#my love for him never disappears it just manifests into art and other creative things

[dabislittlemouse]

can’t believe i’ve been loving him for 5 years already wth

[opbackgrounds]

so I was doing some research after watching movie 6...

...and apparently it was originally written as a comedy

Yeah, I was surprised, too

Baron Omatsuri is not my favorite One Piece movie—Film Z has too many of my favorite tropes to be usurped from that position—but I do think it is the most daring. Of all the supplemental material I’ve seen and read, it feels the least...One Piece-ish. 

Yes, that includes the noodle commercials. 

If you haven’t seen the movie and can stomach a little spookiness, do yourself a favor and give it a watch. Unlike movies like Strong World or Z that have the look and feel of a manga arc, Movie 6 transplants the Straw Hat Pirates into a world that doesn’t feel like a One Piece story, taking risks and exploring themes that would never fit in the manga proper. 

In addition to the obvious changes in art and animation style, there are supernatural elements that don’t make sense within the One Piece world. None of the Straw Hats win a fight—Luffy included, although he is heavily implied to have killed the big bad at the end. The moral of the movie, if it can be said to have a moral, is if you lose the people closest to you, the answer is to forget about them and make new friends. The story ends with many questions left unanswered and the main drama between the crew unresolved.

And, if you allow me to get philosophical for a moment, I wish there were more movies like it. As I wrote in my review of Novel A, I don’t go to supplemental material or side stories looking for a repeat of what’s in the manga. Oda has written 1000 chapters of One Piece—why not spice things up a little and try something different for a change?

I know the answer isn’t that simple, and by their very nature not all risks will pan out. There will be people who don’t like this movie because it’s different, both in look and tone. But there’s something to be said about a creator putting their heart and soul into a work and having it show in the final product. 

Which brings us back to the original premise. How does a movie go from a light-hearted comedy based on a variety show theme to...this

Baron Omatsuri was directed by Mamoru Hosoda and came out in 2005. To put that into perspective, the movie was in production when the Luffy vs Usopp fight was first seen in the manga. Manga!Luffy had not yet faced the challenge of an inter-crew disputes when the story was being written and boarded, nor did the creative team have the events of Sabaody and Marineford to see how Luffy would react to the loss of his loved ones. They were working without a full understanding of Luffy’s character, and to a lessor extent the character of the Straw Hat Pirates, and it seems like Oda was much less involved In production than has been in movies since Strong World and beyond. 

Likewise, Hosoda had just left a tumultuous situation at Studio Ghibli while working on Howl’s Moving Castle, and if this interview is anything to go by (https://instrangeaeonsblog.wordpress.com/2016/04/24/mamoru-hosoda-on-omatsuri-danshaku-animestyle-interview-part-1/) was going through a lot of personal shit when he was brought on as director. The script he was given was originally written like a variety show—something that was carried over into the various trials seen in the final movie—and meant to be a lighthearted affair after the relatively serious Movie 5 (which I have not seen am thus unable to compare tone). 

With that backstory in mind, it’s easy to see how the bickering and backbiting between the Straw Hats early in the movie is a metaphor for Hosoda’s time at Ghibli, which is something he admits to in the interview. Movie 6 feels different than any other One Piece movie because it’s the project of a man who has had to endure the loss of those who he was close with, at least in a professional capacity. 

There are moments in Movie 6 where Luffy doesn’t feel like Luffy. More than once a member of the Straw Hats ask him to intervene during arguments, moments Luffy either ignores or doesn’t notice. It’s a version of Water 7 where instead of fighting Usopp, Luffy ignores the underlying differences within his crew, and as a result loses everybody. 

The structure of the three trials follows a clear path of deterioration within the crew, the initial goldfish scooping game showing the Straw Hats at their best and inciting the jealousy of the Baron, the ring toss sowing discord among the crew even as they snatch a narrow victory, only for them to be utterly crushed in the third and final challenge as they’re unable help one another survive. 

It is somewhat implied that the Breaking of the Fellowship(TM) is magical in nature—that like the One Ring, the Lily Carnation was able to influence the Straw Hat’s thoughts and actions, but this is never stated outright and I prefer the more mundane interpretation: That without strong leadership the Straw Hats fell victim to the manipulative machinations of the Baron, and simply self-destructed as a result.  In the end, it’s up to the interpretation of the viewer. 

And speaking of things up to interpretation, I love how the Lily Carnation isn’t explained in the slightest. The plant that initially absorbs the Straw Hats looks more like the stem of a devil fruit than a flower, it for some reason rings like a gong when hit, and somehow is able to turn pieces of itself into facsimile of the Baron’s old crew who can somehow move around despite being plans. It’s weird, it’s wonderful, and the element of the unknown works so well in the horror-lite setting. 

My personal theory is the island somehow managed to eat a devil fruit which manifests itself as the Lily Carnation (which due to the L/R conflation in Japanese, is pronounced ‘reincarnation’, which I think is a nice touch of foreshadowing that may or may not have been intentional).

(Also, I can’t decide if little chewing animation it makes when it’s eating people or the weird bullseyes it makes when shit gets real are the most terrifying thing in the movie.)

Hmmm, tasty.

Anyway, this is getting long, so here are some final thoughts:

1) This movie has some low key fantastic outfits. The Straw Hats all look very cool without being over designed like a lot of recent movies. Big hat Robin is of course a fave, and makes me really want to see her in a Carmen Sandiego getup.

2) Screenshots do not do the animation of the movie justice. It’s very fluid and has a lot of excellent expressions/poses, although I admit the 3D is jarring at times. Do not let the art put you off if you haven’t seen it 

3) Also, I don’t think there’s any shading? Like at all? The movie does a lot of cool stuff with color instead. For example, the scene where Luffy initially loses to the Baron his skin goes all grey, and I thought it was because he was fighting at night, but it stays grey even in the better lighting of the underground tunnels and stays that way until he finds out the Straw Hats are still alive, where it returns to his normal color

4) There’s an extended Benny Hill-type gag when Luffy first chases after the little mustache pirate that’s perfectly timed to the music, and ends when Luffy just uses his power to grab him. The comedic timing is amazing and it’s probably my favorite funny moment in the movie, of which there are several despite the overall darker tone

5) The extended jungle shot from Nami’s POV? Very cool

6) I love how from the earliest scenes nothing is as it seems. The opening text is Robin reading the map, but the storm that’s seen on screen is the one that sank the Baron’s crew. Likewise the whole fancy city is shown to be fake panels early on, the goldfish catching game is a trap, etc., etc. It does a good job clueing the viewer in early that’s something’s very wrong on the island, even if they don’t realize it at first

7) I don’t think this type of movie would work in modern One Piece without somehow nerfing Luffy. Horror works best when the protagonist is weak and vulnerable, and that fits best with a pre-Gear 2/3 Luffy (same with the rest of the crew, tbh. I was waiting for Nami to use her lightning stick during the games, forgetting it hadn’t been boosted yet). 

8) I like how there are four captains on the island representing different levels of loss—the Baron has lost his crew and wants to destroy all others because of it, mustache pirate lost his crew and is willing to put it behind him to make new friends, Luffy has freshly lost his crew and hasn’t decided what path he will go, and coward dad hasn’t lost his crew yet but is at risk if he doesn’t change his cowardly ways

9) I think the reason why Chopper was the first Straw Hat to disappear is he’s the most likely to play the part of peacemaker. He’s also the only crew member needing rescuing at the end of the goldfish scoop game, when Luffy foolishly puts his life at risk trying to save him from drowning, just like he recklessly charges the Baron at the end of the movie. Except that time there was no Sanji to save him, leaving Luffy to get his ass thoroughly kicked

10) This is a very good Halloween movie, and I’m glad I watched it in October

[airiat]

Boy with the Sun Song (VI.)

iorveth/f!oc | m | friends to lovers, tooth-rotting fluff, hurt/comfort | no warnings apply

vesta aep maghenn knows iorveth (iorveth aep mirbrach, to her) in a way that no one else can claim: they grew up together in the blue mountains and have been the closest of friends ever since. when iorveth’s unit is wiped out in an ambush by a powerful but unknown  adversary, he seeks shelter with vesta until it’s safe for him to rebuild.

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | part six | part seven

[read on ao3]

VI.

The days passed slowly and lazily like fog that rolls down a mountainside. Iorveth seemed to struggle with the transition from his fast-paced, unpredictable rebel lifestyle to my calm, steady world of caretaking and creating. It was almost too hard for me to be around him, the way his energy buzzed frantically and restlessly, threatening to crumble the walls of my home. We were fortunate that the enchantment extended beyond the physical house to a line around my property, which meant he was able to spend most of his days outdoors. 

That time was spent fletching an absurd stockpile of arrows and shooting them with his bow at the trunks of poor, hapless trees in the vicinity. To me, this seemed like a futile endeavor, but every time he did it, I could feel his energy streamline and settle, honing in on that singular task. But it also became a vicious energy, one that thirsted to see death and destruction. I could begin to imagine the fear his victims felt when they found themselves at the other end of his arrow or with his blade cutting into their skin. This was a part of him I had always avoided thinking about, but to see it take shape before my eyes made the thought unavoidable.

There were two sides of the coin. When I heard the name Iorveth, I thought of my best friend and protector, someone who had, despite all his life has asked of him, managed to stay by my side for most of it. A man whose pride was both his greatest strength and his deepest wound. A man who loved summer sunshine and played sweet music so that the birds sang back to him. But when most others thought of Iorveth, dh’oine and nonhumans alike, their minds became clouded with hatred, with cold-blooded fear. 

He was a criminal, a terrorist, a bloodthirsty villain who ought to have hanged for his misdeeds long ago. I knew this, and yet, I still forgave him for all of it. Even if I wasn’t Aen Seidhe, even if I didn’t understand the reasons for why he did what he did, I would have still loved him.

What did that make me, then, if I could still love him in spite of what he’d done? Did it make me a monster the same as him? 

The loud squawk of a bird pulled me out of my thoughts from where I stood leaning against the doorframe watching him shoot. When I refocused, I was met with the sight of Iorveth holding up a shot pheasant by the neck.

“Dinner,” he announced, a triumphant look in his eye, like this bird had been his white whale, like he’d not faced and cut down bigger, more fearsome foes before.

When was the last time he killed somebody, I wondered. 

I smiled at him. “I have a soup recipe that’ll go really well with that.”

“Sounds good.”

I watched as he left for the side of the house where he hung the bird for one of us to clean later. But my eyes didn’t follow his actions, they settled on the bow slung across his back, on the quiver full of arrows hanging from his waist. How they might feel in my hands, what it would have been like to do what he does.

“Do you think you can teach me that?” I asked when he returned, pointing to his bow.

His face lit up as I’d never seen it before. “How to shoot?”

I nodded. “Well, I mean, re-teach me how to shoot.”

He graced me with one of his rare, hard-won smiles. “I’ve been waiting for this day for so long.”

I couldn’t help but return his smile--it warmed me from within like I was standing in a patch of sunlight. “Well, here it’s arrived.”

“About time,” he replied, reaching behind him and pulling his bow out of its holster.

Iorveth approached me and presented the bow balanced on the palms of his hands like a knight would to his queen--all that was missing was him getting down on one knee. I saw a sparkle in his eye at this performance, so I played along with it, taking the weapon into my hands with gentle reverence, as though it was made of the most fragile glass. 

How many had he killed with this bow?

Then, he unbuckled the quiver from around his waist and fastened it around mine. The two objects felt so foreign to me, so cumbersome and awkward on my body. The quiver was heavy and knocked against my hip, the bow large and unwieldy. I looked down at the state of myself, feeling much like a child playing dress-up in her parent’s clothes. The feeling of this shouldn’t have been unfamiliar to me, but it still was. How did anyone fight like that? Much less with the unearthly grace Aen Seidhe are meant to possess? 

“None of this is suitable for you,” Iorveth said when he saw the apprehension that was surely written on my face. “I’ll make sure you get all your own equipment, but in the meantime, we can start here.”

“Alright…” I said slowly. “What do I do now, then?”

“What is it you think you should do?” he countered, going to lean against a nearby tree.

“...nock an arrow?”

He inclined his head towards me. “So you do remember.”

I had, of course, been taught archery as a young Aen Seidhe--right alongside Iorveth, in fact--such a rite of passage it was. But it was never something that I latched on to, preferring instead the lessons in creative arts and literature. And so, while Iorveth flew ahead in his archer’s training, in anything pertaining to combat, actually, I laid down my weapons as soon as I was possibly allowed to. Thus, it had been many, many years since I had last gone through these motions.

I reached for an arrow, fumbling around with the bow in my sudden bout of nervousness under his assessing, waiting eye. Eventually, I managed to get one in my hand and held it up to him victoriously, but he hardly looked impressed. Rolling my eyes, I slid the arrow into place and raised the bow, one eye squinted closed and my tongue poking out of the corner of my mouth. I spent so much time aligning myself with a tree trunk in the distance that the veins of the wood began to blur with the brush behind it. 

When I loosed the arrow, it missed spectacularly, going wide and sailing into the forest beyond.

Iorveth pushed himself off the tree with a shake of his head. 

“You must not overthink it, Vesta,” he chided. “It should be effortless, without any thought.”

I shook my head, furrowing my brow. “I’ve never been able to do that. It never worked for me.”

“Then that’s exactly what I’m going to teach you how to do,” he responded as he came to stand behind me.

Iorveth’s hands settled lightly on my waist in a way that was very distinctly unlike how I’d been taught as a child. There was a very brief flash in my mind of something heady, like candlelight and dark wine, but I pushed the thought away, startled by its appearance. He removed a hand to give me another arrow, and I nocked it, raising the bow back to the tree.

“Your enemy won’t stand there stock-still as you take your aim. There’s no time to think, only to feel and then to shoot.”

His last word came as a command and I obeyed instantly, without thought, but the arrow still swung wide, disappearing into the brush. I exhaled sharply, with frustration, and lowered the bow.

“It’s alright,” he murmured. “Try again.”

I did as he said, but fell short of my target once more.

“What am I doing wrong, Iorveth?” I asked.

Another arrow passed to me. I nocked it and took aim, drawing back the string.

“You’re not breathing,” he said softly, and when he returned his hand to me, it slid down my back, over my waist, settled on my hip. ”Your core is too tight.”

In my surprise over the heat of his words, in the boldness of his touch, my fingers released the string and the arrow flew forward in a blink, embedding itself firmly in the trunk of the tree. The tree was wide, and my arrow hit far, far off to the right of center, but it was still there as plain as day.

 Immediately, Iorveth took his hands off me and stepped back, but I remained standing there bewildered by what he had just done and what it had made me do.

“Look at you,” he said from behind me. “Just like a real Aen Seidhe.”

I turned around to face him. “But I missed my mark.”

“Between missing your mark and missing entirely in the heat of battle, which would you prefer?”

“...I suppose.”

“An arrow wound is still a wound no matter where it hits,” he said. “And believe me, that shit ploughing hurts.”

I pulled a face, imagining what exactly that must feel like. 

“We’ll end here for today,” he said. “Better if you didn’t overdo it on a bow that isn’t right for you.”

I nodded, almost relieved at this out. I didn’t know if I’d have been able to handle another maneuver like the one he’d just pulled. Iorveth took his bow and quiver back from me, and we walked to the house. 

I felt much lighter, better, without them in my possession. I realized then that I’d been feeling the death emanating from them. The strain hadn’t come entirely from the fact that they were too big for me.

“I’ll make the proper bow for you,” he said. “Then we can try again.”

“You know how to do that?”

“Of course I do,” he answered, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “I made mine.”

“You did?” I asked, glancing at the bow on his back. “It’s beautiful. I mean, it fucking reeks of death, but beautiful, nonetheless.”

He chuckled. “A lot of dh’oine blood on it.”

We arrived in the house and he pulled it off, leaning it against the wall near the door. 

Iorveth continued. “You’ve always been perceptive to things like that, haven’t you?”

I nodded. “The things I could say about the way your energy manifests.”

He looked at me curiously, but didn’t ask me to elaborate. “If that’s the case, surely you can feel the danger you’re in here. You’d honestly be safer in Vengerberg itself.”

“The enchantment protects me.”

He shook his head. “Magic is fallible. Very much so.”

“I’d know if it fell.”

“Maybe so, but then what? You’d be defenseless.”

I shrugged. “It hasn’t yet.”

Iorveth made a sound that sounded almost like a growl. “I’ll make you the bow, you’ll master that, and then we’ll move on to the blade.”

His angry panic rolled off of him in waves. I stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm. Instantly, he stilled and we stood there, me waiting, and him trying to calm himself down.

“If anything happened to you, I’d never forgive myself,” he said simply, in a low voice.

“You won’t need to. Nothing will happen.”

