#just admiring his skill as a thespian

[call-me-strega]

Dc x Dp Prompt #20: Wishes of a Secret Romantic

Jason doesn’t really advertise it but he’s a romantic at heart. He craves having his own cliche romance with someone who will actually care about him. Sometimes he indulges in his fantasies by reading romance novels or setting up at-home dinner dates that he takes himself on. He often finds himself sighing and wishing he had someone to relate to, that would give him unconditional care and enjoy going on romantic dates with him.

~~~

Desiree doesn’t quite know how she ended up supervising this beautiful mess but she’s not complaining. If anything she has some sweet gossip to share at girls night and a story for Ghost Writer to obsess over.

~~~ It starts like this:

Ever since Frostbite had taken to teaching the young ghost boy lessons on the Realms Culture and Ghost Biology he’d made great strides in his diplomatic and medical skills. His fighting skills were already impressive but were refined under the tutelage of the warriors of Far Frozen. Personally, she thinks he is grooming the Boy to join the Council of Ancients which have taken a more active role in governance now that Pariah has been defeated for a second time.

The boy has been going around and creating treaties with his enemies in which he finds them another outlet for their obsessions. He has already worked out deals with the likes of Technus, Amorpho, and oddly enough a joint deal between Penelope Spectra and Walker.

Technus was allowed to indulge in his technological creation so long as he was supervised by the Pharoah boy or doing on of the preapproved tasks of mischief, such as causing mild inconvenience to the bastards in white.

He had set up Amorpho with a “Cosplay TikTok” on which he was able to show off his different forms and get recognition for them. He’d amassed a large following thespians and costume artists who greatly admired him.

Due to his position on the Council, the Boy managed to get Spectra and Walker to agree to take part in the new justice system the Council had been setting up. Walker could run his prison so long as he abided by the rules and scentence lengths set by the Council. And Spectra was free to torment those whom the council deemed the worthy of the worst punishments. Many ghosts had grievances against living and non-living menaces, last she heard, there was a whole list for Spectra to go down. Currently, she was in another universe tormenting a man named Eobard Thawne, who went by a ridiculous name called the Reverse Flash. Once she had her fill of torment, they would be taken to Walker’s prison.

The Ghostling continued to do this with many of his former adversaries until he came knocking at the door to her lair. She was well aware of what the GhostBoy would want, and was curious as to what he could offer her.

She granted him the grace of her presence and was charmed by his earnest nature. He genuinely wanted to know her story and obsessions so that he could find the best way to help her. She revealed to him it was not Desire as many people assumed but Fulfillment. She wanted to people to attain their desires in place of how she had been unable too. But there are consequences to wish granting so there’s only so much the Boy could do.

The ghostling had been unbelievable smug when he wished that her wishes wouldn’t have catastrophically negative outcomes. When she granted and skeptically tested this wish she found it had worked. The boy grew even more smug.

Of course balance had to be maintained so her power became not weaker per say, just more indirect. During their trial run, Desiree was granting the wish young boy had wished for a large cookie. Instead of instantly summoning a 50 foot tall cookie as she would have previously done, she simply caused his mother to have the desire to bake cookies and then had two of them fuse together in the oven creating one larger cookie.

A bit more round about than she prefers but it got the job done.

