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cmagines · 5 years ago

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Halloween

Summary: A murder at Halloween brings Y/N Hotchner into her father’s world.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Word Count: 7,660

The time had come. After years of being sheltered, you were finally going to enter the FBI offices as a full-fledged adult in need of full-fledged protective custody. You could’ve lived without the latter, but if anyone was going to hold your safety within their hands, you felt your dad and his team were the best possible choice. You followed behind him, taking advantage of his height to duck down and keep your eyes on the backs of his shoes while he led you out of the elevator and down a short hallway to the double doors in front of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. A visitor’s badge was clipped to your cardigan, a backpack was over one of your shoulders, and you held possessively to your phone in your left hand.

You were still wearing the black dress you had donned for her funeral.

It all started a week ago. Since the Reaper had killed Haley, you’d decided to take a gap year between high school and college so that you could stay home and help raise Jack, permitting Hotch to continue to take cases and stick killers behind bars. As much as you hated that you’d lost your mother, and as well as you knew how much she had grown to detest Hotch’s career, you also realized that the Reaper could have just as easily killed someone else to taunt Hotch and left that woman’s daughter in the same state that you’d been in. Hotch had an important cause to work for and you supported it, so in turn, he financially supported you while you worked a part-time job during Jack’s school days and played the role of his guardian the rest of the time. Just this year, you had decided that, since Hotch had Beth helping your small family out, you could afford to start taking a few classes at the nearby college. While there, you met Olivia. You hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, but Liv refused to take your silence as an answer. The two of you could have been sisters; it was a little bit strange at first to look at her and first wonder what was wrong with the mirror. You had the same color of hair and eyes, the same thick hair and easy, slightly messy hairstyle, were only a fraction of an inch apart in height, and similar skin tones. There was ten pounds of a weight difference at most. What was crazier? She had a twin.

There were three people who looked like you on campus, and it drove the professors nuts in the two classes that you and Liv shared.

It was the Halloween party that probably sealed the fate. Everyone acted like a freak on Halloween, but someone had decided to take it a step two far. Twisting Dr. Seuss, you, Liv, and her sister had all gone dressed in skirts and red shirts as Things One, Two, and Three, wearing thick white face paint and heavy pink eyeshadow to further obscure the differences between you. When they’d picked you up from home, Jack had run to Marie and started excitedly telling his “sister” about his day at school, and Hotch had given Liv a list of chores that he wanted done by the end of the week. Then you’d come down the stairs, Jack and Marie had emerged from another room, and both males looked as though they’d seen ghosts.

“Too many of you,” Jack complained, tugging on Marie’s long red sleeve. She giggled and patted his hair and told you that your brother was cute.

You’d had more fun than you would have thought. The twins had taken you to a frat house and you’d become the center of attention of a handsome boy who came on way too strong. Luckily, he turned out not to be a complete jerk – once Liv saw you were in trouble and intervened, politely asking the young man to back off and informing him that you weren’t comfortable with all of the attention, he had apologized profusely, given you a crooked smile, and told you that he was around for help if you needed it. His name was Seth, and he was a sophomore. You didn’t see him again that night.

You didn’t see much of anything else that night, either, because the party was broken up by the police being called when Liv found her sister’s body in a huge puddle of blood in one of the bathrooms. She had screamed. You were normally uncomfortable talking to large groups of people, but adrenaline and concern had pushed you to power through, and you cited your father’s profession and shoved your way through. The few frat boys who had thought it was a prank hadn’t even bothered to check Marie’s pulse, just assuming she was having them on. You felt her throat and as soon as you felt the very real, and unfortunately very familiar texture of blood, you knew you weren’t going to find a heartbeat. If she wasn’t wearing face paint, you would have known she was dead instantly, the same way you had known when you saw Haley’s body on the floor of your old house.

A murder had transpired, and you did the first thing you could think of and called your dad. Why wouldn’t you? Beth was called to stay with Jack while Hotch came and got you, and after you gave your statement to the police, he took you to your favorite restaurant and didn’t comment when all you did was pick at your food, stomach rolling.

That morning, you were contacted immediately by the police and brought in for a series of questions. You weren’t a suspect, but they thought you might be in danger, because Liv’s parents had gotten back from a meeting with a funeral director and found Liv changed into her Halloween costume, murdered just like her sister, with her body splayed out over the kitchen table. The police thought that having forced her into the same outfit the previous victim had worn might be a little bit significant, and yeah, you agreed. Even you saw the danger in it, so as soon as you told Beth that you couldn’t pick up Jack from school, you called Hotch. The stress finally caught up with you and you told him through tears where you were and that you needed protection.

The BAU was on the case before it had even been sent up through the right government channels, and your father assured you that you would stay with only the agents he trusted most, and you would never be left alone. If you weren’t going to be in a secure room with the technical analyst he considered family, then you were going to be with Rossi, Reid, JJ, Blake, or Morgan (the names meant nothing to you), who were all armed and wouldn’t let anyone touch you.

Hotch glanced behind him to look at you and see your face. You were still nervous about meeting his coworkers. He assured you that they were all people he trusted with his very life, but you had always been timid about meeting new people. You’d been introverted for as long as you could remember, and only grown more so after Foyet.

“You’ll be okay,” he promised, reaching for you. Without moving, you let him hold his hand to your lower back and guide you in through doors that he held open with his other arm. Crossing your own over your chest, you rubbed your arms and kept your head down, looking around but careful not to make eye contact with anyone.

The bullpen didn’t seem like it was loud, but it became very hushed when you and your dad were noticed. Most of the agents towards the wall by the doors and mezzanine looked straight to Hotch before they checked you out, but no one seemed anything but sympathetic and curious, until a woman came up to you both, leaving the desk of a black man with a gun at his hip, which you noticed with a slight grimace. Guns were not your favorite. You’d like them for as long as they kept you safe, but after being threatened with one by the Reaper, you’d be happy if you never saw anyone with a firearm again. Yet, if Dad said that he trusted these people, then you supposed you would, too.

This woman in particular looked out of place in the bureau. You looked at her clothes rather than her face and hoped that she wouldn’t take offense. Other than noticing the frames of glasses and streaks of a coral-pink color in her blonde hair, all you saw were gold bangles on her wrists, manicured fingernails, and bright-colored clothes, including pastel tights, purple pumps, and a dress with swirls and polka dots splashed with a rainbow.

“Is this her?” She asked Hotch with a note of wonder in her voice. Your dad nodded. You nodded a little bit, too, interested to know who she was. Hopefully, she would take it upon herself to explain so that you didn’t have to ask. “Oh, chica,” she sighed, holding her hands out. She reached halfway between you and stopped, giving you the power to decide whether or not she touched you. You lifted your hand to shake hers and she had a tight, motherly grip. “I’m so sorry, darling, but I promise you, you’re gonna be so safe here that if you get a papercut, we’ll arrest the printing machine.”

You giggled a little bit.

“Y/N, this is Penelope Garcia. She’s our technical analyst. If you have any homework for your computer programming class, she’s the person to ask,” Hotch chuckled warmly at both of you. “Garcia, this is my daughter, Y/N. She’s majoring in computer sciences.”

“Gosh, have you come to the right place!” The analyst was kind and worked herself into optimistic excitement, pulling you gently by the hand away from Hotch’s side. She started leading you away from the other desks. Over your shoulder, you looked at Hotch in alarm. “You’re gonna love my lair. Well, it’s not actually a lair, it’s an office, but I call it my lair because it’s not as drab. What’s the fun in going to an office? But a lair, no one says no to going to a lair.”

“Don’t you think she should meet the rest of the team first?” Dad called after you both, making Garcia halt in her tracks. One of her hands stayed on your wrist, which you didn’t mind too much. You didn’t not like people, you just weren’t a big fan of socializing. Having friends was fun. Making them was intimidating.

“Right! Yes!” Garcia gasped and pulled you back towards your father. Your head was going to spin if your entire stay consisted of being commandeered and driven around the FBI. You had a lot to deal with already, and you just hoped that this team was as good as you thought they were and could catch the killer. You wanted justice for your friends’ wrongful deaths. “Yes, Chickadee, come on. I’ll show you to your honor guard. I promise they won’t bite.”

My honor guard? Well, at least she was taking the “protective custody” thing seriously.

First, she took you to the desk that she had been at before she noticed your entrance. Several agents were all looking at you and watching the proceedings, but the one Garcia had been standing with rotated his chair around so his feet were out from under the desk and had covered up his sidearm with his jacket since you’d seen it. Maybe there was an advantage to being looked after by profilers; he must’ve noted your negative reaction. Other than appearing athletic and well-built, he seemed friendly and exuded warmth and hospitality.

Garcia was excited to introduce you to him. If you had to guess, you’d say she had a clear favorite. “Y/N, this is Special Agent Derek Morgan, and he will defend you heroically because he is my, and now your, knight in shining FBI-issue Kevlar.”

You smiled shyly at Agent Morgan, who didn’t reach for your hands, so you didn’t offer. “Hi,” you said quietly.

“Hey, sweetness,” Morgan returned kindly. Unlike the frat kids who would’ve sounded lecherous, drunk, or flirty, Morgan managed to make the endearment sound like an actual endearment, the same way that Beth sometimes called you “honey” or Hotch called you by your nickname. “This computer over here is Reid.” He pointed over his desk to the one behind it, to a young guy with dark brown hair and a lanky, tall figure, even when sitting down.

“Reid Dr.,” Reid told you, standing up hurriedly and rubbing his palms over his thighs. He realized what he’d said and frowned. “Dr. Reid,” he corrected himself, switching the words back around. Instead of relaxing, his frown just intensified. “Dr. Spencer Reid.” Finally, he seemed satisfied, smiled at you a little awkwardly, and sat back down, scratching the back of his neck.

Sure, the introduction was a little bit comedic, but you knew better than probably anyone else in the room how mean it could be to tease someone for a little difficulty with presenting themselves or mixing up their words, what with being sensitive to it yourself, so you ignored the mistakes and nodded, getting out a ‘nice to meet you.’ “Why did he call you a computer?” You asked. Garcia had let go of your hand, so you wrung your fingers in front of you to control the urge to shut up and go back to your father’s side. College wasn’t so bad when you were soft spoken, but the FBI was much more intimidating. Not only were they federal agents with guns, but you were there because of a killer, which made it ten times more stressful.

“Watch this,” Morgan grinned. “Reid, what’s thirty-six to the power of four divided by seventeen squared?”

Reid looked up to the ceiling, but only for a couple of seconds before he had done all of the mental math on his own. “Five thousand, eight hundred eleven, point eighty-two… when rounded to the nearest thousandth.”

“Wow,” you commented, blushing along with Reid, who seemed pleased but unused to being complimented. Both of you looked away from each other when Garcia cooed.

“And this is Alex Blake!” She turned around and indicated for you to come with her, going to the next row. On the outer desk was an older woman, maybe in her forties, with brunette hair and a black blazer over her long-sleeved shirt. Blake smiled at you and held out a hand. You shook her hand with a loose grip and ended it when she did. “She can scare off a bad guy in four languages,” Garcia cheerily bragged.

“I have a PhD in linguistics and I’m a licensed translator,” Blake supplied in explanation.

The next person that Garcia dragged you over to was your father again. “There’s also Rossi and JJ, but JJ’s not here right now and Rossi’s been locked in his office like a recluse for the last two hours,” the techie told you conversationally. She didn’t seem to mind being the one doing most of the talking, instead being compassionate to that you weren’t the most outgoing person in the world. “You can always meet them later. No, really, you definitely will. Rossi’s been bugging the G-Man about you ever since he told us he had a daughter, and JJ’s excited to meet you, too. Is that all you brought?”

It took you a minute to realize she’d changed topics and was now asking about your backpack. “Yes,” you answered, looking down to your hand as you fisted the strap over your front.

Garcia smiled. “That’s okay, sweetie, I’ve got lots we can do that can’t fit in a backpack and I’m sure we can convince someone to get you to a laundromat if you need one.” Personally, you’d been banking on the investigation being closed pretty quickly. You weren’t looking for something just a step short of Witness Protection; a day or two sleeping in the FBI, and then you could go back to your normal life before you got too far behind in your courses. Garcia moved on breezily. “On to the Batcave, Robin, where magical worlds of computer software await. If you’re a computer geek, you’re gonna do a backflip when you see everything I got. Would you believe the FBI gives me thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment when they only actually hired me so they could stop hunting me?”

It had been maybe five minutes, and your head was already spinning. You hoped Garcia elaborated on that last part.

~ ~ ~ Halloween ~ ~ ~

You had never taken to anyone as quickly as you took to Garcia. Maybe it was her kind and loving nature, or maybe it was just how she was so wild and outgoing that you didn’t feel like you could be judged for being your normal, quiet self. All you knew, or really cared to know about it, was that she made you feel comfortable, especially once you were a little bit more used to her. You started to speak a little bit more, didn’t worry about muffling your laughter when you were amused. With her huge monitors, Garcia pulled up your favorite movie franchise and the two of you watched as much as you could before you were yawning, even with the assistance of coffee.

The next morning, you changed clothes and took care of your hygiene in the bathroom. Garcia had fallen asleep after you had, so you didn’t know how long she’d actually been resting, and hadn’t wanted to wake her up. The FBI in general had to be a pretty safe place. Transferring your visitor’s badge onto your new outfit, you pushed back your hair and ventured back into the bureau. Your dad had had to go home – he did have another child to care for, after all – but maybe it was late enough in the morning for him to be back. You weren’t sure what you’d do if he wasn’t.

Six in the morning was not, as it turned out, late enough. No wonder you were so tired… if you’d thought to check the time before changing, you’d have just gone back to sleep. The bullpen was practically empty. But was that – yes! It was! There was a light on under the doorway of one of the offices up on the mezzanine. Your dad had told you that his office was up there. Being the unit chief, he had the seniority and the authority to have a specially-large office instead of just desks on the floor level.

Keeping your head down, you went up the mezzanine steps to the raised walkway along the wall and followed it past a dark office to the one with the light on it. You knocked to be courteous, but one of the few agents that was in was looking at you. Being up higher than the desks made you more noticeable. Eager to get into a smaller space where you didn’t feel like you’d be in trouble for no reason, you walked inside without being invited… and regretted it, because the man at the desk was not your father.

A tiny, anguished squeak made its way out of your mouth. How embarrassing…

“Um.”

“Well, hi,” the man said behind the desk, swiping reading glasses off of his face. He wasn’t that tall. Even sitting, he seemed less intimidating than your dad. He was European, maybe Italian or Spanish, and older than your dad, at least fifty, with the beginnings of a salt-and-peppered beard. He was dressed business casual, with a comfortable black blazer, and a piping mug of hot coffee with the steam still rising sat near his right hand. “I didn’t know I was expecting company.”

There was no reassuring hand at your back or preppy analyst to help you out. Shifting to your other foot and swallowing hard, you took a deep breath. You were here in protective custody, not in interrogative custody. No one was going to hurt you, and the guy seemed amused, not angry. “Well, um, you weren’t… I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

You held your breath then. Your wardrobe was pretty typical for a college student, and while you owned a few nice things for practical reasons, dressing professionally hadn’t been your biggest concern when you packed your things for your field trip to the BAU. So, while you tried to present yourself as an innocent and insignificant individual who made a mistake with no ill intent, you stood there in your jeans and t-shirt with the band name emblazoned on the front. You did not fit in.

“Don’t tell me,” he said dryly, picking up his coffee and taking a sip. Obediently, you shut your mouth and looked down. If he didn’t want you to tell him something, well, by God, you were not going to tell him something. “Hotch’s little girl, right? Though, I guess, you’re not all that little.” Grimacing, you nod. He put his mug down and leaned over the desk, rolling his shoulders and crossing his forearms on the table. “SSA David Rossi. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Thank you, Agent Rossi,” you murmured.

“Dave.”

“Okay.”

He studied you intently. “How is it that you escaped the clutches of the Good Witch?”

“Galinda’s asleep over her computer, so I popped on out of Oz via yellow bricks,” you quipped, leaping without thought onto the references. Then your eyes widened, blood rushed to your face, and you wished you could just disappear.

Rossi seemed to think you were funny, though, because he chuckled heartily. “I like you, kid,” he said in what was clearly supposed to be a praising way. “Have you had anything to eat?” You shook your head. He stood up. “Well, I’ve been staring at this one page for twenty minutes, so I could use a break. C’mon. It’s not DiGiorno, but there is a place downstairs where we can pilfer some food. What do you say?”

Dad wasn’t in, Garcia was unconscious, and none of the three agents she had introduced you to were around yet. Rossi was the only person you knew. As nervous as you were that you might do something wrong or make some horrible social faux pas that existed only between federal agents that you didn’t know about, you would prefer being with someone you barely knew to being completely alone… especially since two of your friends had died and the Halloween costume that you had all worn seemed to be pivotal to the murders.

~ ~ ~ Halloween ~ ~ ~

You spent nearly an entire forty minutes in the cafeteria with Rossi before his phone rang with a notification alert, and he announced that you both needed to go back to the BAU – yourself as proof of life and Rossi as brain trust to work the case. Hotch was a little aggravated that you weren’t within sight when he went to try to find you, but relaxed and gave you a hug when you said that you were fine and that Rossi had just been helping you. You hadn’t even realized you were hungry until the profiler had suggested it.

In the meantime, you went back to Garcia’s lair, expecting just to find the techie you’d grown to tentatively like. Only, when you got there, Garcia wasn’t alone. She was accompanied by a tall, slim blonde, who introduced herself as JJ, the media liaison-turned-profiler. She was beautiful and kind, and had a child at home with her husband. You were warmed to her before she’d even opened her mouth, and she quickly became one of the first people you went to talk to in the next few days.

You had to stay longer than you had thought. When the un-sub didn’t find his third victim – AKA, you – he seemed to go to ground for a while. You wanted to be optimistic and say he had never intended to target you, but Beth had taken Jack home after dinner two nights into your protective custody only to find that the house had been broken into, your bedroom door broken in, and a broken vase on the floor that you used to hold a bouquet of flowers in. When he hadn’t found you, he’d thrown a temper tantrum and made your bedroom look terrible. Dad didn’t let you see the pictures, but Garcia had wrapped you up in a short hug and promised that she would take you shopping for some new things.

Three days, and you were content with staying right where you were. If you had fought with Hotch on whether or not you needed protecting, you very well may have lost your life.

Four days, and you were starting to feel a little bit of cabin fever, but overall, you were still content with staying where your safety was ensured.

Six days going on a week, and all you wanted was to shoot the killer yourself so that you could go sleep in your own familiar bed, and maybe read your brother a bedtime story. You always read Jack a bedtime story, unfailingly, until someone had decided they wanted to plunge a knife through your back.

You played with the hem of your nightgown when you ventured out of the little cavern of Garcia’s office that you had been holed up in for the majority of most days. It was barely past one in the morning and most of the sane people had gone home, even Hotch. After the break-in, you felt immensely guilty that the un-sub might’ve encountered Jack or Beth, and believed it to be nothing short of dumb luck that they had decided to go out to a restaurant. Hotch refused to concede that you were in any way to blame, but, just to be safe, he and Beth had both agreed that it was better if the three of them stayed at a hotel until the case was solved.

If you wanted anything, you had a technical analyst who had all but cried several times just from trying to imagine how you felt and several agents in the building at any given time to respond to your distress call. However, you couldn’t remember a time you had felt more alone – isolated in a building full of people who didn’t really know you, with someone wanting to murder you in a Halloween costume you had swiftly grown to loathe, and without the chance to partake in any of the normal activities you enjoyed. Sure, you were learning a lot from Garcia, and your professors had been appraised of the bare necessities of the situation and had given you projects in lieu of classes, but you still had so much time to be lonely that it was hard to keep your chin up much longer.

Part of your assignment involved making your own website, so, with a sigh of your shoulders and a gentle roll of your head around on your neck, you took your laptop and travelled out to the kitchenette. Hotch usually locked his office door when he left, but he’d been leaving it open for you if you needed to be alone. You’d not really been given a chance to mourn for your friends before you got swept up in everything else. The logic you used was that you could get some of the cheap bureau coffee and get some homework done in his office. You felt terrible and your heart wouldn’t be in it, but you could always touch up on it later.