He let out a long, slow exhale. “Let me teach you how to protect yourself.”

“I will. Anything for you, remember?”

“It’s not for me, it’s for you.”

“I know, Iorveth. I hear you. Show me everything you know.”

“Thank you, beag’aine.”

Then, I released him and we set about the house, settling in for the evening. When I read him again, there was a different sort of feeling lingering in the fringes of his usual pain-anger-desperation. And when I took it inside myself, separated the layers, all I could think of was my writing, the purple-pink-wine red hues of an emotion I’d only ever known in fiction. I knew exactly what it was, but I didn't dare attach its name. Not now. Not yet.

[tempesrature]

The Case of the Murdered Witch Doctors | Chapter 1

Chapter: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 The Charm of Lost Things (Oneshot Follow-up) Creative Process Note Commissioned Art Piece

Pairing: Ride or Die | Ellie x Colt Summary: Ellie Wheeler, a witch-detective from the Agency, is given a case that will lead her to work with one of the most notorious vampires in LA: Colt Kaneko. Now, they must unravel the mystery behind the death of two witch doctors before the case gets hexed. All while they navigate the constant push and pull and attraction they undoubtedly feel for one another.  Word Count: 2k+ Warnings: PG-16 A/N: I’ll save all my words for the Creative Process Note but I would love to give the biggest thank you to @client-327 for proofreading/beta-ing this story for me. Her comments and input truly did brighten my day and this wouldn’t be what it is without her help and guidance. I hope you enjoy! @rodappreciationweek @lovehugsandcandy

~*~

Ellie adjusts the golden masquerade mask perched on her nose and pulls down the short golden dress hugging her body as she looks around the dim nightclub. She roams her eyes around the space as best as she can when neon lights are the only thing that illuminates the vicinity. The space is packed from one end of the wall to the other as bodies dance to the beat of the music. Creatures stick to each other in a euphoric haze with faces hidden under masks of red or gold.

The air is heavy with the smell of strong alcohol, Fern Flower smoke and something…metallic.

But she doesn’t let it phase her, not when she has done so much to prepare herself for this moment. Weeks of research, calling in favors and setting up safety precautions has all boiled down to this moment—and she can’t back out now.

So she takes a deep breath and squeezes her eyes shut as she goes through her plan once more in her head even though she’s memorized it right down to the punctuations. With her resolve trapped deep in her chest, she opens her eyes—the irises of her eyes momentarily glinting in blue—before she takes purposeful steps towards her target sitting in the VIP room in the back of the nightclub.

Her target: Colt Kaneko.

The last remaining legacy of the Kaneko lineage, a Primordial family that can trace its origins to the very first vampires of the world. A lineage of vampires that are gifted with the most coveted and sought after power that is only passed on to the descendants of the Kaneko family—the ability to walk under the sun.

~*~

Colt looks at the scene around him with a bored stare, his eyes momentarily glinting in gold each time it passes a human wearing a golden masquerade mask. But so far, none of them have peaked his interest.

Even though he himself designed this system in his nightclub—red masks signaled feeding only and golden masks signaled feeding and sex—he finds it difficult to choose his companion for the night even though he has his pick of humans in the VIP room.

So he waits, like a predator prowling in the night, for the perfect prey to entice him. A prey, he hopes, will keep him entertained for more than an hour.

“Colt just pick one, man! They all taste the same anyway!” Toby laughs as he wipes away the blood dripping down his chin. The woman in a red mask straddling him falls away from his lap and slumps onto the leather couch beside him in a heap of euphoric haze. Toby takes a blunt on the coffee table and holds it up to the neon lights as the inside almost sparkles with a purple hue from the Fern Flower inside before he takes a long drag and blows out a puff of smoke into the air.

“That’s where you’re wrong Toby,” Ximena corrects, her fangs glinting in the neon light as she signals for a man in a golden mask in the distance. “With a good diet and regular exercise, the blood tastes a lot better,” Ximena grabs the man in a golden mask by the tie, her eyes boring into his. “Do you smoke?”

The man nervously and giddily nods his head and Ximena sighs in disappointment as she waves him away and looks for another one.

Colt smirks, bringing up his glass of whiskey to his lips as he takes in the sight of the closest members of his crew that were turned by father, Teppei Kaneko. Even though Colt was denied a place in his father’s crew for so long and he carries a little grudge to those who were accepted into the crew, he likes the both of them enough and chose to keep them after the head of the Kaneko name was abruptly handed to him when his father was murdered. Eventually, they became his closest advisors and helped protect the Kaneko name when it was at its most vulnerable. Now, he can even call them his friends. Although he’ll never admit that to either of them.

Colt tunes them both out and hones his senses into the crowd beyond him as he tries to pick out his prey. It’s been almost three hours since he arrived and he has to admit he is getting hungry. Even if he doesn’t find anyone interesting, he might as well—as Toby said—“just pick one” since he’d rather not starve at his own nightclub.

“Colt Kaneko?”

Colt’s eyes widen in shock before he takes control, narrows his eyes, and sets his face into a scowl. He turns to the creature standing beside him and sees a girl in a gold mask and gold dress with her black hair falling in waves over her shoulders. Colt is immediately on high alert. This girl appeared out of nowhere, evaded his senses and managed to sneak up to his side. He takes a whiff at her direction and his eyebrows furrow. The rational part of his brain tells him she smells human because she looks human but his senses tell him another thing.

They tell him that she smells like nothing.

Which makes Colt even more confused and wary. All magical creatures have a specific smell to them and he’s aware of the most common ones. Even if it was a creature that he isn’t familiar with, he should still be able to smell something. But for her, there’s nothing.

How can a creature not smell like anything?

That piqued his interest.

“I’m interested,” She says, her expression hidden behind the golden mask. “Are you?”

Colt looks at her from head to toe as he tries to weigh in the possible pros and cons of the girl in front of him. It doesn’t take him long, his curiosity and hunger seeming to win out, before he smirks and places the glass of whiskey on the table. He stands up from the leather seat and smiles, his fangs glinting and his eyes taking on a golden hue.

“Follow me.”

Colt doesn’t wait for her response, already walking towards his own private bedroom further back into the building. His steps are light and quiet as he reaches the double oaked doors of the private room. He pushes it open, takes a step inside and turns around to look at her. His eyes take on a darker golden hue and he licks his lips when he sees her confidently walk in and close the door behind her.

He moves forward and presses his chest against hers and traps her against the door, his fangs clear and protruding as he looks down at her impassive face.

“Are you scared?” He asks menacingly as his eyes flit to the expanse of skin on her exposed neck.

“No.”

Colt smirks as he licks his lips. “Good.”

And he leans down to capture her lips in a bruising and hard kiss. She lets out a small chocked gasp, her mouth opening lightly, and Colt takes this opportunity to delve his tongue into her mouth while he lightly scrapes his fangs on her bottom lip. When he breaks the kiss, he looks down at her and smirks at the wide eyes behind the mask before he moves to fit his mouth against her neck as he bares his fangs. His hunger suddenly so ravenous for her, to taste every inch of her when—

“You are Colt Kaneko, right?” She speaks up and holds her hand in front of his face. Colt’s eyebrows furrow in confusion as he looks into her eyes behind the mask.

“Yeah,” He answers and the confusion melts into cocky confidence. “Don’t worry baby, I’m not like what the rumors say,” He smirks. “I’m better.”

“Charming,” She deadpans before she reaches and unties the strings of her mask.

Colt watches with rapt attention as her face comes into view and fuck she looks better than he imagined and he wants her more than ever now.

“My name is Detective Ellie Wheeler. I am the lead investigator of the deaths of Ernesto and Malina Kilat, an albularyo couple who were murdered a month ago in their home.”

Colt’s eyes widen in shock, her words tumbling into his brain in slow motion, before it’s quickly replaced with pure and uncontained rage as he takes a wide step back.

“You’re from the fucking Agency?” Colt spits out the word like poison before he takes a whiff towards her direction and his anger doubles. “Bullshit, you don’t smell like a witch.”

“Half a witch,” Ellie corrects as she raises her hand and opens it. A spark of blue covers her palm and shortly manifests her detective badge. “Pretty convenient when I’m undercover and nobody can smell what I am.”

“Tell me why I shouldn’t fucking kill you right now,” Colt threatens, his hands balling into fists as he tries to keep the stormy golden hue of his eyes to a minimum.

“Oh, gladly!” Ellie smiles pleasantly as she waves her hand and the badge disappears the blueprint of the nightclub replaces it. “I know where each entrance and exit is in this building, magical or not. All the locks have been changed days ago and will only be opened with one key—which I’ve hidden,” She waves her hand and another image appears, a guy with long brown hair sitting on a chair. He holds up a button with a grin as he looks straight at Colt and gives him a small wave. “That’s my accomplice. One press of that button and this whole building gets swarmed with agents and you’re little operation of the illegal distribution of the Fern Flower blunt gets shut down. Should I list down all the nasty fines and jail time you’ll receive if they catch you red-handed or would you rather listen to me first?”

Colt stares at her blankly in shock and disbelief. He didn’t really expect for her to actually answer him. It was a threat, a way for her to back off and scurry away, but now that she’s efficiently laid out her plan—a plan that has effectively trapped him…he can’t help but feel impressed.

But he doesn’t let that show and opts to scowl instead as he makes a mental note to scold Toby for the poor security in the nightclub.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Ellie smiles excitedly as she waves off the image of her accomplice and makes her way towards the bed to take a seat. Colt regards her carefully, cautiously, and makes sure to keep a distance between them. Now that he knows that he’s dealing with a witch—half a witch, he reminds himself—he knows he needs to be careful.

Witches are known to be unpredictable and callous with their magic. One wrong move and he could be in trouble.

“I need to talk to one of the suspects, Jason Shaw. The problem is, I can’t get a meeting with him. The Agency told me not to investigate him and I need you to help me set up a meeting between us.”

Colt’s blood boils and his vision starts to cloud over when he hears the name. Jason Shaw, a vampire and the head of the Shaw Primordial family. The man responsible for the murder of his father and the whole reason the Agency won’t investigate into the matter. All due to the fact that Jason Shaw is a prominent figurehead in the LA Police Department and has made an agreement with the Agency to hide away and cover up deaths and crimes caused by magic and magical creatures to keep the mortal world away from theirs. His pop’s murder will never receive the justice it deserves since the Agency practically dismissed it as a vampiric affair that should be left alone and resolved between the two Primordial families.

“How the fuck am I suppose to set up a meeting between you two?” Colt scoffs as he looks at her with a glare. “Do you think he just clears his schedules for half-witches playing detective?”

Ellie sends him a menacing glare, her eyes flickering in dark blue. “Request a Primordial meeting between you two and I’ll be in the room when he arrives, I’ll take it from there.”

Colt raises an eyebrow, a little surprised that she knows about Primordial meetings and a little annoyed that he realizes that she’s once again placed him into a trap and he can do nothing but dance to her tune.

“And why would I do that?” Colt scoffs as he crosses his arms in front him. “What? Are you going to threaten to close down the club? Go ahead. Do you think I’m stupid enough to place my own name on the lease?”

Ellie pushes herself off of the bed and walks towards him. She stands in front of him and looks into his golden eyes, her own blues steady and confident when she delivers her next words.

“I can get Teppei Kaneko’s ashes out of the Vault,” She shrugs lightly. “It’s old evidence now. No one’s going to notice that it’s gone missing.”

Colt’s eyes widen in disbelief and shock before his hand shoots out towards her and he presses his palm on top of her beating heart. Ellie scowls, ready to chew him out for touching her without her permission, when she stops herself at the look in his eyes—broken, hope, anger. Feelings she knows all too well.

“Say that again,” He says with a slight growl. “Say it.”

“I can get Teppei Kaneko’s ashes out of the Vault.”

Colt lets out a shuddering breath, his hand falling away from her as he takes a step back. He tilts his head back and his eyes latch on to the red ceiling.

She’s not lying, she’s telling the truth.

And that fills Colt with a sense of utter disbelief and relief. If he takes this deal, he can finally have his father’s ashes after three fucking years in the Vault. The ashes that the Agency refuses to hand over to him because they claim that it can only released to his mother.

“Alright,” Colt agrees readily as he looks back at her with a slight nod. “I’ll get you that meeting with Shaw.”

“Great!” Ellie exclaims with a smile. “And you also need to look at the Kilat couple’s bodies to confirm something for me, along with other things I’ll need here and there.”

“What?” Colt asks with a scowl. “No, our agreement was just the meeting. Who ever said I was going to help you with the actual investigation?”

Ellie looks back at him in absolute shock and disbelief before she places her hand on her hips.

“Do you know how difficult it is to get anything out of the Vault? Even with the right papers? The favors I have to call in? The creatures I have to defraud? Not to mention the risk to my job! And you think one measly meeting with a potential suspect can outweigh the consequences—”

“Alright! Alright! Shut the fuck up already!” Colt lets out a breath he pulls out from the depths of his lungs as he feels an oncoming headache in the back of his head—from not feeding for close to four hours now or from her, he doesn’t know. “Anybody ever told you you’re fucking annoying?”

“Yes, it’s one of my better qualities,” Ellie grins as she makes her way back to the door and picks up the golden mask on the floor. She quickly places it back on her face and turns to look at Colt with a triumphant grin. “I already have your number on file so I’ll text you the address of the morgue and we’ll meet up in a few days. Enjoy the rest of your night Colt!”

She gives him one last wave goodbye before she walks out of the door and closes it behind her with a loud bang.

Colt groans, not knowing whether to be annoyed, angry or impressed that she has masterfully maneuvered him into the agreement.

Out of all the emotions swirling in him, he settles on annoyance. But maybe that’s just the hunger talking in him.

He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose before he makes his way out of the room and internally chastises himself for listening to Toby when he said to “just pick one”.

[rixxy8173571m3w1p3]

Out Of The Woods (3/?)

This multi chap fic has been one that I've wanted to write for a while. I'm hoping to connect a few loose ends, since my series is getting closer to the end. Don't worry, I still got a couple of fics left in me. I'd love to thank @xerxezra whose conversations with me are always inspirational. I'd also like to thank @dorkydisappointment whose writing got my creative juice flowing and @hoodoo12 who continues to inspire me all the time. Please check out the wonderful art done by @ravenousscorpian for two scenes out of the second chapter of this fic (Her art found here)

References to the woman in Ricks journal is from my fic What You Found Amongst The Pages. I know, that was shameless self promotion. There are a lot of questions that I wanted to answer in you'd chapter, but for the sake of editing had to put it in the next. I'll work on it right as soon as this is posted. Thanks for everyone's continued support. 😘😘😘😘😘😘

If you haven't read part 1 or part2, then heres a link (Read Chapter 1, Chapter 2)

In this fic the reader tries to uncover the mystery of the artist behind Zeta-7s portrait.

___________________________

Chapter 3: Dare Not Say That Man Forgets Sooner

Whatever redeeming qualities the room held in the previous happy hours were gone, and now even the remnant, lingering daydreams were falling away. With every hour you comprehended the severity of your assumptions and what the consequences were if you decided that enough was enough. Honestly, you didn't want to lose him because Zeta-7 was the light of your life; he expanded your universe and had helped you become a better person, but you could still carry on if you needed to. You had the means, your work, and an ever growing list of books to read, but was it enough, now that you had gotten a taste of the good life? Probably not.

Nothing made sense anymore.

Concerning the current situation, and all which led up to it; if you considered everything which included your existence, life till now, and all he had ever done, then there was no mistaking that he loved you; or had; at least thought he did, but it didn't change the truth of the matter; you hadn't been the first. A few hours had given you time to weep until you thought you had no tears left to cry, but there was still a thick fog over your thoughts and rationality; any shift of emotion being too much to bear. You curled into yourself, aching, hoping you'd disappear, but it didn't work; you were still here; stuck. Being at a disadvantage, not knowing how to get home and neither having a way to get there if you could was frustrating.

Who knows how long you'd been down here, despairing, wallowing in memories and dust, but you were tired, thirsty, and knew that if you didn't move he'd have trouble finding you, and yet you didn't care; let him find you; let him work for it. Though, how would that make it any better? All it would do is succeed in upsetting him before you knew all the facts. You hated this. Father always said hate was a strong word that shouldn't be taken for granted; you rarely had reason to feel as such, but the more you gleaned from those photos and the more proof you found of her presence about the place made you feel hateful and bitter.

Thinking of her smiling at him, receiving every bit of his loving-kindness and inviting demeanor animated by unaffected good-will; his general countenance and becoming familiar with a fresher-faced creature of your dreams; holding him; touching him; loving him. Oh God no, you thought, groaning into a handmade pillow. What was worse was that you couldn't dissuade the thought of her mysterious silhouette sneaking up behind you, plunging a knife into your already fragile identity, and taking back what was hers. Your doubt feeding these ugly horrors which were hybrids of nightmares and daydreams.

