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darawonplease · 4 years ago

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✵ ch.3 – blackout.

「 ☽ Ian's POV」

「 Ian, you’ve hid in your apartment for a week now, are you alright?」

「 Dude, we need you at the studio」

「 I’ll get your lazy ass myself, I fucking swear」

I scrolled through the DPR group chat out of pure boredom, nothing more.

“450 missed messages, huh?”.

Quite a rare scenario, I was the person who usually spammed nonstop in our group chat, bothering the others.

I threw the phone over the coffee table in front of the leather couch where my body was laying, restless, completely drained. Like a stalled car I was stuck there, my limbs dangling down, almost touching the ground.

The sun splashing into a bundle of warm colors was a view I enjoyed quite a lot from my living room’s large windows. I almost refused to acknowledge how stunning that was just to keep lurking in the darkness, tucked away from any worry.

Defeat left such a bitter taste in my mouth. Our label was going through some rough times and I had abandoned the ship and retired in the comfort of my home for the time being.

I had felt strange ever since Chaerin left for LA. An eerie feeling stalked me each and every step I took, not allowing me any peace.

I looked over my shoulder, my home was completely trashed. Plastic bottles and takeaway boxes were scattered on the floor, my bed undone, all of the surfaces covered in dirty clothes, used glasses. A crack house would’ve been 10 times more hospitable than my apartment.

Maybe it was Chae’s sudden departure or maybe I was just exhausted by the useless amount of editing I did for some - now cancelled - DPR projects. A lethal mix of both certainly put me at my knees when it came to my psychological and physical health.

Overworking was my way to keep my mind busy and forcefully kick out any thought regarding her absence. It worked for a while until that day. The blackout.

I could sense a growing tension that took over me the moment I got into a fight with Dabin.

I couldn’t believe I had let myself get into those conditions. I was forced to contain my rage and melancholy inside the walls of my house; it was the only way to protect the people around me from my mood swings and irritability and, ultimately rest for a bit. I felt like shit.

With the last ounce of strength in me, I dragged my body over to the bathroom.

The mirror’s image told me that wasn’t me. That wasn’t Ian. Ian wouldn’t go into hiding in times of need. Ian wouldn’t get into violent fights. He wouldn’t disrespect his friends. That was the worst version of Ian. The scruffy looking hair, the unshaven face, the deep dark under eyes sitting under those dim eyes, the healing bruises on the cheek. I despised what I saw.

weak.

A deep voice started echoing in my head suddenly.

you’re pathetic.

fucking look at yourself.

you look like shit.

I firmly held my head between my hands, my brain felt like imploding in that instant. My hands started trembling out of control. I watched them twitch like crazy, completely powerless over them.

The more I tried to make up the details of my face in the reflection, the blurrier the vision in front of me became.

“Fuck… not again”.

✵

I woke up, strangled by the warmth of my dirty sheets. The stank of cigarettes and whisky choke me, almost making me gag.

“I need to change these”. I immediately thought to myself as I shoved them away from my body.

That persistent headache finally ceased to bother me; its intensity was nothing compared to the one I had the night before.

I slowly turned my head to the right, the blinds cut through the sunlight, just letting a couple of rays penetrate in the dark room as the day was breaking in.

I followed one of the gleams until it hit on tan bare skin. Someone was lying on the other side of my bed.

“Wh-“.

A woman with platinum hair cascading on her pale face was still fast asleep beside me.

I flinched at the sight of her unfamiliar features and covered my mouth to prevent myself from waking her up.

“Who is this person?” - I thought to myself, as I panicked to get out of bed. I needed to wrap my head around what was happening.

I desperately tried to cling onto the blurry, fleeting memories that vanished in the distance the more I tried to recall them. That now familiar feeling of loss slowly ate away every bit of my sanity.

how did this person end up in my house?

and in my bedroom?

did we…?

I wasn’t one who would hook up with random people. I just wasn’t that type of person.

I was definitely too old for that stuff and yet- a naked woman I didn’t recognize was in my bed.

I just couldn’t resolve the mystery as to where I had possibly met her, I could swear I didn’t step out of my house all week for the fear of hurting someone else. No matter how hard I tried to put together the clues around me, the puzzle was missing too many pieces.

maybe she just walked to my place.

what if I downloaded a dating app?

I frantically looked for my phone under the pillows, the bedsheets, in the drawers of the nightstand. With my face squished against the cold floor I scanned under the bed only to find a pile of random clothes that I then started to go through.

bingo.

There it was, buried under the mountain of dirty garments. I immediately searched for any dating app or messages on my phone to confirm my theory and prove myself I wasn’t actually crazy but to no avail. Of that sort of thing, not a trace.

“Good morning”.

The woman wrapped her arms around me and whispered in my ear with her raspy morning voice.

I froze in place, my mind going completely blank. Having that huge blackout of events didn’t give me any peace but It wasn’t the time to play detective. I had a complete stranger in my bedroom.

“G-good morning”. I forced myself to greet her with a confused smile.

She kneeled to get her stuff from the pile of clothes that stood up at my feet and started dressing up. I immediately turned around in shame at the sight of her naked body, my ears were burning red.

“Why are you so shy all of a sudden, oppa?”.

✵

“Come on, don’t be shy oppa!”.

Chae gently pushed a bowl of rice towards the other side of the table, where I was sitting.

“Just eat to your heart’s content”. She flashed her usual bright smile.

“If I'll find myself at the hospital for food intoxication, I will make your name Chae”.

I pointed at the chef with the spoon in my hand and chuckled, I just loved teasing her.

“Don’t be ungrateful and just eat, will ya?”. She pretended to be offended, crossing her arms and such. It was so obvious that she was anxiously waiting for my critique.

Without further ado I picked a spoonful of fried rice and started munching with no particular expectations. Not because I expected her to be a bad cook, I just didn’t want to put my expectations too high only to be left disappointed.

An explosion of flavors mixed and popped in my mouth. The aroma brought me back to when I was a child and my mom used to cook me a simple fried rice dish before leaving to work. Chae’s cooking felt like home.

I slowly nodded my head in satisfaction and licked my lips.

“It’s… meh-…alright”. I teased her again.

“Alright?! Spit what you ate, this instant!”. Chae threatened me with the wooden spoon she just picked up from the table to hit me on the arm.

“CHAE, OUCH, IT HURTS” - I hurriedly took another spoonful and immediately stood up from my seat, fleeing toward the hallway of her apartment.

“COME BACK YOU IDIOT!”. She chuckled.

✵

The annoyingly loud sound of the intercom made me snap back to reality.

“Hello? You okay? Someone is outside the door”.

The platinum-haired girl waved her hand in front of me to make sure I was listening to her, which I wasn’t until that moment.

I shook my head and sprinted towards the door.

“Come on man, don’t make me buzz for other 5 minutes”. I heard Scott’s stern, yet familiar voice.

I opened the door to find him and Cream on my doorstep, a dead-serious expression plastered on both of their faces. They made their way into my apartment before I could say anything.

“Wait guys I-“.

“Dude, you look like shit”, Cream exhorted, putting his hands at his sides.

Scott looked around my living room, his expression was distorted by a mix of disgust and disappointment as if he walked into a true crime scene.

“What’s up with this Ian? When did you start to smoke legit cigarettes?”.

“Me? You know I don’t smo-“.

He picked an ashtray stacked with cigarette butts from the coffee table and looked back at me with frustration.

“Where does that come from…?”, I muttered under my breath, surprised by the presence of that object in my home.

Cream carefully walked towards the kitchen, almost stumbling in some empty beer cans, “This is so depressing man”, He inspected the empty bottle of what looked like Jack Daniel’s on the messy kitchen counter.

“When did I drink that? Wait guys- “.

“Whoa Ian, are you not going to introduce us to your girl?”.

I widened my eyes at the sight of her; I had forgotten about the stranger in my bedroom for a hot minute.

“She’s…”.

A drip of cold sweat dribbled down my forehead as I panicked to recall that person’s name; my mind could only crash into a blank wall.

I paused for an awful lot of time until she interrupted me.

“The nerve! How come you can’t even remember my name? After last night…You know what Mito? You’re a jerk”.

“W-what?...”.

An explosion of pain spread in my left cheek as she slapped me. She then marched directly out of the door, showing me her middle finger as I held my face in agony.

“Man…”, Scott sighed, “I see you’ve been keeping yourself busy lately…”. He pushed aside the stuff occupying the seating surface of the couch and made space for himself.

“Did she just call you? Mito? Ian? Are you into role-playing?”, Cream asked letting out a small laugh.

“Into what?...”.

“Nevermind”. He heaved a deep sigh and slowly walked towards me, avoiding the trash on the floor like an obstacle course.

I just kept silent. I couldn’t throw a fit again just because I was so burned that I had a complete blackout. I just couldn’t.

“We left you alone for just a week and you managed to turn your pretty apartment into a dumpster”.

“y-yeah…”.

“And the girl? You never told me about that pretty blonde girl, did you? Ian you rascal”. Cream grinned, with a proud smile.

“I- I met her recently I guess…”. I lied, not knowing how to justify myself.

Pushing onto his thighs for support, Scott stood up from his seat, “Ian… I know It’s not the best of times for us right now… but hang in there, okay? We’ll get on our feet soon, we do need you though”, He shook my shoulders to make sure I listened to him.

“Yeah sure…”. I just kept nodding.

“You still haven’t talked with Dabin, did you?”.

“I haven’t”. I looked down at the mess in the living room, attempting to avoid his inquisitorial gaze.

A raw and unfamiliar beat started playing out of the blue, interrupting Scott’s soon to be scolding.

“Look Scott, Ian actually worked on something”. He redirected his attention towards me with a satisfied smile on his lips.

Scott raised his eyebrow and looked over the laptop, “Have you?”, his eyes went back to me.

“This? No-”

The strained vocals on the track suddenly became an unsettling background to the messed-up scenario.

again?

Scott’s scrutinizing gaze felt like a heavy blanket over my body. I could sense the abrupt change of atmosphere, the growing distance between the two of us, the distrust.

“Well, that’s your voice Ian. If not you, who did?”, he smacked his lips.

Cream kept looking around my laptop, “This demo is very aggressive, it’s quite unlike you”, he exhorted.

“I-”.

“I like it, It has character, It’s something different from what you usually write”.

I dashed towards the computer to verify myself.

「 maybeittookover.m4a」

“It happened again huh…”. I murmured under my breath. That was the second time an unknown track appeared on my desktop out of the blue.

“Ian? Are you ok? You’re spacing out- like a lot”, Cream tilted his head at me, “Wait, are you high?”.

“N-no, I’m just really really really tired, that’s all…”.

Scott took a short trip to the bathroom only to throw a towel on my head.

“Wash up, we’re taking you to get a breath of fresh air”.

previous chapter. ✵ next chapter. ✵ masterlist

#clian #chaerian #dprian #cl

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theeagerone · 4 years ago

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Timing

I used to be pretty upset that I wasn't born earlier. I wanted to live the 70s and 80s SO bad. I now feel immensely grateful for being born when I was. I feel lucky to be a bridge between the old & new world. I feel both prepared & overwhelmed to keep accepting further tools of technology; it's invasive & terrifying for some levels, and a healthy & privileged place to find myself in for others. I am actually very behind in current media trends as I haven't regularly watched TV since I was 18, don't follow any podcasts, and don't receive updates from or check a particular news source regularly.

I remember:

- Getting introduced to the 1st popular PCs in kindergarten

- My mom getting a cellphone larger than a brick screwed in to the floor of her car

- When all u could do in computer lab was typing classes & play academic games & Oregon Trail.

- Learning the catalogue system at the library - books and journals were all we had to do our 1st research papers.

- Watching the old MTV with my baybsitters & cousins, before reality TV existed

- Getting off the school bus every day since 3rd or 4th grade to bounce bw MTV & VH1 to see the latest music videos, classic 'Pop-Up Videos'

- Eating Lunchables & Fruit Roll Ups & Dunkaroos & all kinds of weird food when the child's food market & advertising really took off

- When the 1st Emac came out in middle school and they were incredible to behold w their rainbow bright cases

- When dial-up took 5 minutes & learning what e-mail was & browsing AOL chat rooms & staying up late sending hundreds of IMs with my middle school boyfriends on AIM (my s/n: iwannaROCKwithu3).

- When I spent hours each night researching, downloading, & evaluating music on Kazaa - When I spent hours making playlist CDs for my friends and it was the greatest, most precious gift to receive one.

- When I got my own personal phone line in middle school with a leopard faux fur cord phone. I talked for hours & hours with my love interest of the moment and learned deeply about my friend's lives & struggles.

- When Google & AskJeeves.com came out and I thought that was insane & brilliant, that you could ask anything and there would be some kind of answer.

- Slowly abandoning AIM for Myspace at 15.

- Getting my 1st phone (a RAZR) at 15 & being amazed I could take pictures of everything. I didn't have text msging all of high school bc it cost extra (thank God).

- Cruising down the road in 2005 in my GMC Jimmy, so happy to blast classic rock radio & ATL college stations bc that's all I had besides a tape deck. I sometimes connected my walkman to the tape deck to play CDs

- After school driving a car full of friends to play for hours at the river, only using our phones when we were ready to leave or needed to check in w someone

- The night my phone automatically dialed "Home" as I was running from a party to get in my car and my mom received a 5 minute long recording of me screaming at my friends to "jump in the Fing car"and all of us cussing and cutting up as I drove back to our sleepover. I got in huge trouble for driving ppl within the 1st 6 mos of having my license, got my car taken away, and realized that maybe this new exciting concept of 'speed dial' was not a good idea

- When I was 16 & heard about Youtube - the only videos I knew to exist were SHOES, muffins, & GEORGE WASHINGTON. We all laughed about them for weeks.

- When I abandoned Myspace for Facebook at 17

- When you didn't share every detail of your damn life. When you uploaded pictures you were proud of & maybe wrote on your friend's wall to say hi or whatever

- When a band measured their worth w Myspace. The whole reason I felt confident becoming a singer was bc my 1st band Bro & the Brahs w Daniel had something like 1,500 views within a couple weeks of posting our 1st single & I met ppl on campus who had heard our song before they knew who I was.

- When I got to college and we were wild & free for the 1st time in our lives & could have fun together without checking our phones, explore, learn where to go by word of mouth (SO MANY epic gatherings & house parties, cool shows (Slaughterhouse!!) and we could listen & share music forever without anything to distract us. Some of my best memories of college are laying around with friends for hours uninterrupted, crying to records. Spending days in a daze and knowing that was the last time I could do that without a better excuse.

WE KNEW IT WAS THE END OF LIFE AS WE HAD EXPERIENCED IT. WE HAD A LOT OF FUN. WE WERE ABLE TO BE OUR YOUNG SELVES IN A FREE WORLD TO A CERTAIN DEGREE THAT WOULD NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN. WE ARE INTUITIVE WITH TECHNOLOGY THOUGH WE WATCHED THINGS CHANGE AND IT SIMULTANEOUSLY TERRIFIED AND THRILLED US.

Many of us had breakdowns as we became aware of the realer history & overloaded with information as world news became widespread on Twitter, Facebook, etc. by the time I turned 20. I don't understand why boomers or anyone else wants to continue attacking millennials - y'all created us and this. Take a look in the mirror. We are doing the best we can with the constant onslaught of information, adaptation, devastation, disintegration, deforestation, false expectations, infiltration, mutilation, militarization, mechanization, lack of preservation, growing polarization, toxic capitalization, nations built by unimaginable violations.

I am sincerely hopeful & passionate about what happens next. What we are paying attention to, giving to, creating for, maintaining, and fighting for matters. I wish to take an active role in the movement of self-love, actualization, and self-awareness. Where mindfulness with our technology exists, we all deeply know who we are without social media personas and apps to help us "live better lives" as we ________ or ________. Where instead of posting about a major issue affecting our communities we hold ourselves accountable to make the necessary phone calls, attend and gather the necessary people who wish to change something, and make tangible goals and missions that resist debate and politicization. A context which encourages experimentation, where "just doing it" matters & doesn't need to be recorded. When we can remind ourselves to halt the dopamine rush fed by perfectly packaged things and targeted information for our soul's desires. Where we can press pause on the incessant need to debate the current and loosen the grips of anxiety about the future. Where we focus on what's directly in front of us and tap into what it has meant for 200,000 years to be HUMAN.

#milennial #milennials #generation y #technology #humanization #self love #self care #self actualization #writing #manifesto #vision for the future #vision #more human #less tech

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journeysintowebcomics · 5 years ago

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Worm Liveblog #114

UPDATE 114: Simpler Times

Last time the Undersiders had managed to defeat Coil, and took over Brockton Bay as a result. Dinah is now safe, and all is well...until forty-five minutes later, when they found out Noelle has escaped her vault. Tattletale says that’s very bad. So let’s continue!

Ah, the arc ended, and it seems what follows isn’t an interlude, but a new arc. I’m surprised – while I thought it was possible the arc would continue for maybe one chapter more, I didn’t think this would go straight into the next one. Alright! So, the new arc is called Migration.

