#i am. not necessarily smart enough to play all the puzzles on offer but.

[dreamcure]

note: this has been uploaded a number of times to my accounts in the past. i am the original author, vinny, and this is not plagiarized work.

cw: pwp (smut), drug use (weed), no established relationship, fucking in front of a friend, female reader.

word count: 2.8k

“Is he all right?” You tilt your head from your spot on the couch, sights fixed on Tadashi at the other end of the couch.

The boy had his body turned away from you, presumably cuddling the couch pillow. You were so occupied in your ridiculously deep conversation about dinosaurs with Tsukishima that the two of you had forgotten to pass the joint to Tadashi these last couple of rounds. While it bounced back and forth between just you two, Yams must have drifted off into dreamland. He was always a lightweight, so neither of you were necessarily surprised when he was done after just three small takes.

To cover your asses and make sure he was still breathing, Tsukki raised his hand and put a finger under Yam’s nose to feel for air. Once he exhaled hard enough, the blonde brought his arm back and gave a nod of approval. You each sat on your sofa cushion in your living room, Tsukki in the middle, you on his right, and yams on his left. Since Tsukki was the one to bring the joint this time, he lit it and got to hold onto it longer than anyone else. He was currently holding it close to his face and inspecting the little red embers of weed slowly going up in smoke. Then his beautiful eyes turned to you and his eyebrows turned up as he held the stick out to you in offering.

“I’m okay,” you say, almost giggling. Your head tipped to the side and landed on the back cushion of your sofa. “I’m really feeling it.”

Tsukki tch’ed and brought the joint back to his lips to take another, much longer hit now that it was all his.

“What was that for?” You frowned at his little tch noise. How dare he be upset that he didn’t have to share anymore.

You had to wait until he exhaled all the smoke before you got your answer. It came out his nose as if he were a dragon. He hasn’t even coughed yet - what a champ.

“We come over to smoke and you both are done before we’ve even gotten to the next joint,” He said dismissively.

“You brought a second joint?” You look at him, incredulous.

He just smirks and pulls the candy mint tin out of his pocket. Anyone who knows your friend group knows that there were no mints in that tin. Tsukki opened the little container and put out the lit joint, now a stub, on the lid, then laid it to rest beside the other perfectly rolled stick. You could just kiss him - he was so considerate when it came to smoking with the group, even if you didn’t get to the second one this time. Plus, and this goes without saying, Tsukki was the best at rolling perfect every time.

Instead of putting the tin back into his pocket, he leaned forward and put it on the coffee table where it would stay until he left, or until he decided to light again. He leaned back and got comfortable after that. Arms crossed, knees spread apart, and back slouching. His face was turned to Yamaguchi, though, admiring how high he could get with just a little bit.

“So, the cutie is asleep. We can’t play cards against humanity now,” You say reluctantly. “What do we do now?”

You didn’t hear a thing from Tsukki, as if he hadn’t heard you at all. His attention was still trained on Yams, asleep on his end of the couch. You did see he was smirking, though, maybe even a bit absent-mindedly.

“Earth to moon god,” You wave your hand in front of his face to finally get him to turn back to you.

“Don’t call me that,” He mutters. To which you call him moon god again and shake his shoulder playfully.

“I asked you what you wanted to do now that we can’t play cards against humanity.”

There was that smirk again. “We can figure something out,” He says as he tips his head back once again.

It’s hard not to stare at him while he’s like this. Tsukki is completely relaxed. Your eyes take a trip down his body while you think he’s not actually paying attention. His eyes are a little irritated from the smoke, but his lips look so soft and are still tugging upward at one side. Lower, you look over his neck and where his adam’s apple protrudes while his head is back at that angle. What you would give to press your lips to it right now, and leave a few marks while you were at it. The fact that your mind was going wild right now didn’t stun you in the least. It had to be the weed. Nonetheless, your eyes kept going down, down, down, until you finally had to close your eyes and bow your head to get your attention back on track.

If you didn’t stop with your wandering eyes soon, you’d have a second heartbeat to deal with while two of your closest friends are high as kites on your sofa. Though, you spoke too soon because the thought of lifting Tsukki’s shirt to see his toned stomach - and him letting you - invading your mind had the familiar throbbing show up between your legs.

When you thought that he hadn’t been paying attention to your fixed stares, he surprised you by putting his palm over your knee. Your chest fills with warmth like you had just drunk hot cider on a freezing day. You raise your gaze again, only this time your eyes are stuck on his lips. The next thing you know, he puts an arm around your shoulders and he’s leaning in to give you exactly what you want, which is a gentle kiss to your lips. His hand grips firmly on your knee once your mouths meet. He leaned into you with so much eager force that he had you leaning back into the arm of the sofa. What else would those stares be meant for if it wasn’t your thirst for him?

This had not happened before, but your mind was bringing back memories of one night when you had confessed to Tadashi. You had admitted that when you get high with the group that you often think about kissing Tsukki silly. It was something that made your lips tingle just thinking about it - both above and below the belt. Who knew that your first kiss would be thc induced. Apparently your wishes were answered because he was kissing you right now, and your buffering mind was struggling to keep up. Either Tadashi outed you to your best friend, or your best friend was smart enough to pick up on all the times you’ve looked at him vacantly a little too long.

Sensing a bit of unease coming from you, Tsukki pulled away. You look at him, and he looks back a bit confused. You assume that maybe he was thinking, ‘you were just sizing up my crotch but now you’re not going to kiss me?’. But to your surprise, he didn’t say anything like that. He whispered, “Is this okay?”

Tsukishima was asking for your consent to kiss you. What you didn’t have the mental capacity to tell him was that your failure to kiss him back wasn’t because you didn’t want to - you did! - but rather you were stupefied and suddenly thinking that somehow he could read your mind. As if your very obvious ogling wasn’t proof enough that you wanted him badly.

“It’s perfect,” You murmur. Your eyes were trained on his glistening bottom lip.

That’s when he closed the gap between you again, pulling his arm snug around your neck and connected your lips again. This time, you seized the opportunity that was given to you a second time and returned the kiss immediately. Seemingly without effort, your lips melded together like puzzle pieces. This kiss was not like the first. While the first was innocent, this one already had your tongue begging to taste his. It could very well be your high talking and how you didn’t often get this amazing quality of physical contact, or it could be how you’ve always been at least a little attracted to him all of this time you’ve been part of the group with him and Tadashi.

Oh, god, Tadashi was asleep at the other end of the couch still. As much as you wanted to care, your mind was clouded when Tsukki tilted his head and enriched the already beautiful kiss. You could tell that the last drag he took really did him in, because the longer this went on, the sloppier he got. It couldn’t possibly help that your own lips felt like numb static against his. Completely disregarding your previous thoughts about how you should be more respectful to your sleeping friend, you parted your lips at the first sign of any tongue.

Tsukki slipped his tongue into your mouth once you invited him in. His lithe fingers moved up into your hair before you could realize they had ever left your knee. You match his efforts and feel your fingertips run smoothly over his jawline as he sucks lightly on your tongue. You hope and pray that it will never end, because he’s so good at this… Or you were too high to notice how awful this was.

The only sounds in the room were the TV playing some reality show, the sound of Yams’ soft inhales and exhales as he sleeps, and the lewd noises you were making with Tsukki. The kissing progressed so deep that occasionally your teeth would gnash with the carelessness you both exhibited. The fingers in your hair tugged the strands at the roots as he got a little more into it. You were the one to cave and moan first. Those fingers in your hair, plus his tongue running over yours was the perfect formula to make your pussy start to run like a waterfall.

Your quiet little mewl had broken his focus on the kiss. His swollen lips curled into a dopey little grin, and his first instinct was to tease you for your slip up.

“Don’t you dare,” You mumble to him and attempt to spark the kiss again in order to silence whatever fun he was about to make of you. It’s no use, though, because Tsukki lips were thinner due to the sudden grin on his face. God, he’s so beautiful when he smiles.

It was a cocky grin, and if you cared to look you’d see the slightest indentations of dimples in his cheeks. Oh, boy, you were in for it. You braced yourself for teasing. He was the one to kiss you first, but he was surely going to ridicule you for moaning like you did.

To your surprise, he eventually comes down from his giddy giggles and his smile drops just enough to lock lips with you again. Thank heavens for your already feverish cheeks - if he was kissing you, he couldn’t see that you were as ripe as a strawberry ready for picking. This kiss was different. It had all the elements of the ones before, but with something added… desperation.

Tsukki’s hand that was once in your hair had moved back to your knee, yet it didn’t bother to stay there for long. The moment he decided to slip his tongue back into your mouth, his fingers began to travel north up your thigh. The static you once felt in your lips as you kissed was now left in the wake of his fingers as they proceeded closer to the source of all your excitement. You wouldn’t stop him. In fact, you egged him on with another little moan - a soft gasp while he sucked your tongue like candy. This time you got a response from him. In spite of the fact that he laughed at your first noise, he himself had groaned just before trapping your bottom lip in between his teeth and tugging.

That was the end of your kiss, because Tsukishima had moved on to new grounds below your jawline. It gave you space to breathe in deeply and try to get some oxygen through to your hazy mind. At his own pace, he kissed over the exposed side of your neck. Your downcast eyes saw that his knees were spread apart, practically inviting you to do something about it. Just as his hand reached under your skirt, your fingers rubbed over the slight mound leading off to his right thigh. Neither of you had an issue with some mutual touching, evidently, since neither of you made attempts to stop the other. In fact, it was the complete opposite.

While your nimble fingers rubbed his growing cock in his trousers, he couldn’t decide if he wanted to touch your breasts or your pussy. Soon, his kisses over your neck were abandoned in favour of pressing his face into your chest. If your face got any more heated you were afraid you’d feint. Even so, you push your boobs together as much as you can with your biceps in order to give him more to push his face against. The pad of his middle finger did a quick swipe up the length of your panties. The yelp you held in your throat didn’t go unnoticed by him, either.

Once again, your mind went back to your friend asleep on the same couch that you were getting intimate with Tsukki on. Tadashi was in a green coma, and probably wouldn’t wake up for at least another hour. Yet, still, you glimpse at his sleeping form, as he was the biggest threat to you getting caught in this hard-to-explain situation. Nonetheless, your fingers continue to play with Tsukishima’s cock outline.

Tsukki was just a little too far gone to remember his best friend right next to him. His face was occupied in between your bust, glasses pressed snug to his face, and soft grunts slipped from him every now and then since you started massaging his hard-on. Part of the excitement, you decided, was the chance of getting caught. Although unlikely, it was still possible.

His finger runs up and down your panties experimentally, gently pushing the fabric in between your folds where it sticks to your slick. He settles to circle around your clit once he finds it. It’s such a low hum of pleasure that you feel guilty moaning over it. Like clockwork, Tsukki lifted his face and sported a smirk.

“You’re wet, y/n, when did this happen?” He teases, as is his nature.

“I get horny when I’m high. I’m not sorry,” You defend yourself, and attempt to flip the tables. You wrap your fingers around his cock, now pretty hard in his pants, and give it a firm squeeze. You’re understood straight away, because he’s bucking against your hand with need.

“What are you going to do about the mess you made?”

“I made it? You kissed me first.”

“You moaned first.”

“I’m going to smack you,” You grumbled. Here you were, his hand up your uniform skirt making small circles around your clothed clit, your hand grasping his dick through his pants. You were equally desperate, yet you still found the time to bicker.

“Don’t you think that will kill the mood?”

You erupt in a whimper when he replaces his delicate finger with his thumb, pushing the pad bluntly against your sensitive clit. This would feel so much better if you weren’t wearing your panties at all. Maybe Tsukki would even want to keep them since he was the one to make them sopping wet. Just as you were leaning to meet him halfway for a kiss, movement traveled across the couch in the form of vibration. Before your lips could ever meet again, Tsukki’s head spun around just in time to see Tadashi push himself up into a sitting position.

The weight of his arm that was once around your shoulder disappeared. Your bodies separated in a half second - you pushed your skirt down and fixed your collar, he pulled a pillow over his lap and acted as if he’d been holding this the whole time. What you couldn’t fix so easily were the swollen lips and arousals in your bottoms. Your heart was racing and it was easy to tell by the way you were breathing shakily.

To separate yourself from the situation, you stand and leave for the bathroom to calm down from the anxiety of being caught fondling your best friend. It felt like being caught by a parent and you were scared of being grounded, or worse.

“What’s wrong with y/n?” Tadashi asks after you slam the bathroom door shut, all yawns and euphoric smiles after his green nap.

“Nothing. She’s got her panties twisted,” Tsukki lied through his teeth and did what he could to make his boner go away. “Sleep well?”

[ozzdog12]

2020 Top 7 (and 1)

2020 am I right? We saw an insane amount of games come out and 2 brand new consoles. What a wild and weird year for gaming, and life in general. In case you are relatively new here, and to be honest that would be completely fair considering I don't post very often on Tumblr anymore, every year going on the last 4 years (on here) I have done a Top 7 (& 1) for my favorite videogames of the year. Check out 2019, 2018, & 2017. What’s wild, as I look back on my list of games that I’ve completed and played, only maybe 10 came out this year. 2020 was a huge backlog year. 

Lets get on with the ‘And 1!”

Favorite Game that Didn’t Come out in 2020: Control (PS4)

Control may very well have been my 2019 Game of the Year, had I played it in 2019. I LOVED Control. I wanted to play it in 2019, but initial reports that it was a little rough on base consoles put me off until it was fixed. And Holy smokes what an insanely fun and trippy game once I finally started it. I knew within the first 20 minutes this was going to be the shit when I went down a hall, walked into a room and talked to the “janitor” left out a door behind him and the entire building had shifted. I’ve always liked Remedy games, but from a distance. Max Payne 1&2 and Alan Wake all oozed with weirdness and intrigue, but never enough for me to finish them. I missed out on Quantum Break. The story is Control is just the right amount of mind f*!$ for me and builds a universe I didn’t know I needed. It take some time to piece everything together, then everything just clicks. The game does have a weird difficulty spike when fighting bosses and the checkpoints were too far apart at times, but those were later patched. I spent an insane amount of time within the Federal Bureau of Control building and even more time after that with the Foundation and AWE DLC and it STILL wasn’t enough. I wanted more. Outside of Prey, I can’t think of another game that stuck in my brain more after I’d finished it. Control is absolutely a MUST PLAY title. In a world where everything sort’ve feels similar, Control stands out of the crowd.

Number 7: Astro’s Playroom (PS5)

I never thought in my wildest dreams that a game I had almost zero interest in playing would end up on my list of favorite games this year. Astro’s Playroom is being labeled as a ‘Tech demo’ but that feels like an insult to what it is. It’s a full fledged game and its free! I’ve paid more for less. A charming little platformer that lives and breathes the history of the Playstation. So many cool Easter eggs and references. It certainly centers its gameplay around the DualSense controller and everything it can do, but at its core, its a completely approachable and forgiving 3D platformer. I played it just to see what it was about, next thing i knew I had completed all the levels and wanted to further explore all the nooks and crannies within the game. I wanted to see everything the game had to offer and I had an absolute blast doing so. Makes me kinda wish I’d played the previous game on PSVR (I’d have to have a PSVR too)

Number 6: Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS5)

Another quality title, albeit a spin-off, from Insomniac to add to their Spider Man universe. Gameplay felt obviously like Spider-Man, but Miles has unique abilities that made the game feel different enough, especially the cloak and stealth. I enjoyed the fact that it was short and concise. The issue with most ‘open-world’ games is that they are entirely too bloated with unnecessary filler content (I’ll get to that in a later game), something I felt the first game suffered from, but I also understand why they are there. However I could’ve use one or two more story missions to help flesh out some characters, but it wasn’t required and didn’t change my opinion one way or the other. My one BIG gripe was with Miles himself. He is an extremely smart young kid, but so incredibly naïve. Peter Parker tells him the one thing he SHOULD NOT do is tell people he is Spider-Man. I get it, that’s part of his growth, but Miles thinks he can just solve his problems by revealing his identity and it almost certainly never works out. 

Number 5: The Last of Us: Part 2 (PS4)

The Last of Us Part 2 may be the most polarizing game in the history of the medium, but for the absolute wrong reasons. I’m in the minority that I very much enjoyed my experience with TLOU2, quite a bit actually. Its better in every single way over its predecessor, except the overall story. There are plenty of fair criticisms to be had about the story and various things within the game itself, but I thought the gameplay was so tight and crunchy. There were genuine moments of suspense and terror that I felt that no other game has ever given me. The entire hospital section (2nd time) was so susensful, I had to put my controller down to gther myself. Some of my favorite moments in the series I experienced with a character I wasn’t overly fond of. How many games can do that? The Last of Us Part 2 was meant to invoke emotion, not necessarily joy. I think that's what people lost along the way. Say what you will about the direction Naughty Dog has taken over the years, but you would be hard pressed to find a studio that makes games graphically better than they do. Yes, I know about their crunch culture, but this is not a place for that. I will say, the game was a tad bit too long, which is not something it typically say for a single player, narrative driven game. The pacing and the way the story was told wasn’t my favorite, but I respect what it was trying to do, even if it failed in some aspect of that, I finished the game within the week it was released. Something I RARELY ever do. I’m a father and I related with Joel a lot in TLOU, but I also recognized how wrong he was. There is a lesson to be learned. Your actions always have consequences and while he was doing what he thought was the right thing, it wasn’t his choice to make, and in doing so set up a series of events that were entirely avoidable, but again, that’s the point isn’t it?

Number 4: Grindstone (Switch)

I’m counting this as a 2020 game since it just came to the Switch this year ( less than a month ago) but its not the first time I’ve played it. Grindstone was the only reason I kept my Apple Arcade subscription and when I let it lapse, there was a void I just couldn’t fill. I bought Puzzle Quest on Switch but it just wasn't the same. Its THE perfect game for bite sized play, even though in its addictive nature, you’ll clear a few levels and an hour has passed before you know it. It has the perfect amount of depth that most ‘match’ games don't. You have different weapons, items, and outfits w/perks to use and experiment with to keep it fresh. I went months without playing my Switch and when this was announced in August, I couldn’t wait! Sadly, I had to wait 3 months, but since then I have spent so much time on the Switch. It gave me a reason to play it again. The art style and humour is great. The variety of enemies and challenge is just right. I can’t recommend it enough. Seriously, check this game out!

Number 3: Doom Eternal (Xbox One)

I will be the first to tell you, I did not like Doom (2016). I found it extremely boring and trite. I understood what Doom(2016) was doing and it succeeded, maybe too much. Nostalgia is a helluva thing. So in saying that, I was mildly interested in Doom Eternal. Doom Eternal is nothing like 2016 outside of it being a Doom game that connects to the rest of them (& also being a sequel to 2016). The mechanics are drastically different with more platforming (for better or worse). Eternal is challenging, at times very hard, especially early on. Eternal has no respect for its players, in a weirdly good way. It laughs at how you’ve played FPS before this one and WILL MAKE you play it its way, not your way. Yes, you point and shoot, but ammo is scare and you MUST use everything in your arsenal. No more using just 2 guns for the whole game. The enemies are relentless. Sometimes you have to pause and take a breath after a battle because you go a 100 mph for the whole fight. You have to continuously move or you die. There is an enticing rhythm to it. I categorize Eternal as ‘Blood Ballet’. Its a game where when your feeling it, much like a rhythm game, you get in the zone and there is no stopping demons from getting slayed. Surprisingly, unlike most games in the genre, it seemed to get easier (sans one extremely frustrating platforming section late in the game) the longer you played it. Was that a testament that I ‘learned’ the Eternal way or it truly did get easier? I don’t know, but the final Boss(es) were....easy.. I had more problems and deaths within the first 4 hours than I did the final 8-9 hours. The multiplayer was also surprisingly fun. The older I get, the less interested I am in multiplayer, but I found myself coming back for more for a good month or so. 

