#get sniped ang

[coldones66]

Big brother explaining little sis how to cook

[nyaagolor]

Finished Episode 4 and got through the first few chapters of Episode 5, so I’m back with some theories / questions / thoughts. I realized I probably should have been adding the spoilers tag to my posts so that will be rectified soon!! But anyway:

Theories:

1. Who is the person who called Natsuhi on the phone?

We have already established that Natsuhi is likely hallucinating based on her scenes with Kinzo and Beatrice, so I don’t think the kid is real. (She could also be lying but I’m biased in her favor bc I like her). If said child is actually 19, that would put him as a year older than Jessica, smack in the middle of when Natsuhi was having fertility issues. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch that in her extremely heightened state of anxiety around the family conference (all about inheritance / family / lineage), she might be haunted (both metaphorically and literally) by her miscarriage / fertility issues. I’ve been under the assumption that Jessica is not Natsuhi’s child— she’s Krauss’ kid by another woman, but Natsuhi raised her for image related reasons (Krauss didn’t want to get a divorce or admit his wife’s “failure”, but wanted an heir regardless). The person on the phone might be the ghost (literal or metaphorical) of Natushi’s final unsuccessful pregnancy, especially if she was far along before the miscarriage— he ends up being a representation of her trauma and guilt at her fertility issues

2. What happened on the island with Ange?

Her bodyguard actually followed her, sniping and killing the blacksuits and Kyrie’s bitch of a sister whose name I’m forgetting. He kills Ange at the end because Okonogi would be the next person to get the inheritance and that’s what he’s been after in the first place

3. Why could Ange revive Sakutaro?

Maria was mistaken, Sakutaro is not homemade. Rosa bought a factory plushie and passed him off as homemade, so Ange just bought another one. My theory is that Rosa will die by my blade

4. What the fuck did Battler do?

I was initially under the impression that Kyrie killed Asumu to get her man (slay queen or whatever) but now that I think about it it’s not impossible that Battler did it. Did he drive her to suicide? Accidentally kill her and it was made to look like a suicide? Why does he not remember? Why does him not remembering make Beatrice suicidal???? Is Beatrice Asumu???? Is she a ghost that Battler made up in his grief? actually probably not I don’t think they would do that. whatever

Da Rules! (or at least the way I understand the rules of the game to work)

- Magic can only do things that are also possible by humans, meaning every magical act has some kind of trick

- Only the outcome as Battler sees it matter. In essence, everything before the catbox is opened does not need to be taken as fact

- “Mystery” is not “Anti-Fantasy” and shouldn’t be treated as such. “Mystery” is too restrictive, and nuance is important

- Everyone has the potential to be an unreliable narrator. Some are outright lying (hideyoshi + eva in chapter 3), some genuinely believe what they are seeing (Maria, possibly Natsuhi), and some I just don’t trust on principle (Kyrie, Rosa, the limited omniscient narrator)

Questions I still have:

- How did Asumu pass off Kyrie’s kid as her own. Like genuinely what the fuck is the logistics of that??????

- What do I have to do to convince Natsuhi to get a divorce

- When are Battler and Beatrice finally going to make out. I’m waiting.

[tinkerbitch69]

So I’ve finally seen deadpool and wolverine and I’m probably gonna make a lot of posts about it but the first thing I wanna say is the movie could have been wall-to-wall grade a trash (it wasn’t) but it would have been worth it for that amazing montage of behind the scenes footage from so many pre-mcu movies 💕

If you’ll allow me to shill and be cringe for a moment, as someone who grew up with the fox x men universe and various other pre-mcu superhero movies this movie being one big tribute to the films that paved the way for the mcu’s success is unbelievably touching and I’m so glad the final note these characters and stories end on is a reminder of the people behind the performances who brought superheroes to life when no one believed it could be done. Those early superhero movies will mean more to me than the avengers ever will.

So thank you so much to the x men and fantastic four. To hugh jackman’s wolverine and wesley snipes blade and Jennifer garners electra. Chris Evan’s Johnny storm and dafne keen’s X-23 and all the others who didn’t get a cameo like nic cage’s ghost rider, Ben affleck’s daredevil and ang lee’s hulk!

I had the time of my life! 🥹

[xprojectrpg]

This Day in X-Project - March 5

PHASE 2

2015: Jean posts a meme. Artie and Warren meet for the first time at the mansion; it doesn't go well.

2016:

2017: Sue and Hope A. attend a gala event together. X-Men Mission: A vs X: Fred Duncan contacts Garrison to let him know that the Avengers have been brainwashed somehow and are targeting SHIELD and that the X-Men are needed to prevent a bloodbath; Garrison emails Marie-Ange and Amanda for magic-type help investigating the cause of the situation in the Mid-West; in New York, the site of the Triskelion building, Dominion and Rogue encounter the Hulk; Wolverine and Cyclops face Captain America and Black Widow; Bevatron and Dust counter Hawkeye and Deathlok on the roof; Synch and Marvel Girl take on two of the fliers, Falcon and Vision; the Sub-Mariner and Firestar get the other two fliers, Iron Man and War Machine; Blink and Bruiser find themselves facing an insane ‘god’ in the form of Thor and Blink teleports him away; in Minnestoa, the SWORD team and its consultants, Tarot, Daytripper, Dagger and Topaz, land at the site of the Asgardian portal the Avengers had been investigating; Dominion jumps in to help Wolverine against Captain America and Black Widow as Cyclops is forced to switch teams and manages to take down Captain America before Widow knocks him out with her sting; Marvel Girl takes Dominion’s place against the Hulk and they manage to hold him to a standstill, but that’s all; Dust moves to assist Synch against Falcon and the Vision and together they defeat the Falcon and while Synch takes him for medical aid, Dust faces the Vision; Hawkeye critically injures Firestar, so while Blink takes her back to the Blackbird for medical treatment, Cyclops steps in the help the Sub-mariner against the Iron-Men and manage to subdue War Machine; Sharon F.treats Firestar while Longshot provides protection against Hawkeye and buys some breathing room; Thor returns from wherever Blink sent him to and attacks Bruiser and Bevetron; Sharon F.has another patient - War Machine - but with Iron Man trying to kill them, joins Longshot in fighting him off; Rogue defends Dominion from Black Widow despite being in bad shape after the Hulk; Wolverine takes Rogue’s place against the Hulk and between him and Marvel Girl, they manage to wear him down enough for a mind-whammy; Dust finds herself fighting the Vision alone and manages to distract him from his rampage; the Sub-mariner switches places with Bruiser against Thor and the sniping between the two myths gives Bevetron a chance to catch his breath; Synch joins Blink against Deathlok and Hawkeye and things get brutal before Blink teleports them away; in Minnesota, SWORD and the magic team discover the portal is just an illusion and set off a second booby trap - an ice giant - which they go all-out in battling before disrupting the norn stones maintaining the brainwashing spell; Cyclops and Bruiser are battling Iron Man when the spell is broken and all of the Avengers stand down; the X-Men quietly leave the scene while SHIELD treats the Avengers.

2018: Sooraya sends Angelica an email about going to see a movie. Jubilee posts a music video from Rachel Platten. Operation: Salt the Earth: North and Kevin track down the industrial spy to a hotel in St. Petersburg and have a productive conversation regarding the lost materials.

2019:

2020:

2021:

2022: Topaz texts Alani, April and Darcy about Holi, Clint and Matt work to help their dads with some home improvement projects.

2023: April and Madin meet, and it doesn't go completely terrible?

[joecial-distancing]

August Roundup

August felt like a lot of doldrums, as usual, which is nuts because I actually got out of the city for the first time in 0.75 years, and got to flee a hurricane in doing so. some actually decent-looking job opportunities helped with this at the end, but generally was feeling in a rut until literally last week. 

I’ve set aside Beckett’s trilogy for now, having been completely incapable of focusing on Molloy. I get that the formatting and structural choices are what makes that book interesting, but they’re also what makes it impossible for me to read at length. If there were line breaks, if the margins were even slightly uneven, I might have a chance, but alas. Was worried for a bit (as usual) that twitter use has caused harm to my attention span (and to be fair it almost definitely has), but then I started in on the Master and Margarita, which has been completely compelling so far! Wonderful book that I’m looking forward to reading more of! Top-tier The Devil depiction.

I’ll figure out Beckett later, in general the capacity to focus on things that are boring me is something I’d like to train back up.

I beat Sekiro after 65 hours, which probably means I’m going to be adrift for a bit wrt games while I recalibrate around not having this particular use of my time for a bit. Overall compared to Souls stuff, the highs were higher and the lows were lower. Dark Souls 1  made me angry only once, whereas Sekiro had me pretty routinely cursing at the screen. When the fights were good, though, they were all-time; enormously satisfying to learn and beat.

S.O. and I are in the middle of two tv/film-watching projects: 1.) Watching the entirety of the X-files, old and new, bad & good episodes, in order, no skipping; 2.) Chronological rewatch of comic book movies (specifically marvel), starting from howard the duck.

The superhero thing has been interesting, mostly in how fuckin much marvel’s audience allows them to get away with these days. You can really feel the intended audience for these shift over time. Earlier stuff was like comic properties adapted into action movies, alongside Sam Raimi being allowed to go nuts with the spiderman movies, with, like, x-men series then trying to ham-fistedly inject comic lore fanservice, because... that was the audience at that point. These were always popular, but they’re really properly mainstream now in a way they never used to be. The pandering’s all different now. Rewatching that Fantastic 4 movie and xmen 3, it’s like... I remember these being widely derided at the time, mostly by comics nerd people, but in hindsight, they’re just fucking mediocre. xmen3 in particular compares kind of favorably to later avengers, which is fucking hilarious. Other notworthiness: Ang Lee Hulk actually pretty good, Ghost Rider not nearly as funny as I remember it being, Blade 3 for some reason decided to not be a wesley snipes action movie in favor of being a ryan reynolds quip vehicle, Elektra is impressively bad and boring, Punisher is impossible to watch without thinking about that fucking logo and its connection with right-wing radicalism nowadays.

Speaking of, goddamn x-files, man. Slogged through the end of the old series, started in on the reboot, and the reboot mostly just throws into relief how much this show always sucked. it’s always been bad! The new seasons are structured and paced pretty much exactly like the old ones, and without the 90s-00s quaintness to offset things, the thing just doesn’t function. Critics writing retrospectives on the old seasons or writeups of the new ones mostly sound fucking ridiculous because they keep approaching with this reverence like it was ever a good show! The “myth arc” was consistently worse-written than the monster episodes, which at least were sometimes fun and compelling. No Payoffs! Right, the “Speaking of”, though. Much like Punisher can’t be witnessed without just thinking of militia goons, the first season of x-files reboot goes full-tilt antivax agitprop in the finale. They released that in 2016! Joel McHale plays a fucking Alex Jones type and they’re like “let’s have him be right, he is the truth-speaker against the government!”. On a more fundamental level, though, it’s a show that ended it’s original run with an honest-to-god mayan calendar 2012 hook, ended the first reboot season with a craAaAaAzy cliffhanger, then opened the next season with an “it was all a dream”. Bush-league work, start-to-finish.

I also rewatched The Lighthouse this month, which still absolutely rules.

[docholligay]

Wips I hope to work on at some point in the next four weeks

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR IF ANY OF THEM SPARK YOUR INTEREST

“Fareeha you don’t ‘ave to be such a bloody fucking cop about everything. A bit embarrassing to me, actually.” 

“What do you think a global military force to protect society from lawbreakers is, if not that?”

Tracer laughed and shook her head. “We’re not cops, Fareeha, if we was cops,” She leaned back and tossed a balled up form into the trash, springing to her feet in one motion, “I’d quit. We don’t up’old the law, we up’old the people. Law’s only as good as who it serves.” 

Tracer walked over to her kettle as if the conversation was quite finished, and flipped it on. Pharah set down her pen and crossed her arms. 

“We uphold the law. The law protects people. You have to put things in writing, Tracer,  you are an optimist, but you are not naive. People do not, and have not ever, done things out of the common good. ” 

Tracer walked over toward her, nose wrinkled. “We’ve put our entire lives on the line. Nearly died, all of us, on time or another. Lived off an ‘andful of donations and grants and discoveries. Speaking engagements. And why did we do that, COMMANDER Amari? Why’d you turn down an easy, well-paid life, running logistics for an army? Why’d Ang leave ‘arvard?’” She leaned against Pharah’s desk, tapping hard on the metal. . “The common good. Sense of moral duty.” 