The two brokered a deal that would allow Desiree to travel into the mortal realm and grant the wishes she desired to, so long as the wouldn’t cause catastrophically negative outcomes in the future. Young Phantom had even gone as far as to direct her to the so-called Make-A-Wish foundation in which she could find many deserving children to fulfill the wishes of.

~~~

One night Desiree had been flying through the mortal realm to visit a friend, a city spirit she hadn’t seen in ages. As she flew over the city a strong sense of longing and desire resonated with her core. Where there was desire there was someone with a wish. Invisible, she flew down to the source of these feelings to investigate.

She ended up out side the window of a building that held longer traces of death and her friend’s magic. She peered through to see a young man putting the finishing touches on a lavish dinner. She observed as he created a beautiful meal with an air of melancholy before pouring himself a glass of wine and turning on his television to watch mediocre romantic comedies. Intrigued by this young man, Desiree decided to lurk and observe for a while, perhaps he would soon reveal the wish his heart yearned for?

-

Jason sighed into his Osso Bucco as another romantic comedy began to play. Man he really was bumming himself out wasn’t he. He shook his head and took a sip of his wine. He winced slightly as some cringey kids’ movie called How to Build A Better Boy appeared on screen. How had that even gotten in his queue? However, his laziness won out and he made no move to change it, resigning himself to a hour and a half or so of second-hand embarrassment and semi-decent acting.

As he watched the best friend girl make a virtual boyfriend based on her friend, the main girl’s, preferences and huffed to himself. Oh if only things could be that easy. He hummed to himself adding on his own thoughts to the teen girl’s rambling list.

“ If only, sister. I’d wish for a sensitive and sweet guy too. Someone who wouldn’t mind death jokes, or my odd hours. Someone who I could just relax and nerd out with. Someone who’d go on romantic dates with me so I wouldn’t have to sit here eating this nice dinner on my own. Yeah, I’d wish for my perfect guy too.”

Suddenly, a chill washed over Jason and his hair stood on edge. He whipped his head around in search for an intruder only to see nothing there. He scanned the apartment suspiciously before his eyes landed on an open window. He sighed, reassured it was just a draft and turned back to the movie.

~

Desiree was touched by the earnest desires of the young man who was touched by both death and her friend’s magic. It almost reminded her of her own desires for romance while she was still living. Perhaps she would stick around to see how this wish played out for the young man~?

~

Miles away, something sparked in Danny Fenton, helping him make his final decision on which of the colleges that accepted him he should attend.

[spidernuggets]

I legit beg of thee please can you do prompt17. "Why the fuck did you have to make me fall in love with you" but like he's infected with some toxin from a mission and is genuinely angry at reader for making him fall in love with her, but like they're not together she's just his oblivious best friend and this is how you find out he's in love with you. I just find this hilarious cuz reader being overjoyed like oh shit he loves me but also like hey dude calm down lol Its also a tinge angsty cuz he's tiny self esteem thinks you could never love him back and thats why he's mad

Jason Todd x Reader

"Why the fuck did you have to make me fall in love with you"

You love Jason Todd. And for a long while, you believed it was a platonic type of friendship. Because you loved the way he laughed, his smile, his combat skills, his snarky remarks.

And then an oh shit hit you harder than a bomb. Not only did you love Jason Todd, but you were in love with him.

You joined the Titans a couple of months or so after he officially did. He offered you a brew the first time you met, and you politely declined but thanked him for the offer. This is where Jason immediately took interest in you.

When him, you, Rachel, and Gar were doing that blindfold sparring thay Dick recommended, he was even more intrigued at your skill level, but you weren't as skilled as he was, and ultimately lost the sparring match.

You were mesmerised by his advanced ability, asking him if he could teach you some tricks.

Boy, did this boost his ego.

And then the two of you became best friends. You guys trained together, played video games together, and listened to music together. Sometimes, he'd read lines from his favourite novels to you, ranting how dumb one character was or how stragetic another was.

Eventually, Jason took you to the school that he took refuge in during the time he was living on the streets. He told you his story before he got adopted, telling you his mom was a drug addict, his dad was abusive.

You listened, and you comforted him.

Then he told you how he admired the other kids for performing on stage. That's when he became so passionate for literature.

You joked with him, saying that you couldn't believe his biggest secret was being a theatre nerd. He quickly answered back that they were called 'thespians'.

That's probably the exact time you fell in love. Even after all the pain and neglet he's been put through, he still managed to become the strongest person you've ever met.

When you thanked him for showing you his school, that you appreciated how much he trusts you, you swore you saw a glimmer in his eye, even when he tells you it was no big deal.

Jason means so much to you. That's why you'd never tell him you love him. You think you'd break into a million shattered pieces if he left you because of your devoted but selfish feelings towards him. So you kept your feelings tucked away at the back of your heart, concealed from him.

Jason means so much to you that when he arrived back from what yoh heard was a dangerous mission, you instantly ran up to him, pulling him in a tight embrace, mumbling that you thought you lost him.

And it broke you when his response to your worry was a harsh shove.

He didn't say anything and walked straight to his room. He looked horrible. There was a bruise forming around his eye, dried blood under his nose, dark bags under his eyes and a busted lip.

You quickly turned to Dick, who just came in, confused at Jason's glum behaviour.

"Crane ambushed out of nowhere. Cooked up a new toxin. Anger. We gave Jason the antidote for fear toxin, but it doesn't do much. It should wear off after a couple of hours," Dick tries to assure you, but to no avail.

You pace around your room, biting your nails in worry. You look at the clock, and only 15 minutes have passed, and at this point, you feel like pulling your hair out from how stressed you were.

Jason slammed his door so hard when he went into his room that you felt like it could've broke.

Jason hasn't stepped a foot out in those past 15 minutes, and though you might think it hasn't even been that long yet, you couldn't help but stress and worry for your best friend.

So, you went out of your room, heading straight to his, knocking on the door waiting for an answer.

A depressed looking Jason opened the door slightly, and before you can say anything, he slams it shut.

You wanted to cry. He's never done this before. When he has issues, he always talks to you about them. You think that the anger toxin might've been the reason, but still. You aren't taking a toxin for bullshit, so you let yourself into his room, locking the door behind you to ensure no interruptions.

"Jason, what the hell happened? Talk to me!" You pleaded, trying to take both his hands in yours for comfort. In response, he swiftly pulls away from your touch.

"It's none of your goddamn business! Leave me the fuck alone," he says. He doesn't yell at you, but he sounds annoyed. He turns and walks towards his vinyls, pretending to sort them out, but just meaninglessly flipping through them.

"No, it is my goddamn business because you're my best friend! Why are you even pissed at me? It's not like you have a reason to!" you answer back.

"Says fucking who?" He spits as his voice slightly raises. You didn't want it to, but it slightly scares you. Jason has never acted like this towards you before. And if he is pissed at you for something, what was it?

Stealing the last pudding cup? Accidentally dropping his last beer? Winning the last sparring match against him?

"Okay, tough guy, what the fuck did I do to make you so pissed off!" You yelled back.

"For being so fucking annoying!"

What?

He thought you were annoying? Did he not like being friends with you? Did he regret being friends with you? You guess you are a bit too clongy at times. Or maybe you just talk too much.

Possible reasons start flooding your mind. The one person you loved and was your best friend was so angry at you because you were annoying.

"What?" Was all you can say, and it was heard as a tiny, pathetic squeak in your voice.

"You! You wanna know why I'm so angry?? Because you're so goddamn annoying! The way you smiled so brightly when you beat me in sparring, the way your nose scrunches up when you decipher a code wrong, the way you keep notes on everyone's birthdays on your calendar, the way you compliment me when I'm training you! All of it! It pisses me the fuck off!" He yells. You swear you can see tears at the brim of his eyes. "And the most annoying thing is how perfect you are! You- You're so beautiful and so skilled, and you deserve so much! And I can't give you what you deserve!"

But you stand confused. What the hell was he on about?

Jason rubs his forhead in frustration.

"Why the fuck did you have to make me fall in love with you," he says, way more quietly in contrast to his rant. But his voice breaks. And a single tear falls from his eye.

You couldn't believe what he had just told you. He loves you? He's... in love with you??

You were about to smile and admit your reciprocating feelings, but to Jason, your confused look on your face was disgust towards his undying emotions.

He wipes his cheek, face scrunching up, and his anger rises once more.

"No. No, no. I don't- I can't do this right now. You can kick me to the curb later, just- just get out!" He starts yelling again, stepping towards you, pointing to the door.

You attempt to calm him down, but he continues his string of get outs and leave me alones.

You didn't even notice that he unlocked the door and pushed you out before slamming the door in your face once more. You wanted to feel happy that he felt the same towards you. But he just looked so... hurt.

You decided you shouldn't continue to push. You knew he'd come talk to you later once he calmed down, so you go back into your room, waiting for his arrival.

It was late. Last time you checked your phone, it was 2:37am. You don't know how long it's been since then. Jason still hasn't come to see you.

You had your headphones on, writing notes in your journal for future training sessions and abstract plans for upcoming missions that may help Dick during debriefings.

You didn't hear the light knocks on your door, but saw a figure from your peripheral view walking towards you. When you look up, you see a dejected Jason Todd now in front of you.

He sits down on the edge of you bed as you quickly removed your headphones, storing away your jojrnal, ready to listen to him.

Jason couldn't look at you. "I'm sorry," he says. He thinks it's pathetic. Confessing his feelings because of some stupid toxin. Now he has to apologise, and he pressumes after this, you'd look at your friendship differently.

"It was selfish of me to tell you that I... That I lov-" He was quickly interrupted by you. You crawled along the bed to him, kneeling beside him, taking his chin to move his face so you can see those gorgeous green eyes you always adored. They were red and glassy. For the past few hours, he had been crying, even after the toxin had decreased. But you lay your lips ever so gently on his, and he couldn't believe what you were doing.

It took him a second to respond, but he happily kissed back, reaching forward, wanting more as you pulled away.

"You have no idea how much I love you, Jay," you say, barely above a whisper. His eyes widen.

"What? What, but I.." he sat there speechless. Was this real? Or was this the after effects of the toxin? "But.. But I've been dropping so many hints that I was so interested in you and... and you just seemed to have ignored it all," he quietly says. He thinks he whimpering like a kicked puppy.

"Literally, what hints?" You ask, dumbfounded.

"Are you serious? I've- I've called you babe multiple times, hinted at a date, gave you a flower," he lists the many times he had shown a liking to you. "I offered to teach you some combat skills- I keep those skills sacred, I've never taught anyone! Even Gar was yelling at me because I wouldn't teach him!" Jason says unbelievably.

Your hmfave heats up with embarrassment. "Well.. I never really said that observational skills were my strong suit," you weakly say, looking down, avoiding his gaze. And Jason couldn't helo but laugh a bit. He just found you so cute.

He takes hold of your waist, and you squeal as he shifts you so you're sitting on his lap.

"So.. You love me?" He asks, a cheeky grin on his face.

You roll your eyes and scoff. "God, you and your ego," you mutter, holding his face in your hands as you and him share one last kiss for the night.

[aaeoluss]

Scott finds himself staring at August as he runs through his lines (not in a gay way). 

i want to leave this in please it would be so funny it’s so out of place with the tone ahaha

[mirinda03]

CONVENTIONAL FAMILY? Who’s that?

<<<Previous Next>>>

Chapter 13: In which Remus is not worried. Not at all

Janus was LIVID.

Ignoring a cackling Remus, Janus began driving out of the school’s parking lot and speeded towards the school

“So... is dear old Virge kidnapped or what?” Remus said between laughs, not taking this situation very seriously.

Janus ignored him and continued having his eyes on the road.

Remus huffed in annoyance at being ignored. He turned to his small cat.

“So, little buddy, how should we name you?” Remus mused

“Ohh what about Sardine!”

No response

“Hmm yeah, not a very good name. Dog?”

Again, zero response

“Oof, tough crowd. Spots?”

The calico cat stared at Remus unblinkingly.

“Hmm..”

“Remus” Janus said lowly “Could you please SHUT UP”

This did not deter Remus, thought. Instead, it seemed to make him even MORE amused.

“Don’t worry Dad. He’s probably just sitting at a bench being all teenage emo and stuff. You know how he is”

The only response came in the form of a long sigh.

Rolling his eyes, Remus turned back to his new pet.

“Ohh okay okay. Tiger?”

This time, the cat (Tiger?) meowed happily in response.

Remus cheered

“Yes!” He said happily, petting Tiger affectionately “First, names, Next, world domination!”

Janus heard this of course.

“Remus, put your seatbelt on will you?” His voice left no room for defiance. For once, Remus did as he was told.

He finally quieted down, which gave Janus more time to dwell on his thoughts as they arrived at the school entrance. What if Virgil wasn’t there?

Surely he was, Janus tried convincing himself.

Virgil was a responsible teenager and he wouldn’t be the type to just walk home or something. He wasn’t Rem...

“Hey, where’s Virgil?”

At that, Janus let out a string of curses

~•~•~•~•~•~••~•~•~•~•~

Remus was starting to get maybe just a little bit worried.

After not finding Virgil in the school, his dad had seemed to gradually lose his cool.

He seemed calm of course, staring blankly at the road. One wouldn’t know the crisis happening in his brain. Unless you were one of his kids, which Remus was.

Remus saw his dad’s nervousness in the way he gripped the steering wheel just a little too tightly. In the way his eyes were just a little too unfocused. Small details not many would pick up on.

“Dad, we’ll find Virge. Don’t worry” Remus said calmly. He wasn’t too worried right now. Virgil was probably at the house listening to emo music in his headphones and being all broody. There was nothing to worry about.

That didn’t seem to calm Janus, who was already in partial mother-hen mode.

Which meant he looked calm. A bit too fakely calm. Once again, Remus admired his own deductions skills.

“I’m not worried “Janus, the liar, lied “What makes you think so Mr’ almost caused a fire to protect a small kitten’”

“Hey!” Remus said with an overdramatic gasp “it’s Mr’ almost started a fire during a fight’ to you’!”

Janus just rolled his eyes, not bothering to look away from the road

“Whatever you say, Remus” he responded drily “now be quiet, i gotta focus on actually driving”

Remus in his usual Remusness would probably have been inclined to talk just out of spite. But his cat got in the way by sprawling on his shoulders.

Remus sighed. Well, if he couldn’t terrorize anyone he might as well take a nap, right?

~•~~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~••~

When Remus woke up, he looked out to see that they had arrived home.

His dad was deadly silent as he opened the car door. He strode towards the house looking like he had no care in the world, which was obviously a facade.

‘As if i wouldn’t notice he’s walking three steps at a time’ Remus thought and mentally rolled his eyes as he went to follow Janus ‘I’m a professional in Janus-Reading’

“Remus, go look for your brother upstairs” Janus said blankly, standing still next to the kitchen counter.

Remus wanted to protest just for the sake of it. But he was going to go upstairs anyway so he might as well humor Janus. Plus, he could go nag Virgil just for funsies.

Remus went upstairs, fully expecting to hear that loud emo music coming from his brother’s bedroom. To his surprise, that wasn’t the case. The place was eerily quiet actually.

The little menace kicked open Virgil’s door, not bothering to knock.

Nothing.

Virgil wasn’t there.

‘Huh’ Remus thought ‘that’s kinda weird’

He wasn’t worried. He WASN’T. He was just... curious to know where his brother was.

So instead of going to his room to possibly plan more ways to terrorize that teen he had threatened to steal that bike from, Remus went downstairs.

“Hey dad, virgil wasn’t upstai....” He trailed off, looking at the mess in the room. Was it that messy when he had gone upstairs? Surely not.

“Umm dad, did you find Virgil?” Remus asked his father, who was calmly drinking coffee in the counter and seemed indifferent to the absolute mess that was the living room.

“No” came the response.

And even thought they didn’t verbally say it, the two were thinking the exact same thing.

Was Virgil really kidnapped?

Taglist:

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@pansexualpuppet

[derireo]

mafia au: personalities

disclaimer: some of them are aged up in the story (eg. juza is 20, itaru is 26). sakyo is aged down by a year!

Still kind-hearted despite the near death experience and her ex cheating on her with her friend. She wants to see the best in people who haven't lost her trust yet, but quickly turns at the toss of a coin she's wronged.

Trusts a bit too easily. This goes hand in hand with her kind hearted nature, but her gut feeling is almost always correct despite Sakyo and Itaru always complaining about her making new friends. She can't help it, she just really loves people!

An absolute charmer! Her empathetic, open and trusting personality makes it easy for strangers to fall for her; romantic or not. Again, Sakyo and Itaru hate this but they also can't seem to resist her.

Tough exterior. Of course, she's an ooey gooey cutie baby on the inside, but it's a bit difficult for people to see that when they first meet her after the incident. Her resting face doesn't showcase the best emotions, and when most of the characters first meet her or interact with her, she's either violent or staring blankly at them.

Easy to fluster depending on who is talking to her. She can easily brush off comments or questionable actions of affection depending on who she is with, but gets bashful when her combat skills are praised. So far, the only person who is able to fluster her so much to the point that she accepts all advances is Juza. He's a little devil!

Not much for talking. Considering his plans with Itaru that are revealed later into the story, Sakyo keeps his mouth shut when he doesn't need to talk. Despite that, Izumi tends to talk to him anyway whenever he's doing his job, and only responds with low hums or the nod of his head. Itaru is the lucky one and is able to maintain conversation with Sakyo due to their relation with one another. Some may find it surprising that when Sakyo loses his temper, he shouts real loud!

Patient. With how long he's been with Itaru, it's a wonder how he hasn't blown his top off. He lets things slide whenever someone messes up or whenever Itaru does a boo-boo, and even then, he keeps his temper under control when people are unreasonable themselves. The longest he had dealt with someone was probably around 2 hours, and they trashed his office in the meantime. He didn't order it, but Itaru broke the guy's fingers for him one by one.

Reliable. Sakyo is definitely someone you can depend on. He gets things done and he's able to keep you safe; it's what Izumi admires about him the most. He's the oldest of the group at 30, and takes it upon himself to care for the rest of them from any danger that's targeting them from the outside.

Austere. Along with responsibility comes stick up his ass Sakyo. He is strict when he needs to be, when his patience is running thin. He normally punishes Itaru and Tasuku whenever they're doing something stupid, but lets Izumi off the hook most of the time. Juza isn't his problem and lets Izumi dish out a punishment upon the youngest. If all four of them are being rowdy, he will put his foot down and make it very loud and clear that he isn't in the mood to fuck around.

Bit of a playboy. He's seen in one of the earlier chapters being unusually affectionate with Izumi despite only just meeting her. His attitude quickly snaps into something much colder a few minutes later, but the clear image of the docile girl leaning into the touch of his hand definitely warms up something inside of him. In another scene, he's chatting it up with some ladies at the local club Sakyo owns while the older man only watches in annoyance.

Loyal to the bone. He's been with Sakyo from the start, right beside him for a full 8 years ever since they fought and earned their way to the top of Yunliong. He is a bit rough around the edges when you first meet him, but once he warms up to you, he's protecting you with his life. Before Tasuku and Juza showed up, he was the one busy with watching Izumi when her bodyguards were occupied with something else. Sometimes he begs Sakyo to let him hang with her when he's bored.

Goofy and fucking lazy. Once you get past the cold exterior, Itaru's just a weird and lazy guy. Most of the time he's tasked with signing off papers that Sakyo has already read over and is required to go to meetings in the other blond's place. He absolutely hates it though and tries to avoid doing work whenever he can. His sense of humor is a bit weird too, so it's rare for someone to giggle along with him. Izumi loves it though.

The logic. When Sakyo's about to fall off the rails thanks to his patience running thin, Itaru takes charge and becomes the voice of logic and reason when in need of a plan. He's also a bit of Devil's Advocate, making sure everyone knows what they're thinking and saying and trying to let them know that their ideas suck balls.

Obnoxiously flirty, but only with Izumi. Gets on Itaru's nerves a lot because he's childhood friends with Izumi and is almost always seen taking care of her before Juza shows up. With how tight their relationship is, Tasuku always finds a random time to have his hand touching any part of Izumi he can reach and likes to give her kisses every now and then. His advances and flirtatious comments are normally brushed off by Izumi, but she does seem to enjoy his embrace whenever he offers himself up.

Wild card. I don't want to say Tasuku is crazy, but there is definitely something off about him. His mood switches depending on who he's interacting with, but most of the time he's with the group so his temper is subdued. Oddly enough, he always claims that he can feel his blood boiling whenever someone brings up Izumi's ex and friend, and when he fights' his terrifyingly playful.

Quite the thespian/trickster. He's great at masking his emotions and holding himself back when facing obstacles or people he doesn't like. He's good at reading between the lines and can adjust his expressions and moods to fit the atmosphere. Most people don't know he's toying with them until the last second and– crack. They're dead.

Morally grey & sadistic. Some things are only obtainable through bloodshed and death. Tasuku would do anything to keep his group safe, and he did. He was only 17 when he killed his first victim, but it was only because that victim was planning an uprising against the people he swore his life to. Those who are evil only deserve suffering and death; so he serves them both with a smile on his face.

Soft hearted. Even though he's quite the scary man, there is a small place in his heart where the group has resided in. They're his family, and have been for a long time. He may not be the best person to be around, but he tries to show his love and affection through all different means.

The youngest of the group at 20, he still acts like a kid around the other four when he's feeling particularly bratty or bored. He tends to get on the men's nerves more often than not with how close he is to Izumi, and he takes full advantage of it. He knows he's got it better than them! Yes, he's going to rub it in their faces! He's childish & petty like that because the men give back the same energy when he's around.

