#he was talking about doing some kind of reality-TV stunt for the reveal

[alex51324]

You mean the one where the first-ever woman President--a Black woman President--takes office, at the same time as the Republican National Convention devolves into a snake-pit of infighting over who should be the nominee?

Not really, but what a juxtaposition. I'd give my left nut for one grasshopper-lies-heavy film reel of the TV coverage.

Can you fucking imagine living in the timeline where the Trump assassination is successful and like a week later Biden keels over of Covid

[timextoxhajima]

Love Me A Little Less: Chapter 4 - The Guest

LOVE ME A LITTLE LESS CHAPTER MASTERLIST

Member: (3rd person pov) arranged marriage au with Lee Juyeon

Genre: angsty wangsty

Taglist: @sunwoowuvbot @hyunjaethereal​​​

“Get the guest out of my fucking office.”

Jang Won grimly knocks on the door, looking down to ensure Younghoon was carrying more than a fruit basket - a briefcase, worth half a million in cash, in case she needed to bribe a certain someone. Her eyes befall the apple sitting in the fruit basket, and she peels apart the wrapper to remove the bruised item, mindlessly hurling it into the trash can right by the lift. 

The door clicks open, the sound of the door chain reminding her that she needs to handle this one with care and caution.

“What are you doing here?”

“Hi Mrs Nam, I’m Kim Jang Won and this is--”

“I know who you are. I’m asking what you’re here for.”

“Straight to the point I see,” Jang Won cocks a brow. “Look, we don’t want to make things difficult for you, but we’d just like to find out if you happened to know anything about the body swap regarding your husband.”

Mrs Nam’s breathing gets stuck in her throat. She swallows, eyes flitting back and forth between Jang Won and Younghoon. 

“I know nothing. After he died, I visit him every month. I didn’t even know his body was moved until the news.”

Jang Won feels like she’s being strangled, all her nerves shutting down one by one like a tidal surge through her. But Younghoon tugs on the end of her blazer, out of sight, and shifts to talk to Mrs Nam instead.

“Do you mind if we come in and have a chat about it? We’d just like to know more about Mr Nam so we can figure out who did it. Don’t you at least want to know who shifted your husband’s body?”

A hint of curiosity and anger flickers in her eyes despite the slight hesitation. Mrs Nam subtly nods, head looking down but gaze still stuck to Younghoon as she gently closes the door.

“You don’t have to be in there if you don’t want to,” He murmurs, loud enough for her to hear while watching her in the corner of his eyes. 

Jang Won sniffles, finger rubbing the tip of her nose as she composes herself. The jingle of the chain being removed sounds through the door. 

“I’ll be in there because I want to, not because I can.”

The door clicks open, and Mrs Nam keeps it wide for Jang Won and Younghoon to enter. The apartment is rather neat and simple - a couple of single sofa seats around a circular table and a standing television. Pictures on the shelves framing the television. 

Drawn to the pictures first, Jang Won wanders to the photographs. 

A son, older than Younghoon, stands in most of the pictures. A degree in culinary sciences. A picture shot in Paris. Multiple pictures in Europe. A family portrait of him and his wife, Caucasian. 

Younghoon sits opposite Mrs Nam, who looks more tired and drained than anything else, like the anger from before has completely dissipated.

He glances through the pictures, aware that something must’ve caught his sister’s attention because Jang Won wasn’t being very focused now. “We just wanted to know more about him. He might’ve worked at Artemis and I’ve yet to check with his ex-colleagues but I just wanted to know if he was happy there, or if he wasn’t, did he have any... enemies?”

Mrs Nam takes in a deep breath, rubbing an eye before her hands come together on her lap. “No, he was happy, as far as I knew. The only thing he was upset about was my son moving to France and settling there. But otherwise, he was easy-going. Kind. Helpful. I can’t think of anybody who would want to deliberately shift his... body... because he had offended them.”

“I hate to be the one to suggest this but could your father have done anything to anger your son... to the point where--”

“No,” She says with such resolution, it finally tears Jang Won’s attention off the photos. “Never. Their love might’ve been tough but they’ll never do anything to hurt each other.”

Younghoon glances at his sister before returning to Mrs Nam. “So... nobody, huh?”

“None that I can think of.”

Jang Won blinks her emotions away, fingers fiddling with her rings as she looks to Younghoon. His eyes sink to the floor, licking his lips in slight anxiety as he realises they’ve hit a dead end. 

They leave the apartment with only the briefcase, and Mrs Nam closes the door before they can even walk off. The lift ride was exceptionally quiet, Younghoon merely watching Jang Won zip in and out of reality in the reflection of the lift mirrors. 

He looks over, watching the layer of tears thicken over her eyes. Reaching out and rubbing her shoulder, he contains the emotions he’s feeling, just by watching his cold-hearted sister reveal the hint of humanity in her. 

“I told you not to go in if you couldn’t.”

“And I could,” Jang Won clears her throat. “I don’t need you to baby me. It’s been a long time anyway. I’ll deal with it.”

The lift door dings open, and sees Jang Won walking out the doors, leaving Younghoon behind as she struts off. 

Unfortunately, this soft side of Jang Won remains short-lived, for Younghoon finds himself holding her back from tearing the skin off their father’s face when they reach home. 

“What the Hell is this?” Jang Won frowns, facial lines deepening in her skin when the staff is crowded in her office but none of them were moving. Her father, standing by her desk, looks up from the loaded query. 

“Ah, child! I was just waiting to--”

“Are you... moving into my office?”

Her father opens his mouth, lips wide enough for her to see her teeth when Mr Ro finally joins the party. 

“What is going on here?”

“Sir,” One of the housemaids lowers her head, almost like she was embarrassed. “Our guest-- Mr Kim... asked for us to help shift Miss Kim’s belongings out of her office. We were told not to tell you.”

Jang Won’s eyes almost double in size when she processes the words, the tips of her feet already turning to her father. Mr Ro looks up from his subordinate with distaste and disapproval, unable to believe the things he was trying to accomplish. 

“Just which part of June did you not fucking understand? Huh?” Jang Won takes one step forward, but Younghoon grabs her wrist and then wraps his palms around her upper arms. “Playing possum killed your braincells too?”

“No...! No! I wanted things to be early, smooth. So that you wouldn’t be pressured to shift out in June--”

“Bold of you to assume you’ll get it in June!” She hisses, harshly ripping herself out from Younghoon’s grip. “From now on you are a guest and a guest only. This is my house and you will touch nothing that does not belong to you.”

“Aw, come on, daughter--”

“Don’t--” She seethes, finger almost at his nose now. “Call me that. From now on, we just share the same surname... But if you want mercy on the account that I am something you created, then I’d rather you wait until I die.”

The staff in the room lower their head as she storms by them toward the door, and as dramatic as she is, she pulls the doors open and smiles widely at her staff. “A kind, kind reminder that all these people standing before you, Mr Kim Jo-Pil... they work for me. They answer to Mr Ro, and Mr Ro answers to me. So, shall you require any assistance in possibly fucking something else up... do get it to me through Mr Ro.”

She smiles sweetly, tilting her head to the side. “Now, get the guest out of my fucking office.”

The wind brushes through Juyeon’s hair relentlessly, his dark blue, almost black, locks ruffled and made messy in the wind. The yacht makes small jumps against the water, the sun reflected off the surface of the water and into his eyes, the motion of the vehicle spraying some of it onto his hands that were over the railing. 

“Are you sure you want to get yourself involved in this... Jang Won and The Board, I mean,” Sunwoo joins Juyeon by the cockpit, grabbing a bottle of Sprite and cracking the cap open. He takes a sip and smacks his lips, letting the wind do its job in his hair too. “I mean, I know it wasn’t your choice but... that stunt at the press conference last week? Damn, son.”

Juyeon smirks and scoffs, looking at Sunwoo through the lens of his sunglasses. “Maybe it was fueled by her, I don’t know... But I’d be lying if I said being at the same table with her doesn’t make me feel powerful. It feels like I could do anything I wanted as long as she was by my side and it’d... it’ll work, you know?”

“‘It’ll work’?” Sunwoo chuckles sarcastically. “You’re talking about the most powerful figure of The Board of your generation. Hell, it’s Hera’s Princess you’re dealing with here. I’m sure if you played by her rules a hundred percent, she’d buy you an island if you wanted.”

The continuous splash of the water just a few metres down the railing brings some kind of peace to Juyeon, despite the idea of being married to Kim Jang Won being tasteless.

“What about her brother? The Prince of Artemis, right? Kim Younghoon. He must’ve had something to say about Apple-Korea’s next director smooching his little sister on national TV,” Sunwoo snorts, taking another gulp of his drink. 

Juyeon shakes his head, apart from providing Sunwoo a patient smile. “I haven’t met her brother, actually. But word has it he’s the calmer of the two, which I’m actually pretty grateful for.”

“Maybe you should get acquainted with him. Get on Kim Jang Won’s good side by making friends with Kim Younghoon,” Sunwoo places the bottle back into the ice box, noticing the yacht slowing down to a halt. Juyeon peels himself off the railings, finally standing and giving his own limbs a big stretch. 

“Nah,” Juyeon shakes his head and pulls off his sunglasses, squinting away from the harsh sunlight. “The thing about Jang Won is that you shouldn’t indirectly find ways to get on her good side... you gotta do it in her face. That’s how she plays her games. Straightforward. Ruthless.”

“So like... borderline crazy and a control freak too, right?”

Juyeon snickers, pulling off his shirt to reveal the diving suit he’s got underneath. “Pretty sure if your dad came back from the dead and took over your life’s work, you would too.”

Sunwoo smirks, stripping the pieces of clothes off himself too. “Defending the missus already, I see.”

Rolling his eyes and pulling on an oxygen tank with a mask, Juyeon then glares at the younger. “Well, if she’s offering me all the cents I can count, I might as well work it to my best effort, right?”

He cocks a smug brow, giving his goggles one last adjustment before heading to the edge of the yacht. The hues of blue calm his nerves, already able to see the world of life beneath the surface. It has always been his paradise, and always will be.

“Today, we celebrate the love between two of The Board’s most powerful figures: Lee Juyeon, the next director of Apple-Korea, and The Board’s very own Hera’s Princess, Kim Jang Won. Just a last month, the return of Kim Jo-Pil shocked the country...”

Jang Won dips her finger into the glass of lemon-infused water, contorting the image of the television beyond the table and the space of the room. Still in her pajamas, she cannot find the motivation and strength to leave her bed. She can already hear the crowd bustling downstairs, getting ready for her hair, makeup, fittings--

Knock knock

“Oh, Mr Ro,” She covers her eyes, tired. The door clicks open and she groans to herself, refusing to open her eyes. “Please just kill me. I hate it. I hate all of this. Why did he have to climb out of his own grave?”

“I don’t know. His body was swapped, wasn’t it?”

The voice jolts Jang Won out of her laziness, and she sits up like she had been summoned from the dead too. 

“When did you get here?” 

Juyeon smiles, somewhat genuine, and leans against the door frame. He was already in a simple button up shirt, meant to be hidden under a gorgeous, white and silver blazer. His hair’s still wet though, his fringe covering his eyebrows and some portion of his eyes. 

Jang Won can’t help but soften at the sight of him half a foot into his room - if only Lee Juyeon knew how much her friends back in high school swooned over him. 

“Also, I don’t think killing you would be a great idea. Wouldn’t want to see you climb out of your own grave too. Family traits seem to run in the blood of the Kims.”

Jang Won rolls her eyes and crawls her way out of the bed that’s too big for her, feet finding her fluffy, cotton slippers by the bed and shuffling about the bedroom with her hair in a mess. 

“Not very good at answering questions, are you?” She sniffles, not bothering to close the bathroom door behind her as she ties her hair gracefully, pulling a hair towel over her head to keep her fringe out of her face. She hears the door click, and Juyeon appears behind her in the reflection of the mirror. 

The scent of mint from the toothpaste wafts through her nose. 

“Well,” He shrugs and leans against the doorframe again, brushing his fringe out of his eyes. “I answered yours.”

Jang Won chokes on the toothpaste foam, gripping the edges of the sink as she retches into the marble. “Your butler... Mr Ro, called me over. Offered to cover my fitting and everything for today. He said it’s on the house, or rather, yours, I suppose.”

Jang Won finishes up on her brushing, spitting out the leftover foam. “Still didn’t answer my question, y’know.”

Juyeon removes himself off the doorframe, watching her struggle by throwing her hair behind her shoulder. Some locks keep sliding back down around her neck, and her hands are already lathering some facial wash. She tuts in frustration, unable to get her hair out of the way.

Then Juyeon gently gathers her hair behind her neck, his warm fingers barely brushing against her skin. “Morning. Just about two hours ago,” He waits for Jang Won to squint at him, before she provides enough trust to shut her eyes and rub the lotion into her cheeks. 

“Mr Ro wanted to come wake you up, but something seemed to crop up with the tea and cake catering, so.”

“What? What’s wrong with the tea and cake catering? I paid good money for that bullshit,” She looks up from the sink, face smeared in some greenish-blue cream.

He grins, chuckling under his breath as she glares at him in the mirror. “Paying good money for ‘bullshit’, huh? How much did the ‘bullshit’ cost then?”

“Well,” She hesitates and frowns, creating lines in the lotion on her face. “Enough to piss me off if they don’t give me what I want.”

Leaning towards the sink, she runs her hands under the water and washes the lotion off her face.

“What company is the catering from? Need my help?”

She scoffs, waving his hand off her hair, grabbing a cotton towel and pressing it to her face. “To what? What are you gonna do? ‘Hey there, I’m the next director of Apple-Korea and I’d like my tarts and cupcakes this afternoon’.”

He leans his rear into the edge of the platform where the sink was built into, back facing the mirror while she carefully hangs the towel over the metal bar mounted into the beige marble wall. “What else would you want me to say, since that’s just exactly what I want?”

“I’on’t know, buy the company or something.”

He raises both brows in extreme shock, his lips pouting in disbelief that he should’ve been prepared for anyway. “What a solution.”

“Got a better idea?” She rolls her eyes, pulling a robe into the shower cubicle. “Also, are you going to stand there and watch me strip?”

Juyeon’s eyes flit off her instantly, hands pushing himself off the edge of the sink. “Could’ve just asked me to leave instead of being so crude.”

“Well now, I didn’t ask you to leave, I asked--”

“I know- I know what you asked-” Juyeon grimaces, blowing some air into the pockets between his teeth and lips. He sucks in a deep breath and exhales loudly through an ‘o’, giving Jang Won some kind of sadistic pleasure. “Do you ever get tired of that? Messing with people?”

Jang Won’s brown orbs rise to the ceiling, actually giving thought to the question. Her lower lip juts out as she shrugs. “Well... yeah. Yeah,” She finally nods. “But hey! I have different degrees of messing-with-people. There’s the I-kinda-wanna-mess-with-you-by-making-you-awkward kind and there’s the I-might-wanna-rebury-my-dad kind-”

“Alright, you have a nice bath.” 

Snorting, Juyeon waves her nonsense off and walks out the bathroom, sliding the door shut. 

[border-spam]

Leech Lord - HC dump 

Been a while!

Siren wings aren't physical -mostly-, they have no heft or real weight to them and aren't "real" objects that exist within the same space as their owners. The wings are more manifestations of power, the visualisation of the Siren's concentrated energy. They don't fly with them, they aren't actually doing anything generally, any movement a Siren performs while their wings are visible is due to expending their power - hovering, levitating etc, it's not the wings displacing air.

To the touch they'd feel like... the warm static on front of an old TV screen, a tingling buzz of resistance you can pass through but feel like you shouldn't. They feel very off, other, it would be hard to experience one brush through your body and not carry some kind of creeping dread for a few hours after that part of it was still inside your chest cavity somewhere.

The forms they take on aren't related to their Siren Powers at all, the great sources don't care or even know when their powers are being used by a host, they aren't making decisions over things as removed from their sphere of concern as fucking wings, Siren wings are extensions of self. They represent how that Siren see's who they really are, in one way or another.

Amara hardens hers into solid fists, powerful muscle shaped into a protective cage or battering onslaught. They flex and posture in a display of raw physical power behind her back.

Lilith's burn everything she touches, friends, enemies, they destroy and warp reality around them. They don't belong anywhere, and they do more harm than good.

Troy's twitchy, skeletal right wing that's stunted and bent in on itself isn't related to his body damage at all... it's how he sees his form. The vile eyes rolling in their sockets and glaring hatred at everything around him that bulge from the pinions of his left aren't being created by The Leech, it's his extension of self, how he understands and translates its power, how he experiences it. He doesn’t know this though, and it's one of the reasons he's disgusted by his wings.

Tyreen is wretchedly proud of her own, the horrific tentacles of energy that rip through her back, but she doesn't understand those aren't the same as other Sirens. Those aren't wings at all, it's The Leech physically manifesting, not a symbol of her own power and control.

If she ever did leech Troy in LL hers would be the stunted, barely visible purple static ones from canon, because Tyreen has barely any sense of self left. There is so little of who she actually is, that her psyche forms... nothing. Sad, pathetic silhouettes that pale in comparison to the memory of her brother's breathtaking wingspan.

The twins don't like leaving Pandora in general, Troy seeing it as a nuisance, and Tyreen not dealing well with traveling on what she considers "cramped" transport vessels. There is also a major element of danger, cosmic space witches don't hold as much weight when the skirmish is outside a planet's atmosphere, and a hull breach doesn't care if you've got magic powers.

Her claustrophobia and issues with feeling caged are one of the reasons Ty leaves so much of the cult's off world business and faction schmoozing to Troy, he's far more comfortable warping in Sanctum with a small escort fleet than she would be knowing she can't leave her ship for 24 hours.

They won't make trips longer than a short jump to a border planet in anything smaller than their flagship, the danger of being swarmed by an ambush is a tad too real, and the COV's main transport is a -massive- cruiser class warship kept in orbit around Pandora. It doesn't have a name, it doesn't need one. Its city dwarfing silhouette of jutting spires and eye burning floodlights that beam from the building sized sockets of skulls scrapped together from the wreckage of enemy ships do more than enough to announce who's vessel this is.

It can transport an army comfortably, and while devoid of Psychos, is filled with rotating shifts of Bandit and engineering crew. It's iconic visuals are due to tireless work of acolytes and pious worshippers who cover the surface while it's resting in orbit, painting neon COV iconography in teams that can take days to finish a single building sized piece, welding spines, blades, screaming rusted skulls and fluorescent light tubes across the massive breadth of its hull.

The thing is a fucking monster in the dark of space, and if it's ripping through a planet's atmosphere alongside thousands of escort gunships decorated in its honor, the surface inhabitants know exactly who has come to claim their fealty.

The lower crewpeople call it "Vae Victus" with some mix of adoration and fear, Troy doesn't like that. Doesn't think things like his warship should have a name, it's beautiful as it is - free and nightmarish, it doesn't need to be described as anything other than the ship.

Tyreen doesn't feel physical attraction to people anymore, and hasn't really realised this. Shes not asexual, the feeling just isn't there, another symptom of The Leech consuming her piece by piece. She gets fiercely, painfully envious of Troy's "time" with willing followers, of the way he doesn't even really react to eager touches along his skin as he lounges sprawled across his throne while they sit in boredom and listen to whatever bullshit the queues forming all the way out of the Cathedral have come to confess, but it's how used to it he is that irks her. How much he takes for granted something she can't have. Tyreen doesn't like not being able to have things. There's a reminder there that she doesn't have the real control she seeks so desperately.

She has extreme issues with feeling trapped in every way, physical, in her environment, in her decision making etc, it's one of the reasons she can't stand being told she's wrong, or that she has to do something, and it all stems from The Leech rather than her.

Troy heals much faster than anyone would expect from someone with so many complex physical issues. He doesn't spend any time thinking about this and genuinely doesn't notice it's a factor, but the man has very few scars. A severe injury that would leave a horrific gash on someone else just seals for him, always has. He pulled a bayonet out of his abdomen just before he crushed that heretic's head in his maw's reveal, and didn't even react. Within a couple of weeks that was just another slight silvery line across the warmth of his ochre skin, and it wouldn't take much longer till it vanished entirely.

It's likely one of the little reasons he's so uncomfortable about the paper thin coverage of the major scarring on his empty right that never healed, it's such a horrible clash against his otherwise unmarred skin to look at, and Troy finds himself often letting his eyes rest absentmindedly on other people's scars, subconsciously comparing against his own, trying to understand if he's as abnormal visually as he believes.

He has a few, scratch marks across his knees from falling a lot as a kid, the indent cuts along the sides of his spine for his rig attachments, but they aren't that noticeable. His throat scars later, they don't heal great. They show for, well, forever, and it takes him a couple of decades to realise that's how it had always worked, that he chose what to keep and what to let heal all along.

He still.. falls a lot as an adult. He stumbles, he has severe moments of weakness that can make him trip to the side and rock down to his knees before he manages to get a hand under himself, and it’s never his right even though he usually falls to that side. He always tries to steady himself with his left, even after years.

For all her bullshittery about being well traveled and street-smart and blah blah blah, Seifa can be shockingly innocent at times with things she's not much experience of. Ven taking her to a track race? Wow. Where do they sit? How do you know when it starts. What happens if that shit goes on fire? Oh VEN that shit IS ON FIRE!! Is it meant to be? Oh whoah. OHHHH.

She's grabby, she's a super tactile person who tries to not touch too much and respect people's boundaries but if she's excited or scared or can see a close friend is hurting, she tends to give in. She'd be hanging off his arm, bouncing in her seat and screaming as the racers roared by, and she'll go back home and talk to JK about it like she's some kind of expert who's been attending them years.

When they do -eventually- stop doing a terrible job of pretending things haven't shifted for them to their friends, her playful nastiness towards Troy only increases. The sparkle in her eye does too though, and you'd have to not know either of them to think it wasn't intensely affectionate. Yeah she rips into him right in front of a chuckling Eli or JK, but he knows the things she whispers tenderly against his throat as she's falling asleep. He knows what it's like to wake up with her fingers loosely entwined in his, knowing she'd taken his hand in the night. He knows how gentle and soft she actually is, so he'll let her make the little digs. It's a good deal, and he's spent enough time around the little shit to know how to spot those.

