#i have the entire world’s catalogue at my disposal

[theamazingannie]

The worst part of being a writer is that you have to know everything. Not just in regards to all the research you have to do for a one-liner (which is hard) but also that if your character has a character trait, you also need to know how to exhibit that character trait. Your character is funny, you have to be funny. Your character is flirty, you have to be flirty. Your character is known for giving the perfect gifts, you now have to also know how to give the perfect gifts. It’s exhausting

[anthurak]

One of my favorite things about Control is just how completely and utterly nuts/bonkers/GONE the FBC is as one of these ‘secret government blackops’ groups.

Like this is a trope we’re all fairly familiar with at this point; some secret government organization formed to monitor, contain and research all kinds of weird shit and keep it secret from the public. Also they may or may not have kinda gone totally rogue somewhere along the way and might now answer only to themselves at this point in a ‘who watches the watchers?’ commentary on the need for oversight.

But the more you find out about the Federal Bureau of Control, the more it becomes clear they just so utterly past ANY of that by the time the game begins. And have been for basically the last fifty some odd years.

Like here is a basic overview of the FBC that you learn within the first thirty or so minutes of the game: They are a secret government organization dedicated to the containment, cataloguing and research of supernatural artifacts and events. They are headquartered in what they call ‘The Oldest House’, a tall, imposing yet utterly nondescript building in the middle of New York City that is literally impossible for anyone to enter or even notice unless they already know about it. And the interior of the building is actually a twisting extradimensional labyrinth that also opens up to other dimensions/realities and might actually be the World Tree Yggdrasil. It also kind of hates any technology made in the last twenty years. And apparently Number 2 Pencils.

Oh, and the FBC doesn’t really report to the US Government. They report to a floating, inverted black pyramid that exists in a space outside of known reality that might also be the collective human subconscious. The pyramid is colloquially referred to as ‘The Board’ and they are an extradimensional entity/group of entities that appoints the Director of the FBC via the use of a physics-defying geometric gun called ‘The Service Weapon’ that is probably Excalibur/Mjolnir/every other legendary weapon in human myth. They also speak in word-salads and probably know they are in a video game.

See, back in 1964 when the FBC first discovered The Oldest House, they basically decided ‘WOW, this place is cool! Let’s make it our new headquarters!’ and promptly moved in. This was also when the current Director at the time found the Service Weapon within The Oldest House, made contact with/was chosen by The Board and from the point on the FBC really hasn’t answered to the US Government anymore.

Also, the Government basically doesn’t even know the Bureau even EXISTS anymore. Remember how The Oldest House has this kind of ‘Perception Filter’ that prevents almost anyone from entering it or even noticing it, which is how basically nobody can find it despite the fact that it is right in the middle of New York City? Well, after they moved in and became effective ‘residents’ of the house, this filter started applying to the FBC itself. They basically CAN’T be noticed or remembered at this point by anyone who isn’t part of the organization. The reason this secret organization can operate entirely off the grid and can’t be tracked is because they literally have freaky extradimensional reality-warping covering their tracks.

This is what I meant when I said that the FBC is just so far GONE. At this point, the FBC is itself a crazy, supernatural thing in and of itself.

Other fun details about the FBC include:

The Bureau facilities in The Oldest House are not powered by coal, oil or nuclear power. No, instead the lights are kept on by a former director who went a tad power-mad and lost control of his pyrokinesis, so the Bureau locked him up in a giant ‘Sarcophagus Containment’ unit and now use him as a power-generator.  He also sometimes talks through the waste-disposal furnace to try and get people to bring him human sacrifices.

The maintenance sector of the FBC includes an area called the ‘Black Rock Quarry’. The so called ‘black rock’ is an extra-dimensional mineral that, among other things, blocks and dampens supernatural effects and abilities. Needless to say, the Bureau mines the stuff extensively. Now, despite being within The Oldest House, the Black Rock Quarry is an open-top quarry. To space.

One of the ways Bureau personnel get around is via pull-strings that show up all over The Oldest House. Pull a string three times and you are transported to the Oceanview Motel, a quaint little motel that probably exists outside of known reality because no one has ever been able to actually go or see outside the motel. Once you’re there, you just ring the bell on the front desk three times, do some random task and procure a room key. The key opens a door, but only one with an inverted black pyramid. From there, you pull another string and are transported back to somewhere else in The Oldest House. So basically a rather convoluted teleportation system. There are also doors with other symbols that probably go to other realities, but the Bureau hasn’t figured out how to open them. Though one does seem to lead to a void of malevolent darkness that feeds off human creativity and is currently holding one Alan Wake.

Also, the bureau’s janitor is probably a Finnish Sea God.

[keyboardthenerd]

DMC OC Week 2022: Day 3 - Past & Future Part 1

I actually refuse to get better at writing these opening paragraphs. Y'all are just gonna have to seethe and mald about that.

Did you know that if I leave my window open in the summer, the cat will climb onto the roof and bring moths into my room?

Did you also know that I hate flying insects? Anything that can manoeuvre in a 3D space better than I can is an immediate threat.

This... is not relevant. Stay mad.

Roman Eques Laurel: King of Doubling Down

Reference Sheet by andy.rea (instagram)

Past

Operatio Redemptionis. A demon-lead project to produce hybrid nestlings capable of “paying for the sins of their parents''; Demons and their descendants hunted down for the sole purpose of sending a human woman in to attempt to produce some sort of child, who could then be raised, brainwashed, and used against their parents one day, if they are successful.

Edora Laurel. Not much is entirely known about the human woman used for this project. Perhaps she was just not an interesting human before the project. For all intents and purposes, it may have been better this way. Edora was given a warm home, large enough to care for all of her children. Seated inside an old cross-dimensional phenomenon, often referred to as a “Hell Tunnel” or “Hell Bridge”; an area of nomansland that’s neither The World of Darkness or the World of Light, but acts as a very hard to close doorway between the two. An artificial demon called Uri was “gifted” to Edora to act as an eyes and ears for the demons running the project. Uri and everyone else involved with the project would use the Hell Tunnel to pass in and out of Hell. Anything Edora could possibly need was taken care of to the minimum effort, all Edora had to do was produce and raise at least one successfully manipulatable hybrid nestling.

Roman is the 2nd oldest biological child of the human Edora. This quickly turned into being one of eight hybrid children. Being born and raised on the line between The Mortal Plane and Hell makes for a complicated upbringing. Used as the scapegoat for most of the siblings' mistakes, as Roman was the most outspoken about their mistreatment under Edora and Uri. Often pitted against their other siblings in an attempt to curb their temper, they spent most of their upbringing isolated from their siblings, but not the rest of the world.

At around eighteen years old, one of their half-siblings had since been considered “successful”, and been taken into hell to theoretically continue their brainwashing. Since then Edora had disappeared, but Uri hadn’t. And unfortunately for Uri, she had perfectly crafted an entity willing to kill her. With a rock-paper-scissors match to decide which sibling got the short end of the stick, Roman was left behind to deal with Uri while Sadie and Tobias made an early getaway. And after disposing of Uri, “repairing” the Veil Piercer, and creating the Afterthought, Roman left the manor too. Unbeknownst to them, while Sadie and Tobias turned left, running into the city further into mainland, Roman ran right, heading for some dingy little city called Redgrave, and eventually even further, to some strange island called Fortuna.

Future

Roman has a long future ahead of them, while there are many timelines in which I can imagine an angst filled death, their canonical timeline leaves them living a long and healthy life… eventually… 

At the end of it all, all the Spardas are able to live happily and healthily together. Roman does not work directly with Devil May Cry, but pitches in to help whenever anyone asks them to. They much prefer spending their time cataloguing the different underground Demon Groups around the region. The largest cache of information is, of course, on the Order Of The Sword, which is still their biggest special interest.

Part #2 covering AUs will be out and linked shortly. Roman is part of many AUs, so it was very hard to pick just one. But I think I've got something that y'all will like.

[luna-the-moth]

Lucifer, Leviathan, and Satan with a Plant-Loving S/O (SFW)

I accidentally deleted the ask, but here’s what was requested: @hey-its-spades : Hello! For Levi, Lucifer, and Satan if you dont mind uwu . Mc has a knack for plants and has taken it upon themselves to put plants everywhere. ( hanging from ceilings,crawling ivy on outside walls,in the kitchen, library, even luci's study.) All the rooms look a liytle greener and None of them say anything but the student body is saying that it makes the old place look alive and home-y. It makes mc really happy.       

Oh I adore this ask! SFW, with a GN! reader. I’m assuming by student body you mean the HoL residents? Since almost nobody outside the household residents visit there. I got really carried away with Levi and the Lucifer angst as well-

My vampire poll for the OM characters

My ask box is open, but please read my rules and guidelines before requesting! Please send them in my ask box, as I can keep track of requests better.  Reblogs, likes, and comments are greatly appreciated!

Lucifer, Leviathan, and Satan with a Plant-Loving Reader (SFW)

Prologue/basics for all of them:

Ever since you came to the HoL, you decided that it was too....lifeless.

Sure, there were bright candles lighting the halls, but the house was devoid of any life, besides the brothers and Henry.

So you took it upon yourself to decorate, of course!

While many human world plants didn’t fare well in the Devildom due to the poor soil quality, Lord Diavolo had agreed to bring you enchanted soil, guaranteed to grow any plant.

Regardless of temperature or sunlight needs, whatever plant grew in that soil would flourish to its upmost potential.

Asmo had a great deal of amusement with you decorating, advising you on what colors would fit specific areas of the household, and what species of flowers would bring beautiful symbolism as well.

In the house’s entryway, you left a pair of Strelitzia nicolai (giant bird of paradise) plants, as they added a subtle flair.

With long, stemmed leaves, it contributed a touch of elegance and flair.

On the a few windowsills, you had placed Begonia rex-coltorum (Rex begonias), their dark, vivid, colors standing out.

You had planted crawling ivy on the outside walls, making the house seem more inviting.

Lucifer:

Lucifer hadn’t minded your redecoration, as it had matched well with the house’s aesthetic, adding to the beauty.

In fact, he had quite enjoyed seeing you pore over catalogues and books, deciding which one would fit the space best.

Over the next few weeks, he watched as the House of Lamentation became brighter, more colorful.

It was a nice change, he thought.

However, he was surprised when he had woken up in his study, rose bushes in the corners of his study.

Deep, red roses greeted him as he surveyed his study with a pleased smile.

It was no secret Lucifer adored roses, and he was appalled when he had first arrived in the Devildom, as the soil quality was so poor, it could hardly grow anything.

Which meant he couldn’t grow roses, one of his favorite flowers.

The fact that you had thought about him, and wanted to gift him such a beautiful display, greatly moved the stoic demon.

Making his way to one of the bushes, he took off his gloves and knelt down on one knee.

The soft, sweet fragrance immersed his senses, filling him with memories of laughter, smiles, serenity, and Lilith.

Roses were her favorite flower.

As the memories flooded his mind, Lucifer suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of longing, and his vision became blurred.

He remembered the way Lilith used to brighten up when helping him with his garden, an eager grin ever-present on her face.

The way she would make him a colorful bouquet of roses whenever Michael had given him more stressful tasks than usual.

He quickly wiped a stray tear that had fallen from one of his eyes, and calmed himself.

Taking one of the velvety flowers in his hand, Lucifer gently brought his lips to the flower head, leaving a soft kiss, almost as if it was Lilith’s forehead.

The next time you went over to his study for some tea, he brought you into his arms, bringing you close to him.

Kissing your cheek, he lets a small smile break through his usually-serious facade.

“Thank you for the roses, my love. They compliment my study’s aesthetic nicely.”

Placing a small kiss on your neck, he smirked.

“Perhaps I can thank you with a date tonight?”

Leviathan:

Levi actively enjoyed watching you redecorate the HoL.

It was like one of his favorite games, The Grims! (Yes that was a terrible pun for The Sims.)

He had listened with interest as you went off on the best plants that would fit his aesthetic, and would match well with water.

What caught his attention, was when you brought up the topic of bio luminescent plants.

Of course, they weren’t naturally grown in the human world, but scientists had recently found a way to genetically modify tobacco plants.

In doing so, they had spliced the genes with four fungus genes related to bio luminescence, then carefully cultivated them.

From a seedling to maturity, the plants presented a small glow, visible to the naked eye.

The gene modification had no harmful effects on the plants, and the only difference between the lab-modified plants and wild plants, were height.

The entire time you had explained the plant’s origins passionately, Levi sat in awe, watching as you had gestured your hands in an excited fashion.

So this is what you meant when you had said you enjoyed him being so passionate about an anime or game.

At first, Levi had thought you were merely exaggerating to cheer him up, but as he looks at you now, eyes shining with delight, he understood.

You decided that since you were decorating the HoL, you would decorate Levi’s room as well.

You didn’t have access to the bio-luminescent plants, but you decorated his rooms to the nines nonetheless.

So, you had pooled together your money and resources, to create a mini lily pond for him!

You had miraculously gotten him out of the house, for a cosplay con, in which you had ‘accidentally’ forgotten to buy yourself a ticket.

Which we all know is a lie, you had just not bought one for yourself in order to stay at home, assembling the pond with Solomon’s help.

It was small, enough to fit around 6-7 lily pads/lotuses.

You had carefully grown the lily pads in your room, watching as they eventually bloomed into light, almost ethereal flowers.

By the time Levi came home, you had just finished cleaning up, getting the mud washed from your hands and arms.

Upon seeing the lily pond, Levi’s eyes were wide with amazement and shock.

You created and did this, for him?

Absolutely sets down his handfuls of merch, (gently, mind you) and silently steps over to you.

He does his best to hug you like in anime, wanting you to know how much he appreciates this.

Yes, it may be awkward, but it warms your heart knowing that he stepped out of his comfort zone, just to thank you.

He’s too embarrassed to say it while looking at you, but you can hear his voice as he rests his head against yours.

As he pulls away, a blush is evident on his face, his head turned to the side as he awkwardly places his hand against the back of his neck.

“T-thank you, Y/n. It’s a b-beautiful lily pond.”

Satan:

He fully supported your botanical excursion

After all, he’s always had an affinity for plants.

Whether it be for potions, poisons, or mere decor, Satan had a green thumb, through and through.

If his room weren’t full of books, scriptures, and all sorts of literature, he’d fill it with various plants.

So when you had announced that you were going to re-decorate the HoL with various flora, he was buzzing with excitement.

He gathered every human botanical book he knew of, and started leaving them for you on your desk.

Within a week, you had stacks upon stacks of books, knowledge ready at your disposal.

And so you began to research.

Satan was considerate to leave footnotes in a few of them, like what type would pair well with what color schemes, etc.

You smiled while reading through them, seeing Satan’s elegant handwritten flow across the pages.

Within a few weeks, you had skimmed through the books, thoroughly reading a handful of them.

After ordering the plants you wanted on Azukon, (courtesy of Lord Diavolo’s credit card-) you were eagerly anticipating their arrival.

Especially because a few ‘special items’ were in the package.

After all, you wanted to thank Satan properly for his help.

When the various flora arrived, you had carefully cultivated each of them, encouraging their growth.

Satan had assisted you, monitoring their progress, and making sure none of his brothers ruined them.

