#fun fact: if you cast speak with the dead on him in the full release

[wheretheresawyll]

Overall I'm glad they didn't end up going with the plot twist of Zevlor betraying the tieflings purposely to the Absolute, just because the tiefling characters suffer enough already in the release version...but. That being said. Hearing Zevlor scheme, gloat, and threaten pure murder upon the player character is uh

[talentforlying]

@normaltothemax: ♬♬ — SONGS I LOVE

a pain that i'm used to - depeche mode! i am a HUGE depeche mode fan, they're one of my top ten bands, and this one is so much fun to sing! the dynamic shifts between the sirens and the verses + the low steady vocals both give off a very ominous, hypnotic vibe that i think fits constantine's aura of both overwhelming danger and magnetism. the lyrics also sit in a very late-hellblazer place for me, when he's exhausted and angry and just drifting aimlessly on the synchronicity highway from one catastrophe to the next without being able to really feel anything other than apathy towards the fact that he's going to have to solve somebody else's problem. he very much loses himself after his sister dies; he finds a pain that he's used to in direct, seething hate with his name stamped on the label, not oblique calls to destiny that may or may not end in tears, and late hellblazer has him almost craving someone to despise him, just so he knows where he stands.

i'm not sure what i'm looking for anymore / i just know that I'm harder to console / i don't see who i'm trying to be instead of me / but the key is a question of control

also, the song speaks to the fact that a lot of the shit he pulls and the emotions he shows are truly who he is, not always just a con; he wears masks on masks, but there's a lot fewer there than people think. at his core, constantine is driven by deep compassion and burning empathy, he just has to conceal it a lot in order to protect the people he cares about:

i can't conceal what i feel, what i know is real / no mistaking the faking, i care

welcome to the family - avenged sevenfold! this song has been my baby since i wrote gabriel in the supernatural fandom back in middle school lmao, it's my personal patron saint of lost souls and rebellious sons. unlike with gabriel, though, i like to think of this song as the wall that constantine is always shoving against, the manifestation of his opposition: "it seems there's no one to call," "you can't win this fight," these are the fleeting moments of despair before he buckles down, battens down all the vulnerable places, hammers back the doubts, and gets to fucking work. this song is his subconscious wailing at him while he steadfastly ignores it and pushes through, never mind the burnout that will be waiting for him on the other side, never mind how much it costs him. this is what's left of his dad whispering in his ear, his inner monologue, the person he's afraid he'll one day become, and it's an unavoidable part of his subconscious that he has to drag himself past every day of his life.

i see you're a king who's been dethroned / cast out in a world you've never know / stand down, place your weapon by your side / it's our war in the end, we'll surely lose but that's alright / so have you figured it out now, so have you figured it out?

+ 2 songs: for lucy, werewolf heart - dead man's bones has such a kid antichrist vibe to me, and even the title alone makes me think of how his powers manifest at night and kind of lock him away, like a miniature werewolf transformation, and how arthur and john are scrambling to find solutions for him so he doesn't have to become something he doesn't want to be.

'cause if the full moon comes, our love is done / so forever, towards dawn, we run

and for jake, fight - the dirty youth feels like the cage match energy constantine would bet money on. it has the vibe of someone who's kind of bound up in fate to be a brawler, to take the hits that other people won't, until the closest thing you know to a release is that angry energy, which feels very jake to me.

don't wanna go there, i've had a late night / i'm feeling nauseous, chemicals enter my brain / i'm a control freak, an internet geek / i get these cravings, to get out and escape you know that it's fate, and now you can't see / you lose your conscience, and break the silence / the script is written, it's complicated / oh, something's about to erupt

[thealmightyemprex]

Favorite Movie Rambles : REturn of the Living Dead

Still on a horror movie kick,so gonna look at one of my favorite Zombie films,the darkly humorus Return of the Living Dead

In this 1985 warehouse employees Frank (James Karen) and Freddy (Thom Matthews ) accidently release a toxin that causes the dead to rise,hungry for brains ,while Freddy's punk friends are partying at the nearby cemetary

So I have a fondness for what I call "How bad can this get " stories ,and by God , I cant think of a better one then this film,because this is a domino effect of pure chaos . I like the mix of characters as well ,with the cast being mix of older working joes but also these young Punks ,and I love all of them .I always say the job of a horror film is for me to like the characters and I love the characters in this film

Lets start with the Punks.Now this is a comedy so these are intentionally over the top punks ....But I find them so endearing ,they just wanna party and the performances for them are all of them are pretty fun ,and they are all diffrent :Casey is the party girl,Chuck is kind of a dork ,Scuz is punk classic ,Tina is the nice girl,and so on .My favorites of the punks are Trash,Spider ,and Suicide(Yeah thats his name). Suicide is not in the film long but I wish he was .Suicide is the "Spooky " one a very intense angry dude,who other then Trash (Who has a thing for him) ,the others seem to only hang out with him cause he has a car ,but when push comes to shove he is there if his friends are in trouble .I find him hilarious and Mark Venturini does a good job and in a movie full of great qoutable lines ,he gets one of the best " You think this is a fuckin' costume? This is a way of life." Miguel A Nunez Jr plays Spider ,and he just does an amazing job,being really the lead punk and the one who clashes with Burt ,the guy who runs the warehouse . Possibly the most memorable of the Punks is TRash .....Now I think for most fans its cause she spends most of the film nude ,which is handwaved in universe as dancing naked just being a thing she does ,but what I love is the performance of now horror icon Linnea Quigley ,in that Trash.....Is kind of a poser. She puts up this persona of being this death obsessed hardcore punk ,but its hinted that its an act,and when things go south she is as pancked as everyone else (Also minor spoiler: Her death is really sad to me )

Now while the punks are memorable ,the warehouse guys are also great . Gonna start with our in between character Freddy .Freddy is a punk who got a job at the warehouse . Thom Matthews does a great job ,I think Freddy is a very likeable character .....And he is a great trick on the audience ,as there is a shif t with him .Don Calfa plays Ernie the Embalmer , who is the character with his head on his shoulders and I love his relationshipwith Burt (Also,no the fact two friends were called Burt and Ernie was not intentional according to writer and director Dan O Bannon ).Burt is our main lead played very well by Clu Gulager ,and I love that he seems to be a decent boss ,definately cares about Frank and Freddy .....And I adore when the zombies problem arises he's more just annoyed with it but does believe Frank .Speaking of Frank,he is my favorite character in the film ,and all that is all down to the magnificent performance of James Karen .He starts off as the cool old guy but once things go sideways ,he is freaking the fuck out!!! He also gets possibly the saddest scene in the film(A idea which came from James Karen himself )

I should point out while this film is a comedy.....It does the drama really well.Without spoiling I actually fell sad when characters die or are zombified .I feel bad for the characters who are losing friends ,and I feel that these characters truly care about each other

The film is also very scary and thats cause the zombies are scary .I'm not a zombie fan .......But these ones TERRIFY me.....Cause they are fast,sentient.....And there is no way to kill them save for cremation....Which causes more problems .This is the film that established the pop culture culinary taste of zombies:That they eat brains . The effects are hit and miss,I think the extra zombies look kind of lame.....BUT THE MAIN ZOMBIES ARE TERRIFYING .The are designed to resemble the grotesque living corpses from EC Comics The most memorable of the bunch is the Tarman ,this gooey skeletal fella who keeps bellowing "BRAIIIINNNS" ,played by puppeteer Allan Trautman .I think the scariest scene in the film however involves a captured zombie.....And being intelligent ,she talls us why they eat brains.I also just love the set up of the film:In the universe of this film,Night of the Living Dead was loosley based on a real case ,and the scene of James Karen revealing this is amazing

The film is also very funny .The punks can be goofy ,there is some wondeful dark comedy with the zombies, and the fact that everyone is freaking out feels true to life .The best scenes are with Burt,Frank,Ernie and Freddie however .I like Ernies intro scene ,where bBurt delivers a story that is even more unbelivable then wahats really going on. The crown jewel for me are when Freddy,Frank and Burt deciding to mimic Night of the Living Dead by destroying the brain ....Which doesnt work leading Freddy to say my favorite line in the film "YOU MEAN THE MOVIE LIED !???"

Overall this film is a great mix of comedy ,tragedy and horror

@ariel-seagull-wings @metropolitan-mutant-of-ark @the-blue-fairie @angelixgutz @amalthea9 @themousefromfantasyland

[that-shamrock-vibe]

Movie Review: Cinderella (Spoilers)

Disclaimer: I am posting this review the day after the movie airs on Amazon Prime, so if you haven't yet seen it don't read on until you do.

General Reaction:

It is slightly weird to think of another movie studio taking on one of the classic fairy-tales that isn't Disney, because, as I am sure is the case for a large portion of the mainstream audience, Disney have almost claimed fairytale adaptations as their own.

However, as identified, Cinderella, is a fairy tale and one created long before Disney came about. As such, other studios are allowed to put across their own interpretation of these classic stories that we have seen a lot of times adapted at this point.

That being said, we have seen many different adaptations of Cinderella at this point from the classis Disney Animation version and it's live-action counterpart, to modern-day reworkings like A Cinderella Story of the mid-noughties starring Hilary Duff.

It's quite an easy story to tell and adapt to a variety of different settings, and what this 2021 retelling does with the story blends the old-fashioned with the modern. Does that mean it is set apart from the others? Well in my opinion yes and no.

While this is a Sony movie, it plays a lot like a Disney Channel Original Movie. From the comedy to the settings to the costuming and the music, it plays like the best of those types of movies. I'm talking the High School Musical franchise and the Descendants franchise. It is by no means bad or corny, but it isn't even on the level of the 2016 live-action Cinderella.

While that version was pretty much a straightforward live-action version of the original animated version, the style of the movie outweighed the substance.

Here however, there is a great blend of both style and substance. The story takes the classic elements of the original Cinderella fairy tale but tries to inject a modern and feministic twist that the recent live-action Beauty and the Beast tried to do.

In terms of whether this version of Cinderella stands out in the crowd of Cinderella movies, I would say it does. Not only is the titular character race-bent and the setting she is in seemingly plays into that, but the reworking of the Fairy Godmother as the Fab G as well as giving the Stepmother a more humanised backstory allows for a more compelling take on a classic.

Cast:

Because this is just the one all-in review I'm not going to do an in-depth character analysis and instead group the characters as who were my favourites, who did a passable job, who was bad and who were for some reason just there.

Favourites:

I have a top 3/4 favourite characters in this movie. Idina Menzel's Stepmother Vivian, Billy Porter's Fab G, Minnie Driver's Queen Beatrice and additionally Beverly Knight's Queen Tatiana.

Idina Menzel was always going to be fantastic in this movie, but to see her portray what is traditionally the villain character in the movie as a sympathetic character as part of the movie's feminist agenda was an interesting twist. No cat for a start, I don't know if Lucifer was a part of the original fairy tale but of course in the Disney adaptations Lady Tremaine is always accompanied by her faithful feline, but also the fact that her backstory parallels Ella's current story and the fact Vivian was so willing to have Ella reject her passion to do what is expected of her just as was forced on her was actually great motivation.

In truth I have only ever seen Billy Porter in one other thing aside from this movie and that was American Horror Story: Apocalypse. I have never seen Pose though I have heard good things, but from what I understand, Billy Porter only really has one speed. However, as the character's name states, that speed is fabulous. I loved Fab G in this movie, the fairy godmother is usually one of my favourite characters in the movie and every interpretation I have seen has brought something different and memorable. If this version of Cinderella is remembered for anything it will be for this very modernised take on the Fairy Godmother, not only gender-bending and race-bending a traditionally white female character, but with Porter choosing to make the character non-binary and that outfit speaks for itself, Fab G was simply a fabulous character.

In both Disney adaptations, I have never heard mention or reference to Prince Charming having a living mother...or a dead one for that matter. So to not only have the Queen being in a chunk of this movie, but also having her own story branch tying into the feminist agenda running through the movie and being portrayed by Minnie Driver, I was in love with this character.

Pretty much similar to the Fab G, if you've seen Beverly Knight's one second in the trailers you've pretty much seen her in the movie. She contributes to Ella's story in the movie and only appears in the latter half of the movie in 2 maybe 3 scenes but she makes an impact because she's Beverly Knight. My only gripe with her is she does not sing in the movie, you have Beverly Knight with not even a solo in a group number?

Passable:

Unfortunately the star of the movie Camilla Cabello is just passable in this movie as Cinderella. She does have some humour about her and her singing is great despite maybe being autotuned because I know how she can sing, but she doesn't feel like Cinderella to me, it actually feels more like a version of what Emma Watson was doing with Belle in the live-action Beauty and the Beast rather than Cinderella but at least she tried.

As for Nicholas Galitzine, he's definitely more engaging as a modern-day Prince Charming, Robert is definitely more engaging a character than Ella unfortunately, which to be fair is still good as the 2015 Cinderella is the only other adaptation to really make the Prince interesting, but I can't quite put my finger on exactly which movie it is but there is another movie I have seen where the Prince Regent doesn't want to be king but the Princess does and has to fight for her right to be it...that's pretty much this story for them.

Also Pierce Brosnan as the King, despite jokingly singing towards the end, did a great job at being the archetype of old-fashioned values with his on-screen wife Minnie Driver's queen pushing him into a modern-day thinking.

Bad:

As for who's bad, I have to say it pains but the British comic relief characters really let the side down in this movie.

In the three mice defence, Romesh Ranganathan and James Acaster are somewhat funny but unnecessary. James Corden however is abismal in this movie. I get he produces it, but particularly after Cats I do not understand 1) Why he'd want to portray another CG animal or 2) Ever think that one shot of him changing back from human to mouse with his head on a mouse body was funny...it was terrifying.

Also this movie is supposedly a family-audience movie...so why include a crass joke of Corden's character talking about peeing out of his front tail?

Additionally to the three mice, Rob Beckett has a surprising role in this movie as a potential suitor for Vivian's daughters, but he simply portrays such a creepy, cringe-worthy character it's almost uncomfortable to watch.

New Additions:

So as well as the two queens and the British comic relief there is also the addition of Princess Gwen to the movie who is the sister of the Prince and the one who wants to be ruler. It's kind of the same story as Jasmine's in the live-action Aladdin as wanting to be Sultan but being a woman isn't taken seriously, however here it is treated more comedically as every time there is a serious moment with the King trying to force Robert to grow up and be King, she always tries to interject with "Would this be a bad time to tell you about an actual real reason why I would be a good ruler" and they make sense but she's always dismissed until the very end.

Then there's a town crier, who is also inserted as a musical number while he's reading his proclamations but as a rap. Honestly I don't know Doc Brown as an artist but I did happen to enjoy what he contributed.

Music:

Which brings us on nicely to the music of the movie as this is a musical and I usually break down the songs. Again this time I will be doing groupings of best to worse.

Honestly my favourite number is probably "Shining Star" mostly performed by Billy Porter with verses by Camilla Cabello and, unfortunately, James Corden.

I also enjoyed the two original songs of the movie, "Million to One" which is Cabello's "I Want" song of the movie and used a lot through the movie, and then also "Dream Girl" which is Idina's main other song but also sung by basically the women of the movie, it's Idina Menzel if you don't give her an original song it's an insult.

Idina's other song is a cover of "Material Girl" and honestly it is a lot of fun, Nicholas Galitzine's rendition of "Somebody to Love" was also fun and surprising as I did not think this guy could sing that well.

The group numbers were fun and well choreographed but they are also somewhat forgettable. The song at the ball of "Whatta Man/Seven Nation Army" was probably the most memorable but still just mediocre.

Recommendation:

So with all that said, would I recommend watching Sony's Cinderella? Honestly I would say it is worth at least one viewing, and I do recommend watching all the way through just to get the full experience. I do think it will do better as a streaming movie than it would have done as a theatrical release, but I cannot pinpoint a market for this movie.

I don't think this will go down as one of the great adaptations, but there are moments and aspects of the movie that sets it apart from the crowd.

Overall I rate this movie a 7/10, it's not as fantastic as I feel the trailers were making it out to be, but having seen the movie twice there are definitely elements of the movie I looked forward to watching the second time around.

So that's my review of Sony's Cinderella, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Movie Reviews as well as other posts.

[hongism]

mists of celeste ➻ sixteen

➻ pairing: ot8 x fem!reader ➻ genre: space au, pirate au, space pirate!ateez, angst, eventual smut ➻ Word Count: 10.7k ➻ Rating: M ➻ Warnings: language, violence, guns and weaponry, blood, knives, mild torture scene  ➻ summary: Sneaking aboard the ship of a renowned space pirate may not have been the best idea, but you’ll have to make do with what fate has handed to you

⇐ previous | next ⇒ | masterlist

mists of celeste act two ➻ part six

​​​

Darkness swirls across your vision even as your eyelids flutter open. The air around you feels chilly and almost brittle, a sharp tension that you almost inhale as you breathe. You lift your head, noticing a dull ache in your muscles, and try to move your hands. You can’t, however. In fact, you can’t even move your arms. What feels like needles blossoms across your arms and wrists. You twist and writhe in attempts to figure out what the hell is going on, but panic is beginning to settle in and you still can see nothing thanks to whatever is over your eyes. Your legs are in a similar predicament; stuck in place with pain blossoming around your ankles when you try to yank them forward.

Something catches you by the hair and tugs back, and you nearly cry out from the sheer surprise but you can’t. You finally notice the bindings around your mouth as well, shoved between your teeth and pressing against your tongue every time you move it. You can see now, however, a blessing for sure. That is until you realize where you are and what is going on.

Your vision adjusts slowly, the minimal light in the room filtering in slowly, and you can make out a few silhouettes surroundings you. One stands directly in front of you, and you can’t make out who the hell it is until the person takes a step forward. Light from above casts crude shadows across her features, making her seem ten times harsher than the first time you saw her. Taskmaster Cara. You thrash against your bonds in attempts to get lose but it’s pointless. The Berserker toys with a small knife, the blade long and curved, and the only thing you feel in that moment is panic. She leans down when your glare hardens on her. A cruel smile plays at her lips, and she tilts her head to the side.

“Did you have a nice sleep?”

You couldn’t respond even if you wanted to but you settle for gritting your teeth around the gag between your lips. Your stare doesn’t waver or falter, but Cara is unamused by your show of defiance. She draws ever closer, the tip of her knife coming up to drag over your cheek. It’s not enough pressure to cut the skin but if you even breathe the wrong way she could cut into you with ease. You tilt your head back nonetheless, and Cara digs the blade a little deeper.

The skin stings as she drags the blade over it, and it burns like a papercut. Hot blood trickles down your cheek.

“Did you really think you were clever enough to escape me? Now you have nowhere to run. A mouse trapped for the cat to eat. Lucky for me, the bounty for you being delivered dead is still quite hefty. I’ll take your lifeless body to the military and rules the black seas. But–” Cara pauses and leans away from you with the same smirk blossoming on her lips “–not before I have a little fun.”

The woman pulls back without saying another word, standing up straight once more. She continues to twirl the knife in her hands and passes it from hand to hand as she drags her gaze over you. You twist a little in the chair you’re bound to. The blood from your cheek catches on your jawline and ceases its hot path down your face.

A laugh leaves her lips, and she turns away from you, obviously satisfied with her work already.

“Wake him up.” She jerks her head. You aren’t sure what she means by that, but upon looking past her tall form, you can see another limp form in a chair opposite you. They have bindings across their ankles, chest, and arms just like you do with a gag to match. A black hood masks their face, but something tells you that you don’t want to know who sits behind the material. A figure moves behind the person though, and the black hood is ripped out with no shortage of ferocity. Your blood runs cold. You don’t move but your body instinctually begins to trembles against the ropes around you.

It takes a moment for reality to settle in, but when it does, you begin thrashing against the bindings around you in a desperate attempt to get out. Before you know it, your eyes are stinging and burning with unshed tears because this has to be a nightmare, this can’t be real, and this sure as hell cannot be happening. There’s no way you’re here right now, and there’s no way that San is tied to the chair across from you.

He is still unconscious, although based on the look on Cara’s face that won’t last for long, and your suspicions are correct. The person behind San grabs a fistful of his hair and yanks him back.

“Wake the fuck up!” The man shouts into San’s ear, and San jerks back into a state of full consciousness. He groans as he wakes, the sound a bit muffled by the gag between his lips, and his head slumps forward again when the man behind him lets go of his hair.

“San, San, San. Aren’t you going to wake up to see this?” Cara clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, turning back to you with a sinister look in her eyes. You tug at the ropes over your wrists. They’re tied too tight for you to wiggle out of, and you gnaw on the inside of your cheek when Cara approaches you with knife in hand again. She lifts the blade to your other cheek, toying with your skin without slicing it open. “Look here, Sannie. I have a surprise for you.”

San’s chin bobs a little then he pulls his head up. Eyes find yours in an instant. A second passes then San is jerking and writhing in his binds, yelling around the gag in his mouth. The sounds remain muffled and broken though, all ineffective and useless in the long run because Cara just keeps dragging the tip of the knife over your skin.

“Keep him still, Cyrus. He needs to see every second of this.”

The man behind San moves froward again and grabs his hair, forcing him to sit relatively still. It doesn’t stop San from thrashing and yelling through the gag. Cara throws her head back and lets a loud laugh loose. The sound echoes through the building, bouncing off the walls and ceiling until it rings in your ears.

“Come on, Sannie. It’s just like old times. Why aren’t you happy? Isn’t this fun?”

Cara pushes a lilt into her tone, motioning over to where you’re seated with the knife. Her laugh continues to ring as she draws closer to you and circles around the back of your chair.

“Don’t you remember how things used to be? How we used to play? The captain used to string people up like this for you all the time. Let you play God without consequence.”

Cara presses forward and her chin comes to rest on your shoulder. You prepare to slam your head against hers but the icy chill of the blade brushes over the skin of your throat. You freeze under the touch, eyes meeting San’s across the room. He looks ready to murder, and his body goes completely still just like yours.

“You deserve to see the consequences of your actions, Sannie. Coming here wasn’t just suicide. It was murder.” Cara shifts the knife just a little, but in your mind, it feels like much more. “Because now you aren’t going to be the only one to die. You will be the last to die, however, because I want you to watch every second of my torture on your little friend here.” The Berserker pauses to look at your face, bringing the knife up to drag over the cut already on your cheek. “I still remember your cruel methods, Sannie. Would you like to see them replicated on her now?”

San jerks upon hearing the words, straining against the ropes around him and struggling to no avail. Cara releases a dramatic gasp.

“Does she not know? Sannie, aren’t you proud of your past? Proud of all the pain you caused? Those cruel little methods you always used? Why can’t you tell her about your past?” Cara pushes the knife back down to your throat but this time she digs it a little bit deeper against your skin. You grit your teeth around the gag and squeeze your eyes shut as tight as possible. Your breathing has quickened too much in a short amount of time, and you’re fully aware that if it gets any worse then you’ll start to hyperventilate and that’s the last thing you need at the moment. It’s difficult to convince your body to shut up and listen to your mind’s desperate pleas to slow your breathing though; much more difficult than you anticipated.

You’ve been through shit like this before, Y/N. Just breathe. Been through worse actually. You’ll be fine now. Absolutely fine. Just focus on what’s important.

Your eyelids snap open and you look directly at San. Something is different this time. This time you aren’t alone. You’ve only ever been alone in the past, but now you aren’t. You didn’t have to look after someone else – nor did you want that responsibility – but seeing San struggling against the ropes and screaming around the gag… you need to get San out of here. You need to get him away, you have to, you have to keep him from ending up like you or worse.

Teeth sink into the tip of your tongue, and you inhale a deep breath. The pressure of the blade against your neck increases as you shift under Cara’s touch. Her other hand moves to your hair, locking in the strands and tugging your head back until you are eye level with San. You know that she’s trying to force you to look at San, but you don’t do what she wants. Instead, your gaze drifts around the building in search of any possible opens or escape routes. The Berserker behind you begins to speak to San again, giving you time to look around as best you can without irritating her.

“Cyrus, pull the gag off. I want to hear him beg.” The man does as asked, tugging the cloth until it falls loosely, and San spurs the movements on by spitting it out of his mouth as soon as he can.

“You fucking cunt, I’ll murder you if it’s the last thing I do. You won’t walk out of here alive, I will make sure of it because if you so much as hurt a single hair on her head, then I will draw out your miserable life until you’re the one begging for mercy.”

“Oh, ho, ho! Sannie, those are such big words. Almost like old times except with a lot more fury in them. That’s your weakness.” Cara tugs your hair more until it hurts, and you whimper behind the gag. “Big talk for someone tied to a chair without weapons and surrounded by a whole crew of bandits and pirates. You’ve gotten reckless beyond belief. And for what? For one criminal who is worth more money than you have ever seen in your life? You’ve gone soft.”

She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth again. Her hand slides the knife further down and catches on your collarbone. With one quick motion, she slices the skin open, leaving a shallow cut. You hiss around the cloth between your teeth and bite down hard to keep from crying out. You shift your gaze to look over at San to gauge his expression. He thrashes in his chair, slamming his feet against the ground so hard that it causes his chair to tip backward. He knocks into the thug behind him, but the angle causes him to fall on his side. There isn’t any time for him to move before another pirate comes up on the side and presses a hefty boot on the side of San’s face. It keeps him stuck against the dirty floor, facing where you’re sitting. Cara’s demeaning laugh rings in your ears over and over.

She pulls the knife away from your chest, and as she moves it, you catch the sight of crimson on the blade. Cara’s eyes trail over the liquid with a cruel smirk. She grabs hold of your chin, stepping around you and leaning over so that you are eye level.

“You know… there’s an old Tibehken legend my mother used to tell me every night. With each life you take, the darker your blood becomes. The way to know if someone is truly evil is to cut them open and see if their blood runs black.” Her gaze shifts over to where San is lying on the floor. “Her blood is red, Sannie, which makes her an innocent. Even better for me because now I get to make you watch me take an innocent’s life. Because of you did. How dramatic.”

San writhes against the boot on top of him, shaking his head as best he can.

“Don’t. Don’t hurt her. God, please don’t hurt her. I’ll do anything. Yo-You can take me. T-Take me, torture me, use me as a weapon, kill me. Anything. Anything you want, Cara. Please. Please don’t hurt her. She doesn’t deserve this, she’s innocent. This has nothing to do with her. This is between you and me, please. Just let her go and don’t hurt her.” San’s voice is desperate and pleading, the small stutters in his tone only serving to cause your heart to plummet further. You try to shake your response, calling out behind the gag in attempts to tell him no. Cara hesitates. She twirls the knife again.

“That’s a hefty promise,” she mutters. The smirk never leaves her lips. “I can take that deal with ease though. No questions asked.”

You cry out again around the gag as though it will change her mind. She turns to you and yanks the cloth of your gag down to your neck. She stops there though, not moving to touch the ropes binding your body to the chair.

“All you want is for me not to hurt her?” Cara quirks a brow, then motions for someone to come to her side.

You don’t see it coming. A fist connects with the side of your head, and your vision blurs. You cry out at the sudden impact, the shock of it startling you more than the pain itself.

“Stop! You said we had a deal!” San shouts, thrashing against the ground.

“I’m doing exactly what you wanted, Sannie!” Cara laughs, lifting her hands above her head to accentuate her words. She passes the knife over to your new attacker. “I’m not hurting her. Not myself, at least. And that’s what you asked for.”

“You knew what I fucking meant!” San growls. “Yo–”

Whatever he was going to say next is cut off by a cry of pain falling from your lips. The knife drags over the other side of your collarbone, and you twist away from the blade to no avail.

“I’m going to fucking kill you. I’ll murder you, you wo–”

“You should behave,” Cara sighs, picking at one of her nails with little interest. “Otherwise, your cute little friend here is going to end up in strips because of all the cuts. This isn’t a negotiation. There are no terms I’ll accept. There is nothing you can do. This is torture, Sannie. You are going to sit there and watch every second of it. No begging will make it stop. Because thanks to you, I had to sit and watch man after man suffer at your hands. At the captain’s hands. Your hands doing what the captain asked. People who were my crewmates. The moment they faltered – even breathed the wrong way around the captain – who was it who was tasked to exact punishment after punishment?”

Silence greets her. The knife digs into your skin.

“Who was it who killed each and every single one of them, Sannie?”

A small cry of pain leaves you, growing louder and louder as your attacker pushes harder.

“I asked you a fucking question.”

The knife leaves your body, only to return seconds later with another shallow slice over your collarbone.

“Me! It was me!” San yells, voice breaking as he says the words.

“There we go. It was you. It was always you. But the one who had to haul away the bodies was me. I had to haul away the bodies of my comrades who did nothing wrong. Funny how they always called me the Taskmaster and yet you were the sadistic torturer. How fucking ironic, right? Well, now you get to taste it.”

Another shallow cut burning like fire across your skin.

“You get to know what that feels like and how badly it hurts,” Cara continues, admiring the work on your skin with a thin-lipped smile. “You get to watch it happen, Sannie, and not be able to do anything about it. Just like I did. And once she’s dead – once the sweet little Ghost is dead – you will get to haul her body off and live with the pain of reality. You get to turn her body into the military while I collect the prize money. Do you think that’s fair, Sannie?”

“N-No, fuc–fuck no! It’s not!” San refuses in a heartbeat. Cara reels on him, fists balling up at her sides

“Of fucking course it isn’t! Because it wasn’t fair when you did it to me. Why should it be fair to you?” Cara shifts and faces you once more. You take the opportunity to spat on her feet, making certain to hit her shoes when she steps closer to you. The action doesn’t please the woman in the slightest; she snatches her knife back from the man at your side. You merely taunt her by baring your neck to her, a flat expression and confidence in your eyes. No words tumble from your lips.

It isn’t a knife that hits you next. Rather, it is the back of Cara’s hand that smacks against your cut cheek with enough force to cause the chair to wobble under you.

“You are nothing but a cocky little shit who has no place in the universe,” she sneers.

“I learned that a long time ago, you bitch,” you hiss back. “You aren’t sharing any big news.”

As you speak the words, something clatters and a loud thud resounds from above you. Everyone halts and glances up at the ceiling. Cara and her men all look concerned beyond belief, but you can’t help but to laugh at their expressions. Frankly, you imagine that Hongjoong has finally caught up to you, although he’s quite a bit delayed at this rate.

“Out!” Cara orders, pointing towards the doors of the building with her knife. “All of you, get out there! Scope out the surroundings and figure out what the fuck is going on out there! Take care of it quickly, and if need be, leave no survivors. I don’t want to be fucking interrupted.”

All the men surrounding you and San file out of the building at her command, no hesitation in their steps. Their departure doesn’t provide any relief for the worry and anxiety bubbling in your gut. Cara wraps around the side of your chair then brings up a tall boot. She kicks you in the ribs, causing you to topple over and hit the floor in a similar position to San. Her hands grip the back of the chair. She drags you across the cold, dirty floor with little effort. She only stops when you’re about two feet from where San is positioned. As much as he tries to move, he can’t pull himself forward at all, leaving him stuck where he is while Cara puts you right where she wants you.

You feel utterly helpless. Unable to move and fight back, you can’t even find the heart to rile her up with your words. She places you directly across from San so that he can clearly see everything she does, then kneels down by your side to look over at the man. San doesn’t look back at her though; his eyes are on you and you alone, and you take it as an opportunity to mouth a few words to him through the panic.

It’s going to be okay.

You don’t know if it’s the truth, you don’t know how this will end, you know nothing at all except for the panic running through you. You can settle for the small white lie, however, only because it reassures you a little bit to mouth the words to San. He doesn’t respond and instead glances away to look up at Cara again as she walks around your form, but not before swallowing roughly. It’s enough acknowledgment for you to know that he saw what you said.

Cara swings the point of her boot into San’s gut. He groans from the contact, trying to curl into himself but he can’t thanks to the damn ropes around him. Her foot swings into his stomach again. All you can see is the way San’s chest heaves as he attempts to recover from the attacks.

“My men should’ve put you through more hell before bringing you here.” Cara releases a deep heave of breath then returns to your fallen body, toying with the knife as she smiles down at you. “Where to begin with this pretty little bird? Now that we’re all alone, we can have so much fun.” San’s eyes narrow on her, the emotion in them more nervous than angry or murderous now.

The knife breaks through your thigh. It cuts the fabric apart like it’s paper, as well as the skin underneath. She maintains the shallow pinpricks rather than deep cuts, and you suppose you ought to be grateful for that, but you know you won’t be grateful if she continues to do it. A hiss passes through your lips, and you look away from San so that he doesn’t have to see the pained expression on your face. Cara despises that movement though. She bends down to grip your chin.

“Fucking look at him or it’s his leg getting cut next,” she spits, stray saliva hitting your cheek. You let your cheek fall to the floor so that you can look at San again, too afraid that she will hurt San worse than you if you don’t listen.

“S-Stop,” San exhales, tone shaky and desperate even with one word. He continues with a bit of difficulty, licking the edges of his lips before talking again. “Yo-You don’t have to do this. We can – we can come to an agreement. Work something out, I know we can do something that wi–”

The knife slices through your leg again with harder force. You bite down hard on your lip to muffle the scream that nearly spills out.

“Please! P-Please, Cara, please, I–”

“There is nothing to discuss. I have made my decision and this is it.”

San squirms and tries to move across the floor again.

“You can torture me. Pl-Please. You can torture me as much as you want if you just let her go.”

“Are you fucking deaf, Sannie?” Cara laughs, the sound a disbelieving one. “This is your torture. I am torturing you by making you watch this. Every.” Another slice, lower than the last. “Single.” One more that intersects with the last. “Cut.” A third cut, this one vertical against your thigh. You bite down so hard on your lip that it draws blood. In that moment you dare to look over at San but regret it instantly.

His whole body trembles under the ropes, lip nearly quivering as tears spill from his eyes and fall over the bridge of his nose and to the floor.

“Please stop. J-Just stop, please – please stop this. I-I…” San trails off, unable to look up any longer. His chin falls to his chest. “I n-never did this to any of them. None of the crew. I - I didn’t want to be cruel. I just… I was only following orders, that’s all. I was only doing what I was told to do. I swear. I swear I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I really didn’t. I have nightmares about it every night, I-I never wanted to do it. You have to b-believe me.”

“You’ve lost the opportunity to explain whatever happened. What’s done is done. There is no apologizing or backtracking. There is no forgiveness. Don’t you understand that, Sannie?” Cara jams the knife into your thigh all of the sudden, ignoring her previous pattern of shallow cuts and burying a good quarter of the blade into your leg.

“O-Oh god,” you choke out, a large wave of nausea sweeping over you as you see the knife go into your leg.

“Y/N! Y/N, look at me. Please just look at me,” San pleads, and you pull yourself up to look him in the eye. The nausea is making you a bit dizzy, and San’s face swirls into three different ones until the wave passes over you. “It’s gonna be okay, Y/N. I promise. It’s okay. We’re gonna be okay.”

Cara huffs upon hearing San’s words. She jerks the knife and yanks it out of your leg harshly, leaving you to scream against your shoulder. The pain burns and throbs, coursing through your whole system until you can feel sweat beading on your brow.

“St-Stop! Cara, Cara, please!” San pleads again as you cry out. The Berserker doesn’t listen to a word he’s saying, the desperate pleas fall on deaf ears, and she leans over San.

“You’re having too much fun with this, Sannie. Too vocal. I should fix that.” Cara huffs a laugh, glancing over the knife before deciding to plunge it into San’s side. The knife buries all the way to the hilt in the patch up flesh just above his right hip. If you thought your screams of pain were bad, San’s is beyond comprehension. The sound of his screaming triggers something in you, flips a switch, and you lose the last bits of control you had over your emotions.

You don’t think twice before letting your abilities slip through, and you tug at the ropes behind your back while Cara is still bent over San. The effort of trying to use them causes your head to spin even more, but you muster up enough energy to push one wrist through the ropes. That’s all you need too, because you use that free hand to pull the other loose then tear at the ropes around your ankles. Cara is still preoccupied with San but she will notice your movements at any second.

Your heart pounds against the cage of your chest as you rush to pull yourself loose. Cara slowly pulls the blade out of San’s stomach, a sickening squelch resounding as blood pours forth, and she starts to stand up straight again. You twist the leftover rope around the palms of your hands and pounce on Cara’s back as best you can. You misjudge how much pain your leg is in though, and the searing fire that blossoms across your leg causes your jump to miss slightly. You don’t manage to get the rope over her head, so you settle for tossing it around her body and tangling her in the mess. It gives you just enough time to drag yourself over to San’s body, sliding behind him and pulling at the ropes around him.

San writhes in pain, unable to help you get the ropes off of his body, and Cara is nearly unraveled herself from your makeshift trap. Just as you tug his ankles free, Cara comes down on the two of you. She swings the knife down at San rather than at you. You don’t think, operating on instinct only, and your hand flies up to stop her attack from the side.

The side of the knife hits your hand. You ignore the blossoming pain that burns your palm; instead, you grip the weapon tighter and push back against her. Cara’s eyes go wide at the action and the deadly expression across your features. She stumbles backward in attempts to get away from you, but her feet catch on one of the loose ropes and she falls back to the floor. You squeeze the handle of the knife with your other hand and walk in her direction ever so slowly. The slow movements startle her further, causing the Berserker to scramble back as you draw closer.

“What the fuck are you?” She snarls. Your lips quirk upwards at her words. Your left foot drags along the ground as you pull yourself towards her. There is only adrenaline running through your veins, the pain is almost nonexistent, but you know that won’t last for long so you move as quickly as you can.

“I’m merely a ghost,” you huff out. “Here one minute and gone the next. Which is what is going to happen to you soon enough.”

You back her into a corner, her back hits a wall, and she has nowhere to go. You lunge forward and drive the knife she used on you and San into her shin. A cry of pain falls from her lips. The sound spurs you on, causing you to tilt your head to the side in question.

“What? Is this not a fun game for you? You were enjoying it so much not too long ago. Do you not enjoy it not?” You taunt as you twist the blade in her.

“Y-You’re a fucking – fucking psychopath.”

The smile returns to your lips. You pull the knife out of her leg with haste then move forward so that you can squat down in front of her.

“I’ve heard that before too,” you mutter as you twirl the knife in your grasp. The smile coating your lips dissipates. “But only by the people who deserve their fates.”

You cease your toying with the weapon and lift it high above your head, ready to send it cascading down into Cara’s chest. Just as your arm starts to come down, someone catches you by the wrist. You jerk to look over your shoulder. It’s San who stands behind you. San who has caught your hand with one of his own covered in blood. His other hand lingers over the wound in his side that is still bleeding quite profusely. There is a stagger to his breaths, chest shaky as he inhales and exhales, and a hunch to his back that shows how hard it is to hold himself up. Again, the sight of him in that state flips a switch in you.

It’s like someone has yanked a dark veil away from your eyes. Reality seeps back in and fills the cracks in your mind. In that moment, San is all you see and all you know. You drop the knife with a small gasp, unsure of what just came over you and caused you to lose control in such a way.

“D-Don’t kill he-her,” San says, lowering your arm to his side.

“Wh–”

You don’t need to finish the question because San releases you and stoops to pick up the knife you just dropped. He grips it tight, bloodied fingers sliding over the hilt without purchase.

“Turn around.”