(Genuinely awful job of hiding things. Ven pointing accusingly at the Troy sized mound and messy black hair desperately trying to hide itself under her duvet she's accidentally let him catch a glimpse of as she INSISTS everything's fine and she just needs five minutes to get her makeup on hey why doesn't he turn on the TV she'll just be a sec yeah she just has to close the bedroom door no don't worry about it pal yeah bye back in a minute etc)

Troy wears his prosthetic so much in public and has had to practice gestures with it so many times, that very rarely he tries to perform a learned gesture while not wearing it and shit goes to hell.

A huffy God King mid argument trying to cross his arms and just... going nowhere with the left as it swings towards the empty bracer, then pretending he did it on purpose while progressively getting redder and closer to a tantrum as the friend he's talking to desperately tries not to laugh.

It's almost all gestures it happens with, his regular movements and functionality are from a lifetime of not having the prosthetic so he's not going to run into any trouble there. He doesn't reach for things with an empty bracer because he automatically always uses his left, but the things he had to learn since Pandora and practice daily so he could look like he was a natural with it?

Those pop into his movements sometimes when he's only in the bracer and are usually a combination of frustrating and very funny.

Things like his physical threat, that's not something that was part of his life before the God King, how to hold himself and twist the massive arm forward while letting the shoulder blades spread for the viewers are things he had to practice and learn. If he's angry and not wearing it he'll sometimes shift into trying to perform the same actions and just looking confused for a second as his side shakes before he blushes and storms away.

If he's sitting lost in a story Ven is telling and starts absent mindedly playing with what's in his hand, he'll sometimes toss it to catch with the right, something he purposefully does in the background of streams to display finesse and strength subtly... cept in Sanctum that means just yeeting the fucking beer can sideways across the room and everyone stopping conversation for a second while he blanches.

Smarmy, stoned Troy getting into a insults chicken match with JK or Sei, grinning ear to ear and flashing a practiced cocky grin before leaning to rest arrogantly against a door frame and just falling into the wall.

It only happens when he's repeating something he's practiced for a persona, so it's a lot less hurtful than it could be for his esteem, but it's still embarrassing and he usually launches straight into being a huffy little asshole directly afterwards ( even if the genuine laughter feels nice in a way)

[cwopf]

MY THEORY OF GILLOVNY

What if these two actually are together in real life. What if it IS a possibility. As lunatic as it seems, I can’t help but think about it. I have a life of my own, believe me, yet I keep coming back to this thought every once in a while, because I admit I’ve never seen anything like it before and I am not someone who gives even a flying fuck about celebrities. But these two make me wonder and I don’t know what is it about them, but I somehow want to believe in them.

What if their undeniable chemistry truly is real and their love is so much more than just a friendship.

What if Peter Morgan truly is nothing but a colleague and some kind of publicity she caught herself in, because even with all the “proof” of them being a couple, something just doesn’t sit right.

Her behavior, the gestures around him, it just doesn’t seem like a well loved, happy beyond dream kinda woman, I don’t physically see it. I truly don’t get the “love of my life” vibe. Do you?

Stiff, reserved and all in all a bit cold even, they truly make me wonder if it might be just a PR stunt. And, look, if I saw her crazy happy with a guy I’d be happy for her, totally. But, this? Nah, I don’t buy this shit.

Which, when I look back at all the gillovny moments, as crazy as it was, makes me believe that it was more than just an acted out exaggeration. And not even just a deep, year long friendship.

What if it truly passed all of that and became a romance at some point, and a big one. It certainly did look like it at a time. And while it currently looks like it had already ended, it made me think - what if that’s the point?

It takes a fool not to notice their ways towards each other, and even with all the denials, which sure make it hard to believe, when you see it for yourself it naturally comes as a possibility. It seems like a waste not to pursue something like that.

If we go back to the hints. The random sightings. Some might be made up, I am sure, but then some seem just crazy accurate.

What’s with the random dates in their lives, how can it all be so synchronized. Is it just random luck or is it an ode or a message to one another of some sort?

Why were they spotted in the same places so many times, randomly and out of their professional time together. Why the visits on sets, the airport sightings, the deleted tweets that seemed to reveal a little bit too much, the supposed holiday trips to the same destinations.

Why do people in the biz say stuff like “You mean Gillian and David? They’re not married, but they have been together for a while now.” Why does a random person (who apparently works for tv) on fb wish them a happy bday, then posts about how they have been together for a while now and how it was a nice surprise. And why would someone just say that out of the blue? Yep, it probably meant nothing. But, again. What if there was some truth to that? And that was only a fucking year ago.

How do two people accidentally get crippled at the same time? Also the stories from that same event, of how they love each other and their gestures towards one other, them arriving together and entering separately? What the hell are people noticing? Wasn’t she already kinda supposedly taken by then?

Why does she always wear the link bracelet, she wore it in their “good times” and it truly seems like a gift from D, which, of course, we will never know matter of fact, but it just feels like it. She has it on constantly, it seems so telling. She also wears it on red carpets with PM all the time and on almost every photoshoot. What IF it is from DD, wouldn’t that say something?

Also the necklace with a link he once wore on the stage of one of his concerts, could that very link be a part of her chain? If yes, then that is some deeply romantic shit.

Also the recent interviews, one in particular comes to mind. First, her mentioning her supposed boyfriend subtly and only saying the name out loud when asked about it, then proceeding to talk about her “partner” and telling a story of how they were talking about the aging process, but how they respect it because they are both going through it. Why does it feel like the mentioned totally fits someone else, like she’d discuss such a thing with someone who has been a part of her life for a long time and she had inevitably experienced this process with during the years. Does this click for anyone else too, or am I crazy and making up shit?

This was the moment when I stopped to think if just maybe there was a crazy possibility of David still being in her life.

Why does she speak about it being so good not living with her man and how she doesn’t see him that often, but when she does it’s special and it works for them.

While she must have been seeing her “current man” on set all the time. Do you notice how a lot of stuff that are supposedly about PM just don’t add up? Also, again, does the story make you think about someone else as well?

Also, have to throw this in here. The Christmas Jonathan Ross show. The sudden David (dick) reference. The Rob Lowe (apparently a good friend of David’s) saying “not far off from what I’ve been told” then both of them giggling together, almost as if an inside joke. The kind that gives off the vibe of making you wonder if the size thing’s something she’d accidentally blab out and brag about jokingly at some dinner party they once shared.

Why does she usually not give a fuck about half the stuff said, yet she would feel so shaken by people’s disbelief to publicly put it out on twitter about PM being the “love of her life” just to defend that idea? Why does it not seem like her at all? Why do I feel making a joke or being sarcastic about it would fit her more?

Is her SM being totally under control?

Maybe the penis and yoni of the day (along with Nelson) are one of the rare outlets right now, even that being some pre-approved idea for having it seem like she’s being her regular self, cause that’s something that we know fits her character.

But when you think about it, it is still a mini subtle commercial for SexEd. Which I love, yet...Netflix. Again.

Also, the constant mentioning of Netflix along with PM in her stories, desperately trying to fit him somewhere. Like the “what do you eat during quarantine” and bam: “when me and Pete hosted a dinner we froze a chocolate cake...” Riiight. Is it just me, or does it seem like trying way too hard?

Which makes me think of all the contrary. If we go back to the past Gillovny fuckery...“he’s in the shower” and “I’m with schmoopie” shirts and “chewie’s girlfriend” and the twitter saga. What if it was intentionally done that way to make people think “what if”, but obviously take it as a joke, because of course that’s what it is. But was it? Maybe they just knew no one would truly buy it so they could play around for a little bit and actually be a couple for a minute, make out on Kimmel and fuck around on twitter. Propaganda? Maybe.

Some truth in that? God damn it, almost feels like it. Sure felt way more natural, sexy and loving than any of the stuff going on today.

What if we hate MP for no reason, what if she’s just truly a fucking assistant, a help and nothing but it. What if G hugged her after the play in London out of gratitude, because she’s just a prop they need to act this shit out. What if it’s all a big shitshow, but a shitshow nonetheless.

What if I will say the silliest shit of all time and boldly assume...that behind all of this which we do not understand, D&G are still together and fine. What if it was meant to feel like the end to us. But they are there, in secret, because it’s somehow better for them, because they prefer it that way.

What if the shoe pic of “working from home in my Dune London shoes” a day prior to his 60th birthday is just another way to turn people away from that idea and subtly make them not even question anything, while in reality she is with him, somewhere, celebrating his 60th birthday. And things are much brighter for them than what they seem.

I might be so wrong, so off. But something is going on in the background and there are way too many things I do not buy.

Also, it was honestly more probable to me that they were once together, but fell apart somewhere along the way, I believed that and it totally seemed like a probable scenario.

Until the very subtle, yet interesting stuff that have been going on made me question it again, maybe it’s silly, but when I connect the dots, like the constant bracelet wearing, the talking about a partner and not mentioning the name, but referencing stuff that feel completely Gillovny, aging with someone, long distance shit, random people still stating “they have been together for a while now, nice surprise”. Maybe it’s a load of bullshit, but it also just makes it seem like he still might be there, somewhere, after all.

How the hell did I end up here? I ask myself this constantly. I still have no idea.

Yes, it is so fucking crazy. But this is where I leave this at.

[rouiyan]

𝘚𝘏𝘖𝘞 𝘔𝘌 𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌 [ 𝘭.𝘫𝘯 ]

⧏ part of the before i met you collective ⧐

synopsis: after an accidental leak, the news of you and jeno’s relationship becomes the talk of the world. to satiate the incredible curiosity of fans and news outlets alike, the two of you take on a variety show, knowing brother. will this bold move prove to everyone that your relationship is more than just a publicity stunt?

✧ lee jeno x (fem.) reader ✧ idolverse au, knowing brother au, established relationship au

✧ genre : fluff ✧ word count : 1.9k ✧ disclaimers : minor swearing, i talk about eyes a lot lol

✧ author’s note — was supposed to be a short drabble but i got carried away and ended up going into so much unnecessary detail. super fun to write; this idea expertly fought my incoming writer’s block.

you let out a suppressed laugh as jeno profusely denies the apologies that come his way from the girl that just recently joined the makeup team. she had used a much thicker brush than needed on his lips and in turn, they’ve grown almost twice the size, the natural mauve color spilling over the edges. he gives you a pointed look but it’s taken with less seriousness than he’d like, his lips clearly making the expression funnier than intended.

“stop, y/n,” he mumbles, though his face is more of a pout as you crane your neck to watch him, the same girl now fussing with makeup remover blocking your view of him. as she leaves to grab a thinner brush, jeno turns to look at his reflection in the mirror and you make your way across the room to stand next to where he is seated. the both of you stare at each other’s reflections in the mirror, smiles filled with soft adoration. “you nervous?” he speaks, eyebrows shifting up ever so slightly. you swear the way the lights of the vanity reflect off his pupils make it look like he holds the stars in his eyes (and you're sure he does). nodding, you express to him the pressures you’ve been facing, “i hope we do well.”

he hums and removes his stare from the mirror to the actual you, looping his arms around your waist loosely. “we will, babe. we’re unstoppable when we’re together, you know?” he feels more than hears the soft chuckle that you let out and he raises his head to look you in the eyes. “i guess you’re right.” 

it’s been a little over a year since jeno asked you out, right outside the convenience store a few blocks down from the nct dream dorm. a chilly two a.m. snack run where jeno had spontaneously been gifted with the confidence to tilt your head up with his index finger and swoop in for a kiss after his heartfelt words were received with tired enthusiasm. he thinks about that night a lot more than he’d ever admit. 

he also thinks about a similar night, only three weeks ago from now, outside the same convenience store, this time at three a.m., when his hands intertwined themselves with yours on instinct and when you looked up at him with that pretty little smile of yours. he can still hear the shuffling of feet behind him, the click and flash of a camera following. he can still feel the way his heart stopped as he drew his and your hats lower, turning over his shoulder to be face to face with a camera peeking through the shadows. he can still remember the way his hand unwinded from yours, instead wrapping around your whole frame, bringing you closer to his chest and further away from view. he could still hear your heartbeat against his, erratic, and he still remembers praying to dear god that they didn’t catch your face. he stills feels the guilt gnawing at his gut when he found out that it was too late. what was supposed to be a simple first anniversary was turned into a day of phone calls, pr meetings, frustrated managers, and even worse, angry sasaengs camping outside both of your dorms.

he knows it’s not exactly his fault, though he did admit that to the higher ups much to your dislikes, but he can’t help but feel responsible for all his desperate fans going after your reputation, your job, group, family and friends, and most importantly, you. in all honesty, he also received plenty of backlash from your fans as well but it aggravated him much more than it should’ve that people would dare talk shit about his girlfriend. 

making headlines, your relationship with jeno was widely labeled as sm’s bid for attention and monetary gain, however untrue that was. most fans were in denial because of countless other situations where a rumored couple would be later revealed as a publicity stunt, especially since you and jeno were of a big company and from popular groups. of the many game plans that were presented to the two of you, he found this one the most effective. to go on a variety show together and show the compatibility and chemistry between the two of you, to verify your relationship as real and deserving of humanly respect.

jeno is brought back to reality as a colored brush is applied to his lips once again. he looks up to gauge what had happened whilst he was spaced out and sees that you are talking animatedly to the manager that had accompanied you here today, a bright look on your face as your fingers fiddle with a water bottle lid. after getting his makeup done, properly this time, he stands and stalks over beside you, half listening to the conversation about mic settings. with a pout, you hand the water bottle to jeno and he immediately unscrews it, neither of you looking at each other, the act seemingly a casual exchange. 

jeno corners you before going on set, hands on your shoulders, to tell you that, “we’re going to do great, princess.” the nickname rolls off his tongue with ease and leaves a pink dust across your cheeks, blooming under the blush that’s applied on top. he gives your shoulders a reassuring squeeze and slips in a few more encouraging compliments (“so pretty,” tucks strand of hair behind your ear, “i got quite lucky didn’t i?”) before the two of you are called on set to start filming.

the cameras start rolling and as the hosts go about their usual introduction banter, you slip a finger into the indent in the door and on cue, slide it open, revealing your smiling face, jeno’s secure hand on your back, reminding you that he is there with every step into unfamiliar territory. the hosts turn and gape at the pair, having not met backstage to save the guests as a surprise. hodong, is the first to talk coherently among all the commotion, “wah, the power couple of the century is here today!” chuckling at his comment, you and jeno take your places behind the podium at the front, wary of their stares on you. for a second, you feel as if you are in an actual classroom, introducing yourself on the first day of your transfer with an uneasy feeling settling in your stomach. 

“hi, it’s nice to meet you, i’m y/l/n y/n, from sm high! please take care of me!” your nose scrunches at how cringy the school name sounded in comparison to when you and jeno were making it up back in the dressing room. jeno follows with his introduction after you politely bow, “hi, i’m lee jeno, also from sm high! please take good care of us!” a chorus of applause echoes around the three-walled setup and you feel jeno’s hand move from the small of your back to rest upon your shoulders; unconsciously you lean into his frame, his warmth inviting you in ways you don’t even process.

“so the rumors are true, huh?” you look over at soogeun, one of the hosts that you had chosen to sit next to. he’s kind from what you can tell, and almost exactly like the person you see on tv. the other hosts are busy chatting with jeno and you look over at them before settling on the man speaking to you. “yeah,” your voice is soft, “they’re true.” a smile adorns your face as you say this and the little moment that’s caught on camera is enough to melt the audience, (or so the editors think as they go through the tape after filming). 

the hosts inform you that instead of the ‘ask about me’ segment they’re going to, instead, ask the two of you questions, more or less about your relationship. you figure that this has a lot to do with the whole reason you're here and you feel comfortable knowing that you get a chance to explain, to clear the air of assumed rumors. 

the first to ask is janghoon, a simple question to start the segment off, “how did you guys first meet?” jeno and you take turns answering the questions, jeno taking the lead on this one. “it was… january of 2015, i think. like, one year before i debuted and y/n was new to the company. i remember that she was chosen to be in a debut group almost instantly after she joined and some of the other boys in my group were talking about how talented she was.” he takes a second to look over at you, seeing the way your eyes light up when they meet his, “i first talked to her at a showcase, i think. she was already pretty close with mark and haechan, from my group, because they trained together for a bit. even then, i remember her being probably one of the prettiest girls i had ever met. and it wasn’t just the looks though, she- y/n’s always been a kind girl and i guess that i always thought she was too good for me… i still do, for the most part.” 

your eyes are slightly wide when he finishes and he gives you a questioning look. “wow, i don’t remember talking to you until that one halloween party…” the room falls to silence before everyone laughs at jeno’s bewildered expression, clearly baffled at how you didn’t even remember when the two of you first met.

the show moves on good-naturedly before heechul pops the big question, “do you guys love each other?” he says it rather sarcastically, in case you are uncomfortable in answering, but you take it upon yourself to make this situation into a bit of a turning point in all the fun. “of course, jeno’s a big part of my life. whenever i’m not onstage or working, he’s always the one i’m with. this job, it really isn’t the easiest. besides getting to do what we love we also have to be watched constantly, but it’s okay for me at least, having someone like him by my side makes it all okay.” you can almost imagine the cameras showing jeno’s face at this moment, the little hearts edited into the frame of the captured scene, his expression a mix of shy smiles and lovesick eyes. it’s easy to say when you mean it and you know that it’s also easy for jeno when he simply wraps you up in his arms, with content coating his embrace and without care as to the cameras shooting in all directions.

it’s safe to say that the episode went viral, only a few hours after its airing. most fans gushed over your relationship with jeno, sharing screenshots of you in his arms. jeno loves how some fans are even shaming those who look down upon your relationship and he's even happier that he’s allowed to take you out on dates, to add you as a plus one to special events, and to finally be able to call you his, loud and proud.

(bonus: jaemin is beyond excited to watch the episode right when it comes out, popcorn and lights dimmed in preparation. he even dragged a poor renjun to watch it with him, claiming he needed a shoulder to cry on if you guys were being too sweet. he didn’t actually cry, but renjun practically vomited as he watched jeno hoist you up upon his shoulders to reach the basketball hoop during the game segment. he hurled towards the trash can.)

copyright © 2020 rouiyan all rights reserved.

[truthbeetoldmedia]

iZombie 5x13 "All’s Well That Ends Well" Review

Hello friends, are we ready to say goodbye? I was a little nervous coming into this finale, seeing as there was so much to wrap up, and therefore...much to mess up. As a result, the pacing was indeed a little strange, but some minor characters get some hero moments, and it was all setting up a final ten minutes that essentially functioned as an epilogue that sealed the series. 

Okay, let’s dig in. Enzo has taken over Fillmore Graves and has declared war on humans. Dolly and her people have responded in kind, going around New Seattle taking out high ranking zombies. While gunfire rains over the city, Ravi, Clive, and Liv are returning from Atlanta with the vial needed for the cure. 

Even though it’s risky, they choose to fly to get back faster. Liv’s plane seatmate is suspicious, insisting she’s seen Liv before. Even though the official heist is over, the trio show they still have a few smooth moves, and manage to slip a sedative into the woman’s drink so she’ll stop asking questions. As she sleeps soundly, her iPad drops to the floor of the cabin. She must have figured it out right before she’s knocked out — the flight attendant picks up the device and sees the browser is open to an article about Liv and her work as Renegade. 

When the plane lands, the flight attendant pulls Clive, Liv, and Ravi from their seats and introduces them to a Portland police officer. After a brief moment of anxiety, the flight attendant reveals they are siblings, and Liv saved their younger sister’s life by smuggling her into Seattle and turning her into a zombie. The officer offers to escort them to the Washington border as a thank you, and in hopes they can get back to Seattle quicker. Clive is happy to hear this, as he gets a message that Dale is labor with their baby. 

Major turns himself in to get a shot at securing the Max Rager, and luckily he still has one more ally back at Fillmore Graves. Lieutenant Collins has always been a steadfast supporter of Major, and she truly comes through in his hour of need. She helps him get past Enzo and his lackeys so he can get to the precious energy drink needed for the cure. As a result, Enzo executes her. Lieutenant Collins was always a background character, but she was one that I always respected and appreciated, and without her, Major wouldn’t have been able to make it out of Fillmore Graves alive. We’re pouring one out for her tonight. 

Meanwhile, Peyton is still being held hostage by Blaine. She helps the Freylich kids make a distraction by conking him over the head, and tossing the keys to Oliver, the older boy with a terminal illness. He drives the getaway car, but Peyton doesn’t quite make it out with the rest of them. The Freylich smuggler shoots at Peyton, and while she takes him out, he gets her too. Blaine runs out to see Peyton bleeding out on the ground. 

The kids make it back to the safe house, just as Liv and Ravi are arriving. When they realize Peyton didn’t return with them, they get emotional. Ravi nearly falls apart before Liv reminds them they have an important job to do. She tells Ravi to get to cooking the cure, and she would deal with Blaine. She promises to show no mercy. 

Luckily, Blaine’s obsession with Peyton serves her well in this instance. He turns her into a zombie and forces to eat a meal with him. It’s pretty incredible Peyton has survived this whole series without becoming a zombie, but I guess the virus comes for everyone eventually. Unfortunately for Blaine, he should have been more calculating about the brain he fed her. Don E watches Peyton while Blaine goes to visit the well on his father’s property (the one that also used to serve as his father’s prison). Don E is delighted when Peyton has her first vision, but in a dead-panned voice, she tells him she saw Blaine suffocating a girl with a pillow, wearing a wedding dress and calling for Don E. While we still never see the true circumstances of Darcy’s death on-screen, I’m more inclined to trust Peyton’s version of things than Blaine’s. It’s the last straw for Don E, who storms to the well and unceremoniously pushes Blaine in. “No one was ever going to love you,” Don E screams down the well. “I’m the only person who could stand you, and you killed my fiance.” Liv shows up just in time to see the show and she hesitates even less. She hurls a rock at Don E and her aim is true. Don E goes in the well right after Blaine. “Enjoy eternity together!” she sneers, just as she bursts into tears, grieving Peyton. One has to wonder, if this was all that it took to get rid of these two, perhaps it should have been done a long time ago. It certainly would have saved Liv a lot of headaches. I find that even though it was a simple death, it was a deserving one for Blaine and Don E. I was hoping for more of a redemptive moment for Don E, but it took him way too long to see the light, and he’s been complicit in Blaine’s schemes since the very beginning. By the end, he was a richer character, but still an evil one. I’m okay with those two being a little closer to hell now. 

Besides, it was all worth it for the moment right after. “How funny would it be if now I knocked you in,” Peyton says. Liv turns around to see her best friend, and the two reunite in a sweet hug. This moment made me a little emotional. These two college buddies have morphed into two very capable and clever young women, and they’ve been by each other’s side through the worst of it. 