The following weekend, Satan had a student council meeting planned, as did the rest of the brothers.

Which left you with the perfect opportunity to set up Satan’s gifts.

In his room, you had placed Senecio rowleyanus (string of pearls) plants, their bright green globes spilling over the bookshelves.

Along with that, were lavender candles, with dried lavender crushed inside.

After all, Satan had always (usually) been the most level-headed out of his brothers, despite his title.

He’s much more than the avatar of wrath, and has gone through painstaking time and trials to overcome that.

That’s why you had picked lavender, which without a doubt, would be noticed by Satan.

When he had come back from the meeting, he was already in a pissy mood, as things didn’t go as planned, ending in an argument between the brothers.

However, when he stepped into his room, seeing lavender candles lit, and garlands of plants over the bookshelves, he immediately broke out in a smile.

A real, genuine smile.

Seeing you sitting on his bed, lavender candles lit, plant garlands stringing down from the bookshelves, it was almost like one of the romance novels he had read...

Quickly, he scooped you up in his arms, spinning you until you were laughing for him to stop.

Finally setting you down to gently kabeddon you, he playfully kisses the corner of your lips.

“Thank you my love, these are absolutely beautiful. I shall preserve these for all eternity.”

[freddiefiction]

Can I request some Jimercury hurt/comfort?🥺🥰 (I’ve been reading and loving your fics recently🥰🥰)

Jim can’t even remember what the argument was about.

Something to do with the garden, if he recalls correctly; the little wooden birdhouse Freddie asked him to build had been blown over during the night and for some reason his boyfriend deemed this act of God to be his fault. What should have been just another lover’s spat quickly descended into a full-blown screaming match, until it became less about the birdhouse and more about trying to see how much they could rile each other up with their words.

Then Freddie took it too far.

‘You really think I keep you around because I like you? You’re only here because you’re a useful idiot, Jim! You trim my hedges and occasionally you’re a good lay – that’s the extent of your use to me. Do you know how many men there are out there willing to do that? I could replace you in a heartbeat!’

Jim stared at him, mouth slightly open, blood swimming into both cheeks as Freddie’s words seemed to catch up with him and the singer covered his mouth, as if doing so could somehow take back everything that was said. Then Jim turned and walked straight out of the door, making his way up the staircase to the bedroom two steps at a time. He heard Freddie call after him but barely acknowledged his voice, unable to think of anything but the conformation that he was nothing more than a temporary fling, a toy for the great Freddie Mercury to play around with until he gets bored and tosses him away like yesterday’s rubbish.

Jim had planned to start packing the moment he reached the bedroom but found that all he could do was curl up on the master bed as he was struck by a swarm of different emotions at once. First anger, then guilt and finally, complete heartbreak. He’s made plenty of ridiculous mistakes in his life, but this is beyond a simple mishap. He was stupid enough to believe that he meant something to a global superstar, that he was anything more than a tiny weed in the huge garden of flowers Freddie has to choose from.

He’s such a fool. Freddie has a world of men at his disposal; did Jim really think he would settle for a lowly hairdresser who hadn’t even recognised him the first time they met?

His eyes fill with water as he clutches the bedsheets. He wishes he had never moved into Garden Lodge. He wishes he had never laid eyes on Freddie fucking Mercury. He wishes he could just disappear.

Little Miko appears in the doorway, clearly sensing his distress, and she hops up onto the bed beside him, nuzzling his chin so his tears are soaked up by her fur. Jim holds her close, gently rests his cheek against her tiny head and begins to sob.

--

Freddie can’t even remember what the argument was about.

Something to do with that confounded birdbox he had insisted Jim build if he remembers correctly; another one of his impulsive ventures, having been inspired after reading an old gardening catalogue. He hadn’t anticipated that the weather would take a turn for the worst overnight, and they discovered the box smashed to pieces on the lawn the next morning. Freddie being Freddie, he needed to find someone to blame – and Jim just so happened to be in the firing line at the time.

He cringes just thinking about how unfair he was, lecturing his boyfriend about not making the post secure enough and implying that Jim had sabotaged the entire thing on purpose just to annoy him. He doesn’t understand why he always has this urge to push people’s buttons, to make something a big deal when it really isn’t. Some twisted idea that a good argument is a sure sign of true love, or something ridiculous like that.

Then he took it too far.

Freddie hadn’t meant a word he said, not one bit of it. He had wanted to hurt Jim, but the moment he succeeded, he immediately regretted it. Seeing the look of devastation fall across the man's face was almost too much to bear; he held out his arms to his boyfriend, an apology already on his lips, but Jim turned and left the room abruptly, his footsteps disappearing up the staircase.

Freddie had wanted to follow him, but Phoebe quickly intervened, having heard the yelling all the way from the kitchen, and suggested he give the Irishman some space. He sat Freddie down, made him a cup of tea and reassured him that everything would be alright, that Jim would come round once he was calm. Good old Phoebe, always seeing the positive in every situation. Freddie would be lucky if Jim didn’t pack his bags and walk out then and there.

When Jim fails to show up for dinner, Freddie finally bites the bullet and climbs the stairs to the bedroom, a cup of coffee carefully balanced in both his shaking hands as a peace offering. He prays the Irishman isn’t too angry – though he has every right to be. He's expelled so much energy from earlier, he’s not sure if he has the stamina for another round of screaming.

As he approaches the bedroom door, he becomes sensible to the sound of crying; low, almost inaudible sobs, as if someone is in terrible pain. He pushes open the door with one hand and in the darkness is just able to make out the shape of his darling Jim lying face down on the bed, shoulders shaking as he wets the pillow with his tears.

‘Jim?’ Freddie calls out, alarmed.

The shape responds to his voice with a small whimper and Freddie quickly sets the coffee mug down on the nightstand before hurrying to sit on the bed. ‘Jim? Oh darling, please don’t cry! I’m so sorry sweetheart. Jim, please look at me!’

A loud, muffled sniff and the Irishman lifts his head to look up at Freddie with wet, red-rimmed eyes. ‘You don’t love me.’

‘No, Jim, no!’ Freddie almost bursts into tears himself, leaning down to scatter frantic kisses across every inch of Jim’s tear-stained face. ‘I love you, my darling, I love you so much! I didn’t mean what I said, not one word of it, I swear!’

He gathers the younger man up in his arms, rocking him back and forth like a child while Jim weeps into the crook of his neck. Miko watches them from the foot of the bed, her ears flat against her skull as she watches the two humans shed tears together until they’re physically unable to cry anymore.

‘I’m sorry, Jim.’ Freddie looks down at his boyfriend through long lashes, wiping away the stray droplets of water that remain on Jim’s cheeks. He’s never seen his lovely man in such a state; knowing he’s the one who caused it makes his heart go tight until he fears it will burst. ‘You have to believe me, dearest, I love you with every bone in my body. You’ve made me the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I was being a horrible, hateful bastard and I never should have said such beastly things. Please forgive me.’

Jim nestles his face against the soft hollow of Freddie’s throat, exhausted from so much crying. ‘Why are you even with me? You could have any man in the world, and you lumbered yourself with this useless eejit. You deserve the best.’

‘And I have the best.’ Freddie brushes a tender kiss between Jim’s eyes. ‘You’re the only man who’s ever truly understood me, Jim. You’ve never given up on me, despite all the shit I put you through, even though I'm impossible to live with at times. I love you, Jim Hutton. I love you more than words can explain. I want you here with me, always, if you’ll stay.’

Jim leans back to look into Freddie’s eyes, searching for a lie. When he finds none, he nods tiredly and tucks his face back against his boyfriend’s neck.

‘You really hurt me, Freddie.’ He murmurs, lifting a hand to gently caress Miko as she rubs up against his side again.

‘I know, darling.’ Freddie drops a kiss into Jim’s hair, starting to rock them back and forth again. ‘I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you if need be.’

[marie-dufresne]

Fast forward; the fall of ShinRa. Geostigma is on the rise and Rufus is reduced to a wheelchair. Marie manages to find the lodges and sees her former employer for the first time in almost a year.

@ivory-paragon

There were memories and there were dreams. Lady Marie Devereaux could not tell them apart.  How could she, when all of her life had been dictated to her. An accident had wiped her memory entirely, or so she’d been told, and as she ‘recovered’, she was fed stories and pills, stories and pills, stories and pills.

Her husband, Colin, only wanted to see her well again.

Why then, she wondered, despite all his attentiveness and patience and benevolence, did she harbor a raw, deep seated fear of the man?

The things she recalled before she woke up were not real, she’d been told. They never happened, and yet they felt so real. So concrete. She could see faces, hear voices, feel textures.

But for all the things she was told happened?

There was nothing.

Why couldn’t she conjure up a shred of a memory? A familiar smell, or image?

It felt wrong to doubt him when he was waking her up with gentle kisses on her forehead, serving her breakfast on a tray in her suite. They didn’t share a bed in this manor. She needed to recover, he claimed. Then they could be intimate.

It suited Marie just fine. She felt no attraction to her husband as guilty as she felt to admit it, but he’d mentioned they’d been trying for a baby the past few years. They’d try again when she was well.

After three weeks she was left only with a slight limp from where her hip had been injured and after two months, there was no physical evidence left of the accident and she took to what she’d been doing for—how long had they been married? Fourteen years?

It seemed odd to her, to be married for fourteen years and not seek medical help to conceive. If that was right, she’d been all of eighteen and in prime shape for child bearing when they married.

Over the months locked up inside the grand estate, Marie did not begin to trust the past life she didn’t know. Not with the expensive clothes he dressed her in or the jewels or the gourmet foods served to her day in and day out. Instead, she began to doubt.

Her memories, the ones she thought could be real, had faded into nothing more than strange feelings of nostalgia and a recurring nightmare of a bustling street, a telephone, and her crying out for a friend. Or perhaps a lover. She didn’t know.

She didn’t even recall the name.

It happened by accident, her discovery that would either save her or ruin her. Too hasty in picking up her morning tablets, too slow to catch it before it tumbled down the drain. Ah, that was alright. Skipping one dose wouldn’t kill her. They were only meant to keep her balanced. It had been almost a year since she’d been taking them. Surely she’d be fine skipping one dose.

She didn’t tell Colin. It didn’t feel right to tell him, and she carried on, planning out the next season’s gardens, deciding to add an elaborate water feature to the grounds. He liked when she tinkered with the estate. It kept her busy.

Combing through a catalogue of plants, a question popped into her head that had her sitting upright.

What happened to Midgar?

Midgar? She laughed quietly, shaking her head and turning the page. She hated the idea of cities. She hadn’t ever been there, had no desire to be there, so why she was thinking about it now, she didn’t know. And what happened to it? Nothing as far as she knew. Why would anything happen to it? How silly.

The question wore on over the afternoon and it ate at her. It ate at her so much that while Colin was in a meeting in his study, she meandered into the library to tackle the archived newspapers, if only to quell the obnoxious mantra of a question.

That was until she discovered there wasn’t a single newspaper in the library. For a man who made a point of keeping up-to-date on the planet’s happenings…why didn’t he keep newspapers?

She briefly considered asking him casually. How was Midgar these days? Should they make a trip into the city? They were society elites after all. Shouldn’t they show their faces?

Sighing, Marie tapped her fingers onto a standing globe before giving it a little spin. No. She hadn’t been permitted to leave the property since the accident.

Another thing that didn’t sit well with her.

Feeling fuzzy, she opted for a nap. That evening, before bed, she dropped another tablet down the sink.

That night brought her dream, this time with flashes of colour. One colour. Red.

The morning brought her nausea, vomiting, and chills. The dream was gone. The second question Colin asked after her wellbeing was if she’d taken her medication.

He counted them. She’d been smart to dispose of them.

It was all she needed to know something was wrong in her household and through the pain and the sickness, she continued to forego the ‘necessary’ medication. Her dream was stronger, bits and pieces of what seemed like a fantasy were reappearing in her mind, and her fear of Colin Devereaux only grew stronger.

There wasn’t any communication to the outside, save the telephone but she was smarter than to try. They did have an extensive collection of encyclopedia, so again she took to the library. This time it was while he slept, at half past three in the morning. The night, dyslexia, and the tail end of her detox all working against her.

She had the orange pill bottle clenched in her right hand, flipping through the pages of the volume she’d selected, finding nothing. She read the name of the medication seventeen times, working letter by letter to no avail.

She sat back with a sigh, flicking off the tiny lamp she’d brought with her before turning it back on again, eyes roaming the bottle and finding an ‘active ingredient’. That was available in a different volume, and her stomach turned to stone as she read it, chills of a new kind settling underneath her skin.

“….working as a memory suppressant in several trial drugs thought to aid victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Never fully tested, it was pulled from all clinical trials due to ethical controversy and potential for misuse.”

With her hands pressed against her mouth, Marie stopped the sobs that shuddered up from her chest. Not here, not now. She had to make it back upstairs, back to her suite where if she was found, she could pretend to have had a nightmare. After that, she had to leave.

It didn’t matter wholly what the truth was anymore, what were memories and what were dreams and what were fantasies. What mattered now was survival.  For going on ten months she’d been living with a monster. A man drugging her and manipulating her to what end, she wondered.

The next morning she had a name, a name from her dreams and she felt a little better. It also brought with it a number. She’d always been good with numbers and when she spied the telephone from across the parlor after breakfast, she wondered if he would answer if she dialed.

She had a friend somewhere out there in the world, or had at some point. Maybe he could help her.

But calling him from here was not an option. What if he didn’t remember her? What if she’d done something terrible?

For three days, she resisted the urge to flinch when Colin walked in the room. For three days, she kept her hands busy with estate work and leisure so he couldn’t see them shaking, and for three nights, she combed the encyclopedias until dawn, looking for something she could use to give herself a head start.

Finally, on the fourth night, she added some liquid from a sleeping gel into her husband’s nightly cognac. He wouldn’t sleep suddenly, but he would sleep longer and far more deeply once he turned in.

With only a few pieces of jewelry in her handbag, she slipped out of the one blind spot the estate security offered, and ran into the night.

At sunrise, she found herself in civilization. A small town by the looks of it, directions written on a wooden post at the crossroads. Junon wasn’t far, but she wouldn’t be able to walk there. She’d worn her most sensible shoes, but she’d been running for nearly six hours.

She traded a ring for a a bath, hot breakfast, and a truck ride from the innkeeper who was more than eager to do whatever she needed of him.

In the city, her first stop was a jeweler. Even without memories, she knew that trading would only get her so far. She needed cash. Whether she was truly Lady Devereaux or not didn’t matter; she held herself well enough not to be questioned and left the establishment with a purse full of gil, less the bribe she’d paid to have any evidence of her being there destroyed.

Next, a cellphone. One that couldn’t be traced, that had no bill. What did they call them?

“A….burner phone, ma’am?”

The clerk shifted uncomfortably at the woman before him. She didn’t seem all there.

“Yes,” she replied, straightening a bit. “I need a burner phone.”

“No one who buys one of these it up to anything good, you know,” he joked, “you’re not dealing, are you?”

Handing over the gil, Marie looked up with an icy glare, unappreciative of the humor.

“I’ve just left my abusive husband,” she said, lifting her chin, “and I must find Reno.”

