#i haven't forgotten burgess

[whisperprime]

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Interlude | Part 11

Hob has not had this dream in a very long time.

Even before his stunt as a stand in, he hasn't seen it in a while.

He remembers the first time he'd dreamt of that wretched orb. The first time he'd seen Dream - the Dream of the other timeline - within it.

He'd thought it was just a morbid recreation of the story he'd heard. That his mind was just trying to process this horrible thing he'd heard.

He'd descended down into the basement as if in a trance only to become aware with terrible clarity upon passing through a gate that had opened far too easily. He remembered the horror and rage at seeing his friend contained and demeaned in such a way. Remembered the grief that he had gone through such a thing.

Remembered the no small amount of guilt at the fact that he had never looked. 1989 was a poor time to start, but it would have been something.

He had been completely lucid from the moment he passed through the gate, but had retained all the power that came from being within a dream. He'd used it to smudge the circle and shatter the glass.

Dream had later explained - apologized - that he had not meant to draw Hob there. He would have better control next time, he'd promised.

Hob had in turn countered that this was what friends were for: to help each other in their darkest moments. If Dream didn't want his help, that was his choice and Hob would understand, but the immortal human highly recommended talking to someone who could lend him support.

Dream had not been thrilled with the vulnerability that came with admitting he needed help, forgetting asking for it.

Still, when it happened, not once more but twice more, he had given in. Had called Hob for help. Even if it was only subconsciously. To this day, Hob didn't know what he'd said to convince his friend to trust him, but he had done his upmost best to help where he could.

It had seemed like it might be helping.

And then, the Other Dream had died.

And the dreams continued to happen. Not frequently, but they did happen.

Each time, Hob followed the stars down into the basement. Each time he found the same set up.

But, in these sequent revisitations, the orb was always empty.

Hob had heard that the Dream he had known was just an aspect. A point of view. That a new one had come to reside over the Dreaming

He had always wondered if this was a lingering wound that persevered, but didn't affect the new Dream.

Hob never got the chance to ask. He supposed he never would, now.

Hob pulled his eyes away from the cage, turning to face the gate he had been leaning against. He raised his hands and then pressed his palms to the metal. Every time he had come here in the past, he had passed through this gate.

Yet this time, he hadn't.

Since the Other Dream's death and Hob's visits here since, he had always found the gates open, before and after he passed through them. He could always leave at anytime.

But now, the gates were closed. When he presses on them, they hold. He could feel, somehow, that they would yield if he pushed, but there was also the intuitive knowledge that if he did do so he might cause damage.

Slowly, he withdraws his hands. Something is different, perhaps gone sideways. He just doesn't know if it is good or bad. He weighs his options, what little he knows about his situation. Comes to the conclusion that he can afford to wait a bit and see how things progress before making any hasty moves.

It is while he ponders that he feels something shift behind him. There isn’t any sound, per se. Just this sudden absolute knowledge that he is not alone in the dream anymore.

Hob spins around, not sure what to expect. Nothing has ever come in here save for the Other Dream, and he hasn’t been here for over two hundred years, so who--

He spots the intruder and freezes, all thoughts tumbling out of his head in confused fear. There is a familiar figure within the orb where none had been before. Although he is curled up, Hob would know this being anywhere.

“Dream?” The name falls from his lips without his consent. For a moment, he thinks this is some specter, a shadow of the original having taken form within the dream. But nothing like this has ever happened before. He knows how this goes. There is only one Dream of the Endless and for him to be here is for this to be the original. The Dream of the new timeline.

To dream of me is to invite me in.

Hob near catapults himself across the basement in his haste to reach the cage. Dream doesn’t respond to the sound of his voice or to his approach. Doesn’t respond when Hob knocks on the glass to attempt to get some kind of reaction.

“Shit!” Panic is clawing at his throat and Hob is barely keeping to his calm by the skin of his teeth. “Dream, snap out of it.” He again knocks on the glass.

And again he receives no response.