Blaine and Don E may be out of the picture, but we but we aren’t even close to the end yet! Clive and Dale deliver a beautiful and healthy baby. It essentially takes them out of all the action, but I thought, for better or worse, it was a strong choice. I was glad I didn’t have to worry about either of them dying in the eleventh hour, and they were able to watch everything from their television screens without being in danger. 

Ravi finally creates the cure, and he and Major dramatically roll up to the local TV station. After a brief attempt at convincing Johnny Frost to take the cure, Major takes matters into his own hands.  “I’m here to prove to the people that it’s over,” he says. He strikes a deal. Major will take the cure, and Enzo can shoot him in the chest in front of everyone. If he dies, it proves he’s not a zombie. It’s just the kind of stupidly heroic thing that Major would do, and Enzo takes him up on it. Major takes the cure and Enzo shoots him more times than can be counted. It’s traumatic, and they really had me believing that our boy was probably dead. Ravi tackles Enzo and manages to cure him. Graham, who had been sneaking around the background the entire episode, appears and shoots Enzo in the head, avenging his boyfriend. A Fillmore Graves officer takes him out, and chaos breaks out. RIP sweet teacher Graham. Outside the TV station, there’s intense gunfire being exchanged between Fillmore Graves, Dead Enders, and Dolly’s CHICS. Inside, the power goes out. 

Ravi crawls over to what appears to be a lifeless Major, while we listen to a voicemail he left for Liv. He says goodbye because he doesn’t think he’ll survive his latest world-saving stunt, but she’s always been the love of his life. Just when I was beginning to choke up and start preparing for a life without Major Lillywhite, he softly croaks, “You tricky son of a bitch, what was in that syringe you gave me.” Ravi admits that he gave him a vial of straight up Max Rager, but promises him that “next time, it’s all yours.” 

Liv is back at the station, bawling while listening to the voicemail and believing Major is dead. Strangely, Michelle comes into the morgue and asks Liv if she’s okay. The moment is brief and someone breaks into the morgue and sets off a huge explosion. And then suddenly, we are ten years into the future. 

At first, I was a little let down. This is absolutely the easiest way to wiggle out dealing with the aftermath of Dolly, the other fringe human groups, and all the other plotlines that iZombie didn’t feel like it wanted to deal with neatly. We don’t get to watch how Seattle apparently “repopulated, rebuilt, and rebranded” as we hear in a moment later. But my frustration was short lived, as the last ten minutes were devoted to my beloved core characters that I adore so much. 

Clive, Peyton, and Ravi appear on a virtual reality talk show, where a charismatic host asks them questions about their lives after the cure. As three people who had a front row seat to the events, the host wants to get their perspectives. It’s revealed that none of them stayed in New Seattle after the war, but they all went on to have very successful careers and marriages. Ravi and Peyton are a married couple living in Atlanta, she’s a lawyer and Ravi is head of the CDC. Clive and Dale are co-captaining San Francisco PD while raising their kid, as well as Michelle’s. Besides their lives prospering, the world has recovered from this chapter of history. The cure was distributed, and while some were cured, some are still living full lives as zombies. Dolly is still out there, but not causing trouble as far as we know.  While this is all lovely and good, this show really makes us sweat here. Where are Liv and Major? The host wants to know as well. The three of them insist that they are both lost to time, legends in their own right, and they miss them just as much as anyone. Liv died in the morgue’s suicide bombing, and while Major never lost hope that she’s alive, no one has seen him in ten years. They’ve accepted that Liv isn’t alive or that Major will never resurface, America will have to accept it too.  

Unless...

We see a flashback of Major returning to the safe house with the kids, and Liv meeting them there. They reunite with a passionate kiss, and even though things are still burning and they are covered in dirt and exhausted, things are right again. 

In the most “happily ever after” ending the show could have possibly delivered, Liv and Major are living their lives in private, in a huge mansion by the water, with all their little zombie children. Their friends are well aware of this, and are protecting them from the world at large with their reunion interviews. After the host disappears, Liv and Major appear in the virtual reality space, and after some light teasing amongst the group, they invite Clive, Peyton, and Ravi to their personal zombie haven. “All it takes is a scratch,” Liv says with a knowing smile. 

This show tackled more than it had a right to. It was convoluted, goofy, strange, exhausting, whimsical, outlandish, absurd, dark, and hilarious, all at the same time. But what grounded it at the center was the fact it never forgot about its core cast. At times they were given unfortunate character arcs, undercooked plots, and under-serving love interests. But in the end, we saw who they truly were. Ravi, the scientist with a moral compass. Peyton, the lawyer with clever smarts. Clive, the captain with a discerning spirit. And Major and Liv, the nurturers and protectors of zombie-kind, the best mom and dad friends you could ever ask for. I can’t express how happy I am the show ended with these five, standing tall and in love with each other, looking well-rested in paradise. It wasn’t an easy road, in fact sometimes it was a very frustrating road. But when I remember iZombie, I’ll remember it was a show about heroes, good over evil, and a really, really good meal.  I’m always going to have a soft spot in my heart for it. 

Stray thoughts 

“She’s googling The Good Place. She thinks I’m Kristen Bell.” “She’ll be sorely disappointed.” This gag was straight up gold. 

Those flamethrowers seemed especially cruel? Fire doesn’t kill zombies, but sure seems to be painful 

Collins, Graham, Oliver, and Michelle. All minor characters this season that had a Moment this episode. While most of these characters were overall underutilized in this series and season, I liked how each of them were used to tie things together. Oliver was the only one who made it out alive, however, and the rest of them definitely deserved better.

Did the suicide bomber think that blowing up the morgue would prevent creating more zombies…? That’s the only reason I can think why blowing up a fridge full of dead people could make sense. 

Wait this actually reveals a strange plot hole. Is there a limit to how long you’ve been dead before you can be scratched and be a zombie? I don’t remember this question ever explicitly being addressed. There was never an instance where anyone considered creating a zombie army from Liv and Ravi’s morgue.

Clive and Dale named their daughter Olivia. My HEART. 

Even though Peyton was okay, I’m glad we got to see Major comfort Ravi. Their bromance is truly one for the ages. 

“The way I make my decisions these days is asking myself what would Liv Moore do.” This couple is THAT supportive ship. 

I wish we had gotten better promo photos for this finale, or at least some more variety of scenes 

Even though it’s a little thin to believe that some people never turned back human and there are zombies still peacefully living among us (as well as Liv and Major, living outside), I actually didn’t mind it. They had to have some way to wrap up the problem of people who would die if they turned back into a human.

“I do miss you, partner.” “Vice versa, Clive.” Wow, ten years without Liv’s antics. I imagine that Clive’s productivity at work has gone way up, although I’m sure he sorely misses her crime-solving visions.

That’s a wrap for iZombie. What did you think? Favorite brains? Worst plot holes? Best shipper moments? Let me know your thoughts! 

Haley’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝.5

[son-of-alderaan]

There’s a desert valley in southern Jordan called Wadi Rum, or sometimes “the Valley of the Moon.” There are stone inscriptions in Wadi Rum that are more than 2,000 years old. Lawrence of Arabia passed through there during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. More recently, J. J. Abrams went there to film parts of the latest Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, because it’s largely uninhabited and starkly beautiful and looks plausibly alien, and one of the things that has always made the Star Wars movies feel so real—as if they had a real life of their own that continues on out beyond the edges of the screen—is the way they’re shot on location, with as few digital effects as possible. George Lucas shot the Tatooine scenes from A New Hope in southern Tunisia. For Skywalker, it’s Wadi Rum.

They don’t do it that way because it’s easy. Abrams and his crew had to build miles of road into the desert. They basically had to set up a small town out there, populated by the cast and extras and crew—the creature-effects department alone had 70 people. The Jordanian military got involved. The Jordanian royal family got involved. There was sand. There were sandstorms, when all you could do was take cover and huddle in your tent and—if you’re John Boyega, who plays the ex-Stormtrooper Finn—listen to reggae.

But in a way that’s the whole point: you’re out there so the world can get up in your grill and make its presence felt on film. “It’s the things that you can’t anticipate—the imperfections,” says Oscar Isaac, who plays the Resistance pilot Poe Dameron. “It’s very difficult to design imperfection, and the imperfections that you have in these environments immediately create a sense of authenticity. You just believe it more.” When Isaac arrived in Wadi Rum for his first week of shooting, Abrams had set up a massive greenscreen in the middle of the desert. “And I was like, ‘J. J., can I ask you a question? I notice we’re shooting on greenscreen.’ And he’s like, ‘So why the hell are we in the desert?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ And he said, ‘Well, because look: the way that the sand interacts with the light, and the type of shots you would set up—if you were designing the shot on a computer you would never even think to do that.’ There’s something about the way that the light and the environment and everything plays together.” It’s that something, the presence and the details and the analog imperfections of a real nondigital place, that makes Star Wars so powerful.

It was powerful enough to bring 65,000 people to Chicago in April for Star Wars Celebration, a fan convention where you could see a giant Stormtrooper head made out of 36,440 tiny Lego Stormtrooper mini-figures, which is a world record of some kind, though I’m not sure exactly what, and where people were dressed up as Muppets who were themselves dressed up as Star Wars characters. But the main event was the launch of the trailer for The Rise of Skywalker, which was held in a 10,000-seat arena and was such a big deal that even though the trailer was going to be released on the Internet literally seconds after it was over, I—an at least theoretically respectable member of the media—was not only tagged, wristbanded, escorted, and metal-detected, but sniffed by a K-9 unit before I could go in.

J.J. Abrams, alongside Stunt Coordinator Eunice Huthart, directs the Knights of Ren; elite fearsome enforcers of Kylo Ren’s dark will.

I sat down with Abrams a couple of hours later. For the occasion, he was wearing a suit so black and sharp, he could have been doing Men in Black cosplay, but his most distinctive feature is his dark curly hair, which is upswept in a way that is only slightly suggestive of devil horns. Abrams talks rapidly, as if he can barely keep up with the things his racing brain is telling him to say. When I told him that not only was Star Wars the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter, but that all 10 of the Top 10 trending topics were Star Wars–related, and that he personally was No. 5, he was visibly stunned.

Then he recovered enough to say: “Well, I aspire to No. 4.” (For the record, No. 4 was the late Supreme Leader Snoke, who frankly did seem beatable. If you’re curious, No. 11 was pro golfer Zach Johnson, who had just accidentally hit his ball with a practice swing at the Masters. Life goes on.)

Disney executives talk about how important it is to “event-ize” Star Wars movies; i.e., to make them feel not just like movies but like seriously momentous occasions. They won’t have much trouble with this one: The Rise of Skywalker isn’t just the last movie in the Star Wars trilogy that began in 2015 with The Force Awakens; it’s the last movie in a literal, actual trilogy of trilogies that started with the very first Star Wars movie back in 1977, which began the saga of the Skywalker family. The Rise of Skywalker will finally, after 42 years, bring that saga to an end.

FIRST LOOK Vanity Fair reveals Keri Russell as the masked scoundrel Zorri Bliss, seen in the Thieves’ Quarter of the snow-dusted world Kijimi.

We all thought the story was over in 1983 with Return of the Jedi, and then we really thought it was over in 2005 with Revenge of the Sith. But Star Wars has always been an unruly beast, too big and powerful (and profitable) to be contained in one movie, or even in a trilogy, or even in two trilogies, let alone numberless novels, TV shows, comics, video games, Happy Meals, and so on. Now Abrams has to gather all those threads and bring closure to a story that was started by somebody else, in an America that feels a very long time ago indeed. “That’s the challenge of this movie,” Abrams says. “It wasn’t just to make one film that as a stand-alone experience would be thrilling, and scary, and emotional, and funny, but one that if you were to watch all nine of the films, you’d feel like, Well, of course—that!”

Like a lot of things that we now can’t imagine life without, Star Wars came really close to never happening in the first place. In 1971, Lucas was a serious young auteur just five years out of film school at U.S.C. He had only one full-length movie on his résumé, and that was THX 1138, which is the kind of visionary but grindingly earnest science-fiction epic that only the French could love. (They were pretty much the only ones who did.) Everybody expected Lucas to go on and make serious, gritty 1970s cinema like his peers, Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola. At the time Lucas and Coppola were actively planning a radical epic set in Vietnam with the provocative title Apocalypse Now.

FORCE MAJEURE First Order leaders General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Allegiant General Pryde (Richard E. Grant) on the bridge of Kylo Ren’s destroyer.

But Coppola would have to finish that one on his own, because Lucas went a different way. “I had decided there was no modern mythology,” he said in 1997. “I wanted to take old myths and put them into a new format that young people could relate to. Mythology always existed in unusual, unknown environments, so I chose space.” Lucas tried to acquire the rights to Flash Gordon (that would’ve been a dark timeline indeed), but when he couldn’t, he came up with his own original science-fictional epic instead. He called it The Star Wars. Like The Facebook, it would have to shed a direct article on its way to glory.

Even though American Graffiti had made Lucas a bankable director, Star Wars still came together slowly. In the first draft, Luke was an old man, Leia was 14, and Han Solo was “a huge green-skinned monster with no nose and large gills.” Fox executives were baffled by Star Wars, and they squeezed Lucas relentlessly for time and money. We forget now how jerry-rigged the first movie was: the cantina aliens weren’t finished, and the monumental Star Destroyer that dominates the opening shot is, in reality, about three feet long. The Death Star interior is basically one set re-arranged several different ways. To make Greedo’s mouth move, the woman in the Greedo suit had to hold a clothespin in her mouth. “What I remember about working on the first film,” says John Williams, the legendary soundtrack composer, “is the fact that I didn’t ever think there would be a second film.” (He also, like everybody else, thought Luke and Leia were going to get together, so he wrote them a love theme.)

But wherever real mythology comes from, Lucas had gone there and brought something back alive. People wanted movies that gave them something to believe in instead of relentlessly autopsying the beliefs that had failed them. We’d had enough of antiheroes. We needed some anti-antiheroes. “I realized after THX that people don’t care about how the country’s being ruined,” Lucas said. “We’ve got to regenerate optimism.” Like American Graffiti, Star Wars is a work of profound nostalgia, a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate anthem of longing for the restoration of a true and just power in the universe—the return of the king. And at the same time it’s a very personal hero’s journey, about a boy who must put right the sins of his father and master the strange power he finds within himself, and in doing so become a man.

Star Wars is also an incredibly enduring vision of what it’s like to live in a world of super-advanced technology. Science fiction often ages badly, turning into kitsch or camp—just look at Flash Gordon—but Star Wars hasn’t. More than any filmmaker before him, Lucas successfully imagined what a science-fictional world would feel like to somebody who was actually inside it—which is to say, it would look as ordinary and workaday as the present. He even shot it like it was real, working close-in and mostly eschewing wide establishing shots, more like a documentary or a newsreel than a space opera. “It feels very grounded,” says Naomi Ackie, who’s making her Star Wars debut in Skywalker playing a character named Jannah, about whom she is allowed to say literally nothing. “There’s the kind of spectacular-ness, and the supernatural move-things-with-your-mind magic stuff, but then there’s also this really grounded, rugged nature where everything is distressed and old and kind of worn out and lived-in. And I think playing with those two ideas means that you get this feeling that it could almost be real. Like, in a galaxy far away, it could almost be the case that you could have this.”

When Lucas made the first Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, he cheekily labeled it Episode V, then went back and re-labeled the first movie as Episode IV, as if the movies were an old-fashioned serial that the rest of us were all just tuning in to. Around that time, he also started talking about Star Wars as a nine-part epic—so in 2012, when Lucas retired and sold Lucasfilm to Disney, it wasn’t exactly heresy that Disney announced more movies. At the time, Kathleen Kennedy had just been named co-chairperson of Lucasfilm, and she tapped Abrams to direct the first Disney-owned post-Lucas Star Wars movie. It was a bit like saying, Make the lightning strike again, please. Exactly here, if you could. Oh, and could you also earn back that $4 billion we just spent to buy Lucasfilm? (Narrator voice: He could.)

At first blush, Abrams’s debut Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, looked like an elaborate homage to the original. Just like in A New Hope, there’s a young Force-sensitive person on a poor desert planet—that’s Rey, played by Daisy Ridley—who finds a droid with a secret message that’s vital to the Rebellion (or wait, sorry, it’s the Resistance now). There’s a villain in a black mask, just like Darth Vader, except that it’s his grandson Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), né Ben Solo, son of Han and Leia. Kylo has a planet-killing weapon, much like the Death Star but way bigger, which becomes the target of a desperate attack by Resistance X-wings. There’s even a bar full of aliens.

Abrams also insisted on keeping to the analog aesthetic of the original trilogy: those aliens had to be latex and yak hair, not bits and bytes, and everything possible was shot on location using film cameras, not digital ones. Even Lucas had abandoned that approach by the time he made the second Star Wars trilogy, but many fans consider those movies to be a cautionary tale. “Famously, the prequels were mostly greenscreen environments,” Abrams says. “And that was George himself doing that, and it ended up looking exactly how he wanted it to look—and I always preferred the look of the original movies, because I just remember when you’re in the snow on Hoth, when you’re in the desert on Tatooine, and when you’re in the forests of Endor—it’s amazing. If you put a vaporator here, there, all of a sudden almost any natural location suddenly becomes a Star Wars location.”

But the more interesting thing about The Force Awakens and its successor, The Last Jedi, written and directed by Rian Johnson, was how they subtly complicated Lucas’s vision. Thirty years have gone by since the ending of Return of the Jedi, during which time the newly reborn Republic became complacent and politically stagnant, allowing the rise of the reactionary neo-imperial First Order, whose origins we will learn more about in Skywalker. “It was almost like if the Argentine Nazis had sort of got together and actually started to bring that back in some real form,” Abrams says. Just like that, the rules of the Star Wars universe changed. It wasn’t all over when the Ewoks sang. Obi-Wan Kenobi and all those Bothans had died in vain. Even Han and Leia split up. It’s all a little less of a fairy tale now.

The feather-haired godling Luke suffered the trauma of having a Padawan go bad on his watch. It’s an echo of what happened to his old mentor, Obi-Wan, with Anakin Skywalker, who became Darth Vader. But where Obi-Wan made peace with it, waiting serenely in the desert of Tatooine for the next Chosen One to arrive, Luke’s guilt curdled into shame. He hid himself away, so that his Chosen One, Rey, had to spend most of The Force Awakens searching for him, and then another whole movie convincing him with the help of Yoda’s Force ghost to keep the Jedi Order going at all. Star Wars arrived as an antidote to the disillusionment of the 1970s—but now, in its middle age, Star Wars is grappling with disillusionment of its own.

DESERT POWER Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca), Ridley, Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), and John Boyega (Finn) await the call to action for a chase scene.

By dint of advanced Sith interrogation techniques, I was able to obtain valuable advance information about The Rise of Skywalker. Here it is: common emblem.

Anthony Daniels, who plays C-3P0, is the only actor who has appeared in all nine movies of the Star Wars triple trilogy, so if anybody’s entitled to leak, it’s him. Daniels says he loved the script for The Rise of Skywalker, but he didn’t get it until the last minute, right before shooting started, and for some reason he just couldn’t memorize his part. “My first line would not go in my head!” he says. In person Daniels is like a C-3P0 whose preferences have been reset to charming and voluble. “The line that I couldn’t say was two words: ‘common emblem.’ Common emblem, common emblem—I would say them thousands of times. My wife would say it back. I just couldn’t say them!”

Fortunately C-3P0’s mouth doesn’t move, so he could add the line in postproduction. Anyway, there’s the big scoop: “common emblem.” I don’t know what it means either. (Also I 100 percent guarantee that they will change the line before the movie comes out so that this scoop will end up being fake news.) Daniels also told me that C-3P0 does something in this movie that surprises everybody—but he wouldn’t say what. “He keeps his clothes on. It’s not like he suddenly does this thing, but …”

The only other member of the old guard on the set this time was Billy Dee Williams, who plays the charismatic Lando Calrissian. At 82, Williams has lost none of his roguish charm, but now it comes wrapped in a kind of magisterial dignity. People tend to remember Lando for the deal he cut with Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, rather than for his redemptive comeback in Return of the Jedi, and Williams appears to have spent the last 45 years defending him. “He’s a survivor. It’s expediency for him,” Williams says. “You know, he was thrown into a situation which he didn’t look for and he had to try to figure out how to deal with an entity which is more than just a human.” And, he adds, with the weary air of somebody who has spent way too much time justifying the behavior of a fictional character, “nobody died!”

HOT TAKE Members of the crew shade and shine Daniels, the only cast member to appear in all nine of the Skywalker films, while BB-8 looks on.

Chewbacca is still here, too, but it’s not the same man in the suit. The original actor was Peter Mayhew, a seven-foot-three-inch gentle giant who was working as a hospital orderly in London when Lucas cast him in the first movie. Mayhew retired after The Force Awakens, and he died on April 30 at 74. His replacement is Joonas Suotamo, a fresh-faced former professional basketball player from Finland who always wanted to be an actor but was hard to cast because he’s six feet 11 inches tall. “When I first met [Mayhew] he told me I was a wee bit too skinny,” Suotamo says. “But we also had a Wookiee boot camp, which lasted for a week. He told me all kinds of things about the moves that Chewbacca does, how they came to be and his reasoning behind them.” Suotamo has now played Chewbacca in four movies and enjoys it about as much as I’ve ever seen anybody enjoy anything. “It’s very much like silent-era film, with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin,” he says. “He’s a mime character and that’s what he does, and I guess in that minimalism comes the beauty of the character.”

Other things we know about Skywalker: We can safely assume that the Resistance and the First Order are headed toward a final smash, which will be a heavy lift for the good guys because, at the end of The Last Jedi, the Resistance was down, way down, to a double handful of survivors. They’ll face a First Order who suffered a stinging but largely symbolic loss at the Battle of Crait, and who, I feel confident, have learned something from the previous eight movies. The Empire built and lost two Death Stars. The First Order has already lost one super-weapon in The Force Awakens. Presumably it won’t make the same mistake twice, twice.

But the stakes go even higher than that, cosmically high. Sources close to the movie say that Skywalker will at long last bring to a climax the millennia-long conflict between the Jedi Order and its dark shadow, the Sith.

HORSING AROUND Finn and new ally Jannah (Naomi Ackie), atop hardy orbaks, lead the charge against the mechanized forces of the First Order. “It’s extremely surreal to be in it,” says Ackie, “and see how it works from the inside.”

