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[kisskissbanggang]

No Gods Nor Kings - Pt. 1

[8.6k words/30min. Read - King!Chan x Female Reader - SFW/✨Mildly Spicy✨/Very Suggestive - Radical Patriarchs, Weird Work Dynamics, Complicated Situationships, Making Out, Lipstick, Jealousy, Arguments, Changbin is Acting Weird, Jisung is Being a Dick]

Prologue | Come Say Hi

Changbin was staring at your stockings. 

Everyone seemed to be staring lately, actually. 

Starting the morning of the riots at the stock exchange, Jisung had been staring at you when he thought you wouldn't notice, just like he used to when you first started dating. For the past handful of days at work, Changbin’s gaze lingered before he got your attention – every single time. And beginning with the emergency Assembly Changbin called the other day, up until the meeting this afternoon, Chan’s eyes were locked on you whenever he wasn't drowning in paperwork. 

Now Changbin was staring at your stockings, which was even more baffling. The extended glances could really just be innocent or a figment of your imagination, but this time you knew exactly what was going on.

And you knew why. It only took you five days to turn your life completely upside down, beginning from the first time you’d been alone with the King. 

Today was day five.

Changbin was chewing on his pen, staring at the runs in your usually pristine stockings. A few snags in the nylon as low as your ankle and one disappearing up under your dress. The realization made your whole body heat up, and you quickly excused yourself to go run off to the washroom.

- Day 2 -

This really all started after Chan crowded you in his office that day of the stock exchange riots. It was right after the Council meeting the following afternoon, after all the cameras had cleared out. Cameras weren’t permitted into Council meetings while they were in session, but exceptions were made in the minutes directly proceeding if there were any announcements to make to the press. This time, however, the latest developments weren't the concern of the reporters. 

They were obsessed with Chan being in attendance. 

A hushed commotion surged through the gathered legislators as Chan’s security detail entered the Assembly chamber. Chan’s late father never attended these meetings himself, instead opting to send delegates in the interest of personal safety and maintaining distance. Chan’s late father conducted meetings like this, as did his father, and his father, and so on. 

But Chan showed up, and the entire Assembly were beside themselves. 

Changbin had gone rigid beside you. 

“Sir – Changbin – what is it?” you worriedly asked, your voice hushed.

“The camera hounds are going to love this,” Changbin grumbled.

He was right. Some legislators posted surreptitious pictures snapped of the young Royal in attendance with his bevy of security, some in rousing support and some admonishing such casual mingling with government, and the country was in bedlam yet again. 

But while Changbin listened to queries and fielded debates, you were miserably distracted by Chan’s own preoccupation with your presence. He was still just as stubbornly dashing out among the people. A modern King wouldn't wear a crown in public, obviously, but Chan wouldn't even wear his sash that was traditionally worn out for such meetings. The fact that everyone was staring at Chan while he was staring at you was almost overwhelming. 

Here, now, on day five, you wondered how long you could hide out in the bathroom. You dug around in your bag to pull out your emergency pair of nylons. They looked similar enough but were definitely different. Still, you were bogged down with the timeline of events that got you here.

So much attention from the young King made you feel so embarrassingly, nearly light-headed, so much so that you weren't prepared for Jisung when you had gotten home the night of day two. 

You were at your dresser, stepping out of your heels when Jisung simply hugged you from behind. Even this startled you, considering the last time Jisung touched you was to ask you to move out of his way when you were admittedly badgering him about his work. 

Jisung’s arms had slid softly around your waist, his lips brushing the chain holding his pendant around your neck, and he was so gentle that you almost buckled at the knees. 

“I caught you in Assembly today,” he murmured against your skin, “I was watching public broadcasting with some friends and I actually saw you.”

“Since when do you watch Assembly?” you smirked, even while you were breathless with Jisung’s hands sliding back to play with the zipper of your dress. 

“I miss you,” Jisung sighed, ignoring your question. 

You turned in your boyfriend's arms to pull him close, but you were surprised to see a bandage carefully applied to his brow. 

“Jisung,” you sucked in a worried gasp, “what the hell happened to you?”

“It’s fine, it’s nothing,” he quickly soothed you, “it’s–”

“It’s clearly something,” you stiffly insisted. 

“I’m fine, me and the guys were out–”

“Out? You just said you were watching public access.”

“Quit interrupting,” Jisung complained, “we were today, but yesterday–”

“Yesterday? What could you possibly have been doing–”

You stopped yourself, quickly getting a bad idea of what exactly Jisung could've been doing.

“Go on,” Jisung snidely encouraged, “make your accusations.”

There had been no more surprises when you slipped out from between Jisung and your dresser. Instead, you stared each other down, waiting for the other to yield. 

“Well?” your boyfriend had taunted.

You stiffly glowered. “You were at the stock exchange riots.”

Jisung clapped sarcastically. “Great job.”

“I can’t believe this!” you snapped. “You know how dangerous it was out there!”

“Like that matters?!” Jisung blustered. “Your new fearless leader is going to drive us all to the poor house!”

“You say that as if you have any stake in that whatsoever!” you barked back. 

Jisung focused an icy glare at you as you both caught your breath.

“Well?” you meanly prompted. “How long has it been since you’ve worked?”

“I work!” Jisung had growled at you. 

“Right,” you nodded exaggeratedly, “you freelance but you really work once a month and can barely buy our groceries while I’m working overtime just to pay our bills.”

Your boyfriend had been slack jawed and you couldn’t blame him. It was hard to believe you’d actually, finally said it out loud.

“Why are you being like this?!” he ultimately demanded.

You held your ground. “Because you haven’t always been like this. You work, but not like you used to, and meanwhile I’m working myself to the bone.”

“I work,” Jisung gritted out, “and I’m not selling myself to royals or the Assembly to do it.”

This sucked. 

This was bullshit.

You were on the verge of furious and heartbroken tears, but Jisung seemed to be, too. When you had finished staring each other down for a few painful seconds, Jisung was the first to break. He turned away and immediately grabbed his gym bag from the floor beside the dresser.

“... What are you doing?” you pathetically, quietly asked. You already knew. This had been a long time coming.

“I’m staying at a friend’s tonight,” Jisung shook his head. “And I think we’re finally taking that break we’ve been talking about.”

- Day 3 -

Back in day five, you were still in the stupid washroom. The emergency nylons looked ridiculous, but you knew you were overthinking it. No one would notice.

Even though Changbin was all about details.

He would notice.

He’d been dissecting you with his eyes since you shared coffee on the morning of day two. So he would notice. Just more reasons you were trying to fight back tears in the lavish washroom now. You were fighting off a splitting headache.

Jisung left on day one, and everything only got worse on day two, when you attended the next Assembly meeting. Chan had been staring at you every spare moment he got, and then the worst thing you knew would happen ended up coming right your way.

“Come on, then,” Changbin had beckoned you after Assembly. “Are you coming with me or are you taking a short lunch?”

“Er,” you floundered, caught regretfully off-guard. “What’s next?”

“We have a meeting back at the palace?” Changbin had impatiently reminded you. “We have to hash out some addendums his Highness had about the proposals you brought him.”

“Oh,” you nodded absently, “of course. I’m right behind you.”

You had followed Changbin out of Assembly and into the armored car. The ride had been painfully quiet. Changbin was clearly annoyed, and you were still a bit put off by having been effectively dumped the night before. The trip to the palace was familiar, having just done it the other day.

Minho hadn’t been there to greet the car on day two, so this meant the palace had returned to business as usual. Instead, he was waiting for you in front of Chan’s office.

“Chancellor,” Minho greeted with a bow of his head before nodding to you. “Miss.” 

You curtsied in return. Unexpectedly, however, you and the Chancellor were stopped in your tracks before entering the King’s office. Minho instead directed you to a couple security officers with metal detectors. 

“You’re not serious,” you graciously protested. With how Changbin tensed beside you, you had clearly voiced his thoughts. If you’d brought his bodyguard, Hyunjin, inside with you, it would've surely been a full argument. 

Minho helplessly shrugged. “With the state of affairs out there we can’t be too careful.”

“Ridiculous,” Changbin had huffed with a shake of his head. The officers were much more lenient with him, but they had been ruthlessly thorough with you. They checked under your coat, your cardigan, the hem of your skirt, inside your shoes. You were patted down, scanned, and picked over while Changbin and Minho watched. Even airports weren’t this grueling.

Suddenly, as they were about to rifle through your briefcase, a saving grace came.

Chan had poked his head out the door of his office.

“What on earth is taking so long– Minho? What are our guests doing being swept like this?”

Minho had babbled for a moment. “Emergency security measures, Sir,” he hastily explained. “The ones you signed in this morning?”

“Nonsense, that shouldn’t have to apply to Assembly members,” Chan firmly shook his head. “And definitely not the Chancellor. Come on, let’s get to business.”

You hurriedly bundled yourself back up to scamper into the apparent safety of Chan’s office, but even that didn’t last long. Minho came to gather yours and Changbin's coats, which you were grateful for. You recalled adjusting your cardigan before you noticed Chan resuming his staring again. Heat had rushed through your cheeks and this kept up for the entire meeting. You weren’t capable of thinking straight for the half-hour or however long discussion. Instead, your mind had been on Jisung, on how crazy everything got for you in just a short amount of time. 

In fact, you’d barely noticed the meeting was done until Chan got up from his desk. You and Changbin arose as well. 

“Glad that all got sorted out,” Chan clasped his hands together before offering his right to Changbin, who professionally shook it. “Now, Mr. Chancellor, if you don’t mind, my security lead wants to have a word with you and make sure you have everything you need.”

That was weird, you remembered thinking. Wouldn’t Felix, Chan's head of security, have just gotten in touch with Hyunjin directly? Nonetheless, Changbin shot you both a curious look. “What about the signatures? You need to sign everything, not just the approvals.”

Chan nonchalantly shrugged. “Surely your assistant can witness and take care of the grunt work.”

Your boss had paused then before he ultimately glanced back at the door. “Well… Of course she can.”

Minho stepped forward and directed Changbin out of the office before closing the door behind them both. You recalled finding yourself sort of wishing you had your coat back. Instead, you pressed your ankles and knees together. 

Chan took a step forward. 

You took one step back. 

The young King smirked, making a sweet dimple in his cheek more pronounced. 

“I don't bite, miss.”

“Are you sure?” you breathlessly retorted. 

“Never without reason, I promise,” he grinned before waving you closer. “Now, if you don't mind, I have some work I’d like to complete.”

In your recollection, from the hindsight afforded to you by surviving until day three, you were being ridiculous. 

Right?

That day in Chan’s office, you had approached the desk where he was going through the amendments. He was diligently flipping back and forth through the documents to find footnotes before initialing each item. 

“How’s your boyfriend?” he’d casually asked. 

“Boyfriend?” you sputtered. 

Chan shrugged as he continued signing. “I asked if you have a husband the other day and you said no, but I didn't ask if you had a boyfriend. I'm assuming you have a boyfriend. So how is he?”

“Well I don't have one,” you shook your head. “I mean, I don't anymore, I guess.”

The pen in Chan’s hand paused for a second. “So you’re single?”

He’d asked it while still facing his desk, as if this was still an innocent question. 

You grumbled out a sigh. “That hardly means I'm interested, your Majesty.”

Chan reeled, wheezing out an astounded laugh. “Just like that hardly means I'm picking up on you!”

“Aren't you?!” you’d taunted him. “Because you failed to pick up on me the other day.”

“Failed?!” Chan repeated, stunned. “We were interrupted!”

He’d fully stopped signing by now. You were both facing each other, his hands on his hips and your arms folded across your chest. 

“What was interrupted, exactly?” you openly questioned him. The air in the room was suffocating with growing tension. You’d stepped between his feet, startling him into falling back against his desk. This was a mirror of your encounter the other day now. “Chan, your Highness,” you continued, “if you had really wanted to do something you would've found a way to do it by now. I think you’re just lonely.”

Chan’s frustrated hands had been clumsy in their quickness, because his fingers accidentally tangled into your hair in his brash attempt to pull you close while also trying not to fall all the way down onto the desk. “Those points aren't mutually exclusive, miss,” he almost growled. He had the palm of his other hand roughly pressed flat against your lower back to maintain his proximity. “I’m lonely, sure, but you’re also pretty distracting.”

You’d pushed a fist back against Chan’s chest. “Then maybe allow me to stop distracting you, your Highness.”

“Please?”

His plea made you pause. Chan had stared up at you in that moment, eyes shining with want and longing. 

“Come on,” he’d bargained. “One minute? One kiss? Something. Just enough to get you out of my system.”

“With a bare minimum of respect, your Majesty,” you grimaced, “you’re insane if you think I'd risk everything to give into your – frankly gross – advances, especially just to get you to quit obsessing over me.”

“Sure,” Chan scoffed, “I'm insane, just call me mad.”

“Good. Be mad,” you’d hissed. 

It was only poetic that you’d noticed two things at that moment. First, Chan had pulled you against him so his thigh was slotted between your legs, straining your skirt yet again. Second, and much to your horror, you were both physically excited. Your heart was beating in your ears. Chan – a royal – was gazing at you with such desperation that you could combust. Despite all your deriding, you were going mad yourself from the thought that he was so taken by you. 

Chan had capitalized on your distraction, it turned out. His lips had tempted towards yours, beckoning you to go ahead and reach past that point of no return. And he was getting dangerously close to his goal–

“Are you still signing, sir? It’s been more than enough time– Oh! I’m sorry, er, I think someone is calling me from the hall…”

Before you had thankfully been interrupted by Minho once again. 

Chan had gracefully pushed you off of him before Changbin re-entered the office. Your boss shifted his gaze between both of you before you hurriedly turned back towards the desk to go over Chan’s signing. Changbin approached behind you, stooped down to pick something up, and innocently placed his hand where Chan’s had been moments before to scoot you out of the way so he could step between you two and collect the amendments. 

It’d seemed, for the time being, that you’d been saved from yourself. 

Except there were still the matter of the nylons to come. 

The week was turning into an endless cycle of stress. Only that evening following your ridiculous rendezvous with the king in his office, Jisung came to get some of his things. The bitterness between you hurt like mad. 

“I'll be out of your way in a minute,” Jisung had assured you. “Just grabbing the keyboard and my guitar, y'know, so I can work.”

It was funny, honestly, how fast that bitterness stopped hurting so much. 

“I'm sure your vigilante friends really enjoy that you can support yourself,” you’d nodded sarcastically. 

“Hey,” Jisung shot back with an ornery shrug, “at least they have a good cause. At least I'm not bored.”

- Day 4 -

You were still fuming about that little jab the next day. 

More paperwork. 

More meetings. 

More emails. 

It was almost like things were back to normal. 

Except, of course, now you knew what was happening that afternoon. 

Chan was invited but not expected to join this contingency meeting. You thought you were safe for some reason when everyone entered the palace board room near Chan’s office. The press wasn’t allowed into this area, thankfully. And Chan still stared, but this time you had decided you’d rather not humor him. You didn’t spare one glance towards him, instead letting yourself do the ill-advised thing and let Jisung’s piss-poor attitude fester inside you. The pen in your hand had a sickening scratch to it while you scrawled your notes on your legal pad. 

Jisung was an ungrateful ass, and you were dumb to let him skate by for months. You knew it was because it wasn’t that long ago that he’d been incredibly kind and present, and you couldn’t begin to explain just how romantic he used to be. He wrote you a song once, and played it for you after he made you dinner. Everything changed when you got this job.

The rapid typing of the stenographer had caught your attention.

“Your Highness? You still didn’t answer the question.”

“What–? Oh, I’m sorry. I got lost following a train of thought. Could you please repeat the question?”

You finally hazarded a glance up from your notepad to see just how lost in thought Chan could possibly be.

Very, apparently.

Across the board room table, Chan wasn’t even looking at his notes. It didn’t even look like he’d written anything. Instead, white-knuckle death grip on his pen, it appeared Chan had only succeeded in grinding a solid black square into the corner of his notepad. Just then, he’d caught you looking at him. You nonchalantly looked back at your own meeting materials, smug with the attention. Jisung was suddenly too good for you but you had the King’s eyes all to yourself? 

You could feel yourself growing bolder.

Chan’s gaze lit up the second he noticed that you had looked at him again, but this time his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, likely because you let yourself smirk back. His eyes darted to his watch, his notes, his paperwork, and back at you, almost like he was doubting if he actually caught that. You firmly fixed your eye on him across the table before you let yourself nibble on the end of your pen. 