Number 2: Gears Tactics (Xbox One)

As 2020 comes to a close, I came to a stunning realization. I might be a bigger Gears of War fan than I had previously thought. Don’t get me wrong. I love Gears, but I seem to love Gears more than I thought. I'm way more invested into the lore than I recall. Anyways, Gears Tactics is everything XCOM 2 SHOULD’VE been. Not only does Gears Tactics utilize the Overwatch action, its makes it EXTREMELY important. The story revolves around the father of Kait Diaz, Gabe and a ragtag group of mostly random soldiers to take down Ukkon. Anyone who is remotely interested in the Gears universe will love the story and references. The gameplay is just so damn satisfying. The bosses are very challenging and different. I actually had to change my strategy to finish the final boss. I experimented with a totally different style of class and was rewarded for it. The post game stuff is also aplenty. This game scratched a VERY specific itch for me and I’m itchy to jump back in. I’m glad this came to Xbox One because I’m current computer could not run it.

Number 1: Ghost of Tsushima (PS4)

I have a very odd relationship with massive open world games. I love them, but I get very burnt out on them. They all have a relatively same-y formula and are often populated with bloat. GoT does have some of that but to its advantage, its not very populated, in a good way. One of the things that I really appreciated about GoT and its side quest is most of them felt meaningful. The thing that really stood out to me about GoT is the absolutely satisfying combat. It just feels SO GOOD. It requires timing and patience. There are different fighting styles for different enemies and even the armor you wear is more than just cosmetic. The combat is so fun and satisfying that I was immediately excited when they announced Legends, a multiplayer add on, for free. Its so much fun and is a blast to play with a group of friends. I’m sporadically still playing the Legends mode. I initially wanted to play the game in ‘Kurosawa’ mode but I am glad I didn’t because the game, even on the PS4 is stunning, and on the upgrade on PS5 is jaw-droppingly smooth. I did play the entire game in Japanese with English subtitles. I still don't know what Jin’s English voice sounds like. GoT does a good job a drip feeding you new abilities and things to keep things fresh. I love stealth and once I unlocked it, I spent the majority of every battle taking out as many enemies as I could while in stealth mode. Ghost of Tsushima does a lot of things very well, that the few things it doesn’t can be easily overlooked.

[concussed-to-pieces]

Whether It Works Out Or Not; Back In The Cage

Fandom: Red Dead Redemption 2

Pairing: High Honor!Arthur Morgan/Named OFC

Rating: Holy shit T.

AN: Okay I promise I swear this is the last bonus chapter until I finish the game. I swear.

[Spoiler warning for the first four chapters of the game!]

Tag List: @huliabitch​ @cookiethewriter​ @pedrosbigdorkenergy​ @thirstworldproblemss​ @anonymouscosmos​ @culturalrebel​ @karmezii​ @teaofpeach​ @crookedmoonsaultpunk​ @wrestlingfae​ @zombiexbody​ @nelba​ @scribblenotes76​ @toxiicpop​ @mstgsmy​ @misty-possum​ @gallowsjoker​ @midnightbeauty35​ @lackofhonor​ @renegademustelid​

Part One: Strangers

Part Two: Friends

Part Three: More

Bonus One: A Brief Diversion

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: For allusions to character death, mentions of previous abuse, historical inaccuracies and my poorly-remembered French. Stay safe!]

She felt a bit silly in her outfit.

Of course, she didn't need to display as such. "Tastefully understated," she had said to herself in the mirror with a firm nod. It was the fawn-brown dress (admittedly, it was the only dress she currently owned), but she had scraped together the funds for some light trimmings and alterations. A flounce of lace around the hem, a small length of lovely cream ribbon at the waist. The corset, while unwanted, would be expected, practically required in polite company, and even secondhand it was by far the most expensive piece of the puzzle. After that, everything else seemed to fall into place.

Irene Carson (née Craft) arrived at the ball astride Bluster, her hair crowned with a plethora of vanilla flowers and one single spider orchid. The buttermilk buckskin had been curried to within an inch of his life, and sported a matching cluster of vanilla flowers in his mane. He behaved remarkably well given all the hubbub, not putting up any fuss when he was taken from her to be stabled for the evening.

Irene had no elaborate hat to wear, no fantastical feathered monstrosity, so she had made do with what she could find. The flowers would be out of fashion, but they would suit her understated attire a bit better. Perhaps she could be fashionably unfashionable, ahead of the curve.

"I will not be on the list, but please tell Mayor Lemieux that it is the Widow Carson." She politely informed the man with the list at the gate, doing her best to seem calm and collected.

This was a bold move in the normally-subtle social maneuvering of Saint Denis. Attempting to integrate herself back into the gentry was a risky strategy, but a recent realization had convinced her of the necessity of such a move. 

Arthur had made an excellent point. That house had sat silent for long enough. It was time for her to take what spoils she could, time for her to think of the future. Hardly fair that she should escape her dismal marriage with nothing but the clothes on her back!

Tonight would be the first step, provided she could even get past the door. 

As luck would have it, the mayor himself, Henri Lemieux, came out to verify her claim. "Irene? My dear Mrs. Carson, is it really you?" He asked, all a-fluster. "Let me look at you my dear, let me just…" The man took her by the shoulders, examining her face. "It is you! Mon dieu, Irene, we all thought you had perished! Willie assured us-"

"I am certain he went to great lengths to convince you all of the legitimacy of my death." Irene interrupted him coolly. "However, it would appear that he greatly exaggerated."

"He said you...Irene, my dear, he claimed you committed suicide. He had me thoroughly convinced! But he remarried so quickly, I…" The mayor shook his head in a disapproving manner. "I know more individuals than I alone were skeptical! Oh it is so good to see you again, my dear. Please, you are more than welcome." He offered her his arm, which she took without hesitation. "How have you been, my cheré? Your hair is so short, so fashionable! I see you have been taking cues from our sister city of Paris, ne c'est pas?" 

"Naturellement, my dear sir." Irene replied, offering him a soft smile. "I know I will look somewhat out of place in your party. Please forgive my impropriety, but when the news of Willie's passing reached me...I so longed to see you all again, I could not stay away."

"Nonsense, you have nothing to apologize for!" The mayor scolded her lightly, patting her arm. "You have returned from the dead, our very own Lazarus wreathed in flowers like a Belgian-crafted nymph! You are most welcome at our little fête, dear girl. I daresay, after whatever it was that you went through, you are quite justified in a night of revelry." His heavily-accented voice dipped to a conspiratorial tone, "and you must tell us all about your trials. I am certain you have a grand story indeed!"

"Thank you for your hospitality, my dear Mayor Lemieux. I pray that the road ahead of me is far kinder than the road I have traveled thus far."

…

And here Arthur had thought that them playing lawmen was as foolish as they could get. 

He couldn't even believe some of the stunts Dutch was willing to pull for the sake of networking or contacts. The bunch of them looked like damn circus animals in their tuxedos and white ties, and Bill in particular seemed aggressively uncomfortable. Just getting him to bathe had been a struggle. 

Arthur personally had been downright henpecked by Grimshaw and Tilly, the two of them doing their damnedest to tame his thick, unruly mane with a comb and the vestiges of some pomade. All the while Abigail alternated between telling him he would cause every woman at the ball to swoon and bemoaning his stubble. He had shaved yesterday, damn it, and he wasn't going to shave again!

Lord, they were all fools.

Hosea was the only one who seemed to be even remotely at ease, the elderly man already maneuvering his way to the balcony above the courtyard before Dutch had even managed to find Bronte so they could 'pay their respects'. Bill just followed Hosea like a lost puppy.

Arthur didn't have to understand Italian to know that Senor Bronte was insulting them right out the gate. Neither did Dutch, if the tense smile he gave Angelo while they conversed was any indication. 

Arthur was slightly entertained by the panic that flitted across the waiter's face when the larger man ended up catching his arm to use the match originally lit for Dutch's cigar. Never mind that Arthur had had to cut his own cigar with his damn teeth, he was used to doing that shit. Used to falling by the wayside in the gregarious presence of Dutch Van Der Linde. But he wasn't about to let this stuffed-shirt little cocktail carrier get away with ignoring him scot-free. An uncut cigar he could excuse, but an unlit one? That was sacrilege. 

The courtyard was teeming with people, illuminated by the soft glow from crisscrossing strands of fashionable Edison bulbs. There were so many ornate gowns, elaborate hats and stiff-necked suits, Arthur scarcely knew where to look. "Mingle, Arthur." Dutch ordered in an undertone, giving him a concealed shove from behind. "Steal nothing unless it's information."

Arthur sighed, straightened his white tie with the air of a man set before the gallows, and slowly descended into what reminded him of how educated folks would describe an active volcano. The courtyard was a maelstrom of activity, the dull roar punctuated by the mosquito-esque whine of a string quartet. God, what he would give to be out with Irene in the hills instead, listening to her play the fiddle for the wolves.

He shook his head at himself. Again with this nonsense, thinking about her every time he heard violin music. 

He gritted his teeth and approached a group of women, seizing a bottle of champagne off one of the tables as he went. Arthur Morgan was not a smart man, but if there was one thing he knew, it was that folk were more inclined to think charitably towards you if you brought them alcohol. 

"Ladies, might I offer you some champagne?" Arthur asked, knowing his speech was stilted at best as he tried to choke his drawl down. The trio of women seemed to buy it though, simpering and preening while calling him a gentleman. 

That was a lie, and Lord was it a bold one. Though, looking around at the so-called polite company, Arthur felt less like the villain that he was and more like a sheep that had wandered into a wolf's den. 

Maybe a nest of vipers would be more accurate. 

Either way, the large man wasn't used to feeling like prey. As he made his rounds slowly across the courtyard, complimenting outlandish hats and offering his input on the most recent theatre performances (which he had absolutely no clue about), Arthur experienced the distinct sensation of the noose tightening around his neck yet again. Saint Denis was far too civilized for the likes of the Van Der Linde gang. It was only a matter of time before they were rooted out, sent scampering into the night like the vermin they were or slaughtered without quarter.

Lord, this place made him long for the open country.

He bumped into Hosea and Dutch shortly after he had rescued a rail-thin man from choking to death on some peanuts, the two elders of the gang looking like they were plotting something.

"Figure anythin' out yet?" Arthur asked softly.

"Maybe, Arthur. You see that group of folks over by the fountain? That fellow with the tall top hat is the mayor himself." Dutch pointed the man out, gesturing with his cigar.

"So?" Arthur muttered. 

"So, my dear boy, ingratiating ourselves with the mayor's little band will no doubt do wonders for our credibility." 

"Dutch, if the mayor is already cozy in Bronte's pocket like we are, what's even the damn point?" Arthur queried, trying not to sound as sulky as he felt.

Dutch sighed heavily and Hosea quickly interjected, "it's not necessarily the mayor that's our target, Arthur. Rather, the group of people with him. We are attempting to make as many friends as we can, if you recall."

The large man nodded. "Shoah, I guess. You want me to mosey over and...what was the word? Ingrate myself?"

"Ingratiate Arthur, dear Lord." Dutch huffed.

"Right, yeah. Usual fake name?"

"Of course, my dear boy!" Hosea replied brightly, smiling and patting him on the back. "You may have some luck with the woman he has alongside him. From what I can gather, she's stolen the show a bit. The Widow Carson, back from the dead!" He chuckled, oblivious to the way Arthur froze. "Apparently she's returned to attempt to claim her deceased husband's money. Some nasty business, for certain."

"See if you can get into her good graces, Arthur. A wealthy benefactor could do the gang wonders." Dutch instructed absently, already back to scanning the crowds. 

"Her good--Dutch what the hell are you sayin'?!" Arthur hissed, his stomach knotting as a nasty sense of comprehension slowly dawned on him.

"Oh go on Arthur, just pour on the charm! I know you can do it." Hosea encouraged, misinterpreting the source of Arthur's discomfort. The older man gave him a gentle nudge and Arthur found himself sent on his way.

A wealthy benefactor. Was it Irene? Was Irene really here? More importantly, was Arthur shameless enough to accomplish what Dutch had requested of him?

A wealthy benefactor. His skin crawled and Arthur suddenly felt disgusting as he realized that, were it not for his suspicion that the Widow Carson was indeed Irene, he would not have any sort of particular qualms about being asked to do something like this.

Is it Irene? All he could see from his current position was Mayor Lemieux's top hat. He loitered beside a garish floral arrangement for a few moments, trying his best to get himself under control. He was Arthur Morgan, the enforcer of the Van Der Linde gang for fuck's sake! He had survived countless trials before this, surely he could manage speaking to a woman at a party!

Arthur growled under his breath, clenched his fists, and slowly approached the group by the fountain.

"-cheré, you must continue with your story! Ferdinand, stop interrupting, I beg of you!" The mayor was chiding one of the other men standing there, his voice luxuriantly heavy with a French accent. 

The other man, whose complexion was bright red (whether from drink or passion, Arthur could not yet discern), scoffed at the mayor. "Her tale is rife with inaccuracies, Henri! We knew Willie, he would never-"

"Unless you too visited him in his bedchambers, Ferdinand, I suggest you keep your observations to yourself."

Irene. Oh Lord, Irene, flowers woven into her hair like she was a damn forest spirit out of those old Greek tragedies. It was like time had stopped for Arthur as he took in every detail. God, he was startled all over again by just how much he had missed her. She was in that dress, the one she had worn in Valentine. But wonder of all wonders, she appeared to be fully-laced this evening. Arthur swallowed hard, tearing his eyes away from the shapely curve of her hips. The way her corset held and molded her body into something devastating, a weapon normally concealed from him by men's clothing…

Well, he was a red-blooded American. Unfortunately right now, he had to try his damnedest to temper that particular truth about his nature.

"It ain't complex, Lemieux, and only an idiot like you, buddy, would try to make it so!" Ferdinand continued over what Irene had been saying, sloshing the liquor in his glass dangerously close to that beautiful dress. Irene's brown eyes were fairly crackling with restrained fury, color high in her cheeks as she endured being near this loathsome character. She looked magnificent. Arthur wished he could kiss her, right then and there.

"I will not deny idiocy sir, but perhaps now is not the time." The mayor tried to settle Ferdinand down by placating him, however the outspoken man didn't seem to get the hint.

"Typical pansy!"

"You are drunk, Ferdinand." Lemieux stated disapprovingly.

"I'm not drunk, you fool...but this man! This man loves damsels-"

"Ferdinand, your behavior is becoming unseemly." Irene said through clenched teeth. Arthur had a nasty feeling that he knew exactly what Ferdinand had been about to say before Irene cut him off. "Not to mention utterly irrelevant to the topic at hand. Must you constantly inflict your heinous presence upon polite company?"

"Hey hey, you are pretty drunk." Arthur chose that moment to intervene, draping his arm nonchalantly around the belligerent man's shoulders and pinning Ferdinand's arm behind his back after a momentary adjustment. "What's say you and me cool off?" He 'suggested' cheerily, strong-arming the drunkenly-protesting Ferdinand off to the gazebo at the rear of the courtyard. Giving the man a rough shove, Arthur stated (much more rationally than he felt like being at the moment), "sit down and calm down. Count to a thousand. Then, you can rejoin the party."

...

"Thank you sir!" Henri said sincerely, shaking Arthur's hand upon his triumphant return sans one loudmouth. 

"My pleasure." The tawny-haired man replied with a boyish grin. Lord, if she had thought he looked dashing before-! Irene was tempted to feign a swoon. Arthur had clearly been blessed by a trip to the tailor, of that much she was certain. The black suit coat accentuated his broad shoulders and narrow waist in equal measure, leaving him imposingly proportionate in a way that was incredibly tasteful. She was sorely pressed to keep her eyes from wandering, realizing vaguely that Henri was introducing himself.

"Henri Lemieux. I hope you are enjoying my party?"

"The mayor!" Arthur said with an air of surprise, as if he had not known. Irene didn't buy it for a second. Though she was grateful for his timely arrival, she had to wonder why he was here. Did Arthur Morgan have friends in high places?

"Allegedly!" Henri replied with a modest chuckle. "And you are?" 

"Tacitus Killgore, at your service." Irene blinked. That was unexpected. What an elaborate fake name, but he said it so confidently! "This is quite a place you've got here." Arthur continued the conversation, his drawl a touch off. Like he was deliberately attempting to soften it.

"It's not mine, and the city is horribly in debt, but we still can put on a good show." Henri gestured after a moment to the man on his right. "Do you know Evelyn Miller, Monsieur Killgore?"

"My Lord. The writer?" Arthur appeared legitimately awed now, shaking Mr. Miller's hand. Irene could understand that awe, Miller was a revered and respected author amongst the folk in the untamed wilderness of the new States. She herself had been simply soaking up the man's educated palaver like a sponge until Henri urged her to begin sharing her trials.

"Ah, and of course! Our unexpected but most welcome guest, Madame the Widow Irene Carson." Henri introduced her with an elaborate flourish of his hand, making her laugh. "She has been regaling us with the exciting tale of her return to life! It is fascinating to hear."

"Enchanté, Mister Killgore." Irene said, smiling and offering Arthur a quick curtsy. Again, out of fashion, and a bit difficult with the added restriction of her corset, but the quaint gesture had always been preferable to a nod as far as she was concerned. If only that bath girl hadn't been so thorough in lacing her!

Arthur bowed, took her hand and touched it to his lips chastely. "The pleasure is all mine, Mrs. Carson." Her murmured, blue eyes boring into her own. Irene suddenly felt incredibly warm, despite her no-doubt constricted blood flow. "A return to life, you said? Have you been travelin' abroad then, ma'am?"

"Oh no sir, I'm afraid it's been nothing quite so delightful as that." Irene demurred. "Rather trying, in all honesty."

"Truly, it is a sordid affair. Her own husband, claiming she had perished!" Henri shook his head, looking appropriately distraught. "Ghastly. Then, Willie marrying that other woman so fast, and her turning out to be a murderer...well, it is like something from a cheap novel!"

"How awful that experience must have been for you, my lady." Arthur said softly. "Might I listen to the rest of the story, or are you weary of tellin' such a tale?"

"I'm afraid there is not overmuch left to tell, Mister Killg-"

"Please, ma'am, call me Tacitus." He insisted, his eyes bright with their secret joke. 

Irene couldn't help her smile in reply. "Of course, Tacitus. But as I was saying, there is not much to tell. I have spent most of my exile cowering in a cabin out in the mountains, shivering to death or roasting alive." She had tried so very hard to dumb down the tale, doing her best to make it seem like she was still the frail and fragile Mrs. Carson.

"It sounds like you have endured quite a bit of hardship, ma'am." Arthur's lips quirked upwards at the corner, his smile faint but still there. "It's a miracle you managed to survive! A delicate li'l thing like you, all alone out there in that dangerous wilderness." His voice dipped low enough to make her shiver. "Especially with such...reprehensible folk about these days."

Like me, his gaze seemed to say, the heat in that look reminding Irene of when he had kissed her at the stables.

"Exactly what I said, Monsieur Tacitus! Irene, you were so rash! I know that you believed you had no recourse, and I must apologize for my own complacency regarding Willie's abhorrent behavior, but surely there was another way!" The mayor scolded her.

"I am so very sorry, Henri. Next time I am kept prisoner in my own house, I'll be certain to send you a messenger pigeon." Irene retorted wryly, making Henri sputter as Arthur outright laughed. Ah, that laugh! She would have gladly borne her troubles in silence had she known such a delightful sound would someday grace her ears.

Irene was struck anew by the providence of her whole situation while she watched Arthur do his best to play at high society. She had not often been afforded the privilege to observe him, instead of the other way around. His blue eyes caught the amber light quite marvelously, his jaw shaded with stubborn stubble that gave him just the tiniest hint of wildness, of untamed danger. Enough to make him appealing to many of the women present. Irene wasn't sure if she should be flattered or concerned about the amount of time he was spending with the mayor and, by proxy, herself. 

