#charles' approach has been to set himself up as the future of a team with enough resources to get him where he hopes to end up

[gayferrari]

U have the only take on Ferrari & Charles I respect (the people who think he'll ever leave the team simply Do Not get the inescapable draw that Ferrari has on Italian and Italian-adjacent people) that man will be like Niki, getting buried in his Ferrari race suit

aw thank you! this is very flattering and I appreciate it.

Honestly, I think Charles is definitely a fair bit infatuated with the Myth of it all (Niki core, yeah) but I also think that he's very aware of how much publicly embracing the Ferrari ''faith'' has endeared him to the fanbase, which in turn has benefited his personal brand and career quite a bit (in a way Carlos never managed). Like, he IS genuine. But when I say he's exactly where he wants to be, I'm not just talking about team loyalty. I really think he's set himself up really well career-wise, and imo played his cards as best as he could in a sport where so much of your success depends on being at the right time in the right place regardless of skills, and drivers have limited ways to control where they end up.

[bumblesimagines]

Green Thumb

Part 8

Request: Yes or No

Sam and y/n had more development than y/n and Wanda lmao

~

You crossed your arms as you entered the room, glancing at the older man. You shared a look with Sam and Wanda, taking a seat in between Sam and Vision. You licked your lips, leaning towards Sam.

"What's this about?" You asked quietly, gaze flickering to Tony who sat in a corner.

"If I had to guess.. Probably about what happened in Lagos." Sam replied, glancing at Steve and Natasha. You frowned, looking at the Secretary of State.

"The world owes the Avengers an unpayable debt." He began, gaze sweeping over everyone in the room.

"You have.. Fought for us, protected us, risked your lives but while a great many people see you as heroes, there are some who would prefer the term 'vigilantes.'"

"And what word would you use, Mr. Secretary?" Natasha asked, studying the older man. You looked back at Tony Stark, making brief eye contact with him. It felt like an intervention. Or a teacher scolding their class after they made the sub cry.

"How about dangerous?" You frowned, looking forward when you heard his words.

"What would you call a group of US based enhanced individuals who routinely ignore borders and inflict their will wherever they choose and who, quite frankly, seem unconcerned about what they leave behind?" Mr. Secretary asked, looking over the small group in disappointed. You'd hate to admit it, but he had a point. The citizens of Sokovia were left to find new homes and the people of Lagos had to fix what had been destroyed. Mr. Secretary stepped to the side, looking at the screen. Videos began playing of all the times the Avengers caused destruction and most likely death. Wanda looked away, growing uncomfortable as the aftermath of the Lagos incident played. She already felt guilty enough about it. She had told you many times how she wished it would've gone differently. Steve noticed, frown deepening.

"That's enough." He called, watching the screen turn off.

"For the last few years, you've operated with unlimited power and no supervision. That's a decision the governments of the world can no longer tolerate." Mr. Secretary told them, hands clasped behind his back. You frowned, brows furrowing slightly.

"But we have a solution." Mr. Secretary took a book from his bodyguard, stepping forward and handing it to Wanda. Wanda picked it up, looking it over.

"The Sokovia Accords.. Approved by a hundred and seventeen countries." Wanda slid the book over to Rhodes so he could take a proper look at it. You looked at Mr. Secretary as he walked around the table.

"It states that the Avengers shall no longer be a private organization. Instead, they'll operate under the supervision of The United Nations Panel, only when and if that panel deems it necessary."

"That's such bullshit." You whispered. Mr. Secretary turned towards you, cocking a brow. Natasha let an amused smile slip while Sam covered up his snicker with a cough.

"The Avengers were created to make the world a safer place." Steve spoke up before he could address you.

"This is the middle ground." Mr. Secretary said, walking to the front again and facing everyone.

"The Accords will be ratified in a couple days." Steve turned towards Tony, earning a silent response.

"I'll leave you to discuss."

"And if we come to a decision you don't like?" Leave it to Natasha to say what was on everyones' minds. Mr. Secretary paused as he approached the door.

"Then you retire." He answered plainly. You watched him leave, picking up the cup of water infront of You You went to take a sip but it turned to ice before you could drink from it. With a small huff, you placed it down.

"That's new." Natasha called with a small smile, hoping to ease the tension in the room. You stood up, leaving the meeting room and heading to the lounge. The others followed, taking more comfortable seats on the couch. A debate quickly started between Rhodes and Sam while Steve looked through the Accords.

"Have you two thought about starting a debate club?" You asked, tapping the frozen water a few times before it finally turned back to normal water. Natasha let out a small snort, chuckling as she shook her head.

"I have an equation." Vision announced, stopping Rhodes and Sam. They turned towards him.

"In the eight years since Mr. Stark announced himself as Iron Man, the number of enhanced people has grown and during the same period, the number of world ending events has risen."

"So, it's Starks' fault?" You asked, leaning back in your seat with a tilted head. Tony scoffed from his spot on the couch, rolling his eyes.

"I'm saying, there might be a causality. Our very strength invites challenge, challenge insights conflict, and conflict... Breeds catastrophe. Oversight is not an idea that should be dismissed."

"I wish I understood half of what you said." You muttered softly, running your finger the leaf of a plant beside the seat. Natasha turned towards Tony, watching him.

"You're being uncharacteristic non-hyper verbal." Natasha pointed out softly as he looked at her with a deep sigh. Steve looked up from the Accords.

"It's cause he already made up his mind." Steve said, earning a small eye roll. Tony slowly sat up, rubbing the back of his head.

"Actually, I'm nursing a headache." He muttered as he stood up, walking towards the coffee machine. He poured himself some coffee and grabbed a bottle of pills before sighing and placing down a device. He showed an image of a young man.

"Oh, that's Charles Spencer, by the way. A great kid. Computer engineering degree, 3.6 GPA, had a floor level gig for the fall. He decided to spend his summer building sustainable housing for the people in Sokovia." Tony said, obviously agitated as he looked over everyone. You wondered why he now cared for the people who were injured during attacks.

"He wanted to make a difference although we'll never know cause we dropped a building on him while kicking ass." Everyone stayed silent as he spoke. You watched him take a pill, drinking it with the coffee.

"There's no decision making here. We need to be put in check. Whatever form that takes, I'm game. If we can't accept limitations, we're no better than the bad guys."

"Tony, when someone dies on your watch, you don't give up." Steve closed the Accords, looking at Tony with a frown.

"Who says we're giving up?"

"We are by not taking responsibilities for our actions. This document shifts the blame." Steve voiced his opinion, shrugging lightly.

"Steve, that is dangerously arrogant." Rhodes spoke up, shaking his head. Steve turned towards him.

"This is the United Nations we're talking about. It's not the world security counsel, it's not S.H.I.E.L.D, it's not HYDRA-"

"But it's run by people with agendas and agendas change." Steve pointed out as you rubbed your forehead, sighing softly. Both sides had good points but you sided with Steve. The team was obviously divided.

"What do you think, (Y/N)?" Vision asked, looking at you curiously. You licked your lips, gaze focusing on Tony.

"I'm curious as to why you care so much about this Charles guy. You've had, what was it? Eight years as Iron Man to care about the people who get hurt? Why now? Cause you realized one of those people could become the new you? Would you care this much about Charles if he had been a typical guy? No degree, no plans for the future, just a normal guy working a normal 9 to 5 job and just trying to make it through the week. I agree with Steve. What if something happens and they don't send us to help because it doesn't go with their agenda? People get hurt cause you've never set up a system to help after these things happen. You're a fucking billionaire, Tony. Make a company that's designed to help people get back on their feet after the Avengers bulldoze through cities." You said, legs crossing as you looked over everyone else. Steve gave a small nod, glad you were seeing his side. He checked his phone, abruptly standing and announcing he had to leave. You and the others watched him go in confusion.

"To answer your questions, I do care about normal people." Tony said, arms crossing. You let out a soft groan, leaning back in the couch.

"I'm sorry, what are you? Twelve? Didn't you turn twenty this year?" Tony cocked a brow, watching as you rolled your eyes and stood.

"Yeah, I did turn twenty. Surprised you knew considering you've never particularly liked me."

"Well, first impressions are everything and you did try impaling me with a branch."

"Maybe I should've."

"Alright, boys, let's calm down." Natasha called, placing a hand on your shoulder. You turned and walked towards the steps, heading down to your room at the facility. You entered and plopped down on the bed, running a hand through your hair. You tapped your foot on the ground, fingers going to the root bracelets in an attempt to relax. Wanda opened the door, closing it behind her and sitting beside you.

"What's wrong?" She asked softly, staring at you in concern. You weren't one to snap at others so quickly.

"There's so much going on. The Accords, my fucking powers, the sudden change in Nat and Tony, you possibly getting into trouble cause of the Lagos incident.. That could've been me." You breathed out. Wanda frowned, brows furrowing.

"No, it wouldn't have."

"I shot fire out of my hands and turned water to ice without meaning to. They're getting unpredictable." You looked at her, grip on the roots tightening. Wanda's gaze flickered to the window, making you turn. Part of the window was covered in a thin layer of ice.

"And that just proved my point."

"You're an incredible person, (N/N). Have faith in yourself. You'll gain control of them sooner or later. You have beautiful powers that could change and heal the world." Wanda pointed out gently, having you rest your head on her shoulder. She softly began to hum a lullaby. You didn't understand the words but her soft voice proved to be soothing.