And surprise! He's an even bigger flirt than Itaru and Tasuku! Again, only with Izumi! She's the first woman he meets in a while after maybe a year of squatting here and there. With how Izumi easily takes him down and steps on him sets something off in Juza, and with a little more coaxing with Izumi's kindness later on, he's attached. He's clingy and absolutely cunning, having Izumi in his lap not even two hours later when they're back at the new hideout.

Obedient. Assigned as Izumi's pet by Sakyo, he listens to (almost) every command of hers. He stays by her side 24/7 despite the protests and complaints from Itaru and Tasuku and is constantly waiting for Izumi to give him the go to finally kill those two or something to shut them up. He's pretty docile though, when Izumi needs him to be, and doesn't talk unless he's told to.

Shameless. Yeah, so along with flirting with Izumi, he is not at all afraid of touching her inappropriately when in public. He's notorious within the gang for always having his hands on her waist or his face buried in her neck. They also sleep on the same bedroll and he clings onto her like a pillow. He's not afraid to show that he's attracted to her, and with his onslaught of advances, he eventually makes Izumi see him a bit differently.

Exhausted! Always! When he was first introduced in the story, he had just woken up from a nap when he held Izumi hostage at knife point. Juza loves napping and sleeping and takes every chance he gets to rest when there isn't serious things going down. He's still awfully dangerous when half asleep.

[mitchiemoo]

Close Up-Part 1 (Johnny Joestar x Reader)

Summary: You are an upcoming, young actress, starring in your first major film. For publicity, the studio suggests you begin a relationship with your co-star, British thespian Diego Brando. Reluctantly, you agree, and soon find yourself at odds with Johnny Joestar, former Hollywood star. After losing his career and the use of his legs, Johnny offers to help you achieve fame but cautions the price. Is it really the fame you want? Or something else?

Warnings: Explicit language

Word Count: 3,539

“Darling, I promise I’ll return. When I do, I will be a true gentleman, one worthy of your affection.” Diego’s eyes gazed intently into your own as he raised your hands to his lips and kissed them.

You gasped and stepped back in shock. “Oh, sir,” you said. “You needn’t earn my affection, for I have already given it to you. If I am to be the wife of a tailor, then so be it. Please stay.”

Diego rose to his feet and gripped your hands tighter. “No, I must go. I shall better myself to provide the life you deserve. My father was a cruel man, who worked my poor mother into an early grave. The day he died, I resolved to never become a monster like him.” His voice shook with emotion and you could hear the desperation in his voice. Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes, right on cue.

“They shall wed me to another man before you return. Search your heart, you know it to be true. What shall you do with your fortune then?”

A shout came from off stage. “Elena! Jonah is looking for you.”

Panic crossed Diego’s face as you snatched your hands from his grasp and turned away. “I’m sorry, I must leave now. Goodbye, Dorian.”

“Wait!” He called after you as you rushed off stage.

“Cut!”

You breathed a sigh of relief as the lights dimmed and the bell rang. It was hot. Oppressively so. Especially in your costume. Sweat soaked the back of your neck and the under layers of your dress stuck to your skin. No wonder Victorian women were so prone to fainting spells. The late 19th century dress you wore was exquisite and you admired yourself in the mirror while wearing it many times. But the skirts were extremely heavy and restricted your movements.

It was a relief when you plopped down on one of the prop couches scattered around the set. The ornate fan your character used in an earlier scene laid discarded on the spot next to you. You opened it and desperately fanned yourself.

“Would you like some water, miss?” One of the stagehands offered. You nodded and wiped at your teary eyes absentmindedly before you remembered you were wearing make-up. Oops. The stylist would not be happy with you.

“Good read today.” You looked up.

Your co-star, Diego Brando, stood in front of you, looking extremely disinterested. He had shed the dark blue coat he wore in the scene and rolled up the sleeves of his plain white button down. It looked like he barely broke a sweat. “Although, you should try to look more devastated. At least you didn’t forget your lines today.”

If he said that to you at the beginning of filming, you would’ve been fighting back tears. Now, you simply brushed it off. Diego Brando was a world-famous actor. He had been classically trained at the Royal Shakespeare Academy and performed in several critically acclaimed plays before his debut on the silver screen at age 19. Compared to him, you were nothing. This was your first major role and the extent of your training was reading Shakespeare aloud for your family as a child.

“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.” You said through gritted teeth, picking at the intricate golden embroidery on your dress. The stagehand you sent to find water returned and you immediately began gulping it down.

You were surprised when he sat down beside you. He sighed and ran a hand through his golden blond hair.

“Look,” he started. “There’s a fundraiser tonight at one of the local art galleries and the studio wants us to go together, as a couple.”

You choked.

“Wh-what?” you managed to sputter out.

Diego rolled his eyes. “Don’t get too excited, alright? You’re not my type and frankly, I’m not attracted to you in the slightest.” He continued. “The producers and studio executives think this is a good way to get publicity for the film and help our, err, your career.”

You furrowed your eyebrows. Normally you would be insulted by Diego’s words but if working with him had taught you anything about him, it was his strong sense of pride. Nobody was good enough for Diego Brando, not even himself. Especially unknown, amateur actresses like you.

“How does going out in public with you help me, exactly?” You asked.

“Don’t sound so ungrateful, love. Thousands of other girls would kill to be in your position.” He spat and waved his hand dismissively. “We get photographed together, the press makes a fuss about ‘Diego Brando’s mystery girl’, who she is, where she’s from. The public wants to see more of our chemistry and go see the movie. The film’s a success, you’ll be named one of Hollywood’s most promising newcomers and a few months later, we quietly ‘separate.’”

You looked down at the ice in your glass, quietly mulling over Diego’s proposition. All you had to do was pretend to fawn all over him at award shows and fancy parties, where other famous actors and directors were, and your movie would draw crowds of people? It was too good to be true. The only downside you could think of was spending more time with Diego. Your lip curled in distaste.

“How long would this arrangement last?” You asked, tentatively.

“About six months.” He replied. “Like I said, everybody benefits. You get a handsome bachelor, I get free publicity, and the studio makes a bunch of money. Do we have a deal?” He extended his hand and smirked. You hesitated. Six months for a fruitful career and a lifetime of success? What could go wrong?

You shook his hand and were surprised by how firm his grip was. “Deal.”

“Smart move, darling.”

The bell rang again, signaling the end of the break. Diego stood up and offered you his hand again. You set the fan and empty glass aside and he pulled you up from your seat. “My driver and I will pick you up at 7. Dress code is black tie and please, don’t be late.”

He turned on his heel to walk back onto set. As you followed, you couldn’t ignore the growing sense of trepidation brewing in your heart. What could go wrong?

-

Shortly after filming ended that day, you took a cab back to your apartment and inspected your closet. Diego specified black tie, which meant a full-length evening gown, gloves, and jewelry. You had a few nice dresses from the department store, three of them full length. Sure, they wouldn’t be as elegant or glamorous as the Dior, Chanel, and Balenciaga gowns you’d see tonight but that just gave you something else to strive for. Maybe next time you would be the one wearing Chanel and turning heads.

You drew a cool bath and scrubbed your face and hair free of make-up and styling products. Of course, you were going to have to reapply them later but for the moment, you felt very refreshed.

Before you left the set that day, you asked your stylist to recommend some good salons in the area. Your hair and make-up skills were limited so you opted to have it professionally done. Diego made it sound like there would be photographers everywhere and you wanted to look your best.

The gravity of your situation didn’t really register until you were sitting in the stylist’s chair and staring at yourself in the mirror, that visceral moment when suddenly every blemish and flaw seemed magnified. Your stylist was a talkative lady with pink hair, but you were only half listening to what she was saying. This arrangement was only temporary, you reasoned, and then you would be free of him. But deep down, you knew you would never really be free of him.

For the next six months, you would be “Diego Brando’s girlfriend” and after you separated, you’d still be known as “that girl who dated Diego Brando” or “Diego Brando’s ex.” You came to Hollywood to make a name for yourself, to be admired for your work, to be remembered as something greater than “so-and-so’s ex.” When you left your hometown to become an actress, you knew the risks, but the rewards were better than any opportunity available there. You were patient, auditioning for minor roles at first and building up your resume until you decided to audition for a few major parts. Just when it seemed like your hard work was paying off, you made a deal with the devil, disguised as a charming British thespian.

“What do you think?” The girl chirped, breaking you out of your thoughts.

She definitely did a nice job. You barely recognized yourself. The make-up was tastefully done and not nearly as caked on as your usual “stage face.” She pinned your hair up in an elegant up do, which brought special attention to your face and kept the back of your neck cool. You nodded approvingly, tipped her well and headed back to your apartment to finish getting ready.

-

As promised, a limousine pulled up to the front of your building at exactly seven o’clock. It seemed Diego was a punctual man and you had to admit he looked handsome in his gray, three-piece Armani suit. He greeted you curtly when you slid into the back with him and then immediately started dictating how the night would go.

“So, when we pull up to the gallery, there will be a lot of cameras flashing, alright? I get out first, then I help you out, like the gentleman I am.” Diego eyed you in your pale blue dress like a jeweler appraising a gemstone. “You look decent enough, I suppose. I’ll buy you the dress next time although they won’t really be paying attention to you.”

You frowned. “Isn’t that the whole point of this?”

“Relax, love, you have six months to catch their attention.” He crooned. “Just think of this as acting experience. If you want to be as big a star as me someday, you’ll have to get used to the flashing lights, invasive questions, and lack of personal space.”

You looked out the tinted windows at the passing streetlights. You imagined them as eyes peering into the dark leather interior, prying into your innermost thoughts. If what Diego said was true, when you were famous and in the public eye, every move you made was picked apart by paparazzi, who descended like a kettle of vultures. One wrong move and you’d be vilified. If something that was meant to stay private leaked out, there would be an outcry of scandal that could, depending on what it was, jeopardize your whole career.

Another thought suddenly crossed your mind. “Diego,” you said. “Are you going to kiss me?”

He tensed beside you. “Err, probably not. The most I’d do is hold your hand or put my arm around you like this while we’re sitting.” You felt his arm snake around the back of the seat. “Even in my real relationships, I don’t care for too many public displays of affection. I don’t think it’s very professional, really.”

You nodded thoughtfully. “I agree and I feel it’s ‘too soon’ in the relationship to do that. This is our first public event together, after all. Let’s leave them wanting.”

“What’re you thinking?”

“I’m thinking less is more. The press would go wild for a picture of us kissing, especially if we never do it.” You said. “Let’s fuel the fire and make them fan the flames.”

The glow of the passing streetlamps illuminated Diego’s face, casting it in shadow. A glint caught in his eye. “I like the way you think.”

The limousine jerked to a stop and suddenly you were very aware of your department store dress, hand-me down pearl necklace, and $70-dollar hair do. You swallowed and gripped at the small clutch purse you brought. Diego had told you what to do. Smile and look pretty, let him lead you to the door. The hardest part was getting inside. If this was the kind of fame you wanted, you couldn’t let the people and flashing lights overwhelm you.

Diego was a shrewd operator. Every movement he made was calculated and perfected, so it appeared seamless. For you, everything was a blur of faces and cameras and people shouting over each other. You were pretty sure you heard “Diego!” and “Who’s that?” over the commotion. This time, Diego’s firm grip was comforting, and you concentrated on the back of his blond head as he led you down the concrete path.

Your heels clicked on the white marble flooring of the entrance way and you breathed a sigh of relief. Diego let go of your hand and scanned the room. “That went well.” He said. You inspected your palms and saw little crescents indented in the skin. “Do you ever cut your fingernails? They’re like claws.”

“Oi, I clip my fingernails once a week like everyone else. They just grow fast is all.” Diego said defensively. “You have a death grip like a construction worker. Maybe you should’ve done that instead of acting.”

You rolled your eyes and looked around. The gallery was large and open with white marble floors lined with royal blue carpets, and cream-colored walls decorated by avant-garde paintings. A large set of double oak doors was at the end of the room. Fellow guests milled around the entryway in groups, but you didn’t see anyone you would recognize.

“What’s this fundraiser for, anyway?” You asked.

Diego shrugged. “No idea. I just got the invitation in the post and saw Steven Steel’s name on it. Figured it’d be a good excuse to dress up and eat fancy food with other rich people.” Your stomach growled when he mentioned food. The last thing you ate was a handful of blueberries and a soggy sandwich on set that afternoon. You were starving.

He offered you his arm, which you took, and led you through the double doors into the main showroom. You glanced around at the various tables along the floor and spotted several famous faces. The man with the tall silver-blond hair was French actor Jean-Pierre Polnareff and sitting next to him was the famous Egyptian magician Mohammed Avdol. At the table next to theirs was the famous British fashion model Lisa Lisa, impeccably poised and smoking a cigarette in a fancy holder. A few people turned in their seats to look at you and Diego as you passed.

“Ugh, look who’s at our table.” You heard Diego scoff.

You were shocked.

It was Johnny Joestar.

The Joestars were basically Hollywood royalty and Johnny was no exception. Dubbed “Joe Kid” by his fans, Johnny was the face of young Hollywood, an All-American country boy with cute dimples and a youthful face. He made a name for himself playing the righteous young cowboy protagonist in Western action films, the hero who saved the girl and brought justice to a lawless landscape. Everyone knew him and it seemed like his star would only grow brighter.

Until the accident happened.

It was about a year ago. The papers said Johnny was on a walk with his girlfriend one evening when a crazed fan came up from behind and shot him in the back. He lived, fortunately, but was paralyzed from the waist down and would need to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The studio abruptly ended his contract and he hadn’t been seen or mentioned since.

“Joestar,” Diego hissed. He pulled out your chair and pushed you into the table before taking his place beside you. The three of you were the only ones there, so far, and Johnny sat across from you in his wheelchair. It struck you how different he looked in real life. His tousled blond hair reached his shoulders now and for someone known for his dimples, it seemed like a scowl was permanently etched on his face.

Johnny sneered. “Ugh, I should’a known you’d be here tonight, Diego. Never could resist an opportunity to boot lick.”

You knew Johnny and Diego had a history. They had been rivals, once, before Johnny’s accident. They competed for roles, awards, and the hearts of beautiful women. Diego held nothing but contempt for his former rival. He claimed Johnny didn’t have a shred of talent and used the Joestar name to get his roles instead of working hard to earn his fame, like he had. “I came from nothing” he was so fond of reminding you. The feeling was mutual, at least from what you read. Johnny once called Diego “a stuck-up prick who should go back to community theater.”

“Who invited you, anyway? I thought it was clear no one wanted you around since you lost your legs.” Diego said.

You bit your lip and looked down at your lap. Should you say something? Diego could be a heartless bastard, you knew that. Honestly, you felt for Johnny. This man had lost everything. What happened was an accident, he didn’t deserve to get shot, no matter how much the media tried to demonize him.

You gently touched his arm. “Diego, dear, be nice.” You implored, batting your eyelashes for effect. “Please, for me?”

Johnny narrowed eyes and turned his pale blue gaze towards you. They were much more intense in person and once again you were aware of how insignificant you were compared to people like him. “Who’s this?”

Diego looked at you with a simpering smile and draped his arm over the back of your chair, like you’d practiced in the limousine. “This is my new girlfriend.” He replied. “Jealous?”

Johnny regarded you for a moment. “Lemme guess, you’re his co-star? What’s your name?”

You told him and reached over to shake his hand. “It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. Joestar. I’m a big fan of your work.”

You weren’t lying. If any singular actor inspired you to finally move to Hollywood and pursue your dream, it was him. Westerns were far from your favorite genre but if Johnny Joestar was starring in it, you’d drag your family to see it anyway. It was surreal for you to be so close to him.

He nodded politely and shook your hand. You were surprised by how rough and calloused his palms were. “You must be new. I’m not familiar with any of your roles.”

“Yes, this is my first major role. I was very excited when I found out I was going to be working with Diego Brando.” You said. “I’ve learned so much from him.”

“This movie is going to be a hit.” Diego cut in. “Darling, you’re such a captivating actress, everyone will adore you.”

“How long have you two been together?” Johnny asked.

“Two weeks.” Replied Diego.

Johnny went quiet for a moment, inspecting his fingernails intently. “I see,” he said. “Sleeping with Diego is a smart career move. Come up with it yourself?”

An indignant “what” was all you could manage as color bled across your cheeks.

Johnny wasn’t fazed at all. “Listen, I don’t much like lyin’ to people, so I’ll tell you this. When I look at you, I don’t see ‘star material.’ You got a decent figure and a marginally pretty face but nothing about you stands out. They don’t care how good your acting is, it’ll never be good enough for the kinda fame you want. You can be a good actress, but you’ll never be a star.”

You were fuming. Absolutely livid. Who did he think he was? He didn’t know you! He was just bitter. Jealous of the fact that you had a promising career when his ended prematurely. At first, you felt bad for him. Now? You couldn’t even look at him without seeing red.

“You’re better off this way, promise.” Johnny continued, though you could barely hear him over the thundering of your own heart in your ears. “Nobody in this town gives a shit about you when you stop making them money. They’ll turn you out on your back the minute you can’t be their ideal person. The price of fame isn’t worth it.”

You weren’t listening anymore. Any sympathy you had for Johnny and his situation was completely evaporated by the heat of your anger. Diego and the media were right. He was an asshole. Another person to prove wrong. Your movie would be a success. Over the next six months, you’d endear yourself to the public, charm the Hollywood elite and once you secured your place, he’d see how wrong he was.

“Oi mate, you can fuck off.” Diego interjected.

“Eat shit.”

You shot up from your chair and grabbed your purse off the table. “Excuse me, I’m going to the bathroom.” You said quietly, desperately trying to keep your voice from cracking. Your throat felt tight and tears gathered at the corners of your eyes as your emotions boiled over. At least the next time you needed to cry on command, you could think back on Johnny’s words, which still echoed inside your skull. They stung. A lot. And as you hurried through the maze of tables, all you could think about was how true they might be.

-

This is my first time posting on tumblr and I was really excited to share this! Hope you enjoyed it. My inbox is open so if you have any comments or feedback, I’d love to hear it. Even if you just want to chat, I’d love to get to know the community.

[deadlysequence]

RothFrye

Friendly remember about this ship:

Is more than the kiss in the assassination scene that caught many people off guard, to the point that many laugh at finding it absurd, others that find it disgusting and others that they’re like “WTF”.

Is more than that.

RothFrye is about Maxwell admiring Jacob’s skills as an Assassin, as his rival gang who took boroughs from his Blighters in such an impressive way and had to study him for a while before deciding to write and send the invitation.

RothFrye is about the sudden change in Jacob’s behavior when he was with Maxwell in the Alhambra, the sudden bashfulness at the compliments, the way he blushes and smiles. How comfortable he quickly become around him, forgetting their rivarly as the Rooks and Blighters leader and eager to form an alliance.

RothFrye is about how much Maxwell praises Jacob’s way to do his job without the need to change it, without any complain or pointing the weaker points. Or even saying that something is wrong. Maxwell is the only one who sees Jacob as the best assassin, the best twin, while everyone praises Evie endless.

RothFrye is about the open flirtatious conversation in between. Jacob been flirty not as a jocking matter as he usually does but something that reveals his attraction towards the thespian, and the way that he stare at him in silent fascination, don’t been talkative as he usually was. The evident heart eyes both have when they look to one and other.

RothFrye is about been true and honest with eachother. Maxwell never pretended to be someone else (like Pearl did) and he was always blunt about his intentions and encourages Jacob to be his true self. To seek their freedom and fighting together against a highly repressive society.

RothFrye is all about those “Dear”, “Jacob, dear”, “My dear” and Jacob welcoming each one of them.

RothFrye is about Jacob going against Maxwell’s orders to blow up the building and killing children inside because no one is forcing the other to do something their don’t want. If there’s an argue, both had the right to shown their point of view. Even when Jacob went to stop the explosions, he didn’t kill Maxwell in that moment in the roof, surely hoping to solve the whole thing in other way and he found him too valuable.

RothFrye is about the pain and betrayal both felt when they turn away. Maxwell’s anger and mostly suffering when he realizes that Jacob walk away from him, willing to destroy and burn down evething he ever loved and wished to have (the Alhambra, all his power, respect and money, his leadership as the Blighters, everything about entertainment, his legacy in the underworld) because how, a person matters more than anything else in the world. And ready to die for it. and Jacob’s hesitation about killing him because even if it’s something he must done, is something he really didn’t want to do at the end.

RothFrye is about the whole event in the Alhambra that evening, no war against Starrick and the Templars, is a personal matter. How Maxwell announces in public his love for Jacob because he knows that is his last hour alive and there’s nothing to lose after years living in secret about his preferences. How Jacob actually came there despite no one forced him to go. The invitation was at the end that, an invitation to came and finish everything. The dead crow was also a warning, so it was Lewis’ words, but at the end it wasn’t a promise of causing a true damage because Maxwell could had perfectly understand if Jacob didn’t came at the end because he’s going to die anyway, but also hoping to see Jacob one last time. And Jacob, even if he must do his job, he also wanted to see Maxwell one last time before slit his throat, which it was more merciful than letting him to be burn alive.