At this rate, it seemed like you wouldn’t be going back to school for weeks.

Your plan was derailed halfway through making your coffee. Someone cleared their throat and coughed, startling you, and with wide eyes, impulsively feeling guilty for using coffee that belonged to an organization you weren’t really a part of, you started to apologize.

Reid held up his hand, a mug in the other, and with a gentle smile, he quieted your apologies and calmed your nervousness. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that. I thought you would still be asleep.”

“Nightmares,” you mumbled, sinking back against the counter and out of the way. Reid slipped past you, going to make his own coffee refill, while you moved your filled mug out of the way and sought out the milk in the little fridge. You were acutely aware of his presence, but tried not to act like you were on edge by it. He didn’t make you feel threatened, just a little awkward. What were you supposed to talk about?

“I used to have those,” he responded empathetically while his coffee brewed.

You looked up to him curiously. You’d seen one of your friends’ corpses, touched her dead body while looking for a pulse that wasn’t there, felt her blood on your hands. “How did you make them go away?”

Reid’s smile became a little crooked. “I didn’t, not at first.” He, too, leaned against the counter, hands behind him and pressing on the edge. “And sometimes, they still come back. But I manage them, because I remember that I may have memories that my brain can scare me with, but I’ve also shored up a list of things that make me feel better, too. Safer. Less lonely.” He paused. “Gideon – an agent who used to work here – he helped me by giving me a photograph of a little girl we saved, not long after I joined the team. Maybe you could ask Hotch to bring you a photo of your brother.”

“I have plenty on my phone,” you replied.

He shook his head. “It’s not the same as having a physical picture to touch,” he disagreed, and you had to hand it to him – his calm tone was soothing you, his quiet voice making you feel like you weren’t quite as abandoned and hopeless as you had thought.

You swallowed. Most of the time, you didn’t want to talk. You still didn’t, but you thought maybe it would be worth speaking up a little if it meant that you got to have a little more of Reid’s time and his relaxing attention. “What are you still doing in? I thought everyone would have wanted to go home.”

Reid’s smile turned confused, yet remained polite. “I don’t think anyone would be going home if they could help it,” he told you earnestly. “But everyone has someone to go back home to. Even Rossi – one of his ex-wives is in town. Hotch has, well, Jack, and Garcia has a cat she has to feed. Blake’s husband is visiting, Morgan has a girlfriend, and JJ has a son. If they didn’t have responsibilities at home, I don’t think they would’ve left you here on your own.”

“So what about you?” You questioned, unable to let your curiosity rest. The notion that a bunch of adults who didn’t personally know you would give up the comforts of their homes for your sake if not for other personal obligations seemed weird and abstract when applied to anyone but your father, and maybe Beth. Why was Reid still there, talking with you, when he could’ve been with someone he cared about? “Why stay when you have someone else?”

“Well, my mom lives in Las Vegas, so I can’t really visit her every day,” he said, aiming to make a joke. You giggled a little bit and he smiled, pleased to have lessened some of the tension. The bumbling, awkward doctor you’d been introduced to seemed much more at ease when it was just the two of you. “And… I don’t know, Y/N. The thought of you being here on your own, when you might need to talk… when you apparently do need to talk,” he amended, looking at you meaningfully, because that was what you were doing right then. “I didn’t want that to happen if I could prevent it, so here I am.”

~ ~ ~ Halloween ~ ~ ~

You and Reid quickly became friends, to the point where you interacted with him as much as you did with Garcia. Your late-night chats became the norm for the pair of you. Reid tended to come in later in the morning, but because Hotch knew that he was keeping you company long after the sun had gone down, he pretended not to notice. In your head, you stopped thinking of him as Reid and instead as Spencer, your friend, and although you hadn’t had enough time together to talk about everything, you did seem to talk about anything.

Your nightmares persisted, but you felt like you had more control over them. Spencer didn’t ask you to talk about them, but he didn’t say not to, either. Instead, you talked a little bit about his life growing up, and a bit about the funny misadventures he had when he and the team were off the clock. You were amazed by Spencer’s intelligence. Three PhD’s by the time he was twenty-one, and finishing up high school before he was even old enough to have a driver’s permit. Spencer tried to pick up some of your language skills from you, since you’d taken four years of a foreign language in high school, but you’d found out that he was great at memorization while terrible at pronunciation. You told him about a boy you’d dated during your senior year of high school, and added a detail you hadn’t even told Hotch: he had broken up with you because he thought you were spending more time with your family than with him, and this was while you were practically raising Jack, because your mother had been murdered. He had known what had happened, and he’d still cited your prioritizations of taking care of your baby brother as a reason to break up with you. You grew sullen while you talked about it, but it felt good to get it off your chest for the first time. Obviously you couldn’t tell Jack, and you hadn’t known Beth at the time, and you hadn’t wanted Hotch to feel bad about the responsibilities you were taking on as well as being a student, so you made up a lie about how you broke up with him peacefully so you’d both have more time to focus on school and SATs.

You talked about lighter things than your lives, too. The two of you bonded over shared interests in science fiction and “geek” movies. Spencer had developed a healthy appreciation for Marvel after you talked him into bringing a box of popcorn so that you could watch the Iron Man movies together one night. Your unofficial plan was to watch all of the movies with the individual superheroes and lead up to The Avengers. There was a convention coming up in the next few months that Spencer invited you to go to with him. He wanted to dress as Tom Baker’s incarnation of the Doctor, his personal favorite, and you theorized that maybe you could go as Tegan or Sarah Jane.

“If I even live that long…” You’d muttered under your breath, hit by a wave of pessimism. At nearing two weeks of bureau captivity, it was getting harder to believe that the un-sub would be caught. You’d seen enough horror movies to know that the minute your guard was let down, you’d be murdered in your bed. The problem was that not letting your guard down meant staying in the FBI for the foreseeable future.

Spencer had set down a mug of fresh coffee that he seemed to live off of and touched your knee with his hand, rubbing his thumb over your thigh and leaning forwards to meet your eyes. Spencer wasn’t much of one for a lot of touching, and he was rather conscientious of everyone’s personal space, so it was shocking enough that he’d touched you, much less when he locked eyes with you in an intensity that made your stomach flutter.

“We will catch him,” he stated simply, and then went on to tell you everything they’d gotten. Partial (unidentified) fingerprints from the house break. A profile (white male around your age, disorganized, with a fixation that revolved around the identical nature of your and your friends’ costumes). They had reason to believe that he lived nearby, and knew he’d been at the party to kill Marie, and suspected that he may even be one of the frat kids in order to commit the crime without standing out. “So, Y/N, I promise you, you won’t be here forever.”

~ ~ ~ Halloween ~ ~ ~

The next night, you came to Spencer reasonably early. You were sure that the rest of the team, Hotch included, had gone, because you wanted the privacy to be uninterrupted and the security that came with having someone you trusted to be honest yet sensitive leading you. Then you approached Spencer’s desk with a mug full of his favorite flavor of coffee and approximately four tablespoons of pure sugar dumped in, delivered it to his desk, and locked your hands behind your back.

“So, I was thinking about something, and I realize it may not be fun, but I’d rather be a little upset for a while than let this continue.”

The genius finished what he was doing on the computer in a few seconds, saved the document using the control shortcut, and then pushed the chair away from the desk, swiveling it around to face you. He planted both shoes on the floor and leaned over, hands in his lap, and met your eyes, giving you his full attention.

“You said that you think the killer was at the frat party,” you reminded, grimacing even as you said it. You couldn’t believe you’d been talked into going to a frat party. “And I picked up somewhere that serial killers like to see the results of their actions. So maybe it’s possible that he was there when Marie-“ You flinched, took a breath, and started again, trying to depersonalize. “-When the body was found?” Spencer nodded slowly, encouraging you to continue. “I want you to do a cognitive interview on me,” you announced, looking down to your toes. “When I heard Liv scream, I took over. I pushed everyone away and instructed someone to call the cops. I even blocked people from the bathroom to preserve the evidence. If there was someone trying to nose their way in, I probably would’ve seen them.”

~ ~ ~ Halloween ~ ~ ~

You breathed a little bit faster. Liv’s scream echoed in your ears, just as loud and heart-wrenching as it had been when you’d heard it for real. Although you kept your eyes screwed shut as Spencer had instructed, you had a hard time seeing the black of your eyelids when what you were thinking back to was full of colors and movement. The only grounding sensation you felt was Spencer’s larger hand in yours, gently squeezing your palm in reassurance.

“You’re doing so well,” he praised, half-cooing in comfort. “You have to push a group away from the door. What happened next? Do you recognize any of them?” His thumb brushed over your knuckles.

While you were reasonably sure you were supposed to be focusing on your memory, you instead paid more attention to his hand, swallowing hard and squeezing. You were sure your grip was too tight to be nice, and possibly a little sweaty from nervousness and apprehension, but Spencer didn’t move or comment, for which you were grateful.

“I recognize some of them,” you said, imagining yourself in the shoes you’d worn three weeks ago. Some of the colors were unclear, faces distorted, but the ones that stood out weren’t always the ones that had just been closest to you at the time. Flashes of features through the door of a frat boy you shared a calculus class with, although you’d only glimpsed the side of his face in passing over the shoulder of a blurry zombie costume. “Mostly from around campus, but a few are in sports teams. Oh, and Seth,” you added as an afterthought, scoring your eyes across the doorway, refusing to move your eyes to the right. You knew you’d see the blood-filled bathtub in your flashback if you did.

“Who’s Seth?” Spencer asked, pressing calmly for more details.

You didn’t think it was that important, but you went along with it. He was the profiler. “Just some guy that we met earlier that night. He came onto me, Liv asked him to back off, he said he was sorry for being too forward, and he left. I didn’t speak to him again.” In your recollection, you could vaguely place his voice, maybe saying something. Maybe saying your name. At the time all you could hear were Liv’s screeches, alternating between heartbroken and furious. “He’s taller than me. Shorter than you, though. I… he had a cup in his hand. Probably something alcoholic, because he didn’t look completely with it. Drinking messed with his red face paint.”

“What was he?” Spencer pushed his fingers into your palm, pressing on the back of your hand with his thumb, the pressure relaxing your grip. “Who did he dress as?”

“Tate Langdon,” you answered with a slight grin, remembering how you’d initially jumped when he’d come and tapped your shoulder. Then you’d hid behind a bottle of water and laughed, recognizing the cosmetics and the black hoodie.

“Who?”

“Oh. He was a character from American Horror Story,” you explained. “He wore the outfit from when Tate shot up his school. Um, dark black and oversized sweater with a hood up, and black, white, and grey paint to draw a skull on his face.” You faltered as you explained. That was right. When you’d recognized him from his face paint, he had been dressed just like Tate. And later, he’d had red face paint. “Oh…”

“Oh?” Spencer drew you out before you got too far wrapped up in your realization. You realized your hands were trembling. Spencer covered your hand in both of his and held on, silently promising that he wasn’t going anywhere. “What is it? What do you see?”

You swallowed. “He wasn’t supposed to be wearing red face paint,” you said dryly. “And it was on his hoodie, too.”

~ ~ ~ Halloween ~ ~ ~

October 31st. Your least favorite holiday.

“Are you okay by yourself, Chickadee?” Garcia, respectfully wearing a dull-colored outfit, touched your shoulder while you stared down at the two headstones side-by-side.

Wordless, you nodded, clutching a bouquet of black-painted roses in your hands, with a silk ribbon wrapped around the flowers in your murdered friends’ favorite color. Garcia left you alone in the cemetery, finding the path and going back to your car. It was the anniversary of Marie’s death. Soon it would be the anniversary of Liv’s. In mere days, you would be standing in the same spot, a bouquet of the same flowers in hand, the same dress on your body, the dress you’d worn to their funerals.

Seth was nailed on all charges – first-degree homicide, stalking (to find your and Liv’s addresses), breaking and entering, and trespassing with malicious intent. He would never get parole, but after several appeals by a lawyer his high-income father had hired onto his retainer, it seemed as though he might be declared mentally unfit and taken off of consideration for a life sentence. You personally hoped that would never happen, and in the upcoming weeks, you would be called into court to testify against the decision.

“I won’t let him walk from what he did to you both,” you whispered to their graves. A gentle rush of wind acted up and teased your hair, lifting it over your shoulders, strands curling against your cold cheeks. Kneeling down, you deposited the bouquet gently on Marie’s grave, the flower petals a gentle cushion against the granite headstone.

On your way out of the cemetery, you were met by Spencer, who took one look at your face and then reached for your hand. He held onto your hand and entwined your fingers loosely, pulling you to walk by his side as he led you to the car. Tiredly, you rocked your head onto his shoulder. “Thank you for coming with me,” you whispered to the man who had become your best friend in the last year, tying with Garcia in the role.

Halloween sucked for you, but Spencer loved it. You thought it was time you got some closure. The holiday was never going to be your favorite, but if Spencer adored it, then you would learn to be okay. You were determined not to see any real corpses that night. Spencer was going to go to the opening night of a horror film and follow it up by attending the Safe Treat event that you, JJ, and Garcia were all taking Jack and Henry to. The Safe Treat was hosted by your college, and it was the first annual event of its kind, founded in honor of the two students who had died the year before. Faculty and students alike were attending to game, candy, and pumpkin-carving booths, there were going to be photograph opportunities, a costume contest was arranged, and campus security had enlisted their full staff, as well as volunteers from the local police, to make sure that everyone was safe and secure while they had their spooky fun.

