#my only regret is that i did not budget enough time and effort to drawing MORE PIECES for it 😭✨️

[takonxmz]

Had the honor of making art for @jaimebluesq to be featured in their SangCheng Mini Bang 2023 submission: Who’s Prepared to Pay the Price for a Trip to Paradise? (on ao3)!!! 😍💖✨️😍💖✨️😍💖✨️ Read and enjoy 50k words of SangCheng goodness!!!!

You can also view and reblog Jaime's promo post here!! 🥰💖✨️

[hockey-fics]

2 from the kissing prompt list and 5 from the smutty prompt list with Crosby or Tito please!

This is 2 from the kissing prompt list with Crosby. I’ll add 5 with Tito to my list!

Prompt: Kiss in the middle of a fight

A/N: never used someone else’s gif before but huge thank you to the person who made that one, I know how much effort goes into making gifs 

Warnings: argument (obviously), language, and an age gap. 

Four years. 

Four years since your first date. 

When he took you for dinner at a restaurant that was way out of your budget and your comfort zone. Because you were barely 20, a college student living in a rundown apartment with bars on the window and three locks on the front door. And he was almost 30, making more money than you could even wrap your head around, living in an apartment on the side of town you only fantasized about living in. 

But as soon as you were with him that night all your worries subsided. And when you saw the drink menu, hesitating at the prices, Sidney made a casual comment to order whatever you wanted. And when you excused yourself to the bathroom towards the end of the night Sidney paid for the bill while you were gone, not even giving you the chance to have to worry about splitting it. He drove you home that night and parked his car, walking you to your door and waiting till you were securely in your apartment before leaving. 

You never would have admitted it then but you fell in love with him that night. 

But it wasn’t always easy. Because he was almost a full ten years older than you. You were at different points in your life. For the most part it wasn’t an issue, you were mature for your age and he was accepting of the fact that occasionally you did just want to go out and party with your friends. But there were comments, from your family, from his family, from your friends, hell, even the media seemed to have an opinion on your relationship. You saw the tweets, the Instagram comments. You tried your best to pretend you didn’t, but even though he tried to avoid it as much as he could he was in the spotlight and it was inevitable. 

You moved in together three years after you got together, you settled in with him easily. And in the beginning you thought maybe the flood of happiness you felt waking up every morning in a bed that the two of you shared would fade, but it didn’t. You figured at some point cooking dinner together in your kitchen would become routine, but every time he wrapped his arms around your waist while you were preparing dinner or he would step between your legs while you sat on the counter placing his large hands on your thighs, you were just as overcome with joy as the very first time. 

Your whole life you never believed in soulmates. People just found someone they clicked with and made it work. But when you met Sid all those thoughts changed. Because you never met anyone who made you feel the way he did, not a single friend or ex could compete with the overwhelming happiness and comfort that Sid brought you. 

When your family was having a reunion there wasn’t any hesitation in your mind over Sidney coming. Sure, you weren’t married, he wasn’t technically a part of the family. But it really only felt like a formality at this point, that piece of paper. 

So you and Sid packed a suitcase for the three nights you were going to be away, giddy with excitement at getting to introduce Sid to your entire family. He had met your close family on so many occasions, but it was the distant relatives, cousins you yourself had only met a few times, that could get to meet him now. 

Of course Sid splurged, getting a suite in one of the nicest hotels in the area. You told him it wasn’t necessary, that the two of you would be busy, wouldn’t be there that often anyway. But he insisted. 

The second night you two got ready for an afternoon barbecue with your entire family. Your aunt and uncle had rented space at a local country club, a large outdoor gazebo, lawn space for the younger kids to play on. It was all gearing up to be a great afternoon. 

“What if I can’t remember someone’s name? Should we have a codeword or something?” Sid asks, voice hushed and panicked as you walk along beside him, hand in hand towards where your parents had told you to meet everyone. 

Coming to a stop you tug him to face you. “Stop worrying. This is supposed to be fun. Everyone is going to love you.”

And perhaps you shouldn’t have been so confident, an egregious error in assuming you knew your distant family well enough to make that statement. Because by the time dinner is over and a few drinks have been poured the conversations seemed to be taking a turn you weren’t expecting. 

“So, Sid,” your uncle Max says, drawing the attention of you and Sid along with the rest of the group that was sitting around one of the large outdoor tables. “How old are you again?”

Sid clears his throat and you reach over, grasping for his hand beneath the table. “Thirty-three,” he tells him with a nervous formality of being interrogated by the police. 

“And Y/N, darling, correct me if I’m wrong but you’re twenty-two?” You Aunt chimes in. 

“Twenty-three,” you correct, with a force smile. “Almost twenty-four,” you add quickly, immediately regretting it, cringing internally at the childish way it had come across, trying to prove yourself to be older. 

“Sid, you’ve never had any kids? No ex-wives?” Max asks, prodding questions he had no right to be asking when he had barely even asked about the mundane facts of Sid’s life. 

“No,” Sid replies, a defensive edge to his tone. 

“Hm,” Max hums, picking up his drink and taking a rather large swig. “Didn’t want any…or?”

“I…uh,” Sid stammers, rarely at a loss for words but now unable to form a simple sentence. 

“We’re thinking about it,” you suddenly chime in. You feel Sid’s eyes on you, wide and confused. It wasn’t like you two hadn’t talked about it before. In fact, you had talked about it on a number of occasions. Early on in the relationship it came up as a general question ‘do you want kids?’. As things got more serious is became more clear that when you two were picturing having kids it was together. Discussing how you wanted to raise your kids, how many you wanted. And you had been thinking about it, just hadn’t brought it up to Sid that you were starting to think maybe you were getting close to being ready. 

“Oh, hunny, you’re so young and he-,” you aunt begins, trailing off as she glances over at Sid. 

You can feel your emotions building, rage coursing through your veins. “Like I said, we’re thinking about it. I know it’s a big decision.” With that you shut down the conversation, pushing your chair back and watching Sid follow suit, walking with you away from the table. Neither of you say anything till you get back to the car you were renting for the weekend, needing to get away from it all for a few minutes. Hot, angry tears filling your eyes. 

“I’m sorry.”

You stare up at Sid, blinking away your tears as you try to put together what he was talking about. “You’re sorry? Sorry for what? That’s my asshole family, I’m the one who needs to be apologizing to you.”

“But this wouldn’t be happening with another guy,” Sid says, holding both your hands in his. “You shouldn’t need to be standing up for me like that. They’re also your family and I can’t put you in the position of needing to be at odds with them for a relationship.”

“What are you saying?” You ask, shaking your head as you pull your hands back from his, using one to wipe away a few tears before crossing them over your chest. 

“I don’t know,” Sid admits, looking around as he takes a deep breath. “Maybe we…you and I-.”

“No,” you interject, shaking your head. “If you think my family’s opinions are going to change how I feel about you, about us, then you’re a fucking idiot, Sidney. I love you…so much. I know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you because you make me happier than anyone has ever made me, I’m the best version of myself when I’m with you and I’m never going to let that go because someone thinks you’re a few years too old for me or whatever other bullshit people will criticize us about. And I really thought you felt as sure about this as I do, so-.”

Suddenly Sid is stepping closer, leaning down and pressing his lips to yours. It’s soft and tender and filled with a thousand words he hadn’t spoken out loud. Your arms fall from across your chest to around his shoulders, letting him pull you closer. “Marry me,” he whispers against your lips. 

You’re silent for a second, pulling back just enough to look into his eyes. “What?” 

“Marry me,” he repeats. “I have the ring already, I’ve been thinking about asking you for months but it never felt like the perfect moment and this sure as hell isn’t the perfect moment either but I can’t wait any longer. Because I do feel as sure about this as you do and you need to know that now.”

You have tears in your eyes again as you stare up at Sid, only able to nod in response for a minute. “Of course I want to marry you,” you finally whisper, your arms wrapped tight around him. 

[hoodwinkd1]

Your Eyes Whispered Ch 16

Ch 15 here.

Here it is! The final chapter!! So much love to all of you that have followed along with this story <3

Chapter 16: you are in love. true love.

Reality hit Eris in the face, harder than any bitch slap.

They hadn’t left his chambers for almost an entire day, legs tangled and words whispered over breakfast, lunch, dinner, and tea. Eris was ready to hand over his title and power for the opportunity to spend the rest of life like that, with no interruptions and no one around except for her.

Unfortunately, leaving the Court in the hands of someone random seemed ethically dubious and potentially problematic. Equally unfortunately, his stubborn mate loved her job and actually cared about her students. For both of these reasons, Eris found himself kissing Rhia goodbye on her doorstep just before midnight.

“Two whole days apart,” she teased, drawing patterns on his tunic with her finger. “How will we ever survive.”

Eris ducked to kiss her head. “You shouldn’t joke. I might die.”

He watched her lean against the door frame, remembering that neither of them had gotten enough sleep last night. “I’d really rather you didn’t.”

“I’d feel much better if you simply moved in,” Eris grumbled. They both froze. “Joking. That was definitely a joke.”

“You shouldn’t joke,” Rhia teased. “I might die. Leave, before I drag you upstairs and lock you in my room.”

Eris pouted. “Don’t threaten me with a good time. Good night.”

They exchanged one last kiss, so sweet and gentle that Eris’ heart broke and mended itself as their lips parted.

Although her absence ached, Eris had to admit that a full night of sleep called to him as soon as he winnowed back into his chambers. Rhia brought out so many wonderful qualities in him, but falling asleep during one of the countless meetings tomorrow might not reflect well on his leadership potential.

----

Water dripped from her hair, sliding down between her shoulder blades. Rhia knew she should grab her hair oils, knew she should comb out some of the remaining tangles, or she would regret it in a few hours. But his scent teased her, pulling her from the bathroom and into her bedroom.

Strange how she thought the days apart would drag on forever. She felt like it had only been a moment as her eyes scanned his body, hands behind his head and long legs draped across her bed.

“Take your time, love,” Eris smirked.

Rhia snapped her gaze back to his face. “What?”

Eris moved in a way that heated her blood. He sat up, arms coming down to cross his chest. His eyes flashed in a way that screamed predator, but for once, she was completely fine with being prey. “Stare at me for as a long as you want. I’ll wait patiently for you to finish.”

“Cheeky,” Rhia replied, a flush blooming from her cheeks and down her neck. She had never been more grateful for her dark skin, hiding the pink tinge that would have jumped out on a face as pale as her beloved’s. “You speak of patience; I’ll just have to test that out.”

She loosened her grip on the towel, letting it fall to the floor.