STAR CROSSED Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey battle it out with lightsabers in a stormy confrontation. Their Force-connection—what Driver calls their “maybe-bond”—will turn out to run even deeper than previously revealed.

The hottest area for speculation, however, is the identity of the titular Skywalker, because at this point there aren’t many Skywalkers left to rise. One is General Organa, the former Princess Leia, Luke’s sister—but Carrie Fisher, who plays her, passed away in 2016. That was a deeply painful loss for Abrams personally, but it also presented him with an impossible choice as a filmmaker. He needed Leia to tell the story, but Abrams didn’t feel like a digital Carrie Fisher could do the job, and there was no way Lucasfilm was going to re-cast the role.

But then a strange thing happened. Abrams remembered that there was some footage of Fisher left over from The Force Awakens, scenes that had been changed or cut entirely, and he dug them up. “It’s hard to even talk about it without sounding like I’m being some kind of cosmic spiritual goofball,” Abrams says, “but it felt like we suddenly had found the impossible answer to the impossible question.” He started to write scenes around the old footage, fitting Leia’s dialogue into new contexts. He re-created the lighting to match the way Fisher had been lit. Bit by bit, she found her place in the new movie. “It was a bizarre kind of left side/right side of the brain sort of Venn diagram thing, of figuring out how to create the puzzle based on the pieces we had.” Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, appears in the movies as a Resistance officer named Lieutenant Connix, and at first Abrams deliberately wrote her out of the scenes in case it was too painful—but Lourd said no, she wanted to be in them. “And so, there are moments where they’re talking; there are moments where they’re touching,” Abrams says. “There are moments in this movie where Carrie is there, and I really do feel there is an element of the uncanny, spiritual, you know, classic Carrie, that it would have happened this way, because somehow it worked. And I never thought it would.”

The only other member of the surviving Skywalker bloodline—that we know of!—is Leia’s son and Luke’s former Padawan, the fallen Jedi Kylo Ren. Kylo probably isn’t capable of actual happiness, but things are definitely looking up for him: by the end of The Last Jedi he has taken control of the First Order and killed or at least outlived his actual father and both of his symbolic fathers-in-art, Luke and Supreme Leader Snoke. Sources at Disney also confirm that his long-rumored Knights of Ren will finally arrive in Skywalker. “And then he had been forging this maybe-bond with Rey,” Driver says, “and it kind of ends with the question in the air: is he going to pursue that relationship, or when the door of her ship goes up, does that also close that camaraderie that they were maybe forming?”

SANDBLAST Camera operator Colin Anderson readies a take for a chase sequence spotlighting the heroics of Chewbacca, BB-8, and Rey.

Darkness in the Star Wars movies tends to come from fear: for Anakin Skywalker, Kylo’s grandfather, it was his fear of losing his mother and his wife. After two movies it’s still not so easy to say exactly what Kylo Ren himself fears, even though he’s as operatically emo as Vader was stoic. He’s fixated on the past—he made a shrine to his own grandfather—but at the same time the past torments him. “Let the past die,” he tells Rey in The Last Jedi. “Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.”

Presumably whatever’s eating at Kylo started in his childhood: maybe being the kid of literally the two coolest people in the galaxy isn’t as fun as it sounds. Driver—who has obviously thought this through with a lot of rigor—points out that, as cool as they are, Han and Leia are both obsessively committed to lifestyles (smuggling, rebelling) that don’t leave much room for kids. He also points out that, unlike Luke and Rey, Kylo never got to go on a nifty voyage of self-discovery. Instead he grew up under the crushing pressure of massive expectations. “How do you form friendships out of that?” Driver says. “How do you understand the weight of that? And if there’s no one around you guiding you, or articulating things the right way … it can easily go awry.” By the emotional logic that governs the Star Wars universe—and also our own—Kylo Ren is going to have to confront the past, and his fears, whatever they are, or be destroyed by them.

Where Lucas’s trilogies tended to follow the roots and branches of the Skywalker family tree—their personal saga was the saga of the galaxy writ small—the new movies have a slightly wider aperture and take in a new generation of heroes. There’s Rey, of course, who sources say will have progressed in her training since the end of The Last Jedi to the point where it’s almost complete. With that taken care of, all she has to do is reconstitute the entire Jedi Order from scratch, because as far as we know she’s the Last One.

If Kylo Ren can’t be redeemed it will almost certainly fall to Rey to put him down, in spite of their maybe-bond. Their relationship is the closest thing the new trilogy has to a star-crossed love story on the order of Han and Leia: a source close to the movie says that their Force-connection will turn out to run even deeper than we thought. They’re uniquely suited to understand each other, but at the same time they are in every way each other’s inverse, down to Kylo’s perverse rejection of his family, which is the one thing Rey craves most. “I think there’s a part of Rey that’s like, dude, you fucking had it all, you had it all,” Ridley says. “That was always a big question during filming: you had it all and you let it go.”

PUNCH IT! In a historic reunion, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) retakes the helm of the Millennium Falcon, joined by Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Chewbacca, D-O, and BB-8. “He’s a survivor,” Williams says of Lando.

Rey is also, according to totally unsubstantiated Internet theories, a leading candidate to be the Skywalker of the title, pending some kind of head-snapping reveal about her ancestry. (For the record, the other leading unsubstantiated Internet theory has the “Skywalker” of the title referring to an entirely new order of Force users who will rise up and replace the Jedi.)

Rey seems ready for it all, or as ready as anybody could be. “It’s nice having that shot at the beginning of the teaser,” Ridley says, over avocado toast at a fancy Chicago hotel, “because I think it’s quite a good visual representation of where she is now: confident, calm, less fearful.… It’s still sort of overwhelming, but in a different way. It feels more right—less like inevitable and more like there’s a focus to the journey.” Focus is a good word for Rey: on-screen Ridley’s dramatic eyebrows form a wickedly sharp arrow of concentration. I asked Ridley what she’s thinking about when Rey is using her Force powers, and it turns out Rey seems focused because Ridley is actually seriously focused. “I literally visualize it. When I was lifting rocks I was visualizing the rocks moving. And then I was like, Oh, my God, I made it happen! And obviously there’s loads of rocks on strings, so, no, I didn’t. But I visualize that it’s really going on.” (That scene, which comes at the end of The Last Jedi, is another example of classic nondigital Star Wars effects: those were real rocks. “It was actually really amazing,” Ridley says. “It was sort of like a baby mobile.”)

There’s also Finn, the apostate Stormtrooper, played by the irrepressible Boyega, who in person practically vibrates with energy and speaks with a South London accent very different from Finn’s American one. In some ways Finn has gone through a complete character arc already: he confronted his past—by beating down his old boss, Captain Phasma—and found his courage and his moral center. He has had a tendency to panic, if not actively desert, in clutch situations, but at the Battle of Crait he proved that he was past that. “I think he’s just an active member of the Resistance now,” Boyega says. “Episode Eight, he couldn’t decide what team he was fighting for. But since then he’s made a clear decision.” (Cast members tend to refer to the Star Wars movies by their episode numbers: four is the original movie, seven is The Force Awakens, and so on.)

Finn still has to make a clear decision about his romantic situation, though. As Boyega put it at Star Wars Celebration: “Finn is single and willing to mingle!” The movies have been teasing his emotional connections with both Rey and the Resistance mechanic Rose Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran, with whom he shared a fleeting battlefield kiss in The Last Jedi. Rose seems like the more positive choice, given that she stops Finn from deserting early in the movie and saves his life at the Battle of Crait, and that the precedents for romantic involvements with Jedi are extremely bad. Tran is the first Asian-American woman to play a major role in a Star Wars movie, and she has been the target of both racist and sexist attacks online. But she has come through them as a fan favorite: when she appeared onstage in Chicago, she got a standing ovation.

Finally there’s Poe, who has mostly struggled with his own cocky impulsiveness, because he’s a loose-cannon-who-just-can’t-play-by-the-rules. Poe will have to step up and become a leader, because the Resistance is seriously short on officer material. In fact, some of that transformation will already have happened where The Rise of Skywalker picks up, which is about a year after the end of The Last Jedi. “There has been a bit of shared history that you haven’t seen,” Isaac says. “Whereas in the other films, Poe is this kind of lone wolf, now he’s really part of a group. They’re going out and going on missions and have a much more familiar dynamic now.” Star Wars has always been about friendship as much as it is about romance, and as of the end of The Last Jedi, Rey, Finn, and Poe are all finally in the same place for the first time since The Force Awakens.

The Rise of Skywalker introduces some new players, too. There’s a tiny one-wheeled droid called D-O and a large banana-slug alien named Klaud. Oh, and Naomi Ackie, Keri Russell, and Richard E. Grant have all joined the cast, though, again, we know practically nothing about who they’re playing. Going from being outside the Star Wars leviathan to being right in its belly can be a dizzying experience for a first-timer. “I actually tried to do this thing while we were filming,” Ackie says, “where I’d go one day, walking through London without seeing a Star Wars reference somewhere. And you can’t do it. You really can’t. So it’s extremely surreal to be in it and see how it works from the inside.

WELL MET Jordanian locals play the Aki-Aki, natives of the planet Pasaana.

If anything, Star Wars is only getting more omnipresent. The franchise under Lucas was a colossus, but he still ran it essentially as a private concern. He could make movies or not, as his muse dictated—he was beholden to no shareholders. But Star Wars under Disney makes the old Star Wars look positively quaint. Between 1977 and 2005, Lucasfilm released six Star Wars movies; when Skywalker premieres in December, Disney will have released five Star Wars movies in five years. “I think there is a larger expectation that Disney has,” Kennedy says. “On the other hand, though, I think that Disney is very respectful of what this is, and right from the beginning we talked about the fragility of this form of storytelling. Because it’s something that means so much to fans that you can’t turn this into some kind of factory approach. You can’t even do what Marvel does, necessarily, where you pick characters and build new franchises around those characters. This needs to evolve differently.”

A useful example of that fragility might be the relatively modest performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. Solo was a perfectly good Star Wars movie that has made almost $400 million worldwide—but it’s also, according to industry estimates, the first one to actually lose money. In response Disney has gently but firmly pumped the brakes: the first movie in the next Star Wars trilogy, which will be helmed by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the duo behind Game of Thrones, won’t arrive till Christmas of 2022, with further installments every other year after that. There’s no official word as to what stories they’ll tell, or when a second trilogy being developed by Rian Johnson will appear.

But even as the movies pause, Star Wars continues to colonize any and all other media. In addition to video games, comics, novels, cartoons, container-loads of merch, etc., there are not one but two live-action TV series in the pipeline for Disney+, Disney’s new streaming service: The Mandalorian, created by Jon Favreau, and an as-yet-untitled show about Cassian Andor from Rogue One. I have personally tried a virtual-reality experience called Vader Immortal,written and produced by Dark Knight screenwriter David Goyer. At the end of May, Disneyland will open Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, a massive, 14-acre, $1 billion attraction where you can fly the Millennium Falcon, be captured by the First Order, and drink a blue milk cocktail (it’s actually nondairy) and Coca-Cola products out of exclusive BB-8-shaped bottles at the cantina. It’s the largest single-theme expansion in the park’s history: Take that, Toy Story Land. The Disney World version will open in August.

You realize now that, under Lucas, Star Wars always slightly had the brakes on—we were always kept a little starved for product. With Disney driving, we’ll really find out how big Star Wars can get.

ENCORE Composer John Williams conducting the Star Wars score, drawing on themes and motifs he has woven across four decades. “I didn’t think there would ever be a second film,” he says.

When people talk about the new Star Wars movies, they tend to talk about how faithful they are to the originals. What’s harder to say is how exactly the new films are different—how movies like Skywalker keep their connection to the past while at the same time finding a way to belong to the world of 2019. Because regardless of whether or not Star Wars has changed since 1977, the world around it has, profoundly. “There’s a loss of innocence, a sense of innocence that existed in the 70s that I don’t think to any extent exists today,” Kennedy says. “I think that has to permeate the storytelling and the reaction to the stories and how they’re set up. It has to feel differently because we’re different.”

We know things, as a people and as an audience, that we didn’t know back then. For example: back then it felt sort of O.K. to like Darth Vader, because even though he was evil he was also incredibly cool, and the kind of fascism he represented felt like a bogeyman from the distant past. But now fascism is rising again, which makes the whole First Order subplot look super-prescient, but it also reminds us that fascism is not even slightly cool in real life. “Evil needs to feel and look very real,” Kennedy says, “and what that means today may not be as black-and-white as it might have been in 1977, coming off a kind of World War II sensibility.” In the Star Wars–verse, Dark and Light are supposed to balance each other, but in the real world they just mix together into a hopelessly foggy, morally ambiguous gray.

But the changes are liberating too. Star Wars doesn’t have to stay frozen in time; if anything it’s the opposite, if it doesn’t change it’ll die. It will turn into Flash Gordon. For Abrams, that means he can’t go through this process so haunted by the ghost of George Lucas (who is of course still alive, but you get what I’m saying) that he winds up doing a cinematic Lucas impression. At some point Abrams has to let Abrams be Abrams.

The Rise of Skywalker might be that point. “Working on nine, I found myself approaching it slightly differently,” he says. “Which is to say that, on seven, I felt beholden to Star Wars in a way that was interesting—I was doing what to the best of my ability I felt Star Wars should be.” But this time something changed. Abrams found himself making different choices—for the camera angles, the lighting, the story. “It felt slightly more renegade; it felt slightly more like, you know, Fuck it, I’m going to do the thing that feels right because it does, not because it adheres to something.”

There are a lot of small subtle ways that Abrams’s Star Wars is different from Lucas’s, but if there’s a standout, it’s the way that the new movies look at history. Lucas’s Star Wars movies are bathed in the deep golden-sunset glow of the idyllic Old Republic, that more civilized age—but the new movies aren’t like that. They’re not nostalgic. They don’t long for the past; they’re more about the promise of the future. “This trilogy is about this young generation, this new generation, having to deal with all the debt that has come before,” Abrams says. “And it’s the sins of the father, and it’s the wisdom and the accomplishments of those who did great things, but it’s also those who committed atrocities, and the idea that this group is up against this unspeakable evil and are they prepared? Are they ready? What have they learned from before? It’s less about grandeur. It’s less about restoring an old age. It’s more about preserving a sense of freedom and not being one of the oppressed.”

FROM THE ASHES Mark Hamill, as Luke, with R2-D2. Speculation is rampant about who will “rise” as the Skywalker of the movie’s title—and how that choice will reflect the way the world has changed since Star Wars debuted in 1977.

The new generation doesn’t have that same connection to the old days that Luke and Leia did. It’s not like their parents destroyed the Old Republic. We don’t even know who their parents were! They’re too young to remember the Empire. They’re just here to clean up the mess they got left with, the disastrous consequences of bad decisions made by earlier generations, and try to survive long enough to see the future. Is any of this resonating with 2019? Might there possibly be a generation around here somewhere that’s worried about the consequences of its own decisions for the future? Star Wars has never been and probably never should be a vehicle for political arguments, but to paraphrase Ursula Le Guin, great science fiction is never really about the future. It’s about the present.

You could even—if you’re into that kind of thing—imagine the story of the new Star Wars trilogy as a metaphor for the making of the new Star Wars trilogy. In fact, I was totally prepared—because I am into that kind of thing!—to try to push this overthought metafictional hot take onto Abrams … but I didn’t have to. Abrams got there ahead of me. “The idea of the movie is kind of how I felt going into the movie as a filmmaker,” he says, “which is to say that I’ve inherited all this stuff, great stuff, and good wisdom, and the good and the bad, and it’s all coming to this end, and the question is, do we have what it takes to succeed?”

Kylo Ren has it all wrong: you can’t bring back the past and become your own grandfather, and you can’t kill the past, either. All you can do is make your peace with it and learn from it and move on. Abrams is doing that with Star Wars—and meanwhile the Resistance is going to have to do that, too, if they really are going to bring this saga to an end. Because we’ve been here before, watching a band of scrappy rebels take down a technofascist empire, and it seemed to work fine at the time—but it didn’t last. The same goes for the Jedi and their struggle with the Sith. To end this story, really end it, they’re going to have to figure out the conditions of a more permanent victory over the forces of darkness. Their past was imperfect at best, and the present is a complete disaster—but the future is all before them. This time, finally, they’re going to get it right.

[megacircuit9universe]

Trumpty Dumpty

WED FEB 05 2020

There used to be a legend, in my family, that my mom’s grandfather on her mother’s side, was the son of an, “Indian squaw.”  Without getting too technical, research on Ancestry.Com about the woman in question, proved beyond all doubt that she was white as the driven snow.

Why?  Because she happened to be Mormon... and Mormons happen to be extremely serious about genealogy... and have been since long before the internet came along.

This woman, my great great grandmother, had a thoroughly researched family tree on Ancestry going back to the Mayflower*... as do all Mormons, because they take history seriously.

I am certain this is why Mitt Romney, today turned out to be the one and only Republican who voted to convict and remove Donald Trump.

...Because while all this talk about how they’ll be viewed by history rings hollow to every other GOP Senator currently in Congress, to Mitt Romney, it means something, because he knows his descendants will never forget who he was, or what he did with his life... and that to join in on the acquittal of Trump would bring shame to his family for generations to come.

And he knew that... because we all know, that nobody in the near future, or the distant future, or the very remote future, will ever think of Donald Trump as anything but a shitty person, a terrible President, and an appallingly myopic world leader.

But yes... there was no flash removal of Trump today.  He was acquitted, to the shock of  nobody.  But it is worth mentioning that the 48 Senators who voted to convict and remove Trump, represent eighteen million more people than the fifty-two Senators who acquitted him.

Eighteen million.

Immediately after his acquittal, Trump tweeted a CGI video flying over Trump campaign signs that said, “Trump 2020,” then, “Trump 2024,” then 28, 30, 40, and so on until beyond the year 9000 or some bullshit, before ending on Trump 4EVA.

I saw this, passing by a TV at work today, an it spooked me pretty good, because... well, here at MegaCircuit9Universe we talk a lot about time travel and in our model, he (his hyperversal twins on all worldlines) are well known for always attempting to, and sometimes succeeding at, becoming a dictator for life.

News folk passed this tweet off as a simple troll, as the video was a modified version of one created last year by Time Magazine (of all magazines) to promote an article about how Trumpism will outlast Trump.

I didn’t read that article, so I can’t comment on it, but the point here is, that was not just a simple troll.  That was Trump, surviving one of the final checks on his power, putting us on notice of his intention to be our new dictator for life.

I wonder what the AI bot coalition is thinking about that today... especially since yesterday, at the State of the Union address, he continued to crow about, and take full credit for, the booming economy... that they continuously keep from derailing... because for most of them, it is the primary objective.

I would presume that they, as bots, would seek to exhaust every other possible option available, before actually allowing the economy to tank.  And... there are still other options to exhaust in the quest to dislodge Trump from power... within a reasonable time frame.**

This same truth is what likely lead Speaker Pelosi to, just at the end of Trump’s ridiculous SOTU speech (in which he stopped to administer surprise gifts to audience members, encourage cheers of four more years, and in general made the affair a circus of lies) To tear up her copy of the speech, on camera, standing directly behind him.

I should stop to note here that his SOTU, for as crazy as it was, was quite positive in tone... so, very much the opposite of the one I recently suggested might flip the Senate against him... one full of wrath and nonsensical raving.

At any rate, Pelosi’s stunt of ripping up the speech had the immediate effect of stealing all the press coverage about SOTU for the rest of the night and into today.  From the minute the speech was over, the only thing anybody in the media or online wanted to talk about was this stunt of hers... with it going viral on social media in the form of animated GIFs... being praised by the left, and decried by the right.

But many now speculate that this was also a signal that the House is not done with Trump.  Indeed, some say the whole Impeachment trial, it’s timing delayed by a month, thanks to the Speaker, has been a kind of opening act to warm the audience up for the headliner act... which will be about court cases landing against his obstruction of subpoenas, his taxes coming out finally, more FOIA requests coming to fruition, more crimes coming to light, etc.

It doesn’t require any aluminum foil to imagine that such a second act... or third act, if you count the Mueller probe as act one... could finally bring the roof down on Trump’s head in this, an election year.

We all know the Ukraine shakedown was just the tip of an enormous iceberg, which, beneath the water’s surface, is the size of Mauna Kea... and that a shit ton of it will be coming to light soon... as courts strike down his past attempts at damage control... grant information requests to newspapers... as oversight hearings continue in the house... as books are published... and on.

What’s different now, after the impeachment trial, is that we all now also know which Senators are consciously complicit in Trump’s grand crime scheme, and it’s cover up.

We’ve had an idea for a while which House Representatives were complicit (Nunes), but that’s not such a big deal anymore, as we got back the House in 2018, but it took this impeachment trial to expose those poker faced Senators.

Senators play things a lot closer to the vest (Except for McConnell and Graham) which is natural, given that there are only 100 of them, and each one has a lot more power than the average House Rep... thus, a lot more power to lose, if they dirty their shoes in the muck that Reps will occasionally roll about in like swine.

The Impeachment essentially put a gun to their heads... confess your loyalty, Trump or the Constitution... because it cannot be both.

And now that 52 of them confessed, beyond any doubt, that their loyalty is to Trump, over the Constitution... well, now they’re all fair game, when it comes to exposing the greater bulk of that corruption iceberg.  

Lev Parnas named Lindsey Graham as being in the loop with the Ukraine extortion scheme... and Bolton named Cipollone.  And now you can bet your ass a lot more Senators and White House cabinet members will be exposed as being in that loop... and other loops... all looping around Trump... who is looping around Putin.

And I’ll leave the impeachment and SOTU analysis there for tonight.

Because I still have to talk about Iowa!

-------------------------------

So, in chronological order, on February 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th, it was... Super Bowl, Iowa, SOTU, and Impeachment.

Ignoring the Super Bowl, which had no real impact on anything here, Iowa, back on the 3rd, is still not resolved tonight as I write.

The Iowa Democratic Party refused to release any election results at all, the night of the caucuses... citing bullshit technical problems.  The next day, they released 62% of the results.  Then today... released up to 81% of the results... which were found, by sharp eyed election officials to have glaring errors, which IDP then, grudgingly corrected... while still not giving us 100% of the results at the time of writing.

In a nutshell, the original excuse of technical problems with some app they were using doesn’t hold water two days later, because there should have been plenty of time by now to count the paper record by hand, and so it does look as though the IDP simply did not like the results on election night... and has been scrambling to finesse them, ever since.