“I-I… wh-why?” You stammer. Your feet carry you backward though, even though you mind questions it. Cara makes her presence known again and releases a weak laugh. She doesn’t move from her spot on the floor though, eyes tracking San with such scrutiny that you would crumble under that gaze.

“I should’ve known this would be my fate,” she murmurs. Her chin lifts a little. “Don’t be a coward when you do it, Sannie. If you’re going to kill me, then you should at least do it right and give me a proper sendoff.”

“Y/N, turn around.”

“I-I don’t need to though.”

San reels on you with sudden strength to his movements. You flinch at the sight of the emotion in his eyes and the quiver of his lower lip. You know it’s not from the exhaustion of the wound. That much is easy to see. He doesn’t want you to see him do it. After what Cara revealed and the shame that burned San’s words, you understand why. So, you respect his wishes, nod a few times, and pull back to turn around and face the opposite wall.

A few seconds of terse silence pass. You don’t even dare to breathe, just focusing on the adrenaline that is seeping out of your body and leaving pain in its wake. Then – a small gasp, a quick inhalation of air, and… nothing.

You don’t turn around yet though. Something about the air feels odd and sacred, and if you turn around now, you would be disturbing that peace.

“May your journey to the next life treat you well, Taskmaster of The Eurydice,” San says in a quiet tone, only audible because of the silence in the building. A breath of hesitation then – “And may you rot in hell for all you’ve done.”

The words are spoken with a finality, like the ending line of a chapter in a book. San immediately begins to shuffle around. It leaves you to wonder what the hell he’s doing behind you, and as much as you want to turn around, you want to wait until he tells you it’s okay to do so. After a few minutes, San approaches you at last. He taps your arm, fingers brushing your elbow, and you twist to look at his face.

“It’s over…” He remains hunched from his wound and keeps a hand over it in efforts to halt the blood flow. You reach down to touch the hand there, but San pulls away from you in an instant. “Don’t. I-I – I don’t want you to touch me. Now that… now that you know what I did. Who I was. What kind of person I used to be. W-Who my captain made me to be. The th-things he made me do. I – the extent of my captain’s hold on me and how damn easy it was for me to do those horrible things. I don’t want you… I don’t want to taint you with that.”

“San…”

“I remember every single damn face from that crew,” he continues as though you didn’t speak at all. “I remember them all. I know them by heart. The ones I tortured and killed merely because my captain didn’t like the way something was done. The pure hatred I operated with: the reasoning that since they were awful and abused me, then it was okay to hurt them. I remember their faces. Their names. What they begged for in their last moments. Mercy… it was always mercy. I-I can’t get away from it no matter how hard I try. It’s in my dreams every fucking night.”

San stops to look back to where Cara’s body is. His jaw stutters as he look over there. Then he sinks to his knees and a pained sob tears through his chest. You slide down to join him, trying to ignore the sharp pain in your leg as you move and just focus on San and San alone. Despite his insistence that you don’t touch him, you reach out and place a bloodied hand over his thigh. He doesn’t stop you.

“It didn’t help,” he whispers, eyes stuck the hand that isn’t pressed to his stab wound. He flexes his fingers and curls them into a fist. “It was supposed to help but it didn’t. I-I… it didn’t do anything. Why does it hurt so fucking much? I-I should’ve – I’m the one who should’ve–”

You refuse to let him finish that sentence, a surge of panic rushing through your body as you hear the implications in his words. Your hand darts up to grip his shoulder tight.

“It gets worse before it gets better,” you respond. If it’s supposed to be encouraging, you think you’ve failed in every way because how the hell is that reassuring in the slightest. San apparently feels the same way because a scream rips through his lips, startling you with the volume and suddenness of the sound.

“I don’t want it to get better! I want it gone!”

“I’m sorry,” you murmur as you pull his body against yours. “I’m so sorry, San. I-I wish I knew. I wish I knew how to help but I don’t and I’m sorry for that.” Your left hand maintains its position on your thigh, squeezing tight around the injury there. You pull back a little to motion down at San’s wound. “I need to take care of that, San. I need to put pressure on it to keep it from bleeding out more. You – you don’t have the strength to maintain it, okay? Just let me, okay? Let me take care of it.”

San doesn’t seem to hear you, however, and even as you try to look him in the eye, his gaze is unfocused.

“You did well, Y/N,” he says. The words cause a spike of panic. “Remember that.”

It sounds too much like he’s saying goodbye. You can’t stand it, you can’t breathe, you can’t function. Everything bleeds into one blinding shade of white. You press San again.

“Let me take care of your wound, San. Please?”

His response is nothing again, and his body goes limp against yours. You can’t stop the strangled sob that leaves your lips. Your hands tremble as you lower San to the ground, placing him flat against it. You grab for his wrist and neck in a desperate attempt to find a pulse. Another sob leaves you as you find it, a rapid pace that is anything but normal. His skin is clammy and cold to the touch. You don’t know much about medicine or anything in that area, but they did teach you how to recognize the symptoms of shock during your military training. San has to be going into shock, but you have no clue how to stop it and halt the process.

Your head swims, spots filling the edge of your vision as you rush to get to the other side of San’s body where his wound resides. You can’t put proper pressure on both your leg and San’s wound; it’s either one or the other, and with a small cry of pain you choose to press against San’s abdomen instead of your thigh. There’s no telling how long you can hold this position, or how long it is until you pass out yourself, but your sheer willpower is the only thing keeping you going right now.

Noise resounds from outside the building. You pad around for your gun only to realize that you don’t have it. An exhausted sigh falls from your lips.

Is this really how I’m going to go out? A failure even on the brink of death?

Bright sunlight suddenly enters the warehouse, and you lift a hand from San’s stomach to block your eyes from the brightness. Three shadowy figures walk inside with arms out, no doubt holding guns. You swallow the lump in your throat – or at least try to – and prepare yourself for the worst.

“H-Holy fuck.”

The words don’t come from you or San, but the voice is familiar. It almost sounds like Seonghwa, and your assumptions are confirmed when the figure on the left rushes forward and comes into view. It is in fact Seonghwa, and you nearly cry from relief as he comes to kneel beside you. Hongjoong comes into view as well, but he moves straight past you to get to San. Seonghwa reaches out to you, holstering his gun, and pulls himself a bit closer to you. You make an attempt to speak but your jaw just stutters and nothing comes out. All you can do is stare at Seonghwa dumbly with your jaw hanging wide open.

“Shh, shh,” Seonghwa shushes as you make a strangled noise. “You did a good job, Y/N. You did well.”

You shake your head, the movements frantic and without cease until Seonghwa presses a hand against the wound on your thigh. He looks you dead in the eye.

“You did well, Y/N. You did what was asked of you and more.”

You can’t muster up the energy to respond with words so you just nod. Glancing past his shoulder, you catch sight of the third figure coming into view. It’s Mingi but he lingers several feet away without coming closer or saying anything. Hongjoong remains bent over San, his hands moving frantically over his bloodied wound.

“M–Mingi, come closer. I need your help.” The stutter in his tone doesn’t escape anyone’s notice. If you had more energy, you might care to think about it more, but as it is, you can’t tear your mind away from San’s state and your exhaustion.

You try to pull yourself up, but Seonghwa keeps you to the ground with the hand on your thigh.

“I’ll follow with Y/N. Just take care of San right now.”

Hongjoong nods as Mingi comes forward.

“We’ll get San to a clinic as fast as possible. You know the one.”

“San is a fighter. He’ll be okay,” Seonghwa reassures. Hongjoong musters up a grin but it holds little emotion in it.

“I know that, Lieutenant.” Mingi reaches Hongjoong’s side, towering over the captain as he stands next to him, then he moves to pick San up. There is a sense of defeat that fills your body as you watch the tall Berserker lifts San’s all too limp body with ease. The lingering pain of knowing that you could do nothing but watch as Cara hurt him, nothing as she attacked you, and even afterward you could do nothing but apologize for not knowing what to do. It leaves the bitter taste of failure in your mouth. You watch Mingi situate San in his arms, pressing a large hand over the wound that still pours blood, and Hongjoong leads them out of the warehouse. Seonghwa follows their movements with his eyes, only pulling back to look at you once they’re completely out of sight.

“When d-did you get he-here?” Your words slur together a little bit, and Seongwha cracks a small smile.

“Don’t exert yourself any more than you already have, okay?” He shifts you, and you let him lay you down on your back only for him to scoop you up with little effort. The arm under your knees slides up so he can press his palm over your wound. “Mingi and I arrived not too long ago. Hongjoong called us up to a rooftop. He said that both you and San disappeared around the same time. He didn’t see or hear it happen, but he assumed you’d been caught. Suppose he figured correctly.” Seonghwa grunts as he gets to his feet, hoisting you further up against him. He doesn’t move at the same breakneck pace that Hongjoong and Mingi had on their way out of the warehouse. “There’s a clinic that should be able to help you both relatively quickly. It’s not too far away if you can just hold out a little while longer.”

“I-I’m not sure…” You murmur as you bring an arm up around Seonghwa’s back. “I have a knack for getting hurt and passing out, I think.”

“I already don’t you to shush, did I not? Don’t try talking or you’ll make it worse.” Seonghwa glances over your face. “You get hurt because you’re reckless. You just the gun too quickly, lack patience, think with your heart and not your head. You pass out because you didn’t take the time to regain your strength after your arm was shot and you had the surgery. Your body can’t keep up the way it used to because of that.”

You want to retort but can’t find the energy to so you just grumble and roll your eyes instead. Seonghwa continues to speak but this time he returns to answering your first question.

“We dispatched of a group on top of the roof. One started falling so Mingi tried to grab him, but it caused a bunch of noise. More came out to see what was going on. It took us a while to finish them all off.” Seonghwa’s expression shifts, lips turning into a frown. “We could hear you… in the warehouse. Both you and San screaming.” His hold on you tightens a bit before he continues with more hesitance. “When it went quiet, I thought that meant th–”

“San is alive,” you interrupt, a desperate attempt to keep him from finishing that train of thought. “Don’t worry.”

Seonghwa bites his lower lip as he looks down at you, voice quiet when he decides to speak again.

“I was worried about you too.”

You opt not to respond. Even if you knew what to say, you couldn’t bring yourself to say it.

“Will you be okay if I run?” Seonghwa asks, hastening his pace a little before you answer.

“Y-Yea, go for it.”

Seonghwa breaks into a sprint as you give him permission. Despite his haste, it still isn’t quick enough to catch up to Hongjoong and Mingi, and you don’t even see their forms ahead of you in the streets. They must be moving much faster than Seonghwa to be that far ahead already. Given San’s state though, you don’t blame them.

San is all you can think about yourself. While there is the panic and worry over whether he’s okay and alive, there is more to it than that as well. You really know nothing about medical things; you can tell when a wound looks bad and that’s about the extent of your knowledge. You know two things about San’s wound: the knife went to the hilt in him, and there was an ungodly amount of blood. Cara didn’t just cut him up a little like she did with you. She went in full force with the intent to kill, and you’re worried that she may get what she wants postmortem.

You wish you had the energy to huff out a laugh, but you can barely manage to keep your head up at this point. You can never catch a break; there’s always something that you have to worry about. Always running, fleeing, fighting – you can’t even stop to breathe for two seconds before something else is happening. Part of you wonders how long it’s going to last, how long you have to keep running for. You could just go back home and live out the rest of your days there in the hopes that no one will find you, but there are too many memories tied to that place. Yet you want to rest. You’re so fucking tired of all this, and you just want to try having a calm life for once. You need to rest.

Seonghwa pulls you out of your thoughts by releasing a huff of air. You glance around as the regular hustle and bustle of the streets hits your ears. It’s a vaguely familiar sight, just enough for you to know that you’re back in the area you started in. Seonghwa slows his pace some and peels off to a side alleyway rather than pushing through the crowds. He wraps around the buildings with steady steps until you reach an unmarked door with a hanging sign above it. He doesn’t give you the chance to read the words on the sign, pushing into the building with his back.

An old man is the first to greet you, seated behind a rickety wooden desk with his chin to his chest. He glances up when you come in though.

“The primary doctor is busy with a patient who was just brought in,” he says when Seonghwa approaches the desk. “Our secondary doctor is treating someone with an illness right now, but you can wait around five minutes for her to be free.”

“Okay, thank you.” Seonghwa nods a few times then pulls back to carry you to a row of chairs on the opposite wall. He sets you down and eases you onto one of the chairs, hands cradling your elbows as you move. Rather than going to sit beside you though, he kneels in front of you and examines your thigh. He peels back the cut up fabric, soaked with crimson blood, and exposes your wounds to the air. The blood has stopped oozing so profusely, beginning to clot a little. You can barely see past the mess of crimson, but there are a total of five cuts on your leg. Seonghwa glances up, eyes landing on the cuts along your collarbone as well. He thumbs over the skin with a gentle touch and makes sure not to irritate them further. Then his eyes go to your cheek where the first cut is. His expression is unreadable as he pulls himself up and sits down beside you.

“What’s on your mind?” You ask, barely managing to smile. Seonghwa laughs a little, and the corners of his lips curl upwards.

“Oh, nothing much. Just thinking about the weather, of course.”

Your smile stretches a bit more at his joking comment.

“San is going to be okay, Y/N.”

“Y-Yea…” Your voice doesn’t sound confident though, and you don’t know if it’s because of how exhausted and drained you are or if it’s because of something else. Seonghwa doesn’t press you any further than that; your lack of engagement must be enough to deter him from talking more. He just places a hand on your right thigh and lets it rest against the bloodied fabric. The two of you sit in silence for a few minutes, eyes looking anywhere except at each other. You still can’t wrap your mind fully around reality. Everything that just happened just seems so unreal that you don’t want it to be real. The blood on your hands doesn’t go away, however, and neither does the dull ache in your chest.

A curtain to the right shifts all of a sudden, and Hongjoong and Mingi step out from behind it. Seonghwa’s hand on your thigh squeezes a little tighter as he looks over his captain’s dismal expression. Hongjoong ignores him, however, and comes to step in front of you. You brace yourself for the worst, gnawing on the inside of your lip while staring up at him in anticipation.

“You were reckless, careless, arrogant, foolish, and idiotic, among other things like disobedient, stupid, and childish.”

All you can do is nod in confirmation. He isn’t wrong in the slightest, neither was Seonghwa earlier when he called you out for similar things. Hongjoong sticks a hand out in front of you, exposing his forearm and palm to the ceiling. You don’t know what he’s expecting or what to do for many seconds. You blink between his arm and his face without speaking until a sigh falls from his lips.

“Just take it before I change my damn mind,” he grumbles. Realization dawns on you, and you reach out to clasp your bloody fingers around his forearm. He pulls you to your feet with that same grip. Your eyes meet. “Thank you for protecting and saving San, and for doing what I couldn’t do.”

You open your mouth to respond, but words don’t come out. Nor do you have the chance to come up with any sort of reply because a woman peeks out from behind another current beside the one Hongjoong and Mingi walked out of.

“I’m ready for the next patient!”

Seonghwa stands up with you, and you take that as your invitation to go over to the woman. His hand finds your lower back, ready to lift you into his arms again.

“I can walk fine on my own,” you mutter. Part of you doesn’t want to seem weak in front of Hongjoong now, especially since he just told you he somewhat respects you for what you did for San. Seonghwa isn’t affected by your comment though; he just laughs and lifts you regardless.

“You aren’t doing yourself any favors with that ego,” he says once you’re out of Hongjoong’s earshot. You press your lips into a frown but don’t say anything. Seonghwa takes you back to the doctor’s room. She motions towards a chair in the center of the room, and Seonghwa sets you down in it for her. You expect him to head out immediately and return to Hongjoong’s side, but instead, he lingers beside the chair, placing a hand on the back of it near your shoulder.

“Oh wow, quite a few cuts.” The doctor hums to herself and moves closer to you. She checks your cheek first then moves down to your collarbone. “These aren’t deep, but they’ll need just a little cleaning and dressing. Put some patches over them to keep them covered for the time being, but they should heal easy. Awkward places for certain, but easy to fix.”

She pulls back and moves for a counter, snagging a bottle of clear liquid and some white patches. You know it’s alcohol the second she uncorks the bottle and the scent hits you, but the sting of it against your skin draws a hiss from your lips. She continues to clean the cuts, then pulls out a roll of tape to dress the cuts further. Seonghwa’s hand slips down to your shoulder, squeezing it tight when you release another hiss of pain.

The doctor dips down to your thigh after securing the last gauze patch to your cheek. She peels back the cut fabric like Seonghwa did earlier, then another hum passes through her lips.

“I can’t really access the cuts too well with your pants on. Do you happen do have a spare set of pants around?” She asks the question with a smile playing at her lips, no doubt realizing the ridiculousness of it.

“N-No,” you answer with a similar smile of your own.

“We can get some,” Seonghwa interjects, pulling his hand back from your shoulder. “I mean, we were going to regardless because hers are a mess, but I can go now to get them. I’ll just estimate your size, if that’s okay.”

“Perfect, that would be great! I’m going to need a bit of help pulling these off first before you go, if you’d please–”

“I’m sure we can handle it,” you interrupt, smile growing shaky at the thought. Seonghwa nods in agreement immediately.

“I’ll be back shortly then.” He moves back to the curtain and disappears behind it, leaving you with the doctor.

“Let’s get you up first,” she says as she grabs hold of your elbows and pulls you to your feet. “Oh, your hand is cut too! I didn’t even notice it with all the blood. Here, let’s get you over to the sink and wash that off first.” She guides you over to the counter she was working at earlier, running hot water over your hands. You know that not all of it is your blood, that San’s blood is on your hands as well, and that not all of it is front the thin slice over your palm. The doctor pulls your hand out from under the water and towels it dry. You just watch her movements with little interest, squeezing your fingers around the white gauze she wraps around your palm. Once she pulls back, she motions down at your pants.

It’s difficult to do on your own, a painful process that has you ready to fall over by the end of it, but you manage to tug the pants off and expose the cuts along your thigh completely. You don’t wait for her to tell you to sit back down either and just do it on your own. The cuts look far worse than they did when you had your pants on, one much deeper than the other papercut-like ones around it. When the doctor presses her alcohol-covered pad over your leg, it hurts ten times worse than it did before. You fight through the pain by biting down on the tip of your tongue. Once the blood is all wiped away, the cuts don’t look nearly as bad as before, except for the one deeper one.

“A few minor cuts and one deeper one. You won’t need stitches or anything like that, but I will go ahead and do a skin adhesive liquid stitch just to be safe on that deeper cut. Then I’ll wrap you up in some gauze and put a little medicine there to fend off infection. Surgical tape  after to secure it in place, okay?”

“Sounds good,” you murmur as she begins to collect the supplies.

“Keep it clean and treat it often if you can! That’s the key to recovery.”

You watch her work with disinterested eyes. At this point, it doesn’t hurt much after that alcohol horror. The exhaustion is catching up to you with haste, and you mostly feel numb all over at this point. Everything is catching up on you actually, and you really want to find any bed available and sleep for days. Blinking down at your trembling fingers, you recall how you were able to use your abilities earlier but only after hearing San scream. You weren’t able to use them with Cara yesterday though when you were fighting for your own damn life, and you can’t reconcile why that’s the case. The only thing you are certain of is the fact that most of your exhaustion is stemming from the use of your powers because that’s always the thing that takes the most energy out of you.

The doctor before you seals the deep cut with the liquid stitches she spoke about then wraps up your thigh with more white gauze and secures it with several strips of surgical tape.

“As good as new, huh?” She jokes as she smiles up at you. You crack a smile yourself and nod in agreement. Seonghwa comes in just as she’s finishing up with the taping, a new pair of pants in hand. When the doctor leans away, you stand up to take them from him, and he meets you halfway.

“Thank you,” you mumble, not meeting his eyes as you take the clothes from him.

You’re determined to at least clothe yourself without help, but that proves to be too much for you as well and you stumble when you try to pull the pants up. Both the doctor and Seonghwa reach out to catch you, but Seonghwa reaches you first. He grabs hold of your arm and steadies you while you continue to pull the pants on with a grumbled “I’m fine” under your breath.

“Thank you for all your help.” You turn to the doctor who just smiles in response.

“Look after those cuts! You should heal up nicely without too much scarring if you keep an eye on them.”

Seonghwa’s hand returns to your lower back, but he doesn’t move to pick you up this time. He lets you walk out of the room on your own, staying close to your side just in case you stumble again. Hongjoong and Mingi are still in the lobby when you exit, perched in the chairs that you and Seonghwa were on earlier, and both men wear deadpan expressions as you pass by them. Seonghwa doesn’t stop to talk to Hongjoong; instead, he guides you out of the clinic and back into the streets of the city. You don’t question it, and there’s no need to because Seonghwa turns to explain it to you after the door snaps shut behind you.

“We’ll stay in the hotel for another night per Hongjoong’s orders. Just the two of us this time though. Hongjoong and Mingi will wait in the clinic for news on San.” Your expression must crumble because Seonghwa pats your back with the hand there. “I know you want to wait with them but you need rest. I want to wait too but taking care of you is my priority right now, whether you like it or not. You went through hell, Y/N.”

“Okay…” You mumbles, eyes darting away from Seonghwa’s concerned ones.

“He’ll be okay. I promise you that. San is a fighter, and he won’t let anything keep him down. Especially not something like this.” You can only nod in agreement with Seonghwa’s words without knowing for certain whether they’re true or not. Perhaps it’s a desperate need for some sense of comfort, but as Seonghwa guides you back to the hotel, you grab for his hand, awkwardly brushing over his thigh before his hand slips from your back to envelop yours with warmth. He threads his fingers through yours and squeezes tightly without stopping to ask why. The reason is clear enough.

His hand remains in yours all the way to the hotel, only pulling back to open the door for you to step through. Similar to the first time you were in here, you linger near the door as Seonghwa approaches the counter and talks with the man behind it. Your throat feels tight. Seonghwa is right in saying that you need the rest but so much worry nags at your gut that you don’t know if you’ll be able to get any whatsoever. Your thoughts are just full of San. San, San, San.

Seonghwa returns to your side, silently taking your hand in his again and pulling you towards the stairs. It’s that nagging sensation of failure and incapability that overwhelms you as he helps you climb the stairs. If you had done things right, San wouldn’t have gotten hurt. He wouldn’t have gotten caught. You wouldn’t have gotten caught either. You would’ve gotten to San before they did and talked him out of it. Kept him from doing something he would regret. Even with your warning, he still carried through with it, but you could have prevented it. You should have. Should have done better and worked harder to prevent it from happening.

You don’t feel the tears hit your cheeks. It’s Seonghwa who notices them first as you reach the top of the stairs, his hands flying up to cup your cheeks and brush the crystalline drops away with his thumbs. Still, he doesn’t speak, but that silence offers no reassurance in the slightest. He pulls you through the door of the first room on the left – the same one you stayed in the night before with San – and that makes it even harder to go inside. Your expression remains flat and blank as you cry, no sobs fall from your lips, it’s only the tears that fall against your will. Seonghwa continues to brush them away without complaint and he moves you to sit on the edge of the bed while he squats in front of you, hands never leaving your face. He’s speaking to you, offering reassurance and comfort, but every word goes in one ear and out the other. All you can think about it what San said to you right before passing out on top of you.

“You did well, Y/N. Remember that.”

Those words ring in your ears. The person you’ve been trying to save, the one who took the fall for you, the person this has all been for – the fighting, the running, the killing, the damn papers – he said the exact same thing before walking to his death before the King of Eros.

✧✧✧ a/n: jfc cal 10.7k?!??! i know i know i pulled a fast one on you guys and hit the pedal so hard we’re gassing it okay?! also this chapter is a bit intense for sure and full of stuff and information and hints and easter eggs and all that but omg i hope you guys like it, i think it’s been the one i enjoyed writing the most so far mostly because i am sO excited to write the next part after this that im losing my mind skldfjlkdsfj anyway let me know what you think and all those juicy theories !!!

taglist: @faeriewoobin​ @sugarrimajins​ @atinyinwonderland​ @2504-life @lil7bluedragon @sparklychangbin​ @jeong-uwu​ @jeonartemis​ @anothershorthuman​ @xxbluestrifexx​ @yayhei​ @haotheheckk​ @noonawriter​

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

[starshiningsirius]

As fragile as a flower (Yandere Lilia x reader)

Thank you to @megan-is-mia for the scenario idea!

It stung so, so badly. The scream released expressed the pain from the person who had been hurt. The pain subsided somewhat, unlike the smell of burning flesh that never went away.

The fae chuckled in amusement at the girl's pain. Having warned her subtly, but not entirely of the effects the collar he placed on her would cause, every time she would try to escape.

"Dearest do be a good little one and stop trying, though I won't stop you it only hurts me far worse when you get hurt."

"You liar! if that was the truth then you wouldn't have placed this crap on me!" She yelled but it was shortly accompanied by coughs a great many like she was getting sicker and more frail by the moment.

Lilia walked over to her worry brought with his approach trying to use a spell that would temporarily heal her of her ailment. Since she didn't trust him with a potion or the medicine. As soon as he lifted his hand though she smacked it away.

"I'd rather die than be stuck here with an obsessive sadist." Was her response to the action she took causing the fae to sigh.

"Remind me again who was it that got herself here in the first place, you were so ignorant and without my help you wouldn't be here. It's not my fault your so delicate my dear. I only wish for your well being and in turn you could at least show a bit of gratitude." He said with a frown or maybe a pout. It actually made him look innocent as an angel.

What a goddamn lie.

* * *

Where had it all began?

Let's see all the way back at NRC it was just another normal day. Silver and Lilia were having tea with one another while discussing the day that had passed.

Silver happened to mention a girl he had saw in the infirmary. She was coughing very much like she was dying for air. He was about to get the school nurse but she stopped him.

"Wait, I'm fine they know already!" Was something along the lines of what she said.

Lilia was always curious and someone so weak and frail at this school just threw him for a loop. He wanted to go see the sickly one for himself.

He did find her back in the infirmary at lunchtime coughing yet again. He had scared the living daylights out of her when he teleported close.

"Sorry to startle you young one I can't help but wonder how someone like you could survive in a school like this?"

The question unnerved her to say the least as he pushed some of her hair behind her ear. The fae whipped out a charming smile as he had recalled to introduce himself.

"Ah, where are my manners? Lilia, Lilia Vanrouge. Pleasure to meet you my dear."

Though there first encounter was a bit unnerving they managed to get along for the most part. He'd scare her with his sudden appearances of course he found fun in seeing her scared. He'd also guide her to the infirmary during lunch to keep her on track to get some medcine.

They were good friends for the most part. Except for the fact that overtime Lilia just hadn't realized how much protection his friend had needed. How fragile she truly was until an incident had opened his eyes to what he had been missing.

That was when things really went south. She didn't arrive to their tea party after waiting 10 minutes. He knew for a fact her medicinal doses were at noon every day. This tea party was after class and she'd text him if she was going to be late. She didn't have any club activities either since Silver and Sebek both in the Equestrian club with her were with Malleus today. He already knows how Riddle gets when missing a member.

So where could she be?

It was nothing for him to teleport in the school and move about at visible incomprehensible speeds to find her. Of course he stopped when he heard laughter. The type of laughter of someone who had gotten away with a scheme. Peaking around the corner of the empty corridor he found the source of the laughter.

Savanaclaw students.

Someone was lying on the floor as well. He only just noticed them. When he finally realized who it was, it was like his soul left his body and consciousness slipped away.

He hated it, more than anything. He just had to take the anger he felt out on something. They were the cause of this and they would pay the price. Before he realized it they were dead, all of them. He had left their bodies there for someone else to find. It's not like the paintings saw him and there weren't any cameras in that hall anyway.

The thing no, person in his arms was who he was most worried about right now was far more important. Lilia couldn't even comprehend what he was feeling at the time. The sheer amount of worry and the increasing of his heartbeat, he didn't have time to think about it all.

He brought her back to the Diasomnia Lounge with a snap of his fingers leaving the violent, bloody, backdrop of the hallway behind. He placed her on the couch gently. Finally using his magic to the best of his ability to heal her.

He finally took a chance to breath after making sure her heart was still beating. She was still unconscious though. His heart was still pounding and he took a moment to reflect.

This wasn't like him at all. A lowly human protected by a powerful fae. As much anger as he showed but actually couldn't remember very well. He had lost it just after seeing her like that.

How ironic that someone as old and powerful as himself felt love toward someone so youthful and fragile as a flower. Her entire being in a school like this wasn't meant to be. He had come to wonder how she even got here.

Why someone as delicate and fragile as her would be placed in a school full of villainy?

* * *

That same event had flashed through his eyes at that moment in time. The bruised state she was in.

He couldn't help his sudden desire. To protect one of the few things he holds precious. This is different than Malleus, Silver, or Sebek. They're fully capable of protecting themselves. But her if he hadn't been there she would have probably died. It's only better if she stays in the castle where he can keep an eye on her.

He had a smirk on his face as he caressed the cheek of the girl he had fallen for. Eagerly casting the spell that would heal her momentarily.

He knew a spell that could heal her ailment completely but that would ruin the fragile image he had made of her in his head. After admiring the adorable glare she sent him for a second he finally opened his mouth to speak.

"Oh love as fragile as a flower you are. Certainly you don't belong at a school like that. I'll protect you from all the harm this world offers including yourself."

Masterlist

[groovymothwrites]

Dead By Daylight Actor AU? What?

A/N: Okay so hear me out.  I had brought this up to a friend and she thought htat it would be an interesting idea to write about so I’m gonna go for it.  I’ve been thinking about it on and off a bit to try and get some general ideas down on paper.  Hope you enjoy!

Word count: 1,324

- Actors are usually needed when they are intorducing a new chapter, or new things are being released in a tome.  

- Because Dead by Dayight is in the horror genre, there is a lot of practical effects that goes into making the characters come to life.  It’s probably the largest department, and the most expensive too.  A lot of the actors are incredibly patient individuals because their makeup takes so long to do.

- Evan, Philip, and Max were the first killers to be brought onto the project.  Each one of them was given a picture of the design of their character, and were put into a recording booth to record sounds for the characters.  This is the process that would be used for every other killer in the future.

- The first survivors that were brought onto the project were Dwight, Claudette, and Jake.  The same kind of process was used for the survivors as well, but they were given more information about their character’s personality than the killers.

- A lot of the cast and crew were really excited to work with iconic characters like Michael Myers, Freddy Kruger, and Pyramid Head.  All of them are some of the most iconic figures in horror movies and video games, and so there was a lot of hype when their respective chapters were released.

- None of the case knows when a chapter is going to be released.  This is on purpose because the crew likes to see the cast’s reaction to the next characters that are being added.  The cast’s reactions to the Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street additions are legendary.

- Much like her character, Sally acts like the mom of the Dead by Daylight family.  She has a few kids of her own, so when she’s at work she can’t help but to have her mom instincts kick in a bit.  She was very excited to take on the roll of the Nurse, the creepy nurse aesthetic was exciting and she fit into the role really well.

- Lisa’s practical effects makeup takes the longest to do.  “You know, when I was shown the design for the Hag I was completely blown away.  I had no idea that someone would be able to transform me into the Hag, and the first time I saw myself in the mirror I was blown away.” - Lisa Sherwood

- Kazan is actually Rin’s father outside of Dead by Daylight.  When the crew was looking for someone to cast for the Oni they asked the cast if they had any sort of reccommendations.  When they asked Rin, the first person she recommended to them was her father.  “My father is actually a seasoned actor in Japan.  He’s been in many movies, though many of them have never been released in the States.  The next day, my father got a call from the crew asking for him to come in and audition for the role.  The rest was history.” - Rin Yamaoka

- All of the members of the Legion went to school together.  Each member of the Legion was going to be a seperate audition, and so the first person the crew brought in to audition was Frank.  He was the one who brought up his high school/college friends Julie, Susie and Joey.  

- Pyramid Head’s actor is one of the most well seasoned actors besides Kazan.  He has essentially played the character since it’s first appearance in Silent Hill 2.  “When I was asked to join the Dead by Daylight team I was excited.  I’ve actually been a fan of it since it released a few years ago.  It also gave me the chance to play Pyramid Head again, who is probably one of the most iconic figures in horror video games.  I was really excited to see the other cast member’s reactions, it was great.” - Sankaku Atama (yes I know that it’s one of Pyramid Head’s Japanese translations, it was my friends idea)

- Sometimes when shooting is going long or when it’s going to be a busy day, everyone pitches in to either order food or throw a big potluck.  A lot of the cast are pretty good cooks, and a lot of the food that gets brought in are things in crock pots, dips, chips, pop, stuff along those lines.  Some of the cast do make an attempt to bring in some healthy stuff, all of the junk food that is normally consumed on set can be too much sometimes.

- With the release of a new chapter the cast and crew celebrate with a big dinner.  It’s a nice and fun experience, it gives everyone a chance to relax and have a good time while welcoming the newest members to the cast.  “After filming the promo for Spark of Madness some of the cast members came up to myself and Feng Min and asked us where we would want to go for dinner.  I was kind of confused at first, y’know, I had know idea that we had plans to go out.  We learned that it was a tradition amongst the cast and crew, and I think it;s a good tradition to have.” - Herman Carter 

- Charlotte Deshayes, one of the newest killers to be added to the Dead by Daylight cast, does in fact have a twin named Victor.  However, Charlotte is really the only one that does the acting.  Victor has a pretty wide career in voice acting for different cartoons, so he’s the voice behind the Victor that’s seen in Dead by Daylight.

- Pets are always welcome on set.  A lot of the cast members have dogs, and so when they need to bring in their dog because maybe a doggy daycare wasn’t open that day or it was full, the other cast members have no problem helping out and watching the pups.  Evan’s pitbull Sugar is probably the most spoiled dog in the world.  “The first time I had to bring Sugar onto the set was when she was a puppy.  The daycare that I would send her too on occasion was full and a lot of my family lives out of state so it wasn’t like my dad could come and watch her.  So I called and they said that I could bring her into work, and it was honestly a really good decision.  Max and Sugar made a new friend that day, and every time I bring her on set she spends most of her time with him.” - Evan MacMillan

- Caleb is more so well known in the indie movie genre than any well known movie genre.  He usually plays a grumpy old character or some sort of father-figure character, but he was very excited to be playing a bad guy.  “Being able to be a bad guy, a really really bad guy, for once was exciting.  It was a change of pace that I felt that I really needed after working in indie movies for most of my career.” - Caleb Quinn

- Max is hard of hearing, which made recording some of the noises a bit difficult.  Because he’s hard of hearing this makes some of the cast and crew a bit overportective of him.  He understands that what they’re doing has good intentions, but he’s grown accustomed to a world that was not meant for someone hard of hearing like him.  Max is able to speak, but usually accompanies what he’s saying with American Sign Language.  “Sometimes I wish that I’m not treated like a baby.  I know that they’re looking out for me, but I’ve spent over two decades living in a world that isn’t meant for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.  Sally tends to do this the most, but she’s a mom.  I just wish they would understand that I can take care of myself.” - Max Thompson Jr.

[ranger-report]

Theory: No One Is Real In Silent Hill 2

At last, for October, I present a Fan Theory nearly twenty years in the making. I’ve been thinking long and hard about this presentation, and for a moment nearly broke it up into a bunch of smaller posts. But where’s the fun in that? So below I present in its thirty-page entirety (I KNOW I’M SO SORRY) the idea that James Sunderland is the only physically “real” human in Silent Hill 2, and that everyone else is a manifestation created by the town. It’s a long, long, detailed long post, so if you’re here for it you have my thanks in advance. Go pee and get something to snack on.

Welcome to Silent Hill!

***

In the world of video games, true genre-defining experiences come few and far between. Often these benchmark releases inspire waves of imitators: some capture the spark of what made these masterpieces so memorable, most end up as cash grabs on a popular genre. Few games have inspired such imitation as the Silent Hill series. Provocative, psychological, and unafraid to tackle controversial content, the series is renowned for preying on player expectations, toying with perceptions of space and time and awareness. Many lesser games have made an attempt at reproducing the same magic, including later games in the same series.

Silent Hill 2 is singled out by fans and critics to be the best of the bunch. Hailed as one of the scariest games of all time, the story tackles the subjects of abuse (both emotional and physical), grief, and punishment. It does so in a very uniquely Silent Hill manner, in which nothing is real, and every step the player takes moves them closer to an abyss of terror. Developed by Team Silent, the group that created the first four titles in the series, Silent Hill 2 is categorized as a “survival horror” game, and the primary means of gameplay is that of tense combat with heavy emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving. Combat is by no means a “run and gun” escapade – the protagonist generally has a variety of melee weapons like a wood plank or a tire iron, and relatively few guns. Ammunition is sparse and requires constant management; the game recommends avoiding as many enemies as possible. Meanwhile, puzzles are mostly logic-based, involving riddles, the combining of objects to create a key, and choosing the proper item for the proper spot. The atmosphere is oppressively claustrophobic, even in its outdoor environments. Truly, this is an experience that is designed to make the player feel alone and isolated.

Despite this, Silent Hill 2 features a memorable cast; each character has distinct motivations and reasons for their journey to the town, but each person is also shrouded in mystery. After all, their purpose is not to tell their stories, but to enhance the journey of the protagonist. While at first it seems a given that these characters are all real – and they are presented as such – it is my belief that they are, in fact, manifestations of the town in order to provide extra torment for the protagonist, and also represent one of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This is a bit of a difficult pill to swallow at first glance, but the evidence is present throughout the game.

Before we dive into the reasons for this theory, let's first examine the story and setting of the game itself, in order to make sense of what is to come.

In my restless dreams, I see that town:

Silent Hill.

You promised you'd take me there again someday, but you never did.

Well, I'm alone there, now. In our “special place.”

Waiting for you.

-- Mary Shepard-Sunderland

In the opening of Silent Hill 2, James Sunderland reads these words, the beginning of a letter sent to him by his wife Mary. This is, of course, an impossible letter, as James quietly states that Mary has been dead for years, victim of a terminal illness. And yet, despite knowing this, James has come to the town of Silent Hill in order to understand how such an impossible letter could exist, and whether or not his late wife could truly be waiting for his arrival. For both the player and for James, this is an ominous way to begin the journey. Players familiar with the series will already know that the titular town conjures scenarios and creatures based on the psyche of the individuals in the town, making them see what it wants them to see. Those with, say, guilty consciences will see monsters and demons – innocents will only see an empty town. James, meanwhile, despite knowing full well that Mary is quite dead, is far too curious to understand what's going on here.

James begins his journey at a rest stop off the highway, above the town itself. This is the clearest view of the surroundings the game will give us until near the end. Forestry, tall trees, and waves of fog between them can be seen, with a large lake in the background beyond the town. Leaving the rest stop, James – and the player – is forced to walk a long path from the rest stop to the town, a full twenty minutes in-game. On all sides, the fog grows thicker, and the sounds of mysterious wildlife roaming the woods can be heard. As James enters the outskirts of Silent Hill, he cuts through a cemetery off the main road. Here he surprises Angela Orosco, who is sitting in front of a headstone, lost in thought. Immediately presented as anxious, cautious, stuttering and shy, Angela is a nineteen-year-old who claims to be searching for her mother – someone she accidentally refers to as “Mama” before correcting her choice of words to “Mother.” James tells her that he's looking for someone also, admitting that she may or may not be there. When he asks Angela if he's headed in the right direction of the town, Angela attempts to warn him off, saying that there's something wrong with the town, that he doesn't want to go there. James cuts her off, stating that he doesn't care if it's dangerous or not.