Chan looked near death.

At the close of the meeting, you quickly leaned over to Changbin, letting him know you’d only be an extra minute to the car and to not wait up. He offered to ask Hyunjin to wait for you.

Changbin had raised an eyebrow but ultimately nodded when you refused, and with more curiosity when you got up before everyone else made their exit.

Before your initial encounter with the King in his office on day one, you had come across far too many broom and supply closets and even – lucky for you – a service corridor right down the hall. It was a small space, just an exit to the larger corridor system beyond the end of a tall spiral staircase. As if you were only on your way to the one restroom you could think of each time you came to the estate for meetings, you ducked down the hall to the right, only to instead step into the servers door at the back of the supply closet inside. You trotted down the hidden hallway, all the while refusing to lose your gumption. In fact, every time you thought about it, you’d just pictured the absolutely loveless glare Jisung had shot you the night before. 

You stopped at the service door next to Chan’s office, gingerly stepping around the wrought iron spiral staircase to barely crack the door open. The buckles on your bag softly clinked when you set it down, but it sounded concerningly loud in the cold space. Just outside, you had barely been able to make out Chan’s silhouette, cutting a smart shape in a casual shirt and slacks. 

“You go on ahead, Minho–”

“Your Highness,” Minho nagged, “your trainer is here in thirty minutes.”

“I know that,” Chan had dismissed, “I just forgot something in my office.”

“Then I’ll wait!”

“Oh my god!” the young King scoffed, “I’m not a child, Minho, go on ahead. I’ll be right there.”

You held your breath watching Chan turn back around. He’d hesitated, just for a moment. It wasn’t like you’d actually given him any sort of hint as to what was going to happen, you honestly just flirted the hardest you had since you’d met your stupid boyfriend.

Ex-boyfriend.

Chan stepped back in the direction of his office, past the door you were hiding behind, before you finally shot your hand out, snagging his sleeve as he passed and yanking him into the servers corridor with you.

He didn’t even have a chance to shout, but he’d been startled enough that you both were pushed up against the railing to the staircase, breathing hard and shoved up chest to chest. His eyes were wide in the dim passage. “You know your way around the service ways?”

“I’m resourceful,” you’d retorted, nearly panting.

“So what’s all this about, then?” Chan grinned. Like this, he almost looked crazed. “Did my pouting yesterday win you over?”

“Hardly,” you scowled, before you worked your hand into his hair, just like he’d done to you the other day. “I’m seeing how much you meant it.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s obvious how much I mean it,” Chan insisted, his needy hands already on your waist and threatening to dip lower. You’d humored this, letting him pull your hips against his but refusing to let his lips get any closer to your own. His arms wrapped fierce around your waist, all but lifting you onto your tiptoes against him. You tugged his masterfully tamed tresses in your grip and he winced in response. His grip remained steadfast.

“You just want to get me out of your system, right? That’s what you said?” you sneered, ducking your chin to the side when he leaned in to kiss you. Shoved up together like this, his thigh was firmly pressing between your legs once again.

“No,” Chan stubbornly refuted. “This is me settling. I want you but we both know that’s reckless and stupid.”

A harsh giggle escaped you before you could reply. “Some would argue this is already reckless and stupid.”

His fingertips were so firm in the soft flesh of your waist. “Look,” he growled, his gaze heavy-lidded and focused on your lips, “did you get me in here just to humiliate me? Because it’s working.”

You had locked gazes for one moment. Really, you let yourself. Your temptation got the better of you, and for one moment that miserably sappy, swooping feeling coursed through you. The rush of infatuation all but stabbed into you, and all you could remember for one second was how hurt you were. 

This was a terrible way to cope.

But holy shit, Chan was going to be the death of you if he kept looking at you like that. His chest was heaving against yours, his pupils were blown wide in all the excitement, and worst of all, you caught yourself preoccupied with his lips. That stupid pout. His gorgeous mouth.

You had kept one hand firmly in his hair to keep his distance, but with the other you gently cupped his face. Just this gesture made Chan sigh under his breath against you. His jaw tensed under your palm. Your thumb traced the line of his bottom lip.

“I don’t want to humiliate you, your Majesty,” you reassured him, your tone dripping, syrupy sweet. “I already told you. I want to see how much you mean it.”

Chan’s fingers clenched into your side with the mention of his royal title, making you gasp. His eyes lit up at the sound. “Let me finally kiss you and I’ll show you.”

His voice was deep, husky, pulling up all the desire from his gut and making you feel lightheaded. But still, you’d shaken your head at him.

“You didn’t earn that yet, your Highness,” you earnestly scolded him.

Chan’s hands threateningly tensed again at your taunting. “Then what, dear Lady, have I earned?” He finally got a laugh in when his formality made you pause. “You started it, my lady. Now let me ask again: what did I earn?”

You forcefully pushed him back another few inches so you could get a good look at him.

“You can kiss me–” you’d begun, waiting to really savor how much Chan had nearly combusted at your words. He’d so nearly lunged forward before you shoved into him again. “You can kiss me,” you repeated, “here. That's all you’ve earned.” His starving eyes watched diligently, following your pointer finger delicately but firmly landing on the side of your neck. 

“That’s all I’m going to need,” Chan gruffly assured you. 

You didn’t even get a chance to retort before he dove into you, his lips immediately pressing into the taut skin of your neck, just over your pulse. The gasped whimper you’d let out was pathetic and instant. Already, you melted into Chan’s arms and just let him litter your throat with heated nips and kisses, his teeth grazing your skin when he refused to pull his lips off of you.

It felt like an eternity that you’d let the King squeeze and grope and kiss you practically anywhere but your lips, but you knew it’d been more like five minutes. You were buzzing from how heated he’d gotten you.

Except you weren’t buzzing.

It was your phone, in your bag, on the ground by the door.

You’d been missing for five minutes.

The King had been missing for five minutes.

A much more alarmed gasp ripped from your throat as you’d pieced this all back together. 

“Chan–” you hurriedly called to him.

His lips were still buried in the crook of your neck, tickling you. “Hmmn–” he only grunted in reply.

The hair on the back of your neck rose on end when you heard a voice coming down the hall.

Minho.

Now Chan suddenly seemed to hear you. He stood up straight to look in the direction of the sound. His cheeks were fully flushed.

“Oh fuck,” he cursed under his breath.

“What do we do?” you frantically whispered.

“There’s a door further down the hall in my office,” Chan concluded. “You go back the way you came.”

You nodded but held fast for the King to leave, except he only looked back at you.

“Well?” he expectantly asked. “I’m waiting for you; go on.”

He’d urged you to go, and that was all you needed to hear. You scooped up your bag and hurried back in the direction you’d come.

You practically fell through the service door hidden in the bathroom and nearly refused to look at yourself in the mirror, but you were glad you did anyway. The sight you caught in your reflection was a damn mess. You quickly pulled your blouse and sweater back into place before combing your fingers through your hair when you heard a knock at the door.

Who the hell could that be?

You’d taken two deep breaths before reluctantly opening the door, only to be faced with Hyunjin.

Changbin waited up after all.

Hyunjin looked up from the phone in his hand.

“Sorry to rush you, miss,” he glibly apologized, “you know how he gets.”

You nodded, guilty. “I know how he gets.”

Changbin was diligently tapping away on his laptop when you joined him in the car, as if he’d had no problem waiting for you. He had to. There was no way this hadn’t felt inconvenienced in the slightest. In short, this was how he got. Changbin was too accommodating, that even him being annoyed was almost imperceptible from how hospitable he typically was. 

The Chancellor smoothly shut his computer and stowed it in his work bag as Hyunjin had also joined you in the car. Changbin reached into his pocket, still saying nothing to you, and drew something out in his closed fist.

“Did you drop this the other day, by any chance?”

Changbin opened his hand and held it out to you, presenting Jisung’s pendant and chain he’d given you back when he still acted like he loved you. 

Your hand flew to your collarbone, as if you were checking that it were, in fact, missing. It was, obviously. But when had you dropped it? Changbin said it’d been the other day, but–

Of course. In Chan’s office.

All the confidence Chan had just given you crumbled into dust.

“You still enjoy working with me, right?” Changbin asked suddenly, startling you. His tone was still measured, still cordial.

“Of course I do,” you quickly reassured him. You sat up in concern. “Why do you ask?”

“Just,” Changbin sighed, gesturing out towards the palace with a wave, “there’s a lot going on. I like working with you, so I just want to make sure it’s still mutual.”

“I really like working with you, too,” you insisted, leaning over to place a comforting hand on his.

Changbin nodded with a humble smile, but you didn’t feel like you’d done much to actually convince him.

Day four and you hadn’t even finished ruining your life yet.

- Day 5 -

You huffed out a terse sigh. Surely, there would be a recess during this Assembly before too long. You tapped your phone at the corner of your desk. Ten minutes left. This was an insufferably long meeting, and it was only made worse by how grueling it was. You went to surreptitiously grab your lipstick out of your bag. You were sure you didn’t need to touch up, but it’d be nice to duck into the restroom during the recess and hide out.

This was carefully planned to help maintain the last bit of resolve you had left. You were never really one for lipstick and a dress for work, but it seemed warranted by now. There wouldn’t be any temptation if you had on a full face of makeup. You looked good, and it’d be stupid to humor doing anything as dangerous as the previous day if you could leave such obvious evidence behind. The dress was really just to accentuate the first point, but it helped that the form fitting little number wasn’t exactly “easy access”.

Listen to yourself, you’d lamented earlier in the meeting, you sound like you’re hoping you’ll get to test that theory out.

Thankfully Chan seemed equally discouraged. He’d been bombarded since Assembly started, and it seemed the members were not keen on going easy on him. As it turned out, if Chan was so hell-bent on opening up some avenues for better public assistance programs, then his Assembly was going to do everything in their power to see how much the young royal wanted it. He’d had his work cut out for him since the Assembly was called to order, and Changbin wasn’t even helping him. On the contrary, Changbin had been joining his colleagues in the dogpile.

“Your Majesty,” Changbin boredly continued as he flipped through the proposals on his desk. “As I’m sure you know, your elective power isn’t all-encompassing. Department of Economic Welfare brings up multiple strong points as to why your proposal simply moves too fast to maintain a healthy economy.”

“Healthy?” Chan repeated incredulously across the room. “This economy is in shambles, Mr. Chancellor, and I don’t need to be a financial advisor to see that. Our people are either rioting in the streets or too starving and sick to do so. There’s no economy without them–”

“And you know that, your Highness?” Changbin curtly cut in. “You know they’re poor and sick? You’ve seen the statistics from the hospital board and the food banks?”

Chan had openly scoffed at this. “They can’t afford to leave work to get proper treatment! They can’t qualify for the food banks because they barely make more than the maximum!”

Changbin shook his head in doubt, encouraging the rest of his cohort to do the same. “I hardly believe we’re speaking with any concrete proof. Sounds more like you just want to appeal to a people who have grown too comfortable with their current freedoms and yearn for more.”

“Changbin,” you blurted out with admonishment, before you could even consider stopping yourself. The whole Assembly stopped. You wondered why, and then you realized you were horrifically close to Changbin’s microphone. 

Your eyes darted around the room. All these old men were staring daggers into you.

Except for Changbin and Chan. Changbin was stunned, but Chan’s eyes were practically glittering. You cleared your throat before leaning closer to Changbin.

“Mr. Chancellor,” you more formally resumed, “I beg you to recall the platform you ran with only two years ago. You yourself believe there’s a breakdown in communication between our working class and upper class, and only because our upper class refuses to listen.”

You felt a hand gently wrap around your wrist and you glanced back to see Hyunjin try to convince you to sit back in your seat. His pleading eyes were desperate enough that he almost cursed when you yanked your hand back.

Changbin was a bit gobsmacked, which was all the permission you needed to continue. “Those people in the streets are making demands, Chancellor. They are not bored and they are not greedy. This is what it’s taken for them to be noticed at all. His Highness is aware enough to notice that, so I beg the Assembly to do the same.”

At first, you thought you were hearing murmurs ring out through the Assembly hall. However, to your horror, it was the clicks of cameras going off. The press were simply and blatantly going against protocol. You choked down a nervous breath and sat back in your seat, refusing to look up from your notepad. It was not normal for the Chancellor’s staff to speak during Assembly. Changbin was damningly silent.

The Moderator sheepishly called recess, a full three minutes before it was time.

Chan and his staff got up first, crossing the Assembly floor to the doors at the end of the aisle you were seated by. You looked anywhere but his direction when they passed.

A number of reporters and correspondents pushed past your desk to approach Changbin. You definitely needed a breath of fresh air. Thankfully, the women’s restroom would be glaringly empty. You gathered up your bag before sitting back up to grab your notepad, only to find that your phone was missing. It hadn’t moved at all the past few minutes, but it was possible you’d dropped it. You scrambled to search the desk and floor, before you hazarded a look around to make sure no camera hounds were watching you. Thankfully not, but there was Chan looking at you from the back of the Assembly hall. He held up your phone at you with a small smirk.

Your face heated up to the point of blistering.

That asshole. You helped him out and this was the thanks you got?

You abandoned your bag and instead jogged out of the Assembly hall to follow after Chan. 

Honestly, you had no idea what you were doing. You would never be allowed in the Court chamber that the King and his staff could take recess and private meetings. That was its own clearance level with security and everything. Instead, you ducked down the hall towards the restrooms. You wouldn’t fall for this. You’d adjust your lipstick and fussy dress in the mirror and go back where you could apologize to Changbin for speaking out of turn once the reporters left him alone.

All good ideas, but Chan was waiting at the end of the hall when you got there.

You froze in place before stalking over to him.

“I can’t believe you helped me in there,” Chan gushed, transparent glee on his face. You shoved his shoulder before you looked around.

“You cannot be out here!” you frantically scolded him, “And without your entourage?! Are you mad?”

Chan grabbed onto your hand. “You told me to be.”

He reached down behind a tall pedestal holding a vase and exposed a hidden door. You barely had a chance to ogle it before he pulled you inside.

“You’re not taking me to the Court chamber,” you refused.

“Better,” Chan smiled, “these are the emergency halls.”

You half-spun to get a better look in the dim corridor. Surely enough, you remembered hearing about this. There was a network of tunnels, halls, and bunkers that only the highest clearance could access. When you were growing up, there was a photo spread in a national magazine with Chan and his father playing hide and seek in a dark hallway just like this, the tall support pillars providing ample room to get lost in.

And you did just that. You whipped around to find Chan, when he popped out from behind a pillar down the hall. A spitting image of the boy you grew up seeing, wishing you could have a life like that before you ever knew what a burden this all was.

Chan waved your phone at you again. “Who’s this guy with you on your lockscreen?” he asked. Your face heated up again. It was a picture of you and Jisung on a carousel.

“No one,” you replied, mortified.

Chan rolled his eyes. “Right. And what’s your wallpaper?”

“You opened my phone?!”

You uselessly jogged further down the hall, your low heels clicking on the concrete floor.

“Your combo is 1-2-3-4,” Chan laughed before ducking out of sight again. “Now what’s the wallpaper of?”

A frustrated sigh growled out of you. “It’s my aunt’s house in the country. Now can I please have my phone back?”

You shrieked when you felt a hand on your shoulder, only to find Chan there when you wheeled around.

“You know I only have fun when you’re around lately?” he chuckled before he ran off again.

“This is not fun,” you complained, “it’s only been a nightmare since it started.”

“Says you,” Chan taunted from somewhere down the hall, “but you seemed to be having fun yesterday.”

A light turned on further down the corridor and you ran as fast as your dumb heels could carry you, only to find Chan casually lounging in an old bunker. You peeked into the room, finding a small bed, couch, desk, and other basics. It very well could’ve not been touched in twenty years. Chan was sitting against the desk, looking at your phone again when you stepped in. He got up and simply placed the phone back in your hand.

“I can’t believe you helped me in there,” he repeated, but far more gently. Far more earnestly. He meant it. 

You snatched the phone back. “They weren’t being fair to you at all. And I have no clue what’s been going on with Changbin lately; I’m sorry for how he’s been acting.”

“I get it,” Chan shrugged, “a lot of people think I was just bumming around in those last few years before my father died, but I was honestly just trying to get a better idea of other people, other ways of living. It was nice being out of the limelight.”

