#i think genuine unprompted acts of kindness are a shot straight through his heart

[willowser]

"oh! hey, c'mere, i gotta show you something funny!"

whatever nonsense satoru had been planning on spouting is tucked away the instant he sees your coy little grin, and one of his own grows on his face, made brighter and wider by the ease of your invitation.

yes, he's just spent the last seven minutes in your doorway, silent and scheming, thinking on what to say to attract your attention — but it doesn't matter if that's now been disrupted, because he'd take your attention any way it can be served, cold or hot. it's warm today; that much he can tell by the way you beam at him, as he comes to stand beside you.

you dig through the top drawer of your desk for a minute or two, and satoru is bubbling with things to say, now, about the little mess you keep there, but he gets distracted by the hurried, chalky handprints staining the material covering your ass. the sight makes him grin so hard that his cheeks swell, nudging his blindfold up the littlest bit; satoru finds it invigorating, this innate ability you have to fluster him. the heat in his face is surely visible, even to someone like you.

"aha!" you dance back and forth on your feet for a second, stopping only when he starts to join you, excited, and then you hold up two dangly, jingling little things right in front of his face. "a student's sister is selling these for school, and they made me think of you! so i bought us some to match!"

keychains, he realizes, suddenly sober. cute and colorful miniature ice bars.

"adorable, huh?" you pull them back to assess in your palm, touching gently at the plastic as if they were real, as if they could melt in the warmth of your hand. "which one do you want? the watermelon is the cutest, so i was gonna give you that one."

everything satoru had thought to say dissolves, leaks between his fingers, sugary and sweet. he's left with nothing, cold, then, smile frozen, as you fiddle with something so meaningless—

you look up, waiting for his response, and he watches you clock the change in his demeanor, instantly; you can't see cursed energy, but you can see — something, within him. always have been able to, though he's yet to figure out how.

"unless you want strawberry," you shrug, a little awkward now, but sunny as usual. "do you even have keys, actually, or do you—"

"no take-backs!" he snatches the dainty thing from your hand, sticking his tongue out at the flat look you send him. "i get watermelon!"

"fine," you pout for just a second before sticking your tongue out at him, too, and then you laugh quietly to yourself. amused, like a child.

once you start to dig around in your messy drawer for your car keys, satoru turns his attention to the tiny treat, focusing on it. trying to ignore the blood rushing in his ears.

it's so simple. so silly. you are, selfless and honest to a fault, all the traits that make you a liability in this world. if anything were to happen to your students, then you wouldn't make it. and if anything were to happen to you, satoru thinks—

right there in your presence, so close that he can hear your heartbeat peacefully thundering over his own — he can feel the cracks in his composure. how close he is to splintering off, how quickly everything would collapse if he dared to blink wrong.

if anything were to happen to you, satoru thinks, he'd go insane. he already has.

a small laugh leaves him, at the thought, but he closes his fist around the small keychain when you look up at him again. still grinning, leaning in so close that you're about to be stopped.

"do you like it?" you ask, open and hopeful and silly.

it makes him laugh again, because you really have no idea.

[azure-steel]

@mercyxkilling​ said: mercy drew in a breath, steeling herself for the impending confrontation that awaited her once she crossed that threshold. she’d gotten into a fairly heated argument with cloud while they were on their last assignment and she probably... no, she KNEW she could have handled it better. but being emotionally inarticulate rendered her incapable of having a constructive conversation as opposed to a screaming match.

but she needed to repair this. they couldn’t continue to work together if things felt so off. so with that she stepped into the mess hall and sashayed across the room to his table, but before she spoke the woman turned to give a few of the crew sitting nearby a sharp look as she cleared her throat. they needed no more than that, recognizing this as a signal to get the fuck outta dodge.

once they were gone she seated herself not in a nearby chair but on the table. mercy maintained a bit of distance between them, but made sure they were still close enough that he’d be able to read her expressions and know that she was coming from someplace genuine.

“i know that you’re prob’ly still mad at me, but i hope you’ll still give me a chance to explain myself.” but then she was quiet for a long time after that opener, and she turned away so she could avoid his gaze. “i’m really bad at this. but i’m gonna give it my best shot. so just... listen.” reaching up she ran her slender fingers through her hair as she searched for the right words, looking nothing like her usual confident self. “i yelled at you. and i’m sorry i did. i shouldn’t have, and i acknowledge that. i was wrong. don’t tell anyone that, though. i have a reputation around here.”

mercy was trying add a bit of levity to the situation. she’d never been good at handling anything too heavy. and admitting to being wrong or talking about something like this was uncomfortable probably not only for her, but for cloud as well. but she had to do this.

