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whileiamdying · 1 year ago

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Yoko Ono and the Dakota

Word that the pop culture icon has left the fabled Upper West Side apartment building that she defined for a generation has sparked reflection on her impact as a resident there for 50 years.

Derek Hudson/Getty Images

By Anna Kodé Published July 21, 2023 Updated July 24, 2023

Much is transient about New York City real estate. Buildings are demolished, cafes turn into Duane Reades and rents go up. But for the last 50 years, there was a constant — Yoko Ono lived in the Dakota. She stayed even after that tragic December day in 1980 when John Lennon was fatally shot right outside the building.

For years, tourists and New Yorkers alike trekked uptown, hoping to catch a glimpse or have the chance to meet the artist, singer and New York icon. Ms. Ono’s presence sustained the mystique of the Dakota — already well known as a coveted quarters for celebrities and artists when she and Mr. Lennon moved into the Upper West Side apartment complex in 1973.

To the distaste of some other residents, the couple at one point owned five units at the Dakota, which — in addition to being their primary residence — they used as a guest home, a storage space and a studio for Ms. Ono. The living space and studio alone had a combined square-footage of nearly 6,000 square feet, New York magazine reported in 1996.

Stories of the couple’s rumored lavish expenditures spread in tabloids and magazines, such as one 1979 report that Ms. Ono and Mr. Lennon imported a Japanese teahouse for their first-floor apartment, which they promptly returned upon realizing it was too large for the space. More mundane activities made the news too, including the couple contributing sushi to a building potluck.

Yoko Ono and John Lennon moved into the Dakota in 1973. Credit… Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images

After a half century of eccentricity, opulence and tragedy, Ms. Ono has moved out of New York City to the sprawling Catskills farm she bought with Mr. Lennon in 1978, according to reports earlier this year. For many, it signals that yet another link to old New York — the one filled with grit and glamour, run by artists and musicians — is missing. City residents and artists feel a sense of loss knowing that the odds of a momentary sighting or fleeting run-in with Ms. Ono are now even lower, and some have started writing tributes to her time in New York in blogs and small outlets.

The thought of New York without Ms. Ono is a New York with a little less magic.

After hearing the reports, author Lorraine Duffy Merkl wrote in the local news site The West Side Spirit, “I’m still in the ‘New York or Nowhere’ zone, but I have to confess, this native, Bronx girl was beginning to fade.”

“I think Yoko lent such a great romance to the Dakota,” said Julie Lucas, a trustee of the Emmy Awards.

In the early 2000s, Ms. Lucas briefly met Ms. Ono in the elevator of the Dakota. The interaction was fleeting, but impactful for Ms. Lucas, who remembers it sharply to this day.

“That was the one person, as we came into the Dakota, I had always hoped to see — not even talk to, but just see,” said Ms. Lucas, 71, who was there for a cocktail party hosted by television personality Maury Povich. “She had this wonderful calmness and sense of welcoming about her.” For the next 45 seconds or so, until the elevator opened its doors and the two went their separate ways, they spoke about a recent art exhibition of Ms. Ono’s.

“That building represents so much of the hopes of the ’70s and ’80s,” Ms. Lucas said. “And then when John Lennon was killed, she soldiered through all of that grief and stayed on in that building.”

Ms. Ono, who turned 90 earlier this year, no longer participates in interviews, Elliot Mintz, a representative for her, said in an email. Mr. Mintz said she “continues to own her apartment at the Dakota” and added that information on her whereabouts is kept private for security reasons.

‘The Capital of the Capital’

“I think Yoko lent such a great romance to the Dakota,” said Julie Lucas, a trustee of the Emmy Awards. Credit... Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images

The mid-rise, gothic style building sits at 1 West 72nd Street, overlooking Central Park, and was built by developer Edward Clark, who died before its completion in 1884. All 65 units in the complex were rented out before its doors even opened. As the popular tale goes, the Upper West Side was largely unclaimed at the time, so the building’s name came from the notion that it was so far away from developed downtown Manhattan that it might as well have been in Dakota, so say many guidebooks and New Yorkers. But in 1993, The Times reported that Mr. Clark wanted to name his projects after the new states and territories which were named in “excellent taste” (he also suggested Montana Place for Eighth Avenue and Idaho Place for 11th Avenue, but those didn’t stick).

Though it was sumptuous from the start, it wasn’t always the most expensive — there was a period of time where it was rent-controlled, drawing in creative types. Yet its design lends itself to a private way of life that celebrities would naturally seek out; the building encircles its courtyard, so it isn’t visible from the street. The ornate exterior and strict security make it obvious that it isn’t a place anyone can just stroll into.

As the setting for the 1968 classic horror film, “Rosemary’s Baby,” the building’s lore grew. If “New York were considered to be the capital of American art, culture and fashion, the Dakota seemed to be the Capital of the capital,” wrote Stephen Birmingham in his 1979 book, “Life at the Dakota.”

John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived together on the seventh floor of the Dakota. Credit... Scott Cardinal

Roberta Flack, Graydon Carter, Rosemary Clooney, Leonard Bernstein and Judy Garland have been on its long list of notable residents. It takes more than fame and wealth to get in — the co-op’s notoriously stringent board has rejected Billy Joel, Madonna and Cher.

The building’s board once stopped the documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles, who was also a collaborator of Ms. Ono’s, from selling his unit to actress Melanie Griffith. “More and more, they’re moving away from creative people and going toward people who just have the money,” Mr. Maysles had told The Times in 2005.

Today, there is one unit listed for sale in the building: a 6,000 square-foot, five bedroom, nine bathroom apartment on the eighth floor. It has its own separate studio unit, and the listing price is $20 million.

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday

Those who haven’t been inside the Dakota have been able to vicariously experience it through the stories and photos. One homey image, taken by rock ’n’ roll photographer Bob Gruen in 1975, shows Ms. Ono and Mr. Lennon sitting comfortably in bed with magazines splayed. In it, Mr. Lennon, who is wearing a robe, holds their newborn son, Sean. In 1980, Annie Leibovitz photographed Mr. Lennon nude and curled up, with his arms wrapped around Ms. Ono’s head while kissing her cheek. It would later run on the cover of Rolling Stone, but just hours after it was taken, Mr. Lennon was killed.

The Imagine mosaic is part of Strawberry Fields, a memorial for John Lennon in Central Park. Credit... Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock

A crowd gathers in front of the Dakota a day after John Lennon was murdered. Credit... Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Another from Mr. Gruen, taken in 1981, shows Ms. Ono at work, photographing Mr. Lennon’s bloodstained glasses from that day for the album cover for “Season of Glass.”

Ms. Ono’s life in the Dakota was spent in the company of friends and collaborators.

Before Ms. Ono had moved there, in 1966, Mr. Maysles, the documentarian who also lived in the building, and his brother had filmed Ms. Ono’s performance work “Cut Piece.” The performance, which eventually became an influential work of Fluxus art, involved Ms. Ono inviting audience members to come up to her and cut off a piece of her clothing.

Roberta Flack, the Grammy-winning singer of “Killing Me Softly,” had lived next door to Ms. Ono. In “Roberta,” a documentary about Ms. Flack, Sean Lennon said, “At first, you know, I didn’t even think of Roberta as this incredible artist and musician, she was just this really cool neighbor. We used to call her Aunt Roberta.”

“We’re very close to each other and our kitchen is connected,” Ms. Ono said in the documentary.

Erika Belle had heard the stories. So when Keith Haring, a friend of Ms. Belle’s, invited her to dinner at Ms. Ono’s apartment on a rainy Tuesday night in the 1980s, she let out a squeal. “I’d been obsessed with that building, like many lifelong New Yorkers, for years,” Ms. Belle, who is in her 60s, said in an interview. “It had so much old, ’50s Hollywood glamour.”

“To arrive at that building and to know that I was meeting Yoko, was like ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Happy birthday’ all rolled into one,” said Ms. Belle who co-owned the nightclub Lucky Strike and is a model. Ms. Belle was also a backup dancer for Madonna, who she said came to the Dakota with her that evening.

After taking off her shoes to enter, the first thing Ms. Belle noticed about Ms. Ono’s apartment was “how high the ceilings and how wide the hallways were. You could drive a car through those hallways.”

The dinner menu was simply takeout from a Chinese restaurant, but the highlight of the night was getting an apartment tour from Ms. Ono. “She held my hand — even saying it now, I get goose bumps — and asked, ‘Do you want to see the apartment?’”

It was an obvious yes from Ms. Belle. What she remembers most from that intimate walk-through wasn’t a work of art or an expensive piece of furniture, but a bathroom. “Yoko took me to see this bathroom, and she said she left it the same as the day John was murdered,” Ms. Belle said. “She’s like, ‘I haven’t touched this bathroom.’ And that was very touching and moving.”

‘New York Is Like an Old Friend’

Before Ms. Ono was associated with the glamour of the Dakota, she lived downtown, where she became a pioneer of conceptual art.

After moving from Japan in the early 1950s, Ms. Ono attended Sarah Lawrence College in a suburb north of New York. She dropped out in 1956, and then moved to the city. Many of the places she lived and spent time in became meeting places for artists and are now unofficial landmarks of the downtown art scene. In the early 1960s, her Chambers Street loft was where she organized performance events with composer La Monte Young. This became the Chambers Street Loft Series, which was attended by John Cage, Peggy Guggenheim and Marcel Duchamp.

For her 2015 MoMA show, Ms. Ono reflected on that time in her life. “By then, I knew a few people. And I realized that all these people usually create music in New York City,” she said. “But there’s no place for them to present their work. And I said, you know, I think it’s a great idea if we created a place where all of us can present our music.”

The Chambers Street loft was a far stretch — in city blocks and in essence — from the Dakota. “It’s a cold water flat, and it was in the winter. It was so cold, you know? We didn’t even have electricity,” Ms. Ono said.

Ms. Ono and Mr. Lennon first met at an exhibition of her work in London in 1966. Credit… Getty

In 1965, Ms. Ono performed “Morning Piece” at 87 Christopher Street, where she briefly lived and worked as a superintendent. She and Mr. Lennon met in 1966, at an exhibition of her work in London — she had a work titled “Apple,” which featured a real apple on display, and Mr. Lennon went up and bit into it.

The couple soon moved to 105 Bank Street, which is now memorialized as “John Lennon’s First New York Home” on Google Maps. They lived there from 1971 to 1973, when they, as the Plastic Ono Band, released the album “Some Time in New York City.”

In more recent times, Ms. Ono has expressed her evolving relationship with New York through posts on Twitter. “John once said that he fell in love with New York on a street corner,” she said in January of this year.

After half a century of Ms. Ono living at the Dakota, and even longer in New York altogether, New Yorkers are filled with nostalgia, melancholy and gratitude for the various ways she has shaped the city and their life in it.

To many people, Ms. Ono will forever be a part of New York. The writer and curator Phillip Ward — who organized a public 90th birthday celebration for Ms. Ono earlier this year — thinks of the artist every time he passes by the Dakota. “I always look up and just smile and say, ‘Thank you,’” he said.

Ms. Ono, too, has felt reflective about her time in New York.

“New York is like an old friend. It has its moods,” Ms. Ono wrote in 2017. “But I know them all.”

“John once said that he fell in love with New York on a street corner,” Ms. Ono said in January of this year. Credit… Derek Hudson/Getty Images

Susan C. Beachy and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

Audio produced by Parin Behrooz.

Anna Kodé is a reporter for the Real Estate section of The Times. She writes about design trends, housing issues and the relationship between identity and home. More about Anna Kodé

#New York Times #Anna Kodé #Yoko Ono #The Dakota

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itsmoonknight · 3 years ago

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Disney Reveals Obi-Wan Kenobis Rating and Its Lower Than Expected

Disney+ Reveals Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Rating and It’s Lower Than Expected After a short break from live-action storytelling, Disney and Lucasfilm will take a blast to the past with the highly-anticipated May release of Obi-Wan Kenobi. This will be Ewan McGregor's first appearance as the grizzled Jedi since 2005's Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, with his return bridging the gap between that prequel film and A New Hope. Lucasfilm has utilized Disney+ to incredible results over the last couple of years, with Emmy-winning efforts on The Mandalorian and a widely-watched spin-off series in The Book of Boba Fett. Now, Obi-Wan Kenobi looks to take an even deeper trip down memory lane as it adds to Obi-Wan's journey while also mixing in new layers to the mythology that began 45 years ago. With all 11 big-screen Star Wars outings having been rated PG or PG-13, which has continued into the Disney+ spin-offs as they earned ratings of TV-14 for The Mandalorian and TV-12 for The Book of Boba Fett. Now, ahead of Ewan McGregor's return to the galaxy far, far away, his show's rating has fans in a state of surprise. Obi-Wan Kenobi's Rating on Disney+ Star Wars Disney+ U.K. has listed the Obi-Wan Kenobi series with a TV age rating of 9+, which is notably lower than the live-action Star Wars Disney+ series that have come before it. For reference, The Mandalorian was rated 14+ while The Book of Boba Fett was rated 12+. Obi-Wan Kenobi's rating is the same as Star Wars: Visions, although it's higher than both animated series in The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch (6+). Disney+ Why So Low for Obi-Wan Kenobi? Disney fans have seen lower ratings than expected from recent releases across the company's landscape, most recently coming from Marvel Studios' upcoming Disney+ series Ms. Marvel. However, this certainly comes as more of a shock for Star Wars fans considering how much of McGregor's Obi-Wan has already come through on the big screen. A 9+ rating would seemingly indicate that everything in Obi-Wan Kenobi is more than appropriate for any viewers over the age of nine years old, meaning there may not be as much violence or language as there is in other Star Wars properties. However, while this rating may seem low, there's a precedent set that indicates it could change as the season moves forward. Marvel Studios' WandaVision saw its rating change from TV-12 to TV-14 after its first couple of episodes, which is what fans are hoping happens for Obi-Wan Kenobi. However, it turns out, this low rating only makes the series that much more intriguing to watch as McGregor brings the story back a few decades in time. Obi-Wan Kenobi is set to begin streaming on Disney+ on May 27. via The Direct https://ift.tt/7zBUv56

#Marvel #mcu #Disney+ Reveals Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Rating and It’s Lower Than Expected #The Direct

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dramaqueeenamby · 4 years ago

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Waves: The Read

A/N: I am a shady bitch, and I regret nothing. Also, if ya’ll remember, Mercedes is Summer’s publicist/manager. I mentioned that in a few waves, so don’t get confused, friends!

Warnings: None.

Word Count: 2K

Masterlist

TAGS: @notacamelthatsmywife @babe-im-bi @liquorlaughslove @letsshamelessqueen-m @missyperle @valkryienymph @tashawar @mani-lifes @missdforever @hello-therree @toni9 @queenshikongo3

"How many solos has my sister had?"

The room grew quiet, all eyes on the speaker. They’d just finished a number, or rather, Finn and Rachel had just finished a number. The rest of the students served more as props than singers. Ad-libs only constituted so much.

Mr. Schue’s smile dimmed. Slightly. "W—what?"

Alexus shrugged, motioning around the room. "Or any of the kids whose names aren’t Flipper or Rachel?"

"It’s Finn."

"I don’t care," she dismissed, eyes still on the instructor. "I’ve been here a whole week, and not once have I seen someone other than Cher and Sonny score solos."

