#he doesn't even have that scar (see image) yet. he's gonna keep having experiences i just know ituhhhhhhhhhhhghhh

[yashkonu]

inspired by krissy i want to talk about those sweet sweet original characters

it'll get long let's go...!

oh before i get into it you're gonna see a bunch of art throughout this that i've steadily been commissioning for years from @seeyouguyslater! they have a really keen eye for design from description and a dynamic, evocative style that lends itself well to pinning down visuals for characters who don't have anything more than a text description and a few reference images or picrews.

i'm gonna break this up by setting since i tend to think in terms of places and then build out characters from there so:

THE BOUND GODDESS

this is a fantasy setting that's been a loooooooong ongoing project between myself and @kc5rings that is the subject of a novel's worth of note-taking and two tabletop games (so far). the quick pitch is that it's a story about divine betrayal, divine love, the well-deserved implosion of an expansionist empire, and a lot of girls with really rotten luck. I'm only going to get into it about my own characters here for obvious reasons but go bug kat about theirs too!

Arcadia & Avalon

Arcadia is fate's chewtoy. She's also the sword of a creator-goddess (one of six divine instruments), fallen to the world to wander when the goddess was betrayed and bound by the myriad other gods. She's a sword in the sense of a sword of office, a sword of selection, and sometimes like a misericorde. She doesn't really relish any of these roles, since she has ages of experience with the things people do with them. Day to day, she's a jumpy, meticulous woman with an endless array of skills from her long years spent wandering and hiding in plain sight among humans. You're much more likely to meet her as an innkeeper's assistant or a baker's new hire than anything as grandiose as what she actually is. Please for the love of god be nice to her.

Avalon is one reason why you should be nice to Arcadia! She was the goddess' *other* sword, and is less about abstract concepts and far more about abrupt lethal violence. In the ages since the goddess was bound, not a single human has wielded Avalon, because even deep in dreams about the life she lost back then, Avalon cuts anything that gets close into ribbons. When one of her sisters is in danger, Avalon wakes for long enough to find and free them by the most direct means possible.

Lieutenant Chyr & Normal Secretary Sylvie

Chyr and Sylvie are citizens of a big shitty expansionist empire and members of its military! Kinda! It's complicated! Chyr nearly died when she was a kid and was saved by a VERY experimental procedure that partially fused her with a bat! Her big-ass ears are getting cut off by the image cropping. Being part bat has its upsides and downsides, especially in the kinda unstable prototype state she's in, and any time she's injured (frequently) her wounds heal with more batlike features instead of scarring. Patches of fur, single claws or fangs, that sort of thing. She's serious, loyal to a fault, and a part of the group that will eventually rip the empire apart from the inside.

Sylvie's just a secretary! Really! He's part of the same faction Chyr is and was also fused with an animal (a rabbit in his case) for complicated reasons that boil down to keeping his family out of the sights of a vindictive oligarch. He's a much more stable combination of person and bunny and doesn't suffer many of the drawbacks that Chyr deals with. He's also a secretary and lethally pretty! He's never not crossdressing and typically rocks the white blouse + black pencil skirt combo. Sylvie is sharp as a tack and knows exactly the effect he has on people; often he covers for this with a half-genuine scrambling flustered demeanor.

There are WAY more characters in this setting but honestly I could do several entire long-ass posts about it and that's not what we're doing here SO

SCI-FI SETTING WITH NO MECHS IN IT I HAVEN'T NAMED YET

look okay i love mecha we all love mecha they're big impressive evocative and all around cool. BUT. i also often feel like you lose something in a sci-fi setting when you put mecha in it because then it becomes *about* mecha in a way that's hard to shake. i started assembling this setting because i watched a bunch of legend of the galactic heroes and went man you can do some really cool stuff when it's all just ships planets stations and people. I haven't commissioned art for anyone in this setting yet but you bet your ass i plan to

Solo Sequentia

A mysterious figure in long, heavy robes and a wide-brimmed hat nearly big enough to completely hide their face. What if Siffrin from in stars and time were even more committed to not having an inch of visible skin. The name is a pseudonym (i'm not quite that committed to silly thematic names when it's a moderately serious setting), made appropriate by their weird-ass situation.