“Oh my god,” you bemoaned in recollection. “Those cameras. I can’t believe I was such an ass in there.”

“You were great,” Chan assured you. “And you look great. Any reason you got all dressed up today?”

You took a step back, only to find yourself backed up into the doorframe. Chan took a step closer, expectantly waiting for an answer.

“Maybe I wanted everyone to keep their distance,” you attempted.

“Not sure how well that’s working,” Chan shook his head. “Now, do I still have what I earned yesterday, or do I need to do it all over again?”

You tried pressing yourself further into the doorframe. “I thought the whole point was to get me out of your system, your Majesty.”

“Between yesterday and just now in Assembly, there’s a lot more of you I need to get out of my system.”

Chan’s chest was firm where you pushed your hands flat against him. One of his wrapped around your waist.

“Look,” you rebuked, “I don’t get it. Why me? You literally don’t know me, and all I’ve done is tried to get you to leave me alone.”

“I think it’s pretty easy,” he began. “I want to get to know you. I like how you carry yourself, and I really like how you work. I’m just really attracted to you, okay? Women that I get set up with, they don’t know what it means to work. I met women like that when I traveled, but I haven’t ever since I took the throne. And there’s certainly no one like you around.”

There was that awful swooping feeling again, but you didn’t have any clever rebuttals for Chan this time. It’d be remiss to say you weren’t enjoying this at least a little.

You were surprised when Chan leaned in and kissed your cheek, brief and featherlight. The air in your lungs evaporated.

“Honestly?” he continued. “I’ve been feeling like I’ve been doing this all alone so far. You helping me in there? I actually felt like I can do this.”

Chan kissed your other cheek, just as lightly, just as quickly. Now his lips lingered near yours.

“Is it me?” you finally asked, quietly but firmly, “Or is it just how I make you feel?”

The King thought about this for a moment. “I don’t think anyone can make me feel the way that you do.”

He’d murmured it but you’d heard it loud as day before Chan actually kissed you. His lips pressed into the lipstick you’d specifically worn to discourage yourself, just like his hands clutched into the dress you’d worn for the same reason. His gorgeous mouth felt divine against your own, and soon you were clutching onto his shirt collar to pull him closer. You both gasped and sighed and groaned into each other, goading each other on. The boldness he treated you with only encouraged your own, and soon you were teasing the tip of your tongue against the seam of his lips. Now you were breathing hot into each other, tongues wrestling for dominance against each other.

“This is such a terrible idea,” you gasped against his neck, noticing your lipstick smearing down into his collarbones. 

“I know,” he agreed, trying to coax you up onto the desk, “which is exactly why we’re not telling anyone.”

“I love your optimism,” you laughed, “but I really don’t know how this can stay secret if we keep doing it.” You swatted his starving hands off of you, but he just grabbed onto you more firmly, getting a possessive grip on your thighs and causing the first rips in your nylons. He smirked at your shocked gasp and capitalized on it, using your distraction to push you back onto the desk and come forward between your spread knees. Your stockings stretched again as Chan pushed the skirt of your dress up enough to settle down against you.

“Well,” he panted with that same charming smile, “once I get you out of my system, we won’t have to do this anymore.”

“Not callous whatsoever,” you teased, before feebly gasping when you felt Chan’s fingers on your inner thigh.

“Can you blame me?” laughed Chan. “Not once have you actually said you like me. For all I know, you just think I’m hot.” His lips teased your neck again before he clamped down, all to take your attention away from the fact that his needy hands had managed to rip a hole in your nylons, right between your legs.

“I do not just think you’re hot,” you argued, but you were cut off into a surprised squeal when you felt his fingertips begin to tease you. Your back arched off of the desk and you actually managed to kick him off. 

Chan grunted and steadied himself, but he wasn’t able to stop you in time from sliding off the desk and back onto your feet. “So you do think I’m hot,” he chuckled.

He all too easily grappled you into his arms and tossed you on the couch, but he yelped once you snatched his necktie in your hand, yanking him down beside you.

“Right,” you rolled your eyes, “but everyone thinks you’re hot.”

The King cursed when you used your grip on his tie as a counterweight to swing your leg over and land on his lap. He looked up at you, practically in adoration.

“I just think,” you continued, “that people underestimate you. I think you underestimate yourself. I think you have the potential to be an amazing leader, you just need to pull your head out of the clouds.”

You’d caught him off guard. Chan looked up at you, about to say something but refusing until he got that shit-eating grin back.

“That move was cute. Where’d you learn that?”

He’d hooked a finger into the neckline of your dress and pulled you down to kiss you again, but the question stuck with you. You could feel him between your legs.

Jisung. You’d first done that little maneuver with Jisung. His necklace was back at your apartment, unused after Changbin gave it back to you.

Chan’s lips and nipping teeth stopped where they had been threatening to dive under your dress. He pushed you off of him a little bit.

“What’s wrong?”

No. You could not be crying right now, not like some dumb teenager, but there was that telltale sting in your eyes.

You cursed and slid off of Chan’s lap before you grabbed your phone from where it’d fallen amidst all the commotion. He got up to his feet, worry etched in his brow.

“The guy on the lockscreen is my ex, Chan,” you grumbled as you shoved the phone in his hand. You awkwardly shifted your dress back into place. “I got dumped the other day.”

Chan was speechless, mouth opening and closing a couple times as he looked at the picture. He clearly wasn’t expecting that. Well, he should’ve been expecting that, but not like this.

Right?

“So… Definitely not a husband.”

“No, Chan, no husband.”

“And no boyfriend.”

“Nope. No boyfriend.”

“Because you just got out of a relationship.”

“Within the week.”

“I’m such an ass,” Chan regretted out loud. He shook his head at the floor, his hands on his hips.

“Really hope someone can be there for you,” you sarcastically bit back.

“Can you not do that?” Chan nagged. “I shouldn’t have been all over you like I have been.”

“No,” you replied with a sigh. “I had plenty of chances and I didn’t tell you. It’s been complicated and it felt nice to just be liked.”

Chan grumbled under his breath but he nudged your phone back at you. “You got a text.”

Actually, you just got another text, you realized as you grabbed your phone back. There was a new text, from Hyunjin.

>>I’m not going to ask what you’re doing, but where the hell ARE you? You know he wants to check in before Assembly is called back to order.

Holy shit.

You were at work. You were in a bunker in the emergency halls under the Assembly building and you were very much about to sleep with the King or at least give him the opportunity if common sense and the real world hadn’t come back to snap you out of it. This was utterly surreal and very nearly a huge problem.

Phone in hand and without a parting glance, you stormed back into the hall to find your way back to the Assembly hall. The King didn’t follow you.

Behind you in the main corridor, Chan had emerged from somewhere, judging by the cameras going off in the distance.

You charged ahead, back to Changbin, where he would notice your stockings and not say a single word to you, and then right back to the bathroom (for real this time), where you were now trying not to cry even more lest you have to touch up your lipstick and your mascara.

This was fine. This was fixable. You’d make up with Changbin, let Chan down easy, and set up time for you and Jisung to actually talk about this. 

Your phone buzzed again. This time it was your friend, Yeji. Normally you wouldn’t answer a personal text at work but this had to be worth it for her to do this. You’d kill for a mood-lifter right about now.

>>Girl WHAT I almost texted you after your sudden burst of badass energy earlier but nevermind because I *called it* what did I tell you??? Little king mr. man of the people is a royal man-whore oh my GOD

What the hell?

You scrolled down to the screenshot Yeji sent from a local news account. There was another sneaky cell phone shot of Chan, right now, in Assembly, who’d never fixed his tie and collar so everyone sitting in just the right spot could see your stupid perfect little lip print on his collarbone.

This was so close to being a disaster. You threw the phone back in your bag and quietly entered the Assembly hall as graciously as you could.

Surprisingly, Changbin leaned right over.

“You didn’t miss anything,” he murmured in your ear, “but is there any reason his Highness’ staff is asking if you’re available for a transfer?”

“What?” you asked, wondering why everyone was staring at you. “No, I have no idea.”

Okay. You could work with this. No one knew it was you. Chan could handle his own PR hiccups, and you’d politely decline the offer to move over to his staff.

Seriously, why was everyone staring at you?

Hyunjin, ever the mind-reader, slid a glass of water in front of you and you took a healthy swig to relieve your dry throat. You reflexively grabbed a napkin to dab the lipstick mark left on the glass–

The lipstick. Your eyes frantically scanned the room again. King Chan had just resumed Assembly with lipstick on his neck, the exact same shade that you, the only woman in the godforsaken room, was wearing.

This was officially a disaster.

[To be continued.]

[ao3bronte]

Santa Shuffle🎅🎄

After what has been an admittedly tumultuous December (‘Bronte: Attack of the Anons’ was basically the theme at the beginning of my holiday season), I decided to try something that would lift my spirits. I love games and surprises so rather than bang my head against the wall trying to come up with another story, I decided to create little Christmas drabbles based on the following rules:

Put Spotify on shuffle and start playing Christmas songs.

For each song, write something inspired by the song. 

Do 10 songs and post. Make sure to include the song name/artist.

Please sit back and enjoy!​🎅🎄

~

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas - Michael Bublé

The stars are shining from behind the ever-present layer of wintertime clouds, floating like lanterns in the dark. Tonight, Chat Noir feels as if he’s soaring amongst them, gazing up at the brilliant lights that emanate from the canvas of twilight sky. Brightly decorated Christmas trees sit like beacons in the middle of crowded squares that teem with winter markets and roasted chestnuts and Chat simply can’t keep his feelings back any longer, glowing with a wild abandon he has never known.

As always, he’s right where he belongs.

He lets go of his baton and tosses his body into the air, somersaulting over a bevy of twinkling Christmas lights. He banks right and ventures off further onto the familiar rooftops of Paris, healing the gashes in his soul long scabbed over. There’s nothing like the feeling of the holidays, lost within the colourful heights and cheerful carols, never falling. He smiles, his heart bursting with a feeling he can only describe as true, utter bliss.

Christmas in Paris is coming, and for the first time ever, he actually has a home.

Mistletoe - Justin Bieber

There are people everywhere, packed within the vast confines of the main hall of Le Grand Paris. They’re dancing, feasting, laughing, screaming, kissing, drinking, having the time of their lives.

It’s a Christmas party and the Champagne is flowing. Things are going to get a little sloppy.

He spies her from the other side of the hall and they lock eyes, a smirk full of promise playing on her lips. She’s been canoodling and chatting up her network like a true professional while Adrien admires from afar, content to watch her sashay in that gorgeous red handmade gown he loves so very much. The open back, the plunging neckline, the figure hugging silk he just wants to…

...well, he has to be on his best behaviour. They’re in public after all.

But, like most parties this time of year, there are punches and bottles of sparkling wine a plenty, which means that no one is acting with enough propriety to notice the heat emanating between them. He returns her saucy gesture with a raised eyebrow and a smug grin and it’s one of those take it or leave it smirks, the kind that teases and promises so much more.

She pushes through the crowd, her eyes never leaving his, and he stands his ground, limbs tingling with both excitement and slight intoxication. He can feel her lingering on her lips, a memory of something intangibly right, and shifts his body so that he’s standing right where he needs to be in order to make this little game of his all worthwhile.

She notices, of course. She always does.

“Mistletoe?” she questions him, crossing her arms across her chest. The action only accentuates her décolletage and Adrien’s mouth begins to water, “Really?”

He doesn’t even bother trying to answer. Instead, he takes her by the waist and kisses her senseless.

Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town - Bruce Springsteen

Chat Noir grins widely and drops his enormous bag of toys onto the floor just outside of the elevator. He shares a private look with Ladybug, one full of apology for the deluge of children galloping down the hall in their direction, and opens his arms with a laugh.

“HO HO HO!” he hollers with excitement, completely and utterly attacked by children who are so excited to see him that they can hardly contain themselves. Ladybug scoops the toys out of the way just as her partner is thoroughly taken down by the rabid pack and laughs as they tug on his fake beard and Santa hat.

He manages to extricate himself eventually and toddles around the hospital ward with an enthusiastic flock of enamoured children in tow. Santa Noir delivers a personalized gift to each child stuck in the children’s hospital over the holidays and poses for selfies by the thousands while Ladybug follows behind, laughing as he regularly whips out his best impressions of Santa himself. 

And then he starts to sing.

“You better watch out,” he wags his finger, much to the children’s delight, “You better not pout! You better not cry, I’m telling you why. Santa Claws is coming to town!”

A hundred voices chime in for the chorus, waving jingle bells and laughing as Chat performs the latest Fortnite dance for them. It’s embarrassing and hilarious and honestly? 

Ladybug has never been more in love.

River - Robert Downey Jr.

He’s never told a soul, and so long as he knew, no one had been around when he’d finally lost his composure and cried.

He’d collapsed onto his haunches and wept out loud into his palms, frustrated and upset and drowning in a myriad of emotions he can’t categorize without losing anymore of his precious sanity. Why was he out here again? Why was he wasting his time – again – for someone who couldn't even spend a moment of his Christmas Eve to be with his son?

Oh right. 

Because that someone was his father.

He’d cried harder, heaving into the night air without being able to stop himself. 

Why did Maman have to go away?

Step Into Christmas - Elton John

Marinette giggles as Adrien grabs her hands and swings her around her parent’s living room, dancing the night away. The Christmas bops playing off of Marinette’s Spotify playlist are just the thing to convince her to get off the couch after way too much turkey and join him in a little Santa Samba around the Christmas tree.

“Stoooop,” she laughs, not really meaning it as he wraps one arm around her body and captures her hand in his, “Maman’s taking videos of us.”

“For the wedding!” Sabine coos as Adrien spins her in a gentle underarm pirouette and Adrien can’t help but grin.

“Come on Marinette,” Adrien pulls back and shimmies to the jazzy jam, “You can’t deny the chemistry between us.”

“We’re engaged, you doofus,” Marinette scolds him fondly, squeaking as he pulls her back into his chest, “Of course we have chemistry.”

“Which is why we need to practice dancing,” Adrien slots his feet between hers and leads her into a dizzying spiral of turns, “And what better time to do it than on Christmas Eve with my favourite people?”

“Flaterer,” Marinette shakes her head as Tom cheers from the kitchen.

“Dip her! Dip her!”

“NONONO!”

Adrien can’t deny his future father-in-law, now can he? With a side splitting laugh, Adrien lunges forwards and gracefully lowers the love of his life in his arms, pausing only to wink at the camera.

Santa Tell Me - Ariana Grande

Marinette holds her favourite picture of Adrien to her chest and sighs as the latest Gabriel holiday commercial plays on repeat in the background. Adrien stares in awe up at the snow that cascades from the sky, surrounded by Christmas decorated in black and white baubles and metallic ornaments. It’s for another perfume line, this one heavy on frankincense and ginger, and Marinette just wants to bury her face in the crook of Adrien’s perfectly popped collar and drink him in.

He’s perfect.

She would do anything to go on a date with him right now. They could go to the Christmas market together, hand in hand, or sip on hot chocolate in front of a crackling fire. They could decorate gingerbread cookies in her bakery and then go to the annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony together so they could kiss under the fairy lights!

They would be amazing together.

Marinette checks her calendar and sees that Adrien has a packed schedule of modelling and extracurriculars for the foreseeable future and shrugs, still holding onto hope. Maybe, with just a little bit of luck on her side, she could admit her true feelings and fall in love this Christmas…

All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey

Three seconds in the same room with her and he’s practically on the floor, on his knees, head spinning from the sheer emotion of it all. He’d just walked in on her pulling her beautiful, gorgeous black hair out of her ponytails for the mayor’s Christmas Party at Le Grand Paris and thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

Her blue eyes were like the ocean.

Her legs went on for miles.

He pines for her like a puppy. He’d do anything for her.

(He bets she tastes like strawberries.)

“Face it,” Rena Rouge mutters, nudging Ladybug lightly with her elbow. Ladybug glances over in the direction her fellow heroine is pointing and sighs, tugging her bangs in front of her eyes in embarrassment, “He’s got it bad.”

Facing her lovestruck partner, Ladybug takes a weary breath and simply surrenders, “Don’t remind me.”

You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch - Thurl Ravenscroft

Ladybug and Chat Noir exchange glances across the battleground, grinning like Cheshire cats in the gloom. She grips her yoyo in her palm, squeezing the unbreakable spotted material with her fingers. Chat fiddles idly with the base of his baton, his confidence boosted tenfold.