“i just need you to know that... i’m not mad that things didn’t go as planned or that the deal fell through. there’ll be others and it’s not like we’re hurting for money. i was mad because... i saw you out there, and you were just... i don’t know, my man, it was like you just were holding back or you gave up or you didn’t care. i don’t know what’s going on, and you don’t have to tell me anything unless you want me to know. that part is fine. what isn’t okay is watching you convince yourself that you can’t do something or that you aren’t capable or whatever. i can’t say for sure but i know there’s something going on up there.”

she lifted her gaze to look at him and pressed a finger to her temple to emphasize her point before going on. she was speaking pretty fast, clearly trying to push through everything because she has no idea what she was doing.

“i just. i would never, ever ask you to do something that i wasn’t fully confident that you were capable of handling it. and not only handling it, but fucking crushing it. i would never set you up to fail because, despite what it might seem like, i actually care how you feel and want what’s best for you. you’re part of the crew now. i’m here to support and protect you. so you need to know that no matter what you think of me or what you have in your head holding you back... you’re absolutely better than what you think. you need to give yourself more credit. so the next time you and i go out, promise me you’ll do better. because you absolutely can and you absolutely will, because you’re capable of handling anything i ask of you and more.”

and then she heaves a sigh, as if that was the signal that this whole awkward experience was finally over. mercy then stood up straight again and motioned over her shoulder.

“yeah, so. this was real weird so i’ll be in my cabin so i can spend the next foreseeable future stressing about what i said. let me know if you need me okay? my door is always open.”

before she left, though, she made it a point to rest a hand, gentle and light, upon his shoulder, lingering for a moment to offer him an uncertain kind of smile. at least, though, it was genuine. and with that she disappeared into the corridor so she could retreat to her room. Unprompted Ask - ALWAYS ACCEPTING

He’s had a face like a slapped backside since the unfortunate spat. Cloud was no stranger to confrontation, hell, sometimes he even thrived on it given the right circumstances and on occasion the wrong circumstances. What he didn’t enjoy was being chewed out in front of colleagues for a mistake he’d made in the field. Cloud knew he’d fucked up, fucked up majorly and with consequences which affected the entire crew, but there was something about Mercy’s humiliation tactics which didn’t sit well with him.

In fact it settled in his guts like a stone.  Though he guesses all of this isn’t aided by the fact that his failing was down to something so very deep rooted and difficult to shake; a very simple lack of self-confidence, despite the cocksure demeanour he enjoyed fronting. Though he worked well under pressure there were instances - just like this one - where everything just went blank. 

Still, if she was going to scream at him the way she had done, he would have much preferred it been away from the many ears who had been unfortunate enough to witness it. Though he guessed a bullet to the back of the head would hurt far less than how she’d bruised his ego just now even if he was already dragging it behind him after that sorry show he put on today. Still, this hadn’t stopped him yelling back, cussing her out and ultimately throwing his hands in the air and stalking off. He’d been advised by a couple of the guys that perhaps retaliating wasn’t the best course of action, though they were swiftly met with a steely gaze and a sour expression, deeming Cloud practically off limits to anyone else for the remainder of that day. 

He was used to being on his own anyway, he liked it this way, right? With any luck they’ll just drop him off on the nearest moon and leave him there. Wouldn’t be the first time.

That was until the very source of his foul mood appeared within the archway of the mess, and she was making right for him. Needless to say that Cloud didn’t feel ready for another throat slitting, though rather than physically remove himself from the situation he chooses to remain seated (with his feet crossed upon the table of course in his act of immature defiance) and offer the woman a disdainful glare.

It seemed however, a verbal lashing wasn’t what she had in mind, and it showed mostly through her offset expression as well as the casual way she settled herself upon the table, though this was after she’d shot her men a glare of her own to disperse them from the hall, and Cloud was certain one of them had offered his ‘Sorry, man, you’re on your own’ face as he upped and left. He didn’t motion to shift his feet to make way for her though, Cloud was nothing at all if not utterly childish when it came to matters of discipline and it was rather apparent that he held issue with authority; and if Mercy had learned anything today it was the fact that Strife did not like being proven wrong. 