His reaction did not disappoint. She watched his pupils dilate as his eyes narrowed. Rhia bit her lip at how his pulse raced, one vein in his neck standing out in the most tempting manner.

“Stare as long as you wish.” Rhia took two steps backward, leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom. “I’ll wait.”

She turned around, making sure he wasn’t deprived of any view, before stepping fully into the bathroom and reaching above the sink for her favorite, lavender scented oil. As her body stretched, she counted to five in her head.

Rhia didn’t even get to three. Eris launched himself from the bed, appearing behind her so quickly she let out a giggle. He caught her eye in the mirror and raised an eyebrow. She took it for the question it was, giving him a quick nod and leaning back into his warmth. There was something so infuriatingly dirty about the feel of his soft pajamas against her naked skin.

Eris raised his hands slowly, letting them drift up and down her sides, raising goosebumps and her heartbeat. At the same time, he dropped his head to press light kisses to her neck, her shoulder, her spine, a million small points on her body.

Rhia set down the bottle of oil preemptively, knowing she was about one kiss from smashing it on the ground in a fit of passion.

“Hold on,” he murmured against her skin. “We can’t have your hair drying out tomorrow, can we?” He snatched it from her, pouring a small amount into his palm.

She groaned at the feeling of his hands in her hair. While his talented fingers felt like heaven, she really would prefer to feel them somewhere else.

“Oh? And where would that be?” Eris asked. She flushed again, realizing she’d spoken out loud. “Tell me what you want.”

Of course Eris was a talker in bed. He never managed to shut up normally, so Rhia should have seen this coming.

She turned in his arms, running her hands up his chest. Letting her lower back rest against the sink, she looked at him and tilted her head to the side in a silent challenge. “Touch me.”

Eris leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss on her lips. “I am touching you.” His left hand drifted from her side to her stomach, tracing circles that never landed where she wanted him. “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

She sighed against his mouth, savoring the warmth and safety of this moment. There was no fear, no bad memories, nothing dragging her from pleasure. “Lower.”

He complied, circling down to her hips, running his knuckles against them. “Good?”

She was good. Surprisingly good.

Suspiciously good.

“Yes.” She kissed his shoulder, right below his neck. His shirt would have to go soon. “Keep going.”

He moved his hand and ---

Rhia shot up, clutching the sheets around her. No longer in the bathroom, but back in her bed where she’d fallen asleep.

A fucking wet dream. Cauldron, Eris found new ways to make her feel like an adolescent even when he wasn’t around. And now she had to go through the next day and a half thinking about him, missing him even more than before.

-----

“Fuck,” Eris cursed, jumping out of bed and running into his closet. “Fuckity, fucking fuck.”

He was running late. So late that he would have no time to plan out his outfit, brush his hair, eat some damn breakfast, or shower. And as much as he wanted to do all those things, he actually needed that shower right now.

Preferably a cold one.

While he usually prided himself on his body’s exceptionally accurate clock, rarely relying on alarms or servants to wake up on time, his stupid brain had kept him unconscious this morning. All because of a stupid dream.

“You’re a dirty pervert,” Eris growled to himself, grabbing a boring black suit that felt like something Rhysand would wear. Thinking of the Night Court calmed down his burning desire, at least for the moment.

His imagination had played a glorious scene for him, ending with him taking Rhia on the large countertop in his bathroom. Eris shoved the image of her out of his head, head back against the mirror as her back arched towards him, scrambling for some semblance of control as he stalked to his first meeting.

He’d dealt with frustration before, but nothing comparable to this. Eris hadn’t wanted to think about her in that way since their night together. She had set a clear boundary, one that he would never dream of crossing, even in his own head.

Except he literally did dream of crossing it. Eris snarled under his breath as he strode into the chamber, covering up his shame and anger with a mask of disdain. The group of merchants waiting for his arrival had done nothing to earn his ire yet, but the elitist males certainly deserved it.

“My Lord.” One of the eldest Fae at the table, Cephalus, greeted him as the rest of the guests stood and bowed quickly. “I hope you can forgive us for beginning the meal without you.”

Eris couldn’t have cared less about breakfast. “Fine. What business?”

Cephalus waited until Eris sat at the head of the table. “We’ve completed an inventory of the remaining, undamaged farmlands across the territory. While the designated areas for livestock and wheat can produce sufficient levels of product, we have sustained heavy losses in the Eastern regions by the coast.” He paused for a moment.

“Must I sit through an agricultural lesson?” Eris snarked, summoning a mug of coffee. “Get to the point.”

The old Fae held his tongue, although irritation danced across his face. Cephalus nodded to the male sitting directly on his right, someone Eris had never had the displeasure of meeting.

“We’ve created a list of produce that will be affected,” the stranger continued, his voice pitchy with nerves. “As well as other areas that might work as replacements while farmers heal the land.” He held up a long roll of parchment, eyes downcast.

Eris snatched it from him. His eyes scanned the list quickly, groaning internally. Based on the mention of grapes and barley, most of his favorite alcohols were in danger of becoming rare commodities.  “Have you spoken with anyone from these towns? Or my Treasury?”

Cephalus leaned forward. “The Treasury has sent over some preliminary budgets that you may review, but I believe are reasonable.” He paused then, tilting his head. “What would we need to speak to the towns about?”

“Taking over their land.” Eris sipped his coffee. Lukewarm. He sent a shiver of flame across the ceramic. “Have you even checked if the land is available?”

The male from earlier finally looked Eris in the eye. “We already checked for any buildings or development. The land is clear.”

He’d heard enough. These merchants were either stupid or simply had their heads shoved up their asses. “Let me rephrase. Until you have explicit permission from the members of the town to use their land and a fair agreement that reinvests profits into whatever they desire, you may not move forward with agricultural efforts.”

Cephalus cleared his throat. “If I may, that process might take too long. The land is currently serving no purpose and--”

Eris held a hand up. “I didn’t ask. Nothing on this list is essential enough to warrant stealing. If you’re worried about timing, make the agreements extremely favorable to the people living there.”

He grabbed the second list, the one with the list of towns, and held it up to the group. “Surely between the seven of you, someone must have travelled to each of these places before. Go back, or invite a representative to meet here.”

The male from before failed to hide his displeasure at Eris’ command, likely anticipating the additional work these negotiations would require. Eris really didn’t care. The merchant class had flourished under Beron’s rule at the expense of the other Autumn citizens, taking what they pleased and enforcing bullshit agreements that stole resources from small villages.

He finished the meeting after addressing some of the others’ concerns, working on a plan to upgrade the Navy’s presence on the Eastern Coast to protect continental traders from various threats.

Gerwin waited for him in the hall outside. He fell in step as Eris took off towards the training rooms, eager to work off the tension that had been building since the moment he woke up.

“Who was that dark-haired male with Cephalus?” Eris asked.

Gerwin glanced over his shoulder. “Jarod something. He claims his father worked with Beron before dying during Am--, during her reign, as the head of several Royal vineyards. Jyn looked into him and a couple other new faces when they claimed leadership roles.”

“So he’s clean?”

Gerwin snorted. “Would you care either way?”

Eris scowled. “He just pisses me off with his elitism. Probably overly pretentious about wine. too.”

“You’re pretentious about wine,” Gerwin remarked. They’d reached the training ring and began to arm themselves for a proper spar.

Eris chuckled, remembering his conversation with Sofi and Rhia a few weeks ago. “Maybe I’ll test his knowledge.”

“Try him for treason if his wines aren’t up to standard.” Gerwin tossed him a practice blade. “Let’s see how that pretentiousness holds up in battle, huh?”

---

Somehow, Rhia survived another night of scandalous dreams and waking up to a frustratingly empty bed. Her mind and body seemed to be at war with one another, pushing her on a nauseating pendulum between wanting Eris and despising physical touch.

Not all physical touch, though. Really, Rhia just wanted to have him in her arms again. She had called herself all sorts of names, a sap, a clinger, a cliché mate. Sofi had laughed, asking if Rhia would let her cynicism get in the way of her heart.

So although it felt fast and Rhia felt pathetic, she resolved to have a conversation with Eris the moment he arrived in her kitchen that night. The conversation. The moment he arrived.

“I’m moving in.”

She probably should’ve started with “hello”. At her words, Eris’ eyes widened and he coughed on air.

Rhia smiled sheepishly, holding her hand out to take his coat. “Sorry. Hello, how was your day?”

“No, no let’s go back a second,” Eris insisted. “What did you say?”

“Give me your coat and let’s sit like civilized Fae.” Rhia held her hand out further, waiting until he complied.

He watched her hang it up as he sat himself at the table. “Is this a tea or a wine conversation?”

“Wine. Definitely wine.”

Eris magicked a bottle onto the table. “I’ve been told I’m a bit pretentious, but I do believe that tonight deserves an especially good bottle. Now please, put me out of my misery and repeat what you said.”

Rhia scrunched her nose. “I think I’d like to move into the palace. Part time, at first.” She waited for those words to sink in, focusing her gaze on the two glasses filled with red liquid.

“And?” Eris prompted.

“And what? Do you approve?”

He laughed. “Of course I approve. I thought I made it very clear that I’d prefer to never leave your side ever again.” They both took a sip, and he continued. “What changed your mind? Are you sure you want to leave this place?”

“It wouldn’t be permanent, not at first.” Rhia swirled the wine, once, twice. “I wouldn’t do that to my students. But I thought about my life, and I want to do something risky for the first time in awhile.” She looked at him, smiling at how much better she felt simply looking at him. “I want to build a life with you, with your people, in the capital.”

“As much as I love to hear that, the burden shouldn’t be entirely on you,” Eris replied. “Just because I’m High Lord--”

Rhia interrupted. “Yes, it should be. But not because you’re High Lord. Eris, you’ve fought and bled for your role, and I see how hard you work now to make this Court a safer place. I want to do that with you.” Her hands shook with emotion as she reached out to take his. “Whatever reason the Cauldron had, I’d like to believe that it made me your mate to help you. I love this town and these people, but it’s not enough for me, not when I know how much good I can do for thousands of others.”

“This Court doesn’t deserve you.” He squeezed her fingers. “I obviously do not deserve you.”

“Eris--”

He held one finger up. “I’m not stupid. I’ll take all the help I can get, especially if it keeps you in my life. I just- I never imagined we could get here.”

She steadfastly ignored the tears that threatened to show. “And where is here?”

“I have a partner.” The wine lay forgotten as he gripped both her hands. “I never thought you would even consider speaking to me, and now you wish to live with me, work with me.”

“And love you,” she added. “Don’t forget that.”