“I’m sorry, Bugaboo,” he drawls, his glowing eyes mischievous, “Could you repeat that?”

“Of course, Kitty,” she replies, equally as sardonic, “I was just discussing how fun it would be to go cataclysme Le Papillon’s head off. After ruining Christmas Day for everyone in Paris, don’t you think he deserves it?”

Standing within the ruins of the mansion’s west wing, the villain in question starts stepping backwards slowly, only to be impeded by a gigantic hunk of plaster clipping him in the back of the knees. The butterfly Miraculous wielder falls backwards onto his backside as the murderous duo stand over him, their expressions identical.

“Stop!” Le Papillon cries, raising his palms in surrender, “I’m doing this for her! For Émilie!”

“Don’t bring Maman into this,” Chat Noir hisses, spinning his baton in the light of the fire. A few years ago, Adrien might have surrendered then and there. But now?

Now he had his new family to protect.

“Shall I do the honours?”

Chat smiles and motions with his arm invitingly, eyes grazing his fuming fiancé, “The honours all yours.”

Whisking her yoyo’s string around with a cracking thwack so loud even Chat can’t help but wince, his heavily pregnant partner brings her magical weapon down on Le Papillon’s head with a crunch.

Christmas In New York - Lea Michelle

Marinette Dupain-Cheng squares her shoulders and grins widely, stepping out through the revolving doors of the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City. The thrill of life in the Big Apple fills her heart with excitement as she spins around and waves at the doorman.

“Merry Christmas, Miss Dupain-Cheng!”

“Merci!” she chimes, smiling at him over her shoulder. There’s a limousine waiting for her out front and the chauffeur opens the back door as she approaches, taking her gloved hand in his so she doesn’t trip, “Are we headed to work, Miss Dupain-Cheng?”

Marinette offers him a cheeky grin, “Can we get stuck in traffic for an hour or two? I need to do a little shopping for my friends and family before I fly home.”

“Of course,” her chauffeur dips his head, his own smirk hidden by his impressive mustache, “I suppose the traffic must be terrible near Fifth Avenue at this time of day.”

“I agree,” Marinette settles into the leather seats of the stretch limo and relishes in the butterflies fluttering in her stomach. She’s so excited to return to Paris after two wonderful weeks overseas working with the cr��me de la crème of the American fashion world, no thanks to her business with Jagged Stone. She’s walked through a festively decorated Central Park and taken selfies from the top of the Rockefeller Centre. She’s even watched the Rockettes perform their high flying kicks at Radio City and visited the Macy’s Christmas window display! The city that never sleeps hasn’t disappointed her in the slightest, especially draped in the red and greens of Christmastime.

She passes by beautiful holiday trees and flickering fairy lights as they weave their way through Manhattan and, although she can’t wait to hug her Maman and Papa at the airport in just a few more days, she’s already planning her next Christmas in New York.

Bring Me Love - John Legend

Sliding across his apartment floor in his Christmas socks, Adrien clutches a banana in his hand and sings into the stem with all the excitement and enthusiasm of a man who’s about to rock his fiancé’s world. He wiggles his hips and kicks his free leg, boogying down to the saxophone and bass and he is feeling fabulous, the tree is looking fabulous and everything is absolutely fabulous. Marinette would be thrilled with his decorating skills, especially since he’s been left to his own devices for the past two weeks while she’s been away on business. She’ll be landing in Charles du Gaulle in just a few short hours and Adrien has cookies baking in the oven (dough courtesy of Tom, of course) and mistletoe hanging over the doorway. All he needs to make his Christmas homecoming a success would be having his beautiful, successful, gorgeous fiancé by his side.

If only Santa would bring her home faster!

He’s put on his Rudolph boxers for the special occasion and bops his shower soggy hair to the beat, letting it fly everywhere. It might be -8℃ outside but it’s toasty warm inside their little flat in Le Marais and Adrien intends to put the love in their lovenest tonight.

He drops it low and snaps, spinning around on the balls of his feet. He feels amazing and there’s adrenaline and an irrepressible joy surging through his veins as he hops onto the cushions of the couch and channels his inner Beyoncé, howling the high notes with all his might. He can’t hold in his love any longer and leaps off the furniture with a karate kick, landing in a crouch only to pop back up again with a pirouette that would have put his alter ego’s talents to shame.

A giggle from the kitchen leaves him skidding in his tracks.

“Who’s there?”

Her face half hidden by her mittens, a thoroughly amused Marinette steps into the colourful glow of the Christmas tree, “Are you wearing Rudolph boxers?”

Adrien, for all intents and purposes, has never been happier to hear the love of his life critique his undergarments, “MARINETTE!”

“Hey Kitt—mmpf!”

Capturing her lips in a bruising kiss, Adrien drops his banana and spins her around in a searing embrace that leaves them both dizzy and breathless. When he finally sets her back down onto the floor, Marinette is thoroughly smitten with her fiancé all over again.

“Miss me?” he asks, peppering every centimetre of exposed skin with kisses, “Because I thought I was going to wither away to nothing if you were gone for another minute.”

“I missed you,” Marinette’s knees quiver as he undoes her winter coat and throws it onto the kitchen counter behind them, “I missed you so much.”

“Oh my god, your voice,” Adrien wraps his arms around her waist and buries his face in her neck, “Your smell, your skin, your hair, your lips. You are never leaving for that long ever again without me.”

Marinette laughs and Adrien soaks in the beautiful sound, “Deal.”

“Good,” Adrien says, still damp and half naked, “How did I do?”

He gestures to the decorations draped all over their studio apartment and Marinette feels her heart stutter beneath the absolute flood of emotion thudding through her chest, “You did amazing, Adrien. It looks beautiful.”

“Thank you,” he kisses her again, “Christmas must have come early because all I wished for was you.”

Pressing their foreheads together, Marinette boops him on the nose, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

💋Bronte

[sweetsmellosuccess]

Sundance 2020: Day 2

Number of Films: 5 Best Film of the Day: Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Zola: Back in 2015, a Twitter user named @zola began a long, outrageous thread concerning a wild road trip she had been on with a woman she had just met at the restaurant where she worked. The plan was for the two of them to go down to Florida for a long weekend to dance at strip clubs and make a bundle. What followed was an absolutely insane odyssey of horror, involving pimps, guns, gang bangers, and someone jumping off a balcony. Directed by Janicza Bravo, with plenty of snap, crackle and pop, the film stars Taylour Page as our long suffering narrator and Riley Keough as the brazen, hopeless Stefani, who leads her newfound friend into the depths of hell. At its root, it’s a funny, if not sporadically chilling sort of chaotic joy-ride, with Zola’s commentary peppering the proceedings, along with a bevy of social media pings and whooshes (as another critic pointed out, the tweet whistle is half the soundtrack). Bravo pulls out a creative bag of tricks and gags  —  including a propensity for Scorsese-like screen freezes, while she describes one character or other  —  all of which gives the film a zany, madcap quality that imbibes the film with plenty of zing. Riley, a trashy southern drawl in her back pocket (just hearing her call Zola “beech” endearingly never ceases to be amusing), takes to the character like James Franco took to his role in Spring Breakers (a film with which Zola shares a certain Florida-crazed DNA), and Page makes an adroit straight person, taking in the insanity all around her, but despite these amusements, it’s really only skin-deep. There’s no deeper sense of anything, which, while in league with its source material, also puts something of a cap on just what the film can achieve.

La Llorona: if the source of all horror, cinematic and otherwise, is, essentially those elements that make up the human condition, than guilt is one of the more powerful evocations from which to draw. Jayro Bustamante‘s horror film is a timely political allegory set in Guatemala, as an aged and deposed former dictator general (Julio Diaz) is being tried for genocidal war crimes, his family, wife (Margarita Kenefic), daughter (Sabrina De La Hoz), and young granddaughter (Ayla-Elea Hurtado) are all forced to huddle up in the general’s mansion, as throngs of outraged citizens hold a neverending seething protest outside. What’s more, the General, now a slightly shriveled old man, seems to be coming unglued, hearing someone sobbing in the house whom he is convinced is a Guerilla assassin. When his mainly indigenous staff catches wind of this  —  the crying female spirit  —  they quit en masse, leaving the mansion badly understaffed, until a young, new woman (Maria Mercedes Coroy) arrives, leaving the General further discombobulated, as the nightmares and visions he and his wife endure begin to coalesce into an unnerving climax. Apart from everything else, Bustamante’s film is about the searing power of empathy  —  the General’s wife starts the film as a racist, uncaring mouthpiece, but gradually gets her layers of denial stripped away from her  —  and the powerful idea that one’s actions, even if unpunished in the material world, still have dire consequences.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always: Eliza Hittman has made a trilogy of sorts with her first three films. In 2013’s It Felt Like Love, a young teen woman in Brooklyn convinces herself to pursue a callous and contemptuous boy in order to lose her virginity; Beach Rats (2017) follows the trevails of another Brooklyn-based teen, as he attempts to pursue his interest in men while continuing to maintain his bro-heteroness. In her new film, she has moved the setting to a hardscrabble town in rural Pennsylvania, but her characters remain familiar. Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), a dour-faced high schooler has discovered to her horror that she’s pregnant, and too far along to get an abortion without her parents’ cosign, something she wants to avoid at all costs. Enlisting the aid of her cousin, the feisty, resourceful Skylar (Talia Ryder), the pair head off to New York, where Autumn can get the procedure without her parents’ knowledge. With little money and no earthly clue about the city, the two young women are forced to endure a vagabond lifestyle, spending the nights on train platforms, or endlessly going from station stop to station stop, until Autumn can be properly treated. Hittman’s eye for detail and emotional complexity  —  her characters can rarely articulate anything their experiencing  —  is incredibly acute, and she pulls tremendously understated performances out of her two leads. In the film’s most searing scene, Autumn goes through an exhaustive intake interview with a sweetly caring counselor. Shot in a long single take, the back-and-forth covers the most basic details of Autumn’s life and also some of her most buried pain and trauma. The camera stays fixed on her face, as she is asked to finally unpack some of the misery she has worked so hard to tamp down, and the result is one of most devastating sequences you will see this year.

Black Bear: What to make of Lawerence Michael Levine’s meta-within-meta film in which the first half is a specific sort of indie drama in which a young couple (Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon) living up in a glorious lake house away from New York get visited by an actress-turned-director (Aubrey Plaza), there to work on a new project; and the second half is, essentially, the Noises Off-like behind the scenes riff on how the trio (now with the actresses’ roles switched) worked together to produce a variation of the film we were just watching? In part one, dubbed “The Bear in the Road,” Plaza’s character is territorial and coquettish, instantly attracted to Abbott’s lonely musician, and enticing him into disavowing his care for his pregnant partner. In Part two, “The Bear by the Boat House,” Abbott is now the film’s director, and Plaza is his wife, also the star of the film in which she is now the clingy partner, as Gadon arrives from the city on a visit. There is a lot to unpack here  —  or, alternatively, there isn’t terribly much at all, depending on how you see it  —  it being the kind of film that begs for further viewings to untangle its many layers. Whether you will want to put that sort of work into it is unclear. Still, the leads are all tremendous  —  Plaza, light-years removed from her “Parks & Rec” days  —  is a revelation of ferocious, billowing emotion, and Levine is clever enough with his structure to keep things rolling along.  

The Night House: The Midnight slate at Sundance, as with most such designations at other festivals, is by nature a roll of the dice. Some nights, you’ll find something absolutely brilliant (The Babadook, The Nightmare), many other nights, something a good deal less so. David Bruckner’s ghost story isn’t close to one of those conceptual masterpieces, but does offer some serious jumpscare thrills en route to a far too explicated finish. Rebecca Hall plays Beth, a grieving widow, whose architect husband just left their modern manse overlooking a lake to shoot himself in their wooden rowboat. Obsessed with trying to find why he might have done such a thing, Beth slowly begins to unravel his dark, secret life, even as her dreams become waking nightmares of visions, blasts of music from their downstairs stereo, and seeming visitations by either her husband or another dark force from behind the veil. With a sadistic sound design that periodically shocks your system, and a beseeching performance from Hall, who carries this film from first frame to last, Bruckner’s effort dutifully serves up enough genuine creepiness to earn your attention, even if the story slowly devolves into something out of the Final Destination franchise.

Tomorrow: Utilizing a slightly more sane pace, I start the day with Dee Rees’ Shirley; check out the much lauded doc Boys State; get my ‘80s on for The Go Go’s; and finish up with Miranda July’s long-awaited next film, Kajillionaire.

Into the frigid climes and rarefied thin air of the spectacular Utah Mountains, I've arrived in order to document some of the sense and senselessness of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Over the next week, armed with little more than a heavy parka and a bevy of blank reporter's notebooks, I'll endeavor to watch as many movies as I can and report my findings.

[less-than-hash]

Point(s) of No Return

I finally got real internet in France, so the first thing I did was purchase Final Fantasy VII Remake. 

A few days and 10 million Cura spells later, I finished it. (Term used loosely. I got to the credits.) 

It’s fantastic in many ways: gorgeous, obviously (I didn’t experience any of the texture issues (beyond some occasional  pop-in) that others have complained of); charming and funny; deeply stylish. 

I never knew how much I needed more Moulin Rouge in my FFVII.

I’m perfectly comfortable with what the ending did, though I’m not wildly impressed by the execution. And I’m excited for what comes next while holding considerable reservations about how it’ll be handled.

I also found it an incredibly frustrating game in a lot of ways: every time FFVIIR surrenders camera control to the player, for example, you can feel the game’s resentment; there’s a fair amount of repetition of spaces that doesn’t serve the action; while a lot of people seem to like the combat, I found it pretty messy, inconsistent, and frustrating (though loads improved from FFXV), to the point that I turned down the difficulty towards the end just to spend less time fighting battles. 

But none of that’s what I’m here to talk about today. I instead want to discuss a suite of specific design decisions that, in my opinion, really hampered the narrative flow of the ending of the game.

SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS under the cut.

Many games, especially RPGs or other games with open worlds, display a confirmation UI or impress upon the player through dialog (or both!) that the player has reached what we’ll be calling a Point of No Return. 

Though sometimes awkward to experience, this is a Very Good Thing (tm): it lets the player know that they’re about to depart the meat of the game for its conclusion and that if there’s anything they’d backburnered and want to take care of, now’s the time to do it.

Theoretically, this also allows the developers to pace the ending of their story in a way that builds towards a climax, something that’s otherwise difficult to do in an open world game due to the player’s nigh-complete control over the pace of play.

And while FFVII:R is by no means open world, it has some open world elements, especially towards the end of its second act. It’s no surprise that it fires the expected Point of No Return bulletin.

But later it does so again.

And again.

And again.

The first of these is frustrating for a number of reasons, not least of all its dubious accuracy. 

When the characters decide they’ll go after Aerith at the beginning of Chapter 14 (IIRC), the game suggests that doing so will instigate the endgame. This is not true. 

What this moment actually serves to highlight are a bevy of new sidequests. Thing is, there should almost certainly NOT be a bunch of new side content dropped on the player at this point. Not because that content is bad (some of it is quite nice), but because the game has just significantly increased the stakes and the pace of its main narrative, and taking time to futz around the slums looking for things to do dramatically undermines that pacing.

I’m not suggesting that this content shouldn’t be there at all - if the player takes time to explore and find sidequests, it’s nice if there’s something there to reward them; otherwise the world might feel empty and unreactive (to the massive tragedy that just occurred). Alternatively, this content could have been placed between (or before) saving Wedge and deciding to go after Aerith (in the period of the game that’s actually focused on the fallout (no pun intended) of the Sector VII Plate).

But having the game beat the player over the head with it right after saying “we’re gonna go storm Shinra now!” (and using Tifa, a character almost as invested in saving Aerith as Cloud, as the mouthpiece to do so) strains character verisimilitude and kicks the legs out from under the story.

But I suppose that’s kinda her bag.

The second Point of No Return comes after returning from, er, the return to the sewers. 

This is the actual Point of No Return from the open(ish) world, and the game does a very good job of stating both explicitly through UI and dialog that that’s the case (while going so far as to justify it in the fiction). Had it not been for what came before or after, I’d’ve said “well done” and been on my way.

(I could be wrong here - it may be that some of the Chapter 14 sidequests close off after the return to the Sewers, but if that’s so, it doesn’t seem necessary. Certainly one of those sidequests requires the player to do the return to the sewers, making that initial Point of No Return warning misleading.)

