#if her name got released and my brothers classmates made the connection between the names

[folklaurr]

My ass had to listen to my ex cop father and future cop brother talk ab how my sister rape case that was handled so poorly by police is now being used as a training exercise for my brothers class and I had to keep my mouth SHUT. Happy thanksgiving friends.

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Superman & Lois - Ep. 102 “Heritage”

In which the Sad Dad vibes and teen angst continues!

Spoilers!

Lois gets the opening and closing narration this week! And generally has more to do, which is nice.

The fam has officially moved to Smallville, so the boys are gearing up to start school...or are they???

Well, Jon is. Jordan is told he has to stay home until he can get his nascent powers under control because they don’t want him to accidentally flash frying a classmate. Which he almost did. Last week. 

Clark calls Jordan’s accidental heat vision an ‘ocular release of energy.’

This decision, of course, leads to some FAMILY DRAMA. Jordan feels like a freak! Jonathan is upset that they’ve had to move! Clark feels like he’s failing as a parent!

Oh and also the guy in the Master Chief suit is on the hunt for Kryptonite. Which is, you know. Troubling.

SO it’s off to school for Jonathan and off to the Fortress for Jordan!

Lois, upon Jonathan asking why Jordan gets to go flying with dad: “At least we have the radio!”

One plus side about the show being ‘grounded’ and ‘prestige-y’: the high school drama is of a more believable variety. Still tedious, but at least it’s not dated 90s tropes.

...Well, okay. Not entirely true. Sarah Cushing’s personality thus far is ‘nice girl who’s dating a jerk’ and yes, the line “What do you see in that guy?” is said aloud. So.

Win some, lose some.

MEANWHILE, AT THE FORTRESS:

Love the actor they got for Jor-El. He’s perfect, in that he feels like an homage to Brando, Crowe, but is also his own distinct version. I dig it. 

But there’s no giant key made of dwarf star matter because this is GROUNDED and REALISTIC and none of that SILLY CW NONSENSE, WE GOT HBO MAX MONEY. 

Back to the Lois vs. Edge plot:

For all the folks wondering how Lois working at the Planet was going to continue, what with the show being set in Smallville...

WELL.

Edge now owns the Planet, so he re-writes a negative article she’s written about him, which leads to her quitting, and going to write for the Smallville Gazette.

Which is operated by Chrissy Beppo.

Who is...named after the super monkey? 

Does this mean we’ll eventually meet other Smallville residents named after super pets? Like Marsha Whizzy, or maybe Kenneth Comet.

Seems a weird choice when ‘Bibbo’ is right there.

ANYWAYS.

Best line of the episode: “You know what babe? You do your Superman stuff, and I will do my Lois Lane stuff.”

MEANWHILE, THE SAD DAD VIBES INTENSIFY as Grandpa Jor-El reveals: Jordan...will never be like you, Kal-El. His human DNA is too limiting.

Which is a very interesting plot point (that was sorta mentioned/explored in Future State!)

So, about the boys: I still find them...mostly annoying. But I appreciate the dynamic they’re establishing: Jordan has always required more time and attention due to his anxiety disorder, and Jonathan has always had to look after him and compensate--this carries over into the new status quo where Jordan has the super powers and Jonathan further feels that his brother is getting time and attention and he needs to make sacrifices and changes for him/the family. 

This leads to a really lovely moment between the brothers at the end of the episode that I genuinely enjoyed, so. I’m hoping that there will be more of that and less of ‘drama with Sarah’.

(Also if you think that sounds a little like another pair of Super siblings...it does! And also hold that thought.)

The OTHER big twist is that Master Chief AKA Captain Luthor comes from a world with an EVIL SUPERMAN.

To be clear, the set-up is very obviously, ‘Our Clark will prove Captain Luthor wrong re: thinking he’ll turn evil,’ so I’m not seriously suggesting we’re in for a full-on Injustice situation. I just find it funny, how quickly they pulled out the ol’ evil Supes.

(The one we saw in Elseworlds doesn’t count since that wasn’t Clark.)

And maybe this one isn’t either! I admit complete ignorance as to the comics stuff they’re pulling from; I guess it’s somehow connected to Project 7734 (Which is ‘hell’ upside down, as any fifth grader with a calculator will tell you) a counter-Kryptonian force put together by Sam Lane, I think? 

IDK. Like I said, comics blind spot.

The episode ends with Grandpa Lane looking a bit spooked at the ominous 7734 keychain Captain Luthor gave him, and Captain Luthor still on the hunt for Kryptonite! DUN DUN DUUNNNNNN.  

And now, time for a segment I’ll call: Gettin’ Super Salty w/Stranger wherein I will stash all of my frustration regarding the fact that this spin-off doesn’t really want to be a spin-off.

Okay, so first up! As mentioned, the Fortress design has been changed because the silly Supergirl version does not vibe with the new serious aesthetic.

Their loss! More Legion Rings, baby Sun Eaters, and impractical front door keys for Supergirl!

The sunstone AI details the last days of Krypton, and only one (1) pod is shown escaping the destruction.

Thanks, I hate it.

I do appreciate that Jor-El at least kinda appears to be wearing clothes that match the look of Supergirl’s Krypton. I wasn’t paying close attention to the buildings in the hologram, no clue if they match the architecture we’ve seen thus far.

Like, I get it. There’s no time to pause the plot and be like, ‘hey, just FYI, I’m not the sole survivor of Krypton, my cousin escaped as well’ but also AAAARRRRRGHHHHHH. 

You’re using the versions of the characters introduced in Supergirl, the least you can do is namedrop her once. ONCE. That’s all I’m asking. XD

They missed their opportunity, actually; when the boys were like, ‘We have so many questions!’ All you had to do was slip in, ‘Are we related to Supergirl?’ Bam. Done. Never need to go back to it, you’ve acknowledged it, continue on with your solo Sad Dad adventures!

(Except I guess that wouldn’t work, since so much of this is built on Clark being the Lone Protector of the earth. If you allude to other heroes being around, your whole character motivation/struggle makes less sense.)

I get it but I don’t have to like it. XD

They shoulda just set this on another Earth!

Circling back to the sibling dynamic: I hate how now I really want Kara to someday appear on this show and hang out with the boys and be like, ‘ah, yes, I know the feeling, my sister and I were the same.’

That’s it, that’s all the crossover content I need. I realize Melissa is moving on to bigger and better things but MAYBE SOMEDAY. XD (Or maybe I’ll just write a fic, who knows.)

I can’t remember if I brought this up already but it is hilarious to me that anyone still thinks of Superman as a reporter--most modern takes treat it as an afterthought and here, it’s dispensed in the first episode.

It has not been brought up since.

Like, much is made about Lois leaving Metropolis, and what that’ll mean for her career, but no one in Smallville is like, ‘Clark, wow! Farming? That’s quite a career change!’

(I assume he’ll be farming, since they mentioned starting the farm up again.)  

...You think anyone will drag the writers for tossing aside Clark’s ‘true calling?’ 

Who am I kidding? Supergirl fandom is not watching this show, they’re just harassing the people running the social media accounts. 

SO OVERALL: The good remains good! The meh remains meh! I appreciate that this version of Clark and Lois exist as we inch ever closer to the release of the Snyder Cut! But also the behind-the-scenes stuff continues to hang over everything like a terrible cloud! Here’s hoping those problems are addressed!

[princess-of-the-worlds]

dance with the devil

For Day Two of Klaroline AU Week 2019: Crossovers and Fusions.

Happy KC AU Week! @klaroline-events

This is for all the Lucifer fans and is based off this picspam I made several months ago.

***

ao3 link: here

word count: 1668

summary: Detective Caroline Forbes of the LAPD questions an eccentric nightclub owner who claims to be the devil, not knowing that he'll change her life.

***

LAPD clusters around the sidewalk, bright yellow caution tape separating the bullet-ridden, bloodsoaked body of the young blond from the public. Uniforms take statements from shock blanket-covered witnesses, and crime techs swarm the scene, picking up shards of glass and bullet fragments with tweezers and gloved hands.

As Caroline Forbes, formerly Forbes-Lockwood, approaches the scene, sensible boots tapping out a rhythm against the pavement, she eyes the bright flickering sign from the nearby nightclub The Abattoir. She’s immediately grateful for the sunglasses shielding her eyes, tossing her blond ponytail over her shoulder as she arrives besides her ex-husband Tyler.

“Care,” he says, greeting her with a civil nod. Their divorce was finalized two weeks ago, and based on the tightness of his jaw, he’s apparently still not over the fact that they now share custody of their seven-year-old daughter Lizzie.

“Detective Lockwood,” she replies coolly. “Fill me in.”

Tyler struggles not to sneer. He definitely used to be a lot more supportive before they separated. “It’s pretty basic.” He turns towards the body. “College student Camille O’Connell was leaving The Abattoir when she was gunned down by a nearby driver. Based on the cocaine we found in her pocket, she likely owed some low-level drug dealer some cash or something, which makes sense. She wasn’t exactly rolling in it.” He nods towards the nightclub. “O’Connell used to work here as a bartender. Maybe this is where she formed some connections.”

Caroline hums. “Any prime witnesses?”

“One. The nightclub owner.” Tyler grimaces. “Says his name is Niklaus Mikaelson.”

Following the slope of Tyler’s finger, Caroline eyes the man he’s pointing to. Niklaus Mikaelson is a mouthful of a name for a multifaceted man. At first glance, he looks nothing like the rich club owner he apparently is; dressed down in a Henley, dark jeans, and boots, a subtle string of wooden beads around his neck, he wouldn’t be out of place traipsing around in the woods. The devil, however, is in the details: if one looks more closely like Caroline is, they’ll spot the expensive authentic leather of his boots and the handsome Rolex around his wrist or the sleek smartphone he’s slipping from his pocket, a model that Caroline’s quite sure hasn’t even been released yet. Mikaelson is also undeniably pretty: expressive stormy eyes, a dimple grin, mussed sandy curls, lean but muscular.

“So,” is the first thing Caroline says to him as she arrives besides him, “Niklaus Mikaelson? Is that a stage name or something?”

Mr. Mikaelson shakes his head, eyes twinkling strangely. “God-given, I’m afraid.” He pauses, studying Caroline. “You know, you look familiar. Have we met before?”

No, they haven’t. He’s likely seen her in one of the few chick flicks that she starred in before she decided to follow her mother into law enforcement, but to keep his mind from wandering to the full-frontal nudity role that really made her stand out to the public, she quickly shakes her head. “Yeah, five minutes ago.” She purses her lips. “And I’m the one asking the questions.” When he hums in acknowledgement, she nods. “Tell me about your relationship with the victim.”

“Well,” Mr. Mikaelson says consideringly. “Cami used to work here a few years ago; she was trying to gain admittance into a prestigious undergraduate psychology program. She’d dropped out from college when she was younger to help her twin brother with some family problems. I pulled some strings.” He frowns. “She was about to graduate, so she came by to thank me.” His eyes flicker a shade darker. Caroline blinks, swearing she spots a glimmer of red in his pupils. “Then someone decided to end her life.”

Huh. So Mr. Mikaelson definitely had some personal investment here. Could he have been in a relationship with the victim? What kind of strings had he pulled for her?

“Did you know the shooter, Mr. Mikaelson?” Caroline asks.

He grimaces at the name. “Please, call me Klaus,” he requests with an easy smirk. “And no, but we did have an interesting little chat just before he kicked off.” His smirk becomes a bit subdued. “I asked him why he did.”

“Like to play cop, do you?” Caroline cocks a disbelieving eyebrow.

Klaus chuckles. “No, I like to play in general, Detective.” He eyes her form appreciatively and smiling amicably at her. “What about you?”

Caroline ignores his question, delving forward with her investigation.  “So you had a conversation with a dead guy?” She knows that it’s her case, that she’d insisted on it to Tyler, but why does she always interviewing the weird guys?

Frustratingly, Klaus shakes his head, but his eyes are still indecipherable. “Oh, no, he wasn’t quite dead.” He taps his elegant fingers along his upper thigh, drumming out a rhythm that only he seems to be able to hear or make sense of. “His soul hadn’t crossed the threshold.”

Seriously?

It takes all of Caroline’s willpower to keep her expression neutral and calm. “I see,” she replies sharply. “Did he tell you why he did it?”

The nightclub owner fixes her with an amused glance. “Why, money of course. You humans love your money.” He says it ever so strangely.

“Yes,” Caroline retorts, suddenly defensive. “Yes, we do.” She raises her chin pointedly. “And, uh, what planet are you from? London?”

To her surprise, Klaus tosses back his head and laughs full-bodied. The sound, although charming and handsome, catches the attention of several of the uniforms, and they turn to stare at them. Amongst them is Tyler. Caroline nearly flushes. “Yes,” Klaus admitted. “He also said, ‘I just pulled the trigger.’”

“Now, don’t you think that’s interesting?” She lifts her head, fixing Klaus with an appraising glance. “Cami was shot to death by a drug dealer and looks like Cami herself kept the guy pretty busy.” Her ponytail swings over her shoulder with her movements. “You know, it’s sad, it’s ugly, but it’s not rocket science. Something probably went south between them. She gets riddled with bullets, and a nice little act of God takes him out.”

Something dark passes over Klaus’s eyes, and his lips press together tightly, voice becoming strange. “You know, it doesn’t quite work like that, Detective,” he tells her.

Caroline hums, tapping her foot against the pavement. “It’s quite a neatly wrapped little present for the LAPD, don’t you think?” She raises a critical eyebrow. “Why don’t you tell me something?” She pauses. “How did she end up dying in a hailstorm of bullets, and you get away without a scratch? I think that’s interesting. Don’t you?”

“The benefits of immortality,” Klaus says.

“Immortality.” Dryly, Caroline shoots back, “Mm, of course. Uh, you spell that with one or two M’s? I always forget.”

“What will your corrupt little organization do about this?” Something about the way Klaus says it makes Caroline look at him strangely. There’s something off about it, something strictly non-human, but she can’t put her finger on it.

A moment later, she shrugs it off, shivering, and focuses on his question. “Excuse me?”

“Will you find the person responsible?” Klaus asks her directly. “Will they be punished? Will this be a priority for you?” He fixes her with a stern look. “Because it is for me.”

Under his gaze, Caroline bristles. “You’ve got some balls on you, pal.”

At her remark, he looks delighted, eyes twinkling, anger slipping away like mercury. “Oh, thank you very much, but they’re really...quite average.” He smirks.

“I bet.” Caroline allows an edge of steel to slip into her voice. She’s used to her colleagues and the public underestimating her as a woman and as a detective, but she won’t stand for it.

“Now, are you sure that we haven’t met?” Klaus ignores her warning. “I could swear I’ve seen you naked.” He looks considerate now. “Have we had sex?”

A wave of anger washes over her, her vision flashing red. “We’re done here.” Her boots scrape against the pavement as she storms away 

“Uh, Detective! Wait!” Klaus chases after her. “Someone out there needs to be punished,” he says as he catches up to her and matches her stride. Something about the way his accent caresses punished strikes her wrong. “We’re not done.”

Turning her back on him, Caroline peels off in the opposite direction, heading towards one of the uniforms. “Yeah,” she calls behind her. “Yeah, we are.”

***

If someone had told Caroline later that this was the moment her life would change, that this man, this nightclub owner, who looked like an angel, claimed to be the devil, and would sometimes smile like a demon would uproot everything she had ever known, she wouldn’t have believed them, but it would entirely be the truth.

Not much later, Klaus Mikaelson would show up everywhere on the Cami O’Connell case until they finally found the killer, a former classmate named Aurora de Martel. He would try his little “desire is my superpower” trick on her and fail, though he would somehow use it to trick Aurora into stuttering out her confession. Eventually, he would somehow convince Caroline’s boss, the police chief, into letting him become a consultant. Then she would see him every single day at work.

Soon, he would save her life over and over again while she danced around his flirtations and rolls her eyes at his claims of being devil, even when he introduces her to his bartender Marcel - apparently a demon - and his brother Elijah the angel. He would meet her daughter Lizzie and treat her better than even Tyler at times despite inching away desperately whenever she launched herself at him to hug him. He would belittle and irritate Tyler too, but both men would begrudgingly work together.

Unbeknownst to her - and to him, Caroline would fall in love with him and Klaus with her, and when he revealed his true devilish form to her and when she finally believed him, she wouldn’t recoil. 

Because she would be in love with the devil.

[whatareyousearchingfordean]

Kiss From A Rose

The Hunters in the Closet

Summary: Y/n has been hunting alongside the infamous Winchesters for years now, but when an unexpected case pops up in her hometown, she finds herself struggling not only with her feelings for the eldest brother but with the things from her past that she has been fighting to forget.

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Plus size Reader

Word Count: 2.9K+

Warnings: Language, sexual tension, angst

Catch up with the series masterlist and check out Alexandra’s Library for more works by yours truly!

“Okay, Sammy. We’ll meet you at the hotel later,” Dean breathed out a sigh as he hung up his phone and slid it back into his jeans pocket. His hunting partner had her back turned to the eldest Winchester, watching for anyone who might pass them by in the currently empty hallway. When she heard his goodbye, she rounded on the green-eyed hunter, her brows raised. 

“What did he say?” 

“Well, it’s definitely a witch. Sam found a hex bag in the bedroom,” Dean relayed the information the taller brother had called with.  

“And Alec?” 

“Sam says he seemed pretty sincere,” Dean frowned. “Says the dude’s eyes were redder than if he had been three joints deep.” 

“Makes sense. Besides, if it was him, you would think that he'd've gotten rid of the hex bag,” The huntress was fond of the idea of eliminating Alec from the suspect pool. She was having a hard time reconciling the image of the kid she grew up with and a witch that killed his own wife. With all this information and lack of motive, she felt more than comfortable crossing him off their list and knew the brothers would agree with her. 

“That’s true. I think--” Dean’s words were cut off as someone came out of the room in which the two hunters were standing in front of. The door whacked into Y/n’s back, nearly toppling her off her feet. The eldest Winchester held out his hands as she stumbled, ready to catch her if she fell, which thankfully, never happened. 

“Oh my god! I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there I- Y/N?” The sound of her name had the huntress freezing on the spot, abandoning the glare that had settled in her features for something far nicer. 

“Yeah?” Her response was tight-lipped as she turned to face whoever it was that had just run her over. 

“It’s me, Roger Bates,” the man smiled, the grin on his face wide and unsettling. The woman’s brow furrowed as she took in the visage of the man in front of her, her mind unable to connect what it was seeing with the memory of Roger Bates from high school.

Though Y/n��s high school experience had been hell, it was tame in comparison to what Roger Bates had endured. He was strange, even for her standard now, and she hunted monsters for a living. Being a greasy long-haired loner who was more intrigued with academia, computers, and playing Zelda all weekend long. Not that his obsessions with girls that seemed to switch every other week helped with his image. At one point, he even had his sights set on the huntress, to which she had to let him down as gently as possible, seeing as she wasn’t sure if she agreed on a date that she would make it home at the end of the night. 

“Roger? Wow,” she let the word fall out in a breath, unable to form a better descriptor. The once pimply young man now had a hairline that receded further than those twice his age. The pseudo-mullet was ashy gray and Roger had it pulled back in a tight ponytail at the nape of his neck. The man was hunched over a mop bucket, his shoulders heavy with an additional fifty pounds around his middle. 

“I haven’t seen you since graduation,” he noted.

“Oh yeah, well a lot has happened since then,” Y/n remarked, her classmate’s words reminding her of the demise of her family that had catapulted her into a life of hunting which was the last place she wanted to go at the moment. She took the opportunity to divert the conversation to something that had registered in her brain. “Hey, was that Damon I saw helping you earlier?”