Though during a brief moment of clarity, you had come to a conclusion which hardly alleviated these feelings, but we're true; it wasn't your fault. Yes, it had been your choice to accept him and be in a proper relationship with someone with an ambiguous past, and yes you did snoop around a little, but you didn't know how much he'd been hiding or searching for someone like her and had settled on silly, stupid you. Yet, no matter how much you thought about it, why chase a vision of the past and put so much effort in the present? There must've been more to this; there had to be.

Manifested, unstinted kindness and consideration and love in his form didn't happen out of the blue, it was nurtured and conditioned. Had it been her influence which made you knew? Who knows, but you had been fortunate to have had an opportunity to associate let alone form a romantic attachment, but that would soon pass away once you confronted him. Right? After a little while longer, when your heart was finally beginning to slow and thought you'd be able to catch your breath, you heard him walking about upstairs; calling and knocking.

Rick was home and you turned over on the couch and covered your ears so you wouldn't hear him; you weren't ready to deal with this; you didn't want to deal with this. In your heart of hearts, you wanted to go home, to the past, back to when there were no problems and it was just you, dad, and your dreams. If only he was still around so that he could tell you that everything was alright and it was all just a bad dream and that he could fix it, but you couldn't; only in a dream, you could. Dad always knew what was best, but you were old enough to decide for yourself now.

Did this mean you wish you never knew Rick? No, but you wished that you would've never known about all this; about her; that you could've lived in ignorance. Oh, the sweet, sweet bliss of ignorance, how wonderful it had been while it lasted. Even when his warm laughter echoed down the stairway, having found you, ready, eager and excitable to be near you, you didn't answer. You knew you weren't in the state of mind to say anything nice, that despite it all he wasn't a bad person. Yet, the moment that hand of his touched your shoulder, you hissed. “Don't touch me.”

He gasped, stunned by this uncharacteristic aggression. Maybe you weren't the nice girl he thought you were after all; especially if the rustling of his clothes alone made you angry enough to dig your nails into the couch cushions. Zeta-7 waited for a few moments, ruminating on what would be the best course of action before he knelt down to be at your level and wondered. “What's wrong? Are y-y-you hurt? Is th-there anything I can do?”

Swallowing back a sob, you silently counted to ten then answered in a listless tone. “I don't know if you can. You've… you've been hiding stuff from me.”

“Huh, I-I have? What have I…”

“Don't try to deny it.”

Pushing yourself up, you rubbed your swollen eyes and chanced a look at him; your sight fuzzy as tears threatened to fall but thankfully didn't. The alarm in his widened eyes at the state of your runny nose, and tear-stained cheeks made him instinctively reach out to wipe your tears away, but you pushed that familiar, loving hand away. “M-mi corazón?”

Instead of answering as you usually would, you pulled out the well-loved copy of Persuasion from behind a pillow, took a deep breath and dropped it on his lap. “I found it while I was looking for something to read.”

“Oh geez.”

“And can you believe I found more than I bargained for.”

You two sat in silence for what felt like hours as he stared at it, and when he gathered the courage to look inside, the lines about his brow and mouth deepened; another sign that it was true. When he finally interrupted the silence, he confessed regretfully. “I-I was going to tell you.”

“But you didn't. There's a lot of things that I understand are none of my business, but this….I think is a good time to know. If you care about me at all, then read what you wrote.”

“But it's - it's not what you think.”

“Then there's nothing be afraid of. Go on then, read it.”

Visibly swallowing, his shaky hands held it open and he stuttered. “I-I-I thought of you today as I left th-the milky way, on my way t-to a classified location. I-I wish you were here so I could show you the beauty that exists across the universe, but knowing our limitations I can only send you this wonderful novel that I found when I was exploring a-a bookstore located on one of Saturn's moons. I-I know it can be hard to believe that Miss Jane Austen's works can reach the furthest depths of-of space, but that can be blamed on a certain Gallifreyan and his little blue box. I can't wait to hear what y-y-you think of it. Till next time my dear. With love, from Rick.”

“Don't forget the photos.”

Setting down the book, he glanced at the discarded photos, sagging a little after each one, gauging your reaction after he finished studying them. Rick was a smart man, he knew well enough that he messed up and how compromising those photos were. “It's not - I was only writing as ugh - as a friend.” He began, wringing his hands as he went on. “Y-y-y-y-you know I don't have that many.”

Which was true. “Really? So what did she do for you? Was she special?”

“She - she made me a little less lonely. That in itself was something I w-was grateful for.”

Your nails bit into your palms and that ever familiar ache bloomed across your chest; his answer birthing more questions than you were willing to ask. He offered you a Werther's original to placate you which you accepted; it's wrapper similar to the one in the painting. As ever he waited for you to answer, and the longer he waited, the more he sagged; his eyes pleading, hoping, wishing that he could know whatever hurt clouded your heart and wanted to fix it. “I want to believe you, I really do,” you admitted, which made him hopeful, though only for you to crush it with this. “but I'm tired of walking on eggshells. Tell me, what did you want from me when you had someone like her? Seems as though she was a good match for you. She was a creative who could paint, loved flowers, and butterflies among other things I imagine.”

“Sh-she did.”

You bit the inside of your cheek in an attempt to hold back the surge of feelings which were a result of his sincerity. Damn it. You could do this……possibly. “See?” you said cooly, focusing your gaze on your naked feet. “I knew she was special considering you sent her a book that had belonged to the Doctor. She also knew about your travels, which meant you trusted her and you hardly trust anyone. The point I'm getting at is that I want to know what I am to you. So, am I a knockoff or a rebound? Because we both know there's nothing like the real thing.”

“N-n-no, not at all. You mean th-the world to me and I-I love you. I have only loved you. ”

“But she loved you, didn't she? And you loved her. I can't ignore that. If she's anything like me, then what are we doing together Ricardo? Why aren't you with her? I…. I thought we understood each other but then I found proof that I was only second best. I can't do it, I can't compete with a shadow, and I'm not going to try. I don't have it in me.”

“I-I-I-I never expected you to. Por favor mi amor de m-mi vida, if you'll let me explain, I'll tell you whatever you want. I - I don't want to lose you. Please, honest t-t-to God, I don't. I can't.”

“Hmm, I didn't know you were a praying man.”

“When you're about t-t-to lose your universe, I don't think there are th-that many options. I can't - oh please I can't lose you. Not again.”

You felt your resolve breaking. You wanted to fall into his arms and melt into the comfort of them; for you both to comfort each other and let it all go because it probably was just a big misunderstanding; him being the best thing that ever happened to you, but not yet. Maybe he was a praying man after all, and if God was merciful, then why wouldn't you be? Rick certainly would. For Zeta-7, you could be. He'd definitely given you enough chances.

“Fine.” you decided, helping him up as you stood, but through this brief touch he almost misunderstood, thinking that the worst was over and gave your hand a squeeze; his warm smile weakening your resolve even further. Maybe Ricks were masters at mind games after all. And you knew it wouldn't take much for him to make you forget how unhappy you were, and like magic, show you something wonderful and dazzling, but you didn't want to be charmed; you wanted the truth. You bit the flesh inside of your cheeks hard enough for you to bleed, and despite relishing the warmth which permeated your chilled hands, you let go. “I'm……I'm not over it yet.”

TBC

[notbecauseofvictories]

FIC | another city (better than this one)

[READ ON AO3]

“It’s ‘Solo’ now.”

Ben offers it up before Lando can even open his mouth; abrupt and with a whole mess of badly-hidden nerves. For the moment, the kid is sitting cross-legged on a drum of tibanna gas, picking at a hole in his leggings despite the bulky stun-cuffs binding his wrists together. He keeps darting black looks at the patrolmen flanking him on either side, and scowling. He’s fifteen, Lando guesses; give or take a few years (Lando hasn’t been keeping track) and has mastered the art of scowling with his whole body, every inch of him lending itself to the effort.

He’s grown another foot since Lando saw him last; it adds up to a lot of scowling.

“You really should be more creative with your aliases,” Lando says mildly. “I’ve had every anagram of ‘Skywalker’ flagged since the first time you tried to run away from home.”

“Yeah, well, the droid was recording the manifest,” Ben mutters. “Can’t mind-trick a droid into letting you slip by.” 

He shrugs, though it looks more like an awkward twitch. The kid’s all awkwardness, from the absurd slope of his mouth to the way he hunches his shoulders in, like he’s somehow attempting to make himself smaller. The effect is like a bantha trying to pass for a housecat.

Lando snorts. “My advice is the same, pick smarter aliases. Something random, next time.”

Ben shoots him a look and Lando sighs, gesturing for the patrolmen to remove the stun-cuffs. “Why ‘Solo’ all of a sudden?” Lando asks. “You and Leia fighting again?”

Ben hunches over further, the ragged mop of his hair hiding his eyes. It must have been bad, whatever argument he and Leia got into; Ben only cuts his hair when it’s bad. 

Most of Lando’s memories if Ben feature a kid wearing complicated braids—it was an Alderaanian tradition, and it had been a point of pride for Leia to pass on something to her son, Lando knew. He also knew that before being shipped off to Luke, Ben had screamed and screamed and when that didn’t work, he took a pair of scissors and sheared off every strand of hair long enough to braid. Leia had been devastated, and since then, the length of Ben’s hair has become a reliable indicator of how long it’s been since the last serious fight with his mother. 

Lando wonders if it’ll ever be long enough to braid again.

Ben is silent, even when the patrolmen move take off the cuffs. (He clenches his fists when they move in close, and Lando panics, dizzily thinking, if he tries anything—

Ben abruptly flattens his hands out again, as though he can hear Lando thinking it. No one ends up choking on air, or thrown off the dock by a vast, invisible strength; it’s enough and Lando forces himself to relax, breathe.)

“I can handle things from here, thank you,” Lando says to the patrolmen after the cuffs have been removed. He dismisses them with a weary smile, making a private note to follow up after and ensure the paperwork for this particular incident disappears into the ether. 

It’s not the first time Ben decided stow himself away on a ship headed for Cloud City, but it had been easier when he was younger. Leia could call in favors to keep transport grounded, and Han could follow the trail, catch Ben before he got off-world. Captains were suspicious of a child trying to talk his way onto a freighter. The kid only managed to get off Chandrila once before, and then only because he’d snuck in through the exhaust and wedged himself beneath an empty tibanna tank, unnoticed until the freighter was already in hyperspace.

Now that Ben’s come into his inheritance as a Jedi, Lando doubts anyone but Luke could stop him from going wherever he pleases. And clearly, Luke’s falling down on the job.

Lando studies the sullen line of Ben’s mouth. “Does Luke even know you’re here?” he asks.

Ben has gone back to picking at the hole in his leggings. “No,” he says finally. “He probably hasn’t even noticed I’m gone. The---school keeps him busy.”

Lando’s never heard anyone say ‘school’ with as much venom as Ben manages to fit into that single word.

Briefly Lando shuts his eyes, imagining the evening he had planned—the nice decanter of Kuat sherry, minimal paperwork, the sweet possibility that the mine’s handsome new investor would stop by, as he’d suggested he might. It had been a beautiful dream, Lando had been looking forward to realizing it.

Lando sighs, and scrubs a hand over his face.

“Okay, kid. Okay. Here’s the plan. First, we’re going to comm Luke and let him know that you’re not dead. Then you can fill out the application for a temporary residency permit, so you can actually stay in the City longer than a standard day. After that’s finished, I’m having someone fix your hair, because people are going to think you’re some sort of spice-addled vagrant if you walk around like that.”

Ben doesn’t actually smile, but the hard line of his scowl softens a little. “Okay,” he says.

He signs the temporary residency permit ‘Ben Solo’. Lando decides not to mention how uncertainly he scrawls that name, like it belongs to someone else.

.

.

Lando comms Leia himself, after making sure that Ben is asleep in the guest room. “Hey, Princess,” he says, propping his chin up on his hand, and he has the distinct pleasure of watching her smile.

It’s a strange sort of friendship, between him and the wife of a man he once thought was his; but a friendship, nonetheless. “Baron,” Leia laughs, revealing new lines on her face. (Not a very close friendship, or a reliable one. But they both have loved Han Solo, and that sort of ruin demands companionship---and worse, understanding.)

“Your son is here,” Lando says, and the laughter vanishes from her face like a fried lamp, electricity shorting out.

“Oh,” she says weakly.

“I thought I’d tell you. I made him comm Luke, but...”

Leia shuts her eyes, shaking her head heavily. “We fought. Again.”

“I figured.”

Leia sighs, and Lando can hear the strain in her voice. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll pass it along to Han, he has a new frequency now. I’m sure...we can arrange for transport back to Endor, or reimburse you, I just---”

“That’s not why I’m comming, Leia, don’t worry about---”

“I know,” she bites out, and Lando is sorry for bring it up, for saying it like that, like his holdson is some sort of shipment he’s expecting reimbursement for. There’s a gods-fucking lake of things they don’t talk about when it comes to the wake of the Civil War---the Rebellion, though no one calls it that any longer. In those early days of peace, Lando had been the only one with money, squirreled away in Hutt vaults and shady Outer Rim banks. He’d funded Leia’s first senatorial campaign, and shelled out for Han’s racing modifications to the Falcon; he’d even underwritten Luke’s school on Endor, and that was just a few years ago.

He’d seen it all as...a gift, to the only family he suspected he’d get in this life. It wasn’t as though his money was doing anything meaningful sitting in a bank.

It wasn’t until Han got spectacularly drunk one evening that he let slip Leia uncomfortably considered it a debt, one she could never repay. (She’s royal, you know, Han had said. He’d been drunk and loose, flushed with love and new fatherhood, and Lando hadn’t envied him, except maybe a little. They’re...funny about credits, they don’t like to think about what life costs. She doesn’t like to think about it.)

“Leia,” Lando says, feeling very old. “That’s....he’s my holdson. I’m happy to have him. He’s always welcome here, you all are. You know that.”

Even through the wavering blue veil of a comm transmission, Leia looks dubious. (Her son is---perhaps it’s cruel to think it, but her son is not welcome in many places. They both know that.) Lando grins, and then tries softening it to a smile. Something gentler, sincere. 

“Really. Let him stay for a few weeks, hide out with his other uncle and review contracts and itemized shipping lists until his eyes bleed. He’ll demand to go back to being a Jedi, I swear.”

Once, long ago, Lando had met the previous Senator Organa---by accident, mostly. He and Han had been smuggling tech to Alderaan, and the Late Senator Organa had been on his way off-world. Lando couldn’t remember why. But the Late Senator had stopped and talked with them for a moment, asked what they were transporting, and where they were from. Lando had been twenty-seven and mostly hopelessly infatuated; he remembers a lot of awkward, stuttering pauses as he tried to think of something impressive to say to the beautiful man in grey-and-purple robes.

(Han had noticed, and he’d fucked Lando into the co-pilot’s seat afterwards, hot with jealousy. Lando had been delighted.)

Lando knows Leia is not the Late Senator Organa’s biological child. Nevertheless, there’s something about her eyes, it registers as the same sort of sinuous pressure on his skin.

“All right,” Leia says at last, as though she’s grinding out transparisteel. “I won’t interfere.”

He laughs. “Princess, you were spying on the Imperial Senate when you were his age. Maybe he’s just restless, looking for his purpose.”

She shoots him a sour look. “He has a purpose.”

“I know,” Lando says. It doesn’t surprise him that Leia got a blindspot there, can’t see the difference between a purpose and your purpose. He doubts anyone ever asked her if she wanted to be Princess of the Rebellion. “I know. But let him...I mean, he’s fifteen. Let him have some room to run.”

They talk for a little longer, back and forth---she complains about the glacial pace of the Senate, he throws in some anecdotes about the dysfunctional Cloud City Board of Trustees that have her crying with laughter. By the end, she’s smiling again, and when Lando says, “Let him stay,” she ducks her head and says, “Yes.”

Ben’s door is still open when Lando goes by. The kid is a dark shape in a room of darkened shapes, and Lando looks at that strange and familiar outline for a minute, thinking about Han, and Leia, and Tatooine and Luke wearing black. How oddly contented he is, watching Ben Organa Solo’s chest rise and fall.

Lando falls into to his own bed, after, and doesn’t dream.

.

.

Lando will forever treasure the look on Ben Solo’s face when he sets the stack of datapads down in front of him. “What?” Ben says, and Lando grins, his best grin, the kind he typically saves for investors, foremen, and pleasure cruisers who really just get off on watching people grovel.

“You’re a temporary citizen of Cloud City now. Technically, that means you work for Cloud Securities Limited Incorporated, which means you’re not allowed to remain planetside for longer than twenty-four hours without the approval of a Cloud City Securities Limited Incorporated supervisor.” Lando leans in, until he’s close enough that Ben’s eyes have gone wide and panicked, and the kid’s leaning back dangerously in his chair. “I’m you’re supervisor, Ben.”