“Of course I came,” Spencer responded back to you softly, turning his head to rest his cheek over your hair. While you slowly walked together down the block towards your car, he pressed his lips against the top of your head. “I love you.”

~~~

A/N: Happy Halloween everyone! I wrote this a couple of years ago, took it down, and am now reposting it here.

If you liked this oneshot and how I write, please consider commissioning me through Ko-Fi! A oneshot of this length is about $14 ($1/500 words + 500 words FREE), but shorter stories start at only $4, and for just $1, I’ll take prompts for preferences, would-includes, and imagines. My Ko-Fi handle is /writingsofstardust . If you have any questions, please send me an ask or a message and I’ll reply as soon as I see it. :)

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corpse--diem · 5 years ago

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History Repeats | Arthur & Erin

With: @arthurjdrake

After being practically stuck inside for nearly a month with her undead father, going anywhere else was like a breath of fresh air. So when the idea struck Erin to get caught up on some work at Coffee Plus struck her, she was out of the door faster than she could put her jacket on. From the second she walked in the door, she was reminded instantly of her previous trip here. Her and Regan had sat right to her left. The woman who’d yelled at them not far from it. A small smile tugged at her lips, before the overwhelming panic that came with the rest of that stroll down memory lane. Confident that there was no hypnotist in the area, her eyes rolling to herself at the thought, she grabbed a coffee and settled in with her tablet. She was getting behind on her obituaries--another fun detail most people weren’t aware she took care of. Knee-deep in some family history and photos, her eyes happened to glance up above her screen, then back down again. Then, instantly, right back up. Was she seeing this right? She sat back, taking a good, hard look at the picture of the man on her screen--a man who had died years ago. Then, back to the man she had just seen step into the cafe. It was completely unintentional, and totally rude, but she couldn’t stop staring at this man.

It had been at least a couple of lifetimes since Arthur had been in White Crest - always ending up wherever Mercy happened to travel that coincided with his rebirth cycle. His death the last time in this town had been unfounded and quite mundane - gunned down after accidentally stumbling in on an altercation between two feuding families. He’d started a life here and made a couple of friends. The ending really was quite unmemorable. A shotgun blast to the abdomen had put an unfortunate end to what had been a relatively mediocre existence. Thankfully, some things about it had changed. Admittedly while getting his afternoon cup of coffee at what was fast becoming a frequent haunt for him, he wasn’t expecting to feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end at the indication that someone was staring at him quite intently. The sensation caused him to bristle a little, before a marginal turn of his head opened his peripheral just enough to spot the responsible party. His brow furrowed for a moment at the look of shock on her features, glancing over his other shoulder to check if it was not him, but someone else she was staring at… But there was only empty space beyond. Glancing back once more to the women he fixed her with an uncertain and slightly questioning look not recognizing her from anywhere in particular. Taking the time to order and collect his drink, he circled back, approaching her table until his six foot three frame loomed beside it. “Apologies ma’am… I couldn’t help but… uh… notice… You were giving me a strange look… If I’ve done… something to offend you” not that he was sure what he could’ve done to a stranger but in a town like this who knew “please know that I’m quite apologetic for... whatever seems to be the issue.”

Erin knew she should have stopped staring at some point--the man clearly noticed. But she couldn’t help herself. Couldn’t help glancing back up and then down at the photo, again and again. The photo that was far older than what this man could have possibly been. Oh shit--she must have been staring too long, and too hard because after a few moments, he was heading her way. And he was apologizing to her? She pulled her tablet closer to her, shaking her head. “No, God, I’m sorry. Please don’t apologize.” She bit her lip, trying to decide if she was going to share or not. Was that weird? Ah, hell. “I just--” she paused again, fighting with herself until she eventually just gave in. “You don’t happen to know the Crane’s in town, do you? Or are you related to them?” She stood from her spot slowly, tablet in hand, as she zoomed in on the somewhat blurry black and white photo. But now that she held the photo up so he could see. “You see why I was staring now though, right?”

Arthur couldn’t help but blink as after his apology for whatever he’d done to give offence to make this woman stare at him as though he’d grown another head, she offered up one of her own. To say he was perplexed was perhaps a bit of an understatement. To steady any growing nerves, Arthur took a slow sip of his coffee, the familiar bitter taste washing away some of his anxiety over this stranger somehow seeming to think him familiar. “Okay… then, forgive me but I’ve got to ask… Why were you staring at me as if I’ve got another head.” But his answer was provided a few moments later. Crane. A name that had served its purpose when he’d been passing through town before an… untimely demise. “Um… Ha, funny question that but… Yes, I think I have some familial connections back to this town… I think my great great grandfather used to live around these parts...” he smiled though it dimmed fractionally as she turned around her tablet revealing a photograph of him… 1800s style portraiture. Black and white. Distinctly recognisable of a slightly younger self if you looked close enough. “Oh… wow, that’s… Damn that’s pretty scary… He looks…” Arthur swallowed but let very real shock simply play into the reaction he gave as he gestured for a moment before taking the tablet and peering at it with interest. “Where’d you find this?”

Erin was relieved at how calm this man was, despite the abrupt prying and staring. A real killer first introduction, she thought as she watched him nervously sip his coffee. But it was too late to go back now, wasn’t it? But the familial link made sense, and she was growing more curious and more excited about the discovery. “Great-great grandfather? No way,” she grinned, unabashedly scanning over his features as he studied the photo himself. “You guys could be straight up dopplegangers,” she said, watching the shock settle over his face. This was as weird as it was cool, but his curiosity ignited further intrigue on her part. “I’m a funeral director and--” Oh. She paused, realizing that she might have actually overstepped this time. Especially if this was his family. She cleared her throat, trying to carry on without skipping too much of a beat. “And I was given a whole digitized album of family pictures to include for the memorial. I was just going through them, writing the obituary, when your face--or, your grandfather’s face--popped up.”

Thankfully several lifetimes could serve when it came to being shocked, though this had certainly not been how he’d seen his day unfolding. His fingers tightened a fraction on the mug, though his smile remained amicable if a little disturbed by this apparent discovery. “I think… Yeah… Well, uh I guess.” Admittedly on the spot he ran through a list of potential explanations in his mind but her clarification as to why she was digging around through old obituaries caused his eyes to widen a little. Some of the tension in his chest unwound fractionally at the revelation and it gave him a bit more time to think. “Aah… That’s… Yeah that’s a bit less weird then, though you’re right the resemblance is… spooky” he laughed. The sound more than a little awkward in its delivery and at the situation he presently found himself feeling quite floundered in. “That’s why I… um, came here - to this town that is” he clarified quickly “not… this coffee shop. That’d really be weird.” He raised a hand to scratch behind his ear, “because research not just… for that” he indicated the photo with an awkward nod “but research… generally. I teach you see - at the university. History. I teach history.... I’m a historian.”

This poor guy, Erin had to laugh to herself. Here he was just trying to get a cup of coffee in peace and he’d barely made it through the door before a small spectacle was made of himself. Still, the curiosity tugged harder than her sense of good manners. Curiosity prevailed. “It is spooky, isn’t it?” She narrowed her eyes gently in his direction, gesturing towards the open seat across from the table the rest of her things occupied. “Do you have a minute to join me?” She asked, starting to shuffle back towards her seat. “Maybe this is kismet, you know? Like, how else would you describe something like this?” She offered a smile at him, hoping to convey her appreciation for him humoring her as much as he already had. But before she sat, she finally remembered her sense of human civility. “Shit, I’m sorry--I’m Erin, by the way. Erin Nichols,” she reached for his hand, smiling a little bigger and softer. “You can’t tell me you’re not a little curious, especially as a historian.”

“Super spooky,” Arthur agreed, wondering what kind of predicament he’d gotten himself into with this conversation. But he’d gone and put his foot in it hadn’t he? So what else could he do but sit and try to figure out how best to resolve this situation. “Well… I was-” he debated on making up some sort of excuse of a thing he’d been intending on doing, but unfortunately this was a touch more pressing. At least he could be present whilst she did her digging, who knew what she might turn up if he wasn’t around to add a little bit of clarification to it. “But… uh sure…” He internally sighed at the turn of events as he moved to take the proffered seat. “Maybe, or just a really weird coincidence.” Who could say for sure but he returned her smile with a faint albeit genuine one of his own. Always amicable even if he did feel like he was struggling to tread water. The sudden remembrance of civility drew forth a soft huff of a laugh, “all good, Arthur Drake… Pleasure to meet you Erin,” he greeted as he took her hand and shook it politely with a warmer look. “Yeah… Okay you’ve got me,” his smile grew into a little bit of a shy grin “still wasn’t how I was expecting this day to turn out… So how’d you find that anyway? An obituary of someone who passed recently or?”

Erin grinned wider when the man finally seemed to be ceding to her request, even if a bit reluctantly. “I won’t keep you long. I pr--” The word almost slipped from her mouth and Erin pretended to cough to cover up the hiccup. No fucking way was she uttering the ‘p-word’ in the very same place her and Regan had been just a month ago. “Excuse me. Scout’s honor. Not trying to deter your day too much.” It took a moment for her it to click, but the name smacked her with familiarity. Arthur Drake. She nodded, though she was half-distracted as she tried to pull a faint memory from the depths of her brain to connect it. “Yeah, like I said--the family decedent recently passed, so the family gave me their files to go through and put something together for the service and the obituary. It’s pretty common--” she halted mid speech, temporarily forgetting the whole reason this man was here. Instead, focusing on who he was. “Arthur Drake! Wait!” She pointed to him, new enthusiasm in her voice. “You’re Mercy’s Arthur. I mean, you know her. Mercy.” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she recalled the conversation, though a slight, very knowing smirk sat on the tip of her lips.

The sudden way she cut herself off from saying what Arthur could only assume was promise didn’t escape his attention. She’d gotten his attention and now that she had it little slips were something that would be noted and collected, filed in his mind to formulate a better understanding on this strange mortician that seemed to somehow find him of apparent interest. “Alright… I guess I can spare a little time.” How long would depend. But for now it would suffice to give her a bit of leeway. “I see... Well… from what I know he didn’t have any kids of his own this side of the pond… But it’s possible he might’ve fostered a few people and that’s how the name got connected.“ Arthur knew for a fact that was exactly what had happened, but he wasn’t about to admit that. “I’m English myself… Most of my heritage is as well from what little I know of it…” His fingers lightly rubbed at the angle of his jaw as he tried to run the approximate timelines in his head, gods this was going to get confusing. Thankfully he was spared from those calculations by Erin’s sudden exclamation that initially made him blink and then look a fair bit more sheepish than he already had. There was no helping his mild cringe, “ah--- not her Arthur… Well, yes her Arthur but… Not in that sense… Because I’m not… hers. Uh… shit, yes, Gods… What’s she been saying about me? How do you know her?”

What a strange, nervous, little man, Erin thought quietly to herself. His reaction to her inquiry about Mercy was interesting, though. “Mmhmm…” She nodded thoughtfully, unable to hide the little smirk. “We’re old friends. She’s one of the few people in this town who’d gladly scale a cliff with me instead of listing all the reasons why I shouldn’t.” After the past few weeks she’d had, she’d likely give the woman a call for that. Turned her attention back to the screen in her hand, trying to be nonchalant. “Some good things, don’t worry,” she offered pleasantly, but that was all she would say on the matter, recalling how back-and-forth her friend had been when she recalled their Arthur Drake conversation. She halted mid-scroll, the amusement falling from her features suddenly, features narrowing into pure concentration. An older photograph emerged, one from more than a few decades before the original one she had first shown Arthur. Identical. She held the photo up, eyes wide. “Is--do you see that too?”

“Old friends… Huh, interesting” Arthur clicked his tongue a little as he eyed Erin for a moment not quite sure what to make of that statement. “Yeah that definitely sounds like her…” He couldn’t help the way his gaze intensified however in the interim, trying to decipher the code of what constituted good things. The talk of Mercy in all honesty had distracted him temporarily from what they were even ‘researching’. By ‘researching’, it wasn’t Arthur’s typical proactive contribution to sessions as typically befitted his interest in the topic. It was more Erin looking through certain documentations while Arthur asked the odd question here and there trying to look interested while wondering just what this woman might know. That was until Erin froze, and Arthur’s eyes snapped to the screen trying his best to contain his sudden panic. Oh shit. Thankfully at that point his phone vibrated. He snatched up his phone and quickly thumbed open a note tilting the screen just enough to hide its contents as he rushed to fake texting out a reply “oh gods, I’m sorry… my um, tortoise… is really ill and needs food...“ He shot her an apologetic look quickly getting to his feet “well, this was fascinating… Really, but um, yeah… Gotta go, good luck…” With a minor wave, Arthur shot straight for the door cursing this whole venture in his mind. What had he gotten himself into?

#chatzy #chatzy: arthur #history repeats #wickedswriting

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cepmurphy · 5 years ago

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“Urg! He’s got a face fall of teeth!” – The Woman Who Fell To Earth

From now until New Year’s, I’m going to be reviewing S11 of Doctor Who in time for S12. Why? Because there’s various things about S11 I don’t think anyone discusses, so I’m going to do it. And naturally, we start with ep1, The Doctor In An Exciting Adventure With Tim Shaw. Chris Chibnall went into S11 with entirely new writers and directors, a new composer, the first female Doctor, and a pledge of no returning monsters in S11 (i.e. a fudge for New Year’s). It was all going to be new. Did that work? It certainly results in his first episode looking and feeling like no other Doctor Who episode I’ve seen before it. No other episode in S11 looks and feels like this either. When we open with Ryan and his grandparents, it feels like we’re watching a BBC drama. It starts with a deliberately unflashy vlog; we move into natural lighting, wide shots of the grassy outdoors, and domestic drama as Ryan loses his calm and refuses to accept Graham. Where Rose deliberately harkened to contemporary soap operas, The Woman Who Fell To Earth starts off feeling like The A Word. When the science fiction shows up, it starts as abstract yellow slashes in the very air. The lighting, camerawork, and music all presents this as something weird rather than exciting. Something is distorting the genre. And then, the train attack. A BBC drama has been invaded by a sci-fi horror. We’re in a world of darkness now; Sheffield is a city of shadows and grungy alleyways and empty streets. Our first alien is a pulsing mess of wires that flashes from within, something completely alien and faceless. When we get a humanoid villain, he’s a sinister Predator-like figure. He leaves bodies so disfigured they can’t be shown on screen and he wears severed teeth on his face. This is odd enough on rewatch. When I first saw it, I was transfixed. Was this what Doctor Who was going to be like? The answer is “no”, we don’t get this dark and horrific and completely weird after, and that’s a bit disappointing. Still, as an opening I can’t fault its confidence. This is not Moffat’s Who, or RTD’s, or the Classic Era, or even Chibnall’s previous stories. But does the story work, and does it set up the characters for later?

There are some weak points. Why did Tim Shaw’s bundle-o-wires leave the cast alive if it was planting bombs to kill them later anyway? Never explained. Ryan’s dyspraxia comes in during his climb up the crane to help Carl, treated in the story like this is the point where he tries instead of giving up, but we’ll be returning to him and the bike later anyway. And Tim Shaw comes from five thousand galaxies away, a detail that doesn’t fit in with the more grounded, grungy setting of this story.

However, for the most part, this works. It’s a simple plot to start us off: a rich dude is hunting the Most Dangerous Game, and he’s cheating. This is the key thing, the bit that the Doctor and the show flag up as the worst part, not that he’s a killer but that he’s petty. He’s a sadistic thug who taunts and dismisses people, who kills when he doesn’t need to, and then gets pissy when the Doctor notices that he’s cheating at his test. He wants to be seen as the Big Man but he’s just a cheap bully. “Tim Shaw’s a big, blue cheat!”

He’s still a threat, due to that petty brutality. He fits the dark-streets sci-fi horror of this episode – he’s an unsettling, nasty, brutal thug and he’ll kill you. (Making him a major planet-shattering ubervillain, now, that’d be silly, right….? Oh no.)

A simple plot means a greater focus on selling the new status quo, the character dynamic, and it does: the characters work by cooperating, and the Doctor is a low-key, often practical figure. Throughout the story, there are constant scenes of discussion and questioning to figure out what’s going on, and everyone – not just the Doctor figuring it out for us – gets to play a role. Crucially, the Doctor recruits them to find out facts for her, and each character has a different social group and a different method to find them out. We learn something about them when Graham and Grace turn to colleagues, and that Graham does it in person, and when Ryan checks Sheffield social media, and when Yaz tries (and fails) to use her job. Ryan’s continuing issues with Graham marrying his nan are less key than the fact Graham is mostly not pressing the issue, but Grace does; when Ryan snarks “second husband”, both grandparents look at him, but Graham looks away. Graham spends the whole thing trying so hard to get Ryan to accept him as “granddad” and putting up with a lot of guff, and we learn a lot that he’s putting up with it when it’s clearly emotionally draining.

And we learn something when despite all that, Ryan is left depressed when he thinks Graham’s blaming him for what’s going on.

And Yaz’s first bit of police stuff! On first watch, it feels like she rarely does this again – however, on rewatching them closer together, you will start to pick out numerous moments where Yaz reacts and deals with situations exactly as you’d want a policewoman to do. This is where it starts, and is the most explicit: a scene of her keeping the peace with calm authority and common-sense decisions, and asserting herself over older women.

Then there’s the new Doctor. Very, very quickly, we learn who the Doctor is – as with RTD’s debut of the Ninth, we learn about her from how she enters the fray and interacts with people. This Doctor is someone who doesn’t actually know anything on but is working it out, and working out her response, on the go. This Doctor turns to everyone around in the crashed train and brings them into a discussion, tries to form them into a group and trusts them to assist her. This Doctor doesn’t kill Tim Shaw but gives him the means to go home, so he can be saved from the DNA bombs he’s triggered. (Okay, she tricked him into absorbing them, but she’s never intending to kill him, just force him to piss off.)

The most defining thing is that this Doctor builds her new sonic screwdriver. When the Doctor was without sonic or TARDIS in The Eleventh Hour, the sonic was returned as a reward by the story at the very end. The Thirteenth doesn’t need it given to her. We see her make something, and – just as she works out what’s going on – we see her do it with what’s around her. Her new sonic looks like a thing that has been hammered out in a shed too, it’s no sleek sci-fi gizmo born from within a time machine but a piece of DIY engineering.

And that’s one of two big things in this episode that will last throughout the series: the Doctor is grounded, not a figure of great sci-fi power but someone who has to plot and make things. The second is the story is grounded as well. The world isn’t at risk, just a few people in one city. Which city? Sheffield, not somewhere with the TV glamour and loving building porn shots of London. The Thirteenth Doctor gets her new outfit from a charity shop, key intelligence comes from a bus driver, the villain’s grand scheme is to abduct one man, and the Doctor attends a funeral. The stakes are low by the standards of the show, but it’s not treated as such. “They’re not important,” Tim Shaw says about the little people, and is condemned for.

We’re not dealing with the Lost Lonely God here, we’re dealing with a smart, practical woman “sorting out fair play throughout the universe” who works with people like bus drivers and blokes doing MVQs, and who will stick around for your funeral (and a very normal funeral presented in a normal way, a coda that lasts several minutes, not a quick beat). It’s a strong, confident start, setting out a way of doing Doctor Who and saying: this is what we can do. Come along. Unfortunately, following it up with a Coming Soon montage of actors is a terrible way to build interest. It’s a bunch of people staring at the camera in different clothes. Where’s the excitement? How will kids know to care? We’ll end positively and remember the greatest man of Sheffield, the drunk kebab man who threw food at Tim Shaw. “Eat my salad, Halloween!” Legend.

#doctor who #doctor who reviews #Jodie Whittaker #doctor who s11

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talonsandleaves · 5 years ago

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7. Broken Hearts Club Is Open For The Season!

Happy Monday! Right now, I am alone at the lab writing this. Don’t judge me! I have to wait an hour for something to be ready to work more. I will than finish the entry at home and post it.

My name is Nora and I am definitely not ready for adult life mixed with teen drama!

How was your weekend? Mine was... interesting? I GOT MY FIRST PAYCHECK! It’s not much because I am just tutoring for two hours per week. The girls are excited about learning more but one of them... well, I think her homework was entirely made using google translator. I will need to talk to her mother soon if she keeps doing it.

I am having trouble in the German class. Apparently, now the director wants us to have our tests without being told the day. I mean, it would be okay if it wasn’t for the fact that we are all in university and sometimes can’t go to class because of other exams and papers we have to deliver... This is just very disrespectful to all of us because we have been there for more than 5 years and there is no understanding of our effort. Student’s life is tough!

That friend I talked about on my last entry, who I decided to name Will to get this awful decision off of my shoulders, is being a pain in my neck! I just got a text from him saying he is all by himself and that no one cares...

I swear that if I find him one of these days I am going to murder him. I DO CARE ABOUT HIM AND THE ASSHOLE DOESN’T EVEN APPRECIATE IT! I feel really disappointed with Will. Some people are just unbearable and impossible to change. And I am still trying to help despite all of that... No comments.

Another thing that happened during the last few days was Summer not looking quite like herself. I think it’s okay for me to say it here. I mean the names are changed and also no one in my life knows this online diary exists so...

Summer looks so sad today that I am considering preparing something for us to do at the end of the next week. I am quite busy until I am done with a test I have in a week. I have already done all the exercises to prepare myself during the weekend but I will repeat them all again and again just to practice more.

But back to Summer... Nick is traveling and they kept talking online but apparently, he has been kind of ignoring her in the past three days. I told her he can be online but busy talking to someone and that she should just be patient and wait because he will certainly answer when he has time to do so... But part of me is wondering if I am not keeping my hopes high for nothing.