RothFrye is about Jacob’s desperate questions of why he did all those things, unable to accept that he must be forced to kill someone he could have dare to love, his pained expression, his surprise and hurt after the kiss. Maxwell’s final words because of what he learn from his life experience, accepting that his freedom have a cost but he rather be killed by his beloved than living in freedom but without him.

And RothFrye is about the way Jacob tries to not cry in front of Evie when he came back to the train, how he was willing to give up about stopping Starrick to get the Shroud (”Let him have it”), his anger and snapping when Evie mentioned their father. Jacob is hurt because he’ll never had his father’s approval for his own methods, hurt because he had to kill the only person who praised him openly, hurt because he had learn what love truly is and just lost it. Grieving and going to accept it in the process.

And how Jacob at the end, have positive lessons about this relationship and never forget Maxwell, as someone valuable and likeable. With several flaws but no one is flawless, not even Jacob himself.

Accepting and welcoming with nostalgic thoughts, about this love and cherish the good thing they had together.

This is about RothFrye, is more than the kiss at the end. Is about their story, their personalities, their dynamics, the phsychological and emotional aspect, the character developement, the personal feeling in each mission, the joy of each other company.

Maxwell Roth wasn’t an insane person, he was just someone who had to face how cruel the society is against people like him, like Jacob. And ready to share his life with Jacob Frye, the only person who’s similar to him in many ways, almost like soulmates. Connected by fate because everything happens for a reason.

If only Ubi had been more brave...

[khadij-al-kubra]

Persephone & Hades AU...

For your consideration, and bearing in mind that the original myth is not really all that toxic at all and is not a show of Stockholm syndrome...

The “””Kidnapping””” of Persephone:

Logan as Hades-

Bespectacled Ruler of the Underworld

Takes his job very seriously (wears a black and blue necktie with his long silky black robes)

Cold pale skin and intelligent grey eyes with slicked back black hair. Looks scarier and meaner than he actually is. (although he can have a bit of a temper if pushed and will have loud sharp outbursts of “FALSEHOOD!”)

Very logical and methodical in how he rules the underworld and keeps the souls passing through organized. Like he’s got the judgement thing down to a T! But despite his cold demeanor he’s actually very generous and kind at heart. He just recognizes the importance of his work and in remaining just yet impartial

Sucker for dogs, hence why he has a three headed one. He just wishes he had more time to play with Cerberus, but alas ruling the dead alone takes up a lot of ones time.

Has a sweet tooth and often indulges in jams made from the pomegranates that grow in his realm.

Is on decent enough relations with his brothers (Emile as Poseidon and Deceit as Zeus), although he STILL thinks that Deceit cheated in their straw draws, but let it go because he’s actually best suited as the more organized brother for ruling the dead.

Is secretly very lonely. Once in a blue moon he’ll sneak up to the surface for fresh air and sunlight. One day he spots a certain someone in a flower field who takes his breath away. (can you blame him, i mean that smile! )

Patton as Persephone-

Supreme flower child! (flowy sky blue clothes, grass green eyes, sun-kissed freckly skin and wheat colored curls, barefoot, flower crown)

Loves gardening, animals, and helping his father Demeter (Roman) with the changing seasons. Loves Roman to bits....He just wishes he wasn’t so overprotective. Like come ON dad, i’m a grown god, i can look after myself. I don’t run off on my own THAT much!

Is protective and loving towards most all forms of life and tries to see the good in each and every soul, both mortal and god/goddess #momfriendtothemax

Unless given reason to feel otherwise. Then...weeeell at the least he’ll give you a stern talking to but at worst...lets just say you DONT want to get on the bad side of someone who can grow massive and sharp thorn bushes and effect earthquakes when pushed too far. XO

Sometimes gets bored with the same old routine with Roman and wishes to get away and see something new from time to time. Maybe have some quiet time to make his own floral crafts and garden peacefully for fun and not work.

Often sneaks off when Roman is busy and goes wandering along dirt paths, sit under or climb a tree, or frolic in the flowers.

Roman as Demeter -

God of the Harvest, but like, EXTRA in all ways shape or form. (”we can top last years crop no problem, MORE WHEAT STALKS!” “No dad, we can’t, then there’ll be too much in this region and not enough for the next.” “LONGER SUMMER!!” “No! Bad idea dad! That’ll throw the seasons off”)

Often dresses in flowing gold threaded and sunset colored robes, but will change ensemble to match the seasons.

Enjoys watching the goings ons of the mortals, they’re just so entertaining! Especially is fond of traveling thespians and will bless the harvest of wherever they perform in.

Loves his son more than anything and has him help in godly duties because it keeps him close so he can keep an eye on Patton MUST KEEP PRECIOUS BAB SAFE!!!

Stubborn (but will never own up to it)

Virgil as Charon-

In charge of Ferrying souls across the River Styx

Doesn’t mind his job all that much but is #done with soooo many of these complaining, noisy and often rude or entitled souls. (like, NO dude, i don’t care who you were ruler of in the living world. Its two coins for passage like everyone else buddy!)

Really just wants a nap (often tries to hit up Remy a.k.a. Morpheus but he shows up late ALL the time)

Is actually very compassionate and gentle. He tries to ease the fears of souls who he sees are younger or were genuinely good in life or died in unfair ways.

Lives for the dark skull & bones aesthetic

Master of snark

Plays chess with Logan when either of them have some rare down time

    Click the cut for full story

One day Roman and Patton are off doing their nature godly duties, and Roman is nagging his son about the proper way to harvest corn. (”Yes father, i know how to do it. you’ve only told me like a hundred times” “well i just want to make sure to remind you and that you don’t cut yourself on the sickle”)

Patton sneaks off one day to pick flowers since it’ll probably be the last bloom before autumn sets. Suddenly he sees a curious crack in the ground and ambles over to it to take a look. (”what sort of creature could’ve made this deep thing?”) He leans in too far however and pulls an Alice in Wonderland.

Turns out that crack was made by Logan. Apparently he’d become so deeply smitten by Patton that he went to his older brother Deceit/Zeus for advice. (Yes he was a dick and a little shit at times-although took his duties seriously when need be-and tricked many of his lovers into bed, but Emile didn’t have nearly as much love experience as their elder brother & Logan was desperate)

Deceit had actually been pleased when his too serious brother told him that he’d fallen for the spring god. His advice to Logan had been to simply kidnap Patton and either bed him then woo him or woo him and then bed him. Logan, of course, didn’t listen because that was the stupidest idea ever! (”what under earth was i thinking? This is the guy who turned himself into a cygnini in order to copulate with a woman behind his wife’s back.”) Besides, he was too painfully shy and socially awkward to try wooing. (He worked with the dead for crying out loud, not the best circumstances for practicing social skills)

He did however create a crack in the ground so he could sneak peeks at Patton from below the earth and admire him from afar. However, he’d been called back on an emergency and forgot to close one particular crack up before leaving again.

So sufficed to say, he was fairly shocked when he suddenly heard screaming above him one day. He looked up to find one Patton falling towards him and just caught him in his arms in time. (BLUSH CITY ON BOTH PARTS)

Patton thanks Logan but is admittedly miffed at him when he learns Logan was the one who’d made that crack in the ground. “What were you thinking leaving a big hole in the earth like that? Some poor oblivious mortal or animal could’ve fallen into it and gotten hurt!” “Apologies I-it was a foolish oversight on my part. i-I certainly hope you are uninjured?”

After a while Patton forgives him when he sees how truly sorry this (admittedly) scary and stern looking god is. (lest we forget he’s one of the big three) And Logan is honestly just trying not to show how flustered he is. i mean Patton is there in his realm! They both realize the crack is far too high up for Patton to get back out through right away. So Logan offers to have Patton stay in his palace until he can fetch his assistant Virgil/Charon to help Patton back up the next day. IN HIS OWN QUARTERS, OF COURSE! Logan says blushing, trying to be a gentleman. Patton agrees, promising upon Logan’s request to only follow one rule: “You must NOT eat anything”. Strange, but okay. Besides, it’ll be nice getting a break from his father. And it’s just for one night, right? (WRONG!)

Patton ends up having to wait longer than he realized because both Logan and Virgil are super busy with ferrying and judging souls. So he wanders around the Underworld. (of course he is marked with untouchable safety from almost everything as a guest of Logan) 

One night however Patton finds himself stumbling upon a sparse garden. He’s surprised that anything is capable of growing down there in the realm of the dead, but even more shocked by the poor state of it. “Really, just look at the se rose bushes. They’re so brittle!” (it’s not Logan’s fault. He’s a busy boi. plus the god of the dead doesn’t exactly have a green thumb) Really the only thing flourishing down there is a single Pomegranate tree. The fruits on it look so red and shiny and juicy and...well...whats the worst that could happen if he eats just a few seeds?

Of course if you know the myth, it means now Patton cant leave. Because, well, greek god realm rules. Sufficed to say, Patton is pretty miffed that Logan hadn’t thought to tell him why he shouldn’t eat the darn fruit in the first place. Logan is greatly frustrated at Patton because a) he didn’t listen, and b) he actually has a point there and he does NOT like being wrong. Still, nothing to be done about it now.

Over time they cool off and apologize to each other. Patton’s still kind of mad though because now he can’t go home at all if he wanted too, but he recognizes that Logan wasn’t forcing him to stay on purpose. So he get’s over it and tries to make the best out of the situation. At least he can finally get away from Roman’s nagging for a while. 

* Meanwhile in the living world, a frantic and angry Roman raises hell. “WHERE IS MY BOOOOYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!?!?” (Thebes did not have a good crop that year)

While in the Underworld Patton starts talking to some souls, listening to their stories and offering kind and comforting words. Which as it turns out makes them more at ease and willing to go for judgement as they pass on. Logan’s fondness for Patton grows as he witnesses these acts of compassion and kindness. He also comes to respect Patton when he sees just how fierce he can be in the face of those who’d been cruel or unjust in life. ”I’m sorry, you did what to how many people!? and NOW you’ve got the nerve to demand entrance into Elysium young man!? Logan, hold my flower.” “Fret not Patton. I have your bougainvillea.”     (art link for this scene)

Meanwhile Patton cant help but notice that, although he’s stern and serious on the outside, Logan is actually a very gentle god deep down. (he picks up on this from the soft tone of Logan’s voice as he speaks to souls being judged who’d suffered in life, or the way he reassures the more anxious ones with facts and logic about the afterlife that set them at eases “it’s not all punishment and Tartarus you know. Statistically few souls on the grand scale are malign enough to enter there. The Asphodel Meadows are quite pleasant, I assure you.”)

Logan works so hard and tirelessly at his often depressing job, but never acts mean or harsh unless a soul is nasty or rude or was truly evil, and Patton gains an admiration of him for that. (besides, he is actually quite handsome and beautiful in a cold distant way, like the stars and moonlight on a midsummers night) Patton also sees what a softie Logan can be when he’s playing with Cerberus. (”Who’s my excellent tri-headed canine? Who is a good demon dog?”) Patton gushes and of course Cerberus and Patton LOVE each other. Watching Patton play with the big dog becomes Logan’s newest favorite thing. (”By the gods Virgil, it is too precious to process!”) 

Sometimes Patton will keep Logan company when there’s a lull in souls. He’ll tell Logan about all the different places he’s seen and what mortals are like when still alive. Logan meanwhile will often go into rants about the fascinating bits of knowledge he’s accumulated over the years from souls who’ve lived full lives. Logan enjoys having someone who enjoys listening to him (not that Virgil isn’t a respectful listener, but Logan sometimes wonders if he only does is because he’s his boss) And Patton really likes being able to share his own opinions and ideas without condescendingly albeit gently being told, (“no, no, my silly sweet boy. This is the right way to do it. Now eat your cereal, you need the fiber sweet pea”) Having picked up some of the mortal’s sense of humor, Patton is very much a fan of word play and LOVES making puns. Logan is...less than amused by them. However, the first time he makes Patton laugh with a clever quip (about Virgil or one of the more disgruntled souls) he swore the whole Underworld actually lit up. He treasures every time he can make that precious god laugh and smile.

Heck, even Virgil warms up to Patton and actually becomes VERY protective of the spring god. Patton sees through to his anxious softie center and enjoys talking to Virgil who is a very good listener. Meanwhile Virgil finds Patton’s sunny disposition refreshing and his warm presence calming. Patton will often keep Virgil company, but can’t always bring himself to follow when he has to ride across the River Styx. The memories and voices coming off the water just make him too sad.

Virgil ends up playing wingman for Logan. He tells Logan how Patton’s been a bit down in the dumps and recommends Logan cheer him up with a present. “That is an excellent idea Virgil, but what? What could possibly be good enough for that sweet honeysuckle?” “Well you’ve spied on him enough times- and don’t try to deny it boss- what does he like?” 

Sufficed to say, Patton LOVES his surprise underworld garden that Logan had worker rigorously on creating for him. He knows it couldn’t have been easy. Of course, being the god of the dead, Logan cannot maintain the garden and Patton is more than happy to have free creative reign over it. He giddily catches Logan in a big hug, and is pleased when a blushing Logan returns the heartfelt embrace, pressing a tender kiss to Patton’s forehead. Then he takes a blushing Patton’s hands in his.

”Patton, my honeysuckle, sunshine of my heart...I cannot contain it any longer. For so long you’ve been the object of my affection, but over the course of our time together down here, although the circumstances had been less than idea, my love for you has only deepened. Would you perhaps...although I am not worthy of you...would you consider marrying me, and ruling the Underworld by my side?” By now Patton is blushing like crazy and in tears because, although he’d been mad at Logan for getting him stuck down there at first, he realizes that he’s come to deeply love the dark god too. Logan worries that he’s crossed a line but then Patton beams and looks up at him with tears in his eyes. “Oh Lo-lo, my brilliant beautiful lobelia blossom, I-” BAM!

Cue a properly pissed off Roman crashing down to the Underworld. He’s also got Deceit/Zeus with him by the ear. “AHA! So THIS is where you’ve been keeping my precious boy!” “Deceit, you told him!?” “He got it out of me. Sorry, not Sorry. I may be the ruler of the gods, but Roman is quite -ow- convincing when angry.”

Roman rushes over to Patton and they embrace, because although it was nice having time to himself Patton did miss his beloved father. After Roman fusses over Patton-“Are you alright? Are you hurt? have you been eating properly?” “yes, yes, i’m fine father. I promise!”- Roman unleashes verbal hell on, well, the god of hell. He reprimands Logan for kidnapping his son, but Patton quickly comes to Logan’s defense saying that it wasn’t his fault and the whole thing had been an accident, not a kidnapping. When he hears the whole story Roman does calm down a bit, and is admittedly happy to see Patton so happily in love as well. (he may be a helicopter parent, but the god of the harvest is quite the romantic at heart and loves seeing Patton so happy. Even if he doesn’t think the doom and gloom Logan is good enough for his precious little sunflower) 

But upon finding out about the pomegranate sees he practically begs Logan to release him so that Patton can come back to the land of the living with him. (besides, he does still need him to help with the seasons and crops) Logan apologizes, saying it’s impossible and there’s nothing he can do. He just doesn’t have that kind of power. Then all three hear Deceit clear his throat.

“Ahem. God of gods speaking, and if you’re all done blubbering, i may have a solution.” So he tells them that there may be a loophole he can work around. He’ll give Logan his blessing to marry Patton, who will also be allowed to go back upworld with Roman, but on the condition that Patton spends part of the year co-ruling the Underworld. He tells them that for the number of pomegranate seeds that Patton ate, he’ll be obligated to spend a month with Logan. “Well darling, how many seeds did you eat?” They all look at Patton expectantly. Technically Patton only at 3 seeds, but heckitty heck, he really wants more time with Logan than three months. And frankly, he enjoyed the idea of getting some time away from Roman too, bless him but he cannot face so much nagging again! 

He lies and says six. Only six seeds. Because it’s not like anyone was there to see him or could know. Weeeell maybe the all seeing god of gods, but Deceit just winks and smirks at Patton, pressing a finger in secrecy to his lips behind Logan and Roman’s backs. So it’s agreed that Patton will spend the summer and spring half of the year in the Living world with Roman and the fall and winter half ruling the Underworld with Logan.

Before he goes back up with Roman though, Patton and Logan are wed. It’s Logan’s first and only time back to Olympus (he forgot how bright and noisy it was up there!) and all the greek gods and goddesses bear witness to their union. Even Virgil is granted a short vacation to be the witness of honor for his two favorite immortals. As it turns out the months apart end up being good for Roman as well as Patton. He gets a lot more work done now that he isn’t constantly fretting (actively anyways) over Patton or keeping him out of trouble or from wandering. 

When they consummate their marriage for the first time, hoooboi! Logan’s so bashful but respectful (never having been with any other being before, mortal or immortal) and Patton thinks its adorably sweet. Having been topside, well, lets just say Patton snuck off every now and then when he could to “frolic” with a few naiads and mortals he found sweet or lovely. So he ends up being a thorough teacher to Logan. Turns out they’re quite compatible in more ways than one ;)

Patton ends up being a fantastic co-king of the underworld. Heck, he’s even incorporated the new job into his aesthetic (he always wears a crown of flowers and bird skulls in the Underworld) and, as it turns out, can be even scarier than Logan! Only when some foolish soul makes him mad or gets on his bad side. So none do. And with the souls being more behaved it takes the pressure off of Virgil and Logan a LOT. But for the most part Patton remains a sweet, kind and benevolent co-ruler to the dead souls, and balances out Logan’s stricter judgements quite well. Logan now has a bit more breather time to read and play with Cerberus since he’s not the only one in charge of the whole Underworld anymore. And he and Patton LOVE spending time together in Patton’s dark yet flourishing underworld garden! 

Patton is always so happy to go back to the Living world with Roman when winter’s over. Of course he hates leaving Logan and misses him. Logan doesn’t do a very good job of hiding his sadness and tears, but understands. He does get a bit clingy their last nights though. (he becomes a kissy snuggly fiend)  Virgil always promises Patton that he’ll take care of Logan while he’s gone. But Patton is a child of the earth and he does tend to miss the sunshine and his father. So he get’s back to work with a newfound exuberance, making the flowers grow, spending time with Roman and frolicking about the world. He always does his best to bring back a new scroll or star map for Logan, who treasures every gift and is slowly building a library for himself.

Sufficed to say, the decades pass by, Logan and Patton attentively fulfill their godly duties, and remain happily and devotedly in love with one another.

Tag List: @altruistic-skittles @thekeytohappiness-is-you @canadian-crofters@icecoldparadise @the-pastel-peach @justisaisfine @bluebloodstains@purpleshipper @patchworkofstars @axyzel @hissesssss @beautifully-terribly@pink-and-purple-flowers @jynxlovesluck @thatsanswitch @6tick6tock6@hanramz-the-fander @azlinne @helplesscreator @thestoryofme13 @bibbidi-bobbity-booyah @accidental-sanders @moonstone-fox @smokeyrutilequartz@phlying-squirrel @madly-handsome @puns-and-patton @notveryglittery@eequalsmcscared @safesandersides @lizziepopanime @anxiously-unsatisfied-world @ab-artist @unikornavenger  @queer-human-being  @grey-lysander @asofterfan  @fangirltothefullest @tinkslittlebelle @allsortsofgeekery @fuck-my-life-i-want-food @ironwoman359

[camp-campus-universe]

Camp Campus AU: Part 2

Finally! It’s here, after like a week! This took longer than I thought it would, these characters are really hard to draw but I think I’m pretty satisfied with what I have right now. Since I finished this, that also means I dedicate more time to asks, specifically those that requests drawings! That also means I can focus on drawing comics and stuff revolving around their relationships, which I’m excited. I’m really excited to continue with this project and see it grow, and I’m so glad you’re all here to see it with me! You have no idea how grateful I am for all of the love that you’ve all sent so far! Thank you so much. Anyway, without further ado, here we go!

Maxwell/Max : Like many of his peers, Max hasn’t changed much since his time at Camp Campbell. Max is still as vulgar as ever and maintains his pessimistic outlook on life. However, many people think its all just an act now to keep up his reputation. Since Camp Campbell, Max’s life has honestly taken a turn for the better. He has a healthier home life, loyal companions, and Mr. Honeynuts. He is generally happier than he was 7 years prior. The only inner conflict Max truly struggles with now are his budding feelings for his best friend and whether or not he wants to jeopardize their friendship. Also Max is often teased for his “baby” hands, they’re really really small. 

Cornelius/Neil : Intelligent, cocky, and overly sarcastic, Neil plays the role of the parent when it comes to handling Nikki and Max. Unlike his friends, Neil was the only one who matured both physically and mentally and feels as if its his job to make sure Nikki and Max don’t wind up killing someone else or themselves. As mentioned before, Neil and Nikki remained close even after each summer brought an end to their Camp Campbell experience. The reason being his dad and Nikki’s mom eloping and combining the families. While Nikki is eager to invite Neil into her life as the older brother she never had, Neil harbors a sort of resentment towards his dad as a result of his parents’ divorce. Although he is glad to spend time with Nikki as well, Neil is still consciously struggling with his parents’ divorce and can’t help but to think that Candy is a homewrecker, even though he had admitted before that his parents’ relationship was awful. Outside of his home life, Neil can be a bit stuck-up and act like a know-it-all at times. He still harbors a deep loathing for Harrison, now mostly because Harrison claims to be a flat-earther. He’s also still incredibly annoyed by Space Kid, although he has no reason to be. Neil also runs a tutoring business at school in order to make a profit, but unfortunately for him (Or maybe fortunately) Tabii’s his only reoccurring customer. Neil is also Erin’s vice president in the Student Council and they seem to make a great team. He also has custom-made glasses because his nose is so fucking big.