Returning to his quest, James finally enters Silent Hill. Here the fog is at its thickest, and the streets are clearly abandoned and in disrepair. James, thinking he sees someone walking through the fog in the distance, diverts course until he comes to a small construction site. A radio, blaring odd static, lies beside a dead body. James, cautiously, goes inside to pick it up, and turns around to face a strange, warped creature that looks like a shapeless human wrapped in a straitjacket made of flesh. In self-defense, James grabs a plank of wood and is forced to beat the creature to death. As he leaves, he thinks he hears Mary's voice coming from the radio, but the words can't be made out. He continues on. Now more of these creatures are walking along the streets, shuffling, shuddering, spewing acid from their gaping mouths if he gets too close. James can fight, or he can run, but out here where the enemies are multiple and fast, running is the best course of action.

James understands that his first objective is to reach Rosewater Park, where he and Mary shared an intimate moment during their vacation. But the streets have been cut off, so he decides to cut through the Wood Side Apartments. Inside it is dark, strange, and full of noises off-camera that exists solely to set James and the player on edge. In the apartment complex, he sees a key resting on the other side of some gated bars, which looks like it might be the one he needs to cross from one building to the next. As he attempts to reach through for it, an eight-year-old little girl appears out of nowhere. She kicks the key away and stomps on James's hand, laughing as she disappears into the darkness. This is the first living person James has seen in the town proper, and she has essentially made his life more difficult.

More creatures haunt the hallways of the apartment complex, including one that James sees standing on the opposite side of what look like prison bars in the middle of a hall. Tall, wearing a red triangular helmet and a flesh butcher's smock, this creature is called “Pyramid Head.” For now it merely stands opposite James, staring at him motionlessly. Later on, James will encounter Pyramid Head again, this time as it appears to be sexually assaulting another of the monsters. Hiding, James is forced to shoot at Pyramid Head with a gun he found in the apartments until it leaves on its own.

While searching through the apartment complex, James enters a room to discover Angela lying on the floor in front of a full-length mirror, holding a kitchen knife. As she gazes at the knife longingly, James tries to talk her out of whatever it is she's thinking of doing, stating that there's “always another way.” Angela's response is to compare the two of them, noting that it's easier to run away from their problems. She speaks in slow, exhausted tones, a stark difference from the stuttering hesitance of their earlier encounter. “Besides,” she concludes, still staring at the knife, “it's what we deserve.” James denies this, startled by the implication that he would consider such a way out. They continue to talk, James calmly and confidently holding Angela's attention, before they both admit to each other that neither of them have found the people they're looking for. James lets slip that he wouldn't be able to find his wife anyway since she's dead, which causes Angela to become nervous and animated again, and she gets up to leave. James says that they should go together since her warning about the town proved to be true, but she rejects the offer, claiming she'd only slow down his progress. James asks what she's going to do with the knife. Hesitating, Angela asks if James will hold on to it for her, that she's unsure what she'll do if she takes it with her. But when James reaches forward to accept the knife Angela screams and holds it out in defense. Surprised, James backs away as Angela has a near-breakdown, claiming that she's sorry and that she's “been bad.” She quickly sets down the knife and leaves the room in a flustered rush. James takes the knife, and it is worth noting that the knife cannot be used as a weapon in game, only as an item to be examined in his inventory.

James enters one of the apartments to discover Eddie, a portly twenty-something in an ill-fitting polo shirt and backwards cap, hunched over a toilet, violently throwing up. Eddie found a corpse inside of a fridge out in the living room after being chased in by some of the monsters, and a panicked Eddie became nauseous at the sight of it. In a difficult-to-stomach cutscene, Eddie continues to vomit while James talks to him. Eddie adamantly proclaims his innocence in regards to the dead body, claiming that he “didn't do it” and that he's not from Silent Hill. James, oddly, continues to converse with Eddie calmly, as though he's ignoring the man's explosive vomit. He asks if Eddie knows Pyramid Head. Confused, Eddie says he doesn't know what that is, only that he's seen some monsters that have freaked him out thus far. James infers that something brought Eddie to Silent Hill, but that whatever it is, he should try to leave town as soon as possible. Both men tell each other to be careful before James leaves Eddie to finish his business.

After several puzzles and strange occurrences, James is confronted by Pyramid Head, who is now wielding a huge knife that it has to drag behind it. Forced into a narrow room, the player must guide James back and forth, avoiding Pyramid Head's slow attacks, while shooting round after precious round into the beast. Eventually, an air raid siren can be heard in the distance; Pyramid Head descends a set of stairs that are submerged underwater, leaving James to his fate. The water drains, James follows – and the monster is gone.

Leaving the apartments, James finds the little girl who kicked him in an alley out back, perched on a high wall. Her name is Laura. She's precocious, bratty, and stubborn. James tries to get her to come with him, since there are monsters running around that could hurt her, but it seems as though Laura doesn't see the monsters. During their chat, she tells James that he “didn't love Mary,” and refuses to answer any other questions before running away into the fog.

As very confused James continues through Silent Hill, he arrives at Rosewater Park, hoping that this is where he will find Mary. But instead, James finds Maria, a woman who resembles Mary so much that he notes that she could be her twin. Yet Maria quickly establishes her stark difference from Mary. First, with her clothing: where the game shows images of Mary wearing a conservative pink cardigan and long skirt, Maria wears a revealing purple top and leopard print miniskirt. Her walk is sultry, her demeanor flirtatious, and her gaze holds a mischievous “come hither” look. Even her hair shows the change: where Mary had a darker auburn hue, Maria clearly has bleached hair, her brown roots prominent, a tint of red at the tips. James, taken aback by how different this woman is from his wife, at first decides to leave her be. But Maria quickly requests to come along with, wondering aloud if he was going to just leave her alone in a town surrounded by monsters. Guiltily, James tries to avoid this, but surrenders to letting her tag along. She asks if there's another place that Mary could be, and he realizes that they had stayed at the Lakeview Hotel, on an island in the middle of Toluca Lake. Together, the two of them set off to find a way there.

As the player guides James through the town, Maria follows at a decently close pace. Not quite as fast as James, but not so slow that she can't keep up. The artificial intelligence designed for Maria allows the player to not worry if Maria is nearby or not when running from or fighting monsters. In other games, the mechanics would force the player to worry about their companions, but not so Maria; she always catches up, and no matter how far away she is when James goes through a door into a new environment, Maria is immediately waiting on the other side. This ties in to the theme of Maria needing James to take care of her in the story.

Discovering that the highway leading out of town towards the docks has sunken into the earth, James turns around to seek out alternate means of getting to the hotel. Searching through the town, he comes across the Bowl-O-Rama, and decides to go inside just in case he can find any supplies worth taking along. Maria, notably, refuses to go with, stating that she hates bowling and would prefer to remain outside for him.

Inside, James hears two voices talking to each other: Laura, and Eddie. The scene cuts away from James, and focuses instead on these two characters. This is significant in that this is the only time in the game where two people who are not James are having a conversation, and their topic is significant. Laura mocks Eddie's weight, calling him a “gutless fatso,” and asks why he's running away from the police, why he can't just apologize for what he's done. Somehow he's gotten hold of some pizza, which he gladly eats while Laura sits beside him. Eddie states that he would never be forgiven for his transgressions, and continues eating. Laura mocks him for being a coward. Again, this is tellingly the only conversation in the game that James is not a part of, nor does it exist for his benefit in the game. It's only for the player to see and understand.

After this cutscene, James enters the bowling alley and finds Eddie. He asks Eddie if he's alone, which Eddie cautiously admits that he isn't. Laura rolls a bowling ball their way to get their attention, which causes James to see her briefly as she leaves the building. James tries to get Eddie to follow, but he declines, stating that Laura already said she was fine on her own, and that she claimed “a fatso like me would only slow her down.” James, in disgust, says, “Forget you!” before chasing after Laura. Outside, Maria tells James that she saw Laura headed towards the hospital, and they shouldn't leave her alone with the town being the way it is.

James follows Laura to Brookhaven Hospital at Maria's behest, and after Maria stops to rest in one of the rooms he goes on alone. Maria, it should be noted, has claimed to be hungover, but has developed a nasty cough and is taking pills from a prescription bottle. James, pressing on, eventually discovers the little girl playing with teddy bears. Laura is at first shocked to see James, but he assures her he is friendly and isn't going to hurt her or be angry. He just wants to know how she knows Mary. Laura, it turns out, shared a hospital room and nurse with Mary – only the week before. Hearing this, James shouts that Laura is a liar, which she brusquely receives, but she claims that there's something for James from Mary in the hospital and leads him to another room. Once inside, James finds himself locked in with a group of monsters hanging from the ceiling, tricked by Laura. James is knocked unconscious and awakens in an alternate form of the hospital to find Maria.

Maria is less than pleased that he left her alone, demanding comfort as she runs into his arms. But their reunion is short lived: as they attempt to flee the hospital, Pyramid Head appears and pursues them down a narrow corridor that leads to an elevator. James makes it, but the doors shut before Maria can get inside too. She is able to reach her arm in and flails for help as Pyramid Head stabs her to death. Grief stricken at watching Maria die, the woman who looks exactly like his late wife, James sees Laura running away through the front window, he decides to push himself onward. It's telling that as he exits the hospital, the town has changed from day to night, enveloped now in darkness as well as fog. After leaving the hospital, James attempts to find a way to cross Toluca Lake to get to Lakeview Hotel on a nearby island and find the last potential “special place.” In doing so, he discovers a hidden entrance to a strange underground prison beneath the Silent Hill Historical Society. Before this, however, James finds a painting in the historical society of an executioner surrounded by bodies in cages – the executioner looks exactly like Pyramid Head.

After a terrifying descent through impossible spaces – vertical hallways, vast drops into abyss-like blackness – James emerges into the underground prison. Eddie, somehow, is there as well. However, his aloof demeanor has been replaced with a chilling lack of empathy. Sitting on the ground brandishing a revolver, Eddie flinches as James shines his flashlight on him. He proceeds to smile vacantly, stating, “Killing a person ain't no big deal. Just put the gun to their head – pow!” He mimes shooting himself in the head as he does this. Lying on the table beside Eddie is a dead body with a head wound; Eddie claims it wasn't his fault, that the person was looking at him funny. James tries to rationalize with Eddie, telling him he can't just kill someone because of how they look at him. Visibly confused, Eddie asks why not, before continuing to reminisce about a “stupid dog” who'd also had it coming. After this, Eddie chuckles nervously, claiming everything he said was all just a joke, and that he needs to get going. As Eddie opens a door to go deeper into the prison, James asks, “You're going out there alone?” Eddie replies enthusiastically, “Yeah.”

Questing through the prison, James is shocked to discover Maria sitting on a chair inside one of the cells. Confused, James tries to speak to her, but her demeanor is odd: she talks about things that only Mary would know, including a videotape the two of them made together while at Lakeview Hotel. Stunned, James asks if she's actually Maria, to which she brusquely responds, “I'm not your Mary.” She implies a sexual reward if James finds a way around to unlock the cell, but by the time he discovers this path, Maria's body is on the cell's bed, bloodied, dead once again. Struggling with this, James forces himself to move on.

Angela appears in the prison labyrinth as well. Walking through a hallway, James finds scattered newspapers all over the ground, and if examined, reveal a news story about a lumberjack named Thomas Orosco, found with his throat slit in his own house. Moving onward, James hears Angela's voice scream: “Daddy! Please! No!” Rushing through a nearby doorway, James comes across a terrifying sight. Before him is a room made of fleshy material, with a television and makeshift furniture. Lining the walls are mechanical pistons which pump constantly and out of sync with each other. Angela is on her back, desperately trying to get away from a monster. Unlike anything else seen up until now, the monster resembles a person lying on top of another person in a bed, covered by a topsheet of flesh, and a twisted mouth emerging from the front. It shuffles forward on two legs with insidious humping movement. According to the game, this monster is called the “Abstract Daddy.”

James protects Angela and kills the monster; once this is done, Angela leaps to her feet, kicking the creature over and over before picking up the television and crashing it down on the Abstract Daddy, finishing it off. James tells her she can relax, but she screams at him, telling him not to tell her what to do. She accuses him of only wanting “one thing,” and that if he does, he should just force her and beat her, “like he used to do.” As she says this last part, she points at the dead Abstract Daddy, and breaks down, crying and dry heaving. When James tries to comfort her, she pushes him away, saying he makes her sick. She calls him a liar for claiming that Mary died from her illness. Departing with a sneer, she implies that James probably wanted to be with someone else.

Eddie's final appearance comes just before the end of the prison. James enters a cold storage room to discover Eddie standing over yet another dead body, but his mood here has deepened into something far more morose and morbid. James asks if Eddie killed this man as well; Eddie starts to shout about how it was deserved, how the man always called him a fat piece of shit, among other instances of verbal abuse. “It doesn't matter whether you're smart, dumb, ugly, pretty, it's all the same once you're dead!” Eddie shouts, concluding that “a corpse can't laugh.” James asks if Eddie has gone nuts; Eddie decides that James is just like everyone else, laughing at him behind his back, and points his gun at James. The player takes over, forced to fight Eddie, and after a few minutes of action Eddie retreats deeper into the meat locker.

The next room where Eddie has retreated is dark, foggy with cold air, and full of large meat slabs hanging from the ceiling. The meats are all wearing pants with suspenders. James proceeds cautiously as Eddie taunts him from the shadows. Eddie asks James if he understands how it feels to be made fun of just for how he looks. Eddie continues, ranting about how he'd shot a dog because it taunted him, before shooting the owner – his personal bully – in the knee. He laughs about how difficult it would be for the man to play football after that. James tries to tell Eddie that he needs help if he thinks it's okay to kill people, to which Eddie scoffs, telling James that the two of them are the same. After all, he says, Silent Hill called to James as well.

Eddie pops out of the shadows, and the player takes over for another battle. This time, once enough hits are landed, James kills Eddie. Once Eddie has fallen, James rushes over to his dead body, and shows remorse, shameful that he's killed a human being. From here, James leaves the prison and finds a dock with a rowboat waiting outside. He uses it to cross Toluca Lake and get to the hotel.

Startled in the hotel lobby by a loud noise, James finds Laura at a grand piano, having just struck a loud chord to get James's attention. Here they finally have a conversation about their purpose: Laura is here to try and find Mary based on a letter that Mary left for the girl, in which Mary says she's sorry for leaving and is in a beautiful place now. Mistaking this to mean she is in Silent Hill, Laura has come here to find Mary. Also of note in the letter is that Mary tells Laura not to hate James for being “surly” and for not visiting the hospital much, claiming that James is very sweet deep down. Mary specifically says that she had hoped to adopt Laura. James, learning Laura's age and recent interaction with Mary, is forced to admit that Mary couldn't have been dead for three years, and in fact may still be alive.

Upstairs however, James discovers the room he and Mary shared, as well as their videotape. It's a home video of a sickly Mary saying how much she loves Silent Hill before succumbing to a coughing fit. The image changes to one of Mary lying in bed; James leans over her, kisses her forehead, and then smothers her to death. It's this point in the game where both James and the player are confronted with the truth. All around the hotel there have been various video and audio cues that imply the nature of James and Mary's relationship during her final days: a tense, abusive atmosphere in which Mary constantly lashed out at James in anger due to her own negative self-worth, only to adopt a pleading, loving tone after fighting. James, bitter from years of slow decay and sexual frustration, opted to end Mary's pain. Was it a selfish act, or an altruistic one? The story leaves that to the player to decide. James is shown to be in torment over his actions, the memory of which he either repressed on his own or was altered by the powers of the town.

Contemplating the truth of his repressed memories after viewing it, James is found by Laura. He confesses his actions to the girl. Laura screams at James that she hates him, wanting to know why he did it, demanding James bring Mary back, telling James he never really did care about Mary. Filled with sorrow, James can only tell Laura that he's sorry, and that the Mary she's looking for isn't here. Laura leaves without another word. James is spurred on to keep searching for Mary when he hears her voice come from the final, static-filled moments of the video tape, calling for him, saying she's waiting.

Angela's final appearance is in the Lakeview Hotel. James enters a hallway that is engulfed in flames – something odd as the previous area had not been. Angela is here, standing at the bottom of a staircase, staring up into the fire that is consuming the hotel above her. At first she confuses James for her mother, and Angela is excited to see him before realizing that who she's seeing isn't real. She apologizes and thanks him for saving her before, but wishes that he hadn't actually done so. She says that her mother had told her once that she deserved the things that had been done to her, and when James refutes that, Angela simply asks for him not to pity her. After all, she says, what is he going to do? Love her? Take care of her? James doesn't answer. “That's what I thought,” Angela replies. She then holds out her hand and demands her knife back. James, showing genuine care for her, says he won't. She accuses him of holding onto it so he can use it, but James states that he would never kill himself. Hanging her head in sadness, Angela turns and begins to walk up the staircase, fire burning up part of the stairs behind her, effectively cutting off James from following. “It's hot as hell in here,” James muses. Angela's final words are, “You see it, too? For me, it's always like this.” Then she turns and ascends into the inferno.

Leaving the hotel, James finds a room with not one, but two Pyramid Heads, each holding a long spear. Maria is suspended upside-down on a rack, begging for James to help her, but the Pyramid Heads execute her in front of him. Up til now, James has slowly found more and more evidence of the town having supernatural properties, of the myths and legends surrounding it. Realizing that his entire journey has been placed before him by the town, he admits to his need for punishment and faces down the Pyramid Heads. Knowing that their purpose is complete, both Pyramid Heads execute themselves. James then climbs to the top of the hotel to discover one of two outcomes: Mary or Maria, waiting for his arrival. And, depending on his actions during the game, his ultimate fate.

This is an exploration of the psyche unlike any in gaming. Each place he visits holds clues to what is happening both to the town and to his fragile psyche, in the form of strange creatures and the humans he meets. At the end of his quest, James discovers that he has been searching for punishment for his actions this entire time, which has been granted by the strange power of the town itself. Established in the previous game, the town of Silent Hill has the ability to warp reality around those who are drawn towards it, people who are usually tormented by something horrific in their past. How this can be so is never really explained, only hinted at, particularly with the information that the land used to be a sacred place to native tribes that used to inhabit it. Previously, it had manifested a scenario based on the pain and suffering of a powerful psychic girl who been horribly burned as part of a ritual of the town cult. In this scenario, the Silent Hill has taken James's need for punishment and provided it tenfold, but because James is unsure of exactly what he feels he deserves, it also provides multiple angles with which to torture him. Even the outcome of the game itself is open-ended; based on the player's actions during the story, one of four endings will commence with a finale befitting James's decisions. None of the endings are considered the “true” ending by the developers, leaving players to define for themselves what should – or should not – happen to James. These decisions are based solely on items and characters James interacts with. Each decision is subtle, never overt, and first playthroughs often end with James leaving the town in peace. But each finale is very specific, and I believe is represented by each of the four characters James meets in the town.

MARIA

If, during the course of the game, the player has James spent significant time with Maria – including returning to the rooms she's either sleeping in or being held in to check on her – and if the player is careful to ensure Maria takes no damage from the monsters of the town, James will get the “Maria” ending, which is one of two endings that directly relate to one of the other characters.

This is the only ending in which James actually finds Mary at the top of the hotel. Realizing that he'd rather be with Maria now, he confronts Mary. Angered that he's choosing a lesser woman, Mary transforms into a monster, forcing James to kill her in response. After he does, he returns to Rosewater Park where he first met Maria, to embrace her once more and leave town together. As they walk back to James's car, the rest of Mary's letter is read aloud: Mary details her sadness at her stay in hospice care, her sorrow for being so terrible and mean towards James, and assuring him that their relationship was something she'd cherished over the years. She assures James that he had made her happy, and for James to live for himself and do what he needs to do to live.

After the letter is read, James and Maria arrive at his car. She begins to cough, much in the same way the player has seen Mary coughing in flashbacks. Ominously, James has this to say: “You'd better get that looked at.”

Through the events of the game, it is heavily implied that Maria is a construct of the town's powers, an idealized version of what James had wished Mary had been. Despite sensing this, James still chooses her in this ending. After his initial quest to find Mary, James, it seems, did not hold enough devotion to his late wife to see it through to the end. Knowing now that she's dead and gone and that nothing can bring her back, he has resorted to bargaining. He spent so long during Mary's sickness frustrated at being unable to have his life, that with the attractive option of Maria he has once again taken an easier way out – a way that he feels he deserves to have. “What if,” he must think, “I can have the Mary I always wanted without having to deal with Mary's death?” Yet, with the final moments foreshadowing a similar fate for Maria as Mary had, it seems as though the town is not as merciful as it might appear.

What further fleshes out this idea is a bonus chapter for the game that initially only came with the XBOX version before being added to the PlayStation rerelease. Titled “Born From A Wish,” the player assumes the role of Maria before she meets up with James at Rosewater Park. During the short chapter, Maria comes to understand that she was created for a single purpose: to try and entice James into being with her. She wrestles with this notion, even going so far as to put a gun to her head as her only option of getting out. After all, what if he rejects her? Will she be forced to stay in this town forever if that's the case? Finally, Maria accepts her fate and her purpose, and she begins her walk towards the park to meet James.

With the confirmation that Maria was manifested by the town in accordance with James's unconscious desires – even going so far as to reveal that Maria's look was based on a dancer at the local club Heaven's Night – this now opens the door to the possibility that the other characters in the game have also been manifested by the town to aid in James's torment. What's different about Maria is that it is explicitly stated in the game that she was created by the town, where it is naturally assumed by the player that the other characters are in fact real, and have been called to the town for various reasons.

Now that we have some details of the plot and the understanding of how these manifestations work out of the way, let's focus on the individual details of the other characters in the game.

LAURA

In many ways, Laura is a metaphorical hook on the town's fishing pole, bating James into going deeper into the town to discover the truth behind Mary's letter.

After viewing the videotape in the hotel, Laura is not seen again unless the player achieves the “Leave” ending. There are a few key actions one must take in order to get this. First, the player must examine the letter from Mary that James has been carrying since the beginning of the game. This item stays in James's inventory during the whole game, and can be examined multiple times, as it should be to ensure this ending. It's worth noting the fact that, late in the game, examining the note again reveals a blank piece of paper; there never was a letter written by Mary asking James to come to Silent Hill. He made it up in his head. Or, perhaps it was the town's influence.

James must also keep his health meter high throughout the course of the game, consuming items to keep his health from going too low, demonstrating a desire to live. Also necessary for this ending is listening to a lengthy conversation between Mary and James – a memory – that plays as James walks through a long hallway towards the rooftop. It's mostly dialogue from Mary; she is heard yelling at James for bringing her flowers, claiming to be disgusting after the effects of the disease and the medication keeping her alive, shouting at him to go away, that it would be better for her if the doctors just killed her. Then, the turn: crying, Mary begs James to stay with her instead, to tell her that everything will be okay. The player can ignore this conversation if they run quickly through the hall before the dialogue is finished, but in order to get the “Leave” ending, they need to listen to the whole audio. After fulfilling these tasks, James has demonstrated his devotion to Mary and his remorse for killing her.

When he reaches the hotel rooftop, he discovers Maria dressed as Mary, and he confronts her, telling her he doesn't need her anymore. She transforms into a monster and James is forced to kill her. In the cinematic that follows, James finds himself in Mary's sick room. Mary tells him that she wanted the pain to end and James tells her that's why he killed her, to take away her suffering. But, he continues, he admits that she'd said she didn't want to die, and that his actions were selfish. Mary sees the sadness in his face, and tells him to move on with his life, to live and to be happy.

Mary's letter is read aloud again, this time over a shot of the cemetery outside Silent Hill. It should be noted that the same letter is read aloud over each of the endings, taking on a different meaning with each scenario. As the reading ends, we see Laura walk confidently through the cemetery, following by James, and together they walk into the distance until they are swallowed by the fog.

“Leave” is considered by many to be the closest to a definitive ending for the game. James has faced his actions, committed to atoning for his sins, and finds redemption in the innocent girl who also came to find Mary. Since they are leaving together, it's reasonable to assume that James intends to adopt Laura in the same way that Mary had intended to. Or had she? Considering the manifestations of the town, and the fact that Mary's “letter” turns out to be blank by the end of the game, it's very possible that Laura's letter was also blank, something for James to see what he – or maybe the town – wanted. Laura represents moving on, similarly to how Maria did. But with Laura, James sees a piece of his late wife in the little girl, the daughter that they'd never gotten the chance to have together. According to the developers, Laura is a real person who came to the town, hinting that she'd hitched a ride with Eddie. The official novelization of the game follows Laura for a brief segment, seeing the town through her eyes. But this shouldn't stop us from considering that Laura is a manifestation of the town. After all, Maria told James multiple times that she was “real” and had a personality and memories of her own. Laura is also presented as an eight-year-old girl who somehow left the hospital she was staying in and found her way to this abandoned town, and is running around happy-go-lucky without a care. Even if we accept that Eddie gave her a ride into town, it still doesn't explain how a child so young could possibly have reached this place by herself without any other means. And let us consider Laura's role, drawing James deeper and deeper into the town to uncover the truth of his sins. Where Maria is happy to distract James and take him away from Mary, Laura's actions throughout the story are the catalyst for him to continue. She kicks the key out of his reach at the apartments, forcing him to find a new way around and encounter Pyramid Head. When she leaves both the bowling alley and the hospital, James follows her. Inside the hospital, it is here where James is first forced to consider that perhaps Mary hasn't been dead for as long as he thought, and after this Laura locks him in a room with monsters that forces him again to confront Pyramid Head. This is culminates at the hotel, where her words push James towards the truth, and her letter implies that Mary would have wanted to adopt this young girl. Finally, she judges him after viewing the tape, saying she hates him, and that he never loved Mary. She wants Mary back, and if James finds the “Leave” ending, it turns out that he does, too – but he can't have her. Here is where he must find acceptance. This spark of redemption, this eight year old girl, will have to suffice. Except she is just as false as the rest of the manifestations of the town, a fake promise of hope and happiness. James might believe he has found redemption, but at what cost? Notably, in the ending cutscene, Laura is the one leading James as they leave the town, as she has been leading him the entire game.

ANGELA

Utilizing symbolism and a “show don't tell” quality, this next story is one that the game trusts the audience to infer, but with enough detail as to make what is unsaid unmistakable. So, in order to understand the true meaning behind the “In Water” ending, we look to examine the story and interactions with the first character James meets on his journey: Angela Orosco.

Angela's knife is a key item for receiving the “In Water” ending of the game. James must examine the knife in his inventory at least once in order to trigger the potential of the ending, more times to ensure it. James must also let his health meter run into the red, staying at a fairly consistent – and dangerous – level close to death. This shows James's lack of care whether he's alive or not, which falls in line with the suicidal implications of Angela's knife. Maintaining a good distance from Maria and listening to the audio cues from Mary in the hotel are important. There is also a diary on the roof of Brookhaven Hospital, detailing the suicidal thoughts of a former patient there, that must be read. If these conditions are met, “In Water” will happen.

On the hotel rooftop, James discovers Maria dressed as Mary. Just like with “Leave,” he tells Maria that he's done with her, causing her to transform into a monster and he kills her. Once this happens, James finds himself next to Mary's sick bed, just as with “Leave.” But the dialogue here is different: James again admits that he didn't kill Mary to only ease suffering but to get his life back, however this time Mary doesn't bother pointing out James's sadness. Instead, she simply tells him that he killed her and now he's suffering for it, and that's enough. Mary begins to violently cough before dying once more, and a grieving James picks her body up off of the bed and walks off with her.

The screen turns black. We can hear the sound of footsteps, and a car door open and shut. James speaks aloud, a monologue, saying that he finally understands why he came to this town, wondering why he was so afraid to face it. In the background, the engine kicks over, revving to high speed. James admits that without Mary, he has nothing. The car is heard speeding down the road, growing louder and louder with intensity – before it abruptly cuts to silence. “Mary,” James says, “now we can be together.”

Mary's letter is once more read aloud, but this time over an underwater scene. Light from the surface can be seen, air bubbles rise past. It appears as though James has taken Mary's body back to his car and driven into the lake. There is no sight of him leaving, no further words from him, only the somber silence of the water and implication that James, after all of his confidence that he would never kill himself, has finally gone and done just that. It is one of the darkest and most melancholy endings to a video game ever written.

Now, we must examine the ties that Angela has to “In Water,” and what presents the notion that she is a fictional manifestation of the town rather than a real person. Firstly, it should go without saying that the theme of suicide is the most obvious tie. Angela wants to kill herself rather than face the trauma of her past, and so too does James. One of the implications hammered home over and over is that Mary was verbally abusive towards James near the end of her illness, something she addresses in her letter at the end of the game. She understands what she has done to him, and that he may hate her for it. James, for his part, admits that part of him killed her because he hated her, because he wanted his life back. Angela, too, did the same thing, only for her it was an act of survival. We can easily come to the conclusion that her father was physically and sexually abusing her based on the creature design and Angela's words. The sexual nature of the room where James fights the Abstract Daddy – with the pistons pumping in and out of the fleshy walls – brings this to a head. Killing her father, much like James killing his wife, caused a break in her. Wandering through Silent Hill to find her “Mama,” a source of matronly solace, is the opposite of James searching for his own wife, a woman who never had the chance to be a mother.

Reflections and opposites are what define the relationship between James and Angela, and I believe seals the notion that she is a manifestation. James has blonde hair, Angela has dark brown; James wears a dark grey polo under a green jacket with blue jeans, Angela wears a light grey turtleneck and red pants. When James and Angela meet in the apartments, most of their conversation takes place in a reflection. As she lies on the floor in front of a full length mirror, the camera primarily focuses on her, with James captured in the reflection. One shot in particular is telling: the camera looks down from the ceiling, Angela on the right, her reflection on the left, taking up equal sides of the screen, as she gets up off of the floor to turn to James. Before this scene, it's worth noting that Pyramid Head, James's own personal punisher, had been seen carrying no weapons whatsoever. But after Angela hands over the knife to James, when we next see Pyramid Head it is possessing a blade so large it has to drag the knife behind it. It's even referred to as the “Great Knife.” Angela provided James with more fuel for his own punishment, just as Laura led him closer to the hidden truth, just as Maria tried to pull him away from it.

For most of the game, James sees the town as water damaged from the fog. He sees wet environments, dripping water. The theme of water is present throughout the course of the game, except for one glaring instance: Angela's hallway of fire. For her, the world is always aflame, burning, the heat of her trauma a constant reminder. James, on the other hand, is always surrounded by water and drowning. At the end of their stories, when each of them decide to commit suicide, Angela does so by walking upwards into the flames, and James goes downward into the water. James has spent most of the game staunchly denying any desire or ability to commit suicide, but Angela has always known; in fact, she's embraced it. They are opposites in every capacity, down to gender identity, which is particularly of note in that Angela is the only female identifying member of the cast who has no relation to Mary. When we first meet James, he is introduced to us staring at his reflection in a dirty bathroom mirror. And when James and Angela first meet? She attempts to warn him away, to not go into the town, but James's reaction is exactly the opposite. He's going to the town to find what he wants, danger or no. Somewhere, a part of him was trying to get him to turn around, to run away, and that piece manifested in Angela's words.

It should also be noted that the game's creators have confirmed that from the opening of the game Mary's body is in the back seat of James's car. Her death is incredibly recent, within the last couple of days or hours. Perhaps James brought her here with the intention of committing suicide the entire time, having succumbed to the trauma of killing her, to the intense feeling of depression that he now carries.

But even if the previous evidence of opposites and reflections in the two characters has not been enough to convince you of their relation to each other, consider this: each of the first three Silent Hill games features a portrait of the main character on the front box art. Silent Hill 2?

The face on the cover is Angela's.

EDDIE

Up until this point it has been a relatively easy task to link the previous three characters to the endings of Silent Hill 2. Showing the relation of Eddie Dombrowski to the hidden “Rebirth” ending is a little more difficult considering both his story and the events necessary to unlock this ending. And yet, there is enough compelling evidence to demonstrate how this seemingly buffoonish man is essential to understanding the final ending to Silent Hill 2.

What's interesting about Eddie's story is how similarly it follows James's. While Mary did not bully James over his looks, she did verbally abuse him over a long period of time before he finally gave into his torment and killed her. So, too, did Eddie spend years being tortured verbally by those around him, the football player in particular, just because of his weight. Over a period of time, this harsh treatment turned the mild boy into a violent man, finally giving in to his urges and killing the bully's dog before shooting the bully in the knee. This is the event that Eddie was referring to in his conversation with Laura, saying that no one would ever forgive him for what he'd done; James no doubt felt much the same way after killing Mary. James laments his actions, aghast that he has killed a person. It turns out that Eddie is not his first murder, nor is it the only one done in “self-defense.” After all, with years of abuse stacked up, James wanted his life back and to not feel hurt anymore. In self-defense of his own emotions and life, he killed Mary, convincing himself that it was to end her pain as well.

But, unlike the other three characters we've examined, James's interactions with Eddie do not directly lead to one of the game's four endings. “Rebirth” is not an ending one can even achieve on the first playthrough of the game – it is only on starting up a new game after completing the story once can the player discover the necessary items to unlock “Rebirth.” There are four: the White Crism, the Obsidian Goblet, the Book of Lost Memories, and the Book of the Crimson Ceremony. Each of these items are found in locations scattered across Silent Hill, and without all four the Rebirth ending will not occur. If all of them are in James's possession, it will not matter what he did during the course of the game, or what ending was being led up to. “Rebirth” will take over, assuming James has been pursuing this course of action all along. As usual, James will find himself on the rooftop of the hotel, confront Maria disguised as Mary, battle her, and kill her. But then the player is treated to something unusual out of these endings: there is no scene of reconciliation with Mary on her deathbed, and Mary's letter is not read aloud. Instead, once Maria has been killed, the game fades in to James rowing his boat across Toluca Lake through the fog, with what appears to be a body in the boat with him. James narrates over the visual:

Mary. Forgive me for waking you. But without you, I just can't go on.

I can't live without you, Mary.

This town, Silent Hill...

The Old Gods haven't left this place...

And they still grant power to those who venerate them...

Power to defy even death...

As James speaks, the camera slowly pulls up and away from the row boat, which becomes more and more difficult to see in the swirling mist. But as it does, it reveals that James is rowing towards a previously unknown island in the lake. It is small, covered in trees, and has a dock for tying a boat to. As James approaches, he sighs, “Ah, Mary...” before disappearing behind the island, out of view of the player, the island the last thing we see before the credits roll.

What's chilling about this ending are the implications it delivers. First, is that the powers of the town are not simply metaphoric or metaphysical, but extend beyond the veil of the natural world. The first Silent Hill dealt with the cult who lived in the town, and their obsession with the Old Gods, but Silent Hill 2 chooses to focus more on the psychological horror of the town and the effects on the mind. While each of the monsters in the second game have horrific visuals, they can all be traced back to the trauma impacting James from his time during Mary's last days. Even Pyramid Head is explained through a painting found in the Historical Society of an executioner that bears the creature's image. But here, with this ending, Silent Hill 2 at last announces the connection to the first game in the sense of the Old Gods and the dark forces that inhabit the town. James is now crossing those lines, once a victim of them in his mind, now rising to the understanding of how to manipulate those powers to his benefit...if he venerates the Old Gods.

Secondly, this ending implies that James has been on this journey more than once. We can infer this from the simple fact that the ending can only be unlocked after any one of the previous endings have been seen. There's also the disturbing evidence left behind in the shape of the various bodies James finds along his journey. Both in the streets of Silent Hill and in the apartment complex, James finds bodies that wear clothing eerily similar to his own: black shoes, blue jeans, green jacket. Only the faces are bloodied and torn apart as to be unrecognizable. We could, of course, posit that this is just the town's way of predicting James's fate in the same way that interacting with Angela does. In fact, there are multiple ways in which the town predicts James's demise. One of them is found inside Neely's Bar (or, as it's listed in the game, Bar Neely's). A message written in what looks like blood reads “There was a HOLE here. It's gone now.” Later, when James returns to the bar after leaving the hospital, the message has changed: “If you really want to see Mary, you should just DIE. But you might be heading to a different place than Mary, James.” In multiple, subtle ways, the town is directing James towards one of multiple conclusions. It creates Maria, and pushes her in front of him as a means to have back a form of the woman he's lost. It creates Laura, who would have been Mary's adopted child with blessing, and with whom Mary implies she wants James to find reason to move on. It creates Angela, whose state of mind reflects his torment, who James sees is slowly preparing to die, and takes inspiration from. But it also creates Eddie, and Eddie's answer denies all three other routes. Once Eddie's method is chosen – the route which leads to a resurrection – then the story still unfolds, but refuses any other conclusion. Because the women in the game are there to add to James's torment, to force him to face his past and come to the conclusion of how best his punishment must be meted out. But Eddie, the only other male identifying presence in the game, represents what James has been doing before the events of the game: denial.

Eddie changes his story about his past multiple times. When we first meet him, he's vomiting, cowering, appears weak and harmless and denies doing any harm to the body in the next room. Next, he's having a pity party while confessing to Laura, however slightly, that he would be unwelcome by others after what he'd done. Again, remember that this is the only conversation in the game that doesn't involve James – Laura, the icon of moving on despite the past, and Eddie, the icon of denial. Eddie's denial deepens in the prison, when he claims that “killing a person ain't no big deal,” but then jokingly assures James that he was just kidding about causing violence. But his denial only goes so far: in our final meeting, Eddie has accepted the violence he's caused, but focuses the blame on those around him who made fun of him, who “had it coming, too.” Eddie has been hurt, his anger is justifiable, but his means cannot be so. It is extremely telling that the slabs of meat hanging from their hooks are all wearing pants and suspenders. Eddie has been pushed psychologically to the point where he sees the people around him as little more than meat. He understands what other humans are capable of, and has reached the point where he refuses to sit back and take it anymore. His gun, an oversized revolver, is symbolic of his power. James, too, has been pushed to the point of retaliation, but he still denies himself the truth, just like Eddie in the beginning. James is constantly pushed further and further into the realization that he has killed Mary, that he has done wrong, and that he must come to terms with it. In three endings, he faces this wrong. In the final ending, he simply denies the wrongdoing. He's been through this before, he's justified himself, he searched through his mind and come to the conclusion that he was justified in his actions. But how can that be? Well, James has searched through the town on his quest for redemption. He has searched high and low and discovered certain things about the history of the town that he didn't understand before. Books and information on certain items of mystical power. So perhaps when he eventually reaches his conclusion as to what he feels his actions require, a second thought forms in his mind. Perhaps he makes his way all the way back to the parking lot where he left his car – and Mary's body – behind. Maybe Laura is with him, or Maria is with him, or he goes to drive into the lake. As he goes to leave, he thinks, “This doesn't feel right. This isn't what I deserve.” Because he just wants Mary. He can't go on without her. But now he understands how to get her back.

So he turns around and heads back to town, but the town wants him to feel it all over again. He has to earn his wife back. And as the town resets all the players and the pieces, it knows it will get what it really wants: a new servant, someone willing to perform rituals to the Old Gods that have not performed in far too long. And James, calm, peaceful, finally comes to terms with himself as he rows out to the island where the ritual must take place.

