#he's so inconsequential and non-threatening its laughable

[ectojyunk]

Y'know what, that post abt female chars got me thinking. I feel like there *are* some char tropes that get hated on more when its a dude. I'm thinking, if Asahi was a girl, there'd be much less "pathetic simp" and "I want to beat him to a pulp" going around and more "she's so yandere that's cute" and "she loves himmm, idm her gaslighting me"

... Or am I completely off the mark? I genuinely don't know bc I'm v gender blind with these topics

[purple-martin111]

The Sacrifices We Make

Read on Archive of Our Own

Chapters: 2/? Fandom: Fallout 4 Rating: Mature Warnings: The Creator Chose Not to Use Archieve Warnings Relationships: Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor Characters: Paladin Danse, Female Sole Survivor, Arthur Maxson, Scribe Haylen Additional Tags: Post-Blind Betrayal, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma, Depression, Anxiety, Guilt, Suicidal Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Heavy Angst, Abuse, Mental Health Issues

Chapter 2 - Moving Forward

"You've been the only thing that's right In all I've done. And I can barely look at you" -Run, Snow Patrol-

The bunker was cold and damp with an almost mist that saturated the room. It clung, suspended in the air, and collected on her skin like dew in the morning's first light. Slick with condensation, the walls wept from the tragedy that had transpired here. Bleak, dull grays blurred together with the cool stone and concrete that framed this dungeon within the ground.

Buried beneath the broken earth, this pit contained a man, reduced to rubble because a single phrase told him he no longer held the right to life.  Forced him to believe he was less than human, brought into this world an object—a machine.

Within this pit, a woman was concealed as well.  A woman who had once held steadfast to her ideals, but now crumbled beneath the consequences of those same ideals.  Flayed for holding her ground and remaining true to what she perceived as right and wrong.  Except now she wasn’t so sure if she was right—or had she been wrong all along? Buried beneath the weight of her improprieties, she was losing herself to the internal struggle.

Decades had passed, untouched by time, down here in this hole. Mold and mildew grew, dust and filth choked out the oxygen and stamped out the chance for survival here. Yet two beings remained unearthed in the ground.  Scraping the pieces together, trying to live in a world they didn’t belong, attempting to continue and move forward with what little dignity they had left.

Danse had long since abandoned his post beside her, but Jackie remained, slumped against the wall. She watched from behind the safety of her knees as Danse roamed about the space, igniting the fire and attempting to jump start the heartbeat of life with the inconsequential warmth that sputtered from the stove. The fire was stoked, water boiled, and their meager provisions thrown into a pot to make a grisly stew that could laughably be called food.

How long had it been since he had maintained these duties to sustain life in this place that was inhospitable for life to occur? Despite his neglect for himself, Danse seemed content to let the survival instinct take seed, if only for her benefit.  He would make an attempt for her.  To take care of her and ensure that she didn’t die down here.

He approached with slop in hand and Jackie watched through the slits of her eyes, bloodshot and watery, but with nothing left to give. Provided only with the peripheral around her knees, his boots appeared beside her. Slowly, carefully her eyes climbed his withering form only to be met by the listless, lackluster expression that haunted his hollow features since her return.

The once sturdy man, stock with lithe muscles beneath taut skin, the touchstone of fighting fit, now wasted away. With his obvious neglect for his own self-care, Danse had lost a considerable amount of body mass. His clothes fit loosely on his haggard frame when once his bulk stretched the seams of his t-shirt and jeans. His eyes were blank, revealing the emptiness contained within his soul. The sheen of his dark hair lost to the mop that now hung in his eyes and his beard, a scraggly mess of unkempt strands. It seemed he had decided that he himself was no longer worth the effort of self-preservation.

That was her fault. Danse had needed her and she had abandoned him, betrayed him, and he had failed to continue thriving in the wake of her broken promise. But who was she to judge? Jackie’s unwilling return to the Brotherhood had caused her own decline.

The bowl was thrust towards her. “Eat,” Danse commanded and despite herself she almost laughed.  Did he really think he held any control over her anymore?

Jackie squeezed her knees into her chest, “Why?” her muffled voice, barely a whisper, rose from her hiding place.

Her face pressed into her joints only hearing as he shuffled in frustration, “Jacqueline, you need to eat.”

Jacqueline. Scolded for her insubordination with the use of her full name.

“And what about you?” Her eyes peeked above the safety of her knees to fully capture the extent of his deterioration.  What gave him the right to decide that her life held more value than his own?

With a sigh, he set down the bowl beside her.  Heavy steps marked his retreat to the stove and with a clink and clack, Danse returned with a second bowl in hand. He reached out his hand, finding stability in the floor below and slid down the wall to join her.

“You’ll eat if I do?”

Apparently he had learned it was fruitless to argue. Arguing would only serve for them to go round and round, debating the meaning of life, only to end in anger and frustration while their provisions grew cold.

Jackie conceded with a nod and watched as he sucked down the white flag of their peace agreement.

The contents of her own bowl appeared colorless, odorless, completely unappealing. It wasn’t that the food was inedible, it was that chewing and swallowing and eating required entirely too much effort.  More effort than she was willing to give and it seemed that it was an utter waste of time. Yet, she forced herself to chew and swallow and choke it down nonetheless until there was nothing left but the bottom of the bowl.