So the sullen expression remained even as that irritation towards the woman who pulled him up on his failings began to turn inward, even when his gaze had sunk so low beneath the weight of that knowledge - that he was a liability, and it wasn’t until now that he realises there’s no worse feeling than knowing you are the weakest link in the chain. And yet there was something good to be taken from all of this, Cloud knew, because she wasn’t casting him aside but offering a chance to better himself, a chance to prove her right, not wrong. 

When was the last time anyone had this much faith in him? When was the last time he’d been offered this level of compassion? Cloud couldn’t quite remember, and it only made this whole situation sting that little bit more. 

He remains silent throughout her spiel, arms folded defensively, legs still supported on that table in the guise of a barrier between them and allowing the shame of what happened that day to filter into his face. And he had no grounds to argue or defend his corner, because he knew, deep down in his heart of hearts, that everything Mercy said... was right, not that this knowledge made it any easier to hear. Cloud reacts only to that hand on his shoulder, gifting the contact only the slight lilt of his head and a glance out of the corner of his eye. The woman vanishes out of sight then, leaving him to lament on the events, how he could have performed better, how he could have done things so differently... how he’d actually deserved to have his hide tanned for such a blatant blunder on his part. 

And Mercy had enough about her to apologise for her outburst when she really didn’t need to... surely that said far more about him than it truly did about her. 

Cloud isn’t entirely sure how long he sits there, feeling sorry for himself and just wondering for the life of him how to let it go and move on. Maybe it was his turn to clear the air instead of sitting back and doing nothing like usual. Upon exiting the mess hall, he’s actually surprised that he catches her only moments away from vanishing into her cabin; the urge to bail was strong and his legs threatened to turn him right around and retreat back the way his came, though it seemed his mouth was working faster than his basic impulses.

“Mercy... wait...” he calls, though not without the hue of uncertainty hanging in his tone and he stands there for a moment just staring back at her, to gain his bearings and muster the courage he needs to just close that insufferable distance. 

“I don’t want you going in there regretting you spoke to me. ‘Cos this ain’t about you and your management style, yeah? It’s about me and my inability to just... let go.” There’s a crease to his brow, uncertain, defensive and he swallows audibly in a frail attempt to gather himself and simply offer an explanation. 

“I don’t wanna make excuses, but... there’s a lot about me you don’t know, and I ain’t sure I’m ready for you to hear it. Not yet. But, I’ve never been a part of anything before, not really. Always on the outside looking in, no handles of control, just... freefalling and hoping for the best. Always just... the rat. Disposable, easily replaced, only good for making up numbers, you know?” Cloud’s unable to maintain eye contact with her, and not for the want of trying, and with a brisk hand through his hair does he puff out an exasperated sigh, frustrated with himself it seemed before delivering a non-committal shrug. 

“You give me a chance that I never thanked you for, and then I do so by screwing up. And I deserved everything I got thereon after, I did. You ain’t telling me shit that I don’t need to hear, or even shit I don’t already know. Usually they don’t bother at all and I go on floundering to the next problem until I fuck up again.” He’s rambling, he realises, and he rubs the back of his head somewhat bashfully, uttering a chuckle through his nose, a low and deeply unhappy sound. 

“I let you down. I let you all down and I take full responsibility for that, I’ll own it because it’s mine. I promise it won’t happen again, I’ll do better in future, yeah? Just... thanks, for not giving up on me. Enjoy your evening, Mercy.” Cloud leaves it there with a single respectful nod before he’s turning on his heel and making his way back down the hall, just eager for a scalding hot shower to wash away the unpleasantness that was today. 

[mattbrothersscriptwriter]

Once Upon A Time

I’d like to have a little ramble and shout into the void about a truly unique, life affirming and heartfelt movie. Not because any of this hasn’t been covered before - I’d bet my guitar case full of coins it has. Not as a review or a hot take or a think piece, though perhaps it’s a little of all of those things. But because I recently rewatched the 2007 musical drama Once (dir: John Carney) and it reminded me how much this movie makes me fucking feel… which is also the hardest thing for me to eloquently put down into words but hey, I’ll try.