Tears began to fall on both of their faces, but neither moved to wipe them away, unwilling to let go. The moment seemed to echo, across time and space, putting together all the pieces of their relationship that they had spent so long building. All of the truths, all of the sacrifices, all of the pain lined up to form a picture Rhia could now see, like a painting that only made sense once you took a step backwards.

“I accept the bond. I accept you .”

There was no exchanging of food. There was no shift into primal protectiveness. And there was certainly no lust-driven madness.

But there was a bridge. There were golden strings of light and music and joy that pulled her towards him, a stronger pull than gravity.

Eris let out a sigh and a shudder and a wave of warm emotions that Rhia could taste. “I’m going to kiss you now. And possibly never stop.”

As he shoved his chair out of the way, Rhia stood to meet him. As their lips touched, she opened for him completely.

As the bond permanently snapped into place, she let go of her fears that they would never progress physically and she would always remain broken. None of it mattered, not when the cruelest prince of Autumn found a way to love her so fully.

------

thank you for reading!

tag list: @moonbeamfenrys @qamariana

[jasonfry]

More classic movies everyone’s seen but me!

They Live By Night (1948)

Bowie and Keechie are doomed young lovers in Nicholas Ray’s debut as a director. A lot of the tropes will be familiar to film noir fans -- you know Bowie and Keechie will never achieve the normal lives they want, and the movie’s ending feels as fixed and inevitable as Shakespearean tragedy, with avenues of escape closing off one by one. But a few elements set it apart. For one thing, there’s the Depression setting, which offers shabby cabins and dusty plains instead of L.A. clubs and streetscapes, and makes “economic anxiety” a real thing -- Bowie and Keechie’s wedding in particular is a tragicomic masterpiece, with the crooked justice of the peace subtracting elements based on the couple’s budget. The movies also draws power from the chemistry between Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell, which feels natural in a very stylized film, sometimes to the point of feeling intimate bordering on uncomfortable. (Howard Da Silva is terrific in a supporting role as the terrifying hood Chicamaw.)

Ray was given free rein as director, and They Live By Night has an experimental air that would prove highly influential, from the tricky opening helicopter shot to an inside-the-car sequence whose legacy you can see in Gun Crazy. Then there’s its rather odd unveiling: The movie was shelved for two years after it was shot, but circulated through private showings in Hollywood and became a favorite, with Granger tapped by Alfred Hitchcock for Rope and Humphrey Bogart offering Ray a lifeline as a director. They Live By Night isn’t a great entry point for film noir newbies, but will be interesting for fans of the genre.

Robert Altman remade this movie as Thieves Like Us, returning to the title of the novel that Ray adapted; that version is also on my list. 

Under the Volcano (1984)

John Huston enjoyed tackling supposedly unfilmable projects late in life, following his adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood with this take on a 1947 novel by Malcolm Lowery. Albert Finney is wonderful as a drunken, self-destructive British diplomat, and there’s an undeniable pull to the movie -- I saw it a couple of weeks ago and can’t quite shake its suffocating mood of mild delirium. But it’s so, so bleak -- before you try it, make sure you’re up for two hours of unease and dread.

Silverado (1985)

I saw Silverado as a teenager, but came back to it recently because as a kid I’d barely seen any westerns and so had no idea what the movie was celebrating or looking to revisit. Seen through more experienced eyes, Silverado is most interesting because it isn’t revisionist at all -- with the exception of a couple of modern tweaks to racial attitudes, it could have been made in the same period as the movies writer/director Lawrence Kasdan is saluting.

Anyway, Kevin Kline and Linda Hunt are wonderful leads, as is Brian Dennehy as the sheriff who’s put his conscience aside, and virtually everybody you remember from mid-80s movies shows up at one point or another. It’s a lot of fun, at least until the movie runs out of steam in the second half and turns into a series of paint-by-numbers gunfights. The final running battle particularly annoyed me: Kasdan has had ample time to show us the layout of the town of Silverado, which would let us think alongside the heroes as they stalk and are stalked through its handful of streets, but his ending is random gags and shootouts, with no sense of place. Stuff just happens until we’re out of stuff.

Compare that with, say, Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers. Peter Jackson takes his time establishing everything from the geography of the fortress to the plan to defend it, and as a result we always know where we are during the battle and what each new development means for the heroes. That kind of planning might have made Silverado a modern classic instead of just a fun diversion. 

My Brilliant Career (1979)

Judy Davis stars (opposite an impossibly young Sam Neill) as Sybylla Melvyn, a young Australian woman determined to resist not just her family’s efforts to marry her off but also the inclinations of her own heart. Sybylla is a wonderful character, a luminous, frizzy-haired bull in a china shop of convention, and she’s riveting in every scene. (Neill’s job is to look alternately hapless and patient, which he does well enough -- a fate that’s perfectly fair given the generations upon generations of actresses who have been stuck with the same role.) Extra points for Gillian Armstrong’s direction, which consistently delivers establishing shots you want to linger on without being too showy about them, and for sticking with an ending that, Sybylla-style, bucks movie expectations.

(This is an adaptation of Miles Franklin’s 1901 autobiographical novel, which I now want to read. Franklin also wrote a book called All That Swagger, which is such a great title that I’m happy just thinking about it.)

Red River (1948)

A friend recommended this movie -- the first collaboration between Howard Hawks and John Wayne -- after reading my take on Rio Bravo. And I’m glad he did: Wayne is terrific as Tom Dunson, a hard-driving rancher whose cattle drive to Missouri becomes an obsession that leads him into madness, and he’s evenly matched with Montgomery Clift, who’s his son in all but name. 

Dunson begins as the movie’s hero and gradually morphs into its villain, with Wayne letting us see his doubts and regrets and also his inability to acknowledge them and so steer himself back to reality. Clift, making his debut as Matt Garth, is solid in a more conventional role (he looks eerily like Tom Cruise), and Walter Brennan happily chews scenery as Wayne’s sidekick and nagging conscience.

And there’s a lot of scenery to chew -- it’s wonderful to watch the herd in motion, particularly in a shot from over Brennan’s shoulder as the cattle cross a river -- and Hawks brings a palpable sense of dread to the nighttime scenes as things start to go wrong.

I would have liked Red River more if I hadn’t already seen Rio Bravo, though. Brennan plays the exact same role in that movie as he does here, Clift’s character is very similar to Ricky Nelson’s, and Hawks even nicked a melody from Red River to reuse 11 years later. (Hawks was a serial recycler -- he essentially remade Rio Bravo twice.)

A more fundamental problem is that Red River falls apart when Hawks jams Tess Millay into the story. We’re introduced to Tess, played by Joanne Dru, when Clift intervenes to save a wagon train besieged by Apaches, and her nattering at Clift during a gunfight is so annoying that I was hoping an arrow would find its mark and silence her. (She is hit by an arrow, but it only makes her talk more.)

Tess then falls for Clift, who seems mostly befuddled by her interest but blandly acquiesces. This is funny for a number of reasons: Beyond some really dopey staging, Clift’s love interest is pretty clearly a cowboy played by John Ireland and given the unlikely name of Cherry Valance. Their relationship is a bit of gay subtext that wouldn’t need much of a nudge to become text. Tess goes on to annoy Wayne in an endless scene that exists to forklift in a klutzy parallel with the movie’s beginning, and then shows up at the end to derail the climax in an eye-rolling fashion that leaves everyone involved looking mildly embarrassed. (Dru does the best she can; none of this is her fault.) 

I was left wondering what on earth had happened, so I read up and discovered that -- a la Suspicion -- the ending was changed, destroying a logical and satisfying outcome penned by Borden Chase. Tess is a hand-wave to bring about that different ending, a bad idea executed so poorly that it wrecks the movie. Give me a few weeks and I’ll happily remember all the things Red River does right, from those soaring vistas to Wayne’s seething march through Abilene. But I’ll also remember how the last reel took an ax to everything that had been built with such care.

[grammar7wannabe]

Emails with You

To once-upon-a-vine

RE: Assignments

Takashi Shirogane

Sorry to bother you, but do you have any idea where the assignments are for my class? I left them on in my area in the teacher’s lounge. When I looked for them, I couldn’t find them. Since your desk is by mine, I was wondering if you had any idea where they could be. I need them for class, and I can not find them anywhere. Thank you for your time.

Adam W.

RE: Assignments 

Adam

No, I have not seen the assignments, but I am going to check with the security cameras and see if I can see what happened. Also, talking to the other teachers to see if they saw anything. Sorry, I could not do more, but if they are missing, they should be fine. If you find them or something like that, please let me know.

Shirogane

RE: Assignments

Takashi Shirogane 

It’s okay. You do not need to go through all that effort. I found them at my apartment. Thank you for going through all that effort, but it was not necessary. Thank you for doing all of that for me. I appreciate the help, thank you. Next time please just look around. I am not worth all that effort.

Adam W.

RE: Assignments

Adam

You are worth all effort every single day! If your assignments were missing, then they needed to be found, you asked, and I wanted to help you. You are a fantastic person, and I just wanted to help you. I’m glad you found the assignment I was getting a bit worried.

Shirogane

RE: Enlistment

Adam

Hey, I was assigned to go and get a bunch of kids to enlist to the Garrison. They asked if I wanted to recommend anyone to come along to do the straightforward and more technical answering to people’s questions. You are very straight-laced, and I thought you would like to do it. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I thought you would. Here are the details: PDF_ENLISTMENT

Shirogane

RE: Enlistment

Takashi Shirogane

I would love to go with you to help to talk with a bunch of children telling them everything they need to know about flying. I am sure that together you and I can make this something fun and memorable!

Adam W.

RE: Enlistment

Adam

Are you sure? We are going to be around a lot of kids, and well, that can be annoying at times. And I know you get annoyed quickly. Kids are cute, but it is going to be a lot of work. While it can be suitable for the higher-ups making it easier to get some promotions, you shouldn’t feel forced to come along because there are other ways to do this kind of thing. I mean, I want you to come along, but I don’t want you to feel forced to come along because it would be great having you come along.

Shirogane

RE: Enlistment

Takashi Shirogane

I do like children. Their curiosity and genuineness are something I adore to overlook the fact that some children can be annoying and, at times, rude. I do plan to come along for more reasons than a desire to get a promotion or make the higher-ups approve of me. So please look forward to my arrival at this job.

Adam W.

RE: Enlistment

Adam 

I’m sorry I didn’t mean to be rude; I just wanted to be sure you wanted to come along with me on this journey. Thank you for your reply. I can’t wait to see you!

