#i got to finally finally finally properly do peter pan from the air!!! (rather than awkwardly ending up on the mat when i try)

[danzafila]

oh btw finally achieved my first (and second and third) aerial invert yesterday!!!!

[apheamoon]

Lonely Souls - Chapter 1

Peter Quill x Reader AU 

A/N - omg guys, my first chapter!! I’m not sure how this whole scenario is going to pan out, but it was an idea I had late at night last night and I really liked it. It might be a little confusing to start off with, but please don’t let that put you off! Enjoy guys! :)

Warnings - based off the MCU (set directly after the events of Endgame), there’s going to be a slowburn to the relationship, love triangles, slight angst.

——————————————————————

Searching for Gamora was more difficult than anything else. To the rest of the Guardians, they saw little to no point in searching for her, despite the fact that she worked with the group for more or less 5 years. The Gamora they knew and loved was gone - in her place was, yes, a woman who resembled her in both looks and backstory, but as well as that, this Gamora was from the past. A past that all of the Guardians knew of...but the wrong past all the same. Their Gamora was gone, and that was a fact they had all accepted and regrettably tried to move on from.

Well. Almost all of them.

Quill was still smitten with Gamora. To him, she was everything he wanted in a woman - badass, independent, warm-hearted (when she wanted to be). What more was there to want? He, to be completely honest, was in love with her. Sure, there were other women that he had met on the odd occasion when he went from planet to planet, scavenging for parts to sell and what-not, but they were just one-night flings. Not many of the women he had been attracted to in the past mattered to him...but Gamora...

It was frustrating, in his eyes. Her father, Thanos (stupid name, stupid chin), had killed her in order to grasp his hands onto a bit of stone. Quill didn’t see much of a point in that. To him, it was stupid (like Thanos). But then again, he wasn’t a psychopath. Sure, he was a bit reckless at times, but a psycho? Nah. Nope. Nada. But all the same, it was frustrating. He had finally found someone, apart from himself, that he genuinely cared about. And as soon as he got ahold of it properly, it was taken away from him.

“Where we goin’, Quill?” Rocket slapped the back of Peter’s seat as he made his way towards the front part of the ship.

Drax was snoring soundly in one of the seats, a bag of Zarg-Nuts barely hanging from his left hand. A few of the snacks had, in fact, fallen onto the floor, unknown to anyone else. But that was normal. Groot, meanwhile, was playing on his gaming console, quietly muttering curses under his breath. Nebula was in her bunker of the ship, alone. That was where she retreated to if either Groot or Rocket started to get on her nerves. It was better than screaming or stabbing them and starting a riot in the teams only safe space. Mantis...? She was staring into space. Literally. She was literally staring into space. And who could forget Thor?! The Guardian’s had adopted the Asgardian for a short amount of time, allowing him to ride to space with them for something to do. He was sitting near Quill, speaking about how is ex-girlfriend - Jane - had brutally dumped him. However, as soon as Rocket came towards the two, Thor’s absent rambling came to a slow halt.

“Well, rabbit,” Spinning his plump self to the left, Thor reached over and gave Rocket’s head a good massage, “I think we’re going t-“

“Morag.” Quill cut Thor’s sentence off, a hint of coldness in his tone.

Tracing his fingers over the buttons of the Milano, Quill hooked his music player up to it and set the ship onto autopilot. His eyes began to lighten up, slowly, as the sound of Surrender by Cheap Trick began to play through the cheap speakers that Rocket had managed to win through a gamble. The raccoon sighed softly, shaking his head and looking towards the star stricken paradise the crew were journeying through.

“Quill-“ Folding his arms across his furry chest, the Raccoon pulled a face of disappointment towards his friend’s blunt response, “Don’t ya think, y’know, it’s time to give up on lookin’ for her? She doesn’t wanna be found.”

Rocket’s words were a harsh reality and close to the truth that Quill had tried to block out. If Gamora wanted to be found by any of the team, she would have gotten onto the ship as soon as the battle with Thanos was over. From what any of the crew could gather, Gamora fought her fight, then got back onto a sub-ship of some sort and travelled back to space. It made sense, really. These people where nothing but strangers to her.

“Well,” Peter squinted his eyes for a moment, his forehead creasing over with what could only be described as stress, “What if...she wanted to be found and she just doesn’t know it yet?”

Rocket and Thor both shared the same look of confusion.

“I have to agree with the animal,” Thor sighed, scratching his beard softly, “It seems to me that the maiden doesn’t want to be found. Sorry-“ He burped suddenly, pounding his chest with the palm of his hand. The burp was loud, and nasty, but it made Thor smirk, “Pardon me. Anyway, she doesn’t know you guys. Gamora is from a past that is, I’m afraid to say, very different from our own.”

“What difference does that make?” Quill shook his head, a mixture of sadness and confusion melting into his voice, “If she was our family once, why can’t she be our family again?!”

This wasn’t the Quill that Rocket knew before the whole...snap situation. But then again, Rocket had been without his crew for almost 5 years, so the raccoon knew what it was like to love and lose people of his own. Unfortunately, though, he had to learn the hard way and that moving on was what was best for himself in those dark times. So, naturally, Rocket took it upon himself to make Peter see the bigger picture.

“Look, Quill, you’re actin’ a little sappy now. Even Mantis doesn’t act like this, an’ she’s a hopeless romantic!”

Upon hearing her name, Mantis peered from behind Groot and waved over towards Quill, Rocket and Thor, her eyes glistening and a dazed smile on her face. Rocket looked to her for a moment, his ears going backwards. Then, returning his attention over to towards Peter again, he continued with what he was saying.

“What I’m tryna say is, y’know, maybe it’s for the best if y’move on. I mean, y’got us! We’re still here! Right Groot?”

“I am Groot!”

“I’m going to pretend he didn’t say that,” Quill sighed, aiming the comment over towards Groot and leaning back in his chair, “Also, Rocket, I’m the captain. What I say goes. So if I say we’re going to continue looking for Gamora, then that’s what we’re doing!”

“Well, actually,” Thor stretched his arms upwards towards the sky and hummed out a small laugh, his hands going over towards his stomach and tapping it, “I am the strongest Avenger, so technically, I- Odin’s Beard what is that?!”

The Asgardian’s eyes widened as he saw a figure begin to come towards the Milano at a colossal speed. Whatever the figure was, it was masked and dressed in a coat that was honestly too heavy to be worn when flying through space, if they were flying through space at all. Upon further inspection, the figure looked as though it had been chucked out of something, rather than gone for a flight, because it wore no rocket boots, and had no amount of flying equipment on it.

Sighing, Quill stopped the ship and watched as the figure smushed itself into the front window of the ship. The noise of the window and the figure colliding together boomed through the ship, and Drax awoke from his slumber abruptly, his arms flailing in the air and the Zarg-Nuts in his hand falling to the ground.

“Quill!” He shouted, jumping up from his chair and pointing over to the figure on the glass, “Someone is trying to get on the ship! I have spotted an intruder!!”

“Drax, y’late to the party. Sit down!” Rocket scowled, pointing a finger over towards the Mutate and shaking his head.

Meanwhile, Quill was in silent thought. In pure honesty, this situation reminded him of the moment The Guardians had met with Thor, but something seemed...different. He got up from his chair quietly and pressed on his ear piece, a heavy sigh escaping from his lips.

“Let’s get this show on the road.” He told them all, his face serious before it disappeared behind his mask and he left the ship.

As soon as Quill left the ship, it went silent between the three who were at the front of it. As Drax slowly picked up his bag of Zarg-Nuts from off the floor, he began to crunch into them, the silence being engulfed by the sound of his chewing.

“Huh,” Thor sighed, kicking his feet up and smiling eagerly, “I wonder what type of show Quill is going to be putting on for us!”

———————————————————————

Tags:

@peterspideyy

[dragons-bones]

The White Vault Season Three Roundup

Posting this as the tenth and final episode of the season is now in public release!

So I listened to the early release of the season finale on Saturday, screamed a lot, and immediately sat down and re-listened to the whole season. The following post is being put behind a read more for both length and season-wide (finale included) spoilers and includes discussion and theorizing for season four, which Travis confirmed is the penultimate season. (IS IT OCTOBER YET.) Please DO NOT READ until you listen to the finale!

First and foremost, I was originally a little concerned that season three would end up hitting all of the same story beats as the first two seasons without anything new, particularly on the matter of the mystery: lots of puzzle pieces that still don't quite fit together. Arguably we still don't have any clear answers...but we have a lot more pieces that I think we're seeing the overall shape. There is definitely some sort of centuries-and-continents-spanning conspiracy, one dedicated to keeping the shadow monster(s) and totem monsters fed, or appeased, or something, along with the people and civilization that revolves around these creatures. We don't know the why, we don't know the how, but I am personally surprisingly at ease with not having anything answered at this point--honestly I am having an incredible amount of fun speculating in my own mind and reading other fans' takes on tumblr and reddit. Travis and Katie confirming we have a fourth and fifth season to finish telling the story gives me a lot of confidence, particularly since season four is going to take a vastly different tack than the first three seasons.

The Documentarian confirms in the opening of episode one that she had come into possession of the information she presents to whom we knew as of episode five to be Graham "Fuck You I Have A Shotgun" Casner just a few days ago. Episode ten confirms that the events of season three literally occurred within the last few weeks and Dr. Zhou "Fuck You I Have A Frying Pan" Liu, Dr. Josepha Guerrero, and Simon "Fuck You I Am Getting Off This Mountain If I Have To Tobogan Down It" Hall may still be alive up in the caves. I am practically frothing at the mouth with excitement because this really raises the stakes for next season, and while I'm more than certain the entire cast isn't making it out alive...enough might. And in this situation: the dangers are known by both the rescue party and the scientists; and the scientists are the kind who might be able to begin putting our puzzle pieces together, along with whatever the Documentarian acquires elsewhere.

I want to give an especial shoutout to Peter Lewis as Graham Casner. I remember when I first listened to The White Vault, I was a bit uncertain about his voicework: he has a very deliberate, almost stilted-sounding delivery as Graham. His performance really clicked for me when we got the segue ways of him narrating Russian journal entries into an English translation: his Russian, to my ear, sounds very smooth with no hesitation. My thought is, English isn't Graham's first language, and his measured way of speaking is how he ensures he organizes his thoughts properly to be understood. And just--his performance this season was SO GOOD. Especially in the finale, he sounded so raw and angry and just a little bit broken over the discovery that the body Dr. Liu and Dr. Guerrero found truly wasn't Dr. Ureta (I thought, in episode nine, that they're comment of "that's not Dr. Ureta" was more a metaphoric "that's not her anymore" based on what they knew of Simon's experience so far), but Rosa. Like. Holy shit. 10/10 Peter Lewis, godDAMN.

(Aside: props to all the voice actors this season. We really heard them come into their stride as the season progressed, but special props to: Danilo Battistini as Lucas, who showcased Lucas’s descent into (religious fervor inspired?) madness; Eric Nelsen as Simon, who got saddled with a lot of the technical archaeological talk and made it sound natural (really evident when you listen to the bloopers); and Diane Casanova as Eva, who did a fantastic job showing her dealing with the stress of the situation while still remaining snarky and defiant.)

And now to Rosa--who was, unquestionably, my favorite member of the Fristed expedition, so I was, in fact, yelling like a mad thing while my heart went icy and broken when the body was identified as hers. So, I remember reading in a post-episode speculation thread on reddit earlier in the season that maybe the tunnels between Svalbard and Patagonia were connected and this was the same shadow monster as the Fristed team encountered. I thought this was particularly far-fetched bullshit, but, uh apparently not? Good job, fellow speculator! You called it! Perhaps they're not physically connected (that stretches my suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point, considering Svalbard and Patagonia are on literal opposite ends of the planet), but maybe it's a space-time distortion, and the deep caves between Svalbard and Patagonia (and Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China, and wherever else this strange civilization has pockets of activity) are linked via supernatural means. And a space-time distortion would explain why to Graham, it didn't seem too much time had passed for him in the tunnels before he found a way out, even though it was weeks if not months before he was located.

(Brief side note: definitely the Svalbard totem monster that got him, that strange walrus-like entity with the super-elongated phalanges. Also features in Artifact. That totem monster scares me and scares me deeply.)

So does this mean the shadow monster at Fristed and Piedra are the same, able to travel between locations depending on which ones have people near them? (SPOILER FOR ARTIFACT: it's implied there's more than one and they can "travel" via the totem animal artifacts END SPOILER) Does this mean we might see "Jonas" again? Oooooh, two shadow monsters, das bad, das really bad.

(Another brief side note, since I didn't do an episode nine roundup: the dark part of my mind that loves the creepy horror elements of this podcast was overjoyed at being slam-dunked right into the fucked-up-edness of the return of the still-beating heart and teeth in a stone box. Just. Good shit, lots of nightmares, jumping at shadows that night, S U P E R B.

...Wait, Rosa's is the first body actually found, even though we know the shadow monster killed her. Karina's, Walter's, and Carito's bodies never showed up, and we know their hearts and teeth ended up in the stone boxes. Does that mean Rosa's didn't? Is there specific significance to this?)

The sites do seem to be very different: China was a mountain village, most of the village open air with their private ritual rooms carved into the mountainside; Svalbard's might be under a glacier, and is an entire underground village, with its ritual sites buried beneath it; and Patagonia is less a proper village and more a winding system of living quarters and open public/ritual spaces. Svalbard is also currently the only one (that we know of, we have no information about the interior of the China site) using teeth to pave its stairs so, uh, take that as you will.

Teeth appear a lot. I have a thing about teeth, and yet The White Vault doesn't ping it? It's rather strange.

RAIMY. RAIMY YOU GO GET YOUR MAN. PROUD OF YOU, PLEASE DON'T DIE. (Honestly, though, I get the feeling if the shadow monster breathes anywhere in the general vicinity of Raimy, Simon will go batshit and beat the thing to death himself. He is injured but he is pissed.)

I continue to have low expectations about Eva's survival. That she got off the mountain is a surprise--stalked by the shadow monster, perhaps hoping she lures more people to the caves?--and that her 'infection' (excuse me as I continue to have flashbacks to Jane Prentiss in TMA Season One and cry uncontrollably because oh my gooooooooood) hasn't, y'know, gotten properly ugly yet. But goddamn I love her spirit, I love that she's so determined to get the rest of the team out. I WANT her to survive, but all the clues are pointing at REALLY BAD SHIT happening to her.

I remain deeply curious about whether or not Dr. Ureta’s previous trip to the Patagonia site is what primed her to be the first victim of the Piedra team. This might very well be something we don’t ever receive a proper answer to--sometimes some mysteries remain so, after all--but I do find it telling that we have very little of her personal thoughts, unlike the other members of the team (aside, of course, from Lucas).

Dr. Guerrero remains the loose end for me: Simon and Dr. Liu have both shown an utter lack of fucks to give about not letting this monster have them, but Dr. Guerrero was so tunnel-visioned on the science of the find that we notes and thoughts we have her don’t give us a conclusive enough picture about what to expect going forward. But we might end up surprised.

I’m very interested to see what Maheer and Dragana bring to the table: Maheer is obviously the Documentarian’s man because of a very nice paycheck, and Graham’s grumbling about Dragana’s prodding for details has me on alert mostly because Graham is my guy and he deserves a fucking nap and a vacation for all the shit he’s had to deal with.

The White Vault: Iluka is coming up this month on Patreon; I’m willing to bet this is what the Documentarian is preoccupied with while Graham and the rescue team head into the mountains. I’m really curious to see whether or not this might have anything to do with the events of the short Acquisition? I feel we’re due for that to come into play...

There is just. So much. So damn much.

IS IT OCTOBER YEEEEEEET.