The game then progresses into its Final Dungeon, a sequence at turns confounding and at others fun and impressive. A few hours (and sixty flights of stairs) later, Hojo traps you in his lab and makes you jump through hoops to get out. I have a lot of issues with this section in general, the one most germane to this conversation being the obliteration of the pacing. The game has quite literally told the player to “get to the choppa,” but instead throws them through a pretty low-stakes series of trials without much sense of pressure from time.

Like this, but forever.

Still, the designers manage a couple of tricks towards the end of this sequence to ramp the energy back up (Red XIII’s fall, the big fight with the blade fish). 

Then you hop in the elevator, realize that Jenova’s missing, find a trail of alien goop to follow, and make your way to the exit...

Only to hit Point of No Return #3: This Time, For Reals Though.

I like this one as a teaching example, because it’s very clear what the intention is and how it might tweaked to flow a bit better:

What the devs needed to accomplish, in no particular order:

Let the player know that they’re leaving the more open area of the Shinra Building. (Or possibly just Hojo’s lab... you might not be able to backtrack to the lower floors. If that’s the case, I’d argue for cutting this Point of No Return entirely.)

Set up the encounter with Jenova in the next space.

Raise the tension and the stakes. Jenova is clearly an entity of horror. Horror is about tension.

How FFVIIR approached this in the shipping game:

The player finishes the lab area’s final fight, the two parties are reunited, and they take an elevator to Jenova’s tube in the central lab.

Player finds Jenova missing. 

Player locates elevator to Shinra’s office.

Game produces a “Point of No Return,” explicitly telling the player that if there’s anything left to do below, they should go do it.

Player may go looking for new stuff to do (or stuff they left undone), ballooning the time between step 2 and its pay off while dramatically undermining tension.

I’d argue that this flow could have been made dramatically better by setting the point of no return prior to returning to Jenova’s tube.

Like so:

The player finishes the lab area’s final fight, the two parties are reunited, and they find the elevator that will take them up.

The game fires the Point of No Return. This makes a lot of sense narratively, too, because last time the party was up there, Sephiroth was up there, too. (This elevator also goes up or down from this floor - the only elevator in the lab that does so - making it a perfect place in the level to put this kind of choice.)

Player can put off the return upstairs for a time if they want.

Player takes elevator up and finds Jenova missing.

Player takes elevator up to Shinra’s office and 4 pays off without the loss of tension.

BAM!

Anyhoo...

We can play backseat developer all day. I’m sure there were reasons this choice was made the way it was, and I’d be surprised if this exact conversation didn’t happen in someone’s office at some point. 

I don’t know what the various moving pieces were that led to the choice that shipped. It’s just not the choice I’d’ve made in a vacuum, because I’m confident in saying that - whatever the decision was made in service to - it harmed the narrative’s pacing.

And that’s something that happens. Development is give and take, and sometimes (often) narrative hangs lower on the priority pole than other things.

The last Point of No Return occurs right before the final boss. 

Like the first, I’d argue that this one’s unnecessary. The player’s forced by the level design to pass immediately by the very vending machine the Point of No Return suggests that they use, and there’s nothing else for the player to do in that map prior to confronting the Big Bad. The narrative has made it plenty clear that there’s no telling what’s on the other side of that light. 

(I actually thought it was a portal to the ending cinematic and credits prior to seeing the Point of No Return text, and would have been very pleasantly surprised by the twist of facing another challenge. Albeit frustrated said challenge was yet another combat in a system I was entirely over by then.)

An autosave at that point would have protected the player’s experience without interrupting flow.

Like whatever hidden trickery moves Cloud from that hole to the top of the slide.

So to bring this to its conclusion:

Points of No Return, while wildly useful, can dramatically interrupt the player experience and undermine narrative tension. They probably shouldn’t be viewed as an opportunity to unlock a bunch of side content, and they should definitely be placed prior to a series of interconnected events rather than in the midst of them.

Until next time, <3 <3 <#

[ryanmeft]

Movie Review: Cats

For anyone who was aching to see James Corden dive head first into a trash can full of garbage or Judi Dench inform you about how to talk to cats, all while singing and dancing in humanoid feline outfits, boy, do I have the movie for you. Some of the songs work, and the top-notch cast is trying their damndest, but when person-shaped cats shake their asses at the camera while hissing and baring claws, it’s the kind of movie that makes you want to protect your genitals.

I’ve been known to criticize the plots of films by claiming they don’t actually have one, and that’s rarely been more true than it is here. A cat named Victoria, played by Royal Ballet dancer Francesca Heyward in her major film debut, is dumped in a back alley by her owners, where she meets a bevy of other cats who begin to sing about the fact they are Jellica cats. I don’t know what that means, I’m pretty sure the movie doesn’t explain it, and if it does I didn’t catch it, because whenever more than one person sings and/or dances at the same time it’s a garbled mess. Among the cats who adopt Victoria, most don’t stand out in the slightest. The ones that do are a flamboyant show-off named Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo), who seems like a cross between a playboy and a cabaret dancer, and Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson), a self-professed magician who can never get a trick right.

The villain, who abducts cats through magic or trickery, is Macavity, played in his handful of scenes with reasonable relish by Idris Elba. He is backed up in a single number by his gun moll-like girlfriend; Taylor Swift plays the role and is onscreen for all of five minutes, which based on her name’s prominence in the trailer has got to be some kind of false advertising. He’s also got a thuggish assistant played by Ray Winstone, and together the three of them give it their all. In the grand Disney tradition, the villain even gets one of the better songs---or at least one of the few ensemble numbers that isn’t completely broken. Judi Dench gets the role of Old Deuteronomy, the very ancient leader of the cats, and Ian McKellan, who could play a rock and make it interesting, is a feline Lawrence Olivier. 

The alleged plot is that all these cats are competing to determine which one Old Deuteronomy will elevate to the cat heaven---or maybe it’s the next life, or reincarnation, or just a ride in a balloon. To say the film isn’t clear about this is like saying ice is a tad cold. The obvious candidate is faded singing star Grizabella, who lives on the fringes and is in need of redemption. Jennifer Hudson imbues this character with a gravitas that the film doesn’t come anywhere close to earning. This alleged story doesn’t really even come into play until halfway through the movie or so, which would be fine on the face of it, as musicals are allowed and expected to take their time on songs that exist for their own sake. You have to do it right, though. This is not that.

The first major problem lies in the fact that the premise is inherently flawed, and that nothing in the film works to mediate that fact. Director Tom Hooper, working from a script by himself and Rocketman scribe Lee Hall, has, I am told, transplanted the Andrew Lloyd Webber original almost exactly, in the process overlooking an important fact. On the stage, we’re watching people in real time, and the fact we know they are just acting---we can see them in front of us, after all---is part of the draw. Films, because we do not see the bones of the sets and because no curtains ever fall to break up scenes, are taken by the human eye to be more literal. In this regard, Cats admittedly might have been doomed from the beginning, as no matter how good the CG fur is, a person’s face on a cat’s body is never going to look right to our minds. Yet the film not only wants us to believe in and emphasize with these characters, it wants us to do so at the same time that they are doing profoundly creepy things. You could be forgiven for thinking the opening scenes are setting up a horror movie. Let’s break it down, shall we? You have a dark alley at night. A bag is abandoned with something wriggling and unidentified inside. Out of the bag bursts a human-shaped cat, which prompts other human-shaped cats to advance toward the camera (and thus the audience) baring claws and fangs and singing something we can’t begin to make out. I don’t know about you, but if that happened to me, a jolly song-and-dance number would not be my immediate reaction.

By far the most cringe-worthy scenes in the film are given to Rebel Wilson and James Corden. The casting calls for these parts may as well have read “We need larger people to do some songs about being lazy, fat and greedy.” Wilson and Corden are, usually, funny people in their own right. Here, Wilson’s weight is used in a grotesque way to derive a laugh out of the very idea of her doing acrobatics, while Corden is given a supposed-to-be-funny-definitely-not-funny spoken aside that is all about how big his character is. Fat jokes, people? Really? We start with unintelligible music and uncomfortably sexualized animals, and then we bust out the fat jokes? Get someone to sit on a whoopie cushion while you’re at it.

Does the music at least work? Occasionally. “Sometimes the music is okay” isn’t a great blurb to slap on ads for a musical. As mentioned previously, if so much as a single person joins an existing song or dance, everything goes straight to hell. The cast sings over, around and sometimes against each other, and the only way you can understand a word they’re saying is if you already know the lyrics. Even the handful of good solo performances---Hudson’s rendition of the iconic “Memory”, Heyward’s performance of the only new song, the excellent “Beautiful Ghosts”---are marred by Hooper’s inability to sit goddamn still for 30 consecutive seconds. He sends Christopher Ross’s cameras onto close-ups, cutaways and jump shots so frequently that we’re denied the one pleasure any musical should have nailed: the ability to just watch dancers dance and singers sing. When you have people this talented at doing what they do, you put the camera on them and take your hands off it. Even the sets, which were huge so that the human actors appeared cat-size, don’t work---they’re so stuffed with puns about cats, on every marquee and billboard, that it gives the movie the final push it needs into full-on parody.

There’s one good thing that came out of me going to this dud, and that is that I learned that T.S. Elliot once wrote a book of poems about cats. It is, apparently, what the original 1981 musical is based on, and reading it is what I should have done instead of seeing this movie.

Verdict: Not Recommended

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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 All images are property of the people what own the movie.

[chromelong]

Drill man rumble

Drill man rumble full#

Everything is done with the drill, be it double jumping, attacking, defending, and puzzle solving. The gameplay itself is what makes Drill Dozer truly unique. Presentation is over-the-top wherever possible, making Drill Dozer as enjoyable to look at as it is to play.

Drill man rumble full#

Each level ends with a cut-scene of Jill jumping aboard a moving truck, while a brief clip of full motion animation is used when major bosses are destroyed. Huge pieces of artwork are used for the menus (making this game very micro-friendly), and the interface layout itself adds to the look and feel of the world. The adventure opens with a style all its own, boasting high production value from the get-go. It's now up to the young girl to lead her comrades in a struggle against evil. All was well until a rival gang of ruffians, known as the Skullers, stole the red diamond from Jill's gang. “This is real stuff, and it’s incredibly important.Drill Dozer follows the story of Jill, the youngest member of a gang of thieves known as the Red Dozers. “This is a very likely scenario,” he said. Newsom pointed to a Web site,, with disaster tips and resources. Much of the federal Homeland Security money has gone to training and coordination.Īfter his tour, Schwarzenegger deemed it “a fantastic exercise.” He encouraged the public to prepare to be without help for 72 hours. Little money has come in to make the radio systems compatible, but local agencies have worked closer on regional disaster plans. In some cases, they also use different fire equipment hoses from one area need adapters to hook up to hydrants in another. In the Bay Area, for instance, police and fire agencies use incompatible radio systems. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center focused attention on the need for local disaster response agencies to fix long-standing communication problems - both political and technological. We need to do it more.”įailures uncovered after the Sept. “You have no idea how much this means for this to take place. “We’re slowly and methodically making sure the (emergency) leaders are talking to each other,” said San Francisco Assistant Deputy Fire Chief Tom Siragusa. Arnold Schwarzenegger, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and a bevy of official brass toured the area. They peered down with camera probes and sensitive audio gear to look and listen for trapped bodies, barely slowing as Gov. Firefighters took pains to plot a rescue strategy, then dug, drilled and lifted concrete to get to the faux injured, using ram bars, air bags and blocking equipment to lift and stabilize the concrete. The Treasure Island exercise began at 8:30 a.m. Only this year did the federal agency allow states to use the money to train for natural disasters, state officials said. But the past two focused on terrorism scenarios. The annual statewide exercise began in 2004, funded through federal Homeland Security grants. Federal Homeland Security officials and state emergency workers also took part. Months in the making, the statewide exercise began Wednesday with a 24-hour office drill among local agencies, hospitals and others to test regional coordination. “It’s as close to the real deal as you can get,” said San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White. That scenario, they said, could fell 37,000 buildings, kill nearly 5,000 people and injure thousands more while forcing damaged hospitals to shut down. Unaware of the situation when they arrived, they later faced sudden surprises - a nearby building fire, a sudden loss of water.Įmergency officials modeled the drill on the effect of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake on today’s urban landscape. Firefighters from Alameda and Contra Costa counties joined their counterparts from San Francisco, Marin and Santa Clara counties.

[ikesenhell]

Paper Battles

This is the Hostile Takeover series: Part Six. For all other parts and additional IkeSen works by me, see here.

Note: APPARENTLY this series has decided it is going to be highly NSFW as a whole… which is ironic, cause a lot of it is about work… Be warned.

The conference was scheduled for two days from then. Reporters swarmed eagerly outside of Chatelaine Bank, braving the rain for a chance at a juicy story.

“God,” the Director sighed, staring out the window. “That’s a lot of people.”

Nobunaga didn’t answer that. He instead set the tiny box in front of her on the table. She arched her brow at it. 

“What’s that?”

“What do you think?” He half-laughed. 

“You...” Her voice faltered. “You didn’t have to do that. That’s a lot of money to spend.”

“You don’t know how much I spent,” he answered smoothly. “And if the money concerns you, think of it as a long-term investment in Chatelaine Bank. You can return it to me afterwards.”

She cracked the box lid and stared at him from under her brows. “You spent a lot of money on this.”

Nobunaga frowned at her. “First of all, I’ll not have anyone believing that I’d give someone I wished to marry anything less. Secondly, I wasn’t about to be cheap about this. If you’re going to be wearing it for a few months, it should at least be suitable.”

With a deep, long sigh, she slipped it onto her finger. The three diamonds sparkled bright in the light, rubies around the rest of the band. “I feel ridiculous doing this.”

“It’s for your business.”

“Mr. Akechi got the rest of what he needed to pull this off, correct?” She asked, suddenly worried. It was all over her face. “If he didn’t--”

He held up his hand. “Mitsuhide is an expert. He’ll handle it beautifully. Shall we?”

They walked as a unit down the steps and into the front lobby, where Sasuke and Mitsuhide met them in crisp suits. 

“Ready?” Sasuke asked. 

“No.” She laughed. “Let’s do this.”

As soon as the front doors opened, cameras sparked and flashed. Mitsuhide took the stand in front of a bevy of microphones, clearing his throat. 

“Thank you for attending,” he announced smoothly. “I’m going to be sharing a joint statement from Azuchi and Chatelaine Banks on the recent headlines. As you all have reported, there was a photo that placed the CEOs of our respective banks together in what appeared to be a compromising position.”

“Oh, god,” the Princess mumbled, her veneer still solid. 

“As their privacy has been breached,” Mitsuhide continued, cameras flashing, “they would like me to formally announce that they have been engaged for roughly four months.” 

A collective gasp rolled through the crowd. Sasuke stepped up beside Mitsuhide, spreading out his own sheets. “For those with Chatelaine Bank, you need not be concerned. We hold to our standards of transparency and honesty, and even through the courtship, we have continued to keep our policies and business models entirely separate from Azuchi Bank. There are no plans for a merger, nor is that on the table, or even under consideration.”

“Additionally,” Mitsuhide added, a grin spreading on his lips, “We should take a moment to call out those that saw to breach the privacy of our CEOs. I’ve been in contact with the reporters who first broke this story, and I would like to state publicly: it is a shame on the Uesugi-Takeda Bank that they would seek to so smear the names of two happy people for financial gain.”

A hand shot up. “Do you have proof to the assertion that U-T Bank is behind the breach of the story?”

“I do.” Mitsuhide looked almost smug, but it was only a hint. “We’ll be passing out the formalized statement, as well as proof of the emails and attachments sent from Shingen Takeda’s personal secretary. I would like to formally admonish the Uesugi-Takeda Bank for inserting themselves into the private affairs of those they consider rivals.”

The Director turned her head, cocking a brow at Nobunaga. “Very cutthroat of him.”

“It’s the best way to throw out the smokescreen,” Nobunaga whispered back to her. “The scandal isn’t on you anymore. It’s on why Takeda feels it’s necessary to spread gossip about you.”

“Mm.” She apparently hadn’t decided how she felt about that, so she turned her head away and smiled politely at a reporter. 

Azuchi Bank’s phones were ringing off the hook. 

“It’s Kenshin Uesugi,” the secretary advised Nobunaga. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Tell him I’m in a meeting,” Nobunaga answered, picking through his lunch. 