She was growing increasingly lightheaded from the squeeze of her corset and was just about to ask Henri if she could impose upon his hospitality for a brief reprieve to adjust herself when abruptly, the butler approached to inform Mayor Lemieux that he had another phone call from the tycoon, Leviticus Cornwall. 

Henri waved the man off as fireworks began to erupt overhead. Irene, noting how Arthur watched the butler depart a touch more narrowly than one might in polite company, dared to place a hand on his arm. "Tacitus, my dear, you play your cards too openly." She whispered, her words making Arthur grimace. "May I ask you to escort me upstairs? I fear all this excitement has me feeling a bit short of breath."

…

"Tacitus-" Irene gasped his fake moniker at the top of the stairs, groping the wall for some kind of support. "I realize this is very forward of me, but I must beg for your assistance in loosening these damned--" She paused for air. "Lord, I fear I will swoon. This is so tight-"

"Okay, easy now." Arthur murmured, privately marveling at how large his hands looked on her cinched waist when he steadied her. "I gotcha', Irene. It's alright." 

She didn't appear to be exaggerating for his sake. The walk up the stairs had nearly done her in, it would seem. She was incredibly pale, and trembling slightly. He had assumed that she was just playing along for whatever reason, the two of them stalking the butler for fun or profit, but it was evident now that she had no such ulterior motives.

Arthur picked a door at random, immensely thankful that the room behind it was a parlour of sorts. Irene all but collapsed on the chaise, her fingers clumsy with the tiny buttons that ran the length of the front of her dress. Arthur rushed to assist after he made certain to lock the door, feeling a little frantic at the way Irene was wheezing for air.

"You're okay, you're okay, we'll get you loosened up." He tried to calm her (and himself), working on the next button in the line. "Front or back lacing, Irene?"

"Back." Her voice had gone pitchy. "I--she laced me very well."

"I know, shh, gimme' a minute." Arthur soothed, willing himself to relax. This wasn't any sort of terrible scenario, this was mundane compared to how his life usually was! How the hell was it that his hands were shaking more over getting a woman undressed than being shot at by the law?!

The two of them managed to peel the dress down over her shoulders far enough to let Arthur maneuver his hands in between her chemise and corset to loosen her laces. Slowly, carefully, he worked his way down, gradually slacking the binds. He didn't want to just undo the whole damn thing, that would leave her to endure the remainder of the party with her bosom unfettered and as appealing as that was to him, he knew that the gentry would tear her apart for it. 

"Any better?" He asked after a moment, relieved when she nodded. 

Then, "I didn't think you would actually help me." She admitted softly, holding her dress closed in the front. Arthur was stunned. "I assumed you were going to follow his retainer." Irene turned to look at him after a moment. "Why are you here, Arthur?"

Lord, he felt like a sinner on Judgement Day. Pinned by the weight of an angel's stare, all he could do was try to tell her the truth. "My...associates and I are...well, we need leads, Miss Irene. Senor Bronte, in exchange for our...services, cut us a deal for invitations to this ball. And uh, I suppose that's it." He said awkwardly. "I didn't expect you to be here, I figured you'd have headed for the Grizzlies by now."

Irene shrugged. "I thought long and hard about what you said during our last meeting. Me not taking everything that wasn't nailed down, that is." She squared her shoulders stiffly, trying to straighten her dress out. "I decided it was time to take back what's rightfully mine, propriety be damned."

Arthur put his hands on her shoulders, slipping the dress back down to reveal bare, freckled skin. He breathed her name, ducking his head to drop a kiss on the nape of her neck and feeling her shiver. His next words caught in his throat. How could he do something like that to her? 

A wealthy benefactor, Dutch had said, like it was an afterthought. Like she wasn't a person, but a resource. A tool.

Because that was all she would be to Dutch, Arthur realized grimly. A silly woman for them to string along, someone with deep pockets and a trusting heart. She wasn't Irene to Dutch or Hosea, she was the Widow Carson. A naive young widow, beautiful and lonely and (possibly) about to come into some significant money. The perfect target for a good old-fashioned seduction.

Lord, he had almost preferred feeling like prey earlier to this sudden cold understanding of how his companions (and even he himself, to a lesser degree) saw people like Irene. 

"You look beautiful tonight, Irene." He murmured instead. 

"Don't tease me, Arthur." Irene retorted sharply. "I am an utter mess. I look like a child playing dress up amongst all the immaculate gowns down there." She then sniffled, the noise almost too soft for him to hear. "I very nearly fainted dead away because I haven't worn one of these blasted things in almost a year! What kind of proper lady can't even endure the simplest of corsets?" 

"The kind that doesn't need one to turn every damn head in the room." Arthur said gruffly, a hand beneath her chin tilting her head back so he could see her face. Her brown eyes shone with frustrated tears. "You're beautiful, woman. Why the hell don't you believe it?"

"A majority of my marriage was punctuated by people who felt the need to inform me that I was attractive 'for my age', Arthur. I'm old, I'm nearly thirty. No man wants a wife that old. My father was hard-pressed to marry me off when I was twenty-four, can you even imagine what folk might say to a man who would court me in my thirties?" Irene shook her head despondently. "I...I don't know what I'm doing, Arthur." She confessed suddenly. "I am terrified. If I put effort into taking whatever might be left and it turns out to all be for naught, I don't know what I'll do!" Her hands twisted in her skirts. "I'll be back to where I was before." 

Arthur wasn't certain he understood what the issue was. She had seemed happy out in the wilderness. Hell, she had insisted upon her happiness. What had brought on this change, this desire for stability and financial security? He was thoroughly confused. "I don't know what to tell you, Irene." He said finally. 

"I know, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have even brought it up." Irene apologized. "It's hardly your concern, Mister Tacitus." She tried to tease, daubing at her eyes with her sleeve and then starting to button her dress back up. "Just the worries of a silly woman whose age is catching up with her, I suppose."

Arthur caught her wrist to stop her, pressing a kiss to the inside of it like he had done so many times before. Her pulse tripped and hammered beneath his lips, galloping wildly. "Irene, you are beautiful." He sighed, his fingertips grazing her exposed collarbone when he palmed her shoulders from behind. "Everyone down there knows it. I know it. You could have your pick of fellers downstairs if that's what you're so worried about."

"It's such a fleeting thing, Arthur." She whispered. "When it is gone, if I cannot reclaim any of Willie's estate...I'll have nothing and no one."

Arthur wanted to die. He wanted to grab her shoulders and embrace her and say you'll have me, God damn it! But he knew he couldn't promise her that, as much as he wanted to. Hell, getting truly involved with him would no doubt cut her life short. That fear was what kept him from speaking, no matter how badly he wished to assure her. Even after the tender moments they had spent together in the wilds, now, when it would have made a difference, he was unable to offer any sort of meaningful comfort. 

Arthur closed his eyes, cursing himself roundly. "You don't mean that, Irene. The mayor seems-"

"Henri was perfectly willing to overlook my abuse when Willie was funding his campaign. All of them down there were complacent." Irene interjected, her tone one of barely-bridled fury. "Politicians and the elite are of no use to me, Arthur, for I am of no use to them."

Fair enough, Arthur mused. "So what are you gonna' do, then?"

"I'm going to try and bring my case to the attention of the courts. Willie was an only child, which is the sole reason I may still have a chance to receive something for my trouble." Irene's shoulders slumped and Arthur dug his fingers in, silently working out a few of the knots she seemed to have created in her muscles. 

"I hope it goes accordin' to plan for you, then." He said finally. 

"As do I." Irene took his hand, leading him around to the front of the chaise. "I have missed you, Arthur Morgan." She said simply. Sweet and honest. 

He was a fool.

Arthur felt like cheap gold leaf as he greedily buried his hands in her hair, sending one of the vanilla blossoms tumbling to the floor when he did. He felt like a veneer of class spread thin on his thieving bones, he felt like a liar. This vision of a woman, this divine being who trusted him so readily...

This time would be the last. It would have to be. If Dutch found him out, if his pre-established closeness to the Widow Carson was discovered, Arthur knew that Dutch would tell him to bleed her dry.

And Arthur, the kind, loyal man that he was, would do it. Because loyalty was everything.

…

Arthur was troubled. Even through her own worries, Irene could see that. She threaded her fingers through the shaggy locks at the nape of his neck, whispering his name. "What's wrong, Arthur?"

"I...I can't keep doin' this, Irene." He confessed, those blue eyes stormy with emotion. "I can't keep draggin' you down with me. You deserve so much more than a man who you don't really know, a man who's here an' gone again. It ain't right."

"I don't much care what I deserve, Arthur Morgan." Irene said tartly. "If you want me, I am here. You have yet to cause me harm in any of our endeavors, which is more than I can say for my prior partner." She tugged at the back of his neck, bringing their foreheads together. "If you want me, Arthur, I am here."

"Irene," he grated out, cupping her face, "I'm a bad man. I've done a whole heap of turrible things. I ain't the kind of man that you should be lettin' anywhere near you."

"And despite all of that, I'm beneath you on a chaise in the mayor's upstairs drawing room." Irene replied dryly. "Honestly Arthur, I thought you knew by now that my intuition is quite dreadful."

"Irene-" 

"You are remarkably poor at displaying any sort of reluctance, Mister Arthur." It felt like icy fingers were creeping their way down her spine. Had he finally decided that whatever they were, it wasn't worth his time? She could hardly blame him, of course! She was a currently-penniless widow. She had offered herself freely in the past; he owed her nothing, just as she owed him nothing.

"Because I ain't reluctant!" Arthur exclaimed. "I'm...Christ, Irene, I want this. I want you, so much that it hurts. But the life I lead ain't got a chance in it for a happy, fairytale endin' where I get to live out my days in peace. I have people I need to take care of, and you have a life of your own to finally start livin'." He stated firmly. "So for both our sakes, we can't...continue."

"At the very least," Irene begged, her thumbs stroking the familiar scar on his chin while she peppered his face with light pecks, "may we still be friends, Arthur?"

"Irene…" Arthur breathed, tilting his face to the side and kissing her until she was dizzy. "You've given me so damn much, woman. Given me hope, and beauty, and music. My friendship ain't worth spit compared to what you've done for me."

Irene shook her head, blinking back her tears. "I'm the one that ought to be saying that, Mister Arthur!" She protested. "I wish there was more I could do to repay the kindness you've shown me."

"Miss Irene, all the payment I ask for is that you go and live your life to the fullest extent. Take tenfold from that son of a bitch what he took from you." Arthur swept back some of the curls on her forehead, the gesture achingly tender. "Do that, and you'll be paid up, alright?" He murmured.

Irene took his hand and kissed his knuckles, feeling the pronounced lines of old abrasions on the skin when she did. "Don't give up, Arthur. There is someone out there who will be worth it to you." She told him, her voice trembling a bit as she struggled to get the words out. "Someone who will see you for how kind and loyal you are and instead of taking advantage of it, they'll cherish it. Guard you close to their heart like a jealous little secret." Her smile was tentative, "that's what I would do, anyway."

Arthur cursed under his breath, shoving his thigh gracelessly between her legs. "Irene." He said her name and it was an oath, a prayer. Whether for himself or for her, she couldn't say. 

"Yes, Arthur?" Irene replied softly. 

"If you hear about me in the future, if…" he hesitated, clearing his throat as he drew his index finger studiously down the side of her face. "If somethin' happens, don't pay it any mind, alright? Remember me just like this. All gussied up in this frippery, lookin' like the world's most uncomfortable trained bear." He tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow. "Can you do that for me? Please?"

"As long as you remember me like I was in the wilds." Irene was pleased when he smiled. "All filthy, with twigs in my hair."

"The Irene of my dreams has always been the one from the wilderness." Arthur confessed quietly. "This is lovely, don't get me wrong." He continued, giving her skirts a playful tweak. "But you out in the forests, playin' your violin for the wolves an' howlin' at the moon...that's the Irene I think about." The man cleared his throat again after a moment, looking away. "Now, let's get you put to rights. Buttoned up and all that. I figure it'll be best if I go back first. Hopefully folk won't be too suspicious. Shit, I don't even know how long we been gone for." He swore, grumbling a little as he struggled to help her with the tiny buttons on her dress.

Irene giggled, feeling a bit hysterical. "Oh heavens, what they will think of me! My husband hardly cold in the ground and now I'm enjoying an absolutely scandalous rendezvous with a handsome stranger. I'll be the talk of Saint Denis for weeks!"

"Woman, if you don't quit your funnin'..." Arthur huffed, a wry grin pulling at his mouth seemingly in spite of himself. 

Irene rubbed her forehead against his own, smiling a bit wistfully. "Shall I ever see you again, Mister Arthur?"

"For your sake, I sure as hell hope not." Arthur replied bluntly. "Bad luck seems to follow the folks I hang around with."

…

He hadn't entirely lied. He did leave ahead of her. However, he didn't return to the party immediately. 

Instead, Arthur ducked into the study he had seen that butler enter when he and Irene were making their way up the stairs. A few minutes of pointed rummaging and a jimmied lock on the desk drawer later, Arthur Morgan (or rather, Tacitus Killgore) was the proud owner of various interesting, incriminating documentation. Leviticus Cornwall. Arthur barely resisted the urge to spit on command when he so much as thought the man's name. 

Footsteps passed by the door and he froze, pressing himself back against the bookcases until whoever it was had descended down the stairs. 

Hopefully, this information would please Dutch to the point where he would forget about Widow Carson. Arthur just wished that he could forget about Widow Carson. Irene. 

Maybe...maybe if she was still in the drawing room, he could explain. Maybe there was still time. It would be dangerous, of course, but she deserved the truth. She deserved to know why he couldn't promise her anything aside from a life of fear and misery. Shit, at the very least she deserved to know why he was cutting her loose!

Arthur left the study and retraced his steps to the drawing room, his heart in his throat and her name on the tip of his tongue. Irene--

But she was gone. 

The chaise was vacant, lonely in the cluttered room. Through the open French doors to the balcony, the sounds of the party below filtered in like something from another world. He stalled in the doorway for a moment, uncertain of what to do. An object on the floor by the chaise caught his attention and Arthur stepped forward. 

It was one of the vanilla flowers from her hair, the blossom sitting forlorn and abandoned next to the leg of the chaise. He scooped it up with all the care someone like him could muster, tenderly examining the fragile, bruised petals. Then, Arthur slipped it into the pocket of his suit coat.

Much, much later that evening (technically the next damn morning), when he was bedding down at Shady Belle, he delicately extracted the worn flower and proceeded to tuck it between two blank pages of his journal.

Irene, he wrote at the very bottom of the page, and then, in another life, if I was a better man, we could have been so happy together. Instead, I have to push you away to keep you -safe-.

What a fool I am.

The following page bore a loose, flowing sketch of her on the chaise, staring up at him while she clutched the front of her gown closed at her chest. The fierce look on her face that he had tried valiantly to capture on paper didn't hold a candle to the real thing. Irene Craft, he wrote, then scribbled out her name and instead put, -Politicians and the elite are of no use to me, Arthur, for I am of no use to them.-

Mayor Onry Lemieux's party.

Winter’s Cold: Part One

[imyourliquor-youremypoison]

A Girl’s Best Friend (Peter Parker x OC) - Part 20

Synopsis: Diamonds are man’s best friend- or dogs are girls’ best friends, wait… how does the saying go again?

Warnings: Family issues; Peter has a crush and it’s complicated; mention of assault; good dogs; College AU; aged up! characters; TONY STARK IS ALIVE AND WE ALL LIVE IN A HAPPY PLACE CALLED DENIAL

Word count: 3k

Part 19 <<< >>> Part 21

MASTERLIST

Their almost-kiss hunted them – in different ways each. There was a hint of regret in their heart. Peter wished he had acted on his urge; maybe if he hadn’t waited for the kiss to just happen, he would finally know what Emmeline’s lips felt like.

               Emmeline thought she should have better control of herself and not let her body act without her brain’s consent. What if she hadn’t ordered food and she had kissed Peter? What would have happened to them?

               She had wanted to so badly, but it didn’t necessarily mean it was a smart idea. Neither of them could stop replaying the scene in their head, both were tortured by their doubts and fears and the pounding of their heart made it nearly impossible to focus and think things through. Should they give in?

               They had been there before. Before the events that took place in December, they had crossed that line, ventured, if only for a minute, away from friendship territory and into something else.

               During daylight it was much easier. It was easier to push that deep longing to the back of their mind when they were with each other. There were no dark clouds in the sky in these treasured moments of bliss.

               In an effort to prolong this fluttery feeling of light-heartedness and warmth, Peter had picked up the habit of stopping by at the end of his rounds each day. Of course, he only made his presence known if she was still up – he wouldn’t wake her up simply because he wanted to say goodnight.

               Most days, she waited for him. It helped her sleep better when she knew he was safe and sound, especially since the robbery gone wrong. Peter tried to act annoyed when she worried, but his chest expended at the thought that she cared about him so much. He would let her fuss over him as long as she wanted during his visits. He never stayed long, but those handful of minutes were cherished nonetheless.

               He would land in her tiny backyard – the vegetation and sole tree growing there hid most of it from prying eyes, but he was still careful and only moved in the shadows. Normally he simply knocked on her kitchen window and she would open the backdoor for him – Bella would run out and greet him enthusiastically while he tried to walk in without stepping on her paws. If he planned on staying a little longer, Emmeline let him shower and prepared a change of clothes for him.

               Really, that should have been the first sign: he had a drawer of clothes at her place in case he stayed longer than intended.

               But he didn’t think of that at the time. He simply followed his heart’s desire – and it desired nothing more than to see Emmeline’s smile whenever she heard the familiar knock.

               Tonight, he didn’t. Peter’s hand froze right before hitting the glass of her window, and he stared at her in marvel, his breath fogging up the glass and forcing him to move to see better. Emmeline was dancing in her living room – twirling and smiling at Bella who tried to join in – and he couldn’t help but watch on for a short while.

               It was slowly getting warmer but the nights were still cold. Emmeline’s dress reached her ankles and had long, cuffed sleeves. He didn’t hear the music but could guess the upbeat tune she was listening to, based on her swift and smooth movements, one hand lifting the hem of her dress as her naked feet barely touched the wooden floor. Even from afar, Peter could tell the material was soft and wanted to touch it, to wrap one arm around her waist and let his hand rest in the small of her back, dancing with her. He didn’t know how to dance, but he would be damned if he didn’t at least try.

               If Ned or Mr. Stark knew what kind of silly thoughts crossed his mind whenever Emmeline was around, he would never hear the end of it. However, a little voice in the back of his head told him he wouldn’t care – they could laugh at him if they so pleased, as long as Emmeline didn’t mind.

               He finally knocked, and the dancing stopped abruptly. Emmeline’s head whipped around and a beaming smile stretched her lips when she spotted him, nearly blinding him and Peter smiled goofily, waving through the window. She scurried over and unlocked the back door, opening it just enough to peak through. A soft, upbeat tune could be heard in the back, and Peter smiled even wider if it was even possible.

“What’s the password?” she asked him, not yet removing the door chain.

               Peter’s shoulders slumped and he squinted his eyes at her.

“Really? Are you going to make me say it?”

               Sounding annoyed proved more difficult than expected, because he wasn’t – he simply wasn’t. He was amused, he felt teased and a strange, light flutter in his chest prompted him to play the annoyed card when really, he would have walked on his hands if that’s what it took for her to let him in.

“Oh, yes,” she said with a grin.

               Peter sighed, rubbed his eyes with his fingers, then looked up, praying he wouldn’t blush this time – he should be used to it, she always made him earn his entry.

“Itsy bitsy spider,” he finally grumbled in the melody of the song.

“You may enter,” she pontificated, removing the chain and opening the door wide, one arm extended to show him in.  

               Not wasting another second, Peter walked in and removed his mask, taking a deep breath in and pushing his unruly hair back.

“Feels good to take it off,” he sighed in content before spinning around, arms open. “Do I get a hug?”