Solo Sequentia has a problem, which is that they can't die. Or more specifically, they *can* die, but each and every time they reawaken in bed in a studio apartment attached to an otherwise sealed facility just beyond the edge of the galaxy. In their search for answers (and possibly, a way to die for good) they lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, scheme, and sabotage their way across every inch of civilization.

ENSIGN 0 and the Ligature Squad

One of the key things of this setting is that it takes place in a galaxy split between three major powers, with big elaborate diplomatic maneuvering happening on the broad scale and endless back-and-forth territory squabbling between warlords at the borders between the three powers. At one point, one of the major factions kept a particular ace up their sleeve--a soldier beyond compare known only by the codename ENSIGN 0.

(an aside: a bunch of these glyphs and codenames and such are made with affinity photo and a bunch of fonts from a pack by YutaONE.)

ENSIGN 0 is sci-fi 60-something tragic dyke big boss. Her presence almost singlehandedly determined the course of the war for nearly a decade before she decided she'd had enough of being the secret weapon of a military she'd long since lost all faith in. No one who knows who she is has seen her since!

The powers who had used her as their killing implement du jour weren't about to take this lying down, and quickly moved to replace her--this time with a squad of robots they hoped would be easier to control.

That's Ligature squad babey!!!! Each of the six members is intended to replicate a portion of ENSIGN 0's skills. I actually did a little write-up about them ages ago, though they've changed a bit since then. To summarize:

Optic 1, sniper and infiltrator. Serious, quiet, often mean. Puts a lot of effort into never letting anyone know how she feels.

Sine 2, heavy ordnance specialist. Quiet and protective, never talks until she's already completed the thought in her head. Extremely funny when she feels like telling a joke.

Hound 3, close-quarters combat, flanker and tracker. Vicious, stubborn, and loyal to a fault.

Riptide 4, poisoner and saboteur. Charming, easy to talk to, hard to figure out. The cruelest of the bunch when she wants to be.

Tact 5, walking foundry. Tidy, polite, prone to getting flustered.

Rem 6, artillery specialist and tactician. Spends most days either asleep or in a dreamlike haze while she runs an unending array of tactical simulations. Snaps into dead serious focus when needed.

Surprise! They also didn't love being treated as disposable killing implements. They also disappeared on their creators, and now travel the galaxy working as mercenaries while they search for ENSIGN 0, who they think of as something between a mother, a mentor, and an inspiration.

I wonder how close to the character limit I am at this point.

CAPE CITY

this is where i have to make a confession. generally speaking, most of the time, i can't stand cape stuff. i see a superhero and i curl my lip into a sneer that would, thanks to the dread irony that rules my life, make me fit terrifically into that superhero's rogues gallery.

but.

BUT. i can't deny there's something really compelling there. urban fantasy making passionate love to professional wrestling. we could have it all and instead we mostly have a festering pack of racists, misogynists, and general old-boy's-club types shambling around in a pair of giant trenchcoats and all but smothering the genre in the process. it's usually around this point of rambling about it when i realize if i'm paying this much attention to it it must be because i care, oops.

so i made cape city! okay i say i made it but it's another collaborative one between me and kat. making stuff with kat is awesome. it's a loose freeform setting that boils down to what if there was a cool city where all the superhero/supervillain stuff happened. there are a ton of characters in this one that i wont get into in detail but to summarize a couple:

The Ballistic Boa (secret identity Aspen Lerna), a woman who got experimented on and is part snake now. She has a big cool tail, scales in some places, is VERY flexible, and has a pair of solenoglyphous fangs which have a venom that can kill anything. Like mystic eyes of death perception levels of anything.

Akida Ki, a psychic from a distant bad end future who came back to the past samurai jack style to save the world, but arrived to find that the crisis was already averted. Now she's just here and trying to figure out what to do next.

Judie, a career henchman, underling, minion, goon, whatever term isn't being used as an obnoxious marketing campaign or sex-negative pejorative this week. She's an eight and a half foot tall rabbit woman with several mechanical limbs and an absolutely unquenchable thirst for power and pleasure.

Kimera, an unfathomable creature wearing the shape of the human being it used to be. Loves to turn people into stuff and invented puppygirl HRT.

The setting is full of freaks like them and I could go on all day describing them but I want to focus more on two characters in particular:

Cold Comes Summer & Warm Sweeps Autumn

Remember how earlier I said I don't commit that hard to silly thematic names in serious settings? Well so okay this is not a serious setting. Rat girl Summer.

