#clint eastwood before he lost his mind

[stelly38]

I'll take 'Brunettes I'd like to Cuddle' for $1000, Alex. Ooooh, the Daily Double! My answer?-What is 'All of Them'?

And I know 'brunette' is taken from french and is the feminine form, but I don't care. Gendered language is fucking weird. This is how I learned to spell it in english, though, so brunette it is.

[sempersirens]

a bird in your teeth, I

masterlist

summary: since moving into the neighborhood a couple of years ago, you've become close with the miller family. as a young woman living alone joel is protective of you, and he intends to show you how much so

pairing: joel miller x f!reader

warnings: 18+, mdni, neighbour!joel, age gap: reader is early-mid 20s, joel early 30s. no break-out. no smut (yet)

word count: ~1k

"Okay, missy. Bedtime!" Slapping your knees, you rise from your armchair to eject the copy of Notting Hill from the Millers' VCR.

You check your watch and curse softly under your breath. 10:06 pm. Joel should be pulling into the driveway any minute.

"Are there really guys like Hugh Grant back in England?" Sarah asks, tossing her quilt over her shoulder and bundling the pillows under her arm.

"If there are, I could never find them."

"That why you moved all the way across the ocean?"

You turned to Sarah, clutching your chest in mock outrage.

"Maybe. I liked the idea of finding a cowboy. Like Clint Eastwood!" You giggled and clapped your hands together. "Anyway, get upstairs before your old man gets home and initiates a Mexican standoff because I let you stay up past nine on a school night."

Smoothing down Sarah's hair, you place a quick kiss on the top of her head before scurrying her up the stairs.

"Goodnight!" She shouted over her shoulder before her bedroom door closed behind her.

Sarah was definitely old enough to look after herself on evenings like these, but since you moved into the neighborhood a few years ago it became routine to watch the teenager whenever her dad was going to be home late. Neither of you minded, you had bonded like sisters over your time spent together, despite your ten year age gap. You got the impression that Joel liked knowing you were both under one roof while he was away.

Ain't no need f'a young woman to be alone too long he would say, always eliciting an eye roll from both you and Sarah.

Living alone wasn't something that bored or intimidated you. On the contrary; independence excited you. The thrill hadn't subsided in the slightest. Texas had been more than welcoming to you since you decided to leave North London for a new life. As soon as you received the scholarship letter to undertake a Ph.D. at UT Austin, your bags were packed and you hailed a cab to Heathrow Airport.

You had, however, been immediately put at ease when you pulled up to your new home and caught a glimpse of Joel and Sarah walking to the truck in their driveway, lost in conversation, wide-eyed and giddy on an inside joke. You watched over time as the two spent their days in a blissful world of their own making, soaking up each other's company as naturally as the sun burns into the tops of your shoulders on a hot afternoon.

It had been an exceptionally warm Friday evening when Joel first knocked on your front door.

"Evening, ma'am." He had spoken, tipping his head slightly with his hands tucked loosely in his jeans pockets. Your palms had instantly turned clammy, internally praying that he didn't reach a hand forward to introduce himself.

"Hey. What can I do for you?" You had just about managed a reply between mediating your quickened breathing and trying to actually speak words rather than babble.

The rest of the encounter felt like it had flown by. Joel had invited you to a barbecue, too many burgers for jus' two people, he had reasoned. No such thing, you'd replied. Like you had needed any incentive to accept his invitation. You spent the evening with your ankles dipped in their paddling pool, belly laughing and wiping ketchup from the corners of your mouth. You'd be lying if you said your stomach didn't flutter every time Joel directed a question or comment solely toward you, or that your breath didn't hitch when you accidentally brushed fingers passing him the bottle opener. But that had been then, and you promised yourself you wouldn't get so Pride and Prejudice about a man you had just met. A single father, no less. As time passed, you spent most weekends together along with Joel's brother Tommy. Barbecues, family get-togethers, birthday parties; you were invited to them all. Weekends bled into weeknights, and you became an extension of their little family, let into their secret language of exchanged glances and inside jokes.

Lines were never crossed between you and Joel, but that knot in your stomach never seemed to fade either. You knew it was just an unreciprocated crush; misplaced gratitude for all the kindness he had shown you. Southern hospitality and charm had that effect.

Pulling you from your thoughts, Joel's truck headlights illuminated the living room. You quickly cleared the bowls of popcorn and bags of M&Ms from the coffee table before heading into the kitchen to refill your glass of water.

Joel's keys turned in the door and you heard his shoes wiping on the doormat. He called your name softly.

"In here." You responded in just above a whisper.

He walked in wearing a smart button-up, the top two undone, rubbing a hand over his stubble.

"Pint?"

"If you'd be so kind, darlin'." Joel sighed, pulling out a stool before tapping the one next to him for you to perch on.

"Date not go so well?"

"Do they ever?" He laughed as you handed him a cold bottle of beer. "Not having one f'yourself?"

"They won't if you keep expecting them to be a disaster. None for me, I need to head out soon. Meeting some friends for a few at a bar in the city."

"They're all fine women. Just got nothin' in common. S'probably me."

It made you feel dirty when Joel came back tipsy. With his guard down and inhibitions numbed, he was so open. It felt like you were taking advantage of him. You had to fight everything inside of you to argue with his self-deprecation. Of course it wasn't him. He was the perfect man. You tried to not show too much pleasure at his string of failed first dates.

"Should've told me y'had plans, sugar. I would've come back earlier so you could get goin'."

You waved his statement away. "It's no problem, the less time I'm there the better. I should probably head off, though." Before you could move to grab your keys, Joel's hand hovered over yours resting on the table.

"Thank you, by the way. I doubt I say it enough." Eye contact with Joel always stirred something inside of you. Those damn brown eyes. You smiled at him, softly.

"You don't need to thank me, Joel. I like spending time with Sarah. You know that."

He shook his head slightly. "S'not just that. I mean for everythin'. If you ever need me, you call. You know that, right? Hate thinkin' 'bout you in that house all alone."

It's not the first time he had said something of the sort. You always assumed it was the over-protective father inside of him, bursting out at the seams. Or maybe his Southern chivalry finding its feet after a couple of beers.

"Thank you, Joel. I appreciate it." You turned your hand in his and squeezed once before making your way to the door. You felt his eyes on you as you walked. You always felt his eyes on you. Sometimes you would be changing in front of your window and be sure you could feel Joel's gaze from across the street burning into you. But whenever you turned around, he was never there.

"I'm sorry your date didn't go well." You said, lingering in the doorway.

Joel scrunched his nose slightly and shook his head.

"I'm not."

a/n: hi guys! this is my first fic uploaded to tumblr lol kind of nervy but hope you guys enjoy. i plan on writing a couple more parts to this! message me for taglist for part two!

dee x

[spiritus-malum]

Grachiel

Thus follows a dream, on Grachiel, Archdemon of the Dying Times.

I opened my eyes to a darkened alleyway. The night had fallen hard and fast as my bleary tear-filled eyes adjusted to the light, or rather lack thereof. I saw along the walls of the alley a million scrawlings of the mad; "The end is nigh." "All is lost." "Mankind is a plague." "Rot of creation grows and lingers." "You have failed, as have I." "Jesus cannot save us now." And at the end of the alley, backlit by the glow of the streetlamp, I saw him.

Tall and fair, with long hair and a rippling body of perfect physique, the Angel stood against the dark. As he turned to face me it held aloft a banner of tattered and tarnished white cloth. It was dripping from one end with blood, and it read in ghastly ink of the same make, "Tempus Mutat Omnia."

He approached me and held out his free hand for a shake, "A pleasure, Maarika. Earthly devil, creature of chaos and disordered logic. A grand pleasure to make the acquaintance of someone so lacking in remorse and inhibition towards evil."

I coughed out a reply, barely, "Grachiel."

He threw his head backwards in laughter, the sound was as the cawing of a murder of every corvid all at once, a theatre of madness stretched out before me, "Right you are! Are you oft beset by demons in your sleep, little one?"

"You are an Angel." I rebutted.

He looked me up and down, searching for some frailty of the mind to pounce upon and manipulate. He was seeing my every decision, judging my worth as a tool.

"I'm amused, it has been long since I've been called an Angel by any." His golden eyes pierced the core of my being, even in the safety of my own personal oneiros, "You seem to be fond of my presence here, does it bode well for you?"

I swallowed hard, the statement was frightening to consider, why did he come here?

"I believe it does, one of the tides of change. You bring positive change as well you do negative, do you not?"

The look of relief on his face was palpable, powerful, potent, "You say true I say thank ya!" He said in a mock New Yawk accent, "And what a lovely thanks it is, lil lady~" He said in a Clint Eastwood impression.

I laughed nervously, and suddenly thought to look down at myself. I saw a fully feminine form, not the awkward in-between I see in the mirror now, something I would consider goals in my transition.

"Ahhh, there you go, silly young thing." Grachiel chortled as he said, "You liven up the experience by being so enrapted in the presence of an Angel. That's not why I'm here though." He said more seriously.

"So, it's bad, huh?" I asked, less nervous now, more willing to hear what he had to tell me.

"Hardly, for you. For plenty of folks? Yes, awful, terrible, death, destruction, plague, suffering, woe be unto the world that wakes upon that fateful morning.... but...." He trailed slightly, turning around and seeing another figure at the end of the alley where he formerly stood.

She was radiant and pure, the glow of her clothes shined against the stark contrast of the night with perfect clarity and brightness. It was as if she were her own lightsource.

I saw Grachiel straighten his back a bit, and stand with more command and authority, "You bring your comfort here to guard yourself from my truth, but it is by the hand of this comfort you will be spared from death." He spoke the words towards her, but directed to me.

She held out her hands to me, the light of her halo burned against the darkness of night, a perfect circle of infinite brightness that shone out of the dark like the sun. Save that this light did not burn my eyes to behold directly.

She opened her wings and they fluttered out in a storm of white feathers. She flapped them twice, filling the air with a gust of sweet smells. As she did, they lifted her off the ground just enough to let her feet hang down in a gently repose above the concrete.

She opened her eyes to me as she smiled, the light of her halo was dwarfed by the brilliance of her soul shining behind those eyes. She beckoned me with her hands, not making a huge show of it, just calling out to me.

"My love, come to me, all is calm, all is well. You will make it through the fire, you will make it through the night. We will part this world together, but not for many, many years." She spoke in a sweet voice my heart new perfectly.

I turned to Grachiel and said, "Explain to me what we will miss together, please."

He shook his head, solemnly, and said, "No can do, I can't tell you anything about your own future and you know it."

I nodded in understanding, but then puzzled aloud, "Then why bother coming at all?" I asked.

"You have free will, if you make the choices that will lead to her not being salvation for you, I want you with me." He said, matter-of-factly, and with authority unmatched by any mortal ruler, "If she is out of your life, I will keep you, and you will live throu-" A shattering silence fell out of his mouth.

"She will be with me," My love spoke in her own voice, not authoritative, not insistent, not demanding of me. But understanding, loving, caring, wishing only the best for us both, "of that you can be assured Grachiel." She finished.

Grachiel looked perturbed that interruption was even within consideration by her. But when he looked down at me as saw my eyes shining with the same golden halo that filled hers, he understood.

"I am impressed with her, do not fail her, earthly devil." He said, with a final word, departed.

I ran to her, and embraced her. When I did, she sank to the ground again, wrapping her arms around me, her wings vanished. I ran my fingers through her soft curly hair, and she embraced my face with her hands and kissed me deeply as I did.

We stood enraptured by eachother for centuries, as the world around us was warped and destroyed. The buildings that made up the alleyway crumbled to dust. The concrete below out feet joining it, nearly instantly.

The air grew heavy, hot, painful to breath, but we kissed on. The world filled with black smog that choked us and brought us no end of pain, but we kissed on. The dark of night extended into day, and the burning heat of day extended into the night, but we kissed on.

We heard the cry of people in the distance, first raiders, survivors, the pained and starving. But then, the sounds of order, law, systems of government being ratified by the fools who set themselves only to repeat what had occurred already, but we kissed on.

Finally the stillness of a long night, longer than the nights previous, and a few words spoken by close friends from just the other end of the alleyway, "Look I found them! Yeah, they're making out again! Come the fuck on you two, we're looking for medicine and canned goods for winter, not eachothers fucking tongues." The voice teased.

I looked into her eyes, lovingly as I had what felt like a million times before, I took her hand and started towards our friends.

"Come now, my princess. We have a world to keep." I finished.

The return from sleep to waking was painful, I felt as though every muscle in my body had been stiffened. I lept up and looked at myself in the mirror, and there I swear I saw the seal of Grachiel fading from my skin.

Where a knife had whitened the flesh, but not broken any. Where offers had been made, but not struck. Where fate was decided, but not by myself alone.

Fata volente, Tempus Mutat Omnia.

[greyias]

Highlights from last night's stream (I swear, if I had the wherewithal I would actually do clips/highlights properly with Twitch's interface, but eh, effort):

Spending a good ten minutes or so to finish beating that stupid Ithorian at the spaceport so I could finally get the HK part I needed. As I finally beat him, and we cheered in chat, I realized: he had no HK droid parts. That was just being sold like normal by a different vendor a few meters away

Finding a room full of deactivated mute protocol droids, and without any reason whatsoever other than "chaos", activating them all at the exact same time, and cackling madly as they all bunched up and got caught in doorways as they tried to clank past one another to start their patrol routes

Baby Voice Padawan and Holly the Holocron -- most unlikely padawan/master duo

Not realizing the spider enemies somehow breathed fire until like, 45 minutes in of bonking them on the head

Running around for over an hour inside of the Enclave, progressing story bits, gaining light side and experience points, and in a moment of hubris-fueled chaos, decided to overload a computer terminal with a one second timer, insta-killing the entire party. I had not saved since setting foot inside. We had to do everything again

Mical. Just... Mical (being in the party .05 seconds before talking to the Exile like a stalker, "oh god I didn't mean to click on him! I was trying to talk to the turret!", "The Jedi Council convinced Revan to change her mind", *gives a guy some credits and tells him to stop breaking the law* "I've never seen a Jedi do anything nice ever! You're sooooo cool")

MOOKS BRING VROOK TO THE NOOK

Running around Dantooine acting like a little missionary for the militia, asking every single soul on this godforsaken planet if they've heard the good news about Zherron and his gravelly faux Clint Eastwood Voice

And maybe my favorite moment, fueled by my own particular brand of blonde obliviousness, where I am completely and utterly lost trying to find a stupid cave, and talk to our favorite bald, old Jedi hater hanging out near our ship:

Me: [proceeds through passing all of the persuasion/charm checks, probably making bi-disaster finger guns to get Baldy to talk]

Old Bald Guy: You're right random stranger who gaslighted me last stream! [proceeds to give detailed strategic info about all of Dantooine's weak points]

Atton: Wow! You're as smooth as the barrel of a blaster. I like that. 🤩

Me: WHOA THERE, ATTON! Are you talking about that guy's head? THAT'S SO INSENSITIVE!

Atton, probably:

Also Atton: [influence goes up], internally "My god she's so stupid. Why does that make me love her even more?"