Once tells the simple story of Guy (Glen Hansard), a busker in Dublin who lives with his Dad and works in his hoover repair shop. He’s a talented musician but is still living in the shadow of a long since broken relationship, something that evidently both haunts and drives him. This inner conflict has inevitably kept him stranded in the same place – possessing the skills and the ambition to transform his passion into a career but lacking the courage and the heart to truly see it through. That is until he meets Girl (Markéta Irglová), a Czech immigrant who gets by selling flowers and the Big Issue. She’s a keen pianist and the unlikely pair quickly form a unique friendship, bonding over songwriting, heartbreak and Dublin itself.

Shot for next to nothing in three weeks, it’s a film so raw (and perfectly suited to that style) that just a single step in either direction would shatter the illusion. Too glossy and the magic is somehow lost. Any more ramshackle and there probably wouldn’t be a finished film to even worry about. Cillian Murphy was supposed to play Guy but dropped out, making way for director John Carney to convince Hansard, who was already set to write the music, to take the natural next step and just play the role himself.

It’s a story that manages to exist in the moment like nothing else I’ve really seen, thanks in part to the guerrilla style production but also thanks to its immense, bittersweet heart and commitment to bottling the ‘life as it happens’ feeling. It’s how we all experience life after all and it’s only afterwards that we may look back on certain memories as feeling like scenes from a movie: those perfectly captured instances where decisions have huge consequences and it feels like some higher power is writing you into a cruel plot twist or inevitable turning point. Its one thing to physically make a movie feel so grounded but to write and perform it that way too shows a real understanding of the tone they were aiming for – and absolutely nailing in the process.

It’s a joyful movie but an effortlessly melancholy one too. Like I said, it’s bittersweet. Anyone who has ever had a dream, ever been in love or ever wished for something more, you can understand and feel all of that through one look at Hansard’s exhausted face. Avoiding saccharine movie tropes and clichés, he’s simply a bloke who rides the bus with his guitar. Who chases thieves stealing his busking money. Who exists in our world. We probably see him every day, out on the streets or hunkered away in a corner of the tube. His or her music echoing through crowds, ignored by most but probably connecting to more people than we might think.

Guy never seems more vulnerable than when he’s hiding behind a forced smile or his sad, puppy dog eyes and watching this mask of happiness slowly blossom into something genuine is where the film really hits me. It reminds us that we have to seek change – or allow change to happen to us – to move from where we are to where we want to be.

I love how Guy is a thirty something pessimist whilst Girl, despite living with just as much of an uncertain, unstable future as Guy, is a ray of sunshine in comparison. She’s a stubbornly joyful extrovert, happily striking up conversations with strangers - a comically recurring trait that rewards her with casual piano practice in the music shop, helps to secure a bank loan for the recording session AND score a reduced charge for the studio hire later on. It’s the ‘if you don’t ask, you won’t get’ mentality, utilised by someone with no ulterior motives; a real pure soul who finds happiness in what she has, not what she’s lacking.

She speaks her mind, unconcerned with any risk of social awkwardness. Her abrupt “I have to go now” way of announcing she’s leaving becomes something of a catchphrase and it works wonderfully in establishing not just the generational difference between the two characters but the cultural one as well. I really love how we first meet her in the film – when she is drawn to Guy performing his most emotionally raw song (the amazing ‘Say it to Me Now’) all alone, in the middle of the night. This exorcism of his repressed feelings, expressed only through his music, is in fierce contrast to Girl’s happy go lucky outlook and she wastes no time in probing him for the truth.

This film is one of the most genius, underplayed and natural musicals ever – essentially doing the ‘bursting into song’ thing whilst remaining firmly in reality, never quite breaking that thinly veiled fourth wall that all other musicals do. Here, it’s in a beautifully captured song-writing-on-the-fly sequence (‘Falling Slowly’) or a late night jam session between family and acquaintances (‘Gold’) or in a great sequence where Girl sings lyrics to an instrumental track given to her by Guy whilst on a walk back from the corner store to buy batteries (’If You Want Me’). It’s so relatable; from the street kids watching her go past to her fluffy slippers to the clunky portable CD player in her hand. Who hasn’t done something like that? A more traditional musical might have been tempted to convert the pedestrians to background singers, cooing harmonies over her shoulder or snapping their fingers in a dance routine through the street but this film shows that life can be full of ‘movie-adjacent’ moments and not feel cheaply earnt whilst portraying them.