Lando will give him this: Ben Solo is quieter than Ben Organa ever was.

(They have lunch together afterwards. Lando takes him to the canteen as a kind of test, but Ben Solo accepts the hydrated meal pack with a minimum of fuss, says thank you, and keeps his head down in the mess hall. With his hair cut, Lando can watch his eyes, and Ben’s are wounded, but not hard. It’s enough. Lando decides it’s enough.)

This goes on, pretty much. Ben Solo has a head for numbers---”Your dad was good at math too,” Lando says, and Ben’s ears go an ugly crimson color---and he’s not bad company if you don’t mind pointed, angry silences. Awkward as all hells, yes, absolutely. Every time a pretty girl even just walks past them he goes silent and panicky, then sulks for hours afterwards; but Han was always like that too, Lando remembers. Too much, too soon, showing all your cards. (Leia had had more dignity, refusing to reveal how far she’d fallen until there might not be another chance.)

“Aren’t you going to ask me what we argued about?” Ben asks during the third week. Lando’s genuinely surprised he managed to hold out.

“You can tell me, if you want,” Lando says, keeping his expression something bored, blank. “But I figure it’s not really my business.”

Ben has to slouch to fit in Lando’s shadow. The realization makes Lando feel pathetically tender towards him, this boy with hands like plates and feet like skimmers and a perpetual scowl. Sometimes, Lando looks at Ben Solo and it’s all he can do not to remember Han, Han at not much older than Ben is now, and he thinks---

It’s not important.

.

.

The story Lando heard goes like this:

Ben was nine, all scabby knees and cute, probably. (Han wouldn’t shut up about his son being a handsome devil, but Lando’s seen holos of Ben when he was younger---‘interesting-looking’ is being generous.) Anyway, he was a kid. He got in trouble sometimes, like kids do. Especially when they’re Han Solo and Leia Organa’s kid.

But one day, the school commed Leia, and said, come immediately.

Ben was sitting outside the head teacher’s office, pale and shaking and babbling about an accident, a mistake, he was sorry. He was so sorry. And Ben reached for his mother with blood all down the front of his shirt, on his arms, and dried like black paint on his hands. 

It wasn’t his blood.

Ben was nine, and Lando doesn’t know what Leia promised the parents of the little girl he almost-killed but it must have been something else, because nothing about the incident ever hit the holonews. This next part of the story gets elided, or maybe Lando’s just not remembering it all. He guesses Leia commed Luke and talked with him about the fact that her son was beyond meditation and floating rocks now; that her son needed help.

Han wasn’t commed until afterwards. (Lando knows because he and Leia fought about that, the first of the last; Han hid out with Lando in the wake of it. I’m his dad, Han had said after too much whiskey, and Lando’s blood had run cold. Han’s voice had never been that hollow and hopeless. He’d looked...so much older in that moment, an old man already.

I’m his dad, and I can’t even---I can’t protect him. I can’t help him. What’s the point of a father who can’t help his son?)

One month later, Luke arrived to take Ben to the Outer Rim and teach him how to be a Jedi. And that was that.

.

.

Ben can be coaxed into talking about Jedi stuff, at least in the theoretical. Lando will admit it’s all a bit beyond him, and boring as all hells, but it’s nice to see the kid get excited about something. Even if it’s just knowing shit Lando doesn’t.

He never talks about Luke or the other students at the school unless Lando asks directly. Even then, his answers are clipped, monosyllabic if he can manage it. The angry poison has faded from his voice, but underneath is a well of something uglier, a hardened sort of bitterness that Lando wouldn’t begin to know how to chip away at.

There were gamblers on Canto Bight who talked like that---old men, spice-addled and ranting, convinced the system had cheated them. Those imagined fortunes curdled their insides, turned them into something monstrous. What a man felt he was owed...

Lando decides it’s none of his business, and stops asking.

.

.

Sometimes---not often, but maybe out of the corner of Lando’s eye---Ben doesn’t look like Han at all.

.

.

The dining room where Darth Vader once used Lando to bait his trap was torn out on Lando’s orders, remodeled into a solarium. Folirian snowdrops and new, green hyranith trees grow there now, rising up from neat beds. One of the foremen leads exercises there in the morning and Lando knows that it’s a popular place for the younger workers to go after curfew---the cleaning droids keep complaining about empty bottles, and fluids.

There’s nothing to mark the place as anything more than that.

(”Did you save Cloud City from Darth Vader?” Ben asks, and it takes Lando fifteen minutes of cajoling to figure out that the stupid accounting interns have been gossiping with the Baron’s new assistant.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Lando says sharply enough that he sees Ben flinch from him. “That was a dark time, we did what we had to do.”)

Once, late into the fourth shift, Lando is making his way from the office block to his rooms and---it’s out of the corner of his eye, he doesn’t know why he looks but he does. There’s a tall humanoid standing in the center of the solarium, swathed in shadows and starlight and Lando’s heart, it stops dead, everything stops dead, he stops dead, staring at---at what---

Luke said he saw ghosts. Luke said---

Lando must drop his datapad, because the shadowy figure startles at the crunch of the casing. A moment later, Ben emerges from the solarium, barefoot, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and shadows beneath his eyes.

He’s just a boy and yet Lando is frozen, watching him move like a thing apart from the galaxy as it is---still somehow cloaked in shadow-blue, dangerous. Ben frowns, reaching out and taking Lando’s arm. His hand is hot, through the silk of Lando’s shirt.

“Lando?” Ben says. There’s rare concern on his face, but Lando only makes a choked-off noise, jerking his arm out of Ben’s grip like it burns. (Maybe it does.)

“Uncle Lando?” Ben repeats, and it’s that. Lando is---uncle. This is his holdson, his nephew, his. It’s fine. They’re all fine.

“I’m---I’m fine. It’s...it’s fine.” Lando forces himself to exhale, to bend down and pick up the cracked datapad and smile, weakly. “What are you doing in the iota east sector this late anyway? Come on, let’s...go back.”

Ben walks a step or two ahead of Lando, the tail of the blanket trailing behind him like a cloak. Lando swallows a rising tide of nausea and shuts his eyes, walks the rest of the way blind. Listening to the sound of Ben’s bare feet on the stone, and taking comfort in its humanness.

.

.

“Kid’s too pale to be yours,” Umlale says, and Lando doesn’t have to turn his head to know she’s smirking. He rolls his eyes, though he knows she won’t be able to see it through the thick protective goggles.

It’s easy to track Ben through the maze of the processing plant, taller than any of the other techs, the bright green trainee helmet bobbing amid the flow of grey-blue. He’d given Lando the blackest, nastiest look when Lando announced he was being reassigned. Lando had definitely not enjoyed that more than he should have.

“Son of some friends from the war.”

“Must not be very good friends,” Umlale says, and Lando does turn to look at her then. Her luminous eyes wink out from behind the goggles, yellow-green and still uncanny, even after fifteen years of being head of plant operations. Lando always thinks he should be used to it by now; he never actually is.

“What do you mean? He’s my holdson, the kid’s basically family.”

“And you couldn’t get him some swank job in the upper levels?” Umlale asks, her long antennae flicking forward. “Holdson of the Baron, you’d think you could have him making rounds in the casino or overseeing the resorts, working on...outreach, or whatever slick word you’ve come up with to sell the City as more than just a mining colony.”

Lando tries to imagine Ben outreaching to anyone, about anything.

(He pictures...fire. A lot of fire. And people screaming.)

He plays it off with a smirk. “Are you saying that plant tech maintenance isn’t solid work?”

Umlale’s eyes blink, and her whole thorax twitches, in the way Lando knows is as good as a shrug. “It’s solid work. But it’s dirty, and hard. Not the kind of work a Baron gives to family.”

“Unless,” she added after a moment, “you don’t like your family very much.”

“The boy could stand to get his hands dirty,” Lando says, but Umlale is still watching him with bright eyes. Lando flashes a thin smile, turns away. Ben’s green helmet is nowhere to be seen; he must have moved on with the others, into another sector of the plant.

“His pheromones are strange, I noticed when you introduced him. Like something dead and rotting. I know humans aren’t very good at detecting chemical trails, but I wonder...is that what scares you so much?” Umlale asks, and Lando---

---isn’t quick enough to hide it. 

“Oh,” Umlale says, and Lando isn’t sure if it’s his face or his pheromones that give it away. Umlale’s spent enough time scenting chemicals and working with humans, it could be either. “You didn’t know. You thought you distrusted him for no reason?”

Lando opens his mouth, and absolutely does not say, no, I thought I was just terrified that he’d raise his hand up like Darth Vader and wipe out half my city, and there would be nothing I could do to stop him.

“Just make sure he doesn’t accidentally burn the place down, all right?” Lando says instead. “He’s my only holdson, but this is my city. I’d hate to have to choose between the two.”

.

.

Lando can hear Ben crying at night sometimes, thrashing in nightmares Lando has stopped trying to wake him from. Lando lies awake those nights, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what in all the hells he’s supposed to do, how---

“I liked him,” Ben says one morning, of the handsome investor who has stopped coming over because he can’t stand the howling cries of Lando’s holdson.

“Did you,” Lando snaps. He promised himself he would not get angry at Ben, he would understand, he would understand because he’d slept with Luke Skywalker a few times, back when Luke was young and less in control. Lando can remember the gold-touch of Luke against his mind, the fundamental strangeness of all that alien power pushing through to his skin. And that was just sometimes---he imagines it’s worse, weirder, having that crazy-making thing in your head all the time. Since before you were born. 

(Like something dead and rotting, Umlale had said.)

He has sympathy for the uncanny strength collected in Ben’s hands. It isn’t irritation. It isn’t.

But Ben only flinches and then stares down at his hands for the rest of the meal. Lando isn’t sure what’s in that look. It exists. It probably shouldn’t. That’s all.

.

.

“It’s been almost three standard months,” Luke says. He’s pacing, and the holoimage keeps flicking in and out of focus trying to track him. It’s making Lando’s headache worse.

“It’s only been eight weeks,” Lando says, shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to get the headache to ease a little. “Anyway, I don’t know what to tell you. He’s a pretty decent plant maintenance tech now, though. Give him another month, I think he may even be eligible for level two clearance.”

“Lando,” Luke sighs, and Lando wants to laugh at how similar they sound---Ben and Luke, that same tone of disapproval from on high. Maybe it’s Force thing.

“You said he’d be begging to come back! You told Leia!” Luke says, and it’s Lando’s turn to sigh.

“I guess I was wrong.”

“He belongs---”

“I’m not going to force him to leave, Luke. He’s an employee of Cloud City, I can’t fire him without cause, and his residency permit only expires upon his death, criminal conviction, voluntary departure, or termination by the City.”

Luke makes a derisive noise, and Lando cracks open an eye, grinning ruefully. “Sorry, Master Jedi. Some of us have to abide by the bylaws.”

Luke is quiet for a long moment. When Lando opens his eyes, Luke is staring off somewhere into the middle distance, looking---grave, maybe. A little sad. “This is his home,” Luke says finally. His voice is quiet. “This is where he’s safe.”

Lando is silent.

He coaxes Ben to talking to Luke himself, after Lando’s done. He gets a shattered comm box for his trouble, the cracked holoprojector throwing out alarming sparks.

“You can take it out of my pay,” Ben snarls as he stalks out of the room, and the air in his wake Lando can taste electricity, like a stormfront moving in.

.

.

Most nights, Lando teaches Ben to cheat at sabacc. “Han didn’t do the honors?” Lando asks, shuffling the deck. Ben shrugs.

“He didn’t want to pass on---that sort of thing.”

For someone who’d always loved the weightless speed of hyperspace, Han carts a lot of shame around. “Well, I was always a better cardsharp than he was anyway. The trick,” Lando says, flicking a card from one hand to the other and back again, “is not to be too flashy, trust your instincts, and never get caught.”

Lando takes him to the Cloud City casino, once he deems Ben acceptable. He makes Ben give all his winnings back afterwards, “Since technically, when you beat the house, it’s me you’re stealing from.”

“Thanks,” Ben mumbles, late one night when he’s sprawled out on the couch and already mostly asleep. Lando is just shuffling the deck back and forth between his hands, thinking about storm season, and whether they’ll make their number for the quarter. 

In the dimmed light, his expression smoothed out and hair falling in his eyes, The kid looks much younger this way---like a boy, a child.

“No problem,” Lando says quietly. “Anyway, I imagine using the Force makes this sort of thing easy for you.”

“Yeah,” Ben says. His eyes are shut. “But it’s nice.”

.

.

Lando’s finalizing the new durasteel supplier contract---it’s been in the works for over a year and he wants it done; they have some major structural repairs to complete before storm season---which is maybe why he doesn’t notice. He’s distracted, running on a haze of caf and uneasy sleep; it makes sense that the rest of the baronetcy staff are also drawn and quiet, focused on pushing through the deal.

It’s a pity when Eroll quits abruptly, claiming a sick mother on Mygeeto, but Lando understands. And it’s a shame that Onrtia decides to use her vacation time just then, given that she’s one of Lando’s best assessors, but she couldn’t be persuaded to wait until the deal closed. Fedyn asks to be reassigned to a lower level, and so does Geem, but Lando always privately thought they didn’t have what it took to work in the baronetcy. 

He doesn’t think anything of any of it until he wishes one of the accounting interns a mild good morning, and she promptly bursts into tears. A meddroid has to be called to sedate her.

(The durasteel supplier contract is put on hold.)

“I had an interesting conversation this morning with Saytini Raum, in the accounting offices,” Lando says to Ben that night at dinner. They’re in Lando’s suites, alone; Lando didn’t want to risk this conversation in the mess hall. He’s still not sure he wants to risk it at all, but all he can think about is Fedyn’s haunted expression, the panic in Onrtia’s voice as she insisted, no, everything was fine, why wouldn’t everything be fine?

Saytini, dosed with sed and her eyes still wide, terrified, saying, I can feel him in my head, moving around. Like maggots.

“What did you talk about?” Ben asks nonchalantly. Or what Lando imagines is supposed to be nonchalantly, the kid has a face like a pane of transparisteel, every emotion reflected there. 

For a moment, Lando allows himself hate him, Ben Organa or Solo or whoever he wants to be right now, clumsily affecting innocence. For that moment, Lando hates him with all the fire of Bespin’s burning core.

Then he exhales, and lets it slide away. It’s replaced by a vast weariness. “Why did you do it, Ben?”

Ben smiles. He actually smiles, and Lando wants to be sick. He sets down his silverware with a clatter, but the smile on Ben’s face doesn’t falter. “I wanted to help,” Ben says proudly, and Lando shakes his head, uncomprehending. Ben just smiles. “To repay you for everything you’ve given me.”

“A---what?”

“I wanted to help you, help Cloud City. Eroll was talking about you behind your back, complaining about your leadership, so I convinced him to leave and go home. Onrtia isn’t loyal to you, she just wants to make money before she goes, so I made sure she wouldn’t get commission for the supplier contract. You don’t like Fedyn and Geem, they were the previous Baron’s staff, so I convinced them to get reassigned. Saytini was just...I needed information, and she’s a gossip, she knows about stuff.”

“You...convinced them?”

“With the Force, Luke calls it a mind-trick. I even convinced the other workers at the plant to put in more hours, work harder, without asking for any more pay.”

Ben is still smiling, like he’s expecting praise, a pat on the head. Lando dizzily remembers that he had noticed the uptick in safety incidents at the plant; he’d put it down to a learning curve with the new tech, or maybe the weather---everyone tended to get restless and careless during calms. He’d told the safety director to keep an eye on it and determine if it was a trend, then report back.

Of course it’s a trend. His people---his techs, his miners, his processors and ops staff---have been working until they’re too tired not to hurt themselves.

Lando really will be sick.

“Will it fade?” he asks, keeping his voice as light and neutral as he can.

“Fade?”

“What you---convinced them to do, will that fade on its own or do you have to give them new, different order?”

“I mean, I guess it fades on its own if I’m not around, but I don’t understand, why would you want it to fade? Everything’s going so well! Your profits are up, you’re producing more and purer tibanna than before!”

“Ben, you can’t do that, you can’t...”

“I didn’t make them do anything they didn’t want to, it wasn’t even for me. I was helping!”

The worst part is that Ben looks...genuinely confused, hurt and overeager and it’s too much, it’s all too much. (I can feel him in my head, moving around. Like maggots. Like something dead and rotting.) Lando told Umlale that he would hate to choose between his holdson and his city, but he’s made this choice before. Han or Ben, Darth Vader or no---

It’s the City, every time.