Summer is sad for all of this but the only thing I got out of her was “he could at least tell me what he really wanted so that I wouldn’t be waiting for him. I could see other guys and I am probably focused on him for nothing”. She is not like this! I know that! And I asked to meet me for a coffee in the afternoon. She needs it!

Also, I put up with a lot from Lucas during the weekend. Unfortunately, things are starting to be a bit too much for him and my mom took him to the doctor. He has to take medication now and supposedly slow down because of the stress and sadness and driving him crazy and he might even need to increase the dose. Still, he went to Vicky’s house the entire 3 days he was at home. My mom could not stop him and he came back with a look close to a person standing at a funeral. I really don’t know how to help and he keeps picking that girl instead of us and we are doing everything in our power to reduce his problems and worries.

I also started talking to someone this weekend and I guess I am getting better at making new friends because he thinks I am quite funny. YES! Finally, someone says it!

6 notes · View notes

funkzpiel · 7 years ago

Note

how about some drunk crossovers -- i'm thinking the adventure zone: suffering game? do with that what your wine will

Graves wiped a trail of blood from his cheek and glared at the man responsible for getting them in this mess – Grindelwald.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” he wheezed softly, utterly spent. Across the room and leaning heavily against the wall, Grindelwald sneered at him. Of them, he quite nearly looked the worst. Older. Much older. In this “game” they had all been conned into he had spun the wheel and lost 20 years of his life; and it shwoed. It showed in the wrinkles around his eyes and the thinning of his hair. He looked tired. He was missing a hand, something he still had cradled to his chest.

“You were hardly invited.”

“I wasn’t just going to let you get your hands on the Elder Wand,” Graves spat.

“How do you even know it’s here to begin with?” Theseus snarled, oen hand craddling a rather mangled looking arm from the creatures they had to fight when the other travelers betrayed them – a dark bruise beneath one eye – his hair dull and lacking the fiery red of his namesake.

Grindelwald scowled, his mouth a dark and twisted thing. “I saw it.”

Graves snorted.

He himself was doing remarkable well, considering. He had lost hearing in only one ear, the feeling in two fingers, and just a gash on his cheek from running to Theseus’ aid in the firght.

But Tina and Newt…

Tina was curled around him now in fact, the man’s head nestled in her lap. Eyes closed, unconscious. His freckles were gone, his fingers were broken. He was bleeding heavily from his side.

And Tina – her hair was dull and lifeless. She had lost some of her beauty in a spin, her brows a little more shapeless, her nose a bit more crooked, her figure a little less flattering. Nothing drastic, but different all the same.

The Game had taken from them all, all for the sake of the final prize - The Elder Wand.

“How much longer?” Tina moaned, hands shaking as she tried to keep calm in the face of Newt’s shortening breath.

“Shit, I don’t–”

“Shut up, they’re coming back!”

“What a lovely show that was my dears!” One of their hosts said as they glided into the room, the Wheel an large and towering omen behind them. “Absolutely entertaining! Although you’re on the fast trakc to losing if you don’t start putting yourselves first; that othr team threw you to the dogs!”

“Quite right, Lydia, quite right. But you’ll have your chance to leanr later. For now, another round of sacrifice! And take heart – you’re near the endgame now, so this round will be particularly…costly,” Edward said with a dramatic flcik of his hair. Beside him, Lydia laughed, the soundlike church chimes for a funeral pyre.

“Who’s first?”

With a growl and a stagger, Grindelwald stepped forward. A Seer with a distinct distaste for the unknown, no more apparent than now by his inability to wait for the inevitable.

They watched as he spun the wheel, the elves chortling and narrating gleefully as it twirled. With a clattered that slowed and slowed, it finally stopped on sword. And for a moment, Graves hoped it meant what he thought it did.

It didn’t.

“Hmm now this is bland at first sight, but a goodie. We’ll be taking a win from you, some time in the future,” Edward purred when Grindelwald layed them with an expectant look.

“Yes!” Lydia sang, “A moment in your future, a battle you should have won, you’ll now lose!”

“I wonder which,” Edward asked with false innocence. “Do you agree to this sacrirfice?”

Graves hoped it’d be his arrest. Grindelwald must have seen it in his face, too, because he leveled Graves with a deathly glare as he agreed. His body flkickered for just a momnet, then that was it.

“Alright, who’s next/!”

Theseus stood up.

“I’m spinning twice,” He announced. “Once for myself, once for my brtoher.”

“Ah ~but –”

“He can hardly spin for himself,” Theseus said with a snap. “He’s not even awake to suffer whatever it is, so what does it matter?”

The two elves looked at one another with a look Graves couldn’t quite catch and nodded.

“Fair enough.”

“Spin, brother dearest.”

An eye and a body.

“Hmmm… since you’re such a dear and taking both, we’ll grant you this: you need only sacrifice the sight of one eye. As for your body, well… let’s just say you aren’t as spry as you used to be. For this, we’ll be taking some of your reflexes. Do you agree?”

“Theseus–”

“I do,” he said quickly. There was no pain, Graves could tell that much – no sacrifice hurt here – but he could see it in the way Theseus was suddenly blinking rapidly that he had gone blind suddenly ni one eye; his vision there one second, gone the next. He looked Graves’ way and indeed his left eye had gone cloudy and grey.

“Excellent! Another sacrifice closer to the enx t room, well done! Who’s next?”

“I will,” Graves said before Tina could step up, hoping once again he might find soem flaw or loophole to spare them all.

He didn’t.

The spinner clacked with ever panel passed. Thock. Thock. Thock… Thock…Thock… Thock.

An image of a heart.

Graves’ stomach curdled at the possibilities and on either side of the spinner, the elves grinned. Smoke leaked from the edges of his pursed lips.

“This… You are not a lucky man, are you, Mr. Graves?”

Graves glanced at Grindelwald with a scowl.

“Not recently.”

“The heart is a rather tricky thing, director,” Lydia said, her voice awed and somber, as though this were some rare treat. “And at this point in the game, it’s going to cost you.”

“Indeed,” Edward agreed. “A lot. For this sacrifice, Mr. Graves, we ask you this: would you sacrifice being with your soulmate?”

Graves blinked, floored because… this was it? This… fairy tale? He snorted.

“There’s no such thing.”

“I’m not talking about the children’s stories, darling,” Exward purred. “Everyone has a soulmate, but that doesn’t mean we get to meet them or be with them. There’s someone for everyone. I take it you haven’t met them yet, based off your disbelief. Maybe you’ll never meet them and this price will be moot. I guess… think of it this way? If you don’t believe in it, what does it hurt to let it go?”

“Oh interesting, yes. It’s not really a costly burden at all!” Lydia said with a pleased clap. “What do you say, dear?”

“You won’t even know they’re gone,” Edward said. “No matter what, nothing will make you remember them. And if you haven’t met them, you won’t even see them. You’ll exist and they’ll exist, but the string of fate that binds you will be severed. Forever.”

“Mr. Graves,” Tina whispered.

“It’s not real,” Graves said sternly, and he had never believed it to be real. And even if he did, he had no room in his life for love. Not when his life was so dangerous and his time so absorbed by work and his job so risky. It wouldn’t be fair. He has never allowed himself to love and he never would.

And this would cement the promise, if soulmates were real, which they weren’t. A child’s tale to make the world look shiny and exciting. But it wasn’t. It was dull and it was dangerous and it was cruel.

There was no such thing as soulmates.

“I agree,” Graves said and nothing happened. He smirked.

“Done!” Edward said with a clap. Now, Ms. Goldstein, would you be so kind?”

“Here,” said a voice, rough and unfamiliar. “I’ll hold him.”

Graves blinked and turned just in time to see a stranger take Newt’s crumpled body into his arms, allowing Tina to go to the wheel. She paused at the sight of plain bafflement on Graves’ face.

“Mr… Graves…?” She asked.

“Who are you?” Graves barked at the man, hand already at his wand even though weapons were useless in this room. “Is this some new part of the game? Just throwing random people into our team?”

He threw a glare at the elves, only to feel even more irritated by the sheer amazement and glee on their faces.

“Oh this is rich!”

“Did he not know?”

“Closeted probably, those law types always are.”

“How unfortunate.”

“Director,” Grindelwald suddenly said, surprisingly calm and intent in the way he was addressing his enemy. “Do you know that man?”

“Val…?” The stranger whispered, his skin ashy white.

And that was weird because only one—– no one called him that, actually. Ever. Not once. No one dared. No one.

“Director,” he corrected the man, thrown off by the man’s disregard for formalities. “And no. Who is this? Was he from the other room?”

“It’s… it’s me, Val. Theseus.”

“…I’m sorry. Do you know me? The name isn’t ringing a bell.”

Theseus let out a broken little sound, something that made Percival uneasy and uncomfortable.

“Jesus,” he gasped, holding Newt a little tighter. “Oh fuck. You… We… I thought… oh fuck!”

“What is going on?!”

“Oh no,” Tina moaned softly, wrecked.

“Please, Val. You have to remember me. Try! Please, try to remember me!”

Graves looked at him hard and long, but the longer he stared, the more and more his face seemed distant to him. He’d seen him on the street maybe? Or in training? A meeting? He just… didn’t look familiar. Not even a little.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Graves said, at a loss for words in the face of such utter agony when he himself felt nothing.

Theseus bowed his head down to Newt and shook and shook, his breath sharp and hollow. He whispered something, but the words fell on deaf ears and a deaf heart.

For Graves there was no such thing as soulmates, and there never would be.

#mini fic #percivla graves #original percival graves #newt scamander #theseus scamander #thesival #gellert grindelwald #the adventure zone au

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lobotomycorp-unofficialeventfan · 7 years ago

Text

Comments of submitted arts

I translated the judges ' evaluations. I am sorry that I am not good at English. But I did my best.

If I get a chance someday, I'll visit you in a more proficient way!

*********************Evaluation details************************

<<Lobotomy Corporation Unofficial Fan Art Contest Winners>> - Illustration

. . . 1st.

Wish the event will go smootley! [Leafy] https://goo.gl/m9Vg8y . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) . Objectively, this seems to be the best. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) . He has just given relief to the pain of one of his employees. Did the peace given to him lead to happiness in the staff? I'm not sure. We'll just have to mourn. Until he gives us eternal rest. . (Translate plz.) 솔직히, 더 이상 무슨 말씀을 드려야 될 지 모르겠습니다. 내 관점에서는 당신이 최고입니다. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) . The whole body was excited and it was really cool and to my taste. I think he(or she)'s winning my appetite. The realistic paintings and unique atmosphere fascinated me.

. ----------------------------------------- (Sponsor-1) . Looking at the picture, It was worth 150,000 won invested in the competition. I am happy to find such a good quality for 150,000 won. (150,000 won -> about $ 140) . ----------------------------------------- (Sponsor-2) . It was the foreign participant that made us realize that this was an international competition.

I got the mail and looked at the pictures in advance, but I don't think I have any problem getting the first prize.

Their expressions and techniques also had the perfect technology and the right filters for the atmosphere.

I think it suits the atmosphere of the game. I will give you the highest point in both quality and original interpretation.

. ----------------------------------------- .

. .

2nd.

Artworks for awesome mood in game [ N_9] https://goo.gl/wcAqMt . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) . +) The cuteness that covers the horror completely and separation. -) The dimple is so doll looking. If someone have only seen Pan Art, they don't think it's a horror game.

. ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) . The atmosphere of the old version of the game is fantastic. So why did you submit three? If you are a foreigner, but you are a Korean ... . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) . Admiration, Admiration, Admiration. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) . The atmosphere is fantastic and the employees of the previous game version. It is an adaptation of a scene from a legacy trailer. It is an old user's picture that

shows that he has played the game since the previous version. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) . It looks like a professional illustrator. The atmosphere is really good. I liked the idea of perfectly implementing a game picture like a book illustration. Its structure, lighting, and old atmosphere were all perfect.

However, only two pictures can be submitted. While agonizing over it, I examined the third painting except for it, and it was sadly well drawn.

Older versions of the game staff seem to be the norm. Clearly, previous versions of the staff were even more eerie as they were round and cute, compared to game settings. Once again it has been proven.

. ----------------------------------------

3rd.

Slime girl and the queen of hatred [moolon] https://goo.gl/pqQty5 . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) . +) A soft flowing Slime girl and a cute queen of hatred. -) But let's not meet in the game. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) . Ho Ho Ho, I love the Slimes girl. The Queen of Hatred is pretty. Ok, Hong, Hong, oh! . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) . It is a beautiful picture of " Molten Love. " Just like a slime, I want to add a little more clarity or shine. The Queen of Hatred is brighter than the Slimes. It doesn't matter, anyway. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) . I'd like to tell the writer that I used 3 packs of tissue. (It's still growing.) . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) . well implemented the glittery of the Slimes and the glitter of the Queen of Hatred. The Queen of Hatred could have become too colorful. But he painted it very cute, elaborate and without eye pain.

Slimes might have been nice to have a more shiny description. But the melting expression is very good.

The only regret is that I'm not a fan of both. So I could not give additional points. . -----------------------------------------

. . .

<<Lobotomy Corporation Unofficial Fan Art Contest Winners>> - Novel

. ***All the judges participated in the review.*** . . . 1st.

No one will be left [5boonmander] https://goo.gl/YqQsnY . The beginning the and end of a new recruit [5boonmander] https://goo.gl/FShVro . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) . The subject of the fog war. Clearness as well as clarity.

. The process of family members disappearing was impressive. I did not expect to do so with only the " setting of game " of the fog war.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) . Are you worried that there are no photobias, no blood, no trials, no stories? You can see Lobotomy's grim world view through any unnamed employee, sometimes perfect in writing except for a few paragraphs that have been too long for description. Personally, I like a rich description.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) . A good article feels the moment you see the first sentence. This article did. It is my favorite way to end the first and last sentences in the same form. The novel was a perfect beginning and ending, especially with its combination of writing power and plot. A story without a story or story that could not be used went off the rails.

In particular, it is a story from Lobotomy Corporation " Outside. " But it wasn't awkward at all. It is a novel that mixes elements of the world view that did not appear in the game.

. It was a novel about how the staff who worked at Lobotomy worked. It was a perfect way to boost tension and finish it. The spelling is also correct. We give you the highest marks in the quality of the novel and the original interpretation.

. ----------------------------------------- . . . 2nd.

Eternal Meal [Carania] https://goo.gl/ZPyThF . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) If it was in the form of " recording, " the script format was not bad. But at the end, the character himself said, " This is not a recording. " So I had to re-evaluate the assessment. It has been a long time since I took the introduction speech of the previous version of midnight.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) It was an interesting story that was created by linking the text from this book. It was a great victory. It was so cool.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) It is very similar to the story of " Ppodae. " Are you a prophet? So I gave him extra points. It is also ironic that the main character was chosen as a safety team. Nezach cries... overly descriptions and dialogue between overly agreeable characters were a bit annoying. But this is a good novel.

. ----------------------------------------- . . . 3rd. [*spoiler*] A person standing by [Hwatottbool] https://goo.gl/GvzYgg . . (Gallery sub director) Angela's mind was revealing well. The sight of me made me feel lonely. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) I remember that it was a novel that was just before the Ending Update. it was a prophecy. It has a pretty style and description. Character interpretation worked well. But this is not a novel. This is a memoir of a person. I was bored because there was no incident.

Since this contest is a novel contest, it was judged on the basis of novels. . -----------------------------------------

. ******************************** Additional Lists *********************************

<<Lobotomy Corporation Unofficial Fan Art Contest>> - Inspection details for Foreign participants

Hello! [bakaiju]

https://goo.gl/A7Zizy . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) A work of high quality and full of hard work But I am sorry that letitia's eyes are only pretty. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) . Nice judge. Many abnomarlity. And, thank you for your participation. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) The image of the referee bird and the employee who died next to him was so good and great. If you had paid more attention to detail, I would have given you the high marks.

But the second picture felt strange. I find the Queen of Hatred strange. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) It places significance on the first foreign participation. The background and quality are unfortunate. The first picture seems to be done by hand and the second picture by computer. The Queen of Hatred and Latitia are a bit sad.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) It was thought that foreigners should participate in the event, so I went around foreign sites for three days. And I was worried if no one attended. However, this arts immediately gave an impression. I was personally impressed.

So I gave him extra points. The quality is also good. Thanks to this work, I gained confidence that it is okay to put effort into promoting this contest.

However, quality did not give the highest point for some details. Thank you. . ----------------------------------------- .

. . I hope this… [7-Tek]

https://goo.gl/1PiiCm . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) A solemn yet colorful butterfly -) Nothing. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) butterfly is the best. NA. BI. ZO. AH. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) GOOD! Neat light and shade, proper background, and beautiful work. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) It is a fairly good painting, " The funeral of dead butterflies. " It was neat and well-colored. The flying butterflies keep the background from getting bored. He worked hard at expressing the back of his coffin. But it's just a " funeral of dead butterflies. " lol

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) High quality is the " funeral for dead butterflies ". This is a work which really

excited me. Color selection and line description are outstanding. The dark clothing, which can become a lump in the face, is described wisely with lights and dividing lines.

It faithfully depicts butterfly men and has a serious quality. But it's simply that I don't have any additional points because I don't like the guy. Haha...

. ----------------------------------------- .

. . Good day [Mushroomliang]

https://goo.gl/9BN7Qy . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) Well represented the characteristics of each upper layers sepiroth. -) I saw a beer on the table, but this is not a beer place. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Netzach's bedtime is impressive. but Yesod's clothes are preety bad. How many penalty points? . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) A painting with a beautiful, calm, water-coloured expression and a sense of calm that is rarely seen in the Lobotomy corporaton.

I can feel another emotion from the mess of Nezach. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) You must love your Jacques. Me too ... It's not good, but I'd like to have a beer with him.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) Looking at the picture of Nezach lying upside down, I thought I should let him in. Thank you for accepting the invitation.

I was glad to see that the picture was submitted. The eye of art has no borders. Without digital work, they painted only manually. The book gave the original interpretation the highest point in that it revealed the character's individuality through proper setting, not just by expressing characters.

However, I could not feel my preference in the characters submitted. Failure with additional points.

. ----------------------------------------- .

. . art contest [Midson Vonjungle]

https://goo.gl/t4am7B . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) His "noting there" is good. -) His final form of evolution requires holes in the ship. I was embarrassed. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) So simple message. So simple art. I love simple. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) I liked the scary and wonderful " Nothing " that " Goodbye. " However, I want to feel more Gore. I think it is enough to be expressed by hand.

For " Dream of the Black swan, " I'm sorry. Honestly, I didn't like it. When I first saw it, I didn't understand what it was, so I thought it over. If you had painted each characteristic alive, I would have given a much higher score.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) It is regrettable that the lines are neatly aligned and uncoloured. If you had painted the color, I would give high scored the picture .

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) "Nothing there", waving an ax, shouting " Goodbye. " "Black swan's dream"s brother, who looks like he is screaming at his sister, " Get some

money. " It is also a mysterious work that although it is a simple, creased painting, everything

is expressed. However, they did not get high scores in terms of quality as they did not have any painting and had no other explanation besides drawing.

If you had submitted it more carefully, it would have been at least middle class. When the artist painted this painting, it is regrettable that the painting might have been painted roughly due to his impulsivism.

. -----------------------------------------

. I like Snow White’s apple [JeeJee]

https://goo.gl/ME21Ly . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) Painted apples like a cruel fairy tale -) It is regrettable that the wings of "White night" are not sharp but round. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer)

The end of the story is that " Finally, she was happy with another prince." Stop resisting. I am cure you. Pretty art. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) It was nice to reinterpret the story of the apple. Let's wish her happiness. The grandeur and beauty of the white night was a little trim. It would have been even cooler if you had put in a clock unique to the white night instead of the Magic Circle behind you and instead worked more carefully on the description of the wings.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) Our apples can't be that good. The paintings are neat and reveal the author's personal desires. Applelover!

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) Snow White's apple can be cute, and white night can be dignified with the SD ratio. I like hard work in background, excellent lighting, and SD ratio and structure. However, Deporme is so severe that the detailed description of characters is regrettable that it does not give the highest quality score.

This drawing style is similar to the Lobotomy Corporation game. With a little attention, it is likely to be able to produce an impact no less than the original.

. ----------------------------------------- . . . owo TwT [Michin]

https://goo.gl/4oyWgV . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) It's amazing and amazing that Malkuth's right hair got longer when she broke up. -) Nothing. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) It's a pretty cool mood. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) I gave the highest marks in the original interpretation part. I was impressed by the neat and clear portrayal of each character's bad side. It's like a party for all the people. A picture that seems to reveal each other's character in a warm and warm manner.

I wish it had actually ended this way. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) The contrast between the first painting, which is quite dark, and the second painting,

which displays the characters, is impressive. But i think hod is not good. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) I think, most foreign fans prefer the upper layers to the middle layers, cuz they are more important the psychological description.