Because when you can resurrect someone, killing a person ain't no big deal.

***

With video games, sometimes there are multiple endings one can achieve based on their actions during their playthrough, just like in Silent Hill 2. But oftentimes, the developers will state outright which of the endings is the “true” ending so players can have a sense of satisfaction knowing how the story truly ends. However, in Silent Hill 2 every ending is canon. Developers Team Silent have stated that it's up to the players to determine which ending out of the possible four is how James Sunderland's story actually ends. There are, of course, two joke endings that the developers wisely have ensured remain in the realm of satire, leaving us to wonder and marvel at how one game can present so much ambiguity, while still remaining a concrete experience.

This we know: if all endings are canon, if it's truly up to the player, then anything goes. This essay, after all, is a fan theory. At no point have the developers ever hinted that anyone other than Maria is not real. The official novelization shows backstory for some of the characters, and even goes into their heads. Based on this, why extrapolate information to support a theory that has obviously been shown to be quite the opposite? Because – and here's the fun part – Silent Hill has always been a series about misdirection. Illusion, hallucinations of visual and audio types, and concealed intention. Disguises abound in Silent Hill, in each game. Team Silent demonstrated that Maria is absolutely not a “real” person by any means, but still thinks and feels like one and has memories because the town created her to have them. She is presented as the only person in the game who understands who James is, what he's done, and her role in the story. It stands to reason that the town could have created these other characters, but simply not given them the awareness of their role to play. And, as I have hopefully detailed well enough, the compelling evidence linking them both to the town and to James is unmistakable and undeniable. Whether or not you, the reader, choose to support this theory yourself, well, there are many endings to this tale. Just as all of them are equally correct in their canon.

But the next time you play Silent Hill 2, perhaps you'll be invited to look a little closer, pay attention a bit harder, consider ideas that you hadn't considered before. One of the most beautiful things about this abstract masterpiece is that it opens itself to observation as well as deduction, and when a game this detailed and well-thought-out is kind enough to allow for this, it is only good of us to indulge.

Thank you all so much for your time.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER PRE-GAME 9/30/2020: 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE/CONFESSIONAL (2019)

Spoiler alert. Or whatever. It’s not going to matter, you don’t care.

So, I've been away for a minute. Just about any reason to be away from Tumblr is probably a good reason, but I have an especially good one. I'm finally working on a "real" writing project, which demands, and deserves, all of my attention. My social media abstinence isn't just a matter of time management, though. Once I had a long term obligation on my plate, I became very aware of how the short term satisfaction I get from posting mindless rants was eating away at the fuel I have available for sustained efforts. When I wind myself up with a 500-1000 word blog post, it generates a lot of electricity, but I blow it all as soon as I experience the catharsis of posting it, and I'm further pacified by ego-stroking likes and reblogs. Not to sound like a sanctimonious luddite--I mean, I'm still here, after all!--but it turns out that the staying focused on the long haul has been surprisingly revivifying. In fact, I haven't been talking about my big fancy project for the same reason; I don't want to lose any of the juice I've been storing up by wasting it on the shallow pleasure of describing it. Also such things should probably be somewhat confidential until they're approaching the publishing stage, but I digress! There is an actual reason I'm saying all this, that has more to do with this blog.

(Don’t get all excited, I’m not doing EVIL ED right now, I just need a relatable image.)

As I got deeper into my experience of "real" film writing, I started to reflect on the meaning of my personal writing. Like, the point of it. I tend to write in a sweaty, compulsive, sadomasochistic haze, in which I'm sometimes hyperbolically generous, and sometimes--perhaps more often, unfortunately--as nasty as humanly possible. Sometimes the movies deserve it, when they're lazy, pretentious, or otherwise demonstrate an open contempt for the audience aka ME. Often, though, I'm just creating an opportunity to vent my generalized rage and frustration. That can be very entertaining for myself and (hopefully) my teensy-but-devoted readership, but lately I've asked myself whether there isn't some negative tradeoff for all this amusement. In this phase of my life, it's reasonable to assume I'll make more and more friends and acquaintances who create things I don't always care for, but I don't necessarily think they deserve to be abused for it. As much as I have a right to say whatever I want, technically, I'd be embarrassed if I were caught just jacking myself off by making fun of their work in public. And more to the point, I don't necessarily want to contribute to the growing atmosphere in which people feel more afraid to try and fail, because the public so commonly misidentifies sarcasm and mean-spiritedness as intelligence and superiority, and that form of petty darkness spreads across the internet a lot faster than a movie can reach a wider audience. After all, I'm in the process of potentially turning myself into one of those well-meaning failures right now. I could stand to be a little more deliberate about how I speak, and about what, in general.

My father is an art critic, and once in an extra petulant moment, teenage-me asked him in an accusative tone what he thought the point of his profession was. He replied calmly that he wouldn't publish any comment that he didn't think the artist could make use of somehow. I don't know if he always stuck to that policy, but the thought sure stuck with me.

So anyway, over the last few months I've been giving myself a bit of an attitude adjustment, through a combination of personal reflection, and hard work on something meaningful/not for the internet. I've been feeling all proud of myself and shit, but today reminded me that any path to enlightenment is always marked by setbacks, doubt, and temptation. For today, in complete innocence (or at least a melange of innocence and ignorance, as I very much invite this type of problem), I managed to watch TWO (2) movies about an academic film-cum-psychology project, focused on a gang of college buddies who inevitably reveal what bad people they are under the unique conditions of the project, and then the project turns out to be run NOT by its presumed-dead originator, but by the originator's even-crazier lover. It's amazing how particular something can be, and still be utterly obvious and cliche. In my defense, I really tried to turn the second movie off, because it was...just instantly terrible, but the seed of suspicion had taken root--is this randomly selected movie ACTUALLY EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE PREVIOUS MOVIE?--and I just had to find out if this could be true. I suffered, deliberately, for another hour and a half, to confirm my awful hunch. I don't know how I would have felt if I had turned out to be wrong (better? worse?), but I don't have to worry about that now. Now I just have to worry about my overpowering impulse to be as ugly as possible about what I have personally subjected myself to.

(The completely deceptive poster for our not at all witchy or eerie opening feature.) 

In need of a passable time-waster this afternoon, I put on 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE. Released in March of 2019, Caitlin Koller's claustrophobic black comedy feels oddly like a product of 2020. A group of estranged, middle-aged college pals of the BIG CHILL ilk--which one of the characters calls out, out loud, just so ya know--come together for a fallen comrade's funeral, only to find themselves trapped in his widow's increasingly creepy cabin in the woods. Said comrade was driven to suicide by the failure of a psychological experiment he conducted that plunged its subject into madness, and if you don't realize right away that the obnoxious and unstable cast are the new subjects of their not-quite-dead friend's renewed project, then you're firing a lot slower than 24 frames per second. The dialog is often decent, aiding a handful of funny, natural performances...but it's hard to forget that you're just waiting for the conspicuously crazy widow to reveal that the "unexplained events" in and around the cabin are part of a controlled attempt to get the guests to devolve into their worst selves, which isn't such a difficult task considering the undesirable state they all arrive in.

It just made me ask myself, what was the point of this? Why do people make movies that are entirely predicated on the shock of the twist, knowing that if the twist isn't so shocking--or is baldly obvious from the start--then the whole experience just falls apart? Why not hedge your bets with a little more depth, or purpose, or style, or really anything more reliable than a smug attempt to prove that your script is smarter than your audience? Even if you do manage to pull off this dubious accomplishment, it reduces your movie to something like the experience of having somebody jump out of a closet and scream in your ear to "get" you. I've always felt concerned that if somebody ever tries to "get" me like that, I might just automatically punch them in the face. But anyway, whatever shred of good will this movie could have accrued with its plucky performances is blown away by the final insult, when the cops arrive to clean up the inevitable bloody mess. The responding officers are hilariously unimpressed and unsurprised by the byzantine scheme that has resulted in a shocking act of violence, because the cabin's "guest book", which our heroes all filled out, was actually the signatory page of a complicated waiver form granting full permission to the hosts to, like, do whatever the hell they want to everybody. Presumably this shit just goes on all the time, leading the local law to shrug off anything that happens to or because of the dumbassed lab rats who frequent the cabin? I dunno. I mean, what can I say? ACAB, I guess!

At the time, I managed to resist the urge to take to the internet and decry the crimes of this lame-o party joke. I really don't like the sensation that a movie is just trying to trick me into thinking something that isn't true. But, this isn't, like, an affront to cinema. People make annoying, below average movies all the time, and maybe you kinda have to, if you eventually want to make better movies. I imagine myself in the shoes of the people who actually put some elbow grease into this production, having to wade through the rantings of internet ghouls like myself while they're trying to see how their efforts are paying off. Making a movie is probably a lot harder than I think it is.

But that's part of the point I'm heading toward. I'm always amazed by people's willingness to pour huge amounts of energy and capital into something to which there is ultimately very little point. I mean, I have bad, unoriginal, boring ideas every single day of my life. But I almost never DO any of them. I have a hard enough time convincing myself to just get out of bed in the morning, let alone devote blood, sweat, and money to deliver unto the world material evidence of my personal mediocrity. I can't imagine thinking it would be worth it, for myself or the unfortunate people who are subjected to my project, to actually execute on my bad ideas. I'm being judgmental, but honestly, I don't even know if my attitude makes me better or worse than someone who accomplishes the task of completing and selling a movie that's mainly a waste of time. Movies are so complicated, and realizing them requires the consensus of so many people, that it's sort of incredible that there are people capable of making one that doesn't have a powerfully compelling motivation behind it. People who are able to do such a thing obviously have something that I don't, and it isn't just "consideration for the audience."

So, I could probably stand to be more forgiving--or just, less eager to absolutely flay someone alive on my dumb little blog because they so opened themselves up to my arsenal of elaborate insults. But like...not all the time. Sometimes, a movie really fucking asks for it, and in revealing itself to me, it has effectively signed a waiver giving me patent freedom to do whatever I want to it. CONFESSIONAL is the latest movie to give me such a gift. After the final credit rolled in 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE, I looked for a little palate cleanser. As little as I like movies that put their single egg in the motheaten basket of a "shocking twist", I also have a problem with what I identify as canned theater. Not that I think all movies have to be lavish productions, but I think they should try to do something that is natively cinematic. It's very rare that I'm impressed by anything that is literally all talk. So, I went in search of some more familiar form of trash to help me recallibrate, and trash is definitely what I got.

(Me crying over my own bad decisions.)

To be fair, I kind of should have known that I was in for a challenging experience. The 2019 found footage thriller CONFESSIONAL is more or less based on the "confessional" part of sleazy reality TV shows, isolating each cast member in a soundproof stall so they can spill the rotten contents of their guts. Unfortunately, I spotted a review suggesting that the movie succeeded, against all odds, at remaining visually dynamic despite the unchanging scenery, and I was intrigued. The reviewer was correct, impressively; the monotony of the coffin-like environment with its dark foam walls was the least of my concerns. Other problems superseded that threat, immediately. The plot concerns a group of college pals who come together to remember a recently deceased friend--a filmmaker who expired mysteriously while completing a psychology-tinged project in which she recorded all of her friends' most shameful personal secrets. Now, somebody else has taken over the project...someone who "has never been identified", according to an early title card in this movie-within-a-movie (EVEN THOUGH THIS PERSON WILL BE EXPLICITLY IDENTIFIED AT THE END OF THE MOVIE SO LIKE WHY), but who seems likely to be the decedent's ex-lover...who continues to expose their subjects' most shameful secrets on film. I mean, what the fuck? Did I somehow manage to pick a second movie with almost the exact same plot??? I couldn't believe it. I didn't know if I could take it. My prospects only got worse when the cast showed up and started talking. I tried to turn the movie off. I backed out and walked away from it, twice. But I couldn't leave it alone. I had to know if it was really the same movie.

CONFESSIONAL concerns characters who are contemporaneously in college, which actually goes a long way to making everything worse. Each of these walking cliches is connected in some way to Amelia, a film student whose mysterious death has created a campus scandal, leaving shattered hearts and lives in its wake. The living have each received a blackmail-flavored invitation to speak about the deceased in a tiny "confessional booth" somewhere on campus, where, predictably, they find themselves locked in until they confess whatever they know about Amelia, and their classmates. I don't know why practically every single movie about young people has to be so miserable, but this is one of those. I assume that it has something to do with the fact that youth is simultaneously so desired and so ignored. People in their teens and early 20s are so sexually coveted, yet so easily dismissed as individuals, that we wind up with all this media that panders to them relentlessly (or at least, panders to the legions of ticket-buying perverts who enjoy watching them prance around), without almost any consideration of how they actually think and act, and look. Movies like FAT GIRL and  WELCOME TO THE DOLL HOUSE may be accused of their own form of pandering, a venal form of voyeuristic schadenfreude, but at least they reflect something of the awkwardness, isolation, and incompleteness of adolescence; something more than the dissociated, pornographic fantasies of adults who have long since forgotten what it was like to be powerless and ignored, or desired by people who don't even like you.

Not that CONFESSIONAL is supposed to be a work of grim realism, but it is most definitely rooted in a fantasy about college life that makes its contrived, message-y plot a lot harder to take. With almost the sole exception of "the nerdy one", every single character looks like a Bratz doll, oozing an exaggerated indecency that belies the movie's pretentious insistence on addressing the sex & gender Issues of the Day. What you get is a really good example of what happens when millennial characters are modeled, not on any actual millennials, but on other forms of marketing that are aimed at millennials, which are themselves just based on other preexisting youth-targeted commercials, et al ad nauseam. Even setting aside the deliriously slutty wardrobe choices, makeup appears to have been laid on with a trowel, coating each actor in a thick creamy layer of spackle that only makes any scars, pits, or other evidence of individuality look utterly bizarre. Accordingly, everybody preens, pouts, and generally behaves as if they're about to take off their clothes, which might be a huge relief given the profusion of chafing, cheapo mesh and straps they're laboring under.

So, ok, not every movie can have a great costume department, but the dialog here is a perfect match for the disastrous aesthetic decisions. Actually, this is the real reason I almost walked out on CONFESSIONAL. If I may ramble briefly, without substantiating any of my broad-ranging claims: Sometime in the late 90s/early 00s, horror cinema seemed to suffer a degenerative slide away from genuine thrills and chills, and into a version of the genre that is best characterized as the Slutty Halloween Costume approach. Any sense of existential dread, revulsion, or bodily vulnerability was widely replaced by a cutesy, Hot Topic-y preference for fast fashion and sex appeal, in which bloodshed more facilitated an informal wet teeshirt contest than any real fear induction. Horror's new mall goth look came with an equally shallow, boring verbal affectation: a sullen, sleazy, tooth-sucking sarcasm, that ushered in a new era in which, instead of making fun of the scummy coked-out dialog in porno movies, we now expect everybody to just talk like that, because it's hot. There's probably a line to be drawn between this unfortunate development, and the boneheaded real-world trend of identifying "sarcasm" as an important personal selling point on dating sites, but I won't try to prove that here. For now, I will just say that as soon as I heard the CONFESSIONAL characters start to speak, with their sneering, insinuating tones, with the vocal fry, with the head wagging, the jutting jaws, the smoldering gazes, the juvenile dragging-out of horny grownup words like de-bauch-er-y...I almost lost my nerve. Listening to these little creeps hissing and spitting for 84 minutes is a lot like being hit on by some barfly who continues to bludgeon you with his hot breath and corny lines without ever noticing that you've thrown up into your pint.

Uh, anyway. So what actually happens in the movie. Why would anyone ever allow someone to record video of them revealing the ugliest, most embarrassing parts of themselves? Especially a kid, for whom popularity and reputation are often a matter of life or death--literally and specifically, in the case of this story. The flimsy reason is that the late filmmaker, Amelia, was the most awesomest girl ever. Everybody loved her, because she was so sweet, and so smart, and so cool, and so nice, and so deep, and so original, and so talented, and so sexy, and just like, the bestest most perfectest girl in the whole wide world. N.B. "The greatest of all time" is, perhaps counter-intuitively, a really bad quality that makes for really shitty, boring characters. For better or worse, Amelia is rarely on screen (and when she is, she's no Laura Palmer, frankly), so it's up to the viewer to just sort of imagine a type of person who could make you act against your best interests on account of you just like them so much. After all, so many of the characters were obsessed with her in some way, that it's like they're here to help you clap your hands and believe in this seductive, compelling part of the movie, that just isn't actually there on the screen. The anonymous antihero behind the confessional booth scheme slowly extracts from each character the selfish, destructive behavior that in some way contributed to the tragic loss of the most amazing person of all time--and part of the result is, if not a very interesting excuse for Amelia's death, then a story so wacky that I really wish they had centered the movie on it, instead of on the tawdry soap opera we're locked into. Even if that imaginary movie had been really bad, and it probably would have been, at it would at least have been entertaining.

Part of what leads up to the death of Amelia is the existence of a secret school fight club, led by a stereotypically sleazy gender studies major, named Major, who is out to prove men's inherent superiority. The club is called CFB, or Cock Fights Back, which is somehow a garbled pun relating to cock fights, and Trump's famous line of "locker room talk": "grab'em by the pussy" > "pussy grabs back" > "cock fights back". CFB is different from your ordinary fight club in that the fights are always between girls and boys, and the boys are always blindfolded, in order to prove that a fully-abled female is no match for even a handicapped male. To complicate things, a new designer amphetamine is gaining popularity on campus, called "odds-on", meaning that it makes you the odds-on favorite in your CFB fight. As awkward as that is, it also seems that men are never the guaranteed winners of these fights, which makes you wonder why Major insists on continuing to host them. As much as I would have preferred to watch a stupid movie about this stupid idea, I'm stuck instead with a movie in which Major is such an aggressive MRA because he's secretly gay, and he thinks that hating women is a great way to hide that...as if that isn't what we all openly suspect about aggro MRAs. Secret gayness is a big part of this movie, involving multiple characters, although it amounts to very little other than the perpetuation of some stale, harmful cliches about how unfulfilled homosexual urges lead to suicide, sexual abuse, and murder. CONFESSIONAL is just as reliant on this grim vision of gay life, as it is on its weirdly obtuse discussion of drug addiction, for the suffocating sense of self-importance that it uses to try to elevate itself above its porn-y trappings. None of the movie's hot button issues are given any real thought, but are only dragged through the mud to create the illusion that there's a point to all this, thus relieving the film of any sense of innocence that could have made its condescending sleaziness forgivable.

Admittedly, I can't really remember all the details of the film's tortured intrigue anymore, even though I basically just saw it. A lot of its meandering revelations just left me thinking, "Why did I need to know that? Why should I care?" I do know that about half way through this ordeal, I became really anxious about whether it would turn out that CONFESSIONAL did NOT have exactly the same plot as 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE after all, and I put myself through all this for nothing. But no, I was right to begin with. The wonderful Amelia's ethically dubious film project has been picked up by the unhinged lesbian character who loved her so much she wanted to become her, and killing Amelia and usurping her confessional project was apparently the best way of doing that. I guess exposing all the dark, violent secrets of all these tangentially involved characters was just an added bonus, or whatever. Ultimately, this ugly, ignorant PSA about something-or-other only deals itself further damage by relying so heavily on the potential of its clumsy twist to blow your mind, which it does not at all.

So that was it, that's how I burned a whole afternoon allowing my mind to implode-not-explode under the ponderous force of TWO (2) movies about exactly the same exhausted cliche that is still being peddled by certain pretentious assholes as fresh and exciting, and beyond the capacity of the audience to anticipate. There's probably a whole slew of other movies that employ this overly familiar "surprise", but I don't have it in me to dig them out of my long-suffering brain. Feel free to contribute in the comments. For now, I must prepare myself for the ordeal of Blogtober, during which I will *hopefully* choose my screening selections and words more thoughtfully than I have in previous years, when this blog was motivated by just as much abject misanthropy as these movies, which do nothing but willfully insult the audience's intelligence. Maybe today's detour into degradation will help me go forth toward more additive experiences, having purged several lungfuls of meaningless venom from my system, and this season will bring with it more interesting, provocative posts than the last. Or maybe not! In any case, I promise to keep trying my hardest to make it funny.

PS I actually love both FAT GIRL and WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE. I’m “just saying”. 

[vanilla-bean-buttercream]

You Bit Me?!

Summary:

When Logan decided to become a doctor, he knew the full moon was going to bring in all sorts of problems for him. He was prepared to face people who would bite him for no reason, at least, until he was actually bitten by someone. He didn’t have time for this. He was graduating college. He was studying for finals. He didn’t need to crave inhuman amounts of food, get sick off of a special treat, or have heightened senses that set him on edge. There had to be a totally plausible medical reason for all of this. And, no, Lychanthropy is not one of them, Patton.

Statistics:   

Pairings: N/A

Main Characters: Logan, Patton, Virgil, Roman

Minor Characters: Deceit, Emile, a few oc’s

Warnings: Biting, arguing, binge eating, meat consumption, food poisoning, crying, swearing (two times), guns, descriptions of injury, blood, unsafe medical practices, death mentions, threats of death (no one dies though), you’re gonna have a bad time reblogging this on mobile because it’s so long

Word Count: 21,730 

Some helpful links:

- An alternate version on Ao3

- A beautiful art piece drawn by @starry-shake​ 

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Author’s Note:

Well, hello there! This story was the original big bang fic for @ts-storytime I wanted to write, but because I let it slip and there was a certain artist that was hellbent on getting me, I decided to write another. (They succeeded so I’m glad I did haha)

Anyway, this is actually only half of the story I wanted to write, but then I realized I would much rather turn it into a short story series, kinda like how I did TSAoJ (what is it with me and splitting up supernatural stories huh?) so keep on the lookout for that later maybe~

Anyway, I’ve kept some of you waiting too long. I hope you enjoy, and don’t get bummed if you can’t reblog it on mobile. A short reply with a thumbs up is literally all I need <3

-Cat

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Logan sighed as he stared at the price of Crofter's. According to the sticker, he just missed the sale Patton told him about, and he’d have to pay an extra 20 cents for it, which for a college student on a tight budget, was a lot. 

Oh well. Patton could live without an extra box of goldfish crackers.

As Logan reached up to grab the jar, it vanished. Logan froze and blinked, his brain failing to process how the item disappeared so quickly.

“Oh wow, the last jar,” a loud voice said to his left. Logan turned his head slowly. A person with a wide grin and eyes that almost looked gold examined the label. “This must be my lucky day.”

An uncomfortable heat burned Logan’s gut. He cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

The Crofter's stealer looked up and turned their grin into a charming smirk. “Well hello there. How can I help you?”

“By giving me that.” Logan held out his palm expectantly.

“This?”

“Yes, that.”

“I don’t think so. I got it first.”

“But I was here first. I was reaching for it.”

“Well, you’re too slow.”

Logan growled in his throat. “I’m going to ask once more nicely. Hand over the jar.”

The person leaned in close to Logan’s face. “Make me, nerd.”

Logan reached out. He wrapped his fingers around the jar and tugged. The person pulled back. For about thirty seconds, this moment jam-packed with action created such a fuss, multiple people stopped to watch. Some even pulled out their phone to film it.

Finally, Logan got the upper hand. He pulled the jar from the person’s grasp and gave a triumphant little “ha,” totally missing the stranger's deep growl.

One moment Logan treasured his victory, and the next he howled in pain.

It took a moment between the shocked gasps from the crowd and his own distressed noise to realize that, yes, this stranger did, in fact, bite him. Hard. On the forearm.

“Did you just bite me?” Logan questioned.

The person recoiled as if Logan bit them back. Their huge eyes froze along with their breathing.

“I-” they stammered several times.

Logan examined his arm. A small drop of blood that didn’t quite grasp the severity of the situation trickled down his wrist with two perfect indents of human teeth wrapping around his skin.

“If I gather an infection from this, I’m sending you the bill,” Logan grumbled and walked off, leaving his flabbergasted attacker behind.

“Wait!” they called out, but Logan didn’t want to speak to them any longer. He ran off with his jar of Crofter's before the stranger could steal any more of his pride from him. Logan checked out and exited the store. Thankfully, some observers kept the biter at bay and far away from him. 

The whole walk home, all Logan could think about was the bite on his arm. Sure, he could fix it in a heartbeat, but this was a grown human being wrapping their teeth around his arm over a jar of jam, not some toddler. What could have possibly possessed them to do that?

Even if Crofter's was the most valuable food in the world, one did not simply bite another person to obtain it.

Logan entered his dorm room and locked it behind him. He’d be dead before that person came into his safe space and bit him again, or worse, threatened to take his precious jam again.

“Oh, welcome back!” a voice called out from the computer desk. They turned on their swivel chair and beamed.

“I’m afraid I forgot your goldfish,” Logan informed, watching the other person deflate with a whine. Logan walked over to the desk drawer, set the groceries on the counter, and dug around for some gauge to wrap up his arm.

“Logan, what happened?”

“I had a slight disagreement with someone in the grocery store, and they decided to cast their dental impressions with my arm.”

“So in other words, they bit you?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause, and Logan braced himself.

“That’s a story I’d like to sink my teeth into.”

Logan sighed and grabbed the bandage out of the drawer. He sat down on the bottom bunk bed and began unwinding the ball.

“I’m afraid the story is not as exciting as it sounds, Patton,” Logan responded.

Patton left his spot on the computer chair and sat beside Logan. He watched Logan fumble with the bandage before taking matters into his own hands and wrapping up Logan’s forearm. Meanwhile, Logan retold the story, and Patton listened.

“Well, that wasn’t berry nice at all,” Patton mused.

“Please spare me. I’m in enough pain as it is,” Logan grumbled. 

“Isn't there something you can do to make sure it doesn't get infected? I mean, it doesn't look deep, but it did bleed.”

“Yes. Common treatment includes amoxicillin, but that's out of the question for obvious reasons.”

Patton quirked a brow. “But I thought you were allergic to penicillin.” 

“Amoxicillin is a form of penicillin, Patton.”

Patton tied off the bandage and let out a short sigh through his nose. “Well, I hope this guy doesn't just go around biting people.”

Logan leaned and rested his back against the wall. He ran his fingers over the white bandage and sighed through his nose. Hopefully, this would do.

Logan thought back to the confrontation. What could he have done differently? Perhaps there were more jars elsewhere and he missed them. Was being bitten for a sweet treat really worth it? 

A plate plopped into Logan’s lap, and he gazed upon five crackers spread with Crofter's jam. Patton sent a smile before returning to his work on the computer. Logan lifted a cracker to his lips with a slight smile.

Yes, this was all worth it.

--

The following days were rather boring compared to the excitement of being bitten on the arm by a total stranger over a jar of Crofter's. Finals were upon them, and Logan spent most of his time inside studying. After his 5 years of work, he’d be dead before he let failing one class stop him from graduating the hell that was college.

His roommate, however, happily spent his free time out and about with his posse of weird friends. Logan wondered how Patton attracted the most fascinating human specimens to his person.

For example, there was Virgil, who looked like a walking case of constant anxiety. Those wide hazel eyes studied everything. Maybe something bit him unexpectedly as well, and now he expected the unexpected at all times. For someone who chose to draw such little attention to himself, he sure made a scene with his appearance. Dark eyeshadow and eyeliner permanently stained his skin and gave him a wolfish appearance.

Then there was Damian, who Logan swore could not keep a story straight even if he wrote it down prior. The slippery son of a gun always weaved Patton’s gullible mind into intense fairytale stories that even sounded foolish to a child, but Patton always defended Damian’s tall tales, saying how Logan didn’t know Damian’s life and for all they knew, he could’ve run into a prostitute with one eye in the middle of a dark alley and got a blowjob for free.

The only normalish friends he gathered were those from his Theater class. Logan had to admit, Thomas was fun to be around every once and a while… when he and Patton weren’t breaking out into song over the littlest things.

He discovered that when he mentioned something was hit or miss when discussing chance.

Logan cradled his head in his right hand as he attempted to memorize every name for every bone in the human body. It should’ve been easy. Logan loved to study. However, with the bored mother bird sitting on her eggs and her partner trying to serenade and entertain her in the tree next to him, Logan couldn’t focus. That constant twitterpated tweet-tweet tugged at his thin nerves.

“Will you shut up,” Logan growled at the window. Of course, the birds ignored him. He thought about opening the window and throwing a few pencils in their general direction.

If the birds weren't bad enough, now he started to get a headache. The words in his book blurred together, and when Logan looked up at the clock, he couldn’t read the numbers.

Logan took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and pointer finger. Perhaps he needed a break. He released his eyes and blinked into the way too bright sun.

Oh, it was almost noon. No wonder he felt exhausted; he’d been at this for five hours.

Logan slid his glasses back on. The numbers on the clock blurred, and Logan squinted. He lifted the lenses off of his face once again, and the numbers cleared up.

That was... odd. Did he grab Patton’s glasses by mistake? No, even with Patton’s glasses, he shouldn’t be able to tell what time it is across the room without his glasses on, as they were both nearsighted.

Logan set his glasses down on the desk and leaned back in his chair. The world clarified in moments. Well, almost. He still had no clue why he could see without his glasses.

Logan looked into his mirror and examined his eyes. They were the same bright blue from his birth, clear, no signs of alterations that he’d noticed. He didn’t have contacts, so doubling his prescription by accident was out of the question.

What was going on?

The door to the dorm room opened, and the smell of grease and grass flooded the room. Logan almost covered his nose.

“Hey, I brought you lunch, since I know you probably didn’t take a break to eat already,” Patton spoke. He closed the door with his foot and set two bags of fast food on Logan’s desk. The smell overpowered Logan’s thought process.

“Thanks,” he managed to mumble.

Patton pulled out his food and started eating. From here, Logan could practically taste the ketchup sliding down Patton’s fries and sticking to his fingers.

“Yeh mkay?”

“Patton, please don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Patton swallowed. “You’re not wearing your glasses.”

Logan took a deep breath and replied, “You are correct. I was getting a headache from all the studying.”

Patton made a hum of acknowledgment. He held out the wrapped veggie burger to Logan. The smell hit Logan’s head like several hammers and sent his mouth into a drooling frenzy. With all the pain of studying, he forgot how hungry he was.

Within a minute, Logan devoured his veggie burger and moved on to the fries, leaving a rather flabbergasted Patton on his bed.

“Wow, slow down Logan,” Patton said with a light laugh. “Your food’s not growing anywhere.”

Logan sent an annoyed glance Patton’s way but made no further comment.

Patton had just finished his fries when Logan tossed his trash away. He let out a nervous giggle and shook his head.

“You know, I think that’s the first time you finished eating before me.”

“I was hungry.”

“I guess so,” Patton responded. He sighed and put his burger into his lap. “You know, Logan, you spend so much time studying. I wouldn’t mind playing a card game with you.”

Logan leaned back into his chair and eyed Patton with a raised brow. “You do know it’s finals week, yes?”

“Well, yeah, but if you don’t take a break, you’re going to burn yourself out. Please? I know you like Spit.”

Logan ran a hand through his hair. He glanced out at the noisy birds and shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, fine, one game won’t hurt.”

Patton squealed and leapt off the bed. He dug through the drawers for the deck of cards he brought to school with him. Logan watched Patton fish around for a moment. Finally, Patton pulled the deck out and sat cross-legged on the floor, and Logan joined him soon after.

“So, the usual stakes?” Patton asked as he shuffled.

Logan sighed and nodded his head, “Though I don’t plan on losing.”

Patton split the deck and handed one half to Logan. They set up the game, and Patton waited for Logan to finish calculating his moves. They counted to three, and the game began.

While Patton's speed outmatched Logan's own, the other watched Patton’s cards and anticipated his moves, breaking Patton’s combos when he could. This went on for about ten minutes until Patton ran out of cards.

Patton slammed his hand on the floor one second before Logan. Logan’s hand smacked down onto the back of Patton’s hand, and Patton let out a sharp gasp.

A low rumble sounded from Logan’s throat. It almost sounded like a growl. 

The room held its breath. 

Patton looked up into Logan’s eyes, which stared at the back of his hand, and nervously laughed. 

“I win,” he responded in a fake chipper voice.

Logan lifted his hand off of Patton's own. Patton drew his hand to his chest and examined the red mark Logan left behind. He blinked back the tears in his eyes.

“Patton,” Logan called out, searching for Patton’s attention through the pain he caused, “Are you injured?”

“No, you just scared me is all,” Patton replied. Logan watched Patton warily. Patton chewed on the inside of his cheek and picked up the cards. “Best two out of three?”

Logan sighed. “I don’t think so. I really should get back to studying.”

“Oh,” Patton replied. He patted the cards until they were in a neat pile and placed them back in the drawer. “Okay then. We can go get the ice cream now and come back so you can study some more.”

“Sounds satisfactory.” Logan got off the floor and picked up some spare change from his other pants pocket. The two roommates then left their dorm to get ice cream.

--

Logan never felt this sick in his life.

The past three days, he couldn’t keep any food down. His limbs felt like they were going to fall off, and even the smell of food upset his stomach. Patton did his best to care for him, but he was a full-time college student and could only do so much.

Logan rolled over on his bed and took the now dry washcloth off his forehead. He eyed the clock on the wall for the fifteenth time, thankful for once that he could see without his glasses for some reason. Maybe his vision caused this sudden sickness. 

Of course, it was possible to get food poisoning from ice cream.

The birds outside went to sleep hours ago, and Logan couldn’t be more thankful. He put the cool side of the pillow over his head and groaned into his mattress. Great. He was getting a migraine. Just what he needed. 

Why was the week before finals the week he got sick as a dog?

“Logan?” Patton’s unusually calm voice called through the apartment, “are you here?”

Logan moaned in confirmation.

“I’m really starting to get worried about you. Maybe it’s time to go to the hospital,” Patton said as he closed the door. Logan poked his head out from under his blankets.

“Yeah,” was all Logan’s raspy voice would allow him to say. It sounded like he smoked a hundred cigarette packs a day. He wanted to avoid any unnecessary medical bills, but at this point, he’d do more damage to his body waiting than any medical bill could do to him.

Patton grabbed a jacket from the closet and slowly lifted Logan’s blanket. The loss of heat caused a shiver to constrict every muscle on Logan’s abdomen, and he curled his legs up into his chest.

“Hey, kiddo,” Patton cooed and held out the jacket. “Put this on and I’ll help you get down to the car, okay?”

“I don’t want to move.”

“I know, but we have to, or you might get sicker.”

“I’m already sicker- sick. I’m already sick.”

“Logan, please?”

Logan sighed and sat up on his elbows, his stomach pinching and protesting. He panted three times before he sat up all the way. Patton rubbed Logan’s back and sat beside him.

“There ya go. See? That wasn’t so hard.”

Logan rose a brow, and Patton chuckled. Patton eased Logan’s arms into the jacket, noting how much Logan’s body shook from the change in temperature, and helped him down to the car. Logan took his glasses off three minutes after having them on, claiming they made his headache and nausea worse, and Patton placed them in the extra glasses case he kept in the glove compartment in his car. 

Good thing the hospital was only five minutes away. Bad thing that doctors took forever to see their patients. Logan ran to the bathroom at least twice before they were called in to see anyone.

“So, you think you got a case of food poisoning?” the doctor asked as they scribbled down on their clipboard. Logan nodded his head the best he could with it on his knees. Patton rubbed Logan’s back.

“It happened maybe an hour or so after we had some ice cream,” Patton informed the doctor.

“Any history of lactose intolerance?”

Patton furrowed his brow. “I don’t think so. Logan and I eat ice cream all the time, and this is the first time he’s ever gotten this sick after eating it.”

The doctor hummed. “I’d advise him to stay away from any products with milk in it for a few hours just to make sure. It’s possible to develop lactose intolerance through illness, though rare, and I want him to drink extra water or tea, and stay away from energy drinks, soda, or coffee. Vomiting does cause dehydration.”

Logan rolled his eyes. He knew all this. He didn’t waste 5 years in college to have some doctor tell him this was a simple case of lactose intolerance. However, when he opened his mouth to protest, a strong wave of nausea hit him, and he clenched his teeth shut.

“Thank you,” Patton said as the doctor ended their visit. He turned to Logan and sent a sympathetic smile. 

“I hope you don’t think this is just lactose intolerance,” Logan grumbled.

Patton allowed his smile to drop and sighed through his nose. “I don’t know. Maybe we should give it one more day then come back if it gets any worse.”

Logan made a pitiful moan of confirmation before Patton assisted him in standing up straight. He put most of his weight on Patton and shivered again. In the end, Logan lost the rest of his strength, and Patton ended up carrying him bridal style to the car and up to their dorm room.

For the rest of the night, Patton stayed awake and made sure Logan was properly taken care of. The two of them lay together on the bottom bunk. Patton ran his hands through Logan’s hair as he hummed any soothing song he could think of. He bought numerous water bottles to keep on hand and helped Logan when he had an emergency bathroom run. Thankfully tomorrow was Sunday, and they both had no classes.

Logan shivered again thinking about all the work he’d missed the past three days.

“You don’t have to do all this,” Logan groaned at three in the morning.

Patton put down his mug of hot chocolate and sent a tired smile. He replied, “Logan, I’m your brother. Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re only my stepbrother,” Logan retorted.

“Only?” Patton scoffed. “We were best friends first. I’d still be taking care of you even if dad didn’t adopt me.”

Logan allowed a hum of confirmation to escape his nose. “I suppose we were just meant to be together.”

“Heart and mind,” Patton replied and ran a hand over Logan’s forehead. “At least you don’t feel so warm anymore.”

“Perhaps it’s finally passing.” 

Logan wondered what kind of damage his internal organs suffered without proper care and rolled over. Patton’s calm voice reached through the silence of the room and sang a lullaby from his childhood. Logan recognized the tune and closed his eyes.

If he imagined it hard enough, he could picture his father humming the melody to chase away the thunder’s rumble. It even soothed his stomach for the first time in three days. Logan welcomed the euphoria of sleep after being denied for so long. He repeated the common causes of food poisoning in his head, noting salmonella from dairy usually took a maximum of three days to work itself out of the system and hoped this would be the end of his misery.

This would be the last time he ate chocolate ice cream from that store for a while.

--

Logan sighed as he ran a hand through his hair for the fifth time. Catching up on his schoolwork while studying for finals ate away all his free time. Patton tried several times to help, but Logan usually chased him away with his assertive temperament. Thankfully, Patton knew Logan well enough that he didn’t take it personally. He knew Logan was frustrated.

If there was one thing Logan was thankful for in his life, it was Patton’s ability to see the best in people like him.

Logan tried to force his glasses up his nose out of habit, but he remembered nothing rested there. He felt naked without them. However, with his sickness getting better, he didn't want to take a chance and mess around with his vision. Perhaps he'd pop the lenses out and wear just the frames around. Someone would notice he didn't have contacts eventually.

Logan glanced over at the time. Four am always snuck upon him. He glanced outside at the nearly full moon glowing through their window and sighed. He knew when Patton woke up he’d regret staying up this late. He did promise Patton he'd stay up no later than three am, but passing was of the utmost importance. Graduation was less than a week away, and Logan didn’t want to ruin his chances of leaving this hell. Sleep could wait.

He’d turn into a lunatic if he stayed here another day.

Logan clicked off the lamp and curled into bed. He didn’t realize how much his eyes ached until he closed them.