He curses to himself, mutters, “Why is he being affected by this?” Hob presses his hands to the glass, willing the being inside to respond. He doesn’t understand. “This didn’t happen.” So how is it affecting Dream to the point that he seems lost in it?

Hob glances frantically around the room, until his eyes land on the pair of chairs the guards used to sit at. The table is still set to some random hand of cards. All at once, Hob remembers that he isn’t powerless. That the Other Dream had given him the power to help drag him back from the edge of this waking nightmare. It cuts through his panic like a hot knife through butter.

Plan in mind, Hob turns back to the unresponsive Dream. “Hold on,” he tells him. He is loathe to leave, but he must to retrieve the chair. “I'll get you out of there.”

He doesn’t wait for a response. He sprints back across the moat and near yanks up the chair. It should be heavy, but like the three times he’s wielded it before, it’s light as a feather. He pivots, prize in hand, to return back to the orb.

Dream has still not moved. Hob’s fingers flex around the chair, worried. He only had a handful of experiences with this to judge by with the Other Dream. He has no frame of reference for the Dream in front of him. He swallows back his trepidation.

Dream can get mad at him later. As soon as he’s back to himself.

“Got just the thing to get you out,” he says, because he always explains what he’s doing. Tries to use outside stimulation as an anchor, because he’s so far out of his depth. “You might want to move away from this side.”

Like before, he does not wait for an answer. He can feel that time is of the essence and he does not want to wait around to see what it will take before Dream comes back to himself. He swipes a foot through the damn summoning spell, perhaps taking a little vicious satisfaction in seeing it break like he’s never been able to see it in the Waking world.

Coming around, he raises and draws back the chair.

Dream has finally moved. Startled, wide eyes catching his, just as Hob brings the chair around and shatters the glass.

Dream gasps like he’s been under water and has just finally reached the surface. He doesn’t resist as Hob reaches in and gently pulls him out like he’d done with the Other Dream the handful of times they’d done this. Clings tight as he shudders, as if a weight has settled on him.

Dream weights the same as he always does: light in physical form but heavy in concept. Hob’s mind struggles with it, can never get used to it. Bears it regardless, as he makes his way across the moot and away from the cage. He’s just thinking of putting Dream down, when all of a sudden, the Dream Lord seems to just dissolve, shadows slipping through his arms like water.

And just like that, Hob knows that whatever weakness he’s witnessed has passed. He stares at his empty hands and mourns the fact that this is likely the last time he will ever feel that weight again. He lowers his hands and turns in the direction the shadows had slithered away in. Finds Dream, fully clothed and on his feet as if nothing had ever been amiss. Still, he asks, “Are you okay?”

Given past experience, he’s not surprised when he receives no response to his query. He watches as Dream takes in the room. Sees the moment it dawns on him what he’s looking at. What this place is. Hob wonders how much of the truth was contained in whatever he’d experienced when he entered this place.

Dream turns on him with a certain level of hostility. His often blue eyes in the Waking has been replaced by a dark, deep vastness that near screams with barely checked threat. In one instant to the next, he goes from being across the room to bearing down upon Hob.

“If you ever wish to leave here, you will not dodge my questions. What is this place?”

Hob feels a wave of regret, of resignation, for this thing that he could not hide. For this thing that has somehow followed him and affected the being before him. He had so wanted to spare him this knowledge, yet is seems that choice is gone now. “This was your prison, the first time around.”

Dragging his gaze away from those bottomless pits takes Herculean effort, but their pull holds little candle to the weight of his guilt. He looks out across the room, eyes no longer seeing the shattered remains of a construction that only exists in his memory and this dream, but rather the basement as it existed for the last one hundred years. “It's where I was imprisoned, the second time around.”

The temperature around him plummets. It is this that makes him shiver, instead of the way that Dream’s eyes flash with intensity of a distant super nova. The shadows around them darken as he demands, “Hob Gadling, what have you done?”