Lando squeezes his eyes shut and braces his hands against the table. The wood is cool against his skin. “Mr. Solo. As of now, your employment with Cloud Securities Limited Incorporated is terminated. Your temporary residency permit will expire twenty-four hours from the processing of termination. You therefore have twenty-four hours to leave the City, or---”

Ben shoots to his feet, knocking his chair to the ground with a crash. “You can’t do that! You promised I wouldn't have to leave! I’m helping!”

“This was wrong, Ben. You...you’ve made yourself a threat to Cloud City and my people,” Lando says, staying seated. He’s not as tall as Ben, but he’s broader, and he suspects he can throw a better punch if Ben gets close enough for it. If Ben decides to use the Force, though---

Ben is breathing shallowly, and all the blood has gone to his cheeks, two spots of blotchy red stark against his paleness. “I’ll stop,” he says wildly. “I’ll stop, I won’t...don’t make me go. I’m sorry. Please, Lando, please, don’t make me---”

Ben doesn’t cry, at least not like Saytini had---he’s white-lipped and gritting his teeth through it, as though outraged that he can’t stop himself. “I was helping,” he says again. "You just don’t want me here, like---everyone else, you’re just like the others, you just---”

Lando sits there and lets him rage, doesn’t even flinch when an invisible strength picks up his plate and hurls it to the wall, smashing it in a thousand pieces. Lando watches his dinner slide, forlornly down the wall; Ben is still yelling. Lando isn’t paying much attention to the words, just the---sound, the boy hurting and lashing out. (When he shuts his eyes Geem is there, trying to smile and failing, just looking twitchy and anxious and uncertain.)

It takes him almost an hour for Ben to wind down again, at which point most everything in Lando’s dining room has been tossed or hurled or smashed. 

Ben sinks back into his chair breathing hard, blotchy-red from his neck to his ears.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Lando says quietly. “I really am, kid. And of course we’ll get you passage to Endor, I’ll take care of it---”

“I hate you,” Ben says with that same ugly, hardened bitterness. “I hate you more than any of them.”

Lando swallows the protest. “You’re still---family, my holdson.”

Ben huffs, his mouth curving into a sneer, and staggers to his feet again. “Family,” he says with that familiar ugly, hardened bitterness. “Sure.”

Lando watches him go and then exhales, puts his forehead down on the table. The woodgrain is cool, and comforting. He shuts his eyes, and simply breathes.

.

.

“What did you and Leia fight about?” Lando asks, as they’re standing on the wharf, waiting for Ben’s ship to board. It’s a cold, clear morning, and the sun is brilliant white over the clouds.

Ben doesn’t look at him. “I thought it wasn’t any of your business.”

Lando hums, squinting into the light. “Maybe it should have been.”

The freighter captain calls for boarding, and Ben hefts his pack on his shoulder. He looks at Lando for a moment, then swallows and turns away. Lando watches him go, and says nothing.

[brakken]

Replayed Life is Strange ep. 5, thoughts below.

Buckle in - I had a lot to say.

I was nervous about revisiting this one. The first time I played, this ending wrecked me. And I mean wrecked. I was in tears for hours. I had trouble sleeping for weeks. I couldn’t think about the game without wanting to cry. I wanted to draw fan art for it, but couldn’t without breaking down. In many ways, I’m still affected by it. This game changed me.

So, I was nervous. And not just because of how hard it hit me the first time, but I was nervous about how I’d react in replaying. Would I notice something I didn’t the first time, that would ruin the experience for me? Would I cry as much? And if I didn’t, would that mean that I didn’t like it as much? How much of that original feeling was satisfaction, and how much was disappointment?

-spoilers ahead for LiS Ep. 5-

I touched on this very briefly last time, but I want to talk about it further here, where it comes more into play: 

I do not like the Jefferson twist. Coupled with Rachel’s death, it is a shallow and uninteresting answer to her disappearance, regardless of their attempts to pretty it up with the Prescott’s involvement. Strip away the red herrings and tangled threads, and what you’re left with is a dead girl and a murderer. Jefferson becomes unrecognisable in his unveiled role - his tropey villain dialogue and mannerisms separate him so far from his earlier scenes that it may as well have been an all-new person. Maybe this was the intention, but it reads to me as utterly cliche. How frightening would he have been, had he kept his familiar composure? How much more menacing, now that his mannerisms are given a horrific context?

Even within the narrative, his portrayal in this episode feels completely wrong. Jefferson goes from a man with a sick passion for capturing true innocence, to one willing to murder multiple people. It is never understood that murder is part of his pattern. Rachel’s death was an accident at Nathan’s hands, yet now we have Jefferson killing him, Chloe, Victoria, and the intention to kill Max, all with nary a hint of remorse or doubt. He is just the bad guy now - plain and simple. And in a game where so much else is designed to be not so clean-cut, that’s... pretty boring.

With that out of the way, I do think the scenes themselves are done well. Awakening in the dark room is genuinely tense and scary - moreso with Victoria present. Desperately hopping in and out of photographs to different moments of captivity is incredibly effective - it packs on such helplessness and danger.

And even while not being thrilled with Jefferson as the villain, and while understanding it would soon fall apart, it is incredibly satisfying to help Max attain the following victories via time-hopping. A lot of the game focuses on retreading conversations with new information, and consequently, Max displays boosted confidence upon these repetitions. Returning to the first scene is where this is at its peak. She knows everything - and she’s powerful. It’s also in parts like this where I would like to applaud the designers for having a clear vision from the outset (even if I wasn’t entirely thrilled with aspects of that vision). 

A really strong story-telling tool is introducing a solution before the problem arrives, to trick the audience into thinking it’s unimportant until the reveal. Having us take the selfie right at the start of the game is a great use of this. What seemed like just a moment in a scene becomes absolutely vital - but only after we discover we can rewind with photographs. (this is also why the ep.4 Warren moment feels so weirdly deliberate. We already know how her powers work by this point so we’re paying attention every time a new photo is taken.)

--

I’d been put the ending off for a while. 

Once I played up to the art gallery, I took a break and then just... left it there. Left Max in a peaceful moment.

I wasn’t ready.

But lately it seemed like the real world was telling me to return to it. After a week with no breeze, the wind began picking up, and it looked like there could be rain. I found myself idly doodling Chloe and Max in my intervals between work. I had someone here ask me if I’d be writing thoughts for episode 5. I was discovering new music that aligned all too well with where I was at with the characters. 

So, I finally decided it was time, and sat down, and finished playing. Only the next morning did I realise I’d done so on October 11, the in-game day of the storm.

Before moving into the next act of the episode, I want to say I really appreciate the way they’ve sculpted so many different ways to apply Max’s rewind power. It’s great that they’re able to keep surprising me while not emptying their cache too quickly. However, I reaaally wish (and was expecting) that time-freezing would make a return in this finale. It’s used well in ep.2 with Kate, but I feel like it introduced a new threat that is never paid off. Once it’s established that Max’s power can weaken her to the point where it doesn’t function, there is now a looming danger for when that will happen again - maybe this time, the cost will be Chloe, or the town, or even Max herself. But it never does. The closest we get is when Chloe is shot at the end of ep.4, but the power's failure is more directly from Jefferson’s sedation, rather than a weakness on Max’s part. And when she does falter again, it manifests as a prolonged out-of-nowhere dream sequence. There’s some creative stuff present there, but it also stands as a missed opportunity to toy further with tangible peril.

On with the escape. Don’t have much to say here. I may not have been happy with his new portrayal, but it’s still satisfying to watch Jefferson get taken down.  It’s nice to see David on the same team as Max, and it’s a good start to a series of character farewell scenes.

Followed closely by a bad one.

Nathan is thrown to the wayside to an unforgivable degree here. He’s been pivotal in Max and Chloe’s connection uptil now, even though a lot of that happens off-screen. But as soon as he’s no longer the main threat, his presence, character, and life are all discarded. His phone message in the car provides some closure, but is far too little too late and serves more as insult to injury than any kind of saving face.

Meanwhile, Warren, a character with more screentime than Nathan but of relative unimportance to the main story, is given a spotlighted farewell. I don’t get this. I have no harsh feelings against Warren, but insofar as his relevance to Max and Chloe’s arcs, he is a sideliner. Since his primary presence has centred around a potential romance for Max, his farewell scene should be treated with an equal amount of focus. It really annoys me that you are forced to tell him about Max’s powers - there is no way to opt out of it, and all it leads to is him guilt-tripping Max with ‘Chaos Theory’ and ‘choosing the right thing’, which the game is about to throw at us anyway in the dream sequence. It’s also unjust to the scene’s purpose, which is a farewell. We may not fully know it, but we’re saying goodbye to these characters one by one. We’ve just come away from our farewells with Joyce and Frank, and all Warren wants to do is talk plot. But whatevs, I still hugged him.

The confession about letting William die was painful. I wasn’t predicting it to come up again, and by this point it felt like so long ago. And yet, it works. We’ve returned to a Chloe who’s early off of discovering Rachel’s death - and she doesn’t want to listen. And we need her to listen. Most conversations in the game can’t lead to a failure, but I find it really interesting that this one does. 

I’m very conflicted about the dream sequence. Conceptually, I love it. I love when games mess with their established order, and they’re certainly evoking a feeling of helplessness in me upon returning once again to that damn classroom. But, it rubs me the wrong way here, too. We’ve beaten the mini-boss of the game. We defeated Jefferson. Yet the final time we see him is here, forcing us to say words we don’t want to, and watch him take photos of Chloe with us strapped to a chair. I get this is Max internalising her insecurities... but we beat him. We’re onto the final boss, now - the storm. Jefferson is obsolete at this point, and there’s no rhyme or reason to show him in power again.

(sidebar: the bottle-collecting in the hide-and-seek segment was confusing and dumb and made me angry that they were still injecting completion rewards this late in the story)

I also don’t like the Dark Room sequence of the dream, because it villainises Chloe. All the other sequences present us with twisted versions of Arcadia Bay residents. Dead versions, cruel versions. We’re witnessing the weight of guilt that coincides with the coming choice, culminating in an encounter with the Other Max, and Chloe saving us from her. This should have been Chloe’s first appearance in the dream. The Dark Room sequence where she jeers at Max’s shortcomings seems so out of place with the rest of what is being said. I think this is especially noticeable given the following walk down memory lane, showing us everything we’ll lose on the alternate side of the choice. 

(sidebar: I wish that the walk had been done better - I never knew when to stop and listen to the voiceovers and when to continue onto the next highlighted moment, and it was always jarring whenever the dialogue got interrupted)

I was fully ready for Rachel to appear in this dream, in some form or another. With everything culminating, and Max messing more with time, coupled with how blunt they were to put Rachel in the ground in the previous ep, I was waiting and I was hoping. But she never showed. And I don’t understand why. As I said with Nathan, Rachel is integral in the centric plotline of Max and Chloe’s reunion. I need to stress this - even though she’s never seen on-screen, she is a dominating factor in our two main characters’ growth, and is little more than a footnote in this finale.

What we get instead at the end of this dream, is Other Max. I don’t have much to say about her. In my eyes she’s very much just a culmination of the dream thusfar. She doesn’t represent much to me beyond that, except a missed opportunity to meet Rachel and find out what the hell is going on.

Can we touch on that quickly, before the final scene? What the hell is going on? I don’t want to have everything bluntly spelled out, but... did the designers really feel like they’d laid enough groundwork that the answer should be obvious? When Chloe hamfistedly states it’s a mystery we’ll ‘obviously never figure out’... damn. That hurts. I mean, I have my own theory - I like it, and it’s the lens I choose to view the story through. But it’s unfair to put it on the players to do this heavy-lifting. We relied on the designers to draw the path for us to follow, and they took us to a dead end.

So let’s talk about the final choice. Even in replaying, and with the dream sequence’s attempts to balance the scales last-minute, my decision here still remained the same, for a couple of reasons. The first being the game’s true title, as I have mentioned earlier - ‘Save Chloe: The Game’. And hey, this doesn’t suddenly change in the final episode. This was, for me, the fixed goal as soon as I caught onto it. And to save Chloe here, she needs to be able to live past her grief. Contrasted to the alternate Chloe, whose prison was inescapable - saving her came from letting her go. But here, we need to hold on. 

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

My second main reason is Max’s character growth, and the overall narrative. This young girl is warned of a coming storm, and is then given time-altering powers. And she is constantly asking why. Not just why she got powers, but what she is meant to learn from having them. On the surface, what she learns is ‘don’t mess with time a bunch because a storm will happen’ and with that you can lean either way on the choice. But if I was going to carve right to the heart, I see the story saying ‘you can’t fix all your mistakes, but you can move through the consequences and grow in the aftermath.’ Every problem she's faced in the story uptil this point, she has tampered with to some degree in order to solve. And to do so, again, for this final decision, would make her arc amount to nothing. This needs to be different from letting William die, otherwise the game could have ended there. There is no easy decision, but the storm is here. All the pieces lie where they fell, both good and bad. 

I’m tearing this damn photograph.

All that said, I can’t and won’t fault anyone for going the other way. I haven’t played or watched the alternate ending, so far all I know it performs well and ticks story checkboxes that I can’t see over here on the ‘bae’ side.

This choice felt and still feels like the right one to me. From outside the narrative, I can certainly weigh the options and see sacrificing Chloe as the more viable. (though if you want to talk pragmatism, there is absolutely no reason why either of them should think that letting Chloe die should fix everything)

But while it’s important to ask ‘what would I do?’, it’s also been immensely important to me in these playthroughs to ask ‘what would Max do?’, or further, ‘what could Max do?’

So that was my choice. As I said at the beginning, I was nervous as to how I’d feel at the end, after having been so deeply affected the first time. And now, after crying through the whole epilogue, I found myself wondering if I’d cried enough. I looked up the scene online and watched it again, and cried. And then again, and cried. But what was this empty feeling? Is this what it felt like before, or was something blocking me from experiencing it properly?

After stepping outside into the 4am light, and then another rewatch, I realised I was, in a way, messing with time. Trying to force things, just like Max was. I even had my own Other Max in my head, making me question my own thoughts and feelings. So it was time to let it be what it was, and move on. I couldn’t recreate my first play, but I could let myself get swept up in this one.

Since finishing the game, it’s been raining non-stop here. I’ve kept inside, surrounded by the aftermath of this playthrough.

Playing this game changed me. For all it did right and all it did wrong, I was affected. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve consciously noted a tangible shift in who I am as a person. It’s brought me closer to my emotions, and has altered my creativity. It made me revise one of my comic ideas into a game - something I would never have considered on my own.

Even with all these thoughts, I reckon this comic I made accurately sums up my whole experience. 

And as I’ve done each time, here are my favourite moments from this episode:

-'I’ll always be with you.’ ‘Forever.’

-Clasping hands, as the storm rages.

-Max, unable to watch, leaning into Chloe, who looks on with newfound strength.

-Driving through the town, now in pieces. Max, too, in pieces.

-Max’s weak smile when Chloe moves to comfort her. It’s going to be okay. They’re together.

--

(heck, I cried just typing those out, I am so done, haha)

To anybody who read this far - thank you so, so much. This game holds a lot of emotional value to me, and hence these write-ups are probably the most personal thing I’ve put out here for people to see. So thank you for taking the time to look at this. I hope you’re having a wonderful day.

Wah, this was all in preparation for the first episode of Before the Storm, and now episode 2 is about to be released. I gotta dig in!

As always, here’s a lil sketch <3

[tiffanie-nicole2011-blog]

EAST SIDE CONFIDENTIAL part two, Confusion on the Heels of Chaos

historywillabsolvemike.blogspot.com/ EAST SIDE CONFIDENTIAL part two: Confusion on the Heels of Chaos

"I was once, if I remember correctly, present at a gathering of madmen." – Roberto Bolaño

Conjoined twins sharing a vital organ are destined to die simultaneously. Frank "Turk" Jaworski and the Open Kitchen took the same exit. Their departure marked the end of an era, one that was an anachronism by the time of its disappearance. The Open Kitchen was a small space unaffected by linear time. Within the confines of its walls, time sputtered and stalled somewhere in the mid-fifties due to a defect in the time/space continuum. The Open Kitchen was a unique experience. It could never be duplicated. No one in their right mind would even attempt such a folly. The bar was the three dimensional manifestation of Turk’s personality. Bill Curry opened the Copabanana not long after the Open Kitchen closed. Change was inevitable after so many years of stasis. Only one element remained the same. All hell continued to break loose at the same address.