There was a certain pattern to Pharah and Tracer’s arguments, once they reached a deliberate point. Tracer’s voice would grow louder, her gesticulating more wild. Pharah would sit somehow straighter, her voice steelier and flatter. It was a strange sort of sparring, and as constant as the tides. 

“We are not--” 

“And, I just ‘ave to say, it was ‘IGHLY bloody fucking illegal--” 

“Your swearing is unprofessional--” 

“For me to steal that plane in Paris, whatever the reasons were and whatever the result--” 

“You did--” 

“So if you’d like to arrest someone what does something illegal in the pursuit of the good, you can start with me, JAVERT.” 

Pharah stopped and looked her, eyebrow raised. 

“Right, I can make a reference or two, I read.” 

Tracer turned on the ball of her foot and stomped back to her kettle, Pharah never taking her eyes off her. 

“All right, saw it with Em when I begged tickets for  ‘er birthday, but me point stands.”

__________________________________

Haruka sat on the couch, staring straight ahead. 

“I have a dad.” 

“I mean it seemed pretty statistically likely.” Mina crossed her arms and leaned against the couch. 

“Minako.” Michiru quietly twitched her eyebrow. 

“Sorry. But like, yeah.” Mina looked at Haruka. “You want me to go get him? He’ll probably get lost going back to the hotel.” 

“Yes. No.” she continued to stare. “I don’t know.”

“Haruka.” Michiru placed her hand on Haruka’s knee, “You are in no way required to have anything to do with him. You must know that.” 

“Yeah,” Haruka ran her hand through her hair and let it rest on her neck, “Just...I never thought--and he’s know--I guess it was always gonna be true that whoever Mom slept with wouldn’t have to know her that well, but. I don’t know.” 

Mina shrugged. “Honestly he seems like an alright guy. Not like, winning any IQ awards, but nice.” 

Michiru shook her head. “You met him for fifteen minutes.” 

“Didn’t take me that long to see that Haruka’s mom’s a piece of shit.” 

Haruka gave a weak chuckle. “Yeah that’s true.” She looked down at the picture in her other hand. “I have sisters. Half sisters, I guess. They’re tall, too.” 

_________________

Michiru had not let the medal leave her pocket since the day she had found it, though every single day she kept telling herself that she would take it to the lost and found. Every single day, she made that promise to herself, and every single day she returned to her room, with the medal still in hand. It was cheap pewter, and so easily replaced that the owner must have already done so. St. Joan was one of the more common saints for girls to take, and so it might be anybody’s. How would they even know to whom it might belong? 

Michiru told herself all of these things, but what it truly came down to was some inexpressible inability to give up the medal, as if it were a relic of some lost saint all by itself, with a power she could not name. These last weeks had been lonely ones, Rei caught up in some unimaginable drama with Mina, sniping at each other in the hallways, and then sitting together over tea. She could only imagine what the issue might have been between them, though she suspected it was somehow related to Haruka’s small trouble from the Saint Sebastian dance. 

It was Michiru’s sin, but like Lilith, she would not bare it, and so she supposed it had to be passed on to the other women of the world. 

Haruka. There hadn’t been much of her, lately, and when Michiru had seen her, she had refused to meet Michiru’s gaze. She smelled of wood shavings, now, something new added into the repertoire of warmth and incense and a weak, cheap cologne. 

[paranoid-rhythm]

FGO the Stage Babylonia - Random notes/report

I know I rarely post here anymore, but just got home from watching Babylonia Stage and I just need to dump these out, before I forget them lol

* Story opening is as is in game, aka Romani briefing Gudako and Mashu about Babylonia

* But includes song & dance number from the goddesses, Enkidu and Gil.

* Ishtar scene doesn't occur, only passively mentioned. They skip to the Chaldeans meeting EnKingu.

* Ide's Romani is so fucking cuuute. He's certainly got Romani's personality down pat lol.

* Akira's Merlin is on point too. Just seeing him makes me want to punch him lol

* Ana's actress is so cute and lol she's just 143cm tall

* There's a scene of EnKingu massacring humans.

* Romani freaking out from Gudako calling Merlin "Merlin-oniisan" lmao

* Romani and Merlin's duet ang dance lmao the song is kinda Bollywood-ish lol

* The some of the lyrics go like: Gan gan gan senrigan senrigan kimi no egao wa mabushii~ (Clair, clair, clairvoyance! Your smile is too dazzling~!!)

* Gorgon's entrance is a scene where she's massacring some humans. It differs from the game, as Ereshkigal is already revealed as part of the goddess alliance.

* They actually have a live instrumentalists performing, it's nice.

* Gil's intro. Dear lord. HAHAHAHAHA

* And to answer your question, yes he break dances too. Though not to the extent of Reo's Ozymandias.

* BUT HIS INTRO SONG IS SO FUCKING ANNOYING--... I MEAN, it's seriously, a fucking ear bug, lolol

* Gil's not the one singing, but his back up dancers/singers.

* His song is a pun lol it goes like:

GIRU GIRU GIRU GIRU GILGAMESH GIRU GIRU GIRU GIRU GIRU GIRU

GIRU GIRU GIRU GIRU GIRU GIRU TSUYOSUGIRU GIRU GIRU GIRU GIRU

GIRU GIRU GIRU GIRU TSUYOSUGIRU

(Gil Gil Gil Gil Gilgmaesh Gil Gil Gil Gil Gil Gil Gil Gil Gil Gil Gil Gil is super strong (tsuyosugiru))

Imagine that repeating a lot of times. Damn, I got LLS'd on it.

* Ishtar actually calls Gil "Naked King of Uruk" lol

* Flashback on Gil and Enkidu's first meeting. And Ishtar asking Gil to be her husband lol.

Ishtar: Be my husband!

Gil: HAHAHAHA. No.

* There's no Ushi, Benkei, and Leonidas. D:

* Gil and Enkidu's duet... TAT

Gil: You're not just a tool, not just a human! You are my friend, the one who will fight by my side until the end of time, Enkidu!

* EnKingu crying because he is seeing Enkidu's past with Gil

* LMAO the "odd jobs" Shearing sheep, etc. The secret love affair couple even had a duet.

* The Urukian's National Anthem lol. "koko wa Uruk subarashiki ou no kuni" (This is Uruk, the Kingdom of the wonderful King)

* Ana's scene with the flower shop old lady. TAT

* The sea observatory chapter. They didn't do the scene with the rider spriggan kicking Gil's abs (boo) but exchanged it for a short fight scene with Gil and Kingu.

* Gil calling Mashu and Ritsuka by their name, and telling them to go back to Uruk safely. 気を付けて戻れよ ;A;

* LUCHAAAAA~! They actually arrange the stage into a wrestling ring lol

* There's no Jaguar Man unfortunately, but they replaced her with 4 groupies wearing Jaguar hats following Quetz around lol

* Quetz actually doing pro-wres "matches" with the extras lol Romani and Da Vinci actually becomes the announcers/commentators. Romani geting too carried away in playing commentator lol

* I'm telling y'all Quetz is LEGIT lol She ends up plancha-ing 5 people. Also, Quetz's BG song is heavy metal-ish lol

* Ishtar freaking out over Gil's treasures lol Gudako bargaining with Ishtar is sooo cute.

* Romani running away from the Chaldea staff, around the stage during the intermission, doing/carrying random stuff

* Romani actually had a song for his snack time (marron glacé) lol

* The way they did the Ishtar/Ereshkigal talking to Guda scene was actually nice. Ishtar talking to Gudako in the forefront, Ereshkigal behind a screen, beside them.

* They actually did the scene with Guda giving food to the "old man". And the SKY HIGH RIDER BUSTER PLANCHA lol

* HAHAHAHA CasGil's karoushi scene lmao

* Gil actually walking like his April Fool's art towards his bench and falling asleep. ‎Then dying.

* Gil waking up in the underworld, playing with reverb/echo, using his ax as a mic lol

* They skipped the gates part, but kept Gil's "presence concealment EX" part lol

* They kept the huge ass ghost "skin" for Eresh by having her stand behind a screen and projecting the ghost skin there.

* Ishtar vs Ereshkigal fight scene/duet

* Gudako: Nice, ousama~!!

Gil: Hmph! * arm flex *

* THEY ACTUALLY HAD THE GALL TO SHOW SIDURI GETTING TAKEN AWAY BY THE LAHMU DSFHKJ;KSDSD;KSAK

* They skipped the Ax of Marduk + Quetz lucha-ing Merlin. Boo.

* Kingu getting mauled by the other montsers/lahmu... ;A; Siduri blocking the last hit and instructing him to run... god damn my kokoro

* The lion thing monster was constructed like a dragon/lion dance costume, complete with glowing/blinking eyes

* Gil giving the Grail to Kingu scene. AKA Gil just picked up the Grail and threw it at Kingu.

* They changed the scene where Gil covered for Gudako and got sniped by Tiamat instead. He still got sniped but didn't cover Gudako. Also didn't include the part were Gudako asked to hold his hand while falling into the underworld. Boo.

* Tiamat was forms were just projection mapped across the stage

* They had Gramps too, but only the old man costume. The servant costume was projected only.

* They switched the part where Kingu sacrificed himself to hold Tiamat down. They did that when they're in the underworld already, as opposed to the game where it happened after Gil have the Grail to Kingu.

* The end made me realize it's sad that Romani's not there to welcome us back anymore. TAT

* And oh curtain call. Gil and Enkidu came out with their arms linked. Like you know, a groom escorting his bride.

* ROMANI SCOOPING UP GUDAKO BRIDAL STYLE AND RUNNING AWAY WITH HER. Chased by an angry Mashu, Da Vinci and Merlin.

* Romani fighting and pushing, boxing Merlin away from Gudako.

* THESE SHIPPERS I SWEAR. Enkidu trading places with Gudako so that Gil and Gudako would hold hands for the last bow. GDI

* Enkidu pulling Gil out from backstage for one last bow lol

* Oh right, right. I kept count. Gil said ZASSHU a grand total of 1 (one) times. Damn.

[secondreckoning]

Chapters: 4/7 Fandom: Overwatch (Video Game) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Fareeha "Pharah" Amari/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler Characters: Fareeha "Pharah" Amari, Angela "Mercy" Ziegler Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Slow Burn, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Sex, Blood and Injury Summary: In a world where people share dreams with their soul-mates, Angela, a weary trauma surgeon, walks her dreams alone. Nearing forty, she believes she’s simply not one meant for a soul-mate until vivid visions of Egypt begin to brighten her nights.

Angela works.

(Seventy-two hours on. Case after case. Patient after patient. Trauma after trauma.)

Angela knits.

(A scarf. Three dishcloths. Another scarf. Come winter, her friends will be warm.)

Angela journals.

(Occasionally. In bullet points. What is there to say?)

Angela joins Emily and Lena for drinks.

(And knits.)

Emily lifts a shot glass in the air, held daintily between her thumb and middle finger. “To one last work shift before vacation!”

“To unfettered access to my girlfriend!” Lena chimes in.

Both turn expectant faces to Angela. Breathing out in a sigh, Angela lowers her needles to the table and reaches for her coffee mug. What’s worth toasting to? “To Ridgerock.”

To third-wheeling on a lovers vacation.

To two weeks of much too much free time.

And to fourteen days of a lonely hotel room and a town full of women for one-night stands.

Glasses clink. Both Emily and Lena whoop and holler before tipping their drinks back. Angela says nothing and pours black coffee down her throat. She sets the mug down, empty, and picks up her needles again.

Emily stands and gathers empty shot glasses. “Hey, Dr. Eeyore, M.D., you want something more potent this time?” She nods at the mug.

“Like an espresso shot?”

“Like whiskey.”

Her grip tightens on the needles. “Another black coffee is fine.”

Emily hooks a free finger through the mug’s handle. “And another coffee for the teetotaller it is,” she murmurs, and heads to the bar.

Angela finishes one row of stitches and begins the next. She focuses on her hands, on the slender instruments and the soft yarn. Not on the incessant rhythm Lena’s tapping out on the table. “What?” she says finally.

“Nothin’!” Lena raises her fingers in a show of innocence. “It’s just—” She pauses.

Angela shoots a certain look at her. She intends to level her gaze into the mildest of glares, but somewhere between her shadowed eyes and pale skin, it’s potency multiples tenfold.