[secondstartotheright-imagines]

There Is No Escape - Part 15 - Finale

Note: It has been a LONG time since I updated this blog, and I will be making sure I do it more regularly now for you guys, and although this is the last chapter for this particular story it isn’t the last of things that will be posted here. I just feel like this one has come to an end and if I continue it further it won’t be as exciting as it has been to write. I’m so glad you’ve all enjoyed this one! <3

Killian Jones x Peter Pan x Reader

Words: 1,505

Disclaimer: None of the GIFs are mine so all credit goes to the creators <3

Masterlist

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

PREVIOUSLY

“What if he is right….” In that instant, the bars of the cage disappeared from around you and allowed Pan to shuffle himself closer to you on the floor and take your hands in his. This isn’t the first time he has been close to you but it is the first time you feel a genuine emotion radiating from him; one that shows he feels a whole lot more than just lust towards you. “…what if I do feel something for you?”

“If you did you have a funny way of showing it.”

You aren’t sure what to believe, for the past few days you had been focused on nothing other than Killian, getting back his heart and leaving the island with him, but now that your first memory of coming to Neverland has returned to your mind you are already hearing the doubts in your mind.

“I’m the King of Neverland [y/n], leader of the Lost Boys, showing my feelings is hardly a forte of mine.”

“I can’t argue with you there.” You offer him a smile but it doesn’t quite reach your ears as a soft sigh escaped from you. “I’m sorry I betrayed you. I genuinely thought that he, well, I suppose it doesn’t matter what I thought now. I know the truth and now he really does need to go.”

Pan had been looking at your interlocked fingers when you spoke this and his head suddenly snapped up as a look of surprise etched its way onto his face. Your words are the last thing he had been expecting but internally he was smirking that infamous little smirk of his….finally he was going to be getting rid of the pirate and by the sounds of it he didn’t even need to get his hands dirty by killing him.

“Give him back his heart and I will tell him to leave. He is only here for me. If I tell him that the saviour is his love then he will have no reason to stay here.”

The boy seriously has to restrain himself from showing the smugness he felt at the fact that he has got one well and truly over the pirate. He distracted himself a little by nodding in response to what you said before helping you up onto your feet. Of course he had been looking forward to acting out the other rather elaborate plans he’d had for both the pirate and you but, for now anyway, he would let this go your way.

If he found out you were playing him again then he would quickly put aside the feelings he had towards you and make sure you were punished properly.

“No time like the present then….the sooner he leaves the sooner I can get my Lost Girl back.”

                                          * * * * * * * * * * 

In your whole time on Neverland there had only been two times….three at the very most….where every single pair of eyes were on you as you wandered into the main area where you would all gather on a night. Some of the boys were simply looking at you in pure confusion, unsure of what spin this little drama had now taken, but the majority (especially Felix) were looking at you with nothing but suspicion. Some going so far as to draw their weapons and aim them at them.

But your focus wasn’t on them. The fact that you had some rather dangerous items pointed in your direction didn’t even faze you in the slightest….because your eyes were on the tall man currently tied to the largest tree in camp.

“Killian….” His blue eyes looked up from the ground, locking onto you, but you didn’t see the life in them that you had grown so accustomed to. Without his heart he felt nothing; he knew who you were, what you had been through, but any emotion connected to those moments of his life had been erased temporarily. He wasn’t even able to muster a smile at the fact that you were still alive.”…listen to me and listen to me good Pirate.”

The word itself had never bothered you, having been part of Killian’s crew for so many years before coming to this island, but right now you were putting on a show in front of the boys and they needed to hear the disgust in your voice because after everything that had happened they needed the reassurance that they still had the loyalty of their only Lost Girl.

Peter himself was getting ready for the highlight of this little show that you were putting on and looked so comfortable in his wooden chair that a tub of popcorn balancing on his lap wouldn’t have looked all that much out of place at all.

“You are going to forget EVERYTHING about me….” The pirate’s brows furrowed slightly at your words, but he made no attempt to respond in any way vocally. “….you never met me all those years ago, you never loved me, and you most certainly never came here to find me.”

Peter had been all ready to wear that infamous smirk of his as you gave Killian his heart, telling him to leave both the island and you, but the way this seemed to be going now was completely off script. This hadn’t been discussed at all. A big part of him was now wanting to put an end to this, drag you aside and ask what the hell you were doing, but the curiosity in him far outweighed the controlling part of his nature and so instead he remained where he was to see just how all this unfolded.

“You will go home to your precious little saviour and never step foot on the shores of Neverland again.”

A wave of murmurs passed through the camp as each of the boys started to speculate about what was going on, about why you were now turning against the pirate you had been so hell bent on leaving the island with , there was far too much confusion for them right now.

Without saying another word, you drove his heart back into his chest with far more force than was probably necessary, using the move to unleash some of the anger you were feeling, and simply stepped away from his now unconscious form (thanks to your brute force) without so much as a second look at him.

“Drag him back to that rat-infested ship of his before he wakes up and be sure to inform his scummy crew of the new restrictions now on them all.”

The boys were about to stand up and vocalise their annoyance at someone other than Pan barking them orders but as they opened their mouths not a single sound came out of them – no matter how hard they tried their voices seemed to be completely lost, Slightly was attempting to scream out so hard that his whole face had turned a beetroot red colour and his eyes…well they looked like they were close to popping right out of his head.

“You will all do as [y/n] has just told you….” Peter casually strolled past each and every one of the Lost Boys, his words aimed at them but his eyes fixed solely on you as he closed the gap between you, and it was only when he was within arms reach of you that he released the magic on them, allowing them some much needed air to their lungs. “….or I’ll gut you all like fish and if any of you want to see the sun rise tomorrow you will continue to obey both your King…..and your Queen.”

Queen. You had no idea if you’d heard him correctly but given the ear to ear grin he was throwing in your direction you could only assume that you had. Peter Pan wanted you as his Queen. You had done good. Not only had you rid yourself of someone that was destined for another but you had gained the utmost respect off the one person that had shown you down the right path.

Felix and Slightly, rather reluctantly, made their way over to the slowly awakening pirate grabbing one of his arms each but before they left the camp Peter appeared in front of them. His forest green eyes turned into two black bottomless pits as a malicious smirk tugged at his lips that were now almost touching Killian’s ear.

“I won Hook. I always win. [Y/n] will always be mine.”

Of course Killian had no idea who Pan was, or what he was even talking about, but Peter himself knew just how much the pirate had lost today….and it made him feel so very warm inside when he felt your fingers lacing themselves around his. There would be no more attempts to leave the island, no more threats against him or his boys, there was just going to be you and him ruling the island together.

Neverland was going to be your forever home.

                                   ~~~~~The End~~~~~

Permanent tag list: @fallenfairy16​ @brieflybigwonderland​ @buckywintersoldierbarnes2017​ @whorha​

Story tag list: @modified-wonderland​@dottirose​ @lust-for-pan​@xoxoaudreymarie​@xxlilmissforeverxx​ @darkheartedstars​@thebeautywithinme​

[scriptureofashes]

hey! can i request a spideypool soulmate au where the first words of your soulmate that you hear from them is tattooed on your arm kinda thing with peter having a Really strange sentence on his arm like just a bunch of curse words or something absolutely ridiculous and out of context? i think that would be so funny

this starts out angsty, turns cracky and ends fluffy, what have I done

(ps: wade is speculated to be 28-35, I’ve aged him down only slightly because peter is over 20 when they meet here)

Peter makes a point of never letting anyone see his mark.

Even as a little kid, he remembers Uncle Ben and Aunt May’s frowns when they saw it for the first time, gobsmacked by his soulmate’s utter cheek. Before the accident, Ben would always tut under his breath and mutter on about manners and subtlety. That by itself was enough to convince Peter to strap a watch or a cloth of sorts over it.

To this day, Peter still sticks to covering it, all-too aware of the extra fun he’d be made of if these words ever got around. He’s not particularly ecstatic on feeding the bullying.

May still snorts at the sight of it though, after some considerable wine intake.

(mind the readmore, mobile users!)

Ned is the second person to see it.

“Dude.”

It’s after a rather strenuous PE lesson, so they had hit the showers quick before they can go to team practice. They’re the last ones in the locker room and Peter is frankly so damn stressed about everything that’s been going on in just this last week—coming back from his literal ashes and to the Spider-Man shindig with a Spanish quiz around the corner—that he completely forgets.

He stops toweling his hair, eyes darting back and forth between his bare wrist and his best friend’s failing attempt to contain his disbelief, and throws him a sheepish grin.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“Dude.”

It shouldn’t surprise him that MJ sees it next.

The strap on his watch snaps. It snaps, and it’s summer, so he can’t at least try to cover it with his sleeves, and has he mentioned his life sucks? Because it does. It freaking sucks.

It’s not odd to hide your words from the world. People do it more often than you’d think, but it comes from an outdated, conservative concept, so nowadays, society encourages you to flaunt them with pride. Those who insist on concealing them, especially if they’re young, are slightly frowned at.

And, realistically, he knows the words aren’t bad, per se, but they’re not the kind you’d look at without reacting a little, and he’s learned the hard way that kids and teenagers are the absolute worst when it comes to these things. It doesn’t take much to poke fun at someone who’s just slightly off the norm, so if it’s Peter Parker with something like that as his soulmark? Well, he can only imagine the hell Flash would raise for it at school.

He’s just about two seconds into panicking in the middle of team practice, watching Flash on the podium, when tan hands take the watch away from his fussy hands to slide a red cloth over his inked skin. MJ’s own words stare back at him as she ties off the hairband, ones he actually recognizes but says nothing about.

When she’s done, she takes a step aside. She gives him a brief once-over, and then her expression turns appreciative, clearly agreeing with the contents of his mark.

She winks when she turns away, and Peter feels his face on fire.

Mr. Stark, surprisingly, doesn’t react. At first.

Because Peter’s a complete idiot, as Mr. Stark tells him later, he forgoes precautions and pays the price when they’re testing out an upgrade for one of his web shooters. Something malfunctions, and advanced spider healing or not, it still burns when it goes all the way down his forearm, like the freaking Devil himself took a hold of his hand and yanked.

Peter almost comments on how literally fading to bits had hurt less, but when he opens his mouth he’s levelled with a stare very reminiscent of Aunt May’s, and acknowledges the too soon. Even if it has been almost two years.

Mr. Stark has to push back his sleeve to see the damage and get the right treatment from the First Aid kit one of his bots fetched, and Peter squeaks, indignated, despite his arm hurting enough to be a concern. His mentor actually pauses as he surveys his arm, face paper blank for a few moments. Either he’s seen worse or the injury takes precedence, because all Peter’s given is a split-second look, then calloused hands rub some soothing balm on his arm and the lab safety lecture comes on.

Later, bandaged and properly chastised, Peter chances a look at Mr. Stark. His face is still hard to read, as it sort of always is, but he’s staring back dead on. The silence is somewhat excruciating.

Anyhow, this lasts about three seconds before Peter notices the knowing glint in his mentor’s eyes and the clear effort he’s making at holding back his laughter. It occurs to Peter that maybe he realized why the mark is always hidden by the watch and is trying not to say anything in respect to Peter’s feelings.

So Peter gives him a mile and laughs, abrupt and a bit deprecating, but he can’t help himself, and Mr. Stark’s responding grin is wide and nothing short of exasperated.

“Jesus, kid. You have your hands full.”

And Peter laughs all the harder, catching his breath enough to quip, “I thought it was the other way around?”

It takes a surprising half-minute before the meaning sinks in.

“You’re grounded.”

Peter keeps cackling.

He used to think about hearing them for the first time as often as one does think about hearing their soulmate’s first words to them. He used to feel this sort of anticipation and, he admits, desperation for it, when he still dreamt of becoming like those people in the movies whose soulmate comes and saves them from their not-so-rosy lives.

That was before Spider-Man, however, and before Peter grew up enough to know that’s a load of crap. No one can save you but yourself.

Spider-Man is a hero. He’s the people’s man, an actual knighted Avenger by both Iron Man and Captain Marvel, at the beck and call of every criminal that decides to be naughty one particular night. He’s New York’s reliable savior, a figure to look up to and someone to depend on.

It’s understandable how he still longs to hear them, ridiculous and problematic aside, seeing as he doesn’t have time to be his own hero.

He does hear them. At long last, he hears them, and the moment he does, he wishes he didn’t.

It happens when he’s out on a lead about a rich dude’s friends kidnapping the girl that dumped him and teach her how much of a mistake it was to run away from him. Considering the guy’s sadistic tendencies in his criminal record, Peter doesn’t blame her at all.

Spider-Man sneaks into the empty warehouse he finds them in and drops down quietly, though unnecessarily so. The guys—three, and none of them were even assigned guard duty—are arguing so loudly he could have burst in banging pots and pans and none of them would turn.

“Well, it’s about time I had fun and got the imbeciles going for ‘walking cliché’!” he says in lieu of greeting. They’re all in ninja masks too, what is this. “Seriously, guys. A shady warehouse in the shady part of town? What’s wrong with an old-fashioned basement?”

The trio whips out actual knives, like the idiots they are. If he bristles, it’s at the sight of an asian, half-naked girl, gagged, tied to a chair and dotted with colorful bruises. He’s been doing this for almost six years now and seeing innocents touched up like that—it still gets to him, gets his blood boiling.

He snaps his fingers as to show them some sort of realization.

“Let me guess. Is this a Febreeze commercial?”

Goon #1 looks like he’s about to make a terrible decision and lunge, when there’s a static noise only Spider-Man can pick up. Something crackles in the air from somewhere behind the girl, looking steadily more miserable, a poor quality sound even he has trouble discerning. One of the goons goes to the source of it—a battered but fully functional radio transmitter.

It’s a song.

Here I go, here I go, here I go again (again?)Girls, what’s my weakness? (Men!)

Spider-Man freezes. Suddenly everything around him stills and everything within him explodes, not just because this is not the time—he knows that song, he knows the lyrics to it by heart.

The guys finally freak out at the fact that Spider-Man is in front of them and about to spoil their plan, flinging loud curses at each other. Goon #1 suggests taking him on and Spider-Man dubs him the dumbest of the three, rightfully so when Goons #2 and #3 start screaming at him. The song plays on.

Shoop shoop ba-doop shoop ba-doopShoop ba-doop ba-doopBa-doop shoop ba-doop shoopBa-doop shoop ba-doop, ba-doop, ba-doop

Just as he feels anticipation snap, a red and black figure swings out of somewhere into the scene, guns and swords ablazing.

And singing along the words imprinted on the skin of his left wrist.

“Ooooh, you’re packed and you’re stacked ‘specially in the backBrother, wanna thank your mother for a butt like that!”

And wreaking absolute havoc. The guys don’t even have time to wisely make a break for it—because who wouldn’t—before the whole thing turns into a whirlwind of blood and gore.

“Can I get some fries with that shake-shake boobie? If looks could kill you—” Goon #3 goes down with a sword up his guts, “Would be an uzi—”

Peter reacts on instinct when Goon #2 stumbles towards him. He kicks him right in the solar plexus, and right into a chokehold.

“You’re a shotgun, bang!” a gunshot to his head, “What’s up with that thang?”

They’re the lyrics to the song, but the mercenary never seems to let Peter off his sight as he keeps singing and finishes up the job. Goon #1 flops down, lifeless and messy. Peter can suddenly smell the sharp, sour tang of piss.

“I wanna know how does it hang?Straight up, wait up, hold up, Mr. LoverLike Prince said you’re a sexy mutha—”

The corpses are laid in a bloody pile, overstepped in favor of the transmitter going back to its alleged owner. Said owner proceeds into tucking away his weapons and untying the poor girl from the chair—and gently patting her on the shoulders after cladding them in a jacket he produces from God knows where—and steps away to give her some space while she collects herself.

Of course, that means he’s turned to Peter now, who for the life of him cannot move. He doesn’t think he can.