The Copabanana was entirely different from the Open Kitchen. It featured a fully stocked bar, not just cans of Schmidt’s and cheap booze. Every element of Turk’s bar was completely erased by the new owner. The Copa yanked the clock violently into the present. Unlike the dictatorial reign of Turk, Bill Curry preferred a laissez faire approach toward running his bar. As long as the behavior of his clientele didn’t jeopardize his liquor license, he was quite tolerant of borderline behavior. It was easier and more profitable to ignore everything but major transgressions. All Curry required from his customers was a modicum of discretion and no blatant acts of lawlessness. Considering the clientele and the staff, even this small concession was a challenge. Society was changing in the late seventies and early eighties. These changes were responsible for a more open sexual atmosphere. The birth control pill was in widespread use and sexually transmitted diseases were not yet identified as being permanent or fatal As a result the sexual revolution was in full swing. South Street swung a bit further than other neighborhoods. The area had a reputation for embracing creative, eccentric and marginal behavior. It consequently attracted a diverse range of humanity, all bent in some fashion. Styles that attracted attention uptown or in the suburbs were met with a jaundiced eye on South Street. The bizarre was not only accepted, it was embraced on South Street. Normal became weird. In the words of Hunter S. Thompson, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." If we weren’t professionals, we were damn good amateurs.

No one went to the Open Kitchen to meet women. There were none. Turk didn’t ban them, he just did nothing to encourage their patronage. He didn’t really encourage anyone to frequent the place. He was more interested in making sure that irritating people stayed out. If they irked him he kicked them out with alacrity. These exclusions had nothing at all to do with race. Most of his clientele was black. He banished people from all walks of life with equanimity. The limited drink selections offered, Turk’s brusque manner and the fact that the kitchen was never open at the Open Kitchen discouraged errant tourists. It attracted a loyal clientele of cynical and grizzled veterans, all male. Anyone that frequented the place played by Turk’s rules or went elsewhere. It is only logical that women would avoid a bar owned by a proprietor with a reputation for jamming a chrome-plated 45 in someone’s face on a fairly regular basis. The Open Kitchen was an acquired taste. It was Turk’s personal fiefdom and he didn’t seem to be interested in profit. Bill Curry was primarily interested in running a profitable business. He realized that tolerance was profitable in this fringe neighborhood.

This specific evening exceeded the standards of chaos in a chaotic time period. A large group of us attended an art opening that night. I forget the exhibition and the name of the gallery but it doesn’t matter. We all agreed to meet at the Copabanana afterwards. In hindsight it was a questionable decision. Some of us had to work the next day, me for example, but immediate gratification almost always overruled good sense. The entire crew was on the charming side of drunk by the time we left the gallery. That state would prove impossible to maintain as the night wore on. Collectively we lacked basic impulse control on a good day. The odds were against this unfolding as an evening of quiet reflection considering the cast of characters and the quantity of alcohol consumed. Although we operated in the shadows of the culture industry, this was not a group of gentile aesthetes and dilettantes. Drunk, our behavior was reminiscent of orangutans on unauthorized leave from the zoo. Any gains we made within the art system were immediately erased by transgressive acts. We repeatedly snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. If good behavior was the price of success, it was much too high a price to pay given our disinterest in the game and our contempt for rules.

Our tactics were more street than salon. One night in the Khyber I was at the urinal taking a piss and some fucking idiot said to me, "Oh, you’re Michael Macfeat, the guy who paints the crazy things and does the crazy things." I punched him in the mouth, zipped up and returned to the bar.

Most of the exhibiting artists and our friends went to the Copabanana that evening. My father and his friend Rocco were at the exhibition and they decided to join us for cocktails. It was not unusual for Al to socialize with us. He was always up for a few drinks and the pursuit of pleasure. In fact pleasure was his sole motivation in life. To their credit, none of my friends’ fathers behaved like Al. He was a unique individual and often not in a good way.

My father was fun to go out with although growing up with him was a nightmare. He was good company and charming. It made it easier to forgive his faults. On the other hand he was also a larcenous bastard. If it wasn’t screwed down he would steal it. If it was he brought a screwdriver. He could be quite entertaining and he was generous when he had the means. Al would never let any of us pay for anything when we went out. Considering the limited funds at my disposal it would have been self-defeating to refuse his largesse. He wouldn’t come around if he didn’t have cash. As is often the case with gamblers, his finances were tied to his luck so he wasn’t around much. His absences lasted long enough to ensure he would be welcomed back.

His friend Rocco was no stranger. Rocco always carried a pistol with him although I was never sure why he felt the need. He was a rather large man and quite capable of handling himself without it. He made no display of the weapon but the gun sometimes created an unmistakable bulge under his clothing. Hanging around with Rocco taught me to look for signals that a man was armed. Despite the firearm, Rocco was gregarious and a fun to be around. His gun was an accepted fact, like his size. Certainly no one had the balls to question him about the pistol.

Once inside the Copa, Rocco and my father insisted on paying for everyone’s drinks. It became an expensive night for those two spendthrifts. A rather large entourage followed us to the bar and took full advantage of the offer. From experience, I knew that these displays of wild extravagance usually meant that a scam or a bet had born fruit. Apparently they both reaped the benefits of some lucrative caper since they were squandering money like drunken stock brokers with expense accounts. I knew that these windfall profits often came at some else’s expense. Some unseen loser was probably back in New Jersey, licking his wounds and cursing his bad luck. Fuck it. Free drinks were free drinks. I learned to ignore the source of Al’s funds. It wasn’t worth wasting time thinking about it.

Funded by their (presumably) ill gotten gains, multiple cocktails began piling up on both floors for our pleasure. Free cocktails might sound lovely in the abstract but in reality they almost always prove to be a mistake. Paying for drinks sometimes helps one keep excessive spending in perspective; not always but sometimes. Considering the Rogues Gallery in the Copa that night, excess was preordained. The drinks were free but they certainly did nothing to promote good behavior in this group of errant primates.

Fueled by the seemingly endless flow of alcohol, the evening began its slow descent into anarchy. People went between floors in search of some anticipated but indefinable amusement. Both floors had multiple cocktails at our disposal so these migrations weren’t for entertainment purposes only. Fortunately I had a good relationship with the manager of the bar so she left us to our own devices. She had incredible eyes, large and mesmerizing. Granted, I was easily mesmerized back then.

One of the women from our group took umbrage to something or another (either real or imagined) and noisily stormed out of the bar. She had a reputation for pulling a Houdini when drunk. We had all seen this routine before and knew that pursuit was an exercise in futility. I wish I could forget who she was. She later claimed to walk back to New Jersey over the Ben Franklin Bridge. An attractive woman surviving an evening stroll through the city of Camden was unimaginable. Camden led the nation in per capita murders. At the time it was one of the most lawless cities in America and it remains so. Whether this trek actually happened or not was irrelevant. Fact and fiction blurred on evenings such as these. At any rate, no one batted an eye about the sudden departure. It was old hat and it meant more free alcohol for the rest of us.

My father, quite inebriated by this time, got it into his thick skull that one of our friends was pregnant. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. She was just a big-boned girl. Understandably, my father’s comments horrified her. At an early age men are trained to avoid asking about a woman’s weight and age. It wasn’t as if Al didn’t have extensive experience with the opposite sex. His success with women was legendary. Unfortunately his common sense and discretion went south this particular evening. Either he forgot or he just didn’t give a fuck, I am not sure which. Al didn’t stop at one comment about her perceived delicate condition. Oh no, he went on and on about it. If only he made these comments behind her back it would have been less embarrassing for everyone. He was quite direct in his interrogation and he was relentless. Al spent an excruciating amount of time trying to get her to confess to being pregnant. It was the height of absurdity for a man who would confess to nothing, even when caught red handed, would have the audacity to demand a confession from anyone else. Whatever his motivation, he was tenacious. With the singularity of mind that drunks often exhibit he was fixated on the subject. This horror-show went on for what felt like an eternity. Graced with the attention span of a two year old, Al tired of the game and moved on to the other equally absurd delusions.

To deflect the poor girl’s attention away from my father’s abuse, a close friend asked the girl for her telephone number. Her mood brightened at the prospect of potential romance with this handsome rake. I knew that this bastard had no intention of ever calling her (in fact he never did) but she felt a bit better about herself, however fleetingly.

Cocktails flowed without end, an alcoholic version of the nearby Delaware River. Whatever decorum we could muster was simply to ensure that it continued unabated. Kevin, our friend Mike and I retired to the upstairs bar. It was less crowded up there and I needed a break from my father’s lunacy. It was obvious that our luck couldn’t hold out forever. As inevitable and unwelcome as my hangover the next day, my father and Rocco were bound to notice our absence. In much too short a time they did.

At the opposite end of the bar was an attractive woman sitting by herself and wearing a white fur coat. She was a few years older than Kevin and I but that was irrelevant. Her style wasn’t right, it was much too flashy. Her wardrobe was all shiny and sparkly, like a human disco ball. Her clothes identified her as a South Philadelphia native. Their style signified a certain attitude and told us that we couldn’t get there from here. From across the bar it was obvious that it was a clash of sensibilities. The stylistic soundtrack was the Clash’s White Riot at our end of the bar and It’s Raining Men at the other. She looked like a materialistic pain in the ass. Never one to fight battles that I couldn’t win I settled into my Tanqueray and tonics and let sleeping dogs lie.

Unfortunately not everyone followed my prudent example. Rocco and Al gravitated to her. They still lived some low rent Rat Pack version of the past. Contemporary clues held little meaning to them. Even if they understood the clues, as far as they were concerned they were free to ignore them. In that sense they were anarchists. They did whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted as long as their funds held out. They began chatting her up as if either of them had a chance with her. The fucked up thing is that from a cursory glance it appeared that they might. Either she enjoyed the company which was hard to imagine or she was plying them for drinks, a more likely scenario. It was impossible for me to care. These two clowns were on a mission and it was best to leave it alone. I kept one eye on the conversation as one does passing an accident on the other side of the highway. I didn’t really want to see the carnage but it was fascinating on some morbid level. I was disinterested in hearing the actual conversation. It was bound to be all lies and I had heard enough of the sound of my father’s voice for one evening. She was physically fit so at least Al wouldn’t ask her if she was pregnant. That provided me some small comfort.

My father could be exceptionally charming when he saw fit to make the effort. His guile with women was legendary and taken for granted. It was unthinkable to leave my girlfriends with him for any length of time. Even if he didn’t snake me it was in the realm of the possible. He was that charming, that devious and his wiles with women were unaffected by any wide age discrepancy. The woman had as much chance as a wounded zebra run to ground by a hyena. Al could never be trusted with women or money. He was treacherous on both fronts.

Kevin, our friend Mike and I were at the near end of the bar still practicing our drinking. It was going pretty well if oblivion was the goal. We were regulars at the bar so we were familiar with the bartender. He and I had a mutual interest in Soldier of Fortune magazine. We had little else in common so the discussion usually began and ended on that topic. He wasn’t a bad guy but he was wound a bit too tight. If I remember correctly he was also in a twelve step program, which at the time I perceived as a symptom of insanity. His interest in the magazine far exceeded my own, however. He was short but he actually aspired to become a mercenary. That seemed nuts to me but it didn’t matter. He took care of us, we took care of him and if the conversation lagged we could always discuss the engineering merits and dependability of the AK47. Even drinks on the house have a price. My curiosity about Soldier of Fortune concerned the international politics that kept mercenaries employed. I also used the magazine as source material in my artwork. Occasionally an article about the Irish Republican Army would appear but I had no fucking desire to join them. It never hurt to have a friendly bartender in your corner so I finessed the conversations as best I could. I did suspect that he was nuts and that one day he might explode into a one man orgy of violence so I kept a respectful distance.

He came over to our end of the bar but not to bring us drinks or talk about Soldier of Fortune. As an avid gun enthusiast he probably noticed the tell-tale lump under Rocco’s shirt. He said quietly, "You know the woman that those two older guys are talking to? She isn’t what they think she is." We weren’t entirely sure what he meant. In my case I was drunk and my powers of deduction were as impaired as the rest of me. She looked presentable from a distance if you could ignore her sense of style. If the implication was that she was a prostitute, I doubted that either Rocco or my dad would perceive that as a negative. Perhaps things would be less complicated for the three of them if they had crime in common. "Is she a working girl?" He replied in a whisper, "No, she’s a transvestite." Kevin and I swiveled our heads to our right in unison. A more critical analysis of this changeling confirmed his assessment. Curiously, these two drunken reprobates seemed completely oblivious to the situation at hand, despite having a closer view of her. This could not end well. As was often the case with Mike, he was in the Men’s Room at the crucial moment and missed the bartender’s warning.

In the process of writing this, I considered the possibility that Kevin and I had overreacted and had misread the threat assessment. That doesn’t explain the two pirates chatted her up but God knows what the fuck they were talking about. It didn’t look to us like they knew the score but maybe they did. Perhaps Al and Rocco found the conversation comical. It seemed plausible. I am so often wrong that I never discount the possibility. The situation seemed to us to have all of the ingredients of a perfect storm.

I brought the subject up with Kevin recently for the first time in years. I asked him for his general impression of the evening. He said, "Fuck, I was just glad that no one got shot." My later and more benevolent analysis of the situation began to crumble with his answer but I pressed on. "Kevin, is it possible that we were overreacting and that Al and Rocco knew that they were talking to a transvestite?" "No man" he said, "not a fucking chance." I asked him a question that I knew, if answered contrary to my revisionist theory, would collapse the whole theoretical house of cards that I hoped to construct. "You don’t really think that they would have shot her, do you?" "As drunk as those two idiots were that night? I’m certain of it. There is plenty about that evening I don’t remember but I do remember being relieved that no one got shot." His view reinforced my original fear that we had been staring into the dark abyss of violence.

Despite being hedonists, both Al and Rocco were old school and ignorant of the subtler developments in contemporary social mores. We decided that it would be wrong to withhold the truth. There was a possibility that nothing would happen if we left them to their own devices but we didn’t trust fate. I hoped that no one would get shot but on the other hand they were quite drunk. Getting hit over the head with a gun or thrown down a flight of stairs would be enough of a disaster. Rocco was always sociable but an underlying violence lurked beneath his affable demeanor. He was a criminal, after all, or he would not have been running around with my father. He was also quite large, drunk and armed. If the shit hit the fan with Rocco there was fuck-all Kevin and I could do about it. We were experienced at fighting in tandem but there was nothing two hyenas could do against a drunk and armed mastodon.

Our friend Mike was useless in violent situations. He had a quick tongue, a bad attitude and nothing to back either quality up. He was also a functional junkie. His indiscretions may have been the result of his habit or an inability to maintain it at times. It wasn’t unusual to get drawn into fights due to Mike’s rapier wit and his inability or unwillingness to fight. Just a few weeks before he stood idly by and watched a close friend of ours take a hellacious beating at the hands of four men. Michael could watch his friends get pummeled but his friends couldn’t, even knowing that he was wrong and deserved a severe ass kicking. It ran contrary to code, whether he ascribed to it or not. Although he was smart and funny, he was a liability at worst and no help at his best. He couldn’t be trusted so our only option was to leave him out of it.

My father’s temper was inescapable growing up. He never hit me until I was sixteen and I returned the favor by hitting him over the head with a lamp. He did act violently toward others, however. He was 6′ 1" tall and rangy. Once he dove across the bar at Hannigan’s (at 69th and Ludlow, across from the Tower Theater) and strangled a customer until the man croaked an apology. Al was in his fifties at the time. His speed and brutality amazed me. I never heard what precipitated the attack but it may have been a gambling debt. The poor bastard had no chance. He was probably as shocked as I was. I couldn’t trust Al not to be violent if he felt provoked.

Kevin and I were aware that our intervention might have a negative effect. They were behaving themselves at present but the truth could potentially upset this convivial equilibrium. Al and Rocco were very drunk and past the point of reason. Two drunken reprobates, a pistol and a transvestite seemed a recipe for disaster.

We got a lucky break. Rocco and my father lacked focus in their drunken state. They eventually headed downstairs in pursuit of new and improved entertainment. Had the transvestite had lost her luster? There was no way of knowing. Kevin and I weighed our options and we decided that they all sucked. We felt that the situation needed to be addressed before they reversed field. With any luck they would be too drunk, too complacent and too lazy to go back upstairs after getting the news. By the time we located the two bastards their condition had noticeably deteriorated. They were talking and laughing loudly and it was hard to get a word in edgewise. We eventually found an opening and explained the situation as diplomatically as possible. To our horror they rebuffed us. They acted like we were nuts! They told us to fuck off and dismissed us like insolent children. Is it possible that they knew that they were dealing with a shape-shifter? These two hooligans were inscrutable at the best of times so it was difficult to determine what they knew or didn’t know. People whose professions demand deception learn to present a blank expression.

We truly had no qualms concerning the sexual predilection of the transvestite. We lacked morals ourselves so her morality was not in question. No one faulted her for running her game for free drinks if that’s what she was doing. Each to their own. Live and let live. The problem was that these two drunks were capable of losing their minds and we were unable to influence them. The other problem was my own inebriated state. It made my threat analysis (and everything else) a bit suspect.

