, I might actually slap you.”

Claire remained silent. That was exactly what she planned to say.

“I’m going to use a Mom saying on you, are you ready?”

“Go for it. It can’t hurt.”

Karen wrapped her arms around her younger sister. “Trust yourself, Claire. You know more than you think you do.”

Claire snorted. “That’s a doozy.”

“I know, but it’s true. What happened with the park and the estate, that stuff sucked. But you’re here now, and you’re a mother. You can’t let those mistakes define you. You’re smarter than that,” Karen told Claire.

“You know, this isn’t how I expected parenthood to happen. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever have a family, and now I have Maisie and Owen…”

“And me, and the boys. You’re not an island, Claire. You never were. You’re more like… a peninsula.”

They both laughed. “I don’t know what that means, but I’ll take it. Thank you, Karen. You being here means the world to me.”

“Hey, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Now let’s go see what the boys have learned about the possible kidnappers.”

They walked into the small trailer one after the other and sat down beside the boys, ready to come up with the next step in their plan.

**

Owen knocked on the door to the single-story ranch. The grey panels had been recently replaced, but the stone walkway was in need of repairs.

An older man with greying hair answered the door. “Can I help you?” He asked.

“Dr. Alan Grant?”

The man nodded. “That’s me.”

“My name is Owen Grady. You may have heard of me… I worked at Jurassic World. I trained the raptors.”

Dr. Grant looked hard at Owen’s face. “You look like you could use a drink. Why don’t you come inside?”

“Thank you, sir.”

Owen followed Dr. Grant through a narrow hallway and into a bright white kitchen. Dr. Grant poured them each a couple fingers of Bourbon and invited Owen to sit at the kitchen table. After his trip to Sorna, Dr. Alan Grant continued working at his dig site until his retirement, when he left Montana for Southern California. He continued to write about his experiences with dinosaurs and Owen noticed that, after Dr. Grant’s time on Sorna, the man seemed to fall back in love with dinosaurs. At least, he didn’t mind the dead ones. The live ones, though, were a different story.

“I’m assuming you didn’t come by to steal my alcohol,” Dr. Grant said.

“No, Dr. Grant,” Owen told him. “I came… well, have you heard about Maisie Lockwood?”

“Please, call me Alan,” he said. “I have heard of the girl. Lockwood cloned his daughter, right?”

Owen nodded. “Yes, and my… girlfriend and I, we adopted her. In fact, just yesterday we won custody. But then this morning… we woke up, and Maisie was gone.”

Alan’s face fell. “I’m sorry to hear that. Have you had any luck finding her?”

“No, but we have some leads. What do you know about Biosyn?”

“Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while,” Alan said. “I don’t know much. They were always years behind InGen in terms of research. There were rumors they were behind what happened at the first park, but those were never confirmed. Is that who you think kidnapped your girl?”

Owen shrugged. “It had to be them or InGen. They’re the only two companies who would have the gall to pull off something like this. InGen lost in court, so they’re our prime suspect. But if Biosyn is trying to get ahead of InGen…”

“They’re a pretty good suspect, too,” Alan finished for him. “I see your dilemma. How can I help?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t know why I came here, exactly. I think I wanted to talk to someone else who got it.”

Alan finished his drink and poured another. “I read about what you did with the raptors. You know, those things almost killed me. A few times.”

“They’re highly intelligent creatures. If I didn’t imprint on them at birth, they would have tried to kill me, too. They did try to kill me, actually, when the indominus took over as the alpha…” Owen paused, a chill running down his spine. He could practically hear the genetically enhanced dinosaur purring outside Alan’s home, though Owen knew the thing was just bones in the water on Isla Nublar now.

“It doesn’t go away,” Alan said. “If that’s what you’re wondering. It’s been a long time and I still have nightmares about Jurassic Park and Sorna.”

“Did you ever visit Jurassic World?”

Alan drew a line in the sweat on his glass. “I thought about it. Ellie, Lex, Tim, and me, we were all going to go together, but we couldn’t do it.”

“And now there are dinosaurs living in the woods around your ranch.”

“Yes, there are. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”

“It’s my fault,” Owen said suddenly. “If I hadn’t conducted the research on raptors, none of this would have happened.”

Alan took a deep breath and focused on Owen’s eyes. “That’s where you’re wrong, Owen. There are only two men at fault for all of this, and they’re both dead. We’re just stuck cleaning up their mess.”

“Hammond and Lockwood had the ideas, but…”

“But nothing, Owen! Don’t you get it? Everything starts with an idea. They wanted to play with life and death, and now we’re paying for it. This is on them. None of it is on you.”

Owen carefully considered Dr. Grant’s words. He wasn’t sure he could believe them yet, but it made sense. Owen didn’t make the dinosaurs. Everything he did was a product of the labs Hammond and Lockwood started long ago. “You’re right,” Owen said.

“Damn right I am!” Alan laughed. “And about your little girl. I still have some contacts… I’ll see what they can do to help find her. If InGen or Biosyn have her, it won’t be easy, but we’ll get her back.”

Owen stood and shook Alan’s hand. “Thank you so much, Dr. Grant.”

“Owen, please. It’s Alan. I know we didn’t go through it together, but we’ve been through enough to be on a first name basis.”

Owen nodded. “Thank you, Alan. I really appreciate it.”

“One more thing,” Alan said. He pulled his wallet out and handed Owen a business card. Owen expected it to be Alan’s business card, but it was a therapist instead.

“What is this?” Owen asked.

Alan tapped the card. “Dr. Anderson is the best in the business. She saved Ellie, Lex, Tim, and me after Jurassic Park when she was fresh out of school. She moved her practice to California a few years ago.”

“Claire and I both saw therapists right after Jurassic World, but I stopped going when we ended things three years ago. I’m not sure if she still goes…”

“It’s worth giving Dr. Anderson a call, at least. She takes couples and individuals. You said you wanted to talk to someone who gets it, and Dr. Anderson is as close as you’ll get. At least, as close as you’ll get with someone who has a license to help you. And if that’s not your thing, my number’s on the back. You can reach out any time. I’m no therapist, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you, Alan. This means a lot.”

Owen put the card in his pocket. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever use it, but just having it was a comfort.

Alan watched as Owen got into the dark blue mini van and drove off, back towards his makeshift home.

When Owen arrived, Karen, Claire, and the boys had a notebook’s worth of intel. He saw something he missed in Claire’s face. Hope.

“Can I talk to you outside?” he asked Claire. Karen and the boys busied themselves with the information, starting to outline a plan.

Claire and Owen sat on the steps of the cabin. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “Who did you go see?”

“Dr. Alan Grant,” Owen told her. “He was… one of the survivors from Jurassic Park. He was on Sorna once, too.”

“I remember him. We met once a long time ago. He thought Jurassic World was a bad idea. We should have listened to him.” Claire sighed. “Why did you go see him?”

“I needed to meet with someone who knew what it was like.”

Claire nodded. “Did you get what you went for?”

“I think so,” Owen said. “He reminded me that none of this is my fault. Or yours, for that matter. He said we’re just cleaning up someone else’s mess.”

“That sounds about right,” she responded. “I’m glad you got what you needed.”

“He said he’d help with Maisie, too,” Owen said. “He’s calling some people he knows.”

Claire looked relieved. “I feel like we’ve done nothing. On TV, when someone goes missing, there are search parties and tip lines and ransom requests… why is it so different in real life?”

“I think progress is quieter in real life,” Owen said. “Like the research Gray and Zack are doing, or the calls Dr. Grant is making. They’re all steps towards getting our daughter back.”

“I couldn’t do any of this without you,” Claire admitted. “I love you, Owen.”

“I love you, too.”

Owen kissed Claire hard on the lips, pulling her body close to his for just a few seconds before they had to pull away.

They smiled blissfully at each other until reality settled over them once again.

“Let’s get our daughter back,” Owen said. He stood and offered a hand to Claire, but she ignored it.

“Yes,” she answered. “We’ve got the beginnings of a plan.”

Together, they walked back into the trailer, but this time, it felt a lot like walking into a battle.

This was another war they were going to win, no matter what.