“Man. You don’t know how much I’ve been dying to meet you.”

Oh my God. There’s a joke there, he knows it.

“It’s like you’re running from me! The few times I do see you, you just slip away before I can go up and say hi. Seriously, I blink—” he snaps his fingers, “And you’re gone. Like an actual spider. Ha.”

Oh my God.

He places his hands behind his back, primly, but he looks like he can barely contain his giddiness.

“Also.” How is his mask doing that, how is his mask leering at him. “It’s as great as they say, by the way. Looks even better up close.”

Oh my God. Peter keeps quiet. It would be a choice, but it’s not.

“Anyway.” He sticks out one hand. “Great to finally meet you, Spidey.”

The hand is covered in blood. Oh my God. Peter shakes it nonetheless, and he hears him laugh. He does not think about how oddly pleasant it sounds or how his wrist tingles in response.

“Cat got your tongue? Or cat eat your tongue, in this case. A cat would kill and eat a spider, wouldn’t it? Anyway, I was expecting to hear Spider-Man’s sharp-tongue tonight.” He waggles his eyebrows at this.

Half-heartedly, Spider-Man slips back into role and nods his head. He absolutely says nothing and goes to the poor girl waiting for one of them to escort her home, and continues to do so even as he hears more absent-minded talking.

Oh my God. His soulmate is Deadpool. This is a nightmare.

As it turns out, Deadpool got hired by the rich ex-boyfriend to kidnap the girl and torture her if she refused to take him back. Deadpool took the money, shot the guy’s head and went off to track his friends so he could kill them too.

Peter doesn’t know what to take away from that, but a stubborn little voice in the back of his head goes, at least he’s got some morals.

It becomes a thing.

After the warehouse incident, Deadpool is always there. It’s like the carefully stacked dominoes of Peter’s life are knocked over in very quick succession, because Deadpool is always there.

Spider-Man is chasing down a pickpocketer and Deadpool is pointing at shortcuts from his perch on some building. Spider-Man is beating up a bankrobber and Deadpool is clapping on like some ridiculous high school cheerleader. Spider-Man is cooling down a hostage situation and Deadpool is shooting hands that hold weapons.

That last one still has Peter a tad miffed, and thereafter he was livid and on the very edge of a tongue-lashing. Deadpool knows of his firm ‘no killing, crippling, torturing and so on’ policy. He knows, and he still does what he does.

Spider-Man said nothing, did nothing but spare a glance at where the mercenary stood with his sniper rifle and fume on the inside as he recalled the man’s anguished screams and the blast of blood. He did nothing but count every rescued hostage and leave the feds to handle the rest.

He never says a word when Deadpool pops around.

In his defense, the moment he does is warranted.

It’s more often than he’d like that he stumbles upon rape scenes. He always knows it’s one blocks away, before he even swings into the alley and gives the asshole a swift kick to the head. And he always lets himself go on these types of situation, sees red everywhere.

So when Deadpool joins in on kicking the absolute crap out of the guy, Spider-Man throws one last punch and leaves him to it, knowing whatever is about to befall the piece of shit is an armageddon Spider-Man can’t deliver, but Deadpool certainly can.

He’s checking over the poor woman, relieved that the guy hadn’t even managed what he was going for other than ripping some of her clothes, when he catches the end of Deadpool’s rant, “—and there’s only one thing worse than a rapist—”

And quips back, “A child!” out of reflex.

Deadpool stops punching—and Peter was right, the man’s face is swollen, purple, unsalvageable—to stare back at him. Subsequently, there’s a groan and a body hitting the dirty concrete, but the merc doesn’t even waver. He’s staring straight at Peter, the mask unreadable for a change.

Spider-Man dials nine-one-one and gives them his location, bids farewell to the woman despite her pleas for him to stay and webs his way away, away, away.

He’s going to give Ned and Shuri so much hell for this.

One particular night, he sets up watch on a section of the city he’s never even been to as a civilian. He’s not running, except that he is. And there’s something tight in his chest, draining all the fight, draining all but the low-simmering anxiety.

Ergo, he keeps to surveillance and eats his deli from Mr. Delmar’s, texts Ned a string of nonsensical emojis because he can and thinks about how he’ll get started on his next paper—college is wild—with all those extra hours he’s doing for Jameson. He resolutely does not think about his soulmate and how much Deadpool he is.

But Peter… is Peter Parker. Of course that whole plan is shot straight to hell.

“A vine. A fucking vine.”

Peter pauses in his chewing, rolling his mask back down over his jaw, even if his back is what’s turned to Deadpool. The chill in the air turns suddenly sharp.

“Well, would you rather have the first verse to a freaking Salt-N-Pepa song?”

“What kind of question is that. Of course I would, Sandra Denton is a queen and whoever says different can eat a big bag of dicks. A huge bag of dicks. One of those huge, sack bags with colorful dildos in—”

“Jesus, yeah, point taken.”

He meant to sound annoyed, but laughs instead. The sound cuts through the underlying tension, melts it outright. Deadpool approaches him, steps slow and quiet. Peter lets him, fiddles with his phone as the merc settles at a respectable distance, eyes always on the evermoving city before them.

“I.” Deadpool pauses and doesn’t talk for some time, which in itself is a red flag. “Look, I get it. I wouldn’t wanna be saddled with a psychotic killer whose face looks like it was fossilized then reconstructed with wet newspapers, either.���

Peter blinks. Oh.

“I just…” Deadpool trails off again. “We could… ah, fucking shit on a pogo stick.”

The merc sighs, drags his hands down his face, and Peter realizes how much of an asshole he’s been. Deadpool is… Deadpool, to say the least, but there is a person under the suit, a broken man with a broken mind.

Just as he starts to get up, Peter slides over his bag of chips.

“I’m Peter.”

Deadpool freezes so abruptly it’s almost amusing. He’s staring at Spider-Man, open and hopeful, like he can’t believe what he’s been given, and Peter stares right back with a smile, despite the mask and the dark.

Deadpool takes the chips.

“Wade.”

[yearsblog]

How do you follow up a smash hit album that, in your native country alone, sold over a quarter of a million copies, spent two weeks at Number 1 (and didn’t budge from the Top 40 for over a year), spawned both a Number 1 (which itself sold just shy of a million copies) and a Number 2 single, and earned you four Brit Award nominations? With a bit of time and patience, it seems – or at least that’s how Years & Years have done it. The London-based, British-Australian trio’s second studio album ‘Palo Santo’, the follow up to 2015’s banger-filled, world-beating debut ‘Communion’, which put singer Olly Alexander and multi-instrumentalists Emre Türkmen and Mikey Goldsworthy on the proverbial map, has just been unleashed onto the world and currently boasts a handsome score of 82 on Metacritic, a 14-point increase on their previous offering. They may have, by their own admission, suffered from a little Difficult Second Album Syndrome, but the numbers don’t lie – their patience in crafting this record has absolutely paid off.

In reality, it’s not been an inordinately long wait for Years & Years fans, just three years, almost to the day – shorter than we were made to wait for recent sophomore offerings from Lorde, HAIM, Sam Smith and London Grammar. We meet for our interview on the third anniversary of the release of ‘Communion’,four days after ‘Palo Santo’ dropped, on the afternoon of the London instalment of the brief run of gigs across Europe and North America that are serving as the album’s launch parties. Despite being in the middle of a mad release week, packed with media appearances and album promotion, there’s little sign of fatigue from the band. The mayhem of the day hasn’t yet gotten to Emre, who has the clarity of mind to quickly fix an issue with our Polaroid camera, nor Olly, who is supposedly on vocal rest ahead of the performance, but voluntarily sings lines of ‘Sanctify’ as we snap our pictures. With his hair freshly re-dyed red, he’s in a chipper mood. “We can’t wait to be inside you,” he offers as his message to fans in New Zealand, before rethinking his contribution: “Bit weird.” Similarly cheeky humour comes from the stage late in that night's set: “I’m really wet,” he tells the adoring crowd, adding, “Sign of a good night, if you ask me.” There’s no shortage of banter on this promo circus.

If the magic took a little time to return during their writing and recording sessions in the British countryside last year, you wouldn’t notice from listening to ‘Palo Santo’, a record that manages to capture an unmistakeable Years & Years sound, while also pushing them into new territory. There’s particularly noticeable progress in the lyrics: whereas on ‘Communion’, the tracks often sounded as if Olly was writing them while looking directly into the eyes of their subjects, ignoring all surroundings and speaking purely from the heart, on ‘Palo Santo’, the lens is widened and we’re given more context, as well as a greater sense of space and time, to aid our understanding of each of these relationships and encounters. This advancement is particularly evident on ’Lucky Escape’ (in which a bitter scroll through an ex’s Instagram leads to a disparaging sense of relief at having ended things) and the title track (about the complicated experience of being the third party in an open relationship), each about different, yet fully-realised romantic partners.

This lyrical evolution is also apparent on first single ‘Sanctify’, the tale of a fling with a straight-identifying man, suggesting that a discrepancy in two partners’ confidence in their respective sexualities can lead to an interesting power-play in the bedroom. Despite the erotic thrill of the track, Olly’s writing manages to remain sympathetic to a man who “lately life’s been tearing […] apart." "I know how it can hurt / being cut in two and afraid,” he discloses, with surprising depth and warmth for a song so carnal. He’s a lyricist of great heart, trying to make sense of troubled men who are in turn trying to make sense of themselves, even if the romantic relationship he has with them doesn’t extend beyond the bedroom.

Olly’s background as an actor has gained new relevance with the release of ‘Palo Santo’, which sees him take a lead role in the accompanying short film and reteam with co-stars from his years on stage and screen. Before Years & Years properly got going, it was for supporting roles in films like ‘God Help The Girl’, ‘The Riot Club’ and (as Mikey teasingly reminds Olly during our interview) ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ that Olly became a recognisable face. He even featured opposite Greta Gerwig, the future Oscar-nominated director of ‘Lady Bird’, in the tiny 2011 indie ‘The Dish and The Spoon’, and could often be found on the London stage, turning in a string of critically-praised performances in plays between 2010 and 2013. The final play in which he appeared was John Logan’s ‘Peter & Alice’, which imagined the meeting between the two real life inspirations behind ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Peter Pan’, played by Dame Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw respectively. In cutaways to the fictional world created by J.M. Barrie, Olly played Peter Pan, fighting for his right to exist despite the wishes of his non-fictional counterpart, Peter Llewelyn Davies, that his life hadn’t been stolen from him by Barrie.

Jump forward five years and these three co-stars are reunited in another fantasy world in which Olly is a different kind of exceptional boy at the mercy of older powers, striving to assert his individuality. Dench is now the cryptic “mother of Palo Santo,” and Whishaw, who also appeared in one of the earliest Years & Years videos, for ‘Real’, makes a fleeting appearance as a hologram, giving an announcement to the city’s inhabitants. The film, shot in Thailand, is wild and ambitious in a way that, away from the output of the Beyoncés and Gagas of the A-list, pop often isn’t anymore. It also gives Olly the chance to sink his teeth into a role beyond just a dialogue-less, short-form music video. His character, also named Olly Alexander, is made to perform repeatedly for audiences, before growing tired and dismayed with being exploited and finding a way to explore his emotions away from the control of others.

Tonight, it’s on another London stage, a couple of miles north of the one they previously shared, that Olly and Dame Judi are reunited. Her voice is woven through the band’s live show at Camden’s Roundhouse, just as it is through the film. The iconic 83-year-old Oscar-winner’s narration has become an integral part of this project, but those hoping for an appearance from the Dame herself tonight are left disappointed, but probably not surprised, at her absence – she remains a formless, floating voice, just as in the world of Palo Santo.

But what does ‘Palo Santo’ actually mean? Despite its placement as the penultimate song on the album, the title track is the record’s centrepiece, a meditative and powerful cut more mature than anything found on their previous LP, on which Olly cries out, “You’re the darkness in me, Palo Santo.” In its most literal sense, the title comes from the name of the thick, wooden incense blocks that the party in the open relationship with whom Olly was involved was burning during their time together. The direct translation is, somewhat amusingly, ‘holy wood’, and their vapours are said to purify the air and cleanse it of evil and darkness.

But such is the expansive universe that the three-piece have built around this two-word term that it now carries several possible interpretations beyond the literal. Alternatively, ‘Palo Santo’ could be a moniker for this man himself, and the short-lived love triangle relationship, which perhaps represents a time of darkness for Olly.

Given the double use of ‘Palo Santo’ as the title of the record and of the futuristic, android world of the accompanying short film, a couple of further, more meta readings avail themselves to us. ‘Palo Santo’ the album could contain the darkness in Olly, with many songs, such as ‘Lucky Escape’, ‘All For You’ and ‘If You’re Over Me’, depicting him at challenging moments following a break-up, as he attempts to power through and come out on top of love rather than be defeated by it.

The world of Palo Santo seen in the film also has a strong connection to a possible darkness within Olly, as it explores the intersection of disconnect and emotionlessness with sensuality and performance. “The divine, amazing and incredible Olly Alexander”, as he is introduced by the Showman character, is one of very few non-androids in Palo Santo, and the androids, as we learn from the Star Wars-esque pre-scroll in Fred Rowson’s film, “desire nothing more than to experience real emotion,” which feels resonant with Olly’s outspoken discussion of his own mental health struggles. When taken alongside songs like ‘Hallelujah’and ‘Rendezvous’, which tell of rather non-committal sexual encounters, we see the same topics in ‘Palo Santo’ that Olly explored last year in his BBC documentary ‘Growing Up Gay’, of how struggles with mental health are sadly pervasive within the queer community.

In the live performance, it’s during ‘Palo Santo’ that Olly, donning a sparkly robe of almost ten metres in length, is raised up on a platform in front of a huge moon, a star ascending across a dark night. It’s a triumphant, almost unbelievable moment of spectacle meeting emotion. There may be “darkness” in this album, but it’s notably never in the form of sadness, and almost entirely hidden in joyous moments of pure pop. In their live show, Years & Years take the chance to show this overcoming of difficulty and adversity through a visual metaphor that literally grows before the audience’s eyes, and it’s an awesome sight to behold.

Despite being a Palo Santo Party, their setlist is equally balanced between their two albums. The newer cuts – such as the snappy ‘Karma’ and thumping ‘Hallelujah’, both just days old to fans – are received ecstatically, and the familiar hits bring some of the night’s most notable moments. Olly is briefly distracted by his front row devotees during ‘Take Shelter’ and stumbles to the end of a verse, before later bringing out an Italian fan who, thanks to the Make A Wish Foundation, gets to sit with him at the piano as he plays ‘Eyes Shut’, leading to one of the night’s biggest cheers. It’s when MNEK returns to the stage for the encore, following his spritely support set, for the debut of a new duet called ��Valentino’, that the night hits peak gay, much to the fans’ delight. A Latin-flavoured bop telling of an infatuation with a boy “from the outskirts of East LA,” it owes a generous debt to Lady Gaga’s ‘Americano’ (a 2011 album track which opens “I met a girl in East LA…”), as well as the best of 90s girl-band R&B. Fingers crossed we get a studio version ASAP.

Earlier that day, we spoke to Years & Years about developing their songwriting for ‘Palo Santo’, avoiding sadness on a break-up record, when they expect they’ll finally be coming to New Zealand, and much more…

COUP DE MAIN: So it’s three years today since ‘Communion’ came out. EMRE TÜRKMEN: Is it? CDM: It is, happy birthday to it! How has release week been different this time around? OLLY ALEXANDER: It’s similar in the sense that I can’t remember much of it, because we’ve been so all over the place. I guess this time round, you’re… MIKEY GOLDSWORTHY: More of a veteran? OLLY: Yeah, I guess. First time around, I felt like I was hit by a truck. Not in a bad way, not in a negative way, just because it’s so overwhelming. But I think now I feel more grateful that fans have stuck around and that people like the new music. Because you can never take it for granted, can you? What about you guys? EMRE: The first time felt more intense, actually, I seem to remember. Because you know what to expect, in a certain way, it’s less mental. MIKEY: We’re doing similar things. We did [BBC Radio 2 show] Chris Evans last time. We did three countries in one day. CDM: Did you have a big launch show like this one? MIKEY: Not a big one, it was in a little club near Oxford Street. OLLY: We didn’t do anything in America though, did we? I think this time, we tried to do Palo Santo parties, like, East Coast and West Coast America, Berlin and here, so in that sense it’s been way more ambitious. Generally, I think we tried to be a bit more ambitious this time around.