When she finished, Jackie tilted the bowl, upturning it so Danse could see she had made good on her promise.  He did the same and stood to collect the dishes and the corners of Jackie's mouth even rose slightly at the gesture. Their goal accomplished, he set about the room cleaning up and making preparations to wind down for the night.

Still hunched upon the ground, Jackie watched his apathetic movements. Painfully slow, methodical, just going through the motions. It seemed her neglect had taken everything Danse had left.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” She had no right to ask, but she couldn’t go back and she didn’t know where else to go.

Uncertainty ground in her gut as Danse glanced up from his menial chores. Perhaps the request was too much to ask.

Confusion stole across his face as he put up the last of the dishes. “I thought that’s why you came here.”

Jackie had come to tell him of her betrayal and expected him to react accordingly. Throw her out by her coattails, hang her out to dry, or worse, turn his back on her and call her a liar. She wouldn't blame him because she wouldn't have complied with Maxson’s demands if she hadn’t wanted it.

“I…” she hesitated. Despite what she had done, she desperately yearned for his comfort, yet she was terrified he would come to his senses and leave her, “...understand if you don’t want me here.”

He approached and pulled her to her feet. “You’re not unwelcome here Jax.” The fine lines around his big brown eyes grew longer with the warmth of the smile that spread across his face. “This doesn’t change how I feel about you. You are free to come and go as you please.”

As she peered up into those endless pools of brown, she was met with kindness and compassion, understanding that mirrored Danse’s words that nothing had changed. Despite his devotion to her though, Jackie knew deep down, the reality was that everything had changed. Some of her anxiety released with his response but the impact of the events from the last few days were catching up to her and Jackie was exhausted from everything she’d been forced to endure. The last few weeks had done wonders to whittle away her sanity. She had remained endlessly busy so she wouldn’t have to think or feel or comprehend the gravity of her recently acquired duties.

Jackie took solace in Danse’s continued affection even though she didn't deserve it. “I’m tired,” unable to remember the last time she had slept, she pulled at his hands still joined with hers, “let’s go to bed.”

Sleep meant rest, which led to thinking and dreaming and as of late, that just couldn’t be allowed. If she allowed herself the luxury of independent thought, the consequences of her decisions would gnaw at her until she found herself staring down the barrel of her pistol. Jackie feared what lurked beyond the veil of consciousness, though perhaps with Danse by her side he would stave off her demons that lie in wait.

Except when she attempted to pull him along, she was met with unyielding resistance. Danse stood stiff, a mighty oak rooted before her. Jackie’s heart sputtered a painful rhythm; she had crossed the line. She was being allowed to stay but whatever intimacy had been building between them had burned away with her betrayal.

The devastation must have been evident on her face because Danse shuffled closer to clarify his intent, “I…just don’t want you to feel as if this is expected.”

He was too good for her, concerned only about how the physical contact and implications of sleeping together would affect her already fragile mental state. Jackie however, was a selfish woman. As much as the guilt threatened to bury her, she would greedily take what was being offered because she desperately needed to feel close to him. To pretend that maybe he still cared despite what she had done.

“I don’t.”

Danse searched her face for any sign of forced compliance before relaxing and agreeing, “Alright.”

He gave her hand a squeeze and went to flick off the overhead lights as Jackie perched herself on the edge of the tattered bed he had dragged in from the other room. At least it beat sleeping on the floor.

Jackie chewed the inside of her cheek and stared at the floor and when Danse came to join her, the mattress squeaked its protest beneath his weight. Should she tell him? She supposed he deserved to know her current status. Full disclosure in a last attempt to allow him to change his mind, “I’m AWOL right now.”

“Jackie,” Danse pressed his fingers to her chin, turning her face so she could see the seriousness in his eyes, “Maxson will come for you.”

There was no argument.  She knew this to be true and she twisted her hands together, an outward expression of the uncomfortable feeling rising in her belly. Danse’s accusing eyes weren’t helping to ease her nervousness either.

“We both know what will happen if he finds you here.” If she didn’t know him better, she would have thought that in the soft undertones of his voice, Danse was asking if that was what she wanted.

The answer? She didn’t know. Maybe that fate wouldn’t be so bad, but who was she to decide for Danse?  She’d already done that once and look where it got her. Grasping for life in a pit in the ground with a man who believed he was a machine, while the high and mighty thirsted for their blood.

“I know,” she sighed and squeezed her hands tighter, “but not right away.”

Jackie liked to think she understood the man who would lead a witch hunt for their lynching if she didn’t return. For once, she had respected this man, had comradery with him and put her trust in his words. But now it was a forced cooperation to keep the man she loved safe and on the right side of Maxson's gun.

“He’ll wait,” Jackie assured, “A day, maybe two,” she hesitated before dropping her gaze with a shrug, "there was an incident so, he likely expected me to run off.”

“An incident?” Danse folded his arms across his chest and Jackie could feel the scrutiny of his eyes.

"Yeah," her voice shook and moisture gathered in her eyes, "but...it's not a big deal."