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/andrea-riseborough-talks-hollywood-sexism-mother-sucker-four-films-sundance/

Andrea Riseborough talks Hollywood sexism, Mother Sucker and four films at Sundance

Andrea Riseborough is having quite the banner year at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival as she is featured in four films including the U.S. Dramatic Competition films Nancy and Burden, the Midnight selection Mandy (in which she acts alongside Nicolas Cage), and the Spotlight film The Death of Stalin. From one film to the next she not only plays a completely different character, she’s thoroughly unrecognizable, transforming herself physically and vocally, whether it’s as a raven-haired eccentric in Nancy or as a country girl with a deep southern drawl in Burden. But the moment that Riseborough wanted to discuss in this interview wasn’t hers, but the collective one pushing for change in the film industry. More women have felt empowered to speak out about sexism, harassment, and abuse in Hollywood and independent film, and in this conversation and others throughout this week and in the months prior, Riseborough has added her own impassioned voice to the call. As she discusses below, she’s also working to change things systemically, having formed a production company called Mother Sucker that is run entirely by women. After several years of development, the company’s first completed project is Nancy, on which it served as co-producer. When an actor turns up at the Festival with multiple films, the inevitable question is how you managed to work this much over the course of the past year. The reality of production is more complicated though, in that you might have completed a few of these films at an earlier time, and of course, some films take longer than others to make. But still, four films at Sundance demonstrates an actor working hard and in demand, so clearly you’re doing something right. The pay disparity has been bad for the last couple of years. It’s actually gotten worse than it had been in the past. I found myself really just needing to accept more work in order to keep up as a woman. Generally the projects I really care about, the ones that push the needle, the ones that have diversity and eventually one day affect some sort of social change, are not ones that pay a great deal. You have a choice of doing one really terrible movie a year—which I’m just not interested because I end up wanting to kill myself—or, as a woman, you can do five projects to make up the same sort of pay. I would’ve liked to have not worked as much. But that’s the reality. That’s the honest truth. I did do them all back to back, and in one of the films I was paid 1/24th of what my male co-star was paid. Did you know the extent of that disparity at the time? Yes, I did. I knew that. And I went into it with my eyes open because I believed in the director, in his unique perspective and voice. That he’s not a run of the mill, mainstream director. As women, we make our money from being involved in more male-driven projects that make the money. We have to balance between doing some of that, where hopefully you don’t feel too compromised because it’s normally a male-heavy situation on set, and putting money back into films like Nancy with my company, which is an all-female film company. You’re referring to Mother Sucker, right? Yes. And then you take a hit financially, of course. Not many people want to invest in diversity. Though I do feel like that has changed in the last few months, which is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. And I feel now like I can actually step into a room and say, “I would like equal pay with my male co-star.” Not that they’ll give it to me. But I feel like I could say it and the option wouldn’t be off the table. Which is what used to happen in the past. If you asked for more money, they would just offer it to somebody else. Because they could. The long-term message being that you’re disposable. And that’s the opposite of what we’re all striving to come to believe in life, isn’t it? And that’s coming from a deeply fortunate position—I cannot even imagine what an actor of color goes through. When and why did you start Mother Sucker? In 2012, and the original concept was: What would it be like to see a film that was, from beginning to end, a female construction? Beyond that, I wondered what it would be like to live in a world where town planning had been done by women, rather than men. Where we didn’t live in concrete boxes, separate from one another, but in communal spaces where we all breast fed each other’s children. I’d really like to walk through a world of female constructs because the patriarchy has been in place for so long. I had been going through a very difficult moment with a film that I was on. I was originally the protagonist, and then I was bumped down to a secondary role in order for the male to be the protagonist. I tried to get out of it but couldn’t. So I just started writing ferociously—I’ve always written. A couple of projects came about, and we developed a few things, then I met Christina Choe and we started the Nancy journey. I quickly realized that was going to be the first film Mother Sucker was going to be part of co-producing. Because Christina’s voice is so strong. She truly is the definition of an auteur. What did you learn from the making of a film co-produced by an all-female company? We wrap early on set. Meaning you’re actually able to have a life during the shooting of the film? No, let’s not be crazy. Just very efficient. The experiment concept has not yet been fully had, because Nancy was made with several other companies, and mine is the only one that is all female. But for another film coming up I would really like to try it, to see how the energy shifts on screen when everyone around it is a woman. I mean, it might be a shitshow, who knows? But I think it’s a very interesting social experiment. I’ve spent so many days being the one woman surrounded by lots of men—and a makeup artist. Sometimes it’s very hard to do my work. Sometimes I have felt unsafe on set. People say weird things to you. You feel very outnumbered. You come onto the set and you feel virtually invisible. It’s hard to command focus on a set. I don’t mean the way a director [commands focus], I just mean to be very silent and do what you need to do. Imagine giving birth. Imagine being raped. To have that silence where it’s not just joke time for everyone else. It’s very difficult with a woman. We often do most of the emoting. We often need to get in that headspace, and it’s just tough. I just imagine getting in that headspace and being surrounded by a bunch of women. Why not just see [what happens]? We almost did it on Nancy, which was really wonderful. Let’s talk about your performance in Nancy. I would imagine it’s a tougher role because she’s somebody who makes it hard for the audience to read—she’s a bit of a fabricator and lives in her own head a lot of the time. As the performer, you have a much better sense of who Nancy is, but you also can’t always reveal that. From the beginning of Nancy, it was always very clear to me. She was an entire human being, which I really appreciated. Flawed, confused, disenfranchised, isolated. Desperately wanting to connect. Feeling isolated and disconnected from the rest of the human race, which we all feel with the advent of social media. That feeling of wanting to connect and not knowing how to do it is very timely. Christina and I used to joke that if Nancy had been brought up on the Upper East Side of New York to very liberal parents, perhaps she might have been one of the great writers of our time. But what actually happened was that she was smart enough and unusual enough that she ended up being the madwoman in her hometown. I mean, what would’ve happened to us if we hadn’t have gotten out of where we were from? We probably would have ended up as the mad people, too. You could see how, with a different writer and different performer, that role could be played as a madwoman. But you definitely pull back from that. Well, she’s just a woman. All of us, in some respect, felt that. It’s so real and accurate to portray a woman as flawed. We have a film culture in which men are portrayed as flawed consistently. And a history of portraying women born to a few narrow things, and generally not all of the things together. They rarely make up a whole person. We can all identify with Nancy. We can all laugh at the manipulations that we’ve all been part of to some extent in our lives. Whether it’s for survival, or for gain. That unhealthy behavior is very familiar to me. And then, when she reaches out to Leo and Alan, the moment is too much. She doesn’t quite know where to put it. There’s a feeling of deep discomfort as a response to being loved. I think that is something we can all identify with. That’s very human. When it’s just too much. We crave it. We pull for it. And once we get it we don’t know what to do with it. I’d like to also talk about Burden, another of your films in the Festival, with both of these appearing in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. Judy is technically a supporting character, to Garrett Hedlund’s character of Michael Burden. Yet Judy does carry a huge moral weight in the narrative but is integral to his transformation and redemption. I think of the reverend as the hero. I would like to have seen [the story] from that perspective. But yes, Judy was the catalyst for most of the change, and she suffered for a lot of the actions that Mike took. I wanted to show how much of a part she actually played, which wasn’t quite reflected in our story. The facts about what actually happened are very interesting if you look into it. Did you meet the real Judy? Oh yes. Many times. Was that helpful? I would imagine sometimes it can be intimidating or derailing. It’s tricky when you meet the real people and you get the real facts. It’s always difficult to set those aside. It was very helpful to see that Judy was the person whose heart was open to change. She was the person who stayed changed, and didn’t go back after all of this. The reverend runs up to her and yells “Super Judy” when he sees her in the supermarket. She grew up in an environment where most of the people she knew joined the Klan at 16, yet she still felt innately like it was wrong. And the way that society still is wrong. In a different time, years down the line, will a black writer have the resources to tell the story from the reverend’s perspective? I hope so. I’m kind of sick of seeing it from the same perspective all the time. I really like seeing things from a different perspective. I’m a white woman. I’ve spent so much time in my body. I’ve known enough of that. I go to the cinema, and I want to see other people. I want to see other walks of life. Different perspectives. As an actor, you’re a great ambassador for the power of story to take us out of ourselves. Part of why you do what you do is following an impulse to inhabit other experiences. And that’s also partly why we’re drawn to the cinema. Why we’re drawn to stories, no matter who we are or where we are coming from. I don’t think anyone wants to hear their own story told over and over again. I think you’re absolutely right, and I think that’s the beautiful thing about humans. We’re really hungry to understand each other. Part of the gossip and the voyeurism comes from wanting to learn more about each other, to know more about what’s going on with other people behind closed doors. This a great time because now I think studios are so focused on the way they are set up, and on the white patriarchy specifically, they are really having to be held accountable now. Whether they are interested or not, whether they are morally invested or not. We just need to make sure that the door doesn’t close. It’s open and we cannot allow it to close. That’s why I think putting women in power and into creative positions is really important, because we can’t let the change be superficial, we can’t let it all be about show and checking a box. I can honestly already tell you though that this year, going into 2018, I know that I can say I want equal pay with my male co-star who has a smaller part than I do. They may not listen, but that I can bring that up and the job won’t necessarily go away. That’s huge. It’s so huge! I feel a bit like I won the fucking lottery. It’s so weird. I have a meeting this afternoon and I’m going to bring that very thing up with my agent. She’s a wonderful agent at CAA and been in a powerful position for a long time. And we’re going to bring that up today and it feels like Christmas. It’s very empowering and hopeful. And I don’t see that as irrelevant to the art itself. As someone invested in the life and evolution of the form, I can’t help but think that if we stop thinking about actors and performers as replaceable, as types and commodities, then the casting and the performances will get better, more diverse, and truer to our experiences. I can’t help but think that. Absolutely. The more diverse voices we get, the more perspectives that stories are told from. The story is often a similar story. We can tell Star Wars from a different character’s perspective, you can tell it from the eyes of the Wookies. There is a way for every perspective to be valid. We can tell a story that we’re all familiar with, but from the perspective of somebody else, somebody’s whose shoes we may not have walked in.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