CDM: There seems to be a real progression in your lyrics on this record. They’re more precise and specific than they were on ‘Communion’, and even involve some clever wordplay, particularly on ‘straight’ and ‘mask/masc’ on ‘Sanctify’. Did you approach writing lyrics differently this time around? OLLY: Yeah. Songwriting, especially lyrics – the more you do it, the more you uncover and the more you learn about your own process. The stuff that you write when you’re 20 is going to be different from the stuff you write when you’re 25, which is going to be different from the stuff you write when you’re 27. So I think, by its very nature, it develops and changes. But just as a human being, I feel more confident to write the shit that I actually have in my head. Not that it felt like I was stopping myself before, but I think it made a difference feeling more confident in myself this time around.

THE NEW SONG WE’RE MOST EXCITED TO PLAY LIVE IS…

CDM: I think my favourite song on the album is ‘Karma’, which grapples with whether what you’ve done in the past will lead to good or bad fortune in the future. (“No I can’t tell what’s right or wrong / Is there a consequence for all I’ve done?”) Was there something you were trying to answer about the role that guilt has in your life, and whether it’s worth holding onto? OLLY: I guess there’s some specifics that I relate to my own life. Some of those are to do with relationships, some of those are to do with my childhood, and generally about morality and, like, is karma real? And that song, the beginning of the session, I was writing with my friend Sarah Hudson who’s amazing and she’s very like witchy and into like occults and esoteric stuff, and she did a reading for us at the beginning and one of the cards was called ‘karma’ and we were like,“Oh, yes! Let’s write a song called ‘Karma’.”

CDM: How was the experience of writing with Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter on ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Preacher’? OLLY: Oh, good! It was kind of intense because they’re songwriting royalty. I had the head of our label call me up before the session, because everyone was freaking out. They think if you put people in a room, you’re going to come out with a number one song, and there’s so much pressure on it to be good. So I was quite nervous to meet them, but they’re so warm and so inviting. Julia’s a legend too, but because Justin has had such a trailblazing, queer career and because he’s such a queer force in songwriting and in pop music, I was really humbled to be in his presence. And it was fun, you know, it was nice to work with them because you get to see into another writer’s process. I had no idea if my ideas or the stuff that I’ve been doing as a songwriter was any good, and then when I worked with them, I realised that they do similar things, and I was like,“Okay, this is nice, to be able to do this.” And we got a good song out of it!

MY FAVOURITE SONG WRITTEN BY JULIA MICHAELS AND JUSTIN TRANTER IS…

CDM: ‘Palo Santo’ seems to be very much a post-relationship record, with ‘If You’re Over Me’, ‘All For You’ and ‘Lucky Escape’ – as well as the Kele Okereke song that you featured on last year, Olly, ‘Grounds For Resentment’ – detailing how an ex can continue to occupy space in your mind and life once the relationship is over. It’s kind of lacking in heartbreak, unlike most break-up records we hear. Were there sadder songs you wrote for the record that didn’t make the cut? OLLY: I’m trying to think now. MIKEY: There were slower songs. I don’t know if they were sad. OLLY: We had a lot of songs, and then whittled them down. The ones we put on the album felt like the strongest ones. It wasn’t until I saw them together as a group like that where I realised the theme did feel like looking back on a relationship and trying to sort of dig through the shit that happened and feeling sort of angry and frustrated about that, but in a place of empowerment rather than feeling destroyed by it.

CDM: Olly, you’ve described ‘Lucky Escape’ as a petty song. Do you think that pettiness is a necessary, or helpful, part of the post-break-up experience? OLLY: Kind of! I think that I really, really bite my tongue in arguments with people, and I never say the thing I wish I’d said. But in a song, you have way more time! <laughs> MIKEY: It’s annoying when you have an argument and you go back and you’re like, “Ah, I should’ve said that! I would’ve sounded so smart!”

CDM: Olly, you gave Rihanna the first LP of ‘Palo Santo’ after you appeared with her on The Graham Norton Show. So say she’s scouting for new writers for her next album, and just one song from the record could be your calling card, which one would you want her to listen to and think, “I want him to write for me”? OLLY: I’m trying to imagine myself as Rihanna and think what she would like. Maybe ‘Palo Santo’. I’m just proud of the song and the songwriting on that. It’s quite unusual for a pop song. I guess you can argue, “What the fuck is a pop song?” But maybe that one. I feel like she might vibe with that.

CDM: ‘Palo Santo’ is so ambitious and high-concept, in a way that you don’t see many other British artists attempting or getting away with. It seems to come more naturally to American artists like Janelle Monáe and Halsey. Do you think there’s something about British culture that makes it easy to ridicule or be cynical about these sorts of ideas? OLLY: There’s some truth to that, I expect. MIKEY: David Bowie was British and did a lot of that kind of stuff. EMRE: I mean, I think the first concept album of all time was The Beatles. <laughs> Pink Floyd springs to mind… CDM: I guess I mean more in the present. OLLY: But you’re right, I agree. MIKEY: I know what you mean, Americans seem more confident with not caring what other people think. British people always seem to scrutinise other British people. Australians have inherited a little bit of that culture, as well. Especially in Melbourne. OLLY: Brits can be cynical, but I like that about being British. I guess you could say Americans definitely go for bells and whistles and big statements, and are generally considered more ambitious. CDM: Was there ever a concern about people not getting on board with it? OLLY: Yeah, I was worried all the time. But I realised that I was the best salesperson for the project, so I was telling everyone it was going to be so amazing. I went into the label and gave them a PowerPoint presentation about how everything was going to look and all the videos and the merchandise and the live show. I compensated feeling a bit nervous about the whole thing by being extra, extra, extra confident on the surface. <laughs>

HOW YOU GET TO PALO SANTO…

CDM: You’ve reteamed with your former co-star Judi Dench for the narration on ‘Palo Santo’, which is quite abstract – did she have much of an idea of what it was she was saying? OLLY: Yeah! Well, I said to her that she was the queen of androids. She’s sort of like the mother of Palo Santo, so she’s like this omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent – all three – character within Palo Santo, but she’s also kind of serving a poetic Beyoncé voiceover in ‘Lemonade’. So I told her all of that, and I think she was a bit like, “What the fuck?” But she loved it. She was like, “Are you telling me I’m old? Like an old android?” And I was like, “No!” So she was a bit upset about that. But she killed it!

CDM: Back when you were acting, Olly, you played quite a few innocent or corrupted boys dealing with something traumatic, however your character in ‘Palo Santo’ is more powerful and strong, even though he’s in a subordinate role. How much of an impact did being cast in those sorts of roles have on how you saw yourself, and are you trying to push back against that image of yourself now? OLLY: I mean, you put it in a really good way, actually. When you’re acting, you’re just taking the world that you’re given and you don’t really have much choice in the matter. In that sense, I found it quite creatively stifling, because you’re just doing someone else’s work and you’re playing [roles] other people are putting you into. But even when I look at the music videos we did for ‘Communion’, like ‘King’… I guess by the time we got to ‘Worship’ it had shifted, but in all our music videos, I’m getting thrown around, or beaten up, or in ‘Shine’a building collapses on me. I got more and more dissatisfied with being passive, and I think part of the reason I wanted to make a film of ‘Palo Santo’ was so that I could embody a character I would want to be.

CDM: The film has a pretty ambiguous ending, with your character onstage, unable to sing. Will we get to see more of this world, will it be expanded? OLLY: Yes, it will be. As soon as the label give us more money! <laughs> MIKEY: It’s expensive, Palo Santo.

CDM: When can we expect to FINALLY have you play in New Zealand? Because there was the whole situation in 2016 with the cancelled shows… OLLY: I know… It wasn’t our fault! MIKEY: Wait, what happened with that again? OLLY: It was the Ellie Goulding support slot. [The band had to pull out of the Australia and New Zealand leg of Ellie Goulding’s Delirium tour due to logistical difficulties.] MIKEY: Oh, sorry, yeah! My family bought tickets, so I owe them all, like, a hundred quid. There’s talk of next year. I mean, don’t quote me on this, which you will. <laughs>But there’s talk of Oceania/Asia vibes next year. That would make sense. I can pretty much 100% say we won’t be in New Zealand this year. OLLY: I really hope when we go that we get some actual time to spend there, and not just, like, one day. MIKEY: Yeah, it’s beautiful. One of the best-looking countries.

MY FAVOURITE THING ABOUT EMRE IS…

MY FAVOURITE THING ABOUT MIKEY IS…

MY FAVOURITE THING ABOUT OLLY IS…

‘Palo Santo’ is available now. You can watch the accompanying short film below:

[ollyarchive]

INTERVIEW: YEARS & YEARS ON THE WORLD OF 'PALO SANTO', THE DIFFICULT SECOND ALBUM AND DAME JUDI DENCH.                                          

24th August 2018 by

Rory Horne

How do you follow up a smash hit album that, in your native country alone, sold over a quarter of a million copies, spent two weeks at Number 1 (and didn’t budge from the Top 40 for over a year), spawned both a Number 1 (which itself sold just shy of a million copies) and a Number 2 single, and earned you four Brit Award nominations? With a bit of time and patience, it seems – or at least that’s how Years & Years have done it. The London-based, British-Australian trio’s second studio album ‘Palo Santo’, the follow up to 2015’s banger-filled, world-beating debut ‘Communion’, which put singer Olly Alexander and multi-instrumentalists Emre Türkmen and Mikey Goldsworthy on the proverbial map, has just been unleashed onto the world and currently boasts a handsome score of 82 on Metacritic, a 14-point increase on their previous offering. They may have, by their own admission, suffered from a little Difficult Second Album Syndrome, but the numbers don’t lie – their patience in crafting this record has absolutely paid off.

In reality, it’s not been an inordinately long wait for Years & Years fans, just three years, almost to the day – shorter than we were made to wait for recent sophomore offerings from Lorde, HAIM, Sam Smith and London Grammar. We meet for our interview on the third anniversary of the release of ‘Communion’, four days after ‘Palo Santo’ dropped, on the afternoon of the London instalment of the brief run of gigs across Europe and North America that are serving as the album’s launch parties. Despite being in the middle of a mad release week, packed with media appearances and album promotion, there’s little sign of fatigue from the band. The mayhem of the day hasn’t yet gotten to Emre, who has the clarity of mind to quickly fix an issue with our Polaroid camera, nor Olly, who is supposedly on vocal rest ahead of the performance, but voluntarily sings lines of ‘Sanctify’ as we snap our pictures. With his hair freshly re-dyed red, he’s in a chipper mood. “We can’t wait to be inside you,” he offers as his message to fans in New Zealand, before rethinking his contribution: “Bit weird.” Similarly cheeky humour comes from the stage late in that night's set: “I’m really wet,” he tells the adoring crowd, adding, “Sign of a good night, if you ask me.” There’s no shortage of banter on this promo circus.

If the magic took a little time to return during their writing and recording sessions in the British countryside last year, you wouldn’t notice from listening to ‘Palo Santo’, a record that manages to capture an unmistakeable Years & Years sound, while also pushing them into new territory. There’s particularly noticeable progress in the lyrics: whereas on ‘Communion’, the tracks often sounded as if Olly was writing them while looking directly into the eyes of their subjects, ignoring all surroundings and speaking purely from the heart, on ‘Palo Santo’, the lens is widened and we’re given more context, as well as a greater sense of space and time, to aid our understanding of each of these relationships and encounters. This advancement is particularly evident on 'Lucky Escape' (in which a bitter scroll through an ex’s Instagram leads to a disparaging sense of relief at having ended things) and the title track (about the complicated experience of being the third party in an open relationship), each about different, yet fully-realised romantic partners.

This lyrical evolution is also apparent on first single ‘Sanctify’, the tale of a fling with a straight-identifying man, suggesting that a discrepancy in two partners’ confidence in their respective sexualities can lead to an interesting power-play in the bedroom. Despite the erotic thrill of the track, Olly's writing manages to remain sympathetic to a man who "lately life's been tearing [...] apart." "I know how it can hurt / being cut in two and afraid," he discloses, with surprising depth and warmth for a song so carnal. He's a lyricist of great heart, trying to make sense of troubled men who are in turn trying to make sense of themselves, even if the romantic relationship he has with them doesn't extend beyond the bedroom.

Olly’s background as an actor has gained new relevance with the release of ‘Palo Santo’, which sees him take a lead role in the accompanying short film and reteam with co-stars from his years on stage and screen. Before Years & Years properly got going, it was for supporting roles in films like ‘God Help The Girl’, ‘The Riot Club’ and (as Mikey teasingly reminds Olly during our interview) ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ that Olly became a recognisable face. He even featured opposite Greta Gerwig, the future Oscar-nominated director of ‘Lady Bird’, in the tiny 2011 indie ‘The Dish and The Spoon’, and could often be found on the London stage, turning in a string of critically-praised performances in plays between 2010 and 2013. The final play in which he appeared was John Logan’s ‘Peter & Alice’, which imagined the meeting between the two real life inspirations behind ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Peter Pan’, played by Dame Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw respectively. In cutaways to the fictional world created by J.M. Barrie, Olly played Peter Pan, fighting for his right to exist despite the wishes of his non-fictional counterpart, Peter Llewelyn Davies, that his life hadn’t been stolen from him by Barrie.

Jump forward five years and these three co-stars are reunited in another fantasy world in which Olly is a different kind of exceptional boy at the mercy of older powers, striving to assert his individuality. Dench is now the cryptic “mother of Palo Santo,” and Whishaw, who also appeared in one of the earliest Years & Years videos, for ‘Real’, makes a fleeting appearance as a hologram, giving an announcement to the city’s inhabitants. The film, shot in Thailand, is wild and ambitious in a way that, away from the output of the Beyoncés and Gagas of the A-list, pop often isn’t anymore. It also gives Olly the chance to sink his teeth into a role beyond just a dialogue-less, short-form music video. His character, also named Olly Alexander, is made to perform repeatedly for audiences, before growing tired and dismayed with being exploited and finding a way to explore his emotions away from the control of others.

Tonight, it’s on another London stage, a couple of miles north of the one they previously shared, that Olly and Dame Judi are reunited. Her voice is woven through the band’s live show at Camden’s Roundhouse, just as it is through the film. The iconic 83-year-old Oscar-winner’s narration has become an integral part of this project, but those hoping for an appearance from the Dame herself tonight are left disappointed, but probably not surprised, at her absence – she remains a formless, floating voice, just as in the world of Palo Santo.

But what does ‘Palo Santo’ actually mean? Despite its placement as the penultimate song on the album, the title track is the record’s centrepiece, a meditative and powerful cut more mature than anything found on their previous LP, on which Olly cries out, “You’re the darkness in me, Palo Santo.” In its most literal sense, the title comes from the name of the thick, wooden incense blocks that the party in the open relationship with whom Olly was involved was burning during their time together. The direct translation is, somewhat amusingly, ‘holy wood’, and their vapours are said to purify the air and cleanse it of evil and darkness.

But such is the expansive universe that the three-piece have built around this two-word term that it now carries several possible interpretations beyond the literal. Alternatively, ‘Palo Santo’ could be a moniker for this man himself, and the short-lived love triangle relationship, which perhaps represents a time of darkness for Olly.