Why did they not like the results?  Because, as I predicted, Joe Biden bit the dust, in this first primary election of the season, coming in a distant fourth place. But even worse... Bernie Sanders knocked it out of the park.

That, for the DNC, is not an acceptable outcome, and so, one would assume, they put pressure on IDP to hold off on announcing and, please double, triple, and quadruple check everything, until... they get something they can live with.

We saw the DNC do this in 2016, when Hillary was their darling, so... the only thing surprising here, is the level of desperation... over-reaching this far to suppress the results, this early on in the game.

The Faustian bargain the DNC (and IDP) are soo sloowly arriving at, is that Pete Buttigieg, who seems to have come in second in reality, should be presented to the world as having come in first... because if there’s no amount of finesse that can save Joe Biden from his pitiful numbers, then hand the centrist torch to  Buttigieg.  But no way in hell can Bernie Sanders get the political momentum he, and his voters earned out of this!

This does tend to expose how corrupt the DNC still is, and serve to remind us how we got Donald Trump in the first place... after they played this game in 2016, manufacturing consent for Hillary Clinton that did not exist on the ground.

But this time around, it’s not gonna play.  

It’s not gonna wash.

It’s not gonna work.

It won’t work because, Bernie has too much of a head of steam, and there is nobody else in the field that can stop him.  

Warren looked good until she revealed that she was not really for Medicare for all, but just some public option compromise bullshit.  She’s been failing ever since that reveal, and her lame attempt to cast Bernie as a sexist hurt her even worse.

Biden, as predicted earlier in this blog, just has no game, and is running out of money quick.  He’ll be gone before Super Tuesday in March.

Buttigieg blew his wad on Iowa and at the moment is simply a centrist place holder for Biden.  All of his support will go to Bloomberg, as soon as Bloomberg enters the race in March.

This will leave it between Bernie and Bloomberg through the spring... but Bloomberg has no legs.

How do I know that?  Well, as a billionaire trying to buy the election, he’s hemorrhaging millions out of pocket right now, just to stay relevant.  And, while being a billionaire,  he can afford to hemorrhage millions forever, without feeling the slightest bit faint, it’s a sign of failure that he has to go this route.

Where are his donors?  He doesn’t have any because he has no ground game at all.  All he has are ads.  This is just a publicity stunt at it’s heart.

Obama, famous for his relentless ground game, blew away this kind of media blitz, money-is-no-object, opposition both times out.  In his case they were being funded by SuperPacs, but it’s the same strategy of just pouring millions into ads without knocking on any doors.

Bernie Sanders has an even more relentless ground game than Obama ever had, without being funded by any corporate donors or super pacs... with more money than any of his rivals (other than Bloomberg) coming from the donations of regular wage workers.

He also has one magic card that even Trump can never possess... the 18 to 45 vote!

Trump won in 2016 by cobbling together a coalition of white schizophrenics, criminally insane white nationalists, Book of Revelation lunatics, and a freight train of garden variety conservative cowards, groomed by their elders to worship whoever seems to hold the scepter of authority no matter what they say or stand for.

That was a clever way to wring the last ounces of water there was left out of the damp cloth that is the white, conservative, male vote, in a post Obama universe.

But!..

Those hard won numbers in just the right districts, in just the right states... pale in comparison to the numbers available to he who can unlock the all-race, all-gender, 18 to 45 vote.

And Bernie has done that, this time around. 

There is opposition to him, among the centrist boomers, and even some GenX and so-called, X-ennials... fearing that his nomination is just what Trump wants, and will seal our doom.  

But even in the Primary season to come... that’s not gonna make a difference.  By the Convention, the DNC will have no other choice than to nominate Sanders.

That’s my prediction.

Okay... extra long entry for an extra crazy start to February.

I’m going to bed.

*When you go back enough generations, everybody has some claim to a Mayflower passenger in their family tree... just as everybody can claim to be a descendant of Genghis Khan.  

It’s just a quirk of the fact that every generation you go back, you are covering exponentially more people.

The point here is that my great great grandmother had an exhaustive family tree researched by many others... going back to the point where it becomes meaningless (mayflower) which guarantees beyond any doubt, she was not an, “Indian squaw,” as family legend contended.

** Economy Bots seek to unseat Trump because he has abused the legacy Presidential power of tariffs, which artificially changes the prices of things in a way they cannot control.

Thus, the reasonable time frame for removing Trump, is... sooner than he can tank the economy all by himself... which, since the inverted yield curve of mid 2018, has meant:  as soon as possible.

[rachelking2819]

Crisis on Infinite Earths  - Review part 4

Well well well…. 6 years after crisis’ first mention we got to see the most anticipated and ambitious crossover on tv (in my opinion). Another month later and the event has been wrapped up with a pretty bow around it. Well… kind of, there is a whole lot of fallout to deal with for each of our beloved heroes. But wow what an adventure it has been. I am writing this with the last two parts and the Flash portion freshly in my mind, so bear with me please. Let’s get into it shall we?

There we are, one month later, ready for crisis to wrap up.

Our heroes are at the Vanishing Point and are standing at the edge of their sanity. The ones who seem to keep it together the most are Ryan and Lex as they work on a device to get out of where they are. And for some reason Barry has been missing for the last month. Not to worry tho, five minutes in and he crashes into the room declaring he was in the speedforce. He also revealed to have left two seconds ago, but really it has been a month. This led me to believe that he almost got lost in the speedforce, that he couldn’t seem to stop running, because he doesn’t have his lightning rod Iris anymore to keep him grounded to reality. I was sorely mistaken as nobody ever commented on his statement again and Iris was never even mentioned in the last two parts. Maybe it will be mentioned in the upcoming Flash episodes, but I highly doubt it.

Moving on, out of nowhere Oliver appears as ‘Spectre’ and claims to be parallel to time or something and he knows almost everything, providing the team with an answer as to where they need to go. A whole lot gibberish he then says, and I am lost. I am confused, I do not know what is going on. He somehow also has a connection to the speedforce, making Barry almost beg to give him a boost so he can enter the speedforce again and find a way out.

The funniest thing then happens, he taps Barry’s forehead. There is a beat of silence and Oliver says to have unlocked Barry’s “full potential”. While that may be what happened, the tap on the forehead was so dry and out of nowhere. It made me laugh out loud.

With Barry’s potential unlocked, he drops of Ryan, Kara and Lex where they need to be and takes the rest with him into the speedforce to who knows where, the Dawn of Time, I guess. And then, the most amazing ish happened. The Flash met The Flash! This is no joke. DCEU Flash and DCTV Flash met and talked for over a minute on the crossover! Ezra Miller was actually on set in his suit and acted as Barry Allen on tv with Grant Gustin as his co-star! To say I was surprised, would be the understatement of the decade, which is saying a lot as the decade has just begun. The first thirty seconds I was screaming in surprise, wonder, excitement, astonishment and full out geeking/fangirling.

Further, this episode got fun call backs to significant moments of Arrow, such as Barry and Oliver’s first meeting and Sara’s death with Laurel by her side.

Again, my compliments to the stunt/fight sequence coordinators. A beautiful exciting fight sequence was shown. A pity we didn’t get to see Oliver or Spectre, or whatever he is now, in his traditional Green arrow suit and fight for one last one time. Don’t get me wrong, he fought with Anti-Monitor. It wasn’t what we are used to tho. Oliver, our human superhero, fought with superpowers, which was odd to witness for me. I don’t know about you, but I did not like it at all. Oliver was always this hero that had no powers and that was what made him special for me. He found other ways to be useful and effective. So, for him to have powers with his last hoorah felt wrong. All of these beams and explosions of light around him, felt wrong. It felt as if I was introduced to a new character and couldn’t properly say goodbye when Oliver took his last breath.  

With Anti-Monitor defeated for now and the multiverse restoring, Oliver takes his final breath. It was heartfelt and nicely done, but no tearjerker for me tho. Quite honestly, I was ready for Arrow to be over and didn’t have heavy feelings for it anymore.

What did you think of this part of Crisis on Infinite Earths? Did I miss something worth mentioning? Let me know, till next time!

[kazekohitori]

This is a story I wrote in four parts for myself and my friends to help with the loss of our favorite character.

Please read CastielXStacie Chapters One and Two before reading this as they take place before CastielXAllanah part one.

CastielXAllanah Part One

Allanah sat outside the corner Starbucks, sipping her pumpkin spice coffee and perusing the Supernatural Edition of TV Guide magazine. Emma sat in her stroller happily nibbling away on a chocolate cake pop, much of which was on her face and hands rather than in her mouth. The warm layers of wool covering her head and body would not keep her from relishing the chocolatey goodness. The late autumn weather was steadily growing colder. It wouldn’t be long until the streets would be lined with snow and Christmas music would be playing in every store.

It had taken her three weeks to find a copy of the magazine, the tv schedule was almost obsolete; Supernatural had ended that Thursday. Allanah, just as her friends from the ‘Misha’s Angels’ group, had been upset with Castiel’s passing. Losing a loved one was always hard. Even if Castiel was just a character in a tv show, he was real to Allanah’s heart. She loved him. Fully and completely. If he could just be real.

She thought of her friend, Stacie, and how she had become a bit obsessed after Castiel’s death. She wondered if Stacie might have gone off the deep end. The last thing she had said to the group was, “I’ll find a way.” And the last thing she had said to Allanah was, “I need you to believe. Believe with everything you are.” Despite her attempts to contact her Stacie had been silent.

“The last scene I shot was really Castiel’s last scene,” Allanah read Misha Collins’ response in the article. “It was a goodbye for both the fictional character and for me. It was very intense—a lot of tears.” She suddenly felt as if there was a body uncomfortably close to her, almost as if someone was reading over her shoulder. Feeling irked by the audacity of a person to get this close during a worldwide pandemic Allanah was ready to spit fire. Head lifting to give the insensitive person a dirty look via reflection in the window, she instead saw the persons back was to her. Yes, he was disturbingly close, but he was paying no mind to her or Emma or, in truth, any one around her. Indeed, he looked confused. His head turned in all directions as though he had just become aware of his surroundings. The longer Allanah stared at the man’s reflection the more she started to see a resemblance to Misha, or, rather, Castiel.

She turned in her seat to get a better look just as he turned to face the coffee shop. Now she could see his face, those beautiful eyes that she would know anywhere, she was certain it was him. “Misha?” The quiet question slipped from her lips before she caught herself. What was he doing here? He had tweeted an hour earlier from his home in Washington. How was he here? And why was he dressed as Castiel? There was no Supernatural promotion or event going on anywhere near here.

His eyes fell on Allanah, only now noticing she was there, then to Emma, who mirrored his confused look. “No. You’ve confused me with someone else.” He continued to glance around.

Allanah couldn’t help but eye him, he was just so ‘Castiel-like’. Several thoughts came to mind to rationalize what she was witnessing.

One: this could be Misha’s way of mingling with the common people. But that would be impossibly stupid since he is most known for wearing this ensemble and therefore be easily recognized.

Two: this was some prank show stunt that Misha was taking part in. If so, how incredibly mean of him to do this to his fans after their loss.

Three: this was a doppelgänger and, if it was, Allanah should marry him quick before someone else snatched him up.

He interrupted her thoughts when he turned back to her and asked sternly, “Where am I?”

“Starbucks?” What could Misha, or this spot-on Misha-lookalike, be on? Drugs were the only answer to how he could be so lost. When he continued to squint at her in Castiel-like confusion, she continued, “Painesville?” She paused. “Ohio.”

“Oh.” He glanced around at the buildings again. “Thank you,” he turned to walk away.

“Wait,” Allanah surprised herself at the sudden cry. If it had been any other strange character on the street she would be happy to see the back of him. But this guy, he was just too Castiel like. If this was a prank, if this was Misha, heck, even if it wasn’t, she needed to know more. “Are you okay?” She stood, folding her arms and magazine closed across her chest.

The man stared at the magazine taking in the image of Jared, Jensen, Misha, and Alex. He gradually approached, stretching out his hand, “Wh...” he whispered almost inaudibly, “May I?”

Allanah glanced down and then handed him the magazine. She watched him flip through the pages not sure of what she was witnessing.

He lifted his head and looked around as if realizing something. “Thanks,” he said tersely, handing back the TV Guide and turning to walk away.

“Wait! No, you don’t get to do that.” She grabbed her coffee and purse, pushing Emma in her stroller after the guy. “Who are you? If this is some kind of prank I want to know.”

He rounded on her. His stare was ice cold and menacing. “If this is your way of torturing me, it’s sadly lacking.”

“Wha-?”

“I have killed my best friend hundreds of times. I have been pulled apart at the molecular level; more than once. I have been tortured by Lucifer, Naomi, Hannah and Malachi. If this is a twisted lead-in to the real torture, a way to lure me into a false sense of security, I won’t be fooled.”

Allanah gaped at him. “What the Hell are you talking about?”

He leaned in close. Allanah felt herself flush at the proximity and couldn’t decide if she was fearful or turned on. “Reveal your true form,” he growled.

“Seriously?” She took a step back, “TV show, dude.” She gestured around them, “This is reality. Planet Earth? Maybe you’d like to come back now?”

He straightened himself and squinted at her. Surely if this was the being of the Empty it would be reveling in it’s prize caught within the web. Could it be he was in an alternate universe? Had Chuck missed one?

Several moments passed before Allanah finally sighed. “Look, I want to help you, but you need to tell me what’s going on. Is this a prank or something?”

“No.”

“Then why are you dressed like Castiel?”

He glanced down at his outfit unsure of how to respond.

“Are you on something? Do you need a hospital? Or a psychiatric ward?”

“No,” he rebounded, “I’m- I am Castiel.”

“Right,” Allanah sighed sarcastically, “And that’s why you appeared out of nowhere, as if you had been blasted through time and space, with that look of total confusion and no idea how you came to be.”

He nodded silently, intrigued by this woman’s capacity for understanding.

“Okay, Castiel,” she started, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Before he could stop himself he blurted out, “Saying goodbye to Dean.”

“Uh-huh,” she sighed incredulously. “Then what?”

“Nothing. I was here.”

“Right, well, Castiel died weeks ago. Millions mourned his death.”

“Millions?” A look of genuine surprise crossed his features.

“He was a favorite of many fans. Many of whom would not appreciate this sick joke,” she gestured to his outfit.

“I’m confused.”

“This! Cosplaying and LARPing is one thing. Pretending is fine, but taking it this far? Enough already.”

Realization striking him he sighed, “what must I do to prove my identity?”

Allanah scoffed. “Really? God Almighty, you need help. I can’t believe I was willing- You are incredible, you know that?” She started to push the stroller away. “You want to prove it? How about a fucking miracle? Think you can pull that off?” At that second the display of books outside the bookstore to her left suddenly slid in front of the stroller, blocking her path. She attempted to maneuver around it only to have it move and block her once more.

Her heart stopped. She slowly turned to look over her shoulder. He stood gazing at her, waiting for her to move again. She turned back to the bookcase trying to regain her composure. Her brain became fuzzy with the actuality that this was Castiel. In the flesh. In this world. “How-” The word whispered before she could formed a proper sentence.

He approached her cautiously. “If this is an alternate universe, as I believe it to be, and it was missed by Chuck, then I’m going to need help. I need to find Sam and Dean.”

She turned to face him. Looking on him, knowing he was Castiel pulled at her heart. She threw her arms around him without thinking as tears welled up in her eyes, pulling him into a tight embrace.

Surprised by the sudden gesture Castiel stood still, unsure of how exactly to respond. There was something about this woman. Though they had never met before, this embrace was familiar. It felt as if he belonged there, as if he had always belonged there. His time with the Winchesters, his life in the other universe, his trials and tribulations, all of it seemed as if it had been a lucid and vivid dream. He felt as though he had woken from that dream, into this world with this woman who was his home. Overtaken by this burst of emotion he wrapped his arms around her waist and sank his head into her shoulder, breathing her in. As if he had traveled across the universe to be with her, he was finally home.

She loosened her hold on him and pulled away enough to look into his somber face. “I’m sorry, Castiel. For everything you’ve been through. I’m so sorry.” She cupped his cheek as she gazed into his eyes.

A small smile crept to his lips. It was strange to think that she could know everything about him and yet her eyes seemed to say she did. And all the pain he had suffered, all his loss, somehow seemed to dissolve in her embrace.

Allanah suddenly remembered that while she knew Castiel he knew nothing of her and quickly released him. Although, it almost seemed, a sadness crossed his features at the loss of contact. “Ahem,” she cleared her throat, “it will be difficult to find Sam and Dean as they don’t exist. But then again, neither should you. I’ll help in any way I can but...” she sighed, refocusing her attitude, “Where should we start?”

Gratitude filled Castiel’s features. “How about your name?”

Allanah smiled brightly, “Call me Lanah.”

[biofunmy]

Elon Musk Can’t Lose

Alex Spiro was on a roll. The 6-foot-something attorney stood imposingly at the lectern in the Los Angeles federal court with the confidence of a guy compelled to remind people he lettered in high school varsity basketball for four years and almost walked onto his college team. His demeanor was casual — he dropped a few “dudes” that belied his Harvard law degree — but forceful. His only obvious weakness seemed to be the brace on his right foot, the result of an injury sustained during a pickup game.

A high-profile trial lawyer who worked for the CIA before assembling a client list that included New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Mick Jagger, and Jay-Z, Spiro was on the clock for another billionaire defendant on a Friday last December. And having lured the jury in with a fantastical closing argument about his client’s supposed generosity and heroics, Spiro threw in some flattery for the person paying his bills.

“[The plaintiff] can say whatever he wants about Elon Musk,” he said. “No one can bring people together like he can to do the impossible.”

Over the past few decades, Musk promised to land a reusable rocket on a robotic ocean barge, and then he went and did it. He dreamed up a tunnel under Los Angeles to counter the city’s congested highways, and then founded a company to dig it. He’s also mapped out an electric car future and is well on his way toward achieving it. His admirers laud him as the real-life Tony Stark, a once-in-a-generation genius with a force of will that can make the seemingly impossible possible. But as a judge, eight jurors, two sizable legal teams, a dozen reporters, and I learned late last year, Musk’s uncanny ability to transform far-fetched ideas into attainable ones can cut both ways.

We spent a week in the courtroom listening to a legal case as absurd as one of Musk’s wildest moon shots. How did we get there? A quick recap: In July 2018, Musk tweeted that a British cave explorer was a “pedo guy,” faced a wave of criticism, kind of apologized, received a legal threat, doubled down on the accusation, sent a reporter (me) an email suggesting the Brit was a “child rapist,” hired a phony private investigator to prove it, got sued, and, after more than a year of legal wrangling, ended up in court. Never mind that some legal experts thought the case was a clear example of defamation, that his advisers told him to settle, and that he had far better things to do with his time. Musk was going to fight.

In doing so, the billionaire entrepreneur brought the same drive that pushed electric cars into the mainstream to a legal dispute over his own bad behavior. And in typical fashion, Musk defied the odds. He won.

Musk’s legal victory over Vernon Unsworth – a previously unknown Brit who became a legitimate hero while helping rescue a boys soccer team and their coach from a Thailand cave — will rank low on his list of achievements. But in many ways, it is far more revealing of Musk than any of the technological feats that land him in the headlines.

The weeklong trial showcased Musk’s bending of reality, a skill that’s part of his mythology but rarely seen outside his work. It’s something he uses to convince an engineer to perfect a car part for days on end or push a public relations staffer to disappear a bad story, and it’s often rescued him from the brink of failure. In Elon’s world, there is only Elon’s way. “You can always tell when someone’s left an Elon meeting: they’re defeated,” an anonymous SpaceX employee wrote on Quora in 2016. “The reason for this is that Elon’s version of reality is highly skewed.”

“Elon’s version of reality is highly skewed.”

Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was renowned for his “reality distortion field,” an unusual ability to persuade employees and followers that his seemingly impossible visions were worth realizing. Musk has one too; in the case of Unsworth, he used it to convince himself that a critic was a pedophile simply because he happened to be an older white man living in Thailand. Then, when threatened with a defamation lawsuit, Musk and his lawyers built out an alternate reality: one where he played a key role in the cave rescue, where “pedo guy” was a common playground insult, and where he did not attempt to destroy a hero who had criticized him

“Elon has an uncanny ability to tell a story he wants to be true, convince himself that it has to be true, and then convince others,” one former Tesla executive told me after the trial.

That’s exactly what happened in Vernon Unsworth v. Elon Musk. Though a simple online search suggests that Unsworth’s name might be forever linked to pedophilia, Musk won the case by arguing that his “pedo guy” attacks on the caver didn’t explicitly mention his name, and therefore could not constitute defamation. Musk and Spiro declined to comment for this story.

It took the jury less than hour to return a verdict. As reporters rushed back into the courtroom, where phones were banned, I watched from outside, waiting to tweet the decision. Before the judge could strike his gavel, a gaggle of TV producers rushed out of the court’s double doors yelling. Unsworth sat stone-faced, his attorneys slumped in their chairs. Spiro stood with a half-blank stare, almost as if he couldn’t believe he had pulled it off.

Musk rose, nodding.

“Elon Musk is not liable for damages,” I tweeted, watching the billionaire through the glass. “He won.”

Nurphoto / Getty Images

Musk speaks at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, on Oct. 10, 2019.

On July 13, 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published an interview with Musk in which he promised to behave better. Remarking on his Twitter account, on which he had attained a new level of bombast in the preceding months, the Tesla CEO admitted he should probably stop engaging with his critics.

“I have made the mistaken assumption — and I will attempt to be better at this — of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season,” he said. “That is my mistake. I will correct it.”

It took less than two days for Musk to break that promise. On the morning of the 15th, he awoke early, opened Twitter, and clicked a link to a video interview from CNN. Musk hit play.

“He can stick his submarine where it hurts,” a man named Vernon Unsworth said of Musk. Unsworth, a Brit living in Thailand and an expert on the country’s Tham Luang cave system, was talking about the metal tube Musk had built to rescue members of a Thai boys soccer team who had been trapped in the cave for 18 days. Unsworth was convinced it couldn’t work and was irked at what he viewed as opportunism. “Just a PR stunt,” he said.