Shirogane

RE: Last Night

Adam

So I know that we have been doing recruitment for a few weeks now, and we are going to be done with talking to the kids. I need to speak to you. It is about the kiss we had last night. I am kind of panicking over it right now because I thought you were straight. I mean, you acted straight, not that there is a way for anyone to act straight other than dating and liking girls which you haven’t done. I thought that you were straight and all that. But then you kissed me, and I swear I felt sparks fly, but we had been like drinking for a few minutes not enough to get drunk but enough to make both of us woozy, and I am wondering where that puts us. If that kiss meant nothing to you, then this is embarrassing. Still, it said a lot to me. We used to spend so much time together when we were younger and eventually drifted apart. I, when we were friends, fell in love with you, and while that flame has dwindled, I still liked you, and these past few weeks have just been like old times, and I’m in love with you again like mad. You kissed me was it a mistake, and I am just desperate, or did it mean something to you too because this has been running through my head for a few hours now, and it’s killing me not telling you how I feel. I’m sorry if you don’t feel the same way

Shiro

RE: Last Night

Takashi

I admit that I did not at all plan doing what I did last night, but I do not regret such an action. It is relieving to hear that you feel the same way. I am also in love with you ever since we got paired up with Curtis for the simulators. All those long nights together at the Garrison, as we studied to be the best, made me extremely happy since I got to spend time with you. This may not be the most appropriate time to say this, but it was nice to kiss you, and I would like to do it again. If you want to see if this lasts, we can go somewhere nice and try to do that again at another time, then tell me to my face.

Adam

RE: Wedding Guests List

Honey, your mom, has given me a long list of all her friends and demanded we put all of them into the wedding. Our wedding that we haven’t even found a place for yet or even started a budget, she says she would help us with the wedding, but I told her that it wasn’t necessary. Takashi, your mom, is a real piece of work. I miss you, by the way, I can’t believe you agreed to go to another mission. I know the internet does not work that great up there in space, but I still have a few things I need to tell you. Even if it has just been a few months while you go and help the scientist test the official Garrison technology. You broke another record! By what I heard when you went, most missions are completed by someone under 30 years old. When you get back, you can rest a little, and we can finally get married. You are so gifted, and I’m sure the Garrison would miss you, but it would be short. Sweetheart, we have been engaged with each other for one and a half years and have dated for two years since we were both 19 years old. It is getting frustrating that work is coming between us. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but you can’t keep running off every time the wind changed. Stay with me, and then we can be happy together, please, Takashi. I can not handle you going on another mission. I love you!

RE: I love you more

Adam, I’m sorry I keep leaving you for these missions. I love you so much, and I promise when we return, we will get married. When I see you in a week, we have to go and do some recruitment for the Garrison. Just like old times, huh? As we travel, we can plan for the wedding, love you, baby. Sorry, this isn’t longer. Our schedule is jam-packed, and I am not allowed to tell you anything about it while it is still going on. I cannot wait to see your face, and I’ll let you know everything when I get to hold you in my arms!!!!!!

RE: Keith

Okay, so you know how we always wanted to have kids someday. What if that day is today? There was this adorable kid who did well on the pilot simulator, and he has a terrible home life. He has been bouncing in and out of foster homes since he was eight, he is twelve now. His name is Keith, and he has no one around to help him out, and I kind of offered to help him out. A way to do that is to foster him and maybe adopt him, please don’t get mad, but we are going to need to do some paperwork if we want to foster him and I want to foster him. Keith is such a bright kid and super sweet he just has a lot of problems with his home life, and I wish to help the kid. Please help me with this!! I love you.

RE: Keith

 Fine, we can help the kid, but there are things we need to do to ensure that we can foster him. 

We will need to put the wedding off onto a later date

 We will have to do the paperwork together because I will not do it alone

Found a place big enough for all of us that is still close to the Garrison

Get Keith enrolled in the school if he has behavioral issues then that may be harder especially if his grades are not that great we may be able to bypass that with the W.A.P. Test, and we help him study

Take care of him day in and day out until he is eighteen which is six years

If you feel we can do these things, then yes, let’s proceed with this and help Keith.

RE: Keith

Awesome, I got the kid and the paperwork coming to you! I love you so much, baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RE: Discipline

Takashi, Keith has been accused of acting up in class and has hit another kid. James says that he did not do anything to him. Keith just started hitting him out of nowhere. While I do know Keith has issues as he had a hard childhood, I do not believe he would start a fight out of nowhere. I mean seriously, Keith likes to blend into the background and only makes a scene when other people came and drag him out usually to pick a fight with him. That boy has something about him that just draws trouble to him. He is a child who has not been adequately taken care of all his life. Keith is getting better; he would not hit James. I believe that James started it. He is upset that he is not number one. That may suck, but he does not need to get Keith involved in his unbridled jealousy toward Keith. Iverson is taking James’ side. Please, Takashi, comes to the principles office and help calm the situation. They won’t let me help him!

RE: Discipline

Hey, dear, do not worry, I’m calming the situation. Keith is just getting detention, and I convinced them to give James a punishment. One that is different from Keith’s, so they do not interact. You were quite worked up about this, weren’t you? Here I thought you didn’t really like Keith that much, nice to know that isn’t true. I am glad you are warming up to him Keith, it is adorable.

RE: Kerberos

So you are going. You promised me that we would get married before you went onto another mission. We need to talk about this. Come home so we can discuss this Takashi. I love you; please let’s figure this out together. I am worried. You don’t have the best of health, and this mission could be hazardous for you. You could be at serious risk if you go on this mission. There will be others that are so much safer. You already broke every record there is. You have nothing to prove my love. Just stay here, and let’s get married. Please, dear, just stay.

RE: Kerberos

So you haven’t responded, that’s fine. You don’t need to. I know you are busy with teaching and talking to the higher-ups. Do you need to go to Kerberos? Nothing is there that you can’t do here. Like being a pilot or help out the scientists. They can pick anyone else. They aren’t so desperate that they need you to pilot the ship to the moon Kerberos. Anyone with enough skill can do something like that. Please talk to me, Takashi I need to speak with you face to face over this. My mind is reeling, and I need you. Please come home and talk to me. Keith is also anxious about you. Let us all have a discussion and think this through, please.

RE: Kerberos

So Keith said you talked to him. I am your fiancé, don’t you think you should speak to me? I know I am not exactly the most supportive, but you still avoid me? Why? This does not make sense! Can we please talk? Even if it is through a screen, I will handle it. Just, please, Takashi, speak to me.

RE: Goodbye

So the news just got back, and you are gone. I don’t know what to say. I miss you so much. I swear there is a hole in my chest caved out in the place where you used to lie. If I could make any wish, it would bring you back to life. If that is not possible, then I wish to turn back time so that I can experience all the good, the bad, and the amazing all over again. Takashi, I want you to come back so bad, knowing that I can never see you or kiss you ever again is the most painful thing I have ever felt. I know the world is still turning, but it feels like mine has stopped. I wish we had more time to be together. 

Keith is not doing well, you were like a big brother to him, and now that you are gone it is tearing him up inside, I am trying my best, but I am also in pain, and it is hard to talk to him. He has shut down I don’t know what to do. You would. You always did. I swear you are like a Keith whisperer or something.

RE: Sam Holt

Takashi, I can’t believe you are alive! How is it possible? Aliens are something I always thought possible I could never expect this! I can’t believe you were kidnapped, this feels like a dream, and I am going to wake up. You aren’t actually alive, and Sam Holt coming here was either a dream or became crazy all alone in space and came back here somehow. This is amazing, and I feel like laughing. I love you! I know we ended badly, but I miss you so much, Takashi. These years without you, have felt like an eternity in hell. Recovering from someone amazing like you has been hard and challenging. I have dated someone, but it ended, it ended nicely, but it ended because I can not get you out of my head. You are someone I could never remove from my heart, no matter how hard I try. I want to start over again. If you do not want to, I understand just, and please let me be near you, I care too much to walk away back. Takashi, you and Keith being safe are all I wanted. I am so sorry for everything, just please come home again. I love you, Takashi, for a very long time.

Adam

RE: I’m back

Hey Adam, I am also sorry for how I acted. I wanted to go so badly I refused to even think about the consequences or what I was leaving behind. I miss you so much. I know we already talked, but seeing all these emails and reading them (or in some cases rereading them) makes me love you even more. Back then, I should have spoken to you about Kerberos. I should have been more open to you about what I wanted. Fear of you disapproving was all I felt when I got a chance at a once in a lifetime opportunity. Man, did it not disappoint me at all. It was horrifying, and there are parts that I never want to go through again. Other parts make me grateful that I had gone and experienced so many beautiful things throughout the universe. They did disappoint me, though none of it included ice. 

Adam, I am sorry for leaving, but let’s get married, actually married. We have waited so long, and I just want to be with you to the end of time. We invite our families and the paladins and just keep it between us. I love you! I’m so sorry we didn’t do it sooner. Life and my wanderlust kept getting in the way. Today though, I have seen everything there is to see, and I am done. No more aliens, no more traveling, and no more danger. Just you and me together to the end. I know we both have changed a lot, but I still love this new you, and I know you still love me, even without the emails of you saying so. So let’s get married as soon as we can and start our new lives together. We can teach recruits and help test the new spaceships and all that jazz. The war is over, and I just want you, Adam, so please say yes.

 RE: R.S.V.P.

You are cordially invited to Takashi and Adams Wedding on the date of xx xx,xxxx. Please tell us if you can come or not we would love to have you!

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Abramazing Spider-Man #2 Thoughts

More crap.

Let’s deal out some of the minor positives I have.

The art continues to be nice.

Having a Spider-Man get into heroing via the influence of their love interest is something different for whatever that is worth.

Ben burning the suit only to then immediately regret it was a funny subersion of expectations. It made me chuckle.

The only thing I noted as derivative of older Spider-Man stories was the cliché burning of the costume in the backyard.

The recap page did a good job of catching up new readers. Yes. I’m praising the recap page. Let that sink in.

Okey dokey that’s enough now.

Whilst last issue initially made me vaguely interested before chatter surrounding me converted me into hating it, this issue was more bland and going by through the motions.

The thing is last issue so utterly tainted my (and everyone else’s) experience that I am struggling to look past the fact that this is obviously amateurish and actively deceptive of the readers.

That’s perhaps made me resentful to most of the things in the story, I know I’m probably not being fair and balanced in my approach to it.

But all I can say here is how I felt about the book and how I felt about it was supremely unimpressed.

I want to address some tiny points before diving deeper. So Peter is a super scientist but somehow he couldn’t find or design a camera that would work better for him as a one handed man?

Benny clearly never used the webshooters before and yet he’s swinging around with a degree of experience that doesn’t make sense when it’s literally his first try. Hell he’s even carrying someone while he’s at it.