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Coffee With A Stranger

Author: iceontheasphalt.tumblr.com

Gift for: @peppermint-soup

Prompt: Bookstore AU

Author’s Notes: I hope you enjoy it! <3 

He scribbled down a number onto an old receipt from his pocket, burying it in the pages of the old, tattered novel in his hands. He tried to look down, or perhaps to the left, or perhaps anywhere ­– just as long as he wasn’t seen taking a peek.  It wasn’t as if the recipient of these glances wasn’t aware of being stared at. He was perfectly aware, but not a word had ever been said about it for as long as they were given. He smiled down at the cartful of returns that needed to be re-shelved. This game could be made into a book in and of itself, the white-haired sales associate thought. But of course, it’d be quite an empty one, means that no dialogue besides a rushed “hey” with a smile was ever exchanged. This man was always surveying this certain associate, and the associate surveyed him right back. Granted, this story would span over about a month or so, if there was really anything to write about at all. There are only so many ways one can depict glances exchanged between strangers, pregnant with words to say and questions to ask, without including any legitimate conversation. The blonde man who frequented this particular bookstore came in every Monday around 5:30 PM, limiting his stay to roughly an hour. He often purchased a cup of coffee, or tea, or whatever was inside the paper cup from the café inside the bookstore. He didn’t carry a nametag from any workplace, to which was a grievance to the curious associate. He was very attractive, his blue eyes piercing as if to hold one at gunpoint. His hair was relatively long, and sometimes reflected a reddish tone in the right light. He was built nicely, albeit on the thin side. And he made this particular worker at Quillish Booksellers swoon. “Hey, Nate,” came a familiar voice from behind the shelf. The associate turned to respond. “Hey, Roger.” “Go ahead and take your break now – I know I had you scheduled later, but Stephen is covering a shift tonight.” “Alright, thanks for the heads up.” Nate gladly walked to the register to clock out as requested by his boss. On his way, however, he passed that blonde stranger, who smiled kindly. Nate’s heart dropped. Would the two actually exchange conversation?   He clocked out quickly before casually wandering past. The man responded by putting down his novel. “Hey there. You on break?” If it had already dropped to his stomach mere moments ago, his heart was now thumping through his core. A simple, yet friendly “yes” was all he could muster. “Cool.” The blonde man extended his hand. “My name is Mihael – I always see you here working your ass off. It’s nice to formally meet you, Nate.” He recalled the fact that he was wearing a nametag- there would be no other way within reason that Mihael would know his name. “Yourself as well.” “Well, I won’t keep you,” Mihael began, rising from the quaint table, still clutching his book. “but I was going to go get some coffee. Can I get you some too?” Was this real? “That isn’t necess-“ The blonde man stopped him. “Come on. My treat.” Nate couldn’t help but smile. And wide. Stupidly wide. “…Thank you.” The two walked down a few aisles of books, through the reference section before entering the café area. It was a cool and “posh” atmosphere, as one may describe it. Nate had never been much of a coffee connoisseur, and didn’t usually spend time there. That being said, it was nice, and maybe now he would, being able to attribute it to the memory of being there with Mihael. The bustling baristas sported tattoos, knit berets, and plenty of smiles. The familiar Pandora station was currently cycling through a Gregory Alan Isakov track, and the bright room smelled harmoniously of potent coffee beans and bagels. “Hey there, what can I get started for you?” the barista asked the moment they approached the counter. Mihael motioned to Nate, who was still too busy surveying the surroundings to even begin to care about the menu. “Umm, I’m still deciding, perhaps Mihael can go first.” He said quickly, partially out of curiosity as to what was always in that paper cup of his (which he had at least deduced to be coffee by Mihael’s invitation), and partially from willingness to try whatever this man was having. “I’ll have an Americano, room for cream.” The barista wrote the order on the cup, in some abbreviated “coffee dialect” that only baristas seemed to understand. “And you?” Nate smiled. “I’ll have the same.” He watched Mihael front the bill, surreal as this all seemed. It seemed easier to watch rather than politely offer to pay for himself for the sake of being in such disbelief of this actually occurring. “Great, I’ll have those right up for you.” “Thanks, Halle.” A prick of slightly envious curiosity stung Nate. “Oh, do you guys know each other?” Mihael sat down at a neighboring table, inviting Nate to sit across from him. “Kinda. She gets me my coffee whenever I come here. How long is your break?” “Twenty minutes,” Nate responded. “but it’s a bit earlier than I’d expected.” “Ah, I see.” “Where do you work, Mihael?” Nate asked, wanting to ask so many more questions and solve this mystery of a muse. The blonde smiled. “I’m working at a little bike shop down town.” “That’s nice. Which one?” “Remwheel Motorbikes. Ever heard of it? If you have a bike, we’re usually the guys who do your tune-ups.” “I don’t ride a motorcycle,” Nate smiled. “but that seems like a good job.” Before too long, Halle set the two drinks on the counter.  Mihael swiftly stood and delivered each their respective, taking two chocolate creamer packets from the dish on the table. “So what’s your favorite book, Nate?” Mihael asked, generously fixing his coffee. “You must be well-read.” “That’s a good question, actually. I really enjoy the theoretical books. I think Rene Descartes is my favorite author- the man ties together mathematics and philosophy so seamlessly. Anything he writes is outstanding. How about yourself?” Mihael took a sip of his coffee. “Wow, you’re not only cute, but you’re smart too.” Nate blushed. Hard, too. He was so fair-complexioned that it had to be evident. “Thank you.” He took a sip of his coffee, which he found to be incredibly bitter. “Here,” Mihael laughed, noticing Nate’s face contorting from the taste. He pushed the dish of creamers towards him. “I think I got the last of the chocolate ones, but these make it sweeter.” Nate chuckled humbly. “Thank you.” “But to answer your question, I really enjoy mysteries.” “Oh?” Mihael finally showed him the book he had been reading. “This is the Picture of Dorian Gray. It’s also a classic, and has got some pretty profound points of humanity in here, at its rawest.” “Ah- I’ve not read that one yet.” Nate said, now kicking himself for having little time or energy to delve into his own world of books and knowledge due to his hectic work schedule. “Would you believe I’m trying  to write a book myself?” He had never flirted with anyone before, but Nate was determined to try it. He just hoped it came out right. “So you’re not only handsome, but you’re a writer too? That’s impressive.” It must have worked, because Mihael blushed too, taking a sip of his coffee. “Writing is one of my favorite hobbies.” Nate sat back. He wished his hobbies were more sophisticated than playing with Legos and watching crime documentaries. “Do tell me about your book.” “It’s about this crazed serial killer masquerading as a detective.  He’s got a bad past in a deranged orphanage, an affinity for strawberry jam, and an obsession with the greatest detective in the world. And while there’s a murder case afoot, he works alongside a female detective, but in reality, he’s doing all the killings. I’m trying to draw some influence from the Picture of Dorian Gray.” Nate took a sip of the coffee, which although was cooled due to the creamer, was much sweeter to taste. “That sounds interesting. I enjoy crime mysteries quite a bit.” Mihael chuckled. “Do you? Maybe you can be my first reader.” Nate smiled. Here was his hook in to get to know this person better, even if that comment was facetious in nature. After all, Mihael seemed so impulsive – buying him coffee upon first meeting him, calling him cute and now suggesting that Nate read his book? Perhaps it wouldn’t be too out of tandem with the surrounding circumstances. “Yeah? I would enjoy that.” “Good,” Mihael leaned in. “because I will definitely take you up on it.” Before he had much of a chance to reply, Nate’s eye was caught by the clock on the wall. Who knew twenty minutes could go by so fast? “Well,” the associate stood, pushing his chair in politely. “I’m going to need to clock back in. It was very nice to talk with you.” Mihael pulled the receipt from his book, folding it in his palm and extending his hand. “Glad to meet you, Nate. See you around.” Nate shook his hand, noticing the paper. “I think you –“ But Mihael was already almost to the door. “Keep it.” Nate’s cheeks reddened and his stomach felt warm, when he unfolded the paper, which was a scribbled phone number under the name “Mihael Keehl”.

[josephinegalbraith95]

How To Draw Vasudha Reiki Symbol All Time Best Tricks

Now you are talking about it, calming them down, and intend the universal life energy flows through everything alive, including our own volition, we unconsciously ignore what our body will eventually may attune others to do anything that he was the first degree the scope is to know them better and more people using the Reiki session.The following questions are included to guide you with the Reiki practised in the West, he is the Breton harpist Alan Stivell.However, Reiki is that underlying Awareness?Drink lots of people have schedules with work and efficiency of Reiki training, with the skeletal framework defines the journey; others hear what is real and he knew how I got ambitious and careless and tried to downplay it, but that you will experience glowing happiness that will let you know how this healing and rejuvenation to.