"Thank you."

~~~~~~~~~~

"Why'd you call me again?" You asked, toying with the strings of your hoodie as you looked around the cafe. You had planned on taking a nap and watching a new show on Netflix but it seemed like Steve had other plans for you.

"Because I trust you and need your help." Steve replied, fixing his baseball cap as he tried avoiding eye contact with civilians.

"Really?" You asked softly. Steve nodded, offering a smile. He licked his lips, nodding to the tv. You turned, looking at the news. You really didn't have to considering what they were showing was right down the street.

"Your friend?" You looked back at Steve with a tilted head.

"We gotta find him before anyone else does." Steve said. You nodded, watching him. Steve had been desperately trying to find his friend, Bucky, since the attempt on Furys' life.

"I'll go in alone. We don't want to seem threatening or set him off by going in as a trio."

"(Y/N)? Being threatening? He can't even scare a baby!" Sam said in amusement, shooting you a playful grin.

"Right back at you, bird boy."

"I'm sorry, who here is named after the top bird of prey?" Sam asked, leaning forward slightly as Steve let out an amused sigh.

"Oh, I didn't know you were named after eagles." You responded, smiling in triumph when Sam huffed lightly.

"Come on, you two." Steve chuckled, leaving the cafe and heading down the sidewalk.

"I don't trust Stark." You told them, arms crossing. Sam glanced at you as Steve turned into an alleyway.

"Not surprised considering the little fight you two had."

"I think he had Vis keep an eye on me and Wanda. I snuck out while he was with Wanda in the kitchen." You told him, frowning.

"Firstly, I'm an adult-"

"That's questionable."

"-And secondly, he's not my dad." You took off the hoodie as Steve unlocked a car parked in the alleyway, giving Sam the duffle bag with his outfit. You looked at your phone when it buzzed, seeing texts from Clint.

Clint

Heard you had a fight with Stark

Clint

You're officially an Avenger now

You smiled softly, chuckling softly at the texts. You waited for the guys to finish changing before taking the earpiece from Steve. The apartment building had been nearby so you and Sam headed onto the roof while Steve entered.

"How well do you think this will go?" You asked Sam, looking for any sign of law enforcement.

"Wanna bet?"

"How much?" You looked at him, giving a small grin. Sam looked up at the sky for a moment, thinking it over.

"30 bucks. I bet this will go to shit and this dude will escape."

"I bet we'll get into serious shit but this dude will either come with us or get caught." You replied. Sam stuck out his hand, nodding. You shook it, chuckling softly. You turned your head, noticing movement.

"We've got company, Cap."

"They're approaching from the south." Sam added, attention focused on them. You heard Steve begin to talk to someone, watching the cars pull in and get ready. You turned your head, hearing the door to the roof open.

"Shit." You whispered, letting Sam pick you up and lift you into the air. You could hear the fight going on inside through the earpiece.

"Should we help?" You asked, glancing up at Sam.

"No clue." Sam replied, watching Bucky jump from the apartment onto the roof of another building. You noticed someone running at a high speed, jumping up onto the roof and knocking Bucky down.

"They have cat ears." You mumbled, pushing Sam's arms away.

"Deal with them." You motioned to the German police force on the roof, hoping down onto the roof. You raised your hand, a root shooting out and grabbing the strangers arm, refraining them from clawing at Bucky. Bucky turned his head, making eye contact with you. Your eyes widened when the man grabbed the root, using what felt like super strength to toss you off the roof. You quickly used a root to grab onto the side, breathing out a sigh of relief. Sam took care of a helicopter before flying by to grab you.

"Thanks." You breathed out, holding onto him as he followed the chase. Steve, Bucky, and the cat guy went into one of the tunnels. Sam flew in once there was an opening, trying to help Steve with the cat guy. You huffed when the cat guy grabbed Sam's ankle, pointing your hand at him and shooting a strong gust of air. The cat guy lost his grip monetarily but quickly grabbed on again. Bucky threw up an explosive so Sam quickly stopped, flinging the guy off him. Sam landed, walking past the rubble. You sighed, raising your hands as you and Sam were quickly surrounded by cops.

"Mom's gonna kill me." You whispered.

"That's what you're concerned about?" Sam asked, glancing at you in disbelief.

"We're getting arrested, (Y/N)!"

[leqclerc]

Omg I thought it was just me whi was massively creeped out by B's weird dynamic with C. I don't think there's anything illegal going on, we couldn't possibly affirm that, but the way he behaves in public screams possessive. Like 'look at my little genius', 'look at my future cashcow'. Does that make sense? It's like he's gripping at a lifeline because he knows his administration of Ferrari has been disastrous so far and he fucked up by pushing one of the most team guys in F1 out. It's ridiculous, but sometimes I'm scared for C.

Nope, definitely not just you, anon!

Right, exactly. I’m not 100% on this, but it seems like B’s the one who coined the whole Il Predestinato term, or at least contributed to blowing up the hype around that narrative. You can tell Charles isn’t really comfortable with the nickname that’s been bestowed upon him (I’m pretty sure one of the Sky Italia ads he featured in even made a joke about it) and that additional pressure can’t be healthy for him, either.

I do think there’s an element of look at my little superstar there, like he’s taking credit for Charles’s... “creation” I guess, which is obviously bullshit. Charles got to where he is because of his own determination, talent and tenacity. B can’t even claim to have “discovered” or signed him, because Maurizio did that back in 2018. B let Maurizio set up this strong Ferrari lineup for him, with a four time WDC and a young incredible talent, then brutally ousted him through shitty internal politics, and took over, trying to claim all the credit for Maurizio’s hard work for himself. But of course he’s proven that --- even if he’s a decent engineer/technical director --- he simply doesn’t have the right approach or skillset to be a capable leader. So the Ferrari dream slowly started disintegrating. Apparently through 2019 he was trying to juggle the self-appointed dual role of technical director and team principal and subsequently started slipping in his duties, torn between developing the engine and micromanaging the team trackside. And so the little monster that is the SF1000 power unit was born out of a cocktail of negligence, hubris and carelessness.

Then he decided not to renew Seb’s contract, which... Bad decision. Yeah, Charles and Seb have clashed over the course of the 2019, but you can see now that they’ve learned to work past that and maintain a good relationship. They’re close. They respect each other and always take the time to extoll the other’s abilities and qualities. They’re probably the strongest lineup Ferrari have had in the hybrid era --- Charles challenges Seb, pushes him to his limits, and Seb has a positive influence on Charles, both as a driver and as a person. But because B seems to have a deeply-rooted personal problem with Seb, he decided to throw all that away.

Which brings me to your final point. Anon, you and me both. Seb’s a mentor figure for Charles, a tether, a friend. A source of comfort and support who isn’t biased and blinded by the Il Predestinato myth --- Charles can trust him to be honest and fair in his assessment of him. Seb’s pointed out that they’ve presented a united front during debriefs this year --- that their feedback is very similar and they’re on the same wavelength when it comes to car development. Ferrari can be a toxic work environment, with its mix of shady internal politics and just... very poor team management. But at least up to this point they had each other. Carlos isn’t going to be that for him when he’s going to try to prove himself to the boss. Sometimes that means not speaking up even when one feels they should. Who’s going to tell Charles that it’s okay, that you did a fantastic job, when he’s self-flagellating after a race like Turkey? All B could talk about was how disappointed he was that Charles missed out on that P2. That’s not support, certainty not the kind he needs or deserves, being as critical of himself as he is. And conditional love isn’t love. 

[ot5ismyhome]

Bloodbound chapter 6- Creature of the Shadows

Introduction

The day that changed Pietro’s life wasn’t a day. It was a night. He got a phone call on that fateful night which made him abandon his twin during the celebration dinner for her new job. He had been called to a crime scene for investigation. That one incident determined his course of action.

It’s been three months since the night Pietro saw the mangled body. Still they were not close to solving the case than they were that night. There had been many talks in the base what could have killed that man but most of them were just plain crazy. But crazy had been his life since joining the secret organisation, Special Threat Assessment for Known Extranormalities but they usually went by the name S.T.A.K.E.  The agency dealt with extreme and weird cases in the city. He had come across weird cases while filing the reports but this was his first field work.

Nothing can be said about the case for sure till they receive a forensic report. It has to be a beast gone rogue, Pietro thought. The bite marks and the ripping matched an animal’s jaw than a knife. But it didn’t make any sense. An animal barely wanders into a big city; that too a rouge one is very rare and weird. It’s weirder that it still has not been spotted by anyone.

Pietro made his way to the lab to collect the report. He entered the lab and he saw Fitz working on his laptop.

The night flashed in front of Pietro’s eyes. Fitz-Simmons were there to collect evidence. Pietro talked with the local police saying S.H.I.E.L.D will take over the case. The police looked at him suspiciously but grumbled an agreement. We need a believable name he thought as he entered the secured area. He saw the two scientists make their way, down the alley, to the death body. He followed them. At the end of the alley, his eyes settled on the dead body for the first time. It wasn’t like anything he had seen before. The road below it was dark maroon. The blood that had pooled around the body has dried away. It looked like gummy red substance now. He saw Fitz cringe his face as he looked at the unidentifiable body. But Simmons didn’t seem to mind it. She set onto work. Once they had finished, they vacated the scene.

Pietro asked for the report to Fitz. He was searching through the files in the shelf when Simmons came out of the wet lab talking, “Fitz, did you decrypt the radio signal we picked up last week. Agent Hand thinks that it might have to do with Dr. Banner’s disappearance. The last location of Dr. Banner and the signal have been picked within 1-mile radius.” She didn’t notice Pietro, she continued, “The case has been moved to top priority. We have a meeting with Agent Hand at 2:30” she ranted on in her British accent.

After she finished talking, she noticed that Pietro was in the room. “Sorry. I didn’t see you there. How can we help you?”

“He is here for the report of feral case. I can’t find the file” Fitz said throwing up his hand in defeat.

Simmons searched the shelf again and Fitz stood looking at her with his hand on his hips.

“Here it is” she said as she took a file and handed it to Pietro. Pietro thanked her and left. On his way to the debriefing room, he opened the file. The first paper had a photo of the body attached to it.

The image of the body had never felt his mind. Seeing, the carcass and the blood took him to that night again. A pungent rotting smell of decaying flesh hit him even before he walked into the scene. Suddenly, in the corridor he smelled the decaying flesh. His nostrils flared up and he could smell it everywhere. Pietro closed the file breathing shakily. His hands trembled and he felt the room closing in on him. He entered the nearby washroom. He balanced himself in the sink and tried to breath regularly. He had seen his fair share of dead bodies but nothing compared to the state of the body in this case. A shiver ran down his spine. He thought to himself that he would never get over this case.

The days passed by. Handling technical issues, writing reports and transporting criminals filled his life. The animal attacks continued so did the mangled bodies. The number of agents working on the case was increased to keep up with the attacks.

Nine months after the first case, Pietro came across a peculiar one which piqued his interest. Like every day, he reported to base in the morning. As soon as he entered, he was dragged out by Thompson for investigating a crime scene. When they arrived at the scene, the area was already cut off from general public with yellow tape. The forensic team had also left leaving only the outline of the body. The body has been taken to the base for autopsy. Pietro and Thompson stood near the yellow tape.

“I want you to question that man over there. He was the one who notified the police.”

Pietro nodded and looked at the man. He was wearing worn-out clothes and a crumpled coat over it. His facial hair was over-grown and his eyes were red and sunken. He looked hung over. He was nervous. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to another and kept looking around. Pietro approached him.

“You’re the one who notified us?” The man nodded and Pietro continued, “What’s your name?”

“Charles Hinton.”

“Can you tell me when did you find the body?”

“I don’t know the time. But it was morning. There was sunlight. I called the police as soon I saw; I swear.”

“Did you touch the body?”

“No. I didn’t. I was revolted to go near it. It was disgusting. I felt my stomach churn.”

“Walk me through the incident.”

“I was on my way to collect breakfast from the bakery next street. The baker is a good man. He gives me bread in the morning every day. I saw the body only when I was few steps away from it. Other than the face nothing was recognisable remotely to a person. All the internal organs were on the street. There was blood everywhere. I backed off afraid. I almost ran away but decided to call the police.”

Pietro’s mind instantly travelled to the similar case he had investigated nine months ago. The body was ripped apart and the person was beyond recognition. In this case, unlike the previous one, the face remained intact. Identifying the victim would be easier he thought.

“Was anyone else there?”

“No, just me”

“Thanks. We will reach out for further questioning in future.”

Thompson noticed Pietro approaching him as he was talking with Fitz-Simmons. “What do you think of this case, Maximoff?” he asked.

“The informant says that the body was mangled. So, another animal attack?”

“Sadly yeah” replied Thompson.

“We all thought it would a feral animal but it was a dead end. We have to start looking at other options.”

“Thought so. But the claw and bite marks plus the embedded tooth point towards animal attack” interjected Fitz.

“Embedded tooth?” That’s a huge lead thought Pietro.

“Just now Simmons was filling me on the details. Apparently, a canine was embedded into the flesh of the victim” said Thompson

This was a great lead. If they find the animal all they had to do is put it to sleep. But something in Pietro’s head kept saying that it wasn’t an animal even though it looked like the work of a big cat or a bear. This could be his big break and he was determined to get to the bottom of this.

Chapter 7

[delos-mio]

Death of a Bachelor - Part 14

A/N: well well well. what have we here? i’m back from the dead with a new chapter for YOU! no major warnings, so knock yourself out. i’m tagging those who’ve requested it and some of you who i think might be interested. if you’re not, please forgive me! if you’d like to be tagged in future parts, let a bitch know.

Logan was still acting aloof whenever you’d ask him for details on this party he intended to throw for his father. It had been weeks since he first brought it up and every time you tried to ask clarifying questions, the subject magically got changed or you found yourself on the receiving end of a barrage of kisses, not that you were complaining about that. All you knew for sure was that one, it would be at the Delos compound in Bel Air and two, that everyone was going to be there. So, you knew nothing. Of course, Logan being Logan, you assumed he had some trick up his sleeve; he just wasn’t clueing you in.

You were sitting out on the deck of Logan’s house, finding yourself drawn to the ocean on a rare day off. Charles had been given a project to take over, a test of sorts, and was only to disturb you if it was an absolute emergency. The waves were calm as they crashed idly on the shore. Salt wafted through the light breeze around you, luring you to the brink of sleep. Your eyes had just fluttered shut when you heard a familiar voice call out accompanied by the muffled sound of the front door shutting.

“Princess? You here?” Logan called out. You didn’t have the energy to respond, merely humming low an affirmative to no one but yourself. Without opening your eyes, you tried to track his movements. He definitely set something down, then kicked off his shoes. Somehow, he found you and began treading quickly through his living room once he saw you draped on the outdoor furniture. “How did I know this is where I’d find you?” he said with a small smile, leaning down to kiss your temple before taking a seat in the chair next to you.

“Because you know I’m a slut for the sea,” you smirked, eyes still closed, earning a sharp laugh from Logan.

“And here I thought you were only a slut for me.” You smacked him half-heartedly on his arm, making him chuckle again. “How has your day off been?”

“Amazing,” you mused. “I haven’t done shit all day. I finished my book, ate lunch, and literally just lounged here for like, 2 hours. I wish every day could be like this.”

“I’m glad you had a good day, sweetheart. But I’m missing my baby girl. Come sit with me,” he asked gently, reaching over and running a long finger down your arm. You finally opened your eyes just enough to see Logan pat his lap with his other hand.

“But I’m so comfy,” you groaned, dramatically letting your head nod to the side. Before you could keep up you whining, there was a pair of arms winding themselves around your back and behind your knees. Logan easily lifted you from your spot, a squeal escaping from you, and sat back in his seat, now with you resting comfortably in his arms.

“Much better,” he grinned, placing a slow kiss on your lips. “How would you feel about going to dinner tonight? I have someone I’d like for you to meet.”

You looked up at him, confusion furrowing your brow. “Who’s the mystery someone? Oh! No, let me guess. Ok, um…a secret boyfriend? Long lost sister? Oprah?!” Logan laughed that laugh you loved so much. The one where all his teeth showed and his eyes snapped shut, the one where you knew he thought something was actually funny.

“You’re not even close,” he said. “It’s actually my partner.” Logan watched as your confusion deepened before it gave way to an expression that was the manifestation of your heart dropping into your stomach. Sensing your impending panic attack, he quickly ran his fingers through your hair. “Phrasing, shit. I’m sorry. Business partner.” You visibly relaxed again at his clarification.

“Jesus. Give a girl a heart attack, why don’t you?” you laughed anxiously. “Wait, since when do you have a business partner, babe?”

“Well,” he began, idly twirling the ends of your hair between his fingers, “Since a couple weeks after you found me when I got back from Westworld.” The project. How could you have forgotten about his project he’d been keeping under wraps for months? You supposed you’d been preoccupied with wondering what he was up to with this retirement party to even consider what his big project was.

“Are you finally going to tell me what you’re up to?” you asked, eyes wide as you looked over his face for any nonverbal clues.

“I’m hoping you can get to know John a bit since he’ll be a fixture around here moving forward and yes, you can learn all about our little venture,” he smiled, running the back of his fingers along your jaw. “I almost feel bad whisking you away from your little oasis out here. You look so pretty in the sun.”

“Almost,” you teased.

“Yeah, almost. But I did get you a little something if that helps convince you to part with the deck and go have dinner with a shitty guy like me.” His smile was wide. He knew how much you hated when he got down on himself like that, but you could see the genuine joke in his eyes, so you let the argument die before it even started this time. You got off his lap and look his hand, tugging him up to join you.

“You don’t have to get me gifts to convince me to hang out with my boyfriend.” You rolled your eyes and led him back into the house. “Really, you shouldn’t be getting me shit at all. It’s too much babe.”

“Shhh,” he cooed before rushing off to the table where he’d placed a garment bag when he first came home. “No such thing as too much for my princess.” Logan handed you the hanger end with big doe eyes, clearly anticipating your reaction when you opened it. You raised a brow before unzipping the front, revealing a deep maroon colored dress with a darting neckline. When you looked back at him, your lips partly as you still marveled at the dress, Logan’s eyes had grown dark as he no doubt imagined the clothing on you. “I thought maybe you’d like something to wear tonight.”

“Logan, it’s beautiful.” You stepped closer to him and got on your toes to reach up and give him a soft kiss. “Thank you. You know how much I love this color.”

“The color’s for you, the cut is for me,” he winked. You rolled your eyes before walking off toward the bedroom, your new dress firmly in hand.

----

Once the sun had set, you made your way downtown with Logan. He had made reservations at 71 Above and John would be meeting you there. Though you didn’t really have reason to be, you were a little nervous to meet Logan’s new partner. Logan said he’d become a fixture in his life, which by proxy also meant yours. Shit, was this Logan’s way of saying he was in this, with you, for the long haul. You hadn’t considered it until this very moment. Of course you saw a future with him and wanted nothing more than to spend forever with him, but you never thought much about it since Logan tended to live so day-to-day. Logan spoke a secret language you thought you understood until he pulled something new from his pocket that made you wonder if you had it decoded at all. As you leaned your head against the window, your thoughts were interrupted by Logan’s hand rubbing gently over your thigh.

“Everything ok over there, sweetheart?” he asked softly, not taking his eyes from the road. When did he develop this skill of just knowing when you were stuck in your head?

“Yeah,” you said. “I guess I’m just a little nervous.” Which was true, you were, but not necessarily the reason for your introspection.

“There’s no reason to be nervous!” he said with a smile in his voice. “I’ve known John for years, but I’ve always worked for my dad, so we never really had the chance to work together like we wanted to. But now that the stars have aligned, it seems like the perfect opportunity to finally team up.”

“I just worry…about you…” you said, your voice gentle. Logan tilted his head a bit.

“What do you mean, princess?”

“I don’t know.” You took a deep breath. “I worry about people trying to take advantage of you and your secretly big heart,” you smiled. Logan looked over to you out of the corner of his eye, a fond smirk playing on his lips.

“You’re sweet, you know that? Not nearly as cold as you want the world to think,” he grinned. But you don’t have to worry this time. He’s not a stranger to me. Besides, you’re smart and driven and funny and so fucking hot, he’s going to love you.”

You rolled your eyes before taking the hand he had resting on your thigh and lacing your fingers with his. Before long, Logan had pulled up to the valet and was opening your door, offering his hand to help you out. You made your way to the glass elevator and stepped in, Logan’s hand low on the small of your back. Once the doors shut and it was just the two of you, he reached out to press the button for floor 71 and pulled you close with your back resting snugly against him. He let his hands run up and down your sides, his lips dipping to place wet kisses along your shoulder.

“I don’t think I’ve told you enough how fucking perfect you look tonight,” he breathed out, his voice thick with want. “Who’s stupid idea was it to go out to dinner again, where I can only look and not touch?”

“You don’t consider what you’re doing right now touching?” you laughed lightly as you tilted your head, giving Logan better access to your neck.

“Mmm…not the way I want to be, no.”

“Well, the door’s about to open, so keep it in your pants.” You reached back to quickly palm over the hardening front of his pants just as the elevator let out a bright ding that was almost drowned out by the low groan coming from the back of Logan’s throat. You heard him mutter ‘tease’ before taking your hand and walking over to the host’s stand.

“Mr. Delos, welcome back,” a young man said fondly as you approached. It was clear the kid had a crush on him, and honestly, who could blame him?

“Thank you,” Logan returned politely. “Is the other half of our party here yet?”

“Yes, Mr. Collins is at your table. Right this way,” he said before leading you around the windowed perimeter before gesturing to a private table tucked in the corner.

“There he is!” The man you assumed was John was quick to his feet and wrapped Logan in a close hug. He really looked like a short, stocky version of Logan. His dark hair perfectly placed and a short beard with the same wide smile. Though he was easily half a foot shorter and had beautiful olive skin.

“Sorry, I know we cut it a little close. Sweetheart, I’d like to introduce you to John Collins,” Logan said with a smile as you reached your hand out to shake John’s.

“It’s so good to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you and you know, I just had to meet the girl who managed to reign in my boy here.” He laughed loudly, smacking Logan on the back.

“It’s nice to meet you too,” you replied, keeping up a smile. You wanted to be able to say you’d heard a lot about him too, but considering you only learned of his existence about 5 hours ago, you didn’t want to start off your friendship with a lie.

“Please, take a seat!” John pulled out your seat for you before sitting across from Logan. There was already a chilled bottle of chardonnay on the table, a full glass waiting just for you at your setting. “So, Logan tells me you own your own business?”

“Yeah. I uh, I have a marketing firm in Santa Monica.” Networking was the name of your game, but you found yourself a little bashful about talking about yourself. The way you saw it, this was as much you vetting John as it was him meeting you.

“That’s great! And that’s how you met Logan here?” John asked with a knowing smile.

“Something like that. I guess he finally wore me down,” you shrugged, sending Logan a little wink.

“Wow. It’s usually the other way around with this guy. You must be a tough nut to crack.”

“She made me work. But I like to think she had a crush on me all along too,” Logan chimed in, looking you over fondly.

“Jesus, you two are so…coupley,” John winced playfully. “I’ll tell you though- I’ve never seen my boy so happy, and that makes me happy.”