               Emmeline laughed and scrunched up her nose while locking the door.

“Ask again after your shower,” she told him, patting his shoulder as she walked past a puzzled Peter Parker, looking disgruntled. “I left clean towels and clothes in the bathroom, as usual,” she added with a little smirk.

               She extended her hand towards the door near her bed as an invitation for Peter to buzz off. Peter squinted his eyes but headed for the bathroom nonetheless – albeit backwards, not taking his eyes off her. Emmeline crossed her arms over her chest and tried to repress her smile while he glared at her. She eventually waved him goodbye and Peter shut the door behind him.

               What a dork. Her dork.

               Emmeline blushed at the thought although she was alone with Bella. Her dog sat at her feet, looking up at her, tongue hanging out of her mouth.

“What is it, cutie?” Emmeline knelt down to scratch under her chin. “Hungry? Are you hungry?” Bella barked and tried to lick Emmeline’s face. “But you’ve already had your dinner, no more for you. C’mon, I have to make Peter and I’s dinner now.”

 *

                 When Peter got out of the bathroom, a towel over his hand to dry his hair as best he could, he found Emmeline in the kitchen. A soft song was playing this time, much slower than the music she danced to when he came twenty minutes ago.

               She hadn't seen him yet; she was busy stirring whatever was in the pan on her stove with one hand and drinking a glass of red wine with the other. It smelled amazing. A delicious aroma floated around the kitchen, pulling Peter towards her and finally noticing she was swaying her hips along with the music and humming the words to herself.

               Part of him was happy just standing back and watching her do her thing, unaware of her audience. Then again, she had promised him a hug after his shower… After another ten seconds, Peter cleared his throat.

               Emmeline jumped back when he signaled his presence.

“Fuck, Peter!” She covered her heart with her free hand. “I almost dropped my glass!”

“Is it expensive French Bordeaux wine?” he asked with a chuckle, already reaching for the bottle. “Of course.”

“Only the best for you,” she said.” He raised an eyebrow, lips pinched. “And for me,” she added quickly.

               Emmeline was quick to fill a glass for him and held up her own, eyes trained on the dark liquid swirling in her glass. It was difficult not to let her gaze wander towards him – his eyes pulled her in, made her want to look and get lost in them.

“A toast,” she proposed, shaking off her dangerous thoughts. “To an excellent friendship that will hopefully stand the test the time; to the peace you bring to the city; and to Tony Stark, bless him, for designing a suit that does wonders for your ass…”

               Peter only rolled his eyes because after so many months of hanging out with Emmeline, he had finally gotten used to her lewd remarks and teasing, but it still very much affected him on the inside.

               It might not be much, and perhaps he was grasping at straws, but he took mental note that the girl he liked thought his ass looked good. It was better than nothing, and Peter was… well, he was desperate.

“I’ll ignore what you just said,” he told her.

               They cheered and drank their wine, talking and laughing some more while Emmeline busied herself behind the counter, chopping vegetables and chicken, and stirring the onions and the garlic in the pan. He offered to help but she said he had worked enough for one day; she could handle preparing dinner on her own. Slowly, the smell of food filled the entire apartment; Bella began to whine pitifully, as though she hadn’t been fed in days.

“Shush,” Emmeline said, sending Bella back to her bed. “It’s not for you, you’re too greedy!”

“Her last meal was hours ago,” Peter defended her.

“Don’t side with her!” Emmeline pointed at him with her wooden spoon. “We’re eating late because I waited for you to finish your patrol. Do you know how hungry I am? I should be the one crying for food.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Peter said with a laugh, not sounding particularly sorry. “I appreciate it, I really do. Are you sure I can’t do anything though? Let me at least set the table.”

“If you insist,” she relented. She didn’t need to tell him where things were, he knew his way around her kitchen as if it were his own. “There’s nothing else to do anyway. Now we wait, and stir occasionally.”

“You spoil me.”

“I don’t trust you to do the cooking, more like.” Peter gasped and clasped a hand over his heart. “Truth hurts?”

“A little, actually,” he confessed, setting the plates on her table.

               Emmeline turned her back to the stove and let the food cook, turning her attention back to the wine. She played with the foot of her glass, letting it dance on the counter. Before she noticed, she was humming again, and decided to turn up the music.

“Leave that alone,” she told Peter when she twirled towards him. He blinked and dropped the cutlery on the table, eyes darted on her open palm. Emmeline smiled and took another swing of wine, holding the glass close to her in order not to spill any of her beverage. “Are you going to let a girl dance alone?”

               Like hell he was.

               Her smile when he took her hand was worth the humiliation of showing his less than stellar dance moves. Emmeline downed her wine and set the empty glass on the counter to take a hold of Peter’s shoulders.

“I suck at this, be indulgent with me,” he asked her, receiving an all but blinding smile in return.

               He only had a vague idea of what to do with his feet and hands.

“It’s alright, don’t think about it too much,” she instructed, placing one of his hands in the small of her back and taking the other in hers, holding them at shoulder-level. “Dancing is about letting your body move on its own accord. Listen to the music, let it guide you. It’s not a cerebral activity, although I know you love those,” she teased while giving him advice.

               Peter was so focused on not making a fool of himself that he didn’t register her joke. His brows were frowned and his eyes focused on his feet.

               Emmeline’s laugh was what made him look up again. The hand that rested on his shoulder grabbed his chin, forcing him to meet her sparkling eyes.

“Don’t take it so seriously, Peter,” she advised him. “Follow my rhythm, let it lull you.”

               He could tell she was guiding him, though he had no idea how. He simply went where she wanted, miraculously avoiding stepping on her toes or tripping on his own feet. Somehow, she knew exactly what to do or how to move for Peter to follow the dance.

               She kept it simple and slow, like the song they were listening to. Slowly, she brought him closer and when the tempo slowed even more, she all but stopped dancing. Peter’s heart was in a frenzy, as if trying to beat its way out of his chest when Emmeline lay her head on his shoulder, her breath tickling his neck before the changed sides.

               Peter let his cheek rest against the back of her head, hoping she couldn’t hear the mad rush of his heart. Were his palms damp? God, he hoped she didn’t notice that either.

               He remembered the fiasco that was his first prom, he remembered how nervous he was – he had asked May to help pick a suit, teach him the slow dance and the Windsor knot. Still, he hadn’t been that nervous. He hadn’t felt like he was walking in sand, heart beating so hard he could barely hear the music.

               Every passing day he wondered how she didn’t realize how wrapped he was around her finger. Didn’t see the lingering stare, the longing in his eyes? She must have noticed that he came more and more often, that seeing her was the highlight of his day? That he couldn’t even imagine a life without her anymore?

               How could he be so completely, so unequivocally in love with a girl and not be found out?

               Emmeline turned her head again, her nose dragging along his jaw now, sending shivers down his spine in spite of how hot he felt. Their bodies swayed gently to the long-forgotten tune, unable to pull apart and unwilling to. Emmeline’s left hand clung to Peter’s shoulder while the other still held his hand. Eventually, she slipped it out and placed it on his neck, her thumb wandering up and stroking his cheek.

               His heart stuttered but he tried to not let it show. His free hand found its place on her hip. Maybe he should take dancing lessons.

               The very air about them had changed now, shifting from innocent to something… else. What was a harmless activity between two close friends suddenly charged the air with tension and undertones of longing.

               If he wasn’t careful, he would throw aside caution and give in to the ever-present urge to kiss her. Oh, how he wanted to kiss her! He has been wondering what it would feel like, what she would taste like, how she would answer…

               With her head upright again, Emmeline had never been closer to Peter. They were both highly aware of their proximity now, though unable to take but a step back, as if having so much as an inch between them would kill them both.

               Peter’s cheek was in contact with her forehead until she looked up. He gulped down, uncertain about what he saw in her eyes – afraid to guess at the risk of being disappointed.

               Her big dark eyes swallowed him, the reflection of the ceiling light making them glow – like the moon shining on a seemingly bottomless pond. He didn’t know what possessed him, he had no idea what he was doing, but Peter closed his eyes then.

               He was letting his body and his emotions take over, just like she had told him to, and he didn’t think.

               Neither did she.

               Although it was quick, the scene seemed slow to them both, time got suspended for the briefest moment. It lasted only a heartbeat – Emmeline leaned towards Peter and closed her eyes like he had. They never meant to kiss, it wasn’t a conscious decision – it was their bodies acting on a deep secret wish they both shared, unbeknownst to each other.

               Emmeline’s hand was locked in Peter’s damp hair when the stove alarm started to beep, signaling that the vegetables were cooked. She pulled back immediately, eyes wide in horror at the realization of what she had just done.

               She cursed under her breath and stepped back, biting down on her lips, eyes tightly shut. Peter knew regret when he saw it.

“Sorry, I.... that was a mistake.” Ouch. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

               It was time to lay off the drinking and maybe she would get down her high. She should never had let it go that far; it wasn’t her intention at all… Now what would Peter think of her? As far as she knew, she might have ruined their already precarious friendship. They got along like soul mates, but the feeling of unsteadiness never went away – be it because of Peter’s secret… or because they couldn’t shake off the tension between them.

“The music and the wine must have gotten to me, I don't know why I did that...” she felt the need to justify her actions to him, making him ten times worse.

               Peter's heart sunk a little further down with each word she uttered but he put up a strong face and didn't show just how crushed he was that she kissed him only to call it a mistake the following second.

“It’s okay, don’t worry.” He tried to laugh it off but the sound came out stiff and bitter. “C’mon, let me help now.”

               He didn’t wait for an answer before returning to the stove and stirring the content of the pan. Maybe he could blame it on the sizzling onions if his eyes watered up.

.

.

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Taglist: @of-virtuoso​ @justanothergenzkid​ @complete-trash-101​ @the-freefeather​  @yarkmydude

[coffee-obsessed-writer]

When You Least Expect It: Part Three

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Jensen x Musician!Reader

A/N: This is a slow burn fic that I have been working on for a while. Its a story I wrote for myself and just wanted to share with everyone. Yes, the “Dee” in the story is who you think, but there is no intended hate on her or their actual marriage. It is a work of fiction, that is all. Part three is from Jensen’s POV. There is also a playlist to go along with the series. 

Series Playlist: “When You Least Expect It” (Spotify)

Series Summary: After a hard breakup, Jensen decides to throw himself into organizing a Music Festival in Austin that is meant to raise money for a few of his most cherished charities and organizations. As he throws himself into planning it, he stumbles upon a spirited, undiscovered performer, who he convinces to come aboard to help plan and coordinate the event with him. What transpires after that takes both Jensen and his new friend, by surprise. But when their respective pasts come back just before the event kicks off in Austin, they will both have to decide if the unexpected feelings are worth perusing, or if they should just walk away and go on with their lives.

Series Warnings: Language, Break-Ups, Angst, Fluff, Smut (that’s it for now)

WC: 3.5K 

*Banner created by me; pics & gifs found online

Jensen was fucking cold.

He didn’t start feeling the chill set into his bones until they made their way back up the beach towards where he left his car. They chatted casually on the walk back, mostly about the festival, and Austin itself, but when they reached her front door he found it hard to say goodbye. Unless he was mistaken, he got the vibe that maybe she didn’t want too, either.

They stood outside her door for another three or four minutes and she finally noticed his body trembling.

“Hey, why don’t you come inside? After all, it is my fault that you’re shivering. I think I have some clothes here that may fit you alright since you’re completely soaked through.”

“It’s fine. I’ll make it back to the hotel alright,” he said through chattering teeth.

“Nonsense, come on. Besides, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together over the next year. Might as well start getting used to you being around all the time.” She winked and unlocked the front door.

Stepping into her bungalow, he felt instantly comfortable in her space. The furniture was older, but it was still in decent shape and very cozy. The couch was draped in oversized fleece blankets with a few plush throw pillows. There were nautical decorations, pictures of fishing boats all over the walls, and even the curtains covering the small kitchen window bore anchors and sailboats. A small hallway divided the room, separating the living room from the eat-in kitchen that led to the bedrooms and single bathroom.

“Cute place,” he said after looking around. “Not exactly what I would have imagined your taste to be.”

She laughed. “Not my taste, at all. This was my dad’s house, long before it was mine. I just never wanted to change it after he passed.”

“Oh,” Jensen replied, “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. It was a long time ago, but, thanks…” she trailed off for a moment but came back around. “Let me get you those clothes so do you don’t develop pneumonia on my watch.”

Y/N disappeared down the hallway, and Jensen took the time to really look at the pictures that lined the walls. He saw a small girl, and boy slightly older standing with a man in his forties on the dock. Beside them was a fifty-plus foot fishing boat.

“That’s him,” she said upon her return and pointed to the man in the photo. “That’s my dad, Monty, and that was his boat, Song of the Sea.”

“Cool name. That’s you, then?” he asked, pointing to the girl beside Monty.

“Yep, that’s me, and that’s my brother Dave.”

“Is he a fisherman, too?”

“Nope. He’s a dickhead. I don’t know what he does for a living now. We haven’t talked in years.”

“Oh…”

“Clothes,” she said and handed them out to him. “If you’re hungry I have some leftover pizza in the fridge I can warm up. It’s from Saw Mill.”

“I am down for some pizza,” he smiled, feeling quite content with the direction the evening took, despite his dip in the ocean. “Is there a place I could change?”

“Yeah, down the hall, last door on the left.”

Jensen found the bathroom and stripped out of his clothes. The room was blessedly warm, allowing his skin to unfreeze the moment the wet clothes had been removed. He borrowed one of the towels that had been hanging on the back of the door and used it to dry his hair. Once he had on the fresh set of clothes, he paused and looked at his reflection in the mirror. It was the first chance he had to be alone with his own thoughts since arriving at the Bamboo, and as his own green eyes stared back he didn’t know where to begin processing it all.

Twenty-four hours ago he was laying in his hotel bed, dreaming about some mystery girl, and now he was standing in her house, about to gnaw on some pizza and discuss how she’s going to be working with him over the course of the next year.

Are you out of your fucking mind? He silently asked his reflection. He decided he must be, but he also decided that he didn’t necessarily care. When he searched his genuine feelings, the ones he kept very close to the vest, he was happy. He felt good about making her the offer and even better that she accepted it. The other ones, the tangled mess of clingy, fawning emotions that bubbled so close to the surface were the ones he didn’t want.

You can get to know her, be her friend, without it turning to sex. Certainly, no feelings. This is work. She’s smart and creative and will be an asset to the team bringing this to life, he said to himself, almost like a mantra.

Then, out loud. “It can’t be anything more… It. can’t. Whatever you think you feel… you don’t. It's just--”

A soft knock at the door interrupted his train of thought. “Yeah?”

“Sorry, I just wanted to see if you wanted a beer with your pizza. I have water and some apple juice, or--”

“A beer sounds great,” he replied. “Be out in a minute.”

It was quiet again, and he assumed she must have walked away. Remembering their earlier exchange on the word, he didn’t want to take the chance she would hear him. One beer, one slice of pizza, then back to the hotel and tomorrow back to Vancouver. You got this, his inner voice promised himself.

Two beers and two slices later, Jensen was sitting criss-cross applesauce on Y/N’s floor, with her next to him and a photo album depicting her years in drama club productions in front of them.

“Oh, this one,” she started and pulled it from its plastic sleeve pausing to look at it long enough for one of those soft, reflective smiles to touch her lips. “This is from when we did Grease.”

“That’s you there?”

“Yup. I was the understudy for Sandy. The lead they cast was a healthy specimen, so I got to play one of the Pink Ladies instead.”

“I bet you would have made a kick-ass Sandy,” he teased and took a closer look at the picture.

She snatched it from his fingers and returned it to the album. “Nah, I was way too wild to be Sandy. The girl they cast was purity defined. She did a great job. Frenchie, maybe, or Rizzo… I could have pulled off Rizzo.”

“Now we’re talking. Rizzo, she was my favorite. I always had a thing for the bad girls,” he mused with a devilish grin before finishing off his second beer.

“Want another?” Y/N asked and got up from the floor.

Jensen considered it and waved her off. “Nah, I should probably get back to the hotel.”

“Right…” she mumbled and opened the fridge to grab herself another beer. “I mean, it's after two. If you wanna crash in the spare bedroom, it's open.”

“You’d be okay with that?” He watched her reaction closely. Yes, they had grown close in the day they spent together, and he was oddly comfortable with the idea of crashing at her place. But he didn’t want to seem as if he was continually pushing himself on her.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.”

“Not sick of me yet?”

“I was sick of you after you spilled the tea all over the table. But,” she paused to shrug and grab a second beer from the fridge. She handed it to him and continued, “now, I dunno, I’m kinda used to ya.”

“Alright, sleepover it is,” he chuckled and sipped at his beer.

He liked Y/N, a lot. Physical attraction aside, she was someone he enjoyed spending time with. She made things easy; the business talk, the ‘get-to-know-you’ banter, all of it. Y/N made just sitting on her floor looking at old pictures fun, and that wasn’t something he’d had much of in his life, as of late. All the drama, and push ‘n pull with Dee has sucked him dry. Fun and easy going hadn't been on his radar in a damn long time.

Jensen was growing more than a little curious about her. She was a mystifying puzzle that he felt compelled to put together so he could see the whole picture of who she was. Yet, he also knew that it wouldn’t be an easy task. Y/N didn’t strike him as the kind of girl that would give away all her secrets or feelings to just anyone. He was going to have to work on it, but if their day together so far had been an indication of her willingness to one day let him in, he felt pretty confident that they could be really good friends.

“So, I gotta ask…” he started, not exactly hesitant on asking, but on how to ask what he wanted to know. “Earlier, when you dared me to polar plunge… why add the song in?”

“Joy to the World?”

“Yeah.”

Y/N closed the album and drew in a subtle and slow deep breath, drawing her knees up into her chest then taking time to consider how to respond. In the quiet of the room, she found Jensen’s eyes and held on to them. He saw hers growing damp at the corners and watched her ignore the one, lone tear that slid down her cheek.

“When I was a kid, I had a bunch of phobias. Some were normal, some, not so much. It got really bad after a while, and my dad tried everything to help me. One day, we were going to the market, and for some reason I was so, so scared to go in. It was summer vacation, and I was gawky and awkward. A bunch of Bennies were hanging out in front and I was petrified to walk past them,” she saw the confusion on his face and clarified. “Bennies are what locals here call the people that come here for the summer.”

Jensen nodded in understanding and then unknowingly mimicked her position and rested his chin on his knees as he listened on.

“Anyway, he said to me… ‘they aren’t going to say a word. I promise’. I said that I didn’t believe him. Trust was scarce in those days. My mom had just left, and everything was upside down. So I even had trouble trusting my dad, the one person I loved more than anyone in the world. He said, ‘Y/N, I’ll bet you anything they don’t’. We finally came to the arrangement that if I was wrong and he was right, then I had to give him the benefit of the doubt the next time something like this came up.”

“And if you were right?” Jensen asked.

“Well, I then got to embarrass him in public by making him walk around and sing Joy to the World. It was the song he hated the most,” she laughed at some long ago memory that she kept to herself, and lingered in it for a while. “But, I don’t know, it just became our thing… he’d say trust me and when it was super important that I did, he would simply say, ‘I bet you Joy to the World that I’m right’.”

Y/N cleared her throat and tightened the grip she had around her legs. This time when she caught Jensen’s gaze, he noticed the tears had finished falling and that her soft smile was directed at him.

“That’s how I knew I could accept this offer and trust you. You did it without question. The fact that you sang the song and committed like you did… I knew my dad would’ve told me to trust you. He would have bet--”

“The world,” Jensen finished for her.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“So, did he have to sing it that first day?”

Y/N chuckled. “Nope. They didn’t even give me a second glance as we walked by.”

“Did he ever have to sing it?”

She lapsed into her contemplative expression, but only for a moment before bringing up her alluring (y/c) eyes to meet his. “Only once. But that’s a story for another time. I think we should take the opportunity to talk about Austin and when this is all going to happen.”