Oh, nevermind, this is an interlude, similar to the one with the Wards ages ago, I imagine. There’s a guy called Francis, who is getting scolded for leaving when family is coming over. This Francis person is making money with something his mother doesn’t approve, and he argues they’re on the verge of getting a sponsorship. Oh boy. ‘On the verge’ means it’s not certain. I hope this Francis guy isn’t gambling much on the possibility of a sponsorship. Given how he’s arguing with this as his cornerstone, he’ll be doomed if he doesn’t get the sponsorship.

It’s even worse when it’s revealed this Francis guy isn’t officially in the group yet. Oh dang, he really is gambling a lot. I for one hope it all works well, because otherwise he’s going to get a full serving of ‘I told you so’ from his mother.

That seems to be all. Having placated his mom, Francis walks with his luggage and gets on a bus, giddy he’s possibly annoying other people, and feels smugly superior to other people. Well that’s not an endearing character trait, is it. Still, someone having a bad trait is good, as long as it’s balanced with good traits! But yeah, who is this Francis guy, anyway?

Her face lit up as she saw him. He, in turn, snapped a smart salute. “Captain Noelle, ma’am!”

Oh, I see! I see now! So that’s Noelle...hmm...if Noelle is part of this gaming group, then that’d mean the Travelers are the members of this group. In which case this Francis is either Trickster or Ballistic. Most likely Trickster, I’d say. Alright!

Noelle doesn’t appreciate the playful greetings, coyly telling him to stop, and mentions they’re ‘probationary boyfriend and girlfriend’. So they’re a couple! I see. That’s why Trickster is so invested in Coil helping Noelle. I can sympathize with that, yep. During these outrageously saccharine public displays of affection, Marissa arrives. Mars. Sundancer, no?

I wonder if by now they all had their powers. Maybe they gathered as a gaming group because of their powers. Not that I can think of how they can use their powers. Making miniature suns sure isn’t going to help your gaming skills, unless you use that sun to melt the opponents’ systems, haha

There’s Luke, there’s Jess. Hmmm...by process of elimination, those must be Ballistic and Genesis – supposing Francis really is Trickster. They’re all together. Say, wasn’t there some guy named Oliver, who stayed in the headquarters while everyone else went and fought? I think there was someone with that name. That person hasn’t appeared yet here in this meeting.

Now that they’re all gathered, they can start their discussion for real. Noelle is in charge. Does that mean Trickster – leader of the Travelers – was the second in command, and had to take charge since Noelle can’t?

Apparently they have been discussing about kicking an average player out of the group, because he’s boring and doesn’t have as many fans. Francis, on the other hand, has so many fans – fans I imagine would be upset if he’s kicked out or something. If they’re a new team, then they’ll need as many fans as they can. Pragmatism dictates the person named Cody is kicked out. The emotional factor, though, is what’s giving them trouble. Cody is their friend and this will hurt him a lot.

Noelle nodded. “Say what you will about Krouse, like how he’s crap when it comes to calling shots-”

“Hey.”

“Or even the fact that he’s prone to ignoring orders if he thinks it’ll help us. Um, he’s right so long as it’s just him operating solo, but yeah… The thing is, if we’re talking about the big picture, international recognition and going head to head with the best in the world… Krouse has the natural ability to change things up, so we can adapt our strategies to whatever they’re able to pull off.”

Okay, that definitely is Trickster. Trickster’s pretty crap at calling shots, and adapts well enough during the fights. The main character point of view is Trickster’s.

To try to convince them he’s the right person to keep, Francis argues on his behalf, saying this Cody person can’t improve any further, while he can still play better and better. They can’t wait for Cody to improve; they have to act now.

“If you fuck this up for us, you know we’ll never let you live it down,” Luke said.

It’s not like they’ll lose a local tournament. If Francis screws up, they’ll lose boatloads of money and lucrative contracts. Many would think that warrants a little more than ‘never let you live it down’, hah.

Either way, Francis’ arguments were successful. Pretty much everyone agrees to kick Cody out and keep Francis. This can’t be easy to tell Cody, who will do it? Having decided it needed to be done now, they all walk towards the place Cody is at, and it’s decided Francis won’t be right there when Cody is given the boot. Yeah, good idea. It sure would hurt to be replaced and see the guy replacing you sitting right there.

Jess and Francis ride the elevator afterwards, Genesis noting Francis is rather nervous right now.

“The more overconfident you act, the more nervous you are. And when you’re feeling down, you poke at people, provoke them. I think you get some validation out of it, like, if you can test people and they’re still your friends after, you can feel confident in that friendship.”

Well, there’s also that Francis enjoys annoying people, apparently. I guess a lot of his behavior is all about needling and annoying other people.

I’m a bit baffled they keep saying Marissa can be a megabitch. She sure seemed like the person least likely to be abrasive towards other people. Maybe she’s the kind who yells into the voice chat.

As expected, Cody didn’t take it very well. They barely got off the elevator when they started hearing the yelling, Cody is accusing Francis of being a conniving prick who started dating Noelle after she was named captain. Hm. I don’t know, I don’t think he’d be that slimy. Francis is a hella unpleasant person, but is he that much of a jerk? I don’t think so.

There’s two people named Oliver and Chris. Ah, there’s Oliver. What’s Oliver’s role in all this? It doesn’t seem like he’s part of the gaming team, so...is he just a friend who tagged along? Is he with them all because he had a power and therefore fit in the Travelers, while Cody and Chris didn’t take part in that villain team because of the lack of powers? Or perhaps...perhaps Cody and Chris are dead? There’s not that many options as to what happened to them. For all I know, they just were left behind while the Travelers...traveled. It doesn’t have to be a sinister deal.

“Cody,” Noelle started, “We talked it over-”

“Without me!”

“Because we knew you’d react like this, and we wanted to be sure we all agreed before we moved ahead.”

“And I bet Krouse was there, wasn’t he?”

“He was.”

“Real fair.”

“He kept his mouth shut,” Noelle said.

Not exactly true, Krouse thought.

He’s got a point there, that wasn’t exactly fair. Francis got the chance to argue on his behalf, Cody didn’t get that courtesy. I don’t know, seems to me like they all had already strongly considered accepting Francis into the team, before the meeting started.

As expected, Cody is furious to see Francis here. He really shouldn’t have come. A few lines later, I’m proven wrong, he should be here. So, what’s happening is that they’re going to have one session right now. If Francis does awful, then he’s out and Cody stays. Obviously Cody wants to see Francis crash and burn. I think it’s a given what the result of this all will be.

“Here, Noelle,” Krouse said. He set his luggage flat on the ground and unzipped it. There were computers inside, each half the size of a regular desktop, wrapped in layers of towels and plastic sheeting.

“Thanks for the loan. Don’t trust mine with the sheer amount of crap my cousin downloaded onto it.”

“Actually…” He trailed off, sticking his hands in his pockets. “I took my old machine, I replaced the power supply, formatted it, installed a clean OS and done all my usual tricks for clearing out the crap that we’ll never use and optimizing it. You can consider it an early Christmas present.”

Say, doing this right in front of Cody’s not going to make him stop thinking Francis is trying hard to get on Noelle’s good side to get the spot in the team.

What follows is largely paragraphs of stuff I’m not sure what to think about, because it’s them discussing their strategies to play the game. The only thing I can comment about is that Chris and Oliver are like the reserves, although neither of them are very good. Francis used to be one of them.

The strategizing stops when the building rumbles, and a blackout happens. They barely have time to wonder what’s going on and complain about the blackout when there’s a moment of weightlessness.

A heartbeat later, the windows were directly overhead, and he was falling. He started to scream, but he managed only a monosyllabic, “Ah!” before he fell onto the side of the dining room table, tumbled to one side and slammed into the chairs, the wind knocked out of him.

It sounds like the room turned 90 degrees all of a sudden, fast enough for his body to not even feel how the floor tilts and everything goes topsy-turvy. Perhaps it’s the work of a villain?

Francis was lucky enough to be able to look around and get away from immediate danger, Noelle wasn’t so lucky. She crashed onto a chair, and then the computers fell on her. That’s got to hurt, those aren’t soft objects at all. There’s no word on how the rest are like, but they must currently be being pelted by objects. I hope they’re protecting their heads, but I’m kind of expecting a fracture or two.

Noelle is so hurt she’s bleeding from the nose and mouth, that sounds kind of like a concussion. I wonder if that affected anything in the present. But hey, you know what? All that’s happening right now is a good chance for trigger events, especially because soon it’s revealed Chris is dead. What about Cody, he okay?

Since the apartment has turned ninety degrees, leaving to a safe place is going to be rather difficult. Is this apartment the only thing that rotated? What’ll they see if they manage to get to the entrance door? Hmmm...also, what caused this? There’s a mention of a constant female scream. If it’s not one of the gals who are still awake and conscious, is it the parahuman who caused this to happen?

It takes a few minutes to be able to reunite with the rest, thanks to a knotted sheet. Francis manages to climb it even though he’s carrying Noelle, reaching the place with the rest. Chris had quite the gruesome death, but at least it sounds like it may have been instant. Everyone except Marissa is trying very hard not to look at it.

“We need a way out of here first.” Luke looked up at the windows, ten feet above their heads. Neither the floor nor the ceiling offered anything to grip.

Since it’s a window that’s on what’s now the ceiling, and it seems like this apartment was on the top floor, it’d give them access to the very top of the building, no? Hm...that’d be almost impossible to go down from, unless what turned ninety degrees was the entire building – which isn’t that unlikely, but I imagine it’d cause quite the commotion outside, enough for them to hear screams and panic.

It takes some effort, but they manage to get up there. It’s pretty cold, which is bad when you’re already injured and in shock. With some luck they’ll find a safe place, but yeah, they have to get help as soon as possible.

He stared out at the city around him. Snow had been stirred into clouds, and half a dozen buildings had obviously been knocked down, judging by the remaining wreckage. Luke’s apartment building had toppled. How did it not collapse in on our heads?

Oh! Alright, the entire building did fall down! I know this is a rough situation, but given how suddenly and quickly it happened the people inside didn’t even have time to notice everything was tilting, I keep imagining the building just...turned ninety degrees in the blink of an eye. It’s such a cartoonish mental image.

The state of the building is the least of their concerns, anyway. They have to do something to survive the current problem. The constant scream isn’t helping. Soon they find the source of the song, and here is when I get giddy. There she is!

“The Simurgh,” Jess corrected, her voice small. “What is she doing here? Why is she here?”

Oh boy, that makes two Endbringers seen in the story. No, the Simurgh interfering with Dragon’s communications didn’t count, that was too brief. Only one is left! Knowing Mr. Wildbow, it’s bound to happen at some point!

Francis’ suggestion is to run, which although is a sensible reaction and definitely what anyone should do, I don’t think it’ll be of much help. Good thing it’s guaranteed most of the people here will survive to be the Travelers. I suppose the city will be destroyed and, having nothing left and no family to go back to – ouch – they turn into their nomadic lifestyle? Also, Cody is so dead. I suppose something the Simurgh does will lead to his demise.

This is a bit of a short update, but I have to end it here.

Next time: next update

#worm #worm liveblog #webserial #liveblog #webserial liveblog

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fivecentimeterspersecond · 5 years ago

Text

Interview with Sui Wenjing with Xu Lijia (English Translation)

Chinese Pairs skater Sui Wenjing sat down for a discussion/interview with Olympic Gold Medalist in sailing, Xu Lijia. I did a loose translation of the 10 minute rapid-fire q&a in the beginning segment, so this is a detailed translation of the long discussion starting at 11:10.

If you’d like to listen, there’s a dropbox link someone sent me of it (since you need to download an app to listen) and someone also uploaded on bilibili.

The “free skate”/discussion portion of the interview starting at 11:10:

After winning the silver medal at the Olympics, Wenjing underwent surgery in her foot and entered a lengthy recovery period. In March prior to the World Championships, she had another accidental fell and hurt her lower back, but finally with persevering will and spirit, she and her partner gave another perfect performance on the World Championships stage. To stand on the highest step of the podium, what kind of pain did she have to endure? Xu Lijia continues her conversation with Sui Wenjing.

Xu: I want to turn this discussion back onto winning the World Championships, this is already your second time becoming World Champions. I saw your performance at Worlds and I was completely blown away - I believe no matter whether you were watching live in-person or watching at home on tv, you have the same feeling. Before the competition did you think you would be able to execute so well?

Sui: No, I didn’t dare think that. Before the competition, we had a lot of mishaps like when I’d fallen while practicing the twist, Cong completely missed catching me and I fell directly onto the ice. At the time, I had to rest 3-4 days just laying there, then slowly resumed training. But even right before I left I was unable to successfully complete all 13 elements which made me pretty anxious. In addition after the fall, I was doubting myself like, “Can I really do this? Can I even compete?” If we didn’t skate well then what do we do? But I felt like there were so many people helping us so I felt a bit guilty. But at the same time I was afraid that, 1) another injury or mishap might occur while competing, and 2) if we didn’t compete well, we would leave a negative impression on the judges and would affect our scores for next year.

Xu: So you didn’t really expect that you would perform so well. Then if you couldn’t even perform all the elements right before leaving, then what mysterious force do you think propelled you to skate so perfectly? Or what other skills?

Sui: Some kind of mystical force from the universe [laughs] kidding, kidding! Honestly just the accumulation of several years of training and learning how to control ourselves during competition. Once we get to the competition, we know what we need to do, how we need to skate because when we were younger, we didn’t have a good feeling on how to compete. In addition our coaches were always encouraging me, saying not to give up, we have to fight. Whatever happens, happens. It’s not like you don’t have a chance. Think about it: even though this is what your preparation looks like, no matter how you skate, at least you did your best and you’re happy. But look at your competitors, they also have a tough battle - they probably think their competition’s condition isn’t that good, and because they see they have a big opportunity, they’re going to be more nervous. This is how everyone’s mindset shifts. But now you have no burdens, you may be injured and everyone knows you’re injured, so you just fight against yourself. However you skate, it is what it is. Our team leader Lu told us “you must show us your status as a top athlete. You don’t necessarily have to skate well, but you need to show your best self to the judges and the audiences and that you still deserve to stand at the top of the world.” That released a lot of our burdens, and allowed us to put forward our best effort in competition.

Xu: It seems that in all aspects you received so much support and coordination from your entire team, they were constantly encouraging you. Because you encountered so many hardships, it sounds like that was able to release your burdens as well. Once you take that pressure off yourself, you’re able to put your best face forward and perform for everyone.

Sui: Right, of course there’s still some nervousness, but comparatively significantly less. Also after seeing our competitors’ condition, I felt like once we got to the competition, I thought, “no, I have to fight. Why are you ahead of me when you usually don’t skate as well as us!” I really thought that! I thought, I have to do my best. I didn’t think, oh I need to surpass them, I just need to be my best self, and if I surpass myself then I’ll win. Also before the competition I had constant support from fans, medical staff, always working hard and helping me with detailed preparation, how to adjust my condition, etc. I’m so thankful to everyone. This medal is due to our entire team.

Xu: I believe that this year’s world championship will be one of your most treasured experiences. Usually after the season is done, the summer is when you choreograph new programs. This year do you have any plans of where you’ll go for choreography?

Sui: We already finished choreographing. Once we finished competing, the week after we got new choreography, and then two weeks later we went to Japan to perform.

Xu: I can imagine you must have a lot of Japanese fans.

Sui: Yes, the fans from Japan are quite adorable. (laugh)

Xu: (laughs) How long does it usually take you to learn and remember a set of new choreography?

Sui: It doesn’t take long to completely memorize the choreography, maybe about one week. But if you want to be able to perform the program in competition, then it’ll take at least 3 months, roughly.

Xu: Three months? This is because it takes that long to perfect and be comfortable?

Sui: Right, you need to be familiar with it. Also, pairs skating is hard because of the coordination needed between partners - the rhythm, timing, in addition to the connection to the music. These are pretty difficult. Like, if you think about ice dance, they do have a lot of elements that require the two partners’ coordination but they don’t need to prepare for hard elements like jumps or throws, so they don’t need to leave time to prepare for these types of elements. In pairs skating, each element takes a lot of time, so once you complete an element you have to continue to perform. So when we’re choreographing we have to be very aware of the timing between the skaters and the music. This aspect requires a significant amount of time to perfect.

Xu: When you are choreographing do you listen entirely to the choreographer or do you guys add your own ideas or movements?

Sui: When we were very young, maybe the first two years we left the country to do choreography with Lori [Nichol], we pretty much listened entirely to her; we did whatever she said. But these past few years, Lori is someone with really good eyes: she is able to recognize our good ideas and pull them out of us. So these last 2 years we’ve used a lot of our own movements. In our programs this year, around 70% of the choreography was from stuff that Han Cong and I thought up. She would be like, oh hey, this way is good. A lot of our friends would ask us, “then why don’t you just choreograph your programs yourselves?” I’d say, no we can’t, because Lori has really good eyes. She’s able to easily see the big picture construction of the program. It’s like building a house: you start from the ground up then seal the roof. But we can’t see that. Also, we can’t see what a certain movement will look like from now until 4-5 months later. Whenever I watch videos of our programs the past few years from the first week after we choreographed, my god, it’s terrifying! They were just so ugly! But one year later, it looks like the way that she envisioned, really good. But at the time we couldn’t see it at all. This is Lori’s greatest strength.