[ithisatanytime]

Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Cool Clear Water

 even though the cohens are hollywood jews i like them quite a lot, because in my view their movies are from the perspective of hollywood jews and their bemusement at goyish behavior, i dont mind this at all actually in fact i quite like it because they are being honest about their perspective in a way, and theirs more than a hint of admiration for goyishness at least in their early work specifically raising arizona. ive talked before about how i felt now one really understood the ballad of buster scruggs, its a more bitter jewish take on goys and particularly the old west but i still dont mind it even if i disagree with the premise. the main underlying theme is that of the unreliable narrator especially when it comes to the historical west. the structure of the film is off putting and they knew it would be, had the ballad of buster scruggs been at the end of the collection of vignettes they would have one an oscar but they but it in the beginning deliberately because the whole thing is meant to be an ACTUAL deconstruction of the western, not like clint eastwoods unforgiven which claims to be, i love unforgiven but its just a great cowboy flick with a very advanced antihero protagonist its not really a deconstruction though it aspires to be in some places it ultimately fails at its aim and glorifies the violence its supposedly meant to be admonishing, everyone quotes the speech from the end of the movie about how hes william money and hes killed women and children and everything that moves not with scorn but admiration. the ballad of buster scruggs truely IS a deconstructed western, its base elements pulled apart and separated from each other. the two most important vignettes are the ballad of buster scruggs of course and the latter stage coach caravan vignette, they are the same story, or at least the two main characters are the same. the first vignette is a western with all the pageantry and deceit and slapstick that a western writer would add after the facts have had time to be forgotten a bit, while the stagecoach story is told mostly straightforward except for one part. at one point, a woman is having an issue with her dog, i forget its been years since i saw the movie, and one of the cowboys the kinder of the two likes her but the dog is causing problems for the whole caravan, her dog goes missing or something and you hear a shot, followed by barking, another shot and then silence off in the distance, the kind cowboy tells the woman he saw her dog but it ran off, this is a lie and its the most important part of the vignette, he shot her dog but lied and said it ran off in order to make her feel better. this young kindly cowboy wants to quit watching over caravans as he relates to his older much more quiet partner who doesnt seem to care much for the woman either way but he does intimate that hed like their partnership to continue. the next part of the vignette is entirely from the older cowboys point of view, and i think is entirely fabricated, we the audience see the events as they supposedly happen, the woman thinks she hears her lost dog barking from over some hills, her and the older cowboy go to investigate and are attacked by over a dozen indians, he gives her a gun and tells her if things get bad ie he dies, to off herself rather than be taken by the indians, a rediculous fight ensues where the older cowboy who was formerly quiet and reserved is suddenly a loud boisterous gunfighter and killing injuns hand over fist! but at one point it looks bad for him and he has to play dead to fool the chief before he cunningly tricks him and kills him to but when he checks on the girl shes killed herself already fearing the worst. the vignett ends with the older cowboy walking over the hill again and the young cowboy is down at the bottom presumably expecting an explanation. the explanation he intends to give is the one we were both shown, but we know that the young cowboy knows she didnt go over that hill looking for her barking dog because he himself shot it and lied to her about it, so he will know right away the older cowboy just took her off somewhere and killed her to preserve their partnership and his way of life, what do you suppose happens next? well the cohens showed you in a over the top nickel western manner in the opening vignette, only this time just like he said, buster is wearing the black hat and the young gun wearing a white one. in the bank robber vignette, the bank robber is hung twice, the first time hes meant to be hung hes literally saved at the last moment by a random pack of indians again! they literally ride up to him and WINK at him before letting him go, only to be recapture, the second time hes on the gallows he turns to a nervous man ready to be hanged next to him and we get the famous meme “first time?” and it ends, presumably it ends just before he tells a big fat fib about indians just like the other guy in the other vignette. the idea being what we know about the west is largely fabrications, and indians tend to show up when the narrator is unreliable. there are other supporting details in the other vignettes but those are the big ones.

[cursestothemoon]

I don’t know I’d this is enough for a headcanon or blurb or anything but I’ve been trying to think of more NSFW stuff and my mind went back to the American!reader things you’ve done with Fred so far and I can totally see Fred getting his American girlfriend a cowboy hat to wear while riding him because “cowgirls are an important part of your culture” and he just wants to “show his support for your roots”

Save a Horse, Ride a Ginger 

F.W. X FEM!AMERICAN!READER

17+ IF YOU ARE TAGGED AND DON’T WANT TO BE TAGGED IN SMUT PLEASE LET ME KNOW

Warnings: NSFW, vaginal sex, praise, teasing, language, slapping/spanking, finger sucking, unedited because its just on brand at this point

“Love, could you come here for a second?”

The sound of your boyfriend calling you stole your attention away from Molly and the scarf you were trying to knit. You stood up, apologizing to Molly for the interruption- though she didn't seem to mind much- and made your way to the living room. 

The Weasley siblings, along with Harry and Hermione, were sitting around the tv (a muggle television set Hermione had gifted them two Christmases ago) with random DVD’s strewn across the floor. Picking one up, you turned it over as you moved to sit next to Fred on the floor.

“What’s with all the movies?” You asked, reading a few of the titles. 

Fred turned to you holding up one of the plastic dvd cases, “We wanted to learn about your roots, your history, so we asked Charlie send over some stuff from where he is in America.”

You glanced back at the movie in hand, “Fred you’re holding up A Fistful of Dollars.”

He furrowed his eyebrows, “Fistful of doll-what? No, I’m holding a movie disc, love.”

“Freddie, that’s the name of the movie and besides, even if this was a accurate historical movie, which it’s not, it’s not even about my history...I’m from Seattle.”

He landed a flick to your forehead before pulling you into his lap, “Just be quiet while I learn about the Americans.”

The movie, one you’ve seen a few times already, came to end as the credits rolled and the Man With No Name rode off on his horse into the sunset. 

“Amazing...” Ron breathed out making you laugh. 

You were still in Fred’s lap, his hands holding your hips as you shifted to get comfortable. The action made Fred’s breath hitch, he was already turned on as it was and you just happened to notice. 

“Really? Clint Eastwood did it for you?” 

Your teasing tone made Fred pinch your butt in warning.

“No, but the idea of you riding me with a cute little cowboy hat on definitely did it for me.” He whispered huskily into your ear, his warm breath hitting the shell of your ear making goosebumps erupt down your neck. 

You turned to into his eyes, the lust swimming in his honey brown irises sent jolts of need to your core. 

“Too bad we don’t have one.”

Fred nodded, a glint of mischief burning bright in his eyes, “Yeah, too bad.”

In hindsight, you should’ve seen it coming. Whenever Fred wanted something he got, through whatever means necessary- this time it was a brother in America with a sense of humor just like his younger brother’s. 

Now here you were, straddling Fred’s bare hips as he placed a cow print cowgirl hat with a bedazzled brim on your head, the drawstring left to hang in the valley of your breasts. 

“Is this really necessary?” You smirked, starting to slowly grind your wet cunt over his hard cock making him close his eyes and take in a breath. 

“Is it necessary, she asks. It is absolutely necessary, this is an important part of your culture.”

You continued to drag your hips over his creating a delicious friction that had your head lolling back and lips parting to let a breathy moan slip by. His hands helped guid your hips, pushing and pulling you against himself. A response was lost on your tongue as you whined at the feeling of Fred lifting your hips off of him and ceasing the friction. He used one hand to position himself at your entrance, pulling you to sit down fully on his cock.

Fred moved his hands from your hips to your tits, massaging the flesh and rolling your nipples between his fingers before landing a slap on your right breast making you gasp.

“Go on then, want my little cowgirl to ride me.”

You didn’t need to be told twice, rolling your hips against his a few times before lifting up and then dropping back down, coating his prick in your arousal. 

Fred wrapped his right hand around your throat with little pressure while the other one trailed down to your clit, his thumb circling the aching nub roughly. You couldn’t help but cry out as you picked up your pace, your hips moving in half circles and figure eights to rub you just right.

Needing to ground yourself you placed one hand on Fred’s chest and held onto his forearm with the other, making him apply more pressure around your throat. The drawstring of the cowgirl hat was hitting your skin with each lift and drop of your hips. 

You were losing your power fast, becoming putty in Fred’s hands, and he could tell. As you let out another loud moan, he sat up making himself shift inside of you and hitting places that had you doubling of in pleasure and vision going fuzzy. His arm wrapped around your waist to hold you up and help you move on his cock. 

“That’s it, love, keep go- fuck- just like that.” He grunted, using his hold on your body to speed up your movements. 

Your head dropped into the crook of his neck, the skin warm and balmy and inviting. Your lips danced across the expanse of his neck and travelled up under his ear kissing and sucking with a fervent passion. Fred was doing the same to the top of your breasts, your tits littered with red and purple bites and bruises. 

An orgasm was fast approaching both you and Fred, his higher pitched whines and whimpers a clear sign to you and your clenching pussy a sign to him. He bit down on your earlobe as he moved you quicker, each time having the head of his swollen cock prodding at your g-spot relentlessly. 

“Wanna suck on your fingers when I cum.” You muttered into his neck before lifting your head up and opening your mouth for his fingers. 

Fred placed his index and middle finger on your tongue and you were quick to wrap your lips around them suck. You held his wrist with one hand, the other going on his shoulder to brace yourself as you bounced on his dick faster and getting him deeper inside you. 

Soon enough Fred could feel the unmistakable feeling of his balls drawing up, tensing as he neared spilling over the edge of his orgasm. He looked up to drink you in, your flushed face, eyes rolling back in pleasure, lips parted to let the sweetest sounds come from them, and lastly the cowgirl hat atop your head that pulled it all in together. The sight was positively pornographic, his American cowgirl riding him with a heaving chest and aching cunt.

“I’m- I wanna cum.” Your voice brought Fred back to reality. 

His free hand went to grab a handful of your ass, groping the flesh roughly and using the leverage to pull you down onto himself harder.

“Cum.”

It was all you needed to hear to let out a choked sob as your walls tightened around Fred, cumming on his cock. He wasn’t far behind, pressing your hips down onto his roughly, bottoming out, and stilled as he came inside of you, your walls milking him completely. His hot seed coating your walls, filling you up. The feeling so good, making you thank your lucky stars that you were on birth control and din’t have to worry about the consequences.

Fred held you close as you came down from your highs, pressing loving kisses on your shoulder blade. 

“You look so sexy in that bloody hat.” Fred sighed with a chuckle. 

The statement made you giggle into his neck, suddenly feeling bashful in your post orgasm bliss. At your response, Fred turned his head to place a kiss on your jaw then on your cheek before you made a move to pull yourself off of him. 

Fred whined, “No, stay...just a bit longer.”

You placed a kiss onto his forehead, lips smearing against his warm skin before moving to place a kiss on his nose, resting your forehead against his. Fred shifted so he was laying down on his side, as are you, with your leg hiked over his hip and face nuzzled into his bare chest while his cock- now flaccid- was still in you keeping you pleasantly stretched around him. The cowgirl hat had been removed and placed carefully on your nightstand, for later use. Fred bent awkwardly to grab the blanket and pull it over the two of you as he felt your breathing start to even. He tucked the edge of the blanket under your chin and watched as you drifted off into a peaceful slumber, face still in his chest and soft breaths hitting his skin. 

Fred fell asleep moments later, cock still warm and tucked inside your cunt, and holding you to his chest.

His American cowgirl

tags:

@siriusement

@amourtentiaa

@vsawyer1989​

@lifeofkaze

@theorangedrummer

@erinblack003

@famdomhideout

@an2402lths

@escapingrealitybyreading

@readyg0erge

@maybesandohnos

@therealhouseelvesofhogwarts

[addictedtostorytelling]

Could you please explain Gil's and Sara's conflict in 4x07? Personally, I think that it is right that Sara helped with Warrick's case, because they needed as many people as possible to work against the 24 hour time limit. There's probably an proper reason why Sara should have been allowed to work on her case, but I'm quite lost.

hi, @coping-via-clint-eastwood!

so a lot of the conflict between grissom and sara in this episode stems from the fact that even though they are ostensibly arguing over the same issue—essentially, whether or not warrick's homicide case should take precedence over all other cases on the docket atm—they are not arguing on the same rhetorical bases.

grissom is viewing the issue from an almost entirely practical perspective: i.e., they have to work warrick's case before any others because they are up against a very real deadline, which there will be very real potential consequences for missing.

meanwhile, sara is viewing the issue from a more philosophical perspective: i.e., morally/ethically, her case should be given equal priority to warrick's, regardless of any deadlines; just in principle, the victim in her case is as deserving of—and, indeed, entitled to—justice as the one in his case is.

grissom's position is the same one that you state: because warrick's case has a 24-hour time limit, the whole team needs to work together to solve the case before he has to return to court. in grissom’s view, the fact that the case is about to go to trial makes it take precedence over anything else that other team members may be working on, including sara's own homicide investigation, which, though already in progress, is not yet to the judicial stage.

underlying his attitudes here is his assumption that if the team cannot solve the case within the allotted timeframe, then the killer will go free on a technicality, a development that would, in his mind, be a great injustice, considering that the killer's guilt is (based on everything they know at present) greatly implied.

sara's position is that she is working a homicide case of her own, and all homicide cases are time-sensitive in their own ways, not only because leads go cold, suspects flee, and some evidence denatures over time but also because for the victim's loved ones, the victim's death and the need to see the killer brought to justice never become less pressing or relevant, even if time has elapsed since the crime was originally committed; said loved ones will always want to see the case solved as soon as possible, no matter if the murder occurred a day ago or a year ago or ten years ago.

it’s all still present, you know?

of course, even if a particular victim has no loved ones, as a criminalist, sara still feels an obligation to see her case through to a speedy resolution, just as a matter of justice; in her opinion, no killer should be allowed to roam free because, for whatever bureaucratic reason, the case in question is deemed "of lesser priority."

even if nobody in the world actually cares about the victim personally, sara very much views it as her job to "speak for the dead" and to do right by them.

in her mind, that's the job.

to her, it doesn't matter that warrick's case is already to the trial stage whereas hers is not; she feels compelled to get the solve on her case as soon as she can, with no delays. she doesn't think it would be fair to the victim, the victim's loved ones, or society at large to hold off simply because there is another homicide case that is farther along in the judicial process than hers is that also at the same time needs solving.