Mr. Schue scoffed, crossing his arms. "Now, hold on a second, I treat all my students fairly. Any student is allowed to audition for a solo—"

"And how many who have auditioned actually received one, other than your prized pupils?"

Mercedes stood up. "Alexus—"

"No." Alexus lifted her hand and looked over at her sister. "This isn’t right, and you’re too kind and understanding to say anything, so I will."

"You’re out of line, Alexus."

She laughed, looking back at him. "Out of line? I’m not one of your little students, and you’re not going to shut me down like you do them. I’m going to say what I want and need to say, and then I’ll leave, but you’re going to catch this read, first."

"And, cut!"

Summer broke from character and offered Matthew a fake smile before turning away and catching Amber’s gaze. They shared an unspoken exchange, one that caused Amber to laugh after Summer rolled her eyes.

Summer didn’t know why she was so weary about accepting this role. Only 10% of it was acting, the rest was her actually reading the problematic cast members, which was all but a handful. But, to fulfill her petty side and get paid?

It was a double win.

Summer noticed Ryan was speaking with Lea, which ignited another eye roll. She was the guest star, not that Barbara Streisand wannabe. Still, Summer counted her blessings, because she could only take Ryan in small doses. He wasn’t as bad as his prized actress, but it was the fact that he allowed her to treat everyone like shit that made her think less of him.

Perhaps she was spoiled in the sense that every other director she’d had the privilege of working for would never tolerate such behavior. She had to accept that Hollywood was a game, and the rules changed constantly.

"Someone was having fun," Mercedes, Summer’s assistant chimed, coming to walk beside her.

Summer feigned innocence. "I have no idea what you’re talking about."

Mercedes smirked. "Yeah, right. You weren’t acting. You were giving them all a piece of your mind."

Summer retained her smile as they reached her trailer, Summer opening the door so Mercedes could enter first. "Are you trying to insinuate that I was using my job to tell these people how I really feel?"

"I surely was."

As soon as the door closed, Summer confessed. "You know me so well."

The two laughed. "Girl, you know Lea is probably complaining to Ryan right now."

Summer sucked her teeth. "You know she is." Walking over to the kitchenette area, she turned on the Keruig and opened the drawer to select a pod. Her hand ghosted between the caramel and the dark magic, before she settled for caramel. "That black bitch—"

Mercedes snickered. "You sound just like her."

Summer frowned as she insert the pod and selected 8oz. "God, you’re right. I have to have to get out of here."

Smiling, Mercedes swiped down to refresh her emails. "Hey, look at it this way, you keep up this level of performance, and you’re a shoe-in for that Primetime Emmy.

The idea of adding another award to her resume was more than enough to keep Summer focused and dedicated. As a dark skinned black woman, she had to work ten times harder just to remain 20 steps behind. Anything she could do to push herself, she cherished.

Summer added creamer and sugar to her coffee, blowing before taking a sip. "After this, I need a quick break."

Mercedes hummed. "Umm, about that—"

"No."

"Summer—"

"No, Cedes, I’ve been working back to back since I scored 4AM, I think I’ve earned a little vacation time."

"I don’t disagree." Mercedes raised her hands in surrender.

"Thank you," Summer nodded, taking another sip of her coffee.

"But—"

"Here you go."

"I’m just saying, I’m hearing rumors about a potential role that’s gonna start casting in a couple of months."

Summer rolled her eyes and brought the mug to her mouth. "And?"

"And." Mercedes also rolled her eyes. "It’d be perfect for you."

"Mmmhmm."

"Summer," Mercedes lowered her voice. "It’s Storm."

Summer narrowed her eyes. "Storm?" Mercedes nodded. "You don’t mean—"

"X-Men Storm? I surely do."

Summer gasped and covered her mouth. "Bitch!"

"I know!" Mercedes giggled, shushing her client. "So do you see why I want you to keep your options open?"

Summer downed the remainder of her coffee and washed her mug in the sink all the while still stuck on the information she’d been told. "Do you really think I could be Storm?"

"Summer, please, you won an Oscar for your first Hollywood role. You’re a shoe-in."

"What about Shipp?"

"Shipp can skip her ass off somewhere."

The two women laughed when a knock on the trailer door prompted Summer to walk over, opening and smiling when she saw Amber. "Hey girl, come on in."

"I wish." Amber rolled her eyes. "Lea’s ready to start filming again. I mean, Ryan is ready to start filming again."

"You’ve got to be kidding me." Summer checked the watch on her wrist. "It hasn’t even been twenty minutes."

Amber sighed. "You know the saying. She says jump. We say—"

"Trip, bitch."

Amber laughed, as Summer looked back at Mercedes, pointing a finger. "This conversation isn’t over."

Mercedes winked at Summer, the two actresses sauntering back onto set.

Summer wondered if Lea had been listening outside her trailer, because it seemed as if Ms. Michele was purposely antagonizing Summer. Any scenes they had together, Lea would abruptly call cut and give Summer "pointers," all the while Ryan sat in his chair and said nothing.

Summer, forever the professional, managed to keep her composure, but there was only so much she could take.

Finally, when it came time for Summer to film her final scene, she saw an opportunity.

"Alright, and action!"

"I just want you to know that despite your distasteful behavior toward me, I hold no animosity and hope that one day you can release your unwarranted rage, and we can be cordial once I’m on Broadway."

Alexus turned to Rachel and tilted her head, crossing her arms. "I don’t like you. Never have, never will."

Rachel’s smile faltered. "Well, I-I’m sorry you feel that way, but--."

"Let me explain something to you, Berry. This is Lima, Ohio. The biggest thing we have going for us here is Breadstix, a restaurant chain that’s been on it’s last leg since that lawsuit filed by the kid who got two breadsticks stuck up her nostrils."

"I’m much better now."

Alexus ignored Britany and continued. "So, I’ll give you this, this small town notoriety and fame, because I know and you know, that once you actually make it out into the real world, reality is going to slap you so hard, you won’t need to have a nose job."

"Alexus—"

"Your stardom is limited to this pathetic town and its almost entirely pathetic population. And don’t get me wrong, you’re very good at manipulating and controlling individuals, because you can. For now. But, let’s be real, your voice isn’t anything I haven’t heard coming from street singers in NYC. Face it, you don’t have the talent nor the looks to make it into this big star you think you’re going to be. NYADA?" Alexus laughed. "Maybe you’ll make it, I doubt it, and even if you do, once you realize how utterly mediocre your narcissistic ass truly is compared to real talent, you’ll come crying back to Lima and spend the rest of your life working nights at Breadstix while watching reruns of Funny Girl on a goodwill VHS player." A beat. "Now, how’s that for raining on your parade?"

"And, cut!"

——

PRESENT TIME

"Christopher, stop!" Summer laughed as Chris came from behind and lifted her up against his solid frame. "I’m trying to do my makeup."

"You don’t need it," he murmured into her neck. "It’s going to end up all over the pillows anyw—"

"Sir!"

"Autumn."

"Would you please leave me alone?" Summer managed to wiggle herself free from her husband, flipping him off when he slapped her ass. "I am a human being."

"Allegedly."

"Alleged—lemme stop before I end up going to jail." She leaned over and examined her skin, feeling for the tackiness to see if her primer had settled. "This is why I can never do my makeup right. If it’s not him, it’s the twins."

We wanna see the babies!

I don’t get it. Why is she always so mean to him???

^^^^You must be new around here…

What makeup do you use?

Summer caught the last comment and grabbed her foundation and concealer, flashing them on the camera. "You know I have to support my girl, Ri. It’s Fenty Beauty all day everyday over here, ya’ll."

More comments came rolling in, Summer partially paying attention while she tried to do her makeup. Chris was taking her out on a date, the first they’d been on since the birth of the twins.

Summer was actually excited. She was in much need of alone time with her husband.

She grabbed the Snap shadow and blending brush when she noticed majority of the comments kept mentioning Lea Michele.

She didn’t even attempt to hide her distaste. "Why are ya’ll asking me about that girl? Did something happen?" Different stories were coming in prompting Summer to do her own research. "Baby, can I see your phone?"

Without hesitation, Christopher jogged into the bathroom, grabbing onto Summer’s hips while she typed Lea’s name into google.

Five minutes into reading, Summer slammed his phone onto the counter.

"Finally!"

"You’re paying for that," Chris muttered, grabbing his phone, thankful that it wasn’t cracked.

"Sorry, baby." She leaned up and kissed his cheek before looking into her phone. "Ya’ll, okay, most of you should remember I played Mercedes sister, Alexus, on Glee, right?" A wave of "yes" rolled in. "So, I’ve worked with the bitch, and I am not exaggerating when I say bitch. That heifer is literally the worst person I have ever had the displeasure of working with."

Summer pushed Christopher out the bathroom, in case her adding onto the Lea Michele drag train somehow ended up bad. "Now, I’d heard she was a nightmare, but I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt."

"But, literally the first time I walked onto set and introduced myself to her, she looked me up and down, turned up her nose, and walked away." Summer clapped and covered her mouth. "It took everything in me not to call her ass out, but it was my first day, and I didn’t want to cause a scene."

"Obviously, I was a recurring star on the show so I would make appearances throughout the series, and each time I was there, she treated me, and everyone around her, like trash."

"Okay, but here’s the real tea, you know that read Alexus gave Rachel in season 3? That wasn’t in the script." Summer laughed at the comments. Her fans were freaking out. "My line ended when I told her I didn’t like her or something, but it was my last day of filming, and I’d literally had enough of her."

Even more comments came rolling in of laughing, frog, and tea emojis. Summer sucked her teeth and placed her hand on her hip. "Ya’ll, her white ass thought she was gone’ be a thirty something Maria from West Side Story on broadway." A beat. "Somebody had to let her know!"

#chris hemsworth #chris hemsworth fanfiction #chris hemsworth fanfic #chris hemsworth x black!reader #chris hemsworth x reader #chris hemsworth x black!oc #fic: waves

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phroyd · 4 years ago

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One of our Great Comedians leaves us this day! Rest In Peace, Jackie! - Phroyd

Jackie Mason, whose staccato, arm-waving delivery and thick Yiddish accent kept the borscht belt style of comedy alive long after the Catskills resorts had shut their doors, and whose career reached new heights in the 1980s with a series of one-man shows on Broadway, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 93.His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital, was confirmed by the lawyer Raoul Felder, a longtime friend.Mr. Mason regarded the world around him as a nonstop assault on common sense and an affront to his sense of dignity. Gesturing frantically, his forefinger jabbing the air, he would invite the audience to share his sense of disbelief and inhabit his very thin skin, if only for an hour.“I used to be so self-conscious,” he once said, “that when I attended a football game, every time the players went into a huddle, I thought they were talking about me.” Recalling his early struggles as a comic, he said, “I had to sell furniture to make a living — my own.”The idea of music in elevators sent him into a tirade: “I live on the first floor; how much music can I hear by the time I get there? The guy on the 28th floor, let him pay for it.”

The humor was punchy, down-to-earth and emphatically Jewish: His last one-man show in New York, in 2008, was titled “The Ultimate Jew.” A former rabbi from a long line of rabbis, Mr. Mason made comic capital as a Jew feeling his way — sometimes nervously, sometimes pugnaciously — through a perplexing gentile world.“Every time I see a contradiction or hypocrisy in somebody’s behavior,” he once told The Wall Street Journal, “I think of the Talmud and build the joke from there.” Describing his comic style to The New York Times in 1988, he said, “My humor — it’s a man in a conversation, pointing things out to you.”“He’s not better than you, he’s just another guy,” he added. “I see life with love — I’m your brother up there — but if I see you make a fool out of yourself, I owe it to you to point that out to you.”He was born Yacov Moshe Maza in Sheboygan, Wis., on June 9, 1928, to immigrants from Belarus. (Some sources give the year as 1931.) When he was 5, his father, Eli, an Orthodox rabbi, and his mother, Bella (Gitlin) Maza, moved the family to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where Yacov discovered that his path in life had already been determined. Not only his father, but his grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfathers had all been rabbis. His three older brothers became rabbis, and his two younger sisters married rabbis. “It was unheard-of to think of anything else,” Mr. Mason said. “But I knew, from the time I’m 12, I had to plot to get out of this, because this is not my calling.”

After earning a degree from City College, he completed his rabbinical studies at Yeshiva University and was ordained. In a state of mounting misery, he tended to congregations in Weldon, N.C., and Latrobe, Pa., unhappy in his profession but unwilling to disappoint his father.Hedging his bets, he had begun working summers in the Catskills, where he wrote comic monologues and appeared onstage at every opportunity. This, he decided, was his true calling, and after his father’s death in 1959 he felt free to pursue it in earnest, with a new name.He struggled at first, playing the Catskills and, with little success, obscure clubs in New York and Miami. Plagued by guilt, he underwent psychoanalysis, which did not solve his problems but did provide him with good comic material.Nevertheless, he found it hard to break into the nightclub circuit in New York — in part, he claimed, because his act made Jewish audiences uncomfortable. “My accent reminds them of a background they’re trying to forget,” he said.

While performing at a Los Angeles nightclub in 1960, he caught the attention of his fellow comedian Jan Murray, who recommended him to the television personality Steve Allen. Two appearances in two weeks on “The Steve Allen Show” led to bookings at the Copacabana and the Blue Angel in New York.Mr. Mason’s career was off and running. He became a regular on the top television variety shows, recorded two albums for the Verve label — “I Am the Greatest Comedian in the World Only Nobody Knows It Yet” and “I Want to Leave You With the Words of a Great Comedian” — and wrote a book, “My Son the Candidate.”

After dozens of appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Mr. Mason encountered disaster on Oct. 18, 1964. A speech by President Lyndon B. Johnson pre-empted the program, which resumed as Mr. Mason was halfway through his act. Onstage but out of camera range, Sullivan indicated with two fingers, then one, how many minutes Mr. Mason had left, distracting the audience. Mr. Mason, annoyed, responded by holding up his own fingers to the audience, saying, “Here’s a finger for you, and a finger for you, and a finger for you.”Sullivan, convinced that one of those fingers was an obscene gesture, canceled Mr. Mason’s six-show contract and refused to pay him for the performance. Mr. Mason sued, and won.The two later reconciled, but the damage was done. Club owners and booking agents now regarded him, he said, as “crude and unpredictable.”

“People started to think I was some kind of sick maniac,” Mr. Mason told Look. “It took 20 years to overcome what happened in that one minute.”His career went into a slump, punctuated by bizarre instances of bad luck. In Las Vegas in 1966, after he made a few ill-considered remarks about Frank Sinatra’s recent marriage to the much younger Mia Farrow (“Frank soaks his dentures and Mia brushes her braces,” one joke went), an unidentified gunman fired a .22 pistol into his hotel room.A play he starred in and wrote (with Mike Mortman), “A Teaspoon Every Four Hours,” went through a record-breaking 97 preview performances on Broadway before opening on June 14, 1969, to terrible reviews. It closed after one night, taking with it his $100,000 investment.He also invested in “The Stoolie” (1972), a film in which he played a con man and improbable Romeo. It also failed, taking even more of his money. Roles in sitcoms and films eluded him, although he did make the most of small parts in Mel Brooks’s “History of the World: Part I” (1981) — he was “Jew No. 1” in the Spanish Inquisition sequence — and “The Jerk” (1979), in which he played the gas-station owner who employs Steve Martin.Rebuffed, Mr. Mason set about rebuilding his career with guest appearances on television. His new manager, Jyll Rosenfeld, convinced that the old borscht belt comics were ripe for a comeback, encouraged him to bring his act to the theater as a one-man show.