The young boy didn’t hand over the box, instead offering to set it up for her. He didn’t know who this ‘Reno’ was, but if what she said was true, maybe he should help.

“I’ll also need to know the fastest route to Midgar,” she informed him, “I think I belong there.”

The second clerk froze from stocking shelves to look over at the counter, sending the boy a questioning glance. Where was this woman from?

“You’ll uh…you can take a boat,” he settled on, “uh…buy a ticket to ‘Edge’ though.”

Marie accepted the phone he handed her, slipping it into her purse. “Edge?”

Realizing this woman was either off her rocker or had been isolated for too long, the young cashier didn’t want to upset her, so he shrugged with a small smile. “New Port Codes, I think,” he told her instead, “maybe it’ll end up being safer for you too.”

Satisfied with this, Marie headed to the harbor and bought the next ticket on the fastest ship. Alone in her cabin, she lowered herself to the bed. If Colin was after her, there would at least be enough distance between them that when she got to Midgar, she could vanish. Or if not vanish, possibly enlist the help of someone.

With the phone in her hand, her heart raced. She had a number, and she had a name. Aside from that, she had nothing. She didn’t recall this ‘Reno’ or why they were of any importance to her. When had they met? Were they involved with her accident?

She wouldn’t know unless she tried, so with trembling fingers, she dialed.  After four rings, there was a voice on the other end.

“Yo listen you got the wrong number.”

Marie’s brow wrinkled. What an odd way to answer the phone.

“…Reno?”

A little sigh, followed by a groan. “Ayyy okay so you ain’t got the wrong number but if this was about the other night, I was drunk and—“

“Reno it’s Marie.”

Silence.

She prayed it wasn’t confused silence. She prayed he knew who she was. She prayed that he was someone who would help her.

There was shuffling on the other line, followed by a slamming door. “Where the fuck have you been.”

The demand came out as a hiss, but the tone of concern did not go unnoticed by her.

“I don’t know; I—“

“All I get is this freaky voicemail, you go missing, and a week later the fucking world starts to end! What the—“

Her eyes widened as muffled groans and growls of frustration came through.

“The President is in a bad way, Marie. He…we could really use you, and you—you were just gone. No one just vanishes like that unless we make it happen. You know that.”

She didn’t know that, and she didn’t understand the cause for concern but she did know about the voicemail. She’d relived it almost every night since she’d stopped her suppressants. Wherever she’d been—Midgar, she assumed—she’d been running from someone. She’d called him for help.

He hadn’t answered.

By the time his voicemail beeped, she’d been snatched and all she could do was scream.

In this moment, she knew it was Colin Devereaux himself that had taken her.

Taking a breath, she leaned forward. “…why…would Winston ShinRa have any use for me?”

She was terrified of the answer. The President’s reputation was a filthy one riddled with cheap affairs and illegitimate offspring. If she’d had any part in that…

“Winst—what the—No! Rufus, blondie! How can you not even—what happened to you?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her hand coming up to cradle her forehead, “I…I’ve been forced to take memory suppressants. I only just stopped taking them and I can’t…I’m sorry but I just can’t remember anything about myself.”

More silence, and she thought for a moment how almost comical it was. Reno was never silent. It pleased her that she knew this.

“Well that’s great,” he sighed, “scrambled eggs for brains. Well seriously, you should get here. Brick wall memory or not, you might be able to do somethin’ to lift his spirits.”

Her?

“…why me?”

This silence was different, as if it were a subject he wasn’t used to, or perhaps was uncomfortable broaching.

“…because you’re in love with him.”

Marie stared ahead at the wall of her cabin, any words she might have had to object swallowed by the fact itself. Who was she?

Luckily for her, Reno wasn’t in the mood for dwelling on sentiment, if he ever was, and charged ahead, a familiar teasing tone directed at her.

“Yeah, you don’t remember? You were always up his ass like some kind of pet or something.”

He cursed. It was low and under his breath, like he couldn’t believe the situation they were in, like he didn’t need more on his plate, but it was followed by a low groan.

“Tell me when you’re scheduled to dock. Rude will pick you up.”

When she’d given him the information she needed, the call ended and she took a breath, the phone trembling in her hands. She realized she didn’t know—or remember—what sort of person Rufus ShinRa was. Was she jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire? Reno might have known she loved him (maybe everyone knew), but he hadn’t said anything about the president’s feelings for her. What if, especially in the bad way he was in, she was met with resentment or rage?

She had, after all, disappeared.

At the port, this ‘Edge’, Marie recognized nothing. Where had her city gone? Panic rose up in her chest and as her eyes searched for anything familiar, she felt her body freezing her where she stood, grumpy passengers pushing by her as she stood in the way, so out of place in her glamorous, tailored clothing and sophisticated hairstyle.

A hand on her shoulder took her attention away from the sight before her and she looked up, met by an unsmiling face and sunglasses. Unsmiling, but not unkind. She knew this man—or had, at some point.

“Rude?”

His hand slipped from her and he beckoned her forward with the smallest of nods. Dutifully she followed, sliding into the car, clutching her handbag. After a few miles of silence, she looked over and smiled.

“I’m sorry I don’t have much to say…I’ve…had a confusing year and I don’t remember you enough.”

“…”

His lack of response didn’t seen to be from displeasure or annoyance, so she smiled again and tried to relax enough to sit back.

“…it’s fine.”

She believed him.

Marie didn’t keep track of the time they spent driving and she didn’t try to initiate any more conversation. Maybe she could have asked questions to prepare her for what he was taking her to, but she found herself tired of being told about what her life had or hadn’t been. She’d have to see for herself.

He lead her into the lodge and though first her eyes settled on Reno lounging on a sofa, the moment she caught sight of Rufus, confined to a wheelchair, the tightness that had been building in her chest burst.

She knew his face. She knew it.

The room tilted, memories assaulting her. Small, brief flashes of moments. A swirling pool of mako, a slaughtered lamb, a pink fluffy pen, the smell of a cappuccino, a knife at her face.

His hands on her.

She shook, standing there, her life seeping in through the cracks and she felt something stronger than anything she’d felt before.

Despair.

“I…”

There was so much she could have said, that she wanted to say, working her way through the confusion of sorting out everything before her, but there was only one place to start and in only a few steps, she was before him, falling to her knees, tears she understood and justified brimming in her eyes, but as they fell, no makeup smudged, not anymore.

“I’ve failed you, sir.”

[timemachineyeah]

I know I’ve mostly made self deprecating jokes about it but unironically one of the best things Animal Crossing could do, for my gameplay experience at least, is just expand storage possibilities.

I have played every single Animal Crossing game to some extent or another (I probably have the least experience with Wild World). And in every single one I play them extensively for a long time, but the burnout point is always the same.

It’s not the daily grind (I LOVE the daily grind). It’s not the lack of new content (I can re-arrange old content and enjoy it).

It is literally that I run out of storage, and having to cull things or constantly try to find increasingly obtuse solutions makes me frustrated and sad.

Like, that’s how I stopped playing New Leaf the first time. Instead of looking forward to it, the storage finagling made me dread it like a chore. Then they did the big update! They added more storage! And I played constantly until I ran out of storage again. And again couldn’t work up enough excitement to get past that desire to avoid the unfun work of needlessly throwing out or selling things I liked and wanted to keep for other things I also liked and wanted to keep.

It’s about as fun as cleaning out my real closet, which is to say not super fun. And I can’t even KonMari it, because it all sparks joy! If they didn’t want me to want to KEEP all the cute clothes, they shouldn’t have made so many of them! More than that, the end goal of having all of it at my disposal makes me happy, and reaching an arbitrary stopping point where I suddenly can’t keep going towards that goal isn’t fun.

This is less of a problem for furniture. Decorating by design in Animal Crossing is a long term, gradual process. So if I sell a sofa and then later decide to re-order it and have to wait a day for it to arrive - that’s fine. I don’t mind waiting. Waiting is part of the Animal Crossing experience.

But clothes? I want to change clothes on the fly constantly. They clearly know this because they introduced an item that is entirely dedicated to doing just that! They made the wardrobe UI so lovely! They’ve gone out of their way to commit to certain palettes so the clothes all mix and match in fun ways! They clearly intend getting dressed to be a regular part of daily gameplay and intend for mixing and matching their huge library of clothes. And YET, I can’t do that to its full potential because I can’t STORE them.

There are, already, not including new additions we can expect from later updates, 1236 different clothing models in New Horizons, each with up to 8 color variations. That’s probably somewhere around 5000+ peices of clothing. (This does not even count all the flowers, each of which can ALSO be worn as a clothing accessory).

And the whole point of having all that clothing is to have that clothing! So I can use it!

I have, at the point, filled all 1600 of my home’s storage slots with only clothing. I have created a second character to store my out-of-season clothes and items that can’t be repurchased from the catalogue. That character? Is ALSO basically out of storage.

This creates this weird thing where I want to log in and play, but I also don’t, because I dread having to do the storage shuffle, to figure where I’m going to keep things. I WANT to keep playing to make my island pretty and collect all the cool stuff, but for a game whose gameplay is a solid 80% “collect all the things”, the game really does get in the way of that over time with these weird storage limitations.

I’m not even saying storage should just be unlimited without you having to work for it! Make me pay through the teeth for more storage! It’ll give me something to do with my money!

But if you’re going to have 5000+ clothing options alone, you need to account for the players who will want to keep it, so they can use it! You need to give us way more than 1600 storage slots!

This is especially exasperated by the existence of Photopia, where this unfettered access to your entire catalogue is presented seamlessly, making me wonder, why do I have to go to this weird cabin to see everything I can mix and match? Why can’t I just be allowed to do this at home???

This has been my final rant on this issue. I will still keep playing Animal Crossing constantly. Thank you.

[itsclydebitches]

Clammy

Summary: Aziraphale's molt is upon him. He has to decide what to do with the feathers

A park bench and supernaturally beautiful weather. A basket of sandwiches, fruit, crisps, and a rather large selection of chocolate truffles. A bottle of Pinot Noir between them. Crowley stretched out his legs and thought that if this was it, all they ever managed to wring from this world, it just might be enough.

“Divine,” Aziraphale proclaimed, polishing off the last raspberry truffle. The sun had left chocolate coated over his fingers and he set to licking it off, heedless of decorum. Crowley designed to watch.

“Not precisely the word I’d choose,” he said. “Considering I bought them and all.”

“But Mrs. Sutherland made them.”

“But you don’t know what I did to them between here and the bakery.”

Aziraphale froze, thumb halfway between his lips and a smear of chocolate on his cheek. The shock lasted only a moment before he was rolling his eyes. “Of course I know. You forgot to chill them so now they’re a half-melted mess.”

“...touché.”

Not that half-melted messes had ever stopped him. Aziraphale continued to work his way steadily through dessert while Crowley watched the foot traffic in front of them, sneaking glances every now and then from behind the safety of his glasses. It was while he was most assuredly looking only at the changing leaves past Aziraphale’s shoulder that he noticed—

“That time of the century, huh?”

Aziraphale froze for the second time, eyes widening just a bit. But Crowley didn’t call him out on the absurd little wiggle he’d been trying (and apparently failing) to do subtly against the back of the bench. There was no one looking but Crowley and if he didn’t mind chocolate-covered fingers or crumbs down the front of his vest, there was little reason to think he’d mind this. With a sigh Aziraphale gave up and shoved the box away, reaching to scratch rather ferociously at his back.

“It’s so undignified,” he said, tone just this side of petulant. “I am meant to be an ethereal being. A creature of unsurpassed glory and wisdom—”

“Think rather highly of yourself, don’t you?”

“Not some, some, some common avian enslaved to his biology. I don’t even have biology. Not technically.” The last part was definitely a whine.

Crowley indulged in a snort and slid further down the bench, nearly boneless against the wood. Literally. His body bent in ways not generally allowed by spines and pelvises, but no joints dared raise a complaint. “You’ve got it easy, angel. I go through two of them.”

“Two?”

“Wings and,” Crowley gestured down his entire body, suddenly looking a little unsure. “You know. I am a snake.”

“Right.” Nothing like the embarrassment of another to sooth a bit of your own. Aziraphale cast him a crooked smile. “That’s... well. Quite sorry to hear it, dear boy.”

“You and me both.”

Another quick press against the bench and then Aziraphale deliberately went still. He let out a breath. Popped another truffle into his mouth and closed his eyes, trying to savor it. When he opened them again he could see Crowley’s concerned look, even behind the glasses.

“I’m fine,” he muttered. “Over sixty molts since the beginning. You’d think we’d grow used to them by now.”

Crowley barked out a laugh. “Grow used to what? The incessant itching? Constant pain in your back? Exhaustion? I slept for a month after my last molt. Only woke up because Beez themselves was looking for me. Molts are proof that She’s more than a little sadistic, angel.”

“Hush.” But the slap against Crowley’s arm was half-hearted at best. “I suppose I could return Upstairs. It’s always easier without a mortal body compounding things...”

“You really want to spend the next few weeks up there?”

No. He didn’t.

There was a certain understanding that came with annoyances shared across thousands of years. Without being asked Crowley miracled together the rest of their lunch and sent a quick thought towards the London traffic, urging it to thin out. He’d drive Aziraphale back to his shop, say goodbye like it was any other day... and then proceed to only call and text for the next three to four weeks. Their first substantial time away from one another since the Tadfield airbase, but they’d been expecting this. Molts, for all the grumbling, were intensely private things.

And as Crowley stood just outside the bookshop’s entrance, pressing the basket of leftovers into Aziraphale’s hand, he didn’t dare ask that they might change that too.

***

The bookshop was a disaster.

The space had grown considerably in the last two weeks, making room for a collection of supplies that would have rivaled any doctor’s office. Electric heating pads were a marvelous invention that Aziraphale now hoarded, along with the small pharmacy of mortal medications that didn’t seem to do much, but he was inclined to try nonetheless. Safe from the books were melting ice packs he used when unexpectedly feverish; weighted blankets when, a mere hour later, he was suddenly chilled. In the leftover space surrounding his most comfortable couch was the food, a veritable feast of everything salty and sweet. Some of it he’d ordered in, slipping the containers through the smallest crack in the door and slipping exorbitant tips back out. The rest came from Crowley. Per the unspoken promise he hadn’t stopped by again in person, but he could easily miracle things directly into the shop. Aziraphale often looked up from one of his books to find chocolates or tarts or freshly made bubble tea now sitting on the table. He gobbled it all up with a hunger he wasn’t supposed to feel.

Where there weren’t supplies there were feathers. A stunning collection of white that settled into every nook and cranny; an ethereal blanket of snow. Aziraphale didn’t bother picking up after himself whenever an old feather dropped and a new one began the arduous process of growing in. Most would disappear over the next week, fading out of this reality entirely. It was a rather convenient thing (perhaps the only convenient part of this whole process), with just a handful of flight feathers to deal with in the end.

Which was precisely what Aziraphale dealt with now, curled up on the couch with Persuasion resting forgotten in his lap. Disposal of these feathers was no minor thing. It required patience and careful thought.