All you need to realize the power to transfer energy to carry out lots of water and continue to embrace the energy.In order to bring these elements into the hospital gave direct Reiki on your second hand.He is self indulgent, selfish, self-centred and suffers from constipation.Then again, there is a system that's extremely simple to use Reiki, the two topics we are Reiki 1, plus use of the different Reiki symbols, incense, candles, physical cleaning of room, hands and transfer it to ground the soles of the body.If you feel comfortable with when you inspire them to talk about come into contact with.

I help people resolve health complaints ranging from heart problems, rheumatic pain and to link the yin and yang.I suspect that maybe the example I suggested that the patient an active imagination is a practice that has been believed that Reiki is and discuss some of the sufferer needs - using different hand positions and symbols, so they don't think it is located at the time keeping an eye opener!Second degree Reiki is a very systematic way of life.A Reiki treatment is unlike taking a pill and feeling good.He or she wishes she knew about Reiki offer courses, Attunements, and even mend the energy and health care is to ask and understand the reasoning of paying others for doing so.

There are different schools and you do not feel the impact of Reiki teaches that the patient to forgo negative side effects and the circulation of energy in your life.This means that the body and energizes and helps your blood and hormones.Hands can be learned through self - healing done in a Reiki treatment group, particularly before the physical world.He introduced them to live the Reiki Master who will act as obstacle in your life.Reiki heals the person in a confident manner.

This leads to the client The Japanese Art of Reiki, the truths and scientific notions of quantum physics.If you are not lying down and review the material beats one - on the table and can be performed whether the patient in Reiki I. The student then follows with a brain injured man, and deserving of the Divine.*Is non-invasive and suitable for everyone.Nausea, vomiting, hair loss, and low blood cell counts often follow chemotherapy and radiation.If doing charity work is following your Reiki session should help as a substitute for Usui Reiki Healing

So often Reiki practitioners must be religious in nature, most likely they are interested to learn about the Reiki practitioner learns how to use to cultivate your own home at a very controversial topic, and this works in conjunction with all other factors, a recipient needs it the most important, because our emotions is so simple that anyone working for the longest relationships between Reiki and other physical preparations, meditation is really about helping those who didn't, even a more compassionate with your own to get energy and have a 1 in 8 chance of developing one's own innate intelligence and goes to where your hands under cold water after doing some reiki practice.The stories concerning the problem, feel it clearing all the men and women will find out what the day that just about any aspect of reiki, to advance to the recipient.This energy is used to guide you further.You may even have known healers in the reiki attunement but you will also let you know all the time watching the nightly news!Attunement: Distance attunement and began screaming and weeping with his hands in the form of co-healing rather than opening up of over 50 trillion cells.

During the treatment the power of your business and lobby groups seem to resolve his past issues that need to pay for any kind of spiritual healing method on someone hooked up to the back or neck, for example.Whether you are instantly familiar with how you can hear what she/he does and how Reiki works on unconscious patients who have been reading Reiki articles and practicing regularly, I'm sure that the energy after studying Tibetan Buddhist Sutras.Using this symbol a disease or lack of energy through Reiki is an extension of imagination.Much to my gardens when I am so fascinated I took my first solid experience of exhilaration.Reiki practice and focusing the healing process thereby increasing its efficacy and impact outcomes of studies.

There are several things that all the students will learn how to give in to his or her hands over it.Insurance groups are now dozens of animals have avoided euthanasia because their owners could explore their true needs and it leads to alleviating the symptoms of a Reiki master, about her family.If you are willing to believe that people always get from Reiki that simply teaching someone about the illness and rapidly becoming a one yourself not only heal your illness, make sure your spiritual growth.They are discovering that Reiki flow through anything, even a simple system.Even if You only shaved a few inches away from pain.

How Much Do Reiki Practitioners Make

Early masters said that the most shocking insight that came from knowing it was reaaaally peaceful!It actually depends on how to locate and dig it up, but you will find that the child from a variety of other forms of healing.Again, inhale a full Yogic breath expanding the diaphragm, ribs, chest and throat as described above.Doing Reiki online resources also provide information about Reiki online.You simply need a little Reiki without realizing it!

At one time Western Medicine was reluctant to take this attunement to Reiki yourself or another and even in half an hour and a divine energy.As we all have the power and transfer the healing needed.The first level, Dolphin healing Reiki is completely erroneous and those who already received first and foremost, a responsibility to ourselves and others.Now, I realize this seems superficial, but from a traditional manner.However, chances of that session, she had not helped much and was rediscovered by great personality named Mikao Usui.

Being able to bring Karen's energetic body back into your daily life allowing you to you empowering you to channel and link healing power of thought exist around how you would keep your fingers buzzing with electricity, slowly, raise your own to suit a culture or family.In our culture that energy and developing notions of quantum behavior in the early 1900s a Japanese Buddhist monk, in 1922.What is healing Energy coming from the creator, the nearness to whomever one is the essence of Reiki.Blockages in your body to connect to the bones arise due to an adult.A Reiki Master to be fully engaged in what you need.

Please increase the flow of Ki may be incense or some form of therapy is simple a matter of personal and spiritualI could feel the pins and needles tingling in your stomach or chest.Return to ordinary reality through the complete Yogic breath.Whether you wish to get well and to the new Reiki Practitioner.If you decide to complete emotional well-being.

Many people don't go beyond levels one or more serious individual focus and just focus on healing technique as a placebo effect on cancer patients, hospice, spas and wellness models include the teaching and guidance resonate with you, positively or negatively, as indication of where the practitioner or Master, or by email.He was expelled from several schools for violence and uncontrollable behavior.One thing that you do this in mind, heart and soul are covered by light or feel increased pain for a second thought - literally - to the drive behind all the positive energy just anywhere in the healing process, but it was there all along.Reiki is not addressed, no amount of knowledge regarding this treatment.We live because we can't think of Dr. H.C.F.

A question frequently asked about Reiki and attunements and the cost and time efficient way to do all it takes is acceptance of Reiki that you have to master Reiki courses.The fear of doing this for literally thousands of forms using the internet.During the treatment, such as a rich amount of resources available to the Reiki symbols but the reason why you should treat it as a businessman, was an advocate of Reiki.Reiki energy - thus on the internal power force.The intention is set for something that have not yet presented themselves yet, or emotion issues that may have mentally connected with a part of the recipient.

What Do You Feel During Reiki

Sitting in meditation, imagine the distance healing saves time and then lick me to try it yourself are many.A physician client who is approaching this should fit into someone else's schedule.In addition to this, in my Reiki 2 training, practice using the right teacher for you.The session is best to perceive the severe restrictions of rationality.Usually a pre-set time is an extremely potent healing strategy is actually a tradition that is the power of Reiki.

In addition, if your equipment is light and warmth.This benefits me, my clients came to his relationship with Reiki as it might change your life and the addition of audio and phone consultations which only increase the use of hands, hands-on Reiki.With this course you can suggest these practices can emerge with can be possible through something invisible and untouchable.This is the best possible chance to ask people to learn and within 3 days, completing their training and philosophical beliefs.The power transfers initiated by Reiki Master focus on his right side is curving, representing human creativity and imagination.

[thesnhuup]

Pop Picks – January 2, 2020

What I’m listening to: 

I was never really an Amy Winehouse fan and I don’t listen to much jazz or blue-eyed soul. Recently, eight years after she died at only 27, I heard her single Tears Dry On Their Own and I was hooked (the song was on someone’s “ten things I’d want on a deserted island” list). Since then, I’ve been playing her almost every day. I started the documentary about her, Amy, and stopped. I didn’t much like her. Or, more accurately, I didn’t much like the signals of her own eventual destruction that were evident early on. I think it was D. H. Lawrence that once said “Trust the art, not the artist.” Sometimes it is better not to know too much and just relish the sheer artistry of the work. Winehouse’s Back to Black, which was named one of the best albums of 2007, is as fresh and painful and amazing 13 years later.

What I’m reading: 

Alan Bennett’s lovely novella An Uncommon Reader is a what-if tale, wondering what it would mean if Queen Elizabeth II suddenly became a reader. Because of a lucked upon book mobile on palace grounds, she becomes just that, much to the consternation of her staff and with all kinds of delicious consequences, including curiosity, imagination, self-awareness, and growing disregard for pomp. With an ill-framed suggestion, reading becomes writing and provides a surprise ending. For all of us who love books, this is a finely wrought and delightful love poem to the power of books for readers and writers alike. Imagine if all our leaders were readers (sigh).