Lena cringes visibly. “Just—I’m not sure another cup of coffee’s the best idea, yeah?” She nods at Angela’s hands. “Scarf’s lookin’ awfully holey.”

“Excuse you,” Angela sniffs. “It’s an avant-garde pattern.”

Lena frowns down at her work. “You sure you don’t want to give those hands a break? Have a glass of... warm milk?” she suggests. “Have literally anything if it gets that wool off your shoulders and rests your poor hands. They’re so—” She lifts her own hands and gives a palsied demonstration.

“For the record, this is Portuguese knitting,” Angela nods at the length of yarn pinned to her right shoulder, then the left. “My hands do not need a break. This method utilizes smaller movements and therefore puts less strain on my hands.” She adjusts the tension in her lines and knits a single, pointed stitch. “Moreover, designated drivers receive free refills of their choice of beverage. My coffee saves lives and money.”

Emily chooses this moment to return. She clanks Angela’s cup of coffee in front of her. In the cup, it sloshes dangerously from side to side.“And what the hell do you need to save money for?” She takes her seat. “Your yarn can’t make THAT much of a dent in your paycheck.”

Angela presses her lips together, but says nothing. Emily lifts her own glass to her mouth and sips before she continues.

“And I know Angela Ziegler, a renowned prodigy, literal child genius, received seven hundred different grants to help cover her schooling costs—whether she needed them or not.”

“I didn’t ask for that attention.” Her grips her needles, hard, and pain throbs in her knuckles. “I only wanted...”

She only wanted to keep her head down and work harder. Save more car crash victims. More civilians.

She did not ask for the label of Angela Ziegler, Precocious Little Orphan Girl, courtesy of a couple stupid papers on nanotech and biotics. Stupid, ambitious papers from a stupid, ambitious girl.

She shakes the thoughts away. “It doesn’t matter.”

Angela sips her coffee and bends over her knitwork. When she looks up again, Emily and Lena are pulling out of what Angela suspects is a meaningful look. The expression on Emily’s face softens.

“Everything okay, Ange?” she asks. “Do you need, uh, a hug? Do you want to head home soon? It’s getting late.”

It’s not getting late, not really. But it’s either nice of Emily to offer or it’s self-serving attempt to rid the night of cranky, awful Angela, and her brain’s too wrung out on work and caffeine and pain to figure out the difference.

“I’m fine,” Angela insists. “I’m fine. My yarn’s all the hug I need.” She gives the pin over her right shoulder a pat.

Another glance exchanged between the two. Angela does her best to knit and ignore them.

“The thing is...” Emily trails off.

“Hm?”

Emily stirs her drink, sips, and stirs again. She glances away from Angela’s eyes. “The thing is you’ve been all over the board lately,” she admits. “For the past few days you’ve been dead on your feet at work, then before that you were bouncing around asking all sorts of questions about soul-mates, and—”

“I do not have a soul-mate.” Angela slams her needles onto the table. Damn it all. Her stomach’s bottoming out, and she’s aware—painfully aware—of how she fights her fatigued hands with every stitch. “And I will never have a soul-mate,” Angela’s voice comes out steel-edged. “And it’s really—it’s really for the best.” She swallows down the rising lump. “Thank you very much.”

Emily sips her drink and refuses to look her in the eye.

What is it about this soul-mate situation they refuse to understand?

It’s for the best, it really is. There is a reason people like her don't have soul-mates. Dreams go both ways, and all Angela can offer is blood and pain.

***

At home, Angela walks right into her living room, all grey shadows layered on grey shadows without light, and abandons her scarf on the table.

The night at the bar clings to her skin. All her sniped words and her own cloud of misery coat her skin, and there is no washing it off. In her bedroom, as she strips down to her shirt, she hesitates as her hands cross over her body, fingertips bent in the urge to scratch the night off her skin.

Her body’s a mess. hell, the whole of her is a mess. Electric jitters pulse in her muscles

and her hands will not stop shaking

and every line in her body aches from forcing it to stand over operating tables and work through surgery after surgery

and she’s tired. Good God, is Angela tired. It’s a small, stupid thing to complain about. Oh, you’re tired? People are dying Angela. But the tired is deep in her bones, and press its thumbs into her eyes and short-circuiting her mind as she runs through improved versions of tonight, better scenarios where she says the right things, even if she never finds the right things to say.

She drops herself onto her bed and lies on top of the covers. They’re right. It’s a ringing slap to the face. About all of it, but mostly, about her scarf.

Angela’s gone and ruined her scarf and for what? To keep her hands busy? Was it worth a ruined scarf and sore, aching hands?

Angela lifts one hand, and massages her thumb against a sore spot on the other. What’s the point? She lets her hands drop to her sides. Massaging one worsens the pain in the other. Angela rolls over and gathers her pillow beneath her head. A good, hot soak never hurt. Or, likely more helpful a cold compress.

But what’s she supposed to apply? Her fridge and freezer sit near empty. Her last attempt to cook something beyond a basic meal ended up an overzealous Food Network-inspired mess of conflicting spices and ingredients.

And she doesn’t own any frozen peas.

Angela's throat tightens at the thought. Who doesn’t own frozen vegetables? Whose life is so divorced from her own home she doesn’t own frozen fucking peas?

Happy people own frozen peas. Happy people cook for their family and friends. Angela is without a family. Her closest friend is a pity friendship out of mutual attraction to women with a resident some ten years or so younger than her.

Okay, Angela tells herself firmly. You’re going to a stupid place. Don’t go to the stupid place.

She rolls over, every inch of her body gritty and unreal and wrung-out, and lays there, waiting for whatever comes next.

***

Emily and Lena are forgiving when Angela calls them back in the morning, full of apologies. Her soul-mate problems are her own, not something to inflict on her friends through her own brokenness.

Pacing the stretch of floor from outside her bedroom, through to the living room and kitchen, Angela cradles her phone to her ear. “I feel much better this morning—”

“Now that you’ve slept?” Emily chimes in. She’s taken the phone for herself. “Please say you’ve slept.”

“Some.” Less sleep, less time for dreams. Less opportunity to hurt her... dream friend. Whatever they are to each other.

“Some?”

“Some.”

“I hate to bring it up again, Ange,” Emily’s voice drops, “but you’ve looked rough lately. You were like a whole ass new woman for a hot minute there. Bright and shiny. I’d even go so far as to call you bubbly.”

She pauses: it’s an opening, an opportunity for Angela to fill the space with whatever she pleases. Her foolish hopes and sunshine-filled dreams, the nights spent hand-in-hand with someone—well, someone special.

Angela says nothing.

Emily continues. “And again, now this: dragging yourself around the hospital, barely scraping together a bedside manner for your patients—no, that creepy smile you scrounge up does not count—snapping at your friends when they offer to help,” she says. “Not to mention consuming black coffee and energy shots like they're your lifeblood.

“But black coffee is my lifeblood.”

There’s a groan on the other line. “Come on, Angela,” Emily pleads. “What’s going on? Did something happen? Did something bring up some of those shitty dreams again?”

“No. Well—” Angela cuts herself off. She’s on the cusp of truth, and oh, how easy to cross that line. It’s eleven in the morning and her aching tiredness skews everything toward unreal: the sun comes in too bright without curtains in her kitchen and a deep-seated throb started pounding away at the base of her skull the second her alarm yanked her out of sleep. How easy, to share all these hurts with Emily, to dig back and back and back until she arrives at the core of it all.

But also: how easy it is not to share.

“Well?”

Angela turns and traces her steps back along her little route, feet pointed to her bedroom. “Well...” she begins, and suddenly, stupidly, she misses the old, corded phones. Something about lying is easier when she’s got a cord to wrap a finger around. “I know you’re all tired of hearing about it, but the soul-mate situation bothers me more than usual lately. I suppose.”

“Yeah?”

“I suppose.”

“You know, Ange,” Emily says, “it’s not something to feel shame for. Or anything. You know?”

“I know.”

Emily speaks slowly, “Okay. You say you know. But do you know it? As in: do you know it know it?”

“Intellectual understanding and emotional connection to the idea are different things,” Angela replies. Some of last night’s snappishness winds its way in. “I know one and I am trying to know the other.”

“Okay, if you say so,” Emily says. “But you haven’t explained your newfound need for ‘feine.”

“Oh. Well, it’s stupid.”

“C’mon, Ange. Share the stupid.”

“Well, it’s...” Angela stops in her bedroom and squeezes her eyes shut. “As I said, it’s stupid. It’s...” She braces herself, and the words come out in something of a rush. “The thing is, the less I sleep, the less opportunity there is for a soul-mate dream. And the less opportunity there is for a soul-mate dream, the less opportunity for a soul-mate dream to to... bother me.”

On the other end of the line, Emily falls silent.

“Emily?”

“Jesus-fucking-Christ, that is stupid, Angela.”

 ***

Lying to Emily is a mistake.

Angela steps into the hospital cafeteria, lunch clutched to her chest. Courtesy of her own pantry, not selected from a line-up of other drooping salads and uninspired sandwiches cut and stacked in triangles for visual appeal.

Cafeteria food is a universal disappointment: rarely is there a way to mass-prepare food for both cost and taste. But somewhere along the line, an architect or wealthy benefactor or some other person of note involved in the planning phase, realized that the room itself need not bring down spirits as well: full length windows line one length of the cafeteria, blinds pulled high and sun spilling in. Mild chatter fills the room. Doctors and nurses eat with other doctors and nurses, patients and visitors eat with their families. Emily sits in view, her table set where the line of windows end, just out of the sunlight. She catches Angela’s eye and nods.

“Don’t make me confiscate your thermos today, Dr. Ziegler,” her self-appointed Coffee Cop announces as Angela’s lunch hits the table.

Angela slides down into a chair. “It’s orange juice.”

Emily grabs it anyway. She unscrews the lid, rolls her wrist as if breathing a glass of wine and bends her head over it to sniff. And sniff. “Looks clean.”

“Of course it’s clean,” she says. “Now give it back.”

“Is that all you’re having? Orange juice and a yogurt?” The rest of her lunch cannot escape Emily’s appraising eyes. “Please tell me it’s not coffee-flavoured.”

Angela inhales a long-suffering breath. “It’s not. It’s vanilla.” She turns the label out. “I’d like a moment to clarify: coffee flavour does not necessitate caffeine content. And vice versa.”

“Good.”

“And for lunch, I also have a peanut butter sandwich on sprouted whole grain bread and hard-boiled eggs with a side hot sauce,” she lines up each item for Emily’s consideration. “Do they meet your standards, Mother?”

Emily squints at the sandwich. “It’s a little primary school, but yes, I suppose it does,” she says. “After lunch, barring any particular emergency, I want you to try and get some sleep.”

“Again?” Angela protests. She pries the lid off the Pyrex container holding the egg. “I doubt I’ll sleep.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. But you’re going to try.”

In Emily’s books, try means forfeiting her phone and pager to lay on her side and stare at the wall, her arm bent under her head in an uncomfortable angle. Hunting down her most stressing thoughts and setting them on repeat, her chest clutching with each rendition. Counting down the minutes until she finds enough passes for her to wiggle out and deliver unto Emily the devastating news: Angela is awake, and not sleeping anytime soon.

And, if possible, she would like to return to her job now, thank you very much.

Angela breaks the egg in half with her fork. “I cannot wait until tomorrow,” she dips it in the accompanying hot sauce, “when you’ll spend all your time naked with Lena, or staring at stupid art, and you’ll have no time to play Nap Nanny.” She pops the egg in her mouth and promptly gags.

Heat lighting up her face, Angela cracks the foil seal on her yogurt and shovels in one spoonful and then another, until the burn down her throat subsides. Mostly.

In her chair, Emily leans back, and with narrowed eyes, watches Angela gag, recover and dip the second half of the egg in hot sauce, only to lift her fork up hesitantly. Emily slides her phone from her pocket and alternates her critical gaze between her screen and Angela’s face.

The tang of the hot sauce reaches Angela’s nose, promising another dose of heat, and her stomach squeezes in an unpleasant fashion.

“Stop.” Emily’s phone hits the table. “Doctor Ziegler, I demand you set your fork down right now. You sneaky, conniving—"

In the moment, Angela is not capable of a quick enough thought or reaction, and her stomach’s roiling at the prospect of another dose of hot sauce. So instead of smugly shoving it in her mouth and repeating her gag-and-yogurt-recovery act, she sits, dumbfounded, as Emily reaches across the table and lifts the utensil from her fingers.