Summer is a villain! She's selfish, short-tempered, and hates her fucking family so goddamn much. Her family are a bunch of very type-moon style mages, and when she told them to fuck off and never contact her again she also swore off magic forever. Mostly. She's also a hypocrite. Instead she favors the classics of supervillainy--rayguns with a million knobs and switches, elaborate traps and devices, and the occasional Real Gun.

Autumn is a complicated case, and one deeply entwined with the nature of Cape City as a place. At the end of the day, the heroes and villains of Cape City all play a game. An elaborate, often dangerous, sometimes deadly game, but a game nonetheless. Games have rules.

Once, the person who would become Autumn was a hero's sidekick. Said hero was a bit of a ruthless sort, which is fine on its own, but...

But that hero decided to lay a trap for Summer with their own sidekick's life as the bait. Summer isn't a heartless rat and did all she could, but the sidekick was brain-dead by the time she arrived. Wracked with guilt and grief, she exhausted every avenue she could think of to try and bring them back--her own brand of mad science, Kimera's mastery of mutagens, the mental prowess of a fellow villain... even magic. After all her efforts, someone did, at last, wake up--but not the person she'd been trying to save. That new person became Warm Sweeps Autumn, and a motherfucker of a superhero got what they deserved.

Which brings us to Autumn! Yay! She's a big (6'11") soft great pyrenees woman with a heart of gold and a pair of big fuckoff gauntlets she grapples heroes with. Summer's best (and only) dedicated minion, she's nearly indestructible physically and completely indestructible mentally. Summer isn't about to let that happen again.

Completely Normal Secretary Sylvie

Secretary to a well-reviewed therapist in Cape City, Sylvie is,

wait

whadda hell...?

[indianamoonshine]

Solo’s Copilot

*I don’t know whose gif this is so please let me know!*

SUMMARY: Ben Solo is a smuggler. You're a weapon's expert for the Resistance who hates flying but loves cocky bastards.

Against your better judgement, you accept Ben's invitation to be his copilot as he smuggles dangerous cargo around the galaxy - cargo that includes Hutt merchandise.

RATING: M/E

CHAPTER: 1

This is a bad idea. This is a bad idea. This is a bad idea.

You'd punish yourself for agreeing to this later. You hated flying. Space travel was simply not meant for human beings - this you were convinced of. Your feet belonged planted into the ground. Space was no place for someone like you. It was cold, desolate, and terrifying. You avoided it whenever you could, even if that meant attending meetings through holograms. Sure, it put a damper on your work, but at least you wouldn't risk choking to death.

Ben liked to the fly. A lot. And you liked Ben. A lot.

"Do you think it's ready?"

Poe Dameron, general of the Resistance, could never say 'no' to a challenge even if it meant breaking protocol. Late last night, just before the cycle began again, Ben had gotten finished with putting the finishing touches on Poe's beloved X-wing. Somehow, some way, he'd managed to create something no one had ever succeeded to do before. He'd attempted to explain the process to you, but you were an expert on handheld weapons - not starfighters. Nonetheless, you tried to follow his commentary, even if it sounded like he was speaking a different language.

"I'll bet you ten credits it is," Ben says proudly. "Chewie wouldn't let me use the Falcon as a test rat if it weren't."

The giant and hairy Wookie roars from the weapon's crate he's leaning against. You can't speak Wookie, but he doesn't sound as convinced as Ben had let on. Chewbacca gurgles something in his native tongue - it seems like he's reasoning with Ben - and then huffs through his nose when he's ignored.

Poe shifts in his stance dubiously, arms crossed against his chest, and teeth gnawing at the inside of his cheek. You really didn't blame Poe for being skeptical. Ben was a great mechanic, but his "experiment" was reaching. If successful, however, he might have discovered a new way to train pilots. Personally, you hoped it worked; the news of beginners crashing to their fiery deaths was becoming too frequent.

The general understood the severity of this test. He shook his head, defying his better judgement. "Alright. Fine. But I wanna make it more interesting."

Ben raised an eyebrow, long fingers reaching for his jacket he'd draped across the crate next to Chewie. "Like...?"

Poe smirks a little. "A bet. We race from here and back again within ten parsecs."

Even Ben is taken aback. Chewie voices a forceful concern from behind, raising his arms in the air. But after a moment of deliberation, he shrugs with nonchalance.