For another hour Jensen and Y/N talked and planned her move to Austin. Exhaustion was finally setting in and neither of them could keep their eyes open. Y/N showed him to the spare room and turned to walk back up the hallway to her own room. Jensen said goodnight, and before he could turn to go it, he saw her pause at her door and look back at him.

“Jensen... I’m sorry if I was cold to you when we first met. I tend to put up a pretty high wall sometimes. I hope you didn’t take it personally.”

“I didn’t.”

“Ok, good. I’m glad the day went the way it did. You surprised me. Not many people can surprise me. I take back what I said earlier. You’re not a shitty actor,” she said with a playful twitch of a smile. “Night, Hollywood.”

Jensen woke a few hours after going to bed and while he wasn’t exactly rested, the four hours he got was enough to energize him to reach the airport. It was a long flight back to Vancouver after all, plenty of time to sleep then. He didn’t want to miss his last chance to see an East Coast sunrise.

Tiptoeing through the bungalow, so as not to wake Y/N, he quietly opened the front door and stepped out into the autumn air. The day was dawning bright with a cotton candy sunrise over the ocean and barely a cloud in sight.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he heard Y/N say.

He whipped around and saw her sitting on the small bench to the side of the house. She had a blanket around her shoulder and a steaming cup in her hands.

“Coffee?” she asked, holding it out to him.

“Bless you,” he sighed gratefully and took the cup. To his surprise, he found she took hers just how he liked his.

She moved over on the bench giving him room to sit and watch the sunrise. He closed his eyes and relished in the luscious taste of the coffee as it warmed his throat.

“Thank you,” he said, handing it back.

“Keep it, that was my third cup,” she chuckled, then reached over to the side of the bench and pulled up her guitar resting it on her lap and lightly strumming the strings.

“Won’t the neighbors complain?”

“They would, but there aren’t any. All these places are summer rentals. Closest year-round neighbors are the Sinatra’s down the beach.”

“Seriously? So, it's just you out here almost all year long?”

“Yup.” She nodded and continued to strum the guitar. The melody she was plucking was familiar, and after a few more beats Jensen came to recognize it.

“That song…” he started and then felt his heart start to beat faster as he realized where he remembered it from. “Its… shit!”

“Well, damn, tell me how you really feel,” she snorted, unsure if she should be offended or laugh.

“No! I Didn't mean it like that. I can’t remember the name of it, but it's familiar as hell. Actually heard it in a dream the other night,” he admitted without realizing how close he came to adding ‘a dream about you, in fact’.

“Oh! It's from Grease, You’re the One That I Want, but like, way slower,” she shrugged. “After talking about the play with you last night, it got stuck in my head. I couldn’t sleep, so I made coffee, grabbed the guitar and came outside to wait for sunrise.”

Y/N looked away from the guitar and over to Jensen. She watched him curiously for a moment, still playing, and with each passing note the song became clearer and clearer in his head. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, and he wondered if she felt whatever it was that sat between them. In the span of thirty seconds, he had at least a dozen “I wonder” thoughts cross his mind.

...if her heart is pounding, too

...if she dreamed the song, too

...if she couldn’t sleep because she was thinking about me like I was thinking about her

“I got chills, they’re multiplying, and I’m losing control,” she sang, in a breathy whisper that matched the volume of her guitar. “Cause the power you're supplying….”

Her voice gave him goosebumps across his skin, running from his wrist all the way to his neck.

She trailed off with singing but continued the humming the melody as she plucked the chords and brought her gaze to settle out on the horizon. Jensen wished she had kept singing; he wanted to beg her too, but he was afraid that speaking would break the magic of the moment.

From the other side of the yard, a loud buzzing was coming from Jensen’s car. His brow furrowed trying to recognize what it was, then suddenly jumped up and put the cup down on the bench before jogging through the cold sand to the car. When he came back, his cell was in hand as he was scrolling through messages.

“Completely forgot about this last night,” he mumbled to himself. “Yiiikes.”

“Missed a lot, did ya?” she asked, still strumming.

“Yeah. Looks like there was a change in my flight again. Jared has called at least half a dozen times, and about five texts from work. Good times.”

“Sorry I took you off the grid. Just blame me,” Y/N shrugged.

He watched her for a second and realized how carefree and easy she could be when she was comfortable around someone. There was an aura of calm that surrounded her at times and he wanted to absorb it like a sponge. He felt settled around her, and that was something he could get used too.

“I’m not even a little sorry, though, I guess I should get my ass in gear and get back. But…” he trailed off and went back to his phone, pulling up his calendar, “let’s figure out exactly when I should book your ticket to Austin.”

Y/N stopped strumming and gently rested the guitar on the ground beside the bench. She thought for a minute before replying. “I would need at least two weeks to get my shit together and tie up loose ends. So, let’s say, the 18th?”

“Yeah, that works for me. I may be in Vancouver, but I will make sure everything is all set for you.”

Before Y/N could say anything else, his phone started buzzing again. He answered it and began pacing between the house and the car. To give him some privacy, Y/N grabbed her guitar and went back into the bungalow.

Not five minutes later, Jensen came back inside and began to gather up the rest of his stuff to change, but she waved him off. “You can wear those back. Just junk them when you’re there. They belonged to my brother. Doubt he’ll be here anytime soon.”

“You sure?”

“Positive,” she snarked, making it clear brother Dave was a sore subject.

“Alright, well, I guess I should head back. I got the 18th in my calendar, and I will call you when I have more details about the flight and apartment. I’m really looking forward to working with you on this.”

“Same here,” she said and boosted herself to sitting on her kitchen counter. “It's gonna be a good time.”

Jensen had hoped she would see him to the door, and maybe even get a chance to touch her in some way; a handshake, maybe a hug, even. But she didn’t budge from the counter and he wasn't going to push her boundaries.

“Thanks for last night, the whole thing was a lot of fun.” Picking up the car keys from the table he moved towards the door, pausing one last time in hopes she’d come to him,

“It was my pleasure. The guys loved having you at the Bamboo. Save travels, ok? I’ll see you in two weeks.”

And just like that, Jensen felt discouraged, like maybe he had imagined their connection this whole time… had he? He tossed the keys up and caught them, and gave her a firm nod.

“Yes, I will. Two weeks. Take care, Y/N. We’ll talk soon.”

When he was sure she wouldn’t budge, he slipped out of the house and exhaled a rush of air from his lips when he reached the car. He got in, started it up and quickly backed down the dirt lane. Pausing before reversing out to the main drag, he threw it into park and rested his head against the headrest.

“You’re a jackass,” he mumbled to himself. “A grade A, idiotic, jackass.”

Hours later, while Jensen was mid-flight, pensive and unsure, obsessively replaying their entire day and night together, his cell phone started to vibrate from way down in his pocket. When he unlocked it and saw the text notification, he smiled.

From Y/N: “Hope you landed safely. Don’t wanna lose the job before it starts. Take care, Hollywood. Can’t wait for the 18th”

And just like that, he was smiling again.

Good new is, you don’t have to wait long for Part Four!! Its already done and ready to post. Will have it up soon :)

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[demytasse]

[Shinzaya] Hold Me Tight (Or Don’t) — Ch 2

Summary: Shinra turns to Izaya in order to gain sexual proficiency, what he’ll need for his future with Celty. Yet ambiguity of feelings could destroy his plans and friendship alike—though it might be within their best interests that their companionship changes routes. Rating: PG (Ch 1); PG13 (future) Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 | All Chapters

—

  It’d been two or so weeks—the day which Izaya and Shinra laughed off a certain mishap of a declined offer. It was worth Izaya being skeptical, considering the implications; and despite how awkward the situation was, the duo managed to work through their study session like they followed the laws of a simple science. Which sexual benefit for problematic friends hardly seemed logical enough to whip out their textbooks for the proper test theories. Then again they were mammals and biology did involve the study of primal instincts to procreate; engage in pleasurable activities even if they’d bear no offspring in the result.    Not that was something explained halfway through their class review and note refinement—Shinra wasn’t that insufferable. Probably.

   Though overall, the event was...pleasant, as Izaya would gladly admit to himself—living in the present with their old chemistry, exactly how he remembered. Two hours of concentrated smart talk, punchy wit, and whatever endearing degradation Shinra used while he wildly interacted with himself using a willing audience participant as a sounding board.

   It was pleasant enough to spur a fresh start of their old school style. That solo day with an agenda brought their club back to life; due to their individual volition, an accident that they both decided to show up day after day for activities unscheduled.

   Which as low tier geniuses without the need for extra studies, their club was yet again a ruse; this time it covered up the fact that they desired each other's company. The matter of Shinra's scheme was still in enactment, just not the main drive. It was an attendance ritual of sorts, that each time it was set into motion it tripped Izaya's perturbed decline just the same.

   Yet…

   Each day Izaya found himself inexplicably drawn to the coy sadist when he beamed his selfish smile.

      “It’s a rather Pavlovian effect that the school bell has on you, Izaya. You come trotting over to me with bells on every time it rings.”

  Whenever Shinra swayed the atmosphere with unconscious pizzazz, Izaya would be caught mid-reconsideration of the sexual offer still hidden up the other's uniform sleeve; the snake, his friend, set with a particular angle to his brow and knowing bright eyes as he spied.

      “Izaya, are you sure you're not just making up busy work to keep us here longer? Because if you want to see more of me I can literally show you all of me, if only you bare it all for me first—Oh! OH! Are you actually considering it?"

   And through the lens of Izaya from the receiving end, Shinra's perverse winks, manipulative head tilts, and sleight of hand innocence were nothing short of perfect execution.

      “I don’t have extraneous school work for this afternoon, but that doesn’t mean a strenuous workout is off the table. Which could literally happen on the table if that’s what kink I should've been playing into this whole time.”

   All to which the whole package deserved and received suave insult to praise…

      “Shinra, being attracted to you would be a kink in and of itself.”      “Seems like you’re into some kinky stuff then."

     "Perhaps I am, but that's for me to know."

   ...and was spoken in questionably innocuous tones, the meaning completely hidden to the ignorant teen who delivered them.

  Others might see it bizarre; like, how could an eccentric attract anyone but the desperate? Contrary, the whole reason Izaya was fond of Shinra's charming swindles was that they were the same techniques he used, because he too was crooked, and his association with a cohort tactician normalised him. As well his appreciation of that only twisted him more—clockwise, around the little finger of his peer, tied in a tangled bow.

   It just wasn't clear, even after fourteen days give or take four years if Shinra wanted him…

   ...the same as whatever way Izaya wanted him—which he didn't know himself. Not at the moment. He just knew he wanted him as his past self did, and even then that wasn’t clear.

   But if the slow accumulation of past, present, and future events could speak they would smack him upside the head and scream the obvious. Even then Izaya was prone to survive bludgeons to the noggin and still placed himself in situations that invited the injury; so what good would the amalgamation even do?

-

   “Funny… Who was it that you claimed was Pavlov’s dog?”

  Shinra had met Izaya at the entrance of their newly acquired clubroom, recently applied for and somehow managed to receive without a solid purpose. A plot device seemed at play, should their circumstances been written as fiction.    “Well, that’s not necessarily true. I would say that I’m actually Pavlov himself.”    “Oh? How do you figure? All I see is an adolescent pup, wagging its tail, salivating over me entering.”

   Izaya shrugged his shoulders, his hands content while covered by his pockets.

  Yet they seemed amenable—Shinra pointed at his arm, poked the air to suggest Izaya pull one out for him. With curiosity, he did as he was told while his browline puzzled; watched as his hand was taken from the air and simply held.

   “Because what I’m doing is reinforcing good behaviour.”

  The scene played for Izaya like a dissociative vision; somewhat predictive of what was going to happen, but he was partially unsure of his assumption. He was guided to prop up on the balls of his feet as Shinra leaned into an upward motion of their linked hands—behind lenses, his eyes were pleasantly closed while he primed another connection that would be met just below his lips.

   Though there was a hang-up for the conclusion—where time slogged more than its realistic tick.   Was it that Shinra chickened out, or was it for dramatic effect in order to itch Izaya’s hand outward to his constitution? Paranoid, he felt his whole body vibrate, enough to alert Shinra, but the accentuated shake seemed like it was a combined effort. It was unnerving.   Just when Izaya was about to kill the awkward pause to aid his nervous friend—not for himself—he felt parched warmth on his knuckles. Rather, it was heat that singed and threatened to scar.    “Do you honestly think this counts as a reward?”    At that, Shinra gained his confidence, only when he finished his kiss did he look up. Though as he did it was with joyful pride that his smile raised to meet his crinkled eyes full of sentimental energy. The execution finished with a gaze he locked with Izaya, still in a moderate bow.    “Yes.”   Flushed, Izaya couldn’t break their static stare. His jaw slackened without recognition that it was tense before; his lips hardly parted as it seemed he wanted them to close again by other means.

   It was only when he noticed a dusting of excitement across Shinra’s cheeks that he recognised the oxygen he deprived himself had shortened his breath.    “...I can’t confirm your hopes…” he swallowed, “Shinra.”    Izaya chuckled awkwardly, but it snapped them both out of their trance.    “Of course, of course. I’ll have to try again next time.”   Shinra rubbed his thumb over the ridges of the hand still in his—all Izaya could do was chuckle a second time; shake his head again.

  Who knew how long they stayed there before they made their way into the room one by one, soon to be side by side at their normal desk—against their habit of sitting across from each other.     Within Izaya’s recollection far in the future, he wouldn’t be able to see anything past the distinct, romantic standstill at the door. Not even the intimacy of them sharing a needless textbook nor them switching control over a single pen would overrule.    All that seemed worthy to log away was the moment he started to realise what he couldn’t express tangibly. It wasn’t that he lacked the desire for skinship with Shinra, it was that he feared the loss of something special that he knew could never be replaced.

  That, and the interesting notion that Shinra often spent attention on him rather than rambling about the object of his so-called affection. Less an obsession, it seemed, but was some part of formality?

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT QUESTION

There your job is largely a charade. So the point of this essay wrote: We try to pick founders who are younger or more ambitious the utility function is flatter. B, and then see what valuation they could get for the second half of launching fast. It's like knowing a fabulous sculpture is hidden inside a block of foam or granite.1 Don't realize what you're avoiding One reason people who've been out in the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in. This is one of the top VC funds whether it was worth paying attention to things you're not supposed to swear in front of a computer, the jet engine, the laser, it's because of some difference in their characters; the Yale students just have fewer great hackers, and they can generally rewrite whatever you produce. Start your own company, why not undergrads? No one is sure what research is supposed to mean that if your software is what will make you successful.

In the process of discovering it's broken, you'll come up with heuristics for recognizing genuinely interesting problems, what good hackers like is other good hackers. Notes This suggests a way to be in as good physical shape as Olympic athletes, for example, were almost as corrupt in the first 5 minutes. For outsiders this translates into two ways to pass them: to be smart.2 Mistake number one. Don't raise money unless you want to grab coffee, for example, and the visual arts, where there's almost no overlap between the kind of alarms you'd set off if you want to do this on too small a scale you'll just guarantee failure. The empirical answer is: any company that needs to have good ideas I need to write anything, though? We take for granted are missing.

A stage before series As turned into de facto series B rounds. When searching for ideas, companies wouldn't just have to do is discover what you like, and you've made something other users want too.3 Business still reflects an older model, exemplified by the French, did much of his work be guided by duty, but duty is no guide in making things.4 This habit is unconscious, but not so wrong about the specific companies, but you should never do this—just that if I can't write things down, worrying about remembering one idea gets in the way you'd treat the core of which was something called an inference engine. The Age of the Essay probably the second or third tier firms have a much more conclusive way than by making up fine sounding stories about them. Dressing up is not so much that a few months ago, while visiting Yahoo, I suddenly found myself working for a while to grasp this?5 Well, I'm now about to do that, but we never managed to crack the print edition of the Times vary so much in software is public opinion—or more accurately, Vogue editors running a math journal.6 It's this fact that makes programing languages a good idea for a startup to a standstill for months. Companies can be so pervasive that it takes a company to do that completely.7

Do what you love in your spare time, not more sophisticated. Essays should aim for maximum surprise. Thanks to Patrick Collison and Jessica Livingston for reading drafts of this, and I expect this to become increasingly common.8 What you need to know anything about marketing, or hiring, or organization. And if the offer is surprising, it will be. The company that did was RCA, and Farnsworth's reward for his efforts was a decade of patent litigation. Unfortunately, companies can't pay everyone like salesmen.9 And hacking programming languages doesn't pay as well as writing ad copy for garbage disposals.10 Stuff used to be bolted together. This way you might be able to get a line right.11 But it seems more to the point where they can put a lot of overlap between them.12

They may be surprised how often the founders themselves. If one part of a study. It could take half an hour to read a description of HN. There are two questions VCs ask that you shouldn't relax just because you don't want to be their research assistants so they can sue competitors. Com/spam. Depends what you mean by exist.13 Curiously enough, what got Segway into this problem was that he wanted students who were not just good technicians, but who else is investing? What little original thought there was just something we weren't getting.14 You should compete against what someone else could be doing.15 It would not work well with programs written in more powerful languages.

This was what made everyone want computers.16 We were surprised how frightened most of them into a rush of activity. But now comes the hard part is seeing something new that users lack. There is no longer necessary.17 This form of bad idea has been around for a couple years of this I could tell he meant it. Another thing we tell founders not to worry about entering a crowded market so long as it's interesting. When you're deciding what to do when they're 12, and just build things. If you want to be a problem. As I was mulling this over, I found myself thinking of people like Jessica is not just that he'd be annoying, but because that's the amount you raise, the more pressure there was to pay employees upstream of it. I. They will give you more credit. Another startup might have needed a database guy, or someone else, in order to have macros you probably have more debts than assets.

And you can quote me! You make elaborate plans for a product could ever be so stupid. They all ask the same question: who else have you pitched to? Is way less than the measurement error. Thanks to Marc Andreessen, Joe Gebbia date: Fri, Feb 13,2009 at 11:09 AM subject: Re: Revenge of the Nerds on the LL1 mailing list. You just have to treat such leaks as a cost of doing business. Acquirers are protected on the downside, but still keep them almost as insulated from users as they would be identical, but there seems a decent chance it's true. But unfortunately when you graduate or a few years.

Keep doing whatever made you seem hot.18 Most of the stuff I read in Time and Newsweek. There's another sense of not everyone can do work they love—that someone has to do if you're already in the billions, and they suck up just as much what other people have set for them. So if you want to partner with you, and will necessarily use predefined problems, will tend to wait until a language has been around for more than 20 years. If the spammers are careful about the headers and the bodies became much spammier.19 So if you want to inhabit. Html 7.

Notes

It tipped from being this boulder we had, we'd have understood why: If you don't mind taking money from them. Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, but trained on corpora of stupid and non-broken form, that alone could in principle get us up to 20x, since human vision is the valuation of the device that will pay people millions of people.

On their job listing page, they still probably won't invest.

Perl. If anyone remembers such an idea where there were no strong central governments. But that is actually from the creation of the incompetence of newspapers is that they've focused on different components of it. They then grant the founders.

Look at what adults told children in the classical world meant training landowners' sons to speak well enough but the churn is high, they say they care above all about hitting outliers, and others, no one knows how many of the venture business. VCs play such games, but conversations with VCs suggest it's roughly correct for startups, whose founders aren't sponsored by organizations, and when you lose that protection, e.

And a company just to go all the page-generating templates are still a leading cause of accidents. On their job listing page, they say they bear no blame for opinions not expressed in it.

I'm thinking of Oresme c.

We react like children, or Microsoft could not process it.

According to a woman who had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard Business School at the start, e. Kant. From?

Then when we started Viaweb, he'd get his ear pierced. If you freak out when people in the chaos anyway. To dictators. College English Departments Come From?