Hob is all too aware of what this creature can do. Knows there’s so much more he isn’t aware of. But he spent the better part of a century under the knife of a literal Prince of Hell and he feels that entitles him to a little recklessness. It is with this thought that he rounds back on Dream, glaring at him as he snips back, “I saved the universe from being prematurely destroyed.” He draws himself up until they’re nearly nose to nose with each other. “The rules demanded a fair trade and we gave it one as best as we could.”

And oh, how the time line had fought against the changes. But in the end, the changes held. Hob clung to that victory, to the fact that Dream had not spent that century here this time around.

Dream’s expression turned tumultuous in the same way it had just before he’d gone storming off in a hissy fit. Was this ire over the idea that a mere mortal could be a stand in for an Endless as far as the rules that governed the universe were concerned or was it something else? “You have messed with things you cannot understand. There is no telling what consequences you have invited upon yourself.”

This isn’t telling Hob anything he doesn’t already know. He doesn’t back down. “I’ve made my choice. Better me than someone else.” Including you, he does not say, but Dream seems to hear it anyway.

For the first time in their long acquaintance, Dream loses his cool first. To drive him to frustration. “Imprudent human!” The edges of the dream waver as the shadows around them roil with his fury and Hob is very, very nearly is thrown back into the Waking. “Why would you do something so foolish?”

Like a wave, Hob can feel a sudden exhaustion wash over him. They have gotten so very far away from anywhere he wants them to be that he can’t see a way back. Wonders helplessly if there is a way back.

It is with the same stubbornness that urges him to rise with each day, no matter how terrible the night before, that he clings to the fact that he knows in his bones that things can get better, that they always get better. He shifts his weight and makes his decision.

Honesty is sometimes the only path forward.

“Because I love you.”

Silence. Then, “What?”

Hob places his hands on his hips to hide the way they tremble. “You heard me, you great spook. Because I love you.” He’s thrilled when his voice doesn’t even shake.

Dream seems to shake himself out of whatever stupor he’d fallen into, some of the steam taken out of his sails. Something between incredulous and confused crosses his expression. “Do you expect me to thank you for what you’ve done?”

Hob huffs, feeling insulted. “Oh, come off it. Of course I didn’t do it for anyone’s thanks.” He gestures to the ceiling in lieu of the universe at large. “I did it because I wanted to continue to experience everything life had to offer.” He softened, adds, “I would have done it regardless, but, yes, it was a massive bonus that in the process you were spared this experience.” He looks up at this ridiculous, impossible creature, and says with feeling, “Say what you will, but you did not deserve this either.”

There is a war going on behind Dream’s lack of expression. Hob waits, patiently seeing what is going to win out. Braces himself for the worse and he hopes for the best.

Then, “I do not know what you expect to come out of this.”

Could be better. Could have been worse. 

Hob shrugs. “I don’t expect anything to come out of this.”

Dream seems to struggle with this. Slowly, as if parsing the words out, he says “And yet you said it anyway.”

Hob nods. “Because you asked why I would take your place.”

Another struggle. Another war. This is clearly not the direction the Lord of Dreams and Nightmares expected this conversation to go. “I am not him.” 

I will not give you the vulnerability he gave you, lays like a gauntlet between them. 

Hob suppresses the urge to roll his eyes, no matter how good the childish behavior would feel in the moment. It won't help. “I didn't just love him for who his trauma turned him into.” He gestures to the sphere. “I'm not going to lie. He did change after this.”

He brings that same hand around to point at the insufferable git in front of him. Dream's eyes somehow give the impression they have gone cross-eyed, despite having no pupils. Hob would have laughed at the sheer affront coming off him, if this was any other situation. “But don't you dare insinuate that's all it was. I have loved you for seven hundred years. I loved you when you showed me kindness when I was at my lowest and I still loved you when you turned your back on me and walked away. I will likely love you until the day I die. Lord only knows why, but I will.” At this last part, he withdraws, his ire dulling.

Dream, it seems, is not willing to let go of his stubborn streak yet, for he says, “You cannot pick up with me where you left off with him.”