...Which Aziraphale was quite happy to ignore once his phone buzzed. It took him a full minute to find it amongst all the mess and another to remember which button allowed him to light up the screen. Two more remembering his passcode. Really, he could appreciate humans’ continued advancements in technology, but did they have to keep making them so hellishly complicated too?

Ah. Now that he thought about it, that drive might have been Ligur’s doing.

hows it going?

Aziraphale smiled. Three simple words from Crowley and he already felt better. Though admittedly only a bit. One breath later and that incessant itch reared its ugly head again, along with the familiar ache in his lower back. One wouldn’t think that losing and re-growing feathers would be such a monumental feat, yet here he was, taking a moment to breathe before daring a response.

Crowley,

I’ve been better, as you know. Nothing to be concerned with, however. I expect only another week of this nonsense before things return to normal. Shall we get lunch together next Thursday? I greatly appreciate the food you’ve sent over, though I find myself craving something a bit more substantial after all these sweets. Italian would do nicely.

- Aziraphale

The response was immediate.

sure, angel.

There was a beat of silence except for the tick of the clock and a very low hum emanating from two of the heating pads. Then,

need more time to gift your feathers?

Aziraphale’s throat tightened. He blamed it on his poor health.

Crowley,

No, I don’t expect they’ll be any travel this time around. It’s quite nice of you to be thinking about my needs though.

- Aziraphale

His words had the desired effect. Aziraphale’s phone suddenly buzzed as ferocious as a beehive, text after text coming through about how Crowley was not nice, they’d had this discussion, he was actually being selfish, if you’d just listen, and by the way texting isn’t the same as sending a letter you stuffy, outdated, impossible—

With a chuckle Aziraphale let him keep going, well aware that no answer was the best response of all. As he leaned further into the cushions another primary dislodged and settled in his lap. This one didn’t look like it was going anywhere.

Aziraphale stroked the feather tip to tip, thinking.

No. The person he wanted to give this to wasn’t far away at all.

***

Angel feathers had, shockingly, once been a part of an angel. Imagine that. As such, they had a bit more significance to them than what came from your average hawk or peacock or whatever else might be leaving bits of themselves behind. Aziraphale didn’t know why some primaries remained while the rest disappeared—another question on the tip of his tongue that he’d never dared ask—but every angel knew that they’d wind up with a small handful after their molting and those must be dealt with in the most careful fashion. There was a vault up in heaven that catalogued and stored each deposit, perhaps with the hope that the feathers might one day be turned into weapons against the enemy. For those on Earth, however, there was the expectation that they not allow these pieces of divinity to fall into the wrong hands.

Aziraphale knew it was the same among the demons, another similarity that others were too scared or blind to question. They would molt and be left with feathers that gave off what one might term a bad aura: nasty thoughts and feelings that radiated outward, soaking into the back of a mortal’s mind and strengthening the longer they held on. Aziraphale didn’t know what Crowley had done with his own feathers over the years, whether he simply tucked them away where they’d never be found, or handed them off to those who were later remembered as the more unhinged individuals throughout history. He’d never had the nerve to ask. He, however, had always considered the remains of his former wings to be a gift and gave careful consideration to who would receive them. Angel wings had rather the opposite effect, promoting feelings of goodwill, creativity, and a general sense of peace when held. Aziraphale had thus handed his off to writers who fashioned them into quills, great chiefs who wore them with pride, poor mothers who might not have jewels or vases to display in their homes, but they could set this on their mantelpiece and know that someone was watching over them. It was a process that deserved his utmost attention.

Though in truth, Aziraphale had an inkling of what he'd do with his next molt in 1941. Now, with Armageddon behind them, he was quite sure of his decision.

Crowley,

My deepest apologies, dear boy. I meant to say that you’re quite considerate. Is that better?

- Aziraphale

P.S. It’s hardly my fault humans have forgotten how to properly write to one another. Besides, you ought to be proud of me. Convincing this tech to put in line breaks was no easy task!

His phone blew up once more as Aziraphale shook out his wings, trying to encourage the remaining stragglers to finally let go. He must look a right mess, physically done in and sporting only half his usual plumage. It was perhaps no surprise that molting had become a rather private affair over the millennia. Anyone who saw an angel in this state might second-guess their supposed superiority. Aziraphale hadn’t bothered with a mirror in weeks.

The heat was doing wonders for the muscles surrounding his wings though. The ibuprofen, while perhaps not effective under normal circumstances, seemed to be taking the edge off his headache. Crowley kept up a vibrating litany in his lap. He was clearly busy, yet just a moment later Aziraphale caught the scent of garlic and looked up to find a takeout box of pasta sitting on the table.

Fondness surged, helping his new feathers to grow and his mind to settle. Aziraphale placed the primary on a stack of books beside the couch, safely away from his newly arrived lunch.

Crowley,

Thank you <3

~Aziraphale

He’d made his decision. Best to start the implementation of it early.

***

A week and two days later Aziraphale finally left the bookshop. He was what, in human terms, might be called an introvert. Had anyone asked him on an average day whether he’d enjoy spending nearly a month by himself, nothing but books and films to keep his attention, he would have gasped in pure pleasure at the idea. Now, having lived that life once more—one always tended to forget such things as the years went by—Aziraphale recalled how little fantasy matched up with reality. Taking that first breath of fresh air was an unexpected pleasure.

“Angel!”

As was the company. Though perhaps ‘unexpected’ was quite disingenuous of him.

Crowley waited for him down the street, Bentley parked and providing the perfect object to lean against. Aziraphale took in his appearance, identical to when they’d last met with the exception of a pendant necklace spicing up his outfit and rather longer hair. Crowley must have encouraged the growth. Aziraphale was rather sure hair didn’t get to that length in just three weeks time, no matter how much Crowley might yell at it in the mirror. He had most piled up in a bun with the occasional wisp framing his face.

Perfect. Aziraphale couldn’t have planned it better if he’d tried.

“You don’t like it,” Crowley said, noticing his gaze, assuming the worst. One hand lifted instinctually to his hair, twitching like he wanted to start tearing it out. “I’ll change it back. If you want.”

In that moment, with Crowley framed by London traffic and the quickly fading light, Aziraphale had the uncomfortable realization that he could ask him to do anything. Anything at all and it would be done without question or hesitation. The power made him hesitate. Aziraphale knew now that he had to guard his words: ask for nothing more than what Crowley deserved to give; certainly nothing worse than what he’d forced him to endure before.

Wait for me.

“Not at all,” he said. “I love it! You’re just missing that final touch.”

“...final touch?”

They knew separation well. One month was nothing to them. Aziraphale slipped back into Crowley’s space, easy as you please, allowed to turn him slightly and gain access to his bun. Crowley was so focused on the hand Aziraphale had placed on his arm that he didn’t notice the object until it was slipped beneath his hairband.

“What the devil did you put—” Crowley stopped, catching sight of his own reflection in the Bentley’s hood. Aziraphale watched his eyes blow wide behind his glasses.

“Hardly the devil, my dear.”

With the molting finished Aziraphale had been left with eight primaries still in existence on this plane. He’d told Crowley as much over text and had patiently sat through reading the same thoughts he’d already had: it was suspiciously convenient, one might say miraculously so, that he had just enough feathers remaining to number the humans involved in stopping Armageddon. Well, seven humans and one antichrist. The brats deserve it, Crowley had said, voice surprisingly tender down the line. They’ll appreciate it, angel.

No doubt they would. Appreciation wasn’t quite what Aziraphale was going for though.

Upon getting the text that Crowley was outside he’d miracled one of the feathers into the fern he’d gifted him two months back, the only plant in his apartment given the honor of a room to themselves and (Aziraphale would bet) the occasional kind word. The white beauty would be the first thing to greet Crowley when he opened the door, stark against the otherwise dark space.

As Aziraphale donned his coat he’d sent the second feather into the pocket of Crowley’s favorite coat, a surprise for when the weather turned cold and his mood predictably plummeted. The third appeared pressed between the pages of The Extremely Big Book of Astronomy; the fourth now slipped beneath his pillow. By the time Aziraphale was descending the steps of his shop the sixth feather was on its way to Lesley, accompanied by instructions to deliver the inconspicuous envelope at a future date and time, to be decided. It never hurt to have another pick-me-up waiting in the wings. Pun most certainly intended.

The seventh currently rested on the Bentley’s dashboard, yet unnoticed because Crowley was reeling from the feather Aziraphale had slipped into his hair.

“Angel.”

Just that. A breath. So much packed into one single, reverential word. Aziraphale had to swallow hard before he could speak himself.

“I know,” he whispered, trying for steady and failing spectacularly. “We needn’t speak of it if you don’t wish to. Simply know that this decision was the easiest I’ve ever made... and you look quite beautiful, my dear.”

Crowley’s hand rose to brush at the feather, shaking enough that Aziraphale could spot the emotion even in the fading light. He was steady enough to open the door for Aziraphale though, stumbling back around to the driver’s side, managing up until he spotted the second feather on his dashboard. Aziraphale watched him double over and thought that perhaps he’d made a mistake...

No. There’d been enough doubting between them and the care with which Crowley cradled the gift said it all. Even as the rest of him shot the Bentley recklessly through the streets.

For once Aziraphale did not call Crowley out on his driving. There was silence—not even any Queen—all the way back to Crowley’s apartment. Aziraphale caught the tinniest noise, like pain, when Crowley saw the feather in the fern and then he was moving again, nearly tripping over himself in an effort to get to the closet.

It was a door Aziraphale had never seen opened before. He couldn’t even be sure the space had existed before this moment. But the trunk Crowley pulled out was certainly real enough. Aziraphale sucked in a gasp at its age, wood now held together through will and more than one demonic miracle. Crowley hesitated only a moment before flipping the lid.

Inside were black primaries. A couple hundred at least. More than enough to account for one individual’s molts across the centuries.

“Never gave them away,” Crowley said. One hand gripped his feather while the other dove into the trunk, finding and extending a handful of himself. “I was waiting for you.”

Aziraphale tried vainly to keep the tears out of his eyes. He’d never been very good at that. Too soft. Too soft by far.

“Well... I’m here now.”

And he was. As Aziraphale knelt and took Crowley’s face in his hands the feather in his hair slipped out, drifting into the trunk. A spot of white among the black. New amidst the old. It nestled there, settling in.

As did those who had born them.

[florarie5a]

PATCHOULI

Florarie Patchouli Flowers 🌸 The Freshest Of Flowers In A Unique Approach 🌸 We Know It’s The Little Things That Make Each Memory Last A Lifetime, Flower Shop 🌸 Couture Events 🌸 buchete de flori in cutie PATCHOULI STORY LOTS OF PEOPLE ASK ME HOW PATCHOULI BRAND WAS CREATED. FOR THEM I HAVE DECIDED TO WRITE THIS STORY … The PATCHOULI Story begins with a wish, a name and a passion. In 2012 I was in London for the … I do not know how many times, looking for inspiration. I spent there over a month – burning for a new beginning, for setting up a new business representative for me to allow myself to express myself. We, people, suffer a lot when we do not have the chance to create, to express ourselves. So, I was wandering along the famous King’s Road and through Harrods, hoping to find something to catch my attention. It was there I’ve found some of the most opulent flower shops I’ve ever seen. I was swept by their sense of beauty, the artistic and creative boutique side. And then, I made the connection … The connection with my name. Although I did not realize until that moment, my name was predestined for the floral world, towards which only (too) late I was directing my senses. My royal names are imposing, royal names, with echoes in the world history. But Viorica did not sound to me, until that moment, as a source of inspiration in none of my previous professional activities. Even though in the past I was involved in many other business activities, the greatest passion was only to come, or, better said, to the blossom, right from the etymology of my name. Reaching this land of scents, colors and forms, I knew that the next step was the setting up of the first shop of floral creation in Romania. At first I intended to call it Patchouli & Bergamot , but it seemed too long. Patchouli is another name for Pogostemon Cablin, a bushy plant from the mint family, being one of the aromatic plants that grow in India. As of the 19 thcentury, the traders were using patchouli leaves between the cashmere wool shawls to protect the merchandise from the moths. The oil extracted from the leaves of this plant has a strong exotic aroma with a scent of sweet musk. In the East, the plant has various uses: in cosmetics, in aromatherapy, in treating nervous diseases or infections. In perfumery, the patchouli oil has been used since 1960. They say that sprayed on money or on wallets it attracts more money … Another essence that delights my senses is the vetiver. Although both scents are masculine and strong, they are among my favorites – I, myself, being passionate of perfumes, which I collect from all my trips. Following the decision that the brand name will be PATCHOULI, I visualized the concept of the entire floral workshop: from the interior to exterior. The space for the workshop to function in Piata Dorobanti is asymmetric, with lateral glass walls – meaning it was a harsh volume that needed to be tamed in order to welcome the flowers. I thought that vintage curvy furniture contributes to the warming of the space. The centerpiece is the working table, the place where all is happening, while the black floor reflects the Patchouli logo background. On the first part of the table I imagined us creating the bouquet, wrapping it up in tissue paper or in specially branded bags, while at the opposite end the creation process to start all over again. Once the entire process was settled, meaning the technique of combining colors and flowers and considering the client’s budget, we succeeded to create spectacular bouquets within 5 to 10 minutes! The idea of a floral concept store was highly welcomed by the public, from the very beginning. The clients were amazed about the fact that the entire process was unfolding before their very eyes, rapidly and efficiently. At that moment, Patchouli was the sole concept store of the kind on the entire Romanian market, so the most frequently asked question was whether we are an international franchise. The concept in itself is still not widely spread, due to the fact that the custom is for the bouquets to be ready made and exposed for rapid sale. We chose to continuously have very fresh flowers, so as our customers may have the chance to appreciate them and to participate at the creative process.  Hence, they are always aware of the content of the bouquets they buy. People were very excited with the newly and stylish opened store, always full of flowers from all over the world. The window was aimed at being another sensational element of our marketing strategy: wooden cages full of luxuriant flowers disposed in a chosen lack of symmetry and boxes with succulent plants – a static show full of life at which every passer on the street was a witness in awe! Many of these passers were reticent at coming into the store… they were expecting exorbitant prices. I remember the first order I made: I could’ve decorated the entire Dorobanti market with that quantity of flowers! Being in contact with these beauties for the first time, I wanted to learn, to feel their variety, diversity, color and to master them in every aspect. I was longing to meet Anthurium, Amaranthus, Cymbidium, Phalenopsis, Astilba, Eustoma and the rest of the flowers that caught my eye and spirit. The space of the store of 38 square meters, plus the basement, soon became insufficient, despite the overlays our imagination came up with. The only solution was to go out in the street and exhibit our flowers and bouquets, to the delight of the passers. I started to study and register the behavior in time of each flower, so as to learn its resiliency, its specific characteristics. Consequently, I made my own selection and customized my orders so as the variety of merchandise one may meet in Patchouli concept store cannot be found no place else. Along my journeys I was constantly attracted by books and magazines in the domain. I bought everything I could find about flowers and decorations, thus created a vast collection of catalogues. The next step was to ask the suppliers for new and original types of flowers that they never heard of… Slowly, they started to import them and the uniqueness and specificity of our offer have won a special place in our client’s hearts. Moreover, from the very first day our store opened, our staff was specially equipped with branded aprons and vests. We did not stop there: the branded ribbon, the tissue paper and the black paper bag, all of them have contributed to our brand identity. No one before had the courage to use black in this kind of creations, despite this color’s elegant and stylish touch, especially in combination with silver and gold! A visually attractive combination of flowers was studied in order to realize exquisite and unique bouquets and arrangements. This is how we found our place on the market, we got to be known and, following constant positive feed-back, we became notorious. One of the feed- backs close to me heart and that will remain in my memory forever is that each time a Patchouli bouquets or arrangement is presented it’s like a Chanel piece of fashion entering the room – a reason of huge satisfaction for myself and my team. People, in general, were used to a round and extremely compact type of bouquet. We started to educate our customers and to impose our vision on this art, which was a little bit difficult at the beginning. Slightly, the taste for our creations grew so as we can say that we have launched the new trend in the floral design, another great satisfaction for our work. My favorite floral design is the  ‘sauvage’ type, the one that gives you the feeling that the component flowers just have been picked up from the garden –fresh and special. The wrapping added to the style: we have introduced lace, ribbons of all kind and colors, newspaper type of exterior packaging. Starting from this unconventional wrapping, in the context of running a flowers concept store, we created also unconventional arrangements using any object that was inspiring us: boxes, cups, objects of all kind and value. Eventually, a floral arrangement may be realized both in a silver or rusty bowl, each of them bearing their own originality. Owning your business comes with the greatest advantage of all: freedom of decision. So, I decided to give up some flowers that were extensively used on the Romanian market, such as the one we call ‘bride’s flower’, as well as Aspidistra, which is mostly used at funeral creations. In exchange, I introduced various types of eucalyptus: Euchalyptus Cinerea, Baby Blue, Berry, with berries or flowers, or fruits, mimosa and many other types of green plants that add even more value to the bouquets. We also have created the Patchouli candle to represent us by its pithy, vibrant scent. In this way, through the elements that we gathered, we succeeded to make Patchouli a remarkable brand in people’s life, seeding in them the desire to give more, better and more passionately. Despite my strong character, the background is one of a sensitive woman. I love perfumes, trips and adventures – it’s them from where I get my inspiration. Even before Patchouli concept store was created, when I was acting in the advertising industry, I participated at various design international fairs and events. I applied that experience once with launching Patchouli. Passionate by interior design, I created and built a spectacular fountain and placed it among flowers, like a tranquility oasis in the back of the store. In this way, I wished to inspire those who come inside a peaceful feeling, like the one in the Garden of Eden. Lots of people envy us for the nature of our work: the wonderful environment, constantly surrounded by the nature’s beauty. However, underneath that is the assiduous work, the sweet care for the flowers, customers and the business as a whole. Among my trips, an experience dear to my heart, like an anniversary present, is the meeting I had with Jeff Leatham, one of the greatest floral artists of the world, the artistic manager of the Four Seasons Hotel in Paris. The “eternity” I spent with him and his advice have been a true joy and represented a new source of inspiration. I hope to meet him again, why not, in the Patchouli ‘garden’. It is this experience that inspired my new project – the PATCHOULI Garden Showroom – a place where to withdraw the PATCHOULI essence from. I combined flowers with interior design and created a new location where a house and its garden host the home, flowers and decorations concept. It is a special concept, targeting those who appreciate nature and aesthetics in every corner at home, at the office, in the restaurants or hotels. It’s about colors, shapes and perfume symphony, where the queens of the show change their gala costumes. Behind them, as the director, my aim is to admire and talk to them, delighted by their majestic silence. Like them, I myself, become speechless. When our silent dialogue turns into a meditatively one, just the beauty of flowers give rise to new stories.