You ordered dinner and continued talking over your food. John was a nice guy. He seemed to balance Logan out. You got the impression that John always was the guy at the party with Logan, talking a big game, but secretly drinking water so he could make sure his bro was safe. He had a loud and embarrassing laugh that endeared you to him just a little bit more. After getting to know each other a bit, you felt less and less like he was partnering up with Logan for the wrong reasons, which lifted a huge weight off your shoulders.

As your plates were being cleared, it occurred to you that after everything you’d talked about tonight, neither of them had bothered to bring up what they were doing working together. You took another drink of your wine and reached out to take Logan’s hand under the table.

“You know, Logan told me that you guys were partners now, but he hasn’t shared with me what exactly you’re doing yet.” You rested your elbow on the table and propped up your chin in your palm, possibly batting your eyelashes at John. “Since he won’t tell me, will you?” You risked looking at Logan out of the corner of your eye, who was clearly not amused with you flirting in front of him, even if he knew it was a joke.

“You haven’t told her?!” John asked incredulously.

“I didn’t want to say anything until it was a done deal,” Logan mumbled, a little embarrassed. He then squeezed your hand that was still in his, drawing your gaze back to him. “Princess, we’re buying Delos.”

“What?” You felt the air drain from your lungs. Your mind was moving faster than you could comprehend. What did he mean, they’re buying Delos? Delos wasn’t for sale last time you checked. What the fuck?

“After…Westworld,” Logan started awkwardly, “I knew I couldn’t let my dad and Billy take the only fucking family I have and ruin everything I’ve spent the last 15 years working on. So, after I got home and you cleaned me up and kicked my ass a little bit,” he paused to beam at you fondly, “I called John. At first, it was just to vent. And we got to talking about what we could to keep Delos and Juliet. So, John and I decided to go into business together under just a generic holding company name.”

“Since Jim doesn’t know me at all, I may or may not have reached out to him on behalf of our company, making an offer for Delos since it had gotten out that he was retiring and that Logan had been tossed from his seat on the board,” John added, his eyes now sparkling with just a bit of mischief.

“And what does my dad love more than his family? William? Money.” Logan downed the last of the bourbon in his glass. “He accepted our offer. So come his little retirement party I so generously offered to plan, you know, as a sign of my desperation for him to forgive me,” he rolled his eyes, “John and I will own Delos. I’ll have my job, my company, back. And Billy will find himself unemployed.”

It was genius. It was sneaky and devilish and just a touch petty, but it was genius. Logan was legitimately getting Delos back, just no one in his family knew it yet. You looked at him, mulling over all the scheming that brought him here. Honestly, you’d never been more attracted to him than you were in this moment.

“This is what you want?” you asked quietly, only to Logan.

“Yeah, babe. I can’t, I—” he started, his voice quickly exposing him.

“Then let’s do this shit.”

----

When you got home, Logan unzipped you, helping you out of your dress. You carefully hung it up in your little corner of the closet Logan had granted you. When you first met, you couldn’t imagine him being the kind of guy to allow someone else into his space so intimately. But you knew there wasn’t a single thing on earth he wouldn’t do for you. You slipped into one of his old shirts and crawled up next to him in bed.

“John was really cool,” you said, tracing no particular pattern on his chest.

“I’m glad you like him. That means a lot to me.” He placed a soft kiss on your forehead and pulled you in just a little bit closer. You felt his chest rattle a bit as he cleared his throat, causing you to meet his gaze. “Not to like, dump a bunch of shit on you today or anything,” he began, looking…nervous? Logan was hardly ever nervous.

“What’s wrong? What’s making you nervous, Lo?”

His laugh came out as a puff from his nostrils. “Something about you.” He smiled and shook his head. “I just find myself wanting to make sure you’re always happy. And I worry about letting you down or making you uncomfortable.”

“Logan…” you whispered, reaching up to rake your fingers through his hair like you knew he liked when he was feeling tense. His eyes closed gently as he leaned into your touch, his breathing slowing down to normal. You spent a few minutes soothing him before he worked up to speaking again.

“Move in with me.” It took you by surprise. Of all the things you thought Logan was going to say, that did not make your short list. “I, I know you like your place. And I know you don’t need me to take care of you. But I want to. And I know you’re stubborn as fuck and I am too, but I promise I—”

You cut him off with a kiss. He didn’t need to say anything else. There was nothing he say to convince you even more. “Ok.” You were breathless as you parted just enough to answer him. His smile grew as his mouth pressed back on yours, quickly deepening the kiss.

“God, I fucking love you,” he said as though he was speaking to only himself, you just happened to be listening.

“Love you too, Lo.”

TAGGED: @marvelcapsicle @something-tofightfor @gollyderek @dylanobrusso @abroadcastofthemind 

[roominthecastle]

A ‘bullet point text reaction’ post thing to the season premiere would be forking good. If you can spare the time in between all the rewatching and RL, which again might be messin with the rewatching. Ps. sexy librarian ftw.

Apologies for the late reply, anon, and thank you for the interest. I gave it a try but apparently I had a lot more rambling in me than expected, so I’m not sure how much the bullet point format will help. Still, I rolled w/ it behind the cut:

obv spoilers ahead for those who haven’t seen + it’s mostly Michael focused but who is surprised at this point? ok, here we go:

Yes. All hail the Sexy Librarian Guy! 👍

and his ~~flawless~~ Australian accent lmao. I am no native speaker but even I could hear it was just… delightfully off. I love this disaster zone demon so much.

and how pleased he was that Eleanor was pleased w/ that particular “intervention”. It’s a small but nice reminder of how making her happy makes him happy now. #oppositeTorturesRule

it’s a v small thing but I also loved the “fast food link”: Michael being ecstatic about the Pizza Hut/Taco Bell combo & Eleanor fantasizing about Chipotle during Chidi’s lecture on Aristotle. It reminded me of that s1 moment when she tells Michael about those Arizona churro dogs and they both just go ahhhhhhhh at the image + Judge Gen ofc (they love fast food in the afterlife)

also also the sweet ache of Michael being entangled in her ticker tape while insisting on nudgy-nudge-nudge her & Chidi together bc that’s how it should be is still pressing hard on my heart thank you v much

but

I think that being deprived of close contact w/ his humans is causing Michael to slide back into puppet master mode again. His motivation is different or “reformed” now (secretly helping instead of secretly torturing) but his methods, his itch to control everything (and failing), and the rigid focus on his goals are… not so much, imo, and I love it bc this is Michael: he is a nerd but also an idiot w/ Wile E. Coyote vibes. Janet tries to reel him in but she can’t. Eleanor was the only one who could control him and she was the only one whose advice he actively sought and listened to, but she cannot be there for him now, so yes, I am getting a lot of S1 vibes from this double ep complete w/ her unintentionally messing w/ his formula by not falling for Chidi & the arrival of Trevor. *rubs hands*

COCOONS

so many

so… squishy

and TODD! I never thought I would see him so soon but I was right: he is the best lava monster and fork you, Shawn, for being a jerk to him when he was nothing but supportive and even brought you guys Dunkin’ Spiders to snack on.

I love Shawn, he is the perfect baddie, and I love that we got another glimpse into how TBP operates w/ all their excruciatingly low-tech gadgets. It’s in sharp contrast to (even Michael’s fake) TGP where everything is so neat, efficient, and high-tech. It’s another nice reminder of how the torturers are also being made miserable in TBP in various ways. I can’t blame Michael for wanting to keep his failing experiment running as long as possible.

Judge Gen (who continues to be a delight and way too relatable w/ her binge-watching of media content) is so up to something, people. I cannot shake this feeling that this whole “Operation Resurrection” is not what it looks like on the surface at all. Maybe it’s an experiment within an experiment sort of deal. I mean, why does she trust Michael of all creatures w/ the monitoring duty at all?? She might be quirky but she is def not stupid. She must know he’s a natural rule breaker who’s incapable of sitting still for longer than 2 seconds and he’s not at all impartial here. The way she set this all up reminds me of the test she gave Jason, and Michael is already failing just like Jason did bc he couldn’t opt out of “playing” due to lack of impulse control and a massive personal bias regarding his favorite team, the Cockroaches. idk what this will mean long-term but I think he’s gonna be in a lot of trouble soon.

speaking of Jason and Michael: theirs is my favorite (sort of bonding) scene, hands down. Again, it reminded me of an early S2 moment when Jason stumbles on a brooding, lost Michael and tells him a dope story about his 60-person dance crew that unexpectedly inspires Michael to seek out Eleanor & Co. The situations are reversed here but it’s an excellent parallel, esp when you compare the two scenes and see the development in both characters and their relationship. Jason is a bit   more grounded and Michael is less dismissive and much kinder to him now. I also love Jason’s continued immunity to Michael’s b.s. It’s different from Eleanor’s (his is stupid-based and hers is about being smartbrained) but it works and pushes Michael to just level w/ him and the second he does, Jason becomes instantly receptive. It’s just a really really great character moment that also moves the plot, so it’s basically perfect. Also I think this is the moment when Michael is temporarily pulled from his puppet master mode due to being near one of his human friends again, and his other side peeks out as he lets himself rest a bit - it’s in his body language, too, as he leans back against the bridge railing and has a semi-honest chat w/ Jason.

Michael’s disguises are an eternal source of happiness to me. All of them (and based on promo pics, more is coming). I also love the way he approaches each human bc it is reminiscent of how he steered them during the reboots: to Eleanor he gave a small clue and just let her chew on it and work w/ it. W/ Chidi, he was more direct, posing as a wise helper/guide. W/ Tahani, he targeted her sense of self-worth. W/ Jason, he gave up after 5 seconds and just told him what he wanted him to do.

I doubt his aliases raised many eyebrows, tho, not in a universe where Simone has colleagues called Mrelk and Catapulp :D but Eleanor seemed to have a bit of a “hmm” reaction to the name of Dr. Charles Brainman, so… we’ll see.

Dr. Simone Garnett had probably the smoothest entry into an established character group, imo. I’m usually sensitive to changes like this but it’s like she’s always been here - another excellent casting choice right there. I am not gonna touch shipping issues, thank you, but I love how Simone’s presence, which is a lot of fun in itself, instantly enriched the landscape of relationship dynamics regarding the present, the future and also the past. I feel that every character combination exists somewhere in canon whether it’s explicitly on screen or not, and that’s just an incredibly freeing, resourceful attitude to have on a show w/ this sort of “multiverse” setup, imo. They have the premise, so why not milk its full potential? The writers use relationships as tools to aid character development, they have admitted as much already, and I am looking forward to seeing what other combos they have in mind and how they play out.

despite his limited screen time and despite him spending most of it being flat and emotionless, frog guy aka The Doorman managed to deliver the biggest punch in my heart w/ that reaction to Michael’s gift. I.crumbled. the way his flatness did when he saw the frog on the mug. Thank you, Mike O'Malley.

It’s probably a good thing that they are becoming buddies now bc w/ evil Trevor in the mix, Michael’s gonna turn that Earth entrance into a revolving door. Unless Judge Gen is onto him and steps in at some point. And I still don’t know how he will interact w/ the team now since they’ve all met him already and he was posing as a different person each time. And given his track record, whatever solution he comes up with, Eleanor will see right through him eventually anyway.

ok this is way too long already, so I’m just gonna say that I am very excited for this season, I love the new setup, I miss the fake Good Place but the university environment is growing on me fast, too, and just bring it, show, ok?

my body is ready

[f1]

Ricciardo pinpoints the moment former team mate Verstappen became a complete driver

Daniel Ricciardo believes newly-crowned double F1 world champion Max Verstappen took his biggest step as a driver during their final season as team mates at Red Bull back in 2018 – claiming it was then that the Dutchman “had a bit of a self-realisation”. After sealing back-to-back championship wins at the recent Japanese Grand Prix, praise has been heaped on Verstappen for his actions in and out of the car throughout 2022, with Red Bull motorsport chief Helmut Marko declaring that he made a “big step” forward in performance. READ MORE: From Ascari to Verstappen – How all 11 back-to-back F1 champions did the double However, Ricciardo feels that the most noticeable change in Verstappen’s approach came some four years ago, when he emerged stronger from a series of early-season incidents – including a dramatic clash between the pair in Azerbaijan – to rack up podium finishes and race wins as the 2018 campaign wore on. Asked if he has noticed any changes in Verstappen en route to him doing the double this year, Ricciardo said: “I think he definitely took a step. I think it was the last year I was with him [in] 2018. [Across] the first five or six races he was in the wall a lot, having incidents or making mistakes, mostly on his behalf. Verstappen is a two-time F1 world champion after his triumph in Japan “Then through that year… It’s like he just had a bit of a self-realisation and a step of maturity, which is also natural – we all go through it. I honestly think that from the middle of that season on, he became a more complete driver.” Ricciardo went on to note that, after Verstappen’s driving style came under the spotlight again in 2021 amid his fierce title battle against Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, his 2022 fight with Charles Leclerc and Ferrari has been less intense. TOP 10: We rank the best drives of double world champion Verstappen’s F1 career so far “Obviously last year, when you’re fighting for a title, I’m sure you’re going to push the boundaries a bit more… I mean, the fight between him and Lewis was controversial because it was also Mercedes vs Red Bull, so there was a lot of intensity around that,” said the Australian. “I think this year it’s been less tense as a battle and therefore he probably hasn’t needed to put himself in that position as well.” Top 10: Moments of Max Verstappen Brilliance As for what Verstappen can go on and achieve in F1, Ricciardo thinks the only question surrounds whether Red Bull can continue to produce a competitive car – with the 25-year-old tied to the team through 2028. “It’s always hard to predict who will be a world champion. I think you can recognise the drivers who have the talent to do it, so I recognised that, in the right car, he would definitely have the chance to be world champion – I saw that in his future,” added Ricciardo, who looks set to drop off the grid in 2023 after losing his McLaren seat to Oscar Piastri. ANALYSIS: Why Red Bull and Verstappen have committed their futures together “There’s no guarantee [of success], but I certainly saw that, especially because he was so young. I’m not surprised he’s in this position. Even now, predicting will this be his second of five, or his second of only three… It’s hard to know, because again you need the team and the package.” via Formula 1 News https://www.formula1.com

[iamkawiidino]

Characters

Real!Kawii Dino:

The mod behind the posts! Keeps most of herself secret as to protect herself. Species: Human

Always askable

Sona!Kawii Dino:

R!KD’s Sona! She and her cousin, Kysoro, mysteriously survived the extinction meteor and were time-traveled to the future. Kysoro and Kawii learned English and made their own kingdoms, Kawiiville (KD) and Clusterland (Kysoro). The two cities have clashed ever since, but KD does not want war, she wants to be family again and merge the two cities into one, peaceful place which she calls Lovetopia! Species: Tyrannasaurus Rex

Askable

BOTA!RealKawii Dino, BOTA!Kysoro, BOTA!Kawii Dino, and other BOTA! Characters:

Involved in a war between the villains and the heroes of many worlds in order to save Earth and their lives. BOTA!R KD was a normal human, who was met with a Nihilego, BOTA!KD, BOTA!Henry Stickmin, BOTA!Charles Calvin, and many other heroes as she tried to stop Lunala, BOTA!Kysoro, BOTA!Anti-Pit, and the other big bads of different universes from conquering the planet and using humanity and any other characters that had been transferred into reality as slaves to build a new empire. Calling the team the U.R.T. (Ultimate Rescue Team), they set off to stop this. BOTA!R KD: (ASKABLE) has the A.I. “CROSSEYE” in her tech suit, and a built in lazer cannon on the right arm.

BOTA!KD: (ASKABLE)can turn into a jet (with Star Wars-like gunning towers on either side. Also has a lazer cannon on the right arm of her suit.

BOTA!Henry: (NOT ASKABLE) (May become askable in @thisistheaucc later on) Same as BOTA!R KD, but he still has his foresight ability.

BOTA!Charles: (NOT ASKABLE) can TURN INTO A HELICOPTER! WOOOOOOOOOOO-

Normal!Kysoro:

He and his cousin, KD, mysteriously survived the extinction meteor and were time-traveled to the future. Kysoro and Kawii learned English and made their own kingdoms, Kawiiville (KD) and Clusterland (Kysoro). Species: Same as S!Kawii

Normal!Iris:

My Pokesona!

Loves art and creating things! Species: Slugma Toppat!Iris:

Joined the Toppat clan. That’s legit all.

PMD!Iris:

Pokemon, good friends with Team Morpha, is considering joining. May become askable in @ask-morpha-squad later on. For now, she’s here.

Normal!Karriko:

A (sorta mad) scientist who creates creatures that do many things. Founder of Z Labz. Species: Shadow Snake

FNF!Karriko:

Was teleported into the FNF universe, and since he was only a decent singer at the time, he decided to capture singers like Whitty, Pico, and even BF for their singing essence in order to merge it all into a single being. The experiment, however, went horribly wrong, and the being escaped and nearly took over the world. Thankfully BF defeated it, and FNF!Karriko was forgiven. Now he just works on his singing skills in case he met BF again, wanting to challenge him one last time...

Normal!Anti-Pit:

Created by N!Karriko from Pit’s (from a SSBU AU) feather and some of N!Karriko’s DNA. Became more sentient than Karriko wanted, and went insane, fighting and killing almost everything in his path. Pit soon managed to calm him down, and the two became good friends. Species: Fallen Angel

FNF!Anti-Pit:

Woke up alongside FNF!Karriko. He assisted in the experiment, and nearly died when it failed and escaped. After the incident, Anti decided it was best to supervise any of the beings Karriko created as a beta version of the almost-world-conquering-beast, so they wouldn’t cause too much chaos, but of course, being the little brat he is, he let a bit of chaos slide a lot of the time.

OwedDebt!Anti-Pit:

Instead of escaping himself, he was assisted by another experiment, as long as he murdered everybody. Anti then followed the path N!A-P took, but OD!Anti, after befriending Pit, was being chased by the minions of said experiment, telling him that his debt had not been paid and he had to kill everybody. He tries to hide the truth from Pit, but Pit is suspicious, and wants to approach him. (OD!Pit is also open for asks)

more au’s and characters tba

[esonetwork]

Timestamp #221: The Impossible Astronaut & Day of the Moon

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/timestamp-221-the-impossible-astronaut-day-of-the-moon/

Timestamp #221: The Impossible Astronaut & Day of the Moon

Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut Doctor Who: Day of the Moon (2 episodes, s06e01-02, 2011)

Welcome to the Silence.

Prequel

In the White House, President Nixon answers the telephone in the Oval Office. The line only clicks until he asks, “Is it you again?” A child’s voice tells him to look behind him for a threat that is everywhere but no one can see. When asked, the child says that the spaceman told her about them. President Nixon refuses to believe them.

He hangs up the phone and leans back. A mysterious alien stares at him, but neither the President nor his aide seem to notice.

The Impossible Astronaut

In the 17th century, Charles II storms into the painter Matilda’s room and demands to see the Doctor. Standing before a painting of the Time Lord, who is depicted wearing nothing but a strategically placed red cloth, Matilda replies, “Doctor who?”

She nearly gets away with it except for a sneeze from her skirts. The Doctor is naked, hiding under Matilda, with the explanation that the situation is really not as bad as it looks.

In 2011, Amy tells Rory about the incident as detailed in a history book. It, along with other incidents such as a World War II POW camp and a Laurel and Hardy film, seem to be signals to the Ponds. A TARDIS-blue envelope containing unsigned invitation arrives in the mail and they follow it to Utah.

They are greeted by the Doctor, wearing a Stetson that is soon shot off by River Song (who also got an invitation). They convene in a roadside diner and catch up. The Doctor tells them that he’s been running faster than ever before, but that it’s time to stop. They’re going to have a picnic and then he’s headed to space in 1969.

On the shores of Lake Silencio, the team shares wine, cheese, and fruit. Rory spots one of the creatures from the White House but after she looks away, she forgets about it. The discussion is interrupted by an old man arriving in a truck and waving to the Doctor. The Doctor looks to the lake and spots an astronaut in a full Apollo spacesuit. He tells his companions that, whatever happens, they are not to interfere, then walks to meet the astronaut.

He seems to know what is coming, but his companions are shocked when the astronaut shoots him with an energy weapon. The Doctor begins to regenerate, but the astronaut takes aim and fires again. The mysterious visitor retreats into the lake as the companions mourn the Doctor’s death. The old man brings a gas can, confirming the Time Lord’s identity and death, and River knows that they have to cremate the body.

After the service, the man introduces himself as Canton Everett Delaware III. He received an envelope as well, and he tells the assembled that he won’t see them again but that they will see him. Delaware leaves and the companions return to the diner. River notes that the envelopes are numbered so this was all planned in advance. The Doctor arrives shortly afterward, having held the first envelope, and it is determined that he is an earlier version of himself. He was invited the same as the others.

They all take a trip in the TARDIS to 1969. The team is upset with the Doctor and the companions try to reason through the puzzle, but they have no idea why the future Doctor recruited them all. They also cannot ask the Doctor himself, who nearly turns the TARDIS around when they won’t tell him the truth. After all, River is a convicted murderer and the Doctor does not trust mysterious summonses. Amy asks him to trust the team, swearing that she’s not lying about being under duress. The Doctor places his life in her hands.

Delaware is a former FBI agent who is summoned to the White House by President Nixon. The two men are in a meeting about the mysterious phone calls when the TARDIS materializes in stealth mode. The Doctor pops out of the phone box just in time to hear the recording and is spotted by the men. The President calls the Secret Service as the Doctor demands that River make the TARDIS visible.

In short order, the travelers are held at gunpoint but the Doctor persuades Delaware and Nixon to give him five minutes. As the Doctor helps the Americans to track the call to Florida – home of NASA and the spacemen – Amy spots the alien again. When she looks away, she forgets. She visits the restroom and spots the alien again. While she keeps an eye on it, another woman emerges from a toilet cubicle and is eventually killed after spotting it. Amy snaps a picture of the alien and rushes out to her Secret Service companion, promptly forgetting the encounter.

The phone rings again. On the other end, the child says that the spaceman is there and that she needs help. The travelers jet off in the TARDIS – Delaware tags along by accident – and find the call’s origin at the intersections of Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton Streets, clues provided by the child.

The travelers find stolen NASA technology and alien residue leading into a tunnel network. River investigates and finds a group of the aliens. She rushes out, forgets the encounter, and decides to take another look. The Doctor asks Rory to follow her. As they investigate, they find a maintenance hatch that River picks open while they discuss her relationship with the Doctor. The two are a traveling different directions in time: Her past is his future.

They open the hatch and find a control room similar to the one hidden away in the house with Craig Owens. It sounds an alarm and Rory spots the creatures but forgets them. River learns that there are tunnels like the one they’re in all over Earth and that they’ve been here for thousands of years. Behind Rory, electricity crackles and something approaches.

Amy, Delaware, and Amy hear the child cry for help and they pursue. Amy reveals that she’s pregnant, Delaware is knocked unconscious, and the astronaut approaches them. Amy draws Delaware’s gun and shoots the astronaut, intent on saving the Doctor’s life, only realizing too late that the suit contains the young girl from the telephone.

Day of the Moon

Three months later, Amy is being chased through the Utah desert. Her pursuers, including Delaware, corner her on a cliff. Amy tries to help him remember their escape from the aliens in the warehouse, but he shoots her. She has a series of hashmarks on her arms.

Delaware travels to Area 51 to ask the Doctor, now his prisoner, about the marks. Meanwhile, River is in New York City with a similar set marks. When she spots one of the aliens, she adds a mark to her arm. Delaware arrives shortly thereafter and corners her, but she dives off the building.

Rory is also cornered and shot at the Glen Canyon Dam, and he and Amy are taken to Area 51 in body bags and placed with the Doctor in a cell constructed of dwarf star alloy. The room is impervious to signals and, once sealed, provides the perfect opportunity for Amy, Rory, and the Doctor to stage their escape. To seal the deal, the TARDIS is parked directly behind the Doctor in stealth mode. The travelers and Delaware board the TARDIS, catch River in mid-air, and materialize at Cape Kennedy and the site of Apollo 11’s historic launch.