Hob looks to the ceiling as if anyone up there will give him the strength to deal with this terribly, terribly dense creature. But he knows he has done this to himself and he must walk this path himself.

Besides, he thinks he knows what this is truly about. He's seen that look before. Seen that same look on men who would deny themselves what they want most for fear they shouldn't have it.

Well, bullocks to that.

“We were never together. I never told him.”

Dream blinks at him. It's the most off guard Hob has ever seen him. “Pardon?”

Hob, patiently, repeated himself, "I never told him."

“Why?” Why tell me? Why now? Dream doesn't ask, but it's heard regardless.

Hob does not feel like explaining that he had been a coward and as such had missed his chance, so he goes for a close enough truth. “It just never happened.”

The look Dream give him suggested he isn't quite satisfied with that answer, but thankfully, he does not push.

Hob can feel the dream around them start to get the first hints of haziness. The tell tale signs that he will be waking soon. 

Dream must feel it, too. The shadows around them grow heavy, to pull at him with almost the same force. Hob knows that if this being before him wishes to keep him here, he will not wake, no matter what his natural circadian rhythm says.

As suddenly as they come on, the shadows retreat. The hold loosens a fraction to where the threat is no longer there, but Hob isn’t quite in danger of prematurely escaping this conversation until Dream is done with him.

“We will return to this matter another time. I will consider the information you have given me.” Dream eyes him up and down, something considering poking through his ire. “All of the information you have given me.”

Hob feels a thrill race up his spine at the implications of that particular line. Before he can respond, however, and because the cheeky git always has to have the last line, Dream commands in a voice that rings with power: “It is time to wake, Hob Gadling.”

And Hob wakes.

Part 12

[dragonnan]

DREAM ANGST ABUSE

This is one I've managed most of the writing on so far. I'm thinking I'll probably combine my other ideas into this one as well.

The gist of the story takes place following Rodrick's death. I don't see Alex being very involved with Dream, going forward, other than the rare visit to try to bargain. So, instead, the main villain will be Sykes - who has been placed in charge of managing the guards and keeping watch of Dream. The comics established Sykes as someone more than capable of taking whatever he needs to further his ambitions. In this version, he chooses to use Dream as a means for additional income. The story will involve noncon - though I'll be keeping away from anything overtly graphic. I haven't yet settled on whether Dream escapes as he does in the series or if I'll go completely AU and have Hob save him. Either way, he'll have developed major PTSD that begins to worsen once all the chaos of regaining his tools and dealing with Rose and the Corinthian are squared away.

Below the cut is an excerpt from the first on-progress chapter.

It had been a little over a year since the death of Rodrick Burgess. While Alex had fashioned himself as the new head of the household, it was, in truth, Ruthven Sykes who had taken over affairs. Was there something foul – corrupting – in the very stones and mortar of the house which drew such like minds together? Dream had found Sykes to be just as wicked and cruel as Burgess. Perhaps even more so. With Burgess there had always been a consistent, monotonous, nature to his demands. Until his death, he had never wavered in his greed for immortality and wealth – his desire to call back his eldest son, from the Sunless Lands, long since forgotten. Sykes, though… there were no boons to move him. He seemed to want neither long life nor wealth beyond which he already possessed. Not once had he spoken a word to Dream and any orders to the guards were given outside of the basement. When he did bother to show himself it was merely to watch, silent, from the bottom of the stairs, before leaving once again. Thus had been the routine for the last 13 months.

There was a soft crinkling as Jonesy grabbed several biscuits from a package on the counter. Tucking them into the palm of his hand, he grasped the two cups of coffee and carried them back to the small table the two of them shared.

Silence returned as they sipped their drinks and read – Jonsey from a newspaper and Chuck from his tattered book.

Every day after every day after every day followed this pattern. Chuck and Jonsey were there for the first half of the day – from breakfast until dinner. It had only been through their conversations that Dream had even that much insight into the passage of the day. With the coming of Night, two other guards would take over.