“Technically I was helping him, Damon is the janitor here. I just offered to help for the reunion,” Roger pushed the slim bifocals on his face up the bridge of his nose, taking in the woman standing across from him. “Damn Y/n, the years have been good to you.” 

“Hello, by the way,” Dean stepped around where his partner was standing, putting his body now between the old classmates. He held out his hand to the other man with a smirk. 

“Oh, yes, of course,” the woman shook her head with a grin, having forgotten for a fraction of a moment that she and Roger still had company. “This is my husband, Dean.”

“Nice to meet you,” Dean’s voice was clipped as he shook Roger’s hand. The huntress watched as the two men seemed to stand up straighter as they released their gesture, bringing themselves up to their full heights. It was much in vain for Roger, seeing as even after he uncurved his spine, Dean still had several inches on him. 

“I never took you for the marrying type, Y/n,” Roger noted, not looking away from Dean. 

“No, I supposed in high school I wasn’t,” Y/n admitted. “But people change.”

“Not in my experience,” Roger deadpanned, finally breaking off his intense gaze with the eldest Winchester. Y/n didn’t have time to ponder his words before he continued with a cough. “Congratulations though. I suppose I’ll see you at the reunion then?”

Y/n nodded and Roger retreated down the darkening hallway, the squeak of the mop bucket he was pushing echoed off the walls until he disappeared around the corner. 

“What the hell was with that guy?” Dean’s nose was scrunched on his face as he turned back to his partner.

“He’s always been that way. Just… off,” Y/n attempted to stifle her giggle at Dean’s expression. 

Okay,” Dean nodded as his face relaxed into interest. “We can work with ‘off’. Off how?”

“Just off. I don’t know. Roger was your typical nerd who was obsessed with video games and school. The most suspicious thing about him was his obsessions with just about every girl in our class, but that was decades ago, I’m sure he’s over that.”

“Not according to him,” Dean quirked an eyebrow as he pulled out his phone that had just chimed. “Any bad blood between him and Sarah?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What about this Damon guy?” 

“He and Roger were best friends, I mean that tells you just about everything you need to know,” Y/n shrugged. “What I went through was heaven compared to those guys. They didn’t get much relief from anybody.”

“And?” Dean urged, sensing the huntress wasn’t telling him something. 

“It was two months before senior prom, and Damon mustered up the courage to ask Sarah to be his date one day at lunch. As predicted, she rejected him. Made a whole scene in front of the entire cafeteria. It wasn’t pretty,” Y/n explained the scene, the deep empathy she had for the man back on that afternoon day settling in her stomach as she recalled the events. Sarah had torn into the poor kid and the huntress wasn’t sure if anyone could have recovered from a traumatic event such as that. 

“You think he has an office?” 

“Um… office is a loose word.” The woman cocked her head, confused as to where her fellow hunter’s head had just gone. “The janitor had, like, a desk in the janitor’s closet.”

Dean pointed his chin down the hall towards the back of the school, and all she could do was nod in confirmation that he would find the cabinet in that region. The Winchester took off without another word, his long bow-legs carrying him quickly down the hallway. 

“Where the hell are you going?” Y/n slapped her palms against her thighs before taking off after him, having to jog to catch up with his pace. 

“To look for clues.”

“Clues?” Y/n huffed. “Who are you? Sherlock?” 

Dean had reached the other side of the school in no time, pausing outside the heavy metal door that held a gold nameplate affixed to the front with Damon Matthews etched into it. 

“No, but I am following a lead,” he smirked back at her before glancing at his surroundings and then entering through the doorway. 

“What? There’s no way he did this. Damon may have been nerdy but he was the sweetest kid,” she hissed as she followed Dean inside. 

The closet that doubled as an office was lined with shelving. Each one was filled with haphazardly tossed tools and cleaning supplies. A desk sat farthest away from them, papers littering the surface, the gray metal rusting in places. Y/n wrinkled her nose as the strong scent of cleaner mixed with the dank aroma of the room. 

Dean didn’t comment, choosing instead to begin rifling through the paperwork littered about the desk. After watching him work, the huntress let out an incredulous huff before joining him in his search for whatever it was he thought he would find. Even if Damon was their witch, the likelihood he kept his secret manifesto in the school janitor’s closet was slim to none. 

“Don’t huff at me,” Dean glanced at the woman out of the corner of his eye. “After the story you just told me, he’s the best suspect we’ve got.” 

“But just so we are clear, you are saying my ‘local insight’ doesn’t matter?” Y/n made air quotes around the words he had thrown at her only a few hours prior. Dean frowned at his partner, his displeased dimples popping up in the corners of his lips. 

“You know that’s not--“ Dean trailed off as the sound of keys in a lock jingled from just outside the door. Both hunters whipped their heads towards the noise, dropping whatever it was they had in their hands. The eldest Winchester turned back to Y/n and whispered, “Trust me?” 

The huntress gave him a single curt nod and Dean cradled her jaw in his large hands, pulling her up to crash his lips to hers. She sucked in a gasp as her body froze upon contact. He walked her back until her body came in rough contact with one of the metal shelving units and his grasp fell to her waist. 

The second her mind caught up with his actions, her arms instinctively wrapped around his neck, her nails scratching through the short hairs at the nape of his neck. Y/n could have sworn Dean growled at the contact before he curled into her and slid his hands down her thighs, urging her to jump into his grasp. Without thought or hesitation, she complied, wrapping her thick legs around his waist. 

Everything besides Dean fell into the background as he filled her nearly every sense, even the click of the door’s latch. The weight and heat of his body enveloped her and she could taste the hint of cinnamon from the gum he had been chewing after breakfast. His two-day-old stubble tickled her chin where it came in contact with her skin and the familiar yet subtle scent of leather and gunpowder that always seemed to cling to him permeated her nostrils. 

“Oh shit,” the voice of their guest caused Dean to pull his kisses from her lips, much to her dismay. He didn’t relent his grip on her and instead just turned his head towards the man who stood dumbstruck at the entrance. 

Y/n took in the guy whose jaw was nearly at his feet. He hadn’t changed much since high school. It was how she had recognized him earlier when they were in the gym. Damon still had the round baby face he had at sixteen, only now, it was adorned with a patchy beard. He had grown maybe another handful of inches, but other than that, Father Time had gifted the man. 

“Do you mind?” Dean mumbled at the guy as he wiped the mixture of their saliva from his lower lip with his thumb. 

The huntress figured their situation looked just as awkward as it felt. As he had given her no warning, she could feel the heat of a blush underneath her skin, and her chest was rising and falling rapidly with labored breaths. The two hunters were full and well ‘caught in the act’ as she suspected was his ploy to begin with. Y/n had to give it to Dean, he was one hell of a quick thinker, even if his decision now had her reeling. 

Dean turned back to her, a sideways smirk and cocked eyebrow on his face that she didn’t have time to discern before he was kissing her again. A moan fell involuntarily from her lips as the Winchester dug the tips of his fingers into the soft flesh of her thighs. He drank up the sound of it, sucking her tongue into his mouth and causing her core to clench around nothing. 

It was her first time experiencing the feel of the man’s lips against her own as she had dreamed numerous times before. The reality of it far surpassing anything her feeble mind could have ever imagined. Dean was nothing short of a pro at everything he was doing, so much so that the anxiety of the fact of the matter had been completely washed from her brain, allowing her to just get lost in the way he was curled into her and drinking her in as she was him. 

The muttered of apologies from her former classmate came before the latch clicked shut once again. Not that Dean seemed to notice, far too engrossed in his ploy to let up his assault on the huntress. Y/n peeped an eye open to see Damon was gone and reluctantly decided if she was going to come out of this moment with any portion of herself intact, she needed to unravel herself from Dean. 

“Shit,” Y/n pulled her lips from his, licking the last taste of him from her swollen lips. She attempted to wiggle out of his grasp, but she was successfully slotted between him and the shelving. “Put me down before you hurt yourself.” 

“Are you okay?” he frowned at her words but complied with her request, gently lowering her feet back to the cement floor below them. 

“You can’t just pick me up like that.” A snort left her nose as she attempted to right the mess he had made.  “I’m too heavy, you’ll hurt yourself.” 

“It ain’t no sweat sweetheart. I’ve carried my moose of a brother I don’t even know how many times, your ass is nothing,” Dean drawled.

“Yeah, okay, I probably weigh more than your brother,” she grumbled under her breath, but Dean still managed to catch her words. She caught the drop in his expression and flew by the comment before he could properly respond. 

“Let’s just finish this stupid search before we get someone else comes in. I do not want to go through that again.” The huntress purposefully averted her gaze and headed back to the piles of paper she had left only moments ago. It wasn’t entirely a lie. Y/n wasn’t sure if her heart could handle getting to have Dean so close once more only to have to let him go. It was hard enough to watch him walk off with his conquests without having to know the intimate feel of his body pressed firmly against hers. 

“Man you really know how to kick a guy below the belt,” Dean bellyached. Y/n chanced a glance back to see his frown flip back into his signature cockeyed grin. She simply held out a stack of papers to him which he took and began to rifle through. 

Between the two of them, it took only a few more minutes before they had gone through everything. Most of it was work orders and receipts that dated back to before her graduation. As suspected, there was not one shred of evidence pointing to Damon as their witch. 

“Told you,” the huntress commented as she cracked open the door, peering out to check that the coast was clear for them to exit. When she was met with an empty hallway, she proceeded to pull the door fully open and walked into the low light coming through the windows. 

“Just because we didn’t find anything doesn’t rule him out. We should have Sammy check his house,” Dean noted as he followed her down the hallway. Abruptly, she stopped and spun on her heel, causing the hunter to nearly collide with her. 

“Did you or did you not insist that I come out here on this case because my intel on these people would give you guys an advantage on catching this witch?” she hissed at him, making sure to keep her voice low for any possible eavesdropper. Dean nodded, his expression unreadable as he waited for her to continue. “So when I tell you it’s not Damon, why won’t you believe me? Do you not trust me as a hunter?” 

“Of course I trust you. You are an amazing hunter, one of the best. I just didn’t think we should overlook all the possibilities,” Dean explained, his expression softening as he realized how his actions had been perceived by his partner. “I’m sorry, Y/n.” 

“Don’t be sorry. I take point on this one from now on. Okay?” 

“Cross my heart,” he fluttered his hand in an ‘X’ across his chest, giving her an earnest smile. She pursed her lips before returning the grin and continuing out of the hell that housed her for four years of her life. 

Part 5

[underachievers-please-try-harder]

Interview // Biig Piig

Appeared in Issue 104 of Crack. Read online.

Jess Smyth is great at introductions. Affable and disarmingly laid-back, she often finds the process of forging new connections more rewarding than the connection itself. “I love going for a night out, meeting a group of people, and then you walk away and never see them again,” the 21-year-old singer beams between sips of wine on a sunny restaurant terrace. “Kind of like having a day in their life? It’s my favourite thing.”

Surely time is running out for Smyth to enjoy anonymity. In the past two years she’s amassed a fervent following for her work as Biig Piig, which favours smoky, soporific soul and jazz-tinged hip-hop, and features lyrics that shift fluently between English and Spanish. And as much as Vice City and Perdida established Smyth as a standalone voice, these early singles only confirmed her status as a natural collaborator too, featuring production from YSK Jamie and Puma Blue respectively.

She remains a key player in south London’s thriving, youthful scene; she’s well respected by her peers, despite preferring the company of strangers. But then Smyth’s attraction to fleeting friendships isn’t just some anthropological fascination – it’s a survival technique she picked up during her nomadic upbringing.

The oldest of four, she was born in Cork but spent her formative years in Spain, where her family relocated on advice that a warmer climate might improve her brother Paddy’s severe asthma. Her parents got by running bars and restaurants in Marbella and the Costa del Sol, before being forced to move back to Ireland around the time of the financial crash, when the local council revoked their property without warning.

Smyth is impressively relaxed about the whole experience today, be it Spanish bureaucrats forcing her family into bankruptcy or the wrench of starting all over again in Ireland while on the cusp of adolescence. Then there were the subsequent moves to Waterford and eventually west London, where her father still runs a pub today.

“[Moving around] was isolating, but it’s shaped me in good ways,” she muses, sounding as easygoing as she does in her breezy bars. “I don’t ever feel scared to go out on my own. I’m always out and about trying to make friends. And I’m always losing shit like my phone all the time, but I don’t really have attachments to things. Even with people, I think I get attached very quickly and then detach just as quickly.”

Some things do stick though, like her relationships with Lava La Rue and Mac Wetha, fellow members of multi-disciplinary arts collective NiNE8. They met in a music tech class at Richmond College, but fell out of touch when Smyth quit aged 17 to move in with her then-boyfriend (a period she now refers to as “a rough patch”). When the relationship ended, Smyth found herself back in touch with her old classmates by chance, when La Rue invited her to a party. It proved a pivotal encounter.

“[La Rue and Wetha] were having a cypher in the next room,” she recalls. “I’d been in jams at open mics but I’d never seen one like that before, where you have an instrumental playing. I walked into the room, sat down and was having a great time, and then they passed me the mic. I just improvised, and they were like, ‘Woah.’ I thought, ‘This feels sick.’”

The experience reignited Smyth’s creativity after having “completely fallen out of love with music” around the time of leaving college. Where it had previously been pop-punk bands or acoustic balladeers like Lewis Watson and Ben Howard that fed her imagination, she now found herself gravitating towards hip-hop and neo-soul. “I loved the way it was a lot more of a mellow vibe,” she explains. “The way that stories were told and the sounds they used… It just suddenly made sense.”

“I don't ever feel scared to go out on my own. I don't really have attachments to things. Even with people, I think I get attached very quickly and then detach just as quickly” From then on, Smyth dedicated the hours that she wasn’t waitressing or working in casinos to writing music with Mac Wetha, singing and rapping over the beats he’d crafted in his bedroom. “Once everything clicked it just didn’t stop,” she tells me, still sounding astonished at the speed with which she found her sound. “And, looking back, without [NiNE8] being as supportive as they are, I might have followed music but it would have been a lot harder, and I would have lost a lot of myself on the way.”

Currently composed of eight members spread across London, the DIY collective remains a huge source of inspiration for Smyth, bringing together a group of like-minded outsiders, all born in 1998. As she puts it, “we’re like the loose ends: we’ve all come from places where we never really felt like we fit in.” NiNE8 provides a vital platform for experimentation too, and it’s notable that on the group’s recent mixtape, No Smoke, Smyth is more likely to be found rapping than singing. It’s no wonder then that when she joined RCA Records in June, one of the most important prerequisites of signing was that she could continue to collaborate freely with NiNE8.

Her first release for RCA is Sunny, a burst of shimmering yacht-pop that was fortuitously dropped in the middle of the UK’s recent heatwave. With its blissed-out beats and hook-heavy melody, the balmy single is a deviation from the after-hours vibes of Smyth’s catalogue to date. She’s excited about the development, her face lighting up when she talks about it.

“I haven’t made any happy songs in my whole career, which is mad, so I was like, ‘Let’s take a different route with it.’ Having grown up in Spain, around those little beach huts with people playing tunes, I’d love to imagine someone walking through one of those and hearing my song.”

Whether Sunny is representative of Smyth’s forthcoming third EP, she won’t say. But she does let slip she hopes to have the collection out by October, that it features “higher production values” and already has a name.

“It’s going to be called No Place for Patience,” she smiles, pausing to draw slowly on a cigarette. “It’s like, at this point in my life, I know what I want to do and there’s no more time for fucking around, do you know what I mean? Because the clock in my head has very subtly started ticking, in the sense that I’m not a kid anymore. This is the rest of my life. And it’s scary but it’s exciting. Because it’s my future.”

[devilsknotrp]

Congratulations, Ruby! You have been accepted for the role of Connie Romano (FC: Natasha Liu Bordizzo). My God, you understand Connie perfectly. Everything, from your writing sample to your headcanons, fundamentally demonstrated how much thought you’d put into her and how she will relate to the other characters in play. I think you emphasised her softness - and though it would have been too easy to make her too gentle, you struck just the right balance between her sensitivity for others and her quiet resolve. Connie might be uncertain, but she’s not always a pushover. You also dealt with the theme of peer pressure really well. We’d love to see her continue to struggle with that as the group develops, especially because, at some point, she will have to make a choice... Altogether a wonderful application. Please have a look at this page prior to sending in your account.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name: Ruby Age: 19 Pronouns: She/her Timezone: NZST Activity estimation: I’m enrolled full-time in university so my workload fluctuates week-to-week. I don’t like to really estimate activity because I can’t make promises that it will always remain the same. But I do strive to be active to some extent at least once a day. Triggers: [Redacted]

IN CHARACTER

Name: Connie Denise Romano constancy  // devoted to Bacchus // from Rome Age (DD/MM/YYY): 20th of July 1978. CANCER sun, AQUARIUS moon, SCORPIO rising, VIRGO venus. Gender: Cis female Pronouns: She/her Sexuality: Bisexual. Connie has uncomplicated feelings about her sexuality. It has always just been something that has existed within her, devoid of complication, unlike much else of her psyche; she is constantly plagued by complicated feelings about everything else. But she has always known she’s had crushes on girls and on boys. It’s not something she’s ever come out and said to anyone, but she thinks she’d be at peace with it if it came out, or if she dated a girl. It doesn’t seem like a secret that needs to be hidden, but she hides it anyway. She hides a lot of things.

Occupation: High School Senior; aspiring NYU theatre applicant – eventually she wants to be a theatre actress, possibly film but she has no real overwhelming desire for the need to be seen like that. She definitely wants to venture into filmmaking and screenwriting; she has hoards over unfinished manuscripts stuffed in her drawers, most are roles she writes for herself.

Connection to Victim: Brian Goode had always been a bright kid. Connie remembers him in snippets: riding his bike down the street, or down at the arcade, or talking with David. That’s the real thread of connection she has to Brian. David. Connie has always liked David. He’s always kind and she sits next to him in a few of the classes they share together. She had only seen him as a sort-of-maybe friend until he asked her out. Taken by surprise, she had awkwardly turned him down, fumbling her way through an excuse. Connie had still felt too new then, too hurt by everything that had gone down, and David was sweet; she wasn’t ready for sweet. But then it was like he was everywhere, and now she can’t help but look for him in every crowd, or think about what he might say about something. It’s only a small crush, but it makes her feel young and alive and a little shy. Now she feels like they share something. There are moments since Brian’s disappeared that she’s thought about telling David she understands, but that would mean opening up about the gruesome crime, and that’s the secret she holds closest to her chest. Instead, she bakes cookies for his family and has spent time trying to be there for him. As a friend. But she can’t shake the feeling that Brian’s disappearance is connected to her own family’s murder. She’s terrified of what it all means, and she’s determined to help discover what really happened.

Alibi: What were they doing the afternoon Brian Goode disappeared?

Connie had been in the theatre room when Brian Goode disappeared.

“What were you doing?”

“I was practicing my monologue. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte.”

Pause. “It’s Catherine’s bit. You know, I wouldn’t be you for a kingdom!”

“Was anyone else there?”

“It was just me.”

“And what time did you arrive? Did anybody see you? When did you leave? Can anyone confirm that you were there?”

“I must have gotten there at around 2? I’m not sure, sorry. I think I got home around 8? My brother saw me. Em. He was there when I got home. I don’t know if anyone else saw me,” Connie shrugs, “maybe a teacher? I’m sure someone would have been working.”

Connie had been on a bus back from Sioux Falls. Two days earlier she had lied to Emilio and told him she was going to be staying at a friend’s house, throwing out Kelly Shah’s name. Then she hopped on a bus and headed back to her hometown. In the mail she had received a curious post-card, a simple I’m so sorry, baby in sloppy handwriting she could only guess was her mothers. Her bones trembling she had made the snap decision to go back to Sioux Falls. It had her grandma’s old address scribbled as the return address. Her mom must want her to come home. And Connie needed answers, security, her mom.