After attracting celebrity audiences in Los Angeles, that show, “The World According to Me!,” opened on Broadway in December 1986 and ran for two years. It earned Mr. Mason a special Tony Award in 1987, as well as an Emmy for writing after HBO aired an abridged version in 1988.

“I didn’t think it would work,” Mr. Mason said. “But people, when they come into a theater, see you in a whole new light. It’s like taking a picture from a kitchen and hanging it in a museum.”In 1991 Mr. Mason married Ms. Rosenfeld, who survives him. He is also survived by a daughter, the comedian Sheba Mason, from a relationship with Ginger Reiter in the 1970s and ’80s.“The World According to Me!” generated a series of sequels — “Politically Incorrect,” “Love Thy Neighbor,” “Prune Danish” and others — which carried Mr. Mason through the 1990s and into the new millennium.He published an autobiography, “Jackie, Oy!” (written with Ken Gross), in 1988. He also found a new sideline as an opinionated political commentator on talk radio. In the 2016 presidential campaign, he was one of the few well-known entertainers to support Donald J. Trump.Mr. Mason’s forays into political commentary caused him trouble. He was reported to have used a Yiddish word considered to be a racial slur in talking about David N. Dinkins, the Black mayoral candidate, at a Plaza Hotel luncheon in 1989. Mr. Mason was a campaigner for Mr. Dinkins’s opponent, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani said the incident had been blown out of proportion but nevertheless dismissed Mr. Mason from the campaign. Mr. Mason at first refused to apologize but did so later.

He drew attention for using the same word regarding President Barack Obama during a performance in 2009.Appearances on the cartoon series “The Simpsons,” as the voice of Rabbi Hyman Krustofski, the father of Krusty the Clown, confirmed his newfound status, and earned him a second Emmy. Not even the 1988 bomb “Caddyshack II,” in which he was a last-minute replacement for Rodney Dangerfield, or the ill-fated “Chicken Soup,” a 1989 sitcom co-starring Lynn Redgrave that died quickly, could slow his improbable transformation from borscht belt relic into hot property.“I’ve been doing this for a hundred thousand years, but it’s like I was born last Thursday,” Mr. Mason once said of his career turnaround. “They see me as today’s comedian. Thank God I stunk for such a long time and was invisible, so I could be discovered.”

Michael Levenson contributed reporting.

Phroyd

#rip #jackie mason

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shadow--writer · 4 years ago

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Maybe we're all Lonely and Afraid, Maybe we're all Trying to Find the Words to say

song!

Maeve x Lucas. Shadows on the wall. 2.8k

TW (there are more squicks): slight mention of past abuse, mention of plague, mention of eye stuff lol

@dela-png

Lucas was a hard worker.

It was obvious from the way he moved, from the way his face scrunched up as he thought.

Watching the same thing be mirrored on someone of much shorter stature had become...an amusing game of sorts to Maeve. This had gone on for a few weeks now, Will begging them to take the lessons down to the dock to get out of the stifling heat of being indoors.

While she agreed at first, under the guise of the heat, she soon realized the boy had other motives in coming to the dock.

The air today was stifling, even outside. She fanned herself with her hand, almost melting into the chair she sat in. Will had finished his work quickly, a bit too quickly, before running off again.

Lilith and Amanda had gone off alone to seek shelter from the heat, a flimsy disguise to be alone if she ever heard one. But they got what they needed to done, and with a wink she sent them off.

Emmie and Andrew on the other hand…

“Ms. Maeve it’s too hot,” Emmie whined, sinking into her chair.

She reached over to take the little girl’s hand, gently holding her wrists in her hands. Her still, oddly enough, cold hands.

“We can go to get some more water...well you could finish your water,” she said with a warm smile. “Water is very important in staying cool.”

Emmie made a face. “Yeah but water is gross!”

“...my love, it doesn’t have a taste.”

“What makes it gross!”

She laughed softly, letting go of one of Emmie’s wrists to brush back her hair. Just a bit sweaty, her cheeks were rosy though. No fever, no sunburn. No signs of a heatstroke.

“Why can Will go and play and we can’t?” Andrew whined, crossing his arms as he stared at his addition pages.

“Will isn’t...playing. He’s helping Lucas, see?” She pointed to the smaller boy, toddling after Lucas while brightly talking about something. There was a necklace around his neck.

The eel tooth she pulled out of Will’s stomach. What a first meeting.

She pursed her lips to keep from smiling. Will had burst into the clinic when she was trying to save a man’s eye (a very impromptu moment that almost cost that man his other eye) yelling about how Lucas made him his own tooth necklace.

It did take a while to calm Will down from the sight of the man’s infected eye (and her all bloodied), but that wasn’t her fault.

He now wore that necklace everywhere. She never saw him without it. And if he didn’t wear it around his neck, she tied it around his wrist. Oh how he bragged about it to the others when Lucas wasn’t around. Talking the big talk about how he was just like their big brother.

She hid her giggles, watching Lucas pick up a crate of fishing gear and watching Will attempt to pick up the same.

Attempt, being the key word.

He fell back with a thump, making a face at the heavy crate. Lucas was none the wiser, silent as he walked away from the young boy’s struggle.

Lucas was so quiet when he worked. And the others tended to avoid him like the plague. And she knew what avoiding like the plague looked like.

She rubbed at her palms, trying not to think back on that time. The blood on her hands. The tears. The horror in the streets. The smoke from the Lazert blocking out the sun.

She sighed, massaging her temples. Sometimes she wondered how on Earth she was able to sleep at night. Most nights she didn’t go to sleep to begin with. And of course, her quite atrocious eating habits.

Which Lucas, somehow, was helping to manage. At least a little.

Will picked up a smaller crate, this one having hooks and replacement fishing line. Quickly, he bolted after Lucas.

She wondered how long this would go on before Lucas noticed his little shadow. The shadow with the face of a round cheeked boy. So energetic and innocent. The missing teeth reminiscent of hers.

Giggling, she held her arm over her head as she looked up at the sky. No clouds. Not even a hint of rain.

She knocked three teeth out the first time she fell from a tree. Her mother told her that if she kept her teeth by her bedside she would trick a fairy changeling. A well tricked fairy would leave sweets.

Ah, she was thinking in fairy tales again. It was the innocent and the horrifying that made her miss her mother.

And she was waxing poetry. All lost in her mind today it seemed.

“Here, we can wrap up lessons, and you two can go find somewhere to cool off. It’s too hot for arithmetic anyway,” she said, closing the books scattered around the rickety old table.

Andrew and Emmie lit up, dashing away from the table and laughing as they ran who knows where.

Smiling and humming to herself, she started to clean up the mess they made. It was an explosion of books and papers, and it was going to be a pain to sort the pages by kid.

She tied her hair back with the handkerchief, her smile growing bubbly as she touched the soft yet worn fabric. Such a simple gift. Small yet she treasured those who made it.

She snuck a look at Lucas, he was showing Will how to bait a hook. The latter of which was gagging at the prospect of having to hold a worm. That poor worm.

A treasure from those who made it and those who helped give to it.

Lucas was a hard worker.

But he was kind.

Watching him laugh, the boisterous sound making her heart flop in such an odd way she had to look away from him. Hearing Will try and mimic such a laugh was amusing as well, making her stifle her giggles to not be heard by the two of them.

Will liked following Lucas around, chuffing when he chuffed, rubbing the back of his neck when Lucas did so. The weird, adorable, totally Lucas, focus face now on the face of someone much younger. The crease of the eyebrows, the squint, the way he breathed harshly when things went wrong again. The way his tongue would peek out from his lips when he focused really hard.

Kids were strange things.

Will cheered when he baited his hook, Lucas dodging a little as to not get impaled by the hook as the boy waved the baited hook and line around. Both were laughing, the sun unbearably beating down on them.

She swept the papers into one hand, rapping them against the rough surface of the table to even them out. Tucking the small stack into the notebook of her notes on addition, she moved on to Emmie’s work.

Lucas watched her for a moment, helping Will set his hook down so someone else may use it.

She knew his footsteps, now echoed by a shadow’s. Will stomped harder to make his footsteps louder, and she found it adorable.

“Afternoon,” she said, keeping her back to them. Her heart kept fluttering weirdly when Lucas was around. It was starting to become even stranger than normal.

He kissed the top of her head, she could feel him smiling against her hair.

“You smell nice today,” he said softly, taking her hand away from where she was cleaning up.

Will watched, taking her other hand and making her laugh.

Lucas saw this, blinking at the little boy as he mimicked Lucas’ soft expression when he looked up at her. But it was more childlike and a clear imitation.

She decided to play along a little. “Why Lucas! You’ve gotten so much smaller!” she said, gasping a little as she looked down at the smaller boy, he was growing like a weed, now coming up to her hip.

He giggled, smiling brightly. “Now.” She tugged her hand out of the actual Lucas’, placing it on her hip. “Has someone put a spell on you?”

“No!” he laughed.

“No?” she asked, tapping her lower lip. “Have you just been shrunk? A potion maybe? Did you eat something weird?” she teased, squatting down a little. “Now you seem to be around my height. A blessing don’t you know. My neck hurts from always looking up at you.”

He laughed. “Ms. Maeve, I'm not Lucas! I’m Will!”

She placed her hand on her chest, gasping again. “Oh my! You were so convincing I thought it must have been Lucas!” His gapped tooth grin made her smile. He was a sweetheart when he wasn’t whining. “Now where would the real Lucas be?”

Will shrugged, but his giggles and side eye’d looks to Lucas made her smile.

“Ah. Is he over here?” she asked, looking over where Will was. Lucas was much taller with her near the ground, he’d be an imposing sight if it weren’t for the joy lighting up his eyes.

Her gaze slowly fluttered up as she met those eyes. An even brillianter blue today. And now him trying not to laugh. She got to her feet, twisting her lips as she looked at him. “Hmmm well you’re around my Lucas’ height.”

He let out a tiny snort, eyes crinkling with affection. Her cheeks warmed.

Ignoring her flushed face, she stood on her tiptoes, pretending to inspect his face. He had freckles now, his skin deeply tanned.

She wanted to count them. They were…well, the only word for it was adorable. They suited his face well. Though the tan lines from where his hair stayed matted to his face made her giggle. So uneven.

In some ways she was lucky she couldn’t tan.

“Hmmm you look like my Lucas…” she said, landing back on her heels with a small click. She crossed her arms and tilted her head, both him and Will mimicking the motion. “Oh dear now it seems I have a doppelganger,” she giggled. “Two doppelgangers!”

Lucas dropped the charade when he laughed, nose wrinkling at her antics.

“I’m afraid you can’t be my Lucas though,” she said, coming to her conclusion. “You do look an awful lot like him. But he doesn’t have freckles.”

“Can’t you make an exception just this once?” he asked with an affectionate smile. “I’m sure your Lucas wouldn’t mind. And the freckles are an easy fix! A little makeup and they’re gone!” He made a vanishing motion with his hands, Will doing the same.

He still didn’t seem to notice it, which was still amusing to her.

“Even so! I still can’t overlook one thing.”

“Oh? And what might that be?” he asked, moving closer to her. This was risky with him working today and all, but the heat might’ve just melted her brain into mush.

She rubbed her nose against his, moving away. “I’m afraid you’re much too short to be my Lucas.”

He gasped dramatically, holding his chest and stumbling into the nearest table. She laughed so hard she snorted, covering her mouth with her hands as she smiled. Watching her laugh, he shot her a grin that made her blush.

“If you can figure out a way to get a little taller…” she held her index and thumb apart a little for reference, trying to get her laughter under control. She had to fight her smile. “Then we might get somewhere.” She sighed, leaning against her table, papers scattering on the ground. Will watched the two of them, laughing. “And then maybe we can find my Lucas. Wherever he may be.”

He looked around, dragging a small crate over and standing on it. “How’s this?”

She bit her lip, smiling as she inspected it. “Hmm a bit too tall.”

He stepped off the crate and up onto his tip toes. He quirked an eyebrow and she laughed. “Perfect.”

He snorted, resting back on his heels as he leaned over to kiss her softly. “I should get back to work,” he whispered, kissing the corners of her mouth before moving away.

“I’ll miss you,” she said, wiping an imaginary tear away from her eye, making him chuckle.

He ruffled her hair. “Don’t forget me,” he joked, holding her hand gently, raising it and kissing her knuckles softly. “After work, I can make dinner.”

“Tonight?”

“If you’re free.”

“Well I’ll disappoint many men, don’t you know they just come flocking to my door!” Not quite a lie. A drunk man, like any person, could turn into a stupid person. “But I think I can fit you in,” she said with a wink. She could feel his teeth graze her skin as he laughed, letting her hand fall to her side.

“I’m honoured.”

She smiled, leaning against the table again. “It’s a date then.”

His cheeks pinked as he nodded and walked away. “Y-Yeah. A date.”

“Hopefully this one goes better!” she called after him. “Hard to get bit by an eel that far from the ocean.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Are you ever going to let me live that down?”

She giggled, waving at him sweetly. “Never. Will has evidence of his fight with the creatures around his neck now.”

He looked surprised that Will would wear the necklace. Pride soon soaked into his features and he grinned. “Too bad you didn’t get a tooth stuck in you, I would’ve made something for you too.”

She snorted, waving him off. “Get back to work, eel boy.”

He saluted, jogging away.

She turned away to pick up the papers she knocked down, smiling to herself.

Gods she loved him.

It took her a moment to realize what she had just thought. What she knew was going on.

She waited for the waves of panic, for the horror, the disgust in herself to set it. She waited for her stomach to sink to her feet and the colour to drain from her face.

But it never came.

Instead, there was a warm feeling. Buzzing, her heart racing a little, that same love struck smile never faltering.

She loved him.

The very thought startling her.

She slammed the papers down on the table, spooking Will from where he was trying to make fish hooks out of sticks.

Even startled, she did not mind.

No. She did mind! She minded about one thing.

It was too easy. She hadn’t suffered enough to get to this realization. The universe never smiled upon her for long. Something always was going to happen. Always going to go wrong. It was too easy to stay here and love him so...freely.

She froze at the prospect of telling him.

There was the catch. She couldn’t tell him. She wouldn’t.

Stacking Emmie’s papers and tucking them between the pages of a book, she gnawed on her lower lip. She feared him rejecting her. A kiss was one thing. Yes a rejected kiss would (and did) sting but…

Loving another was different. Kisses were physical, showing affection. Infatuation.

But no. She loved him.

She glanced at him, he was trying to pry a few of the smaller kids off his back, he was tending to the nets and they mistook him for a plaything. He was laughing, holding one by their shirt collar. She didn’t recognize the child, they looked around six.

Her eyes darted away, lashes brushing her cheeks.

Being in love wasn’t some...profound thing. It happened slow, it crept up on your senses, drugging you and sending you down into the murky feelings below. It could happen quickly, it could move at a slog. It could be romantic, platonic, about family. But being in love was no different than being angry at someone. Being in love could be used against you. Love was an emotion that vile people used.

Love was a chain, dragging her down into the depths of the ocean while she gasped for air, finding none.

No.

No. It was different.

Being in love with Lucas was different.

It was...innocent in a way. Like the taste of bubblegum on a hot afternoon, the smell of something sweet in the mornings.

The feeling of waking up in the arms of the person you were indescribably, unspeakably, deeply, undoubtedly, in love with.