Xu: It seems just like how an actor, after acting for so long can also become a director. Once you’ve done enough choreography you can come up with your own ideas and opinions.

Skating fans like to call Sui Wenjing and Han Cong “Onion Bucket” (cong （葱）= onion, sounds like his name; tong（桶）= bucket, a joke from when she was young and had a “bucket”-like figure). Even though they’ve been partners for 10 years, there’s no actual chemistry between them. Wenjing on Weibo would call him “Second Dad.” How did these two build up such an intimate understanding between each other? Xu Lijia continues her conversation with Sui Wenjing.

Xu: Let’s continue to discuss your figure skating career. Do you remember the first time you partnered with Cong?

Sui: 2007. I remember this clearly because my mom helped me remember.

Xu: Before you previously mentioned because Cong didn’t have a partner anymore, so you got pulled over to try it out, right?

Sui: Right, right.

Xu: At the time, what was your first reaction?

Sui: I just thought why not try it? (laughs) Right, at the time I thought, this guy looks so scary.

Xu: (laughs) You don’t think he looks cool? I think he’s very cool/handsome!

Sui: He does look cool, but when he’s being scary it doesn’t show.

Xu: Ahh. So you just didn’t like that he has a bad attitude.

Sui: Right! Well, it’s not that he “seems” to, he DOES have a bad attitude! (laugh)

Xu: (laugh) So it’s like this! Then as soon as you paired up did you have good chemistry or was it due to many years together practicing?

Sui: Not at the start, because first I never learned pairs before, and second, when I was younger I just immediately started skating with him after establishing some fundamentals in skating and jumps. I was like a blank piece of paper. My individual abilities were quite strong, and I was the type of person who could basically withstand anything during practice, falling a few times, a few bruises here and there didn’t bother me. I was pretty coordinated, which probably had to do with taking dance and martial arts lessons before, I grasped it pretty quickly. After pairing for 4 months — no, more like 20 days after pairing up, we entered our first competition. [T/N: some stuff muffled here, they were interrupting each other] We barely made the qualification round at the National Games, I remember.

Xu: Wow, very impressive that you were able to compete so shortly after partnering up. When you were younger and had less strength, did you fall a lot learning lifts and throws?

Sui: Yeah, I fell a lot. It’s not that I didn’t have enough strength, just that I wasn’t used to the “feeling” of being in the air or “feeling” of pairs skating, because pairs is actually quite different from singles. You have to rotate horizontally and vertically, you have to rotate so high in the air during throws, and low to the ice during spins. It’s important for pairs women have to get to the feeling of rotating in the air so many ways, it takes a while to get used to. But I felt like I got used to it pretty quickly, including throws - my teacher said “do a throw double” and I don’t know how, but I just closed my eyes and did a triple. (Xu: Ohh…) Yeah, and I landed it, but thought, wait, this doesn’t seem right, and fell to the ground.

Xu: You seem to have a lot of natural talent.

Sui: Yeah. Then my teacher said, tomorrow don’t do doubles, just go straight to triples. From then on I never did doubles.

Xu: Wow. You increased the difficulty so quickly. In your impression, what do you think was your worst fall?

Sui: Worst fall I think was probably this year’s [fall before worlds].

Xu: Ah, the one where you said when you fell it felt like you lost half a life?

Sui: Yeah, because this time was during a twist, your entire body is horizontal in the air.

Xu: Ah yes, it’s so high, falling from a height even higher than your body height.

Sui: Right, it’s like my body height plus an arms length, so that would be over 2 meters tall. I went down head first, and watching the video, my reaction was pretty quick and I used my hand to lift my head a bit, then I rolled over. Otherwise my organs, head, spine may have been impacted. My self-protection instinct was pretty good.

Xu: I think this another kind of innate talent, because I heard before from Li Zijun that pairs ladies need to be very tough.

Sui: Right, because during throw and solo jumps, your body is vertical, so if you fall its usually on your butt, knees, arms. It’s actually easier to protect yourself then. But when you’re completely horizontal, you’re already feeling confused while you’re flying in the air, you don’t know where to grab onto and falling straight onto the ice horizontally is pretty dangerous.

Xu: The fact that so shortly after a fall like that you were able to win the world championships is really so admirable. When you learn quad throws, from when you first start learning, how long does it take to have a high success rate? How long does that process take?

Sui: Quad throws? Actually internationally very few attempt quad throws, and right now we don’t do them often either. Once you get to a certain age, the burdens these elements take on your health increase compared to when you were younger. So now we don’t do them often. When I used to do them competitively a few years ago, I actually didn’t do them that often either, only when my condition was good I would do 4-5 of them. But at that time my success rate was higher than 50%, I was able to grasp them pretty quickly. But it depends on the athlete, some could do them for years and never accomplish it. Some will do it a few times and get used to the feeling, and be able to do them. It depends on the person’s feeling. I remember when I was young I did quad throws, and I did them for a pretty long time but I wasn’t able to complete them perfectly. But once I got older, before my surgery, I was able to do both quad throws and quad twists in a program. But these elements require a lot of physical strength and the process took 10 years, almost 20 years of training. This doesn’t necessarily mean you can complete them in a single program, and you have to train with high caution to be able to complete them. Because our height difference isn’t that big, I have to use more strength to make the throws as high or higher than others, and therefore the impact on my ankles, knees, spine, etc. is much greater than other female partners.

Xu: Like you just said, your partner Han Cong isn’t as tall as Zhang Hao or other international athletes who are so much bigger and stronger, his figure seems to be more similar to singles skaters? (Sui: Yes) Even though your height difference isn’t so remarkable, you’re still able to get such amazing results - how were you able to overcome this aside from what you said before, like gaining more physical strength. How did he overcome the deficit due to his physique?

Sui: He just did strength training and “practiced me”. (Laughs)

Xu: So he has a greater strength requirement due to his height and figure.

Sui: Well usually if you’re big then you’ll have more strength, but at the same time, we have our own strengths that others can’t achieve. For example, when we do solo elements like jumps, we’re very in sync because our height and weight are roughly the same, the difference in appearance doesn’t look like much.

Xu: Ahh, just like our synchronized divers, you both are very similar [in shape].

Sui: Correct. Also, for side-by-side spins we look a lot more in sync because we have a similar [body] radius, so we spin similarly.

Xu: Once you explain it, it makes sense!

Sui: Right, and during skating, our legs have similar length so our lines and rhythm is the same too. Plus when we perform we look very coordinated. It’s not like some of the pairs with one tall and one short skater, it’s like, hey why don’t these two seem to have a very “couple” feeling? (laugh)

Xu: I heard that before the World Championships, you specifically lost 6 kg. If you gain even a little weight, does it impacts him a lot?

Sui: It does affect him. As for myself, it doesn’t really affect my ability to do solo elements individually, like I can do them one by one with no problem. But during program, all 13 elements, once I get to the 5th or 6th element, I don’t have energy after. I get very exhausted. In addition, once I lose weight of course it helps my partner but even more-so it helps myself complete the performance better.

Xu: So are you the type who doesn’t gain weight easily no matter what you eat or gains weight easily?

Sui: Well, now I’m over 20, even though I’m past puberty I’m still okay, I don’t gain weight that easily.

Xu: But do you find it painful when you have to lose weight?

Sui: I just eat vegetables. Once I eat vegetables for a few days I’ll lose the weight. But what I find most annoying, is really everyone, including fans, when they meet me are like, “Wow you’re so skinny! I never realized you were so skinny!” But when they watch me skate on TV are like, “Huh, I think you look pretty chubby.” I’m so tired. I really can’t help it! (T/N: i just want to note that she says this all with a very light hearted, humorous tone, not as offended as she comes off in the translation)

Xu: (laughs) But actually, the TV does actually seem to add weight, it pulls you horizontally.

Sui: Yes, but there’s another thing you might not have thought of. There may be pairs ladies that are larger and taller than me, but when they stand next to a super tall and big male partner, they seem much smaller.

Xu: Ahh, you’re right, so that’s Han Cong’s fault.

Sui: (laugh) No problem, no problem at all! But one of his best features is that he’s got a really small face. I also really have a small face, it’s like a melon seed - when you see me in person you’ll notice my face is super small. But Cong has SUCH a tiny face, it’s like a small knife! Ah, it pisses me off! I have such a small face but I have to stand in front of him, so my face seems so much larger and rounder. It’s so unbearable!

Xu: Sui is giving our audience some weight loss tips, just eat vegetables a few days and you’ll get skinnier, right!

Sui: Well, because I usually do a lot of training, aerobics, anaerobic exercise - figure skating is a very physically demanding sport so once you cut calories you’ll naturally lose weight. And drink lots of water!

Xu: When you’re learning pairs skating, are there times you and Han Cong have difference of opinions? Do you guys fight often?

Sui: We fight all the time, it happens often. In pairs skating, or any team sport, these kinds of problems arise all the time. After many years, we’ve learned how to compromise.

Xu: How do you guys make it work and stick together?

Sui: Before when we really couldn’t agree or come up with a solution, we would immediately find our coach, I think like this, he thinks like that, what do we do? And we would just go with whatever the coach said was better. Now we compromise or if our ideas are completely opposite, we do rock paper scissors and let god decide.

Xu: Wow, so you use this kind of method? (laughs)

Sui: Yeah and now we’re much more rational during training and we don’t try to assert dominance over one another. We have to work to maintain each other’s conditions.

Xu: You two seem to have different conditions on and off the ice. Are your personalities similar or different?

Sui: We are two completely different people.

Xu: (laugh) I see that you really like to hassle him (T/N: dragging is probably a better term encapsulation of her sentiment though, kind of like jokingly criticize? it just sounded weird to put it in translation LOL), while I feel like he tries to appear serious.

Sui: No, I just really like hassling/dragging people! Nothing I can do about it, I’m just so used to it, I do it with everyone I talk to. I’m even like this about myself, very self-deprecating.

Xu: You must have lots of fun in your life. When you’re training with the team, do you usually eat with him [in the dorm cafeterias]?

Sui: We usually do eat together. I guess the good thing is that the two of us “look good” together? (laugh) [T/N: she uses the term “赏心悦目” which literally means pleasing to the eyes and heart…so she’s basically say they’re well matched HAHA]

Xu: When you don’t discuss figure skating or training, what other topics do you talk about? Are there any conversation topics you have in common?

Sui: He would tell me about books he recently read, movies he watched, any movies he’d like to see. I usually tell him, man I have things to do…(Xu: laughs) I really do have things to do! I usually have class on Sundays, I don’t really like wasting my free time. But usually most of my free time I’m doing nothing, playing around on my phone, but occasionally I’ll read a book, etc.

Xu: I see. Let’s discuss your coach Zhao Hongbo. Would you consider him a more easy-going or strict/serious coach?

Sui: I would say both. When we encounter hardships, he becomes a lot more easy-going but when we have problems during training then he becomes more strict. Everyone has different sides to them, and he will often try to help us from many angles.

Xu: What has he passed on to you that has helped you the most?

Sui: Because I’m a very fast-paced person, as you can probably tell-

Xu: You’re pretty self-aware!

Sui: Yes yes! And often during competitions, I may get really stressed and unable to control myself.

Xu: So he helps calm you down.

Sui: He would say, don’t rush, take it step by step, like this past competition. He said just do what you need to do, however you skate we’ll be happy. But sometimes when we’re training and not so rushed, he would tell us, “you see what your competitors are like?” to apply a bit of pressure on us.

Xu: I feel like no matter what situation you’re in, he never seems to get too stressed, he seems very calm. You need a coach like this to keep you level-headed, especially when you’re frazzled, lost, nervous, or when you encounter difficulties. As Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo are Olympic champions, do you see any points of similarity and difference between you and them?

Sui: Hmm…points of similarity and difference…for differences, the two of us started competing internationally and earned medals much earlier. In addition, the two of us grasped a lot more performance styles.

Xu: So you two perform with more music genre and dance genre.

Sui: Right. We have a lot more variety because a lot of athletes can’t develop a lot of versatility in performance styles.

Xu: Right now, Shen Xue is the [Chinese skating federation] president, she probably isn’t like Hongbo meeting you in the training center daily. So under what circumstances do you meet up with her, and what do you discuss?

Sui: Sometimes when my condition isn’t so good and I’m in a bad mood, when I’m stressed to a certain limit, she’ll talk with me, give me some small encouragement, step by step work through some problems during training. She would also tell me, “there’s a lot of new kids on the team, you’re all role models, when you have some time help me manage them.” Right now kids are adorable, but then when they’re teenagers/adolescents, then…you know.

Xu: They can be very rebellious.

Sui: They’re okay. Every age there’s something going on.

Xu: President Shen acts as an authority figure, does she give you any advice or guidance with anything?

Sui: Yes, for example during competitions she might give her ideas on hair style, or help with treating my competition tights because sometimes the color isn’t great, so it doesn’t look as bright so she tells me how to treat them so they look a bit better.

Xu: Ah she has many small tips. Finally, a lot of fans may want to know if you have any hobbies/interests?

Sui: Right now I like to read books and do calligraphy. But recently I’ve been pretty busy, I haven’t really been attending my calligraphy class.

Xu: Calligraphy? How did you start? Is it because it helps you calm down or did you like it since you were young?

Sui: Since I was young, I was the kind that wanted to learn everything. I told my mom, I want to learn to sing, dance, draw, play piano, I want to learn everything. My mom said, “who has time for all of that?!” But I still learned a lot of things, I ended up learning dance and martial arts, and of course skating. But outside of school I learned a lot. And english, I learned as well.

Xu: Speaking of english, I saw that you were using Ted talks for english lessons online. How’s that going?

Sui: Eh I don’t think it’s going that great. Sometimes I’ll just try to complete the lesson no matter how sloppily I do. But every day I try to do a few questions and look at them, it’s better than nothing. For english you have to speak and read it often.

Xu: Right, when I see you doing interviews you do speak quite well!

Sui: Well, for those once you do a lot of them you’re used to it.

Xu: That’s true. Last year when I saw you both at the Winter Olympics, I thought wow, seeing so many more Chinese athletes doing interviews in english, I was so happy.

Sui: I actually really like learning things, and I wanted to learn some instruments too. Before I even learned violin but my neck isn’t good for it. (laughs)

Xu: I get the feeling that you’re an extremely versatile person.

Sui: More like I can’t focus on one thing/get distracted easily. (laughs) I can’t ever persist with anything.

Xu: But I feel you already so dedicated to figure skating, you don’t really need any other hobbies, they just make your life more fulfilling (“colorful”). Finally, I want to give you the opportunity to give your loving fans some words/comments.

Sui: Firstly, I really want to thank these numerous fans for their support. I think that they’re all very dear to me, because they don’t have any personal or blood relations, they probably just saw us on TV or in competition one time and grew to love us and support us. Some even travel to follow us across the world. Some of them give us little gifts or throw plushies at every competition. It’s really touching and heart warming. In addition, the cheers and applause we receive at the end of competitions, I believe as an athlete that’s been able to make it this far, I’m so proud and happy. Thank you so much to our friends that are like family to us quietly supporting me and Han Cong. We will continue to work hard to show you our best selves. Thank you everyone.

Xu: Just like you just said, we hope you can maintain your health and have less injuries and fewer dangerous situations, hopefully in future competitions you can continue to surpass yourselves. We also look forward to more surprises from the “onion bucket” team. Thank you, Sui Wenjing!

Sui: Okay thank you thank you thank you!

#suihan #wenjing sui #cong han #chinese pairs #figure skating #sui wenjing #han cong #pairs skating

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years ago

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14x04 watching notes

Happy Birthday, Davy!

Mittens just ominously warned me to warm up this notepad while I waited for the episode to finish downloading.

The nice guy from the phone provider has recently restored our internet after 4 days of radio silence from me, but it's only about 4'o clock on friday, so really some good timing!

Expectations: pre-mittens warning, Davy back on his nonsense with the scary episodes and expected nonsense of sinking back into MotW after mytharc but in capable hands because, you know, new writing team is aces and all.

post-mittens warning: idk but I should get a stuffed toy?

That's a suspicious amount of ghost lore.

Has Heaven started dumping the spirits out now and if it really IS a ghost it's not going to behave properly?

Oh my god it's a Hell Hazers poster.

There was something I would have talked about pre-episode but had no internet so didn't, but the focus on Dean and nerds and the expectation that this episode would be about a comic book store, did remind me of 9x07 and the action figure which was all "i clobber evil!" and was a strong Dean mirror, including that he needlessly burned it on the stove to try and get rid of the ghost of the mom but it turned out she needed to be talked into letting her son let her go in a scene which has all sorts of shades of Dean vs Mary in 12x22 now and also Dean's entire mark of cain arc was in the self-destruction of his self as an action figure that clobbered evil. A reminder that Dean is this figure seems fairly timely with him coming down from being possessed, as of course he has been used as an action figure. And his willingness to turn himself into one in 13x23 was very much turning himself into the Michael Sword, which in this cosmos is practically like the rarest collectible action figure of the universe. This harks back all the way to the first season and Dean's issues with John's control and the whole blunt little instrument arc, also something that fed directly into demon!Dean, and is being reflected this season in Nick, who murdered a guy with a hammer, after his family was murdered by a hammer, and said yes to Lucifer because of all that angst about hammer murder. Subtle.