“Hey,” Angela bleats a mild protest.

Emily’s sorting through her lunch now, confiscating every item but Angela’s half-eaten yogurt. “Caffeinated hot sauce! Caffeinated hot sauce! Caffeinated peanut butter!” she’s crowing, gathering parts of Angela’s lunch into a haphazard pile before her. “What’s wrong with you, Angela? What’s wrong with you?” A nearby family stares. “I bet you snuck an energy shot into your juice as well.” She snatches up the thermos. “What’s wrong with you?”

There really is only orange juice in the orange juice, but Angela’s beyond redemption now. “Perky Jerky no longer has caffeine in it,” she offers, and heaps in a mouthful of yogurt.

Emily shoves her cafeteria wrap across the table and slumps back in her chair: it’s a whole wheat tortilla rolled around “grilled” chicken bits and limp lettuce. “Eat that instead,” she offers. “I’ll grab something else on the way out.”

“I’m fine, Em.” Angela possesses enough dignity to drop her voice into an appropriately chastised tone. “I can’t take your lunch.”

“Eat it,” Emily commands. “Now. And you’re napping after. No bailing out after half an hour. I’m taking your pager and your phone and you’re going to lie there until the tired part of head triumphs over the stupid part.”

Angela accepts the wrap, pulling it closer, and offers a weak smile, “Is there a point? There’s only six hours left in our shift. I can nap on vacation, after all.”

“Nope.” Emily takes a sip from the thermos. “You’ll sleep now, before someone trips over those bags under your eyes.”

***

Angela’s mind cringes away from the idea of sleep. She’s so close to the proverbial finish line now, so close to the end of her final shift before vacation. Between the drop in stressors from her work and the wealth of relaxation ahead of her, she figures a time may come, soon, when it is safe for her to sleep again.

Emily intends for her to sleep now, divesting Angela of her pager and phone, walking her to the on-call room and warning her to think happy thoughts: all but tucking her into sleep and kissing her forehead, something Angela remarks.

Angela, of course, intends to lay awake and stare at the wall and think the worst thoughts possible: to use the force of her will for all intents and purposes, to defy both Emily and sleep.

But her achy, gritty eyes drift shut and her mind—the filthy traitor, never on her side—recalls the body in its possession has fallen asleep much, much worse places than a dark, quiet, climate-controlled hospital room, and so Angela falls asleep hard and fast and unexpected.

 ***

Angela’s dreaming.

Not of her mother and father, their bodies car-mangled and ruined or of the endless crash of the accident resonating in her soul or of her soul-mate bloody and rent down the middle, but of a hazy sunset and a gleaming tower of a building.

And of her soul-mate, of course. Whole, unbloodied, waiting. She sits on a short slope of steps leading up to the building’s entrance.

Angela has shied away from her soul-mate before, and a dulled instinct beats inside of her like a second heart, warning to do so now. Warning Angela to

run

run

run

before she hurts again.

If she found herself in any other place in the dream, she might give the instinct it’s head, as one does a horse, and let it carry her far, far away, where Angela was merely a fool in a foreign dream-city, and not a cursed soul-mate.

But Angela is some ten, fifteen feet from her soul-mate, and staring her in the face.

Angela stands, rooted to the pavement.

And her soul-mate sits, flight jacket hooked on her thumb and slung over her shoulder.

In the sky above, the sun droops, fat and lazy, sliding further and further down the horizon. It’s not the pinky-purple-golds Angela sees over her parking lot view, but orange, brilliant orange, and its light is everywhere, filling up every space and surface: across the skies, painting the sidewalks and glinting off the towering building behind her soul-mate.

Her soul-mate, who’s shirt is so plainly and boldly blue, as if the blue itself is a statement, a counterpoint to the setting sun.

She tilts her chin up at Angela, and the corner of her mouth crooks up into a smile, as if to say something, possibly How about that? or So you’re back, huh?

Angela’s throat tightens, and she crosses her arms over herself.

On her free hand, her soul-mate’s fingers twitch—in memory of how Angela’s miserable mind maimed her, tore her open?—and the hand comes up, palm open and out to Angela and it’s an—

—invitation—

—reassurance—

—appeal—

—to her.

For her.

Angela steps across the sidewalk, gilt in dying sun, and closes the distance between them. She tightens her arms over herself, gripping her own elbows and stares down: down at her soul-mates knee, down at her ever-open hands.

How many nights did she spend holding that very hand?

How many nights connected, intertwined, guided by that that warm palm?

Tonight, Angela keeps her hands to herself. She is unworthy of this palm, of this warmth of this soul-mate before her, when her own useless, trembling hands fail so often, offer so little. Something builds in her chest and in her throat. She presses her crossed arms into her ribcage, girding herself. Protecting her wonderfulkindwarmgoodperfect soul-mate.

In her vision, her soul-mate’s hand lifts

up

slow

steady

toward Angela.

Angela shuts her eyes before the moment of contact, drenches her world in darkness, and then there it is—soft fingers resting just above her elbow. One touch, one brush of fingers, and is if she were a puppet and someone took a blade to all her taught strings, the lines of tension

drop

out of Angela. All the fences she’s spent the past weeks building and crossing over with bright strips of caution tape—fragile broke danger do not touch—are crumbling

crumbling

crumbling

gone

and she collapses onto her soul-mate.

Strong arms gather her in close and Angela finds her face buried in her soul-mate’s neck, her hands clenching fistfuls of fabric as if it’s enough to haul her soul-mate out of the dreamscape and into the waking world. A hard sob bursts in her throat. Steady hands cross over her back. Angela’s crying now, and she’s not crying in a soft, delicate way, but with a sort of shaking, internal violence. Sobs swell in her throat and wrack the length of her body and pound in her head as she empties her sorrows into her soul-mate's arms.

It subsides, eventually, as all storms do. Angela’s sitting with her forehead resting against her soul-mates collarbone, one of the woman’s sure and steady hands between Angela’s shoulder blades and the other stroking the back of her neck.

With a final sniffle, she eases back and meets her soul-mate’s eyes: they’re swollen, and her brows knit together. Angela gives her a watery smile. A warm breeze caresses them and for a split second, Angela feels like she’ll blow away: the weight on her chest is gone now and she’s light as a sunbeam, light as air itself. She leans her forehead against her soul-mate's cheek and laughs—it’s so easy now, so natural—before unclenching her fists and finding her soul-mate's eyes with a much more steady gaze. They have business to attend to, after all. If her soul-mate has conjured this dream-place for them, then Angela’s hunch says there’s something here her soul-mate longs to share.

Beneath it all she thinks, I am utterly damned.

I want this.

Her soul-mate lifts an arm off Angela’s back and gestures behind her, to the building. Angela nods, and they get to the business of untangling themselves and standing.

It’s night now, the sun’s ubiquitous glow replaced by a darkening sky. In the blue haze of encroaching shadows, the building behind her soul-mate is a beacon of light—and the opposite of every place Angela’s visited to date. If the other places shared with Angela were historic places without price, dedicated to the very life they’ve lived, then this building is the opposite. It’s a monument—almost literally—to shiny newness, to indulgence and pampering, and in the waking world, Angela assumes, to significant price tags.

Behind her soul-mate, the building begins as a squat, square building, glass-fronted to showcase the golden interior. A massive, round tower grows out of it, lined at regular intervals with windows and balconies: some dark squares, some winking with light. Above them, the building’s name is writ in softly glowing letters, their forms smeared meaningless in the dreamscape. Planters of palmy plants—Angela is a surgeon, not a botanist—lounge on either side of the stairs. Spotlights sit at the base of the tower, angled up, painting the building in pink-hued light. More squat buildings sprawl out around them.

In her career, Angela has stayed at a good number of fancy-schmancy hotels for conferences, and a niggling suspicion tells her she’s gaping at one now.

Her soul-mate brushes the back of her against Angela’s. Golden beads catch the light of the glow waiting for them behind the glass. Angela smiles and hooks her arm through her soul-mate’s.

Inside is as glorious as the facade promised. A cavernous lobby awaits them, high and wide and reminding Angela of concert halls. The walls are light earthy red, warm and golden from the light of the chandelier hanging above. The massive chandelier. Angela stares up, mouth hanging open. It’s an upturned umbrella of light, bigger than her bed. Bigger than her room. She gawps up at it the entire way in passing. Furniture of dark wood and creamy seats fill the space, and her soul-mate gentle guides her around a looming corner with intentions for Angela’s knee. She leads Angela around obstacles, past a grand, curling staircase of more dark wood, through a doorway and to an elevator. She presses a button.

Definitely a hotel, and together they’re headed up. Angela runs her teeth over her bottom lip and casts a sideways glance at her soul-mate as they pass polished doors. Inside, as they step back and wait out the ride, Angela leans into her soul-mate, and an arm encircles her shoulders.

Angela sucks in a breath.

She wants—very badly—to squeal.

Coming to a smooth end, the elevator dings and the doors slide open. Beyond them is a hall, and beyond the short journey down the hall is a hotel room.

The suite within is more of the same elegance: handsome dark wood, polished and gleaming, cream upholstery and linens. Sconces set in the walls glow a muted gold and soft hazy shadows lay across the floor. They pass through a sitting room and into a bedroom, complete with a king-sized bed and complimented by a balcony opened to the night air, a gauzy curtain billowing on a gentle breeze.

In Angela’s opinion, this is perhaps a bit forward—is what they’re about to do on this bed the final destination?—but Angela figures she’s proven herself confused and reluctant in the face of anything kind and good. Her soul-mate’s shown her patience and encouragement, and checked for Angela’s consent on every dream walk. So, why not?

Angela slips her hand free and sits on the end of the bed. She gives a bounce and glances up at her soul-mate—

—who’s walking past her, heading for the balcony. She stops on the threshold, lifts an eyebrow at Angela—who’s patting the bedspread beside her now— and nods in the direction of the open night, one hand up and beckoning.

Frowning, Angela rises, and ducks past the curtain onto the balcony.

Warm night air tickles her face and tousles her soul-mate's hair. Sprawled below them is the city, stretching on and on and on until it disappears into the twilight haze. This view is notably less historic: a river bends far to their left and urban structures fill the night. Somewhere on the horizon, on an uncertain boundary, the city stops and the desert begins.

Angela plants a hand on the railing and leans forward, inhaling the view. She’s smiling, and she does not know when she started.

Her soul-mate stands at her left side. Angela entwines their arm and finds her soul-mate's hand again. She tips her head against her shoulder, warm and solid and alive beneath her cheek, and lifts her free hand to point out a building she finds particularly eye-catching.

Smiling her wonderful smile, her soul-mate tips her head down to rest on Angela’s—Angela’s heart skips a beat here, her cheeks arm at the touch—and lifts her free hand to point, guiding Angela’s gaze out to something far in the distance.

Angela leans in a fraction and squints at one of the most telltale shapes in history.

She’s staring at the fucking pyramids.

The pyramids!

Pyramids!

The Great ones? Of Giza?

(Was that river off to their left the Nile? )

Angela’s smile breaks unto a laugh. She grips her soul-mate tighter and points at the pyramids.

(The Pyramids!)

(The fucking pyramids!)

(In Egypt!)

Ever place her soul-mate shared was important, but this one is specific—so, so specific—and here is Angela’s wonderful soul-mate and there is one of the most iconic things in the world, and she’s sharing it with Angela.

Angela laughs again. Pyramids! The pyramids! She’s in Egypt! No—they’re in Egypt Angela bounces up on tiptoes and throws her arms around her soul-mates neck. She’s laughing—pyramids!—and kissing her soul-mate’s cheek and—

***

Angela wakes up.

A voice is speaking to her. A woman’s voice. A woman’s voice Angela commonly finds telling her what to do. It’s calling her name, saying other things. Angela grunts as the words arrange themselves into coherence in her brain.

Angela, it’s time to wake up.

Hey, Angie, c 'mon.

Angela, shift’s over, you can sleep at home.

Angela grunts again and cracks an eye open. The room is dark and Emily’s eyebrows are in view. Angela curses them.

“I was sleeping,” she accuses in a clumsy voice.

Emily dips out of view. “Really?” she says. “Congratulations.” She sounds like she means it.