This fan also seems to draw a lot of upper class fan art. I was impressed by her emphasis on the double personality of ** in the upper tier factoid.

I also liked the way the upper layers were destroyed. So i give that the best score about original interpretation part. . ----------------------------------------- . . . Daily work [白華]

https://goo.gl/gKCKVy . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) It's like a old-Maker game. If the main character of the game was an employee, this game's style would have appeared this way.

-) What the h...er character?

. ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Deep Dark Lobotomy's daily work. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) The highest-quality piece of dot art that has appeared on this contest. It felt like a game script with a graphic like a classic game. Just after a friend dies, he joked, " Who's going to get rid of this?" I felt another strange feeling.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) Management, log-like, simulation - > Maker Game Event Personally, that sounds like a pretty good challenge. Overall, the quality is good. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) Pan-Art turned Lobotomy corporation into an old game atmosphere by mixing dot art and scripts properly.

She laughs at her fellow body and says she won the bet. It shows the broken minds of Lobotomy's employees.

The quality of the object expressed in dots and the detailed Easter egg implementation are very good. It gave him the highest point in the original translation.

It was a piece that showed how the mental state of employees who say they miss the smell of blood was felt by foreigners alike.

. ----------------------------------------- .

. . Fan Art Contest(Angela :x) [清川淀武]

https://goo.gl/Fg7n2M . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) Angela hides huge greed and tries to punish bad people. -) Grow up, my hair! . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) I thought I would write it in English, but I think I'd better put it in Korean. Whose hand is Angela holding? And what does the background mean? Does that punitive bird go to punish Angela? Or did they just follow up?

I don't know the purpose, but it seems possible to interpret in many ways. Is it Angela who has just been made and hasn't gone through the TT2 protocol? . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) Beautiful and dreamlike. Originally, the punishing bird is not matched about this atmosphere. However, I liked the unique atmosphere as a point.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) The background resembles the king of greed's pattern . I hope that the king of greed will eat Engela hard. [Censored]

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) It depicts Angela and a punishing bird with elaborate backgrounds reminiscent of the king of greed.

Angela seems to have expressed her desire for what Ending showed her. Using an accurate but distinct description and depth, the background reflects slightly beyond Angela's clothes, creating a mysterious atmosphere.

I thought :X was just a facial expression, but now I think the main character in Angela's hand is X.

. ----------------------------------------- . . . Lobotomy corp. illustration for Contest [noyuki]

https://goo.gl/a1JY5H . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) Same teenagers, different feeling. -) Just inevitable beauty of Letitia's eyes. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Letitia shot my emotion with a pretty. The magical girl is as cheerful as her profile is. Very good. But why is Letitia's eye normal?

Were you Japanese? I give up on English. I am sorry. Let's understand because we are from the same East Asian country.

(= I'll bother Sponsor-2.) . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) Letitia's cute features, appropriate backgrounds, detailed effects and fine hades. The Queen of Hatred suits the background, which looks like an American comic book. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) I'd like to tell the writer that I used five tissue boxes. The picture of Queen of Hatred seemed to shake a little, so I thought it was moving at first. So i've been watching.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) The detailed description and color were so harmonious that they gave the highest marks in quality.

A picture of a magic girl hurts her eyes. I like the fact that while using strong colors, the colors do not play separately and melt into one piece.

The character interpretation was also well implemented without any differences, but the original interpretation part score is not the best.

. -----------------------------------------

Lobotomy_corporation FAN ART [秋津]

https://goo.gl/iJL1eU . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) Clean style. -) But something is missing. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Good placement and not bad background for the same department location. It seems to be a good description of the upper layers. And Angela, who suggests in the front that things will go his way. I like it. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) Pictures drawn about upper layers.The painting is a neat and well-relieved picture. However, although some of the paintings were omitted, this painting simply listed characters. So i failed to give a high score.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) Nezach is turning back hair beside his ear. Why? It is Angela and upper layers, which is in line with the position of the upper division. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) The positioning of the characters is also the same as the location of the department in the game with Angela.

It was clean pastel version of description and color, but the problem was only lined, which lacked the another impact.

Perhaps the picture just submitted was more so as it was compared with the one in brilliant colors and styles. The painting itself was good, but the timing of submission was not good.

. -----------------------------------------

Submit arts for FanArt Contest [BleryKey]

https://goo.gl/D8XXCe . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) A different atmosphere about abnormalities. -) Nothing. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Strong red hood. She will be kill wolf. Knight of dispair was drown fairy tale style. what a cool style. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) It was a painting that made the touch rough so that the life of a red mercenaries could be felt. But I felt somewhat awkward.

I like realistic things, but the face of the article of despair has become so realistic, So i felt awkward... a little too much.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) The article of despair is of good quality, but not of mercenaries. I prefer mercenaries

to knights of despair, what does this mean? certainly a contrast between red and blue. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) would draw a red mercenary or marksman of magic bullet. he(or she) also sent in mercenaries. to be nice The manual drawing of a foreign artist using strong texture and penmanship was so impressive that it gave the original analysis the best point.

The painting of "knight of despair" seems to be boring as the painting is a bit lackluster in coloring after using detailed descriptions.

Therefore, it does not give the highest point in quality. . -----------------------------------------

Art contest submissions [K-108] https://goo.gl/o7XkdQ

. ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) The woodcutter was well described. -) I don't like the wings of white nights because they are not sharp, it's just round. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Simple. Simple symbol. Cute Whitenight, And Fooooooooooooooooookin Axe guy. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) Only the woodcutter looked very good because the background of the hungry heart, the axe, and the rusty face caused synergy.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) It looks like white night is pissed. The painting shows the color, expression, and

lumberjack's aspirations. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) It is a picture that is decorated like an abstract sentence.I didn't think about white night, but the lumberjack was so cool.

The expression of the rusty helmet and cross axe in his keyword, " Heart, " was very good. He also had a good brush effect.

It seems to be an example of a good result in a simple drawing style. However, the white night seems to shoot the beam from the eye. I am really sorry for not scoring well because of laughing.

lol... loool... looooooooooooool........ sorry!

. -----------------------------------------

. [FAN ART Contest] [siriu]

https://goo.gl/C8f133 . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) A work of great detail -) But no one uses weapons as well as Geburah. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) It's the last time you'll be attending. If you had come a little later, you would have been buried. You were really lucky. They all wear suits and only carry EGO weapons. He must be a competent manager. It's gonna hurt a lot. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) A dynamic painting that came up just before the closing time. It has a solid background, and EGO's expression that each of them is holding, and the

fine detail of the staff is all good. For a balanced evaluation, a demerit was made from the fact that the EGO clothes were not worn. I am truly sorry.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) The manager made only weapons but didn't build a defense equipment!! How did he make a weapon in full dress? . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) I didn't expect a foreigner to turn in his work six minutes before the deadline. If I had not opened the mailbox... Everything is perfect, including situations, character locations, weapons presentations,

detailed descriptions, and the identity of the game. The color is also well matched, so that it is visible without anyone being buried. I think it would have been okay if the outline of characters was a little thicker, but this was excellent.

. ----------------------------------------- .

A Day of My Agent [Mr.Deleted]

https://goo.gl/TsdW1s

----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer)

Thank you for your novel. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) Don't sweat it. The translation went well. The sentence was of moderate length. The confusion, fear and anger of the description and character were well felt. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) It was crazy to translate a foreign language that I didn't even know based on Papago translation. I'm afraid things that I thought might have been double-tracked while I was translating it to make it really readable didn't go away cool afterwards. Sorry. I am happy to introduce a game novel written by foreigners. The description I saw was excellent. What a crusade!

. -----------------------------------------

#lobotomy corporation #lobotomy corp #lobotomycorporation #Fanart #fan art #contest #papago

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geminimoonbeamx · 7 years ago

Text

Naive: Intro

A/N: Hey guys! So I’ve been dying to do a mini series reader insert story for a while! I got this idea while I was reading some Tony/Daughter fics and I thought I’d put my own little spin on it. I really hope you guys are able to connect with this, I picked her moms name just because I thought it flowed better to actually have a name instead of putting something like (your moms name) everytime she’s talked about!

Word count: 1k+

Warnings: Disclaimer- I have the dirtiest vocabulary and my stories will probably always have cursing in them. Other then that this chapter was pretty vanilla!

Summary: As the goddaughter of Tony Stark you were no stranger to the Avengers, but when you meet the newest member- you’re a little more then intrigued. Unfortunately for him, Bucky Barnes has caught your eye.

💘💘💘💘💘

There weren’t many things that Tony Stark truly got excited about. Actually, he could tick them off on the fingers on one hand. New scientific discoveries, adding to his classic car collection(but only when it was a real timeless model, something he really had to hunt for), Pepper looking at wedding dresses- and you.

His god daughter was always something he could gush, embarrassingly, about. About how you’d graduated from college with top grades because obviously any god daughter of his was a fucking genius. About how you’d spent the summer in Europe, he’d laughed and showed your videos of Amsterdam to the team repeatedly. About how beautiful you we’re cause god damn it, you looked just like your mom, just like his late best friend and he could never get over it. But what seemed to be all he could talk about lately, was the fact that you we’re moving to New York.

“Finally, I’ve been trying telling her that the only way she’s getting any where with that degree is in this city” Tony had sighed to Pepper. Really, he’d been desperately attempting to convince you to come stay with him ever since the funeral three years ago. “I told her she might as well move into the Tower, since rent is so fucking insane here”

Even though he refused to think of it this way; the truth of it is that you we’re the only link he had left to Jamie, and trying to accept that his best friend of thirty years was gone was something he just couldn’t accept. The three years she had been dead hadn’t done anything to sway that. He still expected a phone call from her. Still expected to hear her bitching at him and worrying about him being the only one he’d ever really been able to count on.

Isn’t it sad? What he’d give to hear your mother bitching at him again?

It was highly amusing, watching the usually snarky Stark wade knee deep through not only wedding plans, but renovation plans for the entire fifteenth floor for the last month.

“Hey Nat, do you think this rug goes with these throw pillows? Or is it too much fur? This kid loves faux fur, what is she a Gotti?!” Tony had been barraging everyone with questions like this, trying to get his “graduation present” ready for you without you finding out about it or being able to put your input into it was hard. But would he ever admit he’d bitten off more then he could chew?

Hell no.

“No, it actually looks really sheik with the geometric gold table. Y/N’s gonna love it” Natasha had reassured, trying to hide her smirking laughter by taking a drink from her mug.

If Tony had noticed she was slightly making fun of him he didn’t say anything, he just went back to fretting, threating some interior designer on his iPhone.

“Between the wedding and Y/N’s homecoming, he’s going to run himself bankrupt” Sam snorts, from the table. Where he sits with Steve and Bucky.

It had been an… odd few months. The team was back together after the whole Sokovian Accords fiasco- but they we’re all still trying to figure out how to mesh right again. Tony being as distracted as he was had been some kind of god send, had given everyone some room to find their place.

Bucky, for one, was happy that the Billionaire’s mind seemed to be pulled in all different directions. It kept Tony from focusing all the hate on him. Because even though it was unspoken, and Tony had agreed to have him join the team- only after Steve gave the ultimatum that the two we’re a packaged deal- everyone with eyes could see the tension was still there. The way that Tony would never really meet his eyes.

Bucky couldn’t blame him. He’d done…what he’d done and Tony had every right to hold a grudge.

It didn’t make it anyless uncomfortable living in the mans house though.

“I don’t think that’s possible” Natasha reasons.

“You’re right. The man pockets are fuckin’ bottomless . Lucky bastard” Sam swirls his protein shake.

“He’s seems happy, which is good. A happy Tony trumps an unhappy one any day” Steve points out. Steve knew what the consequences of unhappy Tony looked like. The drinking, the downward spiral.

“He really loves this kid, huh? Who is she again? His goddaughter, right?” Bucky inquires, his eye brow raised.

“Yeah, her mom was his best friend, he’s always spoiled her rotten” Steve chuckled a little “She’s a real good girl though. A bit of a spitfire, but the sweetest thing once you get to know her”

Bucky’s eyebrow raises even higher at the way Steve regards the girl. The small smile on his best friends face as he talks about her.

“Really? You sound like you’re a little sweet on her, punk. What is she some kind of grade A dime piece?” Bucky teases, expecting the rest of them to at least smile at his sharp joke. When his laughter is the only one that rings through the kitchen his nose quirks “What?…I was just kidding”

Why we’re the three of them looking at him like that?

“Nah, don’t joke around like that, man. Not if you value your thawed out ass” Sam’s tone is warning.

“What?”

“Tony is really protective of her, like real protective. If he caught any of us lookin’ at her like that he’d fire us” Steve’s tone matches Sam’s. Total seriousness.

“Screw firing you, He’d toss you through one of the windows and watch your body hit the cement is what he’d do. Y/N is a hundred percent off limits. Head this warning” Natasha gives him the little “I’m watching you” signal with her fingers before she walks out of the communal kitchens.

“You guys cant be serious” Bucky scoffs, a small smirk on his face. The reaction they all seemed to have about his little joke was entertaining…“Wait? You didn’t try anything with her, did you, Steve?”

That tell tale blush creeps up Steve’s neck and Bucky shakes his head. That little horn dog he’d grown up with was still there, under the righteous Captain America mask he wore.

“It’s not even like that. She’s just- a little flirt. You’ll see” Steve sputters, trying to defend himself.

“She really is. She’s probably one of the most charming people I’ve ever met in my whole life” Sam laughs in agreement “I’m just not the one who got caught cuddling with her on the couch in the middle of the night”

Bucky gives Steve a shit eating grin as the blonde gets even redder.

“Fuck you, Sam-”

“Oh woah, Cap. Watch your language!” Sam and Bucky are both laughing at Steve’s total dismay and the broad shouldered man gets up from the table.

“Yeah, yeah laugh it up. Tony threw me through a wall for that. I could have been killed!” Steve exclaims, walking away from the men who just seem to laugh louder —- You’d never been a morning person and you walked through the air plane ramp in a little bit of a daze, balancing your tote and your laptop bag on each shoulder.

Why you’d chosen to take a 5am flight was now a foreign thought to you as you make your way through the crowds of people, just wanting to find Tony, get to the Tower and sleep for a sold twenty four hours.

Your phone chirps and you look down at the screen.

Tony calling blinked in bright lettering on the iPhone and you your thumb across it, answering it, not able to keep the large smile off of your face.

“Hey Tony!” Your voice is excited and your mood instantly lifted.

“Hey kiddo, how was the flight?” Tony’s smooth voice comes from the receiver.

“It was okay, I tried to knock myself out but couldn’t. Since when are airplane cocktails so weak?” You tease, your eyes desperately scanning for a Starbucks. You knew JFK International Airport had to be littered with them. You could practically smell the sweet, sweet caffeine beckoning you.

“I’ll have to file a formal complaint. We didn’t pay extra for first class for nothing” Tony uses his best ‘haughty taught white soccer mom, I want to speak to your manager’ voice and you cant help but laugh “But listen, I was going to come pick you up myself but the whole team got called into this spur of the moment meeting. I would try to ditch it but it’s with the director of the secret service so I don’t see myself getting out of this-”

Tony rambles, his voice so apologetic its almost pathetic.

Had you been hyped for him to be waiting for you at baggage claim like he’d always done when you we’re younger? Yeah, but you we’re an adult now. You didn’t need him feeling bad for things he couldn’t control.

“Tino stop!” You laugh, using the nickname you’d always had for him “It’s fine, I promise. I’m a big girl. I’m just going to find a Starbucks and caffeinate and then I’ll grab a cab, okay?” You reason with him.

“Uh, no. Find your coffee but Peppers waiting for you at baggage claim and you guys will take a car back. A cab- Cab? Who do you think I am?” You roll your eyes at your god fathers ever flamboyant nature.

“Alright, I’ll text you when I find her. She still like’s skinny white chocolate mocha’s right?” You question “Have fun at your meeting, see ya’ soon Tino! Love you”

“Bye kid, love you”

After grabbing a pair of venti drinks; a triple shot Pink Drink for you and Peppers white chocolate mocha you maneuver yourself through JFK, down escalators and around the travelers that seemed to forget their manners in the hustle of traveling. Your shoulder get’s bumped more then once.

You know you’re a bigger girl, shorter and wider then most but could they at least say sorry!

“Dick!” You hiss at the man who’d almost knocked the coffee out of your hand.

All of the irritation is let off your shoulders when you see Pepper standing tall, a sign in her hands that had your name scrolled on it prettily.

Jeeze.

You’d missed her. You realize, you hadn’t been in New York since your mom…

“Y/N!” She calls for you, grinning widely and you power walk to the red head, nearly bouncing with happiness as you get to her.

“Pepper!” You cry joyously as you hug her, well as much of a hug as you could give her with your hands so full. It’s mostly just you leaning into her as she wraps her arms around you.

“Oh my god, look at you! Look at your hair! You look so goregous” Pepper fawns over you, cupping the side of your head and looking down at you with dancing eyes.

She couldn’t believe how…old you looked. In her mind you’d always be the cute, chubby twelve year old with long curly pig tails. And yet here you were, looking like a grown woman.

“You’re making me feel so old right now” she admits, only half teasing and you roll your eyes.

“Oh shut up. You know you’re still hot. Here, this is for you” you hand her the latte and she gives you a soft look. You were still a sweetheart.

“Now let me see the rock!” You exclaim and she waves her ring finger at you as you two begin to make your way to the car, both of you giggling- your squeals earning you some side ways looks.

You couldn’t remember the last time you were so happy.

-----

I’m so excited for this story y'all! If you wanted to be tagged in the next chapter just ask!😬😬😬

https://xgminigypsy.tumblr.com/post/166573773564/naive-part-1 PART ONE

https://xgminigypsy.tumblr.com/post/166595772104/naive-part-2 PART TWO

https://xgminigypsy.tumblr.com/post/166629591854/naive-part-3 PART THREE

https://xgminigypsy.tumblr.com/post/166664664834/naive-part-4 PART FOUR

https://xgminigypsy.tumblr.com/post/166703266654/naive-part-5 PART FIVE

https://xgminigypsy.tumblr.com/post/166903805364/naive-part-6 PART SIX

#bucky barnes x plus size reader #plus size reader #poc reader #Bucky Barnes #Bucky Barnes smut #tony stark #tony stark daughter #steve rogers #mcu imagine

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tea-and-cardigans · 7 years ago

Text

What Fools These Mortals Be - Chapter 10

Credit for the beautiful aesthetic above is to @cooperbettycooper

Finally an update guys! So excited to share the rest of the story (now that it is all planned out) and thank you all so much for your patience and sticking with this story through my very sporadic updates.

I have the next chapter beta’d by the always amazing beta @jandjsalmon and need to make a few changes but hoping to have that uploaded within the next few days as well.

Chap 1 / Chap 2 / Chap 3 / Chap 4 / Chap 5 / Chap 6 / Chap 7 / Chap 8 / Chap 9 / Ao3 / FF.net

The Riverdale Community Theatre Company is staging its greatest production to date: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Betty Cooper sees this as an opportunity to make the company’s most sought-after actor, Archie Andrews, hers. Unfortunately, new girl in town, Veronica Lodge has scored a lead role, putting her directly opposite Archie. Behind the scenes, Jughead Jones has returned to his usual role back stage but is soon drafted into the play when one of the actors has an accident. Meanwhile, director Kevin Keller just wants to stage a successful play and keep his actors private lives separate.

Chapter 10 : All Error With His Might

“That’s not how it was at all, Betts.” Jughead’s words were still ringing in her ears. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t replayed the events of that night over and over again in her head; Betty could almost recite his words word for word she was so familiar with them.

His hand was still wrapped around her own and she was all of a sudden very aware of his body heat on the bare skin of her hand. “I was there, Jughead. I remember how it happened.” She broke the silence that was wrapped around them. “You didn’t want-”

“I did turn you down, Betts, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want you.” Her eyes flashed to meet his. “You have no idea how much I wanted you that night.”

“You said-” she started before he interrupted her again.

“I remember what I said. I wanted it to happen, Betts. I just didn’t want it to happen like that. I wanted you to trust me. I wanted to be the one whose shoulder you leant on.” Betty pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes scrunched together as she tried to piece together her own memories to see how they fit with what he was saying. She had been so full of rage and despair that night, not to mention the alcohol that had been running through her veins.

“That summer I saw you, Betts. I saw the real you. I had always thought you were like the rest of them - an actress so high on her own importance, chasing a schoolgirl crush from high school each year.”

“I guess not much has changed then,” she mumbled, avoiding his gaze as she pulled herself away from his hold. Giving herself some distance and sitting on the arm of her couch. She felt as though the world was spinning around her. Everything that she had built up in her own mind about that summer, was falling down. She could feel her world slipping out of control again.