Hours slipped by. Sometimes the guards would get up for more food or coffee or sometimes just to stretch. Dream, while aware of their movements, paid little mind to them. He yearned to fully stretch out his form; not only the physical but the part that once connected to the Dreaming as well. The singular form encasing him, while robust, still felt the stiffness of being held in his tiny cage. He could stand but could not completely straighten to his full height. Nor could he lie down comfortably with the jutting spikes protruding from every joint. No matter. He could endure.

Dream had his eyes closed, sitting with legs folded beneath him, when the door to the basement rattled open. He didn’t move – didn’t open his eyes. He could feel the gaze resting upon him, however. There was the scrape of leather against the concrete; muted through the glass. More footsteps followed and chairs scraped. Changing of the guards.

Few words were exchanged beyond the mundane report of Dream’s activities – such as they were. After Chuck and Jonsey had gone, one of the evening guards approached the binding circle. The metal ramp, bridging the moat, rattled as he stepped across.

Silence followed for a span until, after a brief huff, knuckles rapped on the glass.

“Heard you were a good boy again today, sweetheart.”

Elias Aswang. Dark hair, roughly built, late forties. Often he was given to taunting or crude commentary. Not the first to do so, however. Unremarkable.

“Oi, you fixin to play or you just gonna chat it up all night?” Bruce Hagen; bald, soft around the middle, missing several bottom teeth which caused a mild lisp. Elias gave a final tap on the glass before tromping back towards the small card table.

“Yeah, yeah – but you try and cheat this time and I’ll break your fingers.”

[momowoah]

Favourite characters from One Chicago?

Also favourite headcanon about those characters

(I'm only counting the current characters. Also thanks for your ask 💕💕)

Fire: Kelly has been my fave since s1 (along with Dawson) but I also really love Stella and Violet!

PD: Definitely Kim, Ruzek and Atwater. Dante's episodes are good and I've been liking Hayley's since Jo was introduced but I literally spend all season waiting for those three to shine.

Med: I really love Hannah since she was introduced and I'm so glad they brought her back as a main! I've also grown fond of Archer lately and I'm finding Ripley's storyline really interesting. Let's hope he survives the new mc curse in med and lasts more than a season lol.

I'm not really a person who has hcs lol but when it comes to the direction I want the show to take these characters - I love love love where they are with Stellaride but I do want them to have children at some point (unfortunately it looks like we are not getting a pregnancy reveal in the finale 😔). I'm kinda permanently scared Taylor Kinney will want to leave the show since Jesse Spencer left and he went on a hiatus for a bit so I also hope that if he does they will just move him permanently to OFI as an excuse for him not being on screen instead of killing him off or breaking them up bc even tho I prefer Kelly in squad I actually don't hate him in OFI. When it comes to Violet I'm just fully invested in whatever is going on with her and Novak and her and Carver. I'd bribe NBC for a throuple between them like it would be so goodddddd I mean have you seen the way Novak looks at her???? Girly has the heartiest heart eyes to ever exist. I do think they're both bi which enters the hc field lol (but not for long 🤞).

When it comes to Med I just want to see where they take everything bc aside from the whole Ava ordeal (which I'll never not be extremely bitter over bc WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT) the writers haven't disappointed me that much I think and I like the way everything's going now. I'm honestly a bit tired of PD bc they've apparently forgotten what an ensemble show is (I mean, I might've just forgotten but I'm pretty sure we didn't even get Burzek announcing their most recent engagement to the others?). I mean, I get having one or two episodes every season which are very focused on a specific character (911 does it and they're their best episodes) but not to the point where they literally have no storylines involving more than one or two characters and every single episode focus on someone. I just hope they don't screw up with Atwater again (which. seems like they will bc why are we having a repeat of Jay's worst storyline ever from s4ish?) and have Burgess and Ruzek finally get married bc god I have waited long enough.

[movienotesbyzawmer]

April 12: Rocky III

(previous notes: Rocky II)

Because now that Rocky has done the unthinkable and become The Champ, we want to see him tackle the next challenge… win AGAIN.