I also don’t get the passage of time or the physics of the web swinging scene. So they are standing on the ground, he shoots a webline, smash cut to a splash page of them swinging, with the dialogue clearly conveying the latter clearly follows the former. Comic books are sequential storytelling. One scene or sequence should lead into another, in particular when conveying movement. Ron Frenz was a master at this, rarely if ever, were you questioning how characters moved from Position A to Position B. I don’t know if this was Pichelli’s fault or if it was Henry Abrams just wanting a cool shot but it sucks.

The recap page claims that Ben accidentally hit the bully from last issue harder than he meant to, and maybe I’m just forgetting something, but I did not get that impression. So good job telling me stuff about last issue that the story itself failed to convey.

Finally Faye Ito/Ito Faye/Asian Michelle Jones/Benny’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl stereotype collides face first mid swing into a billboard. But she’s fine. She’s not even scratched or banged up? What? Would that have made her less pretty or something? Also I guess that scene was a callback to Spider-Man 2002, but I’m not griping about that.

Let’s move on to the more significant problems with the comic book.

I’m not the first person to point this out, but I think it bears repeating, this comic book feels like a movie, and I mean that in a bad way.

The panelling feels like a fill storyboard more than a comic book, it’s not making great use of the things you can do with the medium or the space provided. You want a great example of the opposite check out the art in Absolute Carnage: Seperation Anxiety #1.

Tied in with this criticism is the idea that the Abrams (well Abrams the younger) have developed this story like a film.

I am going to slightly disagree here. I think it’s more as though they’ve designed this as a prestige TV mini-series with a Hollywood film budget. I say this because the way this issue starts and finishes feels like a Netflix episode more than the second half hour of a movie.

Part and parcel of that was the obnoxiously incremental advancement of the Cadaverous and Peter subplots. Cadaverous spewed random cryptic nonsense that existed more to remind us he existed than actually accomplish anything.

Peter’s job overseas...again, why is he not just a scientist if he’s retired altogether? He’s not even a science photographer, he’s basically a grizzled Jimmy Olsen or something. Peter became a shutterbug because it was convenient, he didn’t really want to do that long term as a career, his ambitions lay in science, a job that if anything would be far more accommodating for his disability than going to dangerous parts of the Middle East to awkwardly snap photos. It’s not even like being a scientist would preclude him from getting away from NYC or his son if that’s the idea. He could be travelling for conventions and conferences. I also don’t get why we needed as many scenes of Peter overseas as we got nor why it bothered to linger on the tragedies experienced by the people there. It wasn’t like it was a lot but it’s panel time that could be put to better use. At best it felt like a pretentious attempt at being deep, at worst it might be set up that plays into the story later. The thing is the Middle East doesn’t really make for great Spider-Man stories, nor indeed most international conflicts.

Getting into the meat of this issue...Faye...fuckign Faye.

She’s a cliché.

In fact lots of stuff in this story is cliché, it’s just that unlike last issue they aren’t cliches specifically drawing from older Spider-Man stories, they’re more general clichés.

The thing that really annoyed me with Faye and Benny’s interactions was that she was obviously being played up as a kind of remixed Black Cat/Catwoman due to her costume. Like she’s supposed to be a bad influence on him or something, exemplified by the fact that she shoots down and subverts Peter’s famous motto about responsibility. It didn’t even make sense. Having responsibility gives you power...what?????????????????????????

Benny himself continues to be bland and boring as a protagonist to follow. Like so much of this story thus far he feels like a typical film or TV protagonist having issues with their Dad and in that regard is just going through the motions. I dunno if I’d call him passive per se, but he’s not too far removed from being passive that’s for sure; but not as passive as Aunt May.

I mean blaming his Dad for abandoning being Spider-Man and his mother’s death. I practically predicted the dialogue from the moment that scene started up and whilst okay it’s never been done in Spider-Man before strictly speaking it’s so generic to countless other forms of media, including other superhero comic books, it’s just banal.

His belief that he is a freak is also questionable, specifically it brings into question the world building of this universe. Were this a world where only Spider-Man existed as a hero (more or less like the Raimi movies) then that’d be fine. Even in a world of mutants that’d also be fine, though you’d imagine mutant acceptance would’ve 10+ years removed from when Peter was active. But so far this version of the Marvel Universe feels very generalized in regards to the MCU.

It’s like the Spider-Man and MJ of this universe were generalized versions of the Raimi films iteration, jammed into a generalized version of the MCU where mutants do not exist and the 2012 Avengers are THE Avengers. But if that’s the world Benny grew up in, why would being born with powers make him jump to ‘freak’? He’s just a superhero, that’s cool in a world where there is no mutant stigma and where the Avengers are revered fallen heroes.*

My final criticism is in regards to the final sequence. It was just weird.

Benny and the civilian he was rescuing had dialogue that was far more casual than the situation demanded. Like dude, you’ve been blown up, buried alive and rescued by a bona fide superhero who’s not been seen in 10 years and now killer robots are surrounding you. Who is that chill in such a scenario? Who goes through all that and at the end basically says ‘lol classic Spidey lol’?????

The civilian also had odd dialogue where it was as though Henry was throwing shade at the premise of the book itself, about how lame an older, disabled Spider-Man with a beard and a kid would be.

But like Henry...YOU came up with that? If you think it’s lame why are you making 5 issues worth of it????????????????

My final point is that whilst the artwork is praiseworthy, it’s also far from Pichelli’s best work. It’s in fact noticeably lower quality than the work she was producing on the 2016 Miles Morales titles or even the debut of that character.

My recommendation?

Don’t read this. If you are truly curious wait for the trade to come out and then buy it as cheaply as possible?

As for me, I’m sticking this out to the end but I’m also going to be saving my money and reducing my order to just one copy and have cancelled my pre-order of the trade.

Ever since Spencer showed up I’ve made a concerted effort to support the spider titles I like and want to see more of (that’s code for the titles featuring MJ) and since last issue deceived me and this issue failed to impress, I don’t want more work like this from Marvel in the future.

*Also I’m going to be pissed if it turns out a chucklefuck like Cadaverous wound up taking out the Avengers somehow. Like really, this clown did them in?

[raendown]

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 1931 Soulmate au: The one where any scars on your soulmate show up on you as well once they're healed

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

Chapter 128: MadaraTobirama

Madara woke up with a new scar on his arm. It was there when he opened his eyes, a thin brown streak where there had been only pale unbroken skin when he went to sleep the night before. As he rolled over in bed and stared at the ceiling, yawning so wide his jaw very nearly dislocated, Madara scoured through his memories out of habit. Had he seen anyone he knew with injuries on their arm recently? Not that he could recall.

It wasn’t exactly a massive source of irritation that he couldn’t think of anyone. Like everyone else, Madara had been living with the random appearance of new scars on his body since he was very young and if he hadn’t figured it out in the last twenty-seven years then his odds of doing so now were really only slightly better. Making peace and building a village had certainly given him the opportunity to meet more people but it had done nothing to change his preference for quiet and solitude. Even if he randomly decided to emulate Hashirama’s habit of making friends with every child, rock, and squirrel he was still aware that his soulmate might not even live in this part of the world. His morning was no more disturbed by this scar than any of the others he already carried.

When he made his way in to the tower that day Madara’s thoughts were centered more on the claims for budget abuse he was supposed to be investigating than the fact that his arm had acquired a new blemish. He briefly noted the presence of Tobirama in their shared office and nodded once in lieu of welcoming him back from his mission to the Iwa border. Tobirama nodded back and went back to his scrolls without a word.

Though he would rather chew off his own fingers than say so, his usual morning exchange with Tobirama was one of the daily rituals he enjoyed the most. Not because he and Tobirama were particularly close but because it was just the sort of communication he wished the rest of the world could practice: wordless, silent, and free of the unnecessary aggression which had marked every conversation between the two of them for the first half a year after their clans came together. They might not be friends exactly but Madara often felt a certain kinship with Tobirama now which made it much easier to work in the same room with him.

It was a kinship partially based on a shared exasperation with Hashirama but the source hardly mattered.

Madara had only just settled in to his desk and sighed at the pile of work waiting for him when the door swung open again to admit his best friend. Hashirama also shared their office, though he flitted in and out so often they had been contemplating evicting him to his own space to save themselves the constant distraction. Rather than head towards his own desk Hashirama went straight for his little brother, smile on his face and arms open wide, cooing like one would at a small child.

“So you did come home last night! I thought I heard someone in the kitchen this morning!”

“And you didn’t get up to investigate? Brother, honestly. Just because we’re not at war anymore does not mean you should allow your awareness as a shinobi to grow dull. Losing your instincts could get you killed.”

“Wow. I missed you too.” Hashirama stuck out his tongue then used his massive arms to drag his sibling in to a hug and pin him there.

Madara snickered openly at the dismay on Tobirama’s face and then promptly buried his own I some papers when the noise drew a sharp glare over in his direction. He did continue to snicker though, peering over the top of the folder he’d grabbed and watching gleefully as Hashirama began the same ritual he insisted upon every time his younger brother went on a mission out of the village, hands reaching everywhere they could reach in search of anomalies.

“Are you hurt? Did you get injured? Any broken things or blood or eviscerations? No death?”

“Clearly I died,” Tobirama drawled. “This is my ghost you’re fondling.”

“Don’t be like that! I just want to know if you’ve been hurt anywhere so I can heal it.”

“I’m fine, it’s already healed.”

He quite obviously regretted those words a moment later when Hashirama gasped and pawed at his shirt as though he’d said he was bleeding out right there in his chair.

“You were injured! Where?!”

“It was just my arm so calm down.”

Amused as he was by the scene in front of him, Madara didn’t even make any connection between the other man’s words and the new scar he had woken up with until Hashirama pushed an exasperated Tobirama’s sleeve up to reveal the thin brown line sitting low on his right bicep. Madara froze as soon as his eyes landed on that mark. His hand rose to touch his own arm while he watched the siblings bickering across from him, staring long after Tobirama’s sleeve had fallen back in to place and bickering had turned in to a spiteful shoving match.

“Get away! I’m working!”

“You’re so cute Tobi, did you know that?”

“I am nothing of the sort. Now shoo or I’ll ask Madara for a rundown of all the paper work you didn’t get done while I was gone and make you do it now!”

“Hey!”

Pouting indignantly, Hashirama scuttled off to his own desk and flopped down in his chair, pulling the contents of his overflowing inbox closer until it at least appeared that he intended to be productive. It wasn’t that Hashirama had no work ethic or that he was a poor Hokage – quite the opposite, really – it was just that he spent perhaps too much time on public relations and not enough time on the more boring details like sanitation by-laws. His strengths lay in leading but not in administration.