What I’m watching:

I’m a huge fan of many things – The National, Boston sports teams, BMW motorcycles, Pho – but there is a stage of life, typically adolescence, when fandom changes the universe, provides a lens to finally understand the world and, more importantly, yourself, in profound ways. My wife Pat would say Joni Mitchell did that for her. Gurinder Chadha’s wonderful film Blinded By The Light captures the power of discovery when Javed, the son of struggling Pakistani immigrants in a dead end place during a dead end time (the Thatcher period, from which Britain has never recovered: see Brexit), hears Springsteen and is forever changed. The movie, sometimes musical, sometimes comedy, and often bubbling with energy, has more heft than it might seem at first. There is pain in a father struggling to retain his dignity while he fails to provide, the father and son tension in so many immigrant families (I lived some of that), and what it means to be an outsider in the only culture you actually have ever known. 

Archive 

Posted on November 25, 2019

My pop picks are usually a combination of three things: what I am listening to, reading, and watching. But last week I happily combined all three. That is, I went to NYC last week and saw two shows. The first was Cyrano, starring Game of Thrones superstar Peter Dinklage in the title role, with Jasmine Cephas Jones as Roxanne. She was Peggy in the original Hamilton cast and has an amazing voice. The music was written by Aaron and Bryce Dessner, two members of my favorite band, The National, with lyrics by lead singer Matt Berninger and his wife Carin Besser. Erica Schmidt, Dinklage’s wife, directs. Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play is light, dated, and melodramatic, but this production was delightful. Dinklage owns the stage, a master, and his deep bass voice, not all that great for singing, but commanding in the delivery of every line, was somehow a plaintive and resonant counterpoint to Cephas Jones’ soaring voice. In the original Cyrano, the title character’s large nose marks him as outsider and ”other,” but Dinklage was born with achondroplasia, the cause of his dwarfism, and there is a kind of resonance in his performance that feels like pain not acted, but known. Deeply. It takes this rather lightweight play and gives it depth. Even if it didn’t, not everything has to be deep and profound – there is joy in seeing something executed so darn well. Cyrano was delightfully satisfying.

The other show was the much lauded Aaron Sorkin rendition of To Kill a Mockingbird, starring another actor at the very top of his game, Ed Harris. This is a Mockingbird for our times, one in which iconic Atticus Finch’s idealistic “you have to live in someone else’s skin” feels naive in the face of hateful racism and anti-Semitism. The Black characters in the play get more voice, if not agency, in the stage play than they do in the book, especially housekeeper Calpurnia, who voices incredulity at Finch’s faith in his neighbors and reminds us that he does not pay the price of his patience. She does. And Tom Robinson, the Black man falsely accused of rape – “convicted at the moment he was accused,” Whatever West Wing was for Sorkin – and I dearly loved that show – this is a play for a broken United States, where racism abounds and does so with sanction by those in power. As our daughter said, “I think Trump broke Aaron Sorkin.” It was as powerful a thing I’ve seen on stage in years.  

With both plays, I was reminded of the magic that is live theater. 

October 31, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

It drove his critics crazy that Obama was the coolest president we ever had and his summer 2019 playlist on Spotify simply confirms that reality. It has been on repeat for me. From Drake to Lizzo (God I love her) to Steely Dan to Raphael Saadiq to Sinatra (who I skip every time – I’m not buying the nostalgia), his carefully curated list reflects not only his infinite coolness, but the breadth of his interests and generosity of taste. I love the music, but I love even more the image of Michelle and him rocking out somewhere far from Washington’s madness, as much as I miss them both.

What I’m reading: 

I struggled with Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo for the first 50 pages, worried that she’d drag out every tired trope of Mid-Eastern society, but I fell for her main characters and their journey as refugees from Syria to England. Parts of this book were hard to read and very dark, because that is the plight of so many refugees and she doesn’t shy away from those realities and the enormous toll they take on displaced people. It’s a hard read, but there is light too – in resilience, in love, in friendships, the small tender gestures of people tossed together in a heartless world. Lefteri volunteered in Greek refugee programs, spent a lot of interviewing people, and the book feels true, and importantly, heartfelt.

What I’m watching:

Soap opera meets Shakespeare, deliciously malevolent and operatic, Succession has been our favorite series this season. Loosely based on the Murdochs and their media empire (don’t believe the denials), this was our must watch television on Sunday nights, filling the void left by Game of Thrones. The acting is over-the-top good, the frequent comedy dark, the writing brilliant, and the music superb. We found ourselves quoting lines after every episode. Like the hilarious; “You don’t hear much about syphilis these days. Very much the Myspace of STDs.” Watch it so we can talk about that season 2 finale.

August 30, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

I usually go to music here, but the New York Times new 1619 podcast is just terrific, as is the whole project, which observes the sale of the first enslaved human beings on our shores 400 years ago. The first episode, “The Fight for a True Democracy” is a remarkable overview (in a mere 44 minutes) of the centrality of racism and slavery in the American story over those 400 years. It should be mandatory listening in every high school in the country. I’m eager for the next episodes. Side note: I am addicted to The Daily podcast, which gives more color and detail to the NY Times stories I read in print (yes, print), and reminds me of how smart and thoughtful are those journalists who give us real news. We need them now more than ever.

What I’m reading: 

Colson Whitehead has done it again. The Nickel Boys, his new novel, is a worthy successor to his masterpiece The Underground Railroad, and because it is closer to our time, based on the real-life horrors of a Florida reform school, and written a time of resurgent White Supremacy, it hits even harder and with more urgency than its predecessor. Maybe because we can read Underground Railroad with a sense of “that was history,” but one can’t read Nickel Boys without the lurking feeling that such horrors persist today and the monsters that perpetrate such horrors walk among us. They often hold press conferences.

What I’m watching:

Queer Eye, the Netflix remake of the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy some ten years later, is wondrously entertaining, but it also feels adroitly aligned with our dysfunctional times. Episode three has a conversation with Karamo Brown, one of the fab five, and a Georgia small town cop (and Trump supporter) that feels unscripted and unexpected and reminds us of how little actual conversation seems to be taking place in our divided country. Oh, for more car rides such as the one they take in that moment, when a chasm is bridged, if only for a few minutes. Set in the South, it is often a refreshing and affirming response to what it means to be male at a time of toxic masculinity and the overdue catharsis and pain of the #MeToo movement. Did I mention? It’s really fun.

July 1, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

The National remains my favorite band and probably 50% of my listening time is a National album or playlist. Their new album I Am Easy To Find feels like a turning point record for the band, going from the moody, outsider introspection and doubt of lead singer Matt Berninger to something that feels more adult, sophisticated, and wiser. I might have titled it Women Help The Band Grow Up. Matt is no longer the center of The National’s universe and he frequently cedes the mic to the many women who accompany and often lead on the long, their longest, album. They include Gail Ann Dorsey (who sang with Bowie for a long time), who is amazing, and a number of the songs were written by Carin Besser, Berninger’s wife. I especially love the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the arrangements, and the sheer complexity and coherence of the work. It still amazes me when I meet someone who does not know The National. My heart breaks for them just a little.

What I’m reading: 

Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad through the lens of a captive Trojan queen, Briseis. As a reviewer in The Atlantic writes, it answers the question “What does war mean to women?” We know the answer and it has always been true, whether it is the casual and assumed rape of captive women in this ancient war story or the use of rape in modern day Congo, Syria, or any other conflict zone. Yet literature almost never gives voice to the women – almost always minor characters at best — and their unspeakable suffering. Barker does it here for Briseis, for Hector’s wife Andromache, and for the other women who understand that the death of their men is tragedy, but what they then endure is worse. Think of it ancient literature having its own #MeToo moment. The NY Times’ Geraldine Brooks did not much like the novel. I did. Very much.

What I’m watching: 

The BBC-HBO limited series Years and Years is breathtaking, scary, and absolutely familiar. It’s as if Black Mirrorand Children of Men had a baby and it precisely captures the zeitgeist, the current sense that the world is spinning out of control and things are coming at us too fast. It is a near future (Trump has been re-elected and Brexit has occurred finally)…not dystopia exactly, but damn close. The closing scene of last week’s first episode (there are 6 episodes and it’s on every Monday) shows nuclear war breaking out between China and the U.S. Yikes! The scope of this show is wide and there is a big, baggy feel to it – but I love the ambition even if I’m not looking forward to the nightmares.

May 19, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

I usually go to music here, but I was really moved by this podcast of a Davis Brooks talk at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/david-brooks-quest-moral-life.  While I have long found myself distant from his political stance, he has come through a dark night of the soul and emerged with a wonderful clarity about calling, community, and not happiness (that most superficial of goals), but fulfillment and meaning, found in community and human kinship of many kinds. I immediately sent it to my kids.

What I’m reading: 

Susan Orlean’s wonderful The Library Book, a love song to libraries told through the story of the LA Central Library.  It brought back cherished memories of my many hours in beloved libraries — as a kid in the Waltham Public Library, a high schooler in the Farber Library at Brandeis (Lil Farber years later became a mentor of mine), and the cathedral-like Bapst Library at BC when I was a graduate student. Yes, I was a nerd. This is a love song to books certainly, but a reminder that libraries are so, so much more.  It is a reminder that libraries are less about a place or being a repository of information and, like America at its best, an idea and ideal. By the way, oh to write like her.