"Jackie-"

“Please, Danse," she shook her head, "not now."

The reminder of what had happened at the church and later, what Maxson had done to her behind closed doors was entirely too much to process at the moment. The bruises around her neck barely scratched the surface of her injuries and she could only hope that the long-sleeved t-shirt she wore would keep the painful marks that littered her body hidden. With any luck they would at least prevent Danse from asking questions and doing something stupid in turn.

She could see the way he looked at her, Danse wanted to question her and find out exactly what had happened. For the sake of her sanity though, he let it go.

“Maxson,” the least she could do was provide him a meager explanation, “likes to test my loyalties. He’ll to see if I’ll return on my own accord.”

Sympathy, however, didn’t stop Danse from asking the burning question, “Will you?”

Again Jackie didn’t have an answer.  Instincts told her not to go back. It was a trap, so why should she return?  But if she remained here it would mean their fates were sealed.  Then again, she figured her fate was sealed either way.  How long she could live like this? And if Maxson didn’t kill her himself, she knew she would eventually decide that a long walk off a short forecastle would do the trick just fine.

She swallowed her misgivings for now and shifted to meet his eyes, pleading with his muddy browns, “Can we just get through tonight?”

With heaviness upon his brow, Danse nodded his agreement and slipped between the sheets. His hand tugged at her shoulder, beckoning her to come to bed with him. Jackie complied without resistance and his arms wrapped her up, pulling her into the solid warmth of his body. She settled her head against his chest and slipped her hand beneath his shirt.

As she closed her eyes, some of the built up tension within her eased with the warmth of his skin beneath her fingers.  Perhaps it was because she wasn’t brought up in the horrors of this world, but she couldn’t comprehend how this man, this living breathing man, who lie beside her could view himself as anything less than human.

Despite what he had been conditioned to think and what the Brotherhood liked to turn a blind eye to, Danse had been made human. Just like her. Just like Maxson. Just like every other man, woman, and Gen3 synth in the wasteland.

Jackie pulled her hand away and tugged at his shirt, “Take this off.”

He obeyed and she shifted so he could pull the garment over his head and a soft sigh of contentment escaped her as she rolled back against him.

“I’ve missed you,” he admitted and Jackie didn’t miss the unspoken, I thought you weren’t coming back . His hand pressed against the small of her back while the other threaded through her hair before his fingers trailed along the line of her jaw.

She hummed at the much needed contact of his skin against her face and nuzzled closer, “God, I’ve missed you too.”

It felt so goddamn good to be close to him again. To be cared for and wanted for more than just a means to an end. Jackie was sure she would be burned alive at the heat stirring in her belly and beating through her blood. She had forgotten what this felt like…how it felt to be loved. How her skin tingled at his touch and the gentle press of his lips against her forehead. How her cheeks flushed and emotions welled in her eyes at the overwhelming feeling of intimacy that his nearness brought.

Jackie draped her arm across his naked chest and let her head relax against his shoulder as she pressed her lips just below his collarbone. Danse cradled her against his body, holding her close and allowing her to take refuge in the gentle comfort of his touch.

For a moment they remained like that, legs and arms intertwined. They basked in the heat of each other’s body and relished in the strength of their bonds of companionship knitting together once more.

After a while, Jackie shifted and rubbed her nose against his jaw, anxiety needling away at her mind. “You’re not gonna leave me?” she mumbled, retreating into the crook of his neck, afraid to see his response.

“Jax, where would I go?” his hand caressed her cheek and he tilted her chin towards him, tenderly pressing his lips to hers. The tips of their noses touched as Danse leaned his forehead against hers, “I am nothing without you.”

The tips of his fingers softly traced down her neck and along the angular line of her body, his hand coming to settle on the curve of her hip. For all the things she felt for this man, there was sadness behind it all because she knew, as long as Maxson commanded the Commonwealth, she would never be able to be with Danse properly.

If she could, Jackie would give it all up, just to never leave his side again.  Even if it meant living out her days in this decrepit bunker. She would trade the world to spend a lifetime with Danse, but she supposed she already sold her soul to no avail.

Jackie untangled herself enough to see his face, watch his eyes, “If I left, if we ran, do you think he would come for us?”

Sadness spread across Danse’s features, “He would never stop looking,” and she could see the hopelessness in his brown eyes as his expression fell. “Maxson would tear down the sky just to get you back.”

“What if…” she paused, again she had no right to ask.

Perhaps though, she had lost the will to continue living. It was the emptiness and sense of utter loss that clawed around inside her and sank its teeth into the soft flesh of her heart that willed her down the dark path. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about it. Jackie had convinced Danse before to abandon the act, now the game had changed and maybe she could talk him into taking up arms with her. Completion. Together.

“...we just ended it.”

“Jacqueline…” there were no words to ease the heartache, so instead he pulled her closer, “tell me what to do,” he spoke in desperate tones, “How can I fix this?”

She shrugged, resting her head against his chest once again and accepted her fate, “There’s nothing you can do.”

Content for now, to let the warmth of his skin and the sound of his heartbeat in her ear lull her into a false sense of security. As long as the king remained in his castle in the sky, they would never be safe again.