It was all different than before. Before it was a biting cold followed by the sugary sweetness of mock warmth. Being left in the snow, shivering and alone until they wanted you again. Possessing. A chain around her throat.

But she wasn’t in love with Nicolas Bell anymore.

This was something new altogether.

It frightened and enticed her.

Lucas was odd. He was dense as he was sweet. How he interacted with her and around her was so different from what she knew of before. Skittish, but like a puppy in a way.

She pressed her lips together to keep from giggling. He was like a puppy. A kicked puppy at times.

He met her eyes again, she smiled.

She did love him.

And she was okay with that.

#the arcana #the arcana game #maeve #lucas #maeve x lucas #maevas #my writing #at this point #I am writing a book #lmfao look at me go #maeve the idiot #realizing she loves someone #ya love to see it

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offbrandmercyplates · 4 years ago

Text

Birthday fic from Yours the Author!

Ms. Emmibee: is me birthday day.

Me: *Tumbling down a flight of stairs, breaking a comical amount of theater vases that are made to be broken* HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

So yes! It’s Ms. Emmibee’s birthday, so we all know what that means! Presents and (cookie) cake! It’s not possible to send real cookie cake through the internet, though, but a present is a present!

I had actually planned this one out vaguely after the last update. It made sense that we wouldn’t get a lot of time in Temmie Village, since the plot must go on, but I figured most people would appreciate some cute Temmie and Emmibee action. I wrote this all out today. I don’t know if I quite captured the magic of Tem Village, but I like to think there’s a little bit of it here. I’ll let you decide for yourself. See you at the bottom!

What Could it Mean?

“Emmi, I kindly ask—and by ‘kindly’, I mean ‘in a way that won’t cause a scene’—that you stop vibrating so intensely.”

“But it’s Temmie Village, Dr. Gaster! I can’t not be excited!”

“The Temmies are excitable enough without you encouraging them. I’d rather not deal with any more hyperactivity than necessary.”

“Hyperactive or actively hyper?”

“…What?”

“What?”

“…Strange woman.”

“I know. But isn’t that why you like me?” “No more questions. Let’s just—”

“HOI!!!!” Dr. Gaster sighed for ten whole seconds as Emmibee gasped at her first in-person look at a Temmie. She bounced on the toes of her rubber rain boots as the little monster skipped over to them.

She was just as cute as she was in the game, but even smaller; probably no bigger than a munchkin cat. Her quadrupedal body was covered in short, soft white fur, two pairs of ears, a little mane of black hair, and a deep sky-blue shirt over the top half of her body.

Smiling giddily, Emmi pointed at her while grinning at the skeleton companion. “Undoubtedly, a Temmie.”

“Undoubtedly,” Dr. Gaster agreed. “Can we please—”

“HOI!!!” Another Temmie popped up.

“Behold, a Temmie,” Emmi bowed to the newcomer.

“I am aware. Can we—”

Another Temmie trotted over. “Could it be a Temmie?” Emmi wondered.

“Actually, I’m Bob. Nice to meet you,” Bob said. Emmi let out a high-pitched noise.

Dr. Gaster sighed again. “I’m going to the Tem Shop. Can I trust you won’t leave the village?” Emmi was currently chanting “hoi” with the growing group of Temmies. “…I suppose I can.” He made his way to the shop.

One of the Temmies suddenly wiggled her tail the way a cat does before it pounces and leapt up into Emmi’s arms. Emmi extended her arms to catch the Temmie, but a thought suddenly occurred to her: aren’t humans allergic to Temmies? The Temmie landed in her arms, and she instinctively adjusted herself for maximum comfort for the carrier and the carry-ee. Oh wait; I’m a monster now, she remembered. Does that still count? The Temmie she was holding vibrated gently in her arms, and the other Temmies and Bob crowded around her feet, looking a few seconds away from swarming her in a pile of cute. Guess it does.

As much as she would have loved to be swarmed in a pile of cute, Emmi didn’t know when she’d get a chance to explore Temmie Village like this again. Carefully wading through the tiny monsters, she began to look around the small cavern.

True to the game, the walls, ceiling, and floor were made of dark blue stone, but unlike the game, the air was cool and damp and seemed to somehow cast a shiny quality to the stone, if she looked at just the right angle and level of light. There wasn’t any quirky music playing in the background, but the air thrummed—no, vibrated—with an energy that could only be explained by the mysterious power of Temmie.

She took some time to say HOI to each Temmie she passed, admired the rich history of Tem and the statue of Tem, returned the compliments of an adamant Temmie (awawawa! bee lady… such a… cute!!!) and exchanged parenting tips with the parent of a special hardboiled egg (tem and bee… pROUD pARENTS!!!). Emmi considered saying hello to the owner of the Tem Shop, but one peek into the room revealed an irate Dr. Gaster trying to explain why he wouldn’t accept Tem flakes in exchange for all of the items he was selling. It would probably be best to leave him be.

That was when she spotted it: the dancing mushroom, swaying their arms to an invisible tune. Hugging the Temmie she was still holding tighter to her chest, she strode up to the mushroom, swaying her hips and bopping her head to the beat. She giggled and sang with them, “Mushroom dance, mushroom dance… what could it mean?”

The mushroom raised their cap to peer up at her, eyes narrow. “Failure is terrifying,” they said, “but not nearly as terrifying as success.”

The world suddenly stopped; not like a record scratch. It was more like if the planet had stopped spinning, but everyone wasn’t flung off into space. All of the cold and none of the water in the room seemed to cling to Emmi, getting under her raincoat, under her skin, coating her SOUL in an icy sheet. Her breath caught in her throat, her vision tunneled, and there was an intense feeling of being watched…

“Emmi?” The mushroom lowered their cap and went back to swaying. The Temmie in her arms hopped down, her face following a moment after. Emmi looked up to see Dr. Gaster putting something into the pocket of his lab coat and gesturing for her to follow him. “Time to go.”

Emmi’s legs felt a bit weird, like they had almost but not quite fallen asleep, and they were trying to remember how to work. The cold feeling lingered, though not as strongly as it had before Dr. Gaster brought her back to reality. She stumbled backwards, trying not to fall over as she stared at the mushroom again. They weren’t looking at her, preoccupied with their dance. The sudden shift in the mood had left her disoriented and a bit overwhelmed. What that mushroom said… it was way too on the nose for her liking. Had it not been for Dr. Gaster, she would have stood there for the rest of time as she tried to make sense of how that mushroom knew…

She would be grateful to the doctor for saving her from herself, even if he never found out.

“Coming…” she replied, taking one last look at the mushroom before steadily following Dr. Gaster out of Temmie Village.

***

It’s probably a good thing Emmibee didn’t go to the Temmie in the wall. She definitely didn’t need a double dose of the feeling of being watched. Poor Emmi. How did that mushroom know?

“Hyperactive or actively hyper” was a play on the joke “working hard or hardly working”. I was originally going to put a fourth wall breaking joke in that part of the story, but it occurred to me that Dr. Gaster wouldn’t let that go so easily.

Emmi identifying the Temmies (hey, that rhymed!) is a reference to the snow poffs of Snowdin. You all probably already know this, but interacting with every snow poff will tell you that, indeed, you are interacting with a snow poff.

Temmies have a rich history. What is that history? It’s rich. That’s all you need to know, and all you’ll ever find out, probably.

Emmi is going to be a parent sometime soon (skelebaby boys!), so it’d be a good idea to get parenting tips from an experienced parent, even if that parent’s child is a hardboiled egg. Every bit helps!

The scene with the mushroom is what really inspired me to write this. Visually, the shading in that penultimate panel was stunning. I wanted to translate what it looked like Emmibee was feeling into words. What did she see? What did she feel, physically and emotionally? These are questions I have to know the answers to as an author, and if they’re not written already, I’ll write down my own interpretations.

Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO EMMIBEE! One year older, bolder, and wiser! Despite everything, I hope this is a good one for you. I mean it. I’ll be posting this to FFN and AO3, if you’re okay with that. Looking forward to more of your content, be it a full comic page or a textpost gushing about a cute kitten gif. Until then! ~~~ AAAAAAAAAA THANK YOU SO MUCH????? I really really loved doing this scene and you did it justice absolutely PERFECTLY. Emmi’s excitement about experiencing the Underground knows no bounds!! (Also, her dancing along with the mushroom is EXACTLY what I was imagining)

I’m really happy you enjoyed the page! It feels kind of filler-y to me, but it really is important to both the narrative and tone of the story. More pages will be coming soon I promise!

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE BIRTHDAY WISHES

Feel free to post this on your FF and AO3 accounts!

THANK YOU AGAIN AAAAAAAAAAAA

#OBMPfanfic #Yours the Author #another lovely fic from the Author #what a treat!!!#i do like cookie cake thank you VERY much i will take all of it #this fic really does capture this scene almost closer to how i imagined it than the comic itself #well done!#submission

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bewitching-elizabeth-olsen · 4 years ago

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Press/Gallery/Video: Not Your Mother’s Suburbs

The Marvel Cinematic Universe comes to television with WandaVision the new Disney+ series that places a super-powered Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in the suburbs of classic sitcoms.

https://elizabeth-olsen.com/media/Photoshoot/2020-EmmyMag.mp4

GALLERY LINKS

Studio Photoshoots > 2020 > Session 002

Magazine Scans > 2020 > Emmy Magazine

EMMY – When you wish upon a luxurious star, you just might land at Club 33 in Disneyland.

Tucked away above New Orleans Square and decorated with historic flourishes (the harpsichord at reception belonged to Walt Disney’s wife, Lillian), it’s a pricey, ultra-exclusive club for members and VIPS. On August 25, 2019, Marvel Studios president and chief creative officer Kevin Feige, joined by producer-director Matt Shakman, enjoyed lunch and swapped stories there with Dick Van Dyke and his wife, Arlene.

“It was unbelievable!” Feige recalls. “You sit down and don’t know what to say because you’re so starstruck.” Shakman is more succinct: “It was the best afternoon of my life.”

They weren’t there just to catch up with a 93-year-old legend. They were about to start production on an innovative Disney+ series called WandaVision — which Shakman will only describe as a “love letter to television” — and they wanted to hear about the star’s experiences on his groundbreaking 1960s sitcom, The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Van Dyke waxed about his fellow actor and the show creator, Carl Reiner, who mined real-life anecdotes for the episodes, as well as his own delight at filming in front of live studio audiences.

In turn, Feige talked about the new series he was executive-producing with Shakman, among others. “I tried to explain how there was this robot and a witch and how she had to kill him because Thanos reversed time,” he says with a laugh. “I’m thinking, ‘He doesn’t need to hear this!'”

With the premiere of WandaVision on January 15, it will all click. Set after the events of the 2019 blockbuster Avengers: Endgame, the weekly series — which is patterned on prototypical sitcoms of various eras — explores the adventures of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and her love, an android named Vision (Paul Bettany).

Yes, Vision died when the Mind Stone was ripped from his forehead in the 2018 film Avengers: Infinity War, and he is still dead. But rules can be malleable when one of the two main characters is also known as Scarlet Witch.

“What I love about Wanda in the comic books, and what drew me to her originally,” Olsen says, “is what we get to explore in a beautiful way.” To that end, even a witch couldn’t have manipulated the series’ timing any better.

When Disney+ launched in November 2019, it did so with the promise that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) would soon unveil new series based on some of its lower-profile action heroes. At last, fans of the gazillion-grossing, 23-movie Infinity Saga would enjoy extensive and exclusive insights into the likes of Falcon, the Winter Soldier, Wanda, Vision, Loki and others, all in episodic installments.

But the global pandemic wreaked havoc on production schedules. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — which required a complex, multi-city shoot and was set to lead the charge — got pushed to 2021. That left WandaVision, which aims to change the future of the medium by paying homage to its past.

“The show is complicated,” explains co-executive producer Mary Livanos, “because we’re incorporating the rules of the MCU and narrowing in on suburban family sitcoms — but not all the episodes are structurally similar.

“What’s fun about it is that it leads the audience to ask questions about when this takes place or whether this is a social experiment and if this is an alternative reality and an unraveling of the mystery. We’re excited that the Disney+ platform allows us the creative space to play around.”

Indeed, with revenues from cruises, theme parks and cinema down sharply due to the pandemic, Disney+ emerged as the clear winner in the Disney portfolio, signing more than 73 million global members in just 11 months. (The company had initially set its five-year goal at 60 million to 90 million.)

Meanwhile, the Star Wars series The Mandalorian nabbed an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Drama Series — and seven awards in crafts categories — and the MCU has expanded into the freshly minted series She-Hulk, Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel.

Those successes led to a major announcement this fall from new chief executive Bob Chapek: Disney would realign its business divisions to focus future creative efforts squarely on Disney+.

Feige admits to growing up with “a near-unhealthy love and obsession” for some of the characters on his favorite shows, like Alice and Little House on the Prairie, and he’s just as committed now to his behemoth production studio.

“Streaming is 100 percent the future and where consumers want to watch things,” he says. “And hopefully they’ll want to watch our longform narrative series. An experience like WandaVision is something you can’t get in a movie. You go to movies for things you can’t get on streaming, and you go to streaming for things you can’t get in a theater. And of course, everything in a theater goes to streaming eventually.”

It was back in the days of yore — ahem, early 2018 — when then–Disney CEO Bob Iger approached Feige about extending the MCU for what would be a new Disney streaming service. At the time, Feige, who started at Marvel Studios as a producer in 2000 and became president of production in 2007, was wrapping up the 10-year-long Infinity Saga storyline.

“My team and I were wondering internally about where to go from here, and what would be the next step that was equally challenging and unexpected,” he relates. The notion of extending the brand to television “was an adrenaline boost.” Looking to showcase MCU characters who hadn’t yet reached their potential in terms of screen time, he zeroed in on Wanda and Vision and their romantic but doomed love story.

“Elizabeth and Paul were these amazing actors — who had done amazing things in four movies — but never had a chance to dominate the narrative because there was so much else going on,” he explains. “It felt fun to finally give them a platform to showcase their astounding talent.”

Bettany, for one, assumed that his run as Vision had ended with his death in Infinity War. “I was called in to see Kevin and [Marvel copresident] Louis D’Esposito and was convinced that they were going to be gentlemen and say, ‘It’s been a great ride; thank you for your work and good luck,'” he recalls. Instead, they pitched him what he describes as an “exciting and bonkers” idea for the character’s return. “Of course, I said I was in.”

During Olsen’s meeting? “Kevin told me he wanted to merge two different comic series as inspiration. He explained the series would show how Wanda is originally from an Eastern European country and grew up on American black-market products like television,” she says, then cuts herself off to avoid revealing spoilers.

At first, she says, “I was a little bit nervous about Marvel doing something on television, because what does that mean and how could it possibly intertwine? But I got so excited when I heard that nugget of the idea.”

That nugget grew into a fleshed-out narrative in early 2019 after Livanos, who is also director of production and development at Marvel Studios, tapped screenwriter Jac Schaeffer (Captain Marvel, Black Widow) as head writer. “We envisioned Wanda and Vision in this sitcom setting but didn’t know what that meant until Jac came on,” Livanos says.