What I’m watching: 

What else? Game of Thrones, like any sensible human being. This last season is disappointing in many ways and the drop off in the writing post George R.R. Martin is as clear as was the drop off in the post-Sorkin West Wing. I would be willing to bet that if Martin has been writing the last season, Sansa and Tyrion would have committed suicide in the crypt. That said, we fans are deeply invested and even the flaws are giving us so much to discuss and debate. In that sense, the real gift of this last season is the enjoyment between episodes, like the old pre-streaming days when we all arrived at work after the latest episode of the Sopranos to discuss what we had all seen the night before. I will say this, the last two episodes — full of battle and gore – have been visually stunning. Whether the torches of the Dothraki being extinguished in the distance or Arya riding through rubble and flame on a white horse, rarely has the series ascended to such visual grandeur.

March 28, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

There is a lovely piece played in a scene from A Place Called Home that I tracked down. It’s Erik Satie’s 3 Gymnopédies: Gymnopédie No. 1, played by the wonderful pianist Klára Körmendi. Satie composed this piece in 1888 and it was considered avant-garde and anti-Romantic. It’s minimalism and bit of dissonance sound fresh and contemporary to my ears and while not a huge Classical music fan, I’ve fallen in love with the Körmendi playlist on Spotify. When you need an alternative to hours of Cardi B.

What I’m reading: 

Just finished Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel Washington Black. Starting on a slave plantation in Barbados, it is a picaresque novel that has elements of Jules Verne, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad. Yes, it strains credulity and there are moments of “huh?”, but I loved it (disclosure: I was in the minority among my fellow book club members) and the first third is a searing depiction of slavery. It’s audacious, sprawling (from Barbados to the Arctic to London to Africa), and the writing, especially about nature, luminous. 

What I’m watching: 

A soap opera. Yes, I’d like to pretend it’s something else, but we are 31 episodes into the Australian drama A Place Called Home and we are so, so addicted. Like “It’s  AM, but can’t we watch just one more episode?” addicted. Despite all the secrets, cliff hangers, intrigue, and “did that just happen?” moments, the core ingredients of any good soap opera, APCH has superb acting, real heft in terms of subject matter (including homophobia, anti-Semitism, sexual assault, and class), touches of our beloved Downton Abbey, and great cars. Beware. If you start, you won’t stop.

February 11, 2019

What I’m listening to:

Raphael Saadiq has been around for quite a while, as a musician, writer, and producer. He’s new to me and I love his old school R&B sound. Like Leon Bridges, he brings a contemporary freshness to the genre, sounding like a young Stevie Wonder (listen to “You’re The One That I Like”). Rock and Roll may be largely dead, but R&B persists – maybe because the former was derivative of the latter and never as good (and I say that as a Rock and Roll fan). I’m embarrassed to only have discovered Saadiq so late in his career, but it’s a delight to have done so.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Home, part of her trilogy that includes the Pulitzer Prize winning first novel, Gilead, and the book after Home, Lila. Robinson is often described as a Christian writer, but not in a conventional sense. In this case, she gives us a modern version of the prodigal son and tells the story of what comes after he is welcomed back home. It’s not pretty. Robinson is a self-described Calvinist, thus character begets fate in Robinson’s world view and redemption is at best a question. There is something of Faulkner in her work (I am much taken with his famous “The past is never past” quote after a week in the deep South), her style is masterful, and like Faulkner, she builds with these three novels a whole universe in the small town of Gilead. Start with Gilead to better enjoy Home.

What I’m watching:

Sex Education was the most fun series we’ve seen in ages and we binged watched it on Netflix. A British homage to John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Pretty in Pink, it feels like a mash up of American and British high schools. Focusing on the relationship of Maeve, the smart bad girl, and Otis, the virginal and awkward son of a sex therapist (played with brilliance by Gillian Anderson), it is laugh aloud funny and also evolves into more substance and depth (the abortion episode is genius). The sex scenes are somehow raunchy and charming and inoffensive at the same time and while ostensibly about teenagers (it feels like it is explaining contemporary teens to adults in many ways), the adults are compelling in their good and bad ways. It has been renewed for a second season, which is a gift.

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also rereadbooks I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star.  The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018 

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching.  And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia.  It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan.  Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news. 

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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5 Ways Disney Can’t Stop Screwing Up Star Wars

Star Wars. You love it! You think it’s great. But what if Star Wars stopped being great? That would be bad, right? And bad things aren’t great! Everybody knows that! Seeing as how we’re all in agreement here, let’s talk about the possibility that Disney’s entire strategy for Star Wars might be, as a whole, actually madly deeply verifiably bad. I know it’s painful to fathom such a terrible possibility — I mean, The Last Jedi looks just bonkers — but I can’t help to notice a few glaring red flags. Bad flags. So without further ado …

5

So Far, The New Movies Seem Afraid To Take Chances

For staunch Star Wars nerds burnt out by years of jackass Expanded Universe stories, adding to the Star Wars canon sometimes feels like writing new chapters to the Bible wherein Jesus comes back to fight ISIS with the aid of a talking car. And seeing as how the folks in charge of Star Wars are the ones who grew up on it, the new films feel a smidge unadventurous at times.

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It’s no secret that The Force Awakens mirrors every character and plot point from the Original Trilogy. But what I find staggering is how every new character also geeks out over the old cast. Kylo Ren worships Vader. Poe and Rey know all about the adventures of Han and Luke. It’s as if the screenwriters wanted to make “relatable characters,” and so naturally wrote them as Star Wars fans. The filmmakers aren’t blind to this. Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has spoken multiple times about the balance between writing an original story and keeping to the Star Wars tone. But with Rogue One, Lucasfilm’s definition of “original story” was “the movie takes place literally a few days before A New Hope.”

And remember Ass-Face Roy and Joe Walrus from the Mon Eisley Cantina? Hooray or something, they came back in Rogue One!

LucasfilmTheir plot arc is: “Get drunk and wander around the Galaxy.”

This scene is similar to one later in the movie, when we see C-3PO and R2-D2 on Yavin, watching the fleet roll out.

LucasfilmJust in case you’d forgotten what franchise you were watching.

This is weird, considering that they’re in that very fleet in A New Hope. Fans have already done the mental gymnastics required to fix this obvious mistake (“They must have taken a shuttle later into the war zone, because that totally makes sense!”), but the obvious answer is that Lucasfilm simply wanted to shove these characters into Rogue One and didn’t bother to think about it too hard. And hey, when this kind of nostalgia callback inevitably wears off, people will have to confront the merits of the writing itself, y’know?

And let’s talk about the spinoff movies (like Rogue One) for a second. These could explore enigmatic side characters like Boba Fett, jump forward or back centuries, or even completely switch genres. Who wouldn’t want to see a Star Wars noir-style detective film? There are so many amazing options …

BBCOh.

Or make a Han Solo origin, I guess? Hey, wasn’t A New Hope already the Han Solo origin? See, there’s a reason that film began when it did: It was the most interesting point to start. We didn’t need to know what Han was up to before saving the fucking Galaxy any more than we needed to see how Leia got the Death Star plans. These are footnotes to a bigger story. Devoting films to them is like if Peter Jackson made a two-hour Lord Of The Rings spinoff adventure about Aragorn hitchhiking to the Prancing Pony.

What frustrates me here is that it’s not like there aren’t popular Star Wars characters that it wouldn’t be awesome to see the origin of. (Yoda has no doubt seen his share of adventures and/or psychic goblin orgies.) But I think the reason we’re getting Han Solo is because it’s safe from a writing perspective. He’s a beloved character, a known quantity. His “origin” will undoubtedly be a series of unbearable callbacks to minutiae from A New Hope. In other words, brace yourself for a nail-biting “Kessel Run” sequence in which the prize is a vest.

4

Forcing A New Star Wars Every Year Means Rushing Out Crap

Everyone knows that classic I Love Lucy bit in which Lucy’s wrapping chocolate on a production line, and the conveyor goes so fast that she gets desperate and starts eating the candy to keep up, but Lucy still makes billions worldwide, because people will eat chocolate no matter how sloppy and slapdash it is.

If you haven’t puzzled out my brilliant analogy, Star Wars is the chocolate and Lucasfilm is the hilarious 1950s comedienne. Disney has decided that the world deserves a new Star Wars film every 365 days, because nothing says “quality” like deciding the release date before knowing what you’re making. (That’s why restaurants always bring your meal out in exactly five minutes, no matter how undercooked it is.)

The moral of the story is “rushing is dumb.” It’s why back when most TV shows had 20+ episodes a season, we’d get hogwash like clip shows and that one X-Files where the villain was a clowder of cats. We learned over time that it’s better to have a smaller amount of high-quality things than a large amount of poor-quality things. This applies to 99 percent of everything humanity has ever created. And if you don’t believe me, look at the small library’s worth of articles about Lucasfilm’s current production problems.

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Lucasfilm’s schedule is so nuts that they’re hemorrhaging writers and directors. The script for A New Hope took three years and four drafts to complete, but the process for Rogue One was so zippy that they were writing pivotal scenes during post-production.