No words were spoken after that.  Only the silent understanding that they were sinners condemned to live with the consequences of their betrayal.

***

Morning had come, or what she perceived as morning. There was no way to tell for sure. Down here time had a way of folding in on itself. Passing slower than on the surface, like the continuum ceased to exist in this hellhole. One could sit in solid isolation for days.  Never eating.  Never sleeping.  Never breathing. And it would seem that mere seconds had passed when in reality a lifetime had come and gone.

Something had stirred her consciousness and roused her from the dreamless sleep.  A noise? The darkness itself? Movement from her companion in his slumber…? Jackie reached out her hand to grasp at nothing but air.

"Danse...?" she mumbled, realising it was the cold emptiness beside her that had woken her.

Her heart stuttered in her chest and she gasped at the stale air. A prickly, creepy crawly sensation spread within her bones, panic claiming its helpless victim. Her hands desperately searched the sheets, but she came up empty handed. Nothing.

Danse was gone.

Jackie willed herself upright, to slow down and take mindful breaths. Not to default to the assumption that he had left her.

“Danse?!” she called out to him and strained her ears to receive his response. Only silence and the steady drip of water leaking through the crumbling structure greeted her ears and her fears were confirmed.

He had left.

The darkness robbed her of her composure and she stumbled around groping for the lights. She was a fool to think he would stay.  Finally her fingers found solace and she flipped the switch.  Light illuminated every corner of the dilapidated room. Her head spun and her previous night's meal threatened to make a reappearance on the floor. Dizzy and uncoordinated, she lurched forward with barely enough time to catch her knees in her hands before tumbling to concrete floor.

Breathe. Just breathe, she reminded herself and after a moment of, in through the nose, out through the mouth, Jackie regained her bearings enough to look up and scan the room for any clues of Danse’s whereabouts. Her eyes caught in the corner where only one figure loomed a menacing stance.

The armor. The Paladin armor. Her armor. Gone.

And suddenly the pieces clicked into place…

Now she panicked for an entirely different reason. Her gut flipped and her blood ran cold at the horrible realization of what had happened.

Danse had left, but he hadn’t left her. He had gone to make amends, to put action behind his words. He was going to right her wrongs, going to end up on the wrong side of an army of laser rifles, gunning for a bullet between his eyes. A bullet lodged in his brain, already marked for his death.

[ratherhavetheblues]

QUENTIN TARANTINO’S ‘ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD’ “Lightning in a bottle…”

© 2019 by James Clark

     The films of Quentin Tarantino are arguably the gold standard of amusement while indirectly excoriating the history of reverence. His recent shot, Once upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019), attends in a rather special way toward his enmity regarding pious foot-soldiers on guard for the sake of half-truths, at best. The target of Hollywood might seem to be a rather minor concern, not to mention that nearly everyone intuits its flaws already. But do they?

We take a ride with Cliff, a movie stunt man/ and double, for actor, Rick, in Rick’s cream-colored Cadillac convertible. While the actor attends to his well-known métier of Western adventures, overblown, underwhelming but passionately popular, Cliff, not being needed to spare the daring in this outing, takes up his other functions as chauffeur and handyman at Rick’s mansion in the exclusive hills. This day, there is the insupportable collapse of the perhaps, sinking brand’s television antenna, the year being 1969. Two magical events occur during Cliff’s hiatus. The first is the remarkable agility of his reaching the roof—sheer acrobatics in leaping from purchase to purchase. When on the irregular roof, his panache is not only bankable but poetry. The second surprise occurs on the freeway with the top down, of course, and music on the radio, to a tune called, “Gamblin’ Man.” The pitch and volume of the sound inundating the fast car can be discerned, with the driver in closeup, that intensity of this degree is, however unspoken, a field of grace. Much remains to be explored regarding Cliff’s solitary day off; but this film invites disparate, rare and desperate action to coalesce. Some months later, and late at night, with the sidekicks about to go their separate ways (and making a last-ditch party of the crisis), Cliff and his pit bull, Brandy, take a walk in the vicinity of Rick’s opulent (but now financially threatened) castle. The acrobat, saying nothing of the earthquake but feeling much, evokes another ecstatic song, far more explosive than the treacly film productions which made the actor affluent, namely, far from matinee-idol, Chris Farlow’s, one-hit-wonder, “Out of Time”—“Baby, Baby, Baby, you’re outta’ time…” And it’s freeway-time again, because the Stones (far more explosive than the earnest writer) know their Hollywood-Rare. The latter’s, wisely distorting the phrase, “Baby, Baby, Baby, you’re outta’ ooaa” [connoting, both “time” and “sight”]. The fateful musical presentation penetrates the mansion next door, the short-lease range of the now-pregnant starlet, Sharon Tate, where a dizzy anti-climax is about to unfold, which obliges us to consider a step far more demanding of nuance than Hollywood can afford. Back to Cliff, on the rich man’s roof, who couldn’t miss hearing the neighbor’s music, a bemusing effort by the laughably named, “Paul Revere and the Raiders.”