--

A low rumble shook Logan awake. His eyes snapped open, and he sprung up in bed. What was that? Was there an earthquake? Did Patton trip and fall again? His head snapped around and landed on the clock.

Nine in the morning. 

“Patton?” He called out. No chipper voice answered, and he slid out of bed to glance at the top bunk. Patton’s unmade bed greeted him with several blankets and stuffed animals. One, in particular, stared into Logan’s soul, as if it knew what he did and would squeal to Patton the first chance it got.

The rumble sounded again, and Logan cradled his stomach. He hummed and laughed at how silly he’d been. Of course he’d be hungry. Not only did he miss his usual breakfast hour, but he didn't eat much in the past seven days. Of course, the first three didn’t count because he was ejecting everything from his body at alarming rates, but they still counted towards his poor diet.

Perhaps it was time to grab something to eat.

Logan shuffled through the box of granola bars he and Patton kept on hand when they left the dorm in a hurry. He pulled out a granola bar with peanuts and almonds and tore the wrapper open. One of these could hold him over until lunch so he didn’t mess up his schedule too badly.

As he sat down on his bed, he scrolled through some unread messages on his phone. Most of them were a group text between him, Patton, and their father, and Logan noticed he’d finished his granola bar before he finished reading the first text. His stomach continued to growl. In a split decision, Logan opened another bar and began to munch on it.

Patton: I know you’re worried, but Logan’s strong.

Dad: I kno, but w/the stress of finals, I don’t want him overstressing himself :(

Patton: Even if he was, I’m taking care of him, just like I promised. He’s usually sleeping 8 hours a day and eating all three meals.

Dad. Good. :)

Patton: And once finals are over, we’ll be home with you all summer! Well, I will. Logan will probably find a job right after school. They’d be crazy not to hire him.

Dad: When did my little boys get so big?

Logan smiled and sent back a quick text.

Logan: Approximately 8 years ago when I stopped growing.

As his hands reached into the box to grab another granola bar, Logan hit empty cardboard. His brow twisted in confusion. Strange, he just bought this box yesterday, and there was supposed to be 18 bars in it. How many did Patton have for breakfast?

Logan put the box down and glanced at the pile of opened wrappers in his lap. He dug through them and counted fifteen wrappers.

Oh. He must’ve been hungrier than he thought.

Logan’s phone vibrated again, and he noticed a text from his father arrived in the group chat. He opened the message to read “Lol :P” from his dad and closed the lock screen on his phone.

As Logan stood to clean up his mess, he doubled over and gripped onto his stomach. Its growl shook the mattress. How could he still be this hungry after eating so many granola bars?

Logan opened the snack cabinet once again. He grabbed his jar of Crofter's and some crackers, and then returned to his bed. His next class wasn’t for another hour, so he could sneak in another meal before he headed out. He popped the lid off and dipped the cracker straight into the jar.

As he snacked, Logan twisted his once bitten arm around and examined the skin. Strange, the scabs from the bites had already healed. He shrugged it off, wondering if his mind amplified the situation more than it called for. 

For a few minutes, he continued to text his father back and forth. Patton was still in class, so he expected him to join the conversation later. His dad asked about Patton to make sure Logan held up his end of the bargain as well and watched out for his little brother.

Logan: He’s no longer a child. Patton is quite capable of taking care of himself and others.

Dad: I kno, I just worry. He’s 2 good 4 his own good.

Logan: Patton needs to make his own mistakes as well. You and I will not always be there to protect him from those who wish to do him harm. It’s a hard lesson one has to learn when they raise a child. You cannot always protect them from everything.

Dad: … who says I have to :P I’m ur dad. I’ll always worry a little bit about u 2.

Logan rolled his eyes and put his phone away. He licked the excess jelly from his lips and checked the damage he did to his jar and crackers. He already consumed over half of the jar, and he had three out of four cracker packs devoured. 

When did he develop such a healthy, or maybe unhealthy, appetite? Logan was always known as the picky eater of the family. And sure, he had a high metabolism, but he hadn’t eaten this much food in an hour even in his teen years when he grew six inches in three months.

At least his stomach didn’t hurt anymore.

Logan put the jar away and got his things together for his next class. He sent a quick text to Patton asking if they could have lunch together in the courtyard and put his satchel over his shoulder. The walk to his next class gave Patton enough time to respond with an enthusiastic “YES,” and Logan wondered if he should mention how he tore through 15 granola bars, most of his new jar of crofters, and almost a whole box of crackers in an hour.

The classroom held a light buzz of excited chatter from students ready to graduate within the month. Most of them had been through this hell with Logan since he started. There were a few undergraduates in the class, but not many.

“Good morning, Logan! Glad to see you’re feeling better.”

“Ah yes, good morning, Emile.” Logan sat down beside his friend of three years and put his satchel down between their seats. Emile leaned in on the counter and furrowed his brow.

“You look a little confused today. Everything okay?”

Logan rose a brow. He’d never understand how Emile could pierce through his stoic expressions and peg what conquered Logan’s mind.

“I’m merely concerned about passing graduation after all the work I’ve missed.” It was a half-truth. Logan caught Emile’s eye, and Emile sent a gentle smile back.

“Well, you know, if you need anything, I'll do my best to help.”

Logan nodded and replied, “Thanks.”

The professor silenced the room, and the class began.

Logan did his best to pay attention to the test. For some reason, his mind focused on what he was going to grab to eat for lunch this afternoon. Knowing Patton, he’d suggest the food court, but Logan couldn’t take the noise of so many people in one area. His stomach started to ache again, and Logan cradled it. He rested his forehead down on his paper and took deep breaths in.

And that’s when he heard it growl once again.

The sound deafened Logan’s attention to his thoughts. He raised his head from his book and noticed it brought a few other thoughts to a halt as well. Several students whispered and giggled, and Logan felt heat rise to his cheeks.

Emile chuckled beside him. He reached into his bag and pulled out a package of cheese crackers.

“Here, I think you could use them more than me,” Emile whispered.

Logan’s cheeks burned redder than before. He took the crackers and wished they came in quieter packaging. 

Another growl sounded from his stomach, and Logan leaped out of his chair. He could leave the last three questions blank. He grabbed his things and hurried out of the classroom before his stomach could disrupt class again. A few students laughed as he exited the room, and Logan’s ears started to burn from embarrassment. Emile called his name, but he couldn’t be bothered to turn around.

At least the class was almost over and he wouldn't have to go back again. Emile could catch up with him later, as he always had a habit of checking up on Logan to make sure he was okay.

“Logan!” Patton’s voice called out. He turned, and Patton bounced up to Logan’s side. Patton’s backpack jingled behind him. He continued, “Your class is out already? I didn’t expect to meet you for about fifteen minutes.”

Logan opened his mouth to say something, but his stomach growled and interrupted him. He put a hand to his gut and pursed his lips.

“Logan,” Patton’s voice came out in that low warning tone he used when he was upset, “did you skip out on breakfast?”

“Trust me, I had more than enough,” Logan mumbled back. 

Patton eyed him over, but he left it alone. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Okay, I trust you. Hey, where do you want to get something to eat, since you know, your stomach keeps growling?”

Logan put a hand on his stomach and massaged it. 

“You wait here. I’ll be right back,” Logan ordered. Patton opened his mouth to protest but nonetheless listened. Logan took a deep breath and walked off to a place he never thought he’d visit ever again. He’d probably regret this, but ever since he woke up, he craved it. He knew Patton’s order by heart so he could pick up his food as well. Besides, he owed him for the past three days when he made sure Logan’s face didn’t end up in the toilet.

When Logan returned with their food, Patton’s jaw nearly hit the ground. He stood up from his spot on the low stone wall and pulled a bag from Logan’s hands.

“How much food did you order?” Patton asked.

Logan spoke through the bag in his teeth, “Enough to satisfy this insane hunger I woke up with.”

They placed the food on the stones, sat down, and sandwiched the food bags between their hips. Logan searched around the bags until he pulled out Patton’s order of chicken fingers and fries with extra ketchup and pulled two bottles of water out of his bag.

“Logan,” Patton mumbled as he peeked into one of the bags, “did you order… cheeseburgers?”

“I did, along with a chicken sandwich and quite a few chicken nuggets. I’ll share a few with you if 6 aren’t enough for you,” Logan replied.

Patton pulled his lips into a puzzled grimace. “But, Lo, you haven’t touched greasy fast food in about 13 years, ever since-”

“I’m aware.”

“So why now?”

“Because I’m hungry, that’s why,” Logan answered. He unwrapped one of the cheeseburgers and took an inhumanly big bite of it. Patton waited to make sure Logan didn’t choke and unboxed his own chicken nuggets. 

For the first few minutes, the awkward silence choked Patton instead.

Almost every time Patton finished a chicken nugget, Logan would finish off a cheeseburger. Patton wondered if Logan inhaled them at this point. He stopped on his fifth chicken nugget and watched Logan with curiosity. Logan showed no signs of slowing down nor notice that Patton stopped to watch him.

“Logan,” Patton called out. Logan stopped mid-bite and looked over at him, “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” Logan answered. He finished his bite and swallowed whatever reply he formed in his head.

Patton played with his fingers. “It’s just… you were so sick for those three days. And now you’re eating cheeseburgers. The other night, I heard you whimpering in your sleep, and you growled at me when we were playing cards. I know you’re stressed about finals and you don’t like talking about your feelings, but I’m really worried about you. If something is going on, please tell me. Please?”

Logan set the cheeseburger onto the napkin on his lap and turned to Patton. His lips pulled into a quirked smile, and he took a deep breath in and out. “Thank you for the concern, Patton, but I assure you that everything is satisfactory.”

Patton sighed through his nose and mumbled, “I was afraid you’d say that.” Logan quirked a brow, and Patton continued, “Logan, I do trust you, but please promise me if you ever feel comfortable enough telling me what’s going on you’ll tell me, okay?”

Logan stood up and grabbed the empty fast food bags. Patton tried to get Logan to stop, but he had already walked away to put them into the garbage bin. He returned and closed the space between him and Patton, their shoulders and thighs touching, and put his hands on his knees.

“I know you’re worried, but I can promise you that nothing has changed in my life. Well, aside from me being bitten and this monstrous appetite, nothing has at least.” Logan examined the area of skin where the teeth marks were almost a week ago. 

Patton clasped his hands and stared at them. “Okay.”

“Patton, you were my first and my closest friend. You’ve seen me at my worst, and you’ve still supported me nonetheless. You were there when I came out to our father, and you were there when we buried my mother. I have no reason to hide something serious from you because I know there are no risks.” Logan put a hand on Patton's own and gave it a squeeze. “If there was anyone I’d tell all my secrets to, it’d be you.”

Patton couldn’t help the smile that appeared on his lips. He nodded his head and sighed.

“Okay, I trust you.”

“Thank you. Now, I saw you were failing your algebra class. Would you like me to review with you for your final?”

--

Logan groaned as he pulled his blanket over his head. He curled in on his stomach and massaged it. He knew eating all those cheeseburgers would come back to haunt him. The clicking noise of Patton typing on his laptop above his head stopped, and Logan held his breath.

“Lo, you okay down there?” Patton asked.

“I’m fine,” Logan responded. “Just suffering some indigestion from overeating.”

“I told you to stop at the chili cheese dog and loaded nachos this afternoon.”

Logan grumbled an incomprehensible response.

Patton sighed and shut his laptop lid. “Want me to come down and rub your stomach like our mom used to?”

“That’s unnecessary,” Logan replied, but he had already heard the thump of Patton’s feet on the floor of their dorm. He rubbed his face into his pillow and sighed. “Go back to bed, Patton.”

The blanket lifted off Logan’s shoulder, and the cool breeze clenched Logan’s stomach muscles and tightened his fetal position further. He let out a low groan.

Patton sent a sympathetic smile, “Hey there, kiddo.”

“I’m not in the mood to be patronized,” Logan growled and grabbed the corner of the blanket. He rolled over and wrapped himself up like sushi.

Patton put his hands on his hips and sighed through his nose. “You know, if I told anyone that Logan Shea was being childish right now, no one would believe me.”

“That’s a negative thing?”

“No, but I- never mind. Hey, why don’t I make you some peppermint tea?”

Logan paused and tossed his head over in Patton’s direction. “With honey?”

“Extra honey just for you.”

“I guess that would suffice.”

Patton hummed and went over to their portable stove top to set a kettle on the burner. Logan fished his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the time. In three hours, it’d be midnight, and he would have to take his first final in the morning. He should be studying, not laying in bed.

Logan pushed the blanket off him. Goosebumps rose on his skin, and a shiver tore through his body. He caught sight of the full moon peeking over the trees and shining through the curtains of his dorm. Huh, he always liked sitting under the light of the moon. Perhaps it would bring some dopamine into his system and ease his stomach.

A childish thought, but he’d try anything at this point.

As Logan set his feet onto the floor, pain jabbed his kneecaps and toppled his balance. Logan cried out as he fell. The thud alerted Patton, who turned around and rushed over to him.

“Logan?” He cried out as he knelt down, “are you okay? What happened?”

Logan opened his mouth to reply, but his heart pounded in his chest, and he feared if he opened his mouth again it would jump out. His whole body started to throb. Logan clenched his teeth and realized his legs ached like when he got growing pains as a child. The floor slid out from under him, and he felt like he was falling.

Patton retracted his hand. Logan’s body burned like an inferno. He ran over to the counter, turned off the burner for the tea, and started to drench a paper towel in cold water.

A loud growl gripped Patton's attention. He spun around and dropped the towel on the floor. Logan’s body rapidly grew hair. His fingernails elongated into claws, and his nose pushed away from his face into a long snout. Clothing tore as Logan’s body grew, and it couldn’t contain his new size. The only thing that clung to him was his tie, now loosened around a thick mass of black fur. 

Patton covered his mouth in a silent scream. He backed into the counter. His eyes flashed over to the door, and he wondered if he’d have enough time to get out of here before anything happened.

Paws thundered on the floor as Logan stood up on his hind legs and hit his head off the ceiling. He whimpered and brought a pawed hand up to rub the spot. Logan shook his head, his ears making a flapping noise as he did so, and sat back on his hind legs. 

Ice blue eyes settled on Patton and froze Patton in place. Logan’s tail wagged as he took three steps toward Patton. Patton’s throat finally let out a sharp whimper, and he crawled onto the countertop. With Logan between him and the doorway, there was no way to escape now.

Maybe if he was lucky, this was just a horrible nightmare and he’d wake by falling off the top bunk again.

The now wolf Logan tilted his head to the side, much like a dog when someone spoke to it and it didn’t understand. He brought his nose close to the counter and sniffed Patton’s legs.

Patton blinked the tears from his eyes and sucked in a sharp breath. He looked around the counter for anything to defend himself with. He didn’t want to hurt Logan, but if it meant saving his life, he might have to.

Logan brought his head close to Patton’s own. Patton twisted his head to the side and held his breath. Logan’s leathery, wet nose brushed Patton’s cheek, and Patton squeezed his eyes shut. A slobbery tongue licked one of the tears off Patton's freckled face. Patton sucked a sharp gasp through his teeth. 

The wolf whined and nuzzled his nose under Patton’s chin as if trying to comfort him. Patton clenched and unclenched his hands. The wolf’s tail wagged back and forth behind him, and Patton slowly reached up to run a hand through Logan’s fur. It felt coarse and thick to the touch. He slipped his hand over Logan’s fur several times before the knot in his stomach released. 

Petting his brother was not on his to-do list today, but sometimes that’s just how life went apparently.

Logan’s teeth gripped the collar of Patton’s polo. He dragged Patton over toward his bed. Patton tried to slip out of his shirt, but before he could, the wolf tossed him onto the bottom bunk. Patton cried out as he rolled onto his back. The wolf climbed onto the bed as well, the bunk bed groaning in protest under their combined weight.  

Patton tried to roll off. The wolf grabbed him around the middle and pinned Patton against his chest. Patton’s body shook. The wolf’s ears perked up as he stared down at Patton, and he licked the tears off Patton’s face once again. Patton spat the drool off his lips. Logan’s tongue then started grooming Patton’s hair, making it stick up in all different directions. Patton wanted to brush it back to normal, but with the way Logan pinned both Patton’s arms to his side, he had a feeling he’d wake up with a permanent cow lick- er wolf lick.

When Logan was satisfied with Patton’s new hairstyle, he laid down and cradled Patton under his chest like a doll. He nuzzled his nose under Patton’s neck and let out a content sigh.

Patton spat the fur off his lips. He attempted to wiggle out of Logan's grip, but the wolf let out a warning growl, and his whole body froze. Patton's eyes searched the room for their digital clock. With Logan's body pinning down his arms and legs, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. 

Patton stared up at the ceiling of their bunk and tried his best to go to sleep. Hopefully, when he opened his eyes the next day, he’d have a heck of a tale to tell Logan.

--

Disappointment woke Patton up as he realized that last night did in fact happen, and now he had his near naked brother lying on top of his body.

Patton found he could easily wiggle out from under Logan now and put as much distance between him and Logan as he could, but not before covering Logan up with his galaxy blanket. He tripped over the shredded clothes on the floor and landed on the counter's edge. Patton twisted his body and tried to wrap his mind around what happened last night.

In all the years Patton knew Logan, he’d never guess that he was a werewolf.

No, that couldn’t be right. Logan never changed before. He would’ve known it. He and Logan spent many nights camped out under a full moon and staring at the stars, so what changed in that short amount of time?

Logan groaned, and Patton held his breath. He ran a hand through his black hair and sat up on his elbows. Half asleep blue eyes caught Patton’s startled expression, and he sent a quirked smile.

“Good morning,” Logan greeted.

Patton let out a nervous laugh. How much of last night did Logan remember? Obviously not much if he was in this chipper of a mood.

“Uh, good morning,” Patton replied.

Logan shivered, and he looked down. He gasped and brought his blanket closer around his body. A blush tinted his face red. Logan swallowed hard and stared at the floor. His arms gripped the side of the bed as he leaned over the edge and caught sight of his torn clothes on the ground.

“Patton,” he whispered, but his mind couldn’t formulate a continuation. He wrapped the blanket tighter around his chest and started to shake.

Patton walked over to Logan and sat beside him. He chewed on his lip.

“How much of last night do you remember?” Patton asked.

“Not much,” Logan mumbled back. He furrowed his brow and licked his dry lips. “What happened.”

“Weeeeell,” Patton played with his fingers. “You’re going to think I’m nuts for thinking this, and I swear I’m telling the truth, but let’s just say… you were a real animal in bed last night.”

“That’s not even remotely funny, Patton.”

“But it’s true.”

Logan brought his fingers out from under the blanket to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me I did not get intoxicated and defile someone last night.”

“You didn’t.” Patton paused. “At least, I don’t think you did.”

Logan sighed and rubbed his arms. “Then what happened?”

Patton took a deep breath and relayed the events from last night. Logan listened with a stone face. For a while, Patton even wondered if Logan was listening, let alone taking him seriously.

When Patton finished, Logan remained silent. 

Patton swallowed hard and sent a wary smile. “At least you didn’t hurt anyone-”

“I don’t want to believe it, but with all the events that happened over the past two weeks, I’m finding it relatively hard to deny it.”

Patton blinked in surprise. “Wait, you really believe this?”

“Think about it. My aggressive appetite and hunger for meat, my sudden intolerance to ice cream- chocolate to be exact, my rapidly healed eyesight,” Logan examined his forearm where he was bitten. “There's no other possible cause."

“Yeah, I guess it makes sense.”

“It’s no wonder my mind has tried to think up a solution for this problem.”

“Uh-”

“I’ve been stumped for so long, this brings everything into perspective. However, when I wake up, I’m going to have to try and figure out if my arm is infected and caused this fever dream. I knew my allergy to penicillin would detriment me at some point."

“Logan-”

“But first, I have an exam to get to. Even if this is a dream, I don’t want to fail.”

Patton tried to get Logan to wait and listen, but Logan dressed and walked out the door before he could reason with him. Patton flopped down on Logan’s bed and lifted his glasses to press his palms into his eyes.

Convincing Logan last night happened was proving to be more difficult than he thought.

--

Thankfully, the rest of Patton and Logan’s time during finals went rather well. Logan’s hunger subsided, and he was back to his normal eating habits. The two of them had started packing up their things to return home, and Patton decided it was time to start saying goodbye to all his friends before the summer hit and they were apart for three months.

Patton bounced around campus, passing students and professors left and right. He said hello to the few he knew and kept an eye out for those who he searched for.

“Damian!” Patton called out. He waved and ran up to his friend.

Damian turned around, his brown eyes catching Patton and sending a smile. However, it soon disappeared, and he covered his nose.

“Patton,” Damian said through his hands.

Patton froze in his tracks and tilted his head to the side a bit. “What’s wrong?”

“Did you forget to shower this morning?” Damian asked. “What did you do, roll around in garbage?”

Patton rubbed a hand over his neck. It was true; he hadn’t showered this morning. However, he didn’t think that he smelled that bad.

Damian grabbed Patton’s arm, making him jump. He started twisting it all over, then pulled his head to the side and examined his neck. He brought his nose close to Patton’s neck and took a deep breath.

“Uh, Damian,” Patton said with a nervous laugh. “What’s going on?”

A sigh of relief left Damian’s lips, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Nothing. Just wanted to see if it was really you that I smelled.”

“Okay,” Patton replied. 

Damian wrapped an arm around Patton’s shoulder and brought him in close. He said, “You know, I think you should spend the summer at my house. I think we could use some quality bonding time together.”

“The whole summer?” Patton squeaked.

“Why not? I think you’d enjoy the Arizona air. It’s actually breathable, unlike this humid swamp.”

“I don’t know, kiddo,” Patton replied. He gave a slight laugh. “I mean, I know you’re cold-blooded, but some of us sweat, and if you think I smell now-”

“How about a month then? I think my parents would love you.”

Patton chewed his lips. “Thanks but no thanks.”

A deep frown set on Damian’s lips before he sighed through his nose. “Well, if you change your mind, you have my number. And if you ever need help-”

“Patton,” a voice called behind them. Both Patton and Damian turned. Patton popped on a friendly grin, while Damian sent a cocky smirk.

“Virgil, so nice to see you,” Damian cooed, “You’re like a zit on prom night.”

“Shut it, mosquito breath,” Virgil growled.

“Hey Virgil,” Patton spoke. He moved to walk away from Damian but found his friend's fingers digging into his arm. “Uh, Damian, kiddo, you can let go.”

Damian hesitated before retracting his hand. He stared down Virgil as the latter shifted closer to Patton.

Virgil opened his mouth to speak, but he paused and smelled the air. His golden eyes glanced over at Patton, who sent a sheepish smile.

“I didn’t shower this morning, sorry,” Patton responded.

“I hope it wasn’t your fault,” Damian remarked. Virgil’s neck hair bristled. 

Patton pushed between the two of them and offered a too wide smile. “Hey, easy. It’s the last day. Is it really that hard to be nice?”

Damian snuffed and hissed, “To him?”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” Virgil growled.

Patton sighed. He scratched his head and opened his mouth to talk more, but Virgil grabbed his hand.

“Can I talk to you in private?” Virgil asked. He looked over his shoulders and caught Damian’s intense stare.

“Sure, kiddo,” Patton responded. He opened his mouth to speak again, but Virgil already pulled him away and far out of earshot from anyone else. Patton opened his mouth to ask what was going on when Virgil shut the family bathroom door and locked it behind them. For a moment, all Virgil did was stare at the door.

“Patton, I have a really crazy question to ask you.”

“Oookay.”

Virgil started pacing. He opened his mouth a few times to ask, but he closed it soon after with a growl. Patton stayed silent and watched his friend work out his nerves. Finally, Virgil stopped and took a deep breath.

“Patton, who have you been with the past 24 hours?”

Patton pulled out his fingers and started counting, “Well, my brother mostly. I said goodbye to Mr. Mare this morning, then I went to get coffee and donuts with Thomas. Then I saw Damian, and then you showed up-”

“No, I mean, like-” Virgil squeezed his hands through his hair.

“Breathe-”

“I KNOW-” Virgil snapped. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, I’m just-”

“Take your time.”

“Can you stop interrupting me?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He zipped his fingers over his lips.

Virgil blew a heavy breath through his own lips. He spat out, “Patton, do you know anything about werewolves?”

Patton froze. He sucked in a deep breath and let out a too cheerful laugh. “Now, kiddo, what kind of question is that?”

“I can smell that you’re nervous.”

Patton snapped his jaw shut. Virgil stood with his back facing Patton, and he clenched and unclenched his hands.

Virgil continued, “Pat, I… well I mean, my whole family actually- we’re all werewolves. Me, Roman, my mom, my dad, my aunts and uncles, cousins- you get the point. I know this sounds stupid and crazy, but I… the way you smell is not a normal human smell, and I’m worried.”

Patton reached out to touch Virgil’s shoulder, but he retracted it and instead clasped his hands together in front of his chest.

“Well, I-” Patton started. He chewed on his lip. Virgil turned around expecting Patton to continue, and Patton added, “I mean, I may have recently run into one.”

“Wait, what? Are you okay? They didn’t bite you, did they? Well, I mean, I would’ve known if they bit you because I’d be able to tell if you were a werewolf too but-” Virgil paused. “Who is it?”

Patton swallowed hard. He eyed Virgil carefully, who took a step forward. Patton took a step back. Virgil froze, and Patton glanced down at the floor.

“You’re not going to hurt them if I tell you, are you?”

“I- I don’t know, Pat. Not all werewolves are nice, and I just- I want to make sure, okay?”

“I can protect myself,” Patton responded, puffing his chest out a little.

Virgil snorted through his nose. “Okay, fine, but with the way Damian and I were touching you today, I want to make sure they don’t get territorial or anything.”

“Territorial?” Patton repeated. His voice came out in a near whisper, “Is he going to pee on me?”

Virgil let out a bark of a laugh and startled Patton a bit. Patton nervously chuckled. 

“No, but he might come after us, and I’d rather not have another territory struggle on my hands,” Virgil replied.

Patton opened his mouth to ask, but he decided to finally open up instead. “It’s my brother, Logan.”

Virgil furrowed his brow. “Wait, but I’ve smelled Logan on you tons of times. He always smelled like a human.”

“Well, this was… rather recent,” Patton said with a nervous chuckle.

Virgil’s face grimaced, and Patton swallowed thickly.

“Was he bitten over a jar of Crofter's?”

“Uh, yeah, but-”

“That fucking moron!”

“Excuse me?”

“Pat, Roman was the one who bit Logan.”

Patton paused, and Virgil pulled out his phone. Virgil swiped through until he pulled up Roman’s contact and jabbed his finger on the call button. Patton opened his mouth to ask what was going on, but Virgil held up his finger to silence him and put Roman on speaker.

After three rings, Roman’s voice picked up.

“Good morning, My Chemical Bromance, to what do I owe the honor-”

“You turned Logan Shea into a fucking werewolf,” Virgil growled.

The line grew silent. A wary voice called through, “Who is Logan?”

“Patton’s brother.”

“Oh,” was the only response they got for 30 seconds. Patton wondered if the line went dead. Roman continued, “Wait, the same Patton who hangs around with you and Flea Balzary?”

“That’s the one,” Virgil responded.

“Who’s Flea Balzary?” Patton asked.

The other end of the phone grew silent. Virgil asked if Roman was still there, and he got a cleared throat in response.

“Virgil, who else is with you?”

“Just Patton,” Virgil replied.

“Hi,” Patton chirped with a small wave.

Roman breathed a heavy sigh, and he spoke, “Well, hello there, Patton. I’m sorry we had to meet this way- well sort of. We haven’t actually met, but- Logan, is he alright?”

Virgil looked up at Patton for confirmation.

Patton played with his fingers as he answered, “He, uh, he doesn’t think he’s a werewolf.”

“I honestly wouldn’t expect him to. Tell you what, Patton, you bring Logan over to our dorm, and we’ll explain everything. I mean, he’s going to be a werewolf for the rest of his life now, and no level of sane thinking is going to ever deny that.”

“Okay,” Patton replied.

Roman continued, “Oh, and Virgil, I don’t appreciate you chewing up my jersey.”

“You left it on my bed. I told you not to.”

“Then put it on mine like a normal human being.”

“Never.” Virgil hung up the phone before Roman could reply to him. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry to get you all mixed up in this.”

“It’s no problem,” Patton responded. He let out a sigh of relief. “Honestly, I was starting to wonder if it never happened and I really did dream up the whole thing.”

Virgil sent a sympathetic smile. “I wish I could tell you this was all a dream.”

--

Logan sighed as he followed Patton and Virgil off to Virgil’s dorm. Honestly, he didn’t have time for this. There was still so much to pack, and their father would be there in the morning to pick them up. He had to double check to make sure he and Patton both didn’t leave anything behind.

Patton kept trying to bring lightheartedness into the conversation, but between Virgil’s nervousness on revealing a family secret to a complete stranger (even if he was Patton’s brother) and Logan’s irritation, he couldn’t get anyone to respond. 

Eventually, they got to the Freshman’s dorm, and Roman opened the door with an all too eager smile.

“Come on in,” he greeted with an arm open wide. Virgil rolled his eyes and stepped in. Patton followed after and earned a genuine smile from Roman. When Logan stepped in, Roman took a deep breath and tried to keep his smile from disappearing.

“I hope you’re not going to bite me again,” Logan snapped.

“Depends,” Roman replied and earned a kick in the shin from Virgil. Roman yelped and glared at his brother, who closed the door behind Logan.

“Lo, this is Roman. He wants to apologize for biting you,” Patton spoke.

Logan raised a brow and folded his arms. Roman twisted his hands together and swallowed his nerves down his throat.

Roman spoke, “Yes, well, that was an unfortunate accident.”

“Unfortunate?” Logan barked. “You bit me over a jar of Crofter's. I can understand the sentiment, but I would never harm another human being over it.”

“I’m sorry! I wasn’t in the best of moods at the time,” Roman snapped back. He ran a hand through his hair. 

“Obviously. However, apology accepted. Now, Patton, can I go home? I have a lot of work to get done.”

“Not yet,” Virgil spoke up, and Logan turned his attention to him.

“We have something to discuss,” Roman added. Logan turned his attention between the three people in the dorm and sighed.

“I really don’t have time for this.” He turned to leave.

Virgil stared him down, a low growl sounded through his throat, “You really need to hear this.”

Logan’s gut twisted with dread. Something about the look in the two stranger's eyes sent warning signals screaming through his brain. 

“What’s going on?” Logan asked, taking a step back. He grabbed Patton’s hand and partially stepped in front of his brother to shield him from the other two.

“Logan, when I bit you,” Roman started, “You see, sometimes when a pureblood werewolf bites someone- even if they’re not shifted- well it can sometimes lead to the person becoming a-”

“Logan, Roman turned you into a werewolf,” Virgil spat out. 

Logan opened and closed his mouth three times before he finally turned to Patton and said, “You’re playing a practical joke on me, aren’t you?”

“No!” Patton protested and held his hands up. “I swear, Logan, we’re being serious right now.”

“You’re still on about this werewolf business? Patton, werewolves are not real. They’re make-believe. They don’t exist.”

“Could you tell the government that? Because I really don’t want to pay taxes,” Virgil mumbled.

Logan sent him a rather nasty glare, and Virgil rolled his eyes.

“Logan, I swear on my father’s grave that we’re being honest,” Roman said and put a hand to his chest. “I can’t prove it to you now, but if you wait until the night of the full moon-”

“I honestly don’t have time for this,” Logan growled. He turned and pulled Patton’s hand along with him. “Come on, Patton, we have work to do.”

“But-”

Roman growled, “Logan, please be reasonable!”

“I am being reasonable! It’s you lot who are insane.”

“Tell me you remember what happened the night of the full moon, and I’ll let it all go,” Roman snapped back.

Logan opened his mouth to speak. He closed it and opened it again.

“I was in my room, I fell asleep, and then I woke up the next morning. Nothing extraordinary there.”

Roman growled in frustration and scrubbed his hands down his face.

“You-”

“Fine, you don’t want to believe us, just go,” Virgil snapped.

“Virgil-”

“No, Roman, obviously he doesn’t want to listen. There’s no point wasting our breath on him.”

Patton pulled on Logan’s hand and urged, “Please, Logan, please just listen to them. They’re only trying to help.”

Logan eyed his brother over. He glanced up at the other two before taking in a deep breath and exhaling through his nose.

“The only way they’re going to help us now, Patton, is if they help us pack to go home.”

Patton’s head lowered. Tears of frustration pricked at his eyes, and he clenched his teeth.

“Why do you have to be so stubborn?”

Logan shook his head. He mumbled, “You can stay here and play pretend, but I have work to do. Meet me at the car in an hour if you want me to drive you home.”

Logan pulled his hand from Patton’s grasp. He walked out the door and slammed it behind him.

Patton’s shoulders tensed as the door slammed shut. His body stiffened, and he blinked his eyes so tears would not fall onto his cheeks.

Virgil blew a heavy breath through his lips. “That went well.”

“I’m sorry,” Patton apologized. He played with his fingers. “I didn’t mean to waste your time.”

“Worry not, Patton. I could smell werewolf all over him,” Roman answered. “Whether Logan chooses to believe it or not, he is a werewolf, and he will end up shifting on the next full moon.”

“Can’t you both shift into werewolves and show him?” Patton asked.

“This isn’t a movie. We can’t shift at will,” Virgil answered.

Patton sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He walked over to the door, turned the handle, and paused before leaving.

“What do I do? I mean, when he shifts on the full moon.”

Virgil snuffed. “Stay out of his way and hope he doesn’t eat you.”

Roman sent his brother a nasty look before he turned to Patton. “Virgil and I will try our best to be there.”

“Are you kidding me? Do you know how much of a bad idea that is?”

“Do you have a better one?”

Virgil opened his mouth to answer but closed it soon after. He crossed his arms and grumbled under his breath.

“Don’t worry, Patton. You won’t be alone in this. If Virgil won’t help, I will do my best to be there for you when he transforms on the next full moon. You have my word.” Roman walked over to Patton and held out his phone. “Here, take my number. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me.”

Patton nodded his head and sent a grateful smile. He copied Roman’s number into his contacts and sighed through his nose.

“Thank you.”

“No problem at all, little puffball,” Roman spoke. “I have a feeling we’re going to need each other later on.”

--

Logan shifted his car into gear and pulled out of the college parking lot for the last time. Well, at least until he drove Patton back in three months.

Patton rolled his window down and waved goodbye to a few friends. He settled back down into his seat and let the window open. The mild spring air tossed his hair around. His eyes kept flickering over to Logan, and the latter sighed through his nose.

“You have a question?” Logan asked.

Patton squeezed his hands together. “Are you okay? I mean, this is the last time you're going to be here.”

“I’m still under the assumption that this is all a wild hallucination due to sleep deprivation and I’ll wake up in my dorm bed before taking any of my finals,” Logan replied, “but yes, I am satisfactory.”

Patton nodded his head. He leaned his elbow on the window sill, and his eyes watched the trees pass by in a blur. 

For a while, the ride home was silent. The campus was about an hour drive from their home, and they both knew the roads by heart. Ever since they were little, Logan dreamed of going to this college and becoming a doctor so he could stop anyone from suffering the same fate his mother did. They took so many visits to the campus when they were little, and their parents saved up for years so they could go. Realizing that Logan’s dream was soon a reality warmed Patton’s heart. All the years of financial struggles were about to pay off, and he hoped his own journey would be just as successful.

Their familiar childhood suburb pulled into view. Nostalgia gripped Patton’s heart as he watched familiar street signs pass. He caught sight of the park where he and Logan first met all those years ago. Memories played in his mind like a movie.

Logan accidentally pushed Patton's sandcastle over while following an ant trail, and Patton cried for a half hour before he was consoled. Logan offered to help him build it back up after he calmed down. The two of them worked for hours, and quite a few kids asked if they could join in. Soon, it was a playground production. They built a sandcastle that covered the whole sandbox, and their parents were so proud.

Then a dog chasing a frisbee ran through it and ruined it.

Patton chuckled. Logan glanced out of the corner of his eye and quirked a brow.

“Something on your mind?” Logan asked.

“Just remembering stuff,” Patton responded. He sighed. “Remember when you fell off the fire pole because you were too afraid to hold on with your legs?”

Logan shuddered, “Don’t remind me.”

“Okay, I give that memory a break.”

“Patton.”

“What? You have a bone to pick with me?”

Logan contemplated pulling over to the side of the road and making Patton walk the rest of the way home.

The sight of their home came into view, and a wave of relief eased Logan’s tense muscles. Here, everything that happened in the past two weeks or so could go away. Here, he was just a young man who was returning home from college.

No werewolf nonsense here.

Logan pulled the car into the driveway and put it in park. For a moment, Patton and he stared up at the familiar whiteboards in silence, appreciating the moment for what it was. Then Patton exited the car, and Logan followed soon after.

“It’s quiet,” Patton pointed out.

“It’s suspicious,” Logan mumbled. “We did tell them our arrival date was today, did we not?”

“Maybe they had to run to the store,” Patton responded. He inserted his key into the lock and gave it a twist.

From outside, Logan could hear whispers from inside. He grabbed Patton’s hand on the door handle, stopping him from opening it. 

“Someone’s inside,” Logan grumbled. He smelled the air, and several scents lingered on the doorstep. Multiple people were here. Some of the scents he didn’t recognize and sent alarm bells through his mind.

Patton turned to Logan and quirked a brow. “It’s probably mom and dad.”

“No,” Logan growled. He nudged Patton away and placed his own hand on the door handle. Logan took a deep breath in. He twisted the door handle and swung the door open wide.

“SURPRISE!!”

Logan’s glasses slid down his nose a little as he froze in the doorway. Patton peeked around Logan and started to laugh.

“Aww, a surprise party?” Patton shouted over the clapping and cheering.

Their mom and dad, who stood up from behind the couch, walked over to their two boys. Patton ran forward and nearly knocked his mom over, who wrapped her son up in the biggest hug she could manage. Logan missed when his father arrived in front of him.

“Well, how’s it feel to be a graduated college student?” his dad asked as he clapped a hand down on Logan’s shoulder. Logan recoiled. He nearly flashed his teeth at his dad but regained his composure. 

He was a human for god’s sake, not some wild animal.

“No different than when I woke up yesterday morning,” Logan responded in a cool voice. 

“I wouldn’t expect any less from you,” his father responded. “Go eat some cake, relax, and try to have a good time, okay?”

Logan gave a short nod and finally released the breath he’d held in his chest.

Patton blended into the crowd unsurprisingly well. Social gatherings were always his forte, while Logan usually trailed behind him like an awkward toddler. The younger brother bounced from aunt to uncle to cousin, telling each one all about his college adventures. Some looked politely interested while others engaged Patton, asked questions, and gave input to keep the conversation going.

One aunt Logan noticed kept a particular distance from him, and he caught her eye. The mere sight of her sent chills down Logan’s spine. Not only that, but every time he got too close to her, he began to feel sick, but it cleared as soon as he stepped away from her.

That was… odd.

“Logan!” Patton called out, breaking his brother’s concentration. Logan rose a brow and turned to Patton, who held out a cup of lemonade to him. Patton continued, “You know what they say: when life gives you lemons-”

“Thank you,” Logan said as he took the cup. 

“I know you hate surprise parties,” Patton mumbled. He looked down into his own cup.