Groaning all the way, Angela shakes off her sheets and eases her body away from its happy little cocoon of warmth. “Emily,” she says, “I’m going to kill you.”

Emily mock-gasps. “Doctor Ziegler, that violates your Hippocratic oath!” She continues, “And for what? Making you sleep in the first place? Angela, I believe you’re looking for Thank you.”

Angela grumbles in response and fumbles her way done. Emily holds out the confiscated phone and pager as Angela fixes her ponytail. Angela snatches them back and stuffs them in her pockets.

Emily leads the way into the hall. “Question,” she begins, “Will you be joining Lena and I for celebratory, pre-vacation drinks tonight or are you retiring to your sterile cave to hibernate?”

Angela offers another grunt. Egypt and the solid warmth of her soul-mate’s body and and her foggy brain and the recurring thought of interrupted sleep cycle run through her mind. By the time she got home and fell back asleep—

“No point in trying to go back to sleep now,” she all but sighs the words. “I’ll clean up, grab my knitting and meet you kids at...?”

Emily beams. “Your favourite,” she says, “That Irish place.”

***

Angela sits with one leg bent up, updating the colour of her toes. Her fingers sport colour, too. One of the benefits of vacation—she’s officially on vacation now, cue the confetti—no need to maintain pristine, colour-free nails. No need to remove any nail polish the night before work. She’s humming a song she heard on the radio coming home or maybe multiple songs: she keeps beginning one song and finding herself in another come the end.

It does not matter.

What matters most to Angela is the blue she paints on her nails. Egyptian blue, specifically calcium copper silicate, or the closest the drugstore she stopped at offered in Essie’s Mezmerised. She hit Wikipedia for a rundown on Egypt as she loitered in front of her changing room locker, and there it was: calcium copper silicate. The same blue draped on her soul-mate.

At home she expanded her search: buildings. Places she’s seen in person—in a way. Places her soul-mate’s definitely visited.

***

Angela’s brain is a little woozy from the combination of interrupted and lack of sleep, and the cover band in the corner is a touch loud for her sensitive eardrums at the moment, but does not mind they’ve returned to the Actually Decent Irish bar which reminds Angela of her Not Decent At All Irish ex-girlfriend.

It’s also the home of tall, boozy bullfrogs, and Angela sips hers from the comfortable corner Emily and Lena chose. Her first—and last—drink of the evening.

“This is a much improved version of Angela.” Emily outlines a sloppy circle midair in Angela’s direction, leaving no doubt as of who she’s speaking. “But the yarn! The yarn, Ange! Dontcha wanna get up and dance? Have some fun?”

Emily’s on her third bullfrog.

Angela smiles and lifts her work. “I am having fun,” she says. “I’m experimenting with a hat.” A lumpy, amateur hat, but a hat. A hat of the softest yarn in the store. Canada is much, much colder than Egypt. And Angela wants to keep her soul-mate warm.

Because Angela has a soul-mate.

Who is in Egypt.

And who is Angela’s soul-mate.

(Soul-mate!)

Angela’s reliving the sensation of her soul-mate’s arms encircling her as Emily squints between the knitting and Angela’s face. Angela meets Emily’s eyes as she leans forward and sips from her bullfrog straw.

“Oh, my god, Lena,” Emily grips her girlfriend’s shoulder. “She means it. She fucking means it.”

Lena pats her hand. “I can see that, love.”

“She’s not shaking or putting on that unsettling smile or anything,” Emily continues, staring at Angela. “Angela. I cannot believe you’re not fucking lying. Holy fuck. I need to pee.”

She plants both hands on the table and leverages herself to her feet. Lena glances up, but Emily shakes her head. “I’m fine. Fine. Toilet’s right over there.” She points, surprisingly, in the correct direction. “Maybe I’ll find a portal back to reality,” she murmurs as she saunters off.

Angela looks to Lena, who shakes her head. “Nah, she’s fine,” she confirms. “Puttin’ on a bit of show ‘cause she’s in a good mood.” She pauses, “Speaking of...”

“What’s wrong?”

Lena nods at her. “You,” she says. “Or rather what’s not wrong. Em’s right, there’s a bit of whiplash with you, bouncing from a bit sad to a bit cheery, and then onto right miserable. And now you’re all smiles again. Somethin’s up.”

Angela’s needles click in her hands. “It’s--” she hesitates, then ducks her gaze and says, “I think something good’s happened to me. Maybe. If I can prevent myself from ruining it.”

Lena leans in, eyebrows up in conspiration. “Not to name names, but: a soul-mate thing?”

Angela presses her lips together, hard, to hold in a smile struggling to bloom.

“How about I make you a deal: secret for a secret, yeah?” Lena drops her voice. “I’ll even go first.”

Angela releases her smile. “Okay,” she says. “Go.”

Lena looks as though she maybe didn’t expect an agreement. She casts a glance back in the direction of the washrooms, and says, rapid fire, in a single breath, “I maybe have a second soul-mate I’ve only seen her twice I’ve never done approached her please don’t tell Em.”

“What?” The needles still in her hands.

“I’ll tell her eventually!” Lena protests. “I just don’t know what it means.”

Angela stares at her, then clears her throat and says, “It... doesn’t mean anything. It just means there’s the potential for a strong connection there.” She leans in for a long drink as Lena watches her, googly eyed. “A soul-mate doesn’t necessarily equate romance. You’re not cheating on Emily. I mean, there is an element of choice involved. You made a choice with Emily, right? You were attracted to her, you pursued that connection, you decided to leave England, right?”

“Right.”

Angela starts a new row of stitches. “There you have it.” Soul-mate wisdom from a soul-mate newbie. Look at Angela go. “It means you have a strong enough connection to share dreams with. It’s not fate. If you don’t pursue it, whatever connects you might even fade. You might be a second soul-mate to her, as well.”

“Well, thanks, Ange,” Lena rubs a bashful hand on the back of her neck. “And, er, you?” “I...” Angela stares down at her blue fingernails, at the soft blue yarn of the scarf, as if it might talk for her. “I’m... I think I have one. A soul-mate.” There! Her face burns. “She’s... really wonderful.” She’s perfect. “She lives in Egypt. You know. With the pyramids.”

“Is that why you’ve been so down?” Lena prods. “The Egypt thing?”

Angela’s forehead creases. “No?” she says. “Why would it? Egypt’s a beautiful country.”

I saw the pyramids.

Lena shrugs and raises her own glass. “Er, just figured that’s what’s had you so down,” she says. “Realizing she was on the other side of the world and all.”

“Oh,” Angela says, because oh. Her mind races across land and sea. Thousands upon thousands of kilometres lie between her and the woman who held her.

Angela leans in, pushes the straw to one side and downs the rest of her drink as her heart deflates in her chest.

[oh-ranpo]

nothing but a number. (12)

Pairing: Gwilym Lee x Reader AN: The last chapter! I am heartbroken this is over, but I am so thankful for everyone who has supported this story! I am sorry that it’s so short, but I wanted to leave it a little open ended that was open to your individual interpretation. I now have two Joe Mazzello’s and a Ben Hardy in the works, and hopefully another Gwilym at some point. All my tag lists (excluding this one of course) are open again since I have decided not to post from my phone anymore. Just send me an ask or a message and I will get you added! 

YN YLN seen out on the town once again with new bf, actor Gwilym Lee, looking cozier than ever.

You smiled down at your phone, which was a rapid change from how you used to read these headlines. A picture of you and Gwilym was plastered across the top of the webpage, your arms wrapped around his waist and his arm draped over your shoulder, his head bent down to place a kiss into your hair. You felt your heart skip over how things had changed over the past three months.

Things between you ang Gwilym had gotten better and better. After he flew to meet you that third day of your press tour, things had heated up quickly. He wasn’t able to stay more than a day, but he still came to visit you in Berlin before you left for Japan, and was the first one to greet you at the airport when you had returned back home. Being able to openly tell him you loved him, and being able to show affection to him in public was absolutely perfect.  

Now, you stood in front of the mirror of your hotel room bathroom, getting ready to walk down the red carpet for your first big-screen movie. There was rustling from the other room as you set your phone down, and Gwilym appeared in the mirror behind you. He was wearing a simple black three-piece suit that made your entire body tremble when you looked at him. You spun to face him, giving him a smile as he looked over your shoulder to fix his tie.

“Does this look alright?” he asked, moving his hands out of the way so that you could take a good look at him. Your hands slowly trailed up his chest to pull the tie just a little bit tighter, and then you smoothed it down against his shirt.  

“You look fantastic,” you replied, leaning up on your tiptoes to press a kiss against the underside of his jaw. His stubble tickled your nose and lips, but it was a feeling that you had long grown used to.  

When you took a step back from him, his hands found yours and he spun you around slowly so that your dress could fan out around you. His blue eyes went wide and an adoring smile formed on his lips.

“You look absolutely stunning. This red-carpet look suits you. But then again, any look suits you.”

Your chest tightened at his words, and your eyes dropped to the floor in embarrassment. Even after being together for a little over four months, he was still able to make your heart skip with just a few words. You started to get caught up in the feeling of having him so close to you, when your phone vibrated against the countertop, forcing your attention away from him.

Gwilym’s hand dropped from yours, and you turned to see who had texted you. You smiled when you saw Ben’s name, as he was texting you to tell you that the limo would be there any minute.

“I guess we should probably get downstairs,” you said, as you made your way out of the bathroom to grab your purse and shoes. You felt the nerves start to bubble up again over the reminder of what was about to happen. You had been to red carpet events before, but never for something that you were the star of.

You hadn’t realized that you had frozen in place in front of the bed until you felt a pair of hands on your shoulders. You looked up and over your shoulder and met Gwilym’s concerned gaze.

“Are you alright?” he asked, quietly. You nodded and gave him a small smile.

“Just a little nervous.”

His smile grew as he pulled you into his chest and wrapped his arms around your waist.

“It’s normal to be nervous for these things. I still get that way sometimes, but you’re going to do great.”

You leaned back to smile up at him, and he leaned down to capture your lips in his in a slow, sweet kiss. You never would have imagined that by the time this movie wrapped, you would have found someone who made you feel so supported and loved. Besides the movie itself, it was probably the best gift you had ever been blessed with.

When you pulled out of each other’s embrace, you grabbed your phone off the bed and the two of you made your way to the elevator, hand in hand. Ben was waiting in the lobby, and you grinned at how handsome he looked in his all black suit.

“Damn, Ben. You’re out to break some hearts tonight, aren’t you?” you teased, as you walked up and wrapped him in a hug. He chuckled as you fell back and grasped Gwilym’s hand again.  

“Well now that the two of us aren’t together anymore, maybe I’ll finally get a chance.” He winked, and you just shook your head.  

You were thankful that the relationship rumors between the two of you had been stifled. Your mother had finally stopped hounding you about who you were involved with, and no one was out to make you look like a homewrecker. It was made obvious, and without a hint of doubt, who your heart belonged to.

You glanced out the lobby doors and saw a white stretch limo pull up, and you nodded in that direction.

“I think our ride has arrived.”

Ben and Gwilym’s attention turned in that direction, and then the three of you made your way to the door. The entire ride was spent in excited conversation, and your heart rate increased with each passing minute. You were only about an hour away from seeing the finished product that you had been working so hard on.

“Can you believe this is happening? After everything we’ve been through, this is finally it,” you murmured, grabbing the attention of the blond sitting across from you. He had been staring out the window, and Gwilym was looking at something on his phone. Ben’s green eyes sparkled as his expression reflected the same excitement that you were feeling.

“It was well worth it. I mean, you got a new best friend and a new boyfriend out of the deal. Not too shabby.”  

You rolled your eyes at his reference to being your best friend, but he wasn’t wrong. You hadn’t known each other very well when you started, and now you couldn’t imagine your life without him. Plus, he did introduce you to the love of your life, so you were pretty grateful. You reached across the space between you and grasped his hand tightly in yours.

“Thank you, Ben. For making this the easiest few months of my life. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

His smile grew as he squeezed your hand back. The sound of someone clearing their throat filled the space and you both glanced over at Gwilym who was looking between the two of you with mock hurt.  

“And of course, thank you for introducing me to this wonderfully subtle man. I am forever grateful,” you teased as you leaned back and pressed a kiss to Gwil’s cheek. A smirk spread across his lips as his hand moved to your knee.