After our failed attempt at disaster control we returned to the upstairs bar. Perhaps we would have better luck with the third party in this bizarre triangle. Once upstairs, the first thing that we noticed was that our buddy Mike had changed seats. He was now at the far end of the bar and engaged in witty repartee with the transvestite. We did not fucking need another complication at that moment. Now we had to explain the situation to this ass-clown before we approached Miss Thing with a plan. We went to the far end of the bar and shoehorned ourselves into their conversation. At close quarters her artifice of deception paled considerably, maybe it was the Adam’s apple. One of us distracted the transvestite while the other debriefed Mike. He took the news surprisingly well. He took it too well in fact. He said he didn’t care what she was, he was having fun and that we should leave him the fuck alone. That was the third person to tell us to fuck off in ten minutes and it was getting a bit tedious. Imparting the truth to these three fools was a thankless job. It was not unusual for a quiet evening on the town to turn into a three ring circus. This night had no hopes of being a quiet evening from jump street considering the personnel. Kevin and I were not very experienced at calming situations down. We were much better at escalation. Everyone else in the equation had by this time made it very clear that they thought we were assholes. Of course they were right. We were assholes, just not for the reasons that they thought we were assholes. We had good intentions even if our analysis and strategy sucked ass.

With Mike (somewhat) sorted or at least informed, we turned our attention to this obscure object of desire. We explained that her lifestyle choices were of no concern to us. We applauded her courage to pursue her dreams. We had no issues with transvestites whatsoever. Our only concern was that the two mature gents might not act so maturely if push came to shove. All we wanted was to avoid trouble, trouble that could result in the expulsion from a favored watering hole and/or arrest. She smiled slyly and cooed, "I can take care of myself." We retorted, "Uh…no you fucking can’t." We explained that these two old gents were not exactly docile and at least one of them had a concealed weapon. They were much too drunk to expect even semi-rational behavior from them. Rocco and Al weren’t exactly enlightened individuals. We strongly advised her a change of venue, at least temporarily. After a brief period of resistance she agreed to leave after we offered her cash. How much cash it took to get rid of her is lost in the black hole of memory. She exited through the door on the first floor, still resplendent in fur and glitter. She was a spectacle, an artificial Christmas tree walking in high heels. Despite the small size of the bar, Al and Rocco were too plastered to even notice her flamboyant exit.

We had no further contact with the Al and Rocco that night and the subject was too bizarre to bring up later. They were so drunk that it is possible that they forgot by morning. I am surprised that I remember as much as I do about the incident. After our objective was reached I lost interest in the matter. Problem solved. It was as if she never existed. At least we thought that was true until we spoke to Mike again.

He berated us for causing her to leave. "I liked her," he whined about his loss like a Catholic school girl with skinned knees. Kevin and I just looked at each other in disbelief, shook our heads and walked away. Actually, we didn’t give a fuck if Mike left with her or not. That was his business. He was an odd bird anyway. We were simply trying to protect her from the other two fools. Their breed of dinosaur was nearly extinct but they were still dangerous. Neither of them were particularly forward thinking in the realm of sexual politics or any other politics for that matter. We solved the problem by paying her off but now Mike was bitching. Fuck him. I fought enough fights for that little bastard that he should have been more appreciative of our efforts, even if he disagreed with the results or our approach. I repressed the urge to backhand him.

There was nothing left for us to do now but resume our cocktail consumption. Memory abandons me beyond this point. The trip home is a complete mystery. I am quite sure that I didn’t walk. It was enough of a challenge to remain upright in that state. I was so drunk that I had as much chance of flying as I did driving home. I would have crashed the car before I ever got in it.

Defying even my own optimistic and delusional expectations I reported for work the next day, late and hungover as fuck. If I wasn’t still drunk I might have called out sick. I was usually in trouble on this job for various serial indiscretions. It must have been pretty damn important for me to show up or I doubt I would have made it. Although drunk on the morning drive I negotiated it without incident.

When I got near the job I stopped at a roadside stand for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on a long roll. It was my Saturday morning ritual. My boss always brought his shit-bag dog to work, an untrained an intact male Vizsla. It was red and it had a pronounced knot on the top of its head that made it look as stupid as it actually was. I love dogs but I couldn’t stand this fucking cur. If you didn’t protect yourself it would jump up on you and smack you right in the balls. I spent the majority of every working day with my hand covering my crotch. It isn’t a good look and it makes a lousy first impression. People familiar with the dog understood. Most of our regular customers came in holding their packages as a defensive tactic. It must have looked weird seeing everyone standing around clutching their yarbles. The dog was relentless and would jump up if you made eye contact. It happened all day long. I smacked it on multiple occasions. With no one else reinforcing the discipline and partly due to the dog’s sub-par intelligence it had no affect. Training the useless piece of shit would have helped but my boss felt that training and spaying a dog violated its freedom. He preferred his dogs in a near feral state. I can only think of one other dog that I hated this much. I preferred dogs that bit me to dogs that punched me in the testicles on the regular. But the dog was the least of my problems that morning. I was hungover and insanely hungry. I proceeded to unwrap my sandwich and attack it voraciously. While taking an order from a customer, I foolishly dropped the hand holding the sandwich to my side. The Vizsla swiped it right out of my hand! I lost it!

I am not proud of it now but I punched the dog as hard as I could, right on its bumpy noggin. It fell to the floor as if shot. It remained unconscious for a few seconds. Until that moment I had no idea that it was possible to knock a dog out. Fortunately my boss was in his office when this happened. He eventually came out to investigate the clamor but he was on the phone with a customer at the time of the incident. When he finally got to the counter the dog had recovered enough to stand up but it was wobbling on its long, skinny legs. Although vertical it was still on queer street. I admitted that I smacked the dog but I didn’t tell him that I knocked it out. He knew that my version of the story lacked credibility but, to the Visla’s credit, the dog never ratted me out and I did not get fired. Not two minutes after things had calmed down the dog jumped up and tried to smack me in the nuts. I was beginning to feel besieged. As the day droned on the hangover escalated. It was unbearable. I was too hungover to even eat lunch. Unlike large chunks the previous twenty-four hours, the memory of the hangover remains quite vivid.

Around 11:00 the business phone rang and I reluctantly answered it. I had no interest in speaking to anyone, let alone our bone-head customers. It wasn’t a customer though, it was a collect call from a jail in Atlantic City. I accepted the charges. It was difficult to predict the morning getting any worse but it did. My father was on the phone. He was still so fucked up that it was impossible to understand a word he said. It literally sounded to me like he was speaking Chinese. Al was laughing maniacally through the entire unintelligible conversation. There was no laughing on my end of the phone at all. I was hungover, irritable, hungry and I had just knocked a fucking dog out. I didn’t need any more challenges to my patience. These two clowns were a pain in the ass. The old man really pissed me off by speaking in tongues. Gibberish was totally unacceptable in my fragile condition. Without pointing out his linguistic failure, I asked him if Rocco was available to speak. Fortunately Rocco got on the phone and was slightly more coherent than my father. He said that they had been arrested in Atlantic City. I shuddered to imagine their long drive there. They were both post-verbal before they left the bar! How could either of them have driven for an hour in that condition? Now they had a plan and to my horror the plan involved me. They wanted me to leave work, drive to Atlantic City and post bail for them. The idea was ludicrous. I had no desire to see either them anytime soon let alone be responsible for their release from jail. I felt sick. I also had no ready cash after the previous night of debauchery, despite the fact that the drinks were free. Either I was a very sporty tipper the night before or I gave all of my money away in tips and bribes or I lost all of it on the barroom floor. The reason for my poverty was a moot point. It didn’t matter why. I was flat broke. I spent my last few dollars on a sandwich that had been scarfed up by a dog as useless as tits on a bull.

There was only one option as far as I was concerned. I told them to go fuck themselves, sleep it off in the drunk tank and come up with a plan that did not involve me. I had neither the desire nor the wherewithal to pick them up. I had no compassion for them whatsoever. I was penniless. They got arrested on their own merits. They could get themselves bailed out the same way. Jail seemed like a swell place for those two jerk-offs. Fuck you. No.

Later I asked my father about the arrest. Neither he nor Rocco would talk about it. To this day I don’t know what happened. It didn’t make sense that they would stonewall me over a simple DUI. They were quite open about far more scandalous matters. The only thing they volunteered was that Rocco’s uncle bailed them out. Whatever the reason for their incarceration, there was never any talk of a court appearance and neither of them ever became long term guests of the state of New Jersey. Perhaps Rocco’s uncle had connections. It is useless to speculate. They are both dead and the truth died with them.

Every once in a while I would ask Al about it, just to see if he if he would let his guard down and come clean. Sometimes I brought it up just to break his balls. My father discussed the events preceding the arrest but never directly about the arrest itself. It amazed me that he had any memories of the night at all. Over a period of years he steadfastly refused to give me a straight answer. This was no surprise, Getting the truth out of my father was like collecting rain water with a sieve. It was an act of abject futility.

Obfuscation and evasiveness were my father’s forte. He was impossible to pin down. It was useless to pursue a topic with him once the nonsense started. He would give you irrelevant answers as long as you had the stamina to ask pertinent questions. Lying was a tool to him, like a weed-whacker or a hammer. I am sure that the Atlantic City police quickly tired of his machinations and found his bullshit annoying but their contact with him was relatively brief compared to mine. I grew up with him and share his DNA. Both of these concepts are sobering.

Michael Macfeat 12/24/12

Posted by Michael Macfeat on 2013-02-06 21:19:13

Tagged:

The post EAST SIDE CONFIDENTIAL part two, Confusion on the Heels of Chaos appeared first on Good Info.

[ramblingsfromwithin]

#1 - The Value of Reflection

Over the last two months, I’ve been pushing myself to take my writing more seriously. I’ve finished more stories in the last two months than I have since I took a creative writing course in high school.

At the beginning of each week during the class, there would be a brief lesson followed by a related prompt and, for the remainder of that week, we were free to write to our heart’s content. We would then read our finished stories aloud to the rest of the class. 

While recently gravitating towards podcasts involving creative discussions like Lean Into Art, Comics Are Great!, and Comics Manifest, I began to realize how much that class molded me into a better writer without me even realizing it, primarily through constant creation and constant reflection.

The best thing you can do as a creative is to create, regardless of the finished product so long as it is in a finished state that you can reflect on. You’ll soon realize that these reflections will stick with you and come to mind as you continue to create more things.

While I never enjoyed journaling assignments during school, I’ve found enjoyment in ‘creative’ journaling as early as the fifth grade when I fell in love with composition books. I would doodle random shape blobs throughout them, often forming them into something that could be compared to abstract stained glass art.

I also would write down any story ideas I had as well as any ‘storyless’ characters and dialogue that popped into my mind. Mainly because I thought one day I might run out of ideas and wish I had recorded all of them. Ha!

In fifth grade, I wrote and illustrated a comic about a superhero named Gold Star. It was inspired by The Incredibles but also by my vague understanding of Marvel and DC stories via animation, film, and Wikipedia/Wikias.

His name stemmed from a mortgage company in my hometown that had caught my eye one day. Gold Star seemed to me to be a fitting name for a superhero.

I don’t remember much about him specifically. He was a part of a team similar to the Fantastic Four, but he was more Booster Gold influenced. I’d be willing to bet that the “The Greatest Story Never Told" episode of Justice League Unlimited likely was the source of my brief interest in Booster Gold.

The Gold Star comic, my first real creation, was gone almost as quickly as I made it. I had molded two of the villains in the comic after two male classmates who had teased me for being feminine. They somehow got a hold of it, read it, and ripped it up.

I can’t recall how I felt after this happened, but the creative fire inside me didn’t waver.

In middle school, I read the Twilight series in an attempt to understand why it had exploded into popularity with not just my classmates but my mom and her friends as well.

The books were satisfying and I understood why so many people, mainly young girls and women, found so much joy in the gloomy world of Twilight. 

In fact, my friend Brittany began to write her own Twilight-inspired series. The story was handwritten on loose-leaf paper yet it felt as real as any book I had ever read.

It was so inspiring seeing someone my age create something of her own so I decided I would work on my own novel.

I considered how Stephenie Meyer and Brittany used vampires and werewolves in their stories and I decided that I, instead, wanted to write a novel about a boy with bright pink fairy wings that he couldn’t hide.

I did some research online about fairies, naming him Puck as a reference to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I read certain passages of Twilight again that had left a positive impression on me.

I even talked with Brittany about her writing process and bounced ideas off of her.

I don’t remember much of what I wrote and, even though I have quite a bit of writing from that time period, I’m not sure where it disappeared. I’m certain of why I gave up on the project though:

One, writing a novel was more challenging than I had originally thought. 

Two, the ‘slice of life’ teenage story was also challenging to me as I was someone who was just becoming a teenager himself. 

Three, I didn’t have a story.

Looking back, I realize I hadn’t experienced enough up until middle school to truly utilize Puck in the best way possible. I had enough experience to form him as a character but not enough to understand what his role could be in a story.

Even with no real story, though, Puck has continued to live with me in the back of my mind. I have inserted the essence of him into a lot of my fantasy-leaning writing.

He’s now found his way into a world that I created as a form of therapy. I have faith that he and the stories of that world will one day see the light... but it won’t be in the form of a novel like I originally had wanted.

So, prior to my creative writing class, I had created before. I had created things that I was, and still am, proud of, but that creative writing class was the defining moment for me.

It was such a valuable experience for me as a budding creative, showing me the importance of setting and reaching obtainable goals for the sake of creating something tangible.

Sometimes, it means ‘puking’ ideas for a story onto a page and discovering the characters and stories hidden within the ideas.

Sometimes, it means writing the ending before the beginning.

And, sometimes, it means putting a project on hold while I work on other things and continue to read, listen to, and experience the world around me. 

This blog will serve me where my memory cannot. As my craft continues to grow and change, this blog will act as a reminder of where I once was and where I’d like to be headed in the future as well as listing and thinking critically about my own projects as well as my inspirations and my aspirations.

[cohesionarts]

This just in from Cohesion Arts

New Post has been published on http://cohesionarts.com/2017/03/20/harvey-and-the-lionel-trains/

Harvey and the Lionel Trains

I think I’m goin’ back To the things I learned so well in my youth I think I’m returning to those days When I was young enough to know the truth Now there are no games to only pass the time No more electric trains, no more trees to climb Thinking young and growing older is no sin And I can play the game of life to win

–– Carol King

Harvey, Arthur, and the 736 Berkshire

For Christmas in 1955, my father bought, set up and gave to my older brother an elaborate set of Lionel trains, tracks, and accessories.   In our family photo albums, there is  just one photo of Harvey operating the trains, my brother Arthur looking on in gleeful fascination as the cast iron 736 Berkshire electric locomotive “steams” by; Just out of the frame,  circles of chemical-pellet induced smoke are puffing out of its little smokestack.

In the 1950s, Lionel trains were the quintessential under-the-tree expression of America’s post-war prosperity.   The Lionel Corporation had found a way to flourish during the war, by retooling their assembly lines to manufacture servo motors for military equipment instead of electric motors for toy trains. Once the war ended, the company repurposed those servo motors in the first post-war generation of its marquee product.

Our family was sufficiently prosperous (the family business produced ceramic household tile at a plant in Keyport, New Jersey) that our parents could afford to give their kids the very best: that Berkshire locomotive with its smoke puffing stack and whistling coal car was top-of-the-line, but that was just the start of the layout. Arrayed within the circle of tracks were equally high-end accessories:

– A cattle loader with a vibrating surface that propelled little rubber “cattle” into a plastic cattle car;

– A milk car with a solenoid-powered mechanism that ejected little metal milk cans onto a little metal platform.  The milk cans were cleverly made with a tiny magnet underneath so that they would stick to the metal platform when they came flying out of the milk car and not fall over;

– The log loader that carried wooden dowels up a conveyor belt and dumped them on to the waiting “log car” below;

– A light tower with a red-and-blue beacon that rotated just from the heat rising from the little lightbulb within;

There were several crossing gates and switch tracks to reroute the train from one circuit to another.  It was all very elegant – lavish, even – and no doubt very costly, but the Schatzkin family could easily afford it.

All of this mid-century amusement was mounted atop an 8×8 foot table that was actually two standard 4×8 plywood sheets to which my father – an amateur carpenter of sorts who kept an extensive wood shop in our basement – had added a strip of smooth molding around the edges and then clipped the two sheets together with brass hooks.  The whole assembly lay atop two folding aluminum tables which were also de-riguer household items in the 50s.