—and especially not because doing so could potentially result in the killer in her case getting away and/or her case eventually becoming unsolvable/unprosecutable.

underlying her attitudes here is her assumption that if she pauses her investigation, then she may lose the opportunity to ever solve her case and/or catch the killer at all, a development that would, in her mind, be a great injustice just generally.

she is also, on ideological grounds, annoyed that some victims/cases are seemingly deemed "more important" than others just because they may be higher profile.

while we never get the details on her homicide investigation, based on what she says to nick, it's clear that she thinks her case (and its victim) may not elicit the same kind of public sympathy and/or draw the same kind of enthusiastic interest from law enforcement that warrick's case (and its victim) does.

certainly, she is aware that grissom's decision to put the whole team on warrick's case is not only his own but also something he's been pressured to do by the sheriff.

while of course everyone cares about the heinous rape and murder of a young, beautiful white woman with concerned and vocal family members clamoring for justice on her behalf, perhaps not everyone would care about whatever happened to her case's victim, who maybe isn't as appealing/pitiable/innocent-seeming by comparison and perhaps doesn't have anyone to advocate for them.

though of course we have no way to know what the background on the victim in the particular case she's working prior to this episode is, and so cannot say if they had family members or friends to give a damn about getting justice for them or not, that sara would care even—and perhaps especially—about victims who were unconnected and possibly "alone in the world" makes a lot of sense, given her own background.

since justice is supposed to be blind, does her case's victim not deserve the same kind of urgent attention as rachel lyford does?

shouldn't they be considered just as much of a priority as she is, regardless of who they are or what the circumstances of their murder were?

shouldn't the justice system work on their behalves, no matter how many or few connections they had?

if the department starts "cherry-picking" which cases should be given priority over others, then would cases involving unsympathetic, unattached, potentially criminal, potentially anonymous victims ever be solved? moving them to the backburner every time there's a primetime-ready "america's sweetheart" case sets a dangerous precedent, doesn't it?

see: the real life harm caused by "missing white woman syndrome."

so that's sara's grounds for objection to grissom's mandate: she doesn't think it's fair to say that one homicide case matters more than another if both are active cases, regardless of any judicial deadlines.

and on the practical side of things, she also doesn't see why—if everyone else is already working on warrick's case—she also needs to be doing so.

isn't part of the point of having a team with multiple criminalists on it that they can "divide and conquer," working on multiple cases at a time when the need to do so arises? like, say, when there are two active homicide cases open at once?

grissom is, of course, operating on the assumption that he needs the full power of the collective team graveyard brain trust to get warrick's case solved asap; he can't spare anyone—and especially not sara, who is one of his "big guns." he needs her.

so those are the grounds on which grissom and sara come to loggerheads.

of course, beyond the issue itself, there's also some interpersonal stuff at play that exacerbates the conflict between them—i.e., grissom has been uncharacteristically dismissive of and short with sara over the last few months and has been stiffing her on work assignments, and she worries that he is punishing her because she asked him out after the lab explosion. she's frustrated because she feels as if she has done everything in her power to act professionally toward him after he rejected her, and yet he keeps continuously spurning her and treating her poorly. no matter what she does, she finds that she can't seem to win for losing with him. so of course him coming in and acting all imperious with her here, putting his foot down and forcing her to back off her own case to join the team in working warrick's, just further rankles her and causes her to put her hackles up because she feels as if his doing so isn't just its own thing; it's also part and parcel of his ongoing dickish behavior toward her, ever since last may. meanwhile, on grissom's side, he feels compelled to put his foot down with sara because he's trying so hard to toe the line with her. in the past, he has been overly permissive with her at work due to his personal feelings for her. but now that he's definitively told her that they can't have a romantic relationship, he is trying to create some fresh boundaries and treat her "just like everybody else." unfortunately, since doing so goes so counter to his impulses, he winds up going overboard in his efforts and isn't just neutral in his behavior toward her but actually ham-fisted with it. he swings the pendulum too far in his efforts to be "fair" and comes across as being tyrannical instead. hence why he later asks catherine if she thinks he overstepped in reproving sara in front of the team.

anyway, whether or not you think sara's argument has legs to stand on is your call, but that's the nature of the disagreement in itself: grissom is thinking pragmatically about what is needed on a practical level in the moment, whereas sara is thinking philosophically about potentially harmful precedents that could be set by the course of action they take here. toss in a helping of interpersonal angst for flavor, and you've got the back-and-forth you see at the beginning of the episode.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[notfspurejam]

Kiyoshi Kobayashi talks about his history at TBS radio for the promotion of Jigen’s Gravestone. (2014)

(Sorry if there are any mistakes or sentences are unnatural.)

At the time, he was 81 and said ‘I was born in 1933 and I’m 65 years old now.‘ (the interviewer: ’The figures don't add up!’)

Kiyoshi Kobayashi’s story 1: He had a subscription to Japan Times (a newspaper in English) when he was a Junior High school student who was evacuated to rural regions during World War II.

‘I felt at ease when I read English. I wonder if I’m not Japanese... Just kidding!‘

story 2: He had checked and corrected English for students preparing for an exam when he was only a high school student because he was so good at English.

‘ I was even told “I’d love Mr. Kobayashi to correct my English by all means!”, but I wanted to say “I’m a student too...” ‘

Story 3: He used to work as a translator to earn money not only as an actor.

‘Uemura-san, The president of Tohoku Shinsha (Film distribution company)  introduced me to translate scripts such as Lucille Ball stuff (“I love Lucy"?) and "Superman".’

Story 4: He had to do over from scratch when he made a mistake in the studio.

‘Because we dubbed voices while we were watching the film in those days. Getting close to the end, I was nervous not to blow my lines especially when I was a small role...‘

Story 5: He has called a senior at work Mr. Naya (ex-V.A. Inspector Zenigata) as his first name once.

‘We'd dubbed “Combat” at the studio. There was only one microphone and we were gathering around it like goldfishes! He was already a star when I became an actor. I tried to call him Goro once even though I still call him Naya-san. He didn’t say anything, but I really regretted so much.‘

(the interviewer says: I have watched Naya-san was saying he wanted to take over from Yamada-san and dub Clint Eastwood. )

‘I have dubbed Clint Eastwood a few times. Yamada’s voice sounds like coming out of the nose. It’s a strange way to saying, but my voice is coming out of my throat. so I kept in mind his way. It seemed it was not so bad as I thought.‘

Story 6: About Daisuke Jigen’s Gravestone

‘Jigen’s voice is different from my usual voice. What do you think??’ (The interviewer: We can find him in everything you said!) Of course, because I've been acting him! But, usually I’m not like him that much.  (The interviewer: His voice is lower than yours?) Yes, and I’m trying to sound cool... you know?’

‘I attended the premiere of Daisuke Jigen’s Gravestone. I’d thought most fans of Lupin and Jigen were male. However I was surprised that there were many female fans. I went ‘I’m still not so bad...!‘ I know they were coming to see Jigen though, not me.

(Question from a listener: How did you feel when the audience let out a cheer?)

‘I was just surprised that many people came to see us and treated me like a pop star... Thank you very much.’

(Question from a listener: What scene were you the most impressed with?)

‘I liked “From Russia with Love” which sort of featuring Jigen. (* He often answers this TVSP, but I think ‘He means “Voyage to Danger?”’ every time.) There were many episodes before forming a gang, such as Goemon or Jigen conflicting with Lupin. After TV series became suitable for children, episodes featuring Jigen or Goemon have gradually decreased.’

(The interviewer: What did you think when you heard about the project of “Daisuke Jigen’s Gravestone”?) ‘We did Fujiko-chan’s spinoff, so I thought It would happen, but I didn’t expect it would be about his gravestone... I thought “Have I lost the edge I used to have?!” After thinking about it, I don’t need to work after he’s dead. Which makes me kind of relieved... Well, wait and see...

(Question from a listener: What is the most impressive line of Jigen? 

I was going to say it in the end of the program, but... ‘Hey Lupin, it's about time to blow this joint.‘ This is the one.

[deberiaestarescribiendo]

The Tragic and Magic about You. Modern day bounty hunter Din Djarin x F!reader #Writer Wednesday 05/12/21

Summary: You’ve been running away, and trying to start a new, but suddenly you’re captured in a car with a mysterious bounty hunter that has to deliver you to your old boss. But the road can be a dangerous place and the journey will change both your fates forever.

Words: 4,6

Warning: swearing, guns and murder. “there’s only one sleeping bag” trope. Fluff at the end.

A/N: Hi! Another week another thank you to all the amazing writers that participate and everybody that read, comment, like, reblog etc. And of course to @autumnleaves1991-blog for creating this and bring a platform to smaller blogs like myself. Sorry for any bad grammar, misspelling etc and excuse my zero imagination to create fictional names for characters. This is vaguely inspired by Hozier “From Eden” song and specifically the video.

The Tragic and Magic about you

“So you don’t talk much huh?” you say, it’s been a few hours since he’s taken you and he hasn’t said a word. His dark brown eyes fixed on the road and he doesn’t even react when you talk.

“Can I turn on the radio?” before he answers you’re already touching the buttons. A few notes escape from the stereo and in a second it’s gone, he has reached the device and has turn it off. “Not a big fan of music, gotcha” you reply with a huff. Bored, you observe his profile, his hair is disheveled, a chocolate brown as his eyes; he has a striking beauty you think: strong jaw line, aquiline nose and a stern expression. Gosh, you always on the look for bad men and you laugh at yourself for being as simple as to being attracted to the bounty hunter that has finally catch you.

“So you’re kinda nostalgic? Cool car” you brush your hand over the beige leather inside the silver blue Cadillac. “And expensive, you must be really good at this bounty hunt thing, well, you got me and I’ve been running for a few months. I really thought I was safe to be honest, it’s been a long time since somebody got close so I became a little bit too comfortable, I must admit. God! I’m going to miss my apartment” you pout” I had plans for the weekend, and even bought all the ingredients to make a cake. I was almost there! Shit! Now my flat is going to stink with all that food expiring and probably my landlord is going to steal all my stuff, fucking prick, I hate him so much” The bounty hunter reaches for the radio and turns it on. You smirk watching as he has adjusted his posture and his index taps rapidly on the steering wheel.

“Oh I love this song!” you turn it up to the maximum and start singing clearly not knowing the lyrics you just mutter the final syllables of each word, watching him intently as his eyelid trembles and he’s breathing deeply now, his knuckles white holding the wheel so hard that you think he’s about to break it “Isn’t it beautiful this country? look at this, we really don’t appreciate it much, look at the red and oranges of these mountains, the vastness, the sand and how you cannot reach the horizon with your eyes. You must love this, just riding solo with your cool car just doing whatever you want. Real freedom”

For the first time since he arrested you, he turns to you giving you a warning look and you bite your lip, he’s intimidating, a big man and you know if he’s in the business he’s capable of anything, but here you are pressing all his buttons until, if it works, he’s going to snap.

“What’s your name?” He sighs deeply and keeps on driving ignoring you once more “I mean you know many things about me, it’s only fair”

“Mm, let me guess” you tap your finger over your chin “Tom?” no, too posh for you. Jack? you could be a Jack but no. Oh! oh!” you move nervously on your seat and slap on his arm with both your hand handcuffed together “I’m going to call you Clint. You know why?” you wait a few seconds “Clint Eastwood, my friend, a man of a few words. You know who he is, right? Dirty Harry? All those westerns? They’re really not my thing, but he’s a legend, you surely must know him”

The few following hours you asked him about many things and you don’t know anybody this strong, if you were in his place you would be already dead or inside the trunk.

The sun is getting down and the desert starts to be submerged in a violet light and there’s nothing around. You wonder if he’s really going on until he has to give you up without stopping. You’re hungry and thirsty (after too much talking) and you really could use a bathroom.

“So Clint, we ain’t stopping just for bit? I really need to pee, and it would be great if you take this off for a bit” you shake your handcuffs close to his face, and finally you have achieved his limit. He stops the car abruptly and opens his door without saying a word. You follow him with your eyes and when he comes to your door you think of begging mercy knowing that you don’t deserve it, poor guy must have had it.

You turn on your seat and face him. Clint bends down a little and grabs you by your hip taking you out of the car by a swift movement.

“Careful!” you scream

“Shut up” he doesn’t raise his voice. It’s the second time he has said something. The first time being when he stopped you on the middle of the road and after confirming your identity, he had caught you and handcuffed you but he hadn’t said a thing, until now. His voice is deep and low and you wish to hear more but he opens the door to the back seat and throws you on it. He reaches for his jeans and you actually freeze thinking he’s reaching for his gun but he takes out a black bandana and comes close to you. His large broad body occupies all your space, his leather jacket making his shoulders look stronger than you had thought at first glance.

He’s surprisingly gentle, his big hands circling your head while he adjusts the fabric over your mouth “Really it’s not necessary” you say before he reaches your mouth with two fingers and pushes the black bandana between your lips. He ties it a little bit tighter. Your head is on his chest over his white shirt and you scold yourself when you feel you have closed your eyes smelling him: leather, fresh soap and something else that it’s entirely his, once the knot is done on your nape he looks at you and raises one eyebrow “Too tight?”

“i-f not nefecessary f-really” you say and he stays too close to your face for a bit, probably thinking if he should just shove the thing inside your throat and shut you forever. You feel your cheeks burning because you’ve been looking straight into his eyes, they’re surprisingly gentle, there’s warmth in them that you haven’t seen in anybody in this kind of business.

“Just be good and stay quiet for the rest of the journey. We will arrive soon” Clint then proceeds to grab you by your legs and puts you in a more comfortable position on the seat and takes the precaution of fastening your seatbelt. He is extremely careful on his movements and he barely brushes his hands on your hip while doing it, but his neck is so close, shining in a thin layer of perspiration and you are lost again thinking things any sensible person would never have in mind while you’re been taken against your will to answer for messing with the wrong people.

You moan in disappointment when he gets away and closes the door. Then you are left there alone, his scent lingering over your body and you think about how your life had come to this but then...

You feel the air hitting your right side first and the projectile breaking the sound close to your ear second, then the million small pieces of the glass. Some other gunshots hit the trunk and you’re already screaming and trying to get down but the handcuffs and your trembling hands don’t find the way to unlock the seatbelt.

Clint is pressed against the car, you see the top of his head and he’s firing back to whomever is attacking you. You throw your body on the back seat and in the second your back hits the leather, two gun shots blast both windows and many sparkling bits of glass hits your face.

“Release me!” you shout “I can f-helpf” your chin is covered in your saliva but who fucking cares when you’re about to die. Clint raises and you see through the door how he’s attacking back with two guns, his face contorted and sweaty and then you hear the sound of tires screeching the road and your captor lowers his guns.

“Are you okay?” he says through the broken glass on the door

He opens it and what was left of the glass windows crashes to the ground. Clint looks at it for a second; his cool vintage car is destroyed. He climbs over you and takes out the wet fabric out of your mouth

“Are you okay?” he asks again, with the gentlest touch of his fingers he shakes off of your face the small crystals

“Yeah” you whisper. It’s sad that this is the kindest anybody has been to you in a long time.

He reaches for your hands and turns them softly seeing that a red line has formed on your wrists. Clint then lowers the collar of his shirt to reveal a long silver chain with what looks like a skull with horns and one small key to the side, he takes it out and you hear the small clic sound once you’re free.

“Come on we have to go”

When you get out of the car, you curse seeing that they have completely destroyed the tires and the smell of gas and the dark puddle on the road assures you that the car is useless. But there’s nothing around and zero traffic. The vast desert is now covered in the blue shadow of the night and the temperature is beginning to sink.

“So what’s the plan?” Clint has taken a big duffle bag on his shoulder and pushes you from your lower back to the side of the road

“We will spend the night here, if we stay in the open they could find us easily” he says walking towards the darkness where only the shadow of the sharp bushes and cacti cover the space.

“Who are they?” you ask and try to fix your feet on the ground but he still pushes you towards the emptiness of the desert

“Probably competing bounty hunters, you have a big price on your head, you know?” he responds

“But spending the night in the desert, we will be dead by the morning” you protest. The few lights on the road are getting farther and farther away as you both walk towards some indeterminate point. He walks slowly by your side, actually not paying much attention to you, his hand now lies lazily on his side and so you decide in a rush to run away towards the only thing you deem safe, the road. You hear him sigh before he starts running behind you

“Stop, please” he shouts but you go on. You feel your legs as if they were made of iron, heavy and stiff. You gasp the air in your lungs exiting all at once, once he catches you and raise you over his shoulder. You become a little dizzy with your head upside down grabbing the belt on his jeans for your dear life

“Let me down!” he ignores you and keeps on walking, his hand are strong lock on your thighs and the other in your calf so you cannot kick him “I said let me down!”

“Are you going to run again?” he stops

“No” you sigh

“Great” and he bends down so your feet can touch the ground.

He gave you a bottle of warm water and some energetic cereal bar while he prepares a small camp. He knows his ways in all this, searching for a specific place in the wilderness where you two could be safe. Two tall red rocks shield you from the night and he is now cleaning the ground so he can lay down the sleeping bag.