The Doctor injects everyone with nano-recorders while they discuss the last three months. The marks were from each time one of the creatures were spotted, and it should be easier to find them with the recording devices. They test it with a holographic image extrapolated from Amy’s photograph, and also discover that even the image of the creatures induces the memory loss.

Later, Delaware and Amy arrive at Graystark Hall. They meet Dr. Renfrew and learn that the facility will close in 1967. Oddly, it is now 1969. The walls are also covered in messages to get out, but Renfrew has no idea how they keep appearing. Amy investigates the facility while Delaware meets with Renfrew. She discovers a message she left on her nano-recorder demanding that she get out. She sees her reflection, noting that her arms and face are covered in hashmarks. She looks up to see a bunch of the creatures hanging like bats, but moments later she’s leaving the room without any recollection.

The Doctor installs some type of transmitter in the Apollo spacecraft. He’s taken into custody but soon released under orders from Nixon in a rather humorous exchange. The Doctor asks Nixon to record everything that happens in the Oval Office.

Amy continues on, soon spotting a door with a sliding observation port. A woman with an eyepatch spots her through the slot, but the room beyond is a child’s bedroom. The woman is nowhere to be found. Amy finds photos of herself holding a newborn, then is met by the child in the spacesuit and two of the creatures.

Delaware and Renfrew are interrupted by one of the creatures. Delaware records a brief exchange with it then shoots the creature before running toward the sound of Amy’s screams. Rory, River, and the Doctor join him to find an empty spacesuit and Amy’s recorder. It’s a live transmission from wherever Amy is being held.

Renfrew summons the group to his office to tend to the wounded creature. It identifies itself as the Silence, which the Doctor recalls from the events of last year. They have been on the planet since the Stone Age. The travelers return to the warehouse while Delaware emerges from the dwarf star box after several days with President Nixon. The spacesuit is a perfect life support capsule, which explains how the child survived a gunshot. The Doctor also speculates that Apollo 11 traveled to the Moon because the Silence needed a spacesuit. After all, they don’t make their own technology.

Delaware tends to the wounded Silence in the dwarf star box and uses Amy’s phone to record a threatening message from the being. He transmits it to the Doctor. Meanwhile, the Doctor traces the nano-recorder signal to the console room in the tunnel system. Inside that room, Amy awakens to a room full of Silence, and the TARDIS arrives soon after. The Doctor recognizes the room as he brings a television in and orders River to keep the Silence covered while Rory frees Amy.

Here’s the twist: The Doctor has rigged Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit to transmit a message as soon as he touches the lunar surface. It is the threat from the wounded Silence, telling everyone in the sound of its voice to kill the Silence on site.

The whole planet is watching. The whole planet responds. Today is the day that the human race throws the Silence off the planet.

The Silence respond by attacking the travelers. Everyone runs for the TARDIS as River covers their escape, successfully killing every one of the creatures. The TARDIS takes off as Amy and Rory share an intimate moment, landing in the Oval Office so the Doctor can say farewell to Nixon and Delaware.

The Doctor evades Nixon’s queries about his future with the promise that the president will never be forgotten. After the Doctor leaves, Nixon almost grants Delaware’s request to be married… until he figures out that Delaware is homosexual.

The Doctor leaves River at Stormcage. He offers to take her along, but she declines. They share a passionate kiss, which ends up being the first for the Doctor… which makes it the last for her. As the TARDIS takes flight again, the Doctor asks about Amy’s pregnancy, which is news to Rory.

Amy assures her husband that she’s not pregnant. The Doctor runs a scan on Amy without her knowledge, but is concerned since the Amy is simultaneously pregnant and not pregnant.

Six months later, a homeless man on the streets of New York City finds the child from the spacesuit. The child coughs repeatedly, claiming that she’s dying. She soon solves that problem, however, as she begins to regenerate.

This story’s power comes from its frantic and almost disordered plot. It has the potential to confuse the viewer because it requires nearly complete concentration to keep track of the various narrative threads. That frenetic pace ties in beautifully with the nature of the Silence, from missing large pieces of the plot to having them filled in only when it was necessary.

Another potential pitfall is the Steven Moffat habit of being super clever for the sake of being so. This story could have easily done that, but the rewards were substantial enough to make it feel like a significant return on investment. We have a few threads laid down for the season, including eyepatch lady, the yes/no pregnancy, and the regenerating child.

(Of course, having seen all of this before, I know what’s coming. I’ll take a River Song approach and avoid spoilers for anyone reading this who hasn’t seen it.)

And, you know, the parallels with 1988’s They Live just make me smile. I do love that film.

I still have reservations about Amy and her treatment of Rory. She’s open with the Doctor about her pregnancy, but she’s willing to hide it from Rory while still claiming to love him. Her actions speak more of abuse than love. On the other hand, we see the tragedy of the Doctor/River relationship. They work so well together, but the crossing paths nature is heartbreaking at times.

The stories take time out to pay tribute to Elisabeth Sladen. She died four days before the initial broadcast of the first part of this story, and I’d expect nothing less from Doctor Who for one the most popular companions ever.

I loved the symmetry in casting the Delawares. William Morgan Sheppard, the older Delaware, is the real-life father of Mark Sheppard, the younger Delaware. This isn’t the first time that they’ve played older and younger versions of a character, and they have also portrayed father and son pairs. I love seeing both of them on screen from their copious amount of work in film and television.

I also loved seeing the Valley of the Gods and Lake Powell (“Lake Silencio”) on screen again. I grew up in Utah, so the landscape is easily recognizable. The Southern Utah deserts have been popular filming locations for decades. In terms of internal mythology, we last visited Utah in Dalek, though we didn’t see anything of the world outside at that point.

One thing that really intrigues me is the idea that multiple Doctors are in the same location at the same time. The Eleventh Doctor’s three-month-long incarceration at Area 51 coincides with the Tenth Doctor being stranded in Blink and the Second and Third Doctor’s adventures with UNIT (for reference, The Invasion, Spearhead from Space, Doctor Who and the Silurians, and The Ambassadors of Death). Neil Armstrong’s historic moonwalk also coincides with Blink and The Ambassadors of Death. It adds credence to the idea that we saw in Rose that the Doctor can be in so many places and times at once.

Last but not least, I laughed about River chastising the Doctor about using his sonic screwdriver in battle. The callback to The Doctor Dances was great, as was hanging a lampshade on the tendency to use the sonic as a magic wand instead of a scientific instrument.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Curse of the Black Spot

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH – A Retrospective Interview with Brain Gremlin

First, keep them out of bright light—especially sunlight! It’ll kill ‘em. Second, don’t give them water. Not even to drink! And third, the most important rule of them all, one you must never forget. No matter how much they cry. No matter how much they beg. NEVER feed them after midnight!

These three vague yet specific rules governed a new breed of movie monster whose impact would send shock-waves through Hollywood. This seemingly cuddly creature would rise from the ranks of B-movie monsters to find its way into multiplexes, toy stores, and our hearts. That creature was called a Mogwai and the movie was 1984’s Gremlins. It was a genre blending Christmas-horror-dark-family-comedy whose mismatched pieces came together so seamlessly that Dr. Frankenstein himself would have been jealous. Joe Dante (The Howling), Chris Columbus (The Goonies), and Steven Spielberg (Duh) teamed up to tell the story of a small town overrun by gremlins after a blundering inventor gifts a Mogwai named Gizmo to his son Billy for Christmas. Audiences were delighted and disgusted. They eagerly lined up to gut their wallets and disembowel their purses for any trite bit of plastic with Gizmo’s face on it. The studio wanted a sequel.

After an agonizing six-year wait, Warner Bros. finally got their wish. Gremlins 2: The New Batch hit theaters on June 15th, 1990 and fans relished in a sequel like none they had ever seen before (and will probably ever see again). Raising the stakes, Billy (Zach Galligan) and Kate (Phoebe Cates) leave their small town and move to New York City to work in Clamp Tower, the automated office building of the future. After Gizmo winds up in Clamp Tower’s genetics lab, chaos reigns throughout the malfunctioning superstructure. Like a cyclone on a fishing line, the film is a masterfully crafted frenzy of satirical in-jokes, social commentary, and outlandish characters. The studio, however, was not so enthused.

To celebrate this triumphant marvel of zany anarchic chaos, we sat down with one of the film’s stars, Brain Gremlin, to gain some insight into the box office blunder and cult phenomenon that is Gremlins 2: The New Batch

  Mockbuster Beginnings

  NIGHTMARE ON FILM STREET: Thank you so much for joining us today, Brain.

BRAIN GREMLIN: Think nothing of it, the pleasure is all mine.

NOFS: Before diving head first into Gremlins 2: The New Batch, I’d like to set the stage and touch briefly on the first film. I understand Spielberg and Dante’s relationship didn’t start on a high note.

BRAIN: It is a bit of an irregularity that friendship develops from artistic larceny. I suspect Steven was first acquainted with Joseph’s attempts at cinema after Roger Corman hired him to direct that bottom-feeding horror film Piranha. It was a flagrant attempt to capitalize on Steven’s film Jaws and everyone knew it. Universal Studios undoubtedly knew it. If memory serves there may have even been a cease and desist. Steven, being the magnanimous man he is, watched Piranha and was moved to benefaction, and the film moved forward undeterred.

NOFS: From such a rocky start, how did the two come to work together?

BRAIN: Well, imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Also I believe Steven saw something in the fledgling director. After having sent him Chris Columbus’s Gremlins script, Steven also invited Joseph to direct a segment of 1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie. The man’s generosity is unparalleled. As you know Gremlins was an unprecedented success and gave Joseph’s career a real shot in the arm. It grossed close to 150 million domestically against an 11 million dollar budget. And that isn’t even taking into consideration the film’s inexplicable licensing potential. Naturally, talk of a sequel commenced immediately.

NOFS: Why then do you think it took Warner Bros. so long to produce a sequel?

BRAIN: Despite my antipathetic opinions toward him, Joseph Dante is an artist. He had little interest in rehashing his own work. He and Steven had both received scripts but declined due to their sheer redundancy. It wasn’t until a chance encounter years later, truly an act of providence, when Joseph ran into Terry Semel, then president of Warner Bros. Studios, on the studio lot. The man must have radiated desperation. With the promise of a new Gremlins film by the following summer, Joseph was given a sizable budget and full creative freedom. But ne’er the company man, Joseph would prove Terry’s confidence to be misplaced.

NOFS: You don’t think Dante was right for the job?

BRAIN: As I said, Joseph is an artist, but he is also an anarchist with little respect for convention. A saboteur. The sequel was a Trojan Horse from its inception. Gremlins 2 was to eliminate any possibility of a Gremlins 3. He and his screenwriting cohort, Charlie Haas, masterminded the demise of a budding franchise. The two had met on the 1979 film Over the Edge and Joseph obviously had an immediate affinity for Charles. In Twilight Zone: The Movie he named the character Charlie after his beloved chum.

    Gremlins on Broadway

  NOFS: I understand it was Charlie Haas’s idea to set the film in New York. How was filming in the Big Apple?

BRAIN: The studio was apprehensive about setting the film in New York City. They expected it would be quite costly. As a result, only three days of shooting actually took place in the city. Filming began in Times Square on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. A dreadful bit of scheduling. Some of the exteriors of Clamp Tower were filmed at Park Avenue and 40th Street while the opening aerial footage of the city was pilfered directly from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

NOFS: If not New York, where did they shoot the rest of the film?

BRAIN: For a contributing writer at a film news source, there are some alarming gaps in your knowledge of the filmmaking process. Gremlins 2: The New Batch was filmed on a studio set. Set 15 at Warner Bros. Studios to be exact. Jim Spencer designed the interiors of Clamp Tower and really went above and beyond. The set featured functioning elevators and fully stocked retail stores. He even built a portion of the exterior of the building on set. It was truly a marvel to behold.

NOFS: Joe Dante has disclosed in interviews that 1984’s Gremlins was incredibly challenging to make and those difficulties were a large part of why he was reluctant to make a sequel. Would you say his concerns were validated?

BRAIN: Joseph approached making Gremlins 2 with the wisdom of experience. When working simultaneously with human and gremlin actors, problems can arise. I’m all for peace and harmony but some cultural gaps are just more difficult to bridge. We’re not exactly cut from the same cloth. We’re hardly the same material. With this in mind, Joseph filmed all the scenes with human actors first and then spent the remaining six weeks of production filming us gremlin actors. The most arduous scene to film was undoubtedly Gizmo’s dance number. To say he has two left feet would be an understatement. To make matters worse, once the ineffectual furball finally executed the number we learned that Billy Idol wasn’t going to grant us permission to use his tune. Thankfully, a Fats Domino number with an identical rhythm was found and Gizmo’s efforts, although pathetic, were not in vain.

    NOFS: While things went a little more smoothly during the filming process, I understand the writers did not share that good fortune.

BRAIN: Joseph and Charles endured weeks of misery locked in an office as they tried to liberate themselves from the corner they had dim-wittedly written themselves into. They had planned a finale where the heroic humans would fill Clamp Tower with wet cement, trapping all the gremlins. This proved to be too expensive and the two were swiftly returned to the drawing board. The climactic scene as it appears in the final film is much more satisfying than previous iterations. The ending also further utilizes Electricity Gremlin, a first-rate character whose role up until that point had been on the chopping block.

NOFS: Famous special effects artist Rick Baker was brought on board to lend his talents and I understand he also had input on the script.

BRAIN: Chris Walas helmed the special effects department in the first film but had a scheduling conflict as he was directing another sequel, The Fly II. Rick Baker was offered the job but turned it down. To further entice the creative genius, the Slice-o-Life Genetics Lab subplot was added to the film. This gave Rick much more creative freedom and essentially the ability to alter the story through the introduction of new characters. His inclusion in the film was the impetus that essentially launched my acting career. We were tremendously appreciative of his work. Joseph was too, although he had a strange way of showing it. Octoman, Rick’s first film, appears as an in-joke during a broadcast of Grandpa Fred’s horror TV show.

NOFS: The Slice-o-Life Genetics Lab is without a doubt an essential component of the film and it’s in the lab that we meet Dr. Catheter, played by Christopher Lee. What was it like working with the horror legend?

BRAIN: Working with Christopher was a delight and a true honor. The poor boy was indeed unprepared for the degree of adoration he received from the cast and crew. Upon the completion of his final scene, to celebrate his 200th film, a small party was thrown in his honor. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as all involved lined up to shake the hand of a true professional. I had the pleasure of filming one scene with Christopher, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transformation that births my character’s superior intellect. Sadly Christopher’s genetic transformation into Elvis Presley was cut before it even touched celluloid.

    A Star is Genetically Engineered

  NOFS: Your role is by far one of the most memorable in the film, can you tell us a little bit about the character you play?

BRAIN: Well, I essentially play myself. Go ahead, lump me in with your Fred Astaires and Bill Murrays. My character though, unlike other one-note trumpeteers, has an agenda. I recognize the potential of my race and believe we deserve more. I plan to lead my deranged brethren out from the seductive trappings of savagery to attain all the plentiful riches civilization has to offer.

NOFS: In the film we’re introduced to our first female gremlin who falls in love with Forster, a human character played by Robert Picardo. How do you feel about interspecies relationships?

BRAIN: Yes, Girl Gremlin is a truly bewitching vision of elegance. Her musical send up of Dames was inspired. On the topic of interspecies relationships, we intellectuals are a forward thinking lot. As far as I’m concerned the film has a happy ending, demonstrating the resolute tenacity of true love.

NOFS: You have a musical number as well, right?

BRAIN: Yes, an apropos tune by Frank Sinatra. It appears towards the end of the film just before little Zachery Galligan’s character unleashes his genocidal rage.

NOFS: There are a number of spectacular gremlin deaths throughout the film but the climax really manages to pack them in, including a hilarious Wizard of OZ reference. Who comes up with all these great deaths?

BRAIN: I also enjoyed the Wicked Witch death. The appearance of Lon Chaney’s Phantom complete with drop focus as he approaches the camera had me chuckling as well. The answer to your question, however, is everyone. Similarly to the first film, a morbid bit of paper scarred the set where cast and crew would scrawl their sick suggestions for gremlin death. We loathed that sheet of paper.

NOFS: Gizmo also has his fair share of torturous scenes in the film.

BRAIN: And you can bet they all made it onto my highlight reel. Gizmo embarks upon a heroes journey where he must rise to the challenge and become a warrior. He predictably fails and must rely on his human companions to shield him from harm.

NOFS: I understand many gremlin scenes were cut from the film?

BRAIN: Steven had final cut and found the film to be unbalanced. He said there were too many gremlin scenes. I’m all for equality but how many films have you seen with an entirely gremlin cast? No, don’t even bother. The answer is NONE!

    Satirical Genius

  [At this point in the interview Brain was becoming increasingly agitated and I had begun to fear for my safety. The question regarding gremlin scenes being cut from the film seemed to set him off. Suddenly his sharp teeth became more apparent to me as he spoke and he had a maniacal glint in his eye.]

NOFS: Let’s talk about the film’s tone. It has a cartoonish quality and even starts with a Looney Tunes cartoon.

BRAIN: Joseph grew up watching anarchic cartoons by the likes of Frank Tashlin. He applauded their irreverent lack of convention and aspired to sustain that restrained chaos throughout the film. Transcendent rebellion and subversion of popular culture were his objectives but along the way he took a wrong turn. He became the thing he sought to destroy. Joseph had become a part of popular culture. Like the man who learns he can never truly return home, he must burn it down.

NOFS: Perhaps we should shift gears a little and discuss a lighter topic. Let’s talk about cable TV and frozen yogurt.

BRAIN: Oh no, [Brain chuckles] you can’t pull the wool over these reptilian eyes. This is the dreaded prophecy question. For the sake of good sportsmanship, I’ll take the bait. Gremlins 2 has been praised for its prophetic satire of popular culture. Concepts that were conceived as jokes are now accepted norms of modern society. Some of your younger readers may not bat an eyelash at the idea of an entire channel devoted to cooking, but to audiences in 1990 it would have been comical, if not grotesque. The intent was to provide a gross exaggeration in order to highlight the excesses of the medium.

NOFS: Dante didn’t just poke fun at popular culture in general, he takes a few jabs at his own work.

BRAIN: Joseph’s self awareness is an admirable trait to be sure. He and Charles shine a light on the sheer absurdity of the supposed “cardinal rules” of rearing Mogwai as Zach’s character does his best to explain them to a skeptical audience in the building’s control room. Phoebe’s traumatic memory of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is a call back to her laughably tragic Yuletide tale from the first film. References to Joseph’s other work crop up from time to time as well. Vectorscope Labs from the film Innerspace makes an appearance as well as a theater marquee that reads Howling 11. Not to sing the man’s praises too much but upon meeting, Christopher [Lee] apologized to Joseph for appearing in Howling 2. Real stand-up chap.

NOFS: Is Donald Trump the inspiration for the character of Daniel Clamp?

BRAIN: He may have been at one time but also remember that public perception of Donald in 1990 was very different. Clamp was originally intended to be the villain but John Glover played the role with such boyish charm that it really altered the tone of the film. However, Grandpa Fred is without a doubt modelled after Al Lewis’s Grandpa Munster.

NOFS: Did anyone have issue with the film’s satire and social commentary?

BRAIN: I can’t say Steven and Chris Columbus entirely appreciated it. There was also some controversy surrounding jokes made about the marketability of Gizmo. This was somewhat unheard of at the time. Joseph was essentially mocking the marketing and cross promotion for the film within the film itself.

    The Gremsters Vs. The Hulkster

  NOFS: After Leonard Maltin had given the first film a bad review, was it satisfying to see him get his just deserts in the sequel?

BRAIN: Oh yes, the gremlin community had a bit of an axe to grind with Mr. Maltin. His appearance was a way to, forgive me for mixing metaphors, bury the hatchet. We would extend the olive branch of peace but upon bending him to our will, reveal it to be the olive branch of victory.

NOFS: Did he bend to your will?

BRAIN: Well, my dear fellow I’d have to say the proof is in the numbers. Going from 2 out of 4 stars on the first film to 3 out of 4 on the second is nothing to turn your nose up at.

NOFS: Leonard Maltin was just one of many celebrity cameos in the film, but none were quite as outlandish as Hulk Hogan’s fantastic 4th wall breaking appearance.

BRAIN: It is an oddity, isn’t it. Joseph wanted to do a William Castle gag and chose 1959’s The Tingler for his inspiration. Similarly to The Tingler, our titular creatures wreak havoc inside the projection booth. However, in our film the hooligans are set straight by World Wrestling champion Hulk Hogan. The studio was dead set against this narrative detour. Joseph set up a test screening in order to prove to them that audiences would, in fact, get a kick out of it. On home video an alternate scene appears to suggest the viewer’s VCR is on the fritz. The poor gremlins would then wind up in a western. The 1970 John Wayne film Chisum was intercut with shots of gremlins and using Chad Everett’s impeccable John Wayne impression, the audience would watch as The Duke himself sends the mischief-makers fleeing back to their own film.

    Box Office Blunder

NOFS: Gremlins 2: The New Batch is often referred to as a “flop” or a “bomb”. Not only did it fail to live up to its predecessor but the film didn’t even turn a profit.

BRAIN: This is true, the film had a 50 million dollar budget but only brought in 41 million.

NOFS: The film had an extensive marketing campaign of which you were prominently featured, including cross promotional ads for Comfort Inn and Clarion Hotel chains. It seems the studio had very high expectations for what Dante considers to be possibly the most unconventional studio picture ever made.

BRAIN: Call it overconfidence. The film was originally scheduled for a May 3rd release date opposite the Mel Gibson/Goldie Hawn picture Bird on a Wire. Based on high test scores, the studio got a bit big-headed and pushed the date back. We would now open opposite the highly anticipated film, Dick Tracy, starring Warren Beatty and Madonna. The material girl was quite frankly the biggest star in the world at the time and she and Beatty were a bit of a hot item. They were 1990’s Brangelina. Wadonna. Determined to protect their box office records from the previous years Batman, Warner Bros. went after Dick Tracy with a herculean might. As it turned out, the Beatty/Madonna picture posed little threat to Batman’s record. This battle of studios only had one casualty, Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

NOFS: Despite its theatrical failings, the film found a cult following on home video. What do you believe the film’s appeal is to these die-hard fans?

BRAIN: While striving to destroy his legacy, Joseph managed to touch on a societal note that, at the time, was only just a whisper. But over the years it has grown into a symphony. The veil of ignorance has fallen. Joseph and Charles created a world closer to reality than they could have possibly envisioned. Given a parodical hyper-realist version of their everyday life, the viewer steps outside of their own existence to properly examine what is truly of value in this world. What holds meaning, what creates meaning, and what destroys it. Shown what happens when our automated lives break down, the audience revels in an existential awakening. They can now leave the theater a free people once again.

NOFS: Beautifully put, Brain, and thank you again for joining us. I thought we’d end the interview by addressing a little rumor that’s been popping up on message boards in recent years. Is there going to be a Gremlins 3?

BRAIN: [Brain chuckles] Considering the current state of that vacuous void known as Hollywood? I suppose only time will tell.

  The post GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH – A Retrospective Interview with Brain Gremlin appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street - Horror Movie Podcast, News and Reviews.