"Alright. Bet," he says, reaching out to shake Poe's hand. They do, their grips tight around one another. You know Ben is showing off the strength Poe doesn't have by the way the general flinches when they pull away.

Ben turns his chin to you. "Come on, Petals."

Petals. The name gives you a warm, tightening feeling in your belly, sort of like if you'd just drank a shit ton of wine. You follow, grabbing the hand he's offered to you, and resist the urge to lean against him. But your eyes widen in shock when he lifts your intertwined hands and kisses the back of palm with closed eyes.

"What was that for?" you ask with a smile, blush creeping into your cheeks. So embarrassing.

He smirks a grin that could melt ice. "Does there have to be a reason?"

You blink away the lewd thoughts creeping into the shore of your conscious. The thought of him raising that same fist above your head and pinning you to the mattress, warm and plush lips sliding their way down your body as you moan his name in a whiny, almost pornographic, whimper...

That hadn't happened yet, you reminded yourself.

The two of you step inside the Falcon and he releases your hand. You almost whine at his separation, your palm growing cold without his warmth, but you keep quiet. It was still too early to pout like a touch-starved girlfriend. Even though you were touch-starved. Too touch-starved for your own liking. And he was right there; the man who wetted your dreams was right there and you hadn't even seen him naked yet.

Disappointment clouds your vision, but you walk to the cockpit anyway.

Nimble and long fingers dance around the controls you couldn't name if your life depended on it, and the Falcon roars to life. A button on the wall flickers and spits out a choking beep, but when Ben slams his fist against it, it stops. It was almost as if everything he does once seated in the chair is an instinct, like he was possessed by some all-knowing entity.

And while you had confidence in Ben, the fear of flying did not dissipate, even if drowning in a sea of lust. You raise your knees to your chest, the chair being so large that you had more than enough room to fold yourself in it, and begin to chew on your fingernails.

Ben looks over at you. "You don't trust me?"

But he's smiling. It's one of those cocksure smiles that feels objectifying, but still knots your stomach anyway. Maybe that's why it knots your stomach.

You nod your head. "I do," but it's shaky.

Ben hums in disagreement. "Then why do you look like you're headed to your execution?"

He was probably right. You couldn't see yourself, so maybe you did look a little too wound up from another perspective. Still, it was unavoidable.

"You know I hate flying," you say softly. "I belong on the ground."

Ben gazes at you for a moment, eyes twinkling with something you'd never seen in him before, and then leans over to whisper in your ear. "Petals, you belong among the stars..." his hot breath tingles your spine and you shiver as he buckles you in.

Fuck. The cockpit spins, air heated with desire. Your fingers curl into the meat of your palms and this time it's not from fear.

A switch is flipped and Poe's voice filters through the speaker - it jolts you back to reality. Suddenly, Ben isn't the only being in the entirety of the galaxy. "Solo, are we gonna go or what?" he complains.

Ben leans into the mic. "Yeah, ready to go."

The falcon lifts into the air and you flinch, eyes squeezing shut, and muscles turning to stone. This can't be happening. How stupid could you possibly be? You hadn't flown in years. It doesn't help when your ears pop as you reach the stratosphere, and then finally to the mesosphere where the base below turns virtually microscopic. Ben pulls a lever, which you can only assume is the thruster, and the ship lurches towards the blackness of space. Within two minutes, you're off the planet completely, but your nerves have somewhat calmed almost unnaturally. You allow yourself to open an eye and peer out the window, but gasp at the bleakness, and hide your face into your knees again.

"I think you underestimate how good I am at this," Ben chides, but it's playful somehow. "I'm not gonna let anything happen to you."

You peek at him through your lashes. "Promise?"

Something in Ben softens like marmalade. Maybe it was the pathetic way you squeaked, or the way your cheeks burned in humiliation, but he found something endearing enough to crane his neck over and kiss you gently on the lips. It's soft, warm, and it leaves you wishing it were more as he pulls away with one last peck to your temple.

"Promise," he mumbles in your hair.

Another forbidden image flickers through your head: Ben whispering gently in your ear as he rocks into you with tantalizingly slow thrusts, but deep enough to cause you to sob desperately beneath him.

Shit. Shut the fuck up, you berate internally while attempting to rebuke the scenario.

The speaker filters Poe's voice again. "Ready when you are."