“I guess you did well in the Boys Scouts” you comment, he’s been silent again

“I’ve never been one” you open your eyes widely; it’s the first time he has answered one of your stupid comments.

“It comes with the Master Degree in Bounty Hunt, huh Clint?” you laugh

“My name is not Clint”

“Alright, so what’s your name?” you cross your arm over your legs waiting for an answer but he doesn’t give you one. He sits opposite you with his eyes on the road far away

“You know we could talk a little, we have a bond now with this near death experience”

“Rest in the sleeping bag, I’m going to stand guard” he cuts you

“I’m not that tired” even in the dark you see his eyes glaring at you, and you obey. The bag is on his right side and you get inside it feeling the hard ground on your back. Your muscles protest feeling all the tension going away and even if you try not to your eyes begin to close begging for a few hours of sleep.

You curl and make a ball out of your body, when you open your eyes is a dark pitch nothingness in front of you and you tremble for a second until the stars and the moon cast enough light to see a few meters away. It’s so cold now, your jeans and basic cotton shirt are not enough and even the fabric of the sleeping bag couldn’t protect you from this. So you turn and watch your captor’s shape huddled down pressed against the stone.

“Aren’t you cold?” you teeth chatter and he doesn’t answer and the worst possible scenario begins to form on your head “Clint tell me you’re not dead for fuck sake! what would I do in this shithole?”

“I’m not” he simply says, you see that he has zip up his leather jacket, his hands protected inside his armpits

“Come here, we need to stay warm” you get your arm out and blindly trying to reach for his body

“I’m okay”

“Come on, I’m freezing, do you really want to bring me in dead?”

“They actually didn’t care, I could bring in you in cold or I could bring in you in warm”

“Well, be kind and bring me warm” you guess he’s thinking about it or actually it’s going to be brave and spend the night like that, but you hear him moving towards you and lie down against you with a huff.

“Don’t be shy, Clint” you say pressing your body against him. He tenses for a second but then agrees to put his arm around you and his warm breath brushes the hair on your neck

“My name is not Clint” he mutters

“Then why don’t you tell me your name and we will be over it, Clint?”

“I don’t tell anybody, especially those who I catch and deliver”

“I bet you’d never lied down spooning with anyone you caught in the middle of the desert, Clint, but here we are” you whisper

“You never shut up, right?”

“I bet your tongue must be tired for all this talking, Clint” he exhales deeply and moves a little. His big body is surprisingly warm and you think that maybe he could have survived the night out in the open, but you’re thankful that he did join you. You relax your body feeling how tense it was once the temperature lowered “I guess it must be a very horrible name and that’s why you don’t want to tell anybody. But I don’t judge, I mean if anything it’s your parents fault and I will never judge a parent, I’m a very shitty mum myself”

“You are a mum?” his voice sound surprised

“Yeah...I was young when I had him” you feel a warm tear rolling on your otherwise froze cheek

“Wh-where is he?” he tentatively asks

“Far away, with a family I thought would take good care of him, but they’re assholes” you cough before actually starting to cry

“You cannot get him back?”

“I was trying to, that’s why I took the money from my old boss. To start a life with him far away from all this shit and the things I did in the past” you feel how he turns abruptly and raises his upper body to look over at you

“You’re not making that up to get yourself out of this, right?” his words are harsh and the moonlight hit his serious face “I take very seriously anything that has to be with children, it’s part of my creed”

“I’m not lying” you mutter he doesn’t move for a bit but then you see him fluster when he’s aware that you’re very close and he’s on top of you.

Then you’re both in silence you press your eyelids shut trying to regain sleep or maybe to control the urge to cry.

He was actually right. The gas station was not far away, he looks at you from the payphone while you devour a doughnut he has paid and a cup of coffee.

“One of my associates is going to pick us up in a bit” he leaves the duffle bag over one of the gas pump and searches something until he has taken a black plastic clamp “I’m sorry I have to” he takes your hands and brushes his thumb over the marks, you hiss and he looks at you with warm eyes “it would be loose, but don’t do anything stupid” when he ties it, it barely touches your skin “Is it okay?”

“Yes, thanks”

While in the car, with the other man driving, Clint doesn’t say a word and he’s back to the brooding and mysterious bounty hunter. You want to ask him a million questions, know his name, what his creed is or what the collar he hides is and you know that time’s up. You will be delivered to Mr. Horzag and then...you actually don’t know what he’s going to do to you. You have been avoiding those thoughts but now it’s time to face your fate.

His club looks completely different in the daylight. The liquor and the suspicious stains on the velvet couches are visible and the dark paint is chipped, all the frames and lamps dusty, you think that you’ve been lucky the time you’ve worked for him not catching anything bad from touching this sticky place.

“So you are as efficient as they told me” he says with that slow and deep voice of his

Clint nods and softly grabs your forearm bringing you towards the table where the old man smokes.

“Oh, my sweet runaway, it’s a pleasure to have you back” he smiles and you shiver

“Unfortunately I can’t say the same”

“Where’s the money?” he changes his fake smile to a violent expression

“I don’t have it” you shrug

“That’s inconvenient you know that, don’t you?”

“I told you I needed the money, I deserved it for many long hours in this shithole and doing jobs you never actually paid for. I told you I needed it as soon as possible and you ignore me. I just took what I was owed” you replied

“Oh! Yes! To finally play the mummy you actually never wanted to be. How sweet!” he laughs. The two men by his side laugh with him but it sounds faked. Everybody dances at the sound of Mr. Herzog music in this hell; you must always do what he does. “And if you needed the money to get your baby back, where is he? Oh! Maybe you got lost on your way as always, right? And actually expended it on yourself, poor baby is better off without you. Who would want a hoe like you as a mum?”

Again the sound and the air hit you first before you could even process what’s going on. Clint has his two guns out and he has hit Mr. Herzog just in the middle of his forehead, the faster man of the two lies dead with a similar shot and the other, being slower falls down to the ground with his gun on his hand that he hasn’t had the chance to use.

“What?” you shout

“We have to go, is there any other way out? The men at the entry will arrive soon” he says and grabs your arm to rush you when you are still gasping looking at the scene

“Over there” you point to the bathrooms

There was a small door, with a warning claiming that behind it there was just the electric panel but it was actually a door out to run away in case of police raids. You grab Clint‘shand and run through the dark corridor knowing your way in the dark

“We will arrive few streets away” you announce

You try to catch your breath once you get out but he doesn’t give you that time to rest and grabs you and keeps on running gathering insults and screams while you bump into people. He doesn’t stop until you’re on a parking lot on some supermarket; he walks casually until he stops beside the door of a car.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting us a transport. Go to the other door” he covers himself with his body, and you hear the clic when the doors unlock.

A few miles after, you have already caught your breath but still your body is shaking

“Why did you do it?” you mumble. Clint looks at the road, his face is dirty and his jacket dusty, he looks at you before he answers, his eyes glow and you can see tears forming at the corner of his eyes. “A child should be with their parents. They should be loved and taking care of” he says and nods “Where’s your son?”

The neighborhood is dead silent; you drive slowly watching the white fences, white painted houses.

“That’s the one” you say

“Let’s go” he stops the car in the middle of the road and you follow Clint not knowing exactly what is he planning to do.

“We should wait until the morning and ask for him”

“They tried to blackmail you into paying them for getting your son back, what do you think they’re going to do?” he mutters and you sigh knowing it’s true. They didn’t even let you see him after hours of driving if you didn’t gave them something.

He works his magic hands again as he did with the car and opens the door without a sound. He turns his head to both sides until he finds the small panel of the alarm. “Go to his room, I will work the alarm. Don’t make a sound”

You climb the stairs and they creak a little but you’re swift and enter the small room where you know he will be on his crib. You have to cover your mouth to prevent you from crying.

He has a white shirt too big for him and he is cuddling the soft frog plushie you bought him last time you visited him.

“Sh, sh, I’m here, ranita” (little frog) you take him with the small white blanket he has over him, and press his small body to your chest. He protest a little and holds tight his soft toy but doesn’t make another sound or wakes up. So with all the care in the world you climb down and Clint is at the door and waves his hand to rush you.

“Probably the alarm will go off in a few minutes. C’mon”

You could sleep, your body and mind begs you for it, but you can’t take your eyes off of your precious baby. His small lips parted in a relaxed slumber, in a way he knows his at home, his with you and that makes your heart beat faster and bring tears to your eyes. “Thank you” you say, he drives slowly, the light from the cars illuminates his smiling face “It’s a beautiful baby”

“Greg, that’s his name, told you I will not judge if you have a horrible name. I should have thought about other but I wanted to please my boyfriend at the time, just for him to run away...fucker”

“It’s Din” he says

“Din?” you say back and repeat it a few times loving the way it sounds on your lips “It’s beautiful”

“Thank you”

All the waitresses stop to smile and say a few sweet words to your son and you feel proud, in this horrible and ungrateful life you made something so pure and beautiful, he smiles at them once he’s awake and one of them even makes the effort of pressing some fruits to make something for him to eat. Din has his arms crossed over the table eating his breakfast but keeps his eyes on you. You see him observing you and the baby from the corner of your eye and when you get him he blushes and keeps on eating.

“Say hi to Din, ranita. He saved us” you grab his chubby hand and waves it to Din that smiles back at him. Greg opens his toothless mouth at him and laughs “Oh you like him! Enough to lend him your froggy, huh?” you ask the baby and he smiles while eating another spoon of his purée “Take the frog and look inside” you motion to the soft toy that is over the table. Greg actually pouts when he takes it but doesn’t cry.

The toy has a small white Velcro slot where normally there would be a small battery to make sounds but inside there’s a plastic bag with a thick bundle of bills.

“Your payment. I guess it’s only fair. I went to those fuckers’s house to get my baby but they asked for more money. So I looked for a job, a proper one, to pay the rest and well, the rest of what I’ve stolen couldn’t be in a bank and what’s a better place for hiding than a place in plain sight, huh?

“I cannot accept it” he says pressing the Velcro “You have to provide for your baby” he shakes his head and puts the frog back to its place much to Greg content.

“And what would you do? You cannot possible be back to bounty hunting”

“I can move to other place, start somewhere new. Nobody really knows me” he shrugs

“We do, I do” you whisper and then there’s silence between you two, and it feels the cafeteria is silent, there’s nobody around except for you and the invisible string that ties you together, a string full of dreams and longing for a home, for love and acceptance, to truly belong somewhere. “If you starting a new, and I too...I...well”

“That’s no life for a baby...” his voice shakes and he’s back to fix his eyes on his plate

“A baby deserves to be love and taking care of, you said it. And Din, you’re the first person that has cared for us”

“I guess I could protect you until you’re both safe and settle” he says softly like he’s trying to convince himself “For a bit...”

You smile and nod tears gathering on your eyes. It’s the happiest you’ve been since forever “For a bit” you agree.

(As you saw I have zero imagination for names and called baby Grogu, Baby Greg and Mr Harzog is the name of the actor for The Client in The Mandalorian 🤦)

[lorewhoresam]

They Didn’t Even Have To Plot

AO3

Relationship: Castiel/Dean Winchester

Tags: Fluff

Summary: Castiel becomes human after losing his grace on a hunt. Charlie comes to visit, and gets Sam to make Dean talk about his feelings. It was easier than either of them expected.

Something I wrote for a fic exchange a while back, hope ya like it guys

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

Castiel should have known better.

He should have known a witch powerful enough to capture the Winchesters wasn’t actually interested in money. He should have known it was a trap.

No one that smart ever wanted money.

She knew he was an angel. She knew to pray when they asked him for the ransom.

When he arrived at the place the witch had ordered him to drop off the money, a flash of bright, white light blurred his vision before it went black.

Castiel struggled against the bindings on his wrists, ankles and neck, but found himself stuck, the cold metal digging into his skin. He can’t break free using his grace, so they must have been warded against angels.

“Witch! Let me go, I have your money!”

“My dear Castiel, did you really think I wanted money? I want your power. Your grace.”

She said it like it was the most normal thing in the world, and Castiel couldn’t help but be taken aback by it.

“Where’s Dean?” he hissed, glaring at her.

A smug smile spread across the witch’s face.

“Sounds like I got the right bait. So what’s going to happen now, is you’re going to give me your grace, or I will rip your little pets apart, piece by piece.”

Castiel knew what he had to do. It's not like he had a choice, Dean and Sam would both die if he didn’t do this. Besides, it’s not like he hadn’t been human before, and it hadn’t been that disastrous, even without any guidance. At least this time he would have a home.

“Get these off me. And give me my angel blade back.”

“So you’ll do it.”

“Of course.”

A few hours later, he was back at the bunker, Dean and Sam with him, alive and well, but without his grace, and without his angel blade.

“Cas, you okay? You seem a little out of it.”

Dean sat down next to Cas on the couch and looked at him, obviously concerned.

“Yes Dean, I’m fine, don’t worry,” Cas said, looking down to avoid Dean’s gaze. “Bullshit, but I’ll take it for now.”

Castiel knew he should have told him that he lost his grace, but he just couldn’t. He didn’t want to be a burden, and he knew Dean would blame himself, even though Castiel made that choice himself.

He’s exhausted, and although he has been human before, he’s still not used to it. falling asleep is easier than he remembered, but maybe that’s just because he has a home now.

Waking up is harder than it was before. Castiel fades in and out of consciousness, and he can’t force himself to stay awake for more than a few seconds at a time. Suddenly he feels a hand on his cheek, rough and calloused, but warm. He hears someone murmur words in his ear, but he can’t understand them, and he’s abruptly aware that he’s being held, and he panics for a moment, before the steady rise and fall of his chest let’s him know that whoever it is isn’t restraining him. He turns his head against the chest and drifts back off to sleep.

When Castiel wakes up, he feels the body under him shift.

“Hey sunshine, good nap?”

Castiel grumbled in answer and sat upright, stretching his body.

“Now, you wanna tell me what the hell is going on with you?”

“I lost my grace.”

Dean’s eyes widened in concern, and he gently put a hand on Cas’ shoulder.

“What happened?”

And he told him. And he could see the guilt form itself in his eyes.

“Dean, it’s not your fault. I made that choice. I was the one who did not realise there was something wrong.”

“I know Cas. I just– Fuck!”

Dean punched the side of the couch and jerked Cas towards him, holding him close.

“If you need anything, you can come to me. You know that right?” Dean said, without letting Cas go.

Instead of answering Castiel just pressed himself closer to Dean’s chest and let himself cry. He had considered becoming human before, but he wanted to choose that fate, and do it on his own terms, and now that choice has been taken away, and he didn’t know what to do. He was lost.

----------------- Castiel hid in his bedroom the few days after the incident, only coming out to go to the bathroom or to eat. It was very frustrating, hunger and exhaustion, and it didn’t help that he was constantly fearing the moment the Winchesters would decide that he was never going to be useful again, and kick him out.

His thoughts were interrupted at once by a loud knock on the door.

“Cas, can I come in?”

Castiel got up from his bed to open the door for Dean.

“Hello Dean.”

They both sat down on the bed, and Castiel looked at him expectantly.

“Alright, so Charlie’s here, and we’re going shopping, because you need clothes.”

“Dean, I have clothes.”

Dean rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, mine. Not that I mind, but it would be nice for you to have your own. And you need to get out of here for a while. See some actual light.”

Castiel sighed, and agreed reluctantly, if that is what it takes for him to stay even a few days longer, he’d do it.