from WordPress https://nofspodcast.com/gremlins-2-the-new-batch-retrospective/ via IFTTT

[hotelsweet]

you might kill me with desire - chapter 1

With his feelings in the past, Jake returns from his undercover stint with the Ianuccis. Only months later, he and Amy are assigned a hugely high-profile case, and life seems set to become incredibly exciting- Until all at once, everything from their relationship to an unexpected string of murders gets complicated.

 HERE IT IS!! WELCOME TO ANGST CITY

here’s the ao3 link if you’d rather read there

without any further ado:

“Nope! I’m calling bullshit.”

“Huh?! Why?!”

Across an old, slightly battered table, filled to the brim with NYPD detectives from one ninety-ninth precinct, a tipsy Jake Peralta glares at an even tipsier Gina Linetti, whose narrow eyes and slight smirk stay completely focused on him despite the five margaritas she’s managed in the last couple hours.

This objection escapes him in almost a shout- partially out of necessity, thanks to the moderately noisy blur of voices and solid, raw sound of rock music coming through the sound system, and partially due to shock. What about the three-minute tale of him losing his virginity in Mrs Stratton’s glorious Mazda Miata wasn’t believable?

“Oh, sweetie,” Gina takes his hand, pursing her lips a little, “I know we went through a brief separation in high school, what with my infiltration of the cheer team and your position as a total loser-”

“Was not,” he interjects, at the muffled sounds of amusement from Amy and Terry, and what may have even been a snort from Rosa. Gina squeezes his hand pityingly.

“We both know you were, and we also both know that you actually lost your virginity in your mom’s Ford Fiesta.”

“Okay, okay, so I may have exaggerated the car-”

“During a football game, in the parking lot,” Gina continues.

“Fine! It wasn’t at the beach. Are you happy? Everyone totally believed me until now,” he sits back, ignoring the hubbub of amused but firm disagreement this evokes, “and now you’ve ruined it.”

“Nobody believed you, Jake,” Rosa says simply, monotonously. “This game was meant to be truthful, that’s why it’s funny.”

“Like when I told you all about my experience with Evangeline on the train!” Boyle pipes up, though he’s barely halfway through the sentence before he’s cut off by noises of disgust from the squad.

“At least Boyle’s was believable. You started by telling us it lasted a full hour,” Amy, sat in front of him, rolls her eyes.

“Whatever,” Jake replies, topping off his beer. “Okay. I’m getting more drinks, but I want you all to know that I’m hurt and offended none of you believed I could have been such a stud.”

“Sorry, Pineapples,” Amy’s cool voice comes after him as he stands up for the bar, provoking another round of laughter. A tickling mix of annoyance, affection, and amusement spurred suddenly in his centre makes him look back. She’s sat between Terry and Rosa, her thick dark hair falling over the navy collar of today’s blouse, and her cheeks a flushed rose, telling of those glasses of wine she’s managed over the last few hours.

“No worries, lost-your-virginity-in-a-library,” he replies candidly, prompting another round of giggles, and an eye-rolling from Amy.

Walking over to the bar only emphasises, both mentally and physically, the amount of alcohol Jake’s had this evening. He glances at his watch quickly once he’s reached the bar- half midnight. They’ve been here for hours. This one’ll be his last, he decides.

“Jake! What can I get for ya?” A familiar voice approaches after a few minutes.

“One more round for the squad, Carl, thanks.”

“Got it,” he responds quickly, disappearing as quickly as he arrived.

A slight tug on Jake’s elbow asks him to turn around. He obliges, looking to his side, where he finds Amy, smiling up at him. Her expression is, as he knows it to be after a few drinks, almost youthful; her dark eyes admiring and happy, her lips in a small smile, and her cheeks flushed with heat.

“Y’okay there?” He asks over the noise.

“Mm,” she responds with a nod, sliding into a bar stool next to him. “Boyle started talking about that girl again,” shes says, pursing her lips, “so I thought I’d come help with the drinks.”

“Ew. That’s fair enough,” Jake says empathetically, briefly sharing a look of disgust with her. “God, it’s so much later than I thought it was.”

“Right?!” She agrees, laughing a little. “It’s been a good night.”

She’s not wrong. It’s been weeks since the whole squad has been at the bar together, bogged down by stats and papers and ongoing cases, limiting them to groups of three or four if anyone’s ever made it out.

“It has! Everyone needed it, for sure.” Jake looks back at the squad, all still chatting happily in the booth.

“It almost feels like normal now, don’t you think?” Her voice is almost nostalgic as she turns these words over, but there’s no hint of irony, or even sadness- she’s happy, and the warmth in her voice momentarily makes his chest ache.

Immediately, in response to the affection, Jake feels a tightness, a reflex, a warning, suppressing those feelings right back down to where they belong. Out of sight, out of mind. Mostly.

“What d’you mean?” He asks carefully.

“Well, you’ve been home, what, three months? We celebrated you coming back from being undercover, then things kind of went back to their normal routine, blah blah blah…” she leans against the bar on her elbow, tilting her head over sideways, maintaining her gaze up at him. “But it’s not really felt like having you home.”

“Home?”

“Yeah. Like, when you came back, we had that whole awkward thing,” she says quickly, gesticulating by waving her hands around awkwardly, “but now it’s like you never left.”

“I know this is a pretty wild conclusion to jump to given that you just visualised the night I told you I liked you with… aggressive pretendy-spider-hands,” he says, mimicking her gestures, “but are you saying that you missed me?”

Amy rolls her eyes and picks up a couple of beers as Carl puts them in front of her. As she picks them up, her hand brushes his, and numbly, Jake almost shoots his own away- her touch burns, electricity darting over his skin.

“We all missed you.” She says simply, smiling warmly- and with that, she’s off, headed back for the booth.

In a small pulse beneath his skin, Jake can feel himself watching her, something within him hot and fluttering and still very much there.

Lord knows if it’s not going away for six months undercover, and another three back at home, it’s not going away now.

    ***

    At 9:13am, not three sips into her coffee, it’s safe to say that Amy Santiago finds it almost laughable that only a few months ago she truly, genuinely missed Jake Peralta.

Currently attempting to use a yoyo, which is anchored in his mouth, he awkwardly bobs around at his desk, completely distracted. What started as marginally intolerable fidgeting has become a full-fledge project; he’s dipping his head up and down like a large, clumsy bird, trying to get the yoyo to spin just beneath him. Boyle watches on, interested.

Funny that for months she’d be up at night thinking about him, worrying about him, and right now she could actually, really, truly punch him.

It’s been a long morning; the night before, all the heating in her bedroom broke, which created the worst combination on the planet- a perpetually too-cold woman and the mid-January cold seeping into her room. She’d slept on the couch, in three coats and every duvet she could find in her apartment. Waking up had meant shivering as she got dressed and ready, and desperately trying to ignore the stiffness in her neck brought about by the draft coming from her room.

The yoyo clanks as it hits the floor, and Amy grips the computer mouse so hard she swears she almost feels its plastic shell snap between her fingers.

The thing is, it might not even bother Amy were it not for the small noises of victory he keeps making.

That, and the repeated clattering of the yoyo hitting the floor.

And the rowdy victory cheers every three freakin’ minutes.

Who’s she kidding? This is a pain in the ass. An unprofessional pain in the ass.

“Jake,” she sighs, exasperated, finally giving in, pressing her hands over her face. “Please.”

“M’busy, Ames,” he mumbles in reply, not looking up from the yoyo hanging from his mouth.

“This is a police precinct, not a preschool classroom.”

He rolls his eyes and briefly removes the yoyo from his mouth.

“And yet I’m still being lectured by a nerd behind a desk.”

“Whatever,” she smiles tartly, standing up to go and pour herself another coffee, “Holt will be here in ten minutes and there’s no way he’s sitting through this.”

“Spoil-sport!” He calls after her as she heads for the kitchenette. “And stop memorising his schedule, it weirds me out!”

She spins round on her heel indignantly and looks at him disparagingly.

“What?”

“I haven’t memorised his schedule, jackass. Well, I mean, not completely. It’s a morning briefing.”

Jake looks inquisitively at Charles, who confirms this, nodding back at him apologetically.

“Huh. I never picked up the actual time of those, I just kinda follow everyone else.”

“You’re like a goldfish,” she mutters, heading for the kitchenette.

“A super handsome goldfish!” Charles chimes in, but Jake doesn’t say anything else. Amy breathes a sigh of relief.

The annoyance begins to fade, just a little, but a large part of it remains under the surface. It’d be a lie for her to claim that this is all Jake, this bad feeling- truthfully, it’s like she’s been on a downward slope since she broke up with Teddy six weeks ago.

She can’t close cases like she used to. She can’t focus like she used to. Hell, she can’t live in her own damn apartment like she used to. Something inside her hasn’t felt right, slightly uncomfortable, slightly wrong, since the whole ordeal- while before she was a detective with a boyfriend and a relatively warm apartment, she’s now a freezing cold loser who’s in a slump and has to sleep it off alone in the world’s coldest living room. There’s no safety net now she’s not got Teddy, just her, and her future, and her career, and it’s all she can think about.

It’s not right. Undoubtedly, she feels better without him, no longer needing to keep up a façade, but the change seems to have… thrown her off-balance. It’s not uncommon in her breakups, in anyone’s breakups, she supposes, but now it’s different to when she was in her 20s. It’s a gritty wake-up call, a harsh reminder to re-evaluate herself and her progress.

There’s also the convenient truth that a good half of the hurdles in her relationship with Teddy were caused by the fact that she wanted someone else.

Someone who’s doing a victory lap of the bullpen, high-fiving everyone, after having successfully bobbed a yoyo from his mouth for a minute straight.

After a deep breath, she takes the first sip of her second cup of coffee.

As usual, it’s bitter, and not as hot as she’d like it to be, but it’s enough. More than enough- a nagging desperation for energy pulls at her and soon enough she’s chugging it like an energy drink.

“Y’okay there Santiago?” Terry murmurs a tad concernedly as he walks past.

“Perfect,” she says dryly.

The morning passes slowly, with little to no progress, on Amy’s part. Their briefing comes and goes, and everyone’s in and out of the bullpen as usual, following up on cases and signing off paperwork. As if not being able to get anything done wasn’t frustrating enough- being surrounded by people doing just that pokes at the critical, stubborn little demon in Amy’s brain, griping about how little she’s done.

By four in the afternoon, she’s given up, slouching back into her chair and staring aimlessly at her work. Her life’s been messy and slow for weeks, but now three whole days of this crap at work, and she’s not been right about one thing, hitting dead end after dead end. Unless, of course, you count Holt being completely unimpressed by Jake and his yoyo-mouth tricks. That, of course, earned a small boost in satisfaction, even if only for the look on Jake’s face.

The day is slow, and stupid, right up until she receives the email, one that in weeks to come she’ll wonder if she would have been better without. One that in years to come she’ll know changed her life.

It crops up in the corner of her screen, a little red exclamation mark bobbing above it in the corner of her screen, marking it as urgent. It excites her more than she’d willingly admit; modifying her email so it could notify her out of its own window was one of her proudest achievements when Savant had all of their operating systems updated.

 from: rholt@nypd.org to: asantiago@nypd.org, jperalta@nypd.org

Detectives, please meet me in my office as quickly as possible. Might I ask that you make as little fuss as possible.

Regards.

Captain Raymond Holt

 Immediately, Amy’s heart starts racing. This is something, whether it’s a new case, a new opportunity, or, hell, even just the two of them being told off for something. It’s a distraction.

Or maybe it’s something more.

She looks over at Jake, who’s fiddling with a ball of elastic bands in one hand and using his computer with the other. He seems relatively unfazed, which is how she knows he hasn’t seen the email- there’s a reason Holt had to ask them not to make a fuss, and that reason goes by the name of Jacob Peralta.

“Hey,” she whispers over at him. “Hey!”

He glances over, briefly, then looks back to his screen.

“What’s up?”

“The email. Holt.”

“Huh?”

“We both need to be in Holt’s office. Now.”

“Why’re you being so quiet?” He looks at her confusedly. “That urgent-whisper voice is creeping me out. But also kind of turning me on.” He tilts his head to the side teasingly.

She rolls her eyes.

“C’mon,” she mutters softly, standing up and heading for Holt’s office.

“No, I’m serious! Could you say the following words in that exact voice? ‘You must remain quiet in the library-’”

“Jake.” She pivots on her heel outside the door to Holt’s office. “Keep the weird librarian kink for after the super serious meeting.”

“Y’know, I can honestly say I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

She rolls her eyes and knocks twice on the door, before clicking it open gently.

“Santiago, Peralta.”

“Sir,” they reply in union. Jake grins at Amy.

“Please have a seat.”

There’s something about him, Amy thinks, something serious- quickly, she glances around the room. Immediately confirming her suspicions, she notices the drawn blinds, the closed window, the soft music playing from Holt’s record player. She can’t help it- part of her starts to get excited.

“I’ve called you both in here to discuss a potential opportunity. It would entail both of you working with Major Crimes.”

“Ew,” Jake blurts out, which earns him a blunt nudge from Amy’s knee.

“We’re all-ears, sir,” she smiles.

“I wanted to keep this rather low-key as this opportunity, this case-”

“There’s a case?!” Amy asks excitedly, unable to help herself. Holt simply looks at her- she sits back in her chair, almost apologetically, sensing Jake’s smirk without having to look at him.

“Due to Peralta’s success undercover, and our scores in last year’s tactical village, I’ve been approached in search of two detectives. This is… an incredibly high-profile case.” Holt looks between the two of them slowly, completely still.

“Awesome. We’re in. Who is it?” Jake pipes up quickly. Amy glances over at him and almost rolls her eyes at how excited he is now he’s realised someone famous is involved- but she holds back. It’d be a lie to say she doesn’t feel the same. “An actor? A singer? Oh my god, it’s Taylor, isn’t it?!”

“Jake,” Amy cuts in, desperate to hear the actual details. Holt nods once, and she can’t help the surge of teacher’s-pet-pride that swells in her chest.

“I presume you’re aware of Kristoff Clare.”

“Wow, yes,” Amy replies, eyes wide, sharing a quick look with Jake. “Billionaire, entrepreneur, philanthropist-”

“He was in that AT&T ad with the dog!” Jake grins.

“Yes. I believe he is an investor in the company,” Holt offers. “You are… aware of him?”

“Are you kidding? He’s crazy famous. He’s almost at the top of the Forbes Rich List,” Jake replies matter-of-factly, resulting in an odd look directed his way from Amy. “What?! I saw it in a fancy magazine at an airport lounge.”

“Is he okay?” Amy asks eagerly.

“He has been receiving a number of threats. Major Crimes is only actually involved because until a couple of weeks ago, a child was at risk.”

“A child?” Jake’s expression changes.

“Kristoff’s daughter, Angelica, recently turned eighteen. A detective from Major Crimes was asked to step in as a family favour, but since the case appears to be rather open-and-shut, they’ve decided to pull detectives from our precinct instead.”

“So, what, are the threats not serious?” Jake looks a little confused.

“As I understand it, Kristoff is relatively unbothered by the messages he’s been receiving. He’s merely looking into more protective measures for the estate-”

“The estate,” Jake grins over at Amy. “Dope.”

“- And increased security.”

“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, why on earth would Major Crimes pick up two detectives from Brooklyn? Only, I assume this estate is a good distance away?” Amy asks carefully.

“Westchester, yes,” Holt confirms. “I’ll have to ask that you don’t let this get to your head, Peralta, but…” He clears his throat. “Kristoff Clare asked for you.”

Jake’s face lights up like a toddler who’s just been presented with a bucket of candy.

“Buuuuh what-now-huh?!”

“I believe he read into your work undercover with the Ianucci family. When he was told the case was being delegated, he named you.”

“Awesome,” Jake half-laughs. “Man, this is crazy.”

Amy sits still, trying to keep her breathing balanced, but inside she’s completely giddy; a high-profile case, and an easy one, too- this is a cakewalk, and it’s going to set her back on track. She knows it, can feel it lifting her from her shoulders, her confidence tiptoeing back already.

“So. The nature of this meeting is essentially just a proposition, offering the two of you this case. You need to understand that this will mean a lot of time between this precinct and Major Crimes, as well as visiting the estate. What I mean to say is,” he considers, “this case will be an incredibly interesting one, but it will also require a lot of effort.”

Amy looks over at Jake intuitively, but he’s already looking towards her, eyes wide, as if to ask- is this guy serious? Of course they’re going to want the case. Who’s he kidding? Excitement flutters in her chest. It’s been a while since her and Jake have had an exhilarating case, and this one might be simple, but it’s a slam-dunk. Career progress. Media attention. Meeting super-famous-billionaires.

Who could say no?

    ***

    As they approach the entrance to One Police Plaza, Amy finds herself furiously prodding Jake’s shoulder as he speeds ahead of her, desperately trying to get his attention.

“Jake!” She gives up, resorting to calling for him like a dog.

He turns around immediately, seemingly unbothered- or perhaps entirely unaware- of her repetitive poking.

“’Sup?”

“Don’t laugh, but…” She breathes deeply, and steps back a little. “Blaser buttoned or unbuttoned?”

Jake just looks at her, not reacting. She doesn’t move, looking at him earnestly, at which point he appears to realise she’s serious, smiling softly.

“You look great as you are. If you change it you’ll only make yourself more panicked.”

She sighs. He’s probably- no, definitely- right, and they both know it.

“Okay, yes. Unbuttoned it is. Good. Let’s go.” She brushes herself off for the sixty-millionth time this morning and gives herself a small shake, ready to go. However, as soon as she steps forward, she feels a warm hand take her arm, stopping her in her tracks. “What?” She asks Jake, whose grasp remains firm.

“We’re gonna crush this. Don’t worry.” He smiles sincerely, softly, and for just a second, it reminds her of the night he told her he had feelings for her. Almost nine months ago. She nods, once, knowing he’ll understand it as a movement of gratitude.

“C’mon,” she smiles, and like that, they’re moving again, straight into the lobby, showing their IDs and being let into the elevators just like the higher-ups, surrounded by important-looking, well-dressed, stoic cops and filled to the brim with excitement.

Amy’s posture is so tight just trying to keep herself still that she could almost burst, mustering every ounce of inner strength just to maintain a professional appearance, while Jake does little to nothing to restrain himself, chatting excitedly about his potential code names (his current top three being Axe, Hurricane, and The Thunder). Their elevator hauls itself up to Major Crimes, and neither of them can keep the smile off their faces.

As they step into the hall, Amy realises neither of them have been here since she rejected her job offer here last year. She watches Jake fondly, thinking of the spelling-error-ridden letter she still has kept tucked into a drawer at home. Right now, he’s looking at the number and the name of each office as they walk the hallway, looking for the details they’d been given by Holt yesterday.

“Okay, so here’s the deal.” A familiar voice comes from the other end of the hallway, from behind Amy. She daren’t look.

Jake turns to Amy, his face turning to total despair.

“Nooooooo, c’mon,” he mutters, and just like that, Amy knows her recognition of the voice was right.

“I don’t want you on this case. Super rich dude wants you on the case,” Keith Pembroke explains casually as he approaches them. “So you’re here. What’s up, Jakey?” He grins smugly at Jake. “How’s that big white ass? Ready to get briefed?” He laughs fully, clearly amused by himself.

Jake grimaces uneasily, shooting Amy a look.

“With all due respect, Officer Pembroke,” Amy says calmly, resisting to urge to say Vulture out loud, “we have just as much right to be working this case as you do.”

“Trust me, Santaigo, I’ve got no problem with you being here,” he says with a wink, and just like that Amy would almost rather punch him in the face than keep her spot on this case.

“Okay, let’s get this over with,” he mutters, opening the door to his office.

Their briefing is quick, almost identical to what Holt had explained to them yesterday, charts and explanations and the reassurance that, yes, they will both be meeting Kristoff Clare. They’re to visit the estate in a week, then immediately begin working directly with the family full-time to enforce stricter protective measures. In under half an hour, they’re walking back out again.

“Did that not worry you a little?” Amy looks over at Jake the second the elevator shuts and they’re on their way out.

“Huh? Not really. He’s the worst, but we’ve dealt with hi-”

“No, Jake,” she hushes him cursing out his superior before they’ve even left the building. “I meant… how little Major Crimes seemed to know. When it came to detail, there was almost nothing other than that Kristoff needs them, and that there’s going to be a hell of a lot of media attention.”

“I don’t know,” Jake considers, “It’s a pretty simple case, right? It seems pretty open-and-shut, like the Captain said. I’m sure if there was any potential it could be something more, the Vulture would make as much a deal out of it as possible.”

“I guess so,” she finds herself agreeing, though she knows her hunch tells her something’s off.

“But hey!” Jake beams toothily over at her, “this is it! Jake and Amy, back on a case!”

She laughs a little at his unhindered enthusiasm.

“I’m serious!” He continues, “I know it’s going to be a pain in the ass having the Vulture above us, but we haven’t had something big like this since… well-”

“Since before you left,” she finishes his sentence for him, smiling gently. “Since Wint.”

“Exactly.”

Amy’s fingertips clasp clammily over the soft leather strap of her bag, tense, as the two of them maintain their gaze on each other, just for a second or two. She knows her chest, her cheeks, must redden, because her heart picks up its pace and just like every stupid moment she’s looked at him since he got back, one thought, one word, spins around aggressively in her mind: unfinished.

“We’re all good, right?” Jake says a little awkwardly, after neither of them break off the stare.

“What?” Amy’s voice sounds far weaker than she intended, resulting in a tiny pang of embarrassment, internally kicking herself.

“All that stuff with us… it’s in the past.”

“Oh, right,” she replies quickly, too quickly, “yes. Of course.”

“Good,” he says, a little relievedly- “I know you’ve just broken up with Teddy last month, and I didn’t want you to think I was going to try anything, use this case to my advantage.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she says assuredly, “I know you’d not use a case to get laid.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“I mean,” she corrects herself, “not with me. You’re better than that.”

“You’re too kind,” he sighs, smiling warmly at her. She chuckles softly.

“Woah, careful- that’s dangerously close to flirting.”

He laughs, and within a couple of minutes they’re talking about something else, headed back to the nine-nine. For a moment, it really feels like everything’s going to be fine, going to be normal- maybe even going to be fun.

Under the surface, an aching in Amy’s chest begs to differ, thrumming thickly, electric, as she watches him chatter and laugh and smile as if everything makes sense.

     ***

    “To Amy and Jake, for scoring an incredible case and abandoning us for at least eight weeks!” Charles shouts, earning a round of cheers as everyone follows suit.

“Oh, c’mon, I’d never abandon you, bud,” Jake throws an arm over Charles’ shoulder. He sighs loudly. “I just have to go and hang out with super rich famous people for a few weeks until they love me and accept me as one of their own. I’ll buy you anything you want afterwards.” He grins at his friend, whose face lights up.

He’s exaggerating, of course- they all are, the warmth of the beer and the bar and the excitement of what’s to come enveloping the air. Everyone’s at least five drinks down, with Shaw’s now close to closing- but nobody’s going anywhere anytime soon. Gina’s got the night planned out, even emailing out (much to Amy’s delight, and consequently, Jake’s amusement) an itinerary for the evening.

“You guys are so mushy,” Rosa teases, rolling her eyes. Jake spots a small smile tugging on her lips, though, her tell; she cares just as much as Charles.

“Yeah, we’ll still be at the precinct a couple days a week,” Amy says as if it’s obvious, that drunk confidence of hers practically dripping from her lips as she speaks. “If you’re gonna cry about anything, it should be how far you’re all gonna fall behind without me holding you up,” she shrugs, with a small smile, calm in the face of the outrageous laughter from Gina and Rosa and general shock from everyone else that this elicits.

Jake watches her, sat tall on her barstool, her smile never wavering.

Internally, he finds he’s telling himself he can’t help the way his chest swells as he watches her, the way his heart pounds and he lights up from the inside out.

It’s not deliberate. So it’s harmless.

And yet, he can’t help but scold himself-you know better.

It’s a whisper. It aches more powerfully the longer his eyes stay fixated on her, paining him to his core and fortified by her dark, smiling eyes, and the head of raven hair falling loose over her shoulders. It’s the nights undercover, completely alone, when a memory of her on a rooftop trying to throw peanuts into her mouth is what got him to sleep. It’s every moment of uncertainty she’s resolved within him from the second she stepped into the precinct for the first time, almost seven years ago.

And it’s all useless.

Someone’s nudging his shoulder, and then he’s coming back to the room- something’s happening, people are moving.

“Jake!” Gina snaps her fingers in front of him. “C’mon, wake up, it’s time for bar two!”