Finally free of unwanted coddling, Tobirama looked up at Madara with a smirk hanging about his lips, clearly expecting to share the joke with him as they always did when one of them managed to put Hashirama back to work. His expression became confused when he saw the way Madara was staring at him so openly.

“Are you alright?” he asked. Madara wheezed incoherently. “O…kay. If that’s all you needed.” Tobirama shook his head and returned his eyes to the papers on the desk in front of him. Madara wheezed again.

“I don’t think he’s okay,” Hashirama said, standing up to crane around his piles of paperwork.

“Hm? What? No, I’m f-fine.” Madara shook his head in an effort to draw himself back to reality. It was only partially successful in that it managed to break his vapid stare but it was not enough to chase away the memory of that thin line on Tobirama’s arm, leaving him in a state he knew would not be conducive to paperwork. “If you gentlemen would excuse me, perhaps I will find somewhere else to work today.”

Rather than wait to fend off the inevitable objections, he snatched up a thick stack of whatever projects happened to be closest and darted out the door even as both of the Senju brother opened their mouths to say something.

Madara darted in to the first empty room he could find and walked over to the gaze blankly out the window. Thinking himself in the clear, he allowed his body to slump against the glass pane, staring down at the people below while he waited for his heart to quit leaping around in his chest like a drunken monkey. What had started off as a calm morning much like any other had suddenly become a day he knew he would come back to in his memories over and over and all he wanted was a few moments to process that.

He expected to be left alone for as long as he needed so it was a bit of a surprise when the door opened and he felt Tobirama’s calm-still-water-flowing chakra wash over him like a soothing balm.

“You looked as though you were about to faint,” the other murmured. “I won’t be as intrusive about it if you require medical attention.”

“I don’t. As I said, I’m fine.”

“Really?” Once side of Tobirama’s mouth quirked up as he stepped closer, arms folded in a manner which said he didn’t believe a word of Madara’s weak protests.

Before he could stop himself, Madara dropped his eyes to the other man’s arm and blurted, “Can I see your scar again?” He only just managed not to cringe at how awkward and desperate he sounded to his own ears.

“My scar?” Tobirama’s hand was moving upwards automatically even while his face twisted with confusion.

“Please,” Madara said. “I just need to confirm something.”

After giving him a look for being so cryptic Tobirama took hold of his short sleeve and pushed the material up to expose the top of his arm. From up close it was even more obvious how identical the mark was to the one Madara had seen upon first waking this morning. The shape of it curved almost lovingly around his muscle like a frame, drawing the eye to just the right point for prime muscle admiration. Were Madara so inclined he could use the scar as a guide for where to stare and drool over the other man’s perfectly shaped arms.

Right then he was more inclined to raise his eyes to Tobirama’s and lick his lips nervously.

“I have that scar too,” he murmured.

“Oh?”

From the polite yet distant tone of that single word it was clear that Tobirama did not see his meaning. Madara huffed as he reached for his own sleeve, dragging the heavy material upwards until that same spot was visible. He studiously ignored the fleeting hope that the other wouldn’t notice how his arms weren’t quite as defined anymore after delegating most of his missions to others now that they had the manpower to do so. He should really train more often.

“I didn’t have this yesterday but it was there when I woke up this morning.”

“Oh.” Tobirama’s tone was appropriately stunned this time, to Madara’s satisfaction.

“Yes. So. Hm.”

The only problem was that he had no idea where to go from here. Was he supposed to beat around the bush until he figured out what kind of bond the other man was interested in? Shouldn’t he figure out first what kind of bond he himself was interested in? They got along surprisingly well these days so he couldn’t say he was disappointed, at least.

“Dinner?”

“Hm?” Madara drew his brows together in confusion.

“Will you have dinner with me this evening? We can, ah, discuss this in a more private setting.” Tobirama peered at his from underneath snowy lashes and Madara wondered dazedly if he’d ever noticed before how long they were, how prettily they brushed against pale cheeks.

“Yes that sounds…yes. Thank you.”

Tobirama smiled, lingering for a few moments before turning and going back to their office. No doubt Hashirama was waiting for him with a hundred questions and more about what was going on and Madara did not envy him having to deal with that. With a deep breath he turned back to the window to look out at the sprawling village below, unaware of the smile he too was wearing unconsciously.

What a beautiful day it was.

[blahblahemblem]

heroes barracks tour: cavalry + updates

exactly what it says on the tin

Note: I started writing this post last year and some things have changed since then. I’ve decided to keep the stuff I originally wrote and cross it out rather than replace it outright. Additionally, aside from the write-up on my cavalry units this post contains a small update to my armour and flier intros as it’s been long enough that I’ve acquired a few more units and changed some plans I had for the old ones.

Armour update

Build improvements

Not much in this category. I gave both BK and Arden Swap (although only BK had the SP available to learn it), and Henry learned Draw Back (which ended up being surprisingly useful in combo with Armour March).

New units

I made the first armour post before summoning on Winter’s Envoy. Here’s what I got from it:

+def –atk

Got her from the last orb on the first summoning circle.

Despite her awkward IVs, awful outfit, and my general distaste for Tharja as a character, she quickly became one of my favourite units (see also: summer Corrin). I enjoyed using her in the Arena so much that I bothered to invest into improving my score, which is how I got into tier 20 for the first time. I’ve tried using her again last week and failed because the maps weren’t as favourable (she survives and counterkills brave Lyn on defensive tiles, but last week’s rotation included the stupid fucking boat map where she got wrecked all the time because there’s nowhere to run).

Her default set is just so damn good. It’s very gratifying to have another unit with Close Counter that isn’t poor defenseless Takumi (who doesn’t even run it anymore), and Vengeful Fighter is, of course, mindblowing. Hone Armour is for Henry’s bladetome. She also has Hone Atk 3 that I gave her in a desperate rage trying to put together an arena team last week, which I regret a bit since it’s unlikely to see use again but it’s not a big deal in the long run.

Usage: I had an absolute blast running her in the last Tempest Trials in tandem with Henry and (spoilers). The boost to her defences and the Close Defence 3 seal turned her into an all-purpose tank with very few things that scared her. I might try to incorporate her into future arena teams again, and she’s of course quite the green counter option for AA.

Future improvements: I’ve seen people replace her special with a 4-charge one, since it works perfectly with Vengeful Fighter and also deals more explosive damage. I hesitated on doing that while her Tempest was running as the boost to her stats combined with the support bonuses from (spoilers) meant she wasn’t always getting doubled, but for general usage it would make sense. I’m holding out a bit since I’d rather focus on units who don’t have already functional builds first. Another thing is refining the Candelabra (haven’t decided whether to go for even more Def or round out her Res yet). I don’t see myself replacing her weapon for now except maybe with Raudrowl, but I don’t have even one Katarina yet.

neutral

Second summoning circle yielded me this strapping gentleman.

Unlike with Tharja I don’t have a very long ode to his abilities, he’s a good unit but his kit just isn’t Close Counter + QR on steroids. That said, he’s an excellent all-around blue counter with good mixed bulk, so I’m glad to have him. (Plus his voicelines are hilarious. “Party?”)

I don’t really know what else to do with him while I’m this low on quality A skills, so I just left his default kit untouched and added Fortify Armour (mostly for Henry, but Tharja obviously made good use of it too) and Ignis (Bonfire would be better with its lower cooldown, but I didn’t have available fodder and didn’t want to spend feathers on this).

Usage: See above about countering blues. He also provides Fortify buffs to those who need it in AA. Otherwise he’s stuck in the same rut as other armours: they’re great and all, but the movement makes it awkward to use them, and the colour overlap makes gluing him to Henry for Armour March a bit inconvenient.

Future improvements: IDK. Giving him a Slaying Axe could be something, but I like to leave seasonal units with their default weapons if I can help it, I think it adds to the charm. That leaves refining Sack o’ Gifts, although same as with the Candelabra I don’t know whether to go with +def or +res, and replacing Ignis with Bonfire.

Change of plans

Gwendolyn is dead. Thank god I’m free. I used her to give Tharja Hone Armour as I didn’t have an unmerged 4* copy and didn’t want to waste feathers. Rip in pepperoni, I won’t miss you. (I’ve summoned another fucking one since then but I’m not even going to bother merging her again, I just hate her art so much.)

Flier update

Build improvements

I got enough SP on Shanna for Firesweep L+ and on Tana for Swap and Hit & Run, and inherited Desperation 3 on Caeda. Otherwise nothing new.

New units

Happy New Year to me!!

+res –hp

Finally an Azura with IVs that don’t suck. In general I’m beyond happy that I have her; I love Azura, I love dancers in Heroes, her art is great, she has Hone Fliers, she’s a goddamn flying singer when I adore flying units, what is there not to love?

Very simple kit, I don��t want to waste Fury on dancers hence Spd+3 as a budget solution for improving her most important stat (TA is an option, of course, but I think with access to flier buffs Airzura needs it less than other dancers). Kind of wish I waited a bit for The Most Important Unit I’ve Ever Summoned (who will be shown in the next update) before launching to refine the Hagoita... but I really needed the Divine Dew and besides, it’s not like it doesn’t help.

Usage: She’s a dancer...

Future improvements: She has WoM3 inherited, hopefully she will get a lot of kills in today’s TT with the buffed stats (as it’s torture to grind SP for dancers otherwise).

+hp –spd

Bummer IVs, but as I wasn’t expecting to have her at all (she came in the same circle as the Most Important Unit; as the pity rate was at 4,50% I just decided to summon the rest after getting him and there she was) it’s fine. Camilla also has boosted BST to make up for bad IVs lol. In general it’s great that I have her as she fills exactly the niche I was looking to fill, a tanky sword flier.

Keeping her default kit and adding Hit & Run. With flier buffs I think her bane doesn’t hinder her so much that I need to give her something else.

Usage: I just got her four days ago... She’s about to see a lot of action in the new TT though, and afterwards I will probably arrange a secondary flier team with both Camillas and Airzura on it, fourth member being debated (Shanna? or I might replace Cordy with Cherche on the first team and put Cordy here?)

Future improvements: I’m going to refine the Kadomatsu (for +spd) instead of replacing her weapon, I think. Slaying Edge is an option, but as I said before I try to keep seasonal weapons whenever possible. I’ve also seen this video on the effectiveness of a build utilising the Deflect Melee seal and Vantage; it worked excellently there because the test subject with Michalis with WoDaoclere-charged Ignis so it might not be as good elsewhere, but there’s always the option of giving Cammy Wo Dao? We’ll see.

Change of plans

1. Since I got NY!Camilla, I don’t need to build a Palla anymore. I will hold onto the 4* neutral version, maybe even merge her into a +spd 4* if I get one, and use her for HM grinding just because I really like Palla, but I’m not investing into her.