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

It was actually quite nice, browsing through clothing racks, chatting about nothing in particular with people he loved. After a few hours, they decided to go to a diner— mainly because Dean wouldn’t stop whining about how hungry he was.

“So how are you doing Cas?” Charlie looked at him worried.

“I’m fine.”

“Cas,” Dean said sharply.

Cas sighed and rolled his eyes.

“I’m fine, I just… I don’t want to be a burden.”

Dean looked at him in disbelief before hugging him.

“You’ll never be a burden,” he whispered, and pressed a soft kiss to his temple before releasing him.

“You two are so disgustingly cute together,” Charlie said while making fake gag sounds.

Dean and Castiel both flushed and stumbled over their words trying to clarify that they were not, in fact, together. Charlie just raised her eyebrows and smiled knowingly.

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

“So, Sam, what’s going on between those two?”

Charlie sits down on top of the map table where Sam is reading a lore book.

“You know perfectly well what’s going on Charlie. They may be too stupid to see it but you definitely aren’t.”

She rolls her eyes and claps his book close.

“We should do something about it.”

“What do you mean?”

Sam would complain that he was reading that, but this was definitely more interesting.

“Oh you know perfectly well what I mean Sam,” Charlie mocked him, a mischievous grin appearing on her face.

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

“Cas.”

“Yes Dean?”

Dean looked at him worried.

“Come tell me if you need anything at all. You’re not a burden.”

“Dean, I know that without my powers I am useless to you. You don’t need to pretend I’m not for my comfort.”

“Fuck Cas! It’s not about whether you’re useful to us or not, you’re family! We love you!”

Castiel stood there, paralised, when he felt a tear roll down his cheek, and suddenly he was sobbing uncontrollably. He felt himself be enveloped in warm arms and pressed against his chest, but it was as if it was happening to someone else, like he was just a spectator to the scene. He only realised his breathing had sped up when he heard Dean tell him to stay calm and take deep breaths.

“Hey buddy, I’m here, you’re okay, you’re gonna be okay.”

Dean rubbed soothing circles on Cas’ back until he had calmed down.

“I think I just had a panic attack,” Cas said matter-of-factly. “Thank you Dean.”

“Do you want to go get some air?”

Dean stood up and reached a hand out to Castiel.

“Yes, that would be nice.”

He took the hand and stood up as well. To his surprise, Dean didn’t let it go and they walked handed-in-hand into the cool autumn air.

“Maybe we should plant a garden here. What do you think Cas?”

“That would be nice.” Does he know he’s still holding my hand?

“We could put a bench over there.” Does he mind that I’m still holding his hand?

“Hmm.” Does he mind?

“Are you okay, Cas? You look a little pale.” Am I making him uncomfortable?

“I’m fine, Dean.”

Dean gave his hand a light squeeze.

“You’ll tell me if you’re not, right?”

Cas gave him a short nod in response.

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

Sam leaned against the door frame of Dean’s room.

“Hey Dean, how’s it going with Cas?”

“He’s not doing so well, but better than a few days ago.”

“At least he’s getting better. And how are you holding up?”

“Me? You know me Sammy, I’m always fine.”

“Yeah, but this stuff with Cas, it’s got to be taking its toll on you too.”

“I mean yeah, but not any more than on you.”

“Dean. The way I feel about Cas is very different from the way you feel about him and we both know it.”

Dean reddened at his ears and stared at the ground.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he murmured, fiddling with the hem of his shirt.

Sam raised an eyebrow and looked at his brother expectantly.

“Yeah, okay, you’re right. But he’ll never feel the same way, so it’s no use admitting it.”

“Dude. You were holding hands an hour ago. And yes, me and Charlie both saw that.”

“Look, I don’t– I don’t think he gets the meaning of that. It’s probably normal for angels!”

“Dude, he literally has every single piece of media Metatron ever consumed in his head, I’m pretty sure he knows what it means. Just please, talk to him.”

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

A few days later Castiel is obviously less miserable than he was before, and he’s gotten used to being human again.

“Hey Cas, do you want to watch a movie?” Dean yelled from the kitchen, where he was making popcorn.

Cas had agreed, naturally, and so it happened they were on the couch together, a bowl of popcorn and a healthy amount of distance between them, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly playing on the television.

They were about twenty minutes in when Castiel began to complain.

“Dean you’ve made me watch this movie five times already, how are you not sick of it yet?”

“Dude, you can’t get sick of Clint Eastwood, it’s just not possible.”

Castiel rolled his eyes and grabbed another handful of popcorn. Dean cleared his throat and turned around to face him.

“Uh Cas?”

“Yes Dean?”

“I uh– Sam said– I need to tell you something.”

Cas turned off the tv and turned to him, worried.

“Is something wrong?”

“Uh, no, not– not really. I uh, I just need to get this off my chest.”

Castiel nodded for Dean to continue.

“I uh, I think I–” Dean shook his head firmly. “No, I know I’m uh, I’m in love with you.”

It stayed silent for a while, the air thick with tension.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“If I still had my grace the lamps would be shattered.”

“Cas!”

Castiel gently cupped his face with one hand.

“I love you Dean.”

He moved forward and pressed a soft kiss to Dean’s lips. A warmth spread throughout his body, and he smiled into the kiss.

“I guess good things do happen,” Dean whispered softly, before leaning forward to kiss him again.

“I guess they do,” Cas said after they pulled apart, and he put his head on Dean’s shoulder, smiling in satisfaction.

[buzzdixonwriter]

Hoo U?

A spirited discussion is raging on Facebook now, the good kind of spirited discussion, an enthusiastic exchange of ideas and ideals, not a snark fest.

The top is a deceptively simple one:  Who are the characters various actors played?

Let me clarify:   It began as a trivia challenge to name actors who have won Oscars for playing the same character.

And there in lays the debate.

How exactly are we defining a character.

This all sounds trivial, and to be frank this part of the discussion is, but it’s gonna get deep by the end.  

Trust me.

So here’s the kickoff:

Marlon Brando won a Best Male Performance Oscar for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather; Robert DeNiro won a Best Male Supporting Performance Oscar for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather II

Heath Ledger won a Best Male Supporting Performance Oscar for playing the Joker in The Dark Knight; Joaquin Phoenix won a Best Male Performance Oscar for playing the Joker in Joker.

(Trivia bonus: Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart received Oscar nominations for playing the same character at different stages of her life in Titanic, and Winslet and Judi Dench were both nominated for playing the same character at different stages in Iris as well; plus Peter O’Toole was nominated twice for playing Henry II in Beckett and The Lion In Winter which technically counts as a sequel…)

The Facebook debate is over whether Ledger and Phoenix were actually playing the same character.

Now in the case of the former, The Godfather II is a continuation of the same story in The Godfather by the same creative team with much of the original cast reprising their roles, the Oscars going to two actors who played the same character at different stages of their life (BTW, where's the love for Oreste Baldini, who played Vito as a young boy?).

The two films were re-edited and combined with The Godfather III to make a nine-hour and 43-minute miniseries The Godfather Trilogy.

It is clear the creators’ intent from the beginning was for audiences to accept Baldini / DeNiro / Brando as the same person at various stages of his life.

The Ledger Joker and the Phoenix Joker cannot possibly be the same character for a wide variety of internal continuity issues separating the two films.  The creators of Joker went out of their way to state their version of the character was not The Dark Knight version.

Unlike The Godfather movies, you can’t link up the various live action Batman / Suicide Squad / Joker stories into a single coherent narrative (especially since you have to drag in the live action Supeman and Wonder Woman movies and TV shows as well).

. . .

Can different actors play their version of the same character in otherwise unlinked productions?

Of course they can.

Stage plays do it all the time.

If you start with the same exact text, then clearly any number of actors can play Hamlet or MacBeth or Willy Loman.

The problems arise when one goes afield of the text.

. . . 

In 1932 Constance Bennett made a movie called What Price Hollywood? that did okay but really didn’t set the world on fire.

In 1937 Janet Gaynor remade that film as A Star Is Born, the story changed to give it a tragic yet uplifting conclusion; her version was a big hit and Gaynor received an Oscar nomination.

In 1954 Judy Garland remade A Star is Born as a musical and that proved a big hit, and Garland received an Oscar nomination.

In 1976 Barbara Streisand took a swing at the material with a country-western version of A Star Is Born and while she got an Oscar nomination, audiences were unreceptive.

In 2018 Lady Gaga remade A Star Is Born and received both an Oscar nomination for her role and an Oscar win for her song.

Question: Are they all playing the same character?  Each played a character that started their film with a different name than the other versions, but the Gaynor / Garland / Streisand / Gaga versions all end with the central character proudly proclaiming they are “Mrs. Norman Maine.”

Same character?

. . .

There’s no argument that William Gillette, Basil Rathbone, and Benedict Cumberbatch all played Sherlock Holmes, even when their productions took certain liberties with the stories.

But Sherlock Holmes is not an idiot, and Michael Caine played Holmes as an idiot in Without A Clue.

Was he playing the same character as Gillette / Rathbone / Cumberbatch?

(Ironically Peter Cook played a very recognizable and wholly credible Holmes in his farcical send up of The Hound Of The Baskervilles with Dudley Moore.)

Did George C. Scott play Holmes in They Might Be Giants?  Almost everybody else in the story thinks he’s a New York banker who’s suffered a nervous breakdown and only thinks he’s Holmes, but Scott believes he is Holmes 100% and throughout the film other people he encounters accept him as Holmes at face values.

He functions as Holmes throughout.

And in the end, the audience is left in a weird place, not really knowing what his fate may be, not absolutely sure if he is a bonkers banker but maybe…somehow…he is Sherlock Holmes…

. . . 

Did John Cassavettes in Tempest and Walter Pidgeon in Forbidden Planet play the same character?  Were either of those roles Shakespeare’s Prospero?

Did Christopher Lee play the same character in Horror Of Dracula and its sequels, in Count Dracula, and in In Search Of Dracula?   (The producers of Count Dracula sure went to great pains to explain their version was a different and more accurate version than the Hammer version of the character, and In Search Of Dracula cast Lee as Vlad Tepes who was the real life historical figure Bram Stoker based his novel on.)

For that matter, is Count Orlok in Nosferatu:  A Symphony Of Terror actually Dracula?  A European court awarding lawsuit damages to Bram Stoker's widow sure thought so.

Along similar lines, was Bela Lugosi playing Dracula in Columbia's Return Of The Vampire? Universal's lawyers sure thought so.

Did Jim Caviezel in Passion Of The Christ, Max von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told, Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, and Michael Rennie in The Day The Earth Stood Still all play the same character?

Did Toshiro Mifune, Clint Eastwood, and Bruce Willis all play the Continental Op?

Did Clint Eastwood play the same character in all three Dollar films?

Did Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, and Will Smith all play the same character?

Did Leonardo DiCaprio play the same character Steve McQueen played in The Great Escape (even if just for one brief scene) or did he play a character who played a character Steve McQueen played in The Great Escape?

Ooh, here's a good one!

Lon Chaney Jr starts Ghost Of Frankenstein playing the same monster Boris Karloff played in the original Frankenstein / Bride Of Frankenstein / Son Of Frankenstein trilogy, but by the end gets Ygor's brain (Bela Lugosi) transplanted into his body and speaks / thinks / acts briefly as Ygor in Frankie’s body.

However, Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman while maintaining continuity with all four previous films cast Lugosi as the monster (because Chaney had to play the Wolfman, duh) without dialog.  Glenn Strange then assumed the role again in continuity with all previous films for House Of Frankenstein, House Of Dracula, and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, occasionally speaking briefly in the role.

Who was Strange playing in his films?  The original Karloff monster or Ygor in Frankie's bod?  Are those two distinct characters?

. . .

All the above is fun trivia to debate, but it links to a much more serious question:  Who are you?

That’s not a trivial matter.  What constitutes out identity?  What makes us who we are?

I lost my father years ago to Alzheimer’s.  As my brother Robert observed, the only member of a family not affected by an Alzheimer’s diagnosis is the person suffering from it themselves.

I would talk to my father on the phone, and he was always pleasant and cheery, but about three years before he died I realized he had no idea who I was, I was just some voice on the other end of the line that mom wanted him to talk to.

My father was by nature and easy going kinda guy, and that certainly made his last few years easier for my mother and brother Rikk to cope with, but one night when I was visiting, trying to get their affairs straightened out so he could enter a nursing home, he got irritated with my mother as she was trying to help him and raised his hand as if to slap hers away.

My father never raised his hand against my mother.  

Ever.

He taught me and my brothers that was something no real man ever did.

He might sound gruff on occasion but he never raised a finger, much less truck our mother.

The fact he did so in the throes of Alzheimer’s indicated that whoever he once was, he wasn’t that person anymore.

We got him into a nursing home and he lasted a little less than a year there, his mind and his memory and his personality deteriorating rapidly.

Who was he at the end?

I didn’t go to his funeral.

What was the point?

The father I knew and loved had departed long before they buried his shell.

My grandmother, on the other hand, remained her cranky, irascible self until a week and a half before she died, finding the wit to crack one last memorable joke before her body began shutting down.

. . .

The question of identity is related to consciousness, and these are referred to as “the hard question” by physicians and physicists and philosophers alike.

What makes us “us”?

How do we know who we are?

What constitutes identity?

There are no easy, pat answers.

We have textbook definitions that dance around the issue of identity and consciousness, providing enough of a foundation for us to recognize what it is we’re discussing, but no one has yet come up with a clear, concise explanation of what either phenomenon is.

It’s like saying “apples are a red fruit.”

Okay, we know what you’re talking about, but we also know that description falls far, far short of what an apple actually is.

That’s why trivial discussion like whether or not Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix are playing the same character is a lot more important than it seems.

(BTW, they aren’t. Phoenix won his Oscar for his version of the Rupert Pupkin character in a violent remake of The King Of Comedy.)

    © Buzz Dixon 

[tjuk]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLINT EASTWOOD! The Bossman & his Ramrod. PIC SPAM ALERT! 😄📷

WARNING: Long ass post, but it’s full of lovely pictures!

The total legend that is Clint Eastwood turned 90 today... holy crap 90!!!! I grew up watching his movies & Rawhide thanks to my Nana, in fact, I would never have discovered Eric Fleming had she not been such a fangirl for Clint. 

Yeah, I can see why Nana didn’t mind my constant nagging to watch my favourite Trail boss, she had her eye on a certain Ramrod...😜

Rawhide is famously where Clint got his big break, and not just the luck of the draw, this dude is cunning. The ambitious Clint’s career was still young and meaty roles weren’t exactly coming his way. So hearing via a friend that they were casting at CBS, rather than leave it all to fate, he started hanging around trying to get a look in, ending up with an audition, and not exactly following the script but performing it in his own style. Luckily, while casting may not have been enthused someone higher up was and realised it would compliment the already cast, known to be intense lead actor Eric Fleming. I’m summarising a bit, but hey, they clearly nailed it because the evidence is on screen, these guys worked so well together, their chemistry undeniable from the start.

John Hart - a many times guest star on Rawhide - was interviewed for a 2002 documentary ‘Clint Eastwood: Star Power’ about his time on the show. Here’s what he had to say about Clint Eastwood and Eric Fleming’s working relationship. “They were just starting it when I started working on Rawhide. And they [Eric & Clint] used to break each other up, and they kept laughing and the director would get so god damn mad, and finally it got all out of hand. I don’t know what they did to stop it, but they’d start laughing between the two of them.”