Preston Goodplay : Preston is the stereotypical school thespian. Like at Camp Campbell, he’s outrageous and posses a larger than life attitude. He’s both over-dramatic and overemotional, but refuses to take any form of criticism. Preston is often cast as a main role in any school production and even takes it upon himself to critique his underclassmen in the drama department. Despite coming off as a total wacko, Preston is very talented and each performance that he gives is full of energy. Preston is very particular about his passion and is quick to anger if things don’t go his way. Preston acknowledges his relationship with his of his Camp Campbell peers, but doesn’t really willingly share his interest with any of them because of his fear that they might fuck it all up. However, he and Nikki do bond over some musicals that they both enjoy, although Nikki is usually more interested in the violent parts than the actual plot. 

Rudolph “Dolph” Houston : Dolph is the youngest of the cast and the only underclassmen in their friend group. Dolph continues to remain in high spirits and prefers to think positively than reflect upon the negative when faced with difficult situations. After High school, Dolph plans on attending a local Art College in order to truly embrace his career as a professional artist. Growing older, Dolph, like any other boy, went through puberty and grew facial hair. However, he ended up accidentally shaving it in an incident at Camp Campbell one summer and it never grew up correctly after that. Although an innocent mistake, the uncanny resemblance to Hitler disgusts Neil and causes him to keep his distance. Ironically being the youngest of the group, Dolph is a good friend with sole senior Ered. Dolph, like Nikki, has a great admiration for Ered and respects for activism. Using his artistic talent, Dolph often agrees to make protest signs for Ered or even help her vandalize the town to get a message across. Overall, Dolph is the same sweet boy he was years ago. 

Neil Armstrong Jr./Space Kid : Space Kid is just as optimistic and upbeat as he was before. However, he’s also gotten a lot smarter. Inspired by his great grandfather, Neil Armstrong, Space Kid decided to take up an internship at NASA and since then has put a lot of focus on his grades. Much to Neil’s annoyance, Space Kid’s GPA is practically the same as his, which is impressive. Although, the constant work has taken a toll on him and has made him absolutely exhausted. His exhaustion explains why he comes to school dressed comfortably in pajama pants (NASA merch of course TM) everyday. But regardless of overworking himself, Space Kid still tries his best to put on a happy face for his colleagues, even if they don’t appreciate it. 

Harrison : Exerting the same confidence and pride as before while still upholding his magical title, Harrison is the school’s sole illusionist. Although now his tricks aren’t seen as that impressive anymore among his peers, Harrison often attends parties and other small events and shows off his miraculous talent. He hopes that one day he’ll be discovered and whisked away to a life of fame and fortune. Harrison is kind to practically everyone he meets, but his rivalries with Neil and Nerris remain very alive. As a way to annoy Neil, Harrison often lies and says that he’s a Flat-Earther with no intention of listening to Neil’s explanation as to why the Earth is round. Harrison also rivals Nerris not only in magical skills, but also in opinions. As a die hard Harry Potter fan, Nerris had solely read the books and reluctantly turned to the films but found them to be distasteful. However, Harrison had never read the books and enjoyed the effects that the movies had, claiming that they’re superior. And by saying this, the two renew their fierce opposition to each other, but no one can stay mad at each other forever. Having a mostly positive attitude, many might not believe that Harrison actually has a secret, one that lies beneath his iconic white gloves. But it’s too soon to know for sure what it is yet. 

Gaylord “Nurf” Nurfington : Nurf ended up growing into a model citizen. After many anger management classes and corrective punishment, Nurf has finally turned his life around in the right direction. He and his mom currently live together and support each other, trying to rewrite their bad decisions from the past. Nurf often participates in volunteer work as well as lead a therapy group. He has also experiemnted more with his own identity and is comfortable admitting that he is in fact Bisexual. Nurf is also Quarterback for the school’s team and is known as one of their best players, alongside Nikki. Even though he is on his way to becoming an ideal person, Nurf still displays some aggressive tendencies and is very overprotective of his friends from Camp Campbell. 

The Wood Scouts (Billy “Snake” Nikssilp/Edward Pikeman/Jermy Fartz/Stephen van Petrol) : The Wood Scouts don’t play a particularly large role in this AU, but they still exist in this universe. Edward’s leader status has deteriorated in the group and has become co-dependent on Jermy and his newfound popularity. Jermy had gotten a major glow-up over the last Summer and is now considered to be the hottest guy attending the school. Because of his popularity, Edward now clings to Jermy in a one-sided friendship and uses his popularity as a way to elevate his own confidence (he wants clouts lmao).Snake and Petrol have both noticed this behavior from Edward and are disgusted by his attachment to Jermy. Edward often neglects his friendship with the two and refuses to associate with them. Snake still has a small crush on Tabii, but understands that she is completely invested in Neil and wants what’s best for her. Petrol plans to enroll in the military after graduation. He also struggles to find shirts that fit him.

David & Gwen : Here they are! In all of their glory! Unfortunately this time around, David and Gwen don’t play as large of a role in the campers’ lives, but are still actively present in this AU. Summers back, David had fully encouraged Gwen to leave Camp Campbell in search for other job opportunities in the hopes of making her a happier person. With some persuading, she eventually left and the two had little contact with each other since. Since then, David has been running the camp by himself. Now David is the proud father of one. And that one is Max. David had officially adopted Max a few summers ago to help him out of his bad family situation and now lives his life as a proud suburban dad. David then started to rely on Max to help him co-counsel the Camp during the summer, because he though it’d be a great father/son bonding experience and the rest is history. When he’s not a happy-go-lucky camp counselor during the summer, David spends the rest of his time as a Dental Assistant because he loves nothing more than to see people smile. Gwen, however, didn’t find the happiness she thought she would after leaving Camp Campbell. Searching for jobs endlessly, Gwen eventually was hired as a high school guidance counselor but was fired months after because of a incident where she made a student cry hysterically. Gwen was then stripped of her title and sentenced to a secretary position. Although thankful she still has a job, Gwen is as miserable as ever and has to deal with the kids she once knew from Camp Campbell. Most of her time is spent with Max, purely because he’s given a detention every other day, and she couldn’t hate her life more. Hopefully one day Gwen will find the fortune she deserves.  

[kateyes224]

In My Silence

Author:  KatEyes224

Rating: R

Timeline:  Post-This, but before Plus One

A/N:  This story wouldn’t have seen the light of day were it not for a couple of very important people. Namely @mldrgrl, who didn’t ever let me give up on it, and @sunflowerseedsandscience and @mangokiwitropicalswirl who offer their unwavering support even when I don’t deserve it.

She loses him somewhere in the kitchen department, letting him disappear from her line of sight while she lingers, waylaid by a particularly handsome backsplash. Which they absolutely do not need, she reasons after three solid minutes of arguing with herself before finally moving on. But she’d been wanting to update the kitchen since they’d first bought the house; bullet-riddled drywall, she figures, is as good an excuse as any. And their ridiculously expensive homeowners’ policy is apparently finally going to pay off, so they may as well take advantage.

By the time Scully wanders over to the dining area to check out the table they’d picked out together online, she knows Mulder has probably given up on trying to find her. He stubbornly refuses to backtrack at IKEA, claiming it only gets him more turned around. And despite his alleged accrual of Indian Guides merit badges, the proof of which Scully has yet to see, he scoffs at conventional wilderness survival skills like staying put and waiting for help to come to him whenever he gets lost. They’d agreed in the car ahead of time to meet up at the cafe on the second floor if they got separated, so Scully starts heading that direction.

She immediately suspects ulterior motives. Mulder has once again managed to plan this outing to take place around lunchtime, and Scully assumes that his timing is calculated so that he can satiate his unaccountable love of Swedish meatballs.

Meandering through a maze of living room and bedroom furniture, Scully consciously quells the urge to quicken her pace when she finds herself walking past bunk beds and brightly colored children’s rooms, college corner desks and bins of extra-long twin bed sheets.

William would be looking at colleges this year, wouldn’t he? Studying for his SATs. Maybe courting college scouts for water polo or basketball or baseball. Or maybe he’d been an academic, in math league or on the debate team or winner of the science fair. Or maybe he’d been a thespian, or maybe he’d been a loner, or, or, or...

Next to a wall of framed mirrors, Scully closes her eyes against row upon row of her own fractured reflections and breathes deeply through her nose, trying to banish the onslaught of potential iterations of her son as quickly as they apparate. Fifteen years later and he is still every dark-haired, long-limbed boy she sees out of the corner of her eye until she dares to look twice.

William has never stopped being a residual image that appears, Turin-like, in every negative space in her meticulously constructed world. But Scully has learned to allow herself to feel the ebb and flow of both her guilt and her gratitude in these moments. Cognitive dissonance, if nothing else, at least drowns out all the other voices in her head; the ones that whisper about what she did to Mulder when she left him to wrestle with their ghosts all alone in their drafty old house, instead of what she did to William when she gave him away to a future without her, perilous and uncertain.

She cannot, however, stop herself from intentionally averting her gaze when she passes by the children’s play area just outside the IKEA cafe, where a very pregnant mother is loudly compromising with her young son for just five more minutes, and then it’s time to go. Scully squeezes her eyes shut as the woman cradles her swollen belly with one hand and digs the other into the small of her back.

Some reminders still hurt more than others.

She spots Mulder near the front of the line queued to order and is just to about to call out to him when another voice beats her to the punch.

“Mulder? Fox Mulder?”

Mulder turns to the source of the voice, a woman standing several people behind him in line, and Scully sees him quirk a smile of recognition that reaches all the way to his eyes.

She freezes, watching the interaction unfold from a distance with an almost clinically detached interest. Mulder’s social circle, she knows, has dwindled over the years to just a handful of people, mostly acquaintances. As she racks her brain to place this woman, Scully realizes with a pang of regret that she has comprised the bulk of that handful for the last decade or more. And, until recently, she had been doing her level best to leave Mulder behind.

She notices the woman’s blonde hair first, a lustrous mane that falls in golden waves around slender, tanned shoulders. Not a hint of gray, Scully discerns, biting her lip so hard it nearly bleeds. 

Mulder lets the few people between them go in front of him until he and the mystery woman are standing next to one another in line. He crosses his arms as they begin to converse, and Scully flushes hotly as she takes note of a typical Mulder maneuver when he dips his head and leans into her space so that he can hear her better. At one point, the woman turns into him to allow the person behind her to go ahead, and Scully catches a glimpse of her profile. A deep dimple appears in the woman’s cheek as she laughs at something Mulder says.

The two must reach a mutual decision to just order their food together because they finally approach the same register but pay separately. They then head over to a nearby table where a bored-looking blond boy of about six or seven in a baseball uniform is sitting.

Making her way closer, Scully takes in the woman’s tall, fit figure and makeup-free face. She has a wide, easy smile, which she unabashedly flashes up at Mulder as they continue talking.

As Scully nears, she begins to hear snippets of conversation.

“-eb’s little brother is already outgrowing the toddler bed, so we’re here looking at bunk beds. The boys are really excited about the idea of bunk beds, aren’t you, Caleb?”

Caleb smiles tightly and nods, obliging his mother, and throws his small fist into his baseball glove a few more times.

Mulder bends down, muscular arms resting lightly on his bent knees, looking up into the boy’s eyes. Someplace deep within Scully’s chest starts to ache, the twinge old and familiar. Mulder has always been wonderful with children, has always given due deference to their personhood no matter their age.

It was one of those things about him that Scully had always thought would have made him a wonderful father.

“What position do you play, Caleb?” she hears Mulder ask.

Caleb’s little boy voice is swallowed by the cacophony of knives and forks clinking against plastic plates and soda machines spitting ice into cups, and Scully finds herself leaning forward slightly as she continues towards their table, straining to hear.

“-na learn how to pitch.”

Mulder nods and glances up at the boy’s mother before meeting Caleb’s eyes again.

“You know, I pitched a couple of years. I used to be good at curveballs and changeups. But you’re gonna have to practice a lot if you want to be a pitcher. You think you can do that?”

Caleb nods down at Mulder, solemn.

The woman tugs gently at the bill of her son’s baseball cap. “I can’t keep him away from the baseball diamond. And if he’s not there he wants to be at the batting cages.”

Mulder’s smile widens. “I was the same way when I was his age.”

Scully sees the woman’s eyes sweep over her partner’s frame appreciatively. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Caleb stares at Mulder now with naked admiration. “Who’s your favorite pitcher? Mine’s Zach Britton.”

Mulder chuckles. “Britton’s pretty good. I’m a Yankees fan, myself. So I’m liking Severino these days.”

The boy wrinkles his nose. “Ewwww, the Yankees? Traitor.”

Mulder and the woman both laugh.

“Well, maybe one day…” his mother cocks her head, biting her lip as she glances between her son and Mulder, “Mulder here can show you how to throw a curveball, Caleb.”

Mulder chuffs as he rises, crossing his arms even more tightly across his broad chest as a blush creeping over his features. “I’d probably end up in the hospital if I tried to throw a curveball these days, Annie.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Annie says, reaching a tentative hand out and wrapping it around Mulder’s right bicep. “You look like you’re in pretty good shape to me.”

Scully, done observing, quickens her pace and plasters a smile on. “Mulder,” she says, still several feet away. “Here you are.”

Mulder startles, jerking his arm from Annie’s grasp. “Scully, hey. This is, uh, you remember, right? Annie. Anne. Anne Woodward. She was, uh, she was…”

A look of dawning comprehension flits its way over Annie’s face as she gauges Mulder’s stammering reaction with Scully’s sudden appearance. Annie glances down at Mulder’s left ring finger, then Scully’s, before she brings her eyes back up to Scully’s.

Subtle, Scully thinks. “No, I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” she says instead, smiling wider but barely unable to unclench her teeth. The woman is even more stunning up close. Glowing jade-green eyes and full lips. Gorgeous body.

Jesus.  

Scully holds her hand out. “I’m Dana-”

Annie reaches out to shake it firmly. “Agent Scully. I know. You probably don’t recognize me, but I was at Agent Mulder’s house last weekend. I’m an investigative technician with the Bureau. I was part of the team mobilized to collect evidence after the Purlieu incident last week.” She drops Scully’s hand. “Crazy stuff.”

Combing through her memory of the multitudinous faces and comings and goings of all the investigators that had torn their house apart for almost 48 hours, Scully thinks she might remember a blonde ponytail poking out of an FBI cap, gathering evidence. Scully had been in and out of their house herself during those few days, giving multiple statements to multiple agencies, appearing before a review panel.

“Right. Thanks for your help on that,” Scully says. “Agent Mulder’s house,” she emphasizes, “is quite literally a disaster, as you know, so I told him I’d help him pick out some replacement furniture. And I owe him a table.”

Mulder’s brow furrows. He starts to interject, but Scully shoots him a pointed glance. His mouth slams shut, but the confused crease in his forehead deepens.

Just then, Annie’s order number is called, then Mulder’s. Scully makes a show of looking at her watch, clearing her throat.

“Mulder, I’ll just go get the stuff from the warehouse and meet you at the car, okay? You can drop me off at my place on your way home.”

Scully turns and walks away before he has a chance to respond. She throws one last glance over her shoulder and swallows past the lump that rises in her throat as Annie beams up at Mulder. Scully nearly bumps right into the pregnant mother still arguing with her obstinate son as she stumbles towards the elevators.

xxx

As she waits for Mulder in the car, the silence humid and thick, Scully’s memory calls to mind an instance when she was quite young, perhaps ten or twelve years old, when her mother had driven her daughters to the coast after picking them up from school one afternoon. Maggie had stared out the windshield at the crashing surf until Melissa had finally asked what they were doing there. Maggie had blinked, glanced in the rearview mirror, and confessed to her daughters that she was jealous. She was jealous of the sea for the sway it held over her husband. 

As a girl, Scully had been stunned, and had said as much. She was surprised at her mother’s confessing such a thing, for wasn’t envy one of the seven deadly sins?

“Oh, Dana,” her mother had explained with a sad smile, as she’d turned her gaze away from her daughter and back to the green-blue curve of the horizon, “jealousy and envy are not the same thing. Envy is when you covet something of someone else’s that doesn’t belong to you. Jealousy is longing for what’s already yours.”

It’s taken years, but in the cabin of Mulder’s pickup, waiting for him to amble outof the store, Scully finally thinks she understands the distinction.

Apart from herself, Scully knows, Mulder has led such a loveless existence. But hasn’t she also done her best, even unwittingly, to ensure that his histrionic cycle of love and loss just keeps going, ad infinitum? Maybe Mulder has come to believe that a life with Scully is what he has earned, part of his unending doomed lot in life. To be loved by a woman who was not supposed to be able to bear him any children. To be loved by a woman who was destined to give him an impossible son only to give him away.

Scully is startled out of her reverie when Mulder opens the driver’s side door and slams it behind himself. He lets the silence stretch in the cab before speaking.

“What the fuck was that, Scully?”

“You tell me,” she answers, hating how petulant she sounds.

“Scully…” Mulder’s voice is low, dangerous. He twists the keys in the ignition with a jerk of his wrist and pulls out of the parking space. “Come on. You know me better than that.”

Scully doesn't respond. Does she know better? She and Mulder hadn’t really talked about where things were headed between them after the terrorist attack at the Ziggurat in Texas. She’d started staying over at the house with him more and more since her latest hospital stay, after her bout of unexplainable seizures. Remembering the surprisingly new heft of Mulder above her, the way he used their bed frame to leverage the angle of his thrusts, his head between her legs that very morning, she certainly knew where Mulder had been hoping things were heading.

But Scully had always doubted whether Mulder’s known what’s in his own best interests, especially when it came to her.

For her part, she hates herself for needing him as much as she does. He is her fatal flaw, her Achilles heel, the forbidden fruit that has been her undoing. You’d think she’d have learned her lesson by now, but here she is, twenty-five years later, still waging war with herself over him, holding him at arm’s length with one hand while drawing him closer with the other.

Mulder has pulled onto the highway before he starts talking again. There’s a plaintiveness in his voice that Scully can’t remember hearing in years, not since they first started working together. It burns, hearing him trying to convince her of something she knows shouldn’t be plausible, but probably is.

“Annie and I got to talking when she was at the house. She saw my bat and glove in the corner and asked if I was coaching Little League or something.”

Annie. 

Annie is tangible. Attainable. And obviously more than willing. She could probably still give Mulder another child, a little sister for her two boys.

Scully refuses to respond, allows the silence to unspool, become uncomfortable. Mulder struggles to fill the void, like he always does.

“I just, I told her I liked baseball, and we got to talking about Caleb, and how-”

“Mulder, I think this was a mistake.”

Mulder quiets. He stares at her profile. “Okay, fine. We’ll go to Pottery Barn.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Scully looks out the windshield. She can feel the phantom pressure of Mulder’s jaw clenching and unclenching.

“I think,” she begins, glancing at him and pressing on when Mulder closes his eyes, “I think we may be rushing back into this for the wrong reasons.”

“No, Scully.”

“No?” she asks, turning fully in her seat to look at him, incredulous. “No? When have we not been the worst possible option for one another?”

“Scully, where is this coming from?!” Mulder practically shouts at her. “Are you PMSing or something?”

“I’m perimenopausal, Mulder,” she retorts, “and maybe it’s time you started thinking about why we’re even together in the first place. And why we keep continuing to be together when it brings us nothing but heartache.”

Mulder lets another half a mile pass before he speaks again, and the gravel in his voice scrapes her heart raw.

“Are you really that unhappy with me?” he asks quietly, taking the turnoff towards her place.

“Are you really that happy when we’re together?” Scully asks. “Or are you just less miserable because you’re not all alone by yourself?”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Scully!” Mulder yells, slapping a hand against the steering wheel.

“Could you just stop being stubborn for a moment, Mulder,” Scully implores. “Just divorce yourself completely from the idea of you and me and think about it. Could you be happy with someone like Annie? Raising a family, having little boys to play catch with, someone to teach how to throw a curveball? A wife who actually stands a chance of getting pregnant again?”

Her heart feels like it’s withering in her chest, atrophied after so long without him and weary from trying so hard to hold on to what it was about him that made him so irreplaceable. But this is where she’s always failed where he has succeeded: Mulder has a knack for loving the memory of someone unconditionally, in spite of the many ways they’ve let him down.

He pulls up to the sterile, ridiculously overpriced townhouse that she’s insisted on maintaining since she moved out. It’s in a gentrified part of D.C., an industrial park that’s been modernized, and she knows Mulder hates it, even though he’s never said a thing about it. He slams on the brakes so hard that she winces when they screech. Mulder throws the car in park and stares out the windshield, refusing to look at her.  

“I know the difference between losing people and watching them leave, Scully.”

Scully stares at his profile. The strong line of his jaw has softened over the years, but it’s no less dear to her now than it was decades ago, shadowed by 5 o’clock stubble and the sherbet-colored light filtering in from the streetlamps half a block away.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mulder,” she whispers, and she’s out of the passenger seat, slamming the door of the truck and turning the lock of her own place in less than thirty seconds without sparing a second glance behind her. 

He’s been watching her leave for years, she figures, as the automated front door beeps shut behind her. She leans into it, inviting the small measure of pain when she lets her skull thud against the hard wood. The sound of his truck idling lingers until he finally puts the car in reverse and crunches back down the driveway, giving her the space he knows she needs. 

One more night won’t kill them.

[svtntntn]

theatrics

college!wonwoo (also actor!wonwoo)

JEON WONWOO, THE JEON WONWOO

okay, let’s get started

this bookworm’s an english major with a minor in theatre

bc he's also a thespian!!