Given the double use of ‘Palo Santo’ as the title of the record and of the futuristic, android world of the accompanying short film, a couple of further, more meta readings avail themselves to us. ‘Palo Santo’ the album could contain the darkness in Olly, with many songs, such as ‘Lucky Escape’, ‘All For You’ and ‘If You’re Over Me’, depicting him at challenging moments following a break-up, as he attempts to power through and come out on top of love rather than be defeated by it.

The world of Palo Santo seen in the film also has a strong connection to a possible darkness within Olly, as it explores the intersection of disconnect and emotionlessness with sensuality and performance. “The divine, amazing and incredible Olly Alexander”, as he is introduced by the Showman character, is one of very few non-androids in Palo Santo, and the androids, as we learn from the Star Wars-esque pre-scroll in Fred Rowson’s film, “desire nothing more than to experience real emotion,” which feels resonant with Olly’s outspoken discussion of his own mental health struggles. When taken alongside songs like ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Rendezvous’, which tell of rather non-committal sexual encounters, we see the same topics in ‘Palo Santo’ that Olly explored last year in his BBC documentary ‘Growing Up Gay’, of how struggles with mental health are sadly pervasive within the queer community.

In the live performance, it’s during ‘Palo Santo’ that Olly, donning a sparkly robe of almost ten metres in length, is raised up on a platform in front of a huge moon, a star ascending across a dark night. It’s a triumphant, almost unbelievable moment of spectacle meeting emotion. There may be “darkness” in this album, but it’s notably never in the form of sadness, and almost entirely hidden in joyous moments of pure pop. In their live show, Years & Years take the chance to show this overcoming of difficulty and adversity through a visual metaphor that literally grows before the audience’s eyes, and it’s an awesome sight to behold.

Despite being a Palo Santo Party, their setlist is equally balanced between their two albums. The newer cuts – such as the snappy ‘Karma’ and thumping ‘Hallelujah’, both just days old to fans – are received ecstatically, and the familiar hits bring some of the night’s most notable moments. Olly is briefly distracted by his front row devotees during ‘Take Shelter’ and stumbles to the end of a verse, before later bringing out an Italian fan who, thanks to the Make A Wish Foundation, gets to sit with him at the piano as he plays ‘Eyes Shut’, leading to one of the night’s biggest cheers. It's when MNEK returns to the stage for the encore, following his spritely support set, for the debut of a new duet called ‘Valentino’, that the night hits peak gay, much to the fans’ delight. A Latin-flavoured bop telling of an infatuation with a boy “from the outskirts of East LA,” it owes a generous debt to Lady Gaga’s ‘Americano’ (a 2011 album track which opens “I met a girl in East LA...”), as well as the best of 90s girl-band R&B. Fingers crossed we get a studio version ASAP.

Earlier that day, we spoke to Years & Years about developing their songwriting for ‘Palo Santo’, avoiding sadness on a break-up record, when they expect they’ll finally be coming to New Zealand, and much more…

COUP DE MAIN: So it’s three years today since ‘Communion’ came out. EMRE TÜRKMEN: Is it? CDM: It is, happy birthday to it! How has release week been different this time around? OLLY ALEXANDER: It’s similar in the sense that I can’t remember much of it, because we’ve been so all over the place. I guess this time round, you’re… MIKEY GOLDSWORTHY:More of a veteran? OLLY: Yeah, I guess. First time around, I felt like I was hit by a truck. Not in a bad way, not in a negative way, just because it’s so overwhelming. But I think now I feel more grateful that fans have stuck around and that people like the new music. Because you can never take it for granted, can you? What about you guys? EMRE: The first time felt more intense, actually, I seem to remember. Because you know what to expect, in a certain way, it’s less mental. MIKEY: We’re doing similar things. We did [BBC Radio 2 show] Chris Evans last time. We did three countries in one day. CDM: Did you have a big launch show like this one? MIKEY: Not a big one, it was in a little club near Oxford Street. OLLY: We didn’t do anything in America though, did we? I think this time, we tried to do Palo Santo parties, like, East Coast and West Coast America, Berlin and here, so in that sense it’s been way more ambitious. Generally, I think we tried to be a bit more ambitious this time around.

CDM: There seems to be a real progression in your lyrics on this record. They’re more precise and specific than they were on ‘Communion’, and even involve some clever wordplay, particularly on ‘straight’ and ‘mask/masc’ on ‘Sanctify’. Did you approach writing lyrics differently this time around? OLLY: Yeah. Songwriting, especially lyrics – the more you do it, the more you uncover and the more you learn about your own process. The stuff that you write when you’re 20 is going to be different from the stuff you write when you’re 25, which is going to be different from the stuff you write when you’re 27. So I think, by its very nature, it develops and changes. But just as a human being, I feel more confident to write the shit that I actually have in my head. Not that it felt like I was stopping myself before, but I think it made a difference feeling more confident in myself this time around.

CDM: I think my favourite song on the album is ‘Karma’, which grapples with whether what you’ve done in the past will lead to good or bad fortune in the future. (“No I can’t tell what’s right or wrong / Is there a consequence for all I’ve done?”) Was there something you were trying to answer about the role that guilt has in your life, and whether it’s worth holding onto? OLLY: I guess there’s some specifics that I relate to my own life. Some of those are to do with relationships, some of those are to do with my childhood, and generally about morality and, like, is karma real? And that song, the beginning of the session, I was writing with my friend Sarah Hudson who’s amazing and she’s very like witchy and into like occults and esoteric stuff, and she did a reading for us at the beginning and one of the cards was called ‘karma’ and we were like, “Oh, yes! Let’s write a song called ‘Karma’.”

CDM: How was the experience of writing with Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter on ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Preacher’? OLLY: Oh, good! It was kind of intense because they’re songwriting royalty. I had the head of our label call me up before the session, because everyone was freaking out. They think if you put people in a room, you’re going to come out with a number one song, and there’s so much pressure on it to be good. So I was quite nervous to meet them, but they’re so warm and so inviting. Julia’s a legend too, but because Justin has had such a trailblazing, queer career and because he’s such a queer force in songwriting and in pop music, I was really humbled to be in his presence. And it was fun, you know, it was nice to work with them because you get to see into another writer’s process. I had no idea if my ideas or the stuff that I’ve been doing as a songwriter was any good, and then when I worked with them, I realised that they do similar things, and I was like, “Okay, this is nice, to be able to do this.” And we got a good song out of it!

CDM: ‘Palo Santo’ seems to be very much a post-relationship record, with ‘If You’re Over Me’, ‘All For You’ and ‘Lucky Escape’ – as well as the Kele Okereke song that you featured on last year, Olly, ‘Grounds For Resentment’ – detailing how an ex can continue to occupy space in your mind and life once the relationship is over. It’s kind of lacking in heartbreak, unlike most break-up records we hear. Were there sadder songs you wrote for the record that didn’t make the cut? OLLY: I’m trying to think now. MIKEY: There were slower songs. I don’t know if they were sad. OLLY: We had a lot of songs, and then whittled them down. The ones we put on the album felt like the strongest ones. It wasn’t until I saw them together as a group like that where I realised the theme did feel like looking back on a relationship and trying to sort of dig through the shit that happened and feeling sort of angry and frustrated about that, but in a place of empowerment rather than feeling destroyed by it.

CDM: Olly, you’ve described ‘Lucky Escape’ as a petty song. Do you think that pettiness is a necessary, or helpful, part of the post-break-up experience? OLLY: Kind of! I think that I really, really bite my tongue in arguments with people, and I never say the thing I wish I’d said. But in a song, you have way more time! <laughs> MIKEY: It’s annoying when you have an argument and you go back and you’re like, “Ah, I should’ve said that! I would’ve sounded so smart!”

CDM: Olly, you gave Rihanna the first LP of ‘Palo Santo’ after you appeared with her on The Graham Norton Show. So say she’s scouting for new writers for her next album, and just one song from the record could be your calling card, which one would you want her to listen to and think, “I want him to write for me”? OLLY: I’m trying to imagine myself as Rihanna and think what she would like. Maybe ‘Palo Santo’. I’m just proud of the song and the songwriting on that. It’s quite unusual for a pop song. I guess you can argue, "What the fuck is a pop song?" But maybe that one. I feel like she might vibe with that.

CDM: ‘Palo Santo’ is so ambitious and high-concept, in a way that you don’t see many other British artists attempting or getting away with. It seems to come more naturally to American artists like Janelle Monáe and Halsey. Do you think there’s something about British culture that makes it easy to ridicule or be cynical about these sorts of ideas? OLLY: There’s some truth to that, I expect. MIKEY: David Bowie was British and did a lot of that kind of stuff. EMRE: I mean, I think the first concept album of all time was The Beatles. <laughs> Pink Floyd springs to mind… CDM: I guess I mean more in the present. OLLY: But you’re right, I agree. MIKEY: I know what you mean, Americans seem more confident with not caring what other people think. British people always seem to scrutinise other British people. Australians have inherited a little bit of that culture, as well. Especially in Melbourne. OLLY: Brits can be cynical, but I like that about being British. I guess you could say Americans definitely go for bells and whistles and big statements, and are generally considered more ambitious. CDM: Was there ever a concern about people not getting on board with it? OLLY: Yeah, I was worried all the time. But I realised that I was the best salesperson for the project, so I was telling everyone it was going to be so amazing. I went into the label and gave them a PowerPoint presentation about how everything was going to look and all the videos and the merchandise and the live show. I compensated feeling a bit nervous about the whole thing by being extra, extra, extra confident on the surface. <laughs>

CDM: You’ve reteamed with your former co-star Judi Dench for the narration on ‘Palo Santo’, which is quite abstract – did she have much of an idea of what it was she was saying? OLLY: Yeah! Well, I said to her that she was the queen of androids. She’s sort of like the mother of Palo Santo, so she’s like this omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent – all three – character within Palo Santo, but she’s also kind of serving a poetic Beyoncé voiceover in ‘Lemonade’. So I told her all of that, and I think she was a bit like, “What the fuck?” But she loved it. She was like, “Are you telling me I’m old? Like an old android?” And I was like, “No!” So she was a bit upset about that. But she killed it!

CDM: Back when you were acting, Olly, you played quite a few innocent or corrupted boys dealing with something traumatic, however your character in ‘Palo Santo’ is more powerful and strong, even though he’s in a subordinate role. How much of an impact did being cast in those sorts of roles have on how you saw yourself, and are you trying to push back against that image of yourself now? OLLY: I mean, you put it in a really good way, actually. When you’re acting, you’re just taking the world that you’re given and you don’t really have much choice in the matter. In that sense, I found it quite creatively stifling, because you’re just doing someone else’s work and you’re playing [roles] other people are putting you into. But even when I look at the music videos we did for ‘Communion’, like ‘King’… I guess by the time we got to ‘Worship’ it had shifted, but in all our music videos, I’m getting thrown around, or beaten up, or in ‘Shine’ a building collapses on me. I got more and more dissatisfied with being passive, and I think part of the reason I wanted to make a film of ‘Palo Santo’ was so that I could embody a character I would want to be.

CDM: The film has a pretty ambiguous ending, with your character onstage, unable to sing. Will we get to see more of this world, will it be expanded? OLLY: Yes, it will be. As soon as the label give us more money! <laughs> MIKEY: It’s expensive, Palo Santo.

CDM: When can we expect to FINALLY have you play in New Zealand? Because there was the whole situation in 2016 with the cancelled shows… OLLY: I know… It wasn’t our fault! MIKEY: Wait, what happened with that again? OLLY: It was the Ellie Goulding support slot. [The band had to pull out of the Australia and New Zealand leg of Ellie Goulding’s Delirium tour due to logistical difficulties.] MIKEY: Oh, sorry, yeah! My family bought tickets, so I owe them all, like, a hundred quid. There’s talk of next year. I mean, don’t quote me on this, which you will. <laughs> But there’s talk of Oceania/Asia vibes next year. That would make sense. I can pretty much 100% say we won’t be in New Zealand this year. OLLY: I really hope when we go that we get some actual time to spend there, and not just, like, one day. MIKEY: Yeah, it’s beautiful. One of the best-looking countries.

[peter-pan-hoe]

Pan’s Pet pt 7

Word Count: 2446 (ho boy)

MASTERLIST

SERIES MASTERLIST

Warnings: swearing (as always,) slight fluff? Angst, cliff hanger

Sorry for the wait guys as you know from this post I am aware and mad about my lack of posting. Even though I have finally posted, the post still stands. Come dm me if you want me to hurry up on any particular post. I don’t take requests for new stories but will hurry up if specifically requested to do so.

The thought of disapointing people sits in the back of my mind y’know.

@lynicia1514 this one’s for you. For waiting so patiently. xx

I woke up feeling warm. A warmth that wasn't my own was running through me. It wasn't bad, in fact it was quite nice. but it wasn't normal. A foreign scent swam in the air around me also. This scent was sweet and sour like fruit.

I opened my eyes and saw a face. A sleeping face.

Amity's face was right bellow mine.

Her arms were tucked in and she held her little hands to her chest.

It was then that I noticed my arms were around her. One was under her like a pillow and the other was draped over her middle, holding her close to myself.

I smiled lightly to myself at the idea of her sleeping soundly in my arms.

I closed my eyes again, not quite ready to wake up when I smelled smoke.

At first I thought it was the bonfire in the middle of camp but it didn’t have the usual scent of damp wood and kindling.

Something that smelled of charred leather or hair was mixed in with scent.

I lifted my head and looked around the room.

I saw nothing on fire but now that I was focused I could pinpoint that the burning scent was indeed leather.

   “Amity, wake up,” I gently tugged my arm out from underneath her. “Something’s on fire somewhere; we gotta go,”

At the mention of fire her eyes shot open and she slowly looked around.

   “Are you sure?” she asked, her voice croaky from sleep.

   “Yeah it doesn’t smell like the fire pit,” I explained. “I don’t know but just to be safe we should check it out to make sure no one gets hurt,”

She nodded.

I took her hand and pulled her from my bed, leading her out of my tent, only to shove her back inside imediately.

Black smoke was everywhere stinging my eyes and burning my throat as I tried to breathe.

I looked around and saw a number of trees and tents on fire and some of the boys were already up, trying to put out the flames.

   “Get my pillows!” I called in to Amity.

She ran back to my bed, gathering my 3 pillows and bring them to me.

I took them from her, tucking 2 between my knees while I held the other against her face.

   “Hold this here and head for the beach,” I pointed in the direction that lead to the nearest beach. “Run!”

She nodded and did as I said, running a short distance before stopping to look at me worriedly.

   “Just go” I shouted. “I’ll be fine,”

I watched and made sure she was out of sight before I began looking for the boys.

   “Fire!” I shouted. “There’s a fire!”

A few voices shouted at each other and soon the clearing was filled with frantic looking boys wondering what started the fire.

   “Where’s Pan?” I shouted to one of the boys nearest to me. “Or Felix?”

He shook his head and looked around, terrified.

   “It’s gonna be alright,” I handed him one of my pillows. “Here. Hold it over your mouth and nose and run for the beach. Take as many boys with you as you can,”

He nodded and followed where I pointed in the same direction I sent Amity.

   “Pan?” I called. 

I didn’t get a response so I just jogged around directing more and more boys to the beach with Amity and the other boy.

   “Y/N!” Alfie ran at me so fast he didn’t have time to slow down and smacked straight into me.

My superior strength however made it as though he ran straight into a wall.

   “Dude!” I put my hands on his shoulders, steadying him as I checked him for injuries. “What the hell happened? Where’s Pan and Felix?”

   “I don’t know where they are but,” he hestitaed.

   “But what?” I pressed.