“That’s better,” he joked, causing you and Ben to laugh. Before you knew it, the limo was coming to a stop and you could hear the roar of people outside. You took a deep breath as Ben reached for the door handle, and he looked back at you.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

You looked between him and Gwilym one last time, and then nodded.

“Let’s do this.”

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[gamesnared]

Step One: Changing Names

To get started, I’m watching this excellent interview/how-to with John Harper about hacking BitD. His advice for a first step? exactly what I was going to to do anyway. This is more of a writing exercise than any serious rules changes, we’re simply renaming and reframing all the current mechanics to fit our intended game experience. I’ll start with the 12 Action ratings of Blades in the Dark, the skills that a player rolls with any time they attempt to do something with an uncertain outcome. Changing their name also changes what actions they cover in fiction, so renaming them is more than just an aesthetic choice. It’s going to change what each of them can do. With these new actions I want to strike a balance between readability(aka how clear is it what they do?) and an homage to the whimsical naming conventions of HS. I have left a few unchanged as I am unsure of what to put there. None of these are final(in the interview John mentions how it took him months to come up with the list of words he was satisfied with) and any suggestions are welcome

The 4 Insight Actions deal with perception and intelligence

Hunt ==> SNOOP

I want this one to be a little less serious, but the actions it covers are largely the same. It does lose Hunt's connotation with sniping a target fronr ange, sadly, but sniping isn't really something that comes up in HS combat

Study==> INSPECT

This one is self-explanatory, and a detective reference! It's for inspecting a particular person, place, or object for small details.

Survey==>REGARD

You Fondly Regard the location. It's for looking at a large location or seeing the macro details ina situation. I’m worried the new name is too vague.

Tinker==>FIDDLE

A little less precise than tinkering, which I feel fits more with what the kids do with the alchemeter and other gadets they find

The 4 Prowess Actions deal with physical skill and endurance

Finesse==>

Unsure if I can improve this one, FINESSE sounds pretty good to me as is

Prowl==>SCAMPER

Less stealthy, more chaotic, but also faster. HS characters are rarely, if ever stealthy. maybe I should change finesse to a word that also implies stealth?

Skirmish==>STRIFE

What, you thought I WASN’T going to do this?

Wreck==>TRASH

I like this because using ‘trash’ as a verb is funny.  imagine this is what Dave rolls to try and get swords out of shit.

The 4 Resolve actions have to do with willpower and mental fortitude

Attune==> ALIGN

Attune is the “Interact with the ghost filed” action in Blades, so I’m replacing it with an “interact with your aspect” move to cover general aspect fuckery. This is them ALIGNING with their aspect to do... anything aspect-y. Everyone can use this because everyone has an aspect, though their class will probably modify or add on to what they can do with this action.

Command==>

This one is for ordering around and leading groups. I got nothing for this one. I feel it fits really well.

Consort==>

This one is for making with and talking to friends, being genuinely open and communicative, and it’s already a reference to the Consorts! I’m leaving it as is,

Sway==>PSYCHE

For manipulating others. It’s got the same spirit but it’s more juvenile.

That’s what I have for now! also want to try and rename/reorganize the 3 categories these skills are in on a second pass. Next time, Renaming other mechanics, and maybe some actual fiddling with them, ~wow!~

[astro-onechampionship]

I Got Fired From “The Apprentice” —  But I’m Proud I Tried

If you’re reading this, it means that I’ve already been fired.

The beginning of the end came when I applied to be a contestant for the latest season of “The Apprentice.” For those who don’t know, “The Apprentice” is a reality-TV series that pits sixteen contestants against one another in a string of business challenges. Needless to say, corporate skills play a huge role in one’s success on the show.

I have zero corporate experience.

Yes, yes, I have almost a decade of experience in martial arts. I am also the founder of my own little sports events company, both of which helped me out on the show, since “The Apprentice: ONE Championship Edition” is the first Apprentice in history to feature physical tasks on top of the traditional business challenges.

But The Apprentice is still The Apprentice. Corporate pitches still feature heavily on the show, and that was where I floundered.

But here’s the interesting thing.

If I had used my lack of experience as an excuse to not submit my application, I wouldn’t even be on the show in the first place. I would, instead, be a spectator watching the other contestants battle it out on the big screen, an observer instead of a participant. I would be forever dimly jealous of them, of whoever took my place, and throughout it all, I would be thinking the two most regretful words a person can think — throughout it all, I would be thinking “what if.”

I knew, when I submitted my application, that there was a good chance I would fail to be even selected for the show. When I passed three grueling interviews to be one of the sixteen vaunted contestants, I knew there was an even better chance I would leave the show not as the winner, but with my head on the chopping block, fired for the world to see.

I decided to give it my best shot regardless.

As Singaporeans, we were brought up to think of failure as something that is unacceptable. That to fail is to lose, to be somehow lesser. Perhaps it is due to our strict and ruthlessly competitive school system, perhaps it is owing to our parents and their parenting style, best described as equal parts sensible and scared. One thing is for sure; by the time we reach the age of reason, most of us have a deep, almost primal fear of failure inculcated root-and-stem into our system.

This is most unfortunate, because the truth is failure, as corny as it sounds, is the mother of success.

In order to do exceptional things, you have to be first willing to look like a fool. See, the very nature of being a trailblazer means you have to step out of the well-known light of your comfort zone and into the dim unknown. It means you have to try new, never-before-done things — and doing new things often means you end up messing up, flopping and failing, often quite dramatically. 

This failure comes in many forms. It may look like getting chewed out by Chatri in the boardroom, not once but twice. It may look like being a writer but messing up your team’s copywriting. And in the age of the internet, these failures won’t be forgotten. They will be milked and frozen, your worst moments immortalized on the big screen for the world to see.

Failing also means that you will attract a fair share of mockery. 

Whenever you do something against-the-grain, especially in a conservative society like ours, you will attract your fair share of detractors, crabs in the bucket snipping and sniping, trying to pull you down with word and deed alike. 

You must not let them.

To allow your detractors to get the best of you is to rob the world of your gift. Think about it: if the Wright brothers gave up when prominent folks mocked them, we wouldn’t have airplanes today. If Fleming stopped his research when his fellow doctors laughed, we wouldn’t have penicillin, the drug that helped save millions upon millions of lives. And if Steve Jobs quit when he got fired from the company that he helped build, I wouldn’t be typing this to you now on my trusty little iPhone.

People like to poke fun of the mavericks, the outsiders and the stalwarts, when funnily enough, it is often these very people who end up propelling the human race forwards.

I have said a lot for somebody who got ferociously fired fast (in his hometown, no less) so I shall wrap things up with the one thing I came here to say: Give yourself permission to mess up, permission to flop, and permission to fail. Failing is not the end of the world.

Failure— even a failure as humiliating as being canned on national TV, is not only okay. It is something to be proud of. It is a sign that you genuinely tried. It means that you were an active risk-taking participant of life rather than a dull, passive observer. It means you lived. 

Remember, if you want to do something truly extraordinary with your life, it is not only okay to fail.

It is necessary. 

Yours, 

Alvin “The Man In The Arena” Ang

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2019, Part III

Part I is here. Part II is here.

PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

80. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (Martin Scorsese)- Can one put a star rating on Bob Dylan, with renewed purpose, belting out "Isis" in a head and shoulders close-up to New Hampshire teens? What about a naked moment when he and Joan Baez simultaneously realize they should have married each other, and he, for maybe the first time, has nothing to say? As a Dylanologist, I'm glad that this footage from an under-reported period saw the light of day. You can start to think about stars when Martin Scorsese, my other dad, does everything he can to complicate and ultimately undermine that footage with his contributions. I appreciate that he uses his documentaries to experiment and chart his passions, and I think that I get what he's doing with his present-day chicanery, but it does not work for me. Shout-out to when Bob Dylan claims, of one of Scorsese's fake people, "He seemed to need enemies. Even when there weren't any." I felt that. 

79. Serenity (Steven Knight) Djimon Honsou: Lawful Good Jeremy Strong as "The Rules": Lawful Neutral Anne Hathaway: Lawful Evil Diane Lane: Chaotic Good The Kid: Chaotic Neutral Jason Clarke: Chaotic Evil The Bartender: Lawful Neutral Matthew McConaughey: True Neutral Me, Believing Almost Sincerely That This Is a Good Movie: Chaotic Neutral

78. Atlantics (Mati Diop)- It's plenty effective as a window into a patriarchal society I wasn't familiar with, but Atlantics doesn't ever match the heights of its exquisite opening. At the risk of getting banned from this website--and I do realize what I'm implying here...not enough happens.

77. Birds of Passage (Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego)- After enjoying the formal invention of Embrace of the Serpent, I was interested to see Guerra and Gallego's spin on a well-worn genre like crime. So I was surprised to see how conventional Birds of Passage was. The indigenous Colombian rituals provide some color and grandeur, but otherwise this is a rise and fall that I've seen before, complete with a hothead character that threatens the whole operation. Perhaps my favorite part of crime movies, the alluring sinful fun that ropes the viewer in and makes him complicit, is nowhere to be found.

76. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot)- I admire Joe Talbot's debut more than I like it. It's straightforward in its ideas of African-American and masculine performance, and it boils its essence down into a really effective scene near the end (on the bus). It does get tedious though. The protagonists' goals keep changing in a way that makes it seem like the film is overcompensating for how simple it actually is. 

75. Running with Beto (David Modigliani)- Beto O'Rourke is both inspiring and goofy, able to get me to look to the stars and roll my eyes within the same breath. This movie is pretty standard for its genre, but its greatest strength is getting us to see that all people present those contradictions on an individual level, while most people, if we're talking about blue and red states, are the same collectively. 

74. Gemini Man (Ang Lee)- Ang Lee treats Gemini Man like a test reel for 3D high-frame rate presentation, and I think I would have liked the film much less if I hadn't enjoyed the bells and whistles. (Find me in the club and ask me about the HDR--I can go deep.) You could read the film as a comment on Will Smith's Movie Stardom: We're the product of our experiences, and up-and-comers lack some of the character/baggage that Smith brings even if those imitators can approximate his bluster. (The fact that the film is a commercial failure adds another layer. Perhaps the cultural bridge that Smith created is no longer necessary.) 

But you'll notice that none of that stuff is dealing with the text, which rarely does the unexpected, especially when it comes to the mustache-twirling Clive Owen character. The film pointedly avoids a romance between Smith and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and that's another absence that I'm pretending is a plus.

73. The Hummingbird Project (Kim Nguyen)- At first, the film has trouble selling itself, almost underplaying how quixotic the characters' plan to beat the stock market is. Once it settles in after a few false starts, it expands into a story about how precious time is in general, an idea that Jesse Eisenberg sells in his sympathetic performance. The other characters don't fare as well. Skarsgard's foil is comparatively static and dull, and a dialed-up Salma Hayek makes this a more external, obvious picture than it should have been. But there are long stretches that I like. 72. Escape Room (Adam Robitel)- I was exhausted in a good way as the movie rocketed through its setup, showing us the backstory of half of its characters while bypassing the rest. I was exhausted in a bad way by its fourth ending. Basically though, this movie does its job. And I'm glad that some of these thrillers are still envelope-pushing PG-13's. 71. Late Night (Nisha Ganatra)- There's a preposterous scene swinging into the third act that I just cannot accept or get behind, and it introduces a wave of Serious Scenes of People Getting Real with Each Other. But I haven't seen such a distilled juxtaposition of second-wave feminism and third-wave feminism before, let alone in a comedy. Some solid jokes. And John Lithgow playing piano while feeling bad about himself! 70. Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas)- Non-Fiction is a sign that Assayas, always prolific, is entering the Woody Allen Zone. That is, he, a filmmaker capable of great formal beauty, has left behind formal rigor for a moderately funny tale about pseudo-intellectuals having conversations that would have been provocative five or ten years ago. 90% of the film depicts infidelity, but it isn't really about infidelity. Just as every latter-day Allen picture has two or three immaculate jokes or inward moments, Non-Fiction, despite its lack of ambition, has some perfect Assayas inter-textual flourishes. The Selena character bemoans the disposable nature of the TV show she works on, but Assayas drops us into one of the show's wintry, over-exposed shoot-outs as if to capture a genre he'll never fully pursue. He also writes a joke in which Selena, played by Juliette Binoche, claims that she'll try to talk Juliette Binoche into recording an audio book.