"You trust me?" Ben says then, holding your gaze with his own.

You did. "Yeah."

He nods and faces the viewport while gripping the thruster and then says, "Hang on tight."

You knew the Falcon was fast. You'd been told of its legendary speed and noticed how people gawked like it was a living, breathing thing itself. People were enamored with the "hunk of junk" (as others so famously called it) and you'd never understood why. People liked the rush. People liked the stories. People liked the power. You'd felt this with weapons before; a few guns had really excited you over the years, but it was never on the scale of which the Falcon did for others. The Falcon was a war machine, riddled with battle scars from the Empire and the First Order. It was somewhat of a deity.

But to experience it was another thing.

You're jostled into the depths of space, body stumbling forward, but the restriction of the seat belt saving you from plummeting to the floor. Ben was enjoying this immensely, his face bright with exhilaration and fingers bracing for anything.

"Alright, you gonna hit me or what, Dameron?" Ben shouts to the speaker.

There's no reply from the other end and all is silent before there's a sudden...

Bang!

You shriek, desperately clinging to the arms of the chair, and peer out the viewport for any sign of Poe's X-wing. You hadn't even noticed how flawlessly Ben's ingenuity had proved until the general glides beside the Falcon with a thumbs up and a goofy smile. It'd worked. The stun blasters had succeeded on a ship for the first time in history. The controls of the Falcon have frozen, lights blinking erratically, but reported no damage to the hull. Within a few seconds, all the switches on the dashboard sputter back to life.

Ben lets out a joyful holler and presses the intercom again. "Fan-fuckin'-tastic! It worked!"

Poe laughs along with him. "Great job, Solo. You've just saved a lot of lives."

"Happy to be of service," Ben replies, still clutching the thruster. He turns to you and finds you've relaxed, legs now dangling off the edge of your chair. "How about that race now, Dameron?"

You gulp. Oh shit. You'd forgotten about that.

There's no warning before Ben jumps to lightspeed.

You may have not done much flying, but you knew this wasn't how lightspeed worked. At least, not when human decency was involved. Worlds whizzed past the viewport within seconds, the stars of the galaxy stretching into view in-between them. You scream, grasping onto whatever you could find, and wait for death. Ben's skipped to at least ten planets by now and it hadn't even been a couple of minutes.

You don't even think it's ever gone this fast before.

Ben chuckles a hearty laugh, something like a maniacal teenager would muster up, while skipping through the infinity of space-time. Landscapes of all imagination and color had dissolved in front of you, but when a water planet with a massive wall of a wave appeared before you, there was nothing that could stop you from screaming Ben's name in sheer terror.

But, of course, Ben had everything under control. Like breathing, his hands reached for the proper controls, and the Falcon managed to evade the mountain of ice water.

"BEN!" you yell, resisting the urge to slap him even when in lightspeed. Your hands tremble and you prepare for the next jump, praying to the Gods or the Force or whatever it was that controlled your fate, to arrive back home in one piece.

The Falcon rolls on its side, thrusting into another planet once more, until finally - finally - Ajan Kloss sweeps into view.

Ben looks more than satisfied. In fact, he looks like a lotha cat who got the cream. The smugness on his face is apparent, smirk lopsided while looking steady as ever. He folds his hands behind his head and leans back against the chair as you catch your breath, heart thumping randomly in your chest.

"It's never gone that fast before. I just beat my father's run. I can't bel...-"

Before he can even finish, you've pounced on him, desire coursing through your veins. The rush of adrenaline from a near death experience pools arousal between your legs while you swing them on each side of him. Gods, this man was going to kill you one day, and fuck all, if you'd let him. His calloused hands roam up your sides and then down to your ass to scoot you closer.

Your fingers weave through his thick locks, pulling him deeper into the kiss, and when you part your lips, his hot tongue slid against yours. It took everything - everything - in you to not tear off your shirt in that moment. And you would've, had Poe not interrupted so rudely.

"You son of a bitch. I can't believe you pulled that off!"

You growl at the intrusion, refusing to let Ben go. He smiles against your mouth, hands still cupping the meat of your ass with both hands; hands big enough to almost palm it completely. "You owe me ten credits!" Ben chuckles. You kiss against his neck with a hunger that felt foreign, still so heated from moments before. If Poe found you straddling Ben like this, so fuckin' be it.