Schaeffer remembers: “I got wind of this percolating crazy notion of this project and told myself that I needed to get in on that!” …

Press/Gallery/Video: Not Your Mother’s Suburbs was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

#Elizabeth Olsen #WandaVision #Avengers #Scarlet Witch #Wanda Maximoff #Sorry For Your Loss #Avengers Infinity War #Avengers Age of Ultron #Captain America Civil War #Ingrid Goes West #Godzilla

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blood-for-sport · 5 years ago

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Falling Sky [Part One]

[[ Mentions: @summer-embers ]]

Nayleen’s hands traced to the edge of the paper. Though it was thin enough to bite into the flesh of her fingertip, she could not feel the sting. Her eyes were as arrested as her senses, unbroken from the names that lined the top of the letter. She had been tracing those stylized calligraphy characters for at least a minute’s time, unable to force herself to carry onward down the page. The letter she had been fearing, as if ‘fear’ could properly summarize and encapsulate the terror that now swam in her bloodstream like ice water.

From the desk of, Remgard E. Kereni Emmy S. Kereni

Nayleen’s nature told her to set the letter down. Pretend it never arrived. Play dumb to the whole bitter reality that now settled in printed word before her. But it was a reality she could no more ignore than her own heart’s beat casting itself to the walls of her chest. Her eyes lowered without her desire, taking a mind of their own to torture her.

Ms. Nayleen Cooper,

We apologize for the lack of correspondence over the past few months. We trust our monetary stipend has gone to the benefits of our daughter.

Her expression pulled back, letting teeth show past darkened lips. The snarl directed in aggression toward what she knew; what she could not deny.

Your efforts as her caretaker have been exemplary. It seems our daughter is progressing well in her recently evolved arcane talents per our correspondence with the Academy. However..

Nayleen froze. She hated that word. Hated the implications that she knew were to follow. Her muscles ached in reminder of how much she had tensed plucking through this letter, pulling the meaning into her mind in such a way that would truly register.

..with recent evolution in her talents we have determined it most beneficial for Harper to return to her home for private tutoring. We have already secured an tutor who will benefit her immensely with one on one instruction. While we appreciate your more rustic lifestyle as it suits your preferences, we feel Harper would also most benefit from proper instruction on aspects perhaps lacking in your care.

We hope you..

Nayleen stopped. She wanted to thrust her fist through the paper. Rip it. Tear it. Shred it. Demolish it to the most base form of pulp she could. She wanted to toss it to the fire and watch it burn. She wanted to saturate it in water and watch it melt to nothingness. She wanted to erase all traces.

Yet all she did was read. Read more. Read across the lines that each were as a sliver of glass sliding into her heart and aching with every beat.

We hope you understand our decision and respect it. Please know that you will be compensated immensely with a flat fee for your efforts with our daughter. Also note that we shall direct a glowing recommendation of service to any organization or persons you desire. It is the very least we can do for your assistance these past years.

Nayleen let her eyes drop to the final paragraph. There was nothing left inside but the waking ripples of storm. The passage of a great vessel come to ferry her life away and leave her alone, drowning, in a black sea.

We shall be collecting Harper in two weeks time. Please have her belongings prepared for porting. We shall cover the expenses of moving and hands. You need not concern with those matters.

Thank you, Ms. Cooper, and we look forward to working with you in future.

Regards,

Remgard E. Kereni Emmy S. Kereni

Nayleen’s eyes now settled on the hand-signed names penned to the bottom of the paper. The same names it had started with. The same names she was too terrified to read beyond, and now she wished she had not. She wished she had given in to terror and allowed the letter to forever sit undiscovered in her desk.

Yet the truth was inescapable. Like tar it clung to her skin and burned with every moment she sat staring at those bitter-tasting names.

Her ear caught the sound of a bed creaking.

Footsteps down a hallway.

The door to her room opening.

A small figure stood in the doorway, peeking in. Nayleen’s instinct was to hide all of this. Harper was young, too young to deal with matters as turbulent as this. Matters of twisting families and shattering homesteads. She wanted to protect her. Yet this was a foe that could not be engaged with blade or fist. She could no more defend Harper from this reality than herself.

Her eyes traced the pale face as she moved closer, and her eyes told the full story. Nayleen wore the pain on her own features, and Harper was tracing every emotion that crawled under the skin.

“Mom?” Harper whispered, moving closer. And that broke her. Shattered her. The thin sheet of cracked glass that supported Nayleen’s mind gave way and sent her entire being raining down into her gut with the shards of remaining composure.

Nayleen wrapped her arms around Harper, pulling her daughter close.

Not your daughter. Their daughter.

Nayleen tightened her eyes as tears began to freely plot their path down her cheeks. Harper knew little of what caused the pain, but responded with a tight grip of her own. She rubbed her hands to Nayleen’s back, scratching her nails to the cloth in an act that Nayleen had used often when calming her.

“Whatever is wrong.. we’ll take it on together.” Harper noted with a certainty in her tone.

Nayleen pulled her head back, sliding so her forehead pressed to Harper’s own. That young child; her world. Her reason for being alive. The only thing she had ever done in this world that was beautiful.

Not your daughter. Their daughter.

“We’re a team.” Harper added with a smile. Nayleen stared at Harper with nothing but doubt and fear in her heart. Her world was sand slipping through her fingers. Yet she nodded.

“Yeah..” She croaked with broken voice.

“We’re a team, Harper.”

#stories

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years ago

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Witches, Chapter 11: I split another giant chapter in half. In this portion, I set up a filler case that exists purely to set the scene and allow me to make up two very bad AA-style pun names; shit hasn’t quite gotten real but it sure is about to; and Athena makes some new friends.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

The Wright Anything Agency isn’t lucky.

Apollo should just expect that from the start. He didn’t, this time, because he trusted Phoenix - that being a loaded statement - to know what he was talking about and assumed - bad idea - that if he bothered to say Tenma Taro would be weaker at midsummer, then there was some chance of waiting. That it would lay low to wait out the fervor of the trial and the attention turned toward the Vale. That it wouldn’t wreak havoc immediately.

But they’re just a few days into May when the office phone rings with a call from a young woman who lives in Tenma Town and has been charged with robbing her prior place of employment. “Jinxie Tenma gave me your number,” she says, in between sobs, “and said you would believe me th - that - that I think Tenma Taro did it.”

“Of course we believe you,” Apollo assures her. Athena stands on her chair, propping herself on her desk, leaning forward to listen. With her ears, she can probably hear the other end of the line just fine. She might also be able to hear Apollo’s - not doubt, exactly, or disbelief, but the uncertainty he keeps feeling over Tenma Taro. None of them have seen it. They have Filch’s word, and they all know he wasn’t lying, but could he have been mistaken? Could Phoenix’s fae ‘friends’ have been mistaken in what they thought Phoenix was asking them about?

(He doubts it, but he still doesn’t think he knows well enough what they’re getting into.)

Athena searched all of LA’s used car lots for one that was yellow - “I’m like the cab driver for all of you at the agency, and also I just love yellow” - and with a new-old car they take the well-worn path back up to Nine-Tails Vale. Tenma Town is perched a little higher up the valley but has a similar old-fashioned cobblestone vibe, though some more modern office buildings dot the streets here and there. The town square is centered on a large fountain and a statue that Apollo doesn’t think is Tenma Taro, but it’s birdlike enough that it evokes that image.

Their client, Isabella Pyrria - picked up overnight, released on bail in the morning, returned home, and called them as soon as she made it back - is still teary-eyed when they meet her at a bench by the fountain. She explains that she likes to go on walks in the evenings and her favorite route goes past the antiques store she was fired from at the beginning of April, and she hadn’t bothered to change her route because a lot of cool moths congregate under the awning at the cafe next door. She pulls out her phone to show them pictures. Athena nods at each photo, solemnly and knowingly. “I’m more of a marine mammals person myself,” she says, “but I like the fuzzy ones and their…” She holds her hands to her forehead, two fingers raised on each, and wiggles them. “Antenna. What’re your favorite animals, Apollo?”

“Can we get back to the case, please?” he asks.

Isabella swears to them that when she passed by the store sometime around 10 pm, there was nothing wrong. She didn’t stop long to investigate this spring’s batch of caterpillars, because she was trying to get to the corner store before it closed, because she hadn’t had anything for dinner. She made it there, stayed until closing chatting with the owner and petting the bodega cat, and when she came back out she heard the sirens and saw the police cruiser lights.

The antique store’s security camera, mounted outside above the door, broke two months ago and was never fixed, but only employees knew this. Security tapes from cameras outside other buildings further down the street in both directions showed she was the only person who had passed by either. Anyone walking to the antiques store would be spotted by either of those.

“But Tenma Taro doesn’t have to walk,” Isabella says. “It could just fly straight down and land in front and not be seen.”

“Why would a yokai rob an antiques store?” Athena asks. “Why would a yokai rob anywhere?”

“To cause chaos?” Apollo suggests. What do yokai even do - they’re all so very individual? He did some cursory internet research but couldn’t find anything on Tenma Taro; it might as well have just come out of nowhere here in California. The scroll Jinxie said was the only image of it really is only one of two, the Forbidden Chamber scroll showing the gold ore being the other.

“I don’t know why anyone would rob that antiques store,” Isabella says, toying with the hair tie around her wrist. “It’s got pretty stuff but it’s all cheap. There’s nothing worth taking there.”

Her fingers, plucking at the hair tie and smacking it against her wrist, are illuminated red. “Ms Pyrria,” Apollo says. “Are you being fully honest with us? There really isn’t anything that you or anyone would want to take?”

She lowers her eyes to her hands. “We did have, um, a coupon deal with a really good pizza place over in the Vale. Supposed to give one out with every purchase but I kinda just, um, took a whole bunch once I got fired. But that was it.”

That looks true. Apollo glances to Athena, who nods with a secondary confirmation. Okay. They’ve got this much figured out. Now to the scene of the crime.

The antique shop’s windows are shattered, everything that was displayed in them cracked and shattered across the floor inside and the sidewalk outside. Athena leans into the window to examine a typewriter. “You don’t think there could’ve been some kind of magic artifact in here that it wanted to get?” Apollo asks. “Something languishing as just a normal family heirloom that someone dumped off here?”

“Ooh, maybe,” Athena says. “I guess they’d probably have to take inventory to really find out if stuff’s missing, and this is uh - big mess.” She points with her thumb at the police tape across the doorway. “Can we just head in?”

“Er—” They should probably introduce themselves to a detective first, lower the chances of being yelled at once they’re inside. Apollo glances in through the doorway, hoping to catch sight of anyone in there investigating. Maybe most of the investigating already happened? “I guess…?”

Before he’s really finished saying it, Athena ducks under the tape and heads inside. Apollo lifts it up to follow her. If he’s honest with himself he’s not sure what he hopes they can find. Feathers again, maybe? The interior of the shop is densely packed with tables and shelving upturned and overturned, and what would have once been a clear path or two through are cluttered. Apollo steps over a tall wicker flower stand, lying on its side, and a pillow that was probably hand-embroidered. Athena has stopped with her neck craned to the side, reading the titles of the few books still left on a shelf.

Oh, this is going to be rough, to stay focused, when this isn’t a murder and there’s not a particular area, the place where a body was, the place where the killing happened, to hone in on. He’s defended a smattering of other cases between the large nightmarish ones that weren’t murders, but neither did they have very complicated scenes. And no co-counsel distracted by knick-knacks, either.

“Athena,” he says. She jumps, already having become engrossed. “We should probably give the whole place a once-over, see if anything jumps out, find a detective to talk to, and then we can try and look for anything else that—”

“Hey!” A woman’s voice cuts through the stillness, a loud, indignant squawk. “Who’s in here? This is a - oh! Yo! Apolly!”

Athena’s eyebrows rise and disappear beneath her bangs. “D-Detective Faraday?” Apollo asks, turning around and unable to look for her due to making sure he doesn’t place his feet on anything breakable.

“Long time no see!” Kay chirps, with an air of familiarity that far surpasses the scant two times they’ve actually met. From New Years he’s pretty sure that she gives Y-suffix nicknames to everyone she can, but that doesn’t make it any better when Athena is snickering at him. “I mean, I expected to see you soon, what with Tenma Taro, but not quite this soon. And who’s this?” She extends a hand to Athena. “Hi, I’m Detective Kay Faraday!”

“Defense attorney Athena Cykes!” The two seem to be competing to see who can more enthusiastically shake the other’s hand. “Nice to meet you! What can you tell us about the case so far?”

Laughing brightly, Kay shakes her head, her black hair flying everywhere. “I’m not Emmy,” she says. “I’m not just gonna purposely give up the prosecution’s whole case right here. Besides.” She props her hands on her hips. “Tonight we’re going hunting for Tenma Taro anyway, and I’m sure you’ll get enough accidental stuff from us on how we totally believe yeah, it’s that big ol’ turkey causing trouble.”

Athena asks who “Emmy” is, and as Kay explains Ema and her general lack of concern for prosecutorial secrecy, Apollo picks his way through the mess to a door left ajar in the back, into a smaller, even more cluttered room, where none of the objects still left on the shelving have price tags. Prosecutor Debeste stands wedged between a rocking chair and a dresser with a shattered mirror, his upper body twisted awkwardly to give him room to move his arms and jot something down in a little notebook. “Where’s the line between antiques and junk?” Apollo asks, deciding that there is no good way any further into this room, and since he can see most of it, he should probably just stay planted here in the doorway.

“How much it sells for, maybe?” Sebastian offers up weakly. “Is this a trick question?”

“I guess it is, since I don’t have an answer.” Apollo has difficulty trying to survey the room; there’s too much going on, too much clutter that keeps drawing his eye one way and then another, and it takes longer than he thinks it should for him to notice the deep scratches in the wall. Three rivets straight down, tearing apart the wallpaper and wood, about two inches in between them, spaced like claw marks. “Do you have an explanation for that?” he asks, pointing to it.

Sebastian shakes his head and his glasses slide down his nose. “Not really a plausible one besides ‘giant bird monster’. The defendant could persum - presumably have made them with something she found laying around here, there’s some old farm tools kinds of things, but then the question is—”

“Why bother?”

Sebastian nods sharply. “Exactly. It’s not a message or any code or something that the shop owner recognizes, and it would be a waste of time with more chance to be caught. And with—” He points down, in front of Apollo, and Apollo examines the floor to see more gashes in the wood, of the same spacing as those on the wall, like a giant bird-monster walking about on its talons. “That, too.”

And maybe someone’s trying to frame a yokai for the crime, again, play on those fears, but it seems like even more effort to go to. “Is there anything noticeably missing?” Apollo asks. Plenty could be not-so-noticeably missing, all kinds of little knick-knacks, but that can’t be the purpose - no one is going to rob a store for 25-cent porcelain cat figurines. “Cash register, or any large or valuable stuff?”

“The register hadn’t been touched,” Sebastian says. “No fingerprints, nothing missing. The only thing the owner noticed so far and told me is that back here she had - she said it was a weird-looking stone she’d never figured out a price for because she didn’t know what it was or was made of. She said it was roughly” - he holds up his hands, less then a foot apart, and cupped toward each other. “And shaped like a six.”

Apollo’s stomach sinks, which has become a very familiar sensation in this kind of context. “A magatama?” he asks, pressing a hand to his forehead. He knew this wouldn’t be a normal case. It’s still going terribly. “A large magatama? That would be reason enough for Tenma Taro to break into a random human establishment, more than just scaring the townspeople.”