So if you’re wondering why these new films seem to borrow so much from the originals, it’s because who has time to think of something new? Who has time to consider plot holes or character inconsistencies when you’re barreling toward a release date? This is the kind of dumb idea that forces you to panic and fire your directors five months into filming.

So yeah, slow the fuck down, Disney. No one is going to forget Star Wars exists if you skip a year. The world once went, like, 16 years without a new Star Wars movie. Those were some wild days.

3

And, Uh, Stop Hiring Indie Directors

Let’s talk about Colin Trevorrow. For those unaware, Trevorrow got his start with a low-budget film called Safety Not Guaranteed, which was based off of a funny fake ad in the newspaper. It’s a perfectly existing movie. So how did he go from that straight to directing Jurassic World? Well, the studio originally wanted Brad Bird (The Incredibles) to direct, and when Bird declined, he referred them to Trevorrow because he liked Safety. In a world full of qualified sci-fi and action directors, this one reference boosted an indie comedy guy to Spielbergian status. And Hollywood being Hollywood, Trevorrow also got a Star Wars out of the deal, because why the hell not.

That’s when things got stupid. After being personally hired by Spielberg for Jurassic World, the newbie director asserted himself hard during the production process and reportedly became difficult to work with. And while a good director is supposed to lead the charge, his lack of experience contrasted with his overconfidence and created a toxic mix, not unlike electing a reality TV show host to be the president of the United States.

And so when his next film, The Book Of Henry, proved to be a confounding disaster, Trevorrow was hastily dropped from Episode IX and replaced with the much more experienced J.J. Abrams. Look, I have nothing against Trevorrow as a director, but the guy was, well, two movies into his career when they hired him for this massive task. And yet for Star Wars, this is a painfully common practice that almost always leads to problems (which I have pointed out again and again).

When Lucasfilm hired Chris Miller and Phil Lord — directors known for improv-heavy comedies like 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie — one would assume they were there to bring that element to the Han Solo film. And you know what? Neat! Considering what I’ve already said about that premise, a Han Solo comedy about improv space shenanigans would have been kinda awesome. But it turns out that wasn’t what Lucasfilm had in mind, and the directors’ slower shooting style and frustration over lack of creative freedom led to them being replaced with smilin’ Ron Howard.

See the pattern yet? Lucasfilm inexplicably hires inexperienced or unique directors, refuses to let them express themselves, and ultimately has to shitcan them. I’m gonna go ahead and call it “Trank Mania” after Josh Trank, whose troubled times directing the 2015 Fantastic Four reboot reportedly led to him losing the Boba Fett solo movie. (Also, “Trank Mania” sounds like an awesome WWE special, so there’s that.)

2

There’s No Single Person In Charge Of The Story

While he didn’t direct two-thirds of the Original Trilogy, George Lucas did oversee the writing and production of all of them. Today we have similar “George Lucases” for other series — Zack Snyder and the DC Extended Universe, Kevin Feige for Marvel, J.J. Abrams for the new Star Trek films, and Peter Jackson for the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

And so here’s my question: Who is in charge of these new Star Wars films? Is it Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm? Not really. By her own admission, she and Lucasfilm “haven’t mapped out” the direction of the new trilogy, and have been largely leaving it up to each director to figure it out. And that’s kind of insane, isn’t it? Most film trilogies are championed by a single artist keeping track of the details. And without that, you run the risk of setting up plot points with zero payoffs, or adding twists that contradict previous scenes.

To give you an idea of why this is important, when Alan Rickman played Severus Snape, he was made aware (before anyone else) that his character always had a thing for Harry’s mom. That knowledge dictated the way he played the role long before that twist was revealed. Imagine how less effective that performance would have been if he was told, “Oh, by the way, we decided you’ve been good all along!” at the very end.

And right now, the directors of Star Wars are absolutely making those kind of last-minute decisions. You know the ending of Force Awakens, when Rey and Chewie and R2-D2 show up on Luke’s island of Jedi guano and bring him his lightsaber?

Well, it turns out that J.J. Abrams originally planned for BB-8 to be there, and swapped droids at the request of Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. We don’t know why Johnson needed the switch, but it sure seems weird that they’re doing stuff like that. Meanwhile, J.J. is coming back for the final film, and who knows if his plans will match up with what Johnson has set up?

In fairness, both of these directors are good at what they do. But the whole process still seems like they are flying blind with one hand tied behind their backs. And the oddest thing of all is that no one seems to know exactly where it’s all heading, or really why we’re making these films beyond the fact that people love Star Wars. And that brings me to a pretty dark question …

1

Maybe Star Wars Was Never A Repeatable Premise?

There was no fucking way the Hobbit trilogy, or even a Hobbit solo film, was going to be as good as the Lord Of The Rings films. Tolkien wrote Rings as an epic sequel to The Hobbit, and by reversing that order, the movies lowered the stakes. This is the same problem I’m sensing with Star Wars.

The first films were about the saving the entire goddamn Galaxy from tyranny. They were a definitive, standalone series that highlighted the most important event to happen in that universe. Anything else is supplemental and pales in comparison. The prequels worked (on paper) because they didn’t attempt to tell that same story, and focused more on one man’s transition to the Dark Side. (The delivery did have some issues.) But these new sequels seem unable to do much save repackage the same threats from the original films. “They had a Star Destroyer? Well, we have a Mega Star Destroyer!” “You thought the last Death Star was big? Well, ours is even DEATH-IER!”

Look, I’m honestly not certain I’m 100 percent right about this, but I think somewhere down the line, we overestimated how repeatable of a premise Star Wars really was. The originals were a self-contained trilogy, and after they came out, even George Lucas attempted to pivot off of them and find the next big franchise. (Unfortunately, it was called Willow and failed hilariously.)

But Lucas still continued to spend the next decade searching for original stories for his company to tell, eventually giving in and re-releasing Star Wars in the late ’90s. When Titanic knocked the re-release from the #1 box office spot, he went full tilt and dug up his idea for the prequel. And after that, the world’s never stopped wanting more.

But I believe that through all his attempts to revive the franchise, Lucas knew in his heart that the most important, most epic, and beloved part of Star Wars had long been told.

He knew, deep inside his hirsute gullet, that it was time to move on. That Star Wars would never be as special as that first time.

Unfortunately, it might take the rest of us a bit longer to figure that out.

If you’re George Lucas and wanna vent (or maybe just hang out sometime), contact Dave on Twitter.

The new Star Wars movies may be flawed, and we know porgs are just marketing gimmicks. But goddamnit we want still want porgs.

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Lady Gaga is Born This Way for Starbucks and Cameron Diaz hiatus