   “The fire wasn’t an accident,” he said. “Some of the guerrillas, they found Amity’s clothes drying by her tent and threw them in the fire,”

   “That’s why I could smell burning leather,” I looked into the blazing fire pit and saw remnants of melted leather and other fabrics. “What did you mean by gorillas?”

   “Not gorillas the animal,” he corrected. “Guerrillas as in the warfare tactic. They’re a small faction in the hunters and fighters that are kind of unconventional and use their skills in tracking and trapping to fight intruders and catch food. They really don’t like pirates,”

Trackers and trappers. 

   “They know the forest better than most of the others,” he sounded as if he’d had a few bad run ins with these boys.

   “Where are they now?” I asked, scanning the smoke filled clearing for any suspicious looking lost boys.

   “They ran off to the south when the fire went up and caught some tents,” he pointed to the south.

My heart stopped.

   “I sent Amity that way to get away from the fire,” I stepped back from Alfie to sniff the air, regretting the choice immediately as my lungs filled with smoke.

   “There’s too much smoke,” I coughed. “I can’t catch a scent!”

I started towards where I sent Amity and the others.

   “Go find Pan and explain what’s going on,” I instructed before sprinting off after Amity.

The smoke had begun clearing as I ran further and further away from the fires.

The smoke was still a little too thick for me to pick up any scents that would help me locate her so I relied on my hearing.

I listened to the birds all flying away from the smoky areas, the wood crackling in the flames back at camp, the trees creaking as they swayed in the wind.

Then I heard the boys laughter.

This is an odd time to be laughing.

I stopped and focused.

   “She stopped,” one of them whispered.

   “Why though?” another asked. “Do you think she saw it?”

   “No it’s concealed too well,” a third voice added.

   “Then why did she stop?” the first asked.

   “Because I can hear you!” I shouted as I turned a little to the left, the direction their voices came from, and spotted them looking at me through shrubbery about 20ft from where I was standing.

   “Oh shit,” the first one spat as he stood from his hiding spot.

One of the others stood also, dragging the third boy up by his collar.

   “What are you doing?” I snarled. “What is concealed so well that I shouldn’t have been able to see it?”

   “Well if you don’t know,” the first boy smirked. “I’ll just let you figure it out yourself,”

   “Listen shit brain,” I growled as I stepped forward. “I don’t have time for-”

something gripped my ankle and whisked me up into the air, haning upside down from a rather tall tree.

   “Are you kidding me?” I groaned.

The boys laughter drew my attention away from the blood rushing to my head.

I frowned at them as they all crowded around me.

   “We saw you and that pirate slut,” one of them sneered. “She slept in your tent? You’re already a mutt but now you’re a rover too?”

   “Oh for fuck sake,” I rolled my eyes.

Quicker than they could react, I pulled myself up, gripped onto the rope holding my ankle with on hand and sliced through it with the claws on my other, my grip on the rope allowing me to flip back up and land on my feet before the boys.

   “I’m not a mutt or a rover,” I began but I was cut off with a swift punch to the face.

   “Ah!” the boy who punched me cried when his knuckle cracked under the force, while I barely reacted.

   “Really?” I angled my face toward where he bent over a little, nursing his hand. “You can’t take me in a fight. And if you could, I don’t think Pan would be too pleased,”

   “Oh save it,” the boy snapped. “Pan doesn’t give a fuck about you!”

   “Don’t I?” that all too familiar voice chuckled as Peter Pan stepped out from behind a tree. “She is quite useful you know. Her skills and abilities make her more valuable than you and your little crew of savages,”

   “With her,” Felix revealed himself as he interjected. “We have fear struck in Hook’s men and we have a secret weapon if we get any other visitors. We know all your guerrilla tactics so don’t think you’re not expendable,”

Their faces paled at Felix’s words, realising they’d just fucked up real bad and Pan didn’t have any reason to keep them around anymore.

   “We were just playing!”

   “We didn’t mean anything by it!”

   “It was a joke!”

The boys all started throwing out excuses in hopes that they could avoid trouble.

   “Oh shut up,” Felix groaned. “You’re not fooling anyone. We know you tried to trap Y/n and we know you’ve got the new girl somewhere,”

   “Wait what?” I looked at Felix. “They have Amity?”

   “Yeah,” he looked surprised that I didn’t know. “You would have run past where they got her. Didn’t you smell them or anything?”

   “No I can’t smell anything because of the smoke,” I turned to the boys. “You set her things on fire and burnt down half of the camp. Didn’t you?”

   “Did they now?” Pan grinned mischievously.

   “No no!” the first boy stepped back. 

   “We didn’t set any fire,” the second added.

   “Don’t bother lying,” I snapped at them, stepping forward. “Alfie saw you throw Amity’s clothes in the fire pit,”

Their faces went white.

Peter and Felix exchanged looks before Pan sighed.

   “Last time you and your little gang screw up I gave you a warning,” Pan began. “I believe it was fair, giving you a second chance to behave properly. But this time not only did you burn a new comers belongings but you endangered the rest of the boys by setting the camp afire!”

The boys had started cowering away from Pan as he paced back and forth during his scolding.

I was a little worried. 

The smoke had cleared enough that I could smell the fear and anxiety dripping from these boys.

They were terrified.

And rightly so.

Pan wasn’t happy.

He was definitely about to rip these boys new assholes.

But I couldn’t stay and watch. I need to find Amity.

  “Listen turds,” I stepped in front of Pan.

Felix looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “Don’t worry,” I assured he and Pan. “I’m not stopping you from doing whatever to these boys. I’m simply delaying the inevitable,”

I turned back to the boys and leaned right into the first boys face, growling lowly.

  “Where. Is. Amity?” I said, deep and low.

  “We- we pushed her-“ he stammered.

  “Pushed her where?” I gripped his throat and held him still so he wouldn’t back away any further.

  “M-mermaid lagoon!” he gasped.

I released my grip and turned to Pan and Felix.

  “Which way?” I snarled, feeling my fingers tingling as my rage and protective insict hand begun to take over.

  “Y/n,” Pan looked at me sympathetically. “The mermaids-“

  “Which way?!” I snarled.

  “I’ll take you,” Felix piped up.

Both Pan and I looked at him, surprised at his offer.

  “C’mon,” he indicated with his head then took off at a jog heading off into the forest.

I huffed out a breath before running after him.

  “Why would you help me?” I asked as I caught up with Felix, easily matching his pace.

  “I still feel bad for taking you out with my club,” he said. “I figured as way of apology and attempt to earn you trust, I would help you find your girlfriend,”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” I interjected. “She’s just accepting of my lack of interest in men,”

He grunted in response.

  “Speaking of,” I added. “I can’t believe Pan told you! I mean it’s not like I’m in the closet or anything. It’s not a secret but it’s not really his news to share. Sure I turned him down but still-“

  “Wait, you turned him down?” he laughed. “He tried to come on to you?”

  “No not really,” I laughed back. “We were at the beach the other night and I mentioned how it was all boys and jokingly said ‘who am I meant to flirt with?” and he laughed and said why not him. So I told him how I like girls,”

  “How did you know he told me?” he quipped. “I might’ve figured it out for myself,”

  “Some boys were spying on me and Amity and said they heard him tell you,” I shrugged as we jogged along.

The smoke had cleared enough that I was beginning to catch other smells.

  “How far are we from the lagoon?” I asked.

  “Not very,” he said. “Now about the mermaids,”

  “Yeah Pan started to say something but I was too focused,” I said as we began to slow down. “

  “They’ve all got some weird attachment to Pan and get very jealous when it comes to his attention,” Felix explained as he ducked down behind the last layer of shrubbery separating us from the beach. “They tried to drown the last female friend he had and she was like, 12,”

  “What the fuck?” I crouched down beside him.

   “Yeah,” he sighed. “Wendy was a good kid,”

   “Wendy,” I repeated. “Weird name,”

He was going to respond but a shriek interrupted him.

  “Amity,” I breathed before rushing through the bushes onto the beach.

  “Y/n wait!” Felix shouted after me.

I ran out until I was ankle deep in the water but Felix pulled me back.

  “Let me go Felix!” I struggled against his grip. “Look! There she is,”

I pointed out over the water to where I could make out Amity, struggling to stay afloat in what seemed like a rip.

  “She’s right there,” I cried. “I can get her, just let me go!”

I broke free of his grasp and ran out into the water just in time to see the water surrounding Amity suddenly become very violent.

Screeches and wails sounded over the waves and the shimmering silver of tails swishing about in the foam.

  “Y/n!” Amity voice travelled so smoothly over the water.

The water calmed and dark haired heads rose from the surface.

Amity looked at the faces around her and her face contorted with fear.

She looked out at me, pleading, as one of the mermaids moved right up to her and whispered something in her ear.

I couldn’t make out the whisper but I heard Amity’s broken sob just as the other maids sank below the water.

The one by Amity’s ear looked at me, sending me a sadistic grin before she followed the others.

I took one last step forward before she was pulled under, disappearing from sight.

tag list: @not-ahero-deactivated20170723 @niawoods  @mintchip17 @ohokaybyethen @dina3s @just-meh-and-me-dogs @xcastawayherosx @lexymeg @trashofthelowestkind @gunpowderandlead1213 @kennedy-christl 

[recentanimenews]

Anime in America Podcast: Full Episode 6 Transcript

  We may not be able to go to the movies right now, but at least we can live vicariously through anime history in the latest episode of Crunchyroll's Anime in America podcast. Read on for the full episode 6 transcript! 

  The Anime in America series is available on crunchyroll.com, animeinamerica.com, and wherever you listen to podcasts. 

  EPISODE 6: AT THE MOVIES: EVENTUALLY

Guest: Jerry Beck

  Disclaimer: The following program contains language not suitable for all ages. Discretion advised.

  [Lofi music]

  There is one name you HAVE to talk about when it comes to anime. A foundational influence on the entire medium and an enervating force in the animation market. A man without whom we may not even have the anime we know and love today.

  It’s not Tezuka, but good guess.

  When it comes to the world of animation, and honestly most media, all roads lead back to Walt Disney. The man who all the animators in Japan’s growing post-war industry were trying to emulate. Most prominent among them, the legendary manga author and Japanese national treasure Osamu Tezuka who truly lived up to Walt’s legacy both by popularizing the medium of animation and establishing many regrettable business practices still felt in the modern industry. 

  Disney’s beloved animated features were the envy of every studio on both sides of the Pacific and the pursuit of that special magic Walt brought to the silver screen was what kicked off the race to bring Japanese animation to America. So, I guess…we can start there.

  [Lofi music]

  In the ‘50s Toei Animation was basically the only major animation studio in Japan and had the stated intent of becoming “The Disney of the East.” Toei’s first 3 films, Hakujaden, Shonen Sautobi Sasuke, and Saiyuki were all released near the end of that decade and all stuck very closely to the Disney formula, retelling traditional folktales with colorful animation, plenty of cute animals, and, in the case of Saiyuki, musical interludes.

  Back home in the U.S., Disney was deep in a run of blockbuster releases with titles like Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and, umm [cough] Song of the South. Just about every major studio was trying to figure out how to steal some of that thunder. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer was one such studio who considered Disney their rivals at the box office. If you wanna know how that turned out for MGM, uh, Disney acquired their parent company Fox in March 2019.

  It was never much of a rivalry to begin with. MGM put out a behind the scenes docu series called The MGM Parade aping Disney’s “The Magical World of Disney” series in 1955 and decided to close their animation department in 1957, the heads of which, a Mr. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, would depart along with most of the staff to form the very successful Hanna-Barbera Productions. 

  So, what do you do when you want to compete with a company like Disney in animated features but don’t want to go to the trouble of producing any animated features? MGM became the first company to license and release a Japanese anime in the United States, premiering Toei’s Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, retitled Magic Boy, in theaters in July 8th, 1961, winning a close race against Global Pictures and American International by only two months ahead their releases of Toei’s two other films, Hakujaden, retitled Panda and the Magic Serpent, and Saiyuki, retitled Alakhazam the Great.

  They didn’t do too great, which probably explains why between those three movies released in 1961 and Hayao Miyazaki’s debut in American cinemas in 1986, only 3 other anime made it to theaters in the U.S. 

  Not even Tezuka’s magic could break open the box office for anime in the ‘70s. His production company, Mushi Production, had two films, A Thousand and One Nights and Cleopatra: Queen of Sex that were both released early in the decade and flopped. In the case of the latter, Xanadu Productions’s attempt to sell the erotic historical drama as a porno probably didn’t help.

  The rest of the following two decades saw plenty of anime films being released in the West but only for direct to video releases with major Japanese studios leaning hard into this new market. Many U.S. distributors were now exploiting Japanese studios to animate their own cartoons, so many of the same era took on a sort of Western bend. Toei Animation in particular released a number of films during that period that seem pretty focused on replicating that Disney formula even more closely, using Western history and folktales as source material. Some of my favorite examples are The World of Hans Christian Andersen (originally Anderson Monogatari), Les Miserables (originally Jean Valjean Monogatari), 30,000 Miles Under the Sea (yes, miles), Animal Treasure Island, and even Puss n’ Boots (who became Toei’s logo) during the ‘70s.

  [Music from “Toei Logo History” plays]

  In 1986, Hayao Miyazaki finally appeared in the American scene. If you haven’t heard of him… how the fuck not? How is that possible? I don’t, I don’t understand. Often referred to as the Walt Disney of Japan, Miyazaki is the primary creative force of what would become the internationally renowned Studio Ghibli which we’ll get into a bit later. Their first film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was created before the studio even had a name, wowing American audiences with its beautiful art and epic story involving environmentalist themes... kind of. Well not really, actually. Manson International and Showmen Inc. got their hands on the movie and cut it up so bad you couldn’t really call it a Miyazaki work anymore. I mean, they didn’t, they changed everything. They changed the title to Warriors of the Wind, [Clip from 1985 commercial for Warriors of the Wind] renaming Nausicaa to “Princess Zandra” and doing their best to make it an action movie while cutting out any of the environmental themes at the core of the narrative by cutting out a whole 22 minutes of the film. Then they drew up a He-Man ass poster with a whole squad of dudes and a pegasus that were not even in the movie.

  [Lofi music]

  Enter Streamline Pictures.

  Co-founded by Jerry Beck and Carl Macek. Each already working to spread the good word of anime, the two were disappointed in early dubs and brought a new philosophy to the localization game with Streamline. 

  Do. Not. Mess. With. It. Don’t do that. For your own good. 

  Beck: We were quite proud of them, because we had a theory on how to do this, which was to use the original music and effects tracks, not cut anything, uh and to do the dubs as accurately and as correctly as we possibly could, with the best actors we could get. Our model was the Warriors of the Wind, meaning we were going to be everything that movie wasn’t. We were going to be the opposite of Warriors of the Wind. 

  That was the man, Jerry Beck himself. The formula was simple, arguably a lot less work than completely changing a movie to shoe-horn it into some western film archetype, the two-man company began visiting Japanese studios… or rather their Los Angeles offices since every major Japanese studio had one of those in the 1980’s, and asking for dubbing and distribution rights.

  Both passionate anime fans, the two had a ton of knowledge of emerging anime titles and an interest in bringing many of them over which larger studios would have passed up for dumb reasons like “profitability.”

  Beck: We literally made a checklist that we got all the films. We wanted Fist of the Northstar, we wanted Wicked City, we wanted Vampire Hunter D, we wanted Castle of Cagliostro, we wanted- you know, we wanted Lensmen, but I’m not sure why, I actually know why at the time, but that’s such an odd film. So, but we ended up getting them all.

  After handling the theatrical screenings of the Mangum Dub of Castle in the Sky, Macek secured a deal with Japanese publisher Tokuma Shoten to dub future titles, including My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service. After that they went on a tear, where they were basically the only company in the game theatrically releasing anime from 1985 to 1995, averaging almost 2 movies a year in a period where non-Streamline anime films could be counted on one hand with room to spare. 