“It’s exhausting,” Logan responded, “and since my nerves are a mess, my senses are heightened. I can see and smell too many things at once.”

Patton nodded his head and took a drink.

Logan continued, “I’m going to attempt to escape to my bedroom. Keep everyone away if you can.”

“I can try,” Patton responded, “but Aunt Alice has been asking about you a lot. She’s asking some… really odd questions.”

“Her especially,” Logan mumbled. He scanned the crowd one last time for his estranged aunt and walked up the stairs to his room.

“Logan!” his father called out, making the hair on Logan’s neck rise, “the party’s down here. Don’t tell me you’re already calling it a day.”

“I’m exhausted from finals and had to drive the whole way home. I’m not in the mood for a party,” Logan responded.

His dad deflated a bit. “Oh, well, I’m sorry if we upset you-”

“Patton seems to be enjoying himself, so it wasn’t a wasted effort. I shall return once I take a nap.”

His dad sneezed, and Logan blessed him.

“Okay, we’ll save you some cake.”

Logan recalled his three day illness. “Only if it’s vanilla.”

“One slice of vanilla cake with Logan’s name on it going in the fridge.”

His dad sneezed again and rubbed his nose. He mumbled about someone having dog fur on their clothes and hugging him.

Logan sent a genuine smile before retreating up the stairs to his room. The second floor muffled a bit of the chatter, but Logan could still hear it like he was still in the living room. He’d have to invest in earplugs at this rate.

As Logan approached his room, a heavy scent reached his nose. He paused a few steps outside his doorway and took a deep breath in. It seemed to come from his room. Logan tiptoed to his door and put a hand on the handle. The strange scent overpowered his own, and he swallowed his dry throat.

Logan twisted the door open and examined the room. His galaxy bedspread rested against the wall, and his computer desk guarded the corner opposite of it. His window cracked and let in a light breeze, the lace curtain flapping a bit. 

His dresser sat against the wall. On top of that, Logan noticed someone had been burning incense. The smell was sweet and earthy, and it turned Logan’s stomach. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to enter his room. He closed his door and took a few breaths of fresh air.

That’s strange. He usually loved the smell of incense.

Logan turned from his room and headed toward the bathroom, but he noticed someone standing in the doorway. Logan paused and watched his Aunt Alice light up a stick of incense and leave it on the bathroom sink. Logan took a deep breath of fresh air and approached the room.

The sick feeling returned to his stomach.

“Aunt Alice, we have air fresheners on the back of the toilet,” Logan informed.

His aunt turned to look at him, her green eyes studying him with contempt. She curled her lip into a grimace and walked out of the room. The strong smell followed her out. Logan stopped himself from covering his nose and held his breath.

“I’m aware,” she replied.

“Then please extinguish the incense in the bathroom. I’m afraid you’ll aggravate Patton’s asthma.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot about that,” she grumbled. She dug around in her purse and grabbed some sort of perfume. “I wouldn’t want any harm to come to my second favorite nephew.”

Logan’s lungs burned. He resisted the urge to breathe until his aunt turned around. The strong smell burned his lungs further, and he hid a cough behind his shirt sleeve. Alice extinguished the stick with cold water and placed it on the counter to cool. 

“Thank you,” Logan responded as she closed the bathroom door behind her. 

She eyed Logan over once more and curled her nose. Logan watched her descend the stairs. His shoulders relaxed, and Logan failed to realize just how many of his muscles locked from the conversation.

What was that stuff? Why did the smell burn Logan’s lungs and make him want to vomit?

Was… maybe what Patton was going on about him being a werewolf had some truth- no. That was ridiculous. Werewolves don’t exist.

Logan hastened back to his room. He covered his nose with his shirt collar and walked in. The smell slipped through the threads and burned his nose. His head spun. Logan reached out and grabbed the unlit tip, and it burned his fingers. He let out a sharp hiss. Logan raced toward the bathroom to put out the stick as quickly as possible. 

After placing the extinguished incense down on the counter, Logan examined his fingers. Redness coated his fingers, but it didn’t look too severe. The stick’s burn was too far up and shouldn't have injured him whatsoever.

What was this stuff?

Logan walked back to his bedroom. He placed a moveable fan in front of his window and positioned it to spread fresh air into the room. Within a few minutes, the smell disappeared enough for Logan to shut his door, and he took a deep breath in.

After fishing his phone from his pocket, Logan googled scents that would repel werewolves just for curiosity's sake. He came up with wolfsbane, but apparently, that had no smell. 

With a buzzing mind, Logan walked out of his room and leaned over the stair railings. He spied Patton talking to some family members and waved his hands to grab Patton’s attention. 

Patton turned toward him. He smiled and waved back.

“Patton, I need a word with you,” Logan yelled over the chatter.

Patton excused himself from his guests and walked over to the stairs.

“What’s up, Logan?”

Logan shifted his weight from one foot to the next. He asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have Roman’s number by chance, would you?”

“Roman?” Patton’s eyes widened, and a grin spread across his face. “I do. Why?”

“I just-” Logan ran a hand through his hair- “I wish to get better acquainted with him is all.”

“Oh, okay,” Patton said with a wink.

Logan’s cheeks flushed. “I am not crushing on him. I merely wish to discuss the Crofter’s incident in more detail. Perhaps we could reconcile.”

“Ooookay,” Patton replied, his smile still wide. He fished his phone out of his pocket and scrolled until he found Roman’s number. He showed it to Logan, who copied it into his phone. Logan cleared his throat when he finished and thanked Patton for his time. He climbed the rest of the stairs and hastened into his room.

At least the smell dissipated a bit in the rest of the house. 

Logan sat on his bed, rested his forehead in his palm, and grabbed his hair. With a gentle tug, he stared at Roman’s contact number in his phone. How did he word this without alerting the other of his situation? It could be a coincidence that his aunt had burned a smell that affected him so much. It could be a coincidence that all this werewolf stuff would affect him.

Logan opened the messenger and stared at the blinking cursor for a moment. He finally typed a coherent sentence.

Good afternoon, Roman. This is Logan Shea, the person you bit over the jar of crofters. I am messaging you with a question. Hypothetically speaking, are there certain smells that affect a werewolf? I’m curious, and you seem to be into werewolves. If you wish to answer, I would be grateful to know. If not, I hope your day ends well.

Logan waited a moment or two before hitting the send button. That sounded formal and not urgent whatsoever right? He never understood tone over text. How many times had he asked someone a simple question only to get accused of being angry? 

Logan sighed and set his phone on his bed. He didn’t expect a reply so quick, and definitely not several messages popping up afterward. 

Roman: Lavender is a good. I love the smell of lavender

Roman: OH! And it gets rid of mosquitos and stuff because they don’t like the smell. Great for leaving your window open at night

Roman: I heard oranges is a good one too

Roman: But I used to live next to an orange grove when I was little so I might be a bit biased

Roman: Frankincense is pretty nasty tho even Virgil agrees

Roman: Lemongrass is good for when you need to think or ya know clear your head and stuff

Roman: Also white sage is a no no. It’ll kill any wolf that inhales too much of it

Roman: That answer your question?

Logan mumbled about Roman eating up so many texts. Wasn’t it easier to send multiple sentences at once with the correct grammatical format? Logan sent a quick “Yes, thank you” and received some sort of yellow face blowing a heart at him. He set his phone on the counter and plugged it in to charge.

It amazed him how serious Roman took this werewolf business.

The door muffled a bit more of the party downstairs, and Logan sat down on his bed with a book he neglected to take to college with him. He opened the cover, appreciating that new book smell, and hoped that by the end of the book, he’d have some sort of understanding on how to obtain and keep a stable job.

--

Two weeks passed by without much alarm. Logan searched for any sort of job in the medical field. Two called him back for an interview so far, but since it was only the beginning of his search, Logan didn’t bet all his money on grabbing it. After all, he was still young.

Patton played games online a lot with his friends from college. Even though he and Damian were from different time zones, the two of them still found time to get together and play. Patton blamed that mostly on Damian’s horrible sleeping pattern, and no amount of telling him to go to sleep ever fixed it.

Then, three days before the full moon, the insatiable hunger hit Logan’s gut again. Not only that, but he found himself eating greasy foods once again. If Logan’s parents noticed, they didn’t say anything. Patton insisted Logan didn’t smell like grease, but Logan could smell his shame.

The closer the full moon got, the more nervous Patton became. What was he going to do with Logan when he sifted? How would he hide him from their parents? He couldn’t let Logan run free. Logan could hurt someone. It was a miracle he wasn’t hurt when Logan shifted the first time.

Someone must’ve been looking out for him because his parents got a call from his sick great uncle in Canada who asked if they could come to visit. They’d be gone for the week. In fact, his parents were surprised when Patton declined to go with. He loved his great uncle, especially the stories he told, but Patton knew if he left Logan alone, something bad was going to happen.

Patton eyed the basement door. It… might hold Logan. He didn’t know how strong the werewolf was, but it might work. It was all he had.

So the day of the full moon, Patton gathered as many spare blankets as he could, throw pillows, a bowl with water from the kitchen sink, some cheap chew toys he found at a pet store (just in case), and a rawhide bone. He placed them in the basement and made a little nesting area for Logan to lay in.

“What are you doing?”

Patton jumped as Logan’s voice called from upstairs. The steps creaked as Logan descended them.

Patton forced a smile on his lips and replied, “Oh, you know, just making a soft area while I watch tv.”

Logan looked around, his eyes landing on the dog bone on the floor.

“With dog toys?”

“Um… yeah.”

“Patton-”

“I didn’t hide a stray dog upstairs this time, I swear!”

Logan rubbed a hand over his face and sighed heavily through his nose.

“We can’t keep it.”

“But-”

“No buts, Patton. You know dad is allergic to dogs.”

“I know, but-”

“Where is it? I’ll drive it to the rescue center if you need me to.”

Patton lowered his head. Maybe he could use this to his advantage. He sighed through his nose and put his hands in his pocket, his shoulders tense.

“No, Logan, it’s my dog. I’ll do it.”

Patton walked past Logan and climbed the stairs. He sent one last look down, making sure Logan had everything he needed and hurried up the last few steps. 

As he got to the top floor, he closed the basement door and double locked it.

Patton paused, letting the events sink in. He just locked his brother in the basement. Logan was going to be pissed when he found out. Still, it was close enough to nighttime that Patton hoped he wouldn’t have to worry about Logan remembering it.

Patton took five steps back and eyed the door. Logan would be fine. There was a bathroom in the basement. He set water down. Logan would be fine. There were blankets in case he got cold. There was even a window he could watch the full moon rise through. Logan would be fine. He wouldn’t pound on the door and demand Patton let him out. He wouldn’t scratch it down. He wouldn’t break through.

He would be fine.

Patton would be fine.

The door handle jiggled, and Patton held his breath. It hesitated before twisting again.  

“Patton?” Logan called out. A pause. “Patton, this isn’t amusing whatsoever. Let me out right now.”

Patton’s heart raced in his chest. He chewed on his lip. Maybe if he pretended he wasn’t here-

“Patton! Open the door right now. You can’t keep me locked down here forever. We can’t keep the dog.”

The other side of the door grew quiet, and a naive part of Patton hoped Logan gave up.

The door shook as Logan slammed his shoulder into it.

“Patton!”

Patton covered his ears. He could turn on the television and pretend Logan wasn’t there. He could go upstairs and listen to music. He could get on a voice chat with Damian and try to distract himself.

The door banged again, this time as Logan pounded his fist on the wood.

“Patton, unlock the door right now!”

Patton squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed thickly.

“No.”

Patton held his breath and listened. Logan grew eerily quiet on the other side of the door as if he waited for Patton to continue.

“This is no time for childish games. Open the door. Now.”

“I can’t.”

“And why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why?” 

“I just can't.”

“Patton, that's a horrible excuse!”

“I don’t want you to hurt anyone!”

The house deafened as Patton’s yell reverberated throughout it. Logan’s voice did the opposite, going quiet like a whisper.

“Patton, I’m not going to hurt the dog, and I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to hurt anyone. I know I'm angry, but I won't hurt you. I promise. Please, open the door.”

Patton whispered back, “You don’t know that.”

Another pregnant pause stilled the house. Patton fiddled with the sleeves of his cardigan and looked outside. The sun barely peeked over the trees.

Patton continued, “Logan, whether you want to believe it or not, you did get turned into a werewolf. I saw you. You pinned me down on my bed and held me there all night. You were huge and had black fur and- I don’t know if the basement is even going to hold you. And whether you want to or not, when the full moon rises, you’re going to turn into a werewolf again. And I can’t let you out, because I don’t want you to hurt anyone.”

It took a moment for Patton to realize he started crying. His body shook, and he wiped them away with his cardigan’s sleeve. 

It really was happening again. His brother was going to turn into a werewolf, and he was all alone. He had to face this alone. He had to be the one to keep his brother under control. He had to be the one who would hurt Logan if need be. 

The other side of the door stayed quiet. Patton chewed on his lip. Did Logan hear all that? Was he changing now? When would it happen? Anticipation rose goosebumps onto Patton’s skin.

If the real Logan was still in there, Patton needed him to know this wasn't out of malice. 

“Logan, I love you. I’m sorry. If there was something else I could do, I would.”

Patton walked away from the basement door and into the living room. He curled up into a ball on the couch and rolled himself in a blanket like sushi. Since it was the next room over, he’d be able to hear every sound from the other side of the basement door, but it was far enough out of the way that he could pretend the sounds didn’t exist.

“Patton,” Logan’s voice called. Patton’s attention perked up. Logan sighed, and he continued, “When the night is over and I don’t change into a werewolf, promise me you’ll let me out of the basement.”

“I promise,” Patton whispered, then repeated it louder so Logan could hear. He probably heard him the first time, but Patton wanted to be sure.

The sound of Logan going down the basement stairs took all of Patton’s nerves away. Patton breathed a sigh of relief, and he burrowed his head into the soft blanket.

The living room clock ticked. Seconds felt like minutes. Minutes passed like hours. Patton held his breath.

Soon. Any minute now.

A strangled breath cried out from the basement, and all of Patton’s anxiety returned tenfold. 

Here it comes.

The moon glowed through the living room curtain. Patton made sure to leave the living room lamp on so his neighbors knew someone was home and didn’t call the police. If Logan made too much noise, they still might, but at least they’d be calling the police on Patton and not some stranger.

Logan’s scream turned into a growl, and Patton did his best to cover his ears while still remaining locked in the blanket.

Silence choked the house.

Patton popped his head out of the blanket and looked toward the basement door. Logan hadn’t made a sound in at least a minute. Did he shift? Was it over? What was he doing? Was he lonely? Would he be okay? What would he do if he had to pee?

Claws scratching steps clicked on the stairs. Patton’s whole body froze. He could hear Logan’s heavy breath on the other side of the door. Two sniffs preceded a low growl.

The door banged, and Patton jumped.

An annoyed growl shook the walls. The door banged again, this time as claws scraped against it. Patton prayed the door would hold. Logan’s snarl followed soon after.

The door banged and cracked.

Patton yelped as he heard wood splinter.

It wasn’t going to hold.

Logan banged into it again, and the door cracked louder.

It wasn’t going to hold!

The door slammed against the wall beside it like a gunshot and shook the house. Patton covered his mouth as he screamed. He tried not to shake. Maybe if he laid still Logan would leave him alone.

Claws on tile scraped through the kitchen, and Patton heard the floor creak under Logan’s weight. Two sniffs whispered in the air, and the footsteps creaked closer to the living room.

Patton tried to swallow, but his throat closed up. 

Logan’s nose pressed into the blanket, and Patton whimpered. The suction from Logan’s sniff pulled the blanket off his hand, and he retracted it like it burned.

Patton's heart pounded in his ears. 

Logan didn’t hurt him before. Logan could’ve hurt him before, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t hurt him now.

Logan promised he wouldn’t hurt anyone.

He promised.

Teeth gripped the edge of the blanket. Logan ripped the blanket out of Patton’s hold. Patton tried to curl in on himself, to make a smaller target, but there wasn’t enough blanket left to cover him.

Patton gazed into large blue eyes. If he ignored the black fur and wolf snout, they looked just like Logan’s human eyes, only bigger.

No wonder people say the eyes are a window into the soul.

Logan whimpered, and he nudged Patton’s arm with his nose. His tail wagged as he pressed his head completely under Patton’s arm. His nose booped the tip of Patton’s own nose, and Logan let out a low whine.

It’s just me, he seemed to say. Don’t be afraid. 

I promised.

Patton allowed his hand to gloss over Logan’s black fur. It felt the same as the night Logan shifted the first time, soft and warm, and Patton couldn’t help but smile. 

Logan withdrew his head, and Patton pushed himself into a sitting position on the couch. Patton noticed Logan still wore his tie, just like the first night he shifted. 

For a moment, Logan stared at him. Then, he jumped onto the couch.

“Oh no! No wolves on the couch,” Patton scolded.

Logan watched him, his ears alert.

“I mean it, mister. Dad will freak out if he sees dog hair on the couch. No. Down.”

Patton wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if Logan really did roll his eyes, but the wolf pushed his paws off the couch, circled twice, then rested in the middle of the living room floor with a soft groan.

Patton couldn’t help his giddy giggle. When he wanted a pet, he would’ve never guessed it would be his brother.

“Do you still like science and stuff? We could turn on some VSauce or something. I know you like watching Michael.”

Logan’s ear twitched to show he was listening, but he didn’t look up at Patton.

Patton turned on the television and pulled up the YouTube app. He clicked on the video that popped up first and let autoplay run. That way, even if he fell asleep, Logan would have something to entertain himself with. 

Somewhere between the videos, Patton got enough courage to sit on the floor. Logan watched his every move, but he didn’t approach. Patton slid until his hip pressed against Logan’s back, and he let his fingers ghost over Logan’s fur.

If Logan minded he didn’t say anything.

For a while, Patton petted Logan in the muffled background sound of unwatched videos. His eyes grew heavier with each stroke, and when he looked at the clock, it read one in the morning. Patton yawned, and he scolded himself for not getting more sleep the night before.

The next time Patton looked at the clock, it was three in the morning. His head rested on Logan’s chest as he hugged the wolf around the middle.

Logan growled below him. The rumbles of his deep voice shook Patton awake.

Or maybe that was the creaking of the porch steps outside that woke him.

Patton gripped his hand into Logan’s fur, and he pressed his chest into Logan’s back. Whatever was on the porch couldn’t get in. It was fine. They’d be fine.

A key clicked in the latch, and Patton held his breath.

This was not fine.

A snarl curled Logan’s lips back. Patton gripped his hands around Logan’s muzzle, silencing the wolf and holding his breath.

The door closed, and Patton bit his lip.

Who was here? Should he risk calling out? What if they came into the living room and saw a giant wolf? What would they do?

Footsteps came closer to the living room. Logan’s muscles tensed below him.

“Hello?” Patton called out, trying to keep his voice as even as possible.

The footsteps stopped. The whole house held its breath.

“Mom, Dad, are you home?” Patton asked.

Silence answered him.

Patton pressed Logan into the floor as he stood up. 

“Stay,” he whispered, hoping that for once in his life Logan would listen to him. “Please, stay.”

Patton stepped away from Logan and tiptoed toward the kitchen. He peered around the corner and nearly screamed when he stared down a crossbow.

“Patton,” a harsh voice whispered in the dark behind it.

Patton squinted in the low light, and then his eyes widened.

“Aunt Alice?”

She pulled Patton into a hug and squeezed his chest a little too tight.

“Are you alright? You’re not hurt, are you?”

Patton shook away his shock and answered, “No, I’m not. I mean, yes, I’m okay, but- why are you here?”

Alice spied the door to the basement cracked in two. Her eyes narrowed, and she clenched her jaw.

“I’m guessing Logan did that.”

Patton blinked and forced a smile. “Uh, don’t be silly, auntie. Logan’s not that strong.”

“Cut the act, Patton. I know he’s a werewolf.”

Patton swallowed thickly. His eyes darted to the crossbow in his aunt’s hands and then back up to her face. His mind formed one question, but his imagination filled in several answers.

“What makes you think that?”

“The day of the party, I could tell Logan was acting strange. I always carry a bit of wolfsbane in my purse when I’m out, just in case. It doesn’t create a smell, but it makes any werewolf sick to their stomach, and it keeps them well away from me. I could tell how uncomfortable Logan felt around me, and it wasn’t because my perfume was too strong.”

“Maybe he was just tired and didn’t want company.”

“No, this was different. I’ve seen the reaction way too many times. Now, where is he? Please don’t tell me he got out.”

Patton bit his lip. What should he say? Would his aunt try to hurt Logan if he told the truth? What if Logan came around the corner of the living room door and she saw him? What would Logan do? Too many questions fogged Patton’s mind and hid his words in his throat.

“Nevermind. You stay here. I’m going to check the house.”

“No!”

“Patton, this isn’t Logan we’re talking about. This is a werewolf. They’re deadly and unpredictable. Your brother isn’t there anymore.”

That’s not true, Patton wanted to argue. He opened his mouth to argue. However, a low snarl from behind shook every ounce of courage from him.

Alice pulled Patton close to her chest with one arm and held the crossbow with the other. Her eyes narrowed, and her feet backtracked, pulling Patton with her.

Logan observed the situation. His teeth bared, and the hair on the back of his shoulders stood on edge. Claws dug into the carpet.

“No, Aunt Alice wait!”

“Stay behind me, Patton. He can’t hurt you. I won’t let him.”

“But he hasn’t hurt me all night! He’s not going to hurt anyone!”

Logan took a step forward. Alice shoved Patton behind her and took a shot. Logan flinched at the last second, and the arrow grazed his left shoulder. It lodged itself into the carpet. Logan yelped.

Patton watched Alice load another arrow into the crossbow. She lined up her shot. Patton pushed the crossbow up, and the arrow flew wide into the ceiling.

“Patton-!”

Logan leaped.

Alice grabbed Patton’s hand. She pulled him to the side and toward the kitchen door. Patton tried protesting, but his aunt shoved him out the door before he could argue. Alice slammed the door shut as Logan's head slammed into it. Logan cried out and began furiously scratching the door, the whole time snarling and howling.

“In the car,” his aunt urged.

Patton set his jaw. “I’m not leaving him.”

“The hell you’re not! Patton, he tried to attack you.”

“No, he tried to attack you because you shot an arrow at him. You tried to kill him!”

“Only to keep you safe.”

“I was fine until-” the kitchen door cracked- “you came along! He was just laying on my living room floor. And he just held me the first night he shifted. He’s not going to hurt anyone as long as you leave him alone!”

Alice grabbed Patton’s hand a little too hard, and he hissed in pain. She yanked him to the car and pushed him into the back seat. Before Patton could recover, she shut the door, got in, turned on the car, and sped out of the driveway.

Patton regained his balance, only to be knocked over again as his aunt went around another sharp turn. He hit his head rather hard off the window, and for a moment, he saw white. Patton shook off his daze as the car pulled to a stop but didn’t turn off. 

Alice got out of the car, opened Patton’s door, and pulled him outside.

“Stay here,” she ordered. She shoved something cold into Patton’s hands, and Patton stared down at a pistol. “And if anything comes to hurt you, shoot it.”

Patton watched his aunt get in her car and drive back toward his house. His heart panicked.

“No! Aunt Alice, wait! Please!”

But the car sped well out of earshot. Patton’s cries for mercy fell into the grass like his knees.

No, this… this couldn’t be happening. This was all just a bad dream. He’d wake up the next morning, and Logan would be under him in the living room. They’d both be okay.

A sob choked Patton’s breath.

It had to be a dream.

But.

But what if it wasn’t? What if his aunt actually killed Logan tonight? How was he going to tell his parents? How would his dad react to not only losing the love of his life all those years ago to a bullet but his son as well?

Patton got up on his feet. For a moment, he felt dizzy and caught his balance. His head ached, and he massaged his temple, which now held a rather large bump on it. No doubt it’d be black and blue by the morning.

Patton surveyed his surroundings. The park. She dropped him off at the park. It was only a 10 minute walk from here, and if he ran, he might make it in time.

He could save Logan yet.

The bushes beside the creek rustled, and Patton squeezed the weapon in his hand. No breeze blew. Two golden eyes stared out of the bush leaves, and Patton whimpered as he took a step back.

“Patton,” a voice in his mind whispered. It sounded… familiar… like-

“V-Virgil?” Patton stammered out.

Two hazel eyes turned into a large wolf with gray, brown and white fur. Behind it, another emerged, its stark white fur and golden eyes practically glowing in the moonlight.

“Oh, Patton, thank the stars you’re alright,” Roman’s voice spoke next.  

How the two wolves were talking, Patton didn’t know, and quite frankly he didn’t care right now either. Roman came, just like he promised. Patton didn’t know whether tears of panic or relief pricked his eyes, but he wiped them away as quickly as he could. His fingers squeezed the weapon in his hand. He wanted to throw it as far away as he could, but it might hurt someone, and he couldn’t live with himself if-

“Patton, why are you out here all alone on a full moon?” Virgil asked. “Where’s Logan?”

Patton shook his daze away.

“Logan’s back at my house. You have to help! My aunt knows he’s a werewolf, and I think she’s trying to kill him.”

Roman growled deep in his throat, and Virgil nudged Patton’s hand to brush his head against Patton’s side in comfort. His nose tapped the gun in Patton’s hand, and he yelped as he jumped back.

“Patton-” Virgil started, but he didn’t finish. His eyes stayed locked onto the gun.

Roman spied his brother’s reaction and turned his head to the weapon.

“Patton, why do you have a silver gun? Who gave it to you?”

Patton eyed the weapon in his hand before he answered, “It was my aunt. I think she’s dealt with werewolves before. She said she found out Logan was one because she had wolfsbane in her pocket.”

“One shot with that and Virgil and I would be dead within the hour. Silver bullets are fatal unless we’re able to somehow get the bullet out.”

Patton’s gut twisted.

“Oh my goodness, she’s really going to kill Logan!”

“Okay, okay, calm down. We’re going to stop your aunt, we’re going to save Logan, and we’re going to get out of this in one piece.”

Virgil raised his head into the air, but he couldn’t catch a trail on Patton’s scent.

“Which direction is your house in?”

Patton pointed to his left and answered, “It’s a few blocks down the road not far from here.”

Roman nodded his head, and he walked over to Patton. He pressed his back into Patton’s hand and looked up at him.

“Get on my back. Quickly. We’re both faster than you.”

Patton nodded his head. Roman lowered his back, and Patton swung a leg over. His hands dug into Roman’s white fur. Unlike Logan’s, Roman’s fur was soft and thick as a chinchilla. It felt like a cloud.

Roman stood, and Patton’s feet lifted off the ground. He braced himself in the middle of Roman’s back, surprised the wolf could support his weight and whimpered as Roman took off toward his house.

The wind dried Patton’s eyes and blurred his vision. He heard Virgil following on Roman’s tail. Both brothers let out sharp breaths through their nose. Patton could feel Roman’s strong muscles rippling below his legs, and he patted the side of Roman’s head.

“Turn here. My house is the third one down.”

Roman did as he was told. He ran down the street and skidded to a halt outside of Patton’s house.

Alice’s car was parked in the driveway, its engine still pinging from recently stopping. The screen door to the house lay ajar against the wall, and the front door had a slight crack in it. 

Patton swallowed vomit back down his throat. They were both in there, and who knew if Logan was still alive- no. They made it. They had to.

Roman lowered his body, and Patton slid off the side.

“Perhaps it’s safest if you stay out here. I don’t know how much help you’ll be against your aunt.”

“But-”

“No, Roman’s right, Patton. You need to stay safe. You’re only human after all.”

“But-!”

“We’ll be fine. This isn’t our first encounter with a hunter.”

Roman’s eyes hardened, and his muscles tensed. Virgil’s head lowered slightly, and Patton’s curiosity rose.

Patton let out a long sigh.

“Please stay safe.”

Roman rubbed his head against Patton’s hand as he walked past and let Patton’s fingers trail down his back. He stalked toward the house, his head lowered and tail straight, and crept up the porch steps.

Virgil nosed Patton’s hand and gave it a gentle lick. Patton wrapped his arms around Virgil’s neck, and Virgil backed up slightly. However, he resisted the instinct to pull away and rested his muzzle on Patton’s back.

“Please stay safe,” Patton repeated.

Virgil let out a long sigh before pulling away. He followed in Roman’s pawprints before sending one last look at Patton and disappearing in the house.

--

Creak.

Roman waited in the kitchen for Virgil to join his side, and he slowly maneuvered toward the stairs. Virgil stayed close on his tail as they crept up the stairs together.

Creak.

Small puddles of blood climbed the stairs with them, some distorted by pawprints.

A low growl rumbled above them, and Roman froze in place. Logan’s scent grew stronger, as did the scent of blood.

A gun clicked.

“I’m sorry, Logan. You really were my favorite nephew, and I swear I’ll avenge you for this.”

Roman wasted no time climbing the rest of the stairs. He reached the top, and sharp eyes met his. He caught the woman standing outside of a door, gun raised and ready to shoot.

A rumbling snarl thundered with his paws as he charged at her. The woman, who must’ve been Alice, panicked and took a shot. It went wide. Roman lunged. His paws easily shoved her to the ground. The woman yelped.

Roman’s paw pressed into her chest, and he heard ribs creak under his weight. He bared his teeth. Alice moved her arm to shoot again. Roman grabbed her forearm with his teeth and ripped into skin. Blood saturated his fur. His teeth tore muscle and scratched bone. Alice screamed beneath him. The gun clattered from her hands.

A fist pounded into Roman’s nose. He whimpered and let go of her arm, taking a step back to shake the pain in his nose. Alice lunged for the gun. She scrambled backward and aimed.

Roman charged forward. He knocked into her into the wall. The gun banged with her head. The shot lodged itself into the wall, nearly hitting Roman’s face and taking some of his fur with it.

Alice’s eyes rolled into her head, and she slumped unconscious onto the floor.

The ticking clock down the hallway synchronized with Roman’s breath.

Roman licked the blood from his lips and took two steps back. He eyed the woman in front of him before snorting through his nose and raising his head high.

“That’ll teach you for messing with my pack,” he growled.

Virgil pushed past Roman and into Logan’s room. A black bundle of fur growled, and ice blue eyes stared at him.

“Easy,” Virgil whispered and lowered his body to the floor, his ears flat in submission. “We don’t want to hurt you, Logan.”

Logan panted heavily. His ears rested against his head, and he barely focused on Virgil in front of him. 

“Patton. Where’s Patton?” he panted over and over again.

“He’s safe,” Virgil informed. 

The stress in Logan’s eyes seemed to waver a bit, but it came back soon after.

“I have to keep him safe. I promised.”

Roman padded in behind Virgil, and Logan’s hackles raised. He stared at Roman and bared his teeth.

“Easy, I’m not going to bite you this time,” Roman said with a hint of mirth.

Logan tried to push himself onto his feet, but he whimpered and collapsed back down on the ground with a heavy plop. Virgil walked over to Logan and nosed his chest. The scent of silver rose his fur.

“Roman, he’s been shot. If we don’t get the bullet out soon-”

Roman twisted his body around and dashed down the steps as quickly as his feet could take him. He pushed through the front door.

Patton stopped his pacing in the front yard and met Roman halfway.

“I heard gunshots. Is everyone okay? Is Logan okay?”

“I’m afraid not. We need your help. Logan has a silver bullet in his chest, and if we don’t remove it so his body can heal, he’s going to die.”

Patton stopped the panicked choke in his chest and raced into the house. He tried to ignore the bloodstains on the floor and his unconscious aunt with her arm torn to shreds in the hallway. He stood in Logan’s doorway and spied his brother.

Logan’s tail wagged as he spotted Patton. He tried to stand, but he whimpered and collapsed once again. His struggling breaths shook his body with a slight whimper.

“It’s under his right shoulder,” Virgil informed.

Patton walked in and knelt beside his brother. He stroked Logan’s head, and Logan leaned into Patton’s touch. 

“Hey there, kiddo,” Patton whispered. He massaged Logan behind the ear, and Logan rested his head in Patton’s lap. Patton blinked away his tears and continued, “I’m gonna help you, Lo, but I need you to raise your head a little.”

Logan sighed heavily. He whimpered before bringing his head back up. 

Patton sucked in a sharp breath. Blood stained the carpet and soaked the front of Logan’s fur. Patton’s fingers brushed over the fur until he heard Logan yelp. He drew his hand back as Logan took a nip at him.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Patton’s gentle voice shushed him. He stroked Logan’s back a bit. “But I might have to if we want you to heal. I have to pull the bullet out, or you’re going to... to die.”

Logan’s eyes stared up into Patton’s own. They looked so, so tired. Logan blinked slowly, and he bent his ears backward. He rolled off of Patton, exposing his chest and the wound under his shoulder as well.

With that, Patton leaned down and started pushing fur out of the way. His hands stained red. The thick fur finally parted, and Patton found the hole the bullet wedged itself into. He checked Logan’s face for any sign of pain and was both relieved and nervous that Logan remained so calm this time.

Virgil started pacing. Every once and awhile, he’d stop, stare at Patton, make sure Logan wasn’t trying to hurt him, and then continue his pacing again.

Roman, on the other hand, was perfectly content laying on the floor with one front paw out and the other folded onto his chest. Every once and awhile, his ear would swivel, listening to the sounds outside the house for danger, and then returned his attention back to the two in front of him.

Patton poked his finger in the hole. Logan’s muscles tensed, and he swallowed thickly. Patton waited a moment, holding his own vomit in his throat. 

Logan was the doctor, not him. He shouldn’t be doing this. He could hurt Logan worse than he already was. Removing a bullet is the exact opposite of what someone should do if they’re shot.

But what choice did he have? They couldn’t exactly take him to the vet right now, and leaving the bullet there was out of the question. 

If only Logan could talk him through this.

Wait.

“Wait!” Patton spoke, “Roman, Virgil, I need you to talk to Logan for me. He’s a doctor- well studied to be a doctor. I need to know what to do to get rid of it.”

Roman stayed quiet for a moment, and then he spoke, “He says you’ll need gloves because he doesn’t really want your germy hands in his chest. And tweezers.”

Patton nodded and stood up. Logan whined as Patton left the room and ran to the bathroom. He flipped the bathroom light on with his shoulder and froze at the medicine cabinet.

His hands had so much blood on them.

Patton tried to ignore the blood and opened the medicine cabinet. He shuffled around the contents, grabbing gloves and nearly knocking the tweezers down the drain. He resisted the urge to grab the Disney bandaids and hurried back to Logan’s room.

Patton turned on the lights, sat down on the floor once again, and scooted closer to Logan. He put the gloves on. 

Once he had proper lighting, parting the fur to find the hole was easier. However, that still left the bullet to retrieve.

Patton swallowed.

With a shaking hand, Patton pressed the tweezers into the hole. Logan yelped and jolted up, but he stopped himself from biting and pressed his head back into the carpet. Patton found it harder and harder to breathe as he reached for the bullet.

Virgil’s nose nudged Patton’s shoulder, and he spoke, “Logan says you’re doing great. Keep breathing. You can do this.”

Patton swallowed his nerves. The metal of the tweezers tapped the bullet, and Patton chewed on his lip as he grabbed onto the sides. The first pull only slipped off. Patton sucked in a sharp breath.

“Okay, okay,” Virgil whispered, “That’s okay. Try again.”

Patton tried once, twice, three times more before he got the bullet to budge. He stopped paying attention to Logan’s face. Instead, he stared at the bullet wound and carefully moved the tweezers until the bullet came into sight.

Patton’s breathing sped up as the tweezers slid off the bullet once again, and it stayed inside the wound.

“No,” he whispered. He tried to grab it again, but it slipped deeper in.

“Calm, Patton, stay calm,” Roman urged as he stood. He placed his head on Logan’s neck to hold him still. “You almost have it. Just one more try.”

Patton nodded and swallowed hard. His hand shook a little less as he reached for the last time to grab the bullet. Without thinking, Patton yanked his hand back. There was a sick sounding pop, and Logan yelped.

The silver bullet bounced across the floor and rolled to a stop in the center of the room.

All the breath Patton held left his chest at once. He smiled and let out two hysterical laughs.

“I did it. It’s out!”

“You did great,” Virgil mentioned and rubbed his head against Patton’s hair.

“Now what? How long will it take to heal?” Patton asked.

Roman sighed. “I’m not sure. All we can do now is wait.”

Logan’s breathing evened out, and the whimper disappeared from his stressed panting. He tried to sit up once again, but he yelped and laid back down on the floor. 

Patton moved so he sat at Logan’s back. He pulled Logan’s head into his lap and stroked the side of Logan’s head. His fingers trailed farther and farther down Logan’s side until they rested at the base of his ribs.

“You’ll be okay, Logan,” Patton whispered, over and over. Maybe more so for his sake than Logan’s own. Patton began to hum the lullaby that his mother sang when they were kids, and Logan allowed his eyes to close.

Exhaustion knocked Patton forward, and he stopped himself from passing out. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, he started to feel like it was four in the morning and he got two hours of sleep.

But if he fell asleep, he couldn’t watch Logan. What would happen if Logan didn’t make it through the night? What if this was the last time he’d see him? He wanted to spend every moment-

Roman’s side pressed up against Patton’s back. Patton jolted awake as Roman laid down behind him.

“Get some rest, Patton. You earned it.”

“But, Logan, what if he-”

“If anything happens to him, we’ll let you know,” Virgil responded. He curled up against Logan’s bed and rested his head in his paws.

Patton leaned back into Roman’s soft, warm fur. He let a long sigh leave his lungs.

He barely remembered falling asleep.

--

The next morning, Patton tried to ignore the fact that he fell asleep on his brother’s floor, with his naked brother's head in his lap, laying on top of a naked stranger (well, really only his head was on Roman’s bare chest), and Virgil laying curled up against Logan’s bed with at least a little modesty from the bed’s blanket. 

Patton brushed the wound on Logan’s chest. Judging from the sticky dried blood, it stopped bleeding hours ago. The flesh was still tender though as Logan flinched when Patton poked it. Patton drew his fingers back. Logan stayed asleep, and Patton let out a long sigh. He noticed another scratch along Logan’s shoulder that was almost healed. That’s the shot his aunt took when she first came.

Wait.

Aunt Alice!

Patton slid out from under Logan and stumbled into the hallway. He looked down the hall.

Gone.

His aunt was gone.

Patton held his breath. Did she just leave? Did someone take her? Did Virgil and Roman dispose of her body?

Patton chewed on his lip as he left to go check his phone for any missed messages. His throat dried up when he realized he had missed texts from the very person he was looking for.

My dearest Patton,

I feel like I should apologize. I did come to your house with every intent to keep you safe, but I was too lost in my hatred to realize it wasn’t necessary. When I woke, I saw you sleeping with those two wolves and your brother. They didn’t hurt you. In fact, they were protecting you.

I may not have given up my hunter ways, but I certainly will leave you, Logan, and his pack alone for now. Please stay safe. If you need help, you know who to call.

-Auntie Alice

PS - I’m delivering Logan’s favorite crofter thumbprint cookies as an apology. He won’t remember me shooting him, and I’d prefer it that way. He’s still my favorite nephew… no offense ;)

Patton read and reread the note over and over again. He sighed in relief. One problem down.