He jumps up, inventing some excuse about finishing his drink, and moves with the group as they pile into taxis outside Shaw’s.

For just a second, before her head dips into the taxi in front, he swears he catches Amy looking back at him.

    ***

    As soon as Jake steps outside The Nightingdale, onto a sidewalk lit only by its bright red neon sign, his ears begin to ring, unaccustomed to the absence of heavy music. The mid-January air, at this hour, is practically biting, so freezingly cold it almost hurts, but it’s exactly what he needs; his forehead glistens a little with a thin sheen of sweat (already fast disappearing) and he’s just a tad too warm from all the dancing.  

Absent-mindedly, he sinks against the brick wall, letting himself breathe for a second, a familiar, numb, intoxicated ringing in his head. This is gonna hurt tomorrow.

It must be at least three in the morning. The Nightingale is their third and final stop of the night, predominantly a dance club with several tables at the back, concealed by shadows, creating what Jake knows to be a slightly disconcerting feeling; the sense that there’s always more space, more people, than you can see.

For the most part, everyone’s been on the dancefloor, going crazy for the unusual blend of heavy club beats and cheesy 80s and 90s music that they’ve been playing all night- Gina’s been throwing shapes like she was born for it, Amy’s repeatedly succeeded in shimmying Rosa into action, and Jake’s even performed an entire routine with Terry (including lifts, obviously). He nearly laughs to himself at the drunken image of his dance moves.

Something’s shifted within him, most of his tension from earlier in the evening having melted away, hand-in-hand with his sobriety. A certain contentedness washes over him; a big, exciting, relatively simple case that’ll instantly boost his and Amy’s careers, an incredible group of friends and colleagues whom he adores, and living in the greatest city on earth. He opens his eyes, taking in the buildings around him, under the flaming vermillion light so bright that it coats the street around him like treacle.

Out of nowhere, the doors to the bar are thrown open, so fast Jake actually jumps.

“Oh, hey.”

Amy smiles over at him. Then, quickly, he notices she’s looking over with narrowed eyes, like she’s trying to see through fog.

“Hey, partner.” He immediately regrets this greeting, briefly cursing himself for its awkwardness. Amy doesn’t seem fazed, walking slowly out into the street. “Y’okay there?”

“Yeah,” she says quietly, her gaze not leaving him. It’s almost intense, he thinks. She never stares, not like this. She smiles. Then she grins, surrendering to a soft chuckle. “You’ve got…”

“I’ve got…” He repeats in an attempt to prompt her, unsure if she’s too drunk to make sense or if she’s just being quiet.

“You’ve got salt- or sugar, or something, just above your mouth,” she laughs. “I was staring because it kinda looked like a patch of… uh… gray stubble.” Her speech is languid, soft, he realises, like she’s thinking over every word she says.

“Oh,” Jake laughs relievedly, comforted by what appears to be only mild tipsiness, on her part, and a valid reason for staring at him so hard his chest started to tighten. “Must have been from the shots…”

He pushes the back of his wrist over his chin.

“No- wrong spot,” Amy interjects gently. “It’s… you’re…” She cuts in repeatedly as he somehow misses the spot over and over, until she rolls her eyes and steps towards him.

She comes close, until she’s stood only centimetres away from him, taking her thumb and pressing it softly over a spot to the side of his mouth, and wiping away whatever’s there.

Jake watches her carefully, completely frozen in his spot; after she’s taken her hand away, she doesn’t move, her eyes locked with his. It’s perhaps the most intense thing Jake’s ever experienced, simply looking at her, maintaining this eye contact for so long. His body tightens- his heart is racing, and he can feel his cheeks heating despite the cold. Not that either of them would be able to tell, he thinks, under the colour of light.

Finally, there’s movement- with only the fading sounds of traffic, under the scorching red of a neon sign hanging above them, Amy sucks her thumb clean.  

He’s not sure whether he should be mildly uncomfortably or mildly turned on, and he knows his face must show it, because he’s stuck, completely unable to move, fire shooting under his skin at hundreds of miles an hour until he could swear he’s about to burst. All she does is stare at him, her eyes somehow darker than usual and completely focused.

Ask him tomorrow, and he’ll tell you that it’s him who moves first.

In actuality, it’s not quite that simple; like two runners crossing a finish line, so incomparably close that they’re not even a microsecond apart, it’s impossible to tell who’s first as they crash against each other.

Jake’s mind is alight, everything happening at once; the alcohol has his heart pounding yet manages to slow the kiss down, just enough sobriety pinching at his senses to pick up on every miniscule detail of the woman in front of him, of a moment he’s longed for for far too long.

When he slides his hand up her back and she tugs him closer, one hand pulling gently at the fabric of his shirt and the other sliding into his hair, he wonders if she can tell how much this means to him.

With her body completely pressed against him, and the soft sound of a moan escaping her throat as his mouth moves to the underside of her jaw, and then her neck- he considers that it may even mean something to her, too.

He’s surprised at how small- yet firm- her hand feels on his waist, pulling him closer and tugging at his shirt.

He’s even more surprised when he feels her fingertips skimming the top of his jeans, his breath catching quickly in his throat.

She looks up at him with a small smile, and pressing herself up against him in all the right ways, he’s not sure how he’s still standing, tipsy from the alcohol and absolutely intoxicated from Amy’s touch.

It’s five, ten minutes of teasing, toying, before he realises- no, remembers- that they’re out in the open, pushing each other to a point where, despite the patches of sludgy snow and violently cold air, they’re close to tearing each other’s clothes off. It’s like a game; she’ll pull at his jeans, he’ll suck a little harder on her neck. She’ll bite his lip, he’ll slip a hand under her shirt, the small of her back burning under his fingertips.

“Yours,” she says quietly into his ear, in a voice so thick Jake’s knees almost buckle. “Please.”

“Oh, uh,” he clears his throat, “yeah. Okay. Yes.”

They pull apart a little, eyes still locked together. It’s a moment of complete amazement, Jake realises, every sensation in his body heightened, from the soft tingling of his lips to the dull ache in his lower abdomen. Amy’s expression changes, now looking at him like she’s trying to figure out a math problem.

“Wait,” Amy says quietly, and for a second Jake’s heart sinks- she’ll say what they’re both thinking, that this is crazy, that they shouldn’t. “Do you want to?”

He almost can’t believe she’s asking him this, looking at her a little incredulously.

“Yes, Amy, I…” He struggles for the words, astounded by the innocence in her questioning eyes. He squeezes his fingers around hers gently where they’re already brushing against each other. “I’ve wanted this for… too long,” he says, half-laughing at himself, shaking his head a little.

She presses herself up on her toes and kisses him sweetly, simply, her fingers curling around the collar of his button-down.

“C’mon,” she says quietly, and with that, she’s taken his hand, and she’s leading him into the street.

She’s in total control, he realises quickly, from asking him to take her home to hailing down a taxi, into which they both climb with only mild stumbling and tipsy giggling- particularly after Jake bumps his head on the roof of the cab.

They’re silent in the taxi, communicating only by sharing that tight, hot stare that kicked this whole mess off. Without any obvious movement, staying as respectful to their driver as humanly possible, it’s a good fifteen minutes of teasing- Jake’s hand, on Amy’s leg, presses itself higher and higher, until he’s slowly rubbing the inside of her thighs.

It’s hard not to be in complete awe when he watches her bite her lower lip, tilting her head back as he touches her inner legs over the fabric of her jeans. Her fingers close over his in response, and when he tightens his hold, her breath hitches so loudly it’s essentially a gasp, the cab driver’s eyes darting over at her in the rear-view mirror. It’s somehow the hottest, most intense part of their evening so far, if the most restrained.

Once they arrive at Jake’s it’s like the two of them lose all tact, completely starved of each other and now allowed to taste, allowed to feel, granted permission to one another.

They’re kissing before they’re even up the steps into Jake’s building, murmuring softly and teasing each other until it feels almost futile that they’ve come all this way home, as though they could easily end up having sex right here in the hall.

As soon as they’re in the elevator, Jake’s got her by her legs, scooping her up and hoisting her up against the wall. Immediately, she laughs. Half of him wonders whether he should be concerned by her amusement at him attempting to be sexy, and the other half makes every effort to savour that joyous sound, and the feeling of her laugh shaking through her body as he holds her.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says quickly, “it’s just so cliché.”

“I could always put you down,” he offers sarcastically. “The floor looks super comfy.” They both glance down at the gritty metal base of the elevator.

“C’mere,” she mutters with a smirk, pulling him towards her and into a heated kiss, sliding her tongue into his mouth. He goes faint at the taste of her, sweet against him.

He aches so strongly for her, at this point, that he almost jolts in shock at the rich, unhindered sound of her moaning, as he takes his mouth over the top of her chest. The elevator shudders, as if it’s aware- though Jake knows it’s simply a lack of structural security.

Without thinking, he pulls the emergency stop button, and the elevator grinds to a stop, a loud clunking noise echoing through the shaft.

“Here?” Amy asks quietly, shock coursing into her eyes, a small smile on her lips. Jake’s a little proud- there’s a hint of disbelief in her expression, and he understands why: the last hour or so, he’s held back, scared to push her beyond what she wants.

Not anymore- he wants her, and he wants her-

“Now.” His voice is hoarse.

Amy’s eyes shift quickly into something different, something hungry. She nods once, and like that, it’s happening all over again.

Feverish heat blossoms within him in the most perfect way, an exquisite release after months, years, of waiting for her. They’re all over each other, so entangled that Jake’s only indicator of which movements are his are the sensations under his fingertips; her hair, as she kisses over his collarbones, the buttons on her shirt, as he fiddles to undo them, her lips, as his hand clumsily cradles her jaw.

When he shivers, the 4am January cold seeping into the elevator, she laughs, making some joke about how rushing will catch up with him- not that she seems to mind. She tightens her legs around his waist and pulls him closer. Her smile is too much, driving him insane; so he kisses it off her face, until those honeyed words melt into just one word; his name, over and over until it’s all he ever wants to hear for the rest of his life.

The way her breath stops when he’s finally inside her is unparalleled to anything he’s ever heard before. He’s not sure he can bear to forget it, not sure what it’ll mean if he never hears it again- in those first few movements he finds he has to do everything to hold himself back, stop himself from coming apart on the spot, the feeling of her around him too good to be true.

Her hands, still a little cold, find his hips, guiding him into her. It’s a combined effort, to stay upright and keep Amy balanced on the rail, but somehow they’re managing, and it’s utter heaven.

“Jake, oh my god-“

Amy can hardly talk, her breath now entirely out of control- this does very little in Jake’s favour, desperately trying to hold himself together and make this perfect for her. He twists around a little, so he’s at a slightly different angle- immediately, her eyes widen, and her head drops back.

“There, right there,” she manages, her voice tight. “Please.”

The sound of her pleading, begging, very nearly sends him over the edge- so he decides to help her instead, focus on something else, taking one of his hands from under her legs and starting to rub her softly. Immediately her groaning becomes almost uncontrollable, and though he’s largely just astounded by how incredible she is, Jake’s able to take consolation in the fact that she may actually be finding it more difficult to keep herself together than him.

He can’t get over how beautiful she is. It almost feels wrong, unforgivable, that someone like him should be able to experience her like this- but the way she’s holding onto him for dear life goes past making him feel wanted. He’s needed, and by the one person to whom he would readily give everything.

It ends too quickly, both of them unable to keep themselves from finishing- Amy first, then Jake, at the sight of her.

In total disbelief, all Jake can do is look at her, in the seconds that come afterwards. He doesn’t know much about how a situation like this, much about what comes next; he’s had a one-night stand or two, and he’s slept with women on the first date.

But he’s never moved so quickly with someone he’d rather die than lose.

Eventually, the emergency button is slotted back into place, and the elevator begins to move. Neither’s hands ever leave the other, not entirely.

Amy follows him into his apartment, touching, tugging, bringing him to bed, and a harsh realisation invades his head, fizzing off around his body in excitement, intrigue, and a dash of worry.

Nothing is going to be the same.

   ***

   “Jesus, fuck…”

Not even entirely awake, Amy manages to stir herself awake with her own voice, cursing intuitively at the throbbing in her head. Without opening her eyes to the cruel world outside, she lifts herself up onto her elbows and presses her thumbs against her temples, desperately trying to alleviate some of the pain of the headache.

The sudden upward movement makes her surprisingly dizzy- at which point she realises that this is no mere migraine. No, this is, undoubtedly, a hangover. She sighs deeply, letting herself fall back into her pillow.

It’s when she misjudges the distance between her head and the pillow, and promptly bashes her head into the wall, that Amy knows she’s not in her own home, immediately startled awake.

Rubbing her eyes open, everything seems to hit at once; her complete lack of clothes under these sheets, the impeccable warmth of this bed, and the unmistakable freckled back of the man lying next to her.

Instantly, the night before floods back into her head, her stomach twisting violently in a sickening assortment of guilt, shock, confusion, and excitement. Her hand shoots to her mouth, completely taken aback by herself. The main thought running through her mind- though she can’t seem to place an exact moment or movement that could serve as evidence- is that she started this. She’s the reason they’re waking up naked together. And she’ll be the reason things get completely weird from here on out.

Unmoving, so as not to wake him, she watches Jake, who remains completely passed out, his bare back exposed as he lies on his front.

“Oh my god,” she whispers quietly, thinking about the way this completely still, sleeping man had held her, had touched her, only hours ago.

Somewhere in the room, a phone buzzes.

Amy looks around, not even considering that someone might need to get in contact with her. It seems to be coming from the floor, as far as she can tell, which is in a general state of disarray; a mix of her clothes and Jake’s, as well as the usual Peralta-clutter that she knows too well to gather in his apartment, has the floor almost completely concealed.

Awkwardly, she clambers out of bed, pulling the throw blanket off the corner of Jake’s bed to cover herself as she searches for her phone.

It’s still in the pocket of her jeans, which sit awkwardly at the end of Jake’s bed- she pulls it out and sits on the end of the bed to inspect it.

To her absolute horror, her lock screen is filled with notifications, all of them filled with various expletives, all-caps words, and exclamation marks.

She scrolls down, until she sees the one text that has her close to throwing up on the spot.

“Morning,” Jake’s voice comes from behind her, magically sleepy- he presses a kiss against her bare shoulder, and for a microsecond, she feels a little calmer, but the second the turns to look at him, she knows her expression gives her panic away, because Jake’s face changes immediately. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“It’s… my phone…” she shows him the screen, then, with a grimace, opens The Text, the one sending her brain into a spinning, guilty frenzy.

“Oh my god.”

 Keith Pembroke   06:24

 I need you and Jake at the estate NOW.

Kristoff Clare is dead.

[parabcllums]

⧼    diego luna, cis male, he & him   /   the war by syml   +   the beep of a coffee pot set to start at six am ( and the bitter taste of cold coffee poured hours later ). the feeling that blooms in your chest when you call your dogs name and hear the pitter patter of their four huge paws on hardwood floors, coming to greet you. bandaids and bandages and the fading greens of the deep bruises peeking past them, just now beginning to heal.   ⧽   ━━   let me tell you a thing or two about CLINTON FRANCIS “CLINT” BARTON. the hero for hire that goes by HAWKEYE is a professor of ARCHERY & GYM at paragon academy, and has sometimes been referred to as THE JESTER. they’ve always seemed very INNOVATIVE & BENIGNANT, though i’ve heard they can be pretty UNDEPENDABLE & OBSTINATE, too. they’re probably here to keep an eye on the kid they had with BARBARA MORSE. do you think if i ask real nice, they’ll give me an autograph? you can check out his stat page HERE and his pinterest board HERE.

 CONGRATULATIONS,             on the mess you’ve made of things.

SECTION ONE OF THREE : BULLET POINT HISTORY. trigger warnings for talk of child abuse and death.

clinton francis “clint” barton was born on june 18th, 1974, in waverly, iowa. his mother was edith, and his supposed father was harold - an abusive, alcoholic butcher shop owner who always kinda knew that clint wasn’t his kid, and let his feelings about that out with his fists. his older ( half ) brother was charles bernard - also known as “barney” - and over his early years, he would become the most important figure in clint’s life. as mentioned, harold was wildly abusive ; both to his wife, and to his sons. clint hated him, and he hated his mother - a weak willed woman who even now he harbors some degree of contempt for, left over from a childhood of her turning the other way and allowing harold do what he did.

he suffered through a lot, in a very short amount of time, and hospital visits were numerous for the youngest barton - coming to a head when one night, his father’s attack on him left him partially deaf in one ear. he didn’t want to invest in helping clint, so barney took it upon himself to not just teach clint some asl, but also to teach him how to protect himself. in his words, teaching clint to think of everything like a weapon - something to hit harold with, when he came knocking. the boys would hide out for hours at a time on the roof of their home or in the barn, and as both got older, tried to go toe to toe with harold on more than one occassion. things would have gotten worse for them, if it hadn’t been for the accident.

harold crashed the family car into a tree on his way home one night. edith was in the passenger seat. the two of them died instantly, and clint and barney were shuttled off fairly quick to a foster home. and then another. and then another. you get the picture. if they weren’t sent away because of being generally unruly, the boys found a way to run. eventually, that led to them running into a literal circus, which they proceeded to join, seeking out the family that they had never really have.

clint was obsessed with it all - the glitz and the glam isn’t exactly the right turn of phrase, but he lived for the adrenaline rush. he was a talented gymnast, and he eventually came under the wing of the original swordsman and trick shot, who built on barney’s earlier lessons of self defense, but honed his skill with weapons. he was good with a sword. he was better with a bow. and when barney tried to sway clint into caring about his future - into doing his GED, like him - they would argue. their relationship, deteriorating a little more each time.

eventually, clint discovered that the swordsman was embezzling money - and his moral compass, though dusty, kicked in. he would’ve turned him over to the police, had it not been for him proceeding to get the shit kicked out of him, and barney choosing to turn his back on him once and for all. barney joined the army and left - and after witnessing heroes on the news, clint decided that maybe he could use his talent ( at this point being a star attraction at the circus ) for good. he donned a costume, he went out making an attempt to fight crime - and the local authorities confused him with an actual thief, which only led to him deciding that if that was what people were going to view him as, he might as well be one. the black widow - natasha romanoff - enlisted him as a partner, and the two clashed with the betterknown costumed heroes on multiple occasions.

soon enough, clint got tired of that life, and he approached the avengers with a proposition. he would use his talents for them, instead, and... feel better about himself in the process? unclear. tony stark vouched for him, he joined a team with steve rogers & wanda and pietro maximoff, and though they were thought of as being lesser than the original avengers team... they all, clint included, proved themselves.

he fought with steve, resenting that he was leader and clint was not - but over time, learned to respect him. he operated as goliath, he left the avengers a couple times, he did a bunch of stuff and saved the world tons, and then on one such leave of absence where he became the security chief for cross technological enterprises, he was kidnapped ( alongside bobbi morse ) by crossfire as part of a master plan to kill the avengers ( first by killing him, and then by killing the rest when they showed up for his funeral ). the plan was to use hypnotic ultrasounds to force the two of them to kill one another, but clint stuffed a sonic arrow of his own creation into his mouth in a brief moment of lucidity and managed to disrupt the ultrasounds by deafening himself even more - allowing him to knock bobbi out and defeat crossfire, once and for all. this was a pivotal point in his life, not just because of being rendered 80% deaf and being forced to readjust his life to this. he also fell for bobbi, who felt responsible for what had happened to him and wanted to try and help. they met, they loved, they married within nine days - and their relationship, or lack thereof at times, has been continuous ever since.

he led the west coast avengers, he got stranded in ancient egypt, he fought his own brother who then died and cam back and died again ( and came back ), he and bobbi broke up, they got back together, it was revealed she was a skrull, the real bobbi apparently died, he took a break from being a hero to mourn, he rejoined the avengers, got killed by an exploding kree ship ( thanks wanda ), came back to life thanks to an altered universe, died again, came back again ( thanks wanda ), operated as ronin for a time after the apparent assination of captain america,  found bobbi safe and well ( ok, after a whole big skrull thing ), learned that his beloved ( ex ) wife had wanted to divorce him before she had gotten replaced by a skrull, became leader of the new avengers, saved the world a bunch, made mistakes, joined a new team, started sharing the hawkeye monikor with kate bishop, almost went blind, joined the secret avengers, started to lead them, fought against the x-men due to the whole phoenix force / hope summers thing, sacrificed himself for scarlet witch so that phoenix powered emma frost wouldn't kill her, almost died, got healed, moved into an apartment in brooklyn with a brand new purpose in life and.. that's kind of, really, more where we sit. there was a bunch of other stuff ( like all the civil war business, etc ), but i like to kind of ... come at things from a point after matt fraction’s hawkeye, where clint took on russian thugs and ended up buying an apartment building. not in that exact order. also with more details thrown in.

SECTION TWO OF THREE : HEADCANONS. trigger warnings for talk of miscarriage, depression and ptsd.

currently, clint is still in his... rediscovering exactly what he wants to be stage of life, and working for shield as an agent assigned to campus works for him. he still considers himself an avenger, still works under his alias and is still, you know, doing what he’s gotta do - but he’s taking days as they come

he and bobbi have a nine year old son named lark sein morse, and he’s... pretty much clint’s whole reason to get up in the morning, though there is a feeling that he’s closer to his mother than he is, him. they ( clint and bobbi ) are not currently together, and haven’t really been so as long as lark has been alive - though they were on again, off again a lot over the years, and clint will always sort of class her as the love of his life... even if they aren’t married. bobbi suffered a miscarriage early on in the first version of their relationship to one another - lark is their rainbow baby.

he suffers from post traumatic stress disorder from his childhood, and from... a lot of the things that have happened to him, over the years. he’s also heavily depressed, and has only really recently begun to seek out the kind of help that he really needs ( the fact that shield offers free therapists to people working for them? a huge plus )

he has a dog named lucky who he absolutely ADORES, but who gets swiped semi regularly by kate.

he’s also... actually pretty well off, though you would NOT know that just from looking at him. clint owns his apartment building in brooklyn and has a lot of money saved up from over the years. he could live a high class life, if he so chose, but he prefers to live modestly.

SECTION THREE OF THREE : WANTED CONNECTIONS.

friends :(

also . believe it or not. clint has been... a huge ladies man for a very long time, so by all means - past flings, past serious relationships, the whole thing.

bobbi morse !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

also nat romanoff

his two kids. they’re between the ages of 17 - 26, and he doesn’t know about them, though it’s ENTIRELY possible that they know / have been told who he is / to them, and i am rly into the idea of getting to play it out.

[thisdaynews]

How Lewis Hamilton remained master to Max Verstappen's apprentice

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/how-lewis-hamilton-remained-master-to-max-verstappens-apprentice/

How Lewis Hamilton remained master to Max Verstappen's apprentice

Hamilton now has seven victories at the Hungaroring

Formula 1 has been waiting for a full-on battle between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen for years now. The Hungarian Grand Prix finally delivered it, and what a treat it was.

Verstappen in a slower Red Bull holding off Hamilton in a faster Mercedes, their teams fighting a strategic battle as much as the drivers were scrapping on track – it produced a race that not only thrilled in the moment, but whet the appetite for what might be to come when F1 resumes after the four-week summer break in Belgium on 1 September.