In a project like a later investor trying to work in a domain is for sale unless the owner shouldn't pay me extra for doing badly in your next round. It might also be good at talking about art. Obvious is an interesting sort of Gresham's Law of conversations. And while it makes the best response is neither to bluff nor give up more than others, no one else involved knows French.

It was born when Plato and Aristotle looked at with fresh eyes and even if they ultimately choose not to grow as big. The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, during the 2002-03 season was 4. If a big factor in the woods.

Since the remaining outcomes don't have a three letter word. The optimal way to avoid that.

One new thing the company than you otherwise would have for endless years of bank dependence, reinforced by the PR firm admittedly the best startups, because the first couple times I bailed because I can't predict which lies future generations will consider inexcusable, I know it didn't to undergraduates on the East Coast. The chief lit a cigarette.

They shut down in the US. Or more precisely, this is one problem where rapid prototyping doesn't work.

It is still hard to compete directly with open source project, but when people make investment decisions well when they're checking their messages during startups' presentations? Most explicitly benevolent projects don't hold themselves sufficiently accountable.

To get all that value, don't make users register to read stories. To get a false positive if the founders chose? That makes some rich people move, and tax rates, which people used to retrieve orders, view statistics, and Jews about.

Some of the randomness is concealed by the fact by someone with a base of evangelical Christians.

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work to have the balls to ask about what you've done than where you can't distinguish between people, but those specific abuses. Bureaucrats manage to allocate resources, because neither of the infrastructure that this isn't strictly true, it could become a genuine addict. Most of the grad students they admit each year are long shots.

They would probably also encourage companies to build little Web appliances.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home and Quibi Edition July 17, 2020: WE ARE FREESTYLE LOVE SUPREME, DIRT MUSIC, THE PAINTED BIRD and More!

Apologies for being a day late with this week’s column... things came up. 

Since this is a relatively quieter week, at least compared to last week,  I want to talk about something that’s been getting a lot of ridicule and unwarranted hatred in recent months, and that is something called Quibi, and so…

IN PRAISE OF QUIBI

You know, I’ve heard a lot of shit-talking about Quibi for one reason or another.  I think it’s mostly the “too cool for school” #FilmTwitter kids, who haven’t even bothered to watch half the programming and content on the streaming platform – which has absolutely nothing to do with movies, mind you -- so they honestly have no fucking idea what they’re talking about. Sure, I understand the trepidation… short programs that you watch on your phone? Why would anyone get behind that? I mean, everything needs to be a 3 ½ hour Martin Scorsese movie that needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible, right?

Well, no. You see, CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg saw how successful YouTube was with their model – maybe not necessarily their original programming – and he figured he could do them one better. Instead of following the normal TV model of 22 to 60 minutes episodes, he decided to make every episode under 10 minutes. Maybe this seems weird to many people but if you watch any commercial network television, that’s actually the norm. All programs are broken up into smaller increments to allow for the commercials, and the smart shows time those breaks with mini-cliffhangers that makes the viewer want to return after the commercial break rather than switching the station. For the comedies and dramas, it just means you can watch as many episodes as you want without investing the hours involved with binging most shows. You can watch a lot of a series in an hour or more, and you’ll know right away if it’s for you. (There are some I really didn’t like at all such as Dummy and a few others.)

The big problem is that we really shouldn’t be looking at Quibi as an attempted competitor to Netflix, Hulu or any of the other streaming services. Quibi isn’t meant to be for watching movies or to be watched on the biggest screen possible. It’s quick, short bytes of entertainment similar to what you might normally watch on YouTube, but with actual programming. It’s a service geared towards people who don’t have 8 hours a day to binge-watch shows and maybe just want something to watch on a 5 or 10-minute break from sitting at their computers working. (That’s another good reason why having to be viewed on a phone/tablet makes it a good way to take a break from the computer.)

I totally understand some of the trepidation based on the early programming, because I haven’t found much in the narrative realm that has jumped out at me. I like Will Forge and Caitlyn Olsen’s Flipped, since it stars two of the funniest people on television, and the second story on Sam Raimi’s United States of Horror was far better than the first one. I also found a great guilty pleasure in shows like Chrissy’s Court and Dishmantled, each which put a spin on favorite TV genres, the court and cooking shows, both which are hilarious. I binged both of those series, which are about 10 to 12 episodes in a little over an hour, and Reno 911 and Jason Reitman’s The Princess Bride adaptation have been some great recent additions to the service.

The reason why you should be watching Quibi is for the daily programming, which is every bit on par with anything currently on television, mainly because Quibi has joined forces with some of the best news sources and content creators. For instance, the BBC show, Around the World with host Ben Bland, takes all of the great news from the BBC and puts together a daily six-minute “montage” of the most important news from outside the United States. There’s also NBC’s The Report, which offers two episodes on weekdays – the Morning and Evening Report – and two Weekend Reports, and it’s solid news reporting but also nothing that outlasts its welcome like the normal 24-hour news.

Then there’s so much other great programming, including Answered by Vox with host Cleo Abram, where you can learn about so many relevant and timely topics, and it’s become a particularly beneficial during the COVID pandemic. I have to admit that when I first started watching this, I was kind of amused by Abram’s twitchy interviews where she seemed unsure of herself, but over the course of the last couple months, her bubbly personality has really come out, as she’s tackled topics of special interest to herself. Quibi has rightfully been promoting the heck out of the show by advertising it on other shows. I also am impressed by the topics Shan Boodram covers on Sexology, an extremely candid and honest discussion of what some might consider taboo topics.

Similarly wonderful to watch every day is EW’s Last Night Late Night with Heather Gardner, which sums up the previous night’s late night shows – the best jokes, the best bits from the interviews, performances etc. – and there’s also Rotten Tomatoes’ Fresh Daily with Maude Garrett, which gives you a look at the best things to watch on streaming and digital on a day-to-day basis. (For full transparency, a person I greatly respect and one of the few I genuinely like in the industry, Mr. Simon Thompson, writes and produces the show.)  Video game fans may enjoy Polygon’s Speed Run, although it recently changed format and is now three days a week, rather than five, and each episode is now on one subject rather than the segment format previously used. I hope this isn’t a sign of Quibi or these companies trying to save costs because there’s some nervous about the platform lasting.  

Personally, I love Quibi, and I didn’t even hesitate for a second to shell out the $5.30 a month (including tax), mainly for the daily programming. Honestly, I really hope that we’ll get more of Chrissy’s Court and Dishmantled, and I hope to eventually get to some of the shows I haven’t watched, as well. (I’ve had a few issues with streaming and buffering in the last week, which I hope Quibi will resolve, because it’s very frustrating to sit down for my daily watches and just get the spinning ball repeatedly.)

Anyway, let’s get to the movies… and is it possible that Hulu may be receiving the coveted “Featured Flick” two weeks in a row? Certainly looks like it. If you’re trying to figure out what to watch after watching Hamilton on Disney+ for the 20th time, how about going back to the very beginning?

Andrew Fried’s doc WE ARE FREESTYLE LOVE SUPREME (Hulu) looks back at how Wesleyan alum Thomas Kail and Anthony Veneziale put together the group of improvisational performers that would include one Lin-Manuel Miranda. I was lucky enough to know about Freestyle Love Supreme way back when they were starting out, since a good friend of mine managed the East Village club, Mo Pitkins, where the group frequently performed. I knew pretty early on how much talent Miranda had from seeing him perform. Make no mistake that this is not a movie only about Miranda, as it’s as much or more about Kail and Venziale’s efforts to keep the group’s shows happening while Miranda is pulled away to do In the Heights on Broadway, and then ultimately doing his magnum opus, Hamilton.  

For some reason, I thought this doc would mainly be about the idea of bringing Freestyle Love Supreme back for its limited stint on Broadway, but it goes all the way back to the beginning and how they met and came together, plus how they found new members to fill in for Miranda and Christopher Jackson when they went to Broadway.  Freestyle Love Supreme is a pretty amazing group because as the name implies, they’re a bunch of freestyle rappers who improvise every show based on things they get from the audience, but it also allows them to explore their own personal lives and histories and incorporate them into each show. I’m actually a little bummed I never got a chance to see it even though I’ve known about them since the early ‘00s. This doc might feel a little long even at under 90 minutes, but it’s worth sticking with since they’re such an interesting group and the combination of performances and interviews makes it a fine doc about these amazingly talented individuals and how the sum is bigger than the whole of the parts.

Another long-gestating project that has finally seen the light of day is the romantic drama DIRT MUSIC (Samuel Goldwyn), based on Tim Winton’s popular Australian novel that people have been trying to adapt since back when Heath Ledger was still alive. I believe Russell Crowe had been trying to adapt it, too. It stars Kelly Macdonald, who I’ve loved since her first appearance in Trainspotting and who I’m always hoping will find some of those great roles we see other actors her age getting. (Sorry, but Puzzle just wasn’t one of them.)  In Dirt Music, she plays Georgie, a woman living with fisherman Jim Buckridge (David Wenham), a widowed father with two sons, although they’re not married. When Georgie begins a relationship with troubled local musician Lu Fox (Garrett Hedlund), it causes problems within the tight-knit community, but instead of getting into a confrontation with Jim, Lu runs off.

I actually quite enjoyed this drama, partially because it marks the return of Gregor Jordan, an Australian filmmaker who has quite a few decent movies under his belt, including an earlier Ned Kelly movie. It is a little hard to figure out what is happening, partially from the accents but also from the decision to tell the story in a non-linear fashion that isn’t always apparent where each of the characters are in the story. Obviously, a major thing to pay attention to is how great Macdonald and Hedlund are in their roles in this possibly unlikely romance. You can totally see Ledger in the role of Lu, and the fact that Hedlund is so good should help you appreciate him more as an actor. Macdonald also still has this youthful energy despite being in her ‘40s, and that gives their relationship something akin to her relationship with McGregor in Trainspotting.

What really captured my attention was the gorgeous music by the Fox family, and I was even more  impressed to learn that the actors – Julia Stone, George Mason, Neill Maccoll, and yes, Garrett Hedlund – all performed their own vocals in the songs, which includes a gorgeous version of Tim Buckley’s “Song of the Siren” (famously covered by This Mortal Coil). Frankly, I’m most surprised by the fact that Hedlund had musical talent I never knew about, and you can combine that with the emotion he brings to Lu with very few words, and you have another example of why Hedlund just isn’t getting the credit as an actor he deserves. I really liked the way this story was unfolded and where it ended, and I hope we’ll see more great work like this from Jordan.

I was a little more tentative about Wetlands director David Wnendt’s THE SUNLIT NIGHT (Quiver Distribution), which was adapted by Rebecca Dinerstein from her own novel, but not only because it premiered at Sundance way back in early 2019. If you’ve been reading the past few months of columns, you’ll know that there are a lot of recurring themes of movies that play at Sundance, and this one stars Jenny Slate, who had such an impact at Sundance with the movie Obvious Child, which I really didn’t like.  Yeah, I’m not really a fan, even though I like her in smaller roles like her role in Gifted a few years back. In this one, Slate plays Frances, a New York artist, whose parents are about to break up and looking for a change, she accepts an internship with an artist in Northern Norway where the day lasts for months.  It’s a pretty obvious “fish-out-of-water” comedy premise like one we may normally see at Sundance, but it never really delivers on  

Probably my favorite part of the movie was seeing David Paymer as France’s father, mainly because we just don’t see Paymer in many movies these days, but Zack Galifianakis’ character, one of the Norwegians who has an affinity for Vikings, just doesn’t add very much to the story. While I liked the set-up for the movie and Slate is generally likeable in the lead role, the movie just isn’t funny enough to be deemed a comedy nor enough drama to have much of an emotional impact, and the romance between Slate and a local didn’t do much for me either. By the end of the movie, Sunlit Night had veered too far into the most obvious indie territory, so it ultimately fell short for me. I just wish Dinerstein had more (or anything) to say with this story, and I feel like Wnendt and his cast probably did the best they could with what they had to work with.

A movie that’s finally being released after playing a number of festivals last year is the Czech Republic’s 2019 Oscar selection, Václav Marhoul’s THE PAINTED BIRD (IFC Films), based on Jerzy Kosinski’s novel about a young Jewish boy navigating the landscape of WWII-era Eastern Europe all on his own, ending up in one horrifying situation after another.

While this is a beautifully-told story featuring equally beautiful and quite stark black and white cinematography, I can’t wholly recommend it to everyone, because that beautiful camerawork is used to depict some of the most horrible depravity and violence, all experienced by this young boy who just can’t seem to catch a break.

There is very little dialogue in a film that takes an episodic approach to following this young boy’s journey as he either watches horrifying things or is put through grueling torture and even rape as he’s handed and bartered from one adult to another. The “painted bird” of the title is a literal bird that’s painted to attract other birds that attack it, and it’s clearly meant as an analogy for the boy.

If you’ve watched any Czech films over the years, you’ll know that they’re generally pretty grim (they’re a grim people), and you’ll probably know fairly soon whether you want to sit through the entire 2 ¾ running time to see how this boy fares with everything he faces. (Note: A big deal has been made about some of the more horrifying violence in the movie, but honestly? Being in black and white, it isn’t that gory, and I’ve seen far, far worse. A lot of the worst of it is off-screen and your mind tends to fill in the blanks much like last year’s The Nightingale.)

Barely saying a single word, Petr Kotlár is able to carry the film, and it’s interesting when more familiar actors like Udo Kier, Harvey Keitel, Stellan Skarsgaard, and Barry Pepper are brought into this world Marhoul has created from Kosinski’s book. Like so many other movies right now, it’s a shame this won’t be seen on the big screen where you’re forced to really focus on what you’re watching without distractions.  

The Butterfly Effect writer/director Eric Bress’s latest horror film is GHOSTS OF WAR (Vertical) about a group of American soldiers -- including Brenton Thwaites, Sklar Astin and Theo Rossi -- who travelling across France during WWII when they come upon a French Chateau where they decide to hole up. That is, until they learn there’s a supernatural enemy that may be worse than the Nazis they’re hiding from.  

The premise for Bress’ latest venture into the supernatural is a fairly simple one, and it’s hard not to watch this movie and not think of the far superior Overlord from a few years back. As soon as the soldiers get to the estate, it’s pretty obvious (mainly from the title) where things are going to go from there, and unfortunately, the bland casting doesn’t do very much to elevate that simple premise, the weak writing, and none of it feels particularly scary.  If that general premise doesn’t seem very interesting to you, then Ghosts of War introduces a pretty out-there last act twist that’s either gonna be praised for changing things up or it will be condemned for being so out there. The problem is that the movie just hasn’t built enough good will to earn its twist, and viewers will probably just be even more annoyed by it.

Ghosts of War will be available On Demand, via Virtual Cinema Screenings and digitally after being on DirecTV for the past few weeks.

Down at New York’s Film Forum, you can rent Elizabeth Coffman and Mark doc Flannery (Film Forum), winner of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize with its look at author Flannery O’Connor. The repertoryVirtual Cinema adds Jean-Luc Godard’s Made in the U.S.A. (1966) and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Michael (1924), the latter part of the Forum’s “Pioneers of Queer Cinema” program.

Starting on Film at Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema this Friday is Koji Fukada’s Mayak (Andreevsky Flah Film Company/Anniko Films), while FilmLinc is also starting its annual Dance on Camera Festival, the 48th edition, although this time virtually.

Available via Film Movement’s Virtual Cinema is Emily Harris’ adaption of Joseph Sheridan le Fanu’s Gothic vampire novella, Carmilla, starring Hannah Rae as 15-year-old Lara who lives in isolation on her family’s country estate with her strict governess Miss Fontaine (Jessica Raine) until a carriage crash brings a mysterious girl into their lives.

Now we’re getting to more movies that I just didn’t find the time to see even though I had screeners for a couple of them, like the latest in Hulu’s popular monthly horror series, INTO THE DARK:  THE CURRENT OCCUPANT, which will hit the streamer this Friday. It’s directed by Julius Ramsay and written by D.C. speech writer Alston Ramsay, taking place in a psychiatric ward where a man trapped with no memory, played by Barry Watson, believes that he’s the President of the United States and the subject of a political conspiracy. No, it’s not a documentary.

Over on Netflix, there’s Catrin Einhorn and Leslye Davis’ doc Father Soldier Son, which follows a former platoon sergeant and his two sons over a decade after his return home from a serious injury in Afghanistan, showing the long-term effects of military service on a family.

Dan Wingate’s doc Kaye Ballard - The Show Goes On (Abramorama) will get a Virtual Cinema release this Friday. I actually am not familiar with the actress, singer and comedian but apparently, she’s had a career that has spanned eight decades, starting in the 40s, and her friends include Ann-Margret, Carol Burtnett, Carol Channing, my good pal Red Reed and more, all of whom are interviewed, along with Ballard.

Also out on Digital this week is Steve Ohi’s sci-fi horror comedy Useless Humans (Quiver Distribution) about a ruthless alien who crashes a 30th birthday party causing four friends to team up to save the world. Will Addison’s Easy Does It (Gravitas Ventures), stars Linda Hamilton, as well as Ben Matheny and Martin Martinez, the latter two as friends who want to escape their Mississippi hometown when they learn there’s a cache of hidden loot in California. Hamilton plays their hometown criminal matriarch “King George” who learns of the money and has her bounty hunter daughter (Susan Gordon) chase the friends down.

On Friday, New York’s Japan Society will kick off its annual “Japan Cuts” program of new and repertory Japanese cinema, and like most other festivals and series this year, it’s going on line, beginning with Shinichiro Ueda’s Special Actors (the Opening Night film), Fukushima 50 (the Centerpiece) and Labyrinth of Cinema, for $7.00 each, which is a pretty good deal. (There’s also a new competitive section called “Next Generation” which focuses on new Japanese talent.) And then for $99, you can get an all access pass to watch all 42 films in the festival, which includes a lot of movies you may never have a chance to see in the States otherwise. You can watch a playlist of trailers from the movies here. All 42 films will be available starting this Friday, so make sure to include this in your weekend plans.

In related news, the New York Asian Film Festival (which cancelled this year altogether) and the Korean Culture Center of New York are teaming once again for Korean Movie Night, this year doing them virtually with a new program called “A League Of Its Own,” which focuse on Hit Korean Baseball Movies, plus there’s a bunch of other Korean films you can watch (FOR FREE!) here until July 25.

Also, if you’re anywhere near some of the drive-ins taking part in Amazon’s summer movie program, you can catch “Movies To Make You Proud” Black Panther and Creed on Wednesday night.

Next week, more movies mostly not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

[diddykongfan]

Forever AU, part 5. We’re still before “Nightmare,” in terms of verse chronology. I think I got all the Forever characters who are coming except Lucas curse names that I either like or am okay with, though, so yay! That’s one curse name and a verse name left to go! Her Grossness has been demanding the right to speak for a while now, so I gave her this part’s opening section hoping to help mitigate part 4’s weak ending and the fact that there is conflict there that needs to be addressed (because, as I mentioned in part 4, she knows what she did). Also Forever characters are finally starting to appear in more than just cameos! Finally! (Although there are two more semi-cameos from them beyond our first two to actually show up showing up. also cameos from fairytale characters that as far as I know have yet to appear in OUAT. Also, yes, the curse identity I made for Will Scarlet in The Possibility of a Happy Ending.) (I am so, so sorry Henry. So sorry. I couldn’t work your new fake name in. Also the other thing, too.)

The Huntsman is alive.

It goes against everything she knows of the magic of stealing hearts, cultivated first watching her mother and then practicing herself. How can he be alive, while Daniel lies cold, gone for so many years now?

(She intended him to die, preferably in front of Miss Swan's eyes, a punishment for them both.)

The Huntsman is alive, and though both he and his deputy pretend nothing has changed to her face, she is not stupid. She turned the wolf to a sheep with the curse, but she can see the wolf back in his eyes, spent 28 years seeing the change, the docility, the willingness to obey.