2. I made up my mind about spring Camilla. I summoned a Nino and now that I have Hone Airzura it makes even further sense to just go for my favourite build of all time, blade nuke.

Back to cavalry, finally

My main cavalry team isn’t particularly well-put together or impressive, and in general as it turns out I don’t have a whole lot of horses available, but I did go through a period where my horse team carried me through a bunch of difficult content and they’re still my closing act in Arena Assault as I can usually expect them to be able to handle anything.

5* builds

(I don’t have ANY sword cavaliers. This isn’t true anymore, but I still wish I had Xander as well. I didn’t get him because back then I didn’t expect that I’d change my mains and I didn’t want to try dealing with a GHB when I didn’t even have a single level 40 unit on this account yet. I have everything ready for Xander’s rerun that will probably not ever happen now, I have fucking Distant Defence fodder ready, WHERE IS HE INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS IT’S BEEN EIGHT MONTHS)

neutral

No, he’s not my freebie from CYL, I got him off Gunnthra’s legendary banner. Very happy about it because that’s a (relatively) fast offensive sword cavalier, something I didn’t have before. Also he’s adorable and I love his art and wah he says “Roy’s our boy” when you go into battle

I think his default build is fine, maybe he’s a bit on the slower side for Desperation but with emblem buffs, who cares?

Usage: Clearly I haven’t even got around to completing his default skillset... I’ve been busy with fliers and armours :( I’ll put more effort in later

Improvements: Needs an assist. He has Fortify Cavalry inherited but not learned, and also needs to learn his default skills.

+atk –res

Also from Gunnthra’s banner, a defensive sword cavalier to complement the offensive one. Sigurd is really awesome all around so I have no complaints. It’s so convenient that the newer units they release tend to have good builds from the start so I don’t have to scramble around trying to find anything worthwhile to put on them among the piles of trash in my barracks

Usage: Unlike Roy he got to get his default set filled out at least...

Improvements:

I should probably give him Hone Cavalry.

+res –def

My one and only red cavalier, yay!

So Leo’s been sort of shafted by Heroes in terms of default builds (aside from the fact that motherfucker comes with QR3, one of the absolute best skills in the game). Brynhildr is now overshadowed by the goddamn Gravity+ staff, Elise has better offensive stats despite being a healer, etc etc BUT.

I’ve said it before and I will never get tired of saying it: I love monotype bladetome nukes. Who made me love them so much? Cecilia Leo. He was the first unit for whom I bit the bullet and promoted another unit to 5* just to sacrifice them, and what a dazzling fucking introduction to the world of weapon SI that was

Darting Blow seems silly at first glance, dude has 22 whopping spd, but with it, Hone, Goad, and a support he gets up to 40 and can double quite a lot in PvE, and various armours in Arena Assault. Leo in particular is thriving now with all the OP green armours melting when he breathes in their general direction. QR is for when he needs to soak some magic hits, something he did quite well even before Raudrblade.

Usage: Maxed 3k HM, of course! For the rest, see above. Definitely in my top 10 favourite units. I’m very very happy I chose to summon on Male Mages over Female Mages during the third gauntlet (because lol I got all of those female mages as pitybreakers later anyway...)

Improvements: He has everything he needs for now. I could maybe give him Glimmer over Iceberg just for the reduced cooldown, but eh.

At least I made the account switch in time to get him. If I missed both of the DC cavs I’d have died of an ulcer by September

Camus is good. He’s capable of doing both enemy and player phase fairly well (unlike Xander who would be a purely enemy phase unit). Sort of like a blue horse Ryoma. I think he desperately needs merges though.

Usage: Maxed 3k HM. He doesn’t really do a whole lot of work these days even when I get out the team for Arena Assault, but that’s because I’m usually dealing with, like, armours and Ayras and I don’t want a special to trigger so I ORKO them with the ranged cav trio instead. Camus faithfully provides Goad Cavalry and an S support to Leo, and Swaps units around, and he CAN do combat if necessary, so that’s all I can ask for.

Improvements:

Going to +1 him. EVENTUALLY IS will feel maybe a tiny bit of shame and they’ll fucking give him a rerun, that would be two more copies since he didn’t have an Infernal difficulty the first time.

I haven’t been paying attention to him a whole lot before fairly recently, but I was always sitting on some plans for him just because he’s a TT unit and I sort of want to have some kind of functional build going for all of them as I only have copies of them on my main (unlike GHB units who are a lot easier to get).

Now he lucked out. I did three circles on Winter’s Envoy. The first two got me Tharja and Chrom, and the third one somehow contained THREE off-banner 5*s: Catria, Hawkeye, and Cain. They were all used as SI as they all had shitty IVs. Clive got Catria’s lance. Now he can enjoy 2 charge Bonfires.

Usage: I used him a bit in the TT he came from, haven’t done a whole lot since then. I’m hoping to put together a bunch of second-string horse teams (horse mages are a bit more available than flier mages, I’ll get a fucking Reinhardt EVENTUALLY) and he’ll make it on one of those. Plus there’s always walling reds and blues in AA.

Improvements: After I refine the weapon of the Most Important Unit, I’ll evolve his Killer Lance to Slaying Lance. Then he’ll be put on the waiting list for refinements. I’m also not that sure what to do with his B slot. Lancebreaker 1 came from the same Arthur as Swap. IDK if I should just give him LB3, or wait until I have more Subakis (but there’s a very long queue for that). I’m also debating if I should give him Fortress Def.

+atk –res

Another pitybreaker from Ylissean Summer. I don’t mind much since that same summoning circle gave me a very special unit (you will see them in the next post) that I wouldn’t have opened if I hadn’t seen that Peri’d reset my rate.

Peri gets a lot of flak, but she’s not at all a bad unit, she just has a lot of competition in her niche, as Roderick and now Oscar both have similar offensive statlines to hers. Peri is lucky in that I find her amusing and don’t give a shit about either Roderick or Oscar.

Usage: For now I occasionally get her out when I need to deal with an annoying DC Vantage red in AA. Winter Tharja’s also a pain in the ass that she can help deal with handily.

Improvements: Clearly I’m going for a Firesweep build, but I haven’t inherited the + version to her yet. She needs to learn LaD2 (I didn’t bother taking a new screenshot, but she has LaD1 learned now, everything else is the same) and inherit an assist. I’m also on the lookout for a +spd copy to merge her into because I think +spd would be a lot better.

(It’s only now that I’m adding new units to this post that I realised I didn’t have any axe cavaliers originally...)

+def –atk

Bit of an odd one. When the Christmas TT banner dropped, I had a lot of orbs since I was saving for the next legendary and spent considerably less on Winter’s Envoy than I expected. I decided I can afford to pull all reds (for Lucina) and greens on that banner. There were, in fact, only two greens and no reds, and the green was this Frederick. I’ve been considering building one for a while, so it was welcome, even though his IVs are questionable.

He picked up the Hawkeye from Winter’s Envoy. DB3 is just nice to have, and it’s going to sit around for when (if) I give Fred a Brave Axe.

Usage: See Clive.

Improvements: I’m looking for a +atk or +def copy that isn’t –def or –atk respectively, so I can merge. He needs an assist, probably a different B skill, refinement on the axe, and to learn Bonfire.

neutral

My freebie from CYL. I don’t regret picking her, but I am kind of reluctant to use her a lot outside of Horse Emblem because frankly Arena has made me resent her. I’m so fucking tired of seeing this face. When will she fall off her horse. I have no love left for her and I’m gleefully killing the copies of her I have on alts for Swift Sparrow left and right and it gives me a rush every time. It’s kind of sad since I was initially very excited to get her but that’s what countless deathless runs ruined do to a person. I just had to unglue a Brave Bow Lyn from a QP Moonbow Reinhardt earlier today*. Ugh.

* when I originally started writing this post

Usage: She’s on my main cav team and is quite helpful, and has around 2600 HM. Those are the nice things I can say about her.

Improvements: I am not giving her anything else ever as an act of protest

4* merge projects

+spd –hp, +3

I originally intended to make him a +10 thinking I’d never get a brave Roy. Well, I have a brave boy now, but I still want to build his dad, if only because they’re a bit different. I also quite like Eliwood; he’s not the most interesting lord character in the world, but I have a soft spot for him. His Heroes art is atrocious but what can you do.

Short term goals are continuing to merge him (right now I have two more 3* copies waiting), giving him an assist, Fury 3, and probably Swordbreaker.

Long term goal is eventually, once he hits +7 or so, merging in a 5* copy to acquire the Durandal, then evolving it to Blazing Durandal.

+2

The only blue mage cavalier I have :(

Short term goals are merging in the last 3* copy I have, giving her Blarblade & Moonbow from an Odin, Darting Blow 3, some kind of B skill (undecided on that one), an assist, and probably a horse buff.

Long term goal is merging in a 5* copy (that one is a very long way off) to acquire Keen Blarwolf+ (and Death Blow 3) for some anti-horse options in AA.

+spd –forgot, +1

I really like Titania’s art and clearly I’m lacking in the green cav department. I just don’t know what to do with her build really. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it (aka when she’s got a bunch more merges)

+spd –res, +4

The fourth member of my “main” cavalry team. An excellent testament to the power of bladetomes when combined with emblem buffs, as on my old main I in fact used a 3* -atk copy in this role to great effect.

I have a 3* copy hanging around, but I’m conflicted on whether to use her for the extra merge or to give somebody else Escape Route 3.

I’m also on the lookout for a +spd –hp copy instead, as –res bothers me a bit.

I don’t think I’ll change anything else in her build, besides maybe giving her G Tomebreaker at some point. Gronnblade works perfectly fine without upgrading it to its + version, and my obsessiveness about these things doesn’t quite trigger when it’s a 4* unit in question.

+spd -def, +2

+atk –hp, +2

Healers who require standard healer improvements, not much to say here. They might both see some kind of 5* sacrifices at some point so I can get my hands on those sweet sweet Wrathful refinements on their staves (and better healing staves too), but that’s miles and miles out there.

Not pictured

Berkut. Same as all other GHB units that I don’t want to build.

[thedeadflag]

Here’s more of the Oh No There Is Only One Bed What Do clanya AU

(Part 1)(Part 2)(Part 3)

Part 4 below

Content Warning: transmisogyny, transmisogynistic slurs, transphobia

There was a stuffed elcor.

Anya had seen a few in the past, mostly tiny ones, but this one was big, or at least big enough to hug. It looked like Calyn, the Elcor ambassador from the first Mass Effect, only with bigger, cuter eyes. She was spellbound, standing a few feet from the stall selling it.