“You aren’t that girl, Betts. The girl-” He reached for her hand again and she let him take it, she was too dazed to fight back. She felt as if the fight was draining out of her. She had been fighting so hard against allowing herself to sink back into her feelings for him that she was exhausted. “-No,” he corrected, “the woman-” There was such a fondness in his tone that it took her by surprise. “-that I saw held herself together when everything else was falling apart. You helped the backstage crew. Not because you were being forced to but because you wanted to. You got to know us. That was special.”

She shook her head, needing to somehow process the thoughts and feelings that were now overwhelming her. The need to escape was suffocating. The need to lash out to protect herself was so close to the surface. She had been pushing him away for so long that now that that avenue of escape was no longer available to her she felt lost.

“That day in the coffee shop felt like a dream or a fantasy or something. Betty Cooper asking me out for coffee, and smiling at me, even just looking at me. I couldn’t believe my luck.”

Betty felt that tug again. That nagging little voice that he was talking about the fantasy, not the real Betty Cooper. It was the one that she aspired to be, not whatever it was she was now. She could only imagine how much of a disappointment she was to him.

“That was the version of me before it all went wrong,” she whispered, refusing to look at him.

“No.” There was defiance in his voice and she couldn’t help but lift her eyes to his. “There is no version of you, Betty. It’s all you. And I -” he paused and she realized that she was hanging on every single word. “I wanted to get to know all of you. I wanted to be there for you when you lost your mom. I wanted to be the one that you talked to, the one that would try to make it better.”

“I was hurting, Jug.”

��I know you were, Betts. That’s why I couldn’t let anything go any further that night. It wouldn’t have been fair. To either of us. I wanted it to be real.”

“I thought you saw this messed up -let’s face it- crazy person and didn’t want that part of me. That you were scared. That I scared you away.”

“I was scared for you Betts. When I found out you hadn’t even told Kevin about your mom, I knew something was wrong.” She saw the guilt in his eyes as it all was starting to make sense.

“Wait.” She began to put it all together.

When she got back to her apartment, she found Polly waiting for her with Kevin by her side. Polly moved to look at her hands grasping her wrist and examining the deep cuts that she hadn’t even bothered to bandage instead letting them bleed and weep. Polly started crying for a second Betty thought how her sister never could have dealt with looking after their mother if this made her cry. Kevin moved toward her and she instinctively backed away. She felt like a cornered animal, and felt the need to lash out. She didn’t want them to touch her. She didn’t want any of them. Once Kevin wrapped his arms around her, Betty knew they were expecting her to feel something - Polly with her head in her hands on the couch sobbing and Kevin holding her tightly – but instead she just pressed her nails into the skin of her palms once more, letting the pain wash over her body like a calming gentle wave.

“Why didn’t you tell us Betty? We could have helped.” Polly’s sorrowful voice cut through her. Help? What could Polly have done that she couldn’t have? Polly didn’t have the resolve to face what Betty had had to and come out the other side. She turned to face her sister, knowing that her lips was turned up in snarl, a hint of teeth.

“Really Polly?” she spat out her sister’s name and couldn’t help the feeling of satisfaction that washed over her as her sister flinched at her name. “You could have helped?” Betty let out a mocking laugh, shaking her head in derision as her hand flew up to her mouth. Her sister had been everything that Betty had ever aspired to be. Betty’s whole life spent in vain trying to make Alice Cooper look at her the way she had at her older sister even after all of Polly’s many mistakes. She was never going to be good enough. “You? The one who left when it got hard with your picture perfect husband and your perfect children? You couldn’t have survived it. You couldn’t have dealt with seeing her that way- seeing her shrink before your eyes, becoming a shell of the person she used to be. You couldn’t do it so I had to.”

Polly approached her again, tears staining her face and Betty could hear her mumbled sorrys and should haves. They didn’t mean anything, they didn’t change what had happened. The words were not for her benefit they were for her sister’s to ease her own guilt. To absolve her.

“Betty, we have spoken to the hospital.” Kevin’s voice was always so gentle and soothing. Even now when she hated the world and everything in it, it still brought her that little bit of peace. “They are going to admit you.”

Betty started to shake her head, murmuring to herself. No, she couldn’t go. She still had to organize the funeral and the memorial and decide what to do with her mom’s body.

“I can’t go Kevin, I have arrangements. I can’t leave it.” Her voice was pleading as if it was actually Kevin’s decision to make. If she could just convince him that everything was okay, then maybe it was. She could hold it together still.

“We will take care of it, Princess.” She let him embrace her again as his hand moved softly over her loose ponytail. “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered into her hair. And she wanted so much to believe him.

“You told Kevin.” She was staring at him as it all slotted together in her mind. The week after her mom’s death was a blur in her memory. She could only recall snippets and pieces, confident that her mind had remembered all that it needed to and spared her the rest.

“I had to, Betts. You left me no choice. If you weren’t going to let me help you.” Jughead’s eyes searched her own as he spoke.

“I just assumed the hospital had called Polly. I never thought that you-” She pulled away from him and began to pace around the small space of her apartment.

“I couldn’t watch on as you did that to yourself.” He glanced at her palms and she moved them behind her back in defense. “I thought maybe after you got some help that maybe-”

She cut him off. “You never came looking for me. You never even spoke to me when I came back.” Her voice was accusing. She could already feel herself becoming more defensive as the need to protect herself rose within.

“I figured after that night -after the things you said- that maybe you didn’t want to see me and that if you did you would come and find me,” he answered, softly. “When you didn’t, I couldn’t face seeing you again at the play that year.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that?” Her thoughts were still moving faster than she could decipher, when his hands reached for hers and she stilled her nervous movement when he pulled her toward him once more.

“Well, I like to think, Betts, that despite everything we were friends and that maybe we could be friends again.” She could see the hopefulness in his eyes, the way he traced her inside wrist with his thumb. It was a gentle soothing movement that she wanted to lose herself in. She knew then that he was offering her an ‘out’. Jughead was offering her the space to sort out her emotions and she wondered if he needed that space too in light of their revelations.

She remembered how they had been before her mother had died and she had begun her downward spiral and placed that distance between them. She wondered at the prospect of allowing him in only to break her heart again.

“For the sake of the play,” he continued, with a nudge to her side, the corner of his mouth tugging up in a smile. Betty rolled her eyes and found herself sharing the same smile.

He didn’t mention the date again and neither did she. For now they were happy to just be as they were.

On Monday, the late afternoon found them again at the old theatre under the careful watch of their director. Moose was sat next to him as Kevin had brought him along to help him with direction where he could. Betty suspected that there was an entirely different reason as to why Moose was at the rehearsal but she was happy for them and didn’t say anything.

It was all starting to come together, much, she imagined, to Kevin’s relief. The community college group had integrated seamlessly into their backstage roles under the watchful eye of Dilton and Jughead. Ethel has also stepped up into the role that Jughead would usually take and seemed to be flourishing under her new responsibility.

Some things hadn’t changed though, as Cheryl continued to swan about as if she owned the company- although with the amount of money that the Blossom family’s maple syrup business pumped into this town she probably did. Chuck continued to give Betty looks that made her skin crawl and once again she thanked the powers that be that they didn’t share any scenes together.

Betty had found Jughead waiting near her dressing table with a caramel vanilla frappuccino in his hand. He held it out to her as she put her bag down.

“Your favourite,” he said with a smile as he handed her the cup. Their fingers brushed up against each other’s only briefly but it was enough to make a blush began to crawl up the back of Betty’s neck and she diverted her gaze in an effort to distract herself.

They had parted on good terms that night in her apartment. He had pulled her into a quick hug as he had left and Betty had let him hold her for a second longer than necessary as she relished in how natural it felt to have his arms wrapped around her once again. It was a feeling that was too strong to bury so she let herself enjoy the moment however brief it was. She was still unsure of what they were but it was better than before the play had started and maybe it could be better still.

Once Jughead had left her apartment, she had called Polly. She had apologized for calling so late before the tears overtook her and they talked. Really talked. For the first time since Polly had left Riverdale, even on the long drive to the hospital or back home from the treatment centre they had never ‘talked’. Betty had apologized for how she had acted and Polly had done the same. It was cathartic and the first steps toward some real healing between the sisters. She had Jughead to thank for that.

During their rehearsal, Betty and Jughead had continued to play well off one another. His deliberate touches as he attempted to woo her, or rather as Demetrius- under the influence of the love potion- wooed Helena, continued to make her skin tingle and her skin blush. His words of scorn no longer held the same power as they once did. They began to take on the humour of the play. No longer a deliberate attack against her but a comedy of errors. It was how she remembered the play she’d loved so much to be. Kevin seemed to enjoy the change in their approach as well. Praising them both on their performances before he directed his attention towards Archie and Veronica. Jughead shot Betty a wink and squeezed her hand and her smile became broader as she felt as though she was under some kind of spell herself.

Jughead sat next to her as they watched the rest of the scene play out in front of them, grateful for some time away from the stage. She was glad that he had pulled himself away from his usual spot at the back of the audience seats. His own self-imposed solitude. She heard him chuckle softly as Reggie and Chuck played out their lines and she was glad that he enjoyed watching as much as she did. Betty enjoyed all parts of the play and had to admit that Kevin had truly outdone himself this time. The play was perfectly cast, perfectly directed and she could feel herself already becoming more and more excited for their opening night.

She glanced towards where Archie was sitting with Veronica and found that his eyes were trained on her as she jolted in her seat. She was still deliberating in her own mind what to do about the ‘Archie situation’. It had been what she had wanted for so long- a date with the ‘popular’ guy. The perfect match. But the revelation of her past with Jughead and what his true feelings could be, that there was the possibility of a future between them- It had her doubting everything she’d thought she wanted. Not wanting to think about it again, Betty pushed it to the back of her mind and smiled at Archie before she shifted her attention back to the performance on stage.

“Are you going to go tonight?” Betty stilled at the sound of Jughead’s voice. She continued to stare at herself in the mirror of the locker she had been assigned at the start of the rehearsals. Looking at her reflection as if it would hold the answers for her. She shut the locker to find him looking at her from the other side. “I don’t know. I mean things are different now, aren’t they?”

“I think you should go,” he said as she looked at him with an arched brow. “If only to close the chapter on this part of your life.”

“I don’t want you to think-”

“What, that I might be a ‘second choice’?” he scoffed and gave her a wink. “Please. Archie doesn’t stand a chance.”

#bughead fanfiction #bughead #betty x jughead #betty cooper #jughead jones #Wftmb #au fanfiction

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elfnerdherder · 7 years ago

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The Unquiet Grave: Ch.3

You can read Chapter 3 on Ao3 Here

Chapter 3: With Little Thought We Dream

Even serial killers got funerals.

Will Graham stands beside an unknown woman and a small, anonymous funeral director. Garrett Jacob Hobbs had been gleaned of any and all they could take from him, from DNA to fingerprints to hair follicles. With no court case, no ruling to take place, they wanted a swift and clean burial for him, and only one family member –a distant one at that –had arrived to see him put six feet under.

She doesn’t cry, and she doesn’t speak to Will. For that he is immensely relieved.

He hates graveyards. There is no quiet in them, no rest in them. There was no service for Garrett Jacob Hobbs, and with Abigail Hobbs still not awake in the hospital, the funeral director didn’t think to offer.

“It’s at this time that people normally pay their last respects,” the director says, poised over the coffin.

“You’ll make sure he goes down?” the woman asks. “Six feet under and covered in dirt?”

Will isn’t sure if she’s addressing him or if she’s addressing the director; he nods all the same.

She leaves them then, heels sinking into the soft earth where thousands rot, and Will watches the coffin sink slowly, going down, down, down until it hits the bottom with a soft thump.

“Is there anything you wish to say?” the director asks.

Will shakes his head. He isn’t confidant that if he speaks, he’ll sound coherent or make any sense.

He sits down and watches the gravediggers work –he isn’t sure what he’s waiting for until they press the sod down and leave him with a modest, plain gravestone proclaiming nothing more than his name, the year he was born, and the year he died. No mention of being a loving father. No mention of being a kind husband. It’s nice to see that stark honesty, considering he was neither of those things.

The graves aren’t quiet. Will has been to enough cemeteries to be able to feel the sensations of trapped souls beneath the soil, the grief that sits along every blade of grass, the triumph of the killer standing in the crowd and gloating. He once recalled an empath in ‘group’ that had attended a funeral, only to feel the life of someone trapped in a coffin not twenty feet away, freshly buried. They managed to save the man, although he was in a coma for some time after. The empath drunk himself into a car crash, and he later said he just had to get the taste of dirt out of his mouth.

He sits for a while longer, stares at the gravestone and the space where Garrett Jacob Hobbs will forever remain. There is a sense of righteous pride that Will was able to stop him and save Abigail, but there is also the horror as the look on Hobbs’ face was burned into Will’s eye: pain, indignation, and a love that seared and left marks.

It isn’t until he hears voices that he stands up to leave, and he purposefully skirts around the grave so that he can’t feel Hobbs beneath him. He wonders if he takes off his shoes and presses his bare feet to the sod if he’ll still feel him breathing.

Lecter ambushes him for lunch, a thermos in one hand and two travel containers in another. Will thinks to turn him away, standing poised by the entrance to HQ as he is, but at the sight of Director Hansen a short distance away, he accepts the invitation. He’d rather be ambushed by Lecter than Director Hansen.

“Do you often miss meals, Agent Graham?” he asks, sitting down at a bench.

“Why do you ask?”

“It’s three P.M., and people have normally eaten by now.”

Will watches him unsnap the small bowls, revealing a salad inside with strips of meat laid across the top. The dressing is on the side, and he fumbles with the lid while Hannibal passes over silverware.

“You haven’t eaten,” he points out.

“I was traveling for work and was unfortunately detained. What’s your reason?”

“I had a funeral to go to,” he mumbles. If he says it with enough regret and remorse, he figures Hannibal won’t press on details.

“The funeral of Garrett Jacob Hobbs?”

Nevermind, then. He drizzles the sauce over the salad, taking the fork and spearing a few bits of lettuce before he stuffs his mouth and chews, nodding his appreciation at the taste.

“This is delicious, thank you,” he manages after he’s swallowed. Hannibal’s gaze is steady on him, and he turns a piece of meat over with his fork, itchy under the stare. “Yes, his.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asks.

“No.”

“What did you find as you stood inside of the space where he will forever have a passive presence?”

Will takes a bite of the meat and chews, the flavor of a careful blend of herbs and spices rich and practiced, the mark of someone that cooks and cooks remarkably well. There is something else, though, something that reeks of fear, of racing hearts and a terror that bites deep that makes his jaw freeze, his muscles clench involuntarily. His teeth scratch along one another, and he has to force himself to swallow, the food a rock that drags down his throat slowly.

“…Nothing,” he manages. His stomach roils, and he stuffs another mouthful of lettuce into his mouth to try and wash away the taste of the animal that had died. He has a sudden urge to vomit.

“Something wrong?” Hannibal asks.

“…I can’t always eat meat,” he admits. He wants to feel apologetic about it, but he can’t bring himself to. His tone is challenging, daring Hannibal to question it.

“What do you feel?”

“…Terror. Sometimes the meat tastes like terror.” He snorts and rubs his mouth, like he can somehow wipe away the sensation of being cornered, of the final frantic moments of life. “What animal was it?”

“A rabbit.”

“He should have hopped faster,” Will mutters. He spears another piece of lettuce and stuffs it into his mouth.

“Yes, he should have,” Hannibal agrees with a smile. “Is it like that with all meat for you?”

“Sometimes. Some animals die peacefully, or the food is processed or long dead enough that by the time it gets to me, everything that made it an animal is gone.”

“I do have a personal butcher who sells what he hunts for. I know his beef, pork, and geese are handled humanely, but I can’t account for how the hunted behave before they die.”

Will looks up at him and manages a small, sardonic smile. “Their hearts race, their eyes widen, and in that final moment their muscles tighten. That was a very terrified rabbit.”

They finish their meals in silence, the only thing left in Will’s bowl the neatly cut and cooked remains of a rabbit that just wasn’t fast enough.

The drink in the thermos is a coffee with a rich enough taste that it washes away the remains of Will’s nausea. He sips it, mouth passing along the lip of the cup, and he chances a peek to Hannibal once more. Still silent. Still inscrutable. Curiosity burns inside of him at the sight, as well as something akin to awe. He holds it back, though. He doesn’t want to seem too interested, too intent on the silence.

“I suppose I was looking for some kind of closure,” he admits, referring to Hobbs.

“Is he the first man you’ve ever killed?”

“Yes.”

“Is it his death that haunts your dreams, or the fact that you were the one to do it?”

Will wants to lie, but he figures that defeats the purpose of even doing this in the first place. “I didn’t hesitate. The moment one didn’t drop him, there was another. Then another, and another, until there were no bullets left.”

“You walked into a room where your senses were alive to the situation due to your intimate knowledge of your killer, coupled with your adrenaline as well as your skills as an E-3. Naturally, there would be no hesitation on your part because by then, instincts would take over.”

“Some people have a flight instinct, or at least a freeze instinct,” Will points out.

“You have a fight instinct, but all that means is you are far more adept at survival than your counterparts. Does that somehow make you less of a person, or less deserving of life because you are better at preserving it?”

Yes, Will thinks, although he manages to say, “That is what I’m struggling with.”

“Then going to Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ funeral sounds more like a punishment than a need for closure.”

“Killers like that don’t have large, public funerals. Empaths that have a psychotic break and lash out don’t receive large, public funerals, either.”

“Do you compare the two often?”

“It comes with the job. The last serial killer we found before Hobbs was an E-2, a Feeler and a Dreamer.” He pauses, wondering if he should share anything more. Reluctantly, he says, “Hobbs was an agent close to retirement. An empath –a dreamer.”

“Bare hands on the surfaces of anything that opened stories and fantasies within his head that he couldn’t differentiate from reality,” Hannibal murmurs. He has a poetic, flowered form of speech that is somehow lovely rather than corny. “Do you think you will be like that one day?”

“I wear gloves,” he said. “As long as I keep them on, I don’t have to worry about things like that.”

He doesn’t have to worry about things like that, but he does anyway. When he returns to work and is handed a file containing the information regarding a rogue E-2 FBI Agent, he worries even more.

The plane dumps them into a small town in Georgia, the most exciting part of the town being their annual BBQ & Blues festival that the FBI had just missed out on. Will tracks the signs struck into the ground every so many feet advertising an amazing homemade BBQ sauce competition with a rain-stained cardboard paper sign taped to the side declaring the winner Suzanne Perkins.

Suzanne Perkins would never claim her fifty dollar gift certificate to her choice of restaurant, though; she wouldn’t do anything ever again.

Once again he finds himself waiting while Jack Crawford goes through the house, clearing everything out and ensuring that it’s safe. He scuffs his shoe along the gravel, traces idle figure eights with his toe. Despite it having been a day since the incident, people still mill about the police line, necks craning to catch a glimpse of anything they can see.

“Agent Francis Dolarhyde, E-2 Seer and Dreamer,” Beverly says, waiting beside him. “I worked with him once –two years ago? Quiet guy. Cleft pallet and really pretty eyes.”

Will studies his dossier, his photo sharp and clean despite the barely noticeable cleft pallet. His suit is pressed, and following the first photo there is a second showing him in Marine Corps dress blues, expression equally somber and striking.

“It’s confirmed him?” he asks.

“He was supposed to report in after gaining information from his last assignment out in the field, but he never did. His handler reported it, and they started tracking his last movements. Cameras got him at the Atlanta Airport, witness saw him refuse to pay for gas at a gas station on the way here. Cameras confirmed it was him chinsing out on paying.”

“He’s never even had a speeding ticket,” Will murmurs. An E-2 is not as rare as an E-3, although they tend to be more volatile. Will can’t recall the number of studies done trying to figure out why that’s a thing, but from personal experience he can say it’s because an E-3 is more likely to become a vegetable before they even get the chance to try and lash out at someone, let alone have a psychotic break and commit murder.

“Clean record, although he was essentially abandoned by his mother before we got a hold of him and sent him to the institution. Maybe something happened there and it’s finally manifesting now.”

“Always blame the mom,” Will says sagely. Sarcastically.

He’s allowed in by Crawford, and Beverly trails after him in order to speak with Jack in low, hushed tones. When he steps into the house, there is a shift in the air around him, like the very space he stands in is drenched in screams. It takes him a beat too long to walk past the entry, delve farther into a house that for all intents and purposes, looks completely normal.

That is, until he gets to the hall where the family sleeps.

The blood spread along the wall burns into his eyes, and as he stares he can see the walls within his mind folding up and falling away, leaving him in a strange sense of limbo, his skin not his own, his bones not his own. Numbly, he takes off his gloves and tucks them away, relieved to know that at least this time, there would be no living person to distract him with their almost-death.

He places his bare hand on the walls and falls inside of the memory.

I wake to a suppressed gunshot; my half-sleeping mind is delirious, confused, until my wife screams and I’m very much awake, shouting out. Another shot, quiet, muffled, and a burning pain erupts in my neck, makes my cry cut short. Blankets, tight around me strangle, and I fumble and fall from the bed, wheezing. The blood is hot against my cheek, and distantly my wife cries and cries and cries.

Shadowed foosteps retreat from the room. My children. My children.

It is not strength that carries me, stumbling and bleeding out down the hall, but a terror as I realize that I am dying and my children are going to die, too. I try to speak, try to moan my disapproval at that, but the words are impossible, the searing pain in my neck arresting. As he goes to open the door, I throw myself at him, and we grapple, falling into the wall where his arms flail and the gun is seen, distinctly grey in the hallway night light.

I am dying. I am dying.

He turns the gun, and I bite into his neck, knowing that as I do I will die, that I will die and he will take my children. The barrel presses to my temple, upside down, and I rip into his skin, draw blood.