in high school, he was required to fulfill a performing arts credit to graduate and chose drama class

his teacher thought his acting, his body language, his tone of voice, and facial expressions were undeniably good for someone who never tried acting before

so he suggested that wonwoo try out for the school play

and so he did and he slowly developed a love for theatre

he enjoyed the complexity of becoming a completely different person, getting lost in the character he was playing, taking on their struggles and conveying their emotions and feelings, creating his own narrative

it was something that intrigued him and challenged him so he chose to join a theatre club in college

they usually put on small performances in their black box theatre or if they do large scale productions, it's something leading up the entire semester

when he's not acting or doing things with the theatre club, he's spending time on a mixtape with seungcheol, mingyu, and vernon 

or he's reading 

taking on different characters helps him write lyrics, giving him new perspectives on things

it's always one of those three things

this boy is hella busy but always finds time for himself

if the guys ask him out to hang out, they always know to wait after wonwoo's theatre practices

or they just linger by the building he's in and kidnap him afterwards for food and stuff

he always has a book or script in his bag

wonwoo is known as the smart and silent type, the guy who keeps his head down, but asks some questions here and there and gets an A on the exam

a pretty straightforward guy tbh

when you meet wonwoo, he's your TA for your theatre studies class

but the very first time you see him see him, he's on stage

for this theatre studies class as an extra credit assignment, you have to attend a showing of the theatre club’s newest production and write a short report on it

it's this story about this boy and this girl and how their lives interweave together

spoiler alert: the boy gets into a tragic accident and the girl turns out to be dying from a terminal illness!!

and so at the very end, the girl decides to sacrifice her heart for the boy to live on

and you're just a bawling mess in the middle row of the dark theatre

after the show ends, you take a couple minutes to wipe away your tears when going to the restroom, you accidentally run into a tall ass person

it's the male lead from the play!!

you're lowkey starstruck and nothing but incoherent words come out of your mouth, "you—good at a-acting" 

"uh, thank you" he nods and continues past you to the restroom

when he leaves, you realize how awkward that was and how much of a mess you must look with tear tracks on your face

tbh wonwoo didn't even notice how much of a mess you looked

he just vaguely remembers seeing you in the theatre class, that one cute person in the back who fell asleep during the video

later when you stroll into class and your professor asks who attended the play, you and couple others raise their hands

your professor calls on them and they just say the production was good, giving generic answers

when she calls on you, you praise the whole production, from the writing to the directing to the lighting to the actors

you could go on and on about the acting, especially the male lead's performance

and your professor is smirking to herself and raises an eyebrow at wonwoo

and wonwoo, who has a black hat over his head and a mask on (he's lowkey hungover bc the cast threw a small drinking party), immediately perks up at the abundance of praise coming at him

"thank you (y/n) for those kind words, and speaking of this play," she turns to her TA, "wonwoo! congratulations on opening night, for those who don't know—wonwoo is the male lead of the theatre club's production!"

you blush and immediately duck your head down and sink down in your seat, embarrassment flushing your cheeks

wow, your professor gotta expose you like this rippp

at the end of class, you bolt from your seat and leave the classroom asap

wonwoo's actually looking for you, but he can't seem to find you once class is over

the next class, you keep your head down and try to stay inconspicuous but when your professor takes attendance, wonwoo takes note of you raising your hand in the back

you bolt out of the class but wonwoo manages to catch you before you run away again

and when you're hiding in the student commons, guess who spots you in the corner of the room?

WONWOO!! 

he actually stops by your table and thanks you for complimenting on the theatre production

as he re-introduces himself, wonwoo asks if he could sit down with you for a bit before his theatre practice

he makes nice conversation as you take notes on a powerpoint for another class, letting you focus on writing every so often before starting a new conversation with you

but you can definitely tell he's really quiet, but when he talks, he's a really humble and kind guy

your stomach growls and so does his, so you two walk together to the food court, getting something to eat and talk over before you offer to walk him to practice

you end up lingering by practice and meeting some of the other people in the club like the tall and bubbly girl named sooyoung, the equally quiet kyungsoo, theatre club president yoona, and the mysteriously handsome junhui

you stay and watch their rehearsal, admiring everyone's skills and talents as they do warm up exercises and ad-libs games and such

you debate on when to leave the practice, but you end up staying the whole time

and wonwoo's kinda surprised you're still there at the end of the night, so he walks you home to your car and calls it a night, wishing you a safe drive

it’s a nice surprise that you stayed the whole practice, having knowing him for such a short time

when you have theatre class the next day, wonwoo waves at you and catches up next to you after class ends

you two end up getting food and going to the theatre practice together

this becomes your new routine, allowing you two to get closer and closer as the semester continues on;)

if someone needs to find wonwoo, they’ll usually find you with him in the library or in the student commons area

he barely texts you, but when he does he texts you paragraphs after paragraphs

they’re usually complaints of novels and essays he needs to write for his class

and then they usually end with ‘food?’ or ‘I’m outside your apartment’ and then wow there he is

wonwoo also asks you to run lines with him, bringing a smile to your face as you get to comment on his outrageous character or the way the storyline goes

you two even go to a cat cafe together!! 

you’ve never seen wonwoo so happy before;’)

mingyu meets you when he runs into you after another one of wonwoo's practices, immediately blurting out, "(y/n)? oh! you're the person wonwoo's been telling me about! you are pretty cute! wow!"

wonwoo's glaring at mingyu while his best friend has this wide innocent smile at you bc he's happy to finally meet you (and to scope out the person stealing away wonwoo everyday)

you all get food together after practice and mingyu purposely sits in the front with wonwoo

he’s just jealous and wonwoo-deprived

wonwoo enjoys spending time with you in the library most of all

when you're typing away on your laptop or writing out your homework, he peeks behind his book and tries to make you laugh out loud

from changing his expression behind his book, to miming out his lines to you with exaggerated mouthing and hand gestures, he always tries to get you to crack in the silent space

you always slap him on the arm once you two leave the library doors, a small fond smile on his face as he catches up to your retreating figure

wonwoo isn't the type to fall for someone so fast, but he definitely cannot deny that he feels an attraction towards you

the same goes for you too

and bc you and wonwoo are both not the type to confess your feelings so suddenly, you both hold it all in

for theatre, your final project is to act out a scene written by students from a screenwriting class your professor teaches 

your assigned scene is about an argument between two exes, where one person is trying to get the other person back, but they have moved on and don't want to rekindle the past

it's really intense and it sounds straight out of a drama

and of course with your luck, you're paired with this one guy who barely shows up to class

you set up practice sessions and your partner does show up, but he's not really putting in the effort to make these scene the best it could be

wonwoo offers to run the scene with you several times and he even gives you tips and pointers on projecting your voice, conveying emotions, and how to memorize what comes next

you practice way more with wonwoo than your actual partner at this point

when you visit the theatre club meetings, you definitely pay closer attention to everything junhui, kyungsoo, sooyoung, and yoona do, even asking them for tips 

but on the day of your scene, your partner is nowhere to be seen

you've been texting him every other minute since before class started to see if he actually shows up

your professor then suggests that you do the scene yourself, but with someone else as your partner

and oF COURSE, guess who she volunteers as your partner

the one and only JEON WONWOO

you hand wonwoo the script and he reads over it

he's pretending that he hasn't already memorized it, bc let's be honest he totally has 

before you two start, wonwoo mutters in your ear that you can do it and you're gonna do positively amazing

you're too busy getting into character when you don't notice the way wonwoo squeezes your hand as a sign of affection

everyone else notices to it thooo;)

wonwoo starts the scene with you and you can't help it but feel completely at ease opposite him in this

the scene is flowing so well and everyone is in such awe of you two, your professor is avidly watching you in the front row of the room with popcorn in her hands

you're playing the ex whose moved on and wonwoo's the guy who wants you back

the scene is playing out almost exactly how you've practiced it with him

you sound v stubborn, unwilling to change your mind and wonwoo's trying so hard to get you to change your mind 

his voice softens when he gets closer to you, when he gently takes your hands in his

but you pull from his touch like it's an all-consuming fire, like it's going to burn you again

the body language between you two is electric, everyone can see you as a split couple with a messy ending

when your argument is getting to its peak and both of your voices are getting louder and it becomes a shouting match, and wonwoo leans in to kiss you, you slap wonwoo

the slap echos in the room and wonwoo's just as shocked as you are

bc the slap was something you suggested with your original partner but he didn't want to do it bc let's be honest, he didn't want to get slapped in the face

and when you told wonwoo about it during a practice session, he was like 'yeah do it' but everytime you were about to slap him you chickened out and never did it

so you agreed not to do it, even though it'd be great for the scene

but DAMN you really went for it rn!!

your eyes widen slightly with worry, but wonwoo continues on, gritting his teeth and touching his red cheek

you finish the scene with your final lines and walk away from him, letting the silence end the scene for you

one slow clap in the back of the room causes a whole wave of applause for you and wonwoo

but you immediately go back to wonwoo, who is still frozen in his spot

"wonwoo! I'm so sorry! I totally forgot and I just went for it, is your cheek okay? are you okay?" you check his face and there's a giant red handprint on his face

your professor lets you go to the health services wing to get some ice for his face (after giving y'all an A+ bc duh)

you apologize for slapping so hard and wonwoo waves it off, saying that it was perfect for the scene

he instead compliments you on your acting and how well you did

but you're still upset that you caught wonwoo off-guard and slapped him so hard

"hey, we just had our first fake fight and you got an A, now's not the time to be so upset"

you're still not budging, "but I am, I feel really bad"

without missing a beat, wonwoo says, "then take me out to dinner"

you just reply, "okay, okay fine" but you pause as you realize what you just agreed to, "wait—what?"

"you're paying" wonwoo smirks

when you make a face about paying, he just points at the red hand on his cheek

after wonwoo gets his ice, he feigns being dizzy from the slap (prompting you to almost slap him again) and he gets to lay down on a cot in the health services wing with you next to him

"you know pretending to be sick is an abuse of your talents"

"it got me you, didn't it?"

;)

[thephantomprojectionist]

Long Review: Death Fighter (2017)

"What's the matter, never humped a rock before?"

While every other martial arts fan was watching the long-awaited Boyka: Undisputed IV a couple weeks ago, I was getting my hands on a more low-profile release called Death Fighter. I regret that decision, now. While looking up lower-profile movies has served me well in the past, it led to a disappointment this time. After having its release pushed back repeatedly for several years, this film finally reveals that it has little more going for it than a supergroup of karate stars and a few surprises. While there are some things that I like and admire about this one, I have to admit that it’s just too plain to hang with its more substantial competition.

The story: A renegade FBI agent (Matt Mullins) teams up with an ex-military mercenary (Don Wilson) to take down a dangerous kingpin (Gigi Velicitat) in the Thai jungle.

Ensemble casting is so common now that it’d almost be a bigger surprise to feature less than four prominent names in an action movie, but Death Fighter certainly secured an iconic draw. In addition to XMA champ Mullins and kickboxing hall-of-famer Wilson, the cast packs two more legends in Cynthia Rothrock as one of the evil lieutenants and the late Joe Lewis as Mullins’ doomed partner. Throw in rising genre staple Jawed El Berni and you can see why I had such high hopes for this. However, the utilization of its stars is the main reason I’m unhappy with the film. Only the acrobatic El Berni delivers approximate to his reputation; everyone else is in trouble.

Matt Mullins: I’ve been waiting for this guy to step up and become the next Scott Adkins ever since I first saw him in Adventures of Johnny Tao. With Death Fighter being technically his first vehicle in 12 years, I thought it’d be the stepping stone he needed to get people at large to notice him…but now, I have doubts about his potential. Matt shows off his martial skills just fine, but jeez, are both he and his character ever bland! Mullins comes off as a Ken doll, and is absolutely unremarkable beyond his fight scenes. Adkins is no master thespian but at least he can create a memorable character, whereas Mullins barely creates an impression. Were it not for Matt’s physicality, anybody could’ve played this role.

Don Wilson: The opposite of his younger costar, Wilson is charismatic but totally unprepared for the movie’s style of action. Choreographer Patrick Tang favors a flashy, acrobatic style of fight scene, but Wilson isn’t about to change up his usual grounded game for anybody. Though Don’s brawls feature significantly less slow motion than his regular fare, they’re noticeably slower and less creative than anybody else’s – giving the impression that everyone had to go at half-speed with the old man.

Joe Lewis: Speaking of old men, the late karate god is in decisively poor shape. I know Joe was in failing health at this time in his life and thus excuse much about his utilization, but he still seems poorly-placed in an action-packed film like this. He briefly beats up a henchman and engages in a shootout before being killed off only a few minutes into the movie. Whereas his previous role in Kill ‘Em All seemed like an appropriate sendoff to the grandmaster’s film career, this almost seems like an unwanted obligation.

Cynthia Rothrock: Having previously stated that she’d like to do at least one more Hong Kong film in her life, I’d hoped that the similar style of this picture might be the opening Cynthia needed to remind the world that she’s an action legend. Not so. Rothrock seems awkwardly cast in her supporting role, playing second fiddle to a performer less charismatic than she (Velicitat), and like Wilson, her two fights leave a lot to be desired. Her dream match against Don is particularly disappointing, featuring some cruddy camerawork.

Nevertheless, the picture has some noteworthy redeeming traits. Despite my complaints about some of the fighters’ individual performances, I’m still generally pleased by the action content. Though he doesn’t properly distinguish himself from other performers who utilize the tricking style, Matt Mullins is well-matched against Jawed El Berni and the various Thai stuntmen, making for occasionally nice showdowns. However, the film’s trump cards aren’t any of its advertised performers, but rather two hitherto-unknown costars who just about blow their cohorts out of the water. Chiranan Manochaem is introduced as a dramatic performer and potential love interest to Matt Mullins, but explodes onto the adrenaline scenes with some impressive fights, making her arguably the best-utilized performer of the bunch. Less of a character but definitely the best onscreen fighter is Prasit Suanphaka, playing Don Wilson’s near-stoic sidekick. I’ll be really disappointed if this guy gets lost among the masses of stunt guys in Thailand, because he’s one of the most versatile and unhinged performers I’ve lately seen leading a fight scene. With a brawling style that’s a fair mix of Tony Jaa and Jackie Chan, he’s one guy who should definitely been in more movies.

Other positive things I noticed include the refreshingly layered participation of women in the action scenes. I recently wrote an essay on the depiction of women in martial arts films, and it seems as though the filmmakers were thinking along similar lines regarding exceptionalism. Chiranan Manochaem soundly dismantles any demure expectations you develop about her character leading up to her first fight (demonstrating that women can be action participants and supporting stars at the same time), and Cynthia Rothrock’s otherwise disappointing casting as an enforcer helps level the field between the sexes and makes the sight of women fighting men less extraordinary than filmmakers often perpetuate. A subplot involving human trafficking isn’t handled with as much gravitas as I’d hoped (it takes a backseat to the personal revenge angle), but it isn’t played for titillation. Not only that, but – for the first time I’ve ever seen in a U.S. production – the kidnapped women are rescued by another woman. These are small touches, but the effect they have on the presentation is noteworthy.

If there were only such aspects to consider and the handful of weird B-grade moments (e.g. a kid thinks it’s funny when a murder victim’s blood pours onto his head), the film might yet manage to shine a little. Disappointingly, the technical presentation keeps viewers from properly engaging with the story. While the movie can get its plot from A to B, choppy editing frequently gives a strained feel to conversations, fight scenes, and montages. The presence of some naturally pretty scenery merely draws attention to the lack of standout cinematography. Also, the movie’s tone can shift so drastically at times that it can be like watching two different films: it favors a refreshingly optimistic outlook wherein characters develop genuine bonds and manage overcome personal problems, but it can quickly turn around and become quite grim, like the rather gratuitous throat-slitting scene. This film wasn’t rated by the MPAA, but I can see it getting one of those ironic R ratings based on just a couple of scenes. (For the record, it’s gotten a 14^ rating in Canada.)

Outright lack of quality isn’t Death Fighter’s failing point so much as mediocrity. While a movie like this would be a decent watch in most circumstances, the amount of talent involved makes it all the more disappointing when you see how little the filmmakers did with their resources. It makes me fear for the career of Matt Mullins: Rothrock and Wilson subsequently showed themselves prepared to shape up in The Martial Arts Kid (produced after this one but released earlier), and the sheer amount of movies coming out of Thailand assures me that I’ll probably see Manochaem and Suanphaka again, but Mullins probably had a lot riding on this for his prospective solo career. He’ll always be able to find stuntwork and supporting roles, but if this is all he can do when the spotlight’s on him, I have a feeling that it won’t grace him many times more. However, responsibility for the picture’s quality ultimately falls on the filmmakers: to the extent that director Toby Russell wasn’t hampered by producers, he’s demonstrated that he needs more practice in producing a standout karate film and, for the time being, should stick to documentaries.

Death Fighter (AKA White Tiger) (2017) Directed by Toby Russell (Cinema of Vengeance) Written by Lawrence Riggins (Replicant) Starring Matt Mullins, Don Wilson, Chiranan Manochaem, Gigi Velicitat (The Mark) Cool costars: Prasit Suanphaka, Cynthia Rothrock, Jawed El Berni (Ninja II: Shadow of a Tear), Joe Lewis Title refers to: The official title could refer to virtually any of the above-mentioned performers, whereas the working title refers to Matt Mullins. (Don Wilson: “Sometimes, it takes a stubborn tiger like you to get a reluctant lion like me to fight. And you’re white.”) Content warning: Kidnapping, implied torture, violence against women, extreme violence Copyright Vision Films, Inc.

[antibodykrp-blog]

   — The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.

war has little to do with how people go about their lives. this is about thirty-five year old lee chaewon, better known as the madam of lotus anma.

canon: the shield part of: lotus anma

freeform: in the middle of a brutal winter, a strong voice shattered monotonous surroundings. she came into this world kicking and screaming, bloody red but pure and completely innocent -and for one second, the whole world stopped. that’s how legends are born, right? she wasn’t a mistake or an accident. her parents desperately wanted to have a child and she was their long awaited heir - the first lee. but, there was only one problem - she wasn’t born with a sword between her legs. of course, her parents still loved her with every fiber of their being, but something was always missing. perhaps a kind word or an extra hug - she was never entirely certain.

as a a beloved member of the lee family, she always felt special - like she was destined for greatness. but, then he arrived - her darling brother, the salt of the earth. she watched him as he was growing up. a small bump on her mother’s belly that quickly transformed into a real person. it was an interesting but at the same time terrifying process. however, she never got along with him. he was either too boring or too loud - all babies were the same. during her childhood, she loved to tease him and steal his toys - a true sister from hell. but, truthfully, she was never very fond of him. most of her friends had siblings and they were all quite inseparable. she desperately wanted to have a real connection with him but they were simply too different. two sides of the same coin - greatness and madness. so similar. yet so different. their relationship was like a honeycomb - at first glance, it was sweet, but also hollow.

however, her life was never simple. strange men and women were always visiting her parents - especially her father. they all had beautiful smiles on their faces and her parents often tried to hide everything from her, but chae-won knew they were all just good thespians. she was not a fool - those people had guns hidden under the coats. but, she never wanted to hide behind her mother’s skirt - sure, it was a soft, warm and a safe place but the world was not. so, at a young age, she began practicing martial arts, becoming a skilled fighter and a force to be reckoned with.

a beautiful little girl quickly turned into a grown and responsible woman who had a mind as sharp as a diamond. she never played with toys - no such games were too simple for her. on the other hand, she loved to observe people and sometimes they were so similar to plastic dolls. humans are such predictable creatures - they are practically slaves to their desires. the ones that act like mighty gods still bleed if you poke them,she had learned that a long time ago, but she also learned how to spot the weakest sheep in a herd. not many people possessed such a valuable skill. chae-won was always an overachiever - she worked too hard, had the best grades in highschool and was loved by many people. a bright, clever young girl with a dark secret. the position of the head of the mafia didn’t belong to her because she wasn’t a man. she despised her brother for taking it away from her, but her hatred didn’t change anything. her father was an old-fashioned man who valued tradition above everything else. he didn’t know that female leaders were just as powerful as the male ones. they were sometimes even stronger. history had proven that many times. however, she was always willing to help her family and the mafia - the difference between those two oftentimes didn’t exist.