We had been up close to her the night before (at an intersection between convertibles; the play-list no improvement on her home choice), on their drive back to Rick’s, not the restauranteur, of course, but the ravenous, for Bogart’s fame. Here she was accompanied by her recent husband, Roman Polanski, still, at that point, a bright light of European avant-garde movies. (His elevated stature depended upon two early 1960’s efforts, Knife in the Water and Repulsion; from there he coasted and became a notorious child molester.) Rick, regarding this sighting as an epiphany, gushes to a less than thrilled Cliff, “He’s been living next door for a month and this is the first time I’ve seen him. I could be one pool party from starring in a Polanski movie…” Rather typically, he cites the big name for bringing to us, Rosemary’s Baby. The “glamorous couple,” dressed in rococo-era costume (once-stifling for all it’s worth in the 18th century) were en route to the Playboy Club, where Sharon cavorted as more polka-Polish than anyone else in the establishment. She and Mama Kass were the life of the party. But the real story had to be “no-bullshit,” tough-guy, Steve McQueen, describing, Louella Parsons-style, the tangled affections of Sharon’s depths. (A pan, while Cliff was still fighting off her music on Rick’s roof, discloses very briefly a lithographic poster by Alphonse Mucha. The sensitivity of the woman’s presence in that work must clearly derive from Polanski’s better days. That day, the so-called auteur was tossing a ball to her miniature dog, while the sweetheart slept snoring.)

There is about the first moments of our film today such miasma-inducing artificiality, that a whole universe of sensibility has to be invented to counter such an aberration. Firstly, there is a clip of a re-run of Rick’s television series of yore, namely, “Bounty Law,” the facile and preposterous rhetoric there being perhaps engaging for an eight-year-old. But soon we realize that those far more advanced in age than that swear it to be some kind of elixir. In the instalment mentioned, after dispatching five attackers in two seconds, he intones, “Amateurs don’t make it!” Cut, then, to a TV fan program where Rick can do no wrong. The peppy master of ceremonies, one, Allen Kinkaid, congratulates himself for including Cliff—by which he gets to maintain that the viewers are not “seeing double.” Rick explains that Cliff saves him from falling off his horse in high action. He admits, “Yes, I can fall off a horse.” This causes mysterious mirth all round. Then Cliff, convinced that the exercise doesn’t make it, blurts out, “I carry his load,” and more slippery goodwill fills the airwaves.  Scatology closing the mainstream show. But there is more to Allen Kinkaid (and more to Hollywood madness) than that. The seeming inconsequential host is sitting on Hollywood gold dust, in the figure of Jeramiah Kinkaid, a farm boy and his black lamb, in the Disney film, So Dear to My Heart (1948). Jeramiah brings the lamb to the county fair and goodwill prevails. But the action having occurred in 1903, the lamb and the boy are no longer a joy. (The boy, played by Bobby Driscall, died destitute at age 31.) The skills invested in that little story did manage a topspin that fans are not to be ridiculed for cherishing. But, in failing to vigorously discern the hardness and settle for a pathos rapidly becoming bathos, those fans fail to appreciate how few such gems obtain; and they fool themselves that sentimental and melodramatic extracts are close enough to the template. They actually, in great numbers, become an uncritical and militant cult. Rick moves on to an appointment with his agent who urges, in light of his frequent drunkenness wrecking for good “Bounty Law,” and doing “guest appearances” on the order of a cover of the “Specialty Song,” “Green Door,” that he reboot in Italy, where American has-beens enjoy a second life. Over and above the insider’s savvy pragmatism, he enthuses about what is obviously his client’s favorite role, from some time quite long ago, as wiping out much of the Nazi hierarchy with a flamethrower, in the movie, “The Fourteen Fists” [recalling the many fists in play, killing the fearful pagan, Johan, in the Ingmar Bergman film, Hour of the Wolf ]. The unctuous go-getter, mimes the attack and we hear our protagonist call out the comic-book line, “Anybody for sauerkraut?”

   Before plumbing here any more details of this nearly inscrutable myopia, let’s bring to bear more detail of that vigilante saga—from 1968 (set, wouldn’t you know it, in Germany)—where another homogeneous group of militants see fit to kill a painter who does not subscribe to an infinite future in a heaven. The painter, Johan Borg, could be described as some kind of acrobat, inasmuch as he has ventured to reach a dimension of life with which the vast majority are unconcerned. (“Borg,” denoting, in Swedish, a mountain, a castle stronghold. The film in point being set on a German island, there would be the very different lexical sense of a male castrated pig when young.) Cliff, a self-styled, easy-going guy, carries his skillset with significantly more panache than Johan.  But, like the artist, who had repeatedly crushed the skull of a rude boy on a deserted beach, along a steep cliff, there is a past in which Cliff has murdered, in this case, his wife; and gone free, as with the kills Cliff delivered during his military days. (The relentless smashing of an intruder at that swan song party, by the sometime reckless athlete, will give us much to ponder.)