Musk watched the 43-second clip again, and again — growing increasingly angry that a man he’d never met had mocked what he viewed as a good faith effort to aid children in mortal danger. He was particularly sensitive to Unsworth’s remarks because he’d faced similar criticism on Twitter already. And he was in a particularly foul mood because his contributions to Republican lawmakers had recently dragged the company into another lousy news cycle. Musk typed Unsworth’s name into Google, followed it with a search for “Chiang Rai” — a locale near the site of the rescue — and reviewed the results. Then he tapped out a thread on Twitter, where he had some 22 million followers at the time.

“Never saw this British expat guy who lives in Thailand (sus) at any point when we were in the caves,” he wrote in a response to one critic, before saying that he would make a video showing his “mini-sub” was fully operational. “Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.”

To understand Musk’s crass and disproportionate response to Unsworth’s quip, you have to go back to that spring — a particularly rough one for the Tesla CEO. The company was in the middle of what Musk had sagaciously predicted would be “production hell,” and things had not been going smoothly. The crushing pressure to ship cars led to reported missteps — substandard factory conditions, high rates of worker injury, wasted materials, executive departures. And those missteps led to investigations by the likes of BuzzFeed News and plenty of unwanted media coverage.

The scrutiny put Musk in a foul mood, according to three people who worked with him at the time, and his increasingly acidic stream of consciousness bled out into real-life interactions. He called an analyst “boneheaded” on an earnings call. He tried to personally destroy an employee who leaked information about the company. And when he wasn’t working he retreated to Twitter, a place where he could “bypass journo bs,” dish on supposed Big Oil conspiracies, and flirt with the idea of a site to rate reporters.

“It started to spiral out of control,” said one person close to Musk as he quadrupled his tweeting that May. That activity, the person said, was compounded by his time in “production hell” where he put in long hours and slept in a factory conference room to meet projections.

Linh Pham / Getty Images

Thai officers supervise the rescue mission inside Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai, Thailand, June 28, 2018.

Musk learned about the catastrophe in Thailand through Twitter. On June 23, 12 young soccer players and their coach became trapped in Thailand’s Tham Luang cave system after heavy rains flooded it. Some 12 days later, divers called in by Unsworth, who had spent years exploring the caves and was among the first on the scene, found them alive, trapped in an air pocket.

In court, Musk testified that “dozens of people” on Twitter had asked him to assist in the rescue. He initially turned down the requests, thinking the Thai government had it under control. But on July 6, Musk committed to sending engineers from SpaceX and the Boring Company, his tunneling startup, to Thailand after what he described as “active conversations with the Thai government.”

Following an email exchange with a British diver on-site named Rick Stanton, Musk proposed rescuing the boys in a rigid metallic tube, or mini submarine, large enough to tightly enclose “a 15-year-old boy.” But by the time he tweeted footage of the device being tested in a California swimming pool, the main effort to extract the boys, which involved sedating them and swimming them out, was well underway. Nevertheless, Rick Stanton — a diver on the scene who gave Musk some rough specifications — urged the billionaire to continue development as a just-in-case measure.

Later, after the trial, Stanton would say it wasn’t until he saw photos and video of the tube in action that he thought it had no chance of working. Reviewing footage of a test that happened in a sunny California pool, he noticed issues with buoyancy and air capacity. Compounding these concerns, the testing conditions were not at all comparable to the narrow, murky conditions of the cave.

“I think [Musk] had worrying intentions,” said Stanton, who had been prevented from discussing the tube at length on the stand in December. “Surely, there must have been a point when these engineers decided it was not possible … and he decided to bring it on-site anyway and showboat.”

On July 9, Musk dropped off the mini sub in Thailand. He took a tour of the caves before departing for his hotel and eventually heading to Shanghai for business. Musk never met Unsworth or Stanton. The tube was never tested on-site and was ultimately never used.

But shortly after the last boys were extracted, the tube became a lightning rod for renewed criticism. And Musk didn’t take it well. When Narongsak Osatanakorn, a provincial governor who oversaw part of the rescue, said the tube didn’t really fit with the mission, Musk dismissed Osatanakorn, tweeting that he wasn’t a true rescue expert. (Musk’s staff later unsuccessfully pressured the Thai Consulate in Los Angeles to lobby Osatanakorn to reverse his statement.)

By the time he watched Unsworth’s CNN interview, Musk had been getting blasted online for the mini sub for five days straight. His tweets about the British caver took that vitriol to another level. “Cave Diver Criticizes Musk’s Kid-Sub Rescue Plan. Musk Suggests He’s A Pedophile,” read one headline from the Los Angeles Times, while Bloomberg News went with “Musk Labels U.K. Diver As Pedophile In Spat Over Thai Rescue.” To hundreds of publications around the world, the target of Musk’s ire and the implication of his comment seemed quite clear.

A few days later, Musk deleted the tweets and issued a half-hearted apology. But the damage was done. His posts had been screenshotted, shared, written up, and seen by millions. He couldn’t take them back.

Apu Gomes / Getty Images

Vernon Unsworth (center) and his attorneys, Mark Stephens (left) and L. Lin Wood (right), speak to reporters outside the US district courthouse in Los Angeles, Dec. 6, 2019.

In December, as court commenced on a Tuesday in balmy Southern California — 506 days after Musk’s “pedo guy” tweet — the only thing missing in Vernon Unsworth v. Elon Musk was the defendant. Ten floors below the courtroom, photographers and TV reporters had spent the morning jostling for position only to be disappointed when the billionaire failed to show up for opening arguments.

For Musk’s critics, the defamation trial was a barometer: Could a powerful man with virtually unlimited resources be held accountable for his shitty behavior? A little more than a year ago, Musk had been accused of lying about having the necessary funding to take his electric car company private at $420 a share; he had pushed misleading projections about Model 3 deliveries and was being investigated for discouraging workers from unionizing. Around that time, Tesla was also undercounting workers’ injuries at its factories.

Musk walked away from all that with a half-hearted spanking: a $20 million fine (he’s currently worth $34 billion) and an order to relinquish his role as Tesla chair (he remains CEO). In Unsworth’s civil case, former employees who’d been treated unfairly, short sellers who were out for blood, and aspiring Tesla owners still waiting for their car, saw the chance for catharsis. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley wondered how the hell the case had gotten this far. It seemed a senseless waste of time and bandwidth for someone who rarely had either.

Jury selection was a case study in Musk’s influence. Of the 40 or so prospective jurors, about a fifth were dismissed for having some connection to the billionaire. Among those who departed was a man with an upcoming interview at SpaceX. Among those who remained included an owner of two Teslas.

Judge Stephen V. Wilson’s instructions to the three-man, five-woman jury were straightforward. Defamation, among the hardest allegations to prove in a US court, could only be established if Musk’s tweets met five criteria:

1) Whether he said his statements to more than one person other than Unsworth.

2) Whether a reasonable person could understand the tweets were about Unsworth.

3) Whether a reasonable person understood the tweets meant Unsworth was a pedophile.

4) Whether the statements were false.

5) Whether the Tesla CEO failed to use reasonable care when determining the truth or falsity of the statements.

In opening arguments, only the defense seemed to take the judge’s jury instructions to heart. The plaintiff trotted out a junior member of the legal team who gave a dry, matter-of-fact explanation of what had happened and asserted that “pedo guy” was a clear accusation of sexual activity with children. Arguing for the defense, Spiro took a different approach. This was “an argument between two men,” he said, with “insults understood as insults, not literal statements of fact.” He even had a nice acronym for the main offending tweet: JDART, a “joking, deleted, apologized for, responsive tweet.”

After opening arguments, Musk arrived, entering court accompanied by four guards to take the stand. Elevated in the witness box, he spoke with a halting, childish nervousness, crossing and uncrossing his arms and pursing his lips as the plaintiff’s lead attorney, L. Lin Wood, began his questioning.

“Twitter is a free-for-all where there’s all sorts of things that sort of aren’t true, untrue, half-true, uh, where people engage in sort of verbal combat effectively,” Musk said. “Uh, yeah. I mean, there’s everything on Twitter.”

There was a Trumpian quality to Musk’s answers that recalled what his former business partner Peter Thiel said about then-candidate before the 2016 presidential election: Take him “seriously, but not literally.” Musk has used his Twitter seriously, and the company listed the account as a source for information in a 2013 financial filing. He frequently publishes projections for Tesla. But any reasonable sampling of his tweets would also include dumb jokes, memes, and the conversational detritus for which Twitter is known. That stuff is often a convenient foundation for the “I was just joking” defense used by so many people walking back missteps on the modern web. It certainly was for Musk.

“Just as he was using an idiomatic phrase, and I assume he did not literally mean to sodomize me with a submarine, then I also did not literally mean he was a pedophile,” he said. “I just meant he was a creep.”

As Wood — an experienced defamation lawyer who had represented the likes of wrongly accused Atlanta Olympics security guard Richard Jewell and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson — tried to pin responsibility on Musk, the billionaire dodged, his voice soft against the attorney’s aggressive Georgian drawl: Are you one of the most influential people in the world? Not really, the president didn’t take my advice to remain in the Paris climate accords. Do you choose your words carefully for the public? Not everything I say is thoughtful. Do you have a large number of public relations professionals who work for you? I have no PR team personally, and we don’t really have much of a public relations team at Tesla.

The journalists covering the trial looked up quizzically. Some had corresponded with Tesla communications members in recent weeks. In the galley, a staffer, who had fielded press requests for Musk’s tunneling startup and served as his de facto handler for the trial, watched, unblinking.

While BuzzFeed News interviewed former staffers at Tesla and SpaceX for a May 2018 story about Musk’s combative relationship with the press, many people remarked on his thin skin. Some of them recalled being woken up in the middle of the night to respond to a blog post or tweet critical of a Musk company. On the stand, Musk admitted to having a Google alert for his own name to track headlines about himself. Others noted that Musk sometimes tweeted about unfinished features or plans that hadn’t been shared, forcing fire drills to finish or manage them. “He tweets it, therefore it is,” a former staffer told one of my colleagues, while we were reporting the story.

Musk’s claim that “pedo guy” was not an accusation of pedophilia came 13 months after his tweet, and four months before the trial. When he deleted the insult a few hours after posting it on July 15, 2018, he didn’t claim it was a joke or benign. In a tweet a few days later, the Tesla chief only said he had written the words “in anger” and that Unsworth’s criticism did “not justify my actions against him.”

But at his pretrial deposition in August 2019, Musk began claiming that the phrase was from his South African upbringing, a slang term for a “creepy old white guy.” He would continue that argument on the stand, telling Wood he hadn’t explained the meaning of his tweets before August because no one had asked him.

Three people who worked with Musk in July 2018 and spoke with me on the condition of anonymity said they had had never heard the Tesla CEO use that argument prior to his deposition. Online, a number of South Africans also disagreed with the notion that “pedo guy” was slang, while reporters found little evidence that it was a common phrase in the country or anywhere else on the internet. Urban Dictionary’s first entry for “pedo guy” didn’t appear until after Musk’s tweets.

As an argument for Musk’s defense, characterizing “pedo guy” as a playground insult seemed shaky at best, ludicrous at worst. Either way, it was an opportunity for Wood to knock some wind out of the defendant. But he rarely seemed to land a solid punch. At times, he stumbled with his own evidence, misreading emails or demonstrating a poor understanding of the mechanics of Twitter. On more than a few occasions, his argumentative exchanges with Musk resulted in objections from Spiro and reprimands from the judge, who became increasingly hostile to the plaintiff’s attorney as the trial wore on.

“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole.”

One of Wood’s biggest failures was his inability to speak to Wilson’s directive on whether “a reasonable person” would interpret Musk’s “pedo guy” insult as an accusation of pedophilia. No evidence or witnesses were brought in to dispute the notion that the phrase was common in South Africa or on the internet prior to Musk using it. And while Wood later brought in an academic as an expert witness to testify to how many headlines the phrase had generated around the world, Spiro neutered the evidence in pretrial motions and prevented the witness from talking about their impact. No specific articles showing how news outlets interpreted the tweets were allowed by the judge either.

It seemed to be an oversight, more so given Wood’s decision to pursue Unsworth’s claim on Musk’s tweets, and not on other potentially damning communications that had been offered as supplementary evidence. The plaintiff’s attorneys presented those communications in court, but Wilson advised the jury it could only be used to help assess Musk’s state of mind.

As Wood started to read that evidence — including an email in which Musk suggested Unsworth was a “child rapist” who took a 12-year-old bride — into the record, I felt a few gazes shift in my direction. One of Unsworth’s lawyers turned and gave me a weak smile, which I pretended not to notice as I scribbled notes. Musk had written the emails to me.

“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole.”

The opening words of Musk’s email to me were so confusing that I checked the sender twice to make sure it was actually from him. It was only the second email he’d ever sent me. I had never met the billionaire nor talked to him on the phone; save for a few trolling interactions on Twitter, I had not interacted with him prior to this email chain.

I reached out Aug. 29, 2018, after Musk had wondered aloud on Twitter why Unsworth hadn’t sued him yet over his “pedo guy” comment. That morning, I had learned an attorney for Unsworth had sent Musk a letter earlier that month suggesting he would take legal action if he didn’t properly apologize, and I sought comment. In an email with the subject “BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter,” I asked about the “British diver” in the second sentence.

“Have you actually done any research at all?” Musk responded. “For example, you incorrectly state that he is a diver, which shows that you know essentially nothing and have not even bothered to research basic facts.”

I brushed off his criticism, which didn’t answer the basics of my inquiry around the letter. I sent him a response noting that Unsworth had done some cave diving in the past and again asked for comment. When he didn’t reply, I tried again the next day. He replied shortly thereafter on Aug. 30 in a diatribe he prefaced with “off the record” — a term we had not previously discussed or agreed to.

Sometimes people think the words “off the record” are a magic command and, once uttered, immediately go into effect to hide what comes after. But in reality, a journalist and their source have to both agree to that condition before it can be established. Musk and I did not.

Inbox

From: Ryan Mac To: Elon Musk

BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Aug 29, 2018, at 7:40 AM, Ryan Mac wrote:

Hi Elon,

Ryan from BuzzFeed News here. We’re reporting a story out about you receiving a letter from a lawyer representing British diver Vernon Unsworth. The letter, dated August 6, was sent to your Los Angeles home and discusses potential legal proceedings against you for libel.

Given the Twitter conversation yesterday, I was hoping you could talk about the letter and whether you had seen it yet. I’m happy to chat on the phone if you want to call me at [redacted].

Best,

Inbox

From: Elon Musk To: Ryan Mac

BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 8:38 AM, Elon Musk wrote:

Have you actually done any research at all? For example, you incorrectly state that he is a diver, which shows that you know essentially nothing and have not even bothered to research basic facts.

Inbox

From: Ryan Mac To: Elon Musk

BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 9:06 AM, Ryan Mac wrote:

Hey Elon, thanks for getting back. Actually he prefers to be called a “spelunker” and we’ve confirmed that he actually does do cave diving. But do you have any comment on the letter your received?

Inbox

From: Ryan Mac To: Elon Musk

BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Aug 30, 2018, at 6:07 PM, Ryan Mac wrote:

Hey Elon, just wanted to make sure I did my due diligence to research basic facts and follow up here.

Inbox

From: Elon Musk To: Ryan Mac

BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 6:43 PM, Elon Musk wrote:

Off the record

I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole. He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time. There’s only one reason people go to Pattaya Beach. It isn’t where you’d go for caves, but it is where you’d go for something else. Chiang Rai is renowned for child sex-trafficking.

He may claim to know how to cave dive, but he wasn’t on the cave dive rescue team and most of the actual dive team refused to hang out with him. I wonder why …

https://www.google.com/search?q=chiang+rai+child+trafficking&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

As for this alleged threat of a lawsuit, which magically appeared when I raised the issue (nothing was sent or raised beforehand), I fucking hope he sues me.

Inbox

From: Elon Musk To: Ryan Mac

Subject: Letters

On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 7:16 PM, Elon Musk wrote:

On background

Unsworth also said I was asked to leave by the Thai govt, which is utterly false. Thai Prime Minister thanked me personally per attached docs. I went all the way to area 3 with the Thai SEAL team, who were awesome. Never saw Unsworth at any point. Was told he was banned from the site.

It is also total bs that the mini-sub wouldn’t fit through the caves. It was designed and built to specifications provided to me directly by Stanton and the actual dive team. The only reason it wasn’t used was that they were able to drain almost all the water out of the caves, so the underwater portion was very short, and the monsoon arrived later than expected.

Those pumps were critical. Some of the Tesla team helped with electrical power, but major credit to whoever provided those pumps. They were amazing. I’m told they were from some company in India.

Inbox

From: Ryan Mac To: Elon Musk

Subject: BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 8:47 AM, Ryan Mac wrote:

Hi Elon,

I didn’t agree for the conversation to be off the record, but appreciate the response. To follow up, I’ve tried to report out some of these accusations on my own but have not found anything to corroborate the claims. Are you able to share anything that you’ve found about Vernon Unsworth? Do you have any evidence or documentation showing he took a 12-year-old child bride, that he is a child rapist, or that he was kicked off the rescue site, as you stated in your other email? Also are you able to share your correspondence with Rick Stanton showing your discussion of the submarine specs?

With regards to your statement about the legal threat not coming up until you raised the issue on Twitter, the legal letter was dated on Aug. 6 and sent to your Los Angeles home and to one of your SpaceX emails. Did you not see the letter prior to your tweets?

Thank you, Ryan

Inbox

From: Ryan Mac To: Elon Musk

BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Sep 4, 2018, at 12:22 PM, Ryan Mac wrote:

Hi Elon,

While I’d rather chat on the record, I’m happy to go off record with you moving forward so you can answer specific questions regarding the allegations you’ve made.

Thanks, Ryan

Inbox

From: Elon Musk To: Ryan Mac

BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Sep 4, 2018, at 1:05 PM, Elon Musk wrote:

Off the record

If you don’t respect “off the record”, there is no going forward. Off the record means off the record.

Inbox

From: Elon Musk To: Ryan Mac

BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Sep 4, 2018, at 1:18 PM, Elon Musk wrote:

Off the record

I suggest you ask Unsworth to describe his whole ~30 year history of visiting Thailand. What was he doing in Pattaya Beach for the better part of a decade when there are no caves of note in the area?

Inbox

From: Ryan Mac To: Elon Musk

BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Sep 4, 2018, at 5:30 PM, Ryan Mac wrote:

Hey Elon,

I’m sure you’ve seen the story at this point. Still happy to talk with you on whatever terms you want as long as we set them beforehand. Let me know if you want to do a phone call.

Best, R

Inbox

From: Elon Musk To: Ryan Mac

BuzzFeed News: Unsworth legal letter

On Sep 4, 2018, at 5:31 PM, Elon Musk wrote:

Get lost, you creep

“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole,” Musk wrote. “He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time. There’s only one reason people go to Pattaya Beach. It isn’t where you’d go for caves, but it is where you’d go for something else. Chiang Rai is renowned for child sex-trafficking.”

He included a link to a Google search for “chiang rai child trafficking” and ended his message by suggesting the Aug. 6 letter from Unsworth’s lawyer was a response to his tweet the day before.

“As for this alleged threat of a lawsuit, which magically appeared when I raised the issue (nothing was sent or raised beforehand), I fucking hope he sues me,” he concluded.

I read the emails again and texted my editors: “Holy shit.”

Less than an hour later, he emailed again. This time he topped his message with “on background,” suggesting he thought I could use the material if it wasn’t attributed to him. Again, we had no prior agreement. Attached to the email was a signed letter from the Thai prime minister thanking Musk for the construction of the mini sub.

“Unsworth also said I was asked to leave by the Thai govt, which is utterly false,” Musk wrote. “Thai Prime Minister thanked me personally per attached docs. I went all the way to area 3 with the Thai SEAL team, who were awesome. Never saw Unsworth at any point. Was told he was banned from the site.”

My editors and I discussed Musk’s messages and determined they were fair game to publish. They were newsworthy — showing a powerful billionaire setting out to destroy a man over some offhand criticism. And, without an established agreement between reporter and subject, they were on the record, as Musk, who’s had decades’ worth of press encounters, should have known. More importantly, the billionaire seemed to be alleging Unsworth was a pedophile without a shred of supporting evidence. He was essentially suggesting I investigate his tip.

We spent Labor Day weekend reporting on Musk’s claims. We spoke to rescuers who’d worked with Unsworth, including some who swam some of the boys out of the cave. We interviewed Rick Stanton, the British diver who had corresponded with Musk. We reached out to government officials in the United Kingdom and Thailand and tracked down Unsworth’s social media accounts. Eventually, I tracked down the Facebook page for the business of Unsworth’s partner, Woranan “Tik” Ratrawiphukkun, who confirmed to me that she was Unsworth’s longtime girlfriend. Calling him “Vern,” she said they had dated seven years, something supported by photos of them together on their Facebook and Instagram accounts. She was 40, she said. And when asked about Musk’s tweets, Tik declined to comment, telling me to talk to Unsworth’s lawyers.

By the morning of Sept. 4, we had finished our story. I reached out to Musk to offer him a chance to comment on our reporting.

“We haven’t had a conversation at all,” Musk replied.” “If you want to publish off the record comments and destroy your journalistic credibility, that’s up to you.”

We published our article later that day, despite a Tesla spokesperson’s efforts to kill it. Unsworth officially sued Musk for defamation two weeks later, using Musk’s tweets and his emails to me as the basis of his complaint. Discovery in the case would later surface an email sent to an adviser at the time in which Musk described himself as “a fucking idiot” for messaging a reporter without establishing an off-the-record agreement first.

Still, the fact that he sent the emails, a move so sloppy and risky, never sat right with me, and I never understood where he was coming from. It wasn’t until after months of legal motions and discovery that the shady origins of those accusations became clear.

In July 2018, a man identifying himself as James Howard emailed Musk’s personal assistant claiming to be a private investigator, according to court documents. “You may want to dig deep into Mr. Unsworth[‘s] past to prepare for his defamation claim,” the mysterious sender wrote in a note that was forwarded to Musk’s chief of staff. “No smoke without fire!”

The following month, after Wood had sent Unsworth’s initial legal threat, Musk directed Jared Birchall, the head of his family office, to retain Howard, who had subsequently claimed to have worked for billionaire George Soros and the late Microsoft founder Paul Allen. Birchall hired the man and wired him some $52,000 to begin investigating Unsworth. He made no effort to verify Howard’s credentials or claims, which a BuzzFeed News investigation later found to be false. He wasn’t a PI. He was James Howard-Higgins, a convicted felon who BuzzFeed News later found had spent time in prison for defrauding his business partners.