But Sioux Falls didn’t provide any answers; just dead-ends. Her mom wasn’t there and all that lingered was an air of misery. She walked around the block she grew up and bought a milkshake from Bugsy’s and cried behind her school’s old shed. It felt like a million years ago that she had lived there. And it felt like just yesterday her parents had been brutally slaughtered.

She had gotten on the first bus back to Devil’s Knot after that. She was never going to know what had happened to her parents. She was never going to know where her mom went. She was never going to fully belong to this world. But she could go home and laugh until her stomach hurt with Em.

Her bus had pulled up in Devil’s Knot at around 6PM. When had Brian gone missing again? Connie hadn’t gone home straight away. She got off the bus and headed out to “The Clearing” – she had been to countless parties there, fooled around with boys she wasn’t interested in, spent hours practicing her scripts. The creepiness that lived there felt safe to her, somehow. It felt like a loose connection to her own trauma. She couldn’t visit the site her parents had been murdered at, but she could find solace in the space another gruesome crime had taken place. She was a little entranced by the mystery of the case, wanting desperately to be able to bury herself in the facts and knowledge of the Silverman legend since she couldn’t know the details of her own.

Connie didn’t spend long there. She sat on one of the couches and cried until she felt okay enough to clip on her happy, cheerful, popular girl façade and she went home. All the lights were off by the time she returned to their little suburban home. Em tried. But sometimes Connie just wanted to scream out at the absurdity of trying to build a life while they ignored their past. He wasn’t home. He didn’t see her coming in. But it didn’t matter, he’d protect her.

Connie doesn’t know why she lies but she can’t take it back once it’s out of her mouth. Maybe it’s to protect her mom, or maybe it’s to protect her past, or maybe it is to protect herself. Wouldn’t people see her differently if they knew the truth of where she had come from? Couldn’t they suspect her? She knew how mass hysteria worked. She was an intelligent girl.

Faceclaim: Natasha Liu Bordizzo

WRITING SAMPLE

Connie’s got her legs splayed out on the floor of the drama room. Her knee jutted out at an awkward angle, her thigh starting to cramp. Fingers raking through sheets upon sheets of discarded scripts. All the words are blurring together. Either she can’t concentrate or she’s started to cry. Connie feels so detached from her body that she couldn’t tell you which one it is.

It makes her feel a little sick, being squashed up in this room. It used to be her sanctuary. If Devil’s Knot was starting to overwhelm her, the past sneaking up in her mind, her friends starting to drive her stir-crazy – she could always escape here. An easy lie tossed over her shoulder, ‘You know I have to practice!’ and then she’d indulge herself in reading scripts, curled up in the disgusting bacteria-ridden green couch in the corner. The room was nearly always empty, save for a few other theatre kids who’d come and go from time-to-time. But Connie had started to learn the hours in which they came and went, always aiming to be there by herself. From 11am to 1PM was usually a safe bet if she wanted some time for herself.

But now she’s sitting on the cold floor and her stomach is doing somersaults. She’s almost certain she’s going to be sick soon. Her breakfast making its way back up. She can’t stop thinking about Brian. That cute little kid just gone. His name on the tip of everyone’s tongues, the stifling silence around his disappearance, the haunted clutch-hold his presence has had on this town. Connie knows all the rumours about the past tragedies, she had studied up on the Silverman case as best as she could before arriving, and then the gaps had been filled in by eager classmates ready to divulge all the sick, twisted mysteries Devil’s Knot had to cough up.

She sees her Dad’s mangled body. Her stepmom’s headstone. Her mom’s own vanishing from her life. Connie knows all about tragedies and mysteries and satanic ritual cult bullshit. Part of her feels like a bad luck magnet. She’s been reading the same line on the script Mrs Rubens had written for her for half-an-hour. Fed up, she crumples it up in her hand and throws it across the room. Some days she wishes it was acceptable to screech until her lungs hurt. Connie has this sudden overwhelming desire to douse herself in gasoline and sink under water. To throw her body across the room and see how it lands. But instead she presses her lips together and lifts her body up off of the ground. Does a quick stretch to release the tension building in her muscles and fetches the screwed up piece of paper from across the other side of the room.

She just hopes Brian isn’t suffering. She wonders if it would be better if he was found dead or alive. Is he being tortured? She’s read all the books on satanic cults. She’s not sure if she believes in any of what they say – the sex orgies and torture and animal sacrifices. It was all started from puritanical religious ideologies. But part of her does wonder. She wasn’t allowed to see the case files from her parents murder but she knows it was something satanic. Connie shakes her head in an effort to rid her head of the thoughts, threading her fingers through her hair and brushing out any knots that have gathered. Shut up, brain! She wants to yell. It’s always going too fast for her liking. Her brain is still stuck on Brian as she goes to twist open the door to leave. He was such a sweet kid, and even if he wasn’t, no-one deserves to go missing. It’s horrific.

She checks the time on one of the clocks hanging up on the wall before she leaves. If she hurries she might catch some of her crowd still at Patsy’s Diner. She doubts she could keep any food down, but they’re all expecting her. Connie doesn’t know if she can handle having to talk about the case like it’s an enthralling gossip fest tonight, sometimes she wonders if her friends have any hearts at all or if they’re all made of ice. But she plasters on a bright mega-watt, charming smile and works herself into a happy state of mind.

It’s easy to pretend. But she wonders how long she has left until she falls apart at the seams she’s meticulously stitched herself together with. It’s starting to feel like any minute this wild wolf within her will be unleashed. The days are become longer, more tightly coiled around her, and there’s still no sign of a missing child. It’s not normal. Connie isn’t sure how to act like everything can still be the same when something so sinister has taken place…again. In this town, in her life.

She pulls a piece of gum out of her bag, a simple black square shoulder bag she’d picked up as a treat for herself last week, before all this chaos had been unleashed. Carefully she unwraps the mint flavoured piece of gum and pops it in her mouth, throwing the wrapper away in the nearest bin. The act of chewing soothes her nerves, the pop of flavour giving her something more interesting to taste than the rising vomit trying to push itself out of her.

ANYTHING ELSE?

NOTE: Since a lot of Connie’s life is entwined with Emilio’s, I’ve taken a lot of liberties in imagining what her childhood and present day living situation etc. looks like! This would be fleshed out better in conjunction with Emilio’s player & story, obviously, if I was accepted.

BIOGRAPHY.

BEFORE.

Connie Denise Romano was born on the twentieth of July, 1978, as the clock struck a quarter past three in the afternoon, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Her parents were on the brink of a divorce, Grease was still on top of the charts and the stage had been set for her arrival.

Her birth mom was a loose cannon, a firecracker, a live-wire. Connie remembers being enamoured by her, wide-eyed, watching her mom flit around their living room in her dressing gown, belting out Call Me by Blondie, drenched head to toe from the rain outside. But she also remembers the screams in the middle of the night, the long periods of time where she’d disappear for, the terse fights between her parents in their living room at one in the morning. By the time Connie was six her mom, Annie, had left for good.

Emilio will never understand that part of her: the sliver of Annie that lives underneath her skin, that aches to come crawling out on the middle of the stage, the screeched monologues where she shuts her eyes and channels the energy of the woman who’s DNA runs through her. Emilio’s mom is lovely, he’ll never wonder if she was responsible for the murders. It haunts her at night sometimes, a bubbling question mark underneath the surface of her skin. Her memories are clipped, dream-like, half the time she wonders if Annie wasn’t even half the nightmare she remembers her to be; sometimes she’s curious if she was worse, and sometimes she swears these bursts of anger that flare up within her are from her.

It was just Connie and her dad for a while then. He was her best friend, her confidant, her hero who could do no wrong. He tried to teach her to be fierce and resilient in the face of danger, strong and confident and sure of herself, but that’s just not the kind of kid she was. Connie was shy, she was bright and personable around the right people, but she always fit in better at the adult table than the kids table. Clinging to her Dad’s leg at parties, mumbling her name when asked, declining the offer of a birthday party. He enrolled her in drama classes to help ease her out of her shell, or maybe, because he was scared she had that same pent up energy bubbling under her and he wanted her to have a healthy outlet to channel it into. It didn’t matter, she fell into the role of theatre like she was born for the stage.

He remarried when she was ten. Connie had craved a mom so badly, she had spent every night praying at the altar of her bed to stars for one. This intense, sensitive desire that ran through her to be loved. Julia was kind and she took her shopping and they had movie dates, just the two of them, together on the weekends but Connie could still sense the distance. Julia was marrying her Dad, not her. She liked being an easy kid, knew even then how to shut up and play the right part. She went along with being tolerated and not loved. It was an easy role to play.

Her journey into adolescence was rocky. Connie didn’t know how to fit in at first. Her mind has always jumped miles ahead, inquisitive and adept at reading her own emotions. She struggled through middle-school, teetering on the edge of a million different friend groups, playing the shy girl, the weird girl, the outcast girl, the friendly girl, the popular girl; she kind of knew everyone, and no-one ever really knew her. It wasn’t the way she preferred it, her bones ached for settlement but all she could find was restlessness.

In her first year of high school she had no-one. She struggled to make friends in Sioux Falls. The same people she had known her entire life flitted in and out of her life like revolving figures in a play, she reached out to grasp them and they all just slipped away. Her friendships grew away from her, their common interests and shared histories fading into oblivion to make room for those awkward silences of knowing there’s no mutual understanding left anymore. It had left her sad, but Connie always moved on from everything without pushing it, a smile on her face. It was all for her to digest silently, not in a fit of rage.

She made friends in her sophomore year: a bad crowd, her dad had called them. It had been her rebellious stage. Connie had quietly embarked on a journey of destroying herself for fun. It was the year she began to detest everything inside of her. Her insides recoiled and she couldn’t stand to look at herself in the mirror. Every morning she woke up fatigued and nauseous with the thought of having to exist in the world. She had met Peter in one of her drama classes. He was older, and he smoked, and his friends liked to go out to the woods late at night. He kissed her and she felt like she was permanent, her feet stuck firmly on the ground. Then he’d go days without calling her and she’d let herself go stir crazy inside her own brain. They never got up to anything wild. It was never that sort of rebellious phase. Connie would just hang out past her curfew with them, smoking cigarettes she hated the taste of, laughing along when the boys wrestled on the ground.

But by junior year they were gone and she was stuck with herself again. And then her world got shifted upside down.

DURING.

They are hazy memories she can’t quite recollect. A bad dream she tends to forget about. Connie liked to buy the cover-up of a random attack. It goes down better for her. Peter had called her afterwards, to ask if it was satanic, he talked her ear off about the occult. Connie didn’t care. She pushed the event to the back of her brain and reworked herself into a new woman. This would not define her. It would not become her. It is always on her mind.

Police officers. Lawyers. Social workers. God, the fucking social workers. Connie remembers them all in bits and pieces, like watching a film she’s only half interested in. The open mouths, the silent words, the folded up case files she couldn’t look at. The funeral. The faux sympathies from her classmates. The rancid vomit she would throw up every night.

Emilio filed for custody of her and they moved to Devil’s Knot to start a new life.

Connie made herself a list of rules before leaving: no-one was going to know about what had happened, she was going to find herself with a group of friends, she was going to stop thinking about her missing mom and her dead dad, she was going to stop hurting herself for fun. Her life was going to become easy, despite everything.

AFTER.

Emilio is all she has left. He’s quickly turned into her best friend, the only person in the world she thinks she trusts, but it still makes her stomach twist and turn when she remembers he’s responsible for her. He’s overprotective sometimes, and she’s gotten good at lying to even him. It just doesn’t feel like this is her life sometimes.

It would have been easy to fade into the background. Connie has been doing it her whole life. She’s too quiet, sometimes, and her head is always racing too far ahead. She’s always caught up in her own little world. Entering Devil’s Knot she thought she’d immediately fall in with the outcasts. That’s where she belongs, right? But instead she was easily swept up by the most popular kids in school. She doesn’t know how it happened. One minute she was nervously getting ready for her first day, freaking out, and the next she was being pulled along by Kelly Shah.

It had been nice at first, to belong somewhere. There are moments she genuinely appreciates her friends. Then there are moments she feels like such an imposter it makes her want to scream. They don’t know the first thing about her and Connie doesn’t see the point in putting on appearances, it’s starting to wear her down. All she wanted was to live a normal, boring life. But she’s starting to see it’s going to be very hard to achieve that.

Especially with Brian now missing. It feels like only the start of something deeply sinister.

HEADCANNONS.

                       i.         Connie’s wardrobe consists of lots of turtlenecks, solid colours, lilac cardigans, lots of miniskirts, chunky boots that hit right under the knee, navy track pants with stripes down the side, lots of sweater vests, mood rings, flower and butterfly charms and hair-clips, empire waist dresses, low heels, plaid patterns, her favourite cream and baby pink floral long skirt, cropped chunky cable knit sweaters, floral patterns. Her main colour combinations are: black, lilac, peach, navy and red.

                     ii.         Her top artists of the year have to be Alanis Morissette, Goo Goo Dolls, The Smashing Pumpkins, TLC, Oasis, No Doubt, Aaliyah, Hole, Jewel, Bikini Kill, Madonna, Fiona Apple, Modest Mouse, Bjork and Belle and Sebastian.

                    iii.         Connie is a major fan of The X Files. The week Brian Goode went missing was the first episode she had missed since her dad’s death.

                    iv.         Her other staple favourite shows are: Seinfeld, the newly airing Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Beverly Hills, 90210 (she’s a secret Brenda Walsh fan; like she just gets it), Party of Five, The Nanny, Melrose Place and My So Called Life.

                     v.         Connie had been a feverish reader in her youth, devouring all the books she could get her hands on. Her dad had said her mom used to love to read. It had bought her closer to her somehow. But then she hit fourteen and couldn’t stand the sight of words. It’s only after her dad’s death that she’s been getting back into reading again.

                    vi.         Connie hated hiking before her parents died. Now it’s one of her favourite secret hobbies.

                  vii.         She loves to bake.

                 viii.         She had been obsessed with the O.J. Simpson case the year before.

                    ix.         She had bought all the Satanic ritual books she could grab her hands on right after the murder. Everyone wanted to shield her from the truth but she needed to know. Nobody would tell her anything so she had to find out for herself.

                      x.         There is something about ‘The West Memphis Three’ that unsettles her. She has to look away every-time they’re brought up.

                    xi.         She’s a social drinker but a secret smoker. It’s only habitual, a stress-reliever, the only tie she has left to Peter and his crowd. Em has no idea.

                   xii.         Her day-to-day life has been very boring lately: school, theatre practice, listening to what everyone else is doing and going along with the crowd.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS.

                       i.         EMILIO: It’s funny how quickly tragedy can bond you. Connie has always looked up to Em. He’s her big brother, how could she not? They were as close as they could be, considering the age gap and the intervals of missing time between visits. He was still her big brother and she still wanted him to like her and he still annoyed her constantly. But now he’s all she has left in this world. Her very best friend. Her guardian, now responsible for her well-being. It’s like walking a tight-rope with him sometimes. She loves him and she hates him all in the same breathe, and then she feels bad when she knows he’s just doing the best he can.

                     ii.         HEATHER: Heather is unlike anyone Connie has ever met before. There is just something about them that draws Connie in. It’s electric. Their determination, drive, commitment…Connie envies and admires all of it. She thinks the world of them. The brightest part of her day is when they have debate or are studying together or Connie catches her eye from across the room. There’s just something about them that makes Connie glow warm and happy, inspires her to strive to be a better person.

                    iii.         ELIAS: Connie immediately felt a connection to Elias as soon as she met him. He seems to be the only like-minded person in this town to her sometimes. He’s her trusted confidante when it comes to the arts. Some of the rumours about him have limited her from being able to develop a deeper friendship with him the way she wants, her group would just never allow it, but she always feels at peace in his presence and wishes she could just ditch her friends some days and hang out with Elias.

                    iv.         DAVID: He hadn’t really made her radar, other than he was nice and new like she was, and they sat in the same classes together. But then he asked her out, and she turned him down, and now she can’t get him out of her mind. It’s only a small crush, not anything near what she feels for Heather, but it’s there all the same: blossoming in her chest. Since he’s asked her out, she feels like they’ve grown into better friends, and now with Brian missing…well, she’s been spending a lot more time with him.

                     v.         KELLY: Kelly is probably the closest thing she has to a best friend here in Devil’s Knot. Connie both loves and loathes her. There are times where she swears it’s just the two of them against the world, a genuine, real friendship. And then Kelly goes and does something that completely makes Connie pause and wonder who the fuck this girl is. But at the end of the day, her arm is gonna be slung around hers, and they’re gonna giggle at the back of class together, and go shopping together, and Connie is gonna spend her weekends curled up in Kelly’s bed. There’s so much pressure that comes with being friends with Kelly Shah. It always feels like too much sometimes, like Connie is gonna mess up and get kicked out of town.

                    vi.         HOMER, SAM: As much as Connie feels uncomfortable by being in the same group as the popular kids – there comes an immense amount of pressure and responsibility and anxiety with the job – she genuinely does like both Homer and Sam, even if sometimes she feels not good enough in the group or she questions what they’re doing, she thinks the two of them have good hearts and she finds her friendship with the two of them mostly an easy ride.

                  vii.         MILTON: Connie secretly hates Milton. She can’t stand him. He makes her blood boil and rise and she has to bite her tongue every time he speaks. She doesn’t understand why Kelly is still with him at all.

PLOT POINTS.

I’d love to see Connie somehow get tied up in the Chapter business through Em; I don’t see her being truly a part of it, but I think it could be fun to explore maybe her opposition to it and how that affects her relationship with Emilio.

An exploration of the Sioux Falls drama and how that ties into Devil’s Knot’s mystery, if it does at all.

Her complicated relationship with her birth mother – possibly going to see Karen Shah to deal with it or going to see Karen Shah regardless, actually. I’d also love to see Connie trying to find a mother figure through some of the other women in town. It’s something that she’s always desperately been searching for.

I can definitely see her getting involved and trying to figure out what happened to Brian since her own past is still a mystery. It’s going to be easier for her to try and get the truth out of a situation she’s removed from while still feeling like she’s gaining peace of mind from her own trauma. I can see this leading her to work with the younger kids or some of the past generation that was involved in the Silverman case.

I’d also really love to see some sort of connection to Pete Silverman. I think they’d both be characters who carry a lot of guilt. Pete, for his past. And Connie, for the past she’s hiding. Somehow they’re very different but feel similar.

I’d also love for her to get involved in Brian’s disappearance through her lie about her alibi – did someone see her on that bus? Did someone see her out in the clearing? Does someone know about Sioux Falls? I’d love for her past and her lies to come unravelling.

I think a lot of constant themes have popped up in this app with Connie – her past, her commitment to theatre and the arts, her sense of being lost and not belonging, curiosity / avoidance about satanic rituals, her need to belong somewhere, guilt / regret / avoidance / overthinking, her ties to her different family relationships, the friendships she’s made here – I think these are all important parts of her that will be explored in various different ways and plots. I think my overarching goal for Connie as a singular person, not involved within the mystery, would be for her to find a true sense of belonging and confidence rather than playing the role of whoever is wanted from who in that moment. Connie needs to discover who she is.

[catalinda04]

Carried Away Chapter 27: The Start of Winter Break

Masterlist

“Hey Ms. C, you got any fun plans for break?” One of Lucy’s students asked during the last hour of the last day of class before break.

“Not really, just hanging out with some friends. Grading projects, binging Netflix, the usual.” Lucy replied. Even with almost half of the high school staff knowing about her relationship with a famous actor, they had respected her wishes, and kept that information from the kids.