“Yes, sir.”

“What would he want?” Hideyoshi asked, befuddled. 

“Don’t know. He’s always been an odd one.” Nobunaga turned on his computer and sorted through the news results, smiling at what he saw. “It looks like this has bounced back nicely onto U-T.”

“Yes. Shingen Takeda was forced to make a formal address on his part in the news release and basically own to releasing the photos.”

Buzz. Buzz. He flicked on his phone screen and checked the text. It was from the Princess, just a single photo of her television, news conference with Shingen on, and a single finger raised at the screen in defiance. He snorted. “Somehow I don’t think that will placate her.”

“So...” Hideyoshi eyed Nobunaga. “What’s the timeline on keeping this ‘engagement’ going?”

“Until it dies down.” He texted back a simple He’s having to eat quite a bit of his own words and shoved the phone back into his desk. “The current plan is that we can say that the stress and high-profile nature of being thrust into the public and shamed caused the dissolution of the engagement, though we maintain a fondness for each other. This could be a five month to two year plan, depending on the level of media interest.”

“Sounds fair.” But his vice-president paused. “You do realize that the policies you’re having us put through do mirror many of those of Chatelaine Bank.”

“Of course I know that.” He frowned right back. “Why?”

“I just was asking. I think some of our stock holders are growing nervous. They think that we might be changing our bottom line to a smaller profit threshold, and I don’t think they’re fond of that.”

“Azuchi Bank will always be its own entity,” he scoffed. “They’ll stop quailing soon enough. Never let it be said I turned down a good idea in the name of quelling fears.”

They started lunch dates in the name of appearances. He would drive to her office, more often than not, but she didn’t want to ride in his car. They would walk down the street instead, arm in arm, and settle in at a humble Mom-and-Pop bistro that served surprisingly good sandwiches. 

“Never would have thought to come here,” he admitted, peeling open his chips bag. She fixed him with an amused, steely stare until he had to roll his eyes. “You don’t have to say it.”

“Don’t I?” She asked, the teasing lilt in her voice. “We’re not going to talk about your bougie tendencies?”

“No.” He chomped down on a chip, and she laughed. 

“Are you pouting?”

“Not at all. If you choose to believe that, that’s for you to wrestle with.” 

He shared an umbrella with her on the walk back, rain scattering around their shoes and drenching his pant hem. He didn’t mind so much. Lunch was at least interesting now. It felt like some of the magic from the Innovator’s Conference had followed her home, wrapped itself in the cuticles of those manicured fingernails and the swoop of her neck, and he was nothing if not interested in seeing where else it lay. He didn’t have to escort her back to her office door--it wasn’t necessary, after all--but he felt like it, so they walked through her office and talked about interest rates and upcoming legislation. 

“Miss Director?” Her secretary interrupted them, peeking her head in the office. “You have a visitor.”

“Oh?” She glanced at Nobunaga. “Well, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Alright.” He turned on his heel to leave, but--oh. A familiar blonde man emerged in the doorway, mismatched eyes surveying the cozy office, and suddenly Nobunaga was loathe to leave. “Ah. Kenshin.”

“Nobunaga.” Mr. Uesugi looked only slightly surprised. “Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials.”

“Thank you.” 

“Mr. Uesugi?” The Princess paused, then fixed on her professional smile. “Hello. We’ve never met.”

“No, we haven’t.” He answered shortly. His voice was rich and thick, but he was also notoriously brusque and harsh. “I understand my associates got you into a bit of trouble.”

There it was; that sharp, daggerlike glint in her eyes. Nobunaga nearly laughed himself hoarse. Who would win in a fight: the iron maiden Director, or the God of Corporate Warfare himself? “You might say Mr. Takeda caused me a bit of distress, yes.”

“I came here to formally apologize.” He produced a bottle of sake, setting it on her desk with little ceremony. Nobunaga wondered just how humiliated Kenshin was to go this far. “His tactics were disgusting and reprehensible, and the distress and resulting dishonor he caused all of us in no way is endorsed by me. You have my utter sympathies.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you.” She examined the bottle, looking a little confused. “You needn’t apologize for something another person did.”

“But I do. He did it in the name of Uesugi-Takeda Bank, and therefore, it’s my problem as well.”

“Well, that’s appreciated.” She smiled at him. “Thank you very much. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Not at present. Simply wished to grant you that.” And with a nod to both of them, he turned on his heel and left again. 

“Well.” Nobunaga stared after the other man. “Now that was downright nice of him.”

“Definitely not what I’d expected after hearing so many stories.” She uncorked the sake and sniffed it. “Ooh. This is good stuff. I’ll have to share it for an event or something.”

“Maybe your engagement party?” Nobunaga laughed. She picked up a piece of paper, crumpled it, and flung it at his head. He swatted it away. “Come now. You don’t want to start a war with me in here. I’ll win.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” 

“Don’t test me.” He lunged for the printer paper and she laughed, snatching up a few sheets of her own and diving behind the desk. Nobunaga spun a chair around and used it as his own barricade. 

“This is war!” He shouted, lobbing paper balls over the edge. Her laughter spilled from under the desk. 

“Oh my god, you’re gonna ruin my office!”

“You shouldn’t have started this!”

A paper ball smacked him square on top of the head and he cackled. “I will get you for that!”

“Bring it!”

Two could play at that. Nobunaga charged from around the chair and behind her desk; she screamed in surprise as he snatched her up and flung her over his shoulder. 

“Put me down! You ass!” She beat at his back, laughing. He swept her onto her back on her couch. “Ah! Jesus!” 

Planting a knee onto the edge of her couch cushions, he grinned mercilessly down at her. She was smiling still, her hair messed and undone, cardigan askew and skirt hiked up a little too far to be professional. “Admit defeat.”

“Never.” She stuck her tongue out at him. 

“Bah. There’s no way for me to escalate against that kind of treachery in your office.”

They both fell silent, the unspoken next step surging between them. Oh. It felt as if a magnet were linked between their bodies, only just now activated and attracting, and--

“I should go.” Nobunaga straightened up.

“Right.” She fixed herself. “Um, have a good day.”

“Thank you. You as well.” And he turned on his heel to walk out the door, ignoring the terrible, growing desire in his stomach to stay and make good on what he wanted to do. 

[humane-surekha]

I and hubby

Sunday evening

I Let’s go to marine drive

Hubby - Traffic will be bad, let’s chill at home.

I with a melodramatic look, whole week I have not gone out.

Hubby hastily okay okay let’s go.

At around 5 in the rickety creaking Santro, I dressed to kill and hubby with a bored look on our way.

Police nakabandi delays entourage to marine drive

Hubby huffing and puffing

I say let’s have Rustoms sandwich ice-cream

Hubby after 2 ice-cream cool and calm.

With cool air and bevy of beauties spotted at start of marine drive, hubby in very good mood.

I pl let’s stop, I wanna click some hot pics of mine.

Sunset, me hottie and marine drive, what more you need to click.

But parking where, hubby’s question.

I jump out and frantically plead with a cab driver to shift his cab ahead, so that hubby can park.

Lo and behold, cab driver starts cab and leaves.

Yes

I clench my fist and do a small gig, hubby parks

Covid, Corona suddenly sinks in

I search for a place which less crowd

Social distancing, constant cleaning of hands and masks, ingrained in my brain since last year

Relatively finding a place where I and hubby can sit, hastily jump on the parapet and hubby starts clicking, suddenly I hear a voice close by madam, don’t remove your mask, you will be fined

I roll my eyes over to the sound, and say how can you click pics with mask on and with a haughty look, command hubby to focus on the unfinished job

Apart from the hubby flash, feel one more flash on my face and I turn to see 2 females having a bus conductors bag around their neck frantically clicking me.

I am on cloud nine, wow someone else is also clicking my pic, wow that’s a compliment to me, my beauty.

I am rudely interrupted by this thought process when the female in a very highhanded manner commands me to get down from the parapet and says come here madam, I feel like I have been caught red-handed murdering someone,

I yes

The lady in a creaky and pompous voice says you are not wearing a mask. And hence fined

I in my squeaky voice, I am having my mask on

Lady with a evil look, we have proof you were without masks now, we have proof.

Hubby intervenes

Hubby in a husband mode who has the guts to say anything to my wifey ( Even I don’t in falsetto note)

Lady in glee whips out the phone ,

By then hubby in shivaji maharajah mode

Do I need to stop now from the further narrative?

Yes

Right

I need to

Just wondering

Pandemic has seen the growth of so many new ventures starting from sanitizer to facemasks, and thrown out of gear many businesses which have been well entrenched.

And now this latest new mushrooming of punishing citizens for not wearing masks in public.

No-one Denys the importance of wearing masks in public and social distancing.

Are their no fines for social distancing?

Is it strange or is it just impossible to ensure social distancing in a country as crowded as ours?

Then what next best option to fleece citizens?

Penalize citizens in closed car.

I fail to understand how is covid spread from a car when windows are rolled up.

If windows are open, I still understand.

And if we are worried about passengers in the car, are they not already at risk because of the proximity mask or no mask?

Or is it that citizens in cars are a easy target and can shell out the fine as compared to others on road ?

Public places like marine drive where it is very natural for citizens to click pics and thus removing masks.

Yes I agree it is a risk removing masks even for sometime.

But what about social distancing?

Will masks but no social distancing reduce the spread of covid in crowded places?

I am no expert, but my common sense dictates that it is very doubtful.

What I find more disturbing is the Marathi news channel ( Pardon my ignorance about other news channel as I have promised myself to stop watching them since Sushant Rajput tragedy) is the brazen humiliation of citizens and naming and shaming those caught on cameras without masks.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not against masks.

I strongly believe in wearing them in public.

But what is disturbing is the Govt seems to have devised a new revenue model to recoup lost revenue in the last year.

I heard a govt official boosting we have fined 16 Crores or something like that.

Number of fined people is not important, what is to be noted is -

Govt focus on fining and collecting penalty or ensuring that we have atleast some sort of normalcy and get on with our lives and normal economic growth .

This pandemic will continue for the next 2 years is what experts say, in such a scenario, what should be a priority?

Ensuring code of conduct for marriages and functions or penalizing the owner of the marriage hall and the parents and God knows who all.

We as citizens have to take responsibility and yes I agree we would have black sheep’s amongst us, hence strict action is necessary.

But let us all educate, unlearn, relearn, how to handle this new normal which is still an abnormal and not a happy situation for all of us.

[heykav]

This Super-Fast, All-Access Camera Bag Raised $600,000+ on Kickstarter

This Super-Fast, All-Access Camera Bag Raised $600,000+ on Kickstarter

Bevis Gear is closing in on the end of a Kickstarter campaign that has so far raised over $600,000 for the Top Shelf, a camera bag that promises fast, easy access to gear in a way that has never been done before. Bevis Gear claims that all bags to this point have struggled to create a design that properly allows fast and easy access to equipment while also keeping that gear secure. Its solution…

[bevisgear33]

Best Camera Backpack From Bevis Gear

Elevate your photography gear with the best camera backpack from Bevis Gear. Designed for the modern photographer, this backpack offers superior protection with customizable padded compartments for your camera, lenses, and accessories. Its ergonomic design ensures comfort during long shoots, while multiple pockets provide easy access to essentials. Crafted from durable, weather-resistant materials, this camera backpack combines functionality with style, making it the perfect choice for capturing moments on the go.

[andreagillmer]

Rigged Market Socialism

Source: Michael Ballanger for Streetwise Reports   04/06/2020

With his portfolio “solidly anchored” in silver and gold, sector expert Michael Ballanger opines on how bankers and politicians can manipulate markets.

As a child, I used to get quite excited at the prospect of having my English “Gran” read me the Hans Christian Andersen book “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” I found the tale fiendishly amusing, as the charlatan tailor uses lethal doses of flattery and mystery to beguile the poor sovereign into really believing that he is wearing the finest robes ever woven. There is even greater irony in the crowds he passes during a parade as they “Oooh” and “Awww” at his comic preening, knowing full well that he is making a fool of himself but too fearful to do anything but play along. The ending is sublime, with the ultimate moment of reckoning coming “from the mouths of babes,” in the form of a young lad who finally blows the whistle with the innocent but true acknowledgement that, indeed, the emperor was parading pitifully through the town square clad only in his knickers.

I think that I admired and, in fact, envied the scallywag tailor in a manner not dissimilar to the way I am awed by this recent bevy of bankers and politicians. They stand in front of the cameras with their carnival barker bravado and serpentine smiles as they lift trillions of dollars from the future wallets of the taxpaying public and distribute it shamelessly among their capitalist cronies.

You will have to forgive me for defaulting back to the singular best description of the current environment, emblazoned for posterity into our collective psyche by Sir Winston Churchill when he said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” The sheer wisdom of that statement is exceeded only by its sheer cynicism, a practice to which I heartily subscribe.

To wit, that I have been (and continue to be) an irritating gnat in the ears of the Millennial Generation is neither a secret nor a placard. However, I place in these youngsters zero fault for taking such an equally cynical approach to the current global health crisis. They should be outraged by the actions taken by the Baby Boom geriatrics in charge of the “handling” of the outbreak, and indeed they are. Swirling around the twitterverse and the blogosphere are conversations about the COVID-19 pandemic that include descriptives like “Boomer Remover,” which, while in very poor taste in light of the death tolls, reflects the growing mistrust of youth in the global leadership, the bulk of whom would fall into the “boomer” demographic.

Ours is the generation that marched in the streets against racism and war, and then promoted the entire concept of “free market capitalism” for decades. We constantly amped up the frequency and volume of monetary inflation while blindly saying “support our troops,” without questioning why they were being sent off to foreign lands to combat enemies too elusive to confront and too abstract to hate. The banco-politico alliance told us that 9/11 was a “crisis,” so invading a sovereign nation was justified. In fact, the West has been at war in the Middle East now for nearly three decades and there are still terrorists blowing up civilians while young men and women are being returned in body bags to native soils in America, Canada and numerous other NATO lands.

Now, I don’t want to get too morose here but there is absolutely no reason to be surprised if there are crowds marching on the capital cities of the G20, torches and pitchforks in hand, demanding big changes in the “bailout and entitlement queue.”

What really irks me (and should irk you) is that the banco-politico alliance have not “let a good crisis go to waste” but, quite on the contrary, have not only seized it but actually may have created it. Conspiracy theories put aside, with central bank balance sheets all seriously impaired by last September, choked to the esophageal gills with the toxic waste of the last crisis (2008), it is quite possible that these cretins actually needed an excuse to launch a “shock-and-awe” campaign of unbridled money-printing, fully condoned by a terrified legislative and “all-knowing” leadership.

As I have written before, the crisis I identified in the 2020 Forecast Issue was debt, and the first inkling of trouble arrived in September, when JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon first went public with the “trouble in the interbank market” comment during a CNBC interview, followed by the rapid and predictable response by the Fed (REPO). What started as a “temporary” event and “no QE” (quantitative easing) quickly morphed into “permanent” and “massive QE,” and that was before the pandemic even arrived.

No one will ever know for certain, but as Richard Russell would often counsel, “Follow the money.” This leads me to believe that while the elitists probably had nothing to do with the origin of the virus, they have certainly used it to their fullest advantage. Now the Fed balance sheet has grown (and will continue to grow) to unfathomable levels while the treasury departments of all nations around the globe are currently embarked on massive campaigns of debt monetization, the extent of which has become surreal in the true sense of the word.

I was hoping to be wrong in my cynicism, and see the recipient list for the handouts and bailouts not include the banks but, alas, it is not to be. As always, the money has to be channeled through the fee-starved banks because, after all, interest payments on loans held by these “poor banks” must be paid, and as the U.S. is in an election year, they can’t have mortgage defaults spiraling into the abyss while votes are on the table.

In the end, just as that emperor was able to walk without fanfare for what might have been seen as an eternity in retrospect, undergarments disguised as golden robes, the world has long been convinced that the wealth and longevity of the Western World, led by the U.S., was the direct result of “Free Market Capitalism.” That, my friends, is the greatest fallacy of the New Millennium. It did not “go slowly into that good night;” it fell to the ground in ruin, one crisis at a time.