  I cannot emphasize enough how much Streamline did for anime in America. They even helped the medium properly break into American television in the early ‘90s alongside Central Park Media by contributing to Syfy’s anime block which aired Dominion Tank Police, Robot Carnival, Project A-Ko, Vampire Hunter D, and another film brought to the U.S. by Streamline which could be considered their greatest achievement.

  Akira. Or AH-ki-ra [first syllable stress], if you’re a purist.

  Beck: Marvel Comics was printing an adaptation of Akira and we knew about the film [Requiem from Akira plays]. And at that point, that was like, of course like ‘88 or so, you know there were already bootleg VHS copies for sale at comic book conventions and stuff. But we looked at it and went “oh my God, this is like state of the art, you know? This is really a big deal for film.” And I don’t even think we had seen it on the big screen or anything, we just knew we wanted it, if it was gettable. And the good news was that the Akira Committee was kinda desperately wanted it to be shown in America, and they had gone to Paramount, Universal, Fox, everywhere, trying to get somebody to pick up Akira, and nobody would because it was too violent. The idea of that kind of thing being shown in America was, you know, unthinkable. So we were like “we’ll do it!” 

  Akira was a cultural and technological achievement in animation. It set a new record number of colors used in an animated feature at 327, 50 of which were unique colors created specifically for the movie. You could fill a mega size box of Crayons with colors that only exist thanks to Akira, which is insane. The film consisted of 160,000 frames, clocking in at almost 3 times the average for an animated feature of that same length. It was also the most expensive anime film ever produced at the time with a budget of 1.1 billion Japanese Yen. As Jerry said, it was also intensely violent, considered graphic in Japan and especially in America which still considered animation almost wholly a realm of children’s entertainment. The Akira Committee was desperate to get it in American theaters. And obviously, there were difficulties. 

  After being collectively shot down by Hollywood, the Akira Committee was approached by the small and unproven Streamline with a unique offer: if the Akira Committee could put up the cost to dub and distribute, Streamline would give them 100% of the profits up to a cap before beginning to collect their own percentage.

  And it was not easy. Jerry had to negotiate for months with an agent from the committee who basically watched their operation at work to make sure they knew what they were doing. Then Streamline was given an opportunity to prove themselves by hosting a screening of the film in the Spreckles theater at ComicCon. Only once they pulled that off did the committee ink the deal, but with one demand. They were adamant about getting a quality dub and wanted someone who had, at the very least, been nominated for an Academy Award to manage it. At the very least. Carl Macek had one of his associates search around and eventually they landed on Sheldon Renan, who had previously received recognition from the Motion Pictures Association of America for a documentary short just to fit the bill. 

  [Akira versus Kaneda, english dub clip]

  And it was a hit. Screenings pulled in profits on par with or even exceeding critically acclaimed live action foreign films. Streamline established their reputation in the industry on the success of Akira, and the next step was home video, which turned into another battle for Streamline as one of the principles of the committee, Kodansha, was intent on selling out the rights to a large distributor based on Akira’s success in theaters. Still they were turned down and once again, despite not even being a home video distributor, Streamline made an offer.

  Beck: We said to them, you know, we’re gonna get you the reviews, you’re going to get reviews in every town. We got Siskel and Ebert, they reviewed it; we got it on Entertainment Tonight, we got it everywhere. And so we were doing all this stuff, the idea though, the goal, was to get all this coverage and then they would go, they would instead of going to movie studios they would go to the home video people and try to convince them to put it out on home video. No home video distributor wanted it. Nobody. Because there was nowhere, we found out later, there was no place in a video store, then, for them to put it. They couldn’t put it in the kids’ cartoon section, the idea of putting it in science fiction, I don’t know why that didn’t work, that should’ve worked, but they probably had Heavy Metal there, but they for some reason that was not a thing that- they didn’t, there was nowhere to put what we call “anime” in a video store at that time. They did say to us “you gotta have a bunch of them. Five, six, seven, and we’ll create a shelf, we’ll put a shelf in our stores.” This is what Blockbuster said, this is what Suncoast said. So we ended up, we ended up, what we did was we got the vid- they couldn’t sell the video rights, so WE got the video rights, even though we weren’t a video company! And so we ended up putting out Akira on VHS. We couldn’t sell it in video stores. So we ended up- and there was no Ebay or Amazon, that didn’t exist, so we actually went to comic book stores and obviously it was the perfect thing to do, because Akira was a comic book, it was manga, and Marvel was printing it. And we ended up selling them to comic book stores and we- it worked. It was exclusive to comic book stores, it was the only place you could get it. Oh my God, we sold… thousands. 

  Streamline hung up its hat with the release of Space Adventure Cobra in 1995 but many of their partners who handled the theatrical distribution like Tara Releasing and Fathom Events continued without them. Just as TV anime was headed toward its own watershed moment, the field for anime movies broadened in the second half of the ‘90s. Manga Entertainment brought over Ghost in the Shell with Palm Pictures in 1996. VIZ Media broke into films by capitalizing on Ranma ½’s growing popularity with the release of Ranma ½ the Movie: Big Trouble in Nekonron China alongside CBS theatrical in 1998. 

  And then the big one came. 4Kids partnered with Kids WB and dropped Pokemon: The First Movie in 1999. And to call it a smash hit for anime movies would be an understatement. [Pokemon: The First Movie, trailer 1 plays] I saw it. Because my dad bought the VHS from one of those dudes that sold bootlegs in the Kroger parking lot. The one he hand recorded himself. You remember those? We had ‘em. 

  The movie hit $10.1 million in the box office on its opening day, which was a Wednesday, by the way. Over its opening weekend it would climb to $31 million and eventually cap out at $85 million at the box office which has remained the record anime movie in the United States for 20 years. For a moment in time it even claimed the best opening weekend for an animated feature full stop until Toy Story 2 dropped two weeks later. [Pokemon Bumper - 2000] Plastic-faced newscasters began referring to its opening weekend as “Pokeflu,” since so many kids mysteriously called in sick from school the same day.

  “Pokemania Comes to America - 1999, ABC News”: Pokemon is now in full mania! And others may follow suit, when a new Pokemon movie hit theaters this fall, spurring even more… Pokemania.

  "’Pokémania’: 1999 MSNBC Pokémon News Report”: School officials are finding that Pokemon cards are responsible for fist fights and the constant trading is not only distracting kids from classwork, but turning the playground into a black market. 

  And ya know what? Given recent events, Pokeflu sounds very racist. But that’s what they called it. 

  Anime was still a few years off from its Oscar grab and even today hasn’t fully reached acceptance as a respected form of media, but the Pokemon movie proved there was lots and lots of money to be made from anime if you played your cards right. Although it’s difficult to tell if that's what 4Kids and Warner Bros did. Each subsequent Pokemon movie pulled in roughly half what the previous managed. Pokemon: The Movie 2000 scored a total box office of $43 million and Pokemon 3: The Movie grabbed $17 million before the whole thing fell off a cliff. Pokemon 4Ever pulled in only $1.7 million and Pokemon Heroes didn’t even crack $1 million. Mind you, this still gives Pokemon the 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 19th highest box offices of anime films in the U.S., so, you know, what do I know?

  Pokemon’s explosive success at the box office inspired other attempts to grab some of that Disney demographic. Fox was the first to jump after the 1999 success of the first Pokemon movie with Digimon: The Movie which I’m definitely gonna talk about in a little bit. 4Kids itself also tried to recapture that Pokemon magic as the franchise was showing diminishing returns with Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light.

  Unfortunately the Pokemon movies were also a return to form for crazed American producers with scissors. 4Kids onigiri erasure in Pokemon TV series is notorious on its own, but its former president Norman Grossfeld also feared the Pokemon: The Movie movie would do poorly as written. Casting Mewtwo as a sympathetic antagonist confused and angered the profit-minded execs who produced content for children despite probably never having children of their own. They cut out the prologue describing Mewtwo’s past as the victim of genetic experiments and made edits to portray him as a generic villain and Mew as… like some kinda savior, messiah-type thing?

  [Lofi music]

  Fox, in its desperation to compete with the success of Warner Brothers’s Pokemon looked to Digimon, spawning the creation of the cinematic chimera Digimon: The Movie. You see, there wasn’t actually a movie called Digimon: The Movie in Japan, but several short Digimon films titled Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure:... um… Children’s War Game?, and Digimon Adventure 02: Digimon Hurricane Landing!!.

  The first two had been directed by the acclaimed Mamoru Hosoda and the last by Shigeyasu Yamauchi. I really want to emphasize these were three different movies utilizing different art styles and creative processes with the last one even focusing on an almost entirely different cast of characters. So, like Harmony Gold before them, they took a knife to all three features, leaving more than 40 minutes on the cutting room floor to create a bizarrely paced, three-arc, Digimon feature before slapping on a mostly ska soundtrack and Angela Anaconda short in the beginning [Angela Anaconda part of the Digimon Movie]. The movie premiered in 2000 and was panned by critics but walked away with a $9.6 million box office, making it the 9th most successful anime film in the States, so I’m sure the producers cried all the way to the bank while the rest uh… learned that evil pays.

  Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light came later in 2004 and might be an even more bizarre feature than Digimon, since 4Kids produced the movie rather than just chopping it up after the fact. In fact, it might be the first anime film to be screened in the United States before Japan, releasing in August while Japan didn’t get the theatrical release until November. Somehow the Japanese version was still a full 14 minutes longer than the U.S. release. It’s not really clear whether Studio Gallop made the film whole cloth and 4Kids cut it down, as was their usual practice, or if they added some extra content after the fact that 4Kids didn’t want for the American audience. I guess we’ll never know.

  Since it was produced for the U.S., we did get the bonus of having all the cards appear like the actual game complete with english text, even if it sometimes appeared upside-down. Pyramid of Light also had ska music unfortunately. Umm… the 2000s was a, it was a big time for ska. Once again the movie was panned, finding a place in Rotten Tomatoes’s 100 worst reviewed films of the 2000s, but became the 4th most successful anime film in the U.S. ever, with a $19.8 million box office.

  But that is enough about box office for now. Now we can talk about home video releases.

  [Lofi music]

  If you’ve ever tried to catch an anime film in theaters, you’ve probably noticed that even today they usually have extremely limited showings. At Streamline’s peak, they weren’t the only company localizing anime films, they were just the only ones making a push to put them in theaters. Other publishers were going for the straight to video route, but there was one serious hang-up. Blockbuster just didn’t give a shit. 

  Streamline’s own Akira release had limited theatrical showings, meaning they were leaning heavily into home video and the movie really beat the odds, finding success in the two markets mom and pop video stores and comic shops. Bootleg fansubs of Akira had been in circulation for months before the film’s official release, so Streamline sweetened the deal by including actual original animation cels with the VHS which seems less an intelligent marketing gimmick and more of a giveaway of cultural artifacts in retrospect. Those people are probably very wealthy, now. It was probably also unnecessary. Akira’s home video success was a moment in anime history in many ways, but it was also an exception. 

  The direct to video market would never find the same success in comic shops that Akira had. You could find anime in privately owned video stories but even then they were being crowded out by mainstream outlets like Blockbuster who were much less interested in putting anime on their shelves, especially of the famously violent variety like Akira. For anime to get its foot in the door, it would need a new face that was not only child friendly but also insanely popular. I know I just talked about Pokemon’s breakout success, but its home video wouldn’t hit the shelves until 2000. Instead, the man who would help open Blockbusters’s blue and gold doors for other anime in the late ‘90s was one of its creators who most famously hates home video. Hayao Miyazaki.

  Miyazaki was already making the rounds in the U.S. via World Pictures and Streamline dubs of a few of his films which was probably fine by him, as he seems to resent the idea of people  watching his movies in any setting other than a theater, but Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki had his sights set on dominating the animation industry and Disney just happened to be in the market for international films. Former Head of Disney Home Video International Division and current CEO of Herbalife Nutrition Michael O Johnson inked a deal with Ghibli in 1996 granting global distribution rights to their entire library of films. 

  This was thanks in large part to the effort of Disney’s Steve Alpert who went so far as to film a mini-documentary in Disney studios to basically show Eisner and his fellow suits that every single person they employed to draw moving pictures was already a diehard fan of Miyazaki’s work. Alpert himself would jump ship to Ghibli to work alongside Suzuki battling his former employer at every turn to make sure they kept their promise about not cutting Ghibli films.

  Probably expecting Ghibli’s next film to be another Totoro or Kiki, Disney was shocked to see limbs flying off people's bodies in Princess Mononoke and pushed the distribution under their Miramax label to distance themselves from its morally objectionable content, which I can only assume came from a place of deep ignorance of both their own company’s history and the work of their HR department. Also the notion that um… just producing the same thing under a different wing of your company makes you any less morally objectionable… is also morally objectionable. 

  Unfortunately the Harvey Weinstein-lead Miramax was dead set on changing everything about Mononoke that it possibly could. And with Ghibli holding onto an iron-clad contract giving them final say, this transformed into all-out warfare with Miramax trying to weasel in every change they could and Alpert flying over the Pacific to nip that shit in the bud, only ending after Weinstein himself was twice humiliated in public. And to that I say: Good. First in a now iconic story wherein Suzuki presents him with a unsharpened prop sword at a meeting full of Disney and Miramax suits while shouting “Mononoke-hime NO CUT,” and then when Miyazaki and crew left in the middle of their own post-premiere party to carefully consider the suggestion Weinstein had been shouting at Alpert to chop 40 minutes off the movies runtime or they’d “never work in this town again.” And then several years later, the entire entertainment industry said “no, YOU’LL never work in this town again!” 

  Although Streamline had been following our modern era’s best practice of not messing with the source material for about a decade, Ghibli’s “no cuts” policy was one of the first pushes in that direction to come from Japan and doubtless helped to normalize the practice… eventually. As I said before, 4Kids and Fox raked in millions spinning out heavily edited films but Buena Vista bending the knee to Ghibli’s demands, the lasting cultural impact of Ghibli movies, and an increasingly saturated market of TV anime untouched by an editor’s razor eventually pushed the industry in the right direction. After all, no edited anime movies ever have been nominated for Oscars, but more on that later.

  Despite being a global hit, Princess Mononoke didn’t really take off in the way Disney had hoped, only pulling in $2.3 million in its first eight weeks. But it recovered in… that’s right, home video releases! Boom. Got ‘em. They also started churning out actual VHS releases for other Ghibli titles like Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro and then, when Streamline’s rights expired, Disney produced their own lavish dubs for DVD re-releases featuring a star-studded cast with voices like Dakota Fanning, Kirsten Dunst, Patrick Stewart, and uh, Shia LeBeouf. What?! Blockbuster was finally persuaded to start moving in anime content when Disney’s Buena Vista came knocking and the doors were officially open for more anime content.

  Ghibli was way ahead of its time in many ways and rights management was no exception. Or at least Miyazaki’s insistence on the purity of a theater-only movie-viewing experience had some unintended benefits. A mere two years before 4Kids would pull off the heist of the century screwing Shogakukan and Nintendo out of millions in profits in their deal of the explosively popular Pokemon franchise, Ghibli would deny Disney digital rights to their works in their contract. Disney was fine with that, the prevailing belief among executives being that those rights were basically useless. Ha-ha! Imagine that.

  Disney wasn’t interested in digital and if Disney, the most powerful media rights holder in the world, wasn’t going to push into that new sphere of distribution, then it was doomed to failure. Which, looking at the titanic size of Netflix who recently acquired streaming rights to the Ghibli Films worldwide minus Japan and the U.S. and is now staring down the barrel of Disney’s own competing streaming service Disney+ and Warner’s HBO Max, is kinda funny in retrospect.