By mid-August, Howard-Higgins was feeding Birchall dubious information and suggested he had boots on the ground tracking the caver in the UK and Thailand. “Early feedback on the target is there is indeed an unpleasant undertone to some of his lifestyle choices,” Howard-Higgins wrote in an Aug. 17, 2018, email to Birchall. “There is no question that the target ‘associates’ locally with Europeans who enjoy ‘Thai comforts’ that are not acceptable in a developed society.” In court, Wood would also show email exchanges in which Birchall asked the supposed private investigator to leak information to the UK press to sully Unsworth.

On Aug. 27, Birchall emailed Howard-Higgins requesting more explicit information about the British caver. Claiming there were “planned attacks in the media and/or a lawsuit,” he provided a list of 14 specific questions for Howard-Higgins. Among them: inquiries about a possible divorce in the UK, whether Unsworth had met “his wife” in Thailand, and whether his Thai partner was “the 10th teenage girl he met before he decided to settle.” Howard-Higgins replied with a dossier on Unsworth, which, among other things, suggested that he met his wife when she was 18 or 19. This information, according to that document, was still being verified.

But all that information was wrong. Unsworth was not married to his Thai partner, who was much older than what Howard-Higgins had suggested to Birchall. Beyond that, there was no mention of the idea that Unsworth had taken a 12-year-old bride, something Musk would later relay to me.

On the stand, Musk, who never directly communicated with the investigator, said he’d heard that information from Birchall. In his testimony, Birchall only said that he told Musk that Unsworth had met his partner when she was 12, not that they got married then. Regardless, there was never any physical documentation of Howard-Higgins saying that Unsworth had married or even met a 12-year-old.

“Unfortunately, it turns out we were tricked,” Musk said on the stand.

Two former Tesla executives would later tell me that Musk’s hiring of an investigator was a perfect example of his reality-warping intentions. At Tesla, sources said, Musk would often convince himself something was possible — production goals, certain self-driving capabilities, skirting legal measures — and would overrule people whose job it was to manage those tasks. Engineers were hired and fired on the basis of their ability to realize an idea that Musk had predetermined had to be possible.

“He hired the PI because he needed to make it true,” one told me. “In the end, people are just working to justify his ego rather than anything else.”

They also explained Musk’s thought process for emailing me unsubstantiated claims about Unsworth. Musk, the executive said, would sometimes seed information to a third party, like a credulous journalist who might publish it in a story. In turn, he would endorse and share that story with millions of followers, creating a feedback loop of reinforcing opinions.

As the evidence mounted ahead of the trial, Musk refused to give in to what he later termed a “shakedown.” Though he wrangled with a Securities and Exchange Commission probe into his Tesla privatization fiasco, a National Labor Relations Board case on Tesla illegally discouraging workers from organizing, and a NASA safety investigation prompted by him smoking weed during an interview, Musk fought the lawsuit over a 15-month period. During that time, three general counsels and at least three top communications staffers left Tesla. He even fired the first law firm he had hired for the Unsworth case.

Because Musk’s emails to me were part of Unsworth’s initial complaint, I also became entangled in the case. Both sides requested my deposition, and Musk’s requests seemed particularly invasive, asking questions that seemed to get at my newsgathering process and relationships with sources. At one point a process server showed up at BuzzFeed’s San Francisco office while I wasn’t there and sat in our entryway until an editor threatened to call the police.

BuzzFeed News successfully fought off Musk’s subpoena, while Unsworth eventually dropped his. Following that, the plaintiff’s lawyers — who had spent much of the year attempting to build a case partially on Musk’s emails to me — decided they would not use them in court as grounds for defamation, opting to instead sue only over his “pedo guy” tweets.

It was a puzzling choice, abandoning what some experts thought were Musk’s most defamatory statements about the plaintiff. Perhaps Wood had determined Musk’s statements to me hadn’t reached as wide an audience as his original tweets did. Perhaps they worried a discussion about what “on the record” and “off the record” mean would add too much complexity. Wood later declined to answer questions about his legal strategy.

Bloomberg / Getty Images

Vernon Unsworth stands outside the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, Dec. 6, 2019.

If Musk is the megalomaniac billionaire who dreams of colonizing Mars (and dying there), Unsworth is his antithesis. A quiet man most at home exploring the depths of the Earth, the Brit was unknown until summoned to help the Thai boys soccer team. His public persona since has been defined by media coverage of the rescue, the fallout from the fateful 43-second CNN interview clip, and the few images of him that exist on wire services and are reused with every article. But when I spoke with him at length after the trial he came a bit more into focus.

The first time we spoke, in the presence of one of his lawyers the day after the trial, I expected to find a defeated man. Instead, Unsworth was bright, if not enthusiastic, chiming in to fill the gaps of his lawyer’s laments and exuding a certain Englishness by saying he’d “take the result on the chin.” He appeared happy it was over.

Our conversations, which continued over the phone, countered the image of the rough, emotionless exterior Unsworth displayed in court. We spoke and texted about his interests: his love of caving and Tham Luang; the incredible undefeated streak of his favorite soccer team, Liverpool; and his optimism for Brexit now that the Conservative Party was in control. His texts were liberally punctuated with prayer hands and laughing-crying face emojis that made it feel like I was communicating with an overly enthusiastic teen. But when we talked, it was mainly about the trial, and his worries that the defense’s portrayal would cast doubt on his heroic efforts.

“That’s not going to go away,” he said. “The pedo tag is always there. … It’s still difficult to understand why the jury got it so wrong.”

During one of our calls, I Googled Unsworth’s name. The first result was a Dec. 7 article from the Sun titled “Who Is Vernon Unsworth? Thailand Cave Diver Dubbed ‘Paedo Guy’ By Elon Musk.” He sighed when I read it aloud.

“That’s not going to go away,” he said. “The pedo tag is always there. … It’s still difficult to understand why the jury got it so wrong.”

The trial had been particularly difficult for Unsworth. Though he didn’t pay for legal representation — Wood took the case on contingency and funded it with more than $400,000 from his firm’s coffers — the personal cost was quite high. On the stand, the Brit had his personal life exposed and interrogated. He was questioned about his estranged wife and daughter who make up his broken family. And the UK tabloids, who sent staffers to cover every moment of the trial, wrote at length about his life in Thailand with his new partner, Tik.

Defense attorneys also read unflattering texts into the record in which Unsworth disparaged the Thai Navy SEALs for their incompetence. They misrepresented a satirical YouTube video created by a friend to portray him as a fame-seeker hungry for movie deals and diminished his crucial contributions to the cave rescue. Unsworth wasn’t a hero, lead defense attorney Alex Spiro suggested, the true heroes were the divers.

On the stand, Unsworth appeared unprepared for what seemed an obvious and important line of questioning. The caver said he felt “humiliated, ashamed, dirty” by Musk’s label, which he called “a life sentence without parole.” There were times he felt vulnerable, he added, his voice cracking: “I have good days and I have bad days.”

But when Spiro pressed him on that, Unsworth stumbled. Had he sought out a therapist to help temper his emotional anguish? Had Musk’s insult caused him to lose any jobs or friends? Did he discuss it with his family? “I bottled it up,” he said on the stand.

The defense painted Unsworth as a man unharmed by the insult and instead widely lauded in the months following the rescue. In the trial, they showed photographs and videos of Unsworth being congratulated by the UK prime minister, palling with Thai government officials, and smiling while Prince William pinned him with an MBE, an appointment to the Order of the British Empire. It was calculated and effective. If the defense was going to lose the argument around the semantics of “pedo guy,” it would at the very least try to limit damages.

Unsworth’s lawyers, on the other hand, called no witnesses who could have proven Musk’s words harmed their client’s reputation. Wood played a video deposition of Unsworth’s estranged wife seemingly to establish sympathy for the plaintiff, but it only ended up showcasing a broken marriage. And he never called Tik, who could have corroborated his claims of pain and anguish. Spiro called no witnesses for the defense.

After the case concluded, Unsworth bristled at the efforts from the defense to belittle his contributions, including one moment where he had been asked by an attorney whether or not he felt like he needed to apologize to Musk. He spoke of how he and Tik had been investigated by four different sets of Thai authorities, including immigration police, following Musk’s tweets. Unsworth also recalled his embarrassment when Prince William mentioned the altercation during the MBE ceremony.

It’s hard to say if those anecdotes would have made a difference, but it’s worth noting that none of the four jurors I interviewed after the trial found Unsworth to be a particularly sympathetic figure. Two of them agreed with the defense’s position that this was an argument between two men and that Unsworth had started it with his remark on CNN. All four said the caver’s team had done little to establish harm, with one calling that failure the “nail in the coffin for his case.” Another said that they viewed both men, the Brit and the billionaire, as heroes caught up in a juvenile spat.

“That’s where they’re wrong,” Unsworth said. “None of us rescuers or divers — none of us — regard ourselves as heroes. So why is Elon Musk a hero? Look up in the dictionary the definition of ‘hero.’ He’s not done anything that’s worthy of hero status.

“But if there is a hero of either one of us, I’d hope that arrow be pointed at me.”

Mark J. Terrill / AP

Musk (right) arrives at the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, Dec. 3, 2019.

Musk was playing The Battle Of Polytopia — a mobile game “about ruling the world, fighting evil AI tribes, discovering new lands and mastering new technologies” — when I ran into him in the elevator on the day of the verdict. I hadn’t seen him in court since the day of his testimony.

“Are you allowed to talk about the case?” I asked.

“No.”

“Are you going to sit for the jury verdict?”

“I… I think so,” he stammered, clearly miffed at being distracted from his mobile game. The elevator door opened before I could follow up, and Musk’s guards cut me off as he exited. I’m still not sure if he knew who I was.

Outside the room, Wood seemed nervous. A day earlier, the Georgia lawyer held court with reporters, twirling a Juul between his fingers as he spoke. “Vernon Unsworth wants a verdict, and we’re going to get him a one, good or bad,” he remarked — an odd thing to say about a case he had taken on contingency. Then he told us he planned to retire at his lake house following the jury’s decision.

Wood was more on message during his closing arguments. With the manner of a Southern Baptist preacher, he declared the rescue of the Thai soccer team “a miracle from God” and compared Musk’s tweets to “a nuclear bomb” that decimated Unsworth and created fallout that would affect him for years to come. He told the jury of his commitment to Unsworth and his faith in the rule of law. He suggested Musk became involved in the cave rescue because “publicity drives attention, attention drives investors” — a remark that certainly went over well with the Tesla critics who’d begun following him on Twitter. He was ruddy with passion; at one point, Wilson asked him to keep his emotions in check. Then it got personal.

“Elon Musk is a liar,” Wood said. “How do I know it? I don’t know Elon Musk. I’ve seen him in his deposition. I’ve seen him a couple of times in the courtroom. He walked by me. I’ve never shaken Elon Musk’s hand. He refused to shake my hand.”

Wood never managed to explain just why he thought Musk was a liar, but the billionaire certainly has a propensity for playing fast and loose with the truth — I’d heard this endlessly from former employees, confidants, and investors. But had Musk lied in court? His legal team’s retelling of events was certainly generous, but if there had been a truly egregious falsehood on the stand, I hadn’t heard it. And Wood had never flagged it. The jury seemed unmoved by his hand-waving.

Wood’s request for damages evoked a similar, if not worse, response. With a giant marker, he wrote a bunch of numbers on a large white poster board: for actual damages, defined as the suffering the plaintiff had experienced, $5 million. For assumed damages, the hypothetical harm the plaintiff could have endured from the defendant’s reckless words, $35 million. And for punitive damages, the amount intended to discourage a man worth tens of billions of dollars from doing this again, $150 million.

“I have bad days too, but I don’t walk around saying people should give me $2 million.”

I saw one juror struggling to conceal a smirk as Wood wrote out the total. $190 million was an extraordinary number. Had it been granted, it would have been one of the largest-ever awards given in an individual defamation case.

The sum did not go over well with the jury. After the trial, a number of jurors told me they couldn’t understand those eye-popping numbers, particularly with no clear evidence of harm. “I couldn’t put a dollar amount on ‘I have good days and bad days,’” one said. “I have bad days too, but I don’t walk around saying people should give me $2 million.” Another said the jury considered ruling against Musk and then awarding a symbolic $1 to Unsworth.

Outside the courtroom, there was a similar reaction; impressions of the British caver had soured. Twitter users worried about the optics of asking for that much money, while some found Unsworth to be a money-grubber. On a message board used by the Brits living in Thailand — an online community that Unsworth sometimes frequented — members debated the request. “Guilty but not $200m guilty,” wrote one person.

Damages had been Wood’s call, according to the cave rescuer. But for Unsworth, who makes £25,000 a year as a financial adviser, they made sense. How do you sanction a man with seemingly unlimited resources? Any number that sought punitive recourse against a billionaire is going to look preposterous, and they had to outline something for the jury. “[The money] wouldn’t have affected Musk anyway,” Unsworth told me.

Musk’s legal team used the damages request as a cudgel. Noting the reaction in the courtroom, Spiro mocked the sum in his closing argument. “And all of a sudden I hear numbers being thrown out like this is The Price Is Right or something,” he quipped. “They certainly weren’t wedded to any evidence.”

That argument seemed to resonate with the jury, as did a series of rhetorical questions delivered with a steady cadence. “Where’s Tik?” Spiro asked again and again, a reminder that Unsworth hadn’t even called his partner to testify about the emotional and mental impact of Musk’s remark. Then there was contrition: “Listen, Mr. Musk apologized. He doesn’t like those tweets. The shareholders didn’t like the tweets. Elon’s mom didn’t like the tweets. But he didn’t say that this nameless dude committed the crime of pedophilia.”

That last line, an almost throwaway point barely discussed in the days prior ended up being the killshot. Musk’s tweet didn’t mention Unsworth by name, Spiro explained. If the “reasonable person” Wilson described in his instructions to the jury stumbled across Musk’s tweets, how would they know whom he was talking about?

“In no way did I think that the Musk tweet was justified or fair — but on the other hand, well, he didn’t mention Unsworth,” juror Carl Shusterman told me. An immigration lawyer who had admitted during jury selection that he owned two Teslas, Shusterman said that the group of eight considered all of the judge’s five criteria. But once they agreed the average person wouldn’t understand the tweet was about the caver, they had their verdict.

It took less than an hour. They barely had time to finish lunch.

I struggled to understand the logic. If the tweets were analyzed in a vacuum without any context, sure, a reasonable person might have no idea who Musk was writing about. But beyond that vacuum is context accessible within seconds — thousands of news articles and videos, innumerable tweets, and the biggest search engine in the world tying the words “pedo guy” to Unsworth’s name in perpetuity. Spiro’s assertion was convincing on some level, but it was also preposterous. The jury’s decision seemed to be a fundamental misunderstanding of how people use the internet.

“This was a great ‘internet isn’t real life’ moment,” Ken White, a First Amendment lawyer who blogs as Popehat, told me a few weeks after the case. “What people online think is obvious and self-evident … is not how people in the courtroom see it. People were frequently shocked that there was any potential defense of the case, and they felt so strongly about these things that they mistook those feelings for law.”

Mark J. Terrill / AP

Musk arrives at the US district courthouse in Los Angeles, Dec. 4, 2019.

Musk left the courtroom visibly smug. “My faith in humanity is restored,” he said to a scrum of reporters before disappearing into an elevator surrounded by his security team. That night, Tesla’s general counsel quit — the third to do so in a year. A few days later, Musk blocked me and a handful of other journalists on Twitter.

In the weeks that followed, a buoyant Musk would take to the streets of Los Angeles in his Cybertruck prototype, hang out with Kanye West and the Kardashians, and pal around with presidential hopeful Andrew Yang. He celebrated Tesla’s stock hitting an all-time high with memes about $420, the weed-associated number associated with his attempt to take the company private in 2018. January saw him dancing enthusiastically onstage at a Shanghai factory that became the first to manufacture Model 3s in China. Tesla’s market capitalization recently surpassed the $100 billion mark.

But those who know Musk say they’re not sure the billionaire and his car company will be able to maintain this momentum. “In his mind, he’s emerged unscathed — ‘Tesla’s stock price is up and I’m still in my job’ — but if there’s any one word for that stock, it’s ‘volatility,’” one former executive said. “It just looks like good news because it’s contrasted against a past avalanche of bad news.”

“I hope I am wrong about him. I hope he takes people to Mars one day.”

Another person, this one more of a Musk optimist, worried this legal victory would only supercharge one of the billionaire’s most difficult-to-wrangle instincts. “The lawsuit reinforced what he believes is his best strategy: ‘When everyone else is telling me not to do it, I’m going to do it,’” they said.

A week after the trial’s conclusion, Wood inexplicably tweeted an observation that seemed to contradict the arguments he had made in federal court. “The verdict in Unsworth v. Musk spoke the truth,” the lawyer wrote. “While written as possible libel, Elon Musk only intended an insult. Thus, no factual statements were intended. Truth removes any question marks as to Vern’s reputation. Truth wins. So do both parties.”

As critics promptly hammered Wood online and suggested he had left his client out to dry, I wondered if he had just become the latest person to buy into Musk’s reality distortion field. So I asked him whether he still felt the same way about Musk.

“His image has been built to a level that only the most serious of charges could shatter it,” Wood wrote to me. “I hope I am wrong about him. I hope he takes people to Mars one day. But I know what I learned from the evidence.”

I closed Wood’s message and opened my email account. As I did, I saw a reminder to follow up on a note a few days earlier. I had sent it on the final day of the trial, in the blurry hours after the jury let Musk off the hook. “Hey Elon, any thoughts on the verdict?” I had written. He never responded, on or off the record. ●

Sahred From Source link Science

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[blaperile]

Homestuck Epilogues - Meat - Page 12 (Epilogue 2 Page 4)

[salmankhanholics]

★ Why Salman Khan is bigger than Brad Pitt !

June 22nd 2017 | Adrienne McKibbins and Sue Williams

He has more star pulling power than Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, easily twice as many fans as Brad Pitt and more strings to his bow than George Clooney.

But with his latest movie tipped to smash the global box office record for the world's biggest audience – ever – Indian movie icon Salman Khan lays absolutely no claim to being anything like its best actor.

"I don't really watch my own films much," he purrs during a rare interview in Sydney. "If one of my films comes up on TV I might just watch it to see how bad I am. It's always a learning lesson." And then he smiles, a 24-carat beam that bathes everyone in sunshine. "Normally I'll only watch a film I'm doing afterwards at the final dubbing session. That's enough for me."

It's certainly enough for 51-year-old Khan's worldwide following, too. With the dark good looks of an old-fashioned Hollywood screen star, he's proved an enormous draw to both Indian audiences at home, and the 16 million people from India living outside their country, the largest diaspora population on the planet. In addition, there's the increasing number of film-lovers of non-Indian heritage, drawn to Hindi or Bollywood movies by the simple love stories, the colour and the upbeat, feel-good tempo.

Already, Khan, India's most financially successful star, has had one movie – the 2015 blockbuster Bajrangi Bhaijaan – watched by an estimated more than three-quarters of a billion people. Now his new movie, from the same writer/director Kabir Khan, Tubelight, released internationally on Friday, June 23 – the beginning of the Muslim Eid holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, and with giant posters even around New York's Times Square – is predicted to be about to make history.

This, say the industry watchers, could well end up the film that passes the 1 billion audience mark.

To those of us outside India, it's hard to grasp the magnitude of his kind of viewing figures. Our most successful film ever, the first Crocodile Dundee film in 1986, for example, sold more than 46 million tickets in the United States; still a relative pittance compared to the business Tubelight is expected to do.

Quietly modest

Khan, however, is quietly modest. "I have been fortunate with the scripts coming my way," he says, when the figures are quoted to him. "I also choose more carefully now than I used to."

Yet India's most financially successful superstar can afford to be coy. The eldest son of successful scriptwriter father Salim Khan, who co-wrote some of India's most famous "angry young man" films, and step-son of his father's second wife actor Helen, he began acting himself at the age of 22. His brothers, Sohail and Arbaaz followed him into the profession, but with nowhere near the same success.

Khan's own star rose rapidly, working from the late 1980s alongside acting superstars Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan who entered the industry around the same time. Then his star fell, but rose again from 2010 with a succession of hit films.

Each has fared better than the last, with 10 of his movies having each taken more than $US16 million at the box office, and the last six more than $US21 million. That might not appear so much when compared to the latest Star Wars' Rogue One's $160 million, but a massive achievement in a country with low-cost film-making and historically cheap tickets.

Now he's treated as a rolled-gold superstar, having worked with all the big-name female actors, including Aishwarya Rai (Bachchan), Kareena Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra, and top directors like Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Sooraj R. Barjatya and Rakesh Roshan. Our interview today – his only one in Australia – in the penthouse of the Sheraton-on-the-Park, has been preceded by a four-hour wait and a grilling by a phalanx of security guards who are still hovering within earshot, just outside the door left slightly ajar.

He attributes his success partly to his range. "I think every six or seven years the style and content of films change," he says. "You have a successful film, then there are a variety of that type of film made, then it gets to a point where the films start to look like rip-offs and the audience becomes tired of that style.

"So then something else comes into fashion. So far, we have had action dramas, police films, the romantic comedy, the romantic melodrama, and then smaller films, but the cycle still seems to change around every six to seven years, with variations."

Unexpected twist

His new movie, Tubelight, is a mixed genre of an action movie, historical war drama, romance and melodrama, with a regulation smattering of Bollywood song and dance and the unexpected twist that Khan this time plays an intellectually challenged hero. He's in search of his missing brother, played by his own real-life brother Sohail, with shades of last year's massive Australian hit Lion, starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman about a man in India in search of … his similarly lost brother.

This, however, is set against the 1962 Sino-Indian War, and also features Chinese actress Zhu Zhu. "We have very high hopes of Tubelight," says Mitu Bhowmick, the director of Mind Blowing Films, the production and distribution company specialising in the release of Indian films in Australia and New Zealand. "It's the most awaited film of the year."

Happily, Khan also loves this film. "Because Sohail and I are real brothers and everyone knows that the bond is already established, it seems to really work. My character is a really nice guy, but very childlike, so the village calls him Tubelight [slang in Hindi for someone who does not respond to things quickly] and he really does not understand the workings of the world. All my films are morally and ethically correct, and they have a good message."

Khan likes to present himself as a good guy and he has his own charity, Being Human, but, in truth, controversies have tended to muddy that image although they only appear to have made him even more interesting.