69. Crawl (Alexandre Aja)- I guess you could say something negative about this movie, but you would also have to mention that ol' girl lets off a full clip from inside the gator while it is chomping her arm off. So it pretty much has that Academy Awards category sewn up. 68. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan)- as Chinese Jerry Seinfeld once said, "Why don't they make the whole movie out of the hour-long unbroken 3D take?"

67. The Art of Self-Defense (Riley Stearns)- The Art of Self-Defense is a film of two halves--in a way that, actually, Riley Stearns's previous film Faults was. For me, those two halves, one being slow and pre-ordained, the other being wild and unpredictable, are too extreme on either end. The vagueness of the setting is a weapon that goes a long way in unifying those parts though. Even if I couldn't get down with the silliness, The Art of Self-Defense is worth checking out for Alessandro Nivola's career-best performance. The movie is about performative masculinity, so he has the challenge of playing a sort of confident monolith while also being totally specific. He's everything you would imagine a karate instructor to be, but he also takes his glasses out of their case in a way I've never seen before.

66. Dolemite Is My Name (Craig Brewer)- Keep in mind that I couldn't make it all the way through Dolemite proper, so I'm not the intended audience for this film's "let's put on a show" awe. The structure is notable: It starts with Rudy Ray Moore as a failure who has tried everything, crests past the shooting of his movie, and uses that completion as a plot point, only to focus on the distribution for the third act. That is, the screenplay breathes new life into the plot right when it needs it. Eddie Murphy's best performances always seem like regretful commentaries on his own relationship with the audience, (I'm picturing the final speech of The Nutty Professor.) and he follows suit here. Even better is an effete Wesley Snipes as the too-cool-for-school D'Urville. Despite all of the talent involved, however, the thing just isn't funny, and it's least funny in the comedy club scenes that are supposed to sell us on Rudy Ray Moore's genius. If it's not supposed to be funny, then why populate the movie with five comedic supporting actors?

65. Harriet (Kasi Lemmons)- History classes could do a lot worse. Like a history class, the film has so much ground to cover that it has to make choices for pacing, and even then it still feels like a greatest hits. It does have a surprising, brazen edge though, and it's more spiritually curious than I was expecting. Kasi Lemmons leans in to the mystical side of the story, using Tubman's spells as conversations with God that give her the confidence that she needs. The device is a double-edged sword though: What distinguishes and others Tubman, what makes her the chosen one, is also kind of passive and out of her control. Speaking of out of control, Joe Alwyn plays the slaveholder who ain't gonna be as nice as his pappy was. "Seems to me things have gotten a little too easy 'round these parts." 64. Motherless Brooklyn (Edward Norton)- Like Edward Norton, Motherless Brooklyn is sincere and smart and shows its work. Also like Edward Norton, it sort of tires you out after a while with how hard it's trying. I respect the ambition--the film tangles itself in race and jazz and urban planning and makeshift families--but by the third or fourth time that the hero blacks out while getting roughed up, the film reveals that it can't quite thread the needle between noir pastiche and noir cliche. It's satisfying enough as a mystery in general.

63. The Two Popes (Fernando Meirelles)- I'm the target audience for 21st century papal fan-fic, and even I started to zone out during the flashbacks. Jonathan Pryce sort of disappears, but I think this is the first Netflix prestige project being judged on a curve.

[chicagoindiecritics]

New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: MOVIE REVIEW: Gemini Man

(Image: polygon.com)

GEMINI MAN— 2 STARS

Ang Lee’s new actioner Gemini Man is the cinematic embodiment of the figure of speech “chasing your tail.” A reminder from The Free Dictionary, defines that idiom as “to take action that is ineffectual and does not lead to progress” and “refers to how a dog can exhaust itself by chasing its own tail.” Boy, is that ever this movie. You have a multiple Academy Award-winning filmmaker chasing a technological benchmark that the industry cannot match. And you have a lead actor exhausting himself (and us) literally, instead of just figuratively, chasing his own tail.

Graying through his temples and whiskers, Will Smith plays his authentic 51 years of age as ultra-professional government asset Henry Brogan. The old guard assassin wants peace after losing his “feel” and growing a conscience after completing his 72nd confirmed kill. Seafront solitude with a little boat awaits Henry in Buttermilk Sound, Georgia south of Savannah. After demonstrating his chops in the opening scene, Smith’s confident exasperation and desire for this slowdown fits the actor’s appeal.

LESSON #1: “TO THE NEXT WAR, WHICH IS NO WAR” — This quote is Henry Brogan’s shared signature toast with his former brothers-in-arms from the old Persian Gulf and Somalia days, which include Jack (Red Sparrow’s Douglas Hodge) and Baron (Benedict Wong of Doctor Strange. The vibe is two-fold. First, there’s a celebration of success in making the world a better place with each dispatched despot and a survivalist wish of someday putting the bullets and triggers away.

Sure enough, retirement is short-lived when Henry learns he was fed spiked intel where the mark he sniped was someone of a less criminal background than he was told. Brogan and Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, bringing only middling sidekick value), the burned babysitter agent who helps him, become loose-ends for erasure by the order of their head government spook employer Clay Verris (Clive Owen, dialed to 50% intensity). Globetrotting from Georgia and Cartagena in the Western Hemisphere to Belgium and Budapest in the eastern one, the chase is on.

The salt-grained rub is Henry’s indomitable opponent at every stop is someone younger, stronger, and faster with recognizable facial features and training. Over 20 years ago when cloning was the rage, Verris used Henry’s DNA as a test to create an experimental line of expendable soldiers packaged with fewer human flaws and more programmed discipline. The force matching Henry’s every movie is his 23-year-old homegrown duplicate raised by Verris as his own adoptive son and following his every command.

LESSON #2: SO MUCH FOR SUN TZU — Paraphrasing, knowing your enemy better than you know yourself is quickly derailed when your enemy is you. Insert the Dramatic Chipmunk, but watch out for the groan-inducing “clones are still people too” and “they get choices too” wet blanket lessons that preach and follow. Gemini Man becomes a battle of seasoned wisdom versus the superior vigor of youth. Brains tend to always beat brawn, and you can see the end result a continent away.

Through de-aging special effects and digital doubles, Smith plays and voices his own “Junior.” This glaze, if you will, is very well done compared to other incarnations we’ve seen with this performance technology. Most of the time, mouths and expressions match with minimal, though noticeable, creepiness. It takes some getting used to, but it’s still Will Smith. Like most of his duds over the course of the last decade, the fit action star is never the movie’s problem.

Plenty of keen and sleek aesthetics are fair to compliment here. The team of stunt coordinator Brad Martin (Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice) and fight choreographer Jeremy Marinas (The Fate of the Furious) executed action sequences that are kinetic and often clever. Two-time production design Oscar nominee Guy Hendrix Dyas (Inception, Passengers) and the art departments created vast arenas for these battles out of the worldly locales. Academy Award-winning cinematographer Dion Beebe (Chicago) shot them bright and tight while long-time Lee editing collaborator and fellow two-time Oscar nominee Tim Squyres (Life of Pi) stitched the work together with deft pacing.

Much ballyhoo is being made about the high frame rate shooting used to enliven all this action. Matching his 2016 effort on Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ang Lee shot this film in full 4K HD for large scale 3D at a 120 fps clip, exponentially higher than the standard 24 fps rate. Good luck finding a theater or setting that can do Gemini Man full justice. There’s not a single theater screen in the country that can perform all three of those specifications and only 14 than can hit the 3D and the frame rate without the 4K HD. Cue your shrug of disappointment.

We can admire Lee for aiming towards new technological heights, but this reeks of hubris over smarts. Upwards of $136 million is a great deal of money and effort to waste on what amounts to an artistic STEM experiment where the intended visual detail and sensory effect will be lost on over 99% of audiences. If home viewing is the second wave of hope for this wannabe blockbuster to make an impression, even the current 4K HD televisions will have a difficult time hitting those technical specifications.

It is unfortunately understandable that this film probably could not be marketed to the masses without revealing the younger doppelganger crux. What a shame. Such a discovery should have been built as a jarring jaw-dropper rather than a foregone conclusion. The trouble is too often production secrets like that cannot be dependably kept safe in this day and age of scoop culture. That and, if you hold your bucket of popcorn to your ear, you can probably still hear the short-sighted marketing gurus at Paramount clamoring that two Will Smiths are better than one. This is not the 1990s or early 2000s Will Smith anymore. He was lucky with Aladdin but he’s not an A-list draw.

Gemini Man could have been something far greater if it traded much of that polish for punch. Other than the inventiveness of the action, there is zero to few potential thrills to be had when you can see every spot coming. The look is all there, right down to the close-up shot selection framed to capture the steely moments ripe for emotional stamping. There’s just no storytelling strength behind those hard stares. One of the mano-y-mano moments in the movie lets loose the clunker of a line “none of this is necessary” and it feels self-incriminating.

This original premise, scripted out by Game of Thrones czar David Benioff and Goosebumps writer David Lemke with a revision from Billy Ray of Captain Phillips, feels very much like a low-end Philip K. Dick concept. A hero is in minor peril wrapped in easy clues with the lightest whiff of unexplored science fiction floating in the background. There is a market for that to a degree. Preposterousness can work around being ambiguous and ill-defined if it has an interesting edge (look no further than the best of Dick). Gemini Man, with all its finely sharpened pixels, cannot lacerate our enthusiasm.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#830)

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[xprojectrpg]

This Day In X-Project - March 5

2015: Jean posts a meme. Artie and Warren meet for the first time at the mansion; it doesn't go well.

2016:

2017: Sue and Hope attend a gala event together. X-Men Mission: A vs X: Fred Duncan contacts Garrison to let him know that the Avengers have been brainwashed somehow and are targeting SHIELD and that the X-Men are needed to prevent a bloodbath; Garrison emails Marie-Ange and Amanda for magic-type help investigating the cause of the situation in the Mid-West; in New York, the site of the Triskelion building, Dominion and Rogue encounter the Hulk; Wolverine and Cyclops face Captain America and Black Widow; Bevatron and Dust counter Hawkeye and Deathlok on the roof; Synch and Marvel Girl take on two of the fliers, Falcon and Vision; the Sub-Mariner and Firestar get the other two fliers, Iron Man and War Machine; Blink and Bruiser find themselves facing an insane ‘god’ in the form of Thor and Blink teleports him away; in Minnestoa, the SWORD team and its consultants, Tarot, Daytripper, Dagger and Topaz, land at the site of the Asgardian portal the Avengers had been investigating; Dominion jumps in to help Wolverine against Captain America and Black Widow as Cyclops is forced to switch teams and manages to take down Captain America before Widow knocks him out with her sting; Marvel Girl takes Dominion’s place against the Hulk and they manage to hold him to a standstill, but that’s all; Dust moves to assist Synch against Falcon and the Vision and together they defeat the Falcon and while Synch takes him for medical aid, Dust faces the Vision; Hawkeye critically injures Firestar, so while Blink takes her back to the Blackbird for medical treatment, Cyclops steps in the help the Sub-mariner against the Iron-Men and manage to subdue War Machine; Sharon treats Firestar while Longshot provides protection against Hawkeye and buys some breathing room; Thor returns from wherever Blink sent him to and attacks Bruiser and Bevetron; Sharon has another patient - War Machine - but with Iron Man trying to kill them, joins Longshot in fighting him off; Rogue defends Dominion from Black Widow despite being in bad shape after the Hulk; Wolverine takes Rogue’s place against the Hulk and between him and Marvel Girl, they manage to wear him down enough for a mind-whammy; Dust finds herself fighting the Vision alone and manages to distract him from his rampage; the Sub-mariner switches places with Bruiser against Thor and the sniping between the two myths gives Bevetron a chance to catch his breath; Synch joins Blink against Deathlok and Hawkeye and things get brutal before Blink teleports them away; in Minnesota, SWORD and the magic team discover the portal is just an illusion and set off a second booby trap - an ice giant - which they go all-out in battling before disrupting the norn stones maintaining the brainwashing spell; Cyclops and Bruiser are battling Iron Man when the spell is broken and all of the Avengers stand down; the X-Men quietly leave the scene while SHIELD treats the Avengers.

2018: Sooraya sends Angelica an email about going to see a movie. Jubilee posts a music video from Rachel Platten. Operation: Salt the Earth: North and Kevin track down the industrial spy to a hotel in St. Petersburg and have a productive conversation regarding the lost materials.