Whenever Eric was asked who his friends were off-screen, Clint would get a mention, Eric describing them as ‘damn good friends’. There was one early incident where the pair almost came to blows, according to Fleming, "We were on location and I was filming a scene on a hot day. I had to carry Martha Hyer up a hill and then engage in some dialogue with Clint. "Well, Martha is a lovely girl, but she can get a bit heavy when you're carrying her up a hill. I had to do the scene five times because Clint blew his lines. When it happened again, I lost my cool: 'What the hell is going on here?' I demanded, and Clint answered me back in kind. I would have hit him right there if I hadn't been so bushed from carrying Martha. I said we'd settle it back at the hotel....That night Clint and I met to have it out. But we were both so struck by the ridiculousness of the situation that we had to laugh. We never had a bad word between us afterward."

Indeed the pair had a lot in common, especially a love of fishing!

Oh and pretty ladies. 

And we all know about star egos, especially when it comes to who gets the ‘lead’ status and all the shoulder barging and competitiveness of the acting profession. Eric and Clint didn’t seem to see it that way, at least publicly. As Eastwood said: “When I hear about the rivalry, tension and animosity that are standard among actors, actresses and executives turning out some of the television series around Hollywood, I just draw a deep breathe and say, “Thank God for Eric Fleming.”

“In my opinion, this Fleming is about the greatest Joe around. He and I have been working together on Rawhide for seven seasons, and if the viewing public continues to enjoy the show, we might go on for seven more."

Sadly of course, season 7 was the end of the Rawhide trail for Fleming. Out of contract, a reshuffle of management meant he was pushed aside, and while Clint went off to make the second of the Dollars movies in Europe, Eric slipped away to live his long held dream of Hawaii before taking the role that lead him to Peru. It’s doubtful these two men ever had a chance to reconnect. Clint was back working long days on Rawhide and then off to shoot ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’, returning home to the sad news of Eric’s death in late 1966. Maybe it’s idealistic but you’d like to think that if Eric had lived, he’d have been happy for his friend’s well earned success. And wherever the roads of their lives may have lead them, Eric’s to a family filled bliss on the beaches of Hawaii perhaps, and Clint’s undoubtably to the heady heights of mega stardom, they’d have remained friends. 

So here’s to you Clint Eastwood, you always put the story at the heart of your movies and it’s why all these long decades later you’re still kicking ass and showing them how it’s done, even at the ripe old age of 90! 

Happy Birthday Clint! 🎂🥳

📷MORE DELICIOUS PIC SPAM! 📷

[dailykatrina]

PART I

The primary purpose of this blog was to publish the picture of my friend Elīna wearing a red beret. First time we interacted was at our coursmates movie night at his place far away in 2010. We didn’t like each other first. I don’t remember how exactly we became friends (as I don’t remember what was the movie we watched that night. Was it a film by Coen brothers? Or something from Clint Eastwood?). Nevertheless, something more important became evident soon after - we were about to embark on a journey of imagination together and enhance the everyday in such ways that no object would be left as ordinary. 

PART II

This blog became abandoned. It is true. I moved to France in 2016 and it took me about 3 years to fully settle. I’ve traveled a lot during this time as well. There was a lot happening and a lot of effort was put into learning new language, taking care of seemingly never-ending bureaucratic procedures and money earning activities. I didn’t post much during that time and there’s another reason for that. I’ve got a 35mm vintage Canon camera and it didn’t feel right to mix those well framed shots with random everydayness from my phone camera on the same platform. 

I’ve posted some photo series on flickr. There’s only two (or three) that I personally find succesfull and feel the importance of. 

PART III

I went to a film and photo developement workshop as a present for my 29th birthday. It’s been a dream coming true. I knew that I want to experiment with developement and to be more in charge of how sensitive my photography is. However, I continued to develop at an external film lab. My Paris apartment was too small to welcome a darkroom.

PART IV

I got my first real* camera when I was 16 or 17. It was a digital Canon EOS 400. I can still summon the feelings of pride about the marketing speech I gave to my father (in order for him to sponsor this lavish desire). I loved taking black and white and low iso pictures with that camera and a few years later I even expanded my lens collection. However, I loved shooting with the basic 18-55mm lens the most. As much as I almost always shoot on Program with my vintage Canon still today. 

I had a blog on Blogspot. It was called '1000 airplanes on the roof'. That blog was important. I erased it. I even erased the archive of the images I had on my computer from that time. But it was important and there are images I can still recall in my memory that don’t exist in any other realm anymore. JV was following that blog. He asked me to have one of the pictures in full size and I shared it with him. It’s the only picture left from that blog that has a materiality today. 

*I had a point and shoot sony pocket camera before, but my mother lost it a year after I got it. 

PART V

I’ve started using instagram when I moved to France as a way to communicate with my friends. A place for everyday randomness and stunning French landscapes. I love taking pictures with my phone. I am not a farmer of a photography who willfully cultivates and constructs his images. I am a hunter. Or rather, outside of these binaries, I'm just perceptive and sensitive towards objects/elements existing outside of me and them falling into certain ‘images’ that pierce me. I feel like things are cinematographic. And I love to archive things. You know by now that I can be manic and a compulsive eraser, having an inner fight between a desire to share and a desire to keep to myself. Not that there ever was an ambition - even after years of (intermittently occasional but ever-present) shooting, I still considered painting as my primary artistic interest. Painting would be the one I would give my time to. Not photography. 

PART VI 

I am not a painter today. I even developed a fear of a brush. It makes me feel anxious. My last painting teacher criticized my way of being too detail oriented (lack of confidence) and I was vulnerable to that. It made me cry. I am hoping to come back to it one day but for now I need more time for the expression to ripen. 

Things happened photography wise, things that I've already mentioned and some other things that I haven't. I got a Ricoh pocket camera (my digital Canon died of being unused a long time ago already). I realized that I lack literacy, awareness and vocabulary about my own pictorial expressions. I realized that most of my photography is not well served by the small digital format (thanks JV!). I realized that I don’t want my pictures (don’t mind about the phone pictures but not the 135 and MF) to be a scroll through in the middle of the instagram garbage and adds (thanks SF!). I realized that I want the images I capture to be tangible (Thanks to both JV and SF). 

PART VII

It took time to understand what kind of enlarger woud fit my needs best. I didn’t think I’ll get there on my own. But like with everything - persistence and diligence are likely to take you anywhere you want to get to. 

The everyday is important and I am still trying to capture it. Elīna is not here with me but our friendship is a shared book where we both keep writing our experiences. It might not have an immediate visuality. But we'll talk about it and make it alive once we're together. Life continues to be beautiful and ugly and final in both of these expressions as always. I snap this and that and post it here and there. The medium for that is inconstant. 

Sometimes I get into the habit of sharing 

and sometimes 

I get out of it. 

But this place, 

for now 

it’s a place 

of memories 

of an era. 

[dweemeister]

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Italian director Sergio Leone made a name for himself worldwide with the Dollars trilogy of Westerns starring Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name. These movies, along with Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), had more stylized violence than the typical Hollywood Western, and audiences flocked to see what some waved off as pulp novelties. During this period, an idea had been reverberating in Leone’s mind; no longer could he ignore his imagination’s wills. Leone’s success led him to spend ten years working on this passion project, even declining an offer to direct The Godfather (1972). Based on The Hoods by Harry Grey, Once Upon a Time in America is a gangster epic filled with betrayal, crime, graphic violence, and regret. The film alternates between three time periods: the late 1910s/early ‘20s, the final three years of Prohibition from 1930-1933, and 1968. It is Leone’s most ambitious project after a thirteen-year absence from filmmaking, and his last.

In New York City’s Lower East Side, we follow a handful of young Jewish boys who engage in petty thievery, grow to complete contracts for organized crime, and later make their fortunes bootlegging during Prohibition. The film centers on David “Noodles” Aaronson (Robert De Niro as adult Noodles; Scott Tiler as a child). He is first seen in a Chinese opium den in 1933 after seeing three of his friends’ corpses – burnt beyond recognition – whisked away from a crime scene. A non-diegetic telephone rings during this wordless montage – a blaring, ceaseless ringing serving as an aural pang of guilt. That guilt will be gradually explained as the film progresses. Soon after this opium-induced retreat, Noodles will depart New York City for Buffalo. He will return decades later, his hair and soul fading, after receiving a suspicious invitation. Once Upon a Time in America’s first half concentrates on Noodles’ childhood, alternating with scenes from his 1968 return. The film’s second half intercuts between Prohibition and 1968.

Noodles’ boyhood friends are the protagonist’s de facto family. They include Patrick “Patsy” Goldberg (James Hayden as adult Patsy; Brian Bloom as a child), Philip “Cockeye” Stein (William Forsythe as an adult Cockeye; Adrian Curran as a child), Dominic (Noah Moazezi), and Maximillian “Max” Bercovicz (an excellent and up-and-coming James Woods as adult Max; Rusty Jacobs as a child). Fat Moe (Larry Rapp as an adult Moe; Mike Monetti as a child) is not part of the gang, but is nevertheless a friend who knows their secrets. The film also features Noodles’ young love interest, Deborah (Elizabeth McGovern as adult Deborah; a debuting Jennifer Connelly as a child) and friend/underage prostitute Peggy (Amy Ryder as adult Peggy; Julie Cohen as a child). Also appearing in the film are Joe Pesci (whose unclear role in the film is heavily downplayed in the European cut), Burt Young, Tuesday Weld, Treat Williams, and Danny Aiello. Louise Fletcher's cameo appears only in the most recent restoration.

Before continuing with this review, I want to note that there are multiple versions of Once Upon a Time in America available to viewers. Leone’s film debuted at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival with a runtime of 229 minutes (the “European cut”). For the American general release one week later, the film’s distributor (the Ladd Company, via Warner Bros.) cut the film to 139 minutes without Leone’s permission or input. The American theatrical cut – which was released on VHS in the 1980s and ‘90s and sometimes appears on television – rearranges scenes to play in a strictly chronological structure and removes essential plot details, essentially butchering Leone’s directorial intent. A 2014 Blu-ray release of Once Upon a Time in America includes additional footage bringing the runtime to 250 minutes, but the additional footage – due to the degradation of the original negative – appears worse for wear. This review is based on the European cut, which is the recommended print for all those seeing this film for the first time.

With a screenplay by Leone, Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, and Franco Ferrini, Once Upon a Time in America is told through the lens of an unreliable narrator in Noodles. How one views the film changes radically depending on which period should be considered the “present”. If the viewer interprets Once Upon a Time in America as using the 1968 scenes as its anchor, the film is an old man’s reverie – where a lifetime of guilt is revisited and ghosts are confronted. In this interpretation, are Noodles’ memories of his childhood and young adulthood sanitized to spare him further pain? How does he square with all the pain he has been responsible for? Or perhaps one might view Once Upon a Time in America using 1933, as Noodles retreats to the opium den, as the anchor. Here, the 1968 scenes become an opium dream or a nightmare, a painful future that may have been. If indeed this is an opium-induced dream (which would make the 1968 scenes nothing but a hallucination), does that make the childhood scenes even less genuine than in the former interpretation? That Leone and his writers never force the viewer down either avenue speaks to its thoughtful screenplay.

No matter how one reads this film, it requires complete attention. Characters age over fifty years, friendships are formed and destroyed, and innocence is forever lost. Whether it is viewed as an old man occupied by his violent past or a young gangster attempting to smoke away his pain, Once Upon a Time is awash in regret. As much as viewers might sympathize with Noodles, Leone’s film portrays Noodles’ violence as the result of terrible choices influenced by his friends. Granted, there is one occasion where he kills in self-defense. But even that killing is laced with rage and revenge. Faced with the choice between his friends and the money involved with their operations and being with Deborah, Noodles will attempt to have both. Deborah’s disapproval of the gang’s behavior – her opposition becomes more tacit as she ages – assures that Noodles retain some semblance of a conscience as Max’s arrogance permeates through all their friends. Neither fully committing to the appeals from Deborah or his friends, Noodles will lose both.

In the film, smoke or steam is usually present just before or during moments tinged of bittersweet memory. Whether emanating as puffs from an opium pipe, the steam billowing from New York City’s manholes on a frigid day, or discharges from a passenger train, it is a demarcation of an event that will irrevocably affect Noodles’ life. Potentially, due to the film’s openness to interpretation, smoke or steam may also herald moments where Noodles’ memories are most suspect – through conscious reframing of his story or opium-influenced phantasms. Either way, certain narrative threads are left incomplete, raising questions over whether those dangling characters and subplots were Leone’s original intention. Perhaps Leone here is acknowledging the voids in human memory – people and things half-forgotten. Unlike its genre counterparts, Once Upon a Time in America leaves little space for comic relief. Any levity in the film is snuffed out almost immediately due to monstrous lust, performative masculinity, or Noodles’ weariness. The elderly Noodles is stone-faced, wrapped into a world frozen in time the moment he boarded that train to Buffalo. His pain is omnipresent in Once Upon a Time in America. Even in the earliest scenes of his childhood, the years of rumination can be felt in the film’s deliberate pace. Robert De Niro and Scott Tiler, respectively, embody the older Noodles’ sorrow and the younger Noodles’ conflicted feelings.

Like American Western films, the gangster genre is rife with mythologizing and, at times, a glorification of their protagonists’ violent lives. Where Westerns over the last half-century have deconstructed their role in the American mythos, the gangster film – probably because gangster films were never as ubiquitous as Westerns at their respective pinnacles of popularity – has not done so nearly as much introspection. Before Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) and especially The Irishman (2019), Once Upon a Time in America stood mostly alone among gangster films as a rueful examination of its protagonist’s violent lifestyle. The film consistently undermines its characters’ celebrations and successes with the consequences of their prior actions. Those consequences weigh on Noodles still.

But Leone is not entirely successful in this regard. Once Upon a Time in America has two overlong rape scenes – both of which turned my stomach the longer they went on – following a fruitful robbery (this one follows an unsettling submissive fantasy by its victim) and a glamorous date, respectively. The two rapes are committed by Noodles; both scenes serve to highlight his descent into depravity rather than express a minimal concern for the victim. Once Upon a Time in America, already uninterested in developing its female characters beyond sex objects, frames Noodles as a husk of a man because of the murders and robberies he has committed, not his treatment of women. Just because the film has adopted Noodles’ viewpoint – in his childhood and young adulthood, he cannot differentiate between objectification and love – does not mean Leone and his screenwriters can wave away his misogyny as secondary to his violent tendencies. His misogyny and criminality are distinguishable, but both were learned from the same people and environment. This dynamic persists even from the first moment that Jennifer Connelly appears as the young Deborah. There, Deborah sexually teases the young Noodles in a way that neither reflects her personality as a child or as an adult. Is that the result of the opium clouding Noodles’ memory or is it Noodles’ obsession with Deborah?

Once Upon a Time in America is beautifully shot by Tonino Delli Colli (1966’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1997’s Life Is Beautiful) and edited by Nino Baragli (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West). Like a photograph that has faded somewhat but still captures the likeness and character of its subjects, the brown environments and warmly-lit interiors capture the spirit of these neighborhoods of New York City’s Lowest East Side. Life is hardscrabble here, with those born into the prevalent poverty rarely escaping from it. Their Jewishness, verbally and visually, is strangely downplayed by Leone. The film’s long takes – several last over thirty seconds – without any cuts from Baragli allow the viewer to reflect on its changing characters, internalizing the film’s scope and depth of Noodles’ introspection. For the 1968 scenes, the browns are mostly replaced by overcast grays in exterior and interiors. The colors, no longer as warm or as diverse, help the film navigate its temporal and tonal transitions.