Anyway, this is sort of the emotional background to me for action figures in the show.

A Hell Hazers poster also reminds us that Dean is a horror fan, his own connections to the genre, a CLASSIC episode, and a time when he was living his best life briefly.

You know, before he sold his soul for *waves at previous big paragraph* reasons

Fitting for how season 13 ended with Dean this close to happy world peace retirement living his best life :P

Awww the fake movie the MotW comes from is called All Saints Day. Davyyy :')

People I know who are born on like October SECOND consider themselves extra spooky halloween people. I can only imagine what it does, as a 23rd Oct. birthday person, to the psyche to actually be born ON it.

This episode's subtitle is just "Lol I have the best birthday, fuckers"

ACTUAL CLIP FROM 2x18!

And the fucking racist truck >.> Which in-universe was teased as another different movie using the footage in the trailer for Hell Hazers II.

My mum has that exact Wonder Woman figure

This guy is wearing a trenchcoat-featured jacket with a maroon t-shirt under it. I could not tell you what he represents but the trenchcoat part is amusing.

I can't *actually* start saying everything is party!Cas symbolism though so I'll just shush

Er this rando that people were saying was dressed like Sam from the promo images literally is called Sam, and she's wearing a very very loud checkered shirt, of course featuring a lot of orange. I'm guessing with that info it's next to impossible to say she ISN'T in some way a Sam parallel :P

Comic Book Guy is possibly caught in the middle of stealing an action figure, and I can't work out if he is just nervous about that or has a crush on Sam because his behaviour was so suspect, but from the promo scene where he looks a lil worse for the wear he talks about breaking up with his goth gf, and Sam is very clearly a nerd, not a goth.

(Goth nerds are things. The media will get there one day :P)

Oh okay after a few lines of the exchange, yeah this guy is a dick, I have NO clue why he's wearing that coat symbolism wise, and Sam really ought to fire him because wow, uncool and also he seems to be a stereotypical nerdbro gatekeeper who would literally rather scare off customers but be right than just enjoy what they all enjoy together.

Then he apologises for getting angry for saying he just gets spun out sometimes. Honestly, this seems to be crossing over into Dean territory considering the last thing from the recap was Dean being told he was like Michael by Bad Kaia and being really angry when he said he was nothing like him... He also used "spun out" about himself in 12x20 but in rather more tragic lost-Cas circumstances but obviously this parallel has a different lesson to tell than just making them equivalent. This guy is so awful and is using his anger in a petty way over things that don't really matter. He's getting spun out over made up battles rather than real angst, and whether he has his own underlying trauma that makes him behave that way or not, the straight white nerd is one of the secondary main villains of the century so far after the literal alt right, with some overlap of course. Think Kylo Ren as one of the dominant critiques of this behaviour :P Compared to the open of 8x11 for example, where the nerds were harmless weirdoes despite also being straight white and obsessive, the aggression and obsession are played not just as a harmless trait of people who like LARPing and collecting toys, but gatekeep, yell at kids over superman facts, and refuse to have their own dominance challenged.

Thinking he could fight superman might actually explain the Cas like jacket - it's too short to be a coat - that he idealises these heroes, is wearing Batman (who in pop culture most recently was around "v superman") and Cas of course has all his superman comparisons from both 6x20, and his rebirth in 12x01 where he came back to earth as a fiery comet and was immediately mistaken for a spaceman. There's some dark idolisation/mirroring here, that he's debating how to fight the guy (krytonite gloves = the BMoL knuckledusters) and at the same time mirroring the show's Superman in his dress. Only much, much lesser. More subtextual mockery about his weakness and how he doesn't really measure up.

I think in a lot of ways the discourse about nerds in pop culture is moving on now to make this difference clear, that the ones who will be mocked are the ones who deserve it for being too cruel to respect, while in many other ways the mainstreaming of nerd culture into pop culture, meaning a large amount of it is no longer mockable, that everyone had at least SOME nerdy indulgences, means that in general nerdom is more accepted and exalted than ever. SPN obviously having its own deep roots into nerd culture has some direct room for commentary here, and this is also a way of reminding its own fans to be cool and not to be this guy.

Oh, huh, he safely exited the shop. I did not see that coming.

LOL he has batman bedding on a fold out bed in either a shed, garage or basement where he lives.

(This detail was tragic in Attack the Block but it's quite clear in this case the guy is fully grown and is being used as a detail to show his forward progression in life)

Wow, you really have some rage issues here. Especially trying to wrangle free pizza i mean dude. Talk about a line that personifies him 100 different ways in one go :P Who shouts at their pizza delivery place?? They remember your number! This is how to get extra toppings.

Oh my god please get beaten to death by this lil guy

(I know I know he survives he's in the promo)

Is this like... haunted kidney episode... but better?

Actually, Fallen Idols plus Mannequin episode but better.

You know how we saw in the last new year? Watching Small Soldiers for the first time since like the 90s or whenever it came out

The show's animation is so much better

Than Small Soldiers and itself from past years

Oh DEAN

I mean he totally deserves a day off.

I can't believe he owns these socks. Who got them for him for Christmas?

Okay, well first we have to work out which was the last Christmas they had where they were not in prison or in an alternate dimension or dead or -

Cas. It was Cas.

He literally had no idea this wasn't just a cute commentary on how much Chinese take out Dean eats

Anyway as far as I can tell Dean is living out the bisexualdemondean header just to spite Michael for defiling his temple. He's filling it with noods and pizza (and I am sure he didn't yell at the delivery guy, but tipped him well instead for making drop offs at a shady street corner miles from where anyone lives)

Honestly it's been 12 years since Hell Hazers II... What took them so long

Dean's drunk a full thing of Margiekugle mom beer, which is a lil worrying just in terms of him using it instead of comfort from her like in 12x02, now that she's back.

God I want Dean to meet the asshole from the comic shop and for him to get into a dick measuring contest about Hell Hazers II and Dean to be like uh I WORKED on it you ass

Er, does that vending machine contain the nougat of choice of your consumptive son on the other side of the wall?

(who may be out with Cas concealing his consumption on a case so not bothered by all this TV noise)

God I love and have missed Dean, my trashy guy who is sitting hugging a pillow like a teen girl at a sleepover to watch his hatchetman slasher to celebrate being back to himself and get the much-needed R&R, since, you know, last time we saw him he threatened to "break" Kaia and was in a very very bad place (lol)

This guy about to get murdered for trying to snatch a nougat bar is dressed like the unfortunate bandmate (Tommy?) to Vincifer. Is this an oblique Ladyheart reference to set up a weird scenario where Hatchetman is punishing a Lucifer-adjacent asshole for trying to steal Nougat?

I can't believe there's a red exit sign behind him which means Wanek is Waneking in multiple dimensions at once

"Mint Condition" flashes up over Dean indulging in his pizza, saying, hey look it's our guy back in shape. Or, you know, ironically so. Either because Dean being Dean means eating junk food and wallowing because his husband has wandered off with the kid and isn't home to snuggle him while he does this mandatory bedrest, or because, of course, Dean is not Mint Condition at all. He's literally and emotionally scarred.

I am pretty sure this shirt that Sam has on is 12 years old.

Statistically, they're gonna get murdered in each and every one of their original Kripke era shirts until none of them are available to be murdered in later.

I say for no particular reason.

Leave Sam alone. He doesn't shave you mock him, he does shave, you... also mock him. He was doing really well while you were gone! No one got even slightly stabbed who didn't deserve it! This is an all-time record. A beard is a price to pay for that.

Honestly I think Dean is stoned but they're not going to say so but I am treating this scene like it is.

"I wanted to check up on you," Sam says, pulling over a chair. This is so like how he was in 14x01 when he was powering around the Bunker being the boss, and given Dean's been on bedrest, again, much-needed, Sam is treating him like another one of his charges, and once more is in a position of authority... But now, despite shaving to act like nothing has changed a bit more, he is the one in charge of Dean as one of his wards. Everything has changed. Your dynamic is actually wobbling in a weird way.

In season 10 when Dean was laid up with the Mark blues especially around 10x12, which this intro also reminds me of, re: Dean spending a week in his room and Sam popping in to check on him, Sam was still keeping a very wary eye on Dean more that he was a bomb that may explode, and that while he needed to be managed, the power dynamic was extremely, extremely horrifying in that if Sam messed up Dean would murder him. Not an ongoing implicit threat between them, but the knowledge that Dean could become a demon again and demon!Dean would attempt to kill Sam, and so Sam had better do his utmost to keep Dean in a good place. Even if it eventually meant a series of convoluted secrets to try and fix him against his wishes.

Obviously, things are different here. Sam has developed a LOT since then, with season 11 beginning a recovery of his character in tentative little steps which actually kicked off in season 12, and, specifically, in 12x04 under Davy Perez in American Nightmare heralding the new era of Sam focus and lovingly stroking his hair and lavishing him with Sam-sculpted episodes the like of which we hadn't seen all through Carver era.

Now when Sam comes into Dean's room and pulls up a chair and sits down to check up on him, he actually radiates a comfortable, competent authority to do so.

... however he is doing it in that pink shirt which I honestly love the concept of but just wish that I couldn't see Sam in 2x06 showing up in it for the first time, like, my brain is just screaming at him to go get a bunch more pink shirts and refresh his wardrobe

I'm so certain of it but now I have to check because 12 years is such a long time but

http://www.homeofthenutty.com/supernatural/screencaps/albums/SPN2x06/SPN_0060.jpg

Mittens yelled "OH MY GOD" when I sent her the link so I think I'm right

Like, conceptually in every way it's great because it's this long pink shirt that fits him well, fuck toxic masculinity, blah blah action heroes in pink shirts, love it love it love it, but also: it's another fucking plaid shirt Sam has owned since he was a gap-toothed child six years younger than Jack presents as

Dean is lacking his second bedside table, as he has been for seasons, but I'm just staring at him lying sideways on his bed, wondering about his set up, and if this is in any way similar to how he watched all those cowboy movies with Cas, since Davy, of course, was the one to suggest that they had been watching movies together.

"And... not that I'm complaining... House is full of strangers"

Yeah, we know you hate it, Dean. God, it's tragic. In a wonderful way. Sam's built this little empire for himself and it's on top of Dean's old nesting spot. Dean's been forced into his room not just to hide away because he's ashamed but because he doesn't want to be seen and there's too many strange eyes out there. However this resolves, it's going to force some growth. Honestly, as much as Dean loves this room and it means to us, it's also a bleak lonely spot and in the like 7 years they've had the Bunker, Dean's never hooked up in that bed, while it has come to be very much like, well... The bed of an angry nerd living in a basement still using Batman sheets. Again, dark parallels, but of Dean in a dark place.

I'd love if he moved out and got a house in the suburbs.

I mean.

Cas has a house in the suburbs.

(Re: long-running Lizzy watching notes in-jokes about where he stashes a bunch of stuff like demon tablets, first blades, metatron's grace, etc etc)

But yeah, no. I like the idea of Dean nesting, of course. But aside from the obvious conveniences, the Dean Cave, etc, there's no reason it HAS to be here except that this is their inheritance and it's safe. But as I constantly talk about with the library abutting the war room, the work/life balance is always in question and filling the Bunker with strangers is a great way to shove all the life balance out, and leave the only spot left of that to Dean in this room.

If the AU peeps don't all get sent home but remain at least in part a hunter community and maybe even network and grow as the Winchesters finally open up the Bunker's resources and share them and stop being all isolated like Carver era fiercely protected... Dean might have no choice but to move his nesting down the road to somewhere with a sofa where he can park his car out front, and choose to commute in to work.

Awww they have the "our lives are a scary movie" argument again, in a well-worn way. So well-worn this is repeating dialogue from somewhere or other... 2x18? 4x07? God I don't know, implicit in Sam's eyerolling at Halloween in 1x01? All of the above? I am not looking that up. But anyway their stances haven't moved, possibly because this is something that has never really been challenged before. If Sam didn't hate scary movies already, watching 18 hours of Hell Hazers II dailies probably did in any remaining sympathy he would have had towards them, while Dean thrived there.

I guess he may finally have had time to watch it?

And of course stay for the credits to see his name.

Anyway Dean has historically cited movies as research or job adjacent, or vicariously enjoyed watching monsters at work from the safe remove of a screen, while Sam throws it all in to that box where of course it goes to 1x01 where he's running away from ALL of it and has his oddly specific choices to avoid halloween in his day to day as Lawboy. He's struggled to indulge in the weird as a hobby, likes serial killers as, as far as we can diagnose, an outlet of darkness but purely human, and keeps the work/life balance in a rather unhealthy way of denial and boxing things away, because so much of his early seasons arcs were about resisting the life and refusing the call. This harks back to their literal first episode characterisations of Dean being all in and Sam being all out and it's interesting to have us back here in season 14, in a period of such deep reflection, when Sam has finally sort of accepted the life, found a niche in the work that suits him as the boss, and Dean is struggling now with retirement questions, and taking a week off, not liking his home full of strangers, etc etc.

"More Michael Monsters?" Dean asks immediately quick fire when Sam says he has a case.

He may have taken a week off to indulge in pizza but that obsession lurks under his skin. He's in no way done, though I think perhaps better prepared to enter this case than he had been, though of course he's billed as still struggling.

Dean also instantly recognises the Thundercats name, and I'm afraid it's something I'm just not familiar with, that I clearly missed some wave of it when I was younger and it hasn't come back around as an adult... I can't wait to read stuff by people who know more about it and say tragic things about Dean's connection to it. But the important thing here is the dark mirror to the guy who got beat up by the toy, because Dean is being shown as also an enthusiastic nerd who knows the franchise and is excited by this concept and is leaping into a case about it with a "strippers, Sammy. Finally!" level of enthusiasm.

Healthy nerds and unhealthy nerds. But at the same time, Dean might be a better nerd, but his anger last episode is still being examined through this guy.

I love that for Sam and Dean, dressing up for Halloween is dressing up like total nerds in a totally different pop culture way - the old appearance of geeks which is wildly outdated but damned if they aren't putting on pocket protectors anyway. It's a caricature but it's one that is at total odds with who they are as people... More of a traditional halloween thing where normally Sam and Dean are really scary people with weapons, so when you make them dress all topsy turvy, they dress like this instead. They ARE halloween costumes, in their day to day.

Dean continues watching in the shop, Sam eyes up the Red Hood.

I watched that a million years ago with no idea that Jensen was in it, though I had watched the first couple of seasons at that point. I think it was during my "aww the show was cancelled" phase where it was completely off my radar. It's hilarious to me now, because I don't think I COULD watch it, now I know Jensen's voice so disproportionately well. It would be so off-putting.

"She's like your twin."

Sam and Sam both tuck their hair behind their ears at the same moment.

"What are you talking about?"

So. This is going to be extremely subtle.

I hope New Sam survives the episode D:

Sam points out the other guy who people were saying based off the promo pics would be the Dean to this girl's Sam with no idea what was to come. He and Dean in this case are both eating lollipops purloined from the halloween candy.

I guess this guy in the All Saints Day t-shirt shares Dean's love of the same franchise, and seems to represent the bizarre venn diagram with Dean on one side and Andrew Dabb on the other. Their nerdy overlap.

I feel like Sam is just pointing out this character mirror to be an annoying sibling and wow do I love seeing them like this.

I also feel like there is no way Davy would do this if he wasn't about to troll the fuck out of us with these parallels in some terrifying meta way and pointing out that character parallels are a thing this blatantly is about to be Awful somehow.

The Red Hood is staring disapprovingly at them through all of this

Anyway of course Dean Parallel immediately recognises Dean's enthusiasm for Hatchetman and encourages him to press the button, which Dean does with glee. I CLOBBER EVIL. Wait no.

Sometimes we do bad things.

Oh dear.

Oh deeeeeeeeeeear.

Yeah, Hatchetman is like... idk, michael!Dean or something. Or some dark part of Dean where all his violence is and this twisted version is almost like the burned result of the I Clobber Evil hero being melted by Dean and - too meta, I am in pain.

"Vintage hot wheels!"

I know what you want because I have a smol 67 impala on my shelf. Nyoom.

He has an eeny weenie mystery machiney so he can make them race.

Okay guy who got beat up by a toy is called Stuart (I am so bad at names, honestly.)

Of course he got kicked out by his roomie for being insufferable about something as pointless as subs vs dubs, and Sam is already apologising for him before they even go meet him.

Considering there's 3 people working at the shop and Stuart had a trenchcoat, but is also being mirrored to Dean, darkly, I feel like there might be some serious shuffling going on here that surface level, Stuart had that Cas marker, but... yeah

Heeee Dean stealing the Flash mug and making Sam have the one with the cats all over it. One mug representing Stuart, one representing his mum.

I mean it is Sam's turn to have a relationship with THEIR mom this season. Idk if the mugs are actually symbolic over anything other than Dean living his best geek life right now.

I mean he's added the glasses to his ensemble, he's really living it up.

I hope he's still wearing Send Noods under this

Awww it's hot apple cider. What a good mom. This is a perfect halloween drink.