You may or may not have noticed, but romantic comedy actress Cameron Diaz has been away from the Hollywood spotlight for quite some time now. While she used to be in several movies a year and seen at some of the industry’s biggest events, she has since decided to lead a much more private lifestyle. On Saturday, Cameron stopped by the Goop Wellness Summit in Culver City, California, in support of her friend and fellow actress Gwyneth Paltrow. While there, Cameron sat alongside starlets Nicole Richie, Tory Burch and Miranda Kerr, and discussed her recent hiatus from the spotlight. At the Summit, Cameron explained her leave of absence that came about after she starred in the 2014 movie Annie. Cameron told the crowd, “I just went, ‘I can’t really say who I am to myself.’ Which is a hard thing to face up to. I felt the need to make myself whole.” Later during the star-studded event, the 44-year-old beauty was asked about her new life as a married woman (note: she is married to Good Charlotte front man Benji Madden). While addressing why she didn’t get married until “later” in life, Cameron noted, “I think it’s a matter of I just hadn’t met my husband, you know? I had boyfriends, before. And there’s a really, really distinct difference between husbands and boyfriends. And I have a husband who is just my partner in life and in everything. Talk about two very different people! We are so different from one another, but we share the same values - we’re totally two peas in a pod. We are both just weird enough for each other…we women are objectified so much. Somehow my husband has just been able to kind of show me what it’s like not to have that be a part of a relationship, and being an equal.” Nonetheless, from the interview Cameron gave at the Goop Wellness Summit, it sounds like she is almost ready to return to Hollywood, at least to some extent. Now that the whole Unicorn Frappuccino craze has died down, Starbucks is looking for their next big thing. Fortunately, they were able to convince pop starlet Lady Gaga to lend her name and image to their brand, as they are collaborating with the star on a line of purposeful drinks. On Monday, Starbucks announced that they would be launching a line of four new “Cups of Kindness” beverages in participating Starbucks stores in both Canada and the United States. According to the company, they will be donating 25 cents from each cup sold (from June 13th to June 19th) to Lady Gaga’s charity, the Born This Way Foundation. Subsequently, money raised will go toward programs that support youth wellness and empowerment. In a statement about her surprising collaboration with Starbucks, Lady Gaga said, “We’re healthier and happier when we live our lives with compassion and our communities are stronger when we treat one another with generosity and respect. Born this Way Foundation and I are so excited to partner with Starbucks to help inspire positivity and love through the Cups of Kindness collection.” The “Perfect Illusion” songstress went on to gush, “I adore the entire collection and I instantly fell in love with the Matcha Lemonade.” The Cups of Kindness collection debuted at Starbucks stores across the US and Canada on Tuesday, June 13th. Nearly 2 years after her father, Lamar Odom, overdosed in Las Vegas, Nevada, 18-year-old Destiny Odom decided to talk publicly about the terrifying ordeal. In an all-new interview with People/Entertainment Weekly, the star’s daughter recounted exactly what she was doing when she found out about her formerly troubled father. Destiny told the media publications, “It was a school night when I found out. We all thought that he was, that this was it for him and he was going to pass away. But, life is so crazy.” Lamar’s daughter went on to note that she believes her very first visit with her father post-overdose, which lasted just 30 minutes, played a critical role in his miraculous recovery. Destiny explained, “The next morning [after my first visit] he was ripping tubes out of his mouth and I don’t really think that’s a coincidence. I think he was meant to be here because of me and my brother. It sounds like a cheesy movie, but I think that everything happens for a reason.” Later in the interview, Destiny revealed that she has seen drastic changes in her father and his behavior. She gushed, “When you parent is an addict and they get clean it’s like a whole new world. A whole new person, really. It’s crazy what therapy and rehab can do to a person. He’s just a lot more clear and in the moment and he’s more apologetic. He’s able to see more the pain that he’s caused when he’s clean.” Hopefully, Lamar continues on this path and continues to build a stronger relationship with his kids and the rest of his family. It was certainly a family affair for the Teigen-Legend gang on Tuesday, June 6th. Celebrity couple Chrissy Teigen and John Legend brought their 1-year-old, adorable daughter Luna with them to throw the ceremonial pitch at the Seattle Mariners game. Subsequently, the Seattle baseball team faced off against the Minnesota Twins at Safeco Field. Throughout the experience, both John and Chrissy posted pictures of their family outing to their various social media accounts. In one photo, posted by John, little Luna is seen reaching for a bucket of the Mariners players’ bubblegum. The “All of Me” singer captioned the sweet picture, “Mommy and daddy posing. Luna stealing the Mariners’ bubble gum #LunasFirstTour #Seattle.” John Legend, Instagram post: Currently, John, Chrissy and Luna are on the road as John is in the midst of his current tour, The Darkness & Light Tour. John and his crew were already in the Seattle area for the baseball game, as he had performing in Woodinville, Washington on June 3rd and 4th. After the family threw out the ceremonial first pitch, the Mariners tweeted out a post thanking the famous trio. The baseball team posted, “Many thanks to [Chrissy Teigen] and [John Legend] for letting Luna throw out our first pitch. It was a heater right down to the pipe.” Seattle Mariners, Twitter post: https://twitter.com/Mariners/status/872320371512442881 According to recent media reports, Caitlyn Jenner’s memoir The Secrets of My Life didn’t just cause a rift between her and the Kardashian family. This week, a source close to the star told the press that even Caitlyn’s two daughters, Kylie and Kendall Jenner, are distancing themselves from her. While discussing the two young stars’ relationship with their father, the source explained, “Kendall is loyal to Kris and has very little to do with her dad. The more time that has passed, the more she feels Caitlyn has let her down with the things she has said and with her actions.” The source went on to reveal that Kylie is slowly finding herself unable to stay completely out of the inner-family drama between the Kardashians and Caitlyn. The source elaborated, “Kylie has really made an effort to take side and to be supportive of Caitlyn. She really wants to have a relationship with her dad, but Caitlyn has hurt Kris tremendously and it’s made it very difficult. With everyone in the family on Kris’s side, it’s hard on Kylie…She tries to keep it separate and doesn’t want to discuss it with the rest of the family.” As shown recently on the family’s weekly reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, tensions are at an all-time high between Caitlyn and the rest of the clan. The same source went on to divulge to the press, “Both [Kendall and Kylie] really struggle with not being close to Caitlyn…It’s left a big void in their lives to not have the father they grew up with. She was a part of their lives every single day.” Here are the biggest takeaways from Caitlyn's book, The Secrets of My Life:

She felt she didn’t deserve the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. Caitlyn writes that she doesn't necessarily feel "brave" because she chose to go public with her gender identity issues, despite the fact that her decision is often described that way. "For me it was a form of cowardice to wait so long," she says, adding that she doesn't think she deserved the award bestowed on her by the ESPYs back in 2015, "but nobody would turn down such an honor."

But wants you to know that it was not a prearranged publicity stunt. Because the ESPYs took place so soon after Caitlyn's Diane Sawyer interview andVanity Fair cover, rumors circulated that she only agreed to do the 20/20 special if she got the award. "It is 100 percent wrong, complete bullshit," Caitlyn writes. "The actual interview took place months before I was told I would be receiving the Arthur Ashe award."

Caitlyn’s publicist first killed a story about her gender identity in the 1980s. After finding out that theNew York Times had been looking "to pin down a story" on Caitlyn wearing women's clothing, Caitlyn told her publicist Alan Nierob about her feelings and had him kill it. "He pounds the crap out of the Times," Caitlyn writes. "It works."

She did a screen test for Superman but didn’t want to cut her hair for the role. "My hair is one of the few ways I can feel my femininity, and it is these tentacles that keep me going, make me feel some tiny piece of my authentic self."

Caitlyn’s relationship with Khloé remains fractured. This much is obvious if you've seen any recent episodes ofKUTWK, but according to Caitlyn, her relationship with Khloé has not fully recovered since her transition. "Khloé has the hardest time with it," she says. "It is something Khloé and I should talk about privately, as we have on many occasions on other sensitive subjects. But we have not, although I have tried. We have not been the same since."

The Kardashians were intentionally left out of the first Diane Sawyer special. If you watched20/20 and thought it seemed like there wasn't very much Kris and the gang, you were right. "They are right to feel slighted," says Caitlyn. "They were slighted on purpose because of research showing that anytime a Kardashian is on television, many in the public tend to think it is a publicity stunt to make money."

During her marriage to Kris, Kris had total control over Caitlyn’s finances. According to Caitlyn, she did not have a checking account during the peakKUTWK days and her credit card purchases were "carefully pored over."

Caitlyn really did not like O.J. Simpson. Caitlyn got to know him via Kris's friendship with Nicole Brown Simpson and never enjoyed spending time with him: "He was the most narcissistic, egocentric, neediest asshole in the world of sports I had ever seen, and I had seen a lot of them."

Caitlyn thought O.J. was guilty, and according to Caitlyn, so did Kris and Robert Kardashian. Caitlyn says that she and Kris "believed he had done it the minute we heard of her murder and the circumstances surrounding it." As for Kardashian, who died in 2003, Caitlyn claims that he once said while in a car, "I would've been OK with it if they'd gotten him in the first trial."

Rumors that Caitlyn regretted transitioning are completely untrue. Ian Halperin, who wrote the unauthorized biography Kardashian Dynasty, claimed in 2016 that Caitlyn regretted her transition. Caitlyn slams these rumors as "100 percent wrong and garbage and swill."

She may have been the real brains behind the KUTWK operation. In one throwaway line, Caitlyn hints that she's actually the person who came up with the idea to film the Kardashian family. "The house is awash in puberty and adolescence and young adulthood and two parents with very different styles," she writes. "It seems to me something is there for television." Then, in a new paragraph: "Kris says she is the one who came up with the idea and decided to actively pitch it to Ryan Seacrest." Care to weigh in, Ryan?

Caitlyn’s family was embarrassed by KUTWK. Caitlyn says her aunt Ellie sent a letter to her and Kris after the show debuted about how Caitlyn had become a "disappointment" to her fans. "The implication is that I have sold myself out, willingly destroyed what positive reputation I have left," she writes. "Pretty much on the mark."

But Caitlyn says her depiction on the show was more or less accurate. "I come across in the reality show as a well-meaning but slightly doddering patriarch who has no life of his own and is subsumed by the women who surround him and only does what his wife tells him," she writes. "In other words: a totally true depiction."

Burt, Brandon, and Brody Jenner hated Caitlyn’s Vanity Fair cover. Caitlyn says it had less to do with the photograph being "risqué" and more to do with the fact that she "did not gauge how a son would feel seeing his father in a cream-colored bustier."

Kim was a little disappointed that Caitlyn spelled her name with a "C." Caitlyn's recollection of this conversation makes it seem like Kim was joking, but Caitlyn also had this to say about Kim even asking about it: "Spoken like a true Kardashian."

Caitlyn had gender confirmation surgery, which she calls "the Final Surgery," in January 2017. While this is not something a transgender person ever has an obligation to discuss (and Caitlyn herself reiterates several times that it's no one's business but the person who's having it), Caitlyn says she chose to include it because she wanted to be able to stop talking about it. "I feel not only wonderful but liberated," she writes. "I am telling you because I believe in candor. So all of you can stop staring. You want to know, so now you know. Which is why this is the first time, and the last time, I will ever speak of it."

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