Ennio Morricone’s powerful score does even more to strengthen the film’s emotional power. The recently-passed composer, best known for his work on Leone’s Dollars trilogy, was a classically-raised/taught, jazz-loving experimenter whose sound could be bold and brash. Upending expectations for what the Western could sound like with anachronistic electronic elements and guitar, Morricone suspends any anachronisms for his Once Upon a Time in America score. The viewer will hear an odd pan flute (not Morricone’s decision) and diegetic/non-diegetic jazz music, but the defining aspect of the score is its romantic minimalism. One does not associate minimalism with grand emotions, but the score’s romantic minimalism – encapsulated by “Deborah’s Theme” – does not preclude the pathos it evokes. The rests in the lushly-orchestrated “Deborah’s Theme” (according to Morricone himself, despite the cue’s name, it can also be interpreted as the film’s main theme) reflect Noodles’ silent longing and remorse. Even at mezzo piano with no dialogue or sound effects present, Morricone’s cues pierce the soul. As longtime collaborators, Leone respected Morricone’s talents, allowing his friend and colleague’s music to be the star for long stretches. Leone allows Morricone to envelop the viewer in its textural splendor. The orchestral renditions of “Amapola” and The Beatles’ “Yesterday” are effective in placement and arrangement. Whether it is his theme for childhood and poverty, for the film at large, or for Deborah, Morricone’s score to Once Upon a Time in America is an essential part of his film scoring career – a career that spans so many titles, that most of it has not been heard outside of his native Italy.

Before and when making this film, Leone intended to direct two films running around 180 minutes each. Convinced by his producers to whittle Once Upon a Time in America to the 269-minute version that should be sought for a first viewing, Leone was horrified to hear that the Ladd Company – frightened by the runtime and (justifiably) the rape scenes – decided to eviscerate his film. When word eventually (and inevitably) reached Leone’s North American fans that they would not be receiving a version of Once Upon a Time in America that respected Leone’s authorial voice, the film bombed at the box office and was savaged by most anyone who saw it. To some critics including the Chicago Tribune’s Gene Siskel, Once Upon a Time in America’s American theatrical version was the worst film of 1984; in an about face for those same critics, the European cut was the best film of 1984. Eighteen minutes of footage for Once Upon a Time in America have still not seen the light of day due to continuing legal entanglements surrounding them. Leone’s ardent admirers remain hopeful for their eventual inclusion on a future print.

As he challenged the tropes of American Westerns, so too did Leone subvert what might be expected from a gangster film. Or, perhaps with a cynical grin, Leone is challenging the essence and veracity of cinematic narrative. Once Upon a Time in America is an underappreciated, imperfect movie whose reputation continues to grow the further removed it is from its botched release. America’s traditions of tall tales and melting pot storytelling make villains and bystanders of the unsavory characters contained within. Haunted by a past that cannot be changed, Noodles attempts to reclaim his life’s story from those who have written it. As the viewer, we project our anxieties and insecurities onto images spliced to make narrative sense.  Authorship disputes and the struggle between legend and fact permeate cinema. Seldom do they converge as movingly as they do here.

My rating: 9.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[addictedtostorytelling]

This is, very very long. Take all the time you want with this.

Specific question: would this exchange take place?

Gil: Don’t get lost to ghosts of the past.

Person: Those ghosts still haunt me.

Gil: You have to learn to let go.

Person: Gil, you know that the hardest thing for me to do is letting go...

Gil: But you have to try.

Person: I’m trying, Gil, I’m trying...

Gil: Try harder.  I have been helping you with this even back in San Francisco, so if you ever need an ear, a shoulder. I have been those all this time. And I promise you, I will never stop.  You will always have me.

CONTEXT:

How person is displaying upset: sitting in break room, food on one side, case file on the other, writing hand resting on the file with pen slack between thumb and forefinger, other fist is pressed against mouth supported by elbow on table. Person is lost in thoughts, painful memories. Person unconsciously sheds a tear.

Relation to Gil: known each other since ‘frisco. Very close friends. The very very cliche “they’re both in love with each other but they don’t know it (I’m sorry)” Sara doesn’t exist, amongst more canon divergence. Gil knows what person is thinking about. Has comforted them for this many times before.

Person is just as closed off as Gil, which is why person is physically suppressing self, and actually completely unaware of tear. When Gil approaches person about it, person flinches in shock (I mean, if you can’t feel your own tear, you will be startled by more stimulation), quickly recovers and practically scrubs tear away and pretends to be oblivious as to why he is saying person’s name with concern.

He asks, “What’s the matter?”

Person says, “Nothing,” with a perfect mask on.

But Gil sits down and says “Don’t get lost to ghosts of the past.” Person would have been able to hide emotions if it had been anybody else, as good as they were at their jobs. It’s just that Grissom knows that person THAT well.

hey, @coping-via-clint-eastwood!

my tl;dr answer here is “it kind of depends on how different the grissom in your au is from the grissom in canon.”

my longer answer is this:

in au stories where significant details of a character’s life and personal history change, characterization becomes a bit tricky.

characters, like real people, tend to develop into who they are based on both inborn tendencies and formative experiences—i.e., both nature and nurture.

to my mind, the inborn tendencies of a character are the ones that stay the same no matter what fictional universe they’re appearing in or what their life story is there; they’re essentially part of the character’s dna and what makes them recognizable as who they are.

an example of an inborn tendency would be grissom’s high intelligence, which is just so central to who he is that he wouldn’t be himself without it. it's something he came into the world with and something which (presumably) would be the same in every story he features in, even if his life’s details were to be altered from what they are in canon.

(even in an au where he had never been formally educated or hadn’t attained the high degree of education that he has in canon, one would still expect him to just be naturally smart, even if his smarts were expressed outside of the context of academia.)

inborn tendencies typically remain the same across fictional universes.

but not so with traits developed in response to formative experiences.

those are the parts of a character that change based on what story is being told.

to go back to our grissom example, in canon, during the early seasons of the show, grissom has, by his own admission, a trait of “having a shell around his heart”---meaning that, with few exceptions, he closes himself off from others and doesn’t typically seek out any kind of social intimacy. 

while we don’t know the exact formative experience(s) which caused him to develop in this way, we can likely attribute it at least in part to him having been rejected by people in the past on account of him being “different” and starting to be more aloof as a kind of defense mechanism or preemptive strike. 

to borrow from kelly clarkson, “i won’t let you close enough to hurt me.”

growing up as the child of a deaf single mother, with his father having passed away, and having a genius intellect probably resulted in grissom being bullied (or at the very least ostracized) by his peers at a young age. being as single-minded and obsessive as he is also undoubtedly led to him losing friendships or even romantic relationships throughout his adolescence and young adulthood (like the college girlfriend he describes in episode 09x08 “young man with a horn”).

in short, people disappointed him, so, not knowing what to do otherwise, he decided to steer clear of social entanglements so as not to set himself up for even further disappointment.  

so in an au where a young grissom had never been rejected for being different and instead had been embraced by his peers and loved ones (never mind his idiosyncrasies), where no one had ever dropped him as a friend or boyfriend, where the people he cared about didn’t criticize his capacity to form and maintain connections, etc., he likely would develop very differently. he might be more open with the people around him. he might have deeper and more intimate friendships earlier on in the show.

that’s something about him that would change based on how his life had panned out in a particular narrative.    

and that’s the way it is with all characters---they are shaped by the relationships they have throughout their lives, the events they live through, and how their inborn traits are received by the wider world.

of course, aus come in all different stripes, so how much a character’s makeup will change from canon---if it does change at all---in any given au really depends on a number of factors, including the interests of the au itself, what parts of the character’s biography have been changed and how so, and when on the timeline these changes have taken place.

some aus are more interested in changing the story setting rather than the characters themselves; they simply choose to transplant characters with their canon personalities intact from one world to another without paying much mind to how doing so might otherwise alter characterizations—for example, moving the csis out of the crime lab and into a coffee shop but keeping all of their basic personalities and relationships as we know them from the show.

other aus change the very bedrock of the story, going back in time to alter the characters’ life stories before we ever meet them in canon—for example, making it so grissom ends up in san francisco instead of vegas after his college girlfriend dumps him or shifting things so that his father didn’t die when he was nine years old. in these aus, seeing how these changes affect characterization is often the whole point (or at least a high narrative priority).

still other aus are more “canon divergent,” taking show events and deviating from or altering them—for example, making it so that grissom is the one abducted by the miniature killer instead of sara. these stories are interested in how a character’s established characterization from canon might change were one or more events from their time on the show different.

as a general rule, changing a major formative experience from a character’s childhood will probably result in a more drastic shift in their adult personality than will changing a singular event from show canon when they’re already an adult.

likewise, the more experiences that are changed overall and the more formative those experiences are to the character, the bigger the change will be.

to use sara as an example this time, if she had not endured her childhood traumas—growing up in an abusive household with mentally ill, alcoholic parents; having her mother kill her father; being placed in foster care; never getting adopted out of foster care; etc.—and had instead been raised in a stable, loving environment by parents who were good providers and role models, she would probably be almost unrecognizable to us as an adult.

but if the change to her biography were something subtler and later—like maybe she never dated hank during s2 and s3—her personality as we know it on the show would likely still be intact. she wouldn’t be as noticeably different.

so.

all of this rambling is to say that without knowing how exactly the grissom in your scenario’s life diverges from the one he lives in canon (except that sara doesn’t exist and that he is in love with this other person instead), it’s really difficult for me to determine if the given exchange would take place.

some somewhat more specific thoughts after the “keep reading,” if you’re interested.

_____________

bearing in mind that i know nothing about the specifics of this relationship or anything about the person or the cause of their distress itself:

based on what you describe, it tracks that grissom knows right away that the person is upset and knows what they’re upset about and is able to respond accordingly.

since they’ve known each other for so long, it also tracks that grissom would be able to give the person advice pertaining to their situation.

the advice itself (“don’t get lost to the ghosts of the past”) also sounds like something the grissom we know from canon would certainly be capable of saying, and particularly to someone he knew very well and whom he knew was struggling with a long-term issue.

the one place where this exchange potentially diverges from what we know in canon (for me) is in grissom’s final lines to the person, where he talks about being there for them in san francisco and promises to continue to be there for them going forward.

to me, those lines read as very expressive: it’s grissom telling the person in no uncertain terms that he has cared for them in the past, and he will continue to care for them in the future. it’s him promising to stay by this person forever.

by show standards, that’s a pretty effusive statement coming from grissom.

it’s straightforward.

it’s bold.

it’s grissom telling the person that he cares without any hesitation or obfuscation.

in canon, the type of communication grissom struggles with the most is telling the people he cares about how he feels in clear, unequivocal ways. rather than coming out and saying what he considers his relationships with certain people to be and/or telling them what his intentions are, he tends to believe that his actions will speak for him---which sometimes they do, though other times they fall somewhat short of expressing what he intends. 

hence why sara’s s7 storyline revolves around her questioning the true depths of grissom’s feelings and wondering if he feels the same way about her that she does about him, even though they’ve already been dating for two years by that point.

that so, i think that canon!grissom would probably have trouble saying something so open, direct, and articulate when talking about his relationship with and willingness to always help someone—and especially someone for whom he had unspoken romantic feelings.

the grissom we know from the show isn’t one who often comes out and says “i'll be there for you no matter what,” even though he is very loyal to the people he cares about and frequently does serve as a crying shoulder. more typically, he is someone who allows his gestures to speak rather than his words.

he simply is there for the person.

he simply does listen.

(a good example of this tendency is when he wipes sara’s tears and tells her he’ll take her home in episode 07x18 “empty eyes;” he doesn’t really say much, but the tenderness with which he touches her face speaks volumes. another example would be when he holds onto a distraught catherine while a dying keppler is taken into the ambulance at the end of episode 07x15 “law of gravity;” again, his gestures say “i'm here for you,” even though he remains silent.)

given that characterization, i think that the grissom in this scenario would have had to have had some fairly different formative experiences from his canon counterpart in order to say the words “i have been helping you with this even back in san francisco, so if you ever need an ear, a shoulder. i have been those all this time. and i promise you, i will never stop. you will always have me” openly to his beloved, and particularly before they’ve admitted to each other that they are in love---and particularly while they are at work.

at this point, only you as the author of this au scenario can really know if that’s the case.

only you can know if grissom’s life has been different to the point where he would be able to openly promise someone that he would always be there for them and make reference to their previous relationship history in such an unguarded way.

since an au grissom who never met and/or fell in love with sara would certainly be very different from the grissom in canon who does (and since this au grissom’s relationship history with the person in question and feelings for them would also undoubtedly come to bear in the way he interacts with them), it’s very possible that he is capable of making these kinds of statements within the context of your story.

anyway, for whatever it’s worth, those are my two cents. sorry i can’t give you a more unambiguous answer.

happy writing! please feel welcome to send another question any time.

[lovehugsandcandy]

Find the Lady (BP, Ash x MC)

A/N: So I started this when I was amused by the hijinks of BP and abandoned it when it started to get old but then figured I should try to finish it...because I do love me a snarky LI, don't I? This was already posted in AO3, sorry if you already read it.

Pairing: Ash x MC; mentions of Courtney x Mario ‘BrainMelt’ Bautista, Bachelorette Party

Length: ~3600 words

Rating: PG-13 (Swearing. Someone (?) drinks too many Bloody Marys and gets sick.)

Summary: Find the Lady but Mandy’s the Lady and, if Ash can find her, he’s not letting go.

Ash had to do a double-take, a triple-take, hell, a quadruple-take, when he walked by the open door of the Peanut Butter and Banana Quickie Chapel & Pawn Shop at the far end of the Strip. It wasn’t unusual for the gaudy gold doors to be propped wide open in the spring, Vegas heat not yet in full force, comfortable days still the norm before the fire of the summer arrived; the chapel was small enough that he was able to peer inside, past the makeshift pews, past the smoke machines and disco balls, all the way to the far wall where linen flowers and neon lights surrounded the glitter-gold script of their slogan. One-stop shop! We’ll put a ring on it and take it off your hands, too!

However, none of the garish decor caught Ash’s eye. Instead, it was captured by the trio who stood with their backs to him, speaking to the Elvis impersonator. Now that he looked closer, he could tell that it was the blond girl who hooked up with the magician and the hotshot doctor who just happened to live out East near Mandy. These two were just secondary to the sight that stole his attention though because, right in the middle, always right in the thick of everything, stood the gorgeous lawyer herself, braid cascading down her back as she spoke animatedly to Elvis. 