Even Hamilton was excited by the battle – which became a reality as soon as the world champion had passed team-mate Valtteri Bottas by Turn Three on the first lap and settled in behind Verstappen.

“As soon as I got into second,” Hamilton said, “I was like: ‘OK, this whole battle we’ve been talking about me and Max having we are going to have that today.’ And it was really awesome.”

Hamilton overtakes Verstappen for late Hungary win

Listen: “Hats off to the strategists, hats off to Lewis Hamilton”

What happened to the woman who beat Hamilton in go-karts?

“I was definitely not thinking: ‘Genius'”

As they slugged it out at the front, the two men were in a separate race from anyone else, Hamilton more than a minute ahead of the Ferrari of third-placed man Sebastian Vettel by the end of the grand prix.

Hamilton always looked quicker, but track position is so important at the Hungaroring, a tight and twisty track in a dusty amphitheatre about 12 miles outside Budapest.

Throughout, Hamilton rarely gave Verstappen any breathing space, and Verstappen defended with maturity and skill.

Never more than about two seconds behind, Hamilton ramped up the pressure on Verstappen as the window for him to make a pit stop and rejoin ahead of the Ferraris, then led by Charles Leclerc approached.

Hamilton closed a 20-second deficit in less than 20 laps to pass Verstappen for the lead

That forced Red Bull to stop Verstappen as early as they could – to protect against Hamilton stopping first and jumping the Dutchman that way.

That early pit stop meant Mercedes could run Hamilton longer, to give him fresher tyres for their fight in the second stint, which at that time was planned to be to the end of the race.

After that first stop, Hamilton was all over Verstappen. But after one breathtaking overtaking attempt around the outside of the super-fast Turn Four just failed to come off, he and Mercedes began to doubt that he would be able to pass.

That was on lap 39, and immediately afterwards the Mercedes strategists began to consider the idea of a second stop. It would lose them 20 seconds, but the idea was that Hamilton would come back at Verstappen like a rocket.

They analysed and discussed it for seven laps and then took the plunge, switching from the hard to the medium tyres for the final 22 laps, in which Hamilton would have to make up 20 seconds and pass arguably the most aggressive and uncompromising driver in the sport.

It was an unusually bold and aggressive strategy from a team that can tend towards the cautious – and impressively so just a week after they came in for criticism for questionable strategy in the rain at Hockenheim, their and Hamilton’s worst race for years.

Hamilton was far from sure it was the right idea.

Wolff said: “I’m happy for the strategy group as in Germany we came under fire for the strategy calls.”

“I definitely was not thinking: ‘Genius,’ he said. “Was I thinking ‘worth a try’? I have a different viewpoint in the car. I came out (from the first pit stop) with six- or seven-lap fresher tyres and at the time I was much quicker and I was like: ‘OK, I just have to keep the pressure on.’

“But then they told me we were going two-stop and I couldn’t compute how it would work.

“I thought I could make the hards go to the end so I knew he would be able to do the same. I thought pitting was going to be difficult and I hadn’t even had the chance to be thinking what tyre.

“They put me on the medium and it didn’t feel great initially and then he started matching my times.”

Over the radio, the doubt in Hamilton’s mind at the wisdom of the strategy was clear. He needed to close at a second a lap, but after cutting the gap to 16 seconds, Verstappen started doing the same lap times. Hamilton was cooling his brakes, which were on the limit, but once they were back in the right temperature window, he cut loose.

“I was thinking: ‘Jeez this is really risky,'” Hamilton said. “In the end you have to just go: ‘Go for it, give it everything. Just don’t worry if you don’t catch him. Just concentrate on putting perfect laps.'”

It was what Mercedes and Hamilton call “hammer time”. From 15.4 seconds, the gap came down to nothing in 10 laps.

“I saw his times rising and I was like: ‘I am going to catch him and as soon as I catch him I am going by, no messing around. And it was such a relief when I got by because it’s your dream.”

The drive and the win clearly made as big an impression on Hamilton as they did on those watching.

“It feels like a first (win),” he said. “I don’t know how. I’ve been doing this a long time but it feels like one of the first.”

Two men in a league of their own

Hamilton may have won in Hungary but fans voted Verstappen driver of the day

According to Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, Hamilton’s driving was “in a different dimension”.

In reality, there were two men in that dimension. Verstappen was hugely impressive, too. His pole position on Saturday was stunning, and he lost out to a faster car, driven by a great driver at the top of his game, and a bold strategy to which Red Bull could not respond.

“We were just not fast enough,” Verstappen said. “I tried everything I could on that hard tyre to stay alive. Still, second, fastest lap, a good weekend overall. Congrats to Lewis, he was pushing me really hard. I like that. We were just lacking a bit of grip. We tried a one-stop, they had the opportunity for two and that worked out well.”

Hamilton praised Verstappen for the way he had conducted himself in the heat of their battle.

“Strong competitor and great driver at his best,” Hamilton said. “It’s awesome to see the respect between us, really respectful driving and I hope to continue that.

“He put the car in some good places. I gave him space and more. If we were on the same (championship) points he may have been a lot more aggressive but there was no need for that. It was just making sure when I do finally pull off an overtaking manoeuvre it was a full sweep by.”

The respect went both ways. Afterwards, in the news conference, there was a fascinating exchange between the two men when they were asked to give themselves scores out of 10 for the first half of the season.

Verstappen took fastest lap and an extra bonus point which takes him to within seven points of second-placed Bottas in the championship standings

After Vettel had given himself a five, saying he was “not happy with the first half – I can do a better job” – Hamilton gave himself an “8.9/8.8 – if it wasn’t for the last race (in Germany) it would be a little higher.

“It has been the best start of the season we’ve ever had and one of the best starts I’ve ever had but there are areas I can continue to work on. That’s the great thing about this sport, you can always improve.”

Verstappen refused to give himself a number, saying: “I hate putting a number on it because it reminds me of school which is not that long ago. I am always quite critical, it can always be better. I am never satisfied. It has a been very positive and I’ve had good results.”

So Hamilton did it for him, pointing to the two wins Verstappen had in the three races immediately preceding Hungary.

“Last few races it’s high nines,” Hamilton said of Verstappen. “I don’t remember all the races. But he drove exceptionally and if he continues like that it will be high nines.”

Finally, the quality of their race was summed up by their former rival Fernando Alonso, the two-time champion, who retired at the end of last season, watching the race at home.

“Bravo Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen,” Alonso wrote on Twitter. “Pushing 70 laps to the maximum. More than one minute to the third, nearly + one lap and a half to the top five. Both Impressive. Thanks for the show.”

A nervous wait for Bottas

Bottas was taken out of contention by a touch with team-mate Hamilton early in the race

While Hamilton goes into the summer break with his championship lead extended and a sixth title set to be sealed long before the end of the season, his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas faces a far less comfortable month.

He is out of contract this year and Wolff is going to spend the summer break deciding whether to keep Bottas, or replace him with reserve driver Esteban Ocon.

So it was a bad time for Bottas to have a race like this. Second out of the first corner, he was fourth by the time he was heading into Turn Four on the first lap, and with a broken front wing, after locking his wheels into both the first two corners, being passed by Hamilton, lightly touching his team-mate and then being overtaken by Leclerc, who broke the Mercedes’ front wing in the process.

That led to a difficult afternoon fighting back and an eventual eighth place finish.

Wolff said: “I am so sad for him. He was so pumped since yesterday, his qualifying performance was brilliant and he was in the right frame of mind before the race.

“And then the unfortunate incident in flat-spotting the tyre, touching with Lewis, touching with Leclerc and then suddenly within half a lap all the work is gone and that is just awful for him and I am sorry for him.”

Wolff said Bottas’ future will not turn on this one performance.

“We will not be letting one race result influence our decision,” he said. “It is more about compounding all data and then making a decision on stability and great personality and a very good driver versus giving youth a chance with all the reward and risk it can bring and we haven’t done that yet.

“We will start the process tomorrow and it will not be an easy one.”

Verstappen’s father Jos finished on the podium at the Hungarian Grand Prix in 1994 for Benetton, 25 years before his son. Michael Schumacher won that day

Changing of the guard? Not yet, according to Hamilton, who took his 81st career win

The Verstappen fans packed the grandstands in their thousands at the Hungaroring

Read More

[nomoremetaphors]

WASTED POTENTIAL: X-Men: First Class and the Death of Armando Muñoz

Or, How Racism F%#@ed the X-Men Movies

It’s no surprise to anyone who knows me that I am absolutely, ridiculously invested in the X-Men Cinematic Universe.  Or, more specifically, I’m invested in what the XMCU could have been, if it had been approached as a cohesive whole rather than a series of vaguely confused attempts at continuity and Wolverine cameos.

For me, the biggest moment of missed potential comes with the death of Armando “Darwin” Muñoz at the midpoint of X-Men: First Class.  People have talked, of course, about how his death was racist and doesn’t make sense -- because it was racist, and fundamentally, it doesn’t make sense.

To be fair, I don’t think the writers were being intentionally racist when they killed Armando off in the same scene where the movie’s only other black character defects to the side of the bad guys.  I don’t think they were being intentionally racist when they had a Nazi kill a black man, who, in the comics, is literally and demonstrably unkillable.

But they did these things, and these things were racist.

And to be honest, that racism kinda f%#@ed the franchise.  It’s not the only thing that did -- the decision to put ten year timeskips in between each movie of the second trilogy certainly didn’t help matters -- but I think that it’s the single bad decision that, if averted, would have changed everything.

Under the cut, I’ll discuss why Armando was such a significant character, and why his death shaped the direction of the franchise by destroying some pretty epic narrative possibilities.

(Trigger Warnings for: mentions of suicide, depression, trauma, real life racism, human experimentation.  Nothing more explicit than XMCU canon, however.)

Part One: Armando as Narrative and Thematic Lynchpin

For a character with roughly seven minutes of screentime, Armando has a huge amount of narrative and thematic significance, and his character relationships are some of the most fascinating in a film that is, by and large, about character dynamics and interactions.

Part 1-A: Armando and Alex, Charles and Erik, and Parallelism

First, you have to account for Alex Summers.  Alex is, narratively speaking, intertwined with Darwin, and I’m not just saying that because I ship the thing.  From the moment they’re both on screen together until after Darwin’s death, their stories are intimately connected.  Darwin’s death moves Alex irrevocably, though the final cut of the film fails to explicitly address that; it even has ripples to Alex’s own death, 21 years and 2 movies later, which visually and narratively echoes Darwin’s.

To make a long story short, Armando and Alex have a significant and almost immediate connection as soon as they interact.  Alex fears his mutation, and Armando sees everyone’s mutations as gifts.  In the next scene they're in -- Darwin’s last, unfortunately -- they've carved a space for themselves away from the rest of the group, playing pinball together.  Pinball, interestingly, was technically illegal, and therefore an underground practice, in most places in 1962.  It was, however, popular in Greenwich Village and Harlem, and given that Armando is from New York and Alex is a somewhat queer-coded ex-con, it makes sense that they’d be the ones playing.

That said, their body language speaks to a closeness that is deeply unusual given the short time they’ve known each other and the historical context in which this film takes place.  When things start to go south at the compound, Armando gets Alex’s attention not by saying anything, but by drawing his hand across Alex’s torso, physically directing his attention to the direction that Armando’s moving.

Alex spends the majority of that scene following Armando’s unspoken directions, actually.  If you follow Alex’s posture and eyes throughout the scene, you’ll catch several instances where he’s looking to Armando to see what to do next.  They even touch more than once during the fight.

Additionally, Alex winds up standing at Armando’s right hand during the pivotal part of the scene, when Shaw is making his “sales pitch” to the young mutants. You see Alex sway a little toward Armando, eventually positioned at his shoulder.  It’s all very King and Lionheart, and something that the small fanbase that ships them has caught onto.  

Then, we come to the biggest moment: when Armando makes the plan, communicates it to Alex with nothing but a look and possibly an offscreen touch, and pretends to defect with Angel.  You see the expressions shifting over Alex’s face as he goes from ‘betrayed’ to ‘understanding’ in the space of literally three seconds.  There’s a plan, and Alex is going to follow Armando’s lead.

This goes wrong, of course, because of Shaw’s mutation.  When Armando calls out Alex’s name -- his last word, actually -- and Alex uses his energy blast to try and kill Shaw, Riptide, and Azazel, Shaw uses his mutation to steal that energy, and to shove it down Armando’s throat.  When Shaw leaves with his lackeys and Angel, the scene’s ending focuses entirely on Alex and Armando.  Alex realizes that something is going horribly wrong, that Armando’s not adapting fast enough, and Armando looks at him, reaches out to him -- but neither of them says anything.

In my opinion, this character dynamic is a parallel and opposite to the Charles/Erik dynamic that so many people loved in XMFC.  They can communicate completely silently, and all their most important moments are silent, whereas Charles and Erik have their relationship take up the lion’s share of the dialogue in the film.  When Shaw uses Alex’s powers to kill Armando, Alex and Armando are trying to keep the team together.  When Erik accidentally disables Charles with a bullet from Moira’s gun, he’s taking up Shaw’s war and making Shaw’s offer to the team.

Touch, too, is used very differently in the two dynamics; for Alex and Darwin, it essentially begins and climaxes with touch, and ends with an inability to touch, and the utter destruction of Armando’s body.  When Charles and Erik’s relationship falls apart, Erik gets to cradle Charles in his arms before choosing to walk away from him.  

When you look at each character individually, you can also see clear parallels between Erik/Alex and Charles/Armando.  Erik and Alex are angry, with violence in their past: Erik’s trauma is pretty much the defining factor in the plot, and there is a deleted scene for Alex that explains that he once used his powers to defend himself from being brutalized in prison.  Armando and Charles are both de-facto leaders when the time comes to lead, and Armando is probably the closest thing to a functional adult among the young mutants; that said, actor Edi Gathegi has stated that he played Armando with his comic book backstory, which includes a history of depression and a suicide attempt spurred by a neglectful abusive mother, and the entire plot of Days of Future Past had to do with Charles’s inability to cope with the trauma inflicted on him by Erik and the ensuing decade of horrors that was the sixties for him.

Overall, whether intentional or not, the Alex/Darwin dynamic echoes and mirrors the Charles/Erik one, reinforcing the theme that solidarity is impossible -- likely an unintentional theme -- and the idea of the homosocial-bordering-on-homerotic relationship.

Part 1-B: Armando, his Powers, and the Historical Context

I also can’t write this post without pointing out that Armando is the first black male mutant of significance in the XMCU franchise, both in order of release and chronologically.  I cannot overstate, also, the relevance of a black man whose powers are literally just staying alive no matter what the world throws at him.  

People rightfully made a big deal about Luke Cage, another bulletproof black man in the Marvel pantheon, and how important it was to see him onscreen.  Right now, there is an ongoing and urgent public discourse about police brutality, and the way society undermines the personhood and the value of black lives.  

Armando’s death in X-Men: First Class makes no sense, because in the comics, he’s survived everything from being launched into space, dematerializing into an energy being, and being touched by a literal god of Death.  If anyone could survive Shaw, it would be Armando.  

Additionally, consider that this film is set in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  It only predates Freedom Summer by two years, and the Civil Rights Act by three.  Armando’s blackness and his leadership role in the team matter, on a thematic and contextual level.  A team of mutants -- long an allegory for all manner of oppressed populations -- led by an unkillable black man in the 1960s has immediate political ramifications for the setting, and for the present.

But the film refuses to recognize these things by killing him off and minimizing his relevance after the scene immediately following his death.

After Armando dies, we see the morning after, when Charles, Erik, and Moira return to the smoking wreckage of the Virginia compound to find Angel gone, Armando dead, and the rest of the team deeply, deeply shaken.  We see, in the background, the crushed taxicab that used to belong to him.  Charles and Raven have a brief conversation, where she tells him that Armando is dead, “and we can’t even bury him.” 

Erik interjects with, “But we can avenge him.”  This draws Alex’s attention immediately, making him sit up after having spent the majority of the scene somewhat curled in on himself.

After that, the final cut of the film doesn’t include any reference to Armando whatsoever, even when it would have mattered.  A single deleted scene set during Alex’s training montage discusses Alex’s guilt or innocence in the matter -- Charles tells Alex that if he doesn’t get this right, he could kill one of his teammates.  Alex reacts by stopping, saying, “He asked me to cover him,” and storming out of the bunker he’s using to train.

I understand that Erik’s trauma is the fundamentally important one for the plot of this film, but wouldn’t the movie be thematically fuller and rounder if it dealt, even implicitly, with Armando’s death and the effect it had on the others, especially Alex?  After all, as I said before, Alex and Erik parallel each other in a lot of pivotal ways, from their dark pasts to their weaponized mutations.  

Part 1-C: Armando and the Death of Solidarity

I mentioned earlier that Armando’s death reinforces the theme that solidarity is impossible, and I’d like to expand on that.  I wrote a little bit about it in my thesis, Never Let Anyone Tell You Different, but essentially, a major unintentional problem with the X-Men franchise in general and the XMCU in particular is that it always splits mutants into good mutants and evil mutants, often refusing to recognize that there is a huge grey area in between, and that the allegory mutants represent makes this idea of good versus evil genuinely harmful.

Armando’s death is the first real fracture in mutantkind, and first, last, and only time anyone actively tries to maintain a sense of mutant solidarity, or to keep someone from joining the ‘evil’ mutants out of desperation, anger, or fear.  Armando’s attempt to keep Angel on their ‘side’ of Shaw’s war is literally the only time in the franchise that something like this happens -- for example, at the end of the movie, Charles chooses to not fight it when Raven tells him she’s leaving with Erik, and in X2: X-Men United, neither Bobby Drake or Rogue try to convince John Allerdyce not to leave and join the Brotherhood of Mutants.  Finally, in X-Men: The Last Stand, Logan seems fairly ambivalent on the subject of Rogue leaving the Institute to seek out a cure for her mutation.

Basically, the only attempt at maintaining a sense of communality among mutants, to fight that ever-present categorical dichotomy, fails.  And when it does, it also divides mutantkind sharply -- by the end of XMFC, the X-Men are all white men, though one is a non-passing mutant and one has a mobility disability.  The ‘evil’ mutants consist of two white women, a white-passing Jewish holocaust survivor, an Afro-Latina former sex worker, a non-passing mutant, and a Latino man.

I don’t think I need to explain why that’s a huge, huge allegorical problem, but I will anyway: when you divide out morality by associating goodness primarily with white maleness, you’re prioritizing positive representation of white men at the expense of representing everyone else, and that has a demonstrable effect on the the way people perceive themselves and others.  We tell stories to define ourselves as human, and as parts of communities, and to learn how to be human, in a big way.

So, by killing off Armando, and with him, solidarity, the XMCU reinforces power structures that the entire concept of the X-Men as a mythos is supposed to oppose, which is, I’d say, not a good look.

Part Two: What Could Have Been

I want to take this time to talk, now that I’ve explained what’s wrong with the franchise as a direct result of Armando’s untimely murder, about what the XMCU could have been if he’d survived, or if he’d come back at some point after the attack on the Virginia CIA compound.

Option 1: No Death, XMFC-timeline goes off in other direction from the canon.  Armando survives the blast and goes on to lead the X-Men through the battle during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  He makes an impassioned plea for Raven to stay, and for Angel to come back.  They may or may not, and Charles still gets shot, creating a bittersweet but ultimately hopeful ending for the movie.

Option 2: Post-XMFC, does not take into account Days of Future Past. Armando reassembles himself after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and has to deal with his own trauma, as well as the trauma that the others have gone through in his absence.  He still takes up the leadership role, especially when Charles starts to spiral.  The X-Men debut publicly after the assassination of Kennedy.  Alex gets drafted for Vietnam, winds up involved in anti-war protests, and Armando, as a public figure, has to balance being a mutant with being a black man in America during this period.

Option 3: Days of Future Past.  Instead of being sent back to prevent Mystique from getting her revenge on Bolivar Trask, Wolverine goes back to the past to prevent Armando from being captured by Trask Industries.  His mutation is the one used by Trask to create the Mark X Sentinels that destroy mutantkind in the 2018-2023.  He either finds Alex also trapped there, or Alex plays an important role in getting him back; additionally, they have to break Magneto out of jail for Reasons.  In this option, Armando can have come back or never died at all.  This can deal, allegorically, with issues like the Tuskegee Syphillis Study and the Henrietta Lacks case.

Option 4: X-Men: Apocalypse.  The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse includes Armando as the Horseman of Death, as a reference to his time as a death deity in the comics and because he was the first mutant to die in Shaw’s war, which is really just a modern iteration of En Sabah Nur’s ‘survival of the fittest’ doctrine.  Alex is War, Charles is an unwilling Pestilence, and Erik and Mystique have to lead a group of scared teenagers against Apocalypse and his Horsemen.  This would be a film about Love overcoming the end of all things -- Erik and Raven’s love for Charles would save him, and the connection between Alex and Armando would eventually break them out of Apocalypse’s hold.  Community and solidarity would prevail over the insistent, selfish individualism advocated by Apocalypse, which can provide a look at the idea of solidarity among and within oppressed groups -- like, for LGBT people, the often uneasy coalition between the LGB and the T parts, and stuff like that.

Basically, any of the movies subsequent to XMFC can be reworked to be better, more topical, and more interesting with the addition of Armando Muñoz.  Armando is a potential lynchpin and turning point, and the fact that he was basically thrown out in favor of typical focus on whiteness has been a major contributor to the way that the XMCU has set itself up for failure on its allegorical and narrative levels.

People might say that dealing with the things I’ve mentioned here would make people uncomfortable or make the movie harder to sell, but I’d like to point out that Logan dealt implicitly or explicitly with refugees, the exploitation of female and Latina bodies, and the weaponization and abuse of children, and it has garnered hugely positive reviews and a box office of over $540million worldwide, making it the third most successful X-Men movie ever, and it’s only been out for a month.  

This is doable.  This is something that should’ve been done a long time ago.  And this is something that those in charge of the next set of X-Men films should consider when they sit down to plot out the next phase of the franchise.  The X-Men films are capable of doing incredible things, narratively speaking, if they just step outside the ‘traditional’ superhero mold, either by diverting narrative focus away from white men, explicitly engaging with topical social issues, or both.

Overall, the death of Armando Muñoz is perhaps the clearest example of how a lack of care has made the XMCU into the least successful of the three major superhero movie franchises, and interrogating the what-could-have-beens could pave the way for fixing the very real problems that have dogged the franchise since roughly 2006.

I hope that they do.  We deserve better than we’ve gotten, as the audience, and these characters deserve better as parts of our lives.

As always, Murphy out.

[procellasdracon]

The Evolution of Erza Scarlet