Once the bastion of goodness, “Free Market Capitalism” is now a smoldering pile of rubble, while in its place rises a new world order of “Rigged Market Socialism,” where the wonderfully fertile process of true price discovery has been supplanted by interference, manipulation and price management. Ayn Rand wrote of it in 1957 with her epic novel “Atlas Shrugged,” a work that is now prologue to the events of the last eight weeks, with the phrase “Who is John Galt?” echoing throughout the chambers of policy debate and political strategies.

As greatly as I might resemble a Scrooge-like curmudgeon in today’s missive, I give thanks that my portfolio is solidly anchored in a balance of gold and silver assets whose prices are divergent but, on balance, largely positive on the year. To be down year to day anything less than the 22.79% drop in the S&P 500 is a bonus, but to be ahead is a testimonial to the utile effectiveness of a gold-centric portfolio.

Silver, by contrast, has been a dismal underperformer, for all the reasons I mentioned earlier, and despite recent strength remains in a bear market.

I usually roll my eyes when I read some newsletter “guru” taking victory laps for making a lucky guess at the short-term direction of the precious metals. But even worse is the guy that reminds you that he has “always advocated gold” while failing to remind us all that gold endured a horrific bear market from August 2011 to December 2015, with the HUI falling from over 600 to under 100. I try to identify swings in both gold and silver because you do not want to be 100% long anything all the time. However, never in my forty-plus years in association with the mining and metals arena have I come across a more opportune time to hold gold assets than now. I cannot underscore this. We are going to go through a near-term deflationary scare here first, but what will follow will be an inflationary firestorm, the likes of which will make Weimar, Zimbabwe and Venezuela look like Switzerland.

Year to date, gold has been like a dutiful Saint Bernard. It pulled all of us out of an avalanche of snow and continues to revive of us with the barrel of brandy around its neck. It has behaved, and continues to behave, exactly as it should. It is really important to understand that as we look back in time, we see an asset that not only responds to current demand, it also responds to the current policy initiatives of “those in power that would try to save us.” So, these desperate measures being undertaken by banco-politico alliances across the globe are the reasons that I am buying more on any weakness that appears.

Tactically, on the assumption that we will see a $2,000/ounce gold price by 2021, the biggest leverage comes in owning the marginal producers, but even more so in the developers. The developers that own gold ounces in the ground, but not yet mined, represent outstanding upside because if they are valued at $20 per ounce for a deposit carrying an AISC (all-in sustaining cost) of US$1,500/oz., they will get a $100/ounce lift as their profitability moves from $150 to $500/ounce. That one-million-ounce deposit valued at $20 million gets suddenly rerated to $120 million, and whereas the price of gold advanced 21%, the value of the company rose by 600%. This is the epitome of leverage in the world of gold mining.

While the list of companies that fall into the “developer/explorer” category is reserved for subscribers, there are a few that have been outstanding performers. Two of these “penny dreadfuls hit 2020 highs this week and both are gold deals. The same thing is going to happen when silver finally breaks out of its bear market. But for now, the marginal producers and nascent gold producer/developers are the place to be.

The chart of silver shown above, containing some Fibonacci levels covering the peak-to-trough crash, offers some guidance, and while I do not pretend to be a technical analyst by any stretch, silver has finally scratched its way above that first resistance at US$14.38/ounce, with the next two levels possible. To turn the near-term trend positive (i.e., something more than a dead-cat bounce), we need a solid close above US$16.08/ounce.

Back in November the Fed’s REPO actions began to accelerate, making it appear evident that the Fed was content to let the economy run “hot” for “awhile” in order to jumpstart productivity. This was a clear signal to many of us that all was not well with the U.S. economy, and while people shrugged it off as a temporary problem brought on by Trump’s Trade War (with everyone), I surmised that it was going to have unintended consequences, which it did.

The constant interference in the paper markets include the Crimex in New Yord and the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) in London, and as I wrote about in “A Tale of Two Markets” last week, investors are moving rapidly up the learning curve with this insatiable appetite for physical gold and silver. Seeing a paper market offering at US$14.55 for an ounce of digital silver, but having to pay US$23.87 for a deliverable ounce of the same metal with six-month lag time, is the largest and most malodorous smoking gun ever left at a murder scene. The banks are playing a totally different game with a totally different set of rules, and it will not end well.

I wrote in the Forecast issue that I fully expect to see a reset in the U.S. dollar gold price, prompted by the very people who have been resisting it for decades. Continuing along the path of “follow the money,” look no further than U.S., the International Monetary Fund and Germany for the instigators of this collateral mark-up. The banco-politico alliance is not only out of new bullets, and not only are the old bullets having little to no impact, they have only one option left, and that is the gold holdings. They must re-collateralize their precious banks and they have only one means to do that—they must re-price their only remaining collateral.

With the bullion bank shorts still at uncomfortably high levels (280,000 plus), it could not come at a more propitious time.

Welcome to the New World Order of “Rigged Market Socialism.”

Follow Michael Ballanger on Twitter @MiningJunkie.

Originally trained during the inflationary 1970s, Michael Ballanger is a graduate of Saint Louis University where he earned a Bachelor of Science in finance and a Bachelor of Art in marketing before completing post-graduate work at the Wharton School of Finance. With more than 30 years of experience as a junior mining and exploration specialist, as well as a solid background in corporate finance, Ballanger’s adherence to the concept of “Hard Assets” allows him to focus the practice on selecting opportunities in the global resource sector with emphasis on the precious metals exploration and development sector. Ballanger takes great pleasure in visiting mineral properties around the globe in the never-ending hunt for early-stage opportunities.

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Disclosure: 1) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of Michael Ballanger and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. Michael Ballanger is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. Streetwise Reports was not involved in any aspect of the article preparation. Michael Ballanger was not paid by Streetwise Reports LLC for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. 2) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports’ terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports. 3) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article until three business days after the publication of the interview or article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases.

Charts provided by the author.

Michael Ballanger Disclaimer: This letter makes no guarantee or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the data provided. Nothing contained herein is intended or shall be deemed to be investment advice, implied or otherwise. This letter represents my views and replicates trades that I am making but nothing more than that. Always consult your registered advisor to assist you with your investments. I accept no liability for any loss arising from the use of the data contained on this letter. Options and junior mining stocks contain a high level of risk that may result in the loss of part or all invested capital and therefore are suitable for experienced and professional investors and traders only. One should be familiar with the risks involved in junior mining and options trading and we recommend consulting a financial adviser if you feel you do not understand the risks involved.

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[sweetsmellosuccess]

Sundance 2020: Day 4

Number of Films: 5 Best Film of the Day: Bloody Noses, Empty Pockets

Promising Young Woman: It would certainly make sense that the world would be ready (and awaiting) a revenge thriller in the #metoo era. Unfortunately, this peculiar mish-mash of a film has far too many abrupt tonal shifts — more like a fly zipping around an outdoor picnic — to keep itself together. Carey Mulligan plays Cassandra, a young woman with a traumatic past, who seeks revenge against piggish men by posing as black-out drunk at clubs, going home with one hoping to score, only to turn the tables on them when given the chance. What she actually does to them is strangely vague (in the film’s opening sequence she dispatches Adam Brody’s character in a way that leaves blood spatters on her blouse — but we find out later he’s apparently fine), as is her exact motive, for a time. More confusingly, writer/director Emerald Finnel veers wildly in tone from one moment to the next: One minute, it’s a sweet romantic comedy; the next, a dramatic revenge thriller; before shifting to an archly satiric social commentary, all jumbled up into an unwieldy collage. In one crucial, dramatic scene, a character admits to her wrongdoing, but does so in a living room so notably gouache, with pink carpeting and frilly furniture, the characters actually acknowledge the weirdness of the setting to one another. The plot, which involves several unlikely convolutions, too often works against itself, all the way to a supremely unbelievable (if satisfying) ending. Milligan is strong, and the chemistry she shares with Bo Burnham, as a potential real love interest, is sparkly, but its tonal ambiguity eventually does it in.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets: Filming the last day and night of a dingy, hole-in-the-wall bar in Las Vegas, the Brothers Moss imbibe their neo-doc appropriately enough with a distinct ‘70s vibe, in keeping with both many of the clientele themselves, some of whom display a post-hippie vibe, and the concept itself, which plays like something out of Cassavettes joint. We start at the beginning of the day, as Michael, the bar’s chief barfly, is woken up from the counter, goes to shave in the bathroom, and again takes his customary seat at the bar. For the day shift, he’s being served by the genial bear of a bartender, who has a surprisingly good singing voice on those occasions where he is inspired to pick up his guitar and croon. Shortly thereafter, Michael is joined by a bevy of the other regulars, including Pete, a sweet-faced man with a long pony-tail and many stories of past relationships; John, a large Aussie, who bring a heavy, mysterious paper bag with him and tells the bartender to hide it for him. There’s also a former military grunt who gets mildly belligerent, a smattering of younger people who saunter in, and a host of others, at various levels of decay. As the day progresses, and the sweetly fierce Shay comes in to tend bar on the last night, the clients get more and more soused, and things turn drunkenly chaotic. Amidst numerous confessions, admissions, and exhortations off the clientele being “family,” a claim the saucy Michael instantly refutes (“we’re bar friends,” he says sternly, “not family”), the cameras capture the anarchic spirit of the place, even as it exposes the fissures in the nature of their relationships. Michael, the bar’s patron saint and conscience, seems to best crystallize this dichotomy: When he finally does shuffle off the next morning he does it with zero fanfare, as if no longer having to maintain the illusion that the place is anything other than a sad, dilapidated wreck, where patrons get to shut off their minds from whatever pains have driven them there.

The Nowhere Inn: Carrie Brownstein, of both Sleater-Kinney, and “Portlandia” fame, has a penchant for slightly oddball riffs; Anne Clarke, aka St. Vincent, is known for many things, none of them personal, details she protects vigorously. The “documentary” they have made together, along with director Bill Benz, then, is somewhat predictably a mash-up of concert footage (albeit limited), set-up scenes with Brownstein attempting and failing to make a doc of her own, and creative flights of fancy that half play like sketch comedy bits. It’s certainly interesting, concerning itself with issues of performative identity and audience expectation  —  including, naturally, the film audience  —  but I found myself less than enthralled with these various manipulations. I understand all documentaries, even ones that purport to be straightforward, are still formulations, but by the end of this one, not only have we not learned much new about the pair, it’s possible we know even less.

The Nest: It has been 12 long years since Sean Durkin has made a feature film. His debut, the brilliant Martha Marcy May Marlene, earned him richly deserved praise, so this was one of the films most anticipated by critics at the festival. He does not disappoint. The film is an exceedingly slow burn concerning wealthy commodities trader, Rory (Jude Law), his wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), a horse trainer, and their two children, as he moves them from a comfortable life in New York, to a huge English mansion outside London. Shrewd and successful, Rory is still moving too fast for his own good, a fact that puts tremendous strain on his familial relationships. Played as it is, a bit like a monsterless horror film  —  the actual horror being our own alienation from ourselves, as well as the people we love most  —  Durkin’s careful, precise filmmaking, and attention to character detail, really pays off in the later scenes. Law is brilliant, as per usual, and Coon is a bloody revelation. Ironically, it’s a film that the hyper, inattentive Rory wouldn’t have been able to sit through.

Downhill: Well, we knew this was coming the second this film, an American remake of the remarkable Ruben Ostlund helmed Force Majeure, was announced. Ostlund’s film, about a family on a ski trip in the Alps, where the hapless husband flees for his life when a controlled avalanche seems to head straight for them, deserting his wife and children in the process, is all about the subtle mechanics of interpersonal relationships, and the lies we are forced into believing about ourselves. This film, from comic team Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, eschews many of these delicate details to focus on a more broad comic premise. True to form, Farrell plays his character without genuine delusion  —  unlike the original, it’s clear to him from the start that he ran from his family, and doesn’t really try to believe otherwise  —  which makes his denial far less palpable. Meanwhile, they have added in various bits to generate enough plot momentum to carry through to the finish, some of which seem to counter the film’s very premise. There are some funny bits, and enough of the original is kept in place to keep it at least mildly provocative, but everyone is still vastly better off watching the original instead.

Tomorrow: A little bit of a mix-n-match type thing: We will likely begin with the comedy Palm Springs; then switch to horror for Amulet; and take in Assassins for a lighter day.

Into the frigid climes and rarefied thin air of the spectacular Utah Mountains, I've arrived in order to document some of the sense and senselessness of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Over the next week, armed with little more than a heavy parka and a bevy of blank reporter's notebooks, I'll endeavor to watch as many movies as I can and report my findings.

[goldcoins0]

Rigged Market Socialism

Source: Michael Ballanger for Streetwise Reports   04/06/2020

With his portfolio "solidly anchored" in silver and gold, sector expert Michael Ballanger opines on how bankers and politicians can manipulate markets.

As a child, I used to get quite excited at the prospect of having my English "Gran" read me the Hans Christian Andersen book "The Emperor's New Clothes." I found the tale fiendishly amusing, as the charlatan tailor uses lethal doses of flattery and mystery to beguile the poor sovereign into really believing that he is wearing the finest robes ever woven. There is even greater irony in the crowds he passes during a parade as they "Oooh" and "Awww" at his comic preening, knowing full well that he is making a fool of himself but too fearful to do anything but play along. The ending is sublime, with the ultimate moment of reckoning coming "from the mouths of babes," in the form of a young lad who finally blows the whistle with the innocent but true acknowledgement that, indeed, the emperor was parading pitifully through the town square clad only in his knickers.

I think that I admired and, in fact, envied the scallywag tailor in a manner not dissimilar to the way I am awed by this recent bevy of bankers and politicians. They stand in front of the cameras with their carnival barker bravado and serpentine smiles as they lift trillions of dollars from the future wallets of the taxpaying public and distribute it shamelessly among their capitalist cronies.

You will have to forgive me for defaulting back to the singular best description of the current environment, emblazoned for posterity into our collective psyche by Sir Winston Churchill when he said, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." The sheer wisdom of that statement is exceeded only by its sheer cynicism, a practice to which I heartily subscribe.

To wit, that I have been (and continue to be) an irritating gnat in the ears of the Millennial Generation is neither a secret nor a placard. However, I place in these youngsters zero fault for taking such an equally cynical approach to the current global health crisis. They should be outraged by the actions taken by the Baby Boom geriatrics in charge of the "handling" of the outbreak, and indeed they are. Swirling around the twitterverse and the blogosphere are conversations about the COVID-19 pandemic that include descriptives like "Boomer Remover," which, while in very poor taste in light of the death tolls, reflects the growing mistrust of youth in the global leadership, the bulk of whom would fall into the "boomer" demographic.

Ours is the generation that marched in the streets against racism and war, and then promoted the entire concept of "free market capitalism" for decades. We constantly amped up the frequency and volume of monetary inflation while blindly saying "support our troops," without questioning why they were being sent off to foreign lands to combat enemies too elusive to confront and too abstract to hate. The banco-politico alliance told us that 9/11 was a "crisis," so invading a sovereign nation was justified. In fact, the West has been at war in the Middle East now for nearly three decades and there are still terrorists blowing up civilians while young men and women are being returned in body bags to native soils in America, Canada and numerous other NATO lands.

Now, I don't want to get too morose here but there is absolutely no reason to be surprised if there are crowds marching on the capital cities of the G20, torches and pitchforks in hand, demanding big changes in the "bailout and entitlement queue."

What really irks me (and should irk you) is that the banco-politico alliance have not "let a good crisis go to waste" but, quite on the contrary, have not only seized it but actually may have created it. Conspiracy theories put aside, with central bank balance sheets all seriously impaired by last September, choked to the esophageal gills with the toxic waste of the last crisis (2008), it is quite possible that these cretins actually needed an excuse to launch a "shock-and-awe" campaign of unbridled money-printing, fully condoned by a terrified legislative and "all-knowing" leadership.

As I have written before, the crisis I identified in the 2020 Forecast Issue was debt, and the first inkling of trouble arrived in September, when JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon first went public with the "trouble in the interbank market" comment during a CNBC interview, followed by the rapid and predictable response by the Fed (REPO). What started as a "temporary" event and "no QE" (quantitative easing) quickly morphed into "permanent" and "massive QE," and that was before the pandemic even arrived.

No one will ever know for certain, but as Richard Russell would often counsel, "Follow the money." This leads me to believe that while the elitists probably had nothing to do with the origin of the virus, they have certainly used it to their fullest advantage. Now the Fed balance sheet has grown (and will continue to grow) to unfathomable levels while the treasury departments of all nations around the globe are currently embarked on massive campaigns of debt monetization, the extent of which has become surreal in the true sense of the word.