He wanted to head in, to say hello and take just a second to bask in her attention, to see her face, but he had to pause. If she was here, talking to a quickie minister with Reed at her side, it could only mean one thing. She definitely wouldn’t want him popping back into her life at this exact, special moment. So he took just a minute to watch, her hands flying through the air as she gestured to the flowers, the pedestal. He had to smile, melancholy as it was. He was glad it worked out for them. She deserved to be happy.

~~~~~

He hadn’t seen her in six months; hell, it felt like they had barely spoken over text since she left for the airport with her friends and his heart, but she was never far from his mind. He always knew that he was little more than an interesting diversion in her life, a wild story about the time she was in Vegas and met a two-bit hustler while on the run from the mafia, but for him? She was no drunken exploit or tall tale. Yes, it had been short romance, but it was the first time a tourist wove a path into not only his bed but his mind and his bones and his soul. He could still see her, clear as day, standing on the roof of his shit apartment, bathed in the sun's glow as it peeked over the mountains. 

He would recognize her anywhere.

Which is why he had to do another double-take on the Strip that night. He was in the middle of a game of Find the Lady, a pair of eager college-aged tourists focused on his hands as they followed the familiar routine, over-under left right left, when a dark braid caught his eye for the second time that day. He turned his head, quickly, too quickly, and his hands stuttered, the second card falling from his palm to the pavement below.

The girls in front of him laughed as Ash gaped at the card on the ground. He never messed up this game. “Wow, ladies.” He pulled his best smile out. “I think you both distracted me. You win this time.” He knelt to grab his card and held out the deck again. “Best two out of three?”

Once they had finally wandered off, after five more games where he made sure he focused only on his cards, not the gorgeous brunette he was certain he saw, he scanned the crowd intently. Nothing. He looked around.

“Jayson, man, did you see-?”

“I’m not helping you.” Jayson held up his discs. “I’ve had no success tonight because you keep telling people my mix tape is just me at karaoke.”

“It is you at karaoke. It’s not even good karaoke; it’s a clip from your phone at Club Yamang that ends with you screaming at a bouncer as they throw you out.”

“I told them I paid my tab.” Jayson glared.

“Yeah, with a stolen credit card.”

“Man, shut up, you don’t need to blow up my spot.”

“You have no spot.” Ash was still scanning the crowd, Strip packed with tourists and grifters and hustlers enjoying the glittering facades around them. “Do you remember-”

“I remember nothing.” Ash sighed as Jayson stalked off, clutching his CDs under one arm as he looked for his next victim.

With one last look around, Ash shook his head and got back to work. It’s not like she was here to find him anyway.

~~~~~

The next night found him outside the strip club, LIV DUDS blinking in the window. Shitty exterior aside, it was always packed on Saturdays, an easy way to catch willing coeds as they streamed out of the club, high on the buzz that only scantily clad strippers provided.

He was far from the door, eyeing the crowd and waiting for someone who seemed willing to play, when a shout made him turn.

“BACHELORETTE PARTY PART TWO! WOOHOO! ALL THE FUN WITH NONE OF THE GUNSHOTS!” His jaw dropped. It was the blond again, Courtney, the one with the enormous wild streak and dirty mind. She was bouncing, vibrating, visibly excited at being in her element again. And trailing behind her? Ash watched as the three amigos walked out, the senator’s ex and the one with the sketchy job and then, trailing behind with a blush on her cheeks and smile on her face, there she was. Mandy always took his breath away, every time he saw her, and this was no exception.

He stood, frozen on the spot, watching her talk on her cell, hands gesturing, as Diana put her hands on her shoulders to hustle her into a waiting Dryve.

Crap. 

He sprinted forward but watched as the backdoor shut, car lurching and pulling out into traffic.

Fuck. He glanced around, eyes falling on an idling cab. He dashed to the window, knocking frantically.

“I need a- Gene?”

Gene rolled down his window. “’Sup, Ash?”

“I thought you were still pretending to be a human statue by the Bellagio.”

“Meh. Gold paint took forever to wash off, especially when it got inside those tiny shorts and irritated my-”

“TOO MUCH INFORMATION!” Ash grimaced, making a mental note to bleach his brain as soon as he got home. “Anyway, I need a ride. Now.”

“I’m on my break!” Gene gestured to the tuna sandwich in his hands. “I haven’t eaten all day!” The words were barely intelligible around the giant bite in his mouth. 

Ash could just make out the taillights of their car heading downtown. With a deep breath, he opened the door and yanked Gene out of the driver’s seat.

“What the-”

“Here.” Ash pulled open the back door and shoveled him in before hopping behind the wheel, turning the engine, and peeling out. He could just make out the rideshare and had suddenly never been so grateful that the Strip was a long, flat line. “Just sit and enjoy.”

There was a rustling in the back and then a thud as Gene dove towards the floor. “My sandwich!”

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

“You stole my cab.” He was pouting, brushing off the grime from his food, but Ash sensed that it was halfhearted as he settled into the seat and stepped on the gas.

“Not stealing-you’re in it!”

Ash saw Gene take a giant bite of his dinner in the rear-view mirror. “Still stealing,” he sulked.

“Risk I’m willing to take.” He didn’t know what he would say to her if he caught up to them. ‘Congratulations’ seemed a little too fake, ‘Remember me?’ a little too bitter.

“Grand theft auto here. I can’t believe I took financial advice from a thief!”

“Not a thief, I’m borrowing. Much like one does with a loan when they incur a debt. But I’m giving your collateral back when we catch up with that car!” Ash concentrated on darting between traffic, keeping the Dryve in sight, winding his way up the Strip, past the familiar glittering lights and lively casinos. “And, come on! It’s Vegas! Live a little!”

“View’s different back here.”

“That’s the spirit. Enjoy the ride, man.”

Gene gazed out the window. “Did you know that Dirty Harry’s has half priced drinks tonight?”

“Yeah, they do every year on Clint Eastwood’s birthday,” Ash answered idly, focused on getting closer to the girls’ car, gaining some distance as it started to slow down.

“Hmm….” Gene peered at him. “You’ve been doing this a long time, haven’t you kid?”

“Stealing cabs?”

“Hustling on the Strip.”

“About ten years.”

“You ever think about doing something else?”

Ash thought to the manuscript saved on his laptop, forty thousand words, a treatise on hustling tourists and taking risks in the world capital of risky decisions, only partially completed before he lost his motivation, right around the time he realized he lost Mandy for good. He thought about his book and how maybe he could write from anywhere, even from the ritzy East Coast city where doctors and lawyers met and drank expensive whisky with their expensive degrees on the wall. 

He swallowed. Gene was still looking intently at him, eyes peering into him like he read minds. “Sometimes,” Ash responded with a shrug. “But right now, I’m just thinking about catching up to that Dryve.”

“Just don’t crash my cab. I don’t need anymore debt!”

“You got it.”

Finally, after running two red lights, a nerve-wracking close call with a drunk tourist, and inventive insults from the backseat that Gene should definitely trademark, the Dryve pulled up to a stop; he could see the Girl Scouts jump out and file into their hotel.

He screeched to a stop in front of the building, wincing as the valet dove out of the way. “Ok, take your cab, Gene. Here’s my stop.”

He slammed out of the cab but the “Hey, Ash?” from behind him made him turn.

“Yeah?”

“Good luck with your girl.” He had to smile. Of course Gene knew who they were chasing. Ash had always been obvious.

“Thanks, man. Thanks for everything.”

With that, he raced into the lobby of the hotel, the same hotel where he had accidentally rescued them from the gunman, the same hotel with the forest penthouse and shitty security that seemed to allow Norwegian murderers open access to guest rooms. He shook his head. Focus. No time for a walk down a truly trippy memory lane now; he had to find them. Where could they be?

Luckily, raised voices at the bar to his right were a clear signal. A loud commotion, raised voices, and breaking glass? Bingo.

He skidded into the bar and froze. And blinked. And blinked again. “Ummm....”

“Oh! Hi, Ash.” Aisha gave him a quick wave and then returned to the task at hand, trying to corral an overwhelmed Courtney while bobbing and weaving to avoid the signature hand flap. “Courtney, come on!”

“But....” Ash grimaced as her hand collided with Aisha’s shoulder, the slap barely audible with the noise of the insanity in front of him. “But...”

Diana peeked around her friends, barely visible behind the giant thing in front of him. “Hey, Ash.”

“Hi, Diana. Umm...” He blinked again, wondering if he blinked enough times, the vision in front of him would fade. Did he hit his head? “Is that an ostrich?”

She scoffed at him. “It’s an emu!”

“Why the hell do you have an emu?”

Courtney was still flapping her hands, limbs vibrating as she stood; Diana edged away from her and muttered,  “.... because we’re staying in the rain forest suite again?”

“What. Do emus even live in the rain forest?” The emu looked unfazed. 

“Who cares, Ash!?! Do I look like I watch National Geographic?”

“Yes?” He took in her prim outfit, the severe look on her face, and the bottle of electrolyte water in her hand. He nodded definitively. “Yes. You look like your idea of a wild night is binging National Geographic in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers while wearing a face mask and drinking a green juice.”

She wrinkled her nose. “That was so specific that it feels like you were spying on me last weekend.”

He rubbed his temples. “Ok, where the hell did you get an emu?”

Courtney had calmed enough to join the world of the semi-functional and jumped in, “Ash, it’s Vegas! You can get anything here!” She lovingly stroked the neck of the bird; it seemed like it enjoyed the attention. Then again, who knew? “They still haven’t supplied any cute animals, so we had to find our own!”

“You mean, you stole it from the zoo.” Ash whirled to see Mandy walking in, a severe man in zookeeper garb trailing behind her.

“Borrowed!” Courtney’s voice did the screech-thing again.

“Stole and hid it in the suite until it escaped because no one fed it!” Mandy put her hands on her hips.

“What?!?! I left it cocktail weenies and made it Bloody Marys from the mini fridge!”

“It eats seeds. Insects. Grass.” The zookeeper edged closer. “It can’t metabolize alcohol; since water is scarce in their natural habitats, they have a tendency to consume vast amounts of liquids so it has reserves when-”

The zookeeper trailed off as the emu made a few grunting noises and, in a stunning display, threw up partially digested hot dogs and red liquid onto the bar floor as the entire group lunged backwards. They all looked at each other in stunned silence.

“Of all the vomit I thought I would see, I really didn’t think it would be from that.” Diana blinked, looking down at the violent red stain on the floor. For once, Ash agreed with her completely. The emu squawked and looked around, nosing its beak towards the bowl of peanuts on the bar. 

“Did that emu just boot and rally?” Courtney sounded as shocked as Ash felt.

The zookeeper sighed. “They really are amazing animals with a fully developed system of-”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, enough with the zoology lesson.” Aisha glared. “Can you get this thing out of here?”

The zookeeper glared. “It’s not a thing. It’s the second largest bird on Earth with a wingspan of-”

“Ok.” Mandy patted his arm. “It’s amazing, but can you please remove it? I’m sure it wants to get back to the zoo.”

“Fine.”

Ash stepped out of the way, watching the zookeeper coo in some bird-language that made the emu duck its head and follow him out of the bar.

“Wow.” Courtney had stars in her eyes. “That creature is majestic.”

Mandy shrugged, catching Ash’s eye for the first time. He felt his heart stop. “Hi, Ash.” Hell, time stopped.

“And that’s our cue...” Courtney grabbed Diana’s arm, and he barely registered them brushing by, Aisha hot on their heels as they entered the bowels of the casino. The only thing he registered was Mandy’s gaze, pinning him in place with the weight of months of unspoken words and missed opportunities. 

She stepped closer and still he couldn’t move. “Earth to Ash.”

“Hey.” He looked behind him, taking in the open pair of barstools, past the pile of emu vomit on the ground, and set his shoulders. “Do you want to grab a drink? Not Bloody Mary’s?”

He could barely focus on anything else as they settled down at the bar and waited for their drinks. The dim lighting made her seem shadowy, gauzy, as if she were floating in and out of his daydreams; he had to shake his head and take a swig as soon as the beer was placed in front of him. It seemed like she was already so close to fading away, back into her normal life and out of his reach.

“I wondered if we would find you.”

Her voice brought him back to the present, and he shrugged a shoulder. “Vegas is a small place for a local. Also, the four of you cause so much trouble it was only a matter of time.”

“Courtney causes so much trouble.”

“And you’re right there with her.” The smile was impossible to stop. “I seem to remember you getting into trouble all on your own.”

“And I seem to remember you bailing me out a few times.”

“Don’t need to do that anymore.” He winced as the words came out far more bitter than he intended.

“Ash? Why are you…?” She put her hand on his arm and he inhaled sharply, as even that simple touch sent his mind spinning. He pulled away, needing a bit of distance, any distance, something to give him space from the memories of another bar, just like this, another time when he wondered if he would ever see her again. She sighed, watching him, dark eyes cautious and waiting, before she leaned in again to aver, “You know I missed you.”

He had to turn away so she wouldn’t catch his eye roll. “You stopped texting me but it’s ok, I get it.”

“I’ve been working on some things, Ash. I’m sorry but-”

“It’s fine.” He shrugged, lifting his glass. “It’s all transient. You know how it is.” 

“We had something real. You know we did.”

“Aren’t you getting married!?!”

“WHAT?” She stared at him. “To who? What?!?”

“To Reed? The doctor?” Ash shrugged, turning away from her to hide his face. “I saw you at the chapel. And it’s your Bachelorette Party. Congratulations.”

A hand on his cheek turned his face, so he could see Mandy gaping at him. “Reed? Wait, what? No, no, no. He’s here for the wedding, too. Courtney is getting married.”

“Wait, Courtney?” Any happiness he may have felt at the implication that Mandy might be fair game was supplanted by his shock. 

“Yeah. To Mario.”

Ash was so glad that he hadn’t taken another sip of beer because it would have ended up splattered on the marble of the bar. “The MAGICIAN?”

Mandy shrugged. “I think it’s good for her. She needs a bit of stability in her life.”

“I agree, but a magician named Mindblaster is the stability here?” Ash couldn’t stop the scoff.

“Ok. So it’s not a ton of stability.” Mandy smiled. “But they really are a great fit. And she’s happy.”

“Huh.”

She caught his eye. “And I’m not getting married.”

“I see…” It felt like the air had left his lungs. “So, are you saying you’re single?”

“I don’t know about single…” Ash felt his face fall as Mandy looked up at him, curiously. “There is this guy I like….”

He turned to face the bar, grabbing his beer. Of course.

A hand on his arm stopped the bottle halfway to his mouth. “You fool. You know my type. Japanese-American street performers?”

“Pretty niche, you know.” He had to smile ruefully, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. “You remember you left him behind, right?”

She swallowed. “Ash… I’m moving to Vegas.”

“What?”

“My firm has a rotation program for high potential lawyers.” She looked at her hands. “I was selected and get to work with a top partner at a different branch across the country for nine-month trial period. If it goes well, I might have a permanent position.” Finally, she raised her head to meet his eyes. “It’s a big career opportunity. And I requested to come to Vegas.”

He carefully placed the bottle on the bar. “Are you serious?”

“Starts in two weeks. I want to be more than a tourist here. My career is so important to me, Courtney’s moving here, but I mean…I was hoping you…”

He cut her off with his lips. He just couldn’t stop himself from kissing her, pulling her close so the bar stool tilted and she was supported by his hands on her waist, her thighs against his, reacquainting himself with her lips and her tongue and the small of her back and the soft noise she made in the back of her throat and how her hands clutched his jacket as if she was afraid he would vanish.

Pulling back, he had to grin, eyes tracing over her face, the soft look in her eyes. He’s had some big wins in his life but this one takes the cake. 

“And here I was, thinking of moving out East.”

“Wait, what?” She was still so close to him and he watched the individual lashes surrounding those beautiful eyes flutter as she gazed at him.

He shrugged, feeling bashful. “I missed you.”

“Well, you’re lucky my type is extremely rare back home.”

“Your type....” He couldn’t stop the grin spreading across his face. “Tell me all about this street performer you like. Total hunk, right?”

“No one says that anymore.”

“Dashing hustler by day, fearless mafia fighter by night?” He smirked and leaned closer, drawn to the smile playing around her lips; it called to him, to his every cell, urging him closer.

“You legit peeled away as soon as we got shot at.”

“With an amazing sense of self-preservation?”

Finally, her grin broke into a wide smile, beaming across her face, and burned into his brain. “Oh my God, shut up and kiss me again.”

So he did. Nine months of this with a chance for more? That’s a gamble he’d take every time.

.

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