“Does anyone have big plans for break, it’s a long one this year, enjoy it.” Several kids spoke-up about trips with their families, basketball tournaments, or work. Lucy found herself counting the minutes until the bell rang. Henry, along with Kal, would be flying in the next day before they spent the rest of the day celebrating Christmas with her family. It had only been 4 weeks since Thanksgiving, but she missed him terribly, and felt almost giddy about being able to spend 2 solid weeks with him.

Once the bell rang, and all the students had left, Lucy took a few minutes to organize her room, and gather anything she would be needing over break. She was just packing the last of her things into her teacher bag, when Ryan appeared at her door.

“You ready to go?” He asked bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Yes I am. You’re in a hurry today.” She commented to him as they walked down the hall.

“Andi and I are going skiing over break. We leave tomorrow morning, so we’re driving to Minneapolis tonight. I want to get on the road.” He explained,

“Henry flies in tomorrow, then we’re flying to London on Monday night.”

“So just the two of you for Christmas?” Ryan asked.

“No, we’re going to Jersey, and spending Christmas with his whole family; his parents, all 4 of his brothers, their spouses and kids.” Her nerves evident in her voice.

“4 brothers?” he asked, his eyes wide. “That should be interesting.”

“At least I’ve already met his mom, and she likes me. I haven't met any of the rest of his family though.” They stopped outside the Library to wait for Mindy.

Lucy waited impatiently for Henry’s flight to unload. It seemed forever between watching the plane touch down and drive to the gate, before the doors were actually opened.

She saw his head over the others walking up the jetway. She waved to him and his mouth widened into a grin. He released his hold on Kal’s leash and let the dog run to her. She knelt down to envelope Kal into a big hug. The dog had such an expressive face, he grinned at her, happy to see her again. Once her arms released Kal, Lucy felt a pair of strong hands under her arms, lifting her to Henry’s mouth. His lips were warm and soft and welcoming.

“Welcome back, Darcy.” Lucy finally greeted

“It’s good to be back, Pumpkin.”

Lucy and Henry loaded his bags and Kal and into her car, and pointed it North. Lucy updated him on their agenda. She had managed to convince her mother to agree to early Christmas, but Lucy had to agree to spending 2 nights at her parents’ house during the weekend.

“So tonight we’ll get there in time for dinner. Tomorrow morning we’ll all go to church, before coming home to do presents from each other, then a big family dinner with everyone, plus grandma and mom’s sister Izzy and her husband and 2 kids. Then we’ll do more presents, from grandma and such. I had to promise mom we’d stay Sunday night too, so Monday morning we’ll have breakfast then leave, so I can do laundry and pack for our flight.”

“So we’re two nights at your parents’ house?” Henry asked, sounding very dejected about the idea.

“Kal will love it, lots of room for him to run around, snow to play in, and kids to play with.”

“I’m sure he will, but it’s been over a month since I’ve seen you, touched you, held you, kissed you.” He murmured, his voice going deeper with each word.

“That’s why we’re not going straight there. I made some time for just us, before we go celebrate Christmas. Our own private celebration.” She smirked at him.

“Ever the planner, aren’t you.” He smiled at her.

“You love it.”

“I do love it, I love you.” He leaned across the console to kiss her. She linked her fingers with his while she drove, needing to have some kind of connection with him.

Later, after Henry and Lucy had their private celebration, as Lucy was moving Christmas from under her tree to a box to be brought to her car, she set a box aside. Once their bags were loaded, Lucy pulled Henry to sit with her on the couch. She handed him the small box she’d set aside.

Henry looked at the box with it’s blue snowflake paper, and silver bow, then shook it. It rattled a little. The box couldn't hold much, it was only about 4 inches square, he puzzled about what she might have given him.

“It’s not much. You’re an incredibly hard person to buy for.” She pouted a bit. “Anything you want you could buy yourself, or I couldn't afford. So, I went with this. I hope you like it.”

“Darling, you didn't have to get me anything. And I’m going to love whatever you give me.” He gave her a quick peck. “Can I open it?” He asked with all the glee of a 4-year-old.

“Please do.” Lucy held her breath as she watched him tear the paper on the small box. He set the paper aside, and pulled the lid off. Inside, nestled on a bed of fluffy, cottony, filler, were 2 keys on a Minnesota shaped key ring. He picked them up, and eyed them.

“Are these the keys to your heart?” Henry asked with a slightly confused, slightly silly look on his face.

Lucy gave a short giggle. “I suppose you could say that, but they’re actually much more practical than that. They’re the keys to my house. I wanted to show you that you’re welcome here anytime.” She explained worrying her hands in her lap. Had she been totally wrong in thinking he’d like the gesture?

Lucy watched as Henry’s eyes started to shine with water, before he wrapped her in a tender, crushing embrace. “Darling, this means so much. Thank you. You said you didn’t know what to give me. You’ve given me the only thing I want. You.” He said, pulling her in for a kiss that could demonstrate his love more than he ever could with words.

Lucy and Henry arrived at her parents’ house an hour before dinner was to be served. Lucy wanted a chance to settle in and let the kids settle down from their greeting before they all sat down to eat.

There was the usual exuberant greeting from Quinn and Thomas, and hugs from everyone when they arrived. Lucy went to the living room to put all the presents she’d brought, under the tree, and stopped so abruptly that Henry ran into her.

Hanging on the wall where all of their stockings normally hung, was a stocking with Henry’s name on it. While the rest of the family had hand-made stockings that Marie had made, Henry’s was a classic fuzzy red with a white fur cuff, but his name was embroidered on the cuff. “Mom?” Lucy called while walking to the stockings.

“Yes?” She entered the room, seeing Lucy stroking the stocking. “I didn’t have enough time to make a stocking for Henry for this year, so that one will have to do.” Marie explained to her daughter.

Lucy looked at her mother with a tear glistening in her eye. “Oh mom.” Lucy whimpered, wrapping her arms around her mother, touched that she had thought to make sure that Henry felt included. “Thank you.”

“It’s really nothing, honey. There’s no need to get so emotional about it, it’s just a 99 cent stocking.”

“It’s the thought mom. Thank you.” She kissed her mother on the cheek.

“Yes thank you Marie. It’s a lovely gesture.” Henry echoed, giving Marie a quick hug as well.

Dinner was a simple affair, before the orgy of rich food that would follow the next day. Once Quinn and Thomas were asleep, Lucy, Henry, Clint, and Anna all went into the local bar, both Lucy and Clint had plans to see old high school classmates.

The two couples entered the loud, dimly lit establishment together then went their separate ways. Lucy quickly found who she was looking for, “Jenn!” Lucy called, waving her arm high. Jennifer saw her and pointed at the table she and her husband Lee had already claimed. Lucy mimed that she and Henry were going to get a drink first.

Despite the crowd in the bar, they were served quickly and made their way to Jenn and Lee’s table. Jenn jumped up from her stool and squealed when Lucy came close enough to hug. Henry laughed watching the two women devolve into 13 year olds. “Jenn, this is Henry. Henry, my sister, Jenn, and her husband Lee.” She introduced the man still sitting at the table He looked to be about 5 years older than the girls. Jenn wrapped Henry in a hug, and he exchanged a handshake with Lee.

Once they were all seated, Lucy exclaimed, “You didn’t tell me you were pregnant!” She indicated her friend’s prominent belly.

“We decided we were ready for number two. Due in April, so still a bit of time to go.” Her friend said, patting her belly.

“Congratulations! Another baby to spoil! Yay!” Lucy cheered, taking a sip of her drink. “Speaking of number 1, how is my boyfriend doing?” Lucy asked.

“He’s good, adorable as ever. So curious about everything.” Jenn’s eyes lit up as she exclaimed, “The whole troop is getting together tomorrow with the kids. You guys should come!”

“Troop?” Henry asked confused.

“Our Girl Scout troop.” Lucy and Jenn said in unison, which caused them to dissolve into giggles.

“You were a Girl Scout?” Henry asked incredulously.

“Does that surprise you? Really, name a goody two-shoes stereotype, and I probably meet it. I was a very good girl in high school.”

“I’m a good girl I am!” Lucy and Jenn exclaimed, imitating Eliza Doolittle, and erupting into laughter, before Lucy explained why they wouldn’t be able to come.

Jenn wasted no time in grilling Henry for every detail of his life, past and present. She needed to make sure that Henry was “good enough” for her friend, and made no qualms about telling him that. Jenn and Lee announced they could only stay for one drink. Number 2 was doing a number on Jenn, and staying up past 10 any night was pushing it for her.

Lucy and Henry walked them out. There were hugs all around as the four said their goodbyes. Lucy and Henry decided to call it a night then as well. Lucy texted Anna to tell her they were going home. Between him wrapping up filming, and her dealing with kids right before Christmas, they were both exhausted.

Kal met them at the door when they returned to the house. Henry went outside with him, while Lucy got ready for bed. As she was plugging her phone in, Lucy noticed a text from Jenn. “I like him. I give my tentative approval. I reserve the right to withhold full approval until the one year mark.” Lucy smiled.

Chapter 26 .         Chapter 28

[village-skeptic]

I’m worried about FP, you guys

...or at least I would be, if this show made any goddamn sense.

My attempts to untangle the half-assed macrame of S2, including musings on the possible identit(ies) of the Black Hood(s), and other possibly-spoilery predictions and reflections, below the cut...

The question is - who are the Black Hood(s) and what do they actually want?

For a long time now, I have been saying that the Lodges HAVE to be involved with the Black Hood situation, whether it’s as the original perpetrators, or hopping on the bandwagon of opportunism in order to elevate people’s desire for “law and order.” The resulting consolidation of power would of course place Hermione in the mayor’s office, their pet sheriff holding the reins of local law enforcement, and Hiram calling the shots economically, as the CEO of the local manifestation of the for-profit prison-industrial complex.

The most recent Black Hood appearance at the debate serves these aims, as does the first Black Hood attempted murder - offing Fred Andrews was both the satisfaction of a personal grudge and also good business sense. Now that Fred is a political opponent of the Lodges, he continues to be an obvious target - hence the “you’re next, sinner!” note.

I can’t quite explain why the Lodges would want to off Midge (2x!), Moose, Grundy, or Svenson other than as simple crimes of opportunity in line with the “sinners” (law and order) theme. If Cheryl ends up as a Black Hood target (as the last ep’s cliffhanger would suggest), it could be a power play related to whatever twisted history exists between the Blossoms and the Lodges. Consider the payments from Hiram to Clifford that Veronica unearthed last season, as well as Claudius’s inchoate hatred of the Blossoms.

Here’s the thing: unless he’s actually complicit in their plans, FP would seem to be an OBVIOUS target for a Lodge-connected Black Hood hit. It’s definitely in their best interests to destabilize the power structure of the Serpents - not to mention the fact that FP talking about how Hiram paid him off to drive down the price of the drive-in land is a messy little loose end. Finally, given how personal the enmity between Hiram and Jughead has become (a pause, as we all consider the amount of emotional energy that Hiram expends on the local teenage boys) - knocking off FP just seems like an obvious move to make.

Now, obviously Hiram isn’t the trigger man in this situation. While a nameless capo could be on Black Hood duty, a Lodge alliance with a dissident Serpent-Ghoulie faction headed by Penny and the tall, green-eyed Tall Boy also makes a LOT of sense. With the Lodges controlling law enforcement and civil government, the Serpent-Ghoulies get free rein to run drugs, guns, pancake mix, and whatever eldritch horrors they’re trafficking out there to Greendale - and Hiram gets a cut of the profits.

In this case: FP becomes AN EVEN MORE OBVIOUS TARGET for a Black Hood hit. @stillscape‘s recent (and amazing) post about Hiram Lodge expanding into predatory student loans reminded me that we still don’t know WHAT the source of the beef between FP and Penny is. 

(Until we are informed otherwise, I am assuming that FP destroyed Penny’s credit rating by forgetting to pay her law school loans. And - to be perfectly clear - I WILL PERISH if we do not eventually find out why Penny hates him.) Point being - Penny has ample strategic and personal reason to want FP dead - and that was BEFORE her mutilation and banishment. We know that she’s back this week with an army of Ghoulies and ready to riot. Why would she NOT take the chance to settle this old score?

Now. Paparazzi spoilers and recent plot points suggest that Hal Cooper is the Black Hood. Unless Hal’s working with the Lodges - and that is a possibility, given his willingness to sell the paper and puff Hermione’s campaign - the sudden revelation that he is, in fact, obsessed with “sinners” seems like suuuuuuch a bunch of bullshit. Why this specific collection of “sinners?” Why his next-door neighbor and high school classmate Fred, a pervy music teacher, and two teenagers indulging in the exact same kind of experimentation with sex and drugs that the rest of their classmates have? Given the family connection, I suppose Svenson is at least mildly understandable; and of course Hal’s pissed at Cheryl for breaking up his thing with Penelope. How a serial killer obsessed with sin maintained a romance with an actual madam is an other question entirely - maybe he was playing the long game there? 

But if he was going to fixate on sinners - why not the guy who dumped Jason Blossom’s body this season, knocked up Hal’s girlfriend in high school and then schtupped his now-wife again like two weeks ago? How is FP not at the ABSOLUTE TOP of Black Hood!Hal’s list? 

About the last possible Black Hood candidate that we know of for sure is Claudius Blossom. We know he and Penelope have a plan to knock off Nana and Cheryl, so they’re certainly capable of murder. Much like his character motivations, Claudius’s whereabouts are unaccounted for before his surprise appearance, so sure, why not, he could be the Black Hood. Does explain the appearance at Cheryl’s door; doesn’t explain the fixation on Betty AT ALL, but fine, whatever. Claudius has no reason to want FP dead, as far as I know, but Claudius has no canonical reason for wanting ANYTHING. RAS and the writers’ room lighting upon “deus ex Claudius” for no reason other than the sheer hilarious of having Barclay be the murderer twice in a row honestly would not surprise me for a hot second. 

Then again - nor would I be surprised by the choice to introduce Claudius simply to lay the groundwork for Hal Cooper’s evil twin, who was JUST RELEASED from the insane asylum to which he had been sent away when they were very small, and who will have successfully managed to frame his brother for these murders - setting up the NEW sleuthing plot of clearing Hal’s name for S3.

Back to FP though.

We’ve got these comments from the actors about how “this season’s finale is just the same as last season’s” and that we finally recognize “a chess game that someone’s been losing very badly.” With FP in the Fred role and Penny making her move for revenge - that just FEELS right, doesn’t it? Plus, he’s been turning over a new leaf and making things right with Jughead. What better time, narratively speaking, for Penny (or Hiram, or Hal, or Claudius, or Hal’s evil twin Mal) to cap him and amp up the drama?  

Now that I’ve said this, of course - FP HIMSELF will probably turn out to be the Black Hood, at which point I WILL PERSONALLY put a brick through a window and a pint of bourbon into my milkshake. 

[betinaserrano]

How to Get Away with Murder

How to Get Away with Murder is an American television series aired on ABC last September 2014 and ended May 2020. The series is created by Peter Nowalk with a genre of legal drama, mystery and thriller.

This is the most intriguing series I have ever seen. I binge-watched the whole six seasons on Netflix for a week. The suspense of each episode, the phenomenal cast, amazing writers and everyone who put this extra-ordinary series together were definitely worth of your time. The drama ended with a chilling and jaw-dropping plot twist.

Annalise Keating is a defense attorney and  law professor in Middleton University, Philadelphia. Every year, she chooses students from her class to be interns at her firm;  Connor Walsh, Asher Millstone, Michaela Pratt, Laurel Castillo and Wes Gibbins were chosen and named as "The Keating 5 or K5". Frank Delfino and Bonnie Winterbottom also work for Annalise. This is where she got entwined in a murder plot.

It all started in the case of a college student named Lila Stangard, where she was found dead inside a water tank of a fraternity house near their campus. The Keating 5 found out that Sam Keating, Annalise's husband and a psychology professor in Middleton, was having an affair with Lila. Rebecca Sutter is Lila's best friend and became the suspect to her death. Wes Gibbins who is part of the K5 helped her to bring justice to Lila's death but one night when they were all inside the Keating residence waiting for Annalise, the interns got an argument with Sam. They accidentally killed Sam and disposed his body. Laurel, Connor, Michaela and Wes cover up the murder of Sam and Annalise helped her students to get away with it. Rebecca wanted to go to the police and report what happened but she was secretly killed by Bonnie. Wes being paranoid looking for her, teamed up with Rebecca's foster brother to find her. The real killer behind Lila's death was Frank, who got his orders from Sam.

After Sam Keating's death, a lot of dead bodies were piling up. The next murders that they all got away were the deaths of A.D.A Emily Sinclair, Wallace Mahoney, D.A. Ronald Miller, Xavier Castillo, and Governor Lynne Birkhead.

Main Characters

Viola Davis as Annalise Keating

Annalise Keating is my favorite character in this show. She is a confident, powerful  and talented black woman who speaks the nation's truth about the justice system's discriminatory practices. And simply because she is Annaliese freaking Keating!

Annalise was born as Anna Mae Harkness in Memphis, Tennessee. She is the daughter of Ophelia and Mac Harkness. She has a sister named Celestine and a brother, Thelonious. When Anna Mae was still young, she was raped by her alcoholic uncle named Clyde, who was staying at their house while recovering financially. Ophelia saw Clyde coming out from Annalise's room and at that very moment, she knew that Clyde raped her daughter. A few days later, when Clyde was drunk and had a cigarette in his mouth, Ophelia started a fire and burn the house down with him inside.

When Annalise was in Harvard law school, she met Eve Rothlo and they became really close friends. Their relationship became romantic and when Annalise found out that she's pansexual, she got scared of her sexuality. Annalise and Eve were together until she met Sam Keating, who was her therapist that time. The two fell in love and it made Sam leave his wife, Vivian Maddox.

Billy Brown as Nathaniel "Nate" Lahey

Nate Lahey is a respected and tough Philadelphia police detective. In the beginning of the show, Nate and Annalise were having an affair. Nate was married to his wife Nia, who was in the hospital being treated due to her illness.

When Sam Keating died, Nate was and accused framed by Annalise to protect her students especially Wes. Nate being in jail, Annalise told him contact the lawyer that she's referring and it happened to be her former lover, Eve Rothlo.

Alfred Enoch as Wesley "Wes" Gibbins / Christophe Edmond

Wes Gibbins is a law student and  one of the so-called Keating 5.

In his earlier years, Christophe was an immigrant from Haiti to the United States with his mom, Rose Edmond. Rose was working as a maid in the Mahoney family at that time. When Christophe was 12 years old, his mother was called by Wallace Mahoney to be a witness for a murder and claim that she saw Charles Mahoney while cleaning  when Vickie was murdered. Rose refused due to the safety of her son but Wallace threaten to harm Christophe if she does not agree to lie in the stand.

Annalise was hired by the Mahoney's to represent Charles. She went to Ohio to approach Rose but during the trial, Rose did not show up and took his son to escape. At that time, Christophe did not know what was happening and does not want to leave.

Annalise went to Rose's apartment to tell her to testify but Rose took her life in front of her. Annalise was shaking, frightened and went home. When Christophe has returned to his home, he saw his mother lying on the floor with a knife on her throat. He pulled it out and the blood was dripping fast. He became the suspect of the death of his mother but there weren't enough evidence that he killed her and the police let him go. He was put into foster care and changed his name into Wesley Gibbins,

Jack Falahee as Connor Walsh

Connor Walsh was described as a sly, sexy, sophisticated and openly gay. He is also studying  law and one of the favored students of Annalise. He will do everything to earn his professor's admiration. During the case that they were working on, Connor slept with an I.T, guy named Oliver to gain evidence illegally. These two had an "on and off" relationship and ended up married on Season 5.

Aja Naomi King as Michaela Pratt

Michaela Pratt is an ambitious, overachiever who wants to be like Annalise.