I was hoping to be wrong in my cynicism, and see the recipient list for the handouts and bailouts not include the banks but, alas, it is not to be. As always, the money has to be channeled through the fee-starved banks because, after all, interest payments on loans held by these "poor banks" must be paid, and as the U.S. is in an election year, they can't have mortgage defaults spiraling into the abyss while votes are on the table.

In the end, just as that emperor was able to walk without fanfare for what might have been seen as an eternity in retrospect, undergarments disguised as golden robes, the world has long been convinced that the wealth and longevity of the Western World, led by the U.S., was the direct result of "Free Market Capitalism." That, my friends, is the greatest fallacy of the New Millennium. It did not "go slowly into that good night;" it fell to the ground in ruin, one crisis at a time.

Once the bastion of goodness, "Free Market Capitalism" is now a smoldering pile of rubble, while in its place rises a new world order of "Rigged Market Socialism," where the wonderfully fertile process of true price discovery has been supplanted by interference, manipulation and price management. Ayn Rand wrote of it in 1957 with her epic novel "Atlas Shrugged," a work that is now prologue to the events of the last eight weeks, with the phrase "Who is John Galt?" echoing throughout the chambers of policy debate and political strategies.

As greatly as I might resemble a Scrooge-like curmudgeon in today's missive, I give thanks that my portfolio is solidly anchored in a balance of gold and silver assets whose prices are divergent but, on balance, largely positive on the year. To be down year to day anything less than the 22.79% drop in the S&P 500 is a bonus, but to be ahead is a testimonial to the utile effectiveness of a gold-centric portfolio.

Silver, by contrast, has been a dismal underperformer, for all the reasons I mentioned earlier, and despite recent strength remains in a bear market.

I usually roll my eyes when I read some newsletter "guru" taking victory laps for making a lucky guess at the short-term direction of the precious metals. But even worse is the guy that reminds you that he has "always advocated gold" while failing to remind us all that gold endured a horrific bear market from August 2011 to December 2015, with the HUI falling from over 600 to under 100. I try to identify swings in both gold and silver because you do not want to be 100% long anything all the time. However, never in my forty-plus years in association with the mining and metals arena have I come across a more opportune time to hold gold assets than now. I cannot underscore this. We are going to go through a near-term deflationary scare here first, but what will follow will be an inflationary firestorm, the likes of which will make Weimar, Zimbabwe and Venezuela look like Switzerland.

Year to date, gold has been like a dutiful Saint Bernard. It pulled all of us out of an avalanche of snow and continues to revive of us with the barrel of brandy around its neck. It has behaved, and continues to behave, exactly as it should. It is really important to understand that as we look back in time, we see an asset that not only responds to current demand, it also responds to the current policy initiatives of "those in power that would try to save us." So, these desperate measures being undertaken by banco-politico alliances across the globe are the reasons that I am buying more on any weakness that appears.

Tactically, on the assumption that we will see a $2,000/ounce gold price by 2021, the biggest leverage comes in owning the marginal producers, but even more so in the developers. The developers that own gold ounces in the ground, but not yet mined, represent outstanding upside because if they are valued at $20 per ounce for a deposit carrying an AISC (all-in sustaining cost) of US$1,500/oz., they will get a $100/ounce lift as their profitability moves from $150 to $500/ounce. That one-million-ounce deposit valued at $20 million gets suddenly rerated to $120 million, and whereas the price of gold advanced 21%, the value of the company rose by 600%. This is the epitome of leverage in the world of gold mining.

While the list of companies that fall into the "developer/explorer" category is reserved for subscribers, there are a few that have been outstanding performers. Two of these "penny dreadfuls hit 2020 highs this week and both are gold deals. The same thing is going to happen when silver finally breaks out of its bear market. But for now, the marginal producers and nascent gold producer/developers are the place to be.

The chart of silver shown above, containing some Fibonacci levels covering the peak-to-trough crash, offers some guidance, and while I do not pretend to be a technical analyst by any stretch, silver has finally scratched its way above that first resistance at US$14.38/ounce, with the next two levels possible. To turn the near-term trend positive (i.e., something more than a dead-cat bounce), we need a solid close above US$16.08/ounce.

Back in November the Fed's REPO actions began to accelerate, making it appear evident that the Fed was content to let the economy run "hot" for "awhile" in order to jumpstart productivity. This was a clear signal to many of us that all was not well with the U.S. economy, and while people shrugged it off as a temporary problem brought on by Trump's Trade War (with everyone), I surmised that it was going to have unintended consequences, which it did.

The constant interference in the paper markets include the Crimex in New Yord and the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) in London, and as I wrote about in "A Tale of Two Markets" last week, investors are moving rapidly up the learning curve with this insatiable appetite for physical gold and silver. Seeing a paper market offering at US$14.55 for an ounce of digital silver, but having to pay US$23.87 for a deliverable ounce of the same metal with six-month lag time, is the largest and most malodorous smoking gun ever left at a murder scene. The banks are playing a totally different game with a totally different set of rules, and it will not end well.

I wrote in the Forecast issue that I fully expect to see a reset in the U.S. dollar gold price, prompted by the very people who have been resisting it for decades. Continuing along the path of "follow the money," look no further than U.S., the International Monetary Fund and Germany for the instigators of this collateral mark-up. The banco-politico alliance is not only out of new bullets, and not only are the old bullets having little to no impact, they have only one option left, and that is the gold holdings. They must re-collateralize their precious banks and they have only one means to do that—they must re-price their only remaining collateral.

With the bullion bank shorts still at uncomfortably high levels (280,000 plus), it could not come at a more propitious time.

Welcome to the New World Order of "Rigged Market Socialism."

Follow Michael Ballanger on Twitter @MiningJunkie.

Originally trained during the inflationary 1970s, Michael Ballanger is a graduate of Saint Louis University where he earned a Bachelor of Science in finance and a Bachelor of Art in marketing before completing post-graduate work at the Wharton School of Finance. With more than 30 years of experience as a junior mining and exploration specialist, as well as a solid background in corporate finance, Ballanger's adherence to the concept of "Hard Assets" allows him to focus the practice on selecting opportunities in the global resource sector with emphasis on the precious metals exploration and development sector. Ballanger takes great pleasure in visiting mineral properties around the globe in the never-ending hunt for early-stage opportunities.

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Disclosure: 1) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of Michael Ballanger and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. Michael Ballanger is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. Streetwise Reports was not involved in any aspect of the article preparation. Michael Ballanger was not paid by Streetwise Reports LLC for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. 2) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports. 3) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article until three business days after the publication of the interview or article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases.

Charts provided by the author.

Michael Ballanger Disclaimer: This letter makes no guarantee or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the data provided. Nothing contained herein is intended or shall be deemed to be investment advice, implied or otherwise. This letter represents my views and replicates trades that I am making but nothing more than that. Always consult your registered advisor to assist you with your investments. I accept no liability for any loss arising from the use of the data contained on this letter. Options and junior mining stocks contain a high level of risk that may result in the loss of part or all invested capital and therefore are suitable for experienced and professional investors and traders only. One should be familiar with the risks involved in junior mining and options trading and we recommend consulting a financial adviser if you feel you do not understand the risks involved.

from https://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2020/04/05/rigged-market-socialism.html

[junker-town]

The most outlandish characters on ‘Tiger King’, ranked

The Netflix show has gifted us one of the most outrageous cast of characters imaginable.

WARNING: This post contains spoilers about the Netflix series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness.

Every few months, a docuseries gets dropped onto one of the numerous streaming services, quickly gains steam on social media, and becomes the next big thing that you have to watch.

Netflix’s newest series, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, is many things molded into one. Although it could easily be categorized into the true-crime documentary genre, it’s equal parts reality show and stranger-than-fiction biopic. It also happens to include one of the wildest and strangest casts of characters that has ever appeared in a series.

Although the story is centered around the antics of Joe Exotic — described on the show’s IMDB page as “an Oklahoma polygamist, country singer, and gun toter who houses a horde of lions, tigers, and bears in his roadside zoo and is accused of planning the killing of a local animal rights activist” — there’s a deep stable of other unique individuals who each have their own oddities that take this story to a new level.

Here are some of Tiger King’s biggest characters ranked by just how outrageous their actions are.

10. Rick Kirkham

Throughout the series, Kirkham is the closest thing there is to an all-knowing narrator. His role as a television producer of the web series Joe Exotic TV allowed him to take a front-row seat to the daily shenanigans of Joe Exotic and G.W. Zoo. That chapter of his life came to an abrupt close when the studio that housed his footage for the series was lost in a mysterious fire on the property that also claimed two reptile enclosures (including some that once belonged to Michael Jackson). He’s still one of the more subdued personalities despite his role as an authoritative driver of the narrative as he dons a cowboy hat while taking drags from cigarettes.

9. Barbara Fisher

One of the most revealing segments of the series came from an interview with Fisher, who detailed her stint as an “employee” at Bhagavan Antle’s T.I.G.E.R.S. (The Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species) organization. Her most jaw-dropping revelations included the claim that in order to climb the ranks of Antle’s operation, one would have to enter into a sexual relationship with him. That accusation may or may not be true, but Fisher’s presence and storytelling add another layer to the intrigue of Antle’s persona. Her stint is short lived but does lack a bevy of intriguing nuggets of the story.

8. Joshua Dial

Dial’s presence in the latter half of the series is not without turmoil. As a young individual with aspirations of a career in politics, Dial served as Exotic’s campaign manager when Exotic was running for governor of Oklahoma. A self-described libertarian, Dial provides a voice of reason amongst the cast of characters that have warped reality. One of the more harrowing moments of the series is the footage that is shown of Dial’s reaction to Travis Maldonado’s accidental suicide in which Maldonado shot himself while trying to prove his weapon would not fire without its magazine, despite there being a bullet in the chamber. Dial understandably looked on awestruck in shock.

In a series in which it’s hard to find someone to root for, Dial’s short arc is one that deserves sympathy.

7. John Finlay

The teeth (or lack thereof) are haunting. The display of his tattoo-covered torso anytime he’s on camera is distracting. However, Finlay’s narration of some of the more personal aspects of Exotic’s life peel back the curtain on his boisterous persona. Finlay was Exotic’s partner for over a decade throughout the saga, although it’s unsure if the two were ever officially married before the joint ceremony with Exotic and Maldonado that the series shows. His trademark tattoo above his groin reading “Private Property of Joe Exotic” was just one of the many interesting quirks of their relationship. As Kirkham explains, “John Finlay came out and said ‘Look I got to tell you, I’m not really gay, I’ve been sleeping with the girl at the front desk.’”

Finlay ultimately ended his relationship with Exotic to continue his relationship with the aforementioned woman.

6. Travis Maldonado

Maldonado was Exotic’s third husband, and the second portrayed in the series. His relationship with Exotic was always one of dependence. As Dial describes it in an interview, “There are people out there who will look at a person who is in desperate, dire need of something. In Travis’ case, he was addicted to meth — and they take that need and they fulfill it, until they become the only person who can fulfill that need.”

In similar fashion to Finlay, Kirkham also proclaimed Maldonado was not gay. “”I told Joe at least three times that Travis was not gay, OK? Travis was banging every girl in the park,” Kirkham said to the producers of the series.

Nonetheless, Maldonado’s story is a sad, tragic one of someone battling personal demons.

5. Mario Tabraue

The mere fact Tabraue is the alleged inspiration for the Tony Montana character in Scarface plays only a minor role speaks to the overall insanity of the entire saga. His past as one of the most notorious drug dealers in Miami was a precursor to his introduction to the world of big cats. Early on in the series, the production crew attempts to enter his property only to be prevented by security. The crew is eventually able to obtain access, and Tabraue delivers one of the best lines of the entire series when he dons a monkey around his neck while saying “sometimes they say that I’m the prototype for Scarface.”

I’d watch an entire spinoff series focused solely on Tabraue. While not as extravagant or flamboyant as some of the other characters, Tabraue carries an aura of mystery that goes just beyond his affinity for big cats.

4. Jeff Lowe

If there’s one word that best sums up Lowe’s persona, it’s sleazy. His standard attire of ripped jeans, a bandana and a baseball hat are showing extreme levels of How Do You Do Fellow Kids. Lowe’s questionable backstory includes illegally carrying lion and tiger cubs in suitcases through hotels in Las Vegas, a description as a “swinger,” and a history of domestic abuse with his former wife. Lowe preys on Exotic’s hardships as mounting legal fees from an ongoing dispute with Carole and Howard Baskin quickly drain his finances and force him to sell the park to Lowe to keep it alive. Despite his involvement in the murder-fire-hire scheme that ultimately winds up being the downfall of Exotic, Lowe escapes unscathed by cooperating with federal agents to save his own skin.

Lowe’s actions are shady through and through.

3. Carole Baskin

The “Mother Teresa of Big Cats” is the perfect foil to Exotic’s bombastic lifestyle, but not without some question marks of her own. The biggest possible skeleton in her closet (or somewhere in her Big Cat Rescue sanctuary) is the strange disappearance of her first husband, Don Lewis. Did she feed him to a tiger? Is he in the property’s septic tank? Did he flee to Costa Rica only to never be heard from again? SO MUCH MYSTERY.

And, of course, there’s the entire, you know, fact her biggest adversary hatched a plot to have her murdered. Baskin is not perfect by any means. Is she the protagonist of the story? Is she an anti-hero? Her portrayal in Tiger King presents a mixed bag that leaves a complex assumption up to the viewers.

2. Bhagavan “Doc” Antle

My one hot take after watching this series was that I wish Antle was the main focus of the plot. There is SO much to unpack with him.

To start, his soul patch and ponytail combo is an absolute look. He looks exactly like what I would expect a guy that calls himself Bhagavan to look like. Even before the series aired, Antle was already regarded as one of the most well-known big cat enthusiasts as evidenced by his appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Late Show with David Letterman.

His portrayal in Tiger King, however, is not a favorable one. It is alluded to repeatedly that he runs a cult-like organization, as mentioned above by Fisher. There is uncertainty surrounding the nature of his relationships with those who work as apprentices, and there is speculation in multiple interviews surrounding just how many wives he actually has. Many of his apprentices begin as teenage women, and Fisher’s remarks stated Antle would have them change their names to something more exotic (pun not intended) and would pick their outfits that were usually some sort of scantily clad big cat print based.

It remains unclear how much of Antle’s reputation is actually true, but there’s no denying the sheer force of his personality.

1. Joe Exotic

As if anyone else was going to be in the top spot? The antics of Exotic that are shown in Tiger King could easily warrant their own detailed list, but here are some of the most outrageous ones from the series:

Running for president in 2016, then following it up by running for governor of Oklahoma in 2018 and earning 18.7 percent of the Libertarian vote

Literally any of his eccentric music videos from his country music catalogue. “Here Kitty Kitty” might be the most absurd of all of them

Performing a song at Maldonado’s funeral

His affinity for dynamite and blowing things up

GOING TO PRISON BECAUSE OF A MURDER-FOR-HIRE PLOT

There’s so much about Exotic’s entire aesthetic that is hard to put into words. Above all else, Exotic was a showman and an entertainer. As he spirals deeper and deeper into his complicated rivalry with Baskin, we see just how far he’s willing to go in order to preserve his life’s work. It’s fascinating to watch a man so consumed with being on top of his world and the resentment he feels towards those who oppose him that he loses his grip on reality before ultimately ending up in prison.

There are few real life stories and characters — if any — that can match Exotic’s larger-than-life saga.

[thenewsvideos]

Watch It may have been announced in February 2016, but the Canon EOS 1D X Mark II is still an excellent option for photojournalists and professional sports photographers. That said, it is getting on in years and definitely needed a fresh coat of paint, with many suggesting an announcement for the next generation full-frame DSLR could be made in February 2020. Instead of making us wait, Canon has let the cat out of the bag and announced that the EOS 1D X Mark III is definitely in the pipeline. There's no word on pricing or availability yet, although the camera maker took the opportunity to point out that two more RF lenses have been added to its growing bevy of optics. The RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM and RF 85mm f/1.2L USM DS will be available to buy from November and December, respectively, with pricing still to be confirmed. Nikon vs Canon: which camera should you buy?The best DSLRs you can buy right nowMirrorless vs DSLR: 10 key differences Better than before To tease us, and silence t.. video

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