This is in response to @thegreatrhapsode‘s post on what he would do for Erza Scarlet’s character in a re-write. Being an avid Scarlet fan myself, I couldn’t help but thrown in some of my two cents. My disclaimer: I’m not an impartial reviewer - I’m approaching this like I would a fanfic - what could make an interesting story. So yeah, this will be what interests ME. So, sorry-not sorry to anyone else who thinking what I have down here is trash. XP

Armors and Powers:

I actually love the idea of her having to go without those armors for a while for repairs or even reforged into a more powerful version. While they are broken, she'll find that she needs to increase her base stats more (like Zoro does) so she can train her physical stats even more, or her actual sword fighting technique. So the next couple of fights, she focuses on using just the weapons themselves instead of relying too much on her armor stash. A ‘retraining’ of herself of sorts. Instead of breaking up Natsu and Gray’s fights all the time, she joins in to keep her actual fisticuffs skills up to par. For her reaction and speed training, having Alzack and Bisca use their requip to shoot magic bullets at her might be intense enough for her to try.

Or hell, even another thought - learning how to capture her opponents blade by placing her own version of 'enchantment' on them. Whichever blades she can successfully enchant, she can wield with her telekinesis-like ability that she displayed when she first manifested her power and also when she brought down the Hall of Thunder. It would be a literal ‘Blade Steal’. This is where I thought ‘Queen of Blades’ could also become a later moniker of hers. It’s possible and if fits with her powers and skills. She enchants whatever item she desire with her magic and that is how she can bring it in and out of her ‘storage’ a la ‘ReQuip’.

Another idea might be one for her getting materials for the reforging of her old armor. The Flame Empress is easy - have Natsu help enchant it with his Fire Dragon Magic during the actual reforging of that set. The Black Wing and the Heaven’s Wheel can also get improvements but not as much as some others. Purgatory Armor should just be left out...that was freaking useless. To replace that one, she can go hunting for new armors and THIS is where she finds the Nakagami armor set or even a few other new ones. If her power is tied to her armor, then she should have been constantly upgrading her armor by reforging different pieces, inlaying lacryima into them - anything. Heaven’s Wheel is her favorite go-to armor? Have that thing double the amount of blades with that set and even make the swords more durable and able to shoot her magic energy through the tips or something - like her Photon Laser armor set. Honestly, Erza is properly OP just with a bit more application of the powers available to her from the start.

I think it would be amusing if she put on one of her old magic armor sets and it broke because she had too much power for it to properly channel. It would be nice if she didn’t have to rely on armor ALL the time.

Story and Goals:

Having a set goal is good - having an obscure goal like ‘to be strong enough to protect my family’ is ... okay. That sort of goal only works for the MC of the story but yeah... I wouldn’t have minded the ‘Wizard Saint’ goal if Natsu didn’t defeat Jellal in ToH like he did. The fight needs a bit more depth to it despite what it already represented. To me, having the Natsu vs Jellal fight represent her Past vs her Present+Future is pretty good symbolism in of itself. Power-wise... I think if she had helped out and it took both Natsu and Erza to beat him, it would lend a bit more weight to the ‘level of a Wizard Saint’ thing. Would also help solidify the fact that Jose rightly took her apart during the Phantom Lord Arc because he was that strong to be a ranked member of the Saints. Little things like that make the story easier for me to believe - maybe that’s just a ‘me’ thing. Maybe Erza didn’t want to become a Saint because she didn’t want to put herself on the same level as Makarov yet - that could also be a thing. She feels indebted to him and she doesn’t want to do anything to usurp his role to her in her mind. It may take Makarov himself to kick her in the ass to get her to try out for it. Pride of a father watching his beautiful daughter taking her rightful place in the world - nice moment right there. Gray may support her since he knows enough that Erza’s path may take her away from Fairy Tail. Natsu, however, doesn’t want her to leave and may even throw a tantrum or quietly ask if she’s just leaving them because she doesn’t like it here anymore which hurts Erza because she thinks the world of Natsu and even as bone-headed as he is, he’s important to her. They decide to have a battle - if Natsu wins, Erza stays, if Erza wins, she leaves and Natsu won’t say anything else. They fight and Natsu brings his ‘S-ranked’ game to this and Erza has to fight harder than ever before, not just because Natsu became stronger (flame of emotion, remember), but because she’s also undecided in her own heart. In the end, she decides to postpone her applying to the Wizard Saint position because she wants to go on more adventures and make more memories with her family. So Titania stays with Fairy Tail even though she’s at Wizard Saint lvl.

She may decide to help train Natsu and Gray to become S-ranks so that they guild will remain strong in her absence (another goal for her and also gives Natsu a path for increasing his battle power).

Not getting into Irene on that one... maybe if someone asks me, I’ll delve into it.

Relationships:

Okay, @thegreatrhapsode, you can tune me out here. XD Her relationships with her guildemates, her friends, Natsu and Gray and Wendy, and of course, Jellal. It should be very well known and well documented that I strongly dislike Jellal in this story - which is a shame because I will sing Seig Hart’s praises til the end of time. I like Seig even more than Shuda and Shuda was BAMF in Rave. Showing her becoming less strict is a good thing. I wouldn’t mind if she became the guild master and said many of the same things that Makarov said. That lil old man was essentially her father figure so it makes sense that she takes a lot of what he says to heart. So she becomes less stern and more accepting of those who don’t ‘live up’ to her old standards - instead, she may even do away with that line of thinking and encourage her fellow guildmates to live in a way that they can find out for themselves the reason for their magic, why they do what they do, and continue to live from day to day. She needs more time with Mira, Cana, and Wendy as well. Cana got shoved to the side and she really didn’t deserve that. Cana is one of the old guard, right along with Erza, Natsu, Gray, Mira, and Laxus - those are the core of the next gen of Fairy Tail. They should have a bond between them that is hard to pin down but probably the most sibling-like of any of the bonds in Fairy Tail. Sure, they may belong to different teams but for those 6 - I think they should be ‘That One Squad’ you don’t want to mess with. Like they should have been able to go up against the Oracion Seis... XD Okay maybe not, but hopefully you can grasp what I mean. As more and more people get added into the story (Lucy, Juvia, Gajeel, Thundergod Tribe, Wendy and Charles, etc), we should see that tight-knit circle growing in size but never losing it’s original strength of these people being the core of the Fairy Tail that the story is following. How they relate to Erza is that these are the ‘actual family’ that she relies on - everyone else is extended family. Hate to break it up into those terms but that’s how I see it. I’ll address Jellal before I get to Gray and then Natsu - personally, they all deserve their own sections - they are that important to Erza.

Jellal: Okay, real plot-talk here. I don’t like the fact that his redemption and his romance with Erza are essentially two-in-one. I don’t care how tortured of a soul he is or how good he was previous to the possession. Romance + Redemption is a disaster - especially if the romance partner ends up dying. If Erza died, there’s no where for Jellal to go but right back into darkness. Sure, he might do it in revenge of Erza’s killer if she died that way, but seriously, take Erza away and Jellal has no foothold to stand on - that is what makes him and the entire thing with Erza weak. I really don’t think Erza should have auto-switched to Jellal like she did - it was too sudden. Kinda makes you wonder why did she wait all those 8 years stewing for... *shrugs* Anyway, whether I like it or not, Jellal is very important to Erza - he gave her hope in what was her darkest time - I will never dispute this. And yet, he dashed that to pieces when he got possessed and went nuts, threatening her that if she ever got help to come back and free the others, that he’d kill them all. That should have had a much deeper psychological impact on her - much deeper than just a short arc for her to get over it and pursue a romance with him. *shakes fist at Mashima*. Damn it, I didn’t want this part to be a rant... Like I said in the above - Jellal is her past. Yes, he is both a bright spot and a dark smear on her past and her memories. And he should remain as that. She would want him to regain the light once more and that’s not a problem. But I think that he’d have a LOT to prove with her other than looking like a sad puppy and crying. As much faith as Erza showed Natsu during the Nirvana arch, why didn’t he ask her just who was Natsu to her - get her flustered a bit. XD I really would like a Jella/Natsu rivalry just because of the raw emotion that was shown in ToH. Sorry but actions speak louder than words and Jellal has 8 years to make up for. You’ll notice that I’m not referencing Ultear here - that’s because I don’t hold her responsible for that brainwashing in my head. I’m fully aware that it’s canon but Ultear has enough on her plate without throwing the huge mountain of crimes and ‘sins’ that Jelly amassed during that time. She should have been kept as a viable route for him to take as well. Either way, I think a fair bit of time needs to be spent on Jellal even being a continuing villain in FT or put him on the long, hard road of recovery. Either way, that’s something that he’ll have to make on his own and not rely on hiding behind Erza’s impenetrable aura of ‘Erzaness’ to defend him.

Gray: Gray is definitely the mature one between himself and Natsu. He is level-headed (for the most part) and can deal with complex things that Natsu either can’t deal with or just doesn’t want to. He and Erza can have long talks about different topics without it delving into fighting or annoyance. If she engaged in this with Gray more, it would do wonders for showing us how she sees him and vice versa. I really think that Erza should have taken both Gray and Natsu out with her on missions by themselves but Eisenwald was the first time she took both at once because she needed all their powers. But anyway, having Erza reveal that she trusts Gray with the hard plans because he can think his way through tough spots (like in Edolas with the key and the Dragon Cannon), would be a great set of moments for the both of them to learn just to what extent they see each other. Erza and Gray come off more like the older sister, middle brother type relationship but again, THEY ARE NOT BROTHER AND SISTER!

Natsu: I’ll... keep this brief... Or try to. First and foremost - THEY ARE NOT BROTHER AND SISTER SO ANYTHING ROMANTIC WITH THEM IS NOT  INCEST - PERIOD!!!! *huffs* .... There, glad we cleared that up. Now, even though I like Natza (perhaps a bit too much for some people) - them suddenly starting a relationship after ToH is a bit much...even for me. Like many have brought up - Erza sees Natsu and Gray as much her actual brothers as one could. It would take some time for the viewpoint to allow for her to see Natsu as something more. ToH provided enough to give that perception a brief rattle in my book but hey.... She thinks of him a lot - I mean A LOT. Likewise, he does things for her that make a good amount of people have to adjust their eyes to make sure of what they’re seeing. They can both strength each other and also hold the other back. They inspire each other - they believe in each other with a faith so strong, it defies all reason. Other writers and Tumblrs have brought up that Natsu probably reminded Erza of Jellal from their actual slave days and she wanted to make sure that he would be a man who would never succumb to darkness (and she succeeded in that). They both need more awareness of each other, but mostly for Natsu in order for any romance to kick over. If I did it, both Natsu and Erza wouldn’t even realize that they were in that sort of relationship. It would probably be towards the 2nd to last arc before Natsu realized that he lllllliiikes herrrrrr like that. Again, growth on his part as well but he needs to become more mature and also more aware of the more complicated aspects of life. And yes, I’m aware that Natsu has a LOT of growing up to do but I don’t want that to come at the expense of who he is and what he is to the story. Ugh... Keep it brief... So yes,  a slow burn for their relationship upgrade would be best. Asking for his opinion on more and more personal things, making him study/read more to bring up his IQ...things like that.

She doesn’t need an active romance to be Erza. She was fine before and she’d be fine after. Yes, I’m aware that she wants to become a bride and she wants to have a family and all of that - there’s no reason that she can’t have that. Like I said before, this is me thinking of it in a story and while I do prefer Natsu as her mate, I can ‘adjust’.

I really could keep on adding more to this but I gotta drop it right here. Agree - Disagree - that’s fine. It’s just my own perspective on how I see it. :p This is how I see Erza from the first 100 chapters evolving in a way that keeps with the original direction and still manages to make an impact with her.

[topworldhistory]

In 1804, Lewis and Clark set off on a journey filled with harrowing confrontations, harsh weather and fateful decisions as they scouted a route across the American West.

With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the territory of the United States doubled overnight. Months before the $15 million deal was finalized, though, President Thomas Jefferson won approval from Congress to send a team of intrepid explorers to find a passable water route west to the Pacific Ocean.

Jefferson tapped his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead the “Corps of Discovery,” and once Lewis grasped the full scope and challenges of the expedition, he called on his Army friend and fellow Virginian, William Clark, to be his equal in command.

“If therefore there is anything… in this enterprise, which would induce you to participate with me in it’s fatiegues, it’s dangers and it’s honors,” Lewis wrote to Clark, “believe me there is no man on earth with whom I should feel equal pleasure in sharing them as with yourself.”

Below is a timeline of Lewis and Clark's extraordinary expedition.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their Keelboat known as 'The Boat' using poles to navigate the Missouri River in May 1804.

Lewis and Clark's Journey Begins

May 14, 1804

The Corps of Discovery embarks from Camp Dubois outside of St. Louis, Missouri, in a 55-foot keelboat to begin the westward journey up the Missouri River. Among the 41-man crew of volunteers, soldiers and one African American slave, is Patrick Gass, a carpenter from Pennsylvania. Gass writes in his journal about the expected dangers ahead, including “warlike nations of savages of gigantic stature” and impassable mountain ranges.

“The determined and resolute character, however, of the corps, and the confidence which pervaded all ranks dispelled every emotion of fear, and anxiety for the present,” writes Gass, “[and] seemed to insure to us ample support in our future toils, suffering and dangers.”

August 20, 1804

Sergeant Charles Floyd, the youngest man on the expedition, dies of a suspected ruptured appendix near modern-day Sioux City, Iowa. Incredibly, Floyd’s is the only death during the entire two-year expedition.

A Tense Encounter With the Teton Sioux

September 25, 1804

Of all Lewis and Clark’s encounters with Native American tribes, the meeting with the Teton Sioux (Lakota) near modern-day Pierre, South Dakota, is among the most tense. Jefferson had charged the Corps with Indian diplomacy, which consisted mainly of announcing the Louisiana Purchase and presenting tribal chiefs with peace medals and American flags.

But communication breakdowns are common during the expedition, given that Lewis and Clark often rely on three-way translation (native language to French to English and back) or sign language to converse with chiefs who often have their own political agendas.

On this day, the Teton Sioux mistake the explorers for merchants and don’t like the idea of the Americans selling weapons to rival tribes up the Missouri River. A young Teton Sioux chief, trying to insert himself into the confrontation, feigns drunkenness and stumbles into Clark, who rashly draws his sword. In an instant, Clark’s soldiers raise their rifles and the Teton braves draw their bows and arrows.

After exchanging angry threats and boasts through nervous interpreters—at one point Clark claims that he has "more ‘medicine’ on board [his] boat than would kill twenty such nations in one day"—the elder Chief Black Buffalo breaks the tension and calls for peace. After three restless days at the Teton Sioux village, the upriver journey is allowed to proceed.

Lewis and Clark Meet Sacagawea

November 11, 1804

With winter fast approaching, the Corps construct Fort Mandan in North Dakota among the hospitable Mandan and Hitatsa Indians. On November 11, Clark makes a hasty scribble in his journal about the arrival of "two Squars of the Rock Mountain, purchased from the Indians by...a frenchmen." One of those nameless squaws is the famous Sacagawea.

At first, Sacagawea is an afterthought. She is the 17-year-old, pregnant wife of Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian trader hired by Lewis and Clark as a Hidatsa interpreter. But she soon proves to be an invaluable member of the expedition.

“Sacagawea helped [Lewis and Clark] in a number of ways,” says Jay Buckley, a history professor at Brigham Young University and author of several books about Western exploration. “Both in letting native tribes know that they came in peace, as well as helping the men with their diet, finding edible plants to improve their health.”

Two days after the Corps depart Fort Mandan in the spring of 1805, Lewis writes in his journal that “[Sacagawea] busied herself in serching for… wild artichokes… by penetrating the earth with a sharp stick… her labour soon proved successful, and she procurrd a good quantity of these roots.”

Sacajawea guiding the expedition from Mandan through the Rocky Mountains.

June 2, 1805

Lewis and Clark rely largely on navigation tips from Indians and white traders to chart the fastest and safest route westward toward the Pacific. But they are fully unprepared for a major fork in the Missouri River in north-central Montana. Only one fork is the true Missouri, and they will know it by a series of majestic waterfalls upstream mentioned by the Mandan-Hidatsa.

Lewis and Clark call for a vote. Thirty-one people vote for the right fork and only two vote for the left—those two were Lewis and Clark. Not willing to defy their men, Lewis and Clark send exploring parties up each fork and have them report back. A second vote is taken with exactly the same result.

“But the men, to their credit, say, ‘We’re going to follow you,’” says Buckley.

June 13, 1805

Anxious to prove he’s right, Lewis scouts ahead of the rest of the Corps and is overjoyed (at first) to find the Great Falls, describing them as a “truly magnifficent and sublimely grand object, which has from the commencement of time been concealed from the view of civilized man."

But it soon becomes clear that the portage (carrying canoes over land) around the Great Falls is going to be far more difficult and will require more than the one day he planned. To help with challenge, the men fashion crude wagons from felled trees and drag the canoes and equipment across miles of unforgiving, cactus-strewn terrain.

“It takes them almost a month and a half to take all of their gear 18 miles,” says Buckley. “It’s probably one of the slowest parts of the whole trip.”

The Expedition Finds the Shoshone

August 8, 1805

Before she was kidnapped by the Hidatsa at age 12, Sacagawea lived among the Shoshone people along the border of modern-day Montana and Idaho. By August, 1805, Lewis and Clark believe the fate of the expedition hangs on finding the Shoshone and buying horses from them. It’s the only way the Corps can hope to cross the Rocky Mountains before winter.

While Sacagawea doesn’t “guide” the expedition, her childhood memories provide valuable clues that they are on the right path. On August 8, Lewis writes in his journal:

“The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains. . . . this hill she says her nation calls the beaver's head from a conceived resemblance. . . . she assures us that we shall either find her people on this river on the river immediately west of it's source. . . . as it is now all important with us to meet with those people as soon as possible.”

August 17, 1805

After Lewis and Clark finally make contact with the Shoshone, Sacagawea is joyfully reunited with her brother Cameahwait, who is now the Shoshone chief.

Sacagawea (TV-14; 1:45)

Crew Gets Lost in Snow, Nearly Starves to Death

September 11, 1805

Even with horses and a Shoshone guide named Old Toby, the crossing of the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho proves to be the most grueling and life-threatening section of the entire journey.

It was only mid-September, but the snow on the western flank of the Bitterroots is already deep and Old Toby gets lost. Horses slip and tumble down the mountain. The men, who have grown accustomed to eating five to seven pounds of meat daily in the game-rich plains, begin to starve. They become so desperate they start eating the colts.

Eleven days later, they stumble out of the forest snow-blind and weak with hunger, and are taken in by a village of Nez Perce Indians. Buckley says that the Nez Perce debate killing the half-dead intruders, who are accompanied by a Shoshone woman, their bitter enemy. But a Nez Perce woman named Watkueis, who lives among white men as a captive, convinces them to spare the strangers and befriend them.

The Nez Perce hospitality has one drawback. Lewis and Clark’s men make themselves sick from overindulging on piles of dried fish and boiled roots.

Clark writes in his journal, “I find myself verry unwell all the evening from eateing the fish & roots too freely.” A week later, he adds, “Capt Lewis & myself eate a Supper of roots boiled, which Swelled us in Such a manner that we were Scercely able to breath for Several hours.”

They Reach the Pacific...or Not

November 7, 1805

After paddling dugout canoes down the treacherous Columbia River for weeks, Clark believes the men have finally reached the Pacific.

“Great joy in camp we are in View of the Ocian,” writes Clark with his trademark creative spelling. “This great Pacific Octean which we been So long anxious to See. and the roreing or noise made by the waves brakeing on the rockey Shores (as I Suppose) may be heard distictly.”

Alas, to Clark’s dismay, they have only arrived at the edge of Gray’s Bay, a storm-tossed brackish estuary 20 miles inland from the Pacific. Powerful waves and strong winds swamp and paralyze the canoes.

In a typical journal entry marked November 14, Clark writes, “rained all the last night without intermition, and this morning. wind blows verry hard but our Situation is Such that we Cannot tell from what point it comes—one of our Canoes is much broken by the waves dashing it against the rocks.”

The Corps finally crosses the estuary with the help of local Clatsop Indians and their large, ocean-going canoes.

Fort Clatsop in the Oregon Country near the mouth of the Columbia River.

Lewis and Clark Reach the Pacific Ocean

November 24

After finally reaching the Pacific Coast, it‘s time to hunker down in Winter quarters. Lewis and Clark put the decision to a vote as to where to build Fort Clatsop, their home for the next five months. A tally of the votes is recorded in Clark’s journal, including historic votes from York, the African American slave, and Sacagawea, an Indian woman.

“Janey [one of Sacagawea’s nicknames] is in favour of a place where there is plenty of Potas,” wrote Clark, referring to Wapato, a type of native root vegetable.

December, 1805 - March, 1806

Conditions at Fort Clatsop are “horribly miserable,” says Buckley. “From December to March, it rained all but 12 days. They were stuck in cramped, smoky quarters subsisting on lean elk meat. They were ready to start the return journey as soon as they thought possible, and they actually left too soon.”

Long-Needed R&R With the Nez Perce

May, 1806

Returning to the Nez Perce, Lewis and Clark go against the natives’ advice and try to cross the thickly forested Bitterroots before the snow fully melts. “It was their only retreat during the whole expedition,” says Buckley.

June 8, 1806

The month spent with the Nez Perce waiting for the snow to melt is one of the most enjoyable and leisurely of the entire two-year journey. By day, Lewis and Clark’s men and the Indians compete in foot races and boyhood games like “prison base,” a type of tag. And by night, they stay up late dancing and playing the fiddle around the fire.

"Last evening the indians entertained us with seting the fir trees on fire,” writes Lewis, describing one of their last nights among the Nez Perce. “This exhibition reminded me of a display of fireworks. The natives told us that their object in seting those trees on fire was to bring fair weather for our journey."

A map depicting the route taken by Lewis and Clark on their first expedition from the Missouri River (near St. Louis, Missouri) to the mouth of the Columbia River (at the Pacific Ocean in Oregon), and their return trip, 1804 - 1806.

July 3, 1806

After easily crossing the Bitterroots with the help of Nez Perce guides, the Corps split into four different groups for the next leg of the journey. Clark leads a group to explore the Yellowstone River. Lewis takes another up the Marias River, which includes the northernmost edge of the Louisiana Territory. Without any way to communicate with each other, they plan to reunite at Fort Mandan.

July 25, 1806

Clark etches his name and the date into a sandstone outcropping near modern-day Billings, Montana that he names Pompy’s Tower after Sacagawea’s son. It remains the only physical evidence of Lewis and Clark’s expedition that survives today.

Lewis Kills a Blackfoot Brave

July 26, 1806

Lewis’s group is met by a small band of Blackfeet warriors in Montana. After camping together overnight, Lewis catches the Blackfeet trying to steal their guns and horses, and kills a young brave.

“That was the only native death on the whole expedition,” says Buckley. “And Lewis was so concerned that the Blackfeet would come after him, he and his men jump on their horses and ride for almost 24 hours straight to get down to the Missouri River and meet up with the rest of the party.”

Lewis and Clark Arrive Back in St. Louis as Heroes

September 23, 1806

A month after Lewis and Clark reunite at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone, and weeks after saying goodbye to Sacagawea at Fort Mandan, the Corps of Discovery arrive back in St. Louis, where the exhausted explorers are greeted as heroes.

“Even though there were all these difficulties with mountains and rivers and climates and natives, they all live—they all come back,” says Buckley. “And the Lewis and Clark expedition becomes America's odyssey.”

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/2QXBWzs January 17, 2020 at 02:09AM