This movie is something of an Irish, folksy Before Sunrise – except Guy is probably in the period of his life where he’s actually living in Before Sunset (jaded, wondering what could have been) whilst Girl is firmly in Sunrise (open to new connections, optimistic about the present). They’re on different paths and perhaps even swap roles throughout, with Guy becoming more enlightened and eager for new experiences whilst we learn that Girl is caring for a small child who is product of her past. These two never really come to any real conflict themselves. The closest they maybe get is when Guy makes an awkward, kinda sad pass at her one night – but it’s practically all forgiven and forgotten by the next day. That’s real life too and I’m glad a moment like that is addressed in the story but promptly resolved. It doesn’t need to be this instance of overly contrived setup/payoff, it’s just a misunderstanding that the characters are aware enough to acknowledge and put aside. In fact, so much of this narrative goes against the grain. Guy never gets ‘the Girl’. He chooses to chase down a woman who is probably bad for him. And Girl ends up giving her husband another shot – a character we’ve never met and have barely heard about. Again, just because we aren’t aware of a person’s backstory doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that we’re responsible for making any grand change to the way things pan out. Here, a kind gesture of purchasing a piano for a kindred spirit is more than enough… if a little unpractical.

So much of this movie acts as a mirror to the lives of the people making it. The struggling artist narrative is straight out of Hansard’s life, even recording the demo tape in the same studio as he once did. The ex-girlfriend who moved to London is right out of Carney’s own past. All of this helps blur the line between fact and fiction, The scene where Girl tells Guy that she loves him, unprompted and ingeniously unsubtitled, is perhaps the most quietly powerful moment in the film – because the line between performance and truth is shattered as we, like Guy AND Hansard, perhaps can’t tell who’s saying what anymore – the character or the actor. In reality, it may have been both. And it’s captured right there on screen. Lightning in a bottle.

Arguably, this film is set in the last era of when a story like this could be romantic – or at least romanticised. If it was made today, in 2018, Guy would be recording in his bedroom, uploading to Soundcloud, plugging his Patreon page and filling a Youtube account with cover songs sang directly to his webcam. There’s no doubt that the advancements in technology has added an artifice to the whole struggling artist thing and it means something very different in this day and age. Here, in the far flung days of the mid 00s, there’s no real social media presence (Myspace was sort of at its peak but was more of a Facebook precursor than the platform for music it slowly morphed into) and Guy ends the movie with a handful of CDs to show for his time in the studio. Ah physical media, how I miss thee… sometimes…

This is definitely one of those movies that is firmly lodged in my brain. Despite only having watched it twice, three times at most, I’ve had the soundtrack on rotation for ten years and the time I caught Glen Hansard himself in concert (at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 2015, natch) was legitimately one of the most memorable gig experiences I’ve ever been to. Everything from the setlist to the showmanship to the intimacy to the grandeur, it was just incredible. An unplugged encore starting with Say It To Me Now up on a balcony in the crowd through to Falling Slowly on piano? Woop woop! 

But I digress… this is a film that is firmly time-stamped in my memory. I watched it on the very same night that I first properly met someone who ended up becoming a huge part of my life. Nearly ten years ago to the day, me and some friends - energised by both the movie and the hazy summer evening - trekked across town to a housewarming party. This was a decision which would inevitably change the very direction of my life, which is insane when you really sit down and think about it… and being able to pinpoint the origin of such a huge personal crossroads is kinda what Once is all about so it really does resonate.

And I think this rewatch really did resonate, because I now saw myself more as the cynical, pessimistic person Guy is at the start of the film – just trying to keep on keeping on and push himself out of his comfort zone. To achieve something special or worthwhile. Without getting too personal, I can be my own worst enemy and while 2008 mostly feels more like a lifetime ago, there are times when it feels like it was just yesterday and I blinked and went from then to now in a flash. And we all have these moments. Be it meeting someone influential, deciding to move house, to travel to a new country, to quit that job and take that risk; they can be scary or freeing or even traumatic but they’re an element of life that movies strive to replicate… and this one just does so by downplaying the weight of these moments rather than draw attention to them in an artificial manner.

John Carney has said that the title of the film is in reference to other talented musicians and artists that he knew, who always said ‘once I do this and once I do that, then I’ll pursue my passion’ etc, referring to the realities (and the safety nets) of life that can sometimes stop people from taking the plunge and chasing their dreams. I’ve definitely felt the same way and have constantly had that conversation inside my own head: that once I get these things sorted then these things lined up then I’ll do such and such and how in the end, time just keeps on moving regardless… so you have to act. 

This film is about making that choice to act.