Sure enough, Poe arrives next to the window and peers in. When he finds Ben meeting your open mouthed kisses, he groans in disgust.

"Get a room, you two. I'm going back to base."

Ben doesn't separate his lips from yours as he raises a hand in Poe's direction. He hums, "Mmm hmm..." against you as a reply. You allow a giggle that you'd been suppressing bubble from your mouth; Ben swallows it.

"I don't think you're afraid of flying anymore," he mumbles against you, eyes half-lidded, and then squeezes one of your ass cheeks roughly; you let out a yelp. "I think it turns you on."

You shake your head against him, pressing your knees upon the chair to raise yourself over him. More leverage. You needed more leverage. "No. You turn me on. How the fuck can you fly like that?"

"You've got a dirty mouth, don't you?" he teases, tongue entering your mouth once more. Gods, how you wished that tongue were in your pussy instead.

You hum against him as he'd done to you. "Just for you."

He laughs and pulls away from you, though by the way he hesitates you know he doesn't want to. You'd have to get home somehow, you suppose. Still, you weren't flying. Might as well continue indulging in something that doesn't happen very often. The excitement of being caught in an embrace, of being catapulted from one world to another at a dangerous speed...it was a rush.

Ben suppresses a deep laugh - how could he make a laugh sound sexy? - and starts up the falcon again.

[beccasbigworld]

The Mental Health Crisis in Film

Out of all of the five movies assigned to watch my two favorites were American Psycho and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I have to give credit though to the other three movies because they were brilliant. Especially Parasite, the cinematography and the way the movie flowed were exceptional. The endings of American Psycho and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest stood out to me the most because of how raw and shocking of a reaction they left on me after watching. You could say that both of these movies made me a little psycho and cuckoo… I’m gonna pretend someone laughed at my embarrassing pun. Now let's get to the topic of discussion here with discussing the endings of American Psycho and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The ending of American Psycho played tricks on my mind because it made me believe that what Patrick Bateman did was just a false reality and it never happened. Rewind towards the ending when Bateman goes on a psychotic killing spree. After things keep getting worse such as killing the old lady who interrupted him trying to shove the cat into the ATM, killing NYPD officers, and blowing up two cop cars, the spree kept going. Finally, Bateman is in his Pierce & Pierce and makes a call to his lawyer, he tells him everything, as he is hysterically sobbing through the phone what had just happened. He confesses to killing more than 40 people. The next day Bateman sits and has drinks with his business colleagues and he sees his lawyer. He walks up to him and asks him if he got his voicemail. His lawyer thought the voicemail was hysterical and Bateman had a hard time understanding why his lawyer was laughing at his confession. Bateman says again that he killed Paul Allen and before he can get another word out his lawyer, Harold says Uhm no... I was just with Paul in London a few days ago and we had dinner. Bateman’s face got stiff, his face was shiny from all the sweat and I think this is the moment in the film that was the clear image of Bateman's hallucinations, false reality, and declining mental health. I believe the purpose of this ambiguity was to portray the pain that Bateman suffers every day because of his mental illness. According to the website CinemaBlend, “The more significant takeaway is meant to be present in the satire that comes in Bateman admitting his horrific crimes and nobody taking him seriously. He not only lives in an entirely shallow existence where "inside doesn't matter," but he has been driven to the point where he has become a mystery even unto himself, and only really knows that he wants to inflict his inner pain on others. Tragic as it is to say, the number of people he may or may not have murdered is inconsequential -- like the film's existence as Bateman's confession” (Eisenberg). His lawyer doesn’t even take his confession seriously so Bateman is left alone in his world to question what reality really is. Did he kill any of those people or was that just him imagining how he wants to inflict his pain onto others? The character's motives only lead to a temporary sense of catharsis like for example one of the most brutal scenes in the film was when Bateman kills Paul in his apartment. He played music that spoke to him lyrically and he got a clean ax, covered his floor, couches, and himself in plastic, and took his jealousy and frustration out on Paul by killing him viciously with a perfectly sharpened clean ax.

After Bateman would kill any of his victims he would relax for a little but yet not too long after he would be itching for another. The ending of American Psycho tied the movie up perfectly in my opinion. It didn’t necessarily satisfy my expectations. It left me in a curious state of mind because I thought wow did he even kill these people or was this all a part of his imagination? However, I think the way it was written was purposely brilliant because it ties in perfectly with the topic of mental health we are examining because was this a figure of Bateman's deranged mind, or did this actually occur. Overall, in my personal opinion, it was a fantastic movie.