During his day with Rick’s Coup de Ville, Cliff, giving a lift to a teenage girl (1969, again)/ entrepreneur who’d rather do tricks than go home, show’s no enthusiasm for the trade (and its possible quicksand); but, on hearing that “home” is the ranch just beyond LA where the boys worked on “Bounty Law,” he persuades the hooker to ease up for the afternoon and let him see a place he hasn’t visited for years. What he sees is another homogeneous group bent on murderous coercion of heretics—a group, however, right across the board, so inept, you’d think they were in some form of rehab, their main action watching television series, in the energies of a seraglio. This being the notorious Manson marauders, another form of resentment arrives therewith, to make us think. “Pussycat,” the unthinking navigator bringing the Cadillac to the cesspool, declares, angrily—after our protagonist discerns that the once-friend and owner of the property receives, as rent, daily favors from a dogma official, named, “Squeaky”— “You’ve embarrassed me!” She, operatically, like the patrician wolf-pack, in Hour of the Wolf, sneering that the now-non-owner whom the cult kept from Cliff on a pretext of his blindness, is a lie, “He’s not blind—you’re the blind one!” (Her ready playfulness, before the reversal, lingers as somehow at least a bit incisive.) More to the matter of short fuse, by remote soulmates, Johan and Cliff, one of the few males of the entourage (the big beachboy nowhere to be seen) has had, while Cliff was weighing the weight, the temerity to cut one of Rick’s tires. On discovering this, and seeing the sneering perpetrator nearby—a scrawny boy looking as if he should get a checkup—our anti-hero, in the course of ensuring that the inmate install the spare, beats the rascal, repeatedly and very bloodily, to within an inch of killing him. That the first punch lifted the vandal skyward, as in Hollywood cartoons, brings to bear Cliff’s state of far from immunity from the general crap. Later he crushes a sneering Bruce Lee during a lull of a very-short lived assignment. And later still, as mentioned, when Squeaky and a few others (still sans-Manson), have the temerity to invade Rick’s place with Cliff visiting, the latter, receiving a superficial gunshot wound (like that received by wife, Alma, from Johan, the hopeful killer), the retaliation is his taking the pudgy lieutenant by the neck and smashing her face, very often, and very hard upon the telephone receiver (more 1969) and other appliances, leaving her unrecognizable as a head. (Could there ever be anything about that sorority which makes your day? Come to think of it, early on, as the so-called “doubles” [Rick and Cliff] pass by to do their storied errands, there are several of them scavenging through a dumpster, pleased to discover and catch by the wind some white sheets [somewhat like Johan’s lost wife and her sheets in the wind]; and as they squeal like happy seagulls, they have something. They have something far more palatable than do-gooders, Simon and Garfunkel, chiming in here, with their so arch, “Mrs. Robinson.” Hollywood being predictable, but Tarantino, not.)

   The anticlimax—a maneuver in the same league as Bergman’s theatrical jolts—pertains, not to movie lore in general, nor to crime thrillers in particular, but to the explosive and lovely ways of intent within everyone’s grasp to sustain, however difficult. Tarantino’s priority is to see how advantages, far more cruel and formidable pieties than stupid murder, derive their monstrous power, and can be, though never not numerically dominant, eclipsed by courage and wit. The dust-up with Bruce Lee, eliciting from the now marginal pieceworker, Cliff,  the sneer, “You are a little man who [far from the boast he could beat up Cassius Clay] couldn’t hope to carry his [the boxer’s] trunks,” concerns a ridicule of the entire Hollywood Establishment, perhaps a failing of taste, on Cliff’s part, but a revelation of the metaphysical crisis here. More modulated mockery is to be seen during Rick and Cliff’s evening watching old tapes of “Bounty Law.” Depressed Rick can only register contained grief for a lost past. Non-depressed Cliff laughs out loud, seeing through the dramatic travesty, from beginning to end.

It is, then, the seeming fine Sharen Tate, who can lead us, in special ways, to the poison. We first see her returning to LA from Europe, accessing her priority luggage—including a small dog—in the vicinity of a carousel nudging her to be forever a child, as recommended on the highest authorities. She strides, in a slight slow-motion pace, along a corridor with only one exit, emphasized by the glimpse of her Pan-Am stream-line plane. Soon there is a day, like Cliff’s roundabout at the ranch, where, in her tiny, convertible, foreign vehicle (a 1969 phenomenon), she picks up a woman hitchhiker, very unlike Pussycat. Seen from above, there is no doubt that Sharon, granted good bones and good skin, can be as congenial as the girl next door. (The prelude to the lift is a Buffy Sainte-Marie anthem, in tremolo on the radio— “The Circle Game”—a decided improvement over what she listens to at home.)

(“And the seasons they go round and round

And the painted ponies go up and down

We’re captive on the carousel of time

We can’t return we can only look behind

From where we came.

And go round and round and round

In the circle game.”)