I remember seeing this in the theater with my buddy. I don't know if I liked it. I'm pretty sure I found Mr. T to be as charismatic and as terrifying as they wanted. I'm pretty sure when I bought the ticket I hesitated and asked the cashier, "hey, wait, we get to see him do some variation on the triumphant steps jogging moment, right? Otherwise never mind I'll go see Poltergeist again". If I'm paying good money for boxing sequels, I want to be assured that the formula has not been altered.

Okay let's go.

Once again, this is Un Film De Sylvester Stallone.

Slight variation on the fanfare with the title, now there's a close-up of the Important Belt Buckle Of Punchsport.

Then we see the climax of the previous movie, maybe edited slightly for time. But not very noticeably different.

That segues immediately to a montage of Rocky doing many successful beatup games, scored by the enormous pop hit "Eye of the Tiger". I suspect this isn't the last we'll hear of this number.

The montage morphs into a different story, one starring Mr. T! He's watching Rocky win stuff and he is not pleased. He can also fist-game, it seems. But the montage makes it clear that it is our hero Rocky who is the star of commercial endorsements and marriage love.

I mock but this visionary filmmaker has indeed opened this movie with energetically cinematic choices.

0:8:40 - Arcade games! Paulie goes to an arcade and it is like the arcades I went to when this movie was out and I see games that I played! But Paulie doesn't like the Rocky pinball machine. It seems he is a sore brother-in-law.

Rocky is now very dashing. Paulie is drunk and whiny about how Rocky is such a big shot now, but he has a point about how prettied up he has become.

Later that night Rocky and Adrian are in their bed and it has a rich person headboard. The director, also visibly present in front of the camera, clearly instructed the production designer to create a bed that would reflect the elite level of financial flexibility that the protagonist has reached.

So apparently Rocky has gotten himself into the strange situation where he has to do a charity boxing match against a wrestler played by the increasingly famous Hulk Hogan. I had forgotten that Hulk Hogan is in this movie. Mr. T is watching this match and he looks intensely the same way he only ever does.

Whoa Hulk Hogan is way taller than Sylvester Stallone. Is that allowed? The rules have changed! And this whole thing is not boxing it is wrestling and it is that silliness instead of boxing. This is a long scene that is the same as a typical Wrestlemania thing, all manufactured drama made to seem like fighting and true menace, but at the end we see that they are just professional coworkers and we have all learned a valuable lesson haven't we.

At a statue-unveiling, Rocky announces that he is maybe retiring. MAYBE. But then Mr. T shows up talking smack, and ladies and gentlemen we have ourselves an end-of-Act-One.

As Act Two begins, we have a scene that was an A+ homework assignment for the screenwriting teacher of Rocky III's screenwriter, who you will recall is the craftsman Sylvester Stallone. Burgess Meredith is like "I quit! I won't help you with this fight! Mr. T is too hard to beat!" But then they talk it out to advance past that scripted complication. And now Rocky and Mr. T are training for their fight in their separate worlds.

Speaking of worlds, in the World Of Rocky, the famous theme that was introduced in the score of the first movie is actually known to the characters in this movie as Rocky music. They play it for him publicly to celebrate their pride in his violence accomplishments.

Apollo Creed appears to be retired, but he is a commentator at this Rocky/T fight.

0:40:00 - They're about to do the fight, but Mr. T is so The Way He Is that the wants to fight on the way TO the fight. That results in some tumult that makes BM have health problems. It was vague what happened, it seemed like BM was shoved aside by all the mad/scared/fighting people, so then he has a conversation with Rocky in a back room where he's like, don't stop the fight even though I am suddenly vaguely frail. He sort of clutches his chest like maybe there's a heart attack but just one of those everyday ones. I have those every time I click send on a work email. My friends should not be discouraged from championship fisticuffs when that happens.

This is the first Rocky movie to be made after Raging Bull came out, and I detect some influence in the boxing footage, like with close-ups of Mr. T.