Now he just had to figure out how to make all the blood disappear and how to replace the doors Logan broke without his parents noticing.

That was easy… right?

Patton first went to his room and grabbed three of his favorite house robes. The others would probably be cold when they woke up. He draped them over each person, putting a red Mickey Mouse robe on Roman, his favorite fuzzy gray one on Logan, and a powder blue one with calico cats on Virgil. Thank goodness Patton was taller and bigger than everyone.

Afterward, Patton climbed down the stairs, careful not to step in any of the blood puddles, and walked into the kitchen. He spied the broken door to the basement.

Well, no use cleaning on an empty stomach. His parents wouldn’t be home for another four days, after all.

Besides, the wolves-er werehumans- would probably be hungry when they woke up.

Patton grabbed a package of apple oatmeal and started cooking it on the stove. He grabbed some raisin toast and set it in the toaster to pop down when someone was ready for breakfast. No one liked cold soggy toast. He also set tea in the kettle for Logan and put some coffee in the coffee maker. He hated coffee, but Roman and Virgil might appreciate some.

As Patton stirred the oatmeal, the stairs creaked.

Logan entered the kitchen clutching Patton’s robe around him like a lifeline and looked around the house in a near daze like state. Patton couldn’t tell if he was just tired or if it was a state of shock.

“Good morning,” Patton chirped.

Logan stared at the basement door for a few minutes before he answered, “Good morning, Patton.”

Logan reached out to grab a kitchen chair, missed, tried again, and sat down. He stared at the wall in front of him and rubbed a hand over his face.

“It really did happen last night, didn’t it?”

Patton pinched his cheeks into a smile. “I usually don’t like saying I told you so but-”

“I’m sorry.”

Patton closed his jaw with an audible click. Did Logan just… apologize? Flat out?

Logan’s blue eyes drifted over to Patton, and he sighed. His lips stumbled to find words before he continued.

“I didn’t want to believe it. However, with all the evidence stacked against me, the insatiable hunger, the aversion to certain smells, the toxicity of chocolate, and the sudden height of sight, sound and smell, I could no longer cross out the possibility that werewolves did, in fact, exist, and that I was one of them.”

Logan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He stayed silent for a few minutes before adding on, “I did shift into a werewolf last night, did I not?”

Patton nodded his head. He set the oatmeal off the burner and onto a warming pad. After, he reached for Logan’s star mug and poured some earl gray tea. Patton presented the warm mug to Logan, who took it with a word of thanks and sat at the other side of the table. Fingers wove together and placed themselves on his lap.

“You didn’t hurt anyone, though, so don’t worry.”

Logan’s blue eyes flashed open, and Patton recalled the calm stare of the wolf the night before.

“Then how did I achieve the wounds on my chest and shoulder?”

Patton sucked in a breath and forced a smile. He let out a nervous laugh and answered, “Oh, well, I mean- it’s not because you hurt anyone. It’s more like they were out to hurt… you.”

“Me? What possible cause could they have to hurt me?”

“Um, well, they were a… werewolf hunter, I think.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No! Actually, they wanted to keep me safe. They thought that you were going to hurt me.”

“What stopped them?”

“Roman and Virgil. I think it was mostly Roman though.”

Logan nodded his head and sighed through his nose. He ran a hand through his messy hair and swallowed the dryness in his throat.

“Mom and dad are going to flip when they see the door.”

“Yeah, there’s no way they’re going to find it a-door-able.”

Logan glared, and Patton sent a proud smirk.

The stairs groaned a second time, and Patton had to strain his hearing to pick up the light footsteps. Golden eyes flashed over the railing as Roman descended the stairs and stopped in the kitchen doorway.

“Good morning,” Roman practically sang.

Logan turned around in his seat, and Roman smiled a bit too wide at him.

“How are you feeling, Logan?”

“My chest is in pain, but otherwise, I believe I will make a quick recovery.”

“Oh,” Roman flashed his eyes up to Patton before returning to Logan. “How much of last night do you remember?”

“Not much. The last thing I recall was contacting you, actually.”

Patton’s eyebrows pinched together. 

“You called Roman?”

“Texted, actually,” Roman corrected. “He told me, and I quote ‘I’ve attached the directions to my house. Please come retrieve me from the basement. Patton has locked me here thinking I am a werewolf and I can no longer deny it might be true.’ I never thought he’d reach out to me of all people, but I imagine it was because I was the one who extended the invitation a few days ago.”

“Roman and I have been in contact with each other,” Logan replied. “He’s been… rather knowledgeable on the subject of werewolves, and it was beneficial to my research.”

“Uh-huh,” Patton said as he leaned into the table, cupped his cheeks in his hands, and leaned on his elbows with a wide grin. “Glad you two are getting along.”

Logan’s cheeks flushed, and he sent a glare. Patton practically read the “I will kill you if you say anything” rolling off Logan’s stare, and he giggled.

“By the way,” Roman said and raised his nose in the air, “something smells fantastic.”

“Oh! I’m making oatmeal,” Patton said with a smile. He walked into the kitchen and stirred the oatmeal in the pot. “Would you like some?”

“Praise you,” Roman said and stood up from his chair. “I’m starving.”

Logan watched Roman walk over to Patton like a starving puppy waiting for its breakfast. He took a sip of his tea and listened to the steps groan behind him once again.  

Without turning, Logan greeted, “Good morning, Virgil.”

A grunt answered him, and Logan sipped his tea to hide his smirk. Virgil plopped himself in the chair beside Logan, wrapped the robe around him tighter, and tried to blink his sleep away.

“You okay?” Virgil asked. 

“I’m satisfactory. How about yourself?”

“Eh, I’ll live. I think.” He watched his twin chatter with Patton as they argued about milk and cinnamon belonging in oatmeal. A smile softened his face.

“What happens now?” Logan asked. 

Virgil turned his hazel eyes to Logan, and he sighed. 

“Well, you can live a mostly normal life except that, you know, you’re going to shift into a werewolf every full moon from now until you die.”

Logan sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I just finished college. I did not want to walk from one nightmare into another.”

“It’s not so bad,” Virgil replied. “I mean, you can hear people talking smack in the neighbor’s house.”

“Why would I care about someone making a cartoon punch sound effect?” Logan mumbled.

Virgil opened his mouth to explain, but closed it and shook his head.

Roman and Patton finally arrived in the kitchen. Roman placed a cup of black coffee in front of Virgil, who graciously took it and sipped the hot liquid like chocolate milk. Patton passed out four bowls of oatmeal, and they started conducting breakfast.

“So, now that I am a… werewolf-” the word still refused to leave Logan’s tongue- “where do I live? Is it safe to stay here with Patton and my family? Will anyone else come to hurt us?”

“I mean, you have one of two choices,” Roman said and held up a finger. “One, you can come live with Virgil and me in our pack, which I’m sure would welcome you with open arms, or two, you can stay with Patton and come to our house for nights with a full moon. You two only live about 3 hours away from us.”

Logan swallowed his dry throat and squeezed his hands together until they turned white. He caught Roman’s eyes, who looked patronizingly sympathetic.

“It’s your choice, Logan,” Roman offered.

“I will think about it. For now, I’d like to continue my life here, with Patton. Then, on the night of the full moon, I will go to your house and transform.”

Virgil shrugged and sipped his coffee.

“There is the problem though of Patton being part of your pack,” Roman answered. “You’re going to want to know he’s safe, and your wolf form is a lot more… primal than your human form. It’s going to want to physically see Patton.”

“Well,” Patton offered, “I can go with. I mean, Logan didn’t hurt me the last two times. He shouldn’t hurt me the other times, right?”

Roman and Virgil shared a knowing look, and Virgil sighed. 

“Yeah, it might work. I don’t know how the rest of the pack will feel about it though.”

“Oh, you know mom is always happy to have strangers over for supper,” Roman said with a laugh. Virgil glared at him, and Roman’s laughter died down. “But in all seriousness, it shouldn’t be that much of a problem. We can just explain the circumstances to her, and hopefully, everything will be right as rain.”

Logan squeezed the sides of his tea mug. He sighed and stared at his reflection in the glass. His eyes stared back at him, and he wondered if they looked the same when he was a wolf. He’d have to let Patton take a picture of him. 

For science, of course.

“If you believe that is the right course of action, I'll do so without hesitation.”

“Well, I guess it’s settled then,” Roman announced. “Welcome to the pack, Logan.

End

[arcadianmoonshadowjedi]

Knightess of the Moon (Cassandra S3 AU): Chapter 5: Taking What’s Mine - Lines Now Crossed:

Back again with the last chapter in the “Taking What’s Mine” part of Cassandra’s AU! In this chapter, you’ll finally see the ghost child tell Cass her own backstory. Cassandra finally succumbs to her anger, which led to her betrayal of Princess Rapunzel and her friends. 

Also Note: The events of this fic weave into the events of Rapunzel’s Return, therefore the end parts are mostly from the episode itself. 

After this chapter, I’m gonna take a bit of a break from the Cass arc to start on my Eugene DPE season 3 AU (AYYY!).

Here’s the link to AO3 and Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4!

Enjoy! 😊

Cassandra sat in her place, still crying, still heart shattered. Out of nowhere, the ghost re-appeared by her side, looking sympathetically at the broken-hearted Cassandra and laid her hand on her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you, Cassandra.You didn’t deserve to go through all of that,”

Cassandra said nothing. But with the ever-growing sadness and pain consuming her heart, she felt a surge of anger start to build up inside her. She growled and swiftly took out her sword to aim it at the ghost.

“Who are you?!” She bitterly asked, still sniffling with tears and raising her voice as she spoke each word. “And how did you know about my past? Tell me now!” 

The ghost, holding her hands up high, sighed. “Well if you insist,” She started, tipping her finger on the sword’s end, clearly unaffected. “My name… is Madeline,”

Cassandra looked down then back at the ghost, lowering her sword as she let the ghost speak.

“I’m the spirit of the moonstone opal and I was trapped in it for eternity. That was until King Edmund of the Dark Kingdom tried to destroy it, which led to my release.” Madeline paced around as she continued to speak, Cassandra stood still as she continued to listen to her story. “I know of your past because I was on a journey to Corona to try to reunite the sundrop with the moonstone and along the way, I witnessed what happened to you and your family,”

Cassandra shut her eyes and her face tightened. Should she just believe Madeline or not? But at the same time, she wasn’t wrong at all about her past. And Cassandra had some idea about the moonstone and the Dark Kingdom from some of the stories Adira told them.

“As for my quest to retrieve the sundrop, it was a failure because King Fredric uprooted the flower,” Madeline sighed and her face twisted with disbelief as she continued to tell her story. “You see, the sundrop flower, while it had good uses, it’s mostly been used for horrible selfish reasons for thousands of years. You see? The very sickness that killed your family and many Old Coronans also nearly killed Queen Arianna. And instead of using the sundrop’s power to heal everyone afflicted by it, he thought selfishly about only saving his own family,”

Cassandra flinched and looked away. Madeline wasn’t wrong. Each of her words rung in her head. If the sundrop was used to heal the people of Old Corona, she still could’ve had her family here with her now. But they were left to die and her mother had left her in an orphanage to keep her safe. And now she didn’t know what became of her…. Whether she was dead or alive.

“You see Cassandra, the royalty of both Corona and the Dark Kingdom misused the sundrop and moonstone. The Dark kings and queens spent millenia hiding the opal from the world and neglected the people of the Dark Kingdom while their homes were destroyed and they were forced to flee. They were both too beguiled and distracted by these heavenly powers, they just... don’t care for people like you,”

“That’s not true!” Cassandra snapped. She had Rapunzel, who was her best friend. They did run into problems recently, but she knew she could confide in her. She had to talk to Rapunzel about what she saw just now. Surely she would be able to help fix all of this and bring justice, right?

“The princess will be of no help to you, Cassandra,” Madeline interrupted her racing thoughts. “She’s naive and doesn’t understand a lot about Corona’s royalty and its history. Surely she wouldn’t learn anything about it from having fun and playing games,” she snickered.

Cassandra felt an urge to speak up and defend Rapunzel, but before she could say anything, Madeline continued. “Besides, Rapunzel is following her father’s footsteps to the throne. Do you think she’ll care for what you say? She is the princess and you’re simply just her handmaiden,” 

Madeline’s words stung Cassandra’s heart as she was approached by her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look her in the eyes. Her head was completely in the clouds and she didn’t know what to think anymore. Rapunzel was her best friend, she wanted more than anything to stay true to that. But why were Madeline’s words becoming more believable? More than anything, she wanted to keep her faith in Rapunzel. To believe that fulfilling her destiny would bring balance. But would it bring justice to her fallen family or those in Old Corona who were continuously ignored till this day? Would she really be heard and taken seriously by Rapunzel? She finally looked up at Madeline, who was standing right in front of her.

“Afterall,” Madeline started. “The last time you tried to get Rapunzel to listen to you, well…” Instead of finishing her sentence, she reached for Cassandra’s burnt hand and held it up. Her hand, her maimed, charred hand hidden beneath her suit of armor. Her hand that she had lost full ability of and had to re-learn to use because even though she found a way to defeat Hector in the tree without anyone getting hurt, Rapunzel insisted on using that incantation that left her scarred. Because Rapunzel refused to hear her out, she had to experience that massive, traumatic, intense burn, which she still felt until now.

Anger boiled inside of her and surged through her veins. Her fingers clenched around the hilt of her sword as she finally succumbed to her heightened fury. She took her sword and threw it across the empty room with a viscous growl. Her breaths grew harsher as she hyperventilated. No more hope was left inside her, just anger and resentment. She walked over to grab her sword, with her footsteps growing louder with each move she made.

“However,” Madeline started. There is something you can do about all of this. You can bring an end to all of this injustice. The key to bringing balance and ending this disparity is all in your hands…”

Cassandra hesitated, then picked up her sword. “I’m listening,” she finally said as she turned to face Madeline, waiting to hear her destiny.

                                                              ***

Cassandra stood firm at the edge of the moonstone chamber, where the moonstone was once encased. Her hair and eyes now shined in fiery cyan, and her dark brows were pulled down in fury. She glared ahead of her at Rapunzel and Eugene, who stood across the bridge still bewildered by her betrayal. On Eugene’s shoulder was Pascal, who was still reeling from nearly being blown away by the moonstone’s blast.

"You saw all of this in the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrow’s?" Rapunzel asked shakingly.

“I saw everything, Rapunzel!” Cassandra snarled back.

“Cass, if what you’re saying is true, it means....”

“It means that your father ignored my people, MY family! He turned his back on those who needed him and I won’t let that happen again, no more,” Cassandra clenched her fists and with each word she spoke, the moonstone embedded on her chest flickered and sharp black rocks erupted from the ground around her.

“Cassandra please, listen to me,” Rapunzel started, with heartbreak filling her bright green eyes as she pleaded. “I am so sorry this all happened to your family and I understand your anger. You did not deserve any of that. But this… this is not right! Please just give me the moonstone and we can both figure something out! We can speak with my father when we get back to Corona, but please just...”

“NO!” Cassandra interrupted. “I am not taking any orders from you anymore!”

“Cass, please, we are friends. In fact, you are more than just my friend, you’re like my sister,”

“Sister?!” Cassandra snickered as the flickers from the moonstone grew more ferocious. “You cast me aside and didn’t take me seriously! I spent my entire life being cast aside like I was nothing. But now, I am done waiting to be heard by you or anyone! Now, it’s my turn to fulfill my destiny,” She reached for the moonstone opal and clenched it tightly.

Suddenly the doors of the moonstone chamber opened. “So what did we miss?!” Asked Lance cheerily as he, Adira, Maximus entered the room. 

“Lance! Not now!” Eugene whispered sharply. Lance, Adira, and Maximus were taken aback when they caught sight of the now moonstone-altered Cassandra. 

“Cassandra please, let me help you,” Rapunzel pleaded as she cautiously progressed towards her fallen friend. “Stay Back!” Cassandra exclaimed as she backed away whilst black rocks emerged around her. 

Rapunzel, growing more determined, frowned as she walked past the black rocks to reach out once more. “Cassandra! You’ve got to give me the moonstone! It is too dangerous! The whole world is at...”

“I said STAY BACK!” Cassandra screamed as the moonstone flashed wildly like lightning and she took cover behind her clenched fists. Suddenly a massive black rock spurted from the ground thrusting against Rapunzel. In terror, she quickly grabbed her long hair which wrapped itself around her as a beaming, golden shield but screamed as she was thrown across the bridge.

“Rapunzel!” Eugene exclaimed as he witnessed her slam into the ground right in front of him. He quickly lifted her up and held her in his arms with an immense worry filling his eyes. Rapunzel barely opened her eyes to look at him but immediately flinched as the pain took over her muscles. Eugene’s eyes widened in terror but his face quickly turned into a frown.

 “CassANdra!” Eugene yelled as he ferally breathed. Then Pascal squeaked in anger right away. Cassandra finally glanced around her, but was shocked and curious at the immense power she witnessed coming from the opal and from her suit.

Suddenly, Adira drew out her shadow blade and charged at the confused, yet vengeful Cassandra. She sliced through the black rocks that stood in her way until she finally reached Cassandra and pushed her against the wall with the blade.

“Release the moonstone, Short Hair! You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” Adira demanded.

“Neither do you!!” Cassandra yelled, giving into her full rage as the moonstone sent a full blast against Adira, violently jolting her against a black rock. In shock, Lance quickly ran to Adira’s side and held her shoulders. “Breathe easy, your Lance is here,” He assured her. In response Adira rolled her eyes at him while she gripped her throbbing arm. 

The shadow blade, which slipped into the air from Adira’s grasp when she was hit, fell right in front of Cassandra. It was hers now; hers to help her fulfill her destiny. She heaved it up from the ground and put it behind her for her moonstone armor to form a sheath around it. Finally, she sprinted right towards the opening of the moonstone chamber. Eugene let go of Rapunzel and made an attempt to stop Cassandra, one final chance to stop her from leaving into the world, only to be fiercely struck by a black rock as she ran by him. Ensuring that Eugene was alright after the blow, Rapunzel finally chased after Cassandra. She desperately called out to her friend who was almost as good as gone…

[retphienix]

As I type this the credits are rolling on FF12 and man, what an interesting ride this turned out to be.

It’s flawed as can be, and in ways I never suspected. But that was a really fun romp to be honest, and that’s in no small part because of the remaster’s fast forward feature.

But let me rewind a touch for fun.

When this game came out I was falling away from RPGs for a while in my life, not in a “sudden distaste” kind of way, more of a “I have x amount of dollars either directly to my name or accounted to me by my parents being kind and this new thing called ‘xbox live’ just came out and Halo 2 is cool!”

So to say I was out of the loop would be an understatement, I’m almost certain I didn’t know this game came out for upwards of a year of its release. When I did find out about it I had assumed it was an MMO due to the very very little I did see of it through possibly G4 at the time, I mean, it LOOKS like an MMO, and I had heard they had made one, so it lined up.

I knew 11 was an MMO so I just assumed FF was dead and they just made MMOs now, and that 12 was like, a new MMO or something. MMOs were a foreign concept to me at the time so this seemed weird but plausible.

Now I said all of that just to say that now that I’ve played it, man I was more right than I suspected and than anyone who told me I was wrong were willing to give me credit for! THIS IS SO CLEARLY a mismatch of MMO concepts they didn’t do for 11 with broken concepts from FFT and FFTA.

This plays 100% like a single player MMO and that is so utterly bizarre and has so many strengths, weaknesses, and potentials to its name that it’s a miracle this is a game that was released and not cancelled for being too complicated to materialize.

It DEFINITELY holds the faults you might expect from that concept, holy moly.

Regions that are WAY TOO BIG FOR NO REASON? YEP!

A severe lack of respect for your personal time? YEP!

Story feels like a backseat ‘flavor’ feature rather than the point of the RPG you’re playing? GOT IT!

And so much more on the negative front, but it still holds the positives.

I also can’t understate how the disrespect to your time is a lot less of a negative with the 4x speed the remaster allows you, but that’s not the game’s direct doing.

Enough of that though. This was a bizarre game, good and bad all in one, flawed as heck but just so mesmerizing in some respects.

I genuinely liked the single player MMO style. I love the general gameplay of an MMO boss and while the main quest bosses are..... severely lacking and mostly auto-play themselves which is really dull, the side hunt bosses offered a bit more to the fun which I enjoyed!

Ah.

Auto playing.

Should mention that in my little wrap up now shouldn’t I?

FF12 has a sort of ‘program your fight’ mechanic through gambits. I mentioned them in an earlier post when I was just starting the game and my general positivity towards them remains!

But man, they are. Not PERFECTLY applied here.

It’s a weird mix of you having too much and too little all at once and the combat itself not really.. doing much with it?

For one, you can’t go in-depth with how you program your units. You can’t say “When Ashe enters combat cast decoy on Ashe” you just say “Cast decoy on Ashe” and accept the fact that a lot of mp will be wasted unless you toggle off your gambit in between combat.

You can’t say “When party hp < 40% cast group wide heal” or, well, anything that would be so situational. It’s pretty bare bones “Heal when under 80%” “Attack nearest enemy” and no real conditionals to be applied outside of the literal conditionals like “If Ally = Poison use Antidote”.

And yet...

The combat is so simplistic and lacking decisions beyond what gambits you set that you can literally, and I practically did, auto-fight through the whole thing bosses included.

I wouldn’t say that’s the worst. I mean, DWM has that going for/against it and I adore how it handles. But this game arguably has less choice than that game and this one lets you pre-program your fights...

It’s, a sticking point. It didn’t ruin my experience and infact was something I admired about the game, but it’s a flawed system so if the flawed part of it bothers you, ho boy will this bother you.

I did enjoy forcing the game to give me some form of a build through this system but the lack of creativity it fully allows (instead relying on you to battle traditionally which is fine) makes it feel like a weird “Not enough power, too much power” feature.

I was able to make it so I had a full tank/dps/healer setup at least and auto fight with that, so it wasn’t all bad. Just. Flawed.

And I’d bet because this system exists is why the main bosses are so bland. Literally every one just falls to auto attacking, heck, THE FINAL FORM OF THE FINAL BOSS is the first real main story fight to have something you might need to micromanage and even then it was just “He’s immune to physical.... okay now he’s immune to magic” but I could have honestly just auto fought and waited out each phase due to how undertuned he seemed.

All the main fights feel extremely underleveled, which isn’t unusual for FF, but in THIS one with the literal auto fight gambit system, it’s noticeable. The hunts were the only real challenge that usually amounted to “tackle them, change my gambits around, win” which felt rewarding to be honest.

But what of the rest of the game outside of the gambits?

Well it’s alright.

I enjoyed the story beats that reminded me of FFT, though they feel a touch front loaded and then spread thin, but that’s the story as a whole to be honest.

It’s a, well, pretty weak one. Remarkably weak one. Painfully weak.

It has beats that remind me of my favorite! But the rest of the story is just “We have to find the mcguffin.” “I hope she doesn’t use the mcguffin for bad” “Oh thank god she didn’t”

With the interesting bits put to the side and kind of entirely ignored? It’s weird. Like they bring up an immortal species of pseudo angels that control all destiny and fate in our world, and the story is KINDA how do we fight fate or do we follow fate, but it’s shoved so far on the back burner that it isn’t even given closure in the end after you defeat the big bad. Logically, we’ve defeated fate and broken ties to those immortals, but we don’t see them after the fact, and we fight and destroy... not them? We fight the rogue immortal and not directly, if anything we killed his puppet and he just said “later” or maybe he merged with the puppet and we did get him, hard to say. But what isn’t is that the entire story beat is wasted and just kinda there.

The story is forgettable as heck, has a lame and frankly ugly final boss, and gets thrown away to say “We did it, hooray!” at the end so it’s lacking closure on that level, but it does have a sense of character based closure so that’s nice. Well, pretty nice.

Can’t say I adored the cast, but I liked them. I really did end up liking them, and the ending is a nice little “Everyone did well even if we grow somewhat apart” story, that’s sweet.

Not sure what else to say. I know in 20 minutes I’ll have more on my mind, and I know I’ve missed my chance to speak on countless moments in this game by virtue of not truly live-blogging the experience since I lack a mouse/keyboard for my main computer (such a bizarre way to lose access). But here’s a closer.

Final Fantasy 12 was a bizarre, flawed, fascinating game. And I truly understand why it’s the one final fantasy I have never had someone talk to me at length about. Because it’s excruciatingly long (without the remaster fast forward), it’s story is dull, and it’s gameplay is experimental in a way I’d argue has more misses than strikes. It’s not a tranwreck, but it’s forgettable if you aren’t one to pick and find intrigue in those weird little decisions like I do.

This was fun.

[danbevanwriting]

The Ranking of Final Fantasy: Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy IV was the second officially English translated FF game to come to the West, renamed to Final Fantasy II so as 'not to confuse the market', leading to years of confusion ever since! The version that the Americans got was also heavily dumbed down to the point where abilities are stripped from certain characters to better suit the Western audience, who were considered to be a lot less capable of handling a more complex game by the Japanese developers. This has since been rectified in the remakes since then, with the version I played, the Nintendo DS remake (which I played on PC through Steam... which is a port of the mobile version... which is a port of the DS version...) being harder than any other version released. Honestly, I didn't have a great time with this version of the game. The 3D models look a bit tacky when blown up to 1080p, the battles run at 15fps which makes the bad menus unresponsive too, I wasn't a fan of the voiced cutscenes, and during gameplay the camera is zoomed way too far in meaning that most of the time in dungeons you spend having the map overlay on your screen. I would advise playing basically any other version: the PSP remake is incredible with beautiful sprite work, or failing that get a hold of the GBA version or if you have the means a translation patch of the SNES Japanese edition. Avoid the US Final Fantasy II release on SNES! With that all out of the way, let's review the actual game!

Gameplay in FFIV is so good, they used this battle system in Final Fantasy games for the next 5 in the series! The ATB battle system was revolutionary: it took the slow and static turn-based combat from the first 3 games and made it instantly more exciting by making time a key factor. Each character has a timer before their turn to take an action, which means faster characters can attack more often as their ATB gauge fills up faster. This makes even random encounters exciting as the goal is to get as many attacks in as you can while also navigating the menus as fast as you can to get spells out. The rushing aspect can be lessened somewhat by setting the game to wait while choosing a spell, but before you start choosing a spell the timers are still ticking, and the enemies won't hesitate if you don't choose anything. In some ways you can use this to your advantage, such as not choosing an action for the healer, switching to your other characters to do attacks, and only using the healer to quickly patch up your party. Spells are learned through levels now too rather than bought or found in the world like before, so as your characters grow stronger so too does their arsenal of spells and abilities. This has a lot to do with a new concept of character based progression in the series.

The job system from Final Fantasy III is gone here and instead each character has their own built in 'job' or role within the party. This ties in to the other major change with this game: each character is actually a character this time. The story is a lot more character focused, with each character having their own stake in the events that unfold. It's a shame then that the story falls so flat about a quarter to halfway in. The first quarter of this story is fantastic. Cecil, a dark knight in Baron's Red Wings military unit, starts questioning his leaders and his place in the world when he's sent on a mission to basically slaughter a defenceless village for their crystal. What unfolds is a tale of redemption for Cecil, culminating in him climbing Mount Ordeals to shed himself of the darkness and become a paladin of light! But this crescendo occurs a quarter of the way through the game, and now Cecil's character has no growth left. It's a real shame. The story in general gets really stupid after the halfway mark too, with characters heroically sacrificing themselves only for them to not actually die, even when they really should have. Cid exploding in to a ball of flame to stop people chasing you comes to mind, it's a great moment ruined by a cowardly reversal of the consequences. Or stupid sacrifices are made, like Yang staying in an exploding control room to... let the others escape? It doesn't really make sense. But even then Yang survives and comes back in to the story by the end. The story also has all sorts of people double crossing you, Kain most of all, with it all being down to mind control. Contrived doesn't cut it. Speaking of which, the ending is similar to Final Fantasy III in that the main villain, who was totally behind everything, is revealed close to the end of the game. It's not as bad as the Cloud of Darkness reveal, but the evil alien on the moon being behind everything was a bit dumb (although not a terrible concept if the story was better overall). I won't knock the story too much though, I'd argue that at least this time I actually have a story to criticise here which was certainly not the case in the previous games, and this was still more of a story than most games of the time were accomplishing.

Characterisations are certainly where FFIV separates itself form its predecessors. Cecil, Rosa, and Rydia are my favourites as they have good strong personalities; Cecil is a reflective person which ties in to his sub-plot, Rosa is caring which ties in to her being a white mage, and Rydia's empathy allows her to be a master summoner. These aren't amazingly fleshed out characters but, again, at least there's something to talk about here when previously there was almost none of this. I will say I absolutely hate Edge though, he has an extremely irritating personality which means he brags in an annoying manner (as he's a prince) but also falls instantly in love with Rydia, which would be fine if it wasn't done in such an annoying fashion. Luckily Rydia doesn't really respond and it's mostly played for laughs, but I just found it irritating to be honest...

The music in this is legendary at least, the game kicks off with one of its best tracks (The Red Wings) and stays consistently good for the whole game. The overworld theme (Main These of Final Fantasy IV) is truly iconic, as is the battle and boss themes. Even the prelude, a series staple at this point, got a beautiful new melody which makes the track even better. With the power of Spotify you can now even listen to these tracks to hear for yourself, other highlights I would recommend listening to include 'Theme of Love', 'Into The Darkness', 'Battle with the Four Fiends', and 'The Final Battle'. All the tracks fit the context or the environment very well and is a memorable OST in general.

The gameplay which is supported by the music is equally excellent. Dungeon design is great, with most dead end diversions resulting in a decent reward, a concept that is used to great effect in the final dungeon. The final dungeon is surprisingly short, but with all the diversions which lead to optional bosses guarding the most powerful equipment it's worth exploring every nook and cranny. The new battle system also leads to more interesting boss fights too as some have their own unique mechanics. The ATB system means that bosses can go in to retaliation phases that you can wait out by not doing actions, or other bosses like Bahamut turning the fight in to a damage race to defeat him before he casts Mega Flare. It's all very fun and is a positive change from the turn based system.

I touched on the graphics briefly above, but I figure it's worth reiterating how gosh-darn ugly the 3D models are in the remake of the game. The sprites from the SNES or PSP version are practically timeless which ooze personality despite their relative simplicity. Bosses look great in the SNES version where they look a bit dorky in 3D, the final boss being a good example of this. The environments in the 3D version are nice though, but like I said before the camera is so zoomed in it's hard at times to appreciate that. The SNES version takes full advantage of the hardware leap from the original NES to make the graphics far and away better looking than what came before, truly demonstrating the capabilities of the SNES and cementing Square as the top dog in RPG graphics (and this will only get better in time during this console generation).

So, in conclusion, this game is regarded as a true classic, and I think that's with a good reason. The story is engaging despite how stupid it gets and how it falls short in places. The gameplay is great even today, with history demonstrating just how good the ATB battle system is due to it being in a further five Final Fantasy titles, and the fact that so much of this battle system was done so right the first time around really demonstrates how successful Final Fantasy IV is. I would definitely advise people to play this game if they can, even if it's just for curiosity's sake to see where the series has come from. I would be much quicker to recommend this game over the older titles too as it certainly has aged better than any of the NES titles.

Current Rankings:

Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy II

[that-shamrock-vibe]

Movie Review: Spider-Man Far From Home (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this review the weekend after the movie’s release in the U.K, so if you haven’t yet seen the movie do not read on until you do because there are some rather juicy spoilers here.

MCU Ad Campaign:

This is why I feel Kevin Feige needs to have full control over Spider-Man because he is a master of teasing us with enough in the trailers to get us excited for the movie.

Even with Avengers: Endgame which kept so much secret in the trailers built up that hype and anticipation, okay yes it was the culmination of 11 years of movies and the second part of what was one of the greatest cinematic cliffhangers in history, but even so there were so many theories and speculation about what could happen that it obviously helped with that juggernaut release.

But the issue with Spider-Man: Far From Home is the trailers and promotion just made the movie seem like your average superhero flick. It was necessarily the case of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 or Suicide Squad where so much was shown in the trailer that wasn’t in the final movie, but there wasn’t enough to speculate on or build up the hype unless you’re already a comic-book fan and want to see another Spider-Man movie and know that in the comics Mysterio is a villain so want to see what happens with him here.

I’d say the introduction of the multiverse may have been what both Feige and Pascal thought could be a key plot point to draw in the hype, but that was proven just to be a facade. It was only really mentioned in that scene that everyone has seen in the trailers and there was never a time in the trailers where I thought “Yes that is what everyone will talk about”.

With Thor: Ragnarok for example, it was penned as a fun 80s style buddy movie and that is what the trailers showed, but then you add in Hela and that shot of her destroying Mjolnir as well as the “He’s a friend from work” scene and that’s what made it one of the most watched trailers of all time.

I said in my non-spoiler review that I fear for this movie’s performance if we are to base mainstream audience interest on watching the trailers, I still feel that even though the two times I have now seen the movie the theatres have been relatively full.

Characters:

Spider-Man:

As I said in my non-spoiler, Tom Holland continues to prove why he was such a perfect casting choice for Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Not only does he still look like a teenager so you believe he should still be at school, he has so much charisma and charm that you can’t not like the guy.

I loved when he was at Aunt May’s support centre and was, as May said, a little stiff but it was believable.

Let’s face it, this is a guy who is still a teenager, he is still dealing with the average student problems like fancying a girl and possibly getting good grades, although at Midtown it’s a wonder any of them can get good grades with those teachers, we’ll get to them. But also Peter is dealing with the added stress not only of being Spider-Man but the aftershock of what happened in Endgame both in terms of “The Blip” and Tony’s death.

It was interesting to me that they were kind of going down the Iron Man 3 route of Peter having PTSD from “The Blip” but that quickly turned simply into either guilt or grief over Tony’s sacrifice and the responsibility everyone is now putting on his shoulders. With great power comes great responsibility, that saying is echoed throughout this movie in particular.

I also really like the Spidey suits in the movie, because there were so many it was like a Spidey fashion show at one point.

I loved the fact he kept the Iron Spider suit and especially seeing it pixelating in that container was really cool. Also the upgraded suit he was given which is a mainstay of the character at this point.

Then there’s the return of the original Spidey sweatsuit during one of Mysterio’s illusions which was a nice little nod and a reference to the Emperor’s New Clothes with who the world has built him up to be compared to how he feels on the inside.

Also, his new red and black suit that he created in the Stark Industries jet was a fantastic sequence. Not only was it crystal clear that they were trying to make Peter resemble Tony in that scene, but it was done so effortlessly and it was really fun once again to see someone play with the Holo chamber.

But in terms of my negatives, because I do have negatives for all these characters, I cannot believe he was that stupid that he gave away EDITH to Mysterio, not because Mysterio was an obvious bad guy because he wasn’t, but because EDITH was such a useful device and Peter apparently doesn’t have KAREN anymore so he needs some form of AI assistant.

I did however really enjoy the onscreen partnership of Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Holland, you can tell off-screen the two really got on and it resonates on screen.

There was also a really stupid moment when he’s facing Hydro-Man and he wears that mask to try concealing his identity from his classmates, despite the fact that he is wearing the same clothes his classmates know he is wearing so why didn’t anyone attempt to put 2 + 2 together. I mean it’s implied MJ may have but who knows.

With the Elementals as well, as much as I think they are brilliant antagonists visually, and of course in this instance weren’t real but may still exist, I don’t see how Spider-Man can combat any of them because his synthetic webbing would have no effect on water, fire, sand or air. It was obviously Mysterio’s perfect plan to make himself the hero, but the fact no one thought to question that Spider-Man was less use than Black Widow would have been in that fight really bugged me.

I did like him trying to court MJ, I thought his six-step plan was well thought out and the rivalry between him and Brad over MJ was also refreshing to see in a superhero movie.

We’ll talk about the post-credits scene further down but that ending scene before the credits of him doing Spidey’s traditional scout of the city was a great way to end the movie. The main reason I love playing the Spider-Man games is simply to swing through the city and will gladly spend a lot of time doing it just to explore. Also if that’s not the Oscorp building he swung through than it’s the biggest misdirect in a Marvel movie.

Mysterio:

By far my favourite Jake Gyllenhaal role, I have never been a massive fan of his as he and his sister have simply been actors I gloss over. But Mysterio was a very comical villain for me in terms of looks yet Gyllenhaal manages to make the suit and the fishbowl look awesome.

I loved how he was so committed to his role as a parallel world superhero, you honestly believed he was a good guy right up until the moment when the illusion fades.

Speaking of illusions, these are potentially the best use of visual effects I have seen since Doctor Strange. I haven’t seen the movie in 3D but I was almost tempted to the second time just to experience the splender of how the visuals looked. They were literally effects ripped from the comics, everything came together and it was magic.

When he was revealed as a villain and that epic reveal scene of his and his crews master plan, including throwbacks to Captain America: Civil War and the first Iron Man was jaw-dropping. I really appreciate both Feige and  Peter Billingsley who was the actor playing the former Stark Industries scientist turned Beck’s henchman for making it seem like this was the plan overall all those years back. I doubt very much that Feige planned it from Civil War let alone 2008.

However, the ending for Mysterio is where my negatives come in. Not only did Beck turn into a raging child running out of ideas but also the fact they killed him off is something I really can’t get my head around. Vulture, Shocker and Scorpion are all alive and if they want to build a Sinister Six then surely this Mysterio is a likeable candidate, yet now he’s dead. It just reminds me of the likes of Hela and these one-movie villains with so much more potential.

Nick Fury:

I love Samuel L. Jackson, I know I sang his praises during Captain Marvel but he’s just as great here.

I loved the running theme of Peter ghosting him by sending him to voicemail, then eventually when Fury and Peter do meet and there’s the constant interruptions of staff and students that makes him turn and say “If one more person touches that door you and I will be attending another funeral” it was so great and only could be said by Nick Fury.

However, and I’ll get into the reasons more in my post-credits discussion, but with the reveal at the end that the Fury we have seen throughout the movie is in fact Talos the Skrull, there are tells throughout the movie that indicate that which I can’t tell as to if they’re deliberate or accidental.

For instance, during Spider-Man’s first meeting with Mysterio, Fury says “He’s from Earth, just not yours” so why didn’t he say “ours”? Also when he said that appearances can be deceiving I bet that was also a tell that he was the shapeshifting alien.

For that reason, it is hard for me to say that I enjoyed Fury in this movie because the real Nick Fury is only in one small scene at the end of the movie. But Samuel L. Jackson still delivers. Also “bitch please you’ve been to space!” never gets old.

MJ:

Commiserations to Zendaya for not getting Ariel, but at least now she is the girlfriend of Spider-Man so yay. 

I really love Zendaya in this role, I think she brings a much needed grounded modern realism to the role that I feel is needed for the younger female audience of today.

I loved it when she revealed that she always knew Peter was Spider-Man but when he eventually confirmed it she said “Really, because I was only 67% sure”. They really played up the character’s awkwardness and vulnerabilities in this movie which explain why she is such an outcast and how she just seemed to float on by in the first movie.

My one negative is where the character goes now, I think that scene after she found out Peter was Spider-Man was definitely her weakest because she just seemed like a very mopey love interest. But then she’ll have kick-ass scenes like knocking out a drone with a mace.