“If I were trying to scare the town, I’d hit up more than one place,” Athena says. She leans against the doorframe and peers in, as Kay attempts to squeeze in around her and past Apollo. “Just make it a random selection, no pattern, and not attack everywhere. Leave some dread that I’ll come back and get some of the people I spared before.”

“Dread’s a key part,” Kay agrees. “Especially drop some warning in advance, not enough for anyone to be able to stop you, but just enough to make them all anxious and freaked out waiting for the worst.”

“Okay, so you’re both evil,” Apollo says. Athena chortles and Kay breaks into full cackling. “That’s probably a good thing for me to know ahead of time, before we get any further on this.”

“Before we venture into the woods in the dark with them, you mean,” Sebastian says.

“In the dark?” Apollo repeats. “In the—”

“We’ve got, uh, ‘sources’,” Kay says, making the quotation marks with one hand, while in the other she holds and examines a teacup that had managed to survive the initial catastrophe. “Informants who’ve been keeping an eye out to make sure things don’t go belly-up without us knowing.”

“Like other detectives or officers or something?” Athena asks, with a few wide-eyed blinks of confusion.

“Something,” Sebastian agrees. Apollo makes a note to himself to look out for crows. “But we know Tenma Taro doesn’t emerge during the day. You’ll have time to investigate in town; Ms Teak, the shop owner, went out for lunch but she told us she would be coming back, uh…” Sebastian checks his watch, pushing apart his sleeve and his glove to get to its face. “Soon? She lives above the shop, which is how she knew about the crime so quickly.”

“We should definitely talk to her, then,” Athena says. “And then at sunset we’ve got a whole new investigation to start!”

Ms Teak is a short, white-haired old lady who invites Apollo and Athena up to her living quarters above the shop, offers them tea, and insists that they call her “Auntie” even after they tell her they are Isabella’s lawyers. “That girl,” she says with a sad shake of her head, nearly spilling the tea that she pours for Athena, and Athena almost jostles the pot out of her hands eagerly trying to reach over and steady it. “She’s a sweet girl, but her head’s so far up in the clouds at the best of times. I just couldn’t keep rebalancing the register because she got her math all wrong. Or I’d tell her where to go clean and find an hour later she hadn’t done anything because she’d started with dusting the bookshelf and started thumbing through the first book to catch her eye. Cookies, dears?”

“Er, no thanks,” Apollo says at the same time Athena says, “Sure! Thank you very much!”

Depending on what sorts of witnesses she takes this offer from, she might end up in big trouble; but Apollo showed the blackmail letter to L’Belle and he stole it and destroyed it, so maybe he’s not that much better at proper witness protocol. Other subjects that should probably be taught in law school.

“I hate to think that such a sweet girl would be capable of this,” Ms Teak continues, returning to the small round table and setting down a little plate of tea biscuits. All of the decor of the house is mismatched, like it’s all come out of the antiques store at some point or another: a wicker chair next to a polished brown wood one next to a bar stool of almost equal height to the table, a white-and-gold teapot on a blue porcelain saucer, a cutting board shaped like a pig hanging on the kitchen wall visible from where they now sit in the tiny cramped dining area. “I had to let her go, you understand. It simply wasn’t working out. But I’ve got no ill-will toward the dear girl, and I’d hoped she had none toward me. Oh, dear, dear.” She pulls the wicker chair away from the table, that Apollo now can see the green flowered seat cushion and the pillow with an embroidered - opossum? Is that a possum? - resting against the back.

“How did she react when you told her that you were firing her?” Apollo asks. He watches Athena reach slowly for another cookie, like if she moves slow enough she won’t be noticed, and when she returns it to her mouth she nibbles at it like a squirrel, if a squirrel were nibbling because it realized it isn’t professional or polite to just scarf it down.

“Oh, the poor thing cried, of course. So embarrassed and ashamed of all the mistakes she’d made. Hated to think she’d failed at anything though I tried so hard to assure her that just because she wasn’t good at some things didn’t mean she wouldn’t find a passion that she could get her head locked into.”

“Yeah, I got a big sense of shame and sadness when she mentioned being fired, too,” Athena says quietly, tapping at the side of Widget. “Definitely not anything vindictive.”

“I do hope you’re right,” Ms Teak says. “I do hope you and that other nice young pair - how old are you? I swear all of you professional-types get younger and younger these days - can make sure she didn’t do it and find who did.” She sighs. “And I’ve got to clean up that mess they made, and I’d just gotten done all my spring reorganizing of the shop done, too.”

“The stone that was stolen from the back room,” Apollo says. “The prosecutor mentioned that. Do you remember where that came from originally?”

“Oh, I had that old thing for years,” Ms Teak replies. “Maybe a decade or more, now. I don’t quite remember when but my memory is sharp that it was Ms Tenma, rest her soul - the mayor’s wife, I mean, dear little Jinxie’s mother - who brought it in, asked me if I’d ever seen anything like it and told me she didn’t want it back, that I was free to sell it or get rid of it however I like. She said she didn’t know what it was either, but it made her so uneasy she wanted it out. Didn’t ask where she got it from, didn’t feel that was my business. Strange things happen in this town, you know.”

Apollo knows. Apollo knows well that this one of, but not the only, the towns where strange things happen. Ms Teak glares at them over her teacup. “Best not to ask, sometimes.” She says it like advice, a warning. “And I kept telling myself I should get rid of it, but I’ve been so darned curious that I could never make myself ask for a few dollars for it, or just throw it in a river, you understand?” She shakes her head, sending her white curls bouncing. “Maybe whatever it belongs to wanted it back now, and poor Isabella’s lucky she wasn’t walking past at the time it arrived. Though maybe sharp young lawyers like you two don’t believe in that sort of thing?” She raises an eyebrow as she takes another sip of her tea.

“We’re the lawyers who defended Mayor Tenma when he was charged with murder last month,” Apollo says, hoping that the mayor’s popularity has continued to climb, hoping that he was never so hated here in Tenma Town, and that his saying this won’t be a black mark. “We’re, um, familiar with the goings-on around here.”

“That was you?” she asks, surprised, setting down her teacup and saucer. “My goodness. All of those big cases you must get, if the mayor chose you as his lawyers, and here you are up this way for little Isabella.”

“We don’t really—” Apollo begins, because really, it was a lucky fluke that they got to represent the mayor, and luckier that they didn’t entirely blow it, but Athena kicks him in the shin before he can correct Ms Teak on their office’s humble and confusing existence.

“Thank you darlings oh so much for helping out our little town, once again.”

“It’s our pleasure!” Athena replies, taking another cookie.

“She’s the most pleasant witness we’ve ever had!” Athena says brightly, once they’ve left behind the shop to compile their information back in the sunlight of the street. “What a great chance of pace!”

“You’ve had exactly one case before this,” Apollo says. “You can’t say that like—”

“Like Filch and L’Belle weren’t both terrible?” Athena interrupts. She’s unequivocally correct, of course, even without her knowing that Apollo, after his first case, would have had the same reaction to a cooperative, forthcoming, honest, friendly client; after dealing with Olga Orly, Phoenix, and Kristoph. Apollo would have had this same response, but didn’t, because all of the witnesses in his second case were also terrible.

She grins at his silence, knowing what it means, and from her skirt pocket produces yet another cookie.

The alderman’s manor and garden are closed to the public of Nine-Tails Vale - and indeed, anywhere else - for the foreseeable future, but Jinxie still has possession of the master key and has been in to clean up and keep dust from gathering. “The alderman’s wife is still in the hospital,” she explains, “but Papa and I went to see her and she told us that she trusted the town was in good hands with us.” She squares her shoulders, a stack of charms still arrayed in her hand, ready to strike, but instead of slapping one onto Apollo’s head she just offers one to him and Athena. “So we can’t let her down!”

Kay sits on the carpet in the foyer with three boxes of pizza and one of breadsticks. “Ms Teak let me and Sebby take some coupons!” she chirps. “I thought it’s important that we all get some food in us before we head out! Sebby’s on his way over, but I flew out here ahead of time to get us food. You’re welcome!” She waves a breadstick at them and Athena enthusiastically flings herself to the floor, Jinxie sinking down with a bit more grace.

Out the window, the sun is no longer visible, its last vestiges of light barely illuminating the horizon, but the sky is still the light blue of early dusk, nothing that Apollo would yet be worried about roaming around in. Sebastian arrives, with Phoenix and Trucy trailing him, in the blue-black, when several stars are visible along with the moon. “Papa’s up in the Fox Chamber,” Jinxie tells Phoenix. “Trying to get the Forbidden Chamber back in order, make sure it’s all set up.” She offers all three of them warding charms, as she had before. “And he’s talking to the woman who showed up earlier.”

“What woman?” Phoenix asks through a mouthful of pizza.

Jinxie shrugs. “I slapped her with a warding charm when she came in - not one of the protective charms I’ve given you, but one to keep a demon in and stop it from using its powers. And she didn’t mind that so I guessed she can’t be that evil, and Papa has the Nine-Tails to protect him. She’s very pretty - um, she has black hair and was wearing a kimono.”

Oh. That is very unfortunately familiar, too. Phoenix presses a hand over his face and sighs. “Did I do something wrong?” Jinxie asks. “Do you know her?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Phoenix assures her, and after the initial moment has passed, he looks more concerned with whether he wants to finish his slice of pizza. “I know both of the likely options, and there are - there could be worse things. Or people.”

“Mr Wright, do you know how to say things that aren’t cryptic and ominous?” Kay asks. Apollo’s glad he’s not the only one left wondering that question, and that Kay is secure enough to say it out loud, too. Maybe sooner or later Phoenix will get the point, will get tired of hearing it and adapt. Or maybe sooner than that they’ll all be eaten by a yokai.

Jinxie springs to her feet and races up the stairs, calling for her father. She returns two minutes later with Mayor Tenma and a woman who Apollo recognizes, her straight black hair as glassy as ice and her dark, sad eyes. Jinxie was right to take a precaution against her - stuck right in the center of her forehead is a paper charm. “Well, this is a surprise,” Phoenix says lightly, but his posture shifts the moment he sees her, contracting, tightening up from the loose ease he held himself with. When he finishes speaking his mouth has a plastic quality to it, the corner frozen in a lopsided and failed smile. “What are you doing here, Iris?”

He looks so much less comfortable with her here than he did in the office last year, but there’s more people here, more than just Apollo and Trucy to wonder what it is about them, between them. Iris appears no more confident, bowing to Phoenix and never quite straightening up, her hands folded in front of herself, her shoulders turning slightly inward with them. “Since you consulted the Mystic on this matter of Tenma Taro, she was concerned about what may happen to you attempting to reimprison it yourself. Or even with assistance.”

“And I assured Miss… Iris,” Mayor Tenma says, his pronunciation of her name slow and doubtful, like he knows what she is, knows this name is not entirely true to her, “that with the power of the Nine-Tailed Fox, there is little to fear.”

“As I understand.” Iris inclines her head up and to the side, and when her hair swings down and catches the light, as Apollo remembers, it has an auburn sheen. “Understand me, Mayor, that I am not here to tread on your authority, nor to doubt the power of your village’s guardian. When I say that the Fox is weaker than it was when Tenma Taro was first imprisoned, I do not mean that it and you are weak - simply weaker. And there is a ritual to prepare in the Chamber to bind the demon again, and a vast swath of forest to search through. Are we to wait for you to be finished with the Chamber to begin? The Mystic requested of me to keep our friends safe, and that is what I intend to do.”

“I’m surprised Maya didn’t come down here herself,” Phoenix says. “I think I’m overdue for her yelling at me.” He says it tonelessly, with a roll of his eyes, though the implication is obvious, that Maya is one of the fae, and Apollo would never be so casual about having one of the fae angry with him.

“Oh, don’t worry.” Iris smiles with lips pressed tight together. “She will not forget that she has criticisms of your handling of the past eight years. But we all agreed for this situation that both she and my sweet little sister bear a worrying lack of subtlety that could have unfortunate repercussions.”

“Right,” Phoenix agrees. “Pearls would slap a yokai straight through a house. Take care of that situation but level half the town in the process.”

“Indeed. And I was already in the area, over at Hazakurain, and it was not too far to come over. Sister Bikini’s back has been bothering her more lately and I had thought to offer some assistance to the temple.” Iris’ smile gets a little wider, a little less forced. “She still asks after your well-being, and that of a certain handsome prosecutor as well.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Phoenix’s mouth quirks into an equally small smile, and then he claps his hands together and brings them up in front of his mouth. “All right,” he says. “What’s our plan? Iris? Mr Tenma?”

“I have spent these past two weeks, with the assistance of the Nine-Tails, seeking out Tenma Taro, but he has avoided me,” the mayor explains. “It is my hope that you would be able to assist in flushing him out and driving him to a place that I would be able to finish dragging him back into the Forbidden Chamber.”

“So we are gonna be bait!” Athena says.

“No,” Phoenix says. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sort of. Tenma Taro’s weak after being locked up for so long - not weak enough to not be a threat, but enough that it’s going to stay the hell away from its old enemy.” A wave of his hand in the direction of Mayor Tenma. “It’s not going to be so cautious when you kids go tromping into the woods. You’d just smell and seem like - people. Traces of magic, yeah, sure, but none of you are foxes.”

“So it’ll just think we’re tasty snacks and not expect us to kick its butt?” Athena asks.

“Tasty,” Trucy repeats. “Magically delicious, you mean.”

Iris giggles. Phoenix sighs and says, “Sebastian, you’re in charge.”

Sebastian freezes, eyes wide and shoulders hunched, his hands twisting around each other. He wears different gloves now than he did earlier; these have the fingers missing, for whatever reason. “Mr Wright, are you sure?”

A witch against a yokai. Apollo doesn’t really know what witches can do, in the abstract, and he certainly doesn’t know what powers Sebastian has - or the when, why, how, of him becoming a witch - but Phoenix must. Enough to have an expectation. “I’m not asking - or suggesting - that you try and fight it singlehandedly, but I think you’d be a big help in keeping it distracted.”

Neither Sebastian’s face nor his posture suggests that he agrees with this assessment. “And, Iris?” Phoenix asks. She doesn’t look surprised, turns her eyes on Phoenix slowly and blinks, waiting. “I’m sure whatever Maya told you was about me, but I’m pretty sure I’d be a liability if I was trying to keep up with everyone else through the woods, and—”

“Your back pain is and always has been because you sit like a gargoyle,” Iris says. “But you would like me to keep your children from being killed.”

“Well.” Phoenix runs his hand through his hair all the way down to rub the back of his neck. “I wasn’t going to phrase it exactly like that. Those two” - he gestures at Kay and Sebastian - “are Edgeworth’s, not mine.”

“What?” Kay asks. “Mr Edgeworth’s my other dad, but you’re my other other dad! Are you disowning me? Have I been disowned? Why can’t you both be my dads?” She grins. Apollo remembers the conversation he had with Klavier about a particular betting pool.

“I do believe it’s been decided on your behalf,” Iris says to Phoenix. “But, yes, I will make sure none of them come to harm. If—” She frowns, her eyes narrowing, and she rolls them up toward the center of her forehead, as though trying to see Jinxie’s charm still left there. She raises a hand to it and falters, her fingers an inch from the paper.

“Right,” Phoenix says, and he reaches over and peels the charm off of her head.

“You can’t take it off yourself?” Trucy asks.

“There would hardly be a point to such a charm if any monster can just remove the bindings from herself,” Iris says. “Perhaps we use that charm ourselves, slap it upon Tenma Taro when we find him.”