In her younger years, her mother was shot by his father and this lead her to be taken by the social services. Michaela was adopted and raised by Trishelle Pratt along with her adoptive brothers and sisters. She grew up in a poor household and that made her wanting more from life.

She started dating a guy named Aiden Walker. They got engaged and had plans building a life together. Aiden was her ideal guy but Michaela has doubts on her fiance's sexuality. Later on when Connor found out that Aiden was Michaela's fiance, he said that they went to the same boarding school and had a relationship there.

Matt McGorry as Asher Millstone

Asher Millstone was born into a world of Ivy League educations and country club memberships. He is a rich law student of Middleton University. He went to law school to follow the footsteps of his father, Judge William Millstone.

During the death of Sam Keating, Asher was on his way to go to a party with the other students. As he was going to the bonfire, he passed by the house of Annalise and saw Connor's car in the driveway. He hurriedly knocked on the door and shouted to open it. He kept on walking on the streets and decided to party. He does not have any idea what happened to the other Keating 4 on that night. He felt left out every time his co-interns were whispering behind his back about the accident.

Karla Souza as Laurel Castillo

Laurel Castillo is a secret weapon in the making. A quiet, sensitive idealist who enrolled in law school to learn how to defend the less fortunate, Laurel manages to stay under the radar, making it easy for her fellow classmates to underestimate her. With a profound attention to detail and inventive mind, she's talented – and darker – than anyone realizes, including Annalise.

Laurel is the daughter of Jorge Castillo, the owner of Antares Technologies, a technological company which specializes in the manufacture of drones, pumps, among other things. When she was chosen to be part of the Keating 5, Laurel met Frank Delfino in A.K's firm. The attraction between the two was irresistible. But when Frank went missing on action on Season 2, she got closer to Wes. The two became a couple and had a son named, Christopher.

Charlie Weber as Frank Delfino

Frank Delfino's a local Philly boy who never thought he'd be the type of guy who wears a suit to work. But he also never thought he'd get to work for someone like Annalise Keating. Forever loyal and armed with hometown connections, Frank is ready to do Annalise's dirty work at every turn. His street-smart, tough-guy exterior makes him the ideal protector for Annalise.  His number one vice though? Sleeping with the students.

Frank was in jail for 10 years and got out with the help of Annalise. He works as a fixer and private detective in Annalise's firm. After being released from prison, Annalise brought Frank to Ohio to assist her in the Mahoney case. When he was having a drink in the hotel bar, a lady named Lisa whispered her room number. They started kissing but Lisa suddenly pulled a bag under the bed with money inside. She asked Frank to plant a bug inside Annalise's room.

Annalise got involved in a car accident and rushed to the operating room. She was 8 months pregnant back then and lost her son. Frank finds out that she lost the baby. He told Sam that he screwed up and it was his fault. Sam said that Annalise should never find out that Frank caused the accident.

On season 6, It was revealed that Frank was the child of Sam and his sister Hannah Keating. This made him mad and in order save Annalise, he did everything to protect her from Governor Birkhead. He shot the governor and died in the end.

Liza Weil as Bonnie Winterbottom

Bonnie Winterbottom appears sweet and kind, the perfect counterpart to Annalise, but she will show her claws when you least expect it. As Annalise's dedicated associate, Bonnie works around the clock to do all the behind-the-scenes casework, as well as help guide the students. Though she may reprimand Frank about his questionable decisions when it comes to his personal life, she is his biggest ally and protector. Besides, Frank knows that Bonnie has secrets, too.

When she was young, Bonnie was molested by her own father. She was raped, sexually abused and being taped by her parents, making her their source of income. At the age of 15, she got pregnant and while at labor, her parents told her that the baby did not survived but secretly taken by her sister. Bonnie files charges against the councilman who raped her and lose the case to Annalise. After that, she was offered by Annalise to get into law school and Bonnie agreed.

Conrad Ricamora as Oliver Hampton

Oliver Hampton is a computer genius who specializes in coding an hacking.

One of the many reasons that I enjoyed watching HTGAWM was the tandem and chemistry of the "Coliver" (Connor and Oliver). These two lovers will prove that true love exists no matter what the situation they are in, they will make through it all and last a lifetime.

The season finale was released last May 2020 and it broke my heart not seeing this squad again.

All photos credit to owners.

References

https://abc.com/shows/how-to-get-away-with-murder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Get_Away_with_Murder#Cast_and_characters

https://www.fandom.com/topics/tv

[superredcorp]

It was Defence against the Dark Arts Class in Hogwarts. The Hufflepuffs and the Slytherins were joined together in this class which was led by Professor Cat Grant. As soon as the students had all gathered in the classroom, she announced the day's subject: Boggarts. Most students, who knew what they were, got a little nervous. And as soon as Professor Grant explained the basics about the creatures, the remaining ones got flustered and uncomfortable as well. No one liked to openly present their fears. No one wanted to feel that vulnerable. However, it was nothing that was up to discussion and the students knew better than to protest in Professor Grant's class. So they did as they were told and collected in the room, in front of a big closet which was already rumbling.

"Now, remember the spell. Riddikulus. Yes, it sounds ridiculous, we've heard the joke before, it's nothing original. Chip chop.", Professor Grant said. "You, the girl who's name I can't remember, you go first."

A Hufflepuff girl shrieked a little when the teacher's finger pointed at her. She gulped and stepped forward. She seemed to be trembling. "Wand at the ready. I'm going to open the closet now. Riddikulus. One, two, three.", she opened the door and a whirling shadow came out. It swirled around until it formed the shape of a spider which was the size of a big dog. The girl stared at it, mortified. Then suddenly her eyes showed determination, she lifted her wand and yelled "Riddikulus!"

The spider slipped and landed on it's back, long legs high up in the air - with grapes starting to form on them like grape vines. A few students laughed and the girl let out a relieved giggle.

"Good. Next one.", Professor Grant said.

One by one the students went forward, facing their nightmares - from wild mystical creatures to bad grades.

"Alright.", Professor Grant said, looking around. "Miss Luthor, you're up next."

On the other side of the room, Lena was standing with crossed arms, leaning against a desk. When she heard her name, she looked up and raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, no. I'm not doing that."

"Oh, you are. You may think you're too good for this class, Miss Luthor, but it is a lecture and it is obligatory. So, unless you want to meet with the headmaster..."

Lena scoffed. But one more look at Professor Grant's stern face and she faltered. She rolled her eyes. "Fine."

A few feet away, Kara stood with her two friends: Winn, who was a Hufflepuff as well and Mon-El, who was in Slytherin like Lena. Kara had spent some more time with Lena the past couple of weeks and they had grown closer. Kara was the only one really trying to make a connection with her. And she'd always been very compassionate and attentive. That's why she was the only one in the room who noticed the quiet tremble in Lena's voice when she caved or the way she took her steps to the front rather hesitantly, through she tried to appear tough. Lena seemed to know what was going to come out of that closet - and she was really scared of it.

"One, two, three.", Professor Grant counted and opened the closet door once more. This time the Boggart took its time. It didn't come out as a wild whirl of blackness ready to transform. Instead it stayed in the pitch black of the closet. Then suddenly, a hand grasped the frame of the door. A foot stepped out, wearing heels. The rest of the body followed slowly, anticipation building up.

It was a woman, wearing nice clothes and an evil expression on her face. Kara recognized her instantly and her eyes widened. She recognized her from the Daily Prophet's articles. And others did too because whispers and murmurs interrupted the silence in the room.

"Wait, guys. Isn't that...?", Winn hushed.

"It's Lillian Luthor. Lena's mom.", Kara mumbled, concerned.

Lena was frozen on the spot. She stared at her mother - or the boggart disguised as her mother. Who now started talking. "You are a disappointment, Lena. Your father never should have brought you here. You ruined everything. You are a disgrace. Pathetic. Useless."

Behind her suddenly another figure came out, joining her hateful speech. It was her brother. Lex Luthor. "Worthless. Your real mother is better of dead. You would have been such a disappointement to her. It would be no surprise if she got herself killed on purpose. So she would be rid of you."

Lena had meanwhile dropped her wand. Her hands covered her ears, trying to block them out. Hot tears streamed down her face. No one was whispering anymore, everyone gaped with their mouths open in shock. Even Professor Grant was speechless for once. She obviously hadn't expected this.

Kara couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't bare seeing Lena like this, couldn't bare hearing all those terrible things that the boggart was still spouting at her with an endless amount of shame, anger and hate. She stormed forward, running past her classmates and slid in front of the young Slytherin, who was whimpering heartbreakingly desperate, with her arms spread wide, in a protective stance.

Her eyes narrowed. She knew what was coming but she was prepared. The boggart started swirling and forming new for it's new opponent. Soon enough, it had finished it's transformation. Kara released a shaky breath as she stared her worst fear in the eye.

Death Eaters. Death Eaters who broke into her home when she was just a child, who killed her family for being muggleborns and squibs, who made her an orphan. She may have gained a new family in the Danvers' and she loved them, loved the sister, Alex, she got out of it but the trauma of what happened still cut her deep. Her whole world had been taken from her in that night, in that moment.

Kara raised her wand and screamed "Riddikulus!", directing all her anger and pain towards them. The force hit the boggart so hard that it, or well they, flew back into closet which fell backwards and shut close. Kara breathed heavily. Then she quickly turned around to see how Lena felt but she had to find that she was gone. Kara scanned the room, seeing her run out of the door just in that second. Without second thought, she took off after her.

She ran across the corridors of the castle, looking around, trying to find the Luthor girl. Finally, she found her, sitting against a wall, her legs close to her chest, her arms wrapped around them and her head buried between her knees. Kara came closer, slowly and kneeled down in front of her. She eyed her carefully. By the movement of Lena's shoulders, she could tell that she was crying. Kara gently touched Lena's arm. The Slytherin's head shot upwards, rapidly trying to brush away the tears but failing rather miserably.

She sniffled, looking down at her hands. After a few seconds of silence between them, she said quietly: "You must think I'm pathetic."

Kara's eyes widened. "Why would I think that?"

Lena gave a devastated, dark chuckle. "My greatest fear is my own family. I'm a Luthor, my fear should be muggleborns touching me or not being able to learn dark magic. I'm going to be the laughing matter. Why did you even help me back there? They're gonna take it out on you too."

"Don't say that.", Kara said softly. "You're not like your family. You're good. You are a brilliant, kind-hearted, beautiful soul. No one can take that away from you. I believe in you. That's why I helped you... You're my friend."

Lena looked up at her. There was so much pain in her eyes. But also hope and gratitude. "Thank you, Kara. Really. I... I don't know how to thank you."

"You don't have to thank me. Not for that.", Kara smiled. She scooted around her and sat down next to Lena, putting her arm around her and pulling her close. "I will always protect you. And I will always be here for you. I promise."

BONUS SCENE

It had been an hour since the incident in Defence against the Dark Arts class. Kara hadn't left Lena's side since then. They had a free period afterwards anyway so this was easy to do. Soon enough class would start again though and they didn't share the same one there. So Kara wanted to at least spend the rest of their free time together. At one point, Winn came running towards them. They had found a secluded space where no one else was, to talk without anyone listening or staring. "There you are, guys! I've been looking for you!", he said.

"Is something wrong, Winn?", Kara asked worriedly.

"No. Well, actually, um. I just wanted to see how Lena was feeling.", he stammered, fidgeting with his fingers.

Lena frowned. "Well, that's nice but... you don't even know me."

"I know! But I- well, I-", he began, sighed and looked at the ground. Then he sat down and started again. "Look, I... I know how you're feeling."

"I doubt that.", she said, with a raised eyebrow.

"No, really, I-", he sighed again. "When you two ran off, Professor Grant interrupted the lesson. That's why I didn't get my turn to face the boggart. But I still know what shape it would have taken. I know how you feel because... because I know what it's like to be scared of your parent. The boggart would have turned into my dad."

Kara and Lena blinked a few times, uncertain if they'd heard correctly. "Really?", Kara asked sadly.

Winn nodded, looking down at his hands. "My... my father is also in prison. Regular prison because he's a muggle. When he found out that my mom's a witch, he... he lost his mind. He killed six people."

"Oh my god, Winn, I had no idea.", Kara exclaimed, reaching over to touch one of his hands. Winn let out a sad chuckle: "Yeah, well, it's not really something I go around bragging about. I didn't want anyone to think less of me."

"No one would do that!", Kara was quick to respond.

"Are you sure?", Winn returned with a question. "Because I'm not."

"There's always people who will judge you for your family's mistakes. I'm proof.", Lena said bitterly. She looked over at Winn. "Why did you say something now?"

The boy shrugged. "I guess, I just... I wanted you to know you're not alone... with that feeling. That there's someone who gets what you're dealing with."

"That's... that's very considerate and... very nice of you. Thank you.", Lena said, a small, shy smile forming on her lips.

Winn smiled back. As did Kara who started clapping. "Hey, look, now you have two friends!"

Lena laughed and the other two joined in. And Lena did feel better, included, happy. She had friends. Well, she had a friend and... and she had Kara because she couldn't quite call Kara a friend. She embodied so much more than that. She wasn't just her friend, she was her hero.

[evvazi]

The Goddess of Flames

My last fic for Rarepair Week, for the prompt ‘Colours/Powers’, both prompts because they’re really close together in K.

Pairing: Minoru/Anna

Word Count: 3,545

Warnings: Slight violence

Summary: Minoru gets the scare of his life when a bunch of thugs with superpowers attack him, but thankfully he is saved by a mysterious girl that he sets out to find again.

AO3

It had started as a completely normal day. Getting up early had sucked, school was as boring as ever, but at least he’d had some fun playing catch with his friends in the break and his mother’s packed lunch had been tasty as always. Even in hindsight, there was absolutely nothing that could’ve ticked him off to the fact that he’d meet a goddess today.

Minoru had just said goodbye to the last of his friends and rounded the corner to the quiet street that would lead him home when he saw something flash from the corner of his eyes. He really had no way of knowing what it was, but somehow the sickening green of it made him duck on instinct. As he saw a lightning bolt hit the garden fence next to him, he quietly thanked his reflexes and started running. Whatever this was, it was clearly dangerous and he couldn’t afford to be hit by it. That was priority number one, his brain insisted, even though he desperately wanted to turn around and see where it had come from and maybe find out why it was targeted at him in the first place.

Another bolt of lightning missed him by only a few inches and he sped up, fear now seriously creeping up from his stomach and making his throat tight. Someone or something was aiming for him specifically. And judging by the smoke coming from the spot the last shot had hit the street, he might not even survive if he couldn’t outrun it.

His breath was already coming short, but he kept sprinting as fast as he could. Just two more turns and he was home and could alert his mom to what was going on. That was his best shot. Focused as he was, Minoru noticed too late that someone jumped out from the side alley and didn’t raise his arm soon enough to completely block the baseball bat swung at him. It connected with the back of his head with a dull thud and sharp pain spread through his entire body.

He had to have blacked out for a moment, because the next thing he knew, he was already lying on the ground and being dragged into the alley. His vision was swimming, but he could see the one who hit him wore a weird kind of mask, and so did the other two he was talking to.

“Hey man, be a bit more careful next time! Hostages are only useful if they’re alive. We wanna distract the Reds, not get them dead set on revenge again.”

Again…? Who were these ‘Reds’ and why where these people thinking he was important to them? He didn’t know anyone who’d ever been on a revenge quest that wasn’t a fictional character, and the only person he knew who died was his great-grandmother but she’d been like, really old, and died in her sleep…

Minoru was barely aware that his mind had start drifting again as he heard the sound of a car being unlocked and he figured he’d be taken away now, to some evil lair or something, but the earlier panic had yet to come back through the thick walls of fog around his brain.

Then suddenly the whole world was doused in red. Flames were licking at the walls beside him and his three kidnappers were screaming in agony, desperately trying to escape but being engulfed by the flames anyways until they fell to the ground, dead or unconscious he couldn’t tell. It was how he’d always pictured hell to be.

Yet, strangely, he didn’t feel a single ounce of fear. Maybe it was the dull memory that he’d seen a weaker version of these flames not long ago, used by his brother, but he immediately relaxed, knowing they were there to protect him.

Quiet footsteps passed by him, and the flames parted for what Minoru could only assume to be the goddess of fire. Beautiful and regal, with a dress that vaguely looked like it was made of fire too and actual fire wings, she stepped in front of him and addressed the men lying on the ground in front of her.

“Tell your King if he attempts this again, the outcome won’t be this mild. Homra isn’t known for their mercy, and I have no intention of changing that.” Her voice was quiet, but even Minoru could feel a chill running down his spine from the threat, there was no doubt she was absolutely serious.

She turned around, and Minoru only got a glimpse of the destructive fire in her eyes before her expression softened and she knelt down in front of him, stretching out a hand to gently touch his face. It was colder than Minoru had expected and his brain was so hung up on the disparity between her cold hand and the warmth in her gaze, that it took him a while to realize she’d asked him if he was alright.

“Sure,” he blurted out, trying to get up, but abruptly regretting that decision as the world began to spin and he ungraciously fell back on his butt. Okay, maybe he wasn’t alright. The guy had hit him pretty hard after all, so he could easily have a concussion.

The goddess didn’t seem to be bothered by his obvious lie, she simply slid one of his arms over her shoulders and helped him up. It was only then that he noticed she was only about as tall as he was and had a child’s face as well. Maybe she actually was around his age…? She seemed way too amazing for that. None of his classmates had that kind of grace – or that kind of power, for that matter.

Oblivious to his fascination, she simply started walking, and Minoru had to focus all his concentration on keeping up with her and not falling over his own feet.

Before he knew it, they stood in front of his house and she rang the doorbell. Now that the flames were gone, she seemed a little less like a goddess and more like a human, though she still had that otherworldly aura around her.

His mother opened the door and immediately took him into her arms, fussing over him and asking all sorts of questions he could barely keep up with, much less answer. His consciousness started fading again as the safety of his mother’s arms lulled him to sleep, but then he heard quiet footsteps walking away and jerked awake again.

“Wait,” he yelled panicked, “who are you? What’s your name? How…? Why…?” Fuzzy stars were already creeping at the edge of his vison, but he forced himself to stay awake until he heard some sort of answer.

The mysterious girl turned around, facing him again as she said, quiet and sure, just like before: “Anna.”

-

Next thing he knew, Minoru woke up in a hospital bed, unsure if all of that had actually happened or he dreamt up half of it while he was delirious. The girl existed though, he was absolutely sure about that, the memory of her way too clear to be a result of his imagination. His mother confirmed it too, though she was just as clueless as to who she was or where she went as Minoru, her focus had understandably been more on her injured son then on the girl who’d brought him home.

So, as soon as he was released from the hospital, Minoru set out to find her. He didn’t have much to go off of, but he vaguely remembered her mentioning ‘Homra’ and that was a group plenty of his classmates and people on the internet had heard rumours about. It was difficult to piece together what was the truth and what people had just made up, but apparently, it was some sort of street gang with special powers, united under some crazy strong monster who might or might not be dead by now. Well, his kidnappers had said something about revenge…

Most importantly though, the internet gave him a location: Bar Homra in Shizume. He could go look for Anna there, and thank her for saving him. Maybe even ask if she knew why he was attacked if he mustered up the courage for that. It wasn’t a given, seeing how stunned he’d been when he saw her for the first time, and Homra seemed to be full of scary people.

And possibly his brother, too. That wouldn’t be scary, but awkward. If his brother was actually some sort of gang member and didn’t just dress like one, it wasn’t something Minoru wanted to talk about with him, especially not in front of other gang members or Anna, for that matter. But the signs were impossible to ignore. Misaki had used the same powers as Anna. There were rumours about Homra’s vanguard ‘Yatagarasu’ all over the internet. And it would explain why he was attacked – Anna had seen it as an attack against Homra after all. Minoru couldn’t be sure though, and he didn’t know enough about Homra to decide whether it would be cool or disappointing if Misaki actually was a member.