(But does this bit of taste rise to the celestial heights her promotors would insist? Or does it speak to the volatility of cogency?)  Arriving to the studio and giving the stranger a goodbye hug, we see the sign reads, “Fox.” (The infrastructure by Bergman reads “Wolf.”) Foxy advantage, all the way. Soon she’s done for the day, and she comes upon a movie house showing a film she’s in, along with Dean Martin. We can report she’s not another Jerry Lewis, but her enjoyment of seeing herself cavorting to little palpable effect finds her at some level of apparently remarkable fulfilment. She kicks off her sandals and places her dusty feet on the chair in front; and she foxes down every laugh and cheer in the theatre regarding her supposed martial arts skills. (Back to Cliff and Bruce; and wouldn’t you know, the latter—with his effete wolf howls—is a frequent guest of hers.) She had basked, coming into the show, in finding the cashier and the owner of the theatre typically elated by the presence of a goddess. But there’s a coda to this day even more edifying, in the goddess’ excellent day. On the way home she stops by a bookshop (remember them?) to pick up an order of the Victorian novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), by Thomas Hardy, for her brainy husband who must, like her, be a Victorian softy. (Bergman kicks ass, similarly, in Cries and Whispers [1972], where Charles Dickens is seen to be an antiquated wimp, and avatar of advantage in the sense of precious careers, precious families and precious patrimonies. Since we’re drawn, by both Tarantino and Bergman being adept dramatic phenomenological philosophers in lodging a pushback against lead-pipe dogmatists, we seem to require mentioning that maniacal, militant careerists, and such, stem from that ancient Platonic myopia as to dynamics while overestimating inert matter. From there, religion, and its causal conclusion, humanitarianism and its obligations to coincide with the former, and science and its quietist retreat have enjoyed pushing around those who see much farther and braver than those who have gone too far with Plato.) With that ascension coming to bear in the anti-climax, we find Rick, a near-perfect wimp, out on the private road, invited to Sharen’s—she being tantamount to an addict of Rick Dalton action television (when she’s not listening to Paul Revere and the Raiders—“Hungry for the good life, baby!”) She wears a team jersey showing 17, her emotional age.

   The suffocating majority that is Hollywood is at its apex with the pedantry of those behind the scene—producers, directors, agents, promotors, lawyers, accountants… The breathless Kinkaid raises “double” about our protagonists, only to show he doesn’t know what to do with it, having, the years gone by, allowing a swollen prose to predominate and a withered poetry to die. Earnest cheering for lead-pipe nonsense (see the hunks, see the babes) is the order of our function here. Just as egregious as the bishops presiding over The City of Angels, there is Rick, in semi-depression that his career options have dwindled, meaning that others will man the idiocy where he used to be quite paramount. Before the fading actor takes the advice of the savvy cash-sniffer sold on Italy, there is one more push we need to take into account—involving a director, seemingly near dementia—showing the last of Rick’s several-year stint as a villain. (Immediately after the interview about Italy, Rick rejoins Cliff and cries on the vigorous acrobat’s shoulder. “Don’t let the Mexicans see you crying,” the latter urges, a concern reaching as far as the appalling Mexican directors’ film coups of the present day.)

The obsequious last American helmsman he’ll see, for quite a while, probably aware of a disaster in the making, but knowing a way to lessen the cheapness, promises that modernity and novelty will be the watchword. His patter and timbre of voice about the quality of the chestnut in point somehow overruns his standard positivity, in fascinating ways. Aiming for “lightning in a bottle” and “zeitgeist,” he’s all about changing Rick’s image to “Hell’s Angels” and a new hair style. “I want this to be caliber, not cowboy… Hip…” Rick balks in hearing “hippie…” Though our fading star has for years seen himself as a lucrative entertainer first, to those easily entertained (having purchased a castle of sorts with a pool segueing to the heavens, Architectural Digest-perfect); and a participant in the arts running about #99th (the Polanski moment being a rare jog), that he cared at all would perhaps have factored in the eccentric leader’s rhetoric. And there’s something else crossing Rick’s path which Sam, the inflected snake-oil cheerleader, had to regard as a big plus. Waiting at lunchbreak for an early afternoon first take, he wants nothing more than to read his cowboy novella, and he pauses along a shady point of the concern’s walkway. Nearby, a little girl is reading a script. He asks if he could sit down there; and, after a long pause she says, “Sit.” Not the most cordial welcome; but her presence being far more mature than her age, he becomes curious. Lighting a cigarette and responding to her not small ego, he learns that she never eats before going in front of the cameras, because she wants to concentrate upon her persona. “If I can be a tiny amount better, I will.” She then, the sense of deep resolve losing some traction, declares that Walt Disney is the greatest human to have lived over the past hundred years. She goes on to ask about his book—with a topic about a once-world’s-best wild horse trainer in his 20’s becoming far less than that in his 30’s. Falling, as he would have done during those later acrobatic feats, he’s facing the future with “spine troubles.” “He’s not the best anymore. He’s far from it…” This state of affairs rather oddly brings upon Rick a spate of tears. She tries, by her sincere caring, to help lift the spirits he in fact seldom deals with. But the presence of a vigorous, though wobbly, commitment, has dredged up something he has failed to master, an acrobatic challenge demanding nerve and wit far beyond the ways of those million-dollar dogs. In this crisis, the strain of cheapness cannot be stanched. “Fifteen years, you’ll [the girl] be living it!” [no longer disinterestedly transcending that horde of wolves]. On to the oater and its cliché-fest. Rick flubs many lines; and on a break, back in his trailer, he beats himself up for being so unprofessional and being a drunk. (There are, as mentioned, stories tossed around about his addiction causing the end of “Bounty Law”—lacking bounty and lacking law. Having been inspired by the serious girl, he determines to stop drinking and yet he has a shot before tossing out the bottle). Rick does some homework and his subsequent deliveries of evil do surpass—for how long? —his usual Saturday morning television bilge. (This lost cause is interspersed with Sharen’s delight in a film of hers not noticeably any better than Rick’s. Moreover, Cliff’s radio, as he drives Pussycat to the Spahn Movie Ranch, plays, “Brother Loves Travelling Salvation Show,” another touch of bathos to make to make full sense of.) With a staged conflict between Rick’s “evil” emoting and a Bostonian rationalist, we have the goofy makings of a primal conflict no one is ever going to see as such. The empathetic girl, who was supposedly being held for ransom, tells Rick, “That was the best acting I’ve seen in my life!” Sam, sticking to his sticky story, finds that Rick had reached Shakespearian levels.