In late 2015, he was acquitted in a high-profile court case of a traffic accident in which one person was killed and, in another long-running case, was accused of having shot a black buck (our equivalent of killing a koala) using unlicensed firearms. He was acquitted of all charges in that matter earlier this year.

He also has a series of high-profile girlfriends, although he did say in a recent talk show, with a grin, that he's a virgin.

That's something that seems quite at odds too with a lusty screen presence that usually involves ripping open his shirt to reveal a pretty impressive set of abs before performing his own stunts, bashing up bad guys single-handedly, getting the girl – usually half his age – and then still having enough puff left to perform a Bollywood dance number.

Plenty of work

With so much stardom, and so much work at home in India, where he's also hosted the TV reality juggernaut Bigg Boss – the local equivalent of our Big Brother – and 10 Ka Dum, based on the international hit game show Power of 10, as well as appearing in mammoth stage shows based on his movies, he regularly receives offers from Hollywood, eager to lure over some of his enormous fanbase.

But, like his fellow Indian stars, he's turned them all down for what would invariably be secondary roles in a foreign industry, before much smaller audiences.

"I have no wish to go outside India," he says. "I have worked with some of the best directors around, and many of those experiences have taught me as much what to do as what not to do. I have enough films here, enough TV, enough work, and certainly enough audience."

And with that landmark 1 billion mark now on the horizon, who can argue?

Tubelight released around Australia – and the world – on Friday, June 23, is distributed by Mind Blowing Films.

Australian Financial Review

[angelofberlin2000]

Interview: ‘John Wick: Chapter Two’ Director Chad Stahelski Discusses the Man, the Myth, the Legend

A long but VERY interesting article/interview!!!!

http://www.slashfilm.com/john-wick-chapter-2-director-chad-stahelski-interview/

Interview: ‘John Wick: Chapter Two’ Director Chad Stahelski Discusses the Man, the Myth, the Legend

Posted on Friday, February 10th, 2017 by Jack Giroux

John Wick: Chapter 2 isn’t a sequel that delivers more of the same. There are familiarities, but it’s more like the same engine in a slightly bigger, more stylish, and more aggressive car. The simplicity of the first movie remains, but the titular character finds himself in a larger and more dangerous world this time. The world, which takes a few ideas from Arthurian mythology, grows along with John Wick in the sequel.

Director Chad Stahelski, who co-directed the first movie with the uncredited David Leitch (Deadpool 2), shows audiences a different side of the character, while also delivering on the quality action sequences audiences now expect from a John Wick film. The director ups the stakes and increases the scale in the sequel without ever abandoning the titular character’s arc during all the beautifully orchestrated madness.

We recently spoke with the 87eleven co-founder at the press day for the sequel. We discussed finding the right story to tell, the film’s opening and closing action scenes, the influence of Buster Keaton, workshopping scenes with Keanu Reeves, and more with the filmmaker. Below, read our Chad Stahelski interview.

How did you decide on John Wick’s introduction in the sequel? 

We’re big fans of silent movies, or silent storytelling, or visual storytelling as opposed to just exposition. So I had to reveal what we’ve already determined is kind of a mythological figure. Once again, let’s just stick to what we know, we’ll just do it with … When I say action I just don’t mean stunts, I mean let’s just tell a story [visually]. It’s a wacky city.

I was trying to make a movie that was a good introduction to those that hadn’t seen the first film. So how do you introduce that wacky world that half the audience is in on and the other half is not in, and satisfy both? So we’re like, all right, let’s do a little bit of action. Let’s figure out what would be an interesting way to show them you’re not in for a Bourne or a reality-based action movie. It’s a little wacky, so let’s start with some wacky aerials. We’ll come down, and as a little nod to our established audience, we want everybody to know that we’re making fun of ourselves. We’re gonna start with Buster Keaton.

I went to Montreal on a scout for something different. Up there they had all these great projections going as part of an art thing in Montreal. We went to New York, and we saw all these kids from the NYC film school, and it was awesome, they’re just walking around with his little projector on a little red wagon. It was really funny. With a little generator, they’re projecting all these silent movie images up on buildings and taking pictures, and that was part of their art project. Like, that’s fucking genius. Yeah, I just talked to the kid, “I’m gonna steal your shit, man.”

So I was like, I’m gonna get the right to a Buster Keaton film, and I’m gonna project it on a wall, to let everybody know out there we’re making a fun action movie. We’re gonna tilt down off that, we’re just gonna see it fucking crash, and we’re gonna get right into it with “What the fuck is going on?” And then we want to do what I call The Shark and The Fish. We’re gonna design the music so it’s, “Da, da, da, da, bo, bo, bo, da, da, da, bo, bo.” So you see this little guy, “Why is he being chased by this car? Ahh!” And it’s like, “Oh my God, the shark’s chasing the fish. What’s going on? What’s going on?” And then we’re just gonna slam them in the car, and everybody goes, “Whoa.” And then John Wick’s gonna get up. All right cool, that sounds like an interesting way of doing it. But that’s not it, we’re not gonna show his face, and you’re gonna go, “Who the fuck is this guy?”

And then we’re gonna get into, let’s see who can we get? We need a very mythological, we need an orator, we need an Ian McShane. And Keanu is friends with Peter Stormare, and like I’d work with Peter on Constantine, and we’re like, “He’ll never do it. I know he’ll never talk to us.” And Keanu’s like, “Actually, Peter came up to me in the gym the other day and goes, “Why am I not in John Wick 2?” So, I’m like, “You’re kidding?” Keanu’s like, “No, no, I’m serious.” I’m like, “Don’t fuck with me. You’re serious?” He’s like, “No, no, no, really you should call him. Call Peter.” “[Stomare voice] Chad, what’s going on, my friend, I’d love to be in your movie.” We’re like, you’re shitting us. I said, “Okay, well I tell you what, you’re gonna be the orator, you’re gonna introduce John Wick to us in this.”

Derek, I, and Keanu all sat down, and we wrote, “The man, and the myth, and the legend.” And we wrote this little intro about how to recap the first movie. “He killed my brother, my nephew.” We wrote that. We’re just gonna do it as a cool little intercut.

What it’d take to get the rights to the Buster Keaton film?

Phone call.

Just a phone call?

I have a great line producer, a guy named Jeff Waxman, who literally went in and said, “Are you’re sure about this?” I was like, “Yeah!” A couple of phone calls, and we paid the licensing rights, it was very, very easy. Actually, I was shocked, too. I was like, “Really, it was that easy?”

Derek mentioned some other story ideas for Chapter 2. What other ideas did you all discuss? 

Oh my god, brother, you don’t have enough time. I think we started talking about a sequel in January, like literally right after the holiday. The movie opened in October. We were working on different projects at the time trying to finish our second unit career. We didn’t know the first one was gonna do good. So that Basil Iwanyk, the producer, got us all on the phone and said, “Look, we gotta start talking about this. The studio is very interested in a second one.” We had committed to engage it should we find an idea that was was worthwhile. It wasn’t gonna make a mockery of what we had done in the first one, which is always the fucking danger, right?

Right after the holidays, we started getting together. We all had ideas of cool characters and stuff, that was no problem. The world development, great. I already had like ten pages of notes. Storywise, was John Wick saving a cat, were we killing a dog, were we rescuing a baby, does he fall in love? We really got into the plot side of things. And to tell you the truth, six months later in June we still did not have a coherent plot. We were kinda shitting our pants. The studio was kind of pressuring us to start shooting that fall. And we were adamant that like, look we’re  — and I mean everyone, even the studio — not going into this with just a B action plot, like it’s gotta be something that fits our world.

The ideas that had been chucked were anything from comical, to absurd, to kind of cool, just not us. Like, in any other action movie that was grounded it probably would have made sense. You know, about money, about taking over the city, about all … it just felt false to us because it wasn’t mythological. It didn’t sound larger than life.

Then we were bitchin’ to Keanu one day going, “Fuck, dude.” He’s like, “Look, what did you like about the first one?” “What do you mean? You know what I like about it, you were there. What are you talking about?” He’s like, “What did you like?” I was like, “It was super simple, and it was based on a myth. It was a Greek myth. It was, you know, dog, love lost, karma, go kill people who killed dog.” He was like, “Enough said. Figure it out.” You know, yeah, the fucker’s right. Keep it simple.

So Derek had introduced this idea about a marker, about a story we had told about in the stunt community, and it had happened once when I was in a stunt group. One of the older stunt guys had passed away, and they did something called a remembrance coin. It’s about a silver dollar size, it has the guy’s name printed on it and says, “In loving memory of ‘individual’s name.'” And when the stunt guys would go out and drink, one guy would pull out the coin, whoever didn’t have the memory coin would have to buy the round. Just a, you know, goofy way of remembering somebody, whatever it is.

And Derek took that a step further to something called The Marker, and we took that as a bond on life. So it was like a favor, it’s a bond, it’s a check you write with your life. It was taken in a different way. He wanted to use it in a different way, and we’re like, we love that idea, there’s something mythical that it’s a talisman. There’s something cool about that. You trade your life for a favor. And we’re like, well, wait a minute. John Wick got out. We’re not doing a prequel. We wanted to, just didn’t fit quite where we were at. We’re like, okay, he gives that for the favor he did to do the impossible task to get out, and we’re gonna hold that. So if the first one didn’t have it, and the second one didn’t have it, that’s very karmically apt to what the kind of mythology we’re doing. So we just kind of ran with that in creating a very, very simple story, like John owes someone a favor.

The sequel builds on ideas from the first movie. It’s not like some of the standalone Bond films or other sequels. Do you see these chapters telling one story?

What you’re talking about is the episodic theory, like Magnum P.I. The story is Magnum’s doing something, bad guys do something, solves the case by the end of the show. Or, nowadays TV is it’s three seasons of day to day to day continuing the story. I’m a fan of both ways, depends on the project. This I see 1, 2, and 3 is part of the same ongoing story, where we find him now. Granted, 1 and 2 take place within the same week. Number 3 may be a little bit more of a duration for John to get lost in the world then come back.

We basically almost have a prequel written, but we’d save that for other aspects of the property. Lionsgate is very interested in doing a John Wick TV show, and that seems very appealing to us to give those creative ideas to that entity. I think that TV could really expand on what that is, great, than we could in just a two-hour film. We’d like to wrap up the story we’re telling now and then maybe save all our prequel ideas and our impossible tasks for that medium.

You mentioned you had pages and pages of notes before Derek started writing. Were there any memorable ideas in those notes that didn’t make the movie? 

Oh my god, about nine pages of it. Nine or ten pages, so plenty for number 3. One of my favorite things, and definitely Keanu’s favorite scene, happens in Rome. Before he goes to all the other assassins, he goes to a very Vaticanesque-looking building where he asks permission from certain clergy, religious clergy. We’ve tied in the ancientness and the mythological world of religion into our thing. It just bumped a little bit on the overall plot, because it was a little too ambiguous, so it was taken out. We also had a B-plot when we shot the film about how Santino was trying to control the flow of gold coins. Tied into those scenes,  there’s a great scene between Riccardo Scamarcio and John Leguizamo.

Unfortunately, when we thinned down and really streamlined the plot, that B-plot didn’t fit, so we had to lift the scene. It was a really fun scene between John Leguizamo and Ricardo Scamarcio, but that scene didn’t quite make it. It was in Aurelio’s garage. John Leguizamo gave a fantastic soliloquy that unfortunately, we didn’t get to keep in the film. There are two characters that I can really expand on in the third one, one is John Leguizamo’s character, Aurelio, because he’s such a big part of the first film, and Lance Reddick character, as our concierge in The Continental.

The major second act action scene in Rome is almost exhausting, in a good way. What did it take to prep that sequence? 

One thing, I love music, to the point of ridiculousness. That’s why we did the club scene in the first one. I think music is a great motivator, especially when you’re in a, not just a club scene, but music in general I think can tell a lot of the story. It can give it tone. And number two, we have a shitload of classical music that’s been electricized a little bit. Like, the last scene in the museum is Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Summer, I think. That was done through synthesizers and actually done with firearm percussion, instead of drums. We use Haydn, we use Chopin… there’s a ton of different classical music in this.

I always wanted to do like an opera, but when I said opera, I think the producers thought I meant more classical opera. No, I want to do like Tommy, like a rock opera, and I want to do a gunfight. I don’t want to do a club scene, like the first movie, I want to do a coronation, and we wanted to design something that was about live performances, and only for our underworld. Whereas in Collateral, Tom Cruise would fire a gun and everybody would run for cover, this is all our world, so if somebody’s shot in the head, they’d cheer. This is like surreal, and like everyone’s staring at me like, “What the fuck? Is this a Dr. Seuss fucking LSD thing?” I’m like, no man I want to do a rock opera.

Cassandra [Nostalghia], the girl we see doing the opera, she’s the girl that did the vocals in the first movie for a lot of the soundtrack, for a lot of the score. So I asked, “How’d you like to do the performance?” And the wacky guy playing the guitar, that’s Tyler Bates, he’s my composer. He’s the one who did all the sound effects for Guardians of the Galaxy, 300, and John Wick. I was like, “So, why don’t you guys fly to Rome? We’re gonna put you on stage for the concert, you’re gonna do that, and in the middle of it, John Wick’s gonna come through and we’re gonna have a gunfight.” They’re all staring at me. And on top of that, it’s gonna be in 2000-year-old ancient Rome. It’s like, you’re never gonna find a place [like that]. It’s like, ah, get my line producer, we’ll fly over to Rome, we’re gonna talk to everybody.

The Colosseum was off limits, the Vatican was off limits. We go to Caracalla Baths, which is one of the oldest ruins in Rome. Our local producer there, a lovely man, took us in to meet the curator. They have a lot of events there. The Boston Symphony’s been there, The London Opera’s been there, so we thought maybe there’s a chance.

As she’s walking us through it, we’re like, “Look, we would like to do a big stage right here. We want a lot of light towers. We want to put 500 people in here, and then we want our lead character to run through this.” She’s like, “Oh great. What’s he doing?” “Well he’s going to be running from bad guys and he’s gonna be shooting two, three dozen people in the face the whole time.” She’s like, “Okay that’s great, that’s great. Just try not to step on those ruins coming through the grass here.” “Okay. Oh … you sure?” She’s like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s great. Sounds fun.” “[Confused] Okay, um. We were also looking for this place. We kinda had this image of him going through Ancient Rome, the sewers, the catacombs.” She says, “Oh yeah, come with me right downstairs.” “What? In the same location?” “Yeah, you’re standing right above them.”

So where you see that stage in the movie, directly, in the real world, those catacombs are directly under that stage. In movies, that never fucking happens. You gotta do like three or four locations to put it together on film through editing. We’re like, “Really, we go around that stage, step through this hole, we’re in the …?” “Yeah.” “All right well down here we want to kill two or three dozen more people, but with automatic weapons and a shotgun.” She’s like, “Yeah.” “How old are these?” “Oh, 2,000 years.” “Okay, well this isn’t …” “Oh yeah, this is one of the oldest places in … This a sacred place.” “But you …?” “Yeah, yeah, try and just … You can’t dig. You can clear, but you can’t move any ancient stones.” “Can we put lights on here? Can the stunt guy… But you don’t understand when you shoot something …” “Oh yeah, it’s been here 2,000 years. You ain’t gonna break it.”

Like, we couldn’t move a leaf in Central Park. But now I can throw 20 stunt guys against 2000-year-old ruins with a shotgun. That’s kind of how that sequence came about.

To me, it was one of the funnest moments ever in my film career. Standing on that stage looking out over, having Tyler Bates and a real rock band behind me, playing music as all the extras are having a good time. Just kinda like, “Holy shit, somebody pays me to do this.”

When John Wick goes underground in the tunnels, it’s dark but, unlike a lot of action scenes set in the dark, you can tell what’s happening. 

We have a fantastic cinematographer, Dan Lausten (Brotherhood of the Wolf), who spent two weeks down there with the action team coming up with a lighting scheme that was … I like shadows. I like dark, but as you brought up, sometimes dark means you can’t see. We did movie dark, which means you can see, and we did that with different shades of blue and green, as you saw down there. So you can see into the black.

The movie is gorgeous, by the way. 

Dan and I spent about four months designing the colors. I learned more from that man in a show than I’ve learned in my whole career.

What did those four months involve? 

I do something called the lookbook. I do pulls. I go on the internet, and I found every art, photography website that you can possibly access in the time allowed to a normal human being. Bring out colors, and palettes, and set pieces that are aesthetically very pleasing to me. Then I hand, literally, 8,000 photos to my cinematographer and we spend weeks going over each one. Then we devise a color chart, and what the scene means, and where we want to do it. Dan and I get on every plane and find these locations. He starts designing, and designing, and designing and then he’s gotta make it happen on the day. He’s worked a lot with Guillermo del Toro, who in my estimation is one of the best world creators in the business. What was the Guillermo del Toro movie came out right before we came out?

Crimson Peak.

Crimson Peak, yes, thank you. I didn’t overall love the film, but the look of the movie and what he had done with color, and how everything could be so black but yet you could see so deep with the little of blue or red. I was just mesmerized. Again, we look a little too critical at things, so you can’t really enjoy the film. Sometimes you’re so busy looking at how it was done. I remember watching Crimson Peak completely taken out of the movie by how good the lighting and the world was. I was mesmerized, like who the fuck lit this thing? It’s beautiful, and it was Dan Laustsen. I was like, how do I get this guy? I was amazed. I figured if he could do that with just simple set pieces, what could he do with old ruins and action?

Dan was an incredibly collaborative man who just loved to light, what we call now, in camera. There’s a lot of lighting process being done post, in something called digital intermediate. You know, computers. Dan lights as if he’s lighting for film, very, very much in camera and on the day. So when you’re looking through the camera, you’re looking at what you will get. To find that kind of artistry nowadays is fairly rare.

How about the final action sequence? I imagine with those reflections and those tight spaces it was a challenge. 

Six months of prep. From development to actualization, and then another six months of post, meaning visual effects on how to get people out of reflection. It was a little tricky. We absolutely knew it was going to be difficult. It was a huge process between myself, Dan Laustsen, cinematographer, and Kevin Kavanaugh, our production designer. I could tell they were the right guys when I hired them.

I said I wanted to take Enter the Dragon and twist it on its head and add in lights and color, and neither one batted an eye. Like they go, “Ah, cool. We should do this.” And Kevin was, “All right, well let’s do it three dimensional. Put a stair, you know, [M.C.] Escher …” A very famous architect, or conceptual drawing artist. We want to do an Escher staircase, an infinite staircase. I’m like, “Well that’s a great idea.” And Dan was like, “Well, mirrors are boring, let’s put LED lights everywhere, and we’ll change the color, and we’ll project.

We all went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and there was this video exhibition. We’re like, well not just lights, let’s put a video in there that’ll change colors and flash and make it all weird. We’re like, yeah, it’ll be like a disco. It was just a bunch of really smart, creative men putting their heads together and coming up with something really cool.

[Spoilers Ahead]

Are there any scenes without action that took extra time to get right in the editing room?

I really like, and I don’t think it was the hardest, but I like the Gianna bath scene, just because it was so uncomfortable, and to try to do it tastefully. You know, the whole point of that, even the music, was meant to make you feel uncomfortable. When she slits her wrists and all, it’s supposed to be, “Ooh, I don’t want to look at this.” But, it’s cool, and it’s also making you see a little inside to who John Wick really is.

You see him be compassionate. 

Yep. To bring something out, yet hard but soft … It was tricky. That was probably the hardest thing for me to nail tonally. I’m happy with he way it came out. Did it work? We’ll see. The Central Park scene was fun.

You’re as interested in that character as the world, which is a part of why I think that scene works.

And that holds a lot to … I find that interesting about Keanu, and anything he does. The trick is now that I know Keanu has a quality that people like to watch, how do you express it? Dan and I were very, very aware of that and how we shot Keanu, and how we wanted to track with him, and how we always wanted to put him in between things, and how we wanted black to go as red and red to go as black. You know, we’re very self-aware of that, and hopefully, that comes across.

How do you and Keanu Reeves prepare for a moment like the bathhouse scene? Do you both have many discussions beforehand? 

Yes, but it’s usually not on the day. Again, being a newer director, I wasn’t sure on the process. Keanu gave my partner Dave and I a great deal of education on the first movie. Pretty much, “Hi boys, I love you, but this is how you talk to actors.” Because we were used to stunt talk, which was, “Fuck you, move your ass. Hit this mark. Don’t fuckin’ miss. Left, right, up, down, now.” Very direct so you cannot be misunderstood because people’s lives are at stake. That’s not the best way to talk to actors.

Keanu taught us how to workshop, and how to really work a scene, meaning, for the Gianna scene, Claudia Gerini the actress, we brought her to set a week ahead of time, showed her the set roughly before it was really built, brought her back to the hotel and spent the next two days just going over [the scene], rehearsing, just in the hotel room, and talking and laughing, and figuring the best way to do it.

Before that even happened, Keanu, Derek, and I had spent weeks working on the scene, what’s important to say, what it is. The scene was much larger. What you’ve seen is the whittled down, right to the point version of it, which I think is even better. We usually start with much bigger scenes and try to get through what is important and what helps the audience stay true to the character and what rings true to the audience.

Keanu is very, very good at workshopping. He’s very good at talking about a scene. When you engage in Keanu Reeves, or with Keanu Reeves, from day one of development ’til this coming Monday when we premiere, he’s involved. We may be shooting the Laurence Fishburne scene, but when he’s on break, he’s like, “Okay, now let’s talk more about the Gianna scene.” He’s very, very involved, which is great. So by the time you do show up, just like the action, we know what we want to get out of it. Then if something’s not working, again, you’re not trying to get it done, you’re trying to buy yourself time creatively so that you’re not getting it done, you’re creating it, you’re getting it better, you’re workshopping it.

By the time we go there Keanu can come up and go, “This isn’t really working for me.” “No, it kinda is, but maybe we should just shorten it, and maybe you should try to walk over here, say this, and then hit him with that line.” Then that may not work, but then it gives Claudia an idea to go, “You know what, that may not work, but what if I took off my dress here and I give the line about Helen here, and then I get in the bath.” And Keanu goes, “Great. And then I’ll walk … Okay, I get it. So rather than me say it, let me come over and hold your hand.” And that’s how that little piece [went], you know. Rather than anything else Keanu wanted to sit by her, but look, he’s changing the gun hand, and then he holds [her hand], and then he still shoots her, without changing a facial expression. Those are ideas that are all in there, but how they get developed is through a lot of talk.

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