The second movie that I will be diving into detail in is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. My Dad would watch this film when I was little. I would watch films like Indiana Jones and other older films with him however, I never watched this one so watching this film kinda reminded me of that experience I had with my Dad growing up. I enjoyed watching this film a lot, something about the aesthetic of an older film it just makes you feel so alive. The ending of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest left a permanent scar on me because of how raw and emotional the scene was. Mac's character when first introduced was a guy who was full of life and wanted to bring the same light to the men of the mental hospital. Towards the end of the film, Mac holds a party for the men and brings two girls along. Billy and the one woman end up hooking up in one of the rooms and come the next morning Nurse Ratched finds him. After the discovery of Billy, she threatens to tell his mom and this drives Billy off the edge. He takes a piece of glass and while he is sent to wait for nurse Ratched in the other room he kills himself. The discovery of Billy’s death infuriates Mac because he saw so much potential in him and because of Nurse Ratched's threats, Mac strangles her to the point where she almost dies. As an inhumane punishment Mac has a lobotomy that permanently turns him into a zombie. In the end scene, Chief which, over time becomes Mac's best friend in the mental hospital notices that Mac has become a zombie and makes the quick decision to kill him by suffocating him with a pillow. Chief does this because he knew that Mac would rather be dead than be a zombie in Nurse Ratched’s mental institution.

Similar to the ambiguous ending in the film American Psycho the ending of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had an ambiguous ending. According to the website Shmoop,” McMurphy has become a hero to the other patients in the ward because of his ability to stand up to Nurse Ratched. The others would be devastated to see Mac wandering around with dead eyes and a scarred forehead. So Chief decides to take matters into his own hands and to give Mac back his freedom, saying "I wouldn't leave you here this way" and smothering him. Then Chief gives freedom to himself by breaking out of the hospital and running off into the forest” (Shmoop Editorial Team). Chief and Mac discussed earlier in the movie that they want to run away to Canada and live a peaceful life so Chief decides to kill him to give him his power and keep Mac’s legacy living even when he is physically gone. This is why Chief purposely takes the sink out of the floor and throws it through the window so he can escape and run free to Canada to pay tribute to Mac. As for Mac's character, strangling Nurse Ratched I believe did provide him with a sense of catharsis because he was able to get revenge on her for unintentionally killing his friend Billy. However, the relief didn’t last long because Mac gets sent to be punished by the mental institution. Punished as if sent to be lobotomized. As for Chief's character, Mac helps him by leading him to a sense of catharsis throughout the entire movie. Before Mac officially came to the mental hospital Chief was considered hard of hearing and didn’t pay any mind to anyone. However, according to the website Looper, “ McMurphy impacts Chief the most. By watching Mac refuse to take anything lying down, Chief learns how to be as "big" in his actions as he is in stature — and he feels like he owes that to McMurphy. Without the con man giving him the confidence to talk and break free from the ward's toxic environment, Chief would still be silently sweeping the hospital floors at the movie's close. Chief knows that someone like McMurphy — who is so full of life — would never want to live after being lobotomized. Being a prisoner on Ratched's ward was hard enough for Mac without being a prisoner in his own body” (Harbet). Killing Mac gave Chief the final sense of relief one needed because he knew that Mac would never want to be a prisoner in his own body and with the courage he gave Chief, he finally breaks free, keeping Mac’s legacy alive and living his life.

The ending One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was so unexpected for me that my hand was over my mouth and my eyes were peeled to the screen. At first, I didn’t fully grasp why Chief was suffocating Mac however, once he ripped the sink out of the floor It all connected. I personally don’t think the ending could have been written any other way. It was a perfect way to tie the film all together while also highlighting the harsh theme of mental illness in that time and not fully understanding the negative consequences of treatment and what it can do to a person like Mac. It saddens me that this happened to Mac because he was a regular guy at the beginning of the film and a soul in a cold body at the end however, the ending gives the audience a sense of catharsis because we all know why Chief did what he did. Mac helped Chief get his life back and Chief helped Mac preserve his life for the man he really was. Overall I believe that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was one of the best films I have ever watched and I enjoyed watching it for this class for the first time.