Engineer Arthur at the throttle

For that Christmas, the trains were set up in a (more typical 50s) wood-paneled room behind the living room that was called “the playroom.”  There is only one other photo of the trains in our family albums;  In it you can see 7-year-old Arthur gingerly pushing the throttle forward on the state-of-the-art transformer.  You can also see some of the accessories that came with the trains.

After Christmas, the trains were taken down and reassembled in the basement.  I honestly don’t remember a whole lot about them after that.  What do you want from me, I was only five years old and this was all more than 60 years ago…

But I do remember that one morning in 1956 or ’57, the whole set up just disappeared.

*

In later years, our mother would occasionally tell the story of what happened to the electric trains.

One night, the story goes, my parents went to a dinner party at the home of the Connie and George Selby (their their actual name was Seligman but  at some point in the 50s they Anglicized it to “Selby” – my parents suspected they wanted a name that didn’t sound so… well… Jewish).

George Sr. went by the nickname of “Dink,” so – dumb as it sounds – we’ll just call him that.  Dink and Connie had a son, George Jr., who was Arthur’s age.  They also had an elaborate Lionel train set in their basement.  I have some vague memories of seeing the Seligman/Selby’s trains, and of being envious of how much more intricate their layout was compared to ours.  There were multiple trains navigating through realistic scenery, the tracks rising and falling through multiple levels on plastic trestles. Maybe this is how the Jews kept up with the Joneses in mid-50s surbubia – with dueling Lionel train sets; the gentile neighbors who lived on either side of our house all had Lionel trains, too.

The way my mother told the story, they were George Jr.’s trains but… Dink didn’t really let his son play with them.  Dink ran the show and George Jr. was pretty much relegated to watching the trains go by.

The spectacle of a 30-something-year-old man commandeering his nine year old son’s electric trains was enough to send my father into a fit of pique.

And so, the story goes, my father came home that night so incensed that he went straight into the basement and dismantled the entire Lionel layout that he had set up for Arthur, and stuffed everything – the locomotive, the coal car, the milk car, the cattle car, the transformer and all the accessories – into a cabinet. The next morning he announced that  “if you want to play with the trains, you’ll have to put them back together yourself…”

Which my brother never did.

The Lionels stayed dismantled and stashed in the cabinet in the basement where my father put them for several years.

They still hadn’t come out of those cabinets when Harvey died in the fall of 1958.  He was 37.  Arthur was 10.  I was 7.  Our little sister was 4-1/2.

Fast forward with me now,  all the way to 1959:

ca. 1960, photo by Monroe Edelstein

I’m in the third grade and for some reason that I will never recall I went down to the basement and  got my father’s Lionel trains out of the cabinet where he had left them. Without any instruction or coaching I put the tracks together and connected all the wires and for the first time in years the Monmouth Avenue Railroad was running again.  Hey, look, there’ the old 736 Berkshire, and the milk car and the cattle car and the log loader, and the crossing gates, and the little blue plastic man popping out of his miniature green-and-red gate house, swinging his little plastic lantern…

After that, the trains became “my thing” until we moved from Rumson to Maplewood in the spring of 1962.  Before that move, my mother hired a noted photographer to come to our house to make portraits of the family. The photographer asked what I was interested in and I showed him the trains in the basement.  He posed me with that cast iron locomotive.

*

I told my therapist parts of this story last week.

We talk a lot about my father.

More than anything my father longed for a creative life.  Like me, he was a writer and a photographer, but he spent his (short) career making tile for kitchens and bathrooms.  He was never published – unless you count the time that a letter he wrote to Macy’s was used for an ad in the New York Herald Tribune – but I’ve got a trove of his comic short stories in my basement that are still funny.

Almost 60 years after he departed from this planet, I still wonder how my life might have been different if he’d stuck around – at least long enough to see that <I> was the one who was destined to play with his electric trains.

I think he would have approved.  And we would have had something to bond over, at least for a few years.

My mother often said of my father that “you were just getting to an age where he could do things with you…” when cancer dispatched his 37-year-old soul.  I have only a handful of actual memories of him.   One, in particular:

It’s October, 1955.  I’m four, not quite five years old. The Russians have just beaten the US into space with the launch of Sputnik, Earth’s first man-made moon.  One cold autumn night, my father took me – just me – out to the nearby high school football field to see if we could spot Sputnik wandering among the stars.  We  never did see the satellite, but the moment left an impression that remains vivid to this day.  Now every time I look up at the stars… I’m back on that football field with my father.

I wish he could have been around for the moon landing in 1969.  I think we might have watched it together. Oh, sure, there was a lot of other stuff going on at the time; I shudder to think what he, a World War II veteran, would have thought of his sons’ resistance to the draft and the war in Vietnam.  And then I think: Maybe it is fitting that only the good die young. That way we never have pictures of them as angry, bitter old men yelling at us from the other side of the “generation gap.”

And I remember when I showed my mother my first personal computer in 1979.  As I showed her how I could enter text and then wipe it off the screen with a single press of the “delete” key,  she said, “your father would have loved this…”   Really.  He was what we now call a gadget freak.  From Lionel trains to computers… we would have had that much in common.

*

I have been struggling of late with the whole idea of… approval.  Of claiming and manifesting my creative instincts.  And trying to not feel undeservedly pretentious about saying even that.

Creative types.  We’re wired differently.  And we go through life seeking validation and approval from – ironically – the more conventionally wired.  I have spent my entire life doubting my creative instincts, even when they are clearly manifest.  Like every writer (?) I finish one thing and wonder if there’s anything left.  It hasn’t helped that my greatest success as a writer was followed by my most disappointing failure.  Is it any wonder that infinite doubt ensues?

There was an odd little series on Netflix this year called “The OA”  that, among other things, addressed the theme of the “invisible self.” In an early episode, the principle character, a young woman named Prairie, cautions a companion to be gentle with his own inner forces:

“You don’t want to go there,” Prairie cautions, “until your invisible self is more developed anyway. You know, your longing, things you tell no one else about?”

All this business about my father and his electric trains came up when I was telling my therapist that lately I, too have been feeling… invisible.  It seems at times that I am just unwilling or unable to inhabit my own soul.   Like there is some creature inside me that I am the only one who can see – and not altogether clearly at that.  And that the people around me – even the people closest to me – want to reflect back on me… not my invisible self, but theirs.

And the soul recedes.

I realize it’s mostly pointless at this point in my life, but still I can’t help but wonder: If my father had been around to see me set up and run those electric trains…. would he have approved? Would he have seen a reflection of himself, and in that reflection beamed back a glimpse of the invisible me?  Maybe that glimpse, however brief and fleeting, might have provided enough recognition and approval that I wouldn’t still be longing for it 60 years later.  His validation in that moment could have left a lasting impression, much like that cold night when a young father and his little boy scanned the heavens for a dot of light drifting among the stars.

*

When my family moved in the spring of 1962, the trains were dismantled again and packed into a box. Never mind that I didn’t get to pack the box; I was at summer camp when the family moved – but hat’s whole other story.

Once I arrived at the new house, I don’t think I ever took the trains out of the box.  By then my interests had shifted: I wanted slot cars,  and my parents – that would be my mother and her new husband, aka my stepfather – told me I couldn’t have both.  We sold the Lionels to a family from Newark for all of $75.

I’m sorry, Daddy.  I don’t have your Lionels any more.  But I still wish you had been around when I started playing with them.

*

[aion-rsa]

Calvin & Hobbes Meets Sin City in Pepose’s Spencer & Locke –

Writer David Pepose describes his debut comic series “Spencer & Locke” as “Calvin & Hobbes” meets “Sin City.” Locke’s a police detective, a broken-down, beaten-by-life cop, struggling to keep himself together, much less investigate a girl’s disappearance. Spencer is … well, Spencer is a stuffed panther, but in Locke’s mind, he’s the only partner Locke can rely on.

Debuting in March from Action Lab Entertainment, “Spencer & Locke” is more than a simple genre mash-up. Abetted by the versatile illustrations of Jorge Santiago, Jr., Pepose explained that he plans to dive deep into the psychological makeup of a man who talks to his imaginary panther, and the things we find there won’t be pretty.

CBR spoke with Pepose about his influences, the lessons he’s learned on the journalism side of comics, and the surprises that come with seeing his words realized in artwork.

CBR: First of all, David, when I googled “Spencer & Locke,” I found an actress named Spencer Locke, who has a ton of credits I’ve never seen. That can’t be a coincidence.

David Pepose: I know! I was surprised when I saw her name pop up, too. But at the end of the day, I’m just humbled that “Spencer & Locke” has such a strong fanbase that this woman’s parents would actually name her after our book. The power of comics marketing, everyone!

No, I kid, total coincidence. I am very excited to make her fans our own, though.

Locke’s childhood looks awfully adorable at first, but man, it goes dark. As a writer, what appeals to you about that juxtaposition, and how is it useful for playing with reader expectations?

I’ve always been a big fan of mash-ups and remixes, and Spencer & Locke is very much in that vein – our initial high concept was pitched as “what if ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ grew up in ‘Sin City’?” So while we’re very much a dark parody of both Bill Watterson and Frank Miller, I think there is that sense of reader expectation – which we’re able to play upon or subvert to better build up our story. Given this is very much an homage to one of the most iconic comic strips of all time, there’s a lot of tropes and iconography we’re able to play around with, and I’m just excited for readers to see how we’ve turned a childhood classic on its ear.

But I also think that our flashbacks to Locke’s childhood give us some very cool avenues to pursue. Not only do the flashbacks give Jorge an opportunity to stretch his artistic muscles by playing with different visual styles, but they cut deep into who Locke is and why he’s turned out the way he’s turned out. Locke might be a cop, but that doesn’t mean he’s isn’t without rough edges or outright character flaws – sometimes some very prominent ones. But it’s hard not to empathize with a character when you’ve gotten to know his story, and once you read “Spencer & Locke,” I think you’ll wind up falling in love with these characters almost as quickly as I did.

Spencer is obviously Locke’s childhood toy, his imaginary friend, but what does his relationship with Locke actually represent to Locke? Are there aspects of Locke’s personality that can only manifest through the fiction?

Detective Locke is a deeply scarred individual, someone with a chip on both shoulders and a mean streak a mile wide. And in that regard, Spencer is very much the opposite in this buddy-cop dynamic – Spence may look tough on the outside, but it’s easy to see that this cat is one big softie underneath. Beyond sharing a sort of Riggs/Murtagh buddy-cop DNA, Spencer absolutely is a reflection of Locke – Spence represents Locke’s conscience, his savagery, his very intuition as a detective. But what I like most about Spencer and Locke as characters is how they play off each other, how they each have very distinct personalities, philosophies, and points of view – and as you’ll see as the series progresses, this dynamic is really just the tip of the iceberg.

Beyond the obvious “Calvin and Hobbes” references, are there other inspirations for the fictional partner motif? You’re having a zeitgeist moment, as Terry Moore also has a fictional friend/animal partner (a gorilla in his case) in his new series “Motor Girl.”

Pfft, who needs a gorilla when you have a giant imaginary panther? Step off, Terry Moore, we got your number!

But seriously, Terry Moore is a huge name to be lumped in with, so thanks for the compliment. Ultimately, the “Calvin and Hobbes”/“Sin City” mashup was the driving force behind “Spencer & Locke,” but a lot of my favorite movies have been about psychology and mental illness. “Memento” in particular was a big inspiration – it’s the story of a hero who winds up taking a crippling affliction and twists it into something that’s actually positive. So on the one hand, while Locke is broken enough as a human being to need to dream up a friend like Spencer, we’ll see during the story that Locke’s twisted imagination might be the very thing that helps save his life.

Issue one has a heckuva cliffhanger. Suffice to say that we’ve only seen the tip of Locke’s family trauma and the reasons for Spencer’s existence?

Without giving too much away, yes – the title of our first issue is “You Can’t Go Home Again,” and I think that’s very much a mission statement for “Spencer & Locke” as a whole. Our story is very much about childhood scars, and coming face-to-face with your own demons – and Locke is going to need Spencer’s help now that he has to confront the traumas of his past. There are a lot of familiar faces who are going to be coming out of the woodwork now that Locke has come back to the old neighborhood – and each of these figures are going to not only threaten Locke’s survival, but they’re going to challenge and twist his relationship with Spence.

But let’s just say that Locke’s home life was… harrowing to say the least.

You’ve spent literally half your life writing reviews of other people’s comics. Has dissecting them like that given you insights into how to write for comics? Are there any specific techniques or tropes you’ve picked up and applied here?

Ha! I mean, “half” my life might be pushing it, but I do think that writing and thinking critically about comics definitely informed the process of creating “Spencer & Locke.” I don’t have to tell you that comic readers are an opinionated bunch, but having to write reviews – essentially to have to boil down your arguments and present them with evidence, to try to be “tough but fair” – really helped me find my own voice as a writer and my own sensibilities as a reader and consumer. I think everyone knows in their gut what they like and don’t like, but being forced to articulate why I think was a really instructive experience.

One big example for me was structure – the first two volumes of “Ultimate Spider-Man” aside, I’m generally not the biggest fan of decompressed storytelling. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I found myself really responding to the self-contained storytelling in Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher and Babs Tarr’s run on “Batgirl” – so that sort of thing really influenced how I paced “Spencer & Locke,” trying to make each issue stand on its own, to give each chapter its own identity and its own unique flavor, just to keep everything exciting and satisfying.

How has the experience of working with an artist and seeing your words realized in this way been for you? Has Jorge brought out any aspects of your script that surprised you?

I have to tell you, working with Jorge has been immensely gratifying, just watching him take these scripts and bring them to life. He’s a real artist’s artist, and he’s also just tremendously smart — and considering Jorge studied at the Savannah College of Art and Design, I feel lucky that I’ve essentially gotten a crash-course in sequential art from a real master in the making. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t also give a shout-out to our colorist, Jasen Smith – he’s been our secret weapon through the whole process, injecting mood to every scene and just taking Jorge’s fantastic art to the next level. It’s really been a dream working with a team this good.

And as far as surprises in the art… oh man, where to begin? The character designs are all Jorge – when I initially wrote the first issue, I had envisioned Locke as this big, brawny character, kind of like Marv or Callahan from “Sin City,” while Spencer was going to be tall and lanky, kind of a Hobbesian figure. But Jorge flipped that on its head, and I immediately thought that was such a great move – it creates so much more tension having a scrappy character like Locke take all the hits, while having a seven-foot-tall panther like Spencer solidifies him not just as a protector figure, but also as a bit of a gentle giant. But best of all, Jorge only gets better with every issue – I love Issue #2, but Issue #3 is going to blow you away.

How did Jorge get involved? And how did you hook up with Action Lab for “Spencer & Locke”?

You can blame Justin Jordan for this one – once I read about how he met Tradd Moore online, and how Tradd was a SCAD-trained artist, I knew I wanted to take a page out of his playbook. So I went online and looked for SCAD graduates, and just reached out to people whose work I thought might be a good fit for “Spencer & Locke.” But Jorge in particular stood out, because his website said that he was “creating comics and art with stupid amounts of passion” – and that was the kind of quality I really wanted in a partner. And it really paid off, because Jorge took everything I threw at him in my scripts (and there is a lot I threw at him!), and just made it sing.

As far as Action Lab, I had heard great things about the company, having followed Jamal Igle’s “Molly Danger” and Vito Delsante’s “Stray.” So as we were shopping “Spencer & Locke” around, our creative director at Action Lab, Dave Dwonch, saw the potential in our project almost immediately – I think he asked us what our timetable could be maybe an hour after I sent him the pitch. They’ve been really fantastic over there, giving us plenty of room to develop our book and our story as needed, just letting us push the envelope as hard as we can.

Now that you’re big time, are you still heading up the review squad at that other comic book site? Anything else in the works you can tease?

For now, I’ve been keeping myself busy in various corners of the comics internet, but now that “Spencer & Locke” is about to become a reality, I’m very excited to see what the future holds. I have a few other comics projects in various stages of development – I’ve got a spy thriller that’s looking very fun, and a crime caper that I am extremely excited to explore – but I’m also committed to making sure we give “Spencer & Locke” the launch it deserves.

This book has been a labor of love for more than two years now, and I couldn’t be prouder of my team and the work we’ve produced. We just finished up the fourth and final issue of “Spencer & Locke” a few weeks ago, and I miss the characters already – so if people respond to this work, and preorder lots of copies when we hit “Previews” in January, I think there’s a much deeper world for “Spencer & Locke” to explore. This is a dark book – and it gets even darker as we get further into the story – but ultimately, “Spencer & Locke” is a comic about old scars, and whether or not we can rise up and overcome them. Even though one of our characters is just a figment of the other one’s imagination, I think redemption is real – and a story that we can all relate to. There’s something inspiring about that, I think – and it’s that journey that I think will make “Spencer & Locke” ring true for a lot of comics veterans and new readers alike.

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