The ending with her swinging around with Peter was already shown in set photos but it was hilarious to see the final thing, I loved how she kept saying she wouldn’t look down and then kept looking down. Then when they landed and her hair had seemingly grown in weight was very funny.

Happy Hogan:

I am so happy for Jan Favreau being a mainstay in the MCU, you would think that after RDJ left that his entourage would also leave. However, now that Happy is seemingly Spider-Man’s support staff it gives him more reason to be around.

I will say this though, everything you see of Happy in the trailers you pretty much see in the movie itself, with some extended scenes. There are a couple more funnier scenes added in but other than that you’ve seen pretty much everything he does in the movie.

As I said, I loved the recurring gag of “ghosting” Nick Fury, it was interesting in the first instance because I swear up until now Happy and Fury have not actually met before, but now Tony is dead I guess they have some association with each other.

His relationship with Aunt May in the movie was a very sweet and understated coupling in the movie. I actually do see the two of them together and it would be great going forward if they remained in a relationship just to give them both something to do other than support Peter Parker.

It was such a great moment when Peter started designing his suit on the plane and Happy was watching in awe. He saw what the audience was meant to see which was Peter acting like Tony Stark.

I have also enjoyed his progression from Tony’s bodyguard to Spider-Man’s right-hand man. Not only did he come and save Peter from the Netherlands, but also he saved Peter’s school friends and put himself in danger in the process.

I really hope Happy continues to be a part of the MCU, even if it is in the Spider-Man movies but also branching out elsewhere.

Brad:

Hudson from Neighbours is in this movie. For anyone that doesn’t know what I’m on about there was a minor-recurring character a few years ago who was a gay competitive swimmer who became romantically involved with a main character at the time but also got into trouble with the police, this was him and I am so glad to see him still working.

I am unsure if the character was part of the first movie, but I am happy to see him here as he was a great example of how The Blip affected Midtown High.

He did present himself as a bit of a douche but also he did start off simply as a decent guy, it was just that he let his competitiveness for wanting to be with MJ and screwing over Peter get the better of him.

This did cause problems for me as the movie progressed, not only did he become the whistle blower that no one listened to and simply came across as a bitter individual, but also there was never really any resolve to his story after the outburst of questioning why Peter was always disappearing.

Aunt May:

Marisa Tomei continues to be a great and innovative Aunt May. I’m still unsure about having a younger and somewhat hotter Aunt rather than the sweet old lady we are used to but I still say Sally Field in The Amazing Spider-Man movies was my favourite of the bunch.

I am really happy that she set up her charitable rehoming shelter as she has done in the comics and the latest Spider-Man game. Her delivery of when she “blipped back” into existence and the new tenants of her apartment thought she was a ghost or a mistress was hilarious.

I do think May was a bit harsh to Happy, I don’t think she led him on but she clearly invited him to her office and you don’t do that if there’s not something there more than just a summer fling.

I am a fan of the fact that May now knows of Peter being Spider-Man and supporting him in his endeavours, as well as using him to boost support for her homeless campaign.

Maria Hill:

Much like Fury, it is hard to say how well Maria did in this movie because she spent the entire movie as a Skrull. However in terms of Cobie Smulders performance, I am glad she got more screen time than she has done recently.

Although she didn’t have many lines, she had a lot to do action wise. I loved in the climactic battle when she went to the roof with that bazooka because both she and Fury had anticipated Mysterio’s drone being sent to assassinate the two.

Ned:

If I found Ned annoying in Spider-Man: Homecoming, I found him unbearable in this one. Not only are the negative qualities of him from the first movie back in force here, but that added story of Ned and Betty getting into a relationship was simply pointless and made Ned even more unlikeable if possible.

First of all, I don’t care how he defends himself, Ned got a girlfriend and then blew Peter off despite not only being adamant in wanting the two guys to be American bachelors in Europe but also in supposedly being Spider-Man’s “guy in the chair”.

Also, Brad’s jealousy over Peter was understandable and actually good for the movie, Ned being jealous of MJ after she found out about Peter being Spider-Man was just pathetic. Not only because that is the point when he actually tries to help Spider-Man but also because MJ didn’t really need him, no one did.

Teachers:

With the teachers in the movie, I will say I miss Selenis Leyva as physics teacher Monica Warren from the first movie. Not only because her being Latina fit in rather well with the Queens neighbourhood, but also because it was some gender diversity in the ranks.

Here we have the Caucasian Harrington and Mr. Dell who I believe was created for the movie after J.B. Smoove was involved in the Audi commercial with Tom Holland to promote the first movie.

I do agree with Dell about there being no science on the science field trip and this is also why I’d prefer Monica Warren to be there over Harrington, Harrington is a crap teacher. Not only did he not plan ahead with the trip but also his incompetence nearly got a bus-load of students killed. Bearing in mind he was also the teacher responsible during the Washington incident.

Students:

Aside from the students already mentioned, the other students involved in the movie are Betty Brandt, Flash Thompson and Jason Ionello. I thought on the whole the students of Midtown High still continue to be a great and modernly accurate portrayal of Queens in the present day, but also they proved themselves necessary to the movie rather than just clutter in the way.

Post-Credits:

Alright so we have two very juicy post-credits scenes that not only shape the next Spider-Man movie but also the future of the MCU.

The first scene picks up directly where the movie ended and has Peter return MJ to the ground before taking off for some superheroism. However he is then stopped by a breaking news bulletin which was set up by Mysterio and delivered by William Ginter Riva showing a doctored version of events in the climactic battle where apparently Spider-Man was the one orchestrating the drone strike and Mysterio was the hero who Spider-Man killed.

The bulletin then cut to none other than J. Jonah Jameson, returning to the live-action Spider-Man movies portrayed by the one and only J.K. Simmons. My audience cheered at this point because not only is it about time Jameson returned to the movies but to have J.K. reprise the role he is probably most notable for is a delight.

Although here, the Daily Bugle seems to be an online media outlet rather than a newspaper company but for the modern day it works rather well.

However, believing that Peter will one day get a job at the Daily Bugle seems very slim with the reveal that Mysterio identified Spider-Man as Peter Parker, meaning the world now knows Spider-Man’s identity. I want to see the fallout now.

The end-credits scene shows Fury and Hill in a car before shapeshifting into Talos and his wife Soren from Captain Marvel. Talos reports to the real Nick Fury who is in front of the most fake green-screen imaginable as it is revealed he is actually on some form of space-station crewed by Skrulls.

This could be a myriad of things, but my favourite theory is that this is the start of S.W.O.R.D. to become Fury’s new organization after S.H.I.E.L.D.

Overall I rate the movie an 8/10, I’m not going to say it’s a perfect movie but it is a brilliant movie and definitely the movie needed to follow up after Avengers: Endgame.

So that’s my review of Spider-Man: Far From Home, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Marvel Movie Reviews as well as other Movie Reviews and posts.

[wigwurq]

WIG REVIEW: AVENGERS - ENDGAME

You guys can you believe I saw a Marvel movie within like 5 days of its release? I DID IT! AND NOW I CAN WRITE A LOT OF SPOILERS - READ ON ONLY IF YOU HAVE SEEN THIS 3 HOUR MARVEL OPUS TO ITSELF! But what about the wigs? OH GURL. LET’S DISCUSS.

We begin in the Mid-waste (I think?) where Hawkeye has been taking some time out of the fight and hanging by a sleeping tree, Bran-style (oh get ready for a lot of GoT crossover comments as I saw this right after the Battle of Winterfell episode and I might get my nerdy details conflated). Anyhoo, did you know that Hawkeye is married to Linda Cardellini? Is she just the supportive wife in everything? Side note: this fact might have existed in an earlier MCU movie. To be fair, I have seen MOST MCU movies (except Thor 2 and Spider-Man and I’m not correcting that) and only saw the other ones like once so I was going into this movie like most of America: vaguely confused about former facts and really exhausted about where this 3 hour movie was about to take me. ANYWAY, Hawkeye’s entire family vanishes like at the end of Infinity War and ugh I see what you’re doing Endgame: this movie is gonna be a BUMMER.

Iron Man of course lightens the mood with some cute banter with Nebula but also: they’re fully about to die in the space void and did RDJr lose a lot of weight or is this just that Marvel technology they used to make Chris Evans look spindly in the first Captain America? Anyway, things are looking BLEAK but then our girl Captain Marvel shows up and saves the day.

Back on earth, the Avengers are really bummed out about half the population being gone (but not so bummed out that ScarJo and “Best” Chris Evans haven’t taken some time to get haircuts - they look great!) But no time for  hair maintenance talk: Brie Larson is ready to go back to space! Also her hair looks good! This movie was made before Captain Marvel and it looks like they just used her real hair and it’s so much better than her wig in that movie. 

Anyway, to space! Wait, now Brie is wearing a wig. UGH. Dammit, space! However, I think this is ScarJo’s real blonde hair (a more natural look than her blonde bob wig seen in Infinity War) and what a long strange trip it’s been since Black Widow’s first perm to her mall hair in Age of Ultron and beyond. Thank the lord for this lewk. 

So the (remaining) Avengers land on whatever planet Thanos is living on now and apparently he’s using old Avengers costumes as Scarecrows? Ok I know we’re supposed to hate this guy but he’s all for population control, gardens, AND now recycling are we sure we hate him? The Avengers definitely still hate him and after learning that he destroyed all the jewelry he spent all of Infinity War finding, they are PISSED. Thor is so pissed he kills him! Which is a super hot-headed thing to do and is basically as bad as “worst” Chris Pratt’s behavior with Thanos in Infinity War and will these alpha males ever learn??? How are they gonna reverse this whole half of the population missing thing now?

Spoiler (haha these are all spoilers!): THEY DON’T. FIVE EFFING YEARS PASS. And in real movie time, at least like 45 minutes? In which we’re supposed to believe that Black Panther (and other notable Avengers but mainly Black Panther) are going to remain dead. GET ON WITH IT MOVIE. Even more damning: Black Widow is now a sad sad lady making sad sandwiches alone and with THIS HAIR LEWK. I was so damn happy for ScarJo to be wigless and THEN THIS. WHAT IN OMBRE HELL. I think (?) what we’re supposed to think is happening here is that she’s so damn sad that she’s failed at hair maintenance and let her blonde highlights grow out into this mess? Here’s the thing, this wig is actually fine - it looks like real hair - but with A TERRIBLE DYE JOB WHY UGH. 

Speaking of new lewks, ScarJo still skypes with the remaining Avengers (bless her heart!) and Captain Marvel went ahead and got THIS HAIRCUT WHAT. I guess the internet can stop talking about how much she needs a scrunchie? I think that this is actually truer to her comic book self but also is giving me all the Lilith Fair vibes (IN A GREAT WAY!) It is still a bad wig in a man wig way (the back taper is a mess) but you’ve gotta love the 90s gelled sideswept bangs for pure nostalgia. 

Speaking of nostalgia! Ant-Man is back from the quantum realm and damn am I happy to see Paul Rudd (ALWAYS). He is shocked to learn that five years have passed while he was gone (this storyline is very Flight of the Navigator) and goes to find his now teenage daughter even tho he looks exactly the same (tho this would be true regardless - Paul Rudd doesn’t age). However, she’s all alone in her house with no Judy Greer or Bobby Cannavale in sight and does this mean they’re vanished or just not in this movie? Is this daughter being raised by Michael Pena now? Also why isn’t he there? EVERYONE IS IN THIS MOVIE I DEMAND ANSWERS. 

So anyway, Paul Rudd is all: why don’t we just time travel through the quantum realm and get those damn jewels and fix this whole Thanos situation? Best Chris and ScarJo are in, but Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer are the real pros at this whole quantum realm thing but are definitely vanished (as is Evangelline Lilly) so they go find Iron Man since he’s smart, right? Unfortunately, he is now living in a cabin by a lake and has a daughter (mazel! but this is def gonna throw a wrench into the time travel thing). Also Gwyneth is around looking tanned and vaguely ginger. Her wig is basically a more expensive, highlighted version of Nicole Kidman’s wig in Big Little Lies which is to say: MUCH BETTER BUT STILL PRETTY SHITTY. There is also a “joke” (?) about Gwyneth reading a book about composting which I think was supposed to be a Goop dig but honestly: WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT THIS MOVIE IS ALREADY SO LONG CAN WE JUST GET TO SAVING BLACK PANTHER AND THE OTHERS?

Iron Man def is like: dudes I’m not time traveling - I’m gonna do this whole dad thing WHICH IS FAIR so they go find the like #5 smartest person they know: DR. HULK. There are no pictures of this (that I could find) but Bruce Banner is now living life just AS the Hulk (but not an angry one) so he’s basically a bulky green guy in glasses which is fine but where does he buy those huge cowl sweaters? Asking for myself. Also ScarJo finds Hawkeye in Tokyo being some sort of hooded vigilante with a fauxhawk and guyliner and jeez someone is not dealing well without Linda Cardellini. 

Also not dealing well? THOR! #2 Chris is off in Asgard living life with the best supporting characters from Thor: Ragnarok (TAIKA WAITITI 4EVR) and LETTING HISSELF GO. Oh also, Tessa Thompson is there too being a fisherman (?!?!?!) even tho she’s an effing valkyrie how did she get this job?!?! But I have to give full credit to Chris Hemsworth for fully embracing the deglam life here and for the next several hours of this movie. DEGLAM THOR IS EVERYTHING. 

However, the wig is obviously terrible. ZZTop beard aside, the wig is these weird dreadlock tendrels which I’m guessing Thor wouldn’t have had time to maintain between playing video games, drinking beer, and eating pizza. Side note: I was really disappointed that he wasn’t eating Billy’s Pan Pizza (Lisbeth Salander’s #1 food choice in Sweden through all of those terrible books) which I actually tried in Iceland once and spoiler alert: original flavor INVOLVES HAM. Just saying: the devil’s in the details. Anyway, Thor and Iron Man decide to give this whole time travel thing a try (why not?) AND YES ONCE REASSEMBLED, IRON MAN’S FIRST POINT OF BUSINESS IS MAKING A BIG LEBOWSKI JOKE.

Iron Man somehow whips up some time travel gps bracelet and holy shit all of the Avengers movies are literally about jewelry. Then it’s on to making some sweet new time travel suits, Hawkeye gelling up that fauxhawk, and away we go to the quantum realm! Nothing bad can happen!

First stop: the first Avengers movie! OH GOD I SEE WHAT THEY’RE DOING HERE. The MCU literally made a plot where they could journey back to all the other MCU movies like a greatest hits tour and THIS MOVIE IS ENDLESS. This also involves journeying back to the ghosts of wigs past AND GURL I’M SHOOK. I guess I have to give credit to the MCU for wig consistencies - these wigs are as shitty as the originals! - and I guess they saved a lot in the already nonexistent wig budget. Also TILDA EFFING SWINTON IS THERE. This cast, dudes. Dr. Hulk and Tilda have a whole Back to the Future (which they make fun of in this movie, btw and I wasn’t here for it) discussion about time travel that I pretty much zoned out on until Tilda was just like eff it: here’s the jewelry you want, you seem pretty chill now, Dr. Hulk. 

Oh and Tom Hiddleston’s shitty Loki wig is back! Jesus Christ this wig. Also, Robert Redford is back? How do I not remember him being talked into the MCU?? Anyway, the jewelry Iron Man and Best Chris were looking for is DEFINITELY snatched by Loki so they have to figure out a new time travel scenario.

Oh and Best Chris and Iron Man totally made up after being at odds for the last 2-3 Avengers movies. Also what do we think the hairspray budget was for these two? There is also a LOT of talk about Best Chris’s ass in this movie (they literally refer to it as America’s Ass) and I feel like this could very much be its own movie with maybe some added Best Chris badass twitter wars. Just saying. 

Meanwhile, back in olde timey Asgard circa Thor 2, RENE RUSSO IS BACK (also Natalie Portman LOLOL everyone is in these movies). However, Sir Anthony Hopkins is definitely not wasting time on this nonsense and: fair. Also omg this wig on Rene. GURL. I don’t know what GoT prostitute dayplayer they stole this from but regardless: it’s a mess. Also apparently, Rene is about to die (I didn’t see Thor 2) and Deglam Thor is a MESS about it (also still very much a drunken mess also). He almost effs up the plan by going and crying on his mom (don’t worry - Bradley Cooper in his best work to date as Rocket Racoon got the jewelry!) And Rene tells Deglam Thor it’s ok to not be who he’s supposed to be an just be HIM which is very good advice OMG I LOVE RENE RUSSO. 

So speaking of parents, Iron Man decided to go find some Infinity Stones in the 70s where his dad, John Slattery is! Apologies for the quality of this picture - it’s the best I could do. Anyway, John Slattery was made for period piece witty repartee tho his man wig (like all man wigs) is a friggin’ mess. He and Iron Man have some fairly emotional dialogue despite the fact that John Slattery doesn’t know that he’s talking to his son and also someone refers to RDJr as Mungo Jerry so I was really down with this whole section of the movie. 

OH AND MICHAEL DOUGLAS IS THERE (again apologies for photo quality). What Marvel does best is face deaging technology (I still demand this be used for more 80s movies Michael Douglas wasn’t able to make at the time) but what Marvel consistently does worse is: wigs, specifically man wigs. WOOF. Regardless, they got all the jewelry they needed from the 70s! Moving on! 

Over in Thanos town (probably what it’s called), nice Nebula is reunited with her former shitty self and also her sister. Jeez this whole part of the movie is family reunions. Anyway, Gamora’s wig is still a Hot Topic mess. Also a mess: Nebula let Thanos into the whole time traveling jewelry snatching heist which will definitely ruin everything.

Meanwhile, over by the cliffs of sorrow (also definitely official name, probably), ScarJo and Hawkeye and their upsetting hair looks are trying to get that one piece of jewelry that can only be gotten with human sacrifice, which they somehow had forgotten since Infinity War when Thanos sacrificed Gamora to get it. Maybe they just weren’t that tight with Gamora and forgot this? Anyway, the most important thing is that ScarJo gave herself these highlight braids which make this whole look slightly better but it’s still really bad. Also bad: one of these characters has to die! In the end it’s ScarJo I think because she doesn’t have a Linda Cardellini to go back to (or 3 kids) but I don’t really like what the MCU is implying here about the value of single ladies but regardless: goodbye ScarJo and your wig! You are probably better than this whole mess anyway!

Anyway, all the (remaining) Avengers time travel back to present day (aka 2023 just go with it) and everyone is so stoked that they got all the jewelry but then bummed when they hear about ScarJo. Side note: I forgot to talk about Iron Man’s highlights and feathered lewk. It’s upsetting! Moving on! Linda Cardellini calls Hawkeye which means this whole time travelling thing worked and they brought back half the population and also most importantly probably Black Panther so go team! But before we can talk to Linda Cardellini, Thanos crash lands into the Avengers HQ AND DAMMIT NEBULA.

So then everyone is somehow transported (?) to Thanos town aka Fightsville which feels like a great place to probably die in the apocalyptic fight FOR JEWELRY. All the Avengers yet again suck at fighting computerized Josh Brolin aka Thanos and then he calls in all his evil space backup army and everyone is definitely effed. It’s a lot like the part in the Battle of Winterell when the Night King does a Nancy Pelosi clap and reanimates all the dead people to fight the living and Jon Snow cries.

It doesn’t even help when Deglam Thor gives hisself the most wild lightning based makeover. Seriously, he surrounds himself with lightning, gets those badass Total Eclipse of the Heart eyes, and somehow is able to use lightning TO GIVE HIMSELF A HALF UPDO AND BRAID HIS BEARD HAIR AND NO I’M NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP. The lightning fails to remove his beer belly and again: I’M HERE FOR #2 CHRIS COMMITTING TO THIS DEGLAM BODY. I don’t know the hows and whys of lightning makeovers - I guess it’s just restricted to hair. Which still looks like crap, beard braids or no. Moving on: Best Chris can somehow use Thor’s hammer now and did I miss something? I think it’s a Chris thing and I’m glad that everyone agreed that Worst Chris wasn’t invited to it. But also he’s not there. YET.....

BUT THEN. Dr. Benedict Cumberbatch who I definitely forgot about (and who has the most hilarious American accent) creates all his sparkler circles. Also his whole wig/goatee lewk is like that one adjunct professor you had who kept office hours at a coffee house and/or a part-time vampire. Anyhoo, he BRINGS. BACK. EVERYONE. Black Panther (and all of Wakanda!) Spider-Man! Guardians of the Galaxy! ETC! THE JEWELRY HAND CHANGED HANDS MANY TIMES. THERE WAS SO MUCH GOING ON. Everyone starts kicking ass but it’s still not enough until Captain Marvel and her 90s pixie cut show up and I swear to god all the lady Avengers made a protective barrier around her like the Lilith Fair is serious getting back together (I WISH!) It was all the ladies you love - Valkyrie on a flying horse! Wakandan warriors BUT NOT LUPITA BECAUSE US IS BETTER THAN THIS! Elizabeth Olsen in that terrible red wig! Kate from Lost! Gamora and Nebula I think! - plus also Gwyneth who I totally forgot had an Iron Man suit too but sure! It was a very girl power moment that almost worked but very did not. In a final moment we all saw coming since before Infinity War, Iron Man sacrificed hisself for the jewelry hand (also: humanity). Thanks for your service: the jewelry was saved! OH MY GOD THIS REVIEW IS SO LONG. Am I still writing this? Are you still reading this? THANK YOU FOR READING THIS.

In the end, everyone is saved and reunited...to have a sweet funeral (apologies again for picture quality)! I shit you not: they gave Iron Man’s electric heart a viking funeral at his cabin. Really! And all the other prestige actors you weren’t sure would make it to this movie were there: Marissa Tomei in some sweet beachy waves! Michelle Pfeiffer in some not so sweet beachy waves but whatever: I’m always happy to see her! Michael Douglas! The Winter Soldier in his somehow shittier than Loki wig! That chick from How I Met Your Mother! Other people! Samuel L. Jackson! Oh and I think Iron Man’s daughter is now being co-raised by Jon Favreau? Ok! It was also a funerary co-production for ScarJo and I guess (?) Elizabeth Olsen’s computer boyfriend (aka Paul Bettany) who somehow wasn’t able to be revived by jewelry for reasons unknown. Oh and  where the eff were Bobby Cannavale, Michael Pena OR GODDAMNED JUDY GREER I DEMAND ANSWERS!!!!!

SO THEN. Captain America has to go back in time to return the jewelry because Dr. Hulk promised Tilda Swinton and I still don’t get how time travel works in this movie. Also Dr. Hulk is still running the time travel machine even though the whole Ant-Man crew specializing in this technology are back but ok? It all goes great until Captain America returns IN OLD AGE MAKEUP WHAT. Turns out he took a detour to have a life and get married and huh? He then tells Anthony Mackie that he can be Captain America now - officially making the MCU America of 2023 on the level of real America in 2008 and I can’t believe they didn’t cut to a weeping Jesse Jackson (or at least Don Cheadle?) However, Deglam (still!) Thor makes Valkyrie the King of Asgard which officially makes MCU Asgard of 2023 definitely way better than the America of 2019 (yeah I went there) and then he decides to be a Guardian of the Galaxy which means we get to spend an agonizing 3 minutes with Worst Chris. Then they cut to the 1940s and a slow dancing Best Chris and Hayley Atwell and truly: if you can just time travel and be happy can’t we bring back all the dead Avengers too then? HUH? Whatever: THE END! Oh and there’s no post-credits scene but still watch the first like 5 minutes of credits to enjoy the truly mind boggling way that the MCU chose to credit the 5000 people in this movie. Are we please done with Avengers movies now?

VERDICT: DOESN’T WURQ (BUT NOW I WANT A LIGHTNING MAKEOVER)

[imagitory]

Review: The Nutcracker and the Four Realms [Spoilers]

Hey, everyone! So today I decided to go see Disney’s newest release, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms!

Some of you may recall that I’m a rather big fan of the original ballet and was quite disappointed about how little the trailers and promotional materials for this film resembled that very ballet, so I went in with my expectations ridiculously low. Because of this, I was able to see some good in the film, which I’ll go into under the cut, but for those of you who wish to avoid spoilers, I must be frank that The Nucracker and the Four Realms is a mixed bag at best. Those who love the original ballet and book will likely hate how little the movie respects its characters and story, and those who don’t love the ballet and book might find it to be a rather standard action-adventure fantasy film for kids with few elements that weren’t done better in other movies. It’s not as god-awful as The Nutcracker: The Untold Story was or anything: there were good ideas here and there...but overall, I’m afraid I can’t recommend The Nutcracker and the Four Realms to anyone.

For those of you who don’t fear spoilers...a cut!

The Good!

+For the most part, the first fifteen minutes of this movie (taking place in London) felt the way a Nutcracker film adaptation should. There were nice Christmas colors, sparkling holiday decor, and an elegant party full of swirling gowns and happy children. Admittedly I probably would’ve preferred it if the story had taken place in Russia (like the ballet) or Germany (like the book), or even a vaguely European-ish setting without naming a specific city, but hey, can’t win ‘em all.

+All of the actors chosen I thought were pretty good choices. Morgan Freeman made a great Drosselmeyer (though I wish he’d had more of a role in the story), Helen Mirren and Keira Knightley are always good talent (though I’ll come back to problems I have with their characters later), and even the actor they chose for the Nutcracker, Jayden Fowora-Knight, was good enough that I wouldn’t mind seeing him in something else. But for me, the actor I loved seeing the most was Matthew Macfadyen as Clara’s father, who was easily one of the best parts of the movie. This could also be considered a bad thing, as he’s criminally underused, but it doesn’t change how nice it was to see him. (I can only hope that Keira and Matthew were happy to see each other on set again, even if they had no scenes together -- garg.)

+The music was pretty well-handled. James Newton Howard did a good job of not just running all of the usual tunes into the ground -- he gave us a nice haunting remix of the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy during an eerie scene in the Fourth Realm, used the Battle track excellently during a confrontation with the mice, and arranged the Overture perfectly in the opening panning shot (which admittedly looked too CG for my taste, but still communicated the location and mood well).

+Misty Copeland’s ballet performances were excellent. She truly was a joy to watch every second she was on screen.

+The costumes for the most part were well done, as were a lot of the visuals. I have some issues with them that I’ll come back to, but honestly, the majority of them worked well for the characterizations and mood the film was going for.

+Directly connecting Clara to the magical world she enters is, in principle, not a bad idea, nor is the idea of her arrival in that world being more than just a fun finale. A battle in a magical realm will always be more interesting than one done in your living room. I also like the idea that Clara’s facing her real-world problems through her fantasy and that she’s more active in the story...I just would have written those ideas very, very differently.

The Not-So-Good...

+The script. And I mean absolutely everything about it. There is so much wrong with this script and the concept behind it that I will have to make separate bullet points in order to go through all of the problems I had with it:

The characters are beyond underdeveloped. Although I think Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley, and Jayden Fowora-Knight were good casting choices, they honestly had very little to work with. Mother Ginger was supposed to be a villainous sort, but from the very beginning, she never came across that way, despite the script���s and the actors’ best efforts -- hell, in a flashback we see that Clara’s mother actually sort of resembled Ginger! That sure isn’t a hint to who’s really trustworthy or anything. The same can be said for Sugarplum -- honestly, did anyone really not guess that she was the fake-out villain all along, especially after how long Disney has been beating that particular dead horse of a trope? As for our “Nutcracker” Phillip, he really has little autonomy in the story given that he basically follows Clara’s orders as a princess and then, mid-way through the story, we’re supposed to believe that he’s now following her out of real devotion and caring, even though their relationship isn’t given the time and scenes needed to show their growing bond. Drosselmeyer as I said was barely around: we learn that he basically raised Clara’s mother, which you would think means he had a role to play in the Four Realms, but nope! He doesn’t appear anywhere until the end except through his owl familiar that...does absolutely nothing during the entire story. I barely remember any of the side characters in the Four Realms, and I just finished watching this movie about an hour ago. Despite being some kind of a mechanical genius, Clara is amazingly bland. She says she doesn’t know who she is or what her place is, and yet Phillip goes on about how confident she is and basically everyone around Clara showers her with praise. She’s smart enough to teach the great inventor Drosselmeyer himself how to fix something and also tough enough to kick a tin soldier in the face during the climax...but that, in the process, kind of makes her boring and one-note. I never feel like Clara is in any danger or puts herself at any great risk because we never see her in a situation she can’t handle. Even when she’s “trapped” by Sugarplum, it’s at the top of a tower decorated with a chandelier and windows she can easily get out of, so she just jerry-rigs herself and her fellow prisoners a way down after a pointless touch of moping. (I mean seriously, you couldn’t lock her in a dungeon?? With LOCKED DOORS AND WINDOWS??)  And really, hasn’t this archetype Clara’s fulfilling been done to death already? Rather than have her be yet another “girl ahead of her time” (one basically just like her mother, which doesn’t exactly make her special, then), why not have her be nothing like her mother? If Clara had been more like her sister Louise and yet expected by everyone around her to be like her mother, wouldn’t it have made her realizing she has everything she needs inside of herself mean that much more? Wouldn’t it have shown her the value of her own worth if she’d failed to live up to everyone’s expectations at first, rather than her be heralded as “truly being her mother’s daughter” and clearly being so from the beginning?

The Four Realms itself doesn’t really make that much sense. Not only does it resemble Narnia (snowy magical forest that you enter through a magical doorway, time moving differently than in our world, lost human ruler returning to ascend to the throne) and Oz (being split into four parts and, like Oz the Great and Powerful, a ruler of one of those lands being painted wrongly as the villain by another who actually wants to take over everything) a little too much for my liking, but I can’t even figure out its rules. For one, the film can’t seem to decide whether Clara’s mother Marie (nice nod to the original book, actually) created the land or discovered it. In all of the summaries I’ve read, it says that Marie created the Four Realms, and her identity as an inventor would seem to justify this, but in the dialogue, Sugarplum says she discovered each land, and brought its citizens to life through her engine invention thing. Yet if they’re all dolls brought to life and made large by the engine, why are they all doll-sized when they go through the clock to peek in on Drosselmeyer’s party? And how much of that world is actually based on our real world? The film at some points tries to make connections to Clara and her mother’s real life by having Clara and Fritz try to catch a mouse in their attic, depicting a Nutcracker ornament in a flashback, and showing Fritz receive a Nutcracker that resembles Phillip for Christmas, but the film drops the ball in having any of those touches actually mean anything. There are ways you can weave the real world into your fantasy land in a meaningful way -- the film could have had Marie taking inspiration from her real life when she made this make-believe world or even represented Clara’s inner turmoil by making the Four Realms completely make-believe, but instead it just comes across as muddled and odd.

Speaking of Clara’s mother Marie, I really don’t like the fact that I have to insult a dead woman, but...screw this woman! She makes this entire world and then, as her dying wish, tells her adopted father to only have her middle child discover it by leaving the key to her music box there? What, did Louise not deserve to be a princess too? Did Fritz not deserve to be a prince? Your husband, who called you the LOVE OF HIS LIFE, doesn’t deserve to know? Oh, but they’re not like Clara -- they’re not clever and special and different like you and Clara. That’s why you told Drosselmeyer that Clara was your greatest invention, because clearly your other two non-main-character children don’t count. Bite me.

The story crafted doesn’t fit the constraints that a Nutcracker tale must operate inside -- namely, the film sets up the fact that this family is mourning the loss of their matriarch, and yet the entire story focuses solely around Clara. Yes, the original Nutcracker tale is supposed to be about Clara, the Nutcracker, and the Mouse King...but by adding the mother’s death and the arc revolving around Clara and her family coming to grips with it, the story’s basically torn between what it should be about versus what it is about. This family is broken and must be fixed: Clara going into another world that has no connection to anyone but her dead mother to “find herself” isn’t going to fix that. Therefore the central conflict and the driving plot have no connection. The film either needed to take out the family part of the plot or have the entire family discover this world together and connect through their adventures in it in order for this choice to make sense.

On the note of focus, “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” is a misleading title. A better title would be “Clara, Sugarplum, and Their Dead Mother,” because that’s all that gets any real attention here. Phillip, rather than being a prince cursed into the form of a Nutcracker, is a toy brought to life that serves Clara (the real princess) and has no animosity for mice excluding what has been indoctrinated into him by Sugarplum. He even BEFRIENDS the Mouse King at the end. Yes -- THE NUTCRACKER BEFRIENDS THE MOUSE KING. ARE YOU F**KING KIDDING ME --?  As for the Mouse King, oh ho ho....wait until you hear this. The Mouse King is not a monstrous, fearsome creature locked in battle with his foe, the Nutcracker: instead he’s just an ordinary mouse that fuses together with his subjects into this monstrous giant mouse shape. But they’re not really the bad guys -- no, they’re underlings of Mother Ginger, who’s a good guy. So the Nutcracker plays second-fiddle to Clara, and the Mouse King plays second fiddle to Mother Ginger. TWO OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF THE STORY ARE REDUCED TO GROUNDLINGS OVER HERE.

Sugarplum’s motivation doesn’t really make sense. She claims she’s taking over because Clara’s mother Marie left them and that hurt her, but...how do you go from feeling betrayed by your mother figure to “taking over the world”? Is it because the world is one your mother created and you want to destroy it because it reminds you of her -- wait, no, Marie didn’t create it, though, she discovered it, and you only really seem interested in going after Mother Ginger with any great passion rather than any of the other Regents...okay, is it that you were hurt by your mother figure and so you want to create an army so strong no one could ever hurt you again -- wait, but everyone seems to like and trust you, so there’d be no reason for you to fear that and it’s not like you built up that lack of trust earlier...okay, is it that your mother figure chose her real family over her make-believe family and so you want to get back at the family she chose over you -- wait, no, you locked Clara up but you’ve barely even tried to take any vengeance out on her and you looked almost horrified when Clara outsmarted you... Yeah, what I’m trying to get across is that Sugarplum as a villain really doesn’t jive.

Because of the lack of character development and the many disparate plot elements fighting for your attention, no relationship in this movie comes across as particularly heart-felt or genuine. We get almost no build-up for Clara and her father’s disagreement before they part ways (and that confrontation has very little fall-out, so it feels hollow); Sugarplum’s affection for Clara seems so cloying and she is so obviously the villain that it makes it difficult for the audience to see any kind of bond forming (honestly, wouldn’t a kind of buried-deep resentment been more interesting, given that Sugarplum knows all about Clara but Clara knows nothing about her?); and there are so few moments building up Clara and Phillip as equals and friends that the scene where Phillip encourages Clara to stay by saying he didn’t follow her because she’s the princess basically comes out of left field. Even the relationship between Clara and her mother, which is so central to the movie, doesn’t ring true for me because they are so similar. Everyone remarks on how much Clara is like her mother, but that means that there’s no interesting interactions between them. Clara is just a Marie 2.0, rather than her own person, and Marie’s advice to Clara almost seems obvious: if Clara’s so much like the mother she admired, there’d be no reason for her to be as self-doubting as she is. If the film even just tried to show how much Clara still has to learn at some point, that relationship would’ve been that bit stronger, because it would mean that Marie saw something in Clara that no one else did, not even herself.

+Moving on, even though the ballet routines were pretty, they came out of nowhere. Rather than integrate dance seamlessly into the plot by having Clara be interested in ballet or something, the sequences only served to be fluff pieces plopped down into the middle of scenes that don’t connect to anything else going on. It just felt like the filmmakers were trying to remind you that “oh yeah, this is based on the Nutcracker -- I know it doesn’t resemble the Nutcracker in plot at all, but it’s definitely based on the Nutcracker!! 8D”

+The editing at points in this was really choppy and messy. There were quite a few tracking shots that got way up into the actor’s personal bubble, even in scenes that weren’t supposed to be uncomfortable or weird. For example, there’s a moment when Louise, wearing her mother’s old dress, comes to check in on Clara and their father -- the camera keeps the reveal of what she looks like a surprise until after showing the father’s awed reaction for a long moment, but because we the audience have never seen this dress or even a picture of the mother wearing it, we feel nothing when the dress is finally revealed. There’s no emotional gut-punch that would’ve been there if we saw a familiar dress on someone else, so the editing choice seems pointless.

+Even though most of the costumes were pretty, the hair and make-up choices were sometimes bizarre, even for characters that were supposed to be pretty. When Sugarplum does Clara’s hair up all princess-y, it’s supposed to glamorous, but it just looks ridiculous. I also wish that the Regents for the Flower and Snowflake Kingdoms had looked a little less cartoonish -- did we have to have the Snowflake guy have icicle bangs messily dribbling into his eyes? Admittedly both him and the Flower Regent were pretty useless, but their silly designs didn’t exactly make them more appealing. There were also two unfunny “comic relief soldiers” with their hair drawn badly onto their heads, and I don’t know, it just wasn’t a particularly appealing look for characters we theoretically are supposed to like watching. Louise also has a rather odd hairstyle in her first appearances that doesn’t communicate her supposedly feminine and mature character, which is supposed to be a contrast to Clara, but still likable -- instead it makes her look over-the-top and silly.

+Even though many of the visuals were nice enough to look at, there wasn’t much that I haven’t seen before. If you edited footage of the Four Realms alongside Wonderland from Alice Through the Looking Glass and Oz from Oz the Great and Powerful, I think you’d be hard-pressed to tell where one starts and another begins at points. The Christmasy colors you see in the “real world” really should have been dialed up for the fantasy sequences, but instead, there’s not much of a shift excluding seeing people with pink cotton candy and flowery vines for hair. Many of these supposedly doll characters don’t even . resemble toys with hinges or knobs or anything: they basically look like oddly dressed humans. Even a color palette shift would have been helpful in separating the two worlds -- for instance, having a more white/brown/yellow color scheme with pops of red and green for the real world and more of a pink/purple/blue/white color scheme for the Four Realms might have made each one more visually distinctive. It also would have made Clara pop out more if she’d been dressed in a more “ordinary” color scheme (like a pale yellow) that made her stand apart from the most fantastical backgrounds (perhaps touched with a cool lavender or light blue).

At one point I tried to pretend that this film wasn’t an adaptation of The Nutcracker. I asked myself, “if this wasn’t based on the famous ballet you love so much, would you like it? Could it stand apart as its own thing?” And unfortunately, the answer I kept coming back to was, “...It can’t be its own thing, because it’s taken too many ideas from other sources that did them much better.”

A young girl discovering a magical world while wandering around a strange house? The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

A whimsical land of fantastical creatures that can only be saved by a special child? The Neverending Story.

A coming-of-age story where a girl navigates a world of fantasy and adventure to find herself? Labyrinth.

A world of magic and science where good and evil are not what they seem and an ordinary girl can be the princess of a lost kingdom? Castle in the Sky.

And honestly, if all I can think of when looking back on the movie I just saw are the ballet it took its title from and other better movies...what does that say about The Nutcracker and the Four Realms? It breaks my heart, as I so wanted Disney to adapt this classic story, but I wanted a full-length animated musical -- something in the vein of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty -- where any changes made to the plot and characters enhanced the story as opposed to distracted from it. Maybe someday, way down the road, Disney will realize their mistake and do The Nutcracker the right way...whether they do or don’t, though, I’m afraid this Nutcracker movie is doomed to fade from public consciousness, and even though there clearly was hard work put into it, thanks to the overall vision and script, the finished product is so forgettable that I can’t say it deserves better.

Overall Grade: D