so, when the right time came, she became the new madam of lotus anma. when the new queen sat on the throne, the business flourished. chae-won was always a harsh and cold woman - a beautiful marble statue that no man had the right to touch. they could only admire her beauty. she was not for sale. however, her girls never experienced something similar. she’s their mother, a forgotten sister who saved them from the cruel world and gave them a new chance. all her employees were always treated with respect. but, on one knows that chae-won didn’t save them. she just carefully picked them - the wounded doe, a bird with a broken wing, the stray cat. she groomed the naive girls for the role by making them feel beautiful and special. making them feel wanted and needed - don’t we all dream about such things? they were all the perfect victims. no one would miss them, no one would mourn them. their existences meant nothing to the world, but it means a lot to chae-won.

she shields them from the outside world and in return they give her everything. their beautiful bodies and faces attract more strangers and chae-won just keeps stacking money. those girls are her weapon and their love is like ammunition. of course, chae-won is a greedy person but she’s not reckless. so, she often donates a lot of money to schools and charities - she doesn’t need a lawman breathing down her neck.  spread the goodness, the more love the better. her generosity only attracts more souls who actually love and support her. but, good people don’t look forward to the destruction of their siblings, do they? she’s a saint with the devil’s horns, wrapped in the finest silk. as time goes by, her influence and power just keep growing. modern times bring a lot of changes. perhaps it’s time for something new. the seoul mafia will  eventually need a new leader. her reign has just begun.

[mrmichaelchadler]

Finding Your Feet

When it comes to senior-bait cinema that glorifies the act of seizing the day and taking second chances in one’s golden years, actors who hail from the United Kingdom are, in my semi-humble opinion, far more adept at the genre than their Hollywood counterparts. England produced the infectiously charming “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” the crown jewel of these retiree ensemble pieces even if 1998’s “Waking Ned Devine” came first. Back in the old US of A, however, fellow Oscar winners Tommy Lee Jones and Morgan Freeman finally co-starred in “Just Getting Started,” and the result was a crude and crass career nadir for all concerned that was justifiably hidden from critics last December.

Part of the reason for this disparity? Britannia seems to possess a seemingly bottomless pool of drama-school-trained actors of a certain age who are fluent in Shakespeare and seemingly at ease with all mediums—TV, stage and film. Just consider the ensemble of elders from the “Harry Potter” franchise. Not to take anything away from Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, but I was always gobsmacked by the ongoing parade of grown-up stalwarts occupying the halls of Hogwarts over eight films, from Richard Harris and Maggie Smith to Jim Broadbent and Emma Thompson. That is my kind of wizardly magic. Also, aging is much less of an anathema in a land that has been around for countless centuries and whose 91-year-old monarch has lately shown an admirable ability to evolve with the times.

Happily, two of the more nefarious “Potter” alums—both graduates of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts—get to flash far more endearing facets of their thespian personalities, including some terpsichorean skills, in “Finding Your Feet.” This might be a delightful late-life rom-com trifle but give it credit for also delving into the bumpier realities of senior living such as terminal illness, sheer loneliness and regular funeral attendance. You might know Imelda Staunton as the eminently hiss-able headmistress Dolores Umbridge and Timothy Spall as the nasty Peter Pettigrew aka Wormtail. Here, anyone paying attention knows immediately that they are destined to be an eventual couple from the second that her spoiled society dame Lady Sandra Abbott and his thoughtful barge-dwelling handyman Charlie find themselves at odds. Getting over that hurdle forms a familiar if sprightly path for the rest of the story directed by Richard Loncraine, who fares better here than with his listless 2014 portrait of an long-wed couple, “5 Flights Up,” another waste of Morgan Freeman in a pairing with Diane Keaton .   

When we first spy snobby Lady Sandra, ensconced in her rambling estate house, she is overseeing preparations for a retirement party for her husband of 35 years (John Sessions). Later, in between toasts in his honor, Sandra stumbles upon the man of the hour canoodling with her best friend (Josie Lawrence) in the garage. It seems that they have been carrying on an affair for five years and a duly distraught Sandra hightails it to her estranged older sister, Bif (Celia Imrie, a knockout in both “Calendar Girls” and the “Marigold Hotel” films whose sparkling demeanor and saucy half-smiles alone are worth buying a ticket). She’s a never-married free spirit who uses a bike for transport, dons flowy boho frocks, paints stripes in her hair, goes for daily swims in a nearby waterway, is sexually active and resides in a charmingly cluttered north London apartment. In other words, nearly everything her hoity-toity racist and small-minded sibling isn’t.

Shades of “Blue Jasmine”-level self-absorption and hyper-privilege flashed in my head, although the script by Nick Moorcroft and Meg Leonard mostly gets away with allowing the boorish Sandra to have a stab at redemption once she agrees to participate in her sister’s community center dance class. Happily, among the regulars is Joanna Lumley of “Absolutely Fabulous” fame, off her tipsy high horse and gracing the film with her no-holds-barred opining. Of course, Sandra and Charlie are forced to pair off. But once he persuades not to lead, they finally connect through the rhythmic magic of the twist, disco, swing and bootie-shaking salsa. They might not be Fred and Ginger, but—as the song says—they will be slowly yet surely taking a chance on love, even if he fails to reveal everything about his personal situation and she briefly has a change of heart. Whether or not you agree that this gaggle of geezers actually deserve a gig in Rome based on a viral video of their charity-related Piccadilly Circus flashmob, it is very sweet to see Staunton and Spall, whose usual mournful basset hound countenance brightens once his Charlie is given to donning rakish chapeaus, toss the traditional three coins into the Trevi Fountain.

But the relationship that may most strike a chord with audiences is the one between the two polar-opposite sisters, who manage to reunite and recall happy memories from the past just in the nick of time. “Finding Your Feet” finds its own footing by putting its trust in its sturdy performers and avoiding many of the usual tea-time clichés as it allows its British cast to be defined by their relatable human circumstances more than quaint Anglo quirks. Basically, growing old is a bitch but doing it with others can ease much of the distress. And, just to support my Shakespeare-related theory, here is a fact found on the movie’s IMDb trivia section: Imrie did double acting duty while shooting “Finding Your Feet.” She was on the set during the day and then would race to the Old Vic at night for the privilege of playing eldest daughter Goneril opposite star Glenda Jackson in the gender-switch title role of “King Lear.” That right there is the very definition of dedication to one’s craft.

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[mountphoenixrp]

We have a new citizen in Mount Phoenix:

                             Beverly Bang, who is known by no other name;                                           a 23 year old daughter of Cao-Guojiu.                                                             She is an actress.

FC NAME/GROUP: park sooyoung / red velvet. CHARACTER NAME: beverly bang. AGE/DATE OF BIRTH: 23 / september 3, 1996. PLACE OF BIRTH: manhattan, new york city, NY. OCCUPATION: actress. HEIGHT: 167cm / 5’6”. WEIGHT: 54 kg / 119 lbs. DEFINING FEATURES: doe eyes are often narrowed in a way that is greatly intimidating to many, showing that her guard is consistently up through her face. lips are soft and typically painted a coral pink with cheeks polished with a light rose color.

PERSONALITY: sugar, spice, and everything nice. that’s what girls are made of.

or, at least-not girls like beverly bang. domineering, manipulative, and materialistic were far better words used to describe the socialite. being an obsessive overachiever with a shaky moral fiber, she’ll go to great lengths to get what she wants. and to put it simply, beverly is the classic ‘it-girl’ who disregards other’s feelings in the protection of her own. not interested in anything unless it revolves around herself.

she is the cliche rich bitch who basks in the spotlight because she can’t get the same attention at home. beneath it all, it isn’t hard to see that the actress is not as put together as she would like to believe. despite being manipulative, scheming, bossy and controlling there’s an insecure side to beverly she tries hard not to let slip to the surface. a type of self-loathing that sits underneath a façade of confidence and luxury items. when she is in the mid of one of her schemes or tantrums, it is quite obvious she is feeling second best. the fallen princess ruled by her insecurities, despite a confident exterior, her worst is usually at the cause of her feeling inferior.

HISTORY: ACT ONE .  

she wants the world on a silver platter, wants it wrapped around her finger like the prettiest of diamond rings–and, growing up amongst the elites of manhattan, beverly was raised to believe she’ll have it too. she was a little pearl of a girl, born with a silver tongue and a magnetism that had her playing the heartstrings of every soul she crossed. every soul but her parents’, that is.

born to a renowned hollywood director and his beautiful wife, (an heiress who wasn’t known for much, except being part of a real estate empire), the girl appeared to have it all. a picture-perfect family if you will. though behind a pristine image, secrets, and lies were hidden. not everything that shines is golden and beverly knows first hand as she grows up in a less than loving household. parent’s neglectful, she excuses their ways with the conclusion that they simply don’t have the time for her. instead, it is a rotation of nannies, assistants, and chauffeurs who are there to fill the place where her parents should have been. yet, it’s not like her parent’s absence stops them from influencing their child. though, mr. and mrs. bang were not always there, it was clear they had cultivated in their daughter a taste for the finer things in life. buying their child’s love through lavish gifts, she grows a hunger for delectable desserts and dreamy dresses that would one day prove ravenous. they plant within her the seeds of luxurious ambition. by the time beverly is seven, that ambition has landed her, her first role in a huge motion picture.

beverly’s world is turned upside down once she has conquered the big screen. suddenly, people sing the child star praise as if they were singing to the heavens of the church choir while other’s doubt the child’s abilities. claiming it was her father who had snatched her the part. but regardless, it is love and attention which swarms her. even her mother had succumbed to her charms, making time for her daughter and doing things she hadn’t done before. everything is great but, it still isn’t enough for the up-and-coming actress. no matter how many people flocked the girl’s way with admiration, it meant nothing when the only person that she wanted to look her way had suddenly seemed farther than ever.

truth be told, for a young beverly, her love for movies and acting all rooted from her parents. her interest for the art, first beginning with the reenacting of the classics which littered the shelves of her dad’s study. the queen b always, desperately, saught the love and affection of the man she knew to be her father. full days of casting calls and auditions, all just a ploy to get closer to the man that often treated her coldly. but, all was for nothing, as beverly hopelessly pursued a career in the same field as him; hoping to unite the two yet sadly he only grew more and more distant.

ACT TWO .

by the time beverly has reached her teenage years, she has put her daddy issues to bed. or, at least she claims she has. and her time is spent juggling between the hollywood hills, and the streets of manhattan. during this era of her life, she is surrounded by actors her age who do as they please because hollywood gives them the privilege of being wild and careless. and, when she isn’t among her fellow thespians she is immersed in a world where teenagers run around with black cards, a status symbol which gives them the right to feel like they own the city of new york. indulging in the luxuries only adults should.

as the girl grows older, the cracks in her families’ relationship become more and more apparent. the reality is, her father is never home, and her mother is no longer discrete about the string of men she invites into her bed. she begins to question if her mother had ever kept her affairs a secret, or if bev had just been too young to realize what had been happening all along. she slowly finds herself despising her mother. a bitterness which plagues her heart has her blaming her mom for the absence of her father. fuel to a fire its the start of the self-loathing that begins to fester within her soul as she starts to chew over the hidden meaning behind the coldness of her family.

despite her home life, on the surface, all anyone can see is that beverly is manhattan’s it-girl, a star among hollywood royalty. to the world she is an american sweetheart. when high school rolls around the corner, the actress naturally falls into her rightful place among the social ladder. queen b of her catholic private school, it’s a place only the richest children in new york can attend and it is her, who takes the crown as the school’s resident mean girl.

she collects hearts like trinkets, puts them on a shelf for all the world to see–look but don’t touch, for all the skills she’d been instructed in, she never was taught how to share, and like most children given the choice, she didn’t care to learn. it’s often said that men cower before that which they call beautiful, and the same could be said for her. so afraid were they to let such a pretty thing go without. she perfected the art of getting what she wanted. honeyed persuasion and batted lashes, she had a talent that served her well in nearly all of her endeavors–both work and play.

despite her hatred toward her mother, it was hard to deny that she had become more and more like her. beverly always sought the comfort of men looking for something she had been lacking all her life. yet, nothing was every satisfactory. no one was ever good enough to fill the void that had made itself permanent in her heart. so she schemes and makes a game of her high school life. a distraction from everything she was trying to run away from, she takes it upon herself to live life to the fullest.

but her life comes crumbling down when she is met with the truth regarding how she came into this world. it’s about the time she turns eighteen that her mother sits her down for a serious talk and reveals the paperwork her father had sent over to legally disown her. the divorce is soon to be final. she wonders why they waited until now to dump all this on her.

ACT THREE .

though beverly had always had her speculations, it’s a hard truth to swallow that the man she had always known to be her father was now nothing more than a stranger. and an eighteen-year-old girl has trouble coming to terms with the idea that part of her creation is thanks to a god she has never heard about. it’s that day which marks the catalyst of her downfall.

she sinks into a downward spiral. with rage boiling in her blood, the girl grows a hatred for the world as she knows it. lacking the emotional maturity, beverly deals with her emotions in the best way she knows possible–throwing herself into her work. yet, once that no longer works as an escape mechanism she turns to the next best thing. partying.

by the time beverly is twenty, the star throws her cares out the window and goes on the quest of ruining her families image. her dad is about to remarry a girl who is practically her own age.

she can’t stand the idea of everyone moving on, being happy, except for her who is left with the emotional wounds of her parent’s infidelity and neglect. for the use of better words, she throws a tantrum. her vindictive streak soon to be the reason for her own demise and things the girl once would have done in private, she now does for the world to see. acts out intentionally in front of the camera with the hopes her picture will end up on the cover of next weeks tabloid. hoping that everyone on the planet will see the mess that she has become, or perhaps has always been. hoping to shame her parents, embarrass them, maybe they will be so angry they will give her a call. pay her a visit? but, that is all wishful thinking.

a pretty young thing was ready to act out in a cry for attention. though, it’s too late when she has given up her act. she may have tainted her families name, but it was at the expense of ruining her whole career. when the girl is ready to take her work seriously once more, it’s her pr team that has to break it to her, that her image is completely destroyed. no one wants to work with her. when they advise her to lay low, to avoid the spotlight, her mother is the one who informs her of a place known as mount phoenix.

it’s there beverly sets off to start a new.

PANTHEON: chinese CHILD OF: cao-guojiu

POWERS:

master liar and manipulator—beverly has always had a way with words, seeming to know what to say in order to get what she wants. but with the combination of beauty and charisma, she never thought twice about how easily people took her word for truth. lying and manipulating had never been a problem for the girl, spewing fabrications as if it were fact since before she can even remember. perhaps, that was the thing that made the child star such a great actress at a young age. how easily she was able to absorb a character and read lines off a page as if it were her own story. who would have known there was something more behind what critics called raw talent?

natural born performer—theater, acting, being the center of attention, these all were natural gifts the upper east sidder was born with. anything that dealt with performing it seemed as if beverly had an unnatural aptitude for.

STRENGTHS: ambitious, charming, hardworking, intelligent, cultured, loyal, romantic. WEAKNESSES: selfish, manipulative, materialistic, vain, elitist, insecure, vindictive.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Stealing Life with the Big Bad Retail King — One-third of All Buying Transactions  Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed. — Iago, Shakespeare’s Othello It’s more than disconcerting to hear the blathering now, September 2018, about Jeff Bezos. About Amazon dot com as richest company ever. To hear the fawning love of the rich guy, now, when we were predicting a slave master killing publishing, killing independence; news reports and tribute after tribute for this full-fledged Midas of tax cheating, our homegrown monopolist of the highest order, anti-American who gives a shit about main street America, a misanthropic fake news purveyor, a full-bore felonious PT Barnum and smoke and mirrors double shuffle guy who thinks of his tens upon tens of thousands of warehouse workers as spindles, interchangeable parts, and to hell with their precarity, their one nose-bleed from homelessness. This is a time of same sides of the coin of the realm: the conservative and the liberal, the War-Mongering Democratic Party drooling at the McCain fiasco and the Sycophantic Zio-Christo Republicans confused about who is going to own what while scampering away like rats into the alleys as the headlights of their narcissist-in-chief blowtorches the world. The most important characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) are grandiosity, seeking excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy. These identifying features can result in a negative impact on an individual’s interpersonal affairs and life general. In most cases, on the exterior, these patients act with an air of right and control, dismissing others, and frequently showcasing condescending or denigrating attitudes. Nevertheless, internally, these patients battle with strong feelings of low self esteem issues and inadequacy. Even though the typical NPD patient may achieve great achievements, ultimately their functioning in society can be affected as these characteristics interfere with both personal and professional relationships. A large part of this is as result of the NPD patient being incapable of receiving disapproval or rebuff of any kind, in addition to the fact that the NPD patient typically exhibits lack of empathy and overall disrespect for others.** ** Note that NPD runs through the DNA of these ministers like Jimmy Swaggart or Billy-Franklin Graham, through the family RNA of so-called royalty of the world, in the brain chemistry of the likes of a Henry Kissinger or Adolph Hitler, in the hypothalamus of fruit-salad bedecked generals and in the frontal cortex of all great and not-so-great thespians, from politicos to actors. Moreover, this Bezos, our great Albuquerque-born plumbing showroom huckster peddling absolutely all the stuff we do not need piled up in his fulfillment centers, represents those two sides of the same coin: powerful, libertarian, ruthless and spirit-less, driven to conquer/distribute/hawk all the stuff in any sort of catalog that exists out there to fulfill the needs and mostly not so necessary junk of obsolescence and consumer addiction. A cold anti-philanthropy multi-billionaire, whose net worth of $160.7 billion is headline news now as the TV clowns present the Top Five, Top Ten/Twenty diligently, Bezos is the top of the dung heap according to another rag with all the news unfit (for humanity) to print . . . . . . Who is the richest person in the world? While Forbes updates their list of the world’s billionaires in real time as markets fluctuate, the magazine also releases a more static list each year. The total net worth of these money-makers when the 2018 list was released in March was $7.67 trillion. Click through to see 2018’s top 20 richest billionaires on the planet. With his company — which epitomizes the heights of death star techie logic, next gen robotics, drones, massive crisscrossing of products through a digital satellite-fed network of Prime Time orders — Bezos has continually kicked out with the help of Seattle PD we protesters with one share of his shit stock at shareholder meetings protesting his sadism around refusing to air condition fulfillment centers while instead putting rent-an-ambulances outside the doors! Oh, this economic disruptor of small and large businesses, all part of that gift of unfettered homicidal capitalism a la retail conglomeration, is reviled, hated, but will be the big section in those econ books from many years to come. Bernie Sanders wants a special tax on this white shark-eyed Jeff Bezos? Funny follies of the political kind. Imagine, justifying all the tax evasion and felonies of the billionaires and millionaires and banks and hedge funders and the rest of the elites — that’s the cool truth of our state of misrepresentation in Washington. Never political cries of “tax them all for their externalities — all the damage capital and capitalists have done to the world.”  Major and minor municipalities and entire states fall over themselves with money dripping tongues out of their mouths while courting this company with so many freebies in the billions to get another load of office buildings or fulfillment centers or even another headquarters/campus or pod of fulfillment centers. At any cost. Walmartization of the world, or was it McDonaldization first, or Fordization, but now Amazonization of the culture outstrips anything up to this point in this country’s lunacy. You can get anything anytime anywhere for anyone from this five and dime on steroids. Or, The Details About the CIA’s Deal With Amazon: A $600 million computing cloud built by an outside company is a “radical departure” for the risk-averse intelligence community Just in Time Employment, 11th Hour appointments, Permanent Temp, a Precarity defined as the New Almost Slavery Gig gigs — Coulda Been HuffPost Slave Yet, on Democracy Now, again, in September 2018, we are led to believe we now have to be aghast about those fulfillment centers and those Americans being worked to the bone, worked down to the shredded screws in their hip replacement hardware, worked to confusion and exhaustion and then discarded for not working hard enough for this Master Blaster of the Retail Monopoly. Juan Gonzalez of DN tells us about these “cutting edge” stories from his Rutgers University Department of Journalism and Media Studies students working on this “breaking news,” while Juan laughs and smirks at the reality of “us” (not me) ordering everything on Amazon. Here, the DN reports: As Amazon Hits $1 Trillion in Value, Its Warehouse Workers Denounce “Slavery” Conditions Exposed: Undercover Reporter at Amazon Warehouse Found Abusive Conditions & No Bathroom Breaks Ahh, but we over at DV have been printing these stories for more than six years: * Punditry of Shit-Hole Thinking  * On-line Dildo Salesman Bezos is the News Fit to Print * Amazon.com Don’t Need No Stinking Climate Change Badge, No Stinking Corporate Transparency Crap * Books, Bountiful Ethics, Brave Buyers Nichole Gracely / May 21st, 2012 Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley (LV) is a distribution hub, and many fellow Amazon associates and Integrity Staffing Solutions temps had previously worked in other local warehouses. I have and I can say that they’re typically rough workplaces. At first glance, Amazon’s LV fulfillment center appears benign. Primary red, yellow, green and blue splashes of color brighten the place, and motivational posters and friendly educational signs that feature cute characters provide guidance. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of workers populate the warehouse at once, diligently taking direction from hand-held scanners or computers, and the place is enormous so it doesn’t appear cramped. Seriously, the place could house a small city. Physical strength is not a necessary qualification to perform any of their warehouse job functions, and management is ostensibly concerned with worker safety. Just about anyone could staff Amazon’s FC, especially since it only takes a couple of hours to train workers to perform any specific job function. It’s safe to say that anyone laboring in an Amazon FC has fallen into hard times, and many of my former coworkers’ resumes featured distinguished past titles, impressive demonstrations of manual skill and ability, and/or lofty educational attainment. Many never thought they’d wind up in a warehouse and so, yes, this was all foreign for many. Other workers who staffed other warehouses in the past didn’t know what to make of the place because there is something different about Amazon, something alien. “Chairman” Bezos once said that Amazon workers don’t need a union because we own the company. “Chairman” Bezos has zero tolerance for union activity and several Amazon unionization attempts were summarily squashed. After two years on the job an Amazon FC associate is entitled to eight shares of stock. If Amazon is trading at, say, $250 a share, that’s $2,000. Ownership? $250 per share is a generous projection. Seasoned investors are baffled by AMZN’s current overvaluation because of its unhealthy 188:1 (fluctuates, yet always unhealthy) price to earnings ratio, and they’re waiting for the bubble to burst. Nichole went on to write a piece in the Guardian: Amazon Seasonal Work  And the Guardian published another one, more than four years ago: Being homeless is better than working for Amazon Bread and Roses — 106 Years Ago, Back to Now: Strike Amazon, Strike US Correctional Institutions, Boycott I got this from a friend, Andy Piascik, a long-time activist and award-winning author whose most recent book is the novel In Motion. He can be reached at ###. In the end, in the face of the state militia, U.S. Marines, Pinkerton infiltrators and hundreds of local police, the strikers prevailed. They achieved a settlement close to their original demands, including significant pay raises and time-and-a-quarter for overtime, which previously had been paid at the straight hourly rate. Workers in Lowell and New Bedford struck successfully a short while later, and mill owners throughout New England soon granted significant pay raises rather than risk repeats of Lawrence. When the trials of Ettor, Giovannitti and a third defendant commenced in the fall, workers in Lawrence’s mills pulled a work stoppage to show that a miscarriage of justice would not be tolerated. The three were subsequently acquitted. More than a century ago and it’s rabbit-holed history . . . and what do we fight for in this country now? We have fear of unions, we embrace the gig economy/outsourcing on Kratom (called near slavery by socio-economists), and the unimaginable bullshit and shit jobs have generated aimlessness, screen addiction, be mean to thy neighbor mentality, cold hearts and Homo Retailipithecus. Bullshit jobs, as Graeber states: A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble. But it’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried. We have become a civilization based on work—not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself. What is Labor Day or May Day now in a world of Marvel comics and infantilization of every intercourse we have with every sort of humanity? Do we care about solidarity? Do we know how to build communities? Do we see neighbors and people in and on the streets as equals, people, us? What is the value of work when it is drudgery, dog-eat-dog, king of the hill and top of the dung heap relationships? We have to go beyond now this simpleton way of seeing the world from the bifurcated Groucho Marx eyeglasses. This is a great time of upheaval, splintering, hot house planet, Sixth Mass Extinction, a world of capital making more capital off of war, resource theft, thievery of other nations’ and cultures’ futures. Jobs, Who Doesn’t Choose to Collapse, Hothouse Planet, People As I continually teach young people to think, you are what you eat, what you do, what you think, what your read, what you say, what you believe, what you aspire to, what you hope for, what you do or not do to be one with humanity. If your life is one of toil, what is inside the heart, and what do you do with those beliefs and philosophies while slogging away? Are you a believer in exceptionalism, Zionist or Christian superiority? Is the white shade of skin the defining element in your life? Do you have passions that are your own, or are they manufactured, designed, and cajoled by the money changers and propagandists?  The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. This line was from a speech by Rose Schneiderman, Polish-born socialist and feminist and prominent labor union leaders in America. It’s a phrase embodying everything today we workers need to utilize as a galvanizing force upon our souls to break away from these people like Bezos and the entire master crafters of our pain, poverty and penury. When I say “our,” I mean the world’s collective pain in the form of billions of people, for whom Western Culture (sic) has set loose a wildfire of forced displacement, murder, resource extraction, war and disease of the mind and body. It was also a successful textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, during January–March 1912, which is pretty much universally referred to as the “Bread and Roses” strike. Pairing bread and roses not as counter-balances — fair wages and dignified conditions. Defining “the sometimes tedious struggles for marginal economic advances in the light of labor struggles as based on striving for dignity and respect,” as Robert J. S. Ross wrote in 2013. I imagine the Bezos types wanting every last penny from every last $2-a-day inhabitant on earth, and I imagine this fellow is as steely-hearted as any in an Upton Sinclair book — and note this first quote by Sinclair is for me about men and women working today, even though Sinclair was writing about a living livestock animal torn from life: One could not stand and watch very long without being philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog-squeal of the universe…. Each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart’s desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him, and a horrid Fate in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, all his protests, his screams were nothing to it. It did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. ― Upton Sinclair, The Jungle It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked Delusions  of Terra-Forming and Mickey Mouse Grabbing Adults’ Attention So what do we do with these Titans of idiocy, with their billions and their algorithms, with their broken telescopes peering into the black hole of humanity? What about the 150,000 chemicals in human cells created by the industrialists, those synergistic variant effects we have zero knowledge about, which have helped push our American society into a chronically ill species of over 50 percent of a population cycled through Western (Un-)Medicine. Children with autism or on the spectrum — count that as possibly 30 percent of all births by 2040. Diabetes 1 and 2, more than 15 percent or more of the population by 2040. According to Dr. Winchester: This is a really important concept that is difficult to teach the public, and when I say the public, I include my clinical colleagues. Still, atrazine is not the only human hormone-altering chemical in the environment. Dr. Winchester tested nearly 20 different chemicals and all demonstrated epigenetic effects, for example, all of the chemicals reduced fertility, even in the 3rd generation. Still, why do 150,000,000 Americans have chronic diseases? Researchers believe that every adult disease extant is linked to epigenetic origins. If confirmed over time with additional research, the study is a blockbuster that goes to the heart of public health and attendant government regulations. According to Dr. Winchester: This is a huge thing that is going to change how we understand the origin of disease. But a big part of that is that it will change our interpretation of what chemicals are safe. In medicine I can’t give a drug to somebody unless it has gone through a huge amount of testing. But all these chemicals haven’t gone through anything like that. We’ve been experimented on for the last 70 years, and there’s not one study on multi-generational effects. Environmental Working Group tested more than a dozen brands of oat-based foods to give Americans information about dietary exposures that government regulators are keeping secret. In April, internal emails obtained by the nonprofit US Right to Know revealed that the Food and Drug Administration has been testing food for glyphosate for two years and has found “a fair amount,” but the FDA has not released the findings. Ahh, the melting planet, the water cycle’s disrupted, the entire mess of planetary re-shifting is on a collision course with Homo Sapiens. Everyday I get more and more notifications from friends and thinkers about the impending collapses, the impending peak this and peak that (Peak Everything). Globalization makes it impossible for modern societies to collapse in isolation, as did Easter Island and the Greenland Norse in the past. Any society in turmoil today, no matter how remote … can cause trouble for prosperous societies on other continents and is also subject to their influence (whether helpful or destabilizing). For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline. But we also are the first to enjoy the opportunity of learning quickly from developments in societies anywhere else in the world today, and from what has unfolded in societies at any time in the past. That’s why I wrote this book.” ― Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Feudal Factories of Propaganda and Propagating .001 Percenters — Water, Man, Water We trust ourselves, far more than our ancestors did… The root of our predicament lies in the simple fact that, though we remain a flawed and unstable species, plagued now as in the past by a thousand weaknesses, we have insisted on both unlimited freedom and unlimited power. It would now seem clear that, if we want to stop the devastation of the earth, the growing threats to our food, water, air, and fellow creatures, we must find some way to limit both. ― Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West We are seeing this circling of the billionaires’ wagons (vultures circling the 7.8 billion marks, us), this Bezos and Musk lust for space, for some planetary gated-armed-Utopian community. These fellows and dames are something else, and the conjurers of news unfit to consume fall over them, recording and publishing story after story about their wisdom and foresight and shamanistic ways of predicting the future. Remember George W. Bush and his big ranch buy in Paraguay? That was 12 years ago, readers, yet, back to the future, with news (sic) report after news report (sic) keeps tracking the next billionaire economic ejaculation. W, and we thought he was only painting pets! The Chaco is a semiarid, sparsely populated area known — to the extent that it’s known at all — for its abundant wildlife, rapid deforestation, nothing in particular… and what lies beneath it… Our Real Wealth Trader and Outstanding Investments contributor Jody Chudley thinks he knows the true gen about the Bush land grab. Jody says he has a “secret” about the Bushes. And he adds, “It has to do with an investment idea that’s hardly on anyone’s radar.” The real reason Jody thinks Bush 43 and family snapped up nearly 300,000 acres in those semiarid, sparsely populated wastes of Paraguay? Water. That’s right, blue gold. Bush bought the rights to a veritable ocean of fresh, clear-as-glass, Grade A water. His land rests atop one of the largest freshwater aquifers in the world: Acuifero Guarani, by name. According to Jody, “Acuifero Guarani covers roughly 460,000 square miles under parts of Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. It is estimated to contain about 8,900 cubic miles of water.” If you can’t quite imagine 8,900 miles of water, picture a pool nearly three times the size of California. That should give you a decent idea. A fair amount when you consider that 98% of this planet’s water is salt water. Of the other 2%, almost 87% of it is trapped within glaciers, hence inaccessible. Jody’s “trusty calculator” informs him that only 0.25% of the water on this cosmic ball is fresh (underground, or in rivers and lakes). Just a drop in the figurative bucket… Now, we knew this sort of stuff was going on with the elites, who look at us all as easy marks, broken money bags, the fat cows or broken pigs of their global stockades. What’s happened is this trickle-down lust-love-longing for these people who get plastered in the headlines as being grand and philanthropists, deserving of every cent and every billion made on the back of people, earth, cultures. Their trans-capital and monopolies  and viral presence like Google, Facebook, Walmart, and on and on sucks the revolution out of revolutionary, since we are now shackled to their ways of doing things. The goal of the capitalists is to harmonize their theft with our survival, whatever it takes to put five to a studio apartment (of course, sneaking the other four into the room in the dead of night), whatever it takes to just float through a gridlocked urban and suburban world. So, from Bush and Paraguay, to this Gawker Killer Thiel, we have enough evidence of their feudal ways, their slippery snake eyes methods of shitting on we underlings: Here is Robert Hunziker: Peter Thiel, the PayPal billionaire and renowned super-super-super libertarian and unapologetic Trumpster love-fester achieved New Zealand citizenship in only 12 days and bought not only his citizenship but a $13.8 M estate in Wanaka, a lakeside community. According to a phone interview with the former PM of New Zealand John Key, “If you’re the sort of person that says I’m going to have an alternative plan when Armageddon strikes, then you would pick the farthest location and the safest environment – and that equals New Zealand if you Google it… It’s known as the last bus stop on the planet before you hit Antarctica. I’ve had a lot of people say to me that they would like to own a property in New Zealand if the world goes to hell in a hand-basket. Hell in a hand-basket, from the former prime minister of New Zealand — 1935 Book, quote: If the average white New Zealander takes the Maori seriously as a human being, he is usually rather too ready to blame him for characteristics which more careful study will show not to be inherent at all but actually the result of the coming of the Europeans themselves, the extensive destruction of Maori life and the virtual dispossession of the Maori people. Little attempt is commonly made to understand the causes which produced, for a time at any rate (for they are passing) those Maori characteristics which have become almost proverbial amongst us. To put it frankly, we blame the Maori for becoming what we have made him. It is interesting to realise that similar circumstances of the contact of peoples have occurred before, and in view of the people referred to there is one instance which it seems particularly fitting that we should bear in mind. The instance comes down to us from the days when another great Empire, an ancient one, was civilizing native peoples. There is on record a letter from a wealthy Roman landowner to his agent in Britain telling him to ship no more British slaves “as they are so lazy and cannot be trusted to work.” Similar causes produce similar effects; we should be less ready with hasty judgment and hasty blame. There is a widespread belief, and it is one certainly cherished by the average white New Zealander, that no native people have ever been so fairly treated by Europeans as have the Maori people. As a matter of fact, if it is fully and frankly told, the story of the contact of Europeans with native peoples is much the same everywhere. What we have are so many varieties of what a leading anthropologist has recently termed “the tragic mess which invariably results from the impact of white upon aboriginal culture.” It is true that the Maori people have survived, but this, on careful analysis, proves to be very largely due to their own qualities and their own efforts rather than to any specially favourable mode of treatment. If we are honest there is little ground for pakeha self-congratulation. Ahh, the evidence of climate change (global warming–hot planet) was there in 1896 researched, formulated and discoursed by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius (and then later, amateur G. S. Callendar ramified the greenhouse effect of burning fossil fuels, and then later, C. D. Keeling measured the rising CO2 levels tying that to the greenhouse hot house effect), but for which has been swept into confusion by those marketers and mad men. Imagine, average planetary temps going up from  2.5–11°F by 2100. Imagine that! The more civilizations evolve, the more energy dependent they become, so it’s possible that trillions of civilizations in the great continuum of space evolved, rose, fell and disappeared. If you develop an industrial civilization like ours, the route is going to be the same. You’re going to have a hard time not triggering climate change. For a civilization to destroy itself through nuclear war, it has to have certain emotional characteristics. You can imagine certain civilizations saying, ‘I’m not building those [nuclear weapons]. Those are crazy.’ But climate change, you can’t get away from. If you build a civilization, you’re using huge amounts of energy. The energy feeds back on the planet, and you’re going to push yourself into a kind of Anthropocene. It’s probably universal. —  Adam Frank, astrophysicist Interlude, Interglacial Periods, Working for the Homeless — Flailing at Windmills   Yeah, these big ideas I broach with homeless veterans and their attendant family members, and while the Gates-Kochs-Zuckerbergs-Bloombergs-Adelsons-et al have zero concern about us, the proles, the  detritus of their Capital, I believe working to change one life at a time — even if it’s a life riddled with evictions, felonies, relapses, epigenetic familial hell, PTSD, trauma, spiritlessness, physical decay — has meaning since in that process I have incredible interchanges with people who sort of want the same thing — paradigm shifts and de-industrialization and ecosocialism a la Marx 3.0. I try to find peace in writing, even these polemics at DV or LA Progressive; and in my own world of fiction-poetry-creative nonfiction, the windmills abound because of a rarefied culture of the M-F-A (masters in fine arts) elite — those gatekeepers of the small literary kind, or even the National Book Award kind. This country is not big on real outliers in anything tied to the arts, and I am one of those round pegs looking to splinter the quintessential square hole. Short story collection? Who the hell would read that? Well, try out a project of mine to get the stories —  thematically (sort of) threaded (sort of) to the “Vietnam experience” — as a hard copy from a small press, Cirque. You can read one of the stories, “Bloody Sheets,” here, starting on page 115. The collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam, is a gathering of fiction, much of which has been published in literary journals. I have succumbed to a Go Fund Me “deal” to help balance-offset the costs of printing a book on paper with ink. I have no idea if a Go Fund Me will even take off. The first and only donation is from filmmaker Brian Lindstrom. Amazing, a struggling documentarian throwing in FIRST. But we are in a new normal of shitting on writers, expecting us to have our day and then our night jobs and then write-write-write for free. That is the question, really, who wants to spend their time reading short stories, outside the very narrow readership of Masters of Fine Arts aficionados who in many regards can be pedantic and puffery artists? Vietnam, no less, in a time of Tim Burns rotting the foundation of the war we committed, or the Obama administration’s scrubbing of the war in his effort to commemorate it (Obama gives killer Kissinger awards). Vietnam. One of my short journalist pieces for an old weekly I worked for in Spokane. How many died in Vietnam and Indochina? 3.8 million? Oh, that Nobel Cause (War) myth I run into daily at a homeless veterans shelter, that is was winnable and worthy. Killing farmers, man, in their rice paddies! Whew, only a Zionist could write that script. Read my short story collection for a different way to frame creativity and that time period, that narrative framing, that time in history that has defined and redefined the ugly wars of today. I am going to give this a shot in a time of blatant skepticism and group-think/act/do. Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam. Be part of the creative impetus. The energy. The publication of a short story collection. With that “ask” of the reader who then gives will receive another book of mine, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber. In my view [Dan Kovalik], this Noble Cause myth may be the most powerful and enduring propaganda trick ever perpetrated. And, it works so well because the audience for the trick — the U.S. people — are such willing and eager participants in the charade. To explain the power of the Noble Cause myth, Marciano quotes from Harold Pinter’s 2005 Nobel Prize lecture.  I set forth a larger quote from the lecture than appears in the book because it is so profound: The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven. Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. John Steppling, my fellow writer who studies intersections of culture-mimesis-art-politics (My review of his book,  Aesthetic Resistence and Dis-interest. That Which Will Not Allow Itself to be Said, here at DV) discusses the MFA phenomenon, a true watering down and controlled form of check and balances fiction: So, the fact that The Rockefeller Foundation underwrote (and still underwrites) a good many MFA programs (and not just in literature, but in theatre and fine arts) is both relevant, and not. Or maybe a better way to address this is see The Rockefeller Foundation as symptom. I received a Rockefeller fellowship, which I hadn’t applied for. But, the very fact that creative writing programs boomed after WW2, and permeated the academic landscape is without question linked to the patronage of institutions like The Rockefeller Foundation (and the MacArthur Foundation, and…). And to deny that the tacit influence of these institutions is idiotic. Now, it’s also true that what John Crowe Ransom and Stegner and Burrows preached is correct. Or it’s correct up to a point. It is revealing that Melville was derided, because Melville wrote a lot of ideas, and additionally observed the ways those ideas and that knowledge existed in the world. But it is equally true that you do not observe those harpoons so closely, or closely in a particular way, that all you get is a harpoon description. And a so described harpoon that never participates in riots or social unrest, and whose production is unexamined and the harpoon company that distributes it is left blank…the better to describe the fluted morning dew that bifurcates my tabby cat’s shadow on the harpoon handle, and etc etc etc is only a individual’s sensory observation. The harpoon must be known, not just observed. The real point here is that what Iowa started, and many other University programs followed, was to narrow down the definition of “fiction”. Dante would not be considered fiction today. While there is a point in demanding a concrete description, and not a generality, the exclusive focus on the concrete meant that ideas were being eliminated in fiction. The world is not abstract… but that includes History and politics and tensions of daily life. Those offices in New York, or those bad marriages, are not separate from the Chinese Revolution, or U.S. Imperialism, or the blockade of Cuba or the present two million men and women in prison in the United States. ‘Greatness’, whatever that means, and I have no problem with that word, or the ideas behind it, is in discovering both what that connection is, and ..and this is important I believe…how our own personal emotional and psychic formation, and development are related to both Mao and our failed marriages (or, even the successful ones). The emphasis on observation, on brute description, however eclipsed ideas as a subject for fiction. You may not sit down to write ideas, per se, but you certainly have an idea of what a harpoon is. You have to know certain things, and, in fact, the best writing is that which tells you what you don’t know, not describes nicely what you already do know. And there is a tendency in young writers to generalize. So on the one hand it’s natural to emphasize the concrete, but the result, perhaps intentional, or partly so (given the Rockefeller project) was the elimination of ideas in prose, and the narrowing of the definition of what constituted “fiction” http://clubof.info/