There was no other choice than to go and find out. So, one afternoon after school, he gathered up his resolve and took a train to Shizume. He’d looked up Bar Homra what felt like a million times this past week, so he found it without a problem. His heart was beating like crazy in his chest, and he decided to peek through a window first before going in. Who knew what was going on in there? Minoru knew quite a few things he didn’t want to walk in on that could be happening in a bar that served as a gang’s base.

It turned out to be a good decision, because the first thing he saw was his brother, animatedly talking to the barkeeper. So he really was a member…

Anna wasn’t there, in fact, besides his brother and the barkeeper, there was only one other person inside. A guy who looked like a foreigner was sitting on a couch, not really doing anything or participating in the conversation. Just as it seemed like Misaki was about to leave, Minoru locked eyes with the foreigner and jolted away from the window, sprinting behind the next vending machine to hide himself. He barely made it in time to hear the bell as the door was opened and his brother came out, yelling “See you tomorrow then, Kusanagi-san,” before he jumped on his skateboard and drove away, thankfully not in the direction Minoru was hiding.

Now was the time to go in, he knew that. The bar would open officially soon, and it would only get harder to go I then. Plus, the foreigner had already seen him, so it would seem weird if he took too long to come back. Gulping, he abandoned his hiding place and strode towards the bar. Sure, it was a bit scary, but he really wanted to see Anna again, and this was the only hint he had.

A deep breath, and he pushed the door to the bar open and walked inside. The establishment had a nice, homey atmosphere, but Minoru couldn’t help but be intimidated anyway. The alcohol on display and elegant décor practically screamed ‘adults only’ to him, the guy on the couch fixated him with a gaze he couldn’t quite place, and the bartender seemed freakishly tall now that Minoru stood in front of him.

“We’re not open yet,” the bartender informed him, “and you look a bit young to be here for a drink anyway. Are you lost?” At least he seemed friendly, that made it easier to talk.

“Do you, by any chance, know a girl named Anna?” Now that gave him two pairs of raised eyebrows, and he knew he was at the right place. Excitement spread through his entire body at the thought that he was probably really close to finding her. These people just needed to tell him.

“Well, let’s say I do, who wants to know and why?”

Aw man… He didn’t want to answer that… Especially the ‘who’ part. That would just make things awkward. But he had a feeling if he didn’t answer, this bartender guy would just throw him out. “I’m here because I want to thank her, my name’s Minoru.” It dawned on him too late that he could have just lied, but then maybe Anna would say she didn’t know anyone with that name… Wait, did she even know his name? She knew where he lived, so it wasn’t impossible but he’d never told her.

“Ah, so you’re Yata-chan’s brother then? You just missed him.” Aw, dammit…

“He knows,” the foreign guy suddenly spoke up – in perfect Japanese – startling the crap out of Minoru, “he was looking through the window.” What an asshole. Couldn’t he have kept that to himself? Minoru threw him an angry look, but the snitch didn’t seem to care. In fact, he looked a little smug. Yeah, Minoru definitely didn’t like the guy.

“That so?” Thankfully the bartender didn’t pry any further. Him, Minoru thought he might actually end up liking if he got to know him better. “Eric, Anna’s upstairs, go and get her.”

Eric moved without comment, leaving Minoru to wonder if it meant the bartender was Kusanagi-san if he was apparently called by his first name. And then he stocked. ‘Anna’s upstairs’?! She was here? He was gonna meet her, right now? He wasn’t prepared!

“Come here,” Kusanagi-san(?) beckoned tapping lightly on the bar to get him to sit down, “you want a juice or something?”

Minoru walked on autopilot, his brain not quite caught up with reality yet. “I don’t have any money,” he answered belatedly, as it was still in the back of his mind that he needed all his money for the train ride, and he didn’t know whether he should say yes or no, both somehow seemed rude to him.

He got a glass anyway, filled with pineapple juice, his brother’s favourite. This guy was assuming too much.

“Well, you spent a week in the hospital thanks to us, I think I can afford giving you a juice on the house,” Kusanagi(?) said lightly, but then his voice turned more serious. “Honestly, I’d tell you to stay away from here, because it’s dangerous, but you already got hurt and yet here you are.” He sighed dramatically, as if he told people not to do dangerous things on a day-to-day basis and nobody ever listened to him. “It’s probably pointless.”

If Minoru had thought of an answer, it didn’t matter, because he heard soft footsteps on the stairs and his mind was wiped clean. Anna walked down the stairs with the grace of a ballet dancer, and Minoru could have sworn he saw sparks of flames dance around her, illuminating her face and giving her an otherworldly glow.

His throat suddenly felt dry and he had to swallow repeatedly, eyes glued to Anna as she walked over to him at a measured pace and slid onto the barstool beside him like it was the most normal thing in the world. She didn’t seem surprised in the least to see him.

“Minoru,” she greeted, taking a glass filled with some red liquid from the bartender. “Thank you, Izumo.” She smiled, and Izumo took that as his cue to leave them alone, though he didn’t leave the room, preparing things to open the bar. Eric was back too, in the same position on the same couch, as if he’d never moved at all. Minoru had hoped they’d leave them alone, but he guessed this was fair enough. He got to see Anna, that was all he really wanted. “What brings you here?”

Oh, right. He couldn’t just sit there and stare at her – though somehow that didn’t seem like such a bad pastime to him – he had to actually make conversation. And he did have a reason for coming, he should at least accomplish that.

“I- um, I wanted to say… Thank you for saving me!” He couldn’t really bow in his current position, but Minoru did his best to lower his head as far as he could. Anna needed to know how grateful he was for her interference. It was the first time he’d ever been afraid for his life, yet all unpleasant memories were completely overshadowed by her red, burning away Minoru’s fear along with his kidnappers, leaving nothing but pure awe in the wake of her powers.

Anna remained quiet for a while before she simply answered “You’re welcome.” There was a soft smile on her lips though when Minoru looked up again, so it couldn’t have been the entirely wrong thing to say.

“Oh, and,“ he dug into his school backpack, fishing out a box of his favourite chocolates that the store clerk had put a ribbon – red, of course, no other colour would fit her – on for him, “this is for you. I know it’s not much and I don’t know what you like, but I thought everyone likes chocolate, so… yeah.” He held the box out for her.

“Thank you.” Anna accepted the present, smiling wider than before, and… was that a blush on her cheeks? It wasn’t very pronounced, so he couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like it at least.

Minoru’s heart began beating faster at the sight and he couldn’t help but smile back at her.

There was one last thing he wanted to say though. “That fire thing you did… I have absolutely no idea how you did it, but it was by far the coolest thing I’ve ever seen! Like, fire should be scary, but all I could think was that it looked beautiful and that it was there to protect me!”

Anna’s gaze became warm at that, but there was also something else to it, a depth he couldn’t quite grasp. “Yes, I like my Red as well.” For a moment, it seemed like there was something else she wanted to say, but then she shook her head. “Is there anything cool that you can do?” she asked instead.

Him? Nothing of that calibre, definitely. But he had done quite a few ridiculous and difficult things on dares, so he lapsed into a tale of how he’d climbed out of a third-floor window of his school once when he’d been dared to stay and had been locked in the classroom. At first, he’d wondered if she’d only asked to be polite or to stir the conversation away from her powers, but she seemed genuinely amused, even if she didn’t laugh even once.

Somehow, they kept talking after that. The bar was eventually opened and they moved to one of the couches and Anna eventually opened her chocolates and tasted one, but those were the only markers that time passed. So Minoru was taken off-guard when the bartender came over in a quiet moment and asked Anna what she wanted for dinner and if Minoru was going to stay.

He looked at the clock on his PDA. 20:26. “Nooooooooo,” he exclaimed, dread settling in his stomach. It was way, way past time he should be home. And now that he thought of it, he probably smelled like alcohol and cigarettes after having spent the entire evening at a bar. “Shit,” he cursed under his breath, “mom is gonna kill me.”

But he didn’t want to leave. He’d had so much fun, but he couldn’t just keep dropping by now that he didn’t have a reason anymore… And his brother might be there too. Not that he cared as much now, Homra didn’t seem to be full of terrible people after all, but still. It would be weird. Not talking to Anna anymore seemed just as horrible though.

In a flash, he pulled out a pen and a piece of paper from his backpack and scribbled his phone number on it, handing it to Anna before he could lose confidence in his idea. “I really gotta go now, but if you ever wanna hang out again, just call. Or just text if you’re bored or something! See ya!”

Anna nodded and took the piece of paper with a serious expression. “Goodbye.” Her voice was as monotone as ever, but Minoru wasn’t at all discouraged by it, Anna would call if she wanted to, and after today, he was 99% sure she did.

Then he bolted out of the door, hoping a train would come fast so his mom wouldn’t be any angrier than she needed to be.

Just before the door fell shut behind him, he could hear Eric’s voice saying “At this rate, Yata’s brother is gonna get himself laid faster than he does,” followed by a loud crash.

A blush crept up his cheeks. He wasn’t trying to get laid! That was way, way out of his league. But… maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he could go somewhere with Anna, just the two of them, and then, just maybe, they could hold hands-

Minoru broke into a run, hoping it would hide why he was so flushed and breathing irregularly.

[roseisread]

Top 25 Movies of 2016

I saw 51 of the many more films released in 2016, so naturally this list suffers from the usual incompleteness. But of those 51, the movies listed below are the ones that really stuck with me, entertained me, moved me, or made me see the world through a different lens after the credits rolled. Some of them are deeply personal and hold great meaning; others are just a great excuse to laugh or shudder or sob about something that doesn’t matter so you don’t have to think about the things in real life that might evoke that reaction for a couple hours. 

If you saw something amazing that didn’t make the list, be sure to let me know so I can add it to my watchlist (or defend my choice to leave it off the list of faves). 

25. Zootopia (Netflix) At a time when the world was finding reasons to divide itself into fractious subgroups, along came a winsome little animated film about tolerance and eschewing stereotypes. The animation is top notch, the story is funny and action-packed, and any scene featuring the sloth from the DMV threatened my ability to breathe because I was laughing so hard. If you missed it in theaters, be sure to catch up with it on Netflix. It’s a real gem. 

24. The Conjuring 2 (Amazon/iTunes rental) The first Conjuring got a ton of acclaim but I wasn’t that enamored with it. This one, on the other hand, totally delivers. Once again, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson star as paranormal investigators who are plagued by dark forces. This time, the action centers on a family in England (inspired by the somewhat infamous Enfield Poltergeist) with an unwanted apparition who interacts with them in all kinds of upsetting ways. Rather than relying solely on jump scares, there’s a lot of great suspenseful sequences and practical effects that use the atmosphere and physical space to masterful effect. Plus, the characters are likable and we are rooting for them which goes a long way toward making this a better than average horror movie. 

23. The Edge of Seventeen (Theaters) Hailee Steinfeld plus Woody Harrelson equals brilliance. Add to the mix the savvy direction of first timer Kelly Fremon Craig and the charming supporting cast (particularly Hayden Szeto) and you have a winning combo that leaves other teen dramedies in the dust. The story is relatable for anyone who experienced high school: Nadine feels alienated at school and at home, partly because high school sucks and parents just don’t understand but also partly because she sees herself as just a little bit superior to her peers and family members. She’s a classic Holden Caulfield type, really. When her best friend starts dating Nadine’s brother and mortal enemy, she takes it as a personal betrayal. Between this, her crush on a bad boy type, and her tentative steps toward romance with a nerdy but sweet classmate, she’s got a lot on her plate. Naturally, she takes solace by venting to her favorite teacher, the bemused Harrelson who takes all of her abuse and whining with stoic aplomb. 

22. Jackie (Theaters) I was born in 1981, which means I don’t have any personal connection to Jackie O. the way people of my parents generation did. I don’t have recollections of seeing her on TV or experiencing the Kennedy assassination, but I’ve been hearing about it all my life and thus feel like I know the story. This movie took me by surprise by showing me something new, something I’d never considered: The personal grief of a tremendously public loss. Natalie Portman embodies the carefully manicured public persona as well as the private devastation of Jackie Kennedy in the days surrounding JFK’s death. It’s not a traditional biopic, and not a traditional historical drama. That makes sense coming from Chilean director Pablo Larrain, who also gave us the excellent political thriller/comedy No a few years ago. He captures pivotal moments and edits them together into a kind of fractured consciousness befitting the recently bereft Jackie. 

21. 10 Cloverfield Lane (Amazon/GooglePlay rental) I’ve still never seen the original Cloverfield (I know, I know), but I do love me some John Goodman being a possible creeper so I had to see this movie. The title really was an afterthought; the story was written independent of the horror franchise and marketing decided a built-in audience and some name recognition would boost ticket sales. All of this to say, you don’t need to know or love Cloverfield to know and love 10 Cloverfield Lane. Essentially it’s a chamber piece, modeled on some of Hitchcock’s techniques (Lifeboat/Rope/Dial M for Murder).  Oh and also the original script got a once-over by a certain Damien Chazelle, who was once slated to direct it as well until Whiplash got greenlit and then he got a little busy making a movie called La La Land which may or may not be definitely coming up later in this list so... yeah. But anyways. It’s got that breathlessness and intensity Chazelle brought to life in his other movies, but this time in an actual horror/suspense setting. Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Gallagher, Jr. play Goodman’s reluctant houseguests in his underground bunker. Goodman claims to be protecting them from something horrible outside; they’re not sure whether to believe him or to trust their instinct that the something horrible is Goodman himself. All three performances are excellent, and your nerves will be frayed little bundles by the time 103 minutes is up. 

20. Certain Women (Theaters) Just watching this movie made me feel physically cold. It takes place in Montana, and is essentially a triptych that follows three different women in the same small town. The first, played by Laura Dern, is an attorney with a particularly high maintenance client (Jared Harris). The second is a woman (Michelle Williams) who feels alienated from her husband and their teenage daughter, even as the family is working on building a house together. The final story, and by far my favorite, focuses on a farmhand (the glorious Lily Gladstone in a breakout role) who chances upon a night class taught by Kristen Stewart and becomes transfixed. This is a quiet film, about women who yearn for more than their lives so far have given them. Each one deals with the small injustices and tiny victories that ordinary events bestow, but one senses beneath the surface a lingering question of “Is this all there is?” In that way, it’s totally relatable. There aren’t a lot of major plot arcs here, but that’s exactly the point of the film. In watching this movie, you realize that Henry David Thoreau’s quote about the masses leading lives of quiet desperation might well be answered by Simone de Beauvoir: “I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.” 

19. Don’t Think Twice (YouTube/GooglePlay rental) If you listen to podcasts at all (especially This American Life, WTF, or You Made It Weird), you should know the name Mike Birbiglia by now. He’s a comic turned actor/writer/director and this is his latest original work. This time, he enlisted fellow talented comics to join him onscreen: Chris Gethard, Gillian Jacobs, Keegan Michael Key, Kate Micucci, and Tami Sagher play his friends and fellow members of an improv troupe. They’re all people you know or have been--starving artist types who are holding onto a dream that comedy will one day pay the bills and take them to the next level. When that actually happens to one of them, the group dynamic shifts considerably. As Morrissey so accurately sings, “We hate it when our friends become successful.” But really, the truth is we hate ourselves when our friends become successful. It makes us question whether it’s a matter of deserving it or working hard or random chance.  The great thing about this movie is the blend of truly hilarious comedic moments and stirring emotional honesty. It’s about friendship, it’s about surviving your thirties, it’s about figuring out if the dreams you’ve had your whole life are the dreams you still actually want to come true. If you can get through Gillian Jacobs’ incredible solo improv performance toward the end of this movie without tears, you get to be the new Clear Eyes spokesperson instead of Ben Stein. 

18. Love and Friendship (Amazon Prime) This movie features one of the funniest characters of the year, an immensely clueless rich dolt named Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett), who marvels at the existence of peas and struggles to arrive at the correct number of commandments. Who could be responsible for such a creation? Well, who else but the writer whose best work pokes fun at social climbers and wealthy nitwits: Jane Austen. Whit Stillman adapted her little known work Lady Susan into this charming and hilarious period piece starring Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny, Stephen Fry, and Xavier Samuel. Beckinsale does her absolute greatest work in this movie--I had no idea she was capable of this kind of performance, and she absolutely slays. As far as Austen adaptations go, this one is my favorite since Clueless--and that’s about the highest praise I could offer. 

17. Don’t Breathe (YouTube/Amazon/Vudu Rental) The premise of Fede Alvarez’s sophomore thriller is simple: A trio of young Detroit opportunists break into the home of a blind veteran (Stephen Lang) after hearing he’s got a lot of cash in the house, figuring it’ll be an easy score. But they underestimate this particular blind man and his ability to protect his home and property. The result is a fast-paced cat and mouse game that will definitely have you holding your breath for long chunks of time. I had a blast watching this movie, even if it should have ended a few scenes earlier than it did. 

16. Hell or High Water (Amazon/iTunes/GooglePlay Rental) One of my favorite pieces of music, classical or otherwise, is Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. This composition was directly inspired by a speech delivered by Henry Wallace in 1942, which outlined the cause of freedom and the stakes of World War II while also setting a tone for the whole century as one in which ordinary people--the common man--would share the same standard of living, of educational and economic opportunity, of scientific discovery.  An excerpt of this speech reads thusly: “When the freedom-loving people march; when the farmers have an opportunity to buy land at reasonable prices and to sell the produce of their land through their own organizations, when workers have the opportunity to form unions and bargain through them collectively, and when the children of all the people have an opportunity to attend schools which teach them truths of the real world in which they live — when these opportunities are open to everyone, then the world moves straight ahead.” Well, the world has continued moving since those words were spoken, but those opportunities are certainly not yet open to everyone despite promises all around that anyone in America should be able to succeed on grit and good will alone. When grit and good will fail to deliver, some people give up and some people become outlaws. That’s where we find our protagonists in this movie, Toby and Tanner Howard (Chris Pine and Ben Foster, respectively), as it opens. They’re robbing banks out of perceived necessity, and also out of a sense of Karma not acting quite fast enough for their liking. Meanwhile, a pair of Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham) get assigned to the case and aim to catch up with whoever’s responsible and give ‘em hell.  The film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, and the screenplay contains scintillating dialogue and the kind of characters you might find in a classic Western, plus a final showdown for the ages. On the performance side, there’s not a weak one in the bunch. Chris Pine proves he’s more than just a pretty face and Jeff Bridges sheds his Dude persona to give an even better performance here than in his Oscar-winning turn in Crazy Heart. If you need a movie to watch with your Dad that you can both enjoy, this is that movie. 

15. De Palma (Amazon Prime) Sisters. Carrie. Dressed to Kill. Blow Out. Mission Impossible. Body Double. Scarface. The Untouchables. Casualties of War. About 20 other films--all directed by Brian De Palma, the subject of this documentary. For some, he’s alienating. For me, this guy is legendary. His films pick up where Hitchcock left off and go running off in their own bonkers directions, oozing style and excess and delivering tawdry and thrilling twists along the way. I’m convinced that one day he’ll be revered by film students and not just genre lovers, and at that point this doc will serve as a Hitchcock/Truffaut type text.  The doc is really just De Palma going through his filmography chronologically, shots of him talking edited together with clips from every one of his movies and archival behind the scenes footage. That might sound boring but I promise you it is not. He tells lots of stories, does not shy away from pointing out the flaws and issues in his movies, and reflects on the reception his movies have received from critics and cultural scholars over the years. He also tells some fascinating stories from his youth that shed light on the types of movies he grew up to make. He also talks a lot about his techniques and the way his shooting style developed. If you are interested in filmmaking or De Palma or both, this movie will have you riveted from start to finish.