Rocky loses that fight pretty quickly, and maybe the problem is that he didn't do a pre-victory steps jog. But the movie is telling us that BM is dying on a table in the back room and that's the real problem.

BM dies and SS has done some pretty ambitious cry-acting. Then the funeral is in one of those indoor above-ground file-cabinet-style cemeteries, which is not the normal cinematic choice so nice job there.

I can already tell that we're going to have another thirty minutes of a bummed-out Rocky to fill out Act Two before it starts to look like the setup for a fulfilling climax can begin. It's what I would have told him to write if he were my student at the third-rate community college where I'm a part-time screenwriting teacher in this scenario.

Apollo Creed has shown up to try to pep-talk Rocky, and he keeps saying "eye of the tiger" because of marketing departments. But also, he is a more mature person than in the first two movies. Even though it's a character shift, I do kind of buy it. It seems like another side of the character we knew slightly.

0:59:00 - Another scene beginning with dialogue that sounds like it was improvised by people who don't know what real life is like. "Come on you're going to be late to the airport!" "Maybe you should have packed another sweater" "no in California it's not too cold". AHA THEY ARE GOING ON A TRIP TO CALIFORNIA I AM ON TO YOU ROCKY III

When they go to Los Angeles and show us people on the street and the people have been told to look and act super different so that the audience will be like, wow California is different, then, well, we are at this part of Rocky III did you know.

Although there was my earlier expectation that we were going to have a prolonged funereal story arc, but what's happened is that Apollo is invested in training Rocky so they're showing us that side of Apollo, and that's interesting. But also it's the template of "Rocky is training and he doesn't look like he's going to get there, but then inspiration will hit and he will look like he is going to get there". S. Stallone, noted filmmaker, is using montages and flashbacks to show how recent bad news moments for Rocky are haunting him. It is working.

Adrian performs a pep talk monologue for Rocky. I don't understand her point. It's like a box of those refrigerator poetry magnets jumbled up together and spoken as movie script lines. I guess the gist is "don't give up" and he starts to think maybe he shouldn't give up. Then it's a new training montage, and it's got the classic "running far now" Rocky theme so we know it's going well. The twist on the classic cheering-atop-stairs cadence is it's Rocky and Apollo on the beach, and Rocky is a little faster than Apollo and that is great news for them both.

Now we're right before the final fight, and we heard Mr. T tell a reporter that he "pity the fool". I didn't hear the rest of what he said, I was just so happy to hear him say "pity the fool".

Oh but shortly after that he is asked what his prediction is, and he looks at the camera, OUR camera, at US, and says "PAIN". Submitted without comment.

That face-to-face moment right before the fight starts, Mr. T says "imma bust you UP" and Rocky says "go for it". Advanced Scripted Dialogue with Professor Stallone.

The final fight happens, and it's mostly the same as how the other ones went except without a montage summarizing a whole bunch of rounds. I think this whole fight ended in three rounds. But it ends with the exact same music that I'm getting sick of….

BUT! There is a follow-up scene this time! It's some other day later on and Apollo and Rocky are just palling around at the gym. And THEN the movie ends. I feel that the producers must have implored Stallone, artisan that he is, to just end the movie on that climactic moment right after the fight ends, just like the other movies, but he said NO. That is not ENOUGH for a SYLVESTER STALLONE FILM. We will have an additional scene with INCONSEQUENTIAL BANTER. It will last OVER ONE MINUTE. And here we are. Rocky III: it's like Raging Bull, but better!!

I think Talia Shire is the only female actor with any lines in this movie.

One thing that's very much worth saying about this movie is that there is WAY more actual boxing in this movie. The other ones had almost no scenes where there were live boxing matches, but this one had lots. Plus that wrestling one! And as I observed, the directing style with this one also had a newfound sense of visual pop. But the story seems like it changed not at all from how it was described in the first studio board room meeting where jackass producers blurted out what Rocky III might be like.

(next: Rocky IV)