[swilmarillion]

Ars Moriendi

For Terrifying Tolkien Week 2019  |  Prompt: to reek; to fester in the dark Big ups to @admirable-mairon for the inspiration!  |  read on ao3

               It is noontime, and the hasty midday meal has hardly begun when a murmur ripples through the normally silent ranks.  She ignores it, at first.  If nothing else, she has learned that it does not do to get involved. She keeps her head down and focuses on the rhythm of her own movements—the scoop of a spoon into her mash, the lift of her hand to her mouth, the methodical chewing of tasteless mush she forces herself to swallow.  It is not a particularly appetizing meal, but it is nourishing, and for that, she is grateful.  The days are long in Angband, and she knows better than to let her strength diminish. Weakness here is tantamount to death.

               A shadow falls over her, and she looks up at last.  An orc she does not recognize stands over her, and she flinches, averting her gaze to the ground.  They are nasty, fickle things, these orcs, quick to anger, slow to forgive.  “Are you the one called Indil?” the orc asks, and Indil nods her head without looking up.  “Come with me,” the orc says, and Indil’s blood runs cold.

               Her mind races, but she calmly sets down her bowl and stands.  She keeps her face neutral—another trick she has learned—and she follows the orc as he turns and leads her away.  She tries to think of what she has done, tries to suss out what she possibly could have done wrong.  The fact that her mind is blank is no comfort at all.

               Still, nothing here is ever helped by panic, so she does her best to calm her mind and follows the orc that leads her.  To her surprise, they are headed for the fortress.  A fresh wave of fear engulfs her.  She is a field slave.  She lives with the others of her kind in the barracks near the fields.  She hasn’t set foot in the fortress since—

               —the stink of blood in her nostrils, the drip of it down her face, the sweat that plasters her ragged, matted hair to her bruised and mottled skin—

               She swallows the gasp that rises in her throat and pushes the memory away.  All prisoners begin their tenure here in the dungeons, but not all make it out.  She was one of the unlucky souls who did, and she has put forth every effort not to give them reason to send her back.  Her mind races anew, desperately searching for the thing she has done wrong and quietly, uselessly looking for a way to escape. There is none, of course.  This is Angband.

               The orc who leads her is silent, utterly indifferent. She longs to ask him where she is going and why, but she does not dare.  Prisoners do not enjoy the luxury of questions.  So instead she worries, and she follows.  

               They pass into the fortress, and a shudder runs through her.  It is cold and dark and damp here, and she cannot bear the feel of the stones under her feet. They are too much like the ones she slept and cried and bled on all those years before.  They pass slaves that do not look at her; these have learned their lessons, same as she.  The orcs and fiends and maiar have no such qualms, and she shivers under their hungry gaze.  Still, the orc that leads her must have some level of protection, for no one stops or hassles them on their way.

               On they go through twisting, labyrinthine corridors and down narrow, spiraling stairs.  They are headed down toward the dungeons, to the underground heart of the fortress. Indil’s terror is a palpable thing, shaking her limbs and raising the hair on the back of her neck.  She grits her teeth against it and balls her hands into fists, determined not to break.  She walks on, forcing her feet to carry her close in the orc’s wake.  They are close to the breaking pits now.  She can smell them—the sweat, the blood, the piss and the fear made all the worse for their familiarity.  Her heart is hammering in her chest, so loud she is sure the orc can hear it.  Not again, her mind is screaming.  Not again, not again, not again.

               They turn down a corridor, and the stink and the clamor of the pits die away.  A cold wave of relief rolls over her, and she scolds herself for it.  She is on the dungeon level.  She is anything but safe.    

               They come to a door that is closed, but not pulled tight.  The orc knocks three times in quick succession and enters, and Indil follows behind. The room she enters could have been any ordinary study.  Bookshelves line one wall, overflowing with tomes and manuscripts and scrolls.  There is a neat stack of freshly cut parchment on one shelf, a handful of expertly sharpened quills, and several squat jars of ink in various colors.  Most striking is the desk, a beautiful, gleaming thing of dark lacquered wood.  The legs are intricately carved to look like scales, and the feet are long, sharp talons.  

Sitting at the desk is a creature she has seen fleetingly handful of times, most recently in her nightmares.  She stares at the back of his head, eyes tracing the plait of the fiery red hair. He is writing, head bent over the parchment before him, and he does not stop when they enter.  He continues to write, acting for all the world as though he has not heard them come in.  

After a moment, the orc clears his throat.  “My lord,” he says.

The quill scratches steadily across the parchment.  The orc knows better than to speak again.  Finally, the quill is laid aside, and he begins to shuffle the papers into order.  “This is the one?” he asks, neatening the stack and setting it aside.

“Yes, my lord,” the orc says.

The creature at the desk stands up and turns, and she shudders involuntarily. She is never prepared for the lieutenant’s beauty, and she is startled by it again now, standing before him. The translucent cream of his skin, the spray of freckles across the chiseled angles of his face.  He dresses well and moves with easy, assured grace, crossing the distance between them.  “You may go,” the lieutenant says, dismissing the orc with a nod.  The soldier turns to go, and Indil is alone.

Mairon looks her over.  She keeps her eyes carefully on the ground, her head bowed.  There is a moment of silence between them that makes her skin crawl, though she tries not to let him see her unease.  After a while, he says, “You are the one called Indil.”          

“Yes,” she says.

He nods.  “You know who I am,” he says, and she nods.  “You may call me ‘my lord’.”  The gentleness of his tone belies the command in his words.  

“Yes, my lord,” she says.

“Look at me, Indil.”          

She raises her head and meets his gaze.  There is no malice in it that she can see, and yet it fills her with fear.  His eyes feel as though they see through her, to the depths of her soul, and though his expression is neutral, ostensibly friendly, she knows better than to be at ease.  She knows the horrors this pretty face belies.

“You studied under Estë,” he says, and she is momentarily nonplussed.

               “Yes, my lord,” she says.  He is silent, watching her, and she gets the feeling he is waiting for something more.  “And Yavanna,” she adds, hoping this is right.

               “You studied herbalism,” he says, “and the healing arts.”

               “I did, my lord.”

               “And were you a good practitioner?”

               She is not entirely sure how to answer.  “I did my best, my lord,” she says.

               “Tell me,” he says, crossing his arms and cocking his head to the side.  “What would you recommend for a headache?”

               She considers the question for a moment, turning it this way and that in her mind, looking for the trap.  Time is working against her; the lieutenant is not known for his patience.  “Willow bark,” she says at last, clasping her trembling hands before her.

               He nods.  “And say I had no willow tree at my disposal?”

               She blinks.  “Feverfew,” she says.

               “And if I have none of that?”

               She thinks for a moment, toggling through the various pain remedies she knows, and then, before she can stop herself, she hears herself say, “For a headache, my lord, I would recommend you let it take its course.”

               He tilts his head, and for a moment, she is afraid she has been too hasty.  “Why?” he asks.

               “Because the other remedies I know have risks that outweigh the benefits,” she says, “and a headache is hardly life-threatening.”

               He smiles, then, and it is not as reassuring as it ought to be.  A shiver creeps over her skin, and she fights to keep herself still.  He turns, rummages in a drawer of the desk, and turns back to her.  “What are these?” he asks, holding out his hand.

               There is a collection of plant matter in his hands. She studies the flowers and leaves and roots, comparing them to a mental catalogue that has grown weaker with years of disuse.  “Yarrow,” she says, pointing to a flower with a yellow center and delicate white flowers. “Aloe,” she says, pointing next to the spiky green tissue.  “Burdock,” she says eyeing the purple flowers haloed by spikes.  “Valerian,” she says of the pale purple sprig of tiny of flowers. “The rest,” she says, “I do not know.”

               “Well, then,” he says, turning and replacing the detritus in the desk drawer.  “It’s a start.”  He turns back to her.  “Are you squeamish, Indil?”

               “Not particularly,” she says, forgetting herself.

               “You will not faint at the sight of blood?”

               “I haven’t in the past, my lord.”

               “And now?”

               She feels as though they’re having two different conversations, and the uncertainty is gnawing at her, making her head spin.  “I don’t think so, my lord.”

               “What I need,” the lieutenant says, “is an assistant. Someone with knowledge of herbs and the medicinal arts who can assist me in my research.  Someone who will not flinch at the sight of blood or of broken bones.  I need someone who can follow directions and learn the skills I require you to master. Do you think you can do that, Indil?” She is silent, frozen, torn between the dangers of answering and staying silent, of lying and of telling the truth. “I will not force you,” he says, his voice soft and honeyed, like the trap of a carnivorous plant.  “If you do not think you are up to the task, then say the word.  I will have you returned to your post.”

               She is tempted, then.  Every fiber of her being screams that this is dangerous ground, that there is a trap here, that nothing he says can be trusted.  She wants desperately to get away, to never look at his beautiful, terrible face again.  She longs to refuse him, to flee back to the toil of the fields, but she is afraid.  There is danger in refusal, in displeasure; she has learned this lesson well and does not want to learn it again.  

               “I will do it,” she says, hoping fervently she will not come to regret the choice, hollow though it may have been.

               He nods, and she knows that now, for better or for worse, her fate is sealed.

               “Very good,” he says, and pushes past her toward the door.  “Come with me.”    

[dazstormretro]

Discovering Retro Gaming Part 2

It was now early 2009 and I was officially a retro gaming addict. Having previously purchased an old Super Nintendo on a whim I soon found myself with a decent collection of both games and video game magazines which I had enjoyed as a teenager. Now I was looking for my next fix of nostalgia so it was back to eBay.

It wasn’t long before I came across a PAL Sega Mega Drive with a copy of Altered Beast. This was an obvious choice as before I owned my Super Nintendo back in the 90’s I was a dedicated Sega kid. The secondhand console was instantly purchased and before long I was enjoying such classics as Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Shinobi and Castle of Illusion all over again. I remember loving the original design of the Mega Drive back in the day, it felt so sleek and futuristic and in my opinion still holds up.

Over the next few months I would purchase several titles for the console plus plenty more magazines including Mega Tech and Mean Machines Sega to accompany the system. My spare bedroom had now turned into a mini time capsule chocked-full of old Sega and Nintendo paraphernalia. I soon added a Sega Master System to the mix as this was the very first console I owned as a kid. My games library was (and still is) relatively small for the console but having titles such as Double Dragon, R-Type and Psycho Fox at hand felt great. The box art for these games might look primitive compared to later console titles but to me that basic artwork with its graph paper background screams my childhood.

As my collection expanded I started to outgrow the spare bedroom (plus my girlfriend wasn’t exactly over the moon having a room full of ‘old tat’) so it was time to relocate. Luckily I had an attic space which was bordered out and had several power points already pre-installed. After a lick of paint and a good clean I had my first man cave. Entering through a trap door in the landing roof (which wasn’t the most practical way) I suddenly had my own personal space to game. New shelving was bought to house my games, an old 27 inch CRT TV was purchased for a £1 and up went several of my retro gaming posters which had come free with Mean Machines from back in the day.

Obviously having more space meant more retro goodness was purchased including an original NES and Game Boy plus a Dreamcast and a Game Gear, two consoles I never owned as a kid. Around this time I received a text from an old mate asking if I wanted a couple of used game consoles he’d found at his parents house. Of course I jumped at the chance and soon found in my possession a GameCube, a model one PS1 and a model two PS2.