It would be childish to buy it, of course. She was eighteen, much too old for merchandise like that, at least in terms of social acceptability. It would be a frivolous purchase, sixty-five dollars for a plushie that, while seemingly very well made and detailed, would serve very little purpose and would push her over her budget. Not to mention that his bulk would only encumber them, having already loaded their luggage into Clarke's SUV. The trunk was full already, and it wouldn't feel right asking to put some purchases in the backseat.

It just wasn't meant to be.

With palpable sadness: I apologize, I cannot take you with me, my friend... She mused to herself with a shake of her head.

With a heavy sigh and one last longing glance at Calyn, she turned and made her way through the market empty-handed as usual. She already had her photos with Morena Baccarin and Ali Hillis, and that would have to be enough.

"Hey, you not getting anything?" Clarke was suddenly there, directly at her side, carrying a large plastic bag full of various purchases. "We're leaving after the screenwriting panel coming up, so I guess this is effectively last call."

Anya looked back into the market at the various vendors she'd been checking out for the past half hour, and nodded, making peace with her decision. "I'm good. Have you gotten all you were looking for?"

There was a strange shine in Clarke's eye, if just for a moment, but Anya dismissed it as Clarke just laughed. "Are you kidding? Nah, I've got one or two things left. I just wanted to check in, since I'll have to haul my stuff over to my car and then rush back in time for the panel, and I didn't want you to think I ditched you if I'm a few seconds late."

Anya smiled, feeling a little relief that she hadn't succumbed to her impulses. If Clarke would be storing extra things in the backseat, then it was good that Anya wasn't cluttering up the area with her own things. It was for the best.

"I'll wait by the conference room doors for you." She offered, startling a little when Clarke lifted a hand up to rest at the back of her neck, thankfully not moving lest she be reduced to a puddle by one of the market entrances.

"Sure thing, princess. Save a seat for me, will you?" Clarke grinned, all the amusement in the world twinkling in her eyes, and then as quick as she came, she was gone, vanishing into the crowds, leaving her breathless and blushing, frustrated at how the other girl would constantly bring up those silly pet names.

Not that she hated that one. She didn't, not really. It was just frustrating, because the reaction it elicited from her wasn't really earned.  And it was maybe a little embarrassing to be called it in public, but among strangers, that hardly mattered.

She might have to talk to Clarke about the neck thing later, given Costia's unfortunate slip in telling the girl how it affected her.  It wasn't super serious, but she did have to make it clear that just because something might make her body freeze up and her mind pleasantly hazy, doesn't mean that Clarke was free to do it to her whenever.  Among friends who she trusted, that wasn't really an issue. If it was just the two of them, well, that would change things.

As relatively pleasant as Clarke had been all day long, for as much effort she put into note-taking at the earlier panel on LGBT equality in media, she hadn't earned that level of vulnerability from her. Not yet, at least, which was still a big step up from before the weekend when she would have pegged that notion as impossible for Clarke to earn.

Anya liked the small signs of growth that she saw, even if they came saddled with frustrating levels of teasing and playful banter that made her heart swell more than she was currently comfortable with.

She hoped that maybe by the end of the summer, Clarke would have improved enough for her to consider the girl a friend.

That certainly would be a wild turn of events, all things considered.

Anya leaned up against Clarke's SUV, Lexa mirroring her position a foot to her side, both staring off toward the convention center and Costia respectively.  It'd been a long weekend. Maybe not a great one, or even a good one, but it was memorable enough. That much, she could be certain of.

"So, any fancy plans for you and Cos for the rest of your time here?" Anya asked, turning her gaze to her cousin.

"We have a dinner reservation at seven, and there's a club she wants to go to, and knows someone who can get us in for the monthly LGBT night. I can't imagine it'll be very busy, since it's a Sunday, but I know we'll have a good time." Lexa smiled, watching Clarke and Costia discuss something rather animatedly.

"You'll be dancing with Costia...you'll be ecstatic." Anya chimed in, drawing an easy laugh from her best friend.

"True enough. What about you?" Lexa asked, shifting her attention, curious green eyes boring into her skull.

Anya wasn't sure what she meant, but something in her eyes said Lexa wasn't talking about what kind of sleep she'd be getting that night. "What about me?"

Lexa shrugged and nodded towards the duo ahead of them. "Anything planned with Clarke?"

"She's driving me home? I don't know, ask her." Anya noted, not really sure what Lexa was getting at. They had a long ride back home, and it'd be quite late by the time they got in. Not exactly room for adventure or a detour.

"I'm just saying, Anya...she's made an effort. Give her a chance." Lexa's request was a little off, but she didn't blame her cousin for that, not having been around to have the full context.

"That's all I've been giving her all weekend, for your sake, even when she hadn't earned one." She shot back, letting out a frustrated huff as Clarke gave Costia a quick hug and started heading over. "I'm just giving her a chance at earning her way to friendship. She hasn't earned anything past that, Lexa."

Lexa exhaled heavily and pulled Anya into a hug. "You're very frustrating, you realize that?" Her cousin asked, laughing. "I'll see you tomorrow when I get home. I love you."

"Love you, too. Enjoy yourselves tonight." Anya offered, giving Lexa a tight squeeze before reluctantly letting go, knowing she'd have to face down the next few hours now.

About as soon as she and Lexa had separated, Clarke was there, holding open the passenger side door. "Your chariot awaits, Cinderella."

Lexa's laughter had Anya shooting her cousin a quick playful glare, even if her own blushing was a tiny bit embarrassing. "Not funny." She insisted before turning to Clarke. "Not Cinderella."

Clarke lifted her hands and nodded. "Too far, I get it. Sorry...and with that in mind, let me make it up to you with something to give us a break from the heat?"

"Something like what?" She asked, brain shifting gears a little because the heat and humidity really had been pretty overwhelming today. Something to help her cool off would be a welcome reprieve.

"Like...Dairy Queen? You're still royalty, princess." Clarke offered, immediately sending Anya's stomach rumbling with desire.

It was very tempting to blurt out her approval of the plan.

Lexa, of course, managed to make that call even if she wasn't so quickly committed. "Chocolate Xtreme blizzards put Anya in a happy place for at least an hour. That's a good idea." Lexa interjected as she stepped away. "Have a safe trip, you two! I'll see you soon."

Clarke waved Lexa off, but her focus was dead set on Anya. "Chocolate, hrm? I can definitely help with that."

"As far as detours go, I suppose it's not a bad one." Anya admitted with a dramatic sigh, climbing into the passenger seat.

Clarke quickly rounded the vehicle and hopped into the driver's seat, starting the car up.

"Let's get this show on the road, shall we?"

Clarke wasn't completely sure what her plans would be when she arrived home from her trip, but one thing was for certain: she'd be sending some sort of floral arrangement to Lexa for the tip.

She'd gambled and ordered Anya a large of her favourite blizzard in the drive-thru, and for the last fifteen minutes, it'd paid off in more ways than one. Anya, as Lexa had predicted, was definitely in her happy place, entirely content to slowly mill away at her treat in the passenger seat, happy as a goddamn clam.

On top of that was a bit of a revelation, if one she needed to keep to herself for the near future. Her goal had been to make Anya happy, given what she'd had to put up with over the weekend, but Clarke didn't expect to get distracted by Anya's quiet little moans of pleasure, the look of pure bliss across her features, the way each spoonful would reduce Anya to this entirely serene state.

She'd always been attracted to a sort of softness in women, and she'd never seen more than a few brief spurts of that from Anya until now. But with the way Anya looked, with how she was behaving and reacting beside her? It'd been fifteen minutes of this, and all Clarke wanted to do was pull the car over, pull Anya onto her lap, and enjoy that side of her up close and personal.

Of course, it'd be intensely inappropriate and Anya would absolutely reject her, so Clarke just tried to focus on the road ahead, and not the soft, content moans from her right. Maybe there was some underboob sweat, not that anyone could prove it.

It was about ten miles later when Anya set her empty container in the cup holder. "Ughhh, I'm going to regret this tomorrow." Anya groaned, even though her lips still curled up into a smile as she peered down. "A crop top was a bad idea."

"Please, you look incredible." Clarke stated with a laugh, eyebrows rising at Anya's quick scoff. "Okay, seriously, you downed a large blizzard and your stomach's still ninety-nine percent flat. Still as cute as before, and you've rocked that crop top today. But if you want, I can take a run with you tomorrow morning? Or you can come swim in my pool, given this heat's supposed to hold up until next weekend."

She could only spare glances Anya's way, wanting to be a responsible driver, but she only needed a fraction of a second to see the changed tint in her cheeks. "A pool?" Anya asked, sounding skeptical, perhaps for good reason, since Clarke usually didn't exercise in the thing.

"It's long, enough to swim laps. Wide enough for a few. I usually run, but I wouldn't be opposed to swimming so long as I had company." She clarified, noticing Anya nodding in her periphery.

"And if I were to leave after our workout?" It was a fair enough question, one that hinted at a talk Clarke had been expecting, even if she'd been hoping to delay it a while longer.

"Then you leave. I'm not going to pull the hospitality card and demand you stay for brunch. You've...been good to me this weekend, but it doesn't mean we're friends.  Even if I might want that, it doesn't mean you do, or that I'm where I need to be for that to happen." Clarke answered, not really managing to hide the disappointment she felt at that portion of reality.

Because it was disappointing. Given the opportunity, she felt like they could really get along, that they could click, but she'd unknowingly sabotaged that potential over the years. She only had herself to blame, but she had to believe that she could fix it, too.

She'd just need Anya's help figuring out how.

"Okay." Anya let out quietly, barely audible above the hum of the vehicle traveling down the highway. "Okay, good. I wasn't sure you understood, but it's...it's good that you know. Because I approve of the effort you've put into learning and understanding, but...you need to know that some of the things you do...you can't do those when we're alone."

Clarke cocked her head in thought, having an idea of what Anya was on about, but not fully getting it. "Like...the neck thing?" She asked, earning an easy nod. "I didn't mean anything by it."

"You don't have to mean anything. What matters is...well, the result." Anya added, not really clarifying much of anything. After a few seconds of silence on her part, Anya let out a sigh. "Do you understand what consent is?"

"Obviously." She laughed, having campaigned for it to be included in their high school's sex ed curriculum.

"So you understand that a person's body can respond in certain ways regardless of if a person wants it to react that way." Anya clarified, laying bare the issue at hand, immediately forming a deep pit in Clarke's stomach at the thought of having even minutely violated Anya. "Don't feel guilty, I felt perfectly safe in the diner earlier, and when we met Lexa and