“Ooh! I volunteer for that!” Kay bounces up and down and snatches the charm from Phoenix’s hand when he holds it out to her. “I’ll sneak up on him and whack him with it! And then, Seb, you chase it out into the open where the Amazing Nine-Tails can wrestle it back to prison!”

“You should all take some more charms,” Jinxie says, grabbing Trucy’s hands and dealing the paper slips into her palm like a card dealer setting up a game. “Make sure as soon as you see something strange, hit it!”

“That’s sound advice,” Athena says, nodding sagely.

“That could get you arrested,” Sebastian says.

Athena raises her eyebrows and grins at Apollo. He has to suppress a groan. Somehow, in the madness of everything after, he’d almost forgotten about Athena flinging a police officer through the air. Between that, manipulating information from Fulbright, and Sebastian and Kay being plenty friendly (no matter how Kay tried to pretend she wasn’t giving out information), she’s going to get a very strange idea of what she can get away with.

Iris eyes the pizza crusts that someone left behind in the box, but seeing Apollo watching her, she quickly turns her head away, lifting her chin to feign regal posture.

Tenma Taro is going to kill them all, no question.

#if you want the key to the bad pun names it's in the end notes on ao3 #roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

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zach-the-fox · 5 years ago

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Furiends Episode 2: By Your Side

The wooden door opens, swinging forward to the side. Appearing in the frame is Sally, who enters with Zach. She closes the door behind her once the fox has stepped inside, then turns and proceeds into the room next to them, which is the kitchen. Another rottweiler appears at the counter, much greyer in fur color than Sally. “Hey, Mom.”

The older rottweiler turns around to her. “Hello, Sally. How was the mall?”

“It was okay.” Sally takes a couple steps forward. “Emmy, Navy, Niji, and I walked around for a bit. We also had ice cream.”

Her mother smiles. “That’s wonderful.” Her expression disappears upon spotting the blue-bandanaed fox. “Who is this fox you brought, Sally?”

Sally shifts her body to Zach. “Oh, Mom, this is Zach. You know him as the “Flawed Fox of Heroto”, right?”

“Indeed, I do.” Sally’s mother looks at the fox. “That fox has caused trouble; a nuisance as Team Rescuers puts.” Zach’s ears droop.

“Well, he’s not with them anymore. They pushed him away and banned him from the group. In fact, he’s got no friends or family until Emmy brought him to the mall and introduced us to him. He’s actually a pretty nice guy. We were wondering if he could stay with us for a bit.”

“You know I don’t mind you bringing people in, but bringing this fox in concerns me. However, if you say he’s changed, then I’m fine with him staying. He’s your responsibility, though.”

“I understand, but he’s a really nice fox, and he needs all the help we can give him.”

“I’m sure he needs help. He can explain himself one we sit down and eat.” Sally’s mother turns to the counter, takes some prepared food from a tray, and places it onto a plate before walking over to the table. Sally and Zach do the same, joining the older dog. “So, Zach, what brings you here in search of help? Care to tell me your story?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Zach starts. He clears his throat and explains his story from the orphanage to now, while everyone digs into their food. As Zach talks about every detail within his life, Sally’s mother strokes her chin with interest. The fox closes with the ice cream social in the mall. “And so, that’s my story…”

“It’s pretty sad,” Sally utters. “I didn’t know he had a rough life before Team Rescuers.”

“So, I heard,” her mother tells her. She looks back to the fox. “Well, I am sorry about you’ve been treated, Mr. Fox. You are more than welcome to stay for as long as you’d like.”

“Thank you, Ms. Dog… You, Sally, and the others are kind. I appreciate it very much, and I will repay you in any way I can.”

“Zach, it’s fine,” says Sally. “I already told you, you don’t have to do that.”

“Well, I have been thinking of getting work now that I’m free. You know, to make some money… First, I need to go back to the orphanage to retrieve some documents.” He looks to Sally. “Is it okay if you and the others came with me?”

“Sure, I don’t mind. Maybe we all can go with you to retrieve your papers. But, I want to ask you; why do you need someone to come along?”

“I’m scared to do it on my own. I’m afraid everyone will start picking on me as soon as I walk through the door.”

“It’ll be okay, Zach. You have nothing to worry about. We’ll be right beside you.” She takes her fork, stabs a piece of meat, and puts it in her mouth.

“Thank you very much…”

***

Darkness has cloaked the entire room. Zach lies back-faced against the bed, covered up to his neck with the blanket. His eyes clenching but closed. His head shifting from side-to-side along the pillow. Soon, he begins tossing and turning with his body, struggling on the mattress. Zach’s eyes flutter open at last before sitting up and placing his paw against his head. He lets out a sigh, sliding out of bed and heading straight for the bathroom, where he splashes cold water at his face. He returns to the bed and lies back down, yet is unable to close his eyes. After lying motionless for one minute, he decides to get out of bed again. He takes his bandana, blanket, and pillow with him into the other room beside his. Opening the door slowly, he approaches the sleepy dog and begins to whisper. “Sally… Sally…”

From the sound of her name, she turns and opens her eyes to the fox. “Zach? What the hell?! What are you doing in my room?!”

“Can I sleep with you here tonight? I’m too scared to sleep by myself…”

“Do you really have to?”

“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to disturb you… I just can’t sleep with all of the negativity in my head… Can I just sleep here? It’s only for tonight…”

“I’m not very comfortable with people other than me in my bed, especially boys.”

“I’ll sleep on the floor, if you’d like… I don’t mind.”

Sally lets out a sigh. “If you must… But I better not hear a single sound from you. If that’s so, you’re out.”

“Thank you… And don’t worry, I don’t snore.” Zach sets himself up on the floor, placing his blanket on the carpet beside the dog’s bed, curling up into a ball as his he covers himself with the blanket’s other half and snuggling against the pillow, falling fast to sleep with the comfort of company.

***

Zach stands still as the wide, two-story brick building looms over him. His new friends are beside him, waiting for his further actions.

“You okay, Zach?” asks Niji.

“Y-yeah,” Zach responds. “Just a bit nervous…”

“Don’t worry,” Emmy tells him. “We’re here with you.”

“Thank you.” The fox takes a deep breath with his eyes closed. Opening them once letting out air, he proceeds inside the building with the others by his side. He approaches the counter where the receptionist is, wearing hooded robes to mask their identity. “Hello?” The animal turns to Zach’s attention. “I’m here to claim my birth certificate, high school diploma, and card. My name is Zach the Fox.”

“Oh, aren’t you that flawed fox who got evicted yesterday?” asks the receptionist. Zach nods with ears drooping. “One moment, please.” The receptionist stands and ambles to the doorway, where another hooded figure appears. They exchange words in a low tone before the figure beside the receptionist disappears. The receptionist walks back to the fox. “The headmaster will bring them out to you. Please wait while they do.”

“I’m not sure I can…” His entire body trembles. “I’m not comfortable…”

“Zach?” Sally moves in closer to him, as does Emmy. “What’s wrong?”

“This place… I-It brings back so many painful memories…” His shaky paws find their way to his temples. “I… I can still hear the kids taunting me… belittling me… I can still see them standing over… throwing food and other things… I don’t want to be here much longer…”

“Don’t worry…” Emmy rubs her hoof against his back. “We’re not going to be here much longer. As soon as you get your papers, we’ll be out, right?”

Zach looks to her, lowering his paws, and nodding. “Y-yes… Not much longer…”

“Zach the Fox.” The hooded figure reappears before the group. In their grip are two eight-by-eleven paper with writings and designs on them, as well as a card with Zach’s picture. “Here’s your papers. Now, I don’t ever want to see you after this. You’ve got it?”

Zach stares at the figure before giving them a single nod and taking the documents. “Yes, Headmaster… You don’t need to worry… I will be gone…”

“Well, if it isn’t the flawed fox?!” utters a voice. Zach and his friends turn to where the source had come from; a grey wolf with a red bandana on his left arm. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Oh… hello, Jay.”

“Jay?” Navy repeats. She looks to the wolf. “Hey wait, you’re Jay the Wolf from Team Rescuers.”

Jay turns to her and smiles. “At your service.” He shifts back to the fox. “You come to whine your way back into the orphanage? Doubt they will accept you back considering all the trouble you’ve caused!”

“He’s not here for that,” the headmaster points out. “He was just collecting his possessions before walking out the door. Isn’t that right, Flawed Fox?”

“What possessions?” Jay asks. “All he owns is that stupid bandana that your worker gave to him. He owns nothing, Mom! He is nothing!”

“I will talk to you later, Jay. I am busy! As for you, Fox, don’t stick around any longer. I expect you to be out of here by the time I’m finished with the other children.” The figure turns and leaves the room.

Jay continues to taunt Zach. “Hear that? You’re unwanted. You always were. Nothing but a flawed fox!”

Sally, agitated with clenching fists and eyes, steps in front of the fox and into Jay’s gaze. “I wouldn’t pester him if I were you. He’s suffered through a lot.”

“You’re defending him?” Jay queries. “Who would dare defend a flawed fox?”

“We would,” Navy spurts at him. “His friends.”

“Friends?!” Jay chuckles at the idea and crosses his arms. “The flawed fox has no one! He’s been alone his whole life, and always will be. He’s nothing but trouble.”

“You sound like a big jerk,” Niji utters. “Nothing but a bully and a pushover.”

Jay clenches his paw into a fist as his expression changes. “What the hell did you just say, Wolf? You want to run that by me again?”

Emmy gets beside him. “He said that we were just leaving now. Come on guys, let’s get out of here.”

“Wise choice.” Jay watches as the animals exit the building, giving a mean glare at them.

As the group distances themselves from the structure, they head for the park as a means of hanging out. Zach sits on the park bench, hunched over with drooping ears, while Emmy sits beside him, rubbing his back to comfort him.

Sally has her arms crossed as she stands about, looking at the orphanage from the entrance. “Well, I never with those animals. I thought orphanages were a place to make kids happy until they get adopted… And to think the leader of Team Rescuers was actually a caring kind of person. What a total salt bag!” She looks to the fox. “We’re so sorry about everything you struggled through, Zach. We had no idea what you’ve been through.”

“You know what, it’s actually okay…” Zach straightens his ears and his position to meet the eyes on his friends. “I’m actually a bit happy that I don’t have to suffer within that place anymore. I may not have anywhere to go or anything to do, but I’m thankful to be free. I am also grateful to have you guys as my new friends.”

“It’s no worries,” Navy says. “I can’t believe that wolf is so sour.”

Zach manages a small smile. “Thank you…” He looks at his newly-obtained items. “Well, now that I have my documents, I can start looking for a job. The question is, where do I look?”

“I bet the library has some resources on employment,” Emmy suggests. “We should go there and take a look. Besides, we have nothing else better to do, so why not?”

“Sounds boring,” Niji comments. “But sure.” Everyone else agrees with him. Zach and Emmy stand from the bench and head off on their next “adventure”. @emmy-the-absolute-goof @sally-the-pack-leader @rainbow-strike @pink-unicorn-boi @pink-unicorn-blood

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior 8/13/21 - CODA, FREE GUY, DON’T BREATHE 2, RESPECT, THE LOST LEONARDO, WHAT IF, and More!

Well, that was kind of a disappointing last weekend as James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad pretty much tanked at the box office, making less than Birds of Prey did back in February 2020 with all sorts of backseat analysis explaining why it didn’t do well as anyone, other than a scant, few thought. I mean, I’m still kind of stunned, even though COVID and the Delta variant seem to be losing steam as far as being news. It certainly didn’t help that HBO Max decided to release the movie concurrently on HBO Max on Thursday at 7pm.

The nice thing about this week is that we have three new movies, none of which are on streaming or On Demand at the exact same time, so if you want to see any of them, you’ll have to put on your N96 masks and get yourself to theaters. Two of the three movies are originals, while the third is a sequel to quite an original horror movie from about five years back. All of them are pretty good, actually. We’ll get to them soon...

But first, let’s start with this week’s “The Chosen One” and it’s gotta be Siân Heder’s CODA i.e. “Child of Deaf Adults,” which will play in select theaters and on Apple TV+ starting Friday. If you hadn’t heard, it was the belle of the ball at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, winning the Jury Prize and Audience Award alike. Heder previously directed Tallulah and is the showrunner on Apple’s Little America, but this really is a very special film that I’ve enjoyed on repeat viewings now.

It stars Emilia Jones as Ruby Rossi, the sole hearing person in her family of Gloucester fishermen, who are out every day on the sea making the latest catch in their nets. Ruby has other aspirations, and when she joins the school choir, the teacher, Mr. Villalobos (Eugene Derbez) sees talent in Ruby that he thinks might get her into the Berklee College of Music. Ruby has to weigh that with her family’s need to have her as an interpreter while dealing with the other fishermen of the town.

I didn’t know what to expect when I saw this at Sundance back in January, and it still surprised me when I rewatched it again, because it’s a movie that involves a lot of elements that shouldn’t necessarily work, between the fishing and the singing and all the ASL between the amazing ingenue, Ms. Jones, and the deaf actors playing her family, including the one and only Oscar-winning Marlee Matlin. If not for these disparate elements, Coda might be a fairly standard indie family drama, but Heder finds just the right balance of showing how these disparities in Ruby’s life make it hard for her to pursue her dreams.

Ferdia Walsh-Peelo from Sing Street plays the classmate who Ruby is set up with to perform a duet at their high school recital, and of course, he also becomes an unwitting love interest. Unfortunately that’s the aspect of the film that’s the weakest, because Jones’ scenes with Matlin and the other actors, including Derbez, as well as Troy Kotsur and Daniel Durant, as Ruby’s father and brother, are just so powerful and moving even if they’re all in ASL with no dialogue or even incidental score.

Coda is Heder’s second film after Talllulah, a movie starring Elliot Page that never really connected with me, but Coda is such a strong and exceedingly crowd-pleasing film that I have to imagine that this would connect with everybody. I’m not sure if Apple’s gonna be able to get this movie all the way to Oscar night, but I do like its chances for Adapted (?) Screenplay, and maybe Matlin and Kotsur Supporting? I don’t know, because it’s so early and hard to tell, but hopefully the decision to wait so long after the virtual Sundance won’t hurt this movie as it hurt other Sundance award-winning films. Coda is just a joy that I’m sure will be many people’s favorite movie.

You can read my interview with Ms. Heder over at Below the Line.

Incidentally, in last week’s column, I talked about the 20th New York Asian Film Festival, but I didn’t realize that it was only running at Film at Lincoln Center for a week before going down to the SVA Theater on 23rd Street, and you can check out the schedule of movies playing there at the official site. And of course, there’s still the Virtual Festival that’s running through August 22. Also, Fantasia is still going on in Montreal, and I still haven’t had time to watch very much. What can I say? I suck.

Let’s get to some wide releases, shall we?

First up and probably the most likely to win the weekend is Ryan Reynolds’ new action-comedy, FREE GUY (20th Century Studios), directed by Shawn Levy and co-starring Jodie Comer from Killing Eve. The high-concept comedy has Reynolds playing Guy, a bank teller, who actually is a non-player character in a video game called “Free City” that’s kind of a cross between Grand Theft Auto and Fortnite. When he meets Comer’s character in the game, he falls mady in love and decides to do whatever it takes to get on her level. (Get it?) In doing so, Guy ends up becoming a hero for Free City, as well as a viral sensation across the globe as gamers thrill to Guy’s adventures.