I now had retro gaming on tap. With a choice of multiple consoles to play and numerous games at my disposal my interest in the subject peaked even further. After a chance meeting with a friend I was introduced to yet another avenue to explore - YouTube. Up until this point I had not really bothered with YouTube, I had no interest in watching cute cat videos or people maiming themselves in skateboarding accidents but my eyes were suddenly opened to its true potential. Turns out there were thousands of people like me who shared this passion for retro gaming and many of them were making videos on the subject. The first show I discovered was Game Sack which I loved and for weeks binged watched the entire back catalogue. Next up was the Happy Console Gamer which was equally enjoyable and still watch to this day. Before long I had subscribed to around thirty different channels, all making exceptional content on the subject of retro gaming and gaming memories.

Off the back of Youtube I also started listening to various gaming podcasts. Shows such as Maximum Power Up and Retronauts suddenly made car journeys and walking the dog so much more bearable. Retro gaming was everywhere. I now had access to an unlimited wealth of information thanks to online videos, the aforementioned podcasts and could even read newly published material thanks to Retro Gamer Magazine, Twitter and various Facebook groups. The retro gaming community was growing rapidly and I felt humbled to be part of it.

The retro man cave was now properly established and looked eerily like my old bedroom from the 90’s. Crammed full of old posters, video games and magazines this was the place I went to when the real world got too much, a place to relax and switch off for a while.

Another interest which coincided with retro gaming was my love of vintage toys from my childhood, mainly G1 Transformers and a bit of Lego. This new hobby originally started after my dad dug up an old action figure one afternoon whilst gardening. Recognising the toy my mum called me saying she had something she thought I would like. I couldn’t believe when she handed me one of my original M.A.S.K figures, Brad Turner to be exact. This figure had been buried in my parents back garden for over twenty five years! Being reunited with this old friend after so long felt magical. Brad Turner was the very first M.A.S.K toy which I received as a child. That evening I was straight on eBay to purchase Condor, his green motorcycle which now sits on atop of Boulder Hill and takes pride of place in my current man cave.

Having amassed a decent sized collection of the games and consoles which I grew up with it was time to concentrate on the peripherals. For the SNES I hunted down a Hudson Super Multitap, Super Scope, and a Universal Adapter Japanese games converter. The Mega Drive got the Arcade Power Stick and the N64 the rumble pak plus the expansion pak so I could finally play my copy of Perfect Dark.

Approaching my 36th birthday I decided to celebrate one of my all time favourite games, Secret of Mana. On my 16th birthday I had asked for and received this amazing game. Being a big Final Fantasy fan at the time I couldn’t wait for the release of Square Soft’s latest RPG. Exactly twenty years later I thought it would be fitting to once again track down this game. Managing to acquire a boxed copy of Secret of Mana for a decent price I once again set about my quest to find the Mana Sword. To go alongside this beautiful game I commissioned a custom painted Secret of Mana themed Super Nintendo which to date has been my most extravagant retro gaming purchase. This now sits along side my other consoles and looks simply stunning.

Fast forward to October 2016 and my family and I had decided to move house. Of course moving up the property ladder is an important decision, you have to get the right location, suitable garden and of course the right amount of space which suits your budget. Whilst my partner was busy scouring property websites for these sensible options I was searching for a property which could house my gaming collection. It was time to move out of the hot and musty attic space and into a proper gaming room, but to my disappointment this wasn’t to be. We did end up purchasing a lovely house but unfortunately without building an extension there was no extra space to store my gaming collection, suddenly I was without a man cave!

[jordan202]

Maybe This Time

Hey guys, I was watching the scenes from episode 12 and it just got me thinking… I don’t usually write a different story while working on something else, but I was probably going to forget about the idea I had. I didn’t plan for it to take this turn but the story got a life of its own :) 

Oh, I am in a hurry for a double shift so I didn’t ask anyone to proofread. I apologize in advance for my mistakes. The title isn’t coincidental.

Maybe This Time

Amelia nervously tapped her fingers on the working desk, too anxious for the computer results. During the past week, as she watched her patient being submitted to radiotherapy to treat a recurrent tumor, the neurosurgeon had struggled to come up with a viable plan that might allow her team to properly fund their ambitious plan.

While she knew the procedure was a sort of a Hail Mary and had its flaws, Amelia was desperately in need of something that would give her patient hope.

Maybe the reason behind all that was that she needed something to give her hope.

Lately, her life had been nothing but a mess. After a failed marriage, which she refused to think much about, and a brain tumor that had given Amelia answers about her impulsivity but had also served to confuse her feelings even more, the neurosurgeon longed for something that would be good and actually help someone. It was actually easier to focus her energy on the study for Kimmie’s tumor and devote her entire time to it than trying to figure out the mess that her personal life had become.

“So, have you come up with anything yet?”

Amelia’s thoughts were distracted by the sound of Alex Karev’s words and she saw the look of defeat on his face. Much to her own dismay, he also hadn’t been successful to get any kind of support for their project. It pretty much seemed like a dead end for them. Even Bello and DeLuca were losing motivation and Amelia couldn’t blame them. There were several other projects out there that were soaring and the eager interns probably would rather spend their time actually learning something than staying immersed on a computer all day doing research.

Alex gazed at the neurosurgeon and saw the consternation on her face.

“It looks like we’re really going to lose this battle,” Karev commented, obviously unhappy about it.

Amelia hated that situation. And she hated what she was about to propose. But then she thought of Kimmie’s joy and the girl’s happiness at sharing her gift with the world. Something had to be done.

“Not yet,” Amelia said with determination, looking into Alex’s eyes. “I have an idea…”

.

“You have to be kidding me,” Thomas Koracick’s annoyance was obvious not only in his voice, but also on the look on his face and the way he walked, “you have to be freaking kidding me.”

“Look, Tom, I…”

“YOU tricked me here saying you had a groundbreaking project for me,” Koracick nearly hissed, looking at his former’s student with impatience. “I actually bailed on presenting a case at the American College of Surgeons and got on a flight to this hell hole because I believed you and this is what you have for me?” he frowned, absolutely irritated. “HIFU? Are you kidding me?”

Amelia sighed heavily, knowing she shouldn’t be surprised. A couple of days before, she had gotten in touch with her former boss at Johns Hopkins. Tom Koracick ran the neurosurgical department there and had more resources at his disposal than anyone else she could remember. A few weeks prior to that, Tom had flown over to operate on her brain tumor and he’d even stuck around to help her get her department back on track once she was recovered. Before he could return to Hopkins, the two of them had slept together but Amelia knew it hadn’t really meant anything. Not to her, at least, and she supposed that not for Tom either.

For Amelia, it had been all about having a rebound after her complicated separation from her husband. It still sounded funny to think of Owen as that, since they weren’t even living in the same house anymore… But until their divorce was finalized, Amelia knew that technically, that was what he was.

And for Tom, sleeping with her had probably been about his own ego. Amelia knew he was a womanizer and even though during her residency the guy had been extremely professional, never had he hidden the fact that if Amelia ever gave him an opening, he wouldn’t hesitate to sleep with her. She had never really been interested, especially while he was her boss. But now, the two of them were at a leveled position, both ran neurosurgical departments and Amelia had impulsively done it. Physically, it had felt okay, but emotionally, Amelia knew it hadn’t really meant anything.

“It has never been tested on brain tumors before…” Amelia tried to reason and hopefully convince him.

“Oh, why do you think that is?” Koracick sarcastically asked, looking at her as if she should have known better. HIFU, or high frequency focused ultrasound was a non-invasive method that recently was being studied to treat tumors. That wasn’t exactly news in the surgical word.

“No one has really studied it on brain tumors…” Amelia sheepishly gave it another try.

“Yes, exactly!” Koracick interrupted her. “I am sure I don’t need to tell you that even if you successfully blast tumor cells with this new technology there is just no way you can guarantee clean margins and without the full, resection the likelihood that the tumor…”

“…will grow back is high, I know, I know,” Amelia sighed, hating to admit he was right. On tumors that could be later operated or managed with follow up, the HIFU method seemed like a good option. But for brain tumors, there were no guarantees it would work on the long run. “But it could help her buy some time and who knows even…”

“This is exactly why your project got rejected,” during the brief time he’d been at the hospital, Thomas had been brought to speed on the contest and saw the few projects that had made it. “It’s not cost effective, you should know that” he condescendingly rolled his eyes at her. “It doesn’t matter how noble your intentions are, Shepherd. Haven’t you learned this by now? Why would anyone in their right minds invest money on a study that promises no different outcome than a partial resection would?”

“You’re being extremely pessimistic!” Amelia lost her patience with him. “You’re putting all these obstacles when you’ve barely given me a chance to try.” She understood his frustration but he was throwing a bucket of ice water on her plans and that infuriated her.

Especially because she couldn’t refute any of his arguments.

“Look, you know I would love to help you if I could but my hands are tied,” Koracick sighed heavily, regaining some of his calmness. “Trust me, I deal with this kind of debacle all the time and I know you desperately want to help this kid, but it’s better if you just play it clean with the family instead of playing God here, okay?” Amelia scowled, hating to feel like once again he was the professor and she the inexperienced intern, but at the moment, it was exactly how she felt. “I have promised Catherine I’d have dinner with her. She wants me to properly meet her husband,” the neurosurgeon rolled his eyes, as if he was dreading the idea. “I am sorry I can’t help you.”

Amelia watched as Tom Koracick left, hating the fact she couldn’t really hate him for what he was doing. In his place, she probably would have done the same. And now she was back to square one.

For the rest of the day, Amelia stayed immersed in her project, trying to think about any loopholes she could fix to make the idea more tempting for Koracick. She knew he would be in town at least until the following day, so she was racing the clock.

After hours reading in front of the computer, too focused on what she was studying, the click of the door handle started Amelia, causing her to nearly jump from her chair at the unexpected interruption.

“Uh, sorry…” a deep male voice spoke in a low tone. “I had no idea the room was taken.”

Amelia looked up to meet the eyes of the man she was married to. Other than the brief, awkward encounter at the house when she’d walked in on him having breakfast with another woman, they hadn’t really been alone in the same room ever since the day they’d returned their wedding bands to each other.

“It’s okay,” Amelia rubbed her tired eyes, shocked to realize it was nearly midnight. “I was just reading and lost track of time.”

“I was printing some papers earlier today and I think I left my phone charger here somewhere,” Owen justified his presence, pointing at his dead phone. “I’ve been looking for it everywhere and realized I last used it here.”

Amelia got up from her chair and helped him look, scrolling through the files and forgotten objects in the room that was mainly used by interns and residents.

For the following seconds, the neurosurgeon unsuccessfully tried to find the charger, but the lingering silence was growing uncomfortable by the second.

“So…” she cleared her throat, eager to make small talk, “you’re on the liver project, right?” Amelia distractedly asked. She wasn’t really sure. “How is that working out?”

“I was actually trying for a clot factor study but I dropped it,” Owen answered with a shrug. He saw the question on her face and elaborated, “research is not really my thing.”

“Yeah, you’ve always been more of a do-er than a planner,” Amelia smiled.

The neurosurgeon failed to realize at the time of her comment just how personal she sounded. But Owen captured the intimacy it implied and he avoided thinking much about it, choosing instead to focus on his search.

“Why clot factors, though?” Amelia asked after a few seconds of silence.

“I had read about this chained Polymer that was isolated not long ago,” Owen explained. “It basically adheres to hepatocytes and you can sort of choose the cell you’re working with.”

“Really?” Amelia frowned heavily, uncontrollably assaulted by ideas. “You mean like a selective binding protein?”

“Yeah, there is a full catalogue of those at Polymer that have been isolated but even though it sounds good, it’s not very viable for out type of research,” Owen added. “It has an extremely high cost and the patents are just insanely hard to get.”

“Can you tell me more about your clot factor work?” Amelia asked. The more information she had, the better would be to fit all puzzles together.

“Uh… Okay,” Owen saw the eagerness on her face and agreed. It was late and he was tired, but if that was going to make her happy, he could stick around for a few more minutes.

Very patiently, Owen sat down near a computer and logged into a system. For the following minutes, he thoroughly explained Amelia about the idea he’d had. During the entire time, it became kind of hard to ignore her presence. Especially when she stood so close like that. Was it just him, or did her hair smell especially good today?

“This is actually very helpful,” Amelia leaned forward to examine the computer screen a little closer, unaware of the reactions she was causing on the man sitting right next to her.

Owen closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He really shouldn’t be having those thoughts. Well technically, he should, because the woman responsible for invoking those feelings was his wife, but a thousand complications and unspoken issues stood in the way and he really didn’t want to deal with his feelings.

“Do you mind if I print this?” Amelia looked at him with expectation in her eyes.

Owen knew her well enough to realize she was up to something. And judging by the look on her face, it was good.

“Sure,” he instantly agreed, satisfied that his abandoned project had served at least to the purpose of making her smile like that again. He hadn’t seen in ever since the day she’d left their home and his life. “Feel free to use it.”

“Thank you,” Amelia shyly bit her lower lip and made eye contact with him, seeing the warmth in his eyes. She smiled brightly and tried to ignore the way her heart accelerated when he smiled back. “Good night, Owen.”

“Good night,” he reluctantly left the room, knowing that it was the wisest decision.

.

“So you’re telling me you want me to fund a multi million project in which you’ll basically buy the most expensive protein I’ve ever seen so you can blast it with high frequency waves?” Tom Koracick frowned, looking at Amelia with a mix of surprise and admiration.

“Precisely,” Amelia smiled widely, struggling to contain her excitement, “but the real catch here is that, when I blast those cells, the whole tumor will be gone.”

“I don’t know this is insane or purely genius,” Koracick commented, skimming through the paper that had her detailed project.

Amelia had spent the last ten hours coming up with the plan. Her body was tired, but her mind was too alert and excited for her to want to sleep.

“Where did you get the idea?” Koracick frowned, hating that he didn’t have it first.

“A colleague inspired me,” Amelia confessed. “He was going for something along those lines and I adapted his idea to mine.”

“Get him here,” Koracick unceremoniously demanded.

Amelia desperately needed Tom to embark on the project, because she depended on him to finance it. So she decided not to refute. Grabbing her cell phone, she called Owen, gently asking if he could meet her in one of the conference rooms.

About fifteen minutes later, the trauma surgeon joined them, supposing Amelia needed help with something they’d discussed the previous night. But to his surprise, he found her sitting next to Thomas Koracick, the same guy who had taken out her tumor.

Before Owen could ask any questions, Amelia started to fill him on what she’d spent the entire night working with. After Owen had introduced her to the Polymer idea, she had basically filtered through a huge catalog, finding the heaviest binding protein she could that would link to a receptor present only in cancerous cells. Those would heavily increase the mass of the tumor, including the tissue near the margins. Then, once with the ultrasound technique she was working on, it would be possible to work with the HIFU at a frequency that not only would kill the sick cells, but also make sure they had clean margins. Without the heavy Polymer, it was hard to tell and adjust the machine to sort out the diseased tissues from the healthy one, but once Amelia made the cancer cells much heavier, chances of success were incredibly higher.

“This is a brilliant idea,” he stated with conviction after taking a look at her initial proposal. “But the cost would be beyond the charts,” Owen affirmed, certain it would be a problem. “I mean, this Polymer chain you selected costs nearly twice as much as the one I had. It’s going to increase the cost of the project. And it’s not guaranteed it’ll work.”

Amelia was aware of that. She on purpose kept silence, sneakily turning her head to the side very slowly until her eyes finally met Tom’s.