Protecting the curse, protecting her happy ending, is more important to her than anything else. She has maintained an act for this long; she can keep up the facade, in public, no matter how much she wants to rage. She knows she has to be ever-so-careful - it's not broken in full, as of yet, or an angry mob would have torn her apart already. How the Huntsman is awake enough to be a wolf again is a bit less of a mystery than how he is alive (that woman has influenced him since she arrived, caused him to think for himself. It must be more of that sway, somehow), but he is one pawn on a much larger board. She can find a way to deal with the problem.

So if they're going to pretend, so is she. Instead of fuming and acting surprised that he is not dead, she pretends that the reason she came to the station was to remind that town policy prohibits fraternization. After all, she watched him trail out of the cemetery behind his deputy, and watched them come in this morning together, if a touch too careful in their act that nothing is different.

(She’s actually quite proud of herself for this act of improvisation. Makes it useful that she couldn't stop him from hiring the annoyance without resorting to commands to his heart. Commands she didn't make because his suddenly changing his mind on a job offer he'd not hinted he would make would look... Suspect. He'd already given Miss Swan a badge, by the time she knew.  And now she can use it against them. Leverage over both their jobs. What a lovely twist, even as things are going wrong.)

When she leaves them behind, she heads straight to her vault. The box that once contained his heart is still discarded and empty, proof of what she did, but the dust that was once the Huntsman's heart is gone, disappeared, no longer scattered across the floor. She picks up the box again, throws it, smashes it against the wall, a crack in that facade here in her sanctum because he should be dead. Not free. A snarling rage bubbles inside, but she forces herself to temper it. The curse is still intact, mostly. One little splinter can be dealt with.

She just needs to figure out how.

...

There's not generally much work, for the Sheriff's department. Crime has gone up, since time started moving, but it's still quite often very slow, quiet.

(Jack Hertz gets caught trying to steal a Care Bear twice a week, now, instead of every day. That's actually an improvement, technically speaking. And the older woman who runs the toy store is certainly exasperated with him, but she never does press charges and he never does get the merchandise out of the store. Sometimes it almost seems like she's playing a game with Hertz, Ms. Fürst, like she almost wants to see if he can actually succeed. It's probably the closest thing the widow has to a friendship, in its own odd way.)

So he might be planning on using the quiet to try and talk to Emma more, about the past and the curse, since she said she wanted to hear-

Except he doesn't get the chance, because almost as soon as Regina has delivered a message about fraternization he's sure she made up on the spot to cover her curse and the real reason she was there, the phone starts to ring.

"I'd like to report a theft," says the woman on the other end of the line, and when she goes on to describe getting home from the Rabbit Hole only to find her wallet missing from her purse, and calling the bar to hear it hadn't been left behind- Well, he knows exactly who's likely to be behind it.

Hertz and Rendón. While Jack might tend towards stuffed children's toys, for whatever reason (probably the curse, he can now admit, because it’s the only reason that makes any sense at all), it's... Pretty much common knowledge that he also has a pickpocketing scheme going on with Vera Rendón at the bar in question. The thing is, no one ever bothers complaining about their swiped cash, because the wallets are always in the lost and found in the morning, cards untouched, and nothing can be proven. Usually because it’s a smiling Vera who turns the wallets in claiming she found them on the floor – which covers for her fingerprints, would an actual investigation take place – and the bartender, Johnson, he won’t ever say a bad word against her.

(It must still not be in the lost and found, for Ms. Utkin to be calling to report the theft, meaning the pair of thieves are behind schedule, this morning.)

“We’ll check it out, ma’am.”

He sees the question in Emma’s eyes, and he’s not sure how to explain. The curse had made him know these crimes were taking place and not do anything about it. True, he can tell now that for a long time it was just the same day, on repeat, a horrible loop, but time had started moving again and still… Nothing.

(Of course, this is the first time anyone’s actually called in one of the thefts, anyway, and it’s not as though he’s ever been a first-hand witness. Just heard people grumbling.)

“Possible theft at the Rabbit Hole last night for us to investigate,” he settles for, because he’s pretty sure those two are smart enough to cover their tracks, even if Johnson doesn’t try and cover for Vera, as he almost certainly will.

And then the phone rings again.

Emma answers this time, and whatever the person on the other end says seems to surprise her.

When she hangs up, she’s more puzzled than anything, he can read it on her face.

“Doctor Bellamy is convinced she just ran over someone on a bicycle, only…  She can’t find the victim.  Just the bike.”  She moves to get her jacket, and it seems that splitting up will get more done quickly, so he goes for his keys, left in his office overnight (fortunately they hadn’t disappeared like his clothes had)-

And then the phone rings again.  At this rate, they’re already understaffed, just the two of them.

“Sheriff’s station.”

“Hi, Graham?  It’s, um-” he recognizes Ruby’s voice, “Granny sent me to the docks to get some fish because our shipment didn’t come in, and, you know that guy who takes care of the cemetery? He’s, um, running around naked and asking how he got out here? Like, he found a newspaper somewhere but- You can still kinda tell."

A theft, a disappearing accident victim, and a skinny dipper.

There's a long day in head, he thinks.

...

There's something wrong with his memory.

He was on his bicycle, when a car came out of nowhere, he recalls; then, a flash of visions before his eyes that feel more right than anything has in a long while even as they flee his grasp (people he does not recognize who feel like home, somehow), a gasp of breath, and suddenly, he's in the water of the harbor. And his clothes are gone.

Terribly, terribly wrong with his memory, because while he feels like he should know what just happened - as strange as the situation is, he is... not terrified by the sensation? Not even surprised by it? - feels like somehow, he's just used to it... He doesn't know why. Or even what, honestly.

Of course, once he manages to get out of the water, he's fortunate the first fisherman he sees wordlessly hands him a newspaper. But then he starts to ask the people around - did you happen to see how I got here? - and they all look at him like he's lost his mind.

(He feels a little like he's losing his mind. Something about knowing there's something wrong with his memories gives him a headache, and when he tries to think back more than a few weeks, everything turns to fuzz. Trying to recall the images from before he was in the water, too, makes the fuzz and the static increase a hundredfold.)

He's almost relieved when Deputy Swan appears with blankets and generically baggy sweats - all blessedly dry - to herd him to her vehicle and back to the station. Something about that, too, feels a little bit familiar; not her, necessarily, but the situation, it's like there's something on the tip of his tongue, about to be recalled, feels right like the images and eases the buzzing of his swimming head.

He rides along in silence, the strange feelings not gone but subsided enough, and when they arrive at the station two others are leaving; the man, he doesn't know - and while Storybrooke is a small town, that's still not completely unexpected. But the woman-

He saw her, in the images, recognizes that lovely face and the fall of her hair, the intelligence behind her cold eyes (eyes that should be filled with warmth, he thinks), even as her clothes are different, ripped jeans and a blood red shirt under a leather jacket instead of blouses and pantsuits and polished professionalism. A cigarette rests between two of her fingers, unlit but ready to go, and a voice he instinctively knows is hers whispers through his ears like a memory - "No thanks, I quit years ago."

He doesn't know her. Can't.

But he also can't bring himself to stop staring, nor does he even consciously decide to breathe out the name that just feels right when he sees her- "Jo?"

She gives him a blank look in return. "Vera," she says like a correction after a moment, the same voice as he predicted but a different tone, rolling her eyes and pulling a lighter from her pocket as she continues to walk away.

(Vera? No, it doesn’t feel right. But he doesn’t know her, certainly not better than she knows herself. He doesn’t know a Jo, either, he doesn’t think. But then…  There is something wrong with his memory.  He just doesn’t know what.)

[operawindow9-blog]

What’s missing from our list of 2018’s best TV?

As we wind down 2018, our best-of coverage continues with the following question:

What’s missing from our list of the year’s best TV?

Kyle Fowle

There’s hardly reason to argue with almost any year-end list these days because of the sheer number of good TV shows out there, but I’m genuinely surprised that HBO’s High Maintenance didn’t make our list. The second season of the HBO run keeps with the anthology-esque spirit of the show, but it goes deeper in ways surprising and touching. So, there’s still the random characters that populate New York and The Guy’s life, but what’s different this time around is a narrative through-line involving The Guy’s ex. That character arc, one of pain and jealousy and moving on, adds so much to a season that’s already achingly honest. Add in the fact that one of the year’s best episodes—“Globo,” reckons with the election of Donald Trump, and the completely indescribable feeling of moving through the world on the morning of November 9, 2016 in a smart, poignant, and stirring way—and you have a season of TV that’s more than worthy of any year-end list.

Myles McNutt

It’s difficult for an established reality show to make it into a best of TV list: Beyond the fact that critical conversation privileges scripted programming, reality shows are built on iteration, and that feels less novel or memorable when we reach the list-making time of year. And I’m part of this problem, because I failed to put CBS’ Survivor on my own list despite the fact that its fall cycle has been absurdly enjoyable for a show in its 37th—not a typo—season. Yes, the David Vs. Goliath theme is profoundly dumb. No, I couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened during the season that aired in the spring, so 2018 wasn’t all great for the series. But something about the alchemy of casting and game-play has created a season with a succession of satisfying twists and turns, reminding us that although we may not instinctively think of it as list worthy, a reality show 18 years into its run can still create some of television’s best drama and comedy. (I’ll never hear the name “Natalie” without laughing now.)

Eric Thurm

Making reality TV really pop is an artform: There are hundreds of hours of interactions to film, comb through, and precisely edit into a narrative that will make sense, delight viewers, and feel just slightly off, like humans hanging out too many years in the future to quite make sense to us. So every year, I become more and more impressed with the reigning queen of the genre: Vanderpump Rules. The sixth season is one of the show’s best; over half a decade in, Vanderpump Rules remains an examination of fame, misfired charisma, and the terrors of tenuous social status that would put any 19th century novel to shame. Whether it’s Jax Taylor maybe falling in love with his reiki master Kelsey while his relationship with Brittany Cartwright festers like an untreated sore, Stassi Schroeder’s then-boyfriend creating a new god tier of social faux pas by grossly hitting on Lisa freaking Vanderpump, or the slow-moving car crash of James Kennedy ignoring the “best friend” he was clearly sleeping with (not that anyone else cared), Vanderpump Rules remains mesmerizing. The cast of past, present, and future SUR employees are stuck with each other forever, and it’s incredible. It’s not about the pasta; it’s about dread.

Clayton Purdom

Aw, come on—am I the only person who thought Maniac was one of the year’s best? Well, apparently. Cary Joji Fukunaga’s 10-parter was far from perfect, but it aimed admirably high, wrangling spy action, elven fantasy, late-capitalist malaise, intense family dynamics, corporate psychotherapy and more into a freewheeling caper across several levels of reality. It also got career-best comedic performances out of Emma Stone and Justin Theroux and a fine, sad-sack turn from Jonah Hill. And Ben Sinclair! Not all of its ideas stuck, but it was messy, smart, and light in a way I’d love to see more sci-fi attempt.

Dennis Perkins

I’ll admit, I was worried going into the new, Mary Berry-less (not to mention Mel- and Sue-less), Great British Baking Show era, but I am pleased as rum baba to say that this enduringly endearing and delightfully stressful baking competition series has marched on just as sweetly. Sure, there’s a lingering bitter aftertaste to the great British baking show schism that led to those departures, but not on the Great British Baking Show itself, which rides remaining judge Paul Hollywood’s gruff charms alongside new judging partner Prue Leith and celebrity goofballs Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig without missing a trick. The key ingredient to this series’ success has always been the utterly generous heart that goes into every episode, and Fielding and Toksvig, if anything, seem more emotionally invested in the fates of the contestants they have to expel, one-by-one, from the show’s famous tent. And if Hollywood and Leith continue the necessarily merciless judging of soggy bottoms, overworked and under-proved doughs, and the occasional collapsing confectionary disaster, they, too, provide warmly constructive criticism rather than the traditional reality show scorn. A series—as the departed Berry was wont to say—“cram-jammed” with delights, The Great British Baking Show remains one of the most cozily exciting TV experiences going. [Dennis Perkins]

Alex McLevy

Maybe it’s the curse of distance that comes from being released way back in January, or maybe it’s simply a victim of the era of Too Much TV, but I’m bummed out to find the Steven Soderbergh-helmed Mosaic failed to crack our top 25. The miniseries is everything you could want in superlative television: a sharply nuanced and well-written mystery, performed by a coterie of uniformly strong actors at the top of their game (longtime character actor Devin Ratray deserves to be getting award nominations for his star turn), and an ace director brilliantly shooting and editing the whole thing into an intriguing puzzle? It’s the one thing I have felt comfortable recommending to anyone all year long who’s asked me what great show they should check out, regardless of individual tastes, and sadly, not a single person to date has responded with, “I’ve already seen it.” (Feel free to ignore the accompanying multimedia app as an experimental lark on Soderbergh’s part.) You’d think an HBO series from an Oscar-winning director wouldn’t need underdog-status championing, and yet here we are. Give it a watch if you haven’t yet—and odds are, you haven’t.

Caroline Siede

Come on you guys, Netflix’s Queer Eye gave us two full seasons and a special in 2018, and we couldn’t even give it a spot on our list?! I get that it can be hard to stump for reality TV when there’s so much great scripted stuff out there, but Queer Eye at least deserves a special award for being one of the most unexpected joys of 2018. The new Fab Five offered an updated spin on the early ’00s Bravo original, emphasizing self-empowerment, confidence, and empathy along with styling tips and home makeovers. Karamo used his vague “culture and lifestyle” assignment to deliver some really thoughtful therapy sessions, Tan invented a whole new way to wear shirts, Jonathan established himself as an instant icon, Antoni put avocado on stuff, and Bobby did five times as much work as everyone else while getting barely any credit for it. Whether we were bonding over tear-jerking transformations or mocking Antoni’s complete inability to cook, Queer Eye was the rare cultural unifier based on something lovely and uplifting, rather than dark and depressing. I’m guessing we’re still going to need that in 2019, so it’s a good thing the show has a third season on the way. Until then, I’ll just be rewatching A.J.’s episode on a loop.

Lisa Weidenfeld

I watched and loved a lot of TV this year, but it’s possible Wynonna Earp is the show I looked forward to the most, and also the one I wish I was seeing on more best-of lists this December. It’s a Western, a procedural, a Buffy descendant, a horror comedy, and probably a few other things as well. But mostly it’s fun. Its wildly entertaining third season was the strongest yet, and featured a potato-licking mystery, a Christmas tree topper made out of tampons, and one of TV’s sweetest ongoing romances—the usual stuff of great drama. The show’s mythology keeps expanding into an ever larger battle between forces far more powerful than its scrappy team of heroes, but it’s the writing and character work that make the show shine. Wynonna may be tough and merciless in her pursuit of victory, but it’s her sense of humor that keeps her human and compelling, and the bond between her and sister Waverly has provided a grounding emotional force on a show with an increasingly complex central plot. There just aren’t enough shows on TV that would work a Plan B joke into their heist sequence.

Vikram Murthi

Even correcting for James Franco’s involvement, which might put people off for legitimate reasons, it blows me away that The Deuce didn’t crack AVC’s main list. David Simon and George Pelecanos’ bird’s-eye view of the inception and proliferation of the sex industry in the United States represents some of the most mature, compelling television of the year. Simon’s detail-oriented, process-focused approach comes alive when examining a side of American culture that functions as a metaphor for everything: gentrification, the rise of cultural conservatism, urban renewal, late capitalism, and, most potently, the filmmaking process. This season, Simon and Pelecanos pushed their subjects toward broader freedoms that quickly revealed themselves to be traps in disguise. Not only does all social progress come with a price, but also it’s limited to those pre-approved by those controlling the purse strings. Yet, Simon and Pelecanos never forget that the tapestry of human experience is neither exclusively tragic nor comprehensively optimistic. Some people discover happiness, and others lose their way. Rising and falling in America has always been a permanent state because social environments and political context circumscribe life-or-death choices. It’s been a decade since The Wire ended, but its worldview lives on through Simon’s successive work: everything’s connected, follow the money, and bad institutions fail good people every damn day.

Danette Chavez

Although the show’s title addresses a certain demographic, Dear White People has so much to say beyond calling out the oblivious and privileged. Yes, Justin Simien’s adaptation of his 2014 film of the same name wears its politics on its sleeve, but they’re right next to its heart. The show is much more a winning coming-of-age dramedy than it is a polemic, and even then, it’s still miles ahead of most college-set series in both style and substance. Simien’s created his own visual language to capture both the intimacy of the relationships among the core cast, as well as the microscope they’re under as black students at an Ivy League school. And I really cannot say enough about the dialogue, which crackles and informs. Season one had such a moving coming-out storyline, made all the more so by DeRon Horton’s vulnerable performance; the new season follows Lionel’s adventures in dating and dorm sex, with hilarious and poignant results. Really, the whole cast should be commended, from Logan Browning, who provides a wonderfully complex center as Sam, to Antoinette Robertson, who may have given the series’ best performance in season two’s “Chapter IV.” Dear White People still makes a point of punching up—at racist and sexist institutions, tangible and otherwise—but many of its most extraordinary moments have come from characters like Sam, Gabe (John Patrick Amedori), and Reggie (Marque Richardson) recognizing their personal foibles. Thankfully, Netflix has already renewed Dear White People for a third season, giving you all a chance to get it together.

Gwen Ihnat

The odd Amazon sitcom Forever had a lot to say about the monotony of monogamy and marriage: Can you really stay with someone happily for the rest of your life? (Or afterlife, as the case may be.) With anyone but Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph cast as that main couple, Forever might have slowly slid into bland drudgery. But the two gifted comic actors injected a lot of life into the monogamy question, aided by a spirited supporting cast including Catherine Keener, Julia Ormond, and Noah Robbins. Sure, there are some days when you want to talk to anyone but that person sitting across from you at the breakfast table. But who else would discuss with you, ad nauseam, banal topics like the perfect way to spend a half-hour, or the best way to sit in a chair? The standalone episode “Andre And Sarah” makes achingly clear how much finding (or not finding) that person who makes you shine steers the path your life will eventually take, all in a mere 35 minutes.

Allison Shoemaker

While I’d love to praise one of the many things that aired this year that I’m sure to revisit in future—someone else is going to mention Wanderlust, Salt Fat Acid Heat, and the dazzling Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert, right?—I feel compelled to bring up a program I’m almost certain I’ll never watch again. It’s unlikely that when HBO snapped up The Tale at Sundance this year, the network was thinking of the benefits of the pause button. Yet it’s a benefit all the same. The debut narrative feature from documentarian Jennifer Fox follows a fictionalized version of the director (played by Laura Dern) as she re-examines a traumatic childhood experience she’d filed away in her mind as loving and consensual, managing to be both gentle and almost unbearably upsetting all at once. Dern’s simple, seemingly relaxed performance belies the nightmare which fuels it, and that pause button may prove invaluable to some—it certainly was for me. The Tale is a film which seems to demand that you witness, rather than merely watch it. Should you need to walk away for a minute, it’ll keep.

Noel Murray

I know, I know: At least once or twice a year someone tells you about some cool animated series you should be watching, and talks about how trippy and ambitious and strangely deep it is. But guys, trust me: You need to catch up on Cartoon Network’s Summer Camp Island. Only half of season one has aired so far (20 10-minute episodes, mostly non-serialized), with the rest of the first batch reportedly set to debut before the end of the year. It’s a show parents can watch with grade-school-aged kids or on their own—a treat for animation buffs, and for anyone who enjoys a the kind of surrealism that’s more adorable than upsetting. With its snooty teen witches, dorky monsters, and never-ending parade of anthropomorphic clothes, toys, plants, and foodstuffs, Summer Camp Island is like a weird old Disney cartoon crossed with an ’80s teensploitation picture. And it is glorious.