There is a searing pain against my skin. Then nothing, nothing.

Will comes to with a hiss, stumbling back and catching himself. As quickly as the walls went down he tries to draw them up, and he focuses on compartmentalizing and drawing in deep breaths before he continues. Behind him, he senses the footfalls of a scene annotator, and he turns his head.

“The wife was shot first, then the husband. Their bedroom. He tried to follow the RA down the hall when the RA went for the children, and he got a bite out of him.”

“Test tissue residue in Mr. Perkins’ mouth,” the annotator murmurs, nodding.

Will steps into the room across from the smearing of blood, the splatter on the wall he knows to be Mr. Perkin’s brain matter, and he stares at the carnage. There is blood soaking in one of the pillows on the bed to the left, then a large puddle of it underneath the bed on the right.

“The first child is shot in bed, the second dragged out from under their bed before being shot,” he murmurs, kneeling down. He stares at the spaces on the frame of the bed where hands dared press, and he reaches out and presses his palms to them.

Precision, cold and trained, something of instinct and repetition alike –the child hides but I do not fear, I do not worry that I cannot reach them. They scream, struggle, but there is no resistance, like a blade of grass falling to a finely honed knife. They were not taught to hide as I was, not taught to know how to be quiet enough to avoid notice. I was, though. I hide and I hide inside of my own mind, unaware of myself.

You’re screaming, but don’t you understand that you are not just flesh? You are light and air and color and quick sounds ended because I decided to change you. Balloons of color bursting, conjoining with those that fell before to create anew. You scrabble away from me, pleading, but there is no escape. There is no escape.

This is my design. I will Become.

Will jerks from the sensations of Dolarhyde’s thoughts with far less finesse than he did with Mr. Perkins’. It takes far longer to raise the barriers between him and the feeling of cold metal in his palm, and he doesn’t speak, holding his breath until he can be sure that when he exhales, he pushes Dolarhyde from him in his entirety, leaving nothing but Will behind.

He’s pretty sure he succeeded, although there is enough doubt that he can’t speak for several more seconds.

“The child hid underneath the bed, but he knew to drag him out to shoot him. The child on the left died first, the child on the right died second. They were left here, and he returned,” he manages when he can ensure his voice doesn’t tremble. The light and sound and air and color of the child lingers where he died, and as Will stands he swings a leg over the space to try and disperse it.

“He knew that they were here,” the annotator says quietly. Will glances to them, relieved to see their head down. If they take note of how his hands shake, they say nothing.

“He’d have watched the house. There was no hesitation in his movements to the bed, so he knew exactly where to go,” he agrees.

He walks from the room, and he forces himself to enter the bedroom where the air is dank and heavy. There is a hunger, lethal and plaintive, and it sits just over the space where the most blood has collected. There is so much of it that it’s not quite dry, wet and puddled in the center. He doesn’t want to lay his hands near it; he knows, he knows what happened next, and he doesn’t want to see.

The spaces along the blood glow faintly in his eyes though, and the walls come tumbling down before he can even press his hands down.

Mirrors rest over your eyes; can you see? Can you see? Brown eyes stare, dark with hunger, but the walls do not fall away from me as I look into them. I am trapped, barricaded in, but I am not alone with the sounds of the hunger, I am not alone with the sounds of the dying. Can you see me?

Can you see?

I look at you, and I see your life playing out before me: the sounds you make as you fuck, the tone you take when you scold. Are you not aware of me the way I am aware of you? You who looks through these mirrors, can you see the bruises deep down beneath my skin, the sensation of a belt that hits and hits and hits and hits…?

The walls will not lower, but even awake I can Dream your life like it is my own; my wedding, my anniversary, my children, my husband. They’re not mine though, they’re yours, but who are you? Where do you end and I begin?

Can you see? Can you look into my eyes and see me?

He’s pressed against the wall behind him before he is aware of the action, before he even feels his legs move. He grounds himself through tactile sensations, the gloves tight against his skin, the way his pants press to his thighs, the way his shirt tag itches on his neck. It is much harder to come back from the feeling of his hands gliding across Mrs. Perkins’ bare form, and the walls don’t feel so sturdy anymore.

“Are the mirrors in the bathroom broken?” he rasps.

“Every mirror in the house,” the annotator says.

“He broke the mirrors, placed shards over the eyes, mouth, and clitoris; he performed necrophilic acts upon Mrs. Perkins’, then placed the bodies as seen in the photos.”

“Necrophilic acts,” they murmur, writing furiously.

“He placed pajama pants on Mr. Perkins –he’d originally slept in his underwear.”

He stays pressed against the wall as he speaks, like he can somehow melt through it if he tries hard enough. His hands feel like they’re gripping dead flesh.

“The bite marks are not sexual,” he says to the room. “There is no center suck bruise, nor was that his intent. It’s possessive.”

“What is your name?” the annotator looks up from their writing and studies him intently.

“I am Will Graham,” he assures them.

He’s let out of the room with that confirmation that he has made his barriers firm, and he wanders down the hall dazedly, studying the faint glow of footsteps that trail not out of the door but to the fridge. He presses a palm to it, cringing at the sensation of a casual feeling of physical hunger, and he opens the door and stares at the Baby Belle cheese wheel half-eaten. He grabs his glove, sets the cheese on the counter with it, and continues on.

He stands outside underneath the sunlight, staring up at the blinding clear day. In the south, it isn’t as cold although it’s fall, and he takes off his light jacket, laying it over his arm. Dolarhyde was tired after all of his hard work; he’d gone out to look at the moon. It refueled him, charged him. Will plants his feet where Dolarhyde rested, and he flexes and curls his hands to try and dispel the feeling of mirror shards on his palms.

“It’s Dolarhyde?” Jack Crawford asks. Will senses more than hears his approach.

“Yes.”

Jack swears, staring out at the beautifully fenced back yard.

“What set him off?”

“Someone bruised and whipped him,” he says, “but that feels like a long time ago. He’s building, creating.”

“Creating what?”

“Something. I can’t see it yet, but it’s very special to him.”

“Does it feel like he’s lost reality?” Jack wonders. It’s a weary sort of question. Most rogue agents become so ingrained within their delusions that they have no grasp on reality, the walls not only down but non-existent, as though they never were. They have a sense of the entire world, so much so that they are the world and all of the fibers holding it together.

“No. He’s very much aware. He feels that he’s transcended; he’s trying to Become.”

“Become?”

“Yes. That’s…I can’t see more yet. Where’s his house?”

“We can get you on a plane tomorrow back to DC.”

Will nods, mulling over the feeling of teeth in his mouth that are his but not his. “There’s cheese in there. The bite marks look oblong, weird, but I don’t think his teeth had that sort of deformity.”

“Did you work with him?”

“Maybe once,” Will says. “I think I remember him at the academy, but not well.”

“The academy,” Jack murmurs.

The academy was a government funded institution for empaths; by law, children showing signs for the gift were to be tested, and if found to fall into the empath category, were sent to learn how to control and hone in on their gifts. It was never mandatory that they work within government positions like the FBI, but someone with a certificate from the academy who looked to those professions found themselves fast-tracked to the top of the applicant list and given a hefty pay raise above others if hired.

One look at Will as an E-3, and they’d all but salivated at the thought of him working with the FBI, no matter his mental instability.

“An RA in a small town like this isn’t going to go over well,” Will tells Jack. “This is that cliché town where nothing bad never happens to no one.”

“The police department all but begged us to take this,” Jack agrees. “Full cooperation. Do you think you can handle tracking an RA while we look more into the murders here?”

Do you think you can handle tracking someone that you may very well end up becoming one day?

“That’s my job, Jack,” Will says. “I hunt RA’s. Dozens. This should be no different.”

Standing in the sun, trying to let it warm his chilled skin, Will Graham has a distinct feeling that he may have unintentionally lied to Jack Crawford, saying that. He doesn’t rescind his statement, though. He couldn’t if he’d tried.

#LiaS scribbles #The Unquiet Grave #Hannibal #hannibal fanfic #hannibal fanfiction #will graham #someone help will graham #hannigram #slowburn #hannibal x will graham #hannibal au

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crispsevans · 6 years ago

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Films in 2019

filmpage - filmlist - suggest a film

CAN CONTAIN SPOILERS.

Green Book (2018)

seen in theatre production country: USA OV: english seen version: german Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali Director: Peter Farrelly Plot summary: A working-class Italian-American bouncer (Mortensen) becomes the driver of an African-American classical pianist (Ali) on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.

Review: This was showed on a Sneak Monday and I was SO DAMN HAPPY they actually decided to show this movie. My friend and I wanted to see it so badly, but unfortunately all Oscar nominated movies are not really playing in the big main cinemas around us (only in some arthouse cinemas) and so we were pleasantly surprised this big one showed ‘Green Book’ in it’s sneak preview.

I loved this movie, it had the right amount of good laughs opposed to a very serious topic. The character development of Mortensen’s character Tony Lip was also very interesting. Based on a real story, I really love how his view on black people changed.

Very heartwarming film, I really advise you to watch it, if you can. So happy for Mahershala Ali for winning all his awards, very well deserved. Rating: 5/5

Independence Day (1996)

seen on TV production country: USA OV: english seen version: german Starring: Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum Director: Roland Emmerich Plot summary: The aliens are coming and their goal is to invade and destroy Earth. Fighting superior technology, mankind's best weapon is the will to survive.

Review: Ever since I saw the trailer of ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ I wanted to see the first one. There were ads on TV saying a channel would show it this month so I was very excited to watch it. They called it ‘Roland Emmerich’s masterpiece’ - ok you already had me hooked. I really love alien movies lmao. So I was really... disappointed that this movie didn’t really caught me or my attention. I was bored very fast and easily and couldn’t bring up my attention to fully concentrate on watching it, not even later on. But since I can’t just pause the TV programme, I forced myself to watch it ‘til the end.

What can I say, I mean it’s from 1996 - despite the CGI stuff, the characters were pretty shallow and boring, also the storyline was very... well not bad but also boring. Maybe I would’ve liked it better, if I hadn’t seen other movies of this type before that were newer. It wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen though. Rating: 3/5

London Has Fallen (2016)

seen on TV production country: UK, USA OV: english seen version: german Starring: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman Director: Babak Najafi Plot summary: In London for the Prime Minister's funeral, Mike Banning (Butler) is caught up in a plot to assassinate all the attending world leaders.

Review: I was pretty disappointed with this one, too.

I’m totally into political action movies and thrillers, I LOVE THEM. I love movies like ‘White House Down’ and I also enjoyed ‘Olympus Has Fallen’ very very much. Hence why I disliked the sequel to it. Despite the territorial change to London instead of Washington, D.C. it just couldn’t hold up to it’s predecessor. I was so excited when I saw it was playing in London this time (since London would be my home of choice and is my favourite place in the world), but then again I was sad when I saw how everything got destroyed (lol at me). The storyline was so ... shallow and it was getting worse throughout the movie. While I was hooked in the beginning of the movie, I couldn’t care less during the end of it. Rating: 2,5/5

Cold Pursuit (2019)

seen in theatre production country: USA / Canada / Norway OV: english seen version: german Starring: Liam Neeson, Tom Bateman, Laura Dern Director: Hans Petter Moland Plot summary: A snowplow driver (Neeson) seeks revenge against the drug dealers he thinks killed his son. Based on the 2014 Norwegian film 'In Order of Disappearance'.

Review: Look, I don’t know what’s up with Liam Neeson films, but the trailers all look the same. So when I first saw the trailer for ‘Cold Pursuit’ during another Sneak Monday (saw this movie on a Sneak Monday, too), me and my friend just looked at each other and my exact words were ‘Taken 297438943892′ lol. But then again it was nothing like ‘Taken’, but still like every other Liam Neeson film at the same time.

Ok, it’s apparently based on a another film (scandinavian films are SO GOOD), but I wasn’t very convinced by anything in this movie except the idea that Tom Bateman would do great in a romcom.

There were some forced funny installments and moments (which DID make me laugh a lot), but most of the times I thought they were very out of place. I still felt entertained. Rating: 3/5

#films2019 #reviews

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nntodayblog · 7 years ago

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Andie MacDowell Is Back, And We Should Never Have Let Her Go

Illustration: Gabriela Landazuri/HuffPost Photos: Getty Images

Andie MacDowell’s imperial phase lasted an all-too-brief seven years, spanning “Sex, Lies and Videotape” (1989), “Green Card” (1990), “The Object of Beauty” (1991), “Groundhog Day” (1993), “Short Cuts” (1993), “Four Weddings and a Funeral” (1994), and “Michael” (1996).

It was long enough to make her a household name, and short enough to leave folks wondering, “What ever happened to that Andie MacDowell? I love her!” (To which someone should respond, “She was in ‘Magic Mike XXL,’ duh.”)

It’s an awkward question to ask: How does it feel to have lost your popularity? But MacDowell is a realist. Being around pesky Hollywood types ― even though she didn’t move to Los Angeles until 2013 ― has kept her self-aware. She knows she could have had Nicole Kidman’s career, but she opted to focus on motherhood instead of chasing after the industry’s brightest projects. (MacDowell has three children with former model Paul Qualley.) Now, days away from turning 60, the new drama “Love After Love” provides one of the finest roles of her life. And who doesn’t love a good comeback story?

MacDowell plays a theater teacher who observes her husband’s painful death and then grieves alongside her unsettled adult sons (portrayed by Chris O’Dowd and James Adomian) and their extended family. Intimate and elliptical, the film ― directed and co-written by Russell Harbaugh ― lets MacDowell do what she has always done best: look. She is a remarkable conversationalist onscreen, her expressions superseding the words that glide from her mouth, as if her eyes have their own dialogue.

We first saw that wisdom in “Sex, Lies and Videotape,” when she chuckled naively and covered her face while discussing masturbation. And again in “Groundhog Day,” when she leaned forward in the diner to describe her ideal man to Bill Murray. Or in “Michael,” when she winked at William Hurt while singing that silly ditty about pie. But in “Love After Love,” MacDowell’s looks are sadder, more inquisitive, reflective of a weathered existence. She wanders alone into a crowded dance party, and into the jittery arms of new relationships, and into the turmoil of domestic infighting. Watching her is like witnessing an actress reborn. How did we ever let that Andie MacDowell slip away?

In person, MacDowell’s face contains the same multitudes. She is so engaged that her Southern inflections are almost secondary to her attentive brown eyes. When I met MacDowell at her Manhattan hotel last week, the Golden Globe-nominated actress relished the richness of “Love After Love,” hailed the Me Too groundswell and detailed the peace she’s made with the career she didn’t fight to maintain.

IFC Films

Andie MacDowell in "Love After Love."

How does “Love After Love” compare to the projects offered to you in recent years?

It’s so much better than anything I’ve been offered. It’s really hard to find something like that. And you also have to think, “Oh, if there is material like that out there, there’s a lot of people out there that it could have gone to before it came to me.” When I read it, I was like, I cannot believe I’m going to get to do this. I was so excited about it and so thankful that even during the process I couldn’t believe it was happening sometimes.

It was really fulfilling to have that creative vehicle. And [Harbaugh is] totally different than any director I have ever worked with. More sensitive. He’s probably the most sensitive man that I’ve ever worked with. That was amazing. Not afraid of it, either. No fear of his sensitivity. How unusual is that! It’s not that he’s feminine, though sensitivity —

It’s attributed to feminine sensibilities, unfortunately.

It is! Yeah. Maybe that’s going to change. Maybe it’s going to be a human trait, not a female trait. I feel sorry for men being told not to cry. What a horrible thing to tell someone, because it’s not natural. He cried one day, because so much of this script is personal for him. I mean, right in front of everybody! I was kind of blown away. It’s about the loss of his father, and he went through all of that. I was blown away. And he had watched a list of beautiful movies. We watched some of them together, and I watched all of them.

What were they?

″À Nos Amours” and “Loulou,” which are directed by Maurice Pialat. If you haven’t seen them, watch them. “The Godfather.” Bergman movies, “A Scene from a Marriage.” Cassavetes. I’m telling you, it was a long list. And I was excited about that. I think this is not uncommon with new directors, and it’s a wonderful thing that they’re doing. That was exciting because it was like going back to school. I’d done all that in my 20s — I had watched all those movies, and it was nice to do that again and get the feeling of what he wanted to do.

We set up scenes really slowly. There was no push. Say we’re sitting down at the table. He would want us, in character, to have regular conversations and then get into the scene. And then whoever had the first line would just naturally find the space to get up and go into it. At the end of it, we could keep going. Most of the movie is really just his words, but I think starting and stopping in that way made it real. Nothing was forced, and it was fine to go on top of each other. And there was improv. The whole first scene was improvised. When Chris asks me about what makes you happy, that’s all improvised.

And then it became the opening scene. That’s impressive.

Yes! It’s the opening scene! I think there’s a levity to it. There’s a brightness to it that’s really important, because the movie does have such a heavy heart. And it takes a while to become bright again. You see people struggling. It’s watching people grieve, and how crazy they grieve.

I understand relationships now really well, especially parenting. And though my issues are not the same as the issues in the movie, I understand how you do that — the boundaries you break with your children, and how you get in their stuff and how they get in your stuff. I loved that because most movies don’t allow you to show psychological issues with such care. And also, to expect people to understand what’s going on, you have to be smart enough to say, “Look at what they’re doing to each other.”

Archive Photos via Getty Images

Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell in "Groundhog Day."

Knowing what you do now about relationships, do you look back at old performances and think how different they might be had you known more then?

Oh yeah. Sure. But I also think that there is something beautiful to being young and innocent. At the time that I played other characters, they were young and innocent. So I would guess that’s why it’s interesting to be where I am right now. I’m not that innocent anymore. I have to say, I know too much. It’s not like that means I’m a bad person; it’s just that I comprehend a lot more about humanity and the potential of people. I’m not naive.

So Rita, for instance, in “Groundhog Day,” would need to be innocent because she believed the world was beautiful. She wouldn’t need to know all that stuff that I know now. “Sex, Lies and Videotape,” the same thing. I would not have been as naive, and she had to be naive. But that’s what makes characters now, and the work that I can play now, interesting. It’s also what I think makes mature women sexy, just like it’s what makes a mature man sexy. It’s this knowledge.

It’s gravity.

Yes, and experience.

Since you singled out how sensitive this director was, have you encountered a lot of insensitive men over the years in your career?

It’s not just my career. I think it’s life in general. But yeah, this year has made us all think a lot. Before, if we were to complain, we were just seen as complainers or whiners expecting something we don’t deserve. I don’t think the shift is going to happen fast. I think there is so much psychological abuse that men are unconscious of that we have had to tolerate.

I’ve been saying — and it’s the truth — when I was in the process of Jungian therapy, one of my therapists understood how I felt as an independent woman struggling so much just to live in a society that kept putting on me things that I couldn’t understand. Because I was an independent woman, they always wanted me to play this person that I could no longer play. One of the things [my therapist] said was, “Don’t get upset when you read the chapter where Jung was basically saying women were insane to work outside of the house.”

So that’s the format which we have been playing with for such a long time. Change is not going to be easy, but at least we’re going to have change. I think we’re going to finally get it. In the end, I think we will all feel better. Men need to be able to cry, but we also need to be seen as equals, and not as housekeepers. I do think there’s still a layer in there, though men would say, “We’re not like that anymore.” It’s in there! I’m sorry! We are less than. And the fact that we haven’t had a woman president in this country really shows how slow progress is.

What do you make of this political moment?

You know what’s so interesting to me? Before the whole Me Too thing came out, I think there was something in the air. As soon as women put [President Donald] Trump in that box, a lot of stuff started coming up. Before Rose McGowan and all that happened, I confessed to a friend of mine something that happened to me — stuff that started bubbling up for me. And then that happened, and I was like, “I can’t believe this is happening.” There’s a whole feeling within women right now. It’s all coming up and coming out. We’re tired. We just can’t do it anymore. That’s the whole Time’s Up thing. We cannot pretend, we cannot wear this mask any longer. The mask no longer fits, and I cannot pretend to be submissive. Think about that word. Isn’t that an interesting word? Subservient. Submissive.

Less than.

Less than! Less than. To serve you. That has been our role. That’s the same thing I’m talking about that I was struggling with. I had made all the money, yet I would go into meetings with men and I would feel more comfortable if I could take a husband or a man, because I felt like they never really gave me credit.

You mean rooms with studio executives?

No, even just with business people, to go in and talk about my money I had made.

Oh, just to square away your personal finances.

Yes! And just at every level of my life, they’ve looked at me like an incapable woman. It’s insane. And how many people still say a woman is incapable of being president? You feel it — it sinks in.

Tommaso Boddi via Getty Images

Andie MacDowell at the 2015 premiere of "Magic Mike XXL."

Thankfully, the Me Too fallout seems to have hit such a fever pitch that we won’t regress back to where we were.

I don’t think so. There’s no way it’s going to disappear. We’re done. Time is up. And we can’t go back. We’ve got too far to go. It’s not going to happen overnight. We still have a lot of work to do to quit having to play that role.

I tell you, people say this to me all the time. They want me to be in a relationship. My daughters [actresses Margaret Qualley and Rainey Qualley] want me to be in a relationship. I will say to them, “I can’t do it again.” It’s going to take a really special man because I can’t play that role anymore. I just can’t do it. I can’t go back into a role with a man if he expects me to do that.

So you’re not dating?

I’m not dating. I wouldn’t mind it, but I don’t want to play that role anymore. I’ve done it before. You get in with a man, and they start expecting that. I can’t do it.

Have you thought about going public with the incident that happened to you?

What happened to me, I want to do some research about. I was young, and it’s a really big deal. I don’t want to go public with it. It was before I was in the business. I’ve thought about writing about it. I went to a friend of mine who’s a writer and said, “I would really love to do a Southern piece, and I would like to put this element in this woman’s history.” I would like to develop it.

As a fictional concept?