“Give me a concrete reason why I should invest my money on this,” the arrogant surgeon demanded, raising his eyebrows.

“I am going to make history treating gliomas. And if you don’t fund my idea, I am going to sell it to someone who is going to make it happen.” Amelia raised her eyebrows in defiance. “And if I do that, your name won’t be on the paper when it gets published,” she sneakily reminded him, knowing nothing would infuriate Koracick more than letting an opportunity pass. “You’ll lose.”

Tom narrowed his eyes, studying Amelia’s features. She was serious, he knew it. Rolling his eyes, the prestigious surgeon finally made up his mind.

“Fine, but you’re going to report to me. I am going to be here when we use the HIFU for the first time. My name goes before yours on the project,” he dared her, seeing on Amelia’s scowl that she hated it. “And keep this guy, he clearly is more familiar than us with the Polymer thing.”

“No, thanks,” Owen straightforwardly answered. He wouldn’t mind doing it if it was for Amelia, but he had never sympathized with the guy who had once been her mentor and he definitely wasn’t going to be a part of something that would benefit him more than the true author of the project.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Amelia protested Koracick’s terms. “Hell no. Your name is not going before mine.”

“These are my conditions, it’s give or take,” Koracick said in a final tone.

“God… I hate you!” Amelia complained. But she knew she couldn’t give it up. Koracick was her only chance to keep the project going and most importantly, actually give Kimmie a chance. The hard work was just beginning and she would need a lot of help, but it all started with the funding.

“I have a plane to catch, you keep me updated,” Koracick wickedly winked in her direction, loving that he was coming out on top. And just as he was reaching the door, Amelia was collecting her stuff and Owen was logging out the computer, the controversial surgeon turned around, unable to help himself. “If you thought that sleeping with me would give you special treatment, you better think again, Shepherd,” he smirked, knowing he was causing a scene. Even though Amelia hadn’t said it, Koracick had recognized the guy in the room as the husband she’d recently separated from. He was glad he was leaving, because fixing marital drama wasn’t his thing. He was much better at causing it. “Email me as soon as you have phase one initiated.”

Koracick exited without another word, leaving Amelia in absolute shock. Not because he had been inappropriate, rude and extremely unprofessional. She was used to his teasing and didn’t mind it when it was just the two of them. But at that moment, her heart was racing and she had an awful feeling in her stomach.

Amelia knew that, by the time she’d slept with Koracick, she and Owen had already broken things off. She also knew that he had no right to judge her on it, considering he had pretty much slept with the first woman he found right after that.

But she was well aware of how possessive men could be. Especially men like Owen. And she recalled just how they’d agreed to blame all the problems of their marriage on her brain tumor, as if her feelings for him had been questionable while Owen didn’t really have a similar excuse to justify why he’d broken the marriage…

“Owen, I…”

“Good luck with your project,” he violently shut off the computer without waiting for it to properly turn off.

It was obvious he was furious and Amelia got instantly mad at that too.

“You can’t be serious, right?” she asked him just as Owen was about to exit through the door. “Are you really that upset that I had a one night stand? Really?” she followed him to the door, hoping Owen would calm down. He had always failed at keeping rational when he was furious like that. And she was actually surprised that he had been so bothered by it, to the point of getting that mad. “You spent the past weeks fooling around with that…”

“Don’t,” Owen grabbed her slim wrist and stopped Amelia from touching him just as she’d been about to. “Don’t say anything. You don’t owe me any explanations,” Amelia looked at him and instead of the warm, caring eyes, she found the scowl of a guy who was just too mad to even pretend he was okay. “You are a free woman. You can do whatever you want,” he said and Amelia instantly noticed his calm, rational speech completely contrasted with his infuriated reaction. But even though she noticed something was off, never would she be prepared to hear what would come next. “If you have to sleep with Koracick to get funding for your project, then so be it,” he cruelly accused her, knowing he was being extremely unfair. But Owen couldn’t help himself. The news had caught him totally off guard, and the way it had infuriated him had surprised him even more. “Next time just leave me out of it, okay? I don’t want to be a part of another one of your games.”

Amelia felt the blow the instant the words fired out of Owen’s mouth. She didn’t know what hurt her the most, the way he had cruelly accused her of something they both knew wasn’t true, or the cold look on his face as he’d done it.

The first tear rolled on her cheek, enraging Amelia even more.

Screw Owen, she thought, trying to contain the tears that insisted on falling. He had been the one to change his mind… It had been Owen the one to break off their marriage… It had also been Owen the one to jump into someone else’s bed and take a random woman to the house they’d once shared the minute she’d left the house. So he had no right to play that low.

How dare him accuse her of that? Amelia sighed heavily, heartbreak and hurt slowly being replaced by anger and determination. Briefly, she thought about giving up the project and telling Owen to shove his Polymer idea up his ass. But she couldn’t do that because Kimmie’s life depended on it.

And as she went on with her day, blaming exhaustion and sleep deprivation rather than her hurt feelings for the way she struggled to keep focus, Amelia felt more determined to make her innovative project work. It was the only thing in her life worth focusing on.

Owen could take care of his bruised ego on his own. Maybe their idea to become friends was really faded to disaster. After all, they could barely interact without the heavy cloud of their unresolved issues lingering on their heads. And if Owen’s display of anger served as example for what was about to come, Amelia thought maybe it was better to simply never go there after all.

[aion-rsa]

The Suicide Squad: James Gunn Talks the Creative Freedom of That R-Rating

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A couple of days. That’s how long director James Gunn had to wait before Warner Bros. and DC came calling in 2018. Up until that moment, it’d been a pretty turbulent July. The iconoclastic filmmaker who made audiences cry over a talking tree in Guardians of the Galaxy was just fired by Disney—temporarily as it turns out—and his name was being besmirched on social media. Yet less than 72 hours after that dismissal, WB was making him an offer that could change the face of DC superhero movies forever.

“It happened immediately,” Gunn says with a hint of lingering chagrin. “We started talking about what the project would be. The first thing that was brought up was Superman, but I didn’t know if I wanted to do that.” 

So the studio suggested a once-in-a-lifetime alternative: make whatever you want. Gunn was free to adapt “anybody out of the DC catalogue.” Somehow though, with an entire gleaming multiverse at his disposal, Gunn only had eyes for the filthiest D-listers this side of Krypton. He only wanted to make The Suicide Squad.

The team of supervillain rejects has of course been adapted before, with David Ayer’s divisive Suicide Squad coming out in 2016. The earlier movie was a hit too, grossing more than $700 million and triggering a small bout of jealousy in Gunn, who even then thought that was the only DC property he ever wanted to do. But the film left something to be desired for many fans and critics.

To be clear, there are things Gunn absolutely loves about Ayer’s movie. How could he not, when he incorporated so many of the 2016 film’s cast into his own? In Gunn’s mind, Margot Robbie was born to play Harley Quinn, which he hopes to only further highlight by bringing out her “true lunacy” in the new movie. Viola Davis’s Amanda Waller, meanwhile, was the first character he decided to put in his own film. But Gunn is unambiguous on one point: his The Suicide Squad is going to be its own 31 flavors of weird.

“It wasn’t something to contrast the first movie,” Gunn says. “It wasn’t about going through a checklist of this is good, this is bad, this works, this doesn’t… but the concept that John Ostrander started with in the comics, that these are B-grade, shitty superheroes who are considered disposable by the U.S. government and are sent out on these black-ops missions, where they probably won’t make it but who gives a shit because they’re pieces-of-shit prisoners without many skills?”

That is the movie Gunn wanted to make. And he did so with R-rated glee.

Engineered as a standalone epic that might (or might not) be a sequel to the 2016 movie, Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is, in essence, meant to be a spiritual continuation of comic book writer Ostrander’s seminal 1980s run with the team. Davis’ Waller is still the government’s shady lady pulling the strings and recruiting incarcerated sad sacks to do the wet work law enforcement won’t; her point man on the ground remains Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), a straight arrow surrounded by coerced supervillains, including familiar faces like Robbie’s delightfully demented Harley, plus new ones such as Idris Elba’s Bloodsport.

The genre Gunn and his cohorts compare this to is war movies, but who they’re going to war against isn’t exactly clear. With that said, recent marketing revealed a comic book deep cut, with the 1950s space alien, Starro, running amok at kaiju-size.

“Starro is hilarious because he’s ridiculous. He’s a giant, cerulean blue starfish, but he’s also fucking terrifying,” Gunn says. “When I was a kid I thought that was the scariest thing of all time… and I think that exemplifies what this movie is: it is ridiculous and it��s also terrifying, and serious. So he works really well as the villain of the movie—as one of the villains, actually.”

Ironically, the real antagonists of The Suicide Squad might simply be the flick’s main characters, and Gunn is using the motley crew to unleash his distinctive voice. With an absurdly large cast to pick from, the director has carte blanche from WB to kill any character he wants, and to embrace any level of weirdness. And unlike the 2016 film, or his previous Guardians movies, The Suicide Squad is a big budget superhero flick with an R-rating. A first for Gunn.

“Most of my movies have been R-rated,” Gunn laughs when we mention this. He is, after all, a filmmaker who cut his teeth at indie grindhouse distributor Troma Studios, and has a history with tongue-in-cheek horror movies like Slither. But whether it’s making an R-rated Suicide Squad movie or a PG-13 Guardians picture, it’s all the same to him: telling the biggest-ass version of a campfire yarn.

“This is simply a little bit of a higher age bracket,” he explains, “and my audience is a little bit different. They can see a shark tearing someone in half, they can see a penis. It doesn’t matter.” Even so, there remains a sense of human connection among a number of broken Squad members. And those without that vulnerability still allow the storyteller to broaden the moral spectrum he’s playing with.

“I think you know from the beginning of the first Guardians that most likely, in his heart, Peter Quill is good, Gamora is good, Rocket is good, Drax is good.” But with the Suicide Squad, “some are not good people. They’re bad people. It’s less sentimental in that way. King Shark is much less sentimental than Groot.”

And some of these bad people will die in presumably horrible ways. Not that Gunn is killing his darlings lightly.

“The first thing I had to do was ignore the potential blowback from killing a character,” Gunn says. Instead he focused on following the natural progression of the story, and the natural progression of a character’s arc. “I’m just the servant of the story, so whatever the story says is what I’m going to do, no matter what the repercussions are for anything. I believe in the truth of the story. I believe that there was a story out there that needed to be told that I don’t have any control over.”

Perhaps ceding that control is the greatest advantage he’s discovered from making a gross, foul-mouthed superhero movie exactly to his liking.

“I wanted to do the things that other spectacle films haven’t been able to do,” Gunn says, “which is really take my time and investigate these characters, get to know them, focus on the character aspects, focus on who they were, and deal with time in a different way than it’s been dealt with in these movies.”

Gunn is thus able to let his movie breathe in a way that’s unusual for the superhero genre, but is in line with the more adult-oriented filmmaking he loved as a child. The Suicide Squad may be a war movie, but for Gunn it’s a specific type of throwback. Quick to name The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape, he becomes audibly excited when discussing those 1960s “war-caper” films from his youth. Recapturing that men-and-women-on-a-mission aesthetic is as much the appeal of the movie as honoring Ostrander’s comics. He even refers to Elba’s Bloodsport as his Steve McQueen.

“He’s the unsentimental portrayal of a 1960s action hero but without the moral repercussions of those characters,” says Gunn. Also, he notes, Bloodsport is the guy who shot Superman with a kryptonite bullet. “How cool is that? And also, what a dick!” When contrasted with Robbie’s Harley Quinn, Gunn even likens the pair’s energy to an Abbott and Costello routine, only now Costello might kill you with a bat.

But then, each of the Squad members represent their own genre. They also each leave the door open for further exploration. Hence Gunn’s next project is still not Guardians 3, but rather an HBO Max TV series starring one of the nastiest pieces of work in The Suicide Squad: John Cena’s Peacemaker.

Describing the jingoistic flag-waver as if Marvel’s Captain America took a really far-right turn, Gunn saw Peacemaker as the perfect jumping off point when HBO approached him about doing a series.

“I think that the actual inspiration for Peacemaker was the shitty 1970s Captain America TV shows that I loved when I was a child,” Gunn says. “And I think Peacemaker exemplifies a lot of things about society that are going on politically, and what people’s beliefs are about America and the world. So being able to tell those stories that are slightly more socially conscious in their essence, but also outlandish, he lends itself to that.”

Exploring this week-to-week with Cena—an actor whose range Gunn believes audiences have only seen a fraction of—is irresistible. In fact, Peacemaker might mark another significant turning point in Gunn’s career.

Says the filmmaker, “I love doing Peacemaker. I could see just making TV shows after Guardians 3. It’s a possibility.”

Three years since Gunn’s one very bad week, the possibilities now seem limitless.

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The Suicide Squad opens on Aug. 6 in theaters and HBO Max. We’ll have more from our interview with James Gunn in the coming weeks.

Check out more on The Suicide Squad in the latest issue of Den of Geek!

The post The Suicide Squad: James Gunn Talks the Creative Freedom of That R-Rating appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3aGIJas

[robbo1979psr]

WORST ALBUM ART TOP (BOTTOM?) 5...

Okay, this something a bit different from my usual reviews. When talking about food, they've always said that the first taste is with your eyes. If it looks appetising, you're more likely to enjoy how it tastes as a result. Same could be said about music. If an album's cover art grabs your attention, then you may just discover something you'd otherwise just browse past.

The big difference here though I guess is that something that looks completely hideous is equally as likely to get your attention as a great looking album cover. Saying that, it's still only 50/50 that the music is going to be any good, so good luck!

For this list, I've picked five album art stinkers from my music library. Otherwise I'd be here all day listing hundreds of unimaginative drivel from shitty rap artists or so called R&B superstars posing in provocative clothing to entice horny fourteen year old kids...

So here it is. Go forth and punish your eyeballs...

5. 'Point Of Entry' by Judas Priest

Although Priest, up until this point (and after) always served up a mixed bag in terms of album art, this offering in the early 80s is a bit of arty farty nothingness. Judge for yourself what it's meant to be. To me it stinks of what was on offer within. Bang averageness, leaving the listener bewildered after the previous album, 'British Steel' was a timeless classic.

4. 'Fistful Of Metal' by Anthrax

American band Anthrax's debut album itself, is a great piece of heavy metal, more akin to early 80's NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) than the Thrash Metal they are more famed for in subsequent albums, but the artwork looks to have been drawn by a bored school boy who should have been doing his Maths work but instead doodled in the back pages of his exercise book. Just awful.

3. 'Metal Magic' by Pantera

Yes, THAT Pantera. The biggest metal band on the entire planet during the 90's. To be fair, their entire catalogue could be offered up in a 'Worst album art' competition, but this very early offering just pips it for me. An album from when the band were a full on GLAM METAL outfit, long before Phil Anselmo roared his way into the post of lead singer. This pile of diluted glam garbage wasn't exactly helped by their equally lousy attempt at artwork. 'Diamond Darrell' was a long way from his eventual success as 'Dimebag'. Should have been called 'Dirtbag Darrell' for these abominations.