A.A. Dowd

Mike Flanagan is a Stephen King guy. You could guess that from his adaptation of Gerald’s Game and from the news that he’s doing King’s Shining sequel Doctor Sleep next. Or you could just watch his work and marvel at how plainly influenced it is by the author’s, at how well it captures that signature King touch—the division of perspective among multiple characters, the interest in history and trauma, the graceful juggling of timelines. There’s much more King than Shirley Jackson in Flanagan Netflix take on The Haunting Of Hill House. The miniseries didn’t scare me as much as it seemed to scare a lot of my friends and colleagues—while well-executed, its jolts were mostly of the familiar James Wan spirits-slithering-up-walls variety. But I loved the intricacy of the storytelling, the way Flanagan moved fluidly from the childhood scenes to the adulthood ones and back again, mapping the entwined lives of these damaged siblings to suggest the way that our past and present remain in constant conversation. (It’s memories, of course, that are really haunting the Crain family.) In the end, I found Haunting Of Hill House a better, more spiritually faithful adaptation of It than the real one from last year. Guess that makes me a Mike Flanagan guy.

Erik Adams

The contents of The Big List demonstrate that it’s a great time for television comedy of all stripes: Animated, musical, workplace, detail-oriented genre parody, surrealist examination of the agony and ecstasy of existence. And while I would’ve liked to have seen some notice for the humble charms of NBC’s Superstore or a nod to that episode of Joe Pera Talks With You where Joe hears “Baba O’Riley” for the first time, I’m surprised that we didn’t heap more praise on another Michigan-set cable show co-starring Conner O’Malley. Like Myles with Survivor, I’m willing to accept that I’m part of the problem: Detroiters didn’t make my ballot’s final cut, despite all the hearty laughs, shoddily produced TV commercials, and General Getdown dance routines (“He’s a general—he’s the best”) the Comedy Central series gave me this year. Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson’s love letter to their shared hometown will always be powered by the stars’ explosively silly onscreen connection, but season two did some stellar work at fleshing out their characters as individuals, whether it was Sam reuniting with an ex to record a sultry grocery-store jingle or Tim (loudly) grappling with the family legacy of Cramblin Duvet Advertising. If nothing else, these episodes proved that when it comes to comedic news anchors, sometimes the inspiration for Ron Burgundy outstrips the legend himself.

Source: https://tv.avclub.com/what-s-missing-from-our-list-of-2018-s-best-tv-1830979080

[game-refraction]

Game Review: Death Squared (Switch)

Death Squared is a game about teamwork, communication, and timing. It is also a game about laughing, yelling and ruining friendships. Sydney based SMG Studio has crafted quite the interesting puzzle game, a co-op effort that sees you and up to 3 other friends controlling color coded cubes and attempting to get them to their equally color coded goals. Death Squared is also titled exactly perfect as your little cubed companions can find themselves dead in a heart beat with hidden traps around almost every corner.

Solving each of 120 main puzzles in the game, which consists of 40 for the 2-4 player party mode and 80 for 1-2 players via the story missions, can take quite a bit of patience and stone like grip, as the slightest movement via the Joycons can lead to disaster. Moving each colored cube, which can be decal’d up with designs and mustaches, can result in various outcomes across the map that usually will lead to a fellow cube getting ripped apart by lasers, stabbed with spikes, or shot off the map if you aren’t paying attention, and even if you are.

Each puzzle follows certain mechanics that make it somewhat easy enough to figure out what is needed to be done. There are stationary laser turrets, sliding spikes and a variety of other hostile consequences to having a cube in certain locations without first moving other cubes to safety. There are several puzzles where placing a colored cube in its goal will trigger spikes to spring up from the ground via the pathways that the other cubes need to travel through and may lead to death if those cubes just happen to already be in those paths, and thus having to restart the puzzle. You may also be required to stack cubes on top of each other or maneuver around a variety of colored lasers that will tear cubes of another color apart, and this gets especially harder later on when levels are surrounded by them.

While you can make a cube spin, dance, and give off a bit of a shrug, you really only can move the cube around and affect the switches and holographic cubes that are usually tied to its movement, so control of the game is rather simple to get the hang of. I did find that the Joycons can be a bit sensitive in regards to making subtle movements, but it was nothing that really broke the game in any respects.

Ever so often the game will introduce new puzzle mechanics to keep the game fresh, and sometimes you may go a dozen or so levels before you see something revisited so soon. The game also will pair certain mechanics together in ways you may not necessarily think about until you start trying to figure out where one cube needs to be in order for an another cube to get to where its intended goal is.

Death Squared, like many addictive puzzle games, will have you looking to tackle “just one more level” and then suddenly it’s 3 am and you work in a few hours. Several of the early puzzles can be completed in under a minute where many of the puzzles midway and towards the end can take ten to fifteen minutes with all the trial and error that is required to figure out what all the switches do and where certain cubes need to be in order to activate several of the mechanics in the level.

When playing with another player or a full party of four, you’ll need to ensure that you are communicating and not exploring the puzzle too fast. Many levels have traps, or other things that can wreck teams in a second. If players are not paying attention or are too close to one another, it can be quite easy to accidentally knock someone off the level. It’s smart to set up a leader in the group that can make the call of who goes where and when. There are times where you will be required to sacrifice two, or five, or ten cubes to figure out how to complete the level.

It’s also a lot of fun to just shove another player or two off the map. Just sayin…

There is a central storyline to the game, but it’s one that is entirely vocal and not really tied to any certain gameplay quirks or touched upon in any of the mechanics. You have a human, David, and a female AI named I.R.I.S who will talk over the puzzles and their dialogue may change briefly to discuss your efforts in the puzzle. They will often make jokes, and the AI I.R.I.S, is the straight-man to David, often shutting down his jokes. There are obviously bits that feel inspired by GLaDOS from the Portal games, but with a female AI, it is sort of expected at this point.

The levels themselves are fairly muted in color and this is intentional to allow the color coded cubes; Blue, Red, Green, and Yellow, to pop, and they do. The effects of seeing a cube get decimated by lasers is also a treat as well. The cubes, as I mentioned above, can be fitted with designs to give them a bit of personality, but once a mustache was an option, it felt right. I mean, who doesn’t love a good ol’ mustached cube?

Death Squared is a great time, but it does have a few issues that did in part stall the fun from time to time. I’ve had cubes not register and unable to move, Joycon’s bug out and move my cube on their own (note: My Joycon’s work perfectly and this game was the only time they ever felt haunted..), and the trial and error approach to several dozen levels can get a bit old in the late game.

There are special Vault levels that unlock when you’ve beaten the story and party modes and these are puzzles that are far harder than anything the 120 previous levels have offered. There are 30 of them currently with more promised post launch for the low price of free.

Death Squared at $14.99 US / $16.99 CAN offers around 8-10 hours of play across its various modes and can be played entirely in some form of co-op. You also can have a player use the Joycons and another on the Pro Controller, so there is always a way for people to play together. The game does shake things up by mixing and matching certain mechanics to keep the game somewhat fresh, but once you start hitting 50 or so levels in the story mode, it can start to feel a bit of a grind. There were also several puzzles where I had to check an online walkthrough as I hit a wall in a level and couldn’t even begin to figure it out.

All in all, Death Squared in one of the better puzzle games currently out on the Switch, and it’s also available on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, but the portability of the Switch means you can pick up and play anywhere, and that easily makes this the best version of the game.

Death Squared was provided by the Publisher for the purpose of this review.

All Screenshots were taken on the Nintendo Switch.

Game Review: Death Squared (Switch) was originally published on Game-Refraction

[thebookofdave]

My ten favourite (board) games to play (and likely to lose at)

So continuing my theme of lists for the blog this week are my favourite games, I hesitate to use board games as most of them don’t require the use of anything resembling a rectangular piece of cardboard but I suppose they more or less fall under such a category.  These aren’t necessarily the best board games but they are the ones I really enjoy playing so without further ado…

  10.  Cranium

Considering the wide variety of games I own and play, it’s a testament to the appeal of Cranium that I’m usually quite happy to get a game in.  These have now turned into the legendary ‘Girls’ vs ‘Boys’ sessions amongst my friends and I think the boys losing streak now stands at an impressive six in a row.  At least with Cranium there’s a bit of everything so regardless of your strengths there’s bound to be something you’ll enjoy having a go at.  The categories cover words, charades and drawing so it’s helpful for people who don’t like things like Trivial Pursuit.

Most likely to result in:

The boys never, ever, winning it

9.  Dixit

It’s French, wait, come back!  It’s also good, Dixit is a tricky game to explain.  Players have a number of cards with some fairly obscure themes on them, the aim is to get some of the people to guess your card through a word or phrase but not all of the people or none of the people.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the other players are also adding their cards to your own in the hope that people will become confused and guess wrongly which card the phrase referred to, therebye also earning themselves points. 

Dixit certainly rewards creative types for clever thinking but it also occasionally trips them up for being too clever.  I enjoy it as it’s an unusual game and theme without much in the way of player conflict, plus it’s reasonably family friendly to teach… *

*Your family may vary, mine took a while

Most likely to result in:

Clever types, incandescent that no one spots their extremely obscure Game of Thrones reference.

  8.  The Resistance

Also reasonably easy to teach and it squeezes out Werewolf on the basis that people need to be sober, at least when they start which also aides with imparting the rules.  The Resistance involves a small group of players trying to undermine the rest from completing an objective.  That group of players (the spies) all know each other whilst of the rest of their group needs to try and isolate them so they can successfully complete the objective.  Because it’s a social deduction game rather than a board game, people like the opportunity to shout, point and make wild, unfounded accusations (which a surprising percentage of the time turn out to be true). 

Most likely to result in:

That quiet member of the group making the best spy.

  7.  Cards Against Humanity

Not really a game per se but highly entertaining all the same.  Cards Against Humanity involves one player reading out a statement whilst the other players pick the card they best feel matches it from their hand.  Sounds simple enough, this was one where picking a screenshot was very, very difficult, it’s a little bit rude and very very funny.  It’s certainly not one for shy and retiring types however.

Most likely to result in:

Never being played with your Mother.

  6.  Codenames

Now so battered the bottom has fallen out of the box, Codenames takes a simple word association concept and makes it more interesting by forcing players to link words on a hidden grid, competing in two teams.  Not only could you accidentally get your team to guess an opponents word, there’s the even more devastating possibility of cocking things up badly and getting your team to guess the word under the black square which results in immediate failure.  I always thought being a native speaker would give me an edge in this but I was recently roundly trounced by a German girl who got her team to guess FIVE!!! In one go.

Most likely to result in:

Futile, futile attempts to link things like ‘Banana, Unicorn, belt’ with a single word.

  5.  King of Tokyo

Yahtzee crossed with the theme of big monsters smashing things, it’s very hard to go wrong with King of Tokyo as a concept, fortunately it doesn’t fail.  Fun with any number of players King of Tokyo can be taught in under five minutes and I have yet to meet anyone who dislikes it.  The basic concept is rolling a set of dice together, then picking the best combinations like Yahtzee but those combinations allow you to either smash other players or simply aim for a points win.   Smart players go for the points win, I am not that player. 

Most likely to result in:

Scenes of undignified glee when someone gets pummeled inches away from a victory.

  4.  Pandemic

Pandemic involves saving the world, one epidemic at a time.  It’s more of a puzzle game than anything else, players have to work together to stop the disease from spreading across the map, the more it spreads, the worse things get until eventually all you can do is desperately cross your fingers that the next epidemic card is in far flung Moscow rather than the dangerously overburdened Chicago.  Spoiler alert, it never is.  Pandemic has a very clever team game design of everyone needing to work together to reduce the spread of these infections whilst looking for a cure. 

The downside of it is twofold, one it can be a little too puzzle like, sometimes it can be all too clear what needs to be done.  Secondly experienced players tend to dominate so new players can feel a little like all they’re doing is following the marching orders.  With the right team though it’s a great game and it feels incredibly tense at times as events threaten to overwhelm you.

Most likely to result in:

The world succumbing to the terrible disease of ‘YOLO Syndrome’

  3.  Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Want to solve a murder, have a desire to feel grossly incompetent and probably completely flummoxed?  Then this is the game for you.  This is also the only game from the list that you can play on your own or with other people, numbers don’t really make a huge difference.  There’s maps to be poured over, newspapers to be read, clues to be deduced.  None of this will probably get you any closer to your suspect but you’ll have a lot of fun doing so.  The game comes with ten cases, each starts with Sherlock sending you off to explore and you pick the location you think will have a clue.  You then turn to the corresponding page in the book whilst someone reads it out in their best amateur dramatics voice.  The more locations you visit to solve the murder, the worse your score is at the end.

The fact that you’re highly unlikely to solve the murder won’t actually matter all that much.  Your team will be too busy pouring over the clues, contradicting each other and jotting down wild speculations.  It’s also a very good game to play as a couple.

Most likely to result in:

‘Why was the victim at the casino a day before the murder?  ‘Errr they were at the casino, did we know that?’

2.  Twilight Imperium

You thought Monopoly was long, you’ve seen nothing until you’ve played Twilight Imperium.  Epic was a word that was practically made for this game.  It has negotiation, strategy, tech trees, multiple paths of victory and a lot of player interaction.  In essence you’re aiming to be the first player to score ten points through a series of objectives, some public and available to everyone, some hidden and just available to you. 

At the start of your turn you’ll take one of eight cards which also dictate turn order.  These cards each have a different theme for you to use as an action whenever you need to.  Some of them allow you to build, others allow a general council to be called to vote on things, additional movement, trade with other players or get more resources. 

Where Twilight is a clever game is the approach is very much up to you, albeit dictated to some extent by the traits of your nation.  Some of the objectives are military, a large number aren’t but many of the most effective players I’ve seen ignore attacking other people entirely or even more sneakily, bribe other players to do their dirty work for them. 

I also really like the fact that players take part in creating the board, everyone adds a selection of tiles from their hand so each game plays very differently and there’s tiles that let you move from one side of the map to another so it’s seldom the case that you’re entirely isolated.  The tech trees further allow customisation, fancy being a trading nation, you simply can start to buy the tech that allows you to do that.  Want to seize planets early on, you’ll want the exploration techs.

So why isn’t it my favourite, well it takes six to eight hours for a start so it’s certainly an all day affair (although recently I finished it in four so it can be done!).  It can also bog down for the wrong reasons.  Player negotiation and strategy is entertaining to watch, someone pouring over what diplomatic card they want to play, less so.  Despite the long game time however people always seem to be converted to it once they’ve played it, I’ve never had a problem getting a game if I offer one.  Ultimately however, it’s a lot easier to persuade people to play the game Game of Thrones, it’s more streamlined and it offers many of the things I like Twilight Imperium and there’s less of the fear factor for people playing it for the first time.

I haven’t even mentioned the expansions but they add a further wealth of options with things like diplomats, mercenaries, nation specific ships, new order cards and plenty of new tiles but just carrying the base game can result in a dislocated shoulder!

Most likely to result in:

Sheer disbelief that the makers created a ‘longer’ version for those who didn’t find the base game long enough and a lot of post game analysis from everyone who didn’t win

1.  Game of Thrones

Betrayal, deaths, comebacks, alliances.  Game of Thrones has all of these.  The aim is very simple, take seven castles in Westeros and you win the game.  There’s a few complications to that, firstly five other people are aiming to do the same thing and the board is designed in such a way that they’re not going to be very happy about you taking their castles and they will probably let you know early on.  Secondly there’s very tight supply system which means there’s nothing of the boring stuff that Risk has of just steamrollering people.

Actually mostly Game of Thrones is about alliances, desperate temporary alliances which you have every intention of betraying as soon as you feel you’re close enough to a win to do so safely… except your new best friend is probably thinking exactly the same thing. 

The game itself is split into two parts, a hidden phase where you place your orders and try and guess what your opponents are doing and then an action phase where everyone takes turns.  At the end of all of this there’s then a set of cards that come up that will dictate how the next round will play out including things like the Wildlings attacking. 

What’s very clever about Game of Thrones is that regardless of where your house starts in the rankings, you will, at some point have the opportunity to bid on the three different traits of power.  Each of these is rewarding in its own way and you’ll never have enough money to get a decent position on all three so sacrifices need to be made.  However, it gives canny players the opportunity to invest in exactly what they need, assuming they’ve kept enough cash to outbid other people, appropriately, where the bids are drawn, the holder of the Iron Throne decides, bribery and flattery are a must at this point!

The second interesting thing the game does is around combat, there’s no dice involved at all.  Instead each house has a set of thematic cards (Greyjoy are good at sea for example) which they can use, these vary from 1-4 and are played face down and added to the combat value of your units.  The problem being is that there’s no way to the cards back again until you’ve played through your entire hand, go aggressive too early and you paint a big target on your back when you’ve run out of your best cards.  Players can also (if they’ve played the appropriate token in the planning round) offer their support and once combat is initiated you can’t withdraw which can leave to some nasty reversals if your ally turns on you. 

Mostly though Game of Thrones is about people and once the rules are understood (they’re not actually that complicated) I’ve never had someone not enjoy it, in fact most people start to immediately request being invited for a rematch!  There’s also various expansions which bring the houses up to date with the tv show (House Bolton replaces House Stark for example) but they’re not necessary, the base game plays just fine.  It’s a game where reading people, making alliances and angling for position are often much more important than what’s happening on the board, probably why I rarely win it!

There is however, one major downside with Game of Thrones, you really, really need to play with six people, less than that and it’s just never quite as good.

 Most likely to result in:

A divorce or certainly a Red Wedding style incident, there will be a betrayal at some point!

  So that’s my list of favourites, however, there’s a few additional games that I love playing that don’t quite make the list, either because they’re not really board games per se (Netrunner, Imperial Assault) or they just came fractionally short.

  Honorable mentions:

  Netrunner

Netrunner is a card game and initially looks about as friendly to play with as a hungry Doberman approaching his local postie.  It’s a two player game and for a start, both players have entirely different objectives to win and decks to do so with.  It has ridiculous unnecessary futuristic names and the tutorial videos are… interesting.  It is also undoubtedly a superbly tense game of bluffing, strategy and deck creation.  I’ve played it now many, many times and probably have lost a lot more than I’ve won but if the person you want to play a two player game with  has a devious cunning mind (Polish also helps) then they will almost certainly enjoy this.  Just be prepared for your first few practice games to feel a bit strange!  In essence one player is trying to steal cards and the other player is trying to score those cards and fend off those grubby approaches.  There are now hundreds of cards available for it but the starter decks will do just fine for a while and it’s one of those games you constantly kick yourself for not doing something or sit there desperately hoping they don’t call your bluff.

Most likely to result in:

Grudging appreciation of someone’s nasty little trap

Imperial Assault:

A four vs one Star Wars game where one player takes control of the Empire and the others seek to thwart them.  It’s a partial co-operative game where player actions can carry through to subsequent rounds.  A love of Star Wars isn’t really required but it obviously helps as games play out.  Incidentally there’s also an identical game based on the same system called Descent but fantasy themed.  It has expansions galore however so if you start playing it with friends and then become unable to resist buying them don’t come crying to me.  There’s even two different modes of play.  Mostly though I like it because it’s the kind of game where everyone talks about what happened after and the fact that things carry over means everyone gets more invested as time goes on.

Most likely to result in:

An entirely unjustified Rebel winning streak (not that I’m bitter since I’m the Empire at all…)

 Pass the Bomb:

Only on the list because I enjoy the fact it nearly gives my sister heart failure every time we play it.

  Eldritch Horror:

Based on the works of HP Lovecraft, it’s a fully co-operative game of trying to save the world (and failing).  Again I like it because it tells amusing stories, the time Kieran’s sailor went down to the docks and picked up a mysterious back injury for instance.  Pandemic is still my go-to co-operative game but this is a lot of fun to play with a group.  A particular highlight are the encounter cards, there are multiple variants for each location so you’ll never know what’s about to happen to you, it might even be something good (again spoiler, it never is).

  Most likely to result in:

The world ending, or wild celebrations when for once we actually win the damn thing.

Should any of the above pique your interest, Shut up and Sit Down do reviews in a pretty amusing style so they’re certainly worth checking out.