*Stuart Rage Sounds from below*

Wow this is subtle that he has some rage issues.

"Campbell and sons insurance" Hey remember when I said that this whole season's emotional set up with Sam's ownership of the AU peeps reminded me of season 6 and the Campbells? They also literally are the sons of Mary Campbell, so.

No lies, at least, with some serious stretching of the truth.

God, the detail that Dean has played Zelda.

He's being nerdy out loud constantly, and without much fear of judgement. It's wonderful. I guess he's been jostled up enough by Michael that he doesn't really care to hide this random pointless thing that in the grand scheme why should he be ashamed, and also he feels so much worse about other things that this is just an escape to have fun. It also reminds me of last season when he was mourning Cas except that this indulgence Sam is allowing him is co-sponsored by Dean and he's throwing himself into enjoying the smaller things and being more openly Dean-ish than he has in a while. Like, I don't think character comparisons to 8x11 for the nerds is the only way the episodes link :P

In 8x11 Dean's initial reaction to LARPing is that it looks awesome, then he corrects at a look from Sam to being more judgy. In 9x04 as scripted, Sam is surprised that Dean want to read Game of Thrones. So idk if that's just Robbie character interpretations since my 2 surface level examples are from his episodes or if that's just been where open nerdery has lived in past years, but anyway. Sam isn't stopping Dean from indulging in the same way - it seems he also recognises Dean's nerdiness and is less threatened by it than before, in the sense that he doesn't feel like Dean isn't acting himself, but now accepts the nerdiness is a part of Dean.

"Who needs goth girl drama" dude you are the most awful over-dramatic asshole on the show now Lucifer is dead

LOL he's trying to lie about being attacked by a toy now, and Dean points out that he got whooped so thoroughly he was beaten on the back and genitals - so yeah we look at his face and wiiiiince

"Lady you wasn't kidding."

"Big Bang in there..."

Goodness are we calling out the Big Bang theory for its toxic nerdery? Love it.

Sam and Dean halloween costumed as total nerds, still driving around in the Impala. The reverse of someone rolling up in a boring old modern car and, like, a bunch of Draculas get out.

Sam can shave off the beard but it can't stop him Bobby-ing

Dean side-eyes this

"Yeah, it was Riley, he'll be fine."

"I don't know who Riley is, but cool."

God, I am so into this whole dynamic.

Tell me more, Davy.

"So seriously, what is your deal with halloween?"

"I don't like it"

Dean, I am watching this episode on November 2nd, just so you know.

Anyway. This is literally. 1x01's opening adult Sam moment. But Dean's going back to poke Sam about it since he's someone Sam won't lie to in the same way that Sam was concealing his entire being from Jess. I mean this isn't subtle - in 1x01 Dean calls Sam out for doing this. But then, Sam doesn't exactly develop beyond it - in season 8 he does this with Amelia.

Because obviously if Sam is going to move forward and develop there's still things which are not addressed. And if Dean is having his idea of home and work challenged, and his nest disrupted until perhaps he will fly it... Sam has never ever actually addressed his work/life balance in the meaningful way where... like... this was how his difference was introduced when we first ever meet lil babby Sam smiling innocently at us on screen as a kid who has the whole future ahead of him and no idea what torment he's gonna go through. 14 years later, if he's ever going to be a grown up who can handle himself in a relationship and know what is work and what is life and how he can watch halloween movies and not feel personally offended by them but enjoy them as a fantasy and a way of boxing off their world into a safe place they don't have personal responsibility for...

Maybe he might just get a girlfriend who he can tell he is a hunter. Like. Dude. Dean was past that step before the show ever STARTED thanks to his time with Cassie.

Sam, also, metaphorically is an angry guy living in his mom's basement, but perhaps in a more metaphorical way where it's to do with living his whole life under the shadow of his mom horrifically dying as a result of the supernatural and being brought up feeling like a freak and just wanting to be normal and all

wheeee

Anyway Dean is probing for actual answers so I assume Davy will give us a solution to this this episode, but this is my take on it before we get into it properly.

Alternative hypothesis: Davy is personally offended that Sam doesn't like halloween despite it being the best holiday, is determined to fix that and fuck canon, characters can change even 14 years later.

"Don't give me this 'every day is halloween' crap because one it aint, we don't eat that much candy"

I have missed Dean and I love him with every fibre of my being, brb I need to vibrate out of existence at the sheer joy of knowing him

That was the worst "we aren't here staking out your house" move I have ever seen.

You are professionals who have been doing this together for 14 years

why was that so laughably bad?

The youtube comments are so cutting and a bunch of them are unfortunately true. It's self-awareness of using the loser nerd trope but also, cutting in a way because of course Stuart is coming across so much as someone who deserves it - and we're starting to see his mom is sweet and doesn't seem to have caused any trauma in a surface read, and that he was the one who dumped his online gf, and he starts other fights at work or with roomies, so this is getting more and more into territory where he seems fully to blame for his own situation, and therefore you CAN mock him for living in mom's basement, because he PUT himself there, and is single because he chose to be, and so on. The pervading sense that if he was a nicer person, none of this would be happening to him, right down to him stealing the toy in the first place.

Oh boy, the bloody handprint on the wall... We are back in handprint territory, and, you know, maybe because SOMEONE walking past it has been scarred on the wrong shoulder by the actions of an angel or something

There's a chinese take out carton on the shelf in this basement. I doubt it's a collectible.

Send noods.

Okay, that's sort of weird.

If the mom is in costume I don't get the reference. I hope someone else has handled that.

We're going to get her POV on her loser son now, I guess.

"Everything's fine :)" *leaves the room* "everything is not fine!"

Are we calling them out for using "fine" so loosely again too huh?

(Side note: Jack saying he's fine while consumptive, and yeah I am still upset about that. What are you doing to the boy????)

Dean and Sam split up and as Sam walks off a nurse eyes him up and smiles. No idea how intentional that was but I mean, can you blame her? :P

You know, I don't know anything about this franchise, but Sam just jumped to see a toy of a guy who looks weirdly similar to the vampires that ATE HIM a few weeks ago.

He checks over his shoulder in case Dean manifested at his side just in time to see that

Awww Dean and New Dean meet. "he must have awesome insurance"

He calls Stuart's mom "Babs" which is hilarious. They seem close.

New Dean has issues with his dad and Stuart lets him crash with him no questions asked. I suppose Dean isn't going to think too hard about how Sam's choice for his parallel has issues with his dad.

This forgiveness for Stuart's behaviour because he's kind to his own people is a very TFW trait, which makes New Dean more like Sam or Cas forgiving Dean his outbursts, as he's by far the ragiest of them, with Cas trailing in second and Sam the zen fucking master.

Lol Dean and New Dean are both dragged into the room to watch All Saints Day 3 like they're being pulled in on a line

Oh dear, they're bonding.

Davy isn't usually on top of these things but he's channeling a lot of Edlund today and Edlund always had these sort of guys like Andy or Aaron who are so Dean's type in a harmless shared interests and getting stoned together way. This is a bit extreme with the guy's tininess and scruffiness but you know, we'll see how this develops, if it's an accidental twins or a missed connections soulmate dealio.

... You're taking to someone who's still bitter that Andy and Dean would have been perfect together, so.

Also this New Dean guy is demonstrating how to be a Good Fan - he may be as intensely nerdy as Stuart, but he and Dean can compare movies and even though they don't share a favourite, agree that the whole series is great and can see the merits both in each other's favourites, and in another movie that isn't either of their favourites but could be if they happened to be inclined that way.

So healthy :')

"It was always nice to check out. I like watching movies where I KNOW the bad guy's going to lose"

Ow ow ow. But yeah, there's Dean's pro-Halloween rationale, that the tropeyness of the genre has its comforts that every ridiculous horror thing is entirely safe and no one is ACTUALLY going to get eaten by any of these things. Which is also how normal people enjoy horror but at the metaphorical remove of being scared by things we may not literally meet but still represent anxieties we might have in our real lives.

Catharsis, yo

Sam barges in on New Sam to ask her the usual series of increasingly weird questions which get the "are you really insurance?" eyebrows.

"Downtown Salem" - are they in Salem as in the witch hunt one?

I kinda love how New Sam is talking with a speech bubble beside her. So meta.

I think New Dean is called Dirk.

Oops Stuart wasn't one of the co-owners because he kept getting fired for stealing D: Stuart, dude.

"And you hired Stuart back?" "he's my friend"

I think there is commentary appearing here about not just Stuart's unhealthy explosive rage, but that the people around him enable it - even Jordan fired him TWICE rather than banish him forever. The cycle of coddling him without encouraging him to change... Again, this speaks rather more of season 10 and a critique of Sam n Cas from there rather than much currently ongoing with Dean. Sam was complicit in originally abducting Kaia and he and Jody didn't move to stop Dean with Bad Kaia, so though it's in the focus as a critique on Dean's reactions, I feel like the real bad cycles were in Carver era. Though the behaviour still somewhat exists in Dabb era, the overall unhealthiness has declined so much, there isn't a constant oppresive blanket of it as there is here in this shop with Stuart being so awful to everyone and self-destructive.

(It's probably also not a coincidence that this thing has latched onto Dean as well, a la 4x06 I'd guess... Sam got no ghost vibes in the basement, Dean did, and was attacked... To me this is seeming to suggest that his current state has picked up the ghost's ire in the same way in 4x06 he was vulnerable. Loops and loops of things going on so I'll unpick that later if it does turn out to be the case clearly.)

Anyway. This seems to be more about destructive cycles and abusive dynamics, and I would hope a nudge for Dean, though his exile at the start of this episode also suggests to me he knew full well after threatening Kaia that he'd overreacted and needed to take 5, even if there was also a layer of sulking until news of Michael. Her call out was clear enough to make him self-reflect. So I would hope that this episode is here to try and steer Dean's reaction through various pathways, ideally to keep him from falling into anything too awful, as a reminder of where this may lead?

Sam sees the glass case freeze over, and pulls out the EMF, playing it off and being like "nothing... carbon monoxide detector" even as New Sam is understandably a little freaked.

Is this messing with Sam's refusal to tell Jess about monsters by having him keep the truth from New Sam until she's physically endangered?

I mean, carbon monoxide in enough quantities to make the blatantly homemade gadget go "WHEEE" and light up every single LED is a good enough reason to flee the room

"I think you're in danger -" Sam is smacked around the head by Hatchetman because he delayed too long and now he has been knocked out

"Samantha?" Sam determined not to let New Sam out-Sam him

I mean if she is you then she has been knocked out

How does this keep happening to you

how much head trauma has Cas healed over the years?

This is why they have to keep him an angel...

"Is this expensive?" "Wha - no don't!" *BOING* *silence* "yeeeah it's shatterproof glass"

If Jordan really just wants to kill Stuart for getting them a 1 star Yelp review then this also has a weird shade of 11x07 where the ghost was getting revenge and took a few attempts to kill that one guy, eventually succeeding as the clown.

Except the clown was tuned to freak Sam out

and Dean's probably gonna be thrilled to fight Hatchetman

Dean having movie night with new Dean (probably stoned but we can't see it) with comatose Stuart in the middle

incredible

2 dudes watching horror movies 5 feet apart with a comatose guy in the middle because they aren't gay

Dean is thrilled to fight Hatchetman

I feel like this can't last

Davy throws in a gratuitous Halloween moment of Hatchetman walking through the park which is just bedecked in Halloween nonsense

no one cares about him wandering around because it's Halloween

It does make you wonder just HOW much nonsense happening on Halloween really is monsters and stuff out there enjoying themselves because it's expected, which, again, like Sam n Dean dressing up as nerds for this whole episode, having monsters mixing with regular folk and being treated as equals is literally the whole Halloween thing. There's less threat than in 4x07 because we're assuming at this point in the episode that the ghost does have a pretty one-track mind about killing Stuart because with all the characterising nonsense filling the episode the actual plot has been pretty sparse considering we're getting to the final 10 minute run now. So, yeah. This Hatchetman ghost is just out there being a part of the festivities, because that's what happens on Halloween, man

LOL And like Sam not telling his double until it was too late, Dean gets this call and is really open in answering in front of new Dean, and now he's filling in New Dean on everything instead of trying to get him to leave or protect him not just from the monster but from knowing about it at all.

Davy like, hey, remember when ghosts used to do loads of freaky stuff on this show just to be scary? And maybe it seemed like you all were getting bored of it or something, but hey this guy has no idea after 14 years that he shouldn't leave the salt line when everything starts thumping in the room despite having been warned the ghost is coming...

Hehehe Dean gets an axe... The moment of him going to smash it then not and checking if it's open... Whether that was improv or not, it's a good character thing in the sense that Dean is being encouraged not to smash first and ask questions later by the meta plot of the episode

Omg New Dean is as brave as our Dean in some ways... He sees Babs in trouble, and immediately is like "HEY" and starts confronting Jordon in Hatchetman

"He's MY friend. He's OUR friend." That's an interesting take on my/our, because that statement works on both levels - both that Dirk is protective of Stuart because he cares about him, but also that Jordan has his own investment in not killing Stuart that he should remember. In terms of emotional appeal, the first is confrontational while the second is the deep appeal to the ghost.

Filed in the deep deep deep deep deep flips of the crypt scenes, this moment demonstrates about 3 different kinds of flips, while still holding true to possessing thing out of its right mind confronting loved one

Omg the hospital security guards watching the Hatchetman chase a damsel through the hospital while New Dean is chased through THEIR hospital. Talk about dramatic irony and a whole commentary on the metaness of Dabb era in the story reversals and extractions to new levels and repurposing of scenes and narratives...

And despite it playing out scene by scene, the guards are laughing at the bad dialogue and pointing out how Hatchetman is so slow, so how can he even catch them, while the damsel slows herself down and badly fakes a trip so that he can catch up to her...

"We killed you! You're dead!" "We all do bad things sometimes"

And there we get the context for the cool quote the Hatchetman model can recite - just as how in fandom often things are quoted out of context as lines which seem emotional or special but are actually awful. Just for starters, all the Sam n Dean fans using "there aint no me if there aint no you" when Dean didn't even SAY that. Now we see the context of this line, we see that while Hatchetman really isn't deep, he's at least not just saying it to sound cool and talk about himself, he's judging the protagonist for her behaviour, as well as invoking relative morality. Which brings up some interesting ideas about what Hatchetman considers good and evil, in regards to seeming to have a concept of it but not including kill himself as a good thing to do. Obviously completely wild in context but in the philosophical language of the show, the nature of monsters and all is one huge question, along with if Sam and Dean are murderers themselves, and of course how they have done bad things for good reasons and vice versa.

Also I think Sam is about to blow up the door?

"I had a messed up childhood" he says, about to blow up a vintage SCOOBY DOO lunchbox to freedom.

SAMMY. Stop destroying symbols of childhood.

At least he's talking freely to New Sam about himself, which is probably already more than he ever let on to Jess. He really wanted to pretend to be well-adjusted to her, that he probably, like, would have rather waited for a locksmith with her than just pick the door to their apartment if they were locked out, you know?

RIP Scooby Doo.

"Cool" they both say, and share a smile.

It's probably weird to ship Sam and Sam just because the shipname is Sam

Dirk went to hide in the fucking Morgue

well done

Okay I need the security guards back to comment on how the fuck Hatchetman knew New Dean would come to the morgue with enough time to beat him there AND cover himself in a sheet and play dead.

Also before that happened Dean grabbed New Dean by the correct shoulder, and made him jump but aw don't worry it's just your new best friend.

Ghost Jordan is still a fucking nerd even in death because rather than talk to them, he presses the button to summon a catchphrase

It's good to know some things never change even when you are a murderous shell of your former self.

UGH SIGH DAVY ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO DO THIS TO ME?

(The director might also be to blame)

So now they are cobbling together a fake trailer for Hatchetman, using footage from the show

That is to say, Hatchetman is set on Oct. 31st, 1983, or, of course, 2 days before Azazel ruined everything.

I'm not sure if this shot is from the show because we have so few Halloween episodes that an exterior shot with Halloween elements would have to be faked up, but the house looks very much like the old Winchester house, but with a bigger porch and more dramatic features. It does, however, strongly feature the tree branch shadows over the appropriate wall to make it look exactly like the opening shot of their story, while this is the opening shot of the Hatchetman story.

"David Jaeger was an honest man making an honest living" *generic shot of something being worked on*

*shot of the back of John Winchester's head walking into his garage in 5x13 to discover his boss out cold because Anna is about to attempt to murder him, said boss hilariously visible in the shot if you know he's there*

So. That happened :P Hatchetman is John. That ain't subtle if you recognise the back of his head in a split second. Even if you don't they're casting him as a car mechanic which is of course directly connected to Dean and John.

"Until one night when a practical joke turned deadly"

*footage of the wife spectre-rage killing her husband in the cold open of 8x06 because she was still pissed he slept with someone else on prom night*

I think the burning vehicle was the car from 10x13 that Sam and Dean burned early in the episode, where it was violently reminiscent of them burning the memory of John for some meta reason I can't remember at the time, but definitely inspired a lot of frantic fandom typing.

Of course the ghost in that episode was the classic ragey vengeance ghost which was blatantly paralleled to the path Dean was on with the Mark of Cain, complete with being crypt scened out of it by a trenchcoat-wearing widow.

They're implying he was then burned alive and left for dead and I don't recognise the footage of the burned feet but I assume they're from some episode or another.

Anyway then they go to more new footage from the "actual" hatchetman movies. This one is set on Nov. 1st so it's not even a "Halloween" movie but ACTUALLY All Saint's Day (All Hallow's Eve being what Hallowe'en is a corruption of), Nov. 1 being of course a meta nod to the fact the episode is not even airing on Halloween but Davy just really really really really wanted his halloween episode so shut up and enjoy it :P

Oh, it's All Saints Day III The Reckoning. Because of course it's a reckoning. That's all that happens in Dabb era, reckonings.

I am so upset.... I made a joke about 5x05 waaay back, and now it's true because of the whole random thing about Dean's random Axe that was John's that Paris Hilton was going to use to Reckoning him but then Sam murderered her before she could. Now Dean's being reckoned.

Okay Dean is a lil dark right now but his come at me bro of "I was hoping you'd say that" and the preceding speech is incredible. I can't believe this show has Jensen except that I CAN believe that with Jensen we go 14 seasons because FUCK he's scary and intense when he wants to be.

But he delivered that chilling speech and then had the ghost use a red button to talk to him and then was badass at it

I mean

he can put the terror into ANY situation

I am a hysterical laugher, I could not have stood where Dean stood in that moment and taken Hatchetman seriously, even under threat of mortal peril. I once nearly got expelled for hysterical laughing over an untied shoelace that started a rapidly spiralling incident.

I love the new fight guy

I love how Dean is spoiling for a fight, and really enjoying how he can push back against this ghost, in a really, really scary way. But in a cold way, not the red hot Mark of Cain way he was dark last time. He's grinning and enjoying this nerdy ass fight, but it's got a vicious streak.

I especially love the choreography of Dean smashing Hatchetman around the head with clashes in time to the music followed by an elevator ding as Sam and New Sam emerge in the next scene.

Poetic cinema

New Sam guesses the key thing for ghost attachment and Old Sam is impressed.

Careful buddy, they're lining you up for replacement.

Dean seems not to have won this fight with the Hatchetman. I bet if Stuart was awake he'd have some useful advice for how anyone could beat him in a fight but especially Stuart, if they knew the correct thing to do.

New Dean saved Old Dean! Maybe we can teamwork distract the Hatchetman and win together. Possibly this is a metaphor for... working with yourself...

Is it foreshadowing for a fight later in the season of plot significance, just like in 11x07 Sam got beat up by a clown in a cage, as a not too subtle metaphor for Lucifer? I'd love an in Dean's head kinda nonsense with Mikey.

"Dean, key chain!"

TEAMWORK BROS ARE THE BEST BROS

New Sam chips in for her part with fuel for the fire.

Everyone high five the Sam or Dean/Dirk to your left

Oh, COOL effect of a ghostly spirit burning out of a model Hatchetman, who is unscatched by the ordeal

I mean, good, he's probably a really expensive collectible

He falls over with a thud, and goes out on a warbling "time to slice and diiiiiiiii" much like "I clobber evil" died on the fire with a last gutteral noise.

Hopefully bookending each other in terms of models with representations in their voices that haunt Dean and all.

Dean, unprompted, thanks Sam for getting him out of his funk and giving him an easy ghost hunt to win. I guess what 13x05 was supposed to be is what this actually turned out to be.

(Honestly, giving Davy episodes post-drama to let us all unwind is turning out to be an extremely good idea with 13x06 as well)

I am MAJORLY concerned about the time stamp on this episode. It better end in a few seconds and go to a full 3 minute trailer for Hell Hazers III or else.

"It was awesome!" "it wasn't really," says Sam, who burst into the room in time to see his brother pinned and choking

Sam moves on to confronting Dean with the concept of not just hiding in his room when they get back.

He gives Dean the "OI, CHEER UP" talk we've all been yelling at the screen. Good. Good Sammy.

Dean turns to the camera. "I'm never going to get over it. I'm just not."

Look, Sam, just because Dean stabbed Lucifer for you, and now you are sleeping without fear, doesn't mean everyone has that luxury :P

elizabethrobertajones Oh dear, there's still 4 minutes left er I guess I keep watching .... *grimaces nervously*

mittensmorgul :D just watch it in context with the rest of the episode

elizabethrobertajones um what I didn't get far enough into what happens next to know what you mean so that's super ominous Sam is still psychoanalysing Dean in car NOW yo uhave me REALLY worried.

Hey, remember how I started this episode with a vague warning from Mittens? Why am I now getting the feeling that I still haven't watched whatever that was about?

"I'm not doing any good cooped up in my room. So whatever you need, I'm there." ("Chief"?)

"Alright, Chief?"

Oh, man. I'm turning into Dean.

Also Dean appears to have, finally, ceded power over to Sam. Again, the reversals of season 10 - Sam was put in this position of power he just was not ready to cope with and not with the stakes that were laid against him. But here, Dean might be driving the car but he's putting all the real power into Sam's hands.

elizabethrobertajones Is it why Sam hates Halloween because Dean turns out to have set an alarm on his watch to remind him to bug Sam about it again the intrigue you have spun is starting to get to me more than actually watching the episode :P

mittensmorgul oh gosh, I should've just kept my mouth shut. It was seriously just an innocent comment for a nice BM scene :P

I am more horrified about the concept of Sam telling an embarrassing story than I am about any amount of slasher and gore. Look, I can Not handle social squickiness and I love Sam and that is going to make this extremely hard to hear.

Dean's gonna love it though, I can tell.

Please. Protect. Sammy.

"It was soooo bad" he says with a haunted look of a man who has been tortured by the devil

Andrea's party got there first

"Next year, we're doing halloween right"

Oh no, don't you dare start talking like you're going to be alive and ready for a party next year, Dean Winchester. I will perish in your place to make it happen.

BAHAHA Dean coming up with matching outfits and suggests Bert and Ernie, before rejecting that one as too weird.

Yeah, you might not remember but we do

We are never going to let you live it down, in fact.

Also, listen, his mouth runs miles ahead of his brain, that was not suggestive until he realised it was and backtracked

You also can't go as Shaggy and Scooby unless you go to a party WITH them and they go as you and Sam

Thelma and Louise... Dean, stop.

Okay it's hilarious that Davy managed to get both Bert and Ernie and Thelma and Louise into this like... somewhere riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight deep down Dean's consciousness is putting things together. It doesn't remember half the shit he says, but like. Hey. Why ARE those two sets of on screen pairs connected, huh, Dean?

Oh, whatever, he's just trying to annoy Sam now

Nyoooom

IT'S THE SECURITY GUARD

RUN, MAN, RUN

Ew, I left it playing to type that and it told me to watch Legacies

Well that was the one wrong note in this whole episode so I suppose something had to happen like that :P

#Davy fanclub #14x04 #season 14 spoilers #oh my god it's good to have the internet back #my stuff

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sorrytobreakyourheart · 6 years ago

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Micmacs: weapon manufacturing criticism in a comedy

So in On Why Pre-Afghanistan Tony Stark Isn’t a Bad Person ( while not a hero ) I talked about the movie Mimacs à tire-larigot as a counterpoint to all my positive arguments to defend Tony as a weapon manufacturer, and I figured that

(A) most of you probably don’t know that movie since it’s french ( like me) ( and I’m writing this in English, which is probably not helping but eitherway )

(B) I should probably expand on why exactly liking Micmacs and agreeing to a lot of it doesn’t negate my feelings on Tony’s ethics

+ there’s a lot about that movie that stands on its own, without me throwing Tony at it. It’s, first of all, a comedy, though, so of course there isn’t a long and winded commentary of weapon manufacturing thrown in the middle by a character.

The parts that directly relates to Tony or the MCU in general will be in italics.

( I’m not, obviously, going to tell you absolutely everything about it, but mostly the part about weapon manufacturing and how it ties in with Tony’s past )

First of all, the story ( and, because I can’t control myself, the arguments in the middle ):

The Incidents

Bazil ( Danny Boon ) is a child in 1979 when his father ( a soldier ) is killed by a landmine as the man is working on removing landmines from the maroccan part of the Sahara. His mother receives his father’s things, and he learns that La Vigilante de L’Armement was the landmine’s manufacturer.

30 years later, Bazil is shot in the head by a stray bullet from a car/moto chase between two criminals, and survives, but the bullet is still inside his brain because removing it has 9/10 odds of leaving him a vegetable. That also means he spends a lot of the rest of the movie suffering from that bullet, with the risk of dying without warning at any moment. Later, he’s given the bulletcase his replacement at work found on the road: it’s from Les Arsenaux d’Aubervilliers.

Now, I would be the first to say that yes, his life was fucked up by those two weapons, but the manufacturers are not necessarily the ( only ) ones responsible for that. Assuming those two enterprises followed the rules, you can say that the first guilty party in his father’s death is the government/military that started the war/decided to use landmines, and that the criminals in the shooting could have stolen those weapons ( or gotten it from a stolen shipment ) from the military, making it the criminals’ fault.

Both are true, regardless of the manufacturers’ own guilt.

The Aftermath

On top of having lost his father and risking death by inconvenient bullet everyday of his life, Bazil lost his job ( logical, someone had to do the work while he was recuperating ) and now lives on the street, scrapping by as he goes.

After a few months, he’s taken in a by a group/family of other lost people. They live in a cavern of recycling materials ( and by recycling trash ). There’s Tambouille ( Mama Chow in English ) who’s the group’s mom. Placard ( Slammer ), who did 25 years and is possibly a former crook from what we see. Remmington, an African ethnograph who somehow ended up poor in Paris like the rest of them and uses an overwhelming amount of french language clichés. La Môme Caoutchouc ( Elastic Girl ), a contorsionist. Petit Pierre ( Tiny Pete ), an old man who doesn’t really speak but makes incredible automatons. Fracasse ( Buster ), a former human cannonball with the injuries that goes with the job. Calculette ( Calculator ), a girl whose ability to tell anything and anyone’s measurements is basically a superpower.

The Revenge

One day, as Bazil is collecting things thrown away to use again, he ends up right in between the buildings of Les Arsenaux d’Aubervilliers and of La Vigilante de l’Armement. He recognizes the logos, and tries to get to talk with the CEO of Les Arsenaux ( bullet ) for compensation, but get thrown out. Then he cross the street, and hears a speech by the CEO of La Vigilante about how making weapons is awesome ( I’m admittedly symplifying here ).

Frankly, at that point Nicolas Thibault de Fenouillet ( old-style CEO, Les Arsenaux ) and François Marconi ( modern-style CEO, La Vigilante ) don’t seem that different from Tony. They live in luxury, make weapons for their country and possibly its allies, their public persona is not necessarily likeable, but you can always chalk it up to the fact that yes, it’s a public persona ( they aren’t engineer, though, just the CEO ).

Except. Tony might have refused to see Bazil, if he had come to him for a bullet made by SI, but he wouldn’t have made the kind of joke de Fenouillet did ( “He says he has one of our bullet in his brain, sir”/”well that makes something for him to remember us by” ). On top of that, when Bazil was thrown out by security, they took their time to mock him and his head wound, to be cruel. That’s not a behavior Tony would have tolerated from his employees, supposing de Fenouillet knew about it.

Except, I made an argument in my previous post about the Ares Award and Tony’s absence, him not necessarily wanting an award for being a weapon manufacturer, and that directly relates to Marconi’s speech. Marconi, him, is there, and makes the praise of his business, and jokes about Rimbaud having been a poet only to become a weapon dealer, and himself planning to do it the other way. He does it unprompted. He shows the ego we keep hearing about in Tony, when Tony wasn’t even there for his own award ceremony, when Tony only said that the weapon industry was necessary when Christine Everhart basically asked him if she was ashamed.

Anyway, Bazil is angry. He wants revenge, which, okay.

He starts spying on both CEOs, making a plan to take them both down. And as it turns out, Marconi is ( oh, surprise! ) contacted by an African ex-dictator who wants to start up shit again because he likes being a dictator better than being an ex-dictator. Marconi spends about two seconds and a half saying he only sells to legitimate clients, before being told how much he’s going make, and then, his ethics go right through the window.

Which, you know. Tony never agreed to do. Not even when the Ten Rings kidnapped him and tortured him.

There’s a confrontation with the rest of the gang, and eventually everyone in on the plan ( which, you know, is about making les “Marchants de la Mort” pay; you know where I’m going here ).

The plan, in fact, consist of a lot of shennanigans that probably wouldn’t work in real life, but the gang is just that good, and it’s a movie. They start by incapacitating the dictator’s men, and Remington pretends to be them to offer de Fenouillet the same deal, so that both CEOs think the other one undermined him when the deal doesn’t happen. Then they get in, wreck Marconi’s cars, steal de Fenouillet’s rather disturbing collection of famous people’s body parts, steal a shipment of bombs, etc.

From there the CEOs are the one escalating. Marconi put pressure on a cleaning lady to sabotage de Fenouillet’s testing unit, which causes a massive explosion at the plant of Les Arsenaux, and there are no casualties but only by chance. De Fenouillet sends a tactical team to kidnap/murder Marconi.

It’s all interrupted when the dictator’s men get back in the story and play Russian Roulette with Marconi ( before the tactical team gets there ), Bazil gets caught because he was worrying about Elastic Girl ( who was looking for blackmail, and is currently hinidng in the fridge ), and the CEOs finally realize what’s going on ( kinda ).

Bazil almost gets killed, but the gang as a Plan B, and ends up kidnapping de Fenouillet and Marconi instead, staging a flight and arrival in the desert, putting a grenade ( not armed ) in de Fenouillet’s mouth, who’s sitting on Marconi’s shoulders, who’s standing on a landmine ( not armed either ), while they are all disguised as arab women with picture of their dead/injured children.

Before long the two are confessing to a lot of things, starting with all the people who are not legitimate clients they sold things to ( IRA, ISIS, you name it ). They are being recorded, of course, and when the gang stops acting and reveals who they are, they also download the video on ( old, old ) YouTube. Les Arsenaux and La Vigilante are about to close, de Fenouillet and Marconi are ridiculed, about to be tried, and lost all their support.

Bazil is happy with his new family.

The End.

Non-Violence

Bazil & Co’s plan never involved violence. They aren’t looking to kill either CEOs, and the employees are not treated like acceptable casualties just because they work for the two assholes. In fact, the only people who die here are not part of the plan, are killed by de Fenouillet’s men, are the dictator’s men. The most violent thing they did was release bees on workers to steal the bombs, and send a car with goons in it in a billboard

Unlike, say, Wanda and Pietro’s plan, who just didn’t give a damn about what happened to anyone ( the Avengers themselves, but also all the people who would get caught up in whatever they’d pushed Tony into doing ) as long as they got to kill Tony, to make Tony suffer, until they realized it had gone too far and (A) they were going to die too, (B) maybe seven billions people was a bit too high a casualty count even for them.

The only thing you can blame the gang for is the explosion at the factory ( if there had been casualties ), in that they instigated the rivalry, but, in the end, that’s on Marconi, much more than on the gang, because he’s the one who decided to do that ( and by pressuring an imigrant couple to do his dirty work, no less ).

Tony wouldn’t have deliberately endangered people like that. If he was like that, he’d have dropped a missile on Gulmira to get rid of the Ten Rings, without care for the civilians casualties, instead of getting there in person and targetting only the terrorists.

A Plan that wouldn’t have worked if they hadn’t deserved it

Despite the fact that Bazil wants revenge, his whole plan only works if de Fenouillet and Marconi are, in fact, assholes. Marconi didn’t have to accept the dictator’s deal, but he did. De Fenouillet didn’t have to accept the dictator’s deal, but he did. When they thought the other one had started trashing their stuff, they didn’t have to escalate. Marconi didn’t have to take his employee’s visa so that his wife would be forced to sabotage Les Arsenaux. De Fenouillet didn’t have to try and murder Marconi.

If they hadn’t sold weapons to ISIS/etc, they wouldn’t have had anything to confess at the end. They’d probably have been ridiculed, but it couldn’t have done any grave damage to their lives. In fact, the gang would have probably been labelled as the villains for having harrassed/kidnapped/threatened ( since they didn’t know the landmine and the grenade weren’t armed ) people who were doing their job within the law.

At every turn, the CEOs had a choice, and at every turn, they disappointed. Which is why the plan worked.

Tony refused to sell/make weapons for terrorists, which is what pushed Obadiah to get rid of him. Tony demands a lot of his employees, but he doesn’t force them to do anything, they can leave if they want, if they think he’s wrong.

And if Tony, somehow, had still ended up in the same situation, threatened with death to admit to having done things illegal... He wouldn’t have had anything to admit, because he didn’t do it.

Reality vs. Fiction

That’s the big difference between Tony Stark and de Fenouillet and Marconi. He’s not a bad person for being a weapon manufacturer, because he did it following the rules, but they aren’t, because they didn’t.

Being a weapon manufacturer, again, isn’t a bad thing per se, even if it isn’t a good thing either. As long as there isn’t world peace, and the absolute assurance that this peace will go undisturbed, we need soldiers, we need weapons, and therefore we need weapon manufacturers ( but I already made my argument about it in my last post ).

Now, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that most, or maybe even, all, of the real-world weapon manufacturers are not good people who always follow the rules. But in case you hadn’t noticed, Tony Stark is the ideal ( or as close as ) of what a weapon manufacturer should be ( still not good per se, still not bad per se ), because he lives in a fictional world.

If you can believe in a soldier who never obeys orders he thinks are wrong and yet never gets disciplined because of it, if you can believe in a guy who turns into a giant green rage monster, if you can believe that six people can stop an alien invasion, and then you tell me you can’t picture a honest weapon manufacturer in that same world, well.

What we don’t need are weapon manufacturers like de Fenouillet and Marconi. What we need are people who are willing to make them fall, but not by using violence first either, not when it’s not needed, not when you can do it differently.

( though, the Plan almost went South at one point, which is why, sometimes, you also need an assurance, like, say, a way not to get killed by the weapon manufacturer who has, *gasp*, weapons! )

#french movie #Micmacs #micmacs à tire-larigot #pro tony stark #MCU #criticism of weapon manufacturing

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duhragonball · 6 years ago

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[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (102/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

Previous Chapters conveniently available here.

[30 January, 233 Before Age. Planet Server’la.]

Over the next six weeks, Guwar had learned a great deal about his new partners, but very little about the object of their search.

Treekul, the only non-Saiyan in the group, was an alchemical historian. She knew a few techniques for preparing mystical elixirs and so on, but her main focus of study was the lore. Unlike the sciences of chemistry and biology, which made progress through rigorous documentation and peer review, alchemy was a secret discipline, with reclusive masters teaching on a select handful of students. When they recorded their work at all, it was always done in an esoteric style. Simple instructions were expressed as complex riddles. Ingredients were given symbolic codenames which would be meaningless to the uninitiated. Typically, an alchemical scroll promised much: immortality, mastery over living things, the power to transmute lead into gold. But once you actually sat down and read them, they delivered very little: Vague sermons, arcane philosophical tracts, and references to other works which were conveniently unavailable. Guwar had heard about this sort of thing, and always assumed it was an enormous bluff, no different from the way he would use the Saiyans' reputation to make himself seem more powerful than he actually was.

And yet, Treekul seemed to be able to make sense of it all, at least to a certain extent. She had shown him a few documents she had worked on in the past, and explained how she was able to filter the "important stuff" from the "crap", as she put it. Part of the alchemical tradition was to deliberately add a lot of pointless fluff to one's writings, in order to disguise the true wisdom and to trick the unworthy into dismissing their sacred knowledge as nonsense. "Once you've studied enough of their writings," she had told him, "you can start to decode it, and see what they were really talking about."

Treekul hailed from the Planet Clytemnestra, whose people had pale purple skin and dark green hair. Treekul preferred to keep her own hair as short as possible, as she said it helped her focus on her research. "Don't ask me why, but that extra quarter inch of growth on my head just makes me nuts," she had said one day while he saw her applying a trimmer to her scalp. As a result, Guwar noticed that she tended to leave tiny green clippings behind everywhere she went.

Endive, one of the Saiyans, was usually the one flying their ship. She was a smuggler by trade, though she liked to find a good battle between jobs, much the same way that Guwar did when his mathematics skills weren't needed. Like Guwar, she had been forced to scale back her recreational fighting ever since Luffa had begun cracking down on Saiyan activity.

"I tried getting as far from Federation space as I could," she once told him. "I found a nice little civil war on Rofos III. They had mechs, triffles, and all sorts of interesting weapons. I was in heaven... for all of two weeks, and then she showed up and ruined the whole thing. That was when I made up my mind. One way or another, I refuse to be pushed around again."

Endive never had much to say, but Guwar enjoyed hearing it, if only for the chance to admire her looks. She had woven the end of her black hair in to a short, thick braid, which hung between her shoulder blades like a piece of halyard rope from a sailing ship. The bridge of her nose was at a steep angle, which he found aesthetically pleasing, especially whenever she frowned. Luckily for him, she frowned quite often, since the ship's navigation system wasn't quite up to her personal standards. She and Treekul had recruited him into this group by tricking him into thinking he would get to sleep with one or both of them. Watching Endive handle the controls of the ship, he often wished that there was a way to take her up on it.

As for Lesseri, he had dealt with her in the past, though he had always known her to be a ruthless, indomitable warrior. For years he had envied her superior strength and financial success. For example, the ship they now traveled in was hardly luxurious, but it was fast and well-armed, and comfortably quartered six people, which made it far nicer than the broken down one-seater Guwar had left behind on Paxul's Planet. From afar, he had always thought Lesseri to be the model of what a Saiyan should be: a warrior who could go anywhere and do anything she pleased, because she had the might to enforce her own will.

Now that he had lived with her for a while, and seen her ship from the inside, he realized they had more in common than either of them probably cared to admit. Lesseri thought of herself as a weakling compared to other Saiyans, just as he saw himself. This surprised Guwar at first, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. There was always a bigger fish in the pond. He had always thought Lesseri retreated from untenable situations because she was so cold and calculating, but the truth was that she was afraid of dying, just like everyone else. She was farther ahead of him in the search for greater power, but the gap between them was insignificant compared to how far they each had to go. In spite of their past enmity, Guwar was beginning to like her. When their quest led to searching a tomb on an abandoned planet, he was happy to join her.

"I killed my mother," Lesseri told him as she punched her way through the wall that surrounded the necropolis. They had been talking about family, and this was where the conversation had led.

"Why?" Guwar asked.

"You know those procedures where you can have your embryos removed from your womb and gestated outside of your body?"

"No, I had no idea you could do that," Guwar said. He had no interest in procreation, and since he lacked a uterus, he cared very little what others did with theirs.

Lesseri shook her head. "Men," she groaned. "A lot of Saiyan women do it when they get pregnant. Back when Planet Saiya was still up and running, they practically ordered people to do it."

"Okay," Guwar said. "What about it?"

"My mother did it through a private company, only she never came back to get me when it was time. Growing up, it kind of pissed me off. My sister, she used to make excuses. She thought mom must have died in battle, or she couldn't pay the bills or something. When I got older, I tracked her down. Wasn't even that hard. She wasn't even trying to hide."

"Must have been a hell of a fight," Guwar said as he doubled checked their coordinates.

"Nah, I checked her out first before I confronted her. She was too close to me in power. I might have won, but there was no guarantee, and I wanted a guarantee. That was how we both ended up training with Luffa."

Guwar nearly dropped his scanning device. "You trained with Luffa?" he asked.

"If you can call it that," Lesseri said. "Mostly it was Luffa and her alien wife scolding us like we were naughty children. The leader of the group, guy named Zaperc, he tried to start this 'movement' where we'd learn to become Super Saiyans ourselves. My mother joined on, and so did I. Didn't want to risk her learning anything that might make her stronger and protect her from my revenge. Anyway, Luffa found out about Zaperc's group and took over the whole thing. Not that there was much to take over, but I guess she didn't like the idea of trash like us taking her name in vain. Anyway, I waited until the right moment, then I rigged a bomb on my mother's ship. As soon as things went pear-shaped, I knew she'd try to run for it, and sure enough--"

Lesseri clapped her hands together for effect. "Boom. Luffa didn't like it, but she didn't care much for my mother either, so she just sort of stood there while I left."

"What did your sister think?" Guwar asked.

"Beats me," Lesseri said. "I haven't seen her in years. She might be dead. Hold on, I think this is it."

Near the center of the necropolis was a large mausoleum that looked like a great stone chrysalis. There were small alien creatures clinging to its surface, and the glossy surface of their chitinous shells made the entire structure seem almost alive.

"Yeah, I think this is the one we want. Let me take some readings before we smash our way in. Wouldn't want to break anything important."

"So what happened after that?" Guwar asked.

"After what?" Lesseri replied.

"After you killed your mother," Guwar said. "I've never gotten revenge for anything before. I wondered what it was like."

"To be honest, it felt kind of empty," Lesseri said. "I didn't regret it, but I'd spent my whole life on that one goal, and then it was over. Mostly, it stuck in my craw that I wasn't strong enough to kill the old bag directly. Luffa had no business giving me her opinion on it, but she was right. It would have been more satisfying to fight her instead of blowing her up. Mom didn't deserve the honor, but at least if I'd beaten her fairly, I would have had something to be proud of."

"I suppose so," Guwar said.

"That was when I started looking for ways to get stronger. I've had enough of people pushing me around like I'm some bystander. Being a Saiyan used to mean something, but lately it just feels like it makes you a patsy for King Rehval, or Luffa, or anyone else who happens to hit the genetic lottery. I wanted to make my own opportunity."

"And that was how you met Treekul?" Guwar asked.

"Exactly," Lesseri said. "I've heard rumors about Saiyans using a technique called 'Jindan' to increase their power. I know we haven't told you much about it, Guwar, but that's only because we don't know much more than you do. It's not easy finding a Saiyan these days, so if there's anything to the rumors, these jacked up Saiyans are staying out of sight."

"If that's true," Guwar reasoned, "then maybe this Jindan thing isn't all it's cracked up to be. The Saiyans who use Jindan still have to hide from Luffa just like the rest of us."

"Could be," Lesseri said, "but it could also mean that they don't want the competition finding out about their secret. If everyone could use it--whatever 'it' is--then we'd all be right back where we started. And even if it doesn't make you as strong as a Super Saiyan, it could still be a big gain. I don't know about you, but I'll take whatever I can get."

"I'm picking up some unusual readings," Guwar said. "But nothing Saiyan."

Lesseri checked her own scanner and then compared her results to his. "Yeah, Treekul was afraid of something like this. We'll have to take a few precautions before we break into this thing. Give me a hand, will you?"

*******

Thousands of years ago, a brilliant scholar was interred in a mausoleum. Over time, his students were buried nearby, and as the scholar's wisdom of the natural world grew into legend, a superstition arose that those who were buried near his tomb would pass on a blessing to their descendants. Centuries passed, and the scholar came to be revered as a god, whose worshipers believed would one day rise from the dead and rule over the planet. It was said that those buried in the necropolis that surrounded his tomb would be revived as his holy servants.

Before the planet's intelligent life forms vanished, their history included several wars fought over this sacred ground. Conquerors thought that by controlling the necropolis, they could convince others of their supremacy. New religions attempted to assimilate the necropolis's mythical status into their own theologies. During more enlightened times, scientists would attempt to study the graves to learn the truth behind the legends. But the scholar's mausoleum was never successfully breached, for when the ancient one was having it built, he planned to take his greatest secrets with him into the hereafter. To ensure that graverobbers would not plunder his great writings, he treated the interior of his tomb with a concoction of his own making. It would make the stone heal itself when broken. In case this was not enough to dissuade intruders, he prepared a guardian, an unliving creature that would become active when fresh air entered the tomb. Its creator had named it Qursss, and it drew strength from the very earth surrounding the mausoleum. Once unleashed, it would not rest until it had destroyed all living things in the vicinity. When its grisly task was finished, it would lumber back into the tomb, which would then reseal itself.

And so, when the first breeze of fresh air entered the tomb in over fifteen centuries, Qursss stirred and reawakened to its strange un-life. A blue flame ignited from a pile of ashes, and then it grew, transmuting into a vaguely humanoid form cast in minerals and the bones of its past victims. Without hesitation, it rushed towards the source of the air current, and wailed its fearsome warning to any who could hear.

"Woe betide you, graverobbers! Know that you have summoned Qursss the Unquenchable, and for daring to defile my master's resting place, you must pay with your lives!"

It saw light from the fissure in the stone, and then the crack exploded into an opening large enough for a person to enter.

"Yeah, I see it now," Guwar said as he peeked inside to look at Qursss. "We'd better lure the thing outside before we proceed."

Qursss roared as it chased after Guwar. "Mortal fool!" it shouted. "You have sealed your doom this day! Qursss shall pursue you to the ends of the--"

It paused at the threshhold of the hole in the mausoleum. Guwar stood just outside, waiting patiently for Qursss to follow him. The only thing missing from this scene was the ground. Guwar was standing in midair.

"Looks like you were right," Guwar said. "This creature's immortal, but it doesn't seem to be able to fly."

Beneath them, Qursss could hear a second intruder, and its primitive intellect slowly realized that she was carrying the entire mausoleum in her arms. "Aw, well, if he’s too shy to step outside," Lesseri said, "I guess I'll have to give him some encouragement!"

The whole structure began to shake, and Qursss lost its balance. Unable to react in time, it tumbled forward, and as it fell, it realized that it was thousands of feet in the air.

It wanted to threaten its enemies, to warn them that such trickery would avail them nothing, since Qursss would follow them and destroy them for as long as it took to restore its master's tomb. But it had already noticed the ocean below, and Qursss knew that its master had designed it to sleep in the absence of fresh air. No, there could be no reprisal. Qursss would sink like a stone once it hit the water, and Qursss would fall dormant for a very long time. Perhaps one day, when the oceans themselves boiled away, Qursss would stir once more, but that would not be for a very long time. There was absolutely nothing it could do. The enemy had won.

Its final thought, as its monstrous body shattered upon the water's surface, was to wonder why its master had never thought to give it wings.

*******

[31 January, 233 Before Age. Interstellar Space.]

"What I don't understand," Guwar asked Treekul, "is how you found that planet in the first place. It was uncharted, and it looked like no one had been there in centuries."

"Geomantic extrapolation," Treekul replied as she ran her finger over the text of the parchment the Saiyans had removed from the mausoleum. "You're sure this was the only scroll you found in the tomb, right?"

"Positive," Guwar said. "What was that you said a second ago?"

She sat up from her bunk and finally looked at him. "Geomancy," she said. "In my line of work, you can't rely on the people who write these things to actually help you by citing sources. Sometimes you have to use other methods to connect the dots. That planet you and Lesseri went to, I don't know what it's called, or the name of the guy who wrote this scroll, but it's written in the same language as the last four scrolls I studied, and uses symbols and notations he would have learned from an older master known as 'Server'. Not his real name, by the way. None of these guys ever used their real name."

"You... you really haven't answered my question," Guwar said.

She pointed to a disc-shaped object hanging from the opposite wall of her cabin. It appeared to be made of wood, and hundreds of tiny characters and sigils were written upon its surface. "That's a geomantic compass," she said. "Normally you use it for aligning ki energies with planetary fields, but a specialist can use it to locate objects bound by special connections. Server's other disciples had most of the information I needed, but not all of it, so I calibrated my compass with information from the scrolls I had, and used that to point me in the general direction of the one that I didn't. It's taken a lot of course corrections to narrow it down, but considering how long the planet's been lost, I think ten days was a pretty decent turnaround."

Guwar was beginning to understand how some of his clients felt whenever he explained the more complicated aspects of probability theory. "Look," he said, "I just want to understand how this gets us any closer to Jindan. Does that scroll mention it? Does that mean it was invented thousands of years ago?"

"No, of course not," Treekul said. "You have to understand how this works, Guwar. All we really know about Jindan-- and I'm using the word 'know' very loosely-- is that it makes Saiyans stronger somehow, and it just happens to share the name of one of the terms used for the golden elixir, a central concept of alchemical thought. Until we find out more, our best chance is to dig through old writings, and hopefully find scrolls and records that were used to invent this particular Jindan. We do that, and we'll have something resembling a lead to what you three are after."

He made a long sigh when he heard this. "It all sounds pretty hopeless," he said.

She smiled and lay back down on her bunk. "Trust me, Guwar, I've been digging up old secrets my whole career. If there's something to be found, I'll find it. It just takes time. And the occasional defiling of an ancient burial ground, but you and Lesseri didn't seem to have much trouble with that at all. Even if it takes us a year to hit paydirt, wouldn't you say it was worth it?"

Guwar supposed he couldn't argue with that. "I guess I'll leave you to your work then," he said as he rose from her chair and headed for the door. "I could use something to eat anyway."

"Hey, drop by anytime," she said. "It's good to bounce ideas off of you. Oh, could you toss me my trimmer before you go? My scalp's getting a little itchy."

*******

[9 February, 233 Before Age. Thalos I.]

Days later, with nowhere in particular to go, the Saiyans decided to land on a planet to indulge in some hunting and gathering. Guwar preferred gathering, as it made more sense from an efficiency standpoint. The ship's sensors could tell him where to go to find abundant supplies of edible plants, and he could collect those much more quickly than he could chase down a comparable mass of wild animals. Most Saiyans didn't look at it that way, and so when Lesseri and Endive chose to hunt large reptiles on the western continent, he wasn't surprised.

What did surprise him was when Endive approached him later, while he was bundling his first batch of roots and berries for the cargo hold. They weren't supposed to meet up for another hour.

"I thought you were hunting," he said.

"I decided to see if you needed any help," she said. "Lesseri has things well in hand."

"She usually does," Guwar said. "But I think I've covered my end pretty well."

"What do you think of our little band so far, Guwar?" she asked.

He finished weaving a simple rope and began wrapping it around a stack of starchy plants he had found in a marsh. "I'm used to working alone," he said, "but so far I'm impressed with the operation. All of you are professional, sensible. Treekul's a bit flaky, but she's an alien, so I won't hold it against her."

"Have you considered what will happen when we succeed, Guwar?" Endive asked. She took a seat on one of the cargo crates and put her palms on her knees.

"We'll all get stronger," he said. "Much stronger, with any luck. I, for one, plan to be able to write my own ticket."

"And what about Lesseri?" she asked. "She's stronger than both of us right now. It stands to reason that if our quest succeeds, she stands to become even stronger still."

"That makes sense to me," Guwar said slowly. "What's your point, Endive?"

"Merely that we should be considering our own separate interests at this stage of the partnership," she replied. "Our working theory is that there are already Saiyans out there using Jindan in secret. They will not be pleased to see three more added to their number. For every Saiyan that learns the secret, it depreciates in value."

"And if we were talking about treasure," Guwar surmised, "sooner or later we'd have to decide if it would be better to split it two ways instead of three."

"I see this as no different, Guwar," Endive said. "The other Saiyans may try to stop us from reaching our goal. But they may find two Saiyans easier to accept into their domain than three. And if they happen to be fairly weak Saiyans--like you and me-- well, we'd hardly be much of a threat to their plans, now would we?"

"What exactly are you suggesting, Endive?" he asked. He tried to keep his tone neutral, hoping not to tip his hand. At the moment, he saw no compelling reason to turn against Lesseri, but he didn't want to appear to reject the idea, just in case she was on to something.

"For the moment, nothing at all," she said briskly. "I simply wanted to share my appraisal of the situation. When the time comes to make a decision, there may not be a chance to confer privately, Guwar. So I thought we should discuss certain... contingencies in advance."

He was about to ask her what contingencies she had in mind, when the communicators on their wrists began to chirp. It was Treekul. She had found something.

*******

The closest thing Lesseri's ship had to a meeting area was the mess hall situated between the cabins and the cockpit. Treekul presented her findings on a small display screen normally used for entertainment purposes. Guwar found her delivery surprisingly polished and scholarly, considering that she was giving it in her pajamas, which bore flecks of green hair clippings from the last three times she trimmed her scalp.

"I know a lot of what I just said went over your heads," she said as she finished explaining how she arrived at her conclusions. "I just want to give you a bird's eye view of what I've done, so you won't think this I just pulled all of this out of my ear.

"We've trusted you this far, Treekul," Lesseri said. "And I think we get the general idea."

Lesseri had put her feet up on the table and crossed her ankles. Endive was busy eating some raw meat from her hunting, while Guwar sat on the table itself. He had some question about Treekul's data, but he decided to save them for when he could speak with her in private. He suspected that the others would do the same.

"All right, then here's the bottom line," Treekul said as she tapped the screen to advance to the next image. The good news is that my theory was correct, and we've been on the right track. We've established a line of spagyrist masters who studied techniques for increasing physical attributes. We're talking about simple stuff, like healing minor injuries, or improving concentration, but each record we've found states that the masters were looking ahead to a refinement of the research. A 'golden elixir', or a perfection of what they had begun to explore. They called that ideal experiment 'jindan', which means whoever invented what we're looking for must have based his research upon their earlier work."

"But the scroll we just found was never used by anyone," Lesseri said. "That tomb hadn't been touched in centuries, and the wax seal on the scroll itself was unbroken."

"Right, but it did give me more information to plug into my calculations," Treekul said. That means my geomantic measurements will be more precise from here on out, and there's a lot less guesswork about where to look next." She tapped the star chart on the monitor, causing it to zoom in on a single star system. "Turns out we'll have to go to the Quadzityz System after all," she said.

"That whole sector is a war zone," Endive said.

"Fine by me," Lesseri said with a smile. "With all the fighting, we can slip in, take what we need, and no one will notice we were there. We might even score some plunder if we have time."

"Yes, that does sound quite pleasant," Endive replied, "but that isn't my point. A stray bombardment could destroy our objective before we even have a chance to reach it."

"Not to mention the mercenaries working that sector," Guwar added. "Saiyans or not, some of them are bound to be stronger than us. If we're not careful, we could find ourselves outmatched. Then we'd be the ones getting plundered."

"It's worse than you think," Treekul said. "I monitored the war reports from that sector, just to get some idea of what we'd be getting into. Turns out the fighting has escalated even more than we knew. Someone brought slorgs into the conflict."

"Slorgs!" Endive said with a gasp. "Then it's only a matter of time before Luffa gets involved! She'd never tolerate a slorg infestation anywhere near the Federation border."

"And that brings me to the 'Bad News' part of my presentation," Treekul said with a sigh. She tapped the screen one more time, bringing up an image from a news periodical. The photo accompanying the article showed a Saiyan with glowing yellow hair and tail, holding a Quadzity armored troop transport over her head. Terrified soldiers were fleeing from her as she smashed the vehicle into a large boulder.

"Luffa's not just going to get involved on Quadziityz," Treekul said. "She's already there."

NEXT: The War Against War

#dragon ball #fanfiction #lssjluffafic #guwar #treekul #endive #lesseri #server'la #thalos i #qursss the unquenchable

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ahouseoflies · 6 years ago

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The Best Films of 2018, Part V

We’re finally here. Thank you for reading. Or at least scrolling around to the movies that you care about. GREAT MOVIES

12. Minding the Gap (Bing Liu)- In part because it's produced by Steve James, Minding the Gap's easy short-hand is "Hoop Dreams for skateboarding." Because most of the film's pleasures come from following the subjects over the course of five or six years, that makes sense. What differs is that director Bing Liu is so young, which makes this a promising film if a less definitive one than James's feature debut. It’s trying to do so much, but it never feels calculated or constructed as it expands. Boldly, Liu seems to suggest that people don't really change that much, that what drives them or gnaws at them just manifests itself in different ways. The cycle of abuse ends up being a common element for the three skaters, and, as Liu admits on camera, domestic violence is the reason he made the film. (The treatment of it is raw, a blunt object when a more delicate instrument might work better.) He got the hard part right though: delicately getting us to care about people who sometimes don't care about themselves. 11. A Quiet Place (John Kransinski)- Strong early Shyamalan vibes from this lean chiller. Krasinski's directing debut, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, didn't do much for me, and I skipped his obligatory man-comes-back-to-hometown-because-his-mom's-dying follow-up. But the filmmaking really impressed me here just by understanding how to set the table of this kind of movie. A close-up on an important nail sticking out of a floorboard here, an effortless explanation of a rule there. The hang-up for a film this high-concept is that you get distracted by all of the unanswered questions. (How did he get a printer quiet enough to print out all of those radio call signals?) But this world is fleshed out enough, especially an eerie dinner sequence, to bypass that kind of stuff for me. More than anything, there's a sort of elasticity of shot selection that serves the suspense. A tender early scene in which the central couple is dancing while wearing headphones goes on for maybe twice as long as one might expect. So later, the cross-cuts and smash-cuts have even more weight because the camera was allowed to linger earlier. Here's maybe the biggest reason for the movie's success: The characters are all slightly smarter than the audience, whereas the temptation might have been to go the other way with it. 10. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler)- I don't know if I can add anything to the discourse on this meditative yet ambitious film. I do think one early scene points at what makes it special for the genre. When T'Challa is first named king, he has to be drained of the Black Panther powers to fight anyone who wishes to challenge the throne. A member of an outsider tribe challenges him and nearly beats him. It shows a) the world-building of this noble, fair culture, b) the existence of this fully developed clan that will be important later, c) just how human T'Challa is if his reign can come so perilously close to ending just as it has begun. Every scene like that has a logical purpose. Of course, once Killmonger, the best, most realistically motivated Marvel villain of all time, gets introduced, we return to that method of challenging the throne, and writers Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole aren't afraid to let the worst possible thing happen to T'Challa. What occurred forty-five minutes earlier makes this fight seem like a fait accompli. And it's in this sort of narrative detail that the film is able to work up to its thematic purpose. The first half is about, to quote T'Chaka, whether a good man can be a good king. But the second half is about the responsibility of goodness. Show me where Iron Man bit off that much. 9. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski)- Although it takes place mostly in one location during one day, Support the Girls has a bigger world going on in its margins. We hear it on radios, or we see it in the people taking a pitstop in Double Whammies while they're on their way somewhere better. But the force that's really encroaching on the characters' insulated environment is Mancave, the national chain that threatens to put them out of business. "They have commercials and everything," one character complains, and we get snatches of those commercials that were presumably directed by Andrew Bujalski himself. It's ten seconds of content maybe, shot in a bigger, broader style than the modest approach of the rest of the film. But the key to understanding how far Bujalski has come is realizing that he is no longer making fun of the people in the commercial, even if they're jacked bros screaming for a boxing match. That portrayal is amplified, sure, but Bujalski is mature enough now to not ridicule those people. It's okay that they're just not the people he's interested in. He's supernaturally empathetic toward the rogue's gallery of people he is interested in, who spin the ordinary challenges of the working class into something extraordinary. The sunniest member of the team is played by Haley Lu Richardson, who deserves special recognition as the indefatigable Maci. I can't think of parts that are much different from her roles in this, Columbus, and Split, to the extent that people probably don't realize they're played by the same woman, but she rules in every single one. The sky is the limit for her. When a workplace is described as "a family," it's usually just a way for the boss to take advantage of workers when the "family" designation does nothing to help them: "I know I shouldn't ask you to work off the clock, but can you help me out as a FAMILY MEMBER?" Occasionally though, it does feel like a family when people work closely to one another for hours on end and depend upon one another for real life needs. This movie is about what happens when a work family is both control and support.

8. Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)- The trailer for Children of Men advertises itself as "from the director of The Prisoner of Azkaban and Y Tu Mama Tambien," and I remember an audience giggling at that strange CV. For one thing, at the time people didn't understand yet why someone would brag about contributing to a Harry Potter movie. But to pair that children's picture with either a Spanish title they hadn't heard of or a movie that they knew was sexually explicit? Who was this guy? Roma is who he is. I like some of his other films more--I would argue that his approach hurts the performances here--but it seems impossible for him to make anything this personal again. The baldly emotional highs that it reaches come not only from the direct simplicity of the story but also from the sophisticated perspective with which it's being downloaded directly from Cuaron's memory. (It's also, accidentally or purposefully, quite a political film at this moment in time. It insists, sometimes in the dialect of Mixtec, that these people around us silently washing dishes or picking up dog poo are, in fact, part of our family.) There's a moment when one brother throws something at another's head, barely missing, and they both stop in their tracks with fear about how tragically things could have ended up. My dad experienced a similar moment in his childhood, and he would tell the same story about Uncle Steve throwing a shoe at him any time we passed the wooden door with a dent in it at my grandma's house. What a tiny moment to live on for decades, in tangible and intangible ways. Cuaron claims that all of these moments shape us, and taking us to the moon was only a warm-up for resurrecting them for us. 7. Happy As Lazzaro (Alice Rohrbacher)- Alice Rohrwacher won the screenplay award at Cannes, probably because her script for Happy As Lazzaro is fundamentally unpredictable. Games of checkers are unpredictable though. That word doesn't quite cover the way the viewer is forced to guess at something as elemental as "What year is this taking place?" And none of the twists and turns of the storytelling--I refuse to spoil--would gel if Rohrwacher as a director wasn't teaching you how to watch the film the whole time with a rich, warm, light touch. Considering the purity of this vision as a fable, buoyed by realistic labor concerns on the other hand, it's a pity that people are calling Birdbox "crazy" when something like this is just a few clicks down on that service. 6. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)- When assessing The Favourite, the easy temptation is to say that because it isn't stuffy, because of its scabrous wit or its intimate filming techniques, that it "isn't your mother's chamber drama." It is invigorating, but in a lot of ways, the film isn't saying anything that the average Masterpiece Theater production doesn't. Instead it takes cultural touchstones about the emptiness of power and distorts them, much like the fish-eye lenses that Yorgos Lanthimos favors to photograph the palace. It says an easy thing in a hard way, with conviction to burn. Lanthimos seems freed by not having to write the screenplay, and every decision of his is rooted in making things more narrow. The barrel distortion of the fish-eye seems apt for this idea, but so do the secret passageways that Queen Anne gets wheeled through to avoid the lower rungs of the estate. Of course there's no outside world to intrude upon her majesty. But there's even an inner world to the inner world. (It's impossible to watch Olivia Colman's gonzo depiction of Anne's incurious indolence and not think of Trump.) I'm convinced that Emma Stone can do anything, and the final shot, an all-timer, only validates that suspicion. 5. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (Gus Van Sant)- You have to check out every Gus Van Sant movie, even after a few missteps, because you never know: He might take the emotional climax that you didn't even know you wanted and score it to inter-diegetic "Still Rock 'N Roll to Me," thus grounding real poignance with even realer goofiness.I'll admit that the bar is low, but this is probably the most authentic, least treacly movie ever made about addiction recovery. Van Sant, who wrote, directed, and edited, tells the story with patient command. We take Joaquin Phoenix for granted at this point, but everybody on the poster is exceptional. And Udo Kier gets to say, "Pop, pop. It's always about penises." INSTANT CLASSICS

4. A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper)- In one scene Cooper's Jackson Maine wears a black leather jacket under a brown leather vest, and the movie itself risks that kind of hat-on-a-hat silliness and redundancy. But instead it comes off as the best kind of big swing, a comforting and warm serving of Old Hollywood. Cooper's camera knows how to embrace silence and let the leads play off each other to craft raw, touching performances. Sometimes the close-ups are so intense and focused that, when he cuts back to a master, it's disorienting to be reminded that there are other people in that space, in the world at all.The movie's deficiencies come from "Wait, how much time has passed?" moments in the writing, problems that I always have had with Eric Roth projects. But it's easy to get swept up in a movie of moments that believes so much in itself.

3. Mission: Impossible- Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)- The pattern of Mission: Impossible- Fallout is: infodump that explains the stakes and the strategy of what we're about to see, followed by an action sequence that is somehow even more thrilling than the one that came before it. Imagine a really interesting day of grade school classes, in which you learned, like, multiplication, followed by recess every other period. As for T.C., what more could you possibly want out of a human being?

2. Wildlife (Paul Dano)- When Jerry, Jake Gyllenhaal's groundskeeper of pathetic pride, figures out that his boss is about to fire him in front of his son, he smiles and, through clenched teeth, asks if this talk can happen tomorrow. Part of him actually believes that postponing the meeting will help; maybe the boss's temper will cool overnight. But this is a man who is bound by the same desperate spirit as his wife Jeanette, who muses, "Tomorrow something will happen that will make us feel different." When people are living day-to-day, clinging to their dignity--he refers to himself as a "small person" at one point--tomorrow really does offer a regenerative power. Those characters are the same-pole magnets that inform this coming-of-age tale, and the subtext of the film is "Can you believe Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal have a fourteen-year-old son?" It works for the 1960 setting because these are people who defined themselves before they knew who they were, and they'll now do anything to re-define themselves as brave/sexy/valuable. But it works for the actors too. Gyllenhaal in particular is tender and heartbreaking in a true supporting role, allowing himself to look his age, framing himself with the dad akimbo arms. But Mulligan's fake confidence is great too, especially in a scene in which she nearly begs her husband to let her work. Something tells me that I should credit a director for coaxing two career best performances from two great actors. Some people just have it, and Paul Dano does.

1. First Reformed (Paul Schrader)- In 1998 I dragged my father to see Paul Schrader's Affliction, a movie that was kind of about my father's father. When the end credits rolled on that bleak, wrenching film, my dad turned to me and said, "I feel like I have to take a shower." We walked around a nearby hotel and talked for an hour, not that he was able to articulate why he was so shaken. We discussed the difference between entertainment and art and what makes a piece of either successful. Even though he hated the experience, he couldn't deny that it was an experience. He kept on saying, "That's not why I go to the movies." And no matter what I, fifteen at the time, told him, he couldn't understand that's exactly why I go to the movies. First Reformed had the same mesmerizing effect as the best of Schrader's work: When I exited the building, I stumbled into the sunlight because I had been trapped in someone else's mind for almost two hours.

Part of that effect comes from the narrative device of Reverend Toller's journal, which plants us in his headspace from the beginning. Part of it comes from the intimate scale of the film, which features only a handful of locations. But if what I'm explaining seems small, then I'm doing a bad job. The canvas expands. Schrader insists that our care for the environment is our most immediate responsibility; this film historian has no problem with planting the film at 2017 in dialogue. And that emphasis is matched only by his disdain for how big business encroaches on personal aspects of our lives. There's even a scene that tries to account for a recent rise in extremism among young people. As if to prove that he isn't being pedantic, he has one character communicate one of those ideas, letting you assume that role is his mouthpiece, then he has another character reply with something just as convincing. First Reformed weaves in those elements, but it's ultimately a character piece that humanizes the type of person we think we know but for which we have no frame of reference. In Ethan Hawke's piercing performance, we see a Reform minister who punishes himself actively and passively for what he thinks are sins. He uses faith as an armor and as an excuse, being so of the mind and--as another character puts it--"in the garden" that he denies himself medical care. No matter what anyone else tells him, he is convinced of one of the tenets that Schrader could never shake from his Calvinist upbringing: There's nothing you can do to save yourself.

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