14. Manchester by the Sea (Theaters) For a meditation on grief and loss, this movie made me laugh a lot. That might sound inappropriate, but if you’ve ever experienced loss yourself, you know it’s not linear and doesn’t follow rules or codes of conduct. Sometimes you laugh at inopportune times. Sometimes you want to cry and can’t. Sometimes you melt down at the sight of frozen food (see what I did there? Melt/frozen! Ahh I kill me sometimes).  Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges make a great onscreen team, with Affleck playing Lee Chandler and Hedges playing Patrick, Lee’s teenage nephew. They’ve both lost someone important to them, but neither is great at opening up on the subject. Lee does his best to take care of his nephew, but he feels ill-equipped to be the stable parental figure Patrick needs. For his part, Patrick would prefer to keep things the way they are. “I have two girlfriends and I’m in a band!” he points out, and who is Lee to argue with that kind of logic? 

Of course I can’t finish discussing this movie without highlighting the luminous presence of Michelle Williams, who owns every second she’s onscreen (which isn’t very long). Her final scene with Affleck broke me right in two. 

13. Born to be Blue (Digital Purchase) Every year springs new musical biopics upon us, to varying degrees of creativity and critical acclaim or derision. My favorite one from 2016 was Robert Budreau’s nonlinear narrative inspired by incidents from the life of Chet Baker as portrayed by Ethan Hawke, who gives his best performance outside a movie with “Before” in the title. For the unfamiliar, Chet Baker is best known as the singer of “My Funny Valentine” today, but he was also a prominent jazz trumpet player and part of the West Coast jazz scene in the 1950s and 60s. As so many artist types, his genius was often threatened by his dalliances with substances and people whose momentary glamor gave way to decay and destruction. 

Hawke captures Baker’s charming qualities as well as his tendencies toward self-sabotage, and the movie does not feel like a typical biopic as it incorporates a more meditative approach than a chronological one. There’s also a movie-within-the-movie which adds to the novel feel and keeps this from just hitting all the major events in Baker’s life in order. Carmen Ejogo is excellent as Baker’s primary love interest, a complex and well-drawn foil for the troubled musician. Her character is an amalgam of real life people, but she stands out as more than just your typical long-suffering wife/lover trope. 

12. Fences (Theaters) August Wilson’s intimate play gets the cinematic treatment at the hands of Denzel Washington, who both directed and stars here. Troy (Washington) is a garbage man who drinks a lot and talks a lot more to his wife Rose (Viola Davis), his friend Bono (Stephen Henderson), his son Cory (Jovan Adeppo), and others who show up at his doorstep.  The story is simple, but the characters are anything but. This may be my favorite ever Denzel performance, and certainly my pick for Best Actor in a Leading Role of 2016. Davis is phenomenal too, in a quiet but steady way. And not as many people are talking about Stephen Henderson, who played Bono in the play as well as the movie, but he’s excellent.  If you want to hear beautifully written dialogue (and monologues), see some of the year’s best performances, and be moved by a family drama that feels relevant even though it was written and set in a bygone era, go see Fences. 

11. Midnight Special (On Demand) In the first of two Jeff Nichols-directed movies that came out in 2016, Michael Shannon (a frequent Nichols collaborator) is a father trying to protect his son. The boy has some unique abilities, to say the least, and everyone from cult leaders to government agencies wants to exploit those abilities. It’s part superhero origin story, part Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and all about the joy, terror, and unbridled love that come with being a parent.  The movie features memorable visuals as well as supporting performances from Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, and Adam Driver. The ending may leave you with more questions than answers, but the emotions it evokes are unmistakable.

10. Tower (iTunes) In 1966, a lone gunman stood atop a tower on the University of Texas campus and opened fire on the unsuspecting people below. For the next 96 minutes, chaos and carnage took over the scene as law enforcement and campus officials tried to devise a way to stop the shooter without endangering more lives. This documentary tells the story of that day from the perspective of people who were there, using interviews and re-staging events using rotoscoping animation.  The result is one of the most powerful documentaries in recent memory (outside of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence). Hearing from victims, bystanders, police officers, journalists, and students who experienced this firsthand reveals so much about the nature of trauma, the way we react in extreme circumstances, and the contrast between what was then a first-of-its kind incident and what is now an all too frequent occurrence: The campus shooting spree. It’s never preachy, just lets each person tell their own story. Always, the focus is on the people on the ground rather than the person behind the violence. It’s a must-see film.

9. Arrival (Theaters) Denis Villeneuve has become one of my favorite directors of recent years, and it’s great to see a film of his get embraced so widely by audiences as well as critics. In case you haven’t yet seen it, this movie features Amy Adams as a linguist and Jeremy Renner as a scientist. Both of them have been recruited to help the government communicate with the aliens who have recently parked giant pods all over the world.  The movie opens with a much more human story, and if you cried at the beginning of Up you will certainly shed tears here too. I won’t give more away than that, but what happens informs the emotions and decisions made throughout the film in interesting ways.  I love the visuals of this film, and the emotional arc of the story. I also adored all the technical linguistic things that were going on, and I don’t know enough about science or language to know whether they were plausible so I’m just going to assume ignorance is bliss and aids in suspension of disbelief. There is one scene that seems to create a divide in audiences between loving and hating this movie. I won’t explain beyond saying it involves a phone call, so if you’ve seen it you know what I’m talking about. I can understand the criticism, but for me it was not enough to derail all that came before and after.  If you haven’t seen this yet and you like your science fiction with a few tugs on the heartstrings, this is definitely worth your time. 

8. The Lobster (Amazon/iTunes/GooglePlay Rental) I adore this movie, but that does not mean you will. I have to put that caveat right up front. In fact, at least one person I recommended this movie to absolutely hated it. So, take my opinion with a grain of salt but I will try to convey truth in advertising.  Yorgos Lanthimos, whose previous films were Dogtooth and Alps, makes his English language debut with this dystopian romantic comedy. Colin Farrell, John C. Reilly, Rachel Weisz, Ben Wishaw, Lea Seydoux, and Olivia Colman are the human subjects who populate the story. In their world, if you find yourself without a partner, you go to a hotel where you have 45 days to pair up with someone. If you do not find a suitable match, then at the end of 45 days you get turned into the animal of your choice. You can extend the time of your matchmaking opportunities by going out to the forest and hunting “loners,” people who have escaped from the hotel in the past and choose to live lives of solitude.  It’s a wacky premise, but leads to numerous laugh out loud scenarios in addition to the more plaintive moments. I should warn you that there is a scene or two of violence involving an animal, which may be tough to watch for some. That may be one of the reasons people hate it. But as a critique of human behavior and society’s obsessions, it’s quite an effective parable. 

The latter half of the film takes a different turn, and while I don’t want to give away what happens, that’s why I called this a “romantic” comedy. You may not want to watch it with your date on Valentine’s Day, but if you do it should certainly give you much to discuss afterward.

7. April and the Extraordinary World (YouTube/Vudu/GooglePlay/Amazon Rental) This animated steampunk French film features a talking cat and a whipsmart girl and an underground lair and a bunch of other wondrous things that I don’t dare attempt to describe. It’s an alternative history film, it features the voice of the marvelous Marion Cotillard, and it should’ve been nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars. Alas, it was not. But if you want to watch a gorgeous, funny, charming film that might inspire a generation of girls to go into STEM careers, watch this. 

6. The Neon Demon (Amazon Prime) I feel intoxicated every time I even recall this sumptuous film. If you missed my review of it earlier this year, go check it out and then go watch this film... if you dare.

5. Sing Street (Netflix) This is, hands down, the feel good movie of the year. Written and directed by John Carney, who gave us Once and Begin Again, this film is set in Ireland in the early 1980s. The premise is simple, really: A boy starts a band to impress a girl that’s out of reach. Not only does he hope to impress her with the music, but he convinces her to star in their music videos since she’s seeking a career as a model. Then he has to actually form the band, and learn how to play instruments and write songs. Along the way, his older and cooler brother educates him on the cool musicians of the day: The Smiths, Duran Duran, The Clash, The Jam, Hall & Oates, The Cure, Spandau Ballet.  The original songs in this film are super catchy and fun, and serve as homages to the great bands referenced above. If you’re a sucker for the films of John Hughes, the music of the 80s, and stories about brothers and coming of age and following your dreams, this is the movie for you. 

4. The Handmaiden (Theaters) Take a novel  set in Victorian England about pickpockets, conmen, and insane asylums that’s been referred to as “lesbian Dickens” (Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith), and set it in colonial South Korea, and make sure it’s directed by the guy who made Oldboy. This is a recipe for the most gorgeously photographed, erotically charged, bonkers in the best way movie of the year.  I don’t want to get too far into the story which has so many delicious surprises, but the quick version is that an orphan pickpocket goes to live with a rich but possibly mentally ill young woman to serve as her handmaiden. This is all in an attempt to con said rich young woman into a marriage plot with a smooth talking ne’er do well man. And there’s also the added wrinkle of the rich girl’s creepy uncle, who collects banned erotic books and holds readings in his library for men who pass through. It’s a very unsettling atmosphere for two young ladies, and they form a bond with one another in spite of themselves.  There are moments of horror, laughter, and blush-inducing romance in this unrated film (don’t watch it with Grandma unless she has a very open mind and you have a very comfortable relationship). Its runtime is 145 minutes but I wanted to stay in this world forever. 

3. Green Room (Amazon/iTunes/GooglePlay Rental) We lost too many good people last year, and Anton Yelchin was one of the losses that hurt the most. In this movie, he gives arguably his best performance as a member of a punk band that gets in way over its head when they take a gig for gas money that takes place in a remote area where most of the audience is neo-Nazi skinheads. They get through the performance, uncomfortable as it is, but the real trouble happens later when one of them witnesses something their hosts really don’t want them to see. From there, it’s a tense stalemate as the band members have to improvise and evaluate who can be trusted. The movie is directed by Jeremy Saulnier, who gave us the excellent and underrated Blue Ruin a few years ago. This one has a similar blend of regular people in irregular situations, with plenty of blood and gore but also a fair bit of humor and a whole lot of real raw punk rock, both on the soundtrack and in the aesthetic. It helps that Saulnier was in a band himself back in the day, so he brings a real authenticity to the characters in the movie.  This stayed atop my “best of the year” list all the way into December, when I finally saw the last two films on my list. I’ve watched it multiple times and would watch it many more. If you took delight in a video of a Nazi getting punched a few weeks back, you should definitely watch this movie. And if you didn’t, well, you should still watch this movie. 

2. Moonlight (Theaters/Digital Purchase) Barry Jenkins (director/co-writer) and Tarell Alvin McCraney (co-writer) have created a moving, timeless piece of visual poetry in this film that captures three significant chapters in the life of a young man named Chiron. When we first meet him, he’s maybe six or seven years old and people call him “Little.” He hides out in an abandoned house to escape from neighborhood bullies, and is discovered by Juan (Mahershala Ali), a local drug dealer with a complicated moral compass. Juan and his wife Teresa (Janelle Monae) become de facto surrogate parents to Little, whose mom (Naomie Harris) works late and brings random men home and sells their belongings off piece by piece to afford the drugs she craves.  In the second chapter, Little is now “Chiron,” in high school and life hasn’t gotten easier. He’s still quiet, still has a troubled relationship with his mom, and feels pretty alone in his peer group with the exception of his friend Kevin. He and Kevin share an unexpected but life-changing evening on the beach that is intimate and believable and raw. The next day at school, however, another life-changing exchange takes place between the two young men and this one is even more visceral in its immediate and long lasting impact on Chiron’s future. Finally, we see him as “Black,” a little older and transformed from the skinny vulnerable teen into a muscular, physically intimidating presence. He’s clearly fighting against his past by embracing everything he can to seem larger than life and untouchable, in both his physical appearance and his lifestyle. He gets a phone call one night that reconnects him with a part of his past he could never quite shake. I won’t spoil what happens next, but the final twenty minutes of this movie are a perfect encapsulation of long-suppressed feelings finally forcing their way out into the open. It’s such a personal story, but the specifics make it so relatable that it feels universal in its specificity.  The performances in this movie are wonderful, the cinematography is gorgeous, the score is amazing--I could go on for years. To me, this movie showed a story I’ve never seen on screen before, from a perspective that’s completely underrepresented in pop culture. It never feels manipulative or stereotypical or preachy--just real and achingly human. Some moments in this movie have replayed themselves over and over in my mind hundreds of times, and even having seen it twice in the theater I can’t wait to study every frame of it on multiple viewings once it’s available on Blu-Ray. I want it to seep into my bones the way it seeped into my heart. 1. La La Land (Theaters) “This is the kind of movie that just fills your heart up,” I texted a friend the second I exited the theater after seeing La La Land the first of three times (and counting). And every time I watch it, my heart overflows a little more. Here’s a film that will resonate differently depending on your frame of mind when you watch it, the same way Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind can feel funny or sweet or tragic or dark or romantic depending on your current relationship status.  At first glance, Damien Chazelle may seem to be showing off in his follow up to Whiplash, tapping into an easy sentimentality that short circuits our center of reason by throwing in references to Singin’ in the Rain, Casablanca, West Side Story, and an LA that probably only ever existed in the imaginations of the people who never actually visited the City of Stars but fell in love with its many portrayals on the silver screen. And yes, Hollywood does love stories about itself and yes, the novelty of an original movie musical does scream “anachronistic film school prodigy.” So I get the skepticism, I truly do. I can’t promise this movie will live up to the hype of a record-tying number of Oscar nominations for you, but I can tell you that it means so much more than that to me. It’s not just another charming but forgettable throwback (I’m looking at you, The Artist).  In case you haven’t yet experienced this movie, a quick breakdown: Sebastian and Mia, portrayed by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, are both in LA chasing their dreams of artistic success. He’s a jazz pianist; she’s an actress. Neither has quite made it, and “making it” to them means doing something authentic on their own terms which makes success even more elusive. Compromise may be part of real life but neither of them is quite ready to give up the fantasy yet. Their relationship starts off adversarial, then tentative, then before you know it they’re literally floating into space so carried away are they with love and visions of a future together. The stages of their lives and the story are divided up by seasons, and sure as summer follows spring, you can’t get through the year without the fall. Fall in this movie has a double meaning, and the cute flirty interludes give way to frustrated sighs and changing priorities. Other seasons follow, which I will not spoil, but I will say that the final five or ten minutes of this movie could stand on their own and still be my favorite film of 2016. People compared Whiplash to The Red Shoes, and I would make the same comparison to this film although for different reasons. The ballet sequence of The Red Shoes and the final sequence of La La Land share an artistic splendor the can induce wonder and catharsis in equal measure. I’m prone to quoting Charles Bukowski, so I’m going to close by quoting him again. I think the following poems explain the core of this film, and why it resonates so much with me: “the area dividing the brain and the soul is affected in many ways by experience – some lose all mind and become soul: insane. some lose all soul and become mind: intellectual. some lose both and become: accepted.” --You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense “if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.” --So You Want To Be a Writer?

[georgebenjiart]

NANOWRIMO

Okay, so I only got 2,599 words. lol. This is a story that I’ve been working on and crafting for 3 years now, with the help of my older sibling who isn’t on tumblr. At one point I had 10k long novella written out for it. There’s also a 2nd 10k long novella from another character’s perspective as well. This is most likely going to be the first chapter, and I’m sorry that it’s really rough. This story doesn’t have a name, but at one point it was known as How I Lived, so I’ll be referring to it as HIL until I decide on something better.

HIL-

(if you’d prefer the google doc link to read it, dm me)

Words- 2599

Summary- A world where your chest glows a color when you’re near your soulmate, Heath, a boy who doesn’t believe in soulmates, or love, gets the biggest surprise. (note: only about half of this is in the story so far lmao)

Story:

My brother always tells me that waiting is even better than the reward, but to that I say bullshit. That’s all we do, right? We just sit back and wait. We wait until it’s time to talk to our friends, we wait until it’s time to go to sleep, to wake up, to go to work, to go home. Loops and endless waiting. My brother will die on a hill claiming that the wait is the best part. Personally, I think he’s just looking for an explanation as to why he hasn’t found his soulmate yet.

--

Like clockwork, Mel knocks on my door at six-forty-five that morning and I’m out the door, a quick goodbye to Onus and my backpack swinging onto my shoulder.

“Alright, spill. Jungle Blitz 4 demo, promising or no?” Last night we were up on a voice call waiting for leaks of the newest demo of the next game in our favorite video game series. Mel had to go to bed before the demo dropped.

“Depends. Do you like good games or not?”

“Oh God. That bad?”

“Think Kingsley has a kid.”

“So… good then?”

“Continue thinking, Lane is canon.”

“Holy shitting fuck. No.”

“Yes.”

Mel squeals a little bit and I know she’s going to be smiling about this for the rest of the day. “I can't believe the audacity of them to release the demo on the first day of school.”

“Oh, come one, it was world wide, they didn’t do it just to spite you.”

“You don’t know that, Heath.” Mel wiggles her finger at me and I can’t tell if she’s completely serious or not.

We continue our conversation as we make our way to school and as we pass through the student parking lot, a group of jock-ish seniors slow their conversation to glare at me. Mel just kind of glances my way and we don’t say anything about it.

“Alright, your first period is Mr. Long in room 105? Algebra 1?” I flip my hair out of my eyes and Mel laughs just a little bit.

“Get a haircut, and yeah. Well, yeah and no. Mr. Long in room 105, yeah. But it’s for Algebra 2.”

“How in the- That’s… I’m only in geometry you smart bitch.”

“Yeah! Remember, I was ahead of you in middle school too.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I walk her to her class and hug her goodbye. “Good luck, sorry you’re like ten minutes early.”

“Eh, it’s the first day, who cares?” Mel shrugs and her jackets make a sound.

As soon as Mel enters her class, the first bell rings and I head to the stairs. On my way up, I spot a very confused and short freshman gripping their class schedule.

“You need help finding your first period?” I’m afraid my voice scared the poor kid.

“My.. My brother said that he would… he would walk me to my first period.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t… know.”

“I can help you in the meantime, can I walk you to you class?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Okay, coo. What’s your class?”

“Room 105.”

“Hey, I just walked my friend Mel there. She’s super nice, and a freshman like you.” I turn around and motion for them to follow me. “So what’s your name?” After a beat, “And pronouns.” They look very feminine, short bleached pigtails, blue tips, very big, bright blue eyes, a small button nose, and a thin pink jacket.

“Naomi.. And uh.. She/her.”

“Okay, cool. I’m Heath and I use he/him.” I smile at her, but she still looks like she’s ready to explode any second. “So what are you into? Do you play video games or anything?”

“Um… Kind of, not really.” We get to her class and I point at Mel, who is sitting at a table by herself.

“Go make sure Mel makes at least one friend, please.”

“Sure.. thing…” Naomi then rushes into the class, her tiny backpack bouncing with her.

When I finally get to my class, I choose a seat towards the back of the class, having not recognized any friendly faces in the crowd. My first four classes go by slowly, my teachers discuss silibi and give us “peer bonding” assignments to get to know the classmates we’ve known since freshman year. Lacking as that sounds, it’s still stressful and by the time I get to lunch, I’ve forgotten that Mel and I have the same lunch.

“Heath, I’ve been texting you. What the heck?” Mel sits down next to me, startling me from the astral plane my soul had traveled to.

“Oh, sorry, I was spacing out.” I check my phone, sure enough there’s five unread messages about lunch.

Then Naomi sits down next to Mel and gives me a little wave.

“Hey, you have lunch with us!” That gets a simple smile from Naomi. I pull a piece of bread from my backpack and begin to chow down.

“You cannot be serious.” Mel glares at me, her glasses slipping down her nose.

“What?” I ask, my mouth full.

“That’s your lunch?” Mel has pulled out a sandwich and soda can, while Naomi has a bag of chips and a salad.