2019:

2020:

2021:

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/gemini-man-review-two-will-smiths-at-the-cost-of-everything-else/

Gemini Man Review: Two Will Smiths at the Cost of Everything Else

Gemini Man is a film that has been more than twenty years in the making. The big reason for that has to do with the approach to the premise — which involves a younger clone of an aging assassin sent to kill him — as the makers wanted to create a computer-generated clone of the protagonist, rather than cast another actor to do the work. For the longest while, the technology didn’t exist to execute that convincingly. But it does now. Owing to the two decade-long delay though, the concept, premise, and underlying themes of Gemini Man have been explored several times. In 2002, Star Trek: Nemesis riffed on the concept (poorly), opting to use Tom Hardy to play the villainous clone of Patrick Stewart. In 2009, Duncan Jones explored the philosophical aspects of cloning with his debut film, Moon. And in 2012, Rian Johnson used time travel and different actors — Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis — for a similar premise.

That doesn’t mean Gemini Man shouldn’t exist. But it does mean it needs to offer something audiences haven’t seen before. Unfortunately, its credited team of creators — the acclaimed director Ang Lee, working off a script by Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff, The Hunger Games co-writer Billy Ray, and Goosebumps writer Darren Lemke — don’t seem to have the faintest idea how to do that. In fact, Gemini Man even fails at being just an action or thriller film, as advertised. The film is largely inert and any momentum that it does build for itself is then squandered in the next lacklustre scene. Its characters have zero depth to them, and hence there’s no emotional engagement to any of it. And entire scenes seem to be missing in between, so it’s likely that much of the character development was abandoned to shrink Gemini Man into a runtime of less than 2 hours. Essentially, the film rings hollow.

For what it’s worth, Gemini Man does actually have something to offer (most) audiences haven’t seen before. Continuing his love for bleeding-edge tech from his previous feature, Lee has shot Gemini Man in extra-high frame rate — 120fps to be precise, which is five times the standard 24fps — at 4K resolution in 3D. (Peter Jackson made The Hobbit trilogy in 48fps, while James Cameron intends to film Avatar sequels in 48 or 60fps. FPS stands for frames per second.) In theory, that means much, much smoother images with an imperceptible flicker. But Lee has spent time and money on technology that forget being appreciated, can’t even be seen as intended by most audiences. Not a single screen in India, or the US for that matter, will screen Gemini Man in 120fps at 4K in 3D. In India in fact, Gemini Man is only available in the plain ol’ 24fps at 2K in 2D. (It’s in IMAX too, if that’s any consolation.)

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Will Smith, and Benedict Wong in Gemini Man Photo Credit: Ben Rothstein/Paramount Pictures

Gemini Man opens in Liège, Belgium, where government assassin Henry Brogan (Will Smith) gets to show off his skill level by sniping a bio-terrorist target travelling in a bullet train at 240km/h. With his 70-plus kills weighing on him, Henry decides to retire from service. But since the film revolves around him, he’s naturally pulled back in. The plot is so generic and convoluted that it needs no explaining except to say that Henry’s life is in danger, which forces him to ditch his Georgia home in the US with Defense Intelligence Agency operative Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who was sent to surveil Henry but becomes a loose end after being burned. They are being pursued by their own government, including Clay Varris (Clive Owen), the nefarious head of a secret black ops project known as GEMINI. (The film never offers a full form.)

Seeking help, Henry and Danny meet up with Henry’s former colleague and friend Baron (Benedict Wong), which kick starts Gemini Man’s globe-trotting plot from Cartagena, Colombia to Budapest, Hungary. (Most of it is comprised of action sequences that have a longer than usual average shot length, but isn’t anything memorable and borders on parody at times. In one scene, Winstead is essentially turned into a light source.) Following them close behind — it’s in the premise, the trailers have spoiled it already, and the film doesn’t drag it out for too long either — is a younger clone of Henry called Junior (Smith, via a combination of CGI and motion capture), sent by Clay. Henry is spooked and hesitates to take a shot at him but Junior, who doesn’t know any better, seems to have no qualms about killing him.

Gemini Man never bothers to really dig into why Clay would send Junior after Henry, or why Henry would try to avoid killing Junior. It offers a cursory, ambiguous explanation for the first one — Clay refers to Henry as Junior’s “darkness”, even though they are unrelated outside of their matching DNA — and it explicitly points out that Junior couldn’t be Henry’s son he didn’t know about, since he’s never had a long-term relationship with anyone. Gemini Man does wish to explore the regret Henry has in not being a husband or father, having used his job as an excuse. It also wants to ruminate on the philosophical idea of nature vs nurture. At the same time, it betrays a deep lack of interest in how it gives itself no time to tackle these concepts in any meaningful way. The film jumps one from thing to another without any meaningful connective tissue to hold all of it together.

As a result of this, it’s Junior who suffers the most in Gemini Man, as his actions feel like they’ve no real weight to them. Audiences need to feel the internal conflict he’s wrestling with, between the seeming lies he’s been fed throughout his upbringing by what seems like a doting albeit conniving father versus the shocking truths that are being poured over him by his older clone whom he’s been tasked with killing. Could Henry be simply lying to save his skin? What’s the ulterior motive of his adoptive father Clay? All of this is necessary to Gemini Man, but it just isn’t played out for long enough on-screen. Instead, Junior seems to switch from one emotion to the other on a whim, and those heel turns are just indicative of the aforementioned hollow writing.

Speaking of poor writing, Gemini Man is also filled with boring and stilted dialogue that further pulls down the film. Its attempts at banter crash land and the exposition is dreary. Henry’s obsession with his age and others’ mockery of it — he says he’s 50, everyone corrects him that he’s 51 — is never properly set up. Clay is stuck with cookie-cutter dialogues and a third-act monologue about how cloning is more humane in times of war, while Baron really wants you to know that he served in tiny countries around the world which he’s only too happy to name-check. Elsewhere, characters are killed off and their friends have little to zero emotional response. And lastly, there are scenes written in to fool the audience that completely fall apart if you think back to them.

The only thing that does work in Gemini Man is its technological achievement of a digitally-created younger Smith — except for the very end. Most scenes involving Junior take place at night, which means the imperfections aren’t that easy to spot. But the whole thing descends into the uncanny valley as soon as daylight falls on Junior’s face. Still, two Will Smiths can’t help a film that’s lacking in most departments. All of Winstead, Owen, and Wong are underused, a criminal act in addition to its missteps with character development and dialogue writing, hand in hand with haphazard editing and pacing troubles. Gemini Man spent over two decades in development hell waiting on the tech to catch up, but Lee & Co. seem to have forgotten that films are built on the foundation of words, not pixels.

Gemini Man is out Friday, October 11 in cinemas in India in English, Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu.

[docholligay]

an overwatch/friends crossover sounds........... so fucking WILD. mccree, working retail,

This is an extension of that Doc Hates everything Friends episode, but would we like to talk about what people who were in Overwatch (that I write about) do before Pharah and Tracer get the bright idea to start it back up? No! I don’t care I want to be self-indulgent and pretend you do. (All in my HON HON HON canon, of course) 

Ana

Well she’s busy pretending to be dead, but a girl’s gotta eat

She becomes a mercenary, and while she’s picky about her jobs, she does, in fact, know that she has to pay rent and sometimes you just get the itch to snipe a man. 

She reads about all of Pharah’s accomplishments and is convinced she’s doing the best thing by letting Pharah think she’s dead. 

McCree 

Thinks for about .5 seconds about going back to the Deadlock Gang. Even his total lack of pride won’t allow him to. They left him, didn’t they? He won’t come crawling back. 

It occurs to Jesse he doesn’t have loads of skills. 

He takes a job working a Murdoch’s in Salida, Colorado, selling rope and bailing wire and bullets and various farm and ranch items. 

He has a little mobile home on some land and a horse and his cats and other than being lonely, he’s reasonably happy. 

Jesse McCree just can’t leave well enough alone, and this is how Reaper gets to him. 

Mercy

First she has convince the medical board that just because the UN brought her and Reinhardt up on ridiculous charges because they couldn’t find hardly anyone else, doesn’t mean she ought to lose her license. 

Tracer is still struggling to recover from Doomfist ripping her through time. 

A technicality means they can’t charge Winston, as he is not human. 

Conveniently everyone that SHOULD be charged is dead. 

“Dead” 

In any case, she manages to convince them and goes about repairing her reputation. She’s won Nobel prizes, she never patented a single medical breakthrough she made, but all people remember is seeing her in front of the UN. All they remember is hearing it said that she was a bad person. 

She works a speaking circuit, which she hates but which allows her to rebuild some sort of good graces. She takes a job teaching pre-med in Zurich. 

It only takes a couple of years for Harvard to forget the unpleasantness of the inquiry and remember her genius. She takes a teaching position at their medical school, gets a little apartment at the back of a house, and gets takeout. 

She meets Fareeha Amari, and her life changes forever, and the sun seems to finally rise. 

Tracer

First things first, Lena thinks, she has to get back to normal. The tear through time rattled her fairly well, and recovery is slow. 

Ang is busy getting written up by the world’s principal’s office and still spends nights and weekends adjusting medications and such for Lena, trying to help get on her feet. Ang is a good egg, a kind person, and it makes Tracer so angry she can’t hardly think to see her humiliated on a world stage. 

She damn near tosses open the door and marches down to New York City to give them a piece of her mind, save for the fact that the world still brings her to her knees more than she’d like. 

In time, she does recover. It takes about six months for her to be back in life again, and another month for her to get well enough that she decides to go out and get a job, no matter what Winston has to say about it. 

Her pilot’s license was never formally revoked, because they, in truth, never thought she would get better, and it would reflect ill on them to strip the Hero of London. 

But that doesn’t mean anyone will let her get in the air. She can’t get hired by fucking RyanAir, even. 

She spends a fair amount of time screaming at the sky no one will let her into. 

Lena takes a breath, and decides she’s going to get a job, whatever it is, and worry over the flying later. Her uncle Teddy offers to let her come work in the bakery, says he’d love to have her, but it feels too much like charity, and also baking starts at 3 am. 

She gives her resume, typed neatly on linen paper, to anyone who will take it out of her hands. Bars, restaurants, (”I’m very cheerful, mind. Excellent customer service”), Harrods to Marks and Spencers, but no one bites until she wanders into a little suit shop, and, quite by starting a conversation, manages to sell a fine suit to a fellow butch lesbian. 

The owner is not a stupid man, and sees an untapped market. 

Lena enjoys it quite a bit, helping up the selections of boys’ suiting for the smaller among them, helping with tailoring, and in general, making excellent sales and feeling like she’s contributing in life. 

But then, she gets an offer from Top Gun. The Americans are as crazy as she’s always thought and they’d love to have her come teach. She’s one of the finest fighter pilots ever born, so who cares if she might disappear in the air? 

She loves it. She’s so happy, the feel of being back in the cockpit, of flying, of coming to close to the line, it fills her in a way she had missed so very much, even, she realizes, when she was doing field work for Overwatch. 

But she misses London terribly, and her family, and Winston is in Boston, so when Red Air offers her a position, even thought it’s theoretical, she takes it. 

But the good news is, Helix also wants to work with her. They need a pilot to help with some prototypes for flying. 

She’ll be working with Captain Fareeha Amari. 

Winston

He has to take care of Lena. This is the only thing he knows for sure, is that she’s sick, and she needs his help, and he has to take care of her. 

Overwatch fell down around their ears, but he doesn’t even care. He has to help her. 

He repairs mobile phones, tablets, and laptops out of his house, and the pay is not great, but it’s enough to keep them together, especially with Tracer’s family helping out. 

They always treat him so kindly, like he was one of them too. 

He hates that Lena feels she has to get a job. But there’s no arguing with her once she’s made her mind up. 

Besides, it’s lifted her mood so much that he thinks better of his hesitation. 

He invents a new kind of battery for a cell phone, and the royalties come trickling in, and suddenly Winston has so much less to worry about than normal, and nothing again if it ever takes off, save for the fact that Lena has an offer in America that she intends to take. 

He thinks about just going with her, but decides instead to apply to do research at universities. He’s a doctor. He should have the same chance as anyone else. 

He didn’t really believe in himself, but he gets a position at MIT. 

Lena flies to come see him at least once a month. 

(Pharah and Dva are not on this list because they were not in 1.0)