2. 'Dance Of Death' by Iron Maiden

The absolute Kings of album artwork in the 80s and early 90s, thanks in it's entirety to artist Derek Riggs. Each album cover left you gazing for hours as you spotted new and amazing details hidden within the artwork, including trying to spot his unique signature that was always well hidden. Unfortunately, the band disposed of Derek's services in the early 90s and it went completely downhill from there for the artwork, and arguably the music. From this reviewer's point of view, the music improved again once Blaze Bayley joined the band as singer, after a slow decline with Bruce on vocals, but the artwork just kept on getting worse. The nadir of this slide came with this awful offering. This was 2003, yet the computer generated artwork looked more akin to 1993. Absolutely terrible. The hope was, that they spent more time on the music than worrying about artwork, especially after firmly having Bruce back on vocals after unfairly booting out Blaze for the 'Okay' 'Brave New World' album. That was bloody wrong too. Oh how the mighty had fallen. Like Samson cutting his hair (yes, pun intended! If you know, you know...) it seemed cutting Riggs away, also put Maiden on the slide.

1. 'Unveiled' by Cage

Oh dear. OH DEAR. LOOK AT IT. JUST LOOK AT IT!!! This was a 1998 debut release by an America band called Cage, belatedly wading in on the popularity of the masterpiece 'Painkiller' album by Judas Priest. Unashamedly ripping off that sound, much like Primal Fear did also, but then they did it so bloody well. In fairness, this isn't a bad album, but look at that artwork! They didn't even bother trying to establish a band logo. I'm guessing the 'artist' wasn't much of an expert in Deluxe Paint (one for the nerdy teenagers there) and just didn't bother. JUST LOOK AT IT!! If you're a fan of the kids' shows 'Reboot' or 'Butt Ugly Martians' then it may appeal, but let's be honest... Even Stevie Wonder can see this album artwork is utter stinking hot garbage. My eyes now have the AIDS.

[oliviacueva]

Independent Study: Fashion, Waste, and Reuse - Project Background

Mounts of trash piled up behind a wall in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Across the street was the ocean. [image description: mounds of trash pile up behind a blue painted cement wall, with telephone wires and seagulls flying over head].

In november I ran away and traveled all around Mexico -- a crazy, horrible timed trip cuz COVID, that if anyone else did I would be hella mad at BUT i did it anyways because I needed to GTFO after loosing my job and I took serious care to make sure I was keeping myself and others safe from any possible transmition of this ever evolving virus. So we'll leave the mexico travel experience during COVID for another post (but it was truely amazing and held me well during that mourning period) and just bring it up here to talk about the way they deal with their trash. TRASH TRASH TRASH. what a lovely topic.

So in mexico, like many other countries in the world, they don't bury their trash like we do to hide it, they burn it. So when I was traveling around i often smelled the smell of buring garbage which has a particular kind of smell, not like you would think, maybe more like buring pastics which is probably the majority of what is burning. Anyway -- this experience reminded me that the entire world has no solution for our mass consumption and mass waste problem that is killing our planet and that any thing we do whether thats burning, burying, dumping into the ocean, all of it remains here even if we can't see it, we still breath it, eat it, consume it.

I have as an adult been very aware of how much I consume and how much I waste. Growing up in Berkeley, CA in the 90's we were composting in our backyard before the green bins were mandated by the city. We recycled! We bought second hand. We kept things for as long as possible until they literally turned into rags. Rea liberal shit with that peasant mentality twist. When I moved to new york city for undergrad those habits quickly changed. There wasn't composting readily available. I remember reading a recycling sign that disclosed that the only bottles NYC reclycled were those that had necks smaller than the body! What?! I read that but kept throwing everything I was used to reclying into the bin, hoping that it would be sorted and wind up in the right place. HOPING!

So it had been on mind for a while that recycling was probably fake, at least in New York City and then of course this past year (2020) it came out that all recycling of plastic is actually truely a lie and that all the producers of plastic BIG OIL COMPANIES knew it was a lie the whole time and still sold it to us like that sweet ol american dream. For many years we actually sold all of our plastic waste to china. Which shouldn't mean we don't care where it ends up! But a few years back china stopped taking our recycling so we were left to figure it out on our own. But basically plastic is not recycled because it takes more money to recycle plastic than it does to make new plastic. And so of course it all links back to capitalism and caring more for profit than for people. You can learn more about this by reading/listening to it here.

So when I got home from Mexico in December of 2020, I decided to save all of my trash. Everything that can be [actually] composted goes in the green bin and everything that can actually be recycled [aluminum and glass and paper] goes in the recycling. But everything else I decided to keep, to wash, and now I am embarking on a project to turn one month' of trash into a wearable piece of some sort. I have no idea what this looks piece looks like yet. But it's gonna happen.

The Process: Sorting Trash

When I am ready to throw something away I consider it. Is it a piece of food waste, bones, organic material, or wet paper that can decompose back into the earth with out any extra process? If so it goes in the compost bin. Is this an aluminum can, a piece of clean tinfoil, or a CLEANED glass jar or bottle, or newspaper or cardboard? If so it goes in the recycling. If it something that is questionable, like it says compostable but it looks like plastic or it says recyclable but its something like tetrapack, which can only be recycled in certain facilities, it gets added to my trash collection, washed, cleaned, dried and ready to be transformed into this garment of trash.

Next Steps

Currently I have collected all of my trash and begun the cataloging of it. Please keep in mind that I am already not a huge consumer so my trash for the month is far less than the average american I THINK. Most of the trash was collected for just the month of December and some things I have continued to collect into January and February. Like daily disposable contact lense cases! there are so many! It's hard to throw things away now so this project may continue to grow in trash amount. We will see. Becuase this getting long, I'll save the process cataloguing photos for the next post.

TTYL

[patriciahaefeli]

#MeToo

     While on line at my local barista the other day, I overheard a conversation between a man and a woman, the theme of which was the recent barrage of sexual harassment accusations being leveled at men in positions of power, prestige and wealth, especially those whose victims were women. 

      “Is it really possible that all of these women were sexually harassed?” the man wondered aloud, “And if it’s true, what the hell took them so long? Why now? They’re calling it the Weinstein effect.’” 

      The woman’s head shook disgustedly at the mention of the name and she sucked her teeth before muttering, “Gross.” 

      “How about you?” He elbowed her playfully. “Have you ever been sexually harassed?” She looked down at her boots for a moment, and when she raised her face to him there was a sardonic smile on her lips. “Oh yeah,” she said kind of sadly. “Yeah, I have.” 

      By the time I’d collected my skinny vanilla latte, I had decided to break a pact I’d made with a co-worker and friend nearly thirty years ago. 

      I was twenty-seven and had been a recruiter in the HR department of a large financial services corporation for about a year when I first met him. He was in his mid-forties I think, and in the process of taking an existing department and forming a separate subsidiary, under the umbrella of the huge parent company. I went to his office to talk with him about his future hiring needs, which he assured me would be massive. He also said we would be working closely to accomplish his goals. It seemed like an exciting diversion from the hiring I’d been doing, and although there were more seasoned recruiters at his disposal, he seemed to want me. He had such confidence in me, it was flattering. 

      After that first meeting, we had several more, although he always scheduled them around lunchtime, and then when I showed up, he’d casually mention that he was starving and we’d talk over lunch at a nearby restaurant. Most confusing of all, he seemed to be doing most of the recruiting and hiring himself. 

      And then, he recruited me. He had a way of speaking that reminded me of old gangster movies. Over lunch at his favorite downtown restaurant, he had a habit of turning away from me when he spoke, and he seemed to be always surveying the room. He’d order for me too, which made me vaguely uncomfortable, like we were on a date or something. But there was nothing you could put your finger on. Nothing that wouldn’t sound crazy to someone who wasn’t there. I shook it off. When he asked me if I wanted to be his assistant, with the promise of bigger and better things down the road, I told myself that he thought I was bright and capable, and I wanted to live up to that impression. I said yes. 

      During the first few weeks I worked for him, I’d often walk into the office and hear him blasting the same Fine Young Cannibals song, “She Drives Me Crazy,” but he’d shut it off as soon as I walked in. Once, I told him, “I like that song, why do you shut it off?” And I thought I saw his cheeks color. Once again, I shrugged it off. Not only could I not fathom a romantic feeling toward him, the very idea that it could have something to do with me seemed the height of conceit. He was a grown man for crying out loud! Married. He wasn’t a teenager with a crush. Get over yourself, Tricia. 

      One afternoon, he sent me to the office of the CEO of the parent company to pick up U.S. Open tickets. The office was at the top of the World Financial Center,and while I was there, I met a beautiful woman who he would also recruit, and she would become a dear friend. When I got back to our offices, he gave the tickets to me. I was thrilled. When he heard me gushing over them on the phone with my then-boyfriend, he stormed out of the office, slamming the door so hard that that heads shot up in the surrounding cubicles and offices. Shocked glances were exchanged. What the heck? 

      About six months after I started, we moved the entire operation to a new facility. As promised, my job title changed and I no longer worked directly for him. What didn’t change were the lunches. The “invitation” was always extended under the pretense of wanting to pick my brain about something. Again, it was flattering. On the other hand, the more this new business was defined, the more I realized I really didn’t understand most of it. I knew I was bringing nothing to the table so to speak, and I began to notice that once we were away from the office, the conversation would turn to other topics anyway. 

     Once, he was telling me about a married friend who was having an affair. My response was simple, “I don’t understand that,” I said, shaking my head. “If you want out, get a divorce.” He was visibly agitated after that, and he dismissed my remarks with something like, “How would you know anyway? You’ve never been married.” It was true, but the way he said it stung like a slap. He cut that lunch short and we drove back to the office in silence. 

      Not long after that lunch, another invitation came. This time, I told him that my department was very busy, and that my (immediate) boss would not be happy if I went out for lunch with his boss. His voice deepened into a lascivious drawl, “Well, then you better not tell him.” I was speechless. In that moment, everything I’d been refusing to acknowledge crystalized. There was dead air on the line for what seemed like eternity. When he spoke next, his voice was filled with disgust, “Christ. Forget it.” 

      Aside from him, the senior management of that subsidiary consisted of three men at that point. One of them was openly hostile toward me, although I couldn’t imagine why, I’d barely had any interactions with him. The other, depending on who else he was with, could be overly solicitous, or rudely dismissive. As I was several layers of management beneath all of them, only the third seemed to have a reasonable response to me, which is to say that he seemed to barely know my name. 

     I remember that I was in a good mood the morning the envelope came. I had just gotten to work, and was humming softly as I picked up the interoffice envelope on my desk and began to unwind the twine closure. Tilting it to let its contents drop to the desk, I froze. There, on my desk was a Fredericks of Hollywood catalogue with a yellow sticky note on it. In his distinct handwriting, the note said, “Choose something you would wear in public, and something you would wear in private.” 

      I was horrified. My heart was pounding and I realized that I had physically backed away from my desk. My head spinning, I tore the note off the magazine and tore it into a million pieces. I spun around wildly. When had he been here? Was he here now? Had anyone else seen? And then, Oh my God. What am I going to do now? 

      What I did was ignore his calls for days. It was a large facility, and I kept as far away from his office as possible. The more I stayed away, the more often he called. I started to avoid being at my own desk as well. I just stayed on the move. I told no one for about a week. The woman I’d met while getting the U.S. Open tickets was another of his recruits. She’d known him longer than I had and had become for me a trusted friend. I went to her office and as soon as I began she jumped up and closed the door. We talked for over an hour and during that time she told me that she was glad I’d come to her, because she had reason to believe that he’d led other senior managers to think that there was something going on between us. There was, in fact, some resentment brewing among those who’d heard and assumed I’d received preferential treatment as a result. Good God, I thought, I wouldn’t exactly call the treatment I’d gotten preferential. 

      She said didn’t believe it herself, but hadn’t known how or when to tell me. Then she told me about the time he’d done something similar to her. 

      I wasn’t sure if I felt better or worse when I left, but of all the things we talked about that day, not once did we discuss confronting him, or telling anyone else about the things he said and way he behaved. On the contrary, that’s the day we made the pact, and it was to “take this to our graves.” 

      I couldn’t avoid his calls forever, so the next day, when I saw his name come up on the display I picked up. I said hello and what he said next was more a statement than a question. 

     “You’re really pissed at me aren’t you.” 

      Under different circumstances that sentence would have been comical. He was the CEO for crying out loud not my boyfriend! I should have said, Yes, I am. I should have said, How dare you? Or even, What in the world did I do to give you the impression that I was in any way open to that? What I said was, “If anyone other than me had opened that envelope, I’d never be able to defend myself.” 

      I got lucky. He was fired by The Firm at-large within weeks of that event. Still, when it happened, I actually felt bad for him. News had travelled fast throughout the building, and when he called me into his office that last time, I went willingly. Truth be told, I felt I owed him that one final dignity; to come when called. If I thought he might apologize before he left for insulting me, or taking advantage of the twenty-something me, or even the trouble he’d caused me within the company, I’d have been wrong on all counts. What he did, was give me some advice for the coming weeks: “Keep a low profile.” 

      He suggested, during that conversation, that without him, my job security was now tenuous as well. He implied that I really didn’t add any value to the firm, and he practically flat out said that the only reason I had a job was because of him. I sat there silently, and took it. When I got up to leave, I thanked him, and wished him well. What I felt, however, was a combination of rage and relief. Regardless of what happened to me there, I knew I’d never have to see him again. 

      I didn’t lose my job. In fact, in subsequent months my role within the company became more defined, and over time, a clearer career path emerged. His replacement, a true, class-act of a guy, brought with him an atmosphere of friendly professionalism that truly changed everything. I remember the years that followed and the people who worked there with great fondness. 

     The point is that now, when I hear people wonder aloud if it’s possible that all of those women endured sexual harassment and kept silent for years I can say with confidence that yes, it is not only possible, it is probable. In my own case I was afraid for many reasons. Not the least of which was the very thing he’d hinted at during our last meeting. For a period of time, anyway, he’d successfully convinced me that whatever talent or potential he’d “seen” in me, it was a vision that few others shared. 

      I didn’t know who I’d complain to either, in that particular part of the firm, the buck stopped with him. He was the CEO, the top guy, the head honcho. I was afraid he’d deny it – and what, exactly, had he done other than make me uncomfortable? He’d never touched me or exposed himself to me or anything that overt. I was afraid of being labelled troublesome. I was afraid that I was far more disposable than he was in a business that was, effectively, one of the last great bastions of the ole boy’s network. 

      As a sometime “tiger mom” and stepmom to five strong, hard-working and ambitious daughters, I’m comforted that this type of thing is being excavated across multiple fields. Yes, women are “coming out” now like never before, and the single most important reason for that is that they can. Now, there’s a much better chance that they’ll be heard, and the right people will suffer the consequences. I pray that if, and when any of them experience something like this, they will recognize it immediately, and tolerate none of it. Most of all, I hope they never blame themselves.

   For a very long time, I wanted to believe that what was right in front of me was not, in fact, what I thought it was. I was naïve. I was embarrassed. I was young. He was none of those things, and had he not been my boss, I don’t believe for a second that he would have behaved the way he did with me. He wasn’t the first to abuse his position and power, and he won’t be the last. But it’s really that simple,-and that complicated.