“Yeah. I slept in this morning and Onus forgot to make me lunch.”

“Oh for christ’s sake, here,” Mel pulls out a second sandwich from her bag and hands it to me.

“Ohoho, thank you!” I kiss Mel’s hand begin to chow down a second time.

Just then, a loud bang sounds and we look over from our cafeteria table near the double doors, to see none other than Ronnie fucking Yule, their face pressed against the glass. “Let me in bro,” they mouth.

“Who’s that?” Mel asks.

“Ronnie, they’re in our discord server. You’ve talked to them before.” I open the door for then and they join us at our four-person table.

“My little brotato chips, what is cracking?” I can just feel the cringe radiating off of Naomi and I’d be lying if I said the only reason why I wasn’t cringing as well was because I love Ronnie with my entire fucking heart.

“Not much, just my bones.” And then I crack my neck.

“Oh, yucky. Hey, who’re you, you little carraromo?” Ronnie is talking more so at Naomi, rather than with her. That’s just a thing that they tend to do tho.

“I’m N-Naomi.”

“Sweet! Hey, so say you’re not just Naomi, but also a sister. Would you be having a brother who is on the football team?”

“Uh… Yes…?”

At this point in the conversation I’ve spaced out again and only really care about my sweet sandwich. I wait for lunch to end. Then I wait for the day to be over and I walk home with Mel.

I ask her if she plans on joining any clubs, she says no. I ask her what she thought of Naomi, she tells me Naomi is pretty cool so far. I ask her how her day went, apparently okay. I ask her if she wants to hang out at my house to play Jungle Blitz, she says yes.

My house isn’t much to look at, to be fair I’m surprised we still have it. It’s a mobile home, and a very homely one at that. It’s painted a perfect suburban beige on the outside, and a sickly sweet yellow on the inside. Our kitchen and livingroom are mostly connected, but there’s still a breakfast bar separating the two. We have fairly lights up in the living room year round because one reason or another when Onus and I were younger. The house always smells like either musty old books or whatever was most recently cooked, usually pancakes or spaghetti.

I sprawl out on the couch, Mel takes her place on the floor, leaning back on the couch, and she starts playing the third Jungle Blitz game. “I need one of the achievements still.” I fall in and out of sleep, watching Mel play. We hold a running commentary on events of the game, events which I am so well in tune with that I’m able to talk about them in my sleep apparently.

Mel leaves after a few hours, and I’m free to sort out the stack of silibi and other assorted papers I need my mom to sign. I leave them on the couch and I head to bed.

The next day of school is the first day of one of the three clubs I’m a part of (I know, social butterfly Heath), which is the first thing Onus informs me of when he hands me the stack of papers my mom signed sometime during the night. The next thing he tells me is that he’s made pancakes. I’m out of bed, ready for school and pounding my fists on the table within the next four minutes.

“Calm down, bro. I have a headache.” Onus serves me the pancakes and it takes everything in my not to eat the plate with the pancakes. “Didn’t put butter on-” I take a bite out of the stick of butter on the breakfast bar. “No. No, jesus christ, not this early in the morning you fucking gremlin.”

“Awugh c’mon O-nie,” I spit some crumbs his way and he rubs his temples.

“How old are you? Six or sixteen?”

“As if a six year old could be as funny as me.”

“Fucking Hell.”

“I have club today?”

“Chew your goddamn food. Yes, you have GSA today. Tomorrow you have DnD.” Onus reaches into his backpack haphazardly lain on the kitchen counter to pull out a textbook and a bunch of papers.

“What- that?” I swallow my food between words.

“Just some biomed bullshit. Doesn’t really matter.”

“Ah.” Just as he spreads his papers out to start working on them, there’s a knock at the door, and I’m stuffing my papers in my messenger bag and sprinting out the door, tugging shoes on as I run.

“Guess who got breakfast this morning!” I brag.

“You, for once?” Mel yawns and clearly would rather be in bed.

“Haha! Onus is the bestest brother in whole entire wide world ever!”

Mel yawns in agreement.

Similarly to yesterday, when we pass through the parking lot, the group of seniors hanging around some small sports-ish car all stare at us, mostly me, and glare. One of them laughs a little bit. When I glance over, usually I ignore them, I realize that I do, in fact, recognise most of them. The one laughing is Calvin James.

Calvin James sure is a character, or something like that. I’ve never spoken to him, but I’m certain he’s spoken about me. Not that his friends are horrible and the worst people in the whole world, but they sure don’t like any of the trans kids who go to school here. Including me. And probably Mel is they ever get close enough to her to know that.

“I need a haircut still,” I whine as we enter the school. Calvin James is the hottest guy I’ve ever seen. “This sucks!” I flip my hair out of my eyes and my glasses almost fly off my face.

“Get one then.”

“I need Onus to take me, but he’s busy with, like, adult stuff or some shit.” When we get to Mel’s class I walk in and sit with her at her table.

“Do you think my parents could take you?”

“Um… Maybe?” I think about this for a moment. “Wait- new topic, are you going to GSA today? Please say yes. You have to say yes or I’ll cry.”

“Bitch.”

“Fucker.” We makes hearts with our hands to really get the fact that we actually hate each other across.

While we’re having our chat, Naomi joins and we welcome her, there’s a brief exchange in which Mel agrees to go to the club after school today, only if Naomi goes too and Naomi agreed to because it beats just watching the football team practice while she waits for her brother to drive her home.

I only get a few complaints from teachers about the crumpled papers, it’s mostly just jokes though. At lunch, Ronnie joins us again.

“Heath, you need a snake?” Ronnie offers an applesauce cup to me and I oh so humbly accept it from them.

All but inhaling the applesauce, it’s gone sooner than anyone can start a new conversation. As I slam the empty applesauce cup onto the table, a group of preppy-adjacent freshman girls pass by us and sicker to each other, pointing at Naomi.

“I can beat them up for you,” I offer, wiping applesauce from my face.

“Haha, n… no. That’s not… needed.” I’m just now realizing that Naomi might not be stuttering from anxiety and she might actually just have a stutter.

“If you say so.” I shrug my shoulders and start a conversation with Ronnie about our Dungeons and Dragons characters, before moving on to talk about how GSA is meeting after school.

After lunch, my next three classes are boring and nothing particularly happens in them. At the end of the day, I head back to my art class where GSA meets.

“Hey Heath!” I’m greeted by Jae, who is in conversation with a freshman, who must me new this year.

“‘Sup.” I start moving some of the tables together so there’s a large table for about twelve people to sit around. “We’ll be starting soon, probably. Take your seats, please.” Jae and the freshman sit down at the other end of the table, soon Ronnie joins, then three small freshman, then Mel and Naomi. “Okay, we’ve got mostly everyone who will be showing up today, and it’s about time to start.” We start with check ins, which consists of stating your name and your pronouns?

“I’m Heath, this club’s president, and I use he/him pronouns.”

“Ronnie, I’m the vice president, they/them.”

“Mel, she/her.”

“Naomi, she/her.”

“Christian, he/him.” The freshman with Jae.

“Jae, the secretary, he/him and they/them.”

“Felicity, she/her.” One of the three freshmen.

“Alex, she/her.” The next freshman.

“Kali, she/her.” The last freshman.

“Okay, thanks for coming, everyone, today we’re just gonna set some stuff up for the rest of the year…”

The meeting goes well enough, the three freshmen mostly just whisper and giggle to each other, but other than that nothing goes wrong. I walk home with Mel after the club and I eat dry cereal out of the box as I do homework in the living room.

Mom doesn’t come back home that night, and I feel sorry about how many hours she’s currently working.

*

The next morning goes business as usual, except for the fact that I didn’t get any sleep at all. Onus arrives at the house, makes me a pancake, packs me a lunch and does does homework while I get ready for school. I leave the house with Mel, we walk through the school parking lot.

“School parking lot” is where things deviate from business as usual. As we’re walking by the regular group of jock-adjacent kids, they snicker at me and I turn to them.

“You’re just gonna do that everyday, huh?” I shout. The morning is bright, cool and the perfect time to throw some hands.

“Keep walking, girl,” one of the guys, a taller, lankier one, who isn’t even facing my direction just kind of shouts back out of the side of his mouth.

“Keep laughing, asshat.” I tiptoe my way towards them, and I can feel Mel plant herself in the pavement.

[its-just-like-the-movies]

Raw (17, B), American Fable (17, C+), and Personal Shopper (17, C)

In my quest to review every 2017 release I see, I’ve decided to cramp down on some films that I’m sort of enthused by that could’ve been better versions of themselves. The Spooky Lady-Led Trio, you could call it. All of these films have something to offer to prospective viewers, and elements I’d happily endorse, as well as things I’d readily change about them. Either way, here they are!

Raw

As an advertising hook, a film with the idea of relating to cannibalism as just one of those things kids do in college while exploring themselves was a pretty great lure to get me into the theater. A French film with a breakout female director that won a Cannes prize with every review thumbnail featuring its heroine covered in blood? This smelled like the perfect mix of art house horror and gross-out horror. And it frequently was that, particularly in the mysterious opening scene and a later one explaining it, the eating of an accidentally mislaid finger, the worst seven minutes in heaven - all the sex scenes are actually sort of terrifying, - and a scene near the end that redefines the term “leg day”. The beginning hazing and party scenes are all pretty effective, as are the more mundane frights of being accused of cheating on an exam and walking in or your roommate having sex. We the audience all made an agreement with each other as that finger was being eaten that hey, if this is a lot for you, feel free to freak the fuck out. It’s easy to see the argument director Julia Ducournau is trying to make with this film, but too often she undercuts herself in the film’s most stylized gestures. Lights flare red and pink as protagonist Justine (played by newcomer Garance Miller) is prowling parties for men to sink her teeth into, and it’s simply not as effective as seeing her carnivorously oggle her gay roommate as he plays soccer, sexually taunting an opposing team member as her nose bleeds. A dream sequence sees a horse running forever strapped in a treadmill-type machine, another one sees a dissected dog rise from its metal table, still hidden under its plastic sheet. For a film with the objective of trying to portray cannibalistic impulses as just another thing kids do in college, it regularly struggles playing things as casually with Justine as does with her roommate’s promiscuity, the general partygoing/hazing rituals of her classmates, or the cannibalism her own sister partakes in.

Played with a lived-in, grubby casualness by Ella Rumpf that’s fascinating to watch even before we learn she also eats people, Alexia’s relationship with Justine becomes an even richer mystery than the women’s shared cannibalism as Alexia continuously fluctuates between taking her sister under her wing and leaving her out to dry, particularly in a vicious fight after Justine sees a video of what Alexia got drunk Justine to do, only for it to end in a moment of unity and bonding between the sisters, perhaps the most connected they’ve been the whole film. Her own nonplussed attitude as she peels back the layers of her own depravity while trying to coax her sister down the same hole is portrayed with the offhanded tone the film should’ve stayed in, instead of the flashes of stylized lighting and odd, seemingly unrelated visual imagery. A final-frame reveal that could’ve been a whole other chunk of the film, tying back to an earlier scene where Justine is shocked to learn that *her* parents would’ve been game for her vet school’s hazing, could’ve easily been a whole narrative of the film for Ducournau to explore for both sisters had she not essentially reduced it to a jump scare. I’ve seen critics try and assign social commentary to Justine’s relationship with the gay roommate portrayed by Rabah Naït Ouffela she and Alexia both contemplate going after, in different but not ways, as taking to task the ways that straight women use and abuse GBFs, but I haven’t read the take that would make me agree with that idea completely. There’s a lot in Raw I wish were better, even though it worked plenty of times just fine and Rumpf nails every one of her scenes. Given the rise of cannibalism as a topic in film, television, and pop culture in general, I hope there’ll be a take like this that goes further and achieves the rich goals it sets for itself. But if the chance to see Raw comes your way, take it. Even if it doesn’t hit all its marks, its successes are still as terrifying and inspired as the best horror movies around, with sections so tense and horrific you and all your friends will lose all feeling in their fingers at the same time. A fun, unifying experience for the whole squad.

American Fable

I’ll give American Fable credit for probably fulfilling all of its ambitions, but the success is marred by an odd directorial hawk and some too inevitably realized arcs, particularly the doomed neighbor and the escalating antagonism of the brother. Plenty had been said about the film’s stylistic and tonal debts to Terrence Malick, but I wonder how well this actually served the film. True, in a long dream sequence, director Anne Hamilton crafts a woozy, elaborately out-of-body experience that feels like an actual dream using Malick’s new-age style. Hell, actress Marci Miller, cast here as the protagonist’s mother, seems like a composite of Sissy Spacek and Jessica Chastain, while lead Peyton Kennedy is as close to Linda Menz as I’m sure Hamilton could find. However, I’d say the Malick inspirations are something of a limitation to the story, lending it a kind of fantastical or grand air that just doesn’t suit the subject matter. Why make such an event carry the kind of majesty connotations that that style implies, when something a little darker or less florid would’ve been a more apt treatment of the script. That subject matter by the way, is about a young girl who discovers that her father has agreed to imprison a land developer in an abandoned silo on behalf of a Mysterious Woman in exchange for enough money to keep their farm afloat. And that young girl, named Gitty, discovers that man around the same time her father falls into a coma, forcing this Mysterious Woman to share what she had commissioned The Father to do with His Wife and Their Son Martin, who gladly steps up to take his father’s place and falls easily to the words of encouragement this strange lady provides. She also bears a great likeness to a woman wearing armor with ram horns on the helmet and riding a black horse, who always shows up when shit gets fucked up. This woman also bears no real impact on the narrative despite being a semi-interesting figure, and it’s debatable that the actual Mystery Woman does either.

Gitty’s relationship with the Mystery Man, played with such panicked gentleness, faux benevolence, and earnest caring by Richard Schiff - what a good summer for The West Wing’s men! - is easier the most affecting part of the film. Even if it’s as easy to see coming as her relationship with her brother, Schiff and Kennedy manage to create a real bond of unclear fragility as Gitty begins grappling with what his being there means, and what she can do to help. The last shot rewards her and our faith in Schiff’s character, and if the movie around them feels somewhat under-realized, I’m still glad I got to see that relationship unfold. In fact, the film ends with more unanswered questions and loose ends than it started with, which doesn’t really do right by the parents or the ultimate payoffs, literal or otherwise, with the Mystery Woman’s request. Again, I think Martin’s arc becomes more or less predictable once he threatens the life of Gitty’s beloved pet chicken, but at no point do we see what his parents’ reaction is to where he’s left. I don’t regret seeing it, but looking back on it, there’s surprisingly little to parse over, especially in the areas it so successfully advertised as being about. A lot of that stuff - the wondrous stylization, potential supernatural elements, some kind of folkloric entity - all feel extraneous, underused, or ill-serving to the film, some parts more than others, but still. There’s bits of magic all over the place, but even more so are there missed opportunities.

Personal Shopper

So early into the year, I’m not sure this was necessarily the project I was most looking forward to, but it was definitely high up on the list. Kristen Stewart had been practically perfect in Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria two US released years ago, the story itself sounded so entrancing, and reviews from several critics I trusted had been rapturous. On the other hand, plenty of friends and people I talk to online (or both) weren’t that hyped on the film or Stewart, and the Best Director Cannes prize Assayas shared with Cristian Mungui for Graduation wasn’t exactly a saving grace for what many considered to be a lackluster set of awards that managed to ignore much better films almost completely. I for sure haven’t seen all or even most of the Competition films from 2016, but Aquarius and Elle already pose more ambitiously realized projects than Personal Shopper does, not to mention Loving’s lowkey achievements and the madness of The Handmaiden.

Hindsight being 20/20 and all, it seems almost inevitable that I’d be as unmoved about this film as I am now. Like Clouds, Personal Shopper seems to have fashioned a showcase vehicle for its leading lady without giving her a whole lot to play beyond material firmly within her comfort zone. Juliette Binoche got who knows how many monologues about the price women in Hollywood must pay to stay relevant, a sentiment that might’ve had a little more power or variance had Assayas cast an actress who could really relate to that character instead of an actress who’s stint with American movies was sort of a phase in the middle of all those French movies she was and has been making, building a massive amount of acclaim and goodwill in Europe along with winning numerous prizes in France and Europe in general. In a similar vein, Assayas casting Stewart as a woman forced to withhold herself emotional seems like perfect casting but really isn’t, constraining the actress to give the kind of laconic, uninteresting performance many had accused her charismatic, lowkey style of actually perpetrating in previous films (no, I don’t remember Twilight). I felt bad that my interest in her performance got higher as she got emotional, even though I never believed she’d actually die. I wish I felt more active restraint in her performance, trying to keep a grip on her hope and fear and curiosity at all times rather than seemingly not feeling anything except in the scripted moments to let that gas valve leak. Post-film, I kept wondering who would fit better in the lead role of Maureen. Lea Seydoux, perhaps? who gave such a restrained performance in Farewell, My Queen that was nevertheless tinged with palpable thoughts and emotions at all times and could’ve just let the film be in French. Ellen Page, maybe? not for any particular reason but if he’s gonna cast an American actress he might as well do another outside-the-box choice that could pay off big time. Taissa Farmiga, who’s been so great at doing the same kind of grounding that Stewart has been in horror films across tones and genres while being able to play perfectly with the ratio between ridiculous and earnest of each project. Fuck it, why not Julianne Moore?

I don’t mean this to rag on KStew herself, who I’d have happily handed an Oscar to for her work in Clouds, but this feels like miscasting disguised as no-brainer casting. Between Clouds and Certain Women, her particular style seems best as a kind of supporting seasoning, or at least not perfectly aligned with the tone of the film itself. Part of what made her so special in both projects is that she managed to carve a space in both films to accommodate her own persona while fitting her style into the film’s. Personal Shopper fails her by trying to tailor itself to what Assayas may think are her strong suits, which just ends up making Maureen unreadable in an uninteresting way. The plot itself doesn’t really help her, given how thin it ultimately is. Opening and closing with Maureen working in France until she finds out that her recently deceased twin brother had moved on and that there is an afterlife, the large middle of it is occupied with an unknown number texting Maureen, pretending to be and not be her dead brother and whose identity I guessed almost as soon as the first messages popped up on Maureen’s screen. There’s barely more here than Clouds, and it’s marginally better given the spooky subject matter - the few scenes of Maureen performing a seance or following her pen pal’s orders are appropriately tense - but it’s still alarmingly little for the film to work with.

Would a different director entirely have solved this trick. One person I follow on Twitter, Kyle Turner (who’s super great, go follow him, it’s @tylekurner) suggested Mia Hansen-Løve should’ve been given this project, and I firmly agree. Admittedly I’ve only seen Things to Come, one of 2016’s most perfect movies, but if that’s essentially the kind of film Hansen-Løve would’ve made Personal Shopper into, it’s an idea I fully support. That kind of observational style would’ve been a lovely prism to examine Maureen’s griefs and hopes for the afterlife, for her brother, and for her own life as she waits for a sign and puts off flying to her boyfriend in Wherever. It may also have been a fine match for Stewart’s brand of quiet charismatic performance, allowing it to flourish within her keenly observational style instead of subsuming it. Most, if not all of my thoughts on Personal Shopper are about how to make it a better movie, something I feel a little bad about given how well others have received it - David Ehrlich was practically rapturous, saying the film evoked his grief at the death of his father so potently, and his review was the best encouragement I had to see this - and I do hope people see this. It’s an ambitious project made by artists I’ve fans of outside this particular film with plenty more projects of theirs I’m actively searching for, and I respond to raves about Personal Shopper better than other positive reviews for projects I was equally meh on. See it for yourself. Maybe your opinions about it will make themselves known by smashing a glass or tearing wallpaper, or just manifesting physically and vomiting ecoplasm in your general direction. Either way, it’s an interesting project with a singular, spooky tone that’s trying more than plenty other films.