Free Guy is Ryan Reynolds’ first live-action starring role theatrical release since…. Oh…. the action-comedy sequel The Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Wife a little under two months ago. Considering that barely made half of what its predecessor did, and that’s with Reynolds sharing the screen with Samuel L. Jackson and Salma Hayek, one wonders if his draw as an A-lister can be maintained during a pandemic. Before that, you’d have to go all the way back to 2018’s Deadpool 2 for a fully live Reynolds movie, because he wasn’t seen as himself for most of his role in and as Detective Pikachu. Of course, Reynolds’ unmistakable voice was back in DreamWorks Animation’s The Croods: A New Age, the sequel to the 2013 blockbuster that made the ballsy move to be one of the first movies to open during the pandemic. It grossed $58.6 million in theaters, which was slightly more than Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and even more than the Warner Bros. sequel, Wonder Woman 1984.

This is also a big movie for Jodie Comer, who won an Emmy and was nominated for two Golden Globes for Killing Eve, but hasn’t really been in too many movies, other than playing Rey’s Mum in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Later this year, she’ll star in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel and may possibly be back in the awards game again, we’ll see. The movie also stars Lil Rel Howery, who seems to be everywhere and in everything these days, as well as Taika Waititi who is super-hot right now due to 2019’s Jojo Rabbit, and his various television projects, as well as having a small role in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad last week.

In some ways, Free Guy is gonna be a test for a lot of things, the first one being whether Reynolds is a big enough draw when not playing Deadpool to get people into theaters, just as people are starting to get skittish again about going into movie theaters. More importantly, it will show whether not having a movie on streaming or VOD means that people who want to see it will put aside their fears and return to theaters… like they did with F9 and Black Widow and Godzilla vs. Kong. Is an original non-franchise movie like Free Guy enough to get people interested in getting their butts off the couch and into a far more comfortable movie theater seat? (I’m being facetious, if you didn’t guess.)

After The Suicide Squad last week, I’m really not sure whether I can trust my own instincts, but I also don’t want to lower my prediction to something ridiculous out of fear that the pandemic really is destroying any chance of the box office fully recovering. One thing working in Free Guy’s favor, besides its PG-13 rating is that it’s not available on streaming and VOD. Anyone who has been intrigued by the film’s great reviews will HAVE to go out to a movie theater to see it or else, they’ll have to wait 45 days.

Maybe if this opened last month, I could see it open in the $30 million to $40 million range, but with things being the way they are, I’d probably go with high $20 million, so close to $30 million but not quite.

You can read my review over at Below the Line, and I’ll have an interview with the film’s Production Designer, Ethan Tobman, fairly soon.

Also opening Friday is the horror sequel DON’T BREATHE 2 (Sony/Screen Gems), starring Stephen Lang as the blind former Navy Seal who terrorized a bunch of kids who broke into his house in 2016’s Don’t Breathe.

The original movie, which starred Jane Levy, reuniting with director Fede Alvarez after the two remade Evil Dead for producer Sam Raimi, opened in late August, on the fourth weekend of the original Suicide Squad, in fact, and it knocked the movie out of the #1 spot. Its $26 million opening in 3,000 theaters was impressive for the time, partially because late August has never been great. It stayed #1 for a second weekend, over Labor Day, and it ended up grossing $89.2 million in North America, which is great for an R-rated horror film.

Levy isn’t around for the sequel and Alvarez has moved into a co-writer/producer role for his creative partner, Rodo Sagayes, to take over the directing reins, but honestly, I’m not sure how many people will know or care, because Lang’s character and the film’s violence and chills are it’s real selling point. Like many horror movies, there isn’t much in terms of star power other than Lang, but that has never really hindered the success of a horror movie in the past.

As with every movie I cover in this column, there’s the pandemic in the room and whether that might hold people back from going to theaters. I wish there was a way to calculate the effect that’s had on moviegoing, because it seems to affect movies differently. For instance, the recent The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It was able to open with $24.1 million just two months ago, although that was down from the $40 million of the previous two chapters. So that’s about a 40% drop-off in a similar five-year gap between movies. (Actually, it’s kind of strange that 2021 is replicating 2021 with three sequels to movies from five years earlier.) There’s no denying that the number of Covid cases are way up since June and movie theaters are still being painted as the “enemy” even though no significant cases have been traced back to the movies.

We also have to look at Sony’s last horror sequel, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, which I quite enjoyed, but it ended up opening with about $10 million less than the original movie a few years back. We can probably expect Don’t Breathe 2 to have a similar pandemic drop-off even if it’s another movie that won’t be on streaming or VOD this weekend.

I think Don’t Breathe 2 should be good for around $15 million this weekend since it’s catering towards a young audience that’s a bit more devil-may-care about going out to theaters. It will also probably appeal more to older single guys than something like Free Guy, which seems different enough to pull in a different audience.

My review will be posted over at Below the Line later on Thursday, plus I have a bunch of interviews coming, including this one with Rodo Sayagues and Fede Alvarez.

Next up is RESPECT (MGM), the long-awaited Aretha Franklin biopic (for those that didn’t see Genius, like me, I guess), starring Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson as the Queen of Soul. The movie directed by Liesl Tommmy was supposed to be released in January to take part in last year’s Oscars race, but I guess MGM wanted to make sure it got a proper theatrical release, which wasn’t possible since NYC and L.A. movie theaters didn’t reopen until March after the cut-off. But MGM had already decided to push the movie back to the summer in hopes of having more theaters able to play the movie, which is kind of true now?

It’s been a while since we’ve seen JHud in a high-profile theatrical release, and unfortunately, the last one was 2019’s Cats, a movie in which she probably was the best thing, although it still only grossed $27 million domestically, a flat-out bomb. Before that, she provided her voice for the animated blockbuster Sing in 2016, and then a bunch of smaller movies before that. She’s joined in the movie by the likes of Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Titus Burgess, Mary J. Blige, Marc Maron, and Audra MacDonald, quite an impressive array of talent that shows how many wanted to be involved with this project. Director Liesl Tommy is making her feature directorial debut after directing a ton of theater and TV shows like The Walking Dead and Jessica Jones.

Even so, it’s obviously that the ongoing popularity of Aretha Franklin, especially since her death in 2018, is going to go a long way into getting people into theaters, which includes a lot of older black women who really haven’t had much to get them out into theaters in recent months. Will this be enough?

Before Respect was delayed from its original January release, many thought that Hudson would receive another Oscar nomination for her performances. Having not seen the movie at the time of this writing, I can’t confirm or deny those chances. If that’s still the case, then releasing the movie towards the end of the summer (similar to The Help, successfully, and The Butler, not so much) is an odd decision rather than just holding the movie for festival season by holding until next month.

Either way, I think the love Aretha’s fans have for the Queen of Soul as well as Hudson’s fans, Respect should be good for between $8 and 10 million this weekend -- hard to pinpoint exactly without knowing how many theaters MGM is getting for it against the stronger summer movies.

Mini-Review: I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Respect, even after seeing the trailer a couple dozen times in front of other movies, but it’s a respectable biopic that cover 20 years in the life of the Queen of Soul from singing at a young age in her father’s church to returning to church for the gospel records as captured in the recently-released doc, Amazing Grace.

But first, we go back to 1952 where Aretha is a young girl (played by Skye Dakota Turner) is uncertain of her future as she’s being ordered about by her preacher father (Forrest Whitaker) and trying to find direction. The movie casually sets up the fact that young Aretha was sexually abused by a family friend, and maybe she got pregnant, too? It’s hard to tell and maybe a little odd since she would only have been 10 at the time, but it’s something that will be brought up (just as subtly) over the course of the film.

Jennifer Hudson takes over as Aretha as she turns 19 and goes to New York City to start recording, meets Marlon Wayans’ Ted White, makes him her manager and marries her, which basically has her going from one abusive man in her father to another one. It feels like the movie spends a long than normal time on the ‘60s, which is when Franklin’s career really took off with “Respect” and then a series of hits that took her all around the world. That whole time, she’s dealing with Ted’s abuses and jealousy while trying to write and record those hits, before her dark demons return and she starts drinking heavily.

As you might imagine, you go to see Respect to see how well Jennifer Hudson pulls off the Queen of Soul, and she’s an incredibly complex character that needs a nuanced performance, which Hudson tries to pull off by bringing different aspects of her life into different scenes.

There are some scenes that don’t work as well as others, and it feels like there’s a bit of time-crunching or futzing around so that at a certain point, her father seems to be de-aging, although I was just as impressed (possibly even moreso) with Forrest Whitaker, whose performance as Aretha’s father is more than just a full-on villain despite his violent treatment of his daughter. Wayans is also good and almost unrecognizable at first, and there are a few other nice performances in there as well, including Marc Maron as record label head Jerry Wexler.

But the performances Hudson gives as Franklin are goosebump-inducing, leading up to the recording of her record-selling gospel record as depicted in the aforementioned doc.

A fairly decent representation of Franklin’s little-known life leading up to her fame, Respect probably succeeds the most when Jennifer Hudson is performing as the Queen of Soul, but she’s also created a fairly moving portrait with strong dramatic moments that far outweigh any of the film’s issues. Rating: 8/10

With that in mind, this is how I see the weekend looking with two of the new movies bumping Suicide Squad down to third place where it will be facing off against Respect.

1. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $28.5 million N/A

2. Don’t Breathe 2 (Sony/Screen Gems) - $15 million N/A

3. The Suicide Squad (Warner Bros.) - $10 million -62%

4. Respect (MGM) - $9.6 million N/A

5. Jungle Cruise (Walt Disney Pictures) - $8.7 million -55%

6. Old (Universal) - $2.5 million -36%

7. Black Widow (Marvel/Disney) - $2.4 million -39%

8. Stillwater (Focus) - $2 million -39%

9. Space Jam: A New Legacy (Warner Bros.) - $1.3 million -43%

10. The Green Knight (A24) - $1.1 million -56%

Donnie Yen stars in Bennie Chang’s RAGING FIRE (WELL GO USA), which premiered at the New York Asian Film Festival on Monday and at Fantasia in Montreal on Tuesday, and I’m not going to review this, because honestly, it’s such a cookie-cutter Hong Kong police action-thriller that I’m not sure I really have much to say about it, so I won’t.

On the other hand, I do have more to say about Andreas Koefoed’s documentary, THE LOST LEONARDO (Sony Pictures Classics), the Leonardo being Da Vinci, the master artist behind the Mona Lisa and many other works. Since I don’t really follow the world of art, I really didn’t know about the Salvator Mundi painting found about 10-12 years ago that was thought to be an original Da Vinci worth in the hundreds of millions, often dubbed “The Male Mona Lisa.” But it’s also a painting that was surrounded by controversy due to the 5-year restoring job that may have left very little of the original painting.

As the film began, I was groaning a little about sitting through another movie of art experts and historians talking about how important a find this is and why it’s either great or horrible, depending on who is being interviewed. Eventually, the film gets more interesting as it starts getting into the idea of selling it. After being sold to a wealthy Russian oligarch by an unscrupulous Swiss art dealer who made a nice profit on it, the painting ends up being auctioned by Christie’s, and the story just keeps getting more and more interesting as it goes along.

While I’m not one to go ga-ga over any painting by Da Vinci or otherwise, I do like a good mystery or suspense-thriller, so good on Koefoed for realizing about halfway through this movie that the talking heads will never be as interesting as actual footage. And that’s what happens here, too. I actually feel a little ignorant that I wasn’t aware this was going on as it was, maybe because I don’t really follow the art world in that respect. Maybe I just missed it, so it’s good that Sony Classics (who loves making movies about art) is giving this a fairly high-profile release following its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival a few months back. In that sense, The Lost Leonardo is quite a gem.

Heinz Brinkman’s USEDOM: A CLEAR VIEW OF THE SEA (Big World Pictures) is a somewhat intriguing doc about the Baltic island of Usedom, the location of a number of imperial German health resorts, beaches and such, and how the Jews were kicked out by the Nazis before Usedom was split into a German and Polish half after WWII. I wish I could get into this more, but I just have a limited mental capacity for a lot of German talking heads.

Which brings us to Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein’s THE MEANING OF HITLER (IFC Films), the new doc from the team behind Gunner Palace, which looks at the cultural fascination with Hitler and Nazism and the recent rise in white supremacy, antisemitism and the “weaponization of history itself.” I don’t know what that last part means, because I got so swamped this week that I didn’t get to watch this, and like another recent doc on the subject of Naziism and the Holocaust, I just couldn’t get into the right head space to hit play on this doc. Maybe I’ll watch it sometime down the road.

Similarly, I didn’t get around to watching Dutch filmmaker Jim Taihuttu’s THE EAST (Magnet Releasing), which I may like as a fan of Paul Verhoeven’s Dutch WWII films, and I probably should give this a look, but I just ran out of time this week. It’s about a young Dutch soldier who joins an elite unit led by a mysterious captain called “The Turk,” and it takes place in the Indonesian War of Independence after World War II.

As far as TV goes, Wednesday sees the debut of Marvel Studios’ WHAT IF...? on Disney+. I’ve seen the first three episodes, and I was a pretty big fan of the comics in the ‘70s (sadly, part of the giant collection that I sold a few years back), and I guess this is okay. The first episode is the one with Haley Atwell voicing “Captain Carter” i.e. Peggy Carter gets the Super Soldier Serum, which is one of the more obvious What Ifs that could possibly done, so that we can get another “women are as good as men, and they need to be heard” storyline that’s in 90% of the Marvel movies already. On the other hand, the first episode does include the voices of Sebastian Stan and others, so it’s quite a coup in that sense, but whoever wrote it, clearly doesn’t understand that people spoke differently in the ‘40s. I liked the 2nd episode, a mash-up of Black Panther and Guardians of the Galaxy, which is a fun idea that brings together a lot of great characters -- including Chadwick Boseman’s last voice performance -- but again, hearing the voices just isn’t the same when the writing isn’t as good as the movie. I feel like the animation for the show is okay, maybe not quite on par with some of the great Batman or Superman cartoons we’ve gotten over the years. On the other hand, the entire series features the great voice of Jeffrey Wright as The Watcher, acting kind of like the Rod Serling for the series, much like the Watcher does in the comics. I also dug the music by Emmy winner Laura Karpman (Lovecraft Country), and I’ll watch the rest of the series as it debuts, but I’m not sure it’s as much a rush to see each episode to avoid spoilers as with Loki or WandaVision.

Hitting Netflix this week is the limited series, BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR (Netflix), starring Rosa Salazar, Eric Lange, and Catherine Keener. The tagline is: “Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar) comes to LA dead set on directing her first movie. But when she trusts the wrong person and gets stabbed in the back, everything goes sideways and a dream project turns into a nightmare. This particular nightmare has zombies, hit men, supernatural kittens, and a mysterious tattoo artist who likes to put curses on people. And Lisa’s going to have to figure out some secrets from her own past in order to get out alive.”

Also, TITANS Season 3 debuts on HBO Max, but since I haven’t watched seasons 1 or 2 yet, it might be some time before I get to it.

Next week looks like it could be a bit of a dog with four or five new wide releases but nothing that really jumps out, plus I’ll be in Atlantic City all next weekend, so who knows how much I’ll be able to watch or write about?

#The Weekend WArrior #Movies #Reviews #Coda #Free Guy #Respect #Don't Breathe 2 #the Lost Leonardo #Box Office

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