Yes, because I still have this idea of developing a TV show. I would love to do an ensemble piece sort of like the characters in “Love After Love” — that complex, but for a TV series. I went in to pitch this idea to her, and I told her what had happened to me and said I would love this to be a mature woman my age and for this to be part of her history. I had never told anybody this except for my daughters. And then the #MeToo happened and Rose came out.

That’s what I’m talking about: It had bubbled up to the point where I finally told someone. It was after the Trump thing, and I think psychologically it had something to do with it because I felt like, with what happened to me, these guys felt it was OK. The behavior that we’re talking about, men have been told that it’s OK. And they’ve supported each other. It is OK because they’re supported each other in treating women like that. It’s been all right.

Do you think you have more of a leg to stand on in terms of getting that project developed?

I think if I focused really hard on it I could make it happen. I just need to really set my mind to it. It’s like anything in life.

I look at other people, like Nicole Kidman and all these people, and look back and think, “At one point, I was a contender along with these people.” I feel like I lost my juice somewhere along the line.

Do you know when that happened?

I think it was important to me to have a normal life. I don’t know that you can have a normal life. It was a sweet idea, and I tried super hard. I lived in North Carolina and Montana, and I did not focus very hard on my career. I focused really hard on my children, and I had this concept that I wanted to give them something normal. I don’t know that people ever really allowed us to be normal. I think it’s super hard for people to allow someone in my position to be normal, because they like to see you as that. It’s more fun.

They want you on a pedestal.

Yeah, it’s interesting, right?

You become a figurehead for aspiration.

It’s part of the fantasy of the world.

“I know I won’t have her life, but there she is, so I can at least imagine it.”

Yes, that! They want you to be that. The good thing is, at the same time, I think I’m super ambitious. In getting out of that whole world, I did focus on my children, so there was a positive. They didn’t really know that much about what I did. It was not a part of our dialogue, and it did help me to just be a mom. But at the same time, it made me lose the inspiration, in a sense, to be more creative in my work. And it’s just a matter of finding that kind of levity and energy and making it happen when you haven’t been in the loop.

You’re right, though. Through a lot of the ’90s, you were one of the it-girls, so to speak.

I was in the mix. That would be the word.

You could have had Julia Roberts’ career if you’d wanted it.

I could have done a lot more. I could have started a production company and made more happen. But also, at the same time, there was one year right away when my success really took off and I did three movies. And I felt like I just didn’t see my children, and I didn’t like that.

I had read an article written by a man who was about my age, 60, and he had written about regrets. He said, “You’ll never regret not working. You will regret not spending time with your family.” I listened! I made sure that was my priority. But now they’re gone, so I do have the time, if I can just focus and connect.

I’ve never lived in Los Angeles, so I’m starting to make connections. I’m trying to reach out to younger people and keep my mind open. Maybe I can make it happen.

Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images

Andie MacDowell and Gerard Depardieu in "Green Card."

You sound fairly zen about the whole thing. Was there ever a moment when you were more resentful about how that panned out?

Hmm, I’m trying to think of what I said to a friend of mine. Not resentful. That’s not how I feel. I almost felt like, what did I do wrong? What could I have done more? That kind of thing. How did I not end up more connected? I’ll look at people who are making it happen and they’ve got it all going on, with the production companies, and think, where was the disconnect for me? And I think it was living in North Carolina and focusing on my kids. But I’m glad I did.

I know it’s kind of late in the day to spark that energy, but …

People love a comeback story.

It still could happen.

After all, you were the talk of “Magic Mike XXL.”

Well, that was another case. When you disappear like that and you feel so disconnected, like you’re just completely nobody, you’re excited for an opportunity. It didn’t matter how small it was. I just wanted to be in the movie, please, and work on a movie with [“Sex, Lies and Videotape” director Steven Soderbergh] and be with all these wonderful people.

And watch some hot men dance.

And watch some hot men dance! It was a lot of fun. Being in the room with those guys was hysterical. And I think they were happy to have me there. It was only three nights. Talk about changing time zones. I worked really hard to get into that time zone because we were working nights.

When you look back, do you think about doors that could have opened had you taken different roles?

Yeah, I think everybody thinks that, I’m sure. There’s a lot of things I could have done differently.

Were you offered “The Silence of the Lambs,” or is that just a rumor?

No, I wasn’t offered “Silence of the Lambs.” That’s a mistake. And it’s not only what you were offered, but I’ll look back at opportunities and say, “If I hadn’t been consumed with my personal life at that moment, I would have gotten that.” There are a lot of cases like that, and I’m not going to say which movies. But you’ve got to have a personal life, right? That is the hard thing to balance. It’s not an easy process. And I also had my kids young. A lot of people wait. I had my kids in the height of my career, so I had a lot going on.

At this point, how many scripts are you reading in any given year?

Not enough. [Laughs] And I would also be open to taking smaller roles, like “Magic Mike.” Sometimes I think, why am I not more connected with all these people that they would remember me and I could play quirky roles? What did I do wrong? I maybe didn’t befriend people enough or get close enough to people. How do I get in there and just play these offbeat characters? I’d be willing to do that.

Right as you were dipping out of the limelight, it seemed like people were starting to whisper more about the lack of roles for women of a certain age, which has since become a pressing topic in Hollywood.

Yeah, and they weren’t even whispering. They felt very comfortable asking that question: “How does it feel to know you’re not going to work anymore?” Isn’t that amazing? They’re not going to feel comfortable asking it anymore, you would think. They’ll look stupid. But everybody asked it. It was a normal question to ask.

You were asked that question specifically?

Oh, so many times! That’s what I’m talking about: It’s been so normal to treat us like that. It’s the same thing as thinking that women don’t age well. That’s a concept that women believe, too. I keep saying to them, “It’s not true, you guys. They age, too — they’ve just tricked us.” Think about it!

I told this to another guy the other day, and it’s true: If you put a man with a woman who’s 25 years younger on the screen, automatically he looks sexy. The concept keeps happening — it’s happened for so long that we project that energy onto him because we’ve been taught it. Men look alluring, they look sexy. If you did that with women, we, too, would look alluring and sexy.

And when women get to be older than their love interests, it’s treated as a punchline, like “Harold and Maude.” That’s an extreme example of an age difference, but it speaks to what you’re saying.

Right, and I’m just talking about a 10-year age difference. We would look like our power was sexy. “I’m a rich, powerful woman. Why can’t I be just like a rich, powerful man?” And it’s not so much that I even want it.

You want the opportunity.

I want women to be seen as as sexy as men, and I don’t want women to feel bad about themselves. That’s what has happened to us. We’ve been taught that we age out. Men become sexier, and we become trash. It’s not a good way to live. From 40 to 60, we could have such better lives. And mine’s gone! I’m turning 60, so I’m fighting for all those other people. I want my daughters to feel good about themselves.

This interview has been edited for clarity and condensed for length.

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cutestgirl-inthemorgue-blog · 7 years ago

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July 2017

I started my job as a receptionist at a funeral home this month. hands down the best job I have had, lovely people, interesting job. this was how I chose to get started in this industry before I go to school. I just can’t go around dishin’ out thousands of dollars just to change my mind…again. I thought “hey, let’s makes sure I’m actually cool with corpses”. not like there is going to be many in reception, hopefully. I originally wanted to be hired as the crematorium operator, unfortunately my driver’s license isn’t qualified on their insurance for another year. so now I wait. while I wait I am doing A LOT of research and A LOT of planning. you see the goal here is to own my own funeral home, but not just ANY funeral home, a modern, up-to-date, open minded, and environmentally consious funeral home. I know, I’m talking big game for a girl only two weeks in. But hey, a girl wants what a girl wants, and that girl gets it too.

The Order of the Good Death is a group based out of L.A that promotes death positivity, and basically everything else I am inspired by, and my hope is to start bringing their message to Canada. Canada does offer alternative funeral homes that are more focused on the interests of the deceased rather than basing it off of outdated traditions. In Ontario and Saskatchewan liquid cremation (eco-cremation, green cremation, whatever you want to call it), is an available alternative to burial or fire cremation, which is an awesome step, and I will personally fight any funeral director that tells me that is just as bad as fire cremation, seriously, don’t even try me. Anywho, my ultimate goal is to own my funeral home that offers everything from natural burial, liquid cremation, to direct cremation, and eco-friendly burial. While I will be a Licensed Funeral Director and Embalmer, I do not support embalming, however I do understand it can necessary in some religions.

This blog will be a way for me to keep track of my progress in this industry, as well as a way to organize my ideas. I’m very excited to be starting this endeavor! ____ / \ \×EB×/ \___/

#death #funeral #funeral industry #mortician #death positive #the order of the good death #caitlin doughty #alternative death

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attract-mode-collective · 8 years ago

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Review: A Day with Sid, Ed, & CD-i

Longtime readers may be less than surprised to learn that I have a deep fondness for infomercials designed to sell game hardware, be they arcade machines or computers and consoles. Why? Well, they’re the perfect combination of the two things I loved most growing up, that being video games and late night television, both of which were at their absolute apex around the early 90s (IMHO).

The one I watched and loved the most was a 30 minute long piece of paid programming dedicated to the Phillips CD-i, which attempted to usher CD-ROM based entertainment into living rooms during the 16-bit era of gaming and ultimately failed, with much of its infamy due to the rather poor utilization of Nintendo IP that Phillips had access to (due to them being there to pick up the pieces of the SNES CD project, when Nintendo and Sony had a falling out).

Alas, I have yet to find an acceptable, let alone complete copy on YouTube. I should know; I regularly check and see if one has been finally uploaded. The bits and pieces that are currently present is the infomercial split into three parts (it was shared at a time in which uploads could not be longer than ten minutes), and even then, a sizable chunk of the beginning portion is missing. Though during a regular check, I came across the existence of a second informercial that I had no idea existed!

Despite the beginning being cut off here as well, enough of the set-up is present for the following half-hour to make sense. Basically, we have a pair of twin brothers in the same line of business, more or less: assisting those with technical difficulties.

Ed is a repair person who specializes in VCRs, game systems, and personal computers. Consumer tech that the informercial portrays as being less than consumer friendly, to the point that they’re practically consumer hostile. As such, Ed’s characterization reflects this stance; he’s slow, lazy, and aloof. Which is pretty much all the justification that Sid needs to swoop in and hijack Ed’s clientele, to then perform his role of CD-i salesperson.

Sid believes that he’s not so much stealing them but is instead “steering them in the right direction” and even describes himself as a “Robin Hood for the information age”. The dude loves his job, cuz he loves the CD-i! All of which is illustrated via three vignettes that the informercial presents. The first is Little Timmy and the Wrong Button and it depicts an early 90s mom and her young early 90s son, at the computer… dad’s computer to be exact. The scene opens with mom trying to get a game running by inserting a long string of DOS commands. When she has to step away from the computer, to refer to some manual that’s high atop the book shelf, her child disobeys the commandment of not touching the keyboard, which results in him completely erasing the hard drive.

Believe it or not, for the younger folks reading this, such a scene was somewhat common in television and film at the time: kids were portrayed as being dumb, unable to grasp technology. Crazy, I know! Anyhow, the point of this scene is to demonstrate that computers are super fragile and needlessly complicated, so mom makes a call to Ed, though Sid shows up instead (mom actually calls an office, where Ed’s boss is, who relays jobs to his repairman in the field via CB radio, which Sid snoops in on… kinda messed up, I know). As he barges inside the house, Sid states “So, you hit a pot hole in the information super highway, huh?”

Mom points towards the computer but Sid makes his way straight towards the TV and hooks up a later model of the CD-i, the one that resembles a game console, so I know it came after the other informercial, cuz that one featured the version of the hardware that looks like a VCR. Anyhow, Sid immediately starts doing his pitch, which is how the CD-i does everything a computer can, but instead of a tiny monitor on a desk, you can enjoy everything on your big ass living room TV and on the comfort of your couch.

And what’s the first piece of software to demonstrate the power of CD-i, to not only impress the young man in the skit but everyone watching at home? Why, an edutainment title called Crayon Factory. Seriously. Sid (presumably) gets the idea after noticing the young scribbling all over the walls of the house with crayons, though he’s a bit too old for such behavior. And thus we have my fave little touch of the informercial; when the kid inserts the disc, Sid adjusts it so its properly resting on the spool. Not sure why I like that so much…

But yeah, it’s hardly the first taste for the viewing audience at home that I would have chosen. Yet Crayon Factory is exciting enough for Sid to steal the controller (and a rather cheap looking one at that; on the long list of problems with the CD-i is the rather chintzy input devices) from the boy and play the game himself. While playing, Sid continues on with the hard sell, by noting “CD-i has everything you get with a CD-ROM… except the problems!” Which means zero loading time (not according to footage I’ve seen on YouTube) and no complicated equipment (speaking as a Mac guy, I will agree that PCs are hard to figure out, sorry). He also runs down all the other things that the machine can play, like music CDs (this is the early 90s and compact discs were still relatively new) and movies (with Four Weddings And A Funeral mentioned, the first instance of several) plus actual video games!

The first legit gameplay we see is of Chaos Control, a rather subpar on-rails shooter that heavily relies upon full motion video. But instead of the enemies being sprites that are super imposed on top, which is usually the case, here they’re part of the pre-rendered backdrop. So when you shoot something, it becomes obscured by a puff of smoke, and a really crappy looking one at that. It’s also worth noting that Chaos Control was released on other platforms, and I see the Japanese Sega Saturn version a lot when looking for imports on eBay. There are TONS of copies out there for sale and no one’s buying.

Mom is less than impressed, cuz she’s a woman, and women don’t play video games, according to the informercial. Though she’s also worried about how her husband will react to the loss of the computer (which is referred to as to simply “the CD-ROM”; I think it has less to do with a female being unfamiliar with tech yet again, and more with how no one on staff was fluent period). Which is why Sid bring up Palm Springs Golf, cuz all dads love golf, right? Though CD-is are for mothers as well, which is why Sid introduces her to Kathy Smith Personal Trainer, a work out video disc that has an aerobics instructor with an eye patch. Just figured I’d mention that.

After Four Weddings And A Funeral’s name is dropped for the second time (btw, not once does the informercial ever show a clip, we never even see what the packaging looks like), several other games are mentioned. Nothing manages to pique mom’s interest, until she finds out that there’s a CD-i version of Jeopardy, which is what allows mother and child to bond over technology, and in a way that simply is impossible via CD-ROM or any other old-fashioned piece of tech! As Sid exits the house, after successfully extolling the virtues of the CD-i yet again, he comes across Ed who is only now arriving (his tardiness is largely due to the nap he took on the way). Sid notes “not to make excuses for him, but Ed was born twenty minutes after me and has been late ever since.” Sick burn Sid, sick burn.

Afterwards is the first commercial break within the commercial programming, which is consistent with the format of the medium. This is the first opportunity for the viewing audience to purchase their own machine, for just 8 payments of $62.50? That’s $500. Plus $19.95 for shipping and handling (also, please allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery). The selection of software and entertainment available is detailed, including yet another mention of Four Weddings And A Funeral (we are told there are plenty of movies for the platform, but we only ever hear about one specifically, with the key word here being “hear”). I seem to recall the Turbo Duo’s hefty price tag being justified with a slew of quality pack in titles, and the CD-i is no slouch in comparison… of the six discs included there’s Chaos Control (yawn), Space Ace (okay, that’s slightly better), Compton’s Encyclopedia (okay, before there was Wikipedia there were encyclopedias, so I can see Compton’s actually being a legit enticing piece of software at the time), and a Beatles cover record.

Next is our second tale of truth and discovery, entitled Game Machine. The scene opens up in a living room inhabited by three totally radical teens. The kid any gamer could at home could totally relate to! One’s playing an unspecified game console, another’s just rocking on to some killer tunes via headphones. Unfortunately he gets a bit into the music and ends up knocking over the console, which breaks (which upon freezing of the frame reveals an answering machine instead of a SNES or Genesis). This pisses of the third kid, who had been chillin’ on the couch, eating pizza while on his back (I used to that a lot as a kid… okay, not really). It’s his house and the console is technically his father’s, so a call for help is made.

As before, Sid intercepts Ed’s communiqué from his boss. And as one might expect, video games take center stage in this segment; first up is a full motion driven adventure game called Burn:Cycle that’s about cyber espionage though the mid 90s lens (the best kind, of course). Which is where my other fave shot from the infomercial shows up, right after one of them bites it. I love it when actors are supposed to do something that should be natural, yet either due to poor acting skills or a clueless director (I want to believe in this case it’s the latter), it comes off as anything but...

We then check in on Ed real quick, who is being proactive this time but unfortunately got the address wrong, so he instead shows up at some biker gang’s hideout. Back to Sid, who details the second game for the segment… and it’s Chaos Control for the second time?! Footage from Space Ace is shown after, which is odd, given the type of game that the CD-i was practically made for. Otherwise… we’re constantly told that there are 200 titles available, but the same ones that were showcased with the mom and the small boy are mentioned yet again, even the workout video.

This second segment is not as interesting as the first one, plus it’s not as long either. When the gamer dorks assume that dad has come home, they start panicking because the place is a mess, due to abundance of half eaten pizza slices all over the place (cuz, you know, teenagers). But it’s Ed, who got lost on the way; instead of the boys’ house, he encountered a biker gang. Though we get zero explanation as to what, if anything, had happened.

The ending is also fairly anticlimactic, and the whole thing’s a disappointment to be honest. After a repeat of the commercial break from before, we arrive at the third and final vignette, A VCR’s Last Meal. So you all know already what this one is going to be. As before, the scene opens up in a living room with a man and a woman, a couple sitting on the couch, watching a movie. Sid tells us that they’re movie buffs, though he also explains how their VCR has also developed “quite the appetite” for film as well, hence why they’re regular customers of Ed.

Not surprisingly, their tape (which we are told is Forest Gump, and not Four Weddings And A Funeral; talk about a missed opportunity to flex the CD-i version being superior over the VHS edition) is eaten up by their machine. A call is immediately made the guy has a slightly argumentative exchange on the phone, who states that because of their extended warranty, he wants Ed to give it another shot at fixing it. Ed gets the dispatch, but his hands are full, eating what appears to be two maybe even three slices of pizza at once...

At this point, the infomercial’s negative characterization of Ed and all that he represents officially went over the line. Sid, whose very healthy lunch is an assortment of fruit and vegetable slices and is an additional dig at his brother, decides to steal yet another client from Ed. What a jerk.

The moment Sid arrives, he barges himself into the couple’s abode, replaces the VCR with a CD-i and considers the job done. The dude wonders what the f and our pitchman explains that he’s offering a new way to consume movies. Sid identifies just one title… any guesses which… and then goes onto to tout the CD-quality sound. The girlfriend or wife (not sure what the nature of their relationship really is) seems immediately sold, but the boyfriend or husband is not. So Sid fires up a movie, and just when we see a “Feature Presentation” graphic, he suggests play a video game instead? Great, so Four Weddings And A Funeral is seriously the ONLY movie for the platform, which they either don’t have the rights to show footage from or maybe it’s not even ready.

The game we see is Caesars World of Boxing. Sid initially hands the controller over to the man but then gives it to the woman instead. Cuz it’s funny you see. Because women don’t play video games you see. We briefly cut to Ed who is having engine troubles, and then it’s back to the woman playing the boxing game. And only her. Not sure if it’s a one player game only or if Sid simply doesn’t have a second controller. Can you plug more than one controller into the machine? I honestly don’t know! The woman is way into the game, mostly the violence, so Sid cuts her bloodlust off by popping in the CD-i version of Clue. It’s a video board game that has clips of all the characters, and because it’s not footage from the famous movie, I didn’t care and you probably won’t either.

The third video game used to convince a movie buff couple as to why they should dump their VCR for a CD-i is Burn:Cycle of all things. Afterwards, while Sid is applying the icing on the cake by pointing out how machine also plays games in addition to video games and nonexistent movies, Ed shows up looking pretty pissed. And for good reason; this bother has been stealing his customers for the past 24 minutes, or should I say stealing Ed of his livelihood. What we get is a shot in which Sid and Ed are facing each other, and since it’s the same actor playing both roles once again, it’s a bit of trick photography, but because their eye lines are not meeting the special effect is less than convincing. Anyhow, as Ed rambles on about how the couple is like family, the woman slips in a copy of Mad Dog McCree. Given how it’s an interactive movie, front and center, why wasn’t it brought up front and center to the film fanatics? Then again, playing a light gun with a standard controller is always lame, so maybe that’s why it barely gets any screen time.

In the middle of this, Sid notes that it’s quitting time for both him and his brother, so cut to them sitting on the couch, alongside the couple, with Ed enjoying some Mad Dog McCree himself! Am shocked it’s not all of them watching a movie, Four Weddings And A Funeral of course (we don’t see what they’re seeing, so it could have been possible). Sid’s voice over states “A minute of CD-i and years of rivalry just disappeared!” The last shot we see, before the infomercial ends with the third and final showing of the commercial, is of the van driving off. Before it said Sid’s CD-i Sales but there’s been some alterations, and now it states Sid & Ed’s CD-i Sales. Isn’t that cute. Am assuming this would last for maybe 4 more months, until Sid was forced to adopt Ed’s line of work. Or who knows, maybe the two would go onto drive around town and pitching Atari Jaguars?

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