There is one more current to add, needing as much pondering as we can manage, that being Cliff’s. We’ll see how amenable our picaresque protagonist can see fit to be stronger and brighter than the level he’s settled for. After the brush with Polanski and Sharon and their effete, rare roadster, the “double” retrieves his severally damaged, early 1960’s Karmann Ghia convertible from Rick’s spacious entrance, performs a little UCLA huddle unwind and returns home—home being a severally damaged trailer at the backside, mud bowl of a drive-in movie of poor status, amidst a terminal truck, various bits of garbage and an operating oil well. (Would that latter apparatus have anything to do with depths?) He kisses and plays with his pit bull, “Brandy,” and presents him with a “Wolf Tooth” dog bone. The easygoing “nonentity” does demand some decorum and patience, at dinner, from the companion/ Alfa. His television, seemingly never turned off, is tuned to a pop singer in a tux, namely, Robert Goulet, a Canadian far less alive than Buffy Sainte- Marie. Discerning the spigot of entertainment may be a large obligation most of us neglect. How Cliff performs, as it happens, is far more momentous than that of anyone else in view here, and we’re obliged to see where he’s going. (Another prelude to a hidden slippage of dialectic is the two hand chow cans being slowly pulled by gravity to the bowl.)

Where he’s going, on that putatively fateful farewell party is far from transparent. It doesn’t involve Brandy chewing off one the intruder’s cock; but hostility does reign. Getting a bit closer is the Manson irregular and enduring fan of “Bounty Law,” lawyering, “My idea is to kill the people who taught us to kill.” Though far from  a debater, Cliff, were he to have been able to listen to such entitlement, he’d have recognized the mob murderousness, in lieu of serious discernment. He’d have recognized it, because everyone around him uses it, in order to rough up those, like him (far from fully acute), by way of ostracism, contempt and sabotage. Even more a setback than the flesh wound contracted in the skirmish, there would be weepy Rick, using a flamethrower to kill a wounded sitting duck; and dissolving a supposed friendship and livelihood, for reasons of clinging to advantage. (How anyone can see staunch buddies here must indulge in large selective cognition. Sure, Cliff goes over old episodes with the star, and enjoys them. But he’s especially savoring the stunts [the acrobatics]. Anyone on to “Outta Time/ Sight” is not apt to be a fan of what Rick does.) After the Manson massacre, there’s the likelihood of some contact, on Rick’s terms. More good-natured balance and risk.

   In the run-up to Sam’s hoopla, Rick lobbies to the producer to give Cliff some work, somewhere. “He’ll do anything…” That’s tastes of an in-crowd regarding a no-crowd. (On the plane home from Italy—where the jobs were easy for a Hollywood name, and Rick showed much more acute critical powers about European entertainment errors than the American brand—there was the name and his new wife in opulent “Business Class;” and Cliff getting drunk amidst the also rans.) On trampling Bruce Lee, Cliff loses that job, but occasions more gold than the studio is worth. Alma, the widow in Hour of the Wolf, the endeavor being consulted by Tarantino’s golden touch here, quite remarkably shows very little concern for her artist’s husband’s having stoned to death a young boy. Cliff, too, doesn’t lose any sleep about killing his wife. Here we’re in a volatile territory of crime, coming face-to-face with the heroes of civilization (Rick’s work) being strains of a plague the body-count of blasted fruition impossible to count, especially in view of the fact that it will never end. But the tuning is remarkably upbeat, because dudes like Cliff find a way. A T-shirt of his, somewhat covered by a full shirt, spells Champion. (Our film today, despite so many coincidences with the somber defeat in Hour of the Wolf, becomes a cornucopia of inflected  verve.)

A coda at the ending credits, finds black and white Rick urging the viewer to smoke, “Red Apples Cigarettes,” which cuts down “bitter, dry” intake and delivers “healthy flavor.” Hollywood and its dubious logical props not nearly seen for its poison the way cigarettes have come to be discerned.

Someone who would have had no difficulty spotting the poison of world history and the merchants getting rich on it, is Heraclitus (flourishing about 500 B.C.); but left behind by pedants and sissies. One of his aphorisms, paradoxically counselling long-term, creative civilization, proceeds, “War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free.”

Let’s close things here with those well-known Heracliteans, the Stones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tyCOV3SyQc