  [Lofi music]

  Buena Vista might’ve helped Ghibli in another way though. Let's talk about when anime won an Oscar. No one’s quite sure how it happened, really. Not that Spirited Away didn’t deserve it. It definitely did. It’s a good movie. It’s just, uh, this was the first and only of Miyazaki’s works to have even been nominated. Ever. In fact, no anime films before Spirited Away in 2003 received a nomination for best animated film in the Academy Awards, and only The Tale of Princess Kaguya has been nominated since. Maybe the stars aligned, maybe it’s because Spirited Away’s stiffest competition in the 75th Academy Awards was Lilo & Stitch and Ice Age [Spirited Away Wins Animated Feature: 2003 Oscars], maybe it's because Spirited Away carried extra credibility by being released in the U.S. under the auspices of Disney. Whatever the cause, anime, via Ghibli, had grabbed a piece of critical acclaim in the American entertainment industry that seemed otherwise determined to ignore it.

  Not that Hollywood hadn’t noticed anime long ago. Two of America’s most celebrated directors, Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky, have both committed what can charitably be described as borrowing from a certain Japanese director by the name of Satoshi Kon to build their respective, uh repertoires. Aranofsky heavily borrowed story, themes, and imagery from Kon’s Perfect Blue in his film Black Swan and even recreated the bath scene from Perfect Blue in his Requiem for a Dream. Guess which two of those three movies were nominated for Oscars? Nolan’s Inception collected four Oscars in 2010 which contained several scenes that anime fans got a sneak preview of 3 years before in the limited screening of Kon’s 2007 Paprika. And also in that one uh, Donald Duck comic strip. 

  Uh, look, I’m not trying to roast anybody or anything like that. Maybe Aronofsky. But you just can’t talk about Spirited Away grabbing an Oscar without giving mention to not just anime films, but foreign films in general which Hollywood seems to find value in but only when filtered through one of its own creators. So what does this get us? It gets us Scarlett Johansenn playing a woman named Motoko Kusanagi and an Oldboy remake that completely misses the point. 

  Trust me when I say the only good adaptations by Hollywood are Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow and the Wachowski sisters’s Speed Racer. You heard it here. If you want a new Ghost in the Shell movie just open your wallet, call Mamoru Oshii, and ask him to make another one. Stop with this weird shit. 

  Although many films were in uncertain licensing situations until GKIDs started recollecting them, the works of visionary directors like Mamoru Hosoda, Satoshi Kon, and Isao Takahata have managed to find their way to American theaters over the years without edits and a minimal delay that recently has been reduced down to less than a year. Not quite simulcasting, but given none of them have had a real breakout hit, it’s long strides to think that fans have had consistent opportunities to watch their movies in theaters over the years and purchase them in home video.

  [Lofi music.]

  Since Miyazaki’s most recent retirement, Ghibli underwent a sort of identity crisis on what to make of their studio or even if they would continue making films at all. During this period many of their creators left to join other studios, some of them even forming their own Studio Ponoc itself dedicated to continuing Ghibli’s traditions of movie making. Ghibli itself was just kinda there until very recently, when the aforementioned GKIDs secured the rights to Ghibli within the U.S. and entered into a deal to stream the entire Ghibli library on HBO Max. Ghibli also recently announced that it's nearing the release of TWO new films, Miyazaki’s own How Do You Live? and the studio’s first entirely CG feature film Earwig and the Witch, by Miyazaki’s son, Goro. 

  And I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing until I saw the images and I will just say I’m definitely gonna go see it.

  And y’know what? That’s great for Disney, but Ghibli’s downtime created an existential dread within the anime industry and fandom, because there wasn’t any other big name director to replace Miyazaki in the collective consciousness of America as “THE anime director,” or as Mother’s Basement on YouTube would say “the new Miyazaki,” until only recently...

  Makoto Shinkai has been directing anime movies, arguably the SAME anime movie, since 1998 and has been a well known quantity in the fandom since his 2002 film Voices of a Distant Star. But something changed in 2016. His movies are almost always about young people in love separated by time, space, circumstance, or supernatural circumstance, but each iteration has refined his technique until one finally reached critical mass. Your Name became the most successful Japanese film of any kind in multiple countries, including China, and Japan’s second most successful anime film domestically behind Spirited Away. Didn’t even crack the top 10 in the U.S., though.

  And no Oscar.

  That said, Your Name was a resounding success in the United States, now surpassed by Shinkai’s newest film Weathering with You last year. Each pulling in $5 million in the box office is no small feat for anime films. Appearing more frequently in mainstream outlets may be slowly growing Shinkai into a household name which, matched with his own formula for successful films, could be the beginning of another single director legacy that will pull the industry up with it.

  Now although we’ve seen less explosive releases since the children-focused anime movies around the turn of the millenia, it’s hard to describe our past decade of the 2010s as anything but a stateside renaissance for anime film. While the collective box office brought in by anime in the U.S. during the 2000s completely dwarfs that of the ‘90s, there weren’t all that many more films making it over. The real difference in the marketing and theater availability after Pokemon provided a proof of concept. Although there’s been roughly 50% more anime films coming out per year in Japan in the 2010s than the 2000s, the yearly average with theatrical releases in the states more than doubled between the decades.

  And while TV anime are slowly being consolidated into a few select streaming services, more distribution companies have entered the industry to put anime films in theaters. Nowadays GKIDs, Fathom Events, and Eleven Arts have an almost monthly churn of screenings that actually top the daily box offices… on their Wednesday showings. Wednesday. Still, given the movies are airing in limited theaters and showings, the numbers are very good. Just last year Dragon Ball Super: Broly had the 3rd most successful box office for an anime film in the U.S. at $30 million.

  Sounds like we’re in a pretty good place. Well, it’s all- I mean, it’s all relative. We have doubled the number of movies we license every year since last decade, but American theater-goers still only get the opportunity to watch maybe half of the anime films that come out every year in Japan. Meanwhile, there are an average of over 200 TV anime produced every year and, with rare exceptions, every single one is licensed and distributed in the United States across a number of streaming services. Next up, we’re going to talk about anime on TV and how it's grown into one of the largest, fastest, and most sophisticated localization industries in the world.

  Bye!

  [Lofi music]

  Thank you for listening to Anime in America, presented by Crunchyroll. If you enjoyed this, please go to Crunchyroll.com/animeinamerica to start your 14-day free trial or just log on for some free, ad-supported anime. 

  Special thanks to Jerry Beck. You can find more of Jerry’s work over on cartoonresearch.com along with the history of Streamline Pictures written by Fred Patten, one of the co-founders. 

  This episode is hosted by me, Yedoye Travis, and you can find me on Instagram at ProfessorDoye or Twitter @YedoyeOT. This episode is researched and written by Peter Fobian, edited by Chris Lightbody, and produced by me, Braith Miller, Peter Fobian and Jesse Gouldsbury. 

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[secondstartotheright-imagines]

There Is No Escape - Part 9

Note: Killian has found you and is determined to get it through to you that Pan is lying. Will you give in and how is Pan going to react when the one person he didn’t want finding you does just that?

Killian Jones x Peter Pan x Reader

Words: 2221

Warnings: Some violence.

Disclaimers: None of the GIFs are mine. All credit goes to the creators <3

Deception was rife on the island so to hear that you are being deceived is hardly anything new. Pan and the boys loved to play games where such a thing was the key element….so what made this pirate think that it would bother you at all? That’s if you could even bestow the ‘pirate’ title upon him. Weren’t they supposed to be fearsome and intimidating men? This one seems to be saying anything he can to distract you from slitting his throat where he stands.

“We all deceive one another. It’s what makes the games on this island fun. So, sorry, but you are going to have to come up with something better than that if you want me to spare you.”

You have never taken the life of anyone before but that doesn’t mean that you would back out if the situation calls for it. If anything you would do it just to prove to Pan that you don’t need a babysitter…not that you should even have to prove such a thing to him.

“This is a different deception. This has nothing to do with a game.” The look in his eyes shows the exhaustion the pirate must have been experiencing but it didn’t stop a spark of defiance from pushing its way through as he spoke. “This is all to do with Pan wanting something. No matter what it takes.”

“Nothing new there then.”

You are growing bored of him relaying information that you already know. You have been on this island long enough to understand your leader, know his traits, nothing of what you are hearing is having the desired affect that the male before you obviously wants it to.

“Damnit [y/n] why have you always got to be so stubborn? Just listen to me will ya?!”

You are not the only one who is fast losing their patience but given the precarious situation he is currently in he makes sure he doesn’t make any sudden moves to get up and leave. Instead his dark eyes remain on you as though the longer you look at them the more sense you will see.

“He was there the whole time wasn’t he?”

Bit of an odd remark for him to make and immediately your confusion shows as your brows furrow. The grip you have on your dagger loosens ever so slightly as an unnerving feeling began to creep in.

“When?”

“When you got your memories back he never left your side did he?”

“Well of course he didn’t. He’s my leader, my friend, he wanted to make sure that I was alright.”

There was no other reason needed for him to be there the whole time you had been in the healing waters of Neverland. He had been looking after you just like you had always remembered him doing so. But if that is the case then why were you beginning to feel a sense of dread come over you when you think this? You have always been so sure about things when it came to Peter, always, and yet this pirate – someone you barely even know in comparison – was managing to change that completely.

“He wasn’t there to look out for you. He was making sure that you didn’t remember everything…..only what he wanted you to. I now you are going to find it hard to believe but do you really, honestly, think I would wander this island for as long as I have just to lie to you?”

“You’re a pirate so lying is in your nature.”

His look darkens at your words, his dry and chapped lips moving into a frown, it’s clear that your words have struck a nerve which only increases your confusion with this whole conversation.

“I am not lying to you [y/n]. In fact I am the only bloody person on this island who isn’t!!!” He stands himself up properly now, his full height towering over you, but it isn’t done to intimidate you there is more of a desperate air to his action as he holds out his only good hand towards the dagger you are still brandishing. “Now put down the knife before somebody gets hurt. I’m not here to threaten you so it isn’t needed.”

“Right. Because I am just going to make myself completely vulnerable in front of the likes of you! Not a chance!”

“Fine. Have it your way. I was only trying to be polite.”

Before you can even think to react to his next move he grabs the blade of the dagger, not caring for the fact that it slices into the palm of his hand when he does, and then he yanks it out of your grip entirely before throwing it into one of the nearby bushes. He had some nerve! That had been a gift from Pan and now you are going to have to get on your hands and knees just to try and find it again.

You step right up to him, ready to fight him with your bare hands, but he simply grabs both of your hands and pins them to you side – forcing you to listen to him.

“Just go back to where he took you love, go inside on your own, if none of your memories change then I will admit defeat and leave this blasted island. I know you don’t know of any reason to trust me but just humour me yeah?”

If agreeing to this ludicrous ask of his is the only way to get rid of him then what else can you really do? A frustrated huff escapes you as the defiance in your eyes changes to a look of surrender.

“Fine. I will do it if it shuts you up.”

He doesn’t speak another word and simply mimes the action of zipping his lips shut as a rather satisfied grin reaches his lips.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

You remember the way to the healing waters so well that it is like you were only here a day or two ago rather than a few weeks....perhaps that is something to do with the fact that you want this over and done with so the pirate can leave you alone – if Pan found out about this he would not be happy at all. The last thing you need is to be punished because of this rather stubborn pirate.

You reach out a hand to the veil of vines that cover the entrance of it but before stepping in you turn to look at him. You are about ready to tell him the ins and outs of him coming here with you but before a word even leaves your lips he holds up his hand and his hook and takes a couple of steps away from you.

“Don’t worry love I won’t intrude. Like I said....you need to be in there alone.”

He really is adamant that he is going to be right about all of this. That you will go in there, find out Pan has lied, and come out having had some kind of ‘EUREKA!’ moment....it makes you a little nervous and after one last look you make your way back into the place you’d thought had healed your broken mind.

Once you have stripped down to your underwear, as you had done before, you took in a deep inhale of air before lowering yourself slowly into the shallow pool. Although you have done this before everything seems so much more unnerving without the presence of someone else here.....without Peter.

After a few hesitant moments where your nerves get the better of you and stop you from closing your eyes you finally allow yourself to calm down enough to lay your head back against the edge of the pool.

Your memories come to you quicker than they had done before and they hit you ten times harder too. The first one was from when you arrived on the island only you weren’t with Peter this time. You were with the very pirate you had just threatened to kill.

You feel yourself smiling at him as he looks at you from the wheel of his ship. His own smile lighting up his whole face as he kept his hook on one of the spokes on the wheel and wrapped his good arm around your waist. Pulling you into him closer so that your heart skipped not one but two beats.

“I’m so glad you let me come with you Killian. I know that it’s not seen as good luck to have a wom-“

He placed a kiss onto the top of your head and interrupted you before you could finish your sentence.

“Yeah but you’re not just any woman are you? You’re MY woman. Always will be now that you are away from that wretched father of yours. As soon as me and my men have got what we want from here we are going to sail to as many lands as we can....and you are going to be by my side for every one of them.”

The feeling that was spreading through you as he spoke his words was one of pure love for the man. As far as you were concerned this ship may have been full of his crew but it was only you and him in your world........

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Pan had been of sparring with his boys, still annoyed at the fact that he’d had to give in and let you go off on your own, but halfway through an attack on Luke, one of the older boys, something hit him. He didn’t know what it was but it felt like an invisible force had punched him right in the stomach.

It’s not like he hadn’t received numerous hits before – not just from the boys but from you too – but this was hard enough to really catch him off guard which ultimately meant that instead of Luke being the one to receive the hit he did, right across the head.

“Argh! Dammit Luke!”

The boy didn’t look shocked in the slightest, that much was made clear by the rather hysterical laugh that erupted from him, a laugh that was soon followed by a whole chorus of them when the other boys realised what had happened.

“I would apologise Pan but maybe if you weren’t so busy thinking about a girl then you wouldn’t have been so easy to beat.”

Luke’s words had a teasing undertone to them, one that wasn’t appreciated by Pan at all, but right now he had more things to worry about then punishing Luke. That could be done later, and he would be damn well sorry by the end of it too, but for now he needed to find out what the hell was going on.....that feeling hadn’t been a pleasant one at all.

Something was happening that shouldn’t have been.

Without so much as another toward to the boys he disappeared into thin air and reappeared in the very part of the island that had sent that feeling powering at him. That was when he spotted the very figure he hadn’t wanted to see....and he was stood outside the cave that held the healing waters too.

His eyes turned dark at that moment, looking like the very eyes of a demon, and he appeared closer to the pirate. Only this time, unlike all the others they had met, he made sure he ended up directly behind him. That was when he drove his fist into his back and ripped out his heart.

Killian stumbled on his feet, turning to face the boy, and looked at him in sheer horror as his good hand went up to rest on his now empty chest.

“Oh....would you look at that.” In contrast to the dark eyes he now possessed a smug little smirk crossed his lips as he watched the pirate struggle to stand. “....turns out it isn’t [y/n] that has your heart after all. It’s me!”

Laughing to himself as though he had just told some amusing joke Pan gave the pulsating heart a squeeze, relishing in the agonising pain it put Killian through.

“I-It’s too late boy. Sh-She is going to remember.”

“Oh I’m sure she will. She is a smart one that girl. That’s why I want her here with me. So it’s a good job you are going to break her heart isn’t it?”

“Like hell I-“

Another squeeze of his heart and Killian’s words soon cut short as Pan leaned his head over his shoulder and spoke down his ear in a menacing tone.

“You will have no choice. I have your heart. She walks out of there knowing everything and the ironic thing is she is going to come running to the one person who has lied and deceived her. You should know by now pirate.....Peter Pan never fails.”

Permanent tag list: @modified-wonderland @fallenfairy16 @dottirose @lust-for-pan@brieflybigwonderland @xoxoaudreymarie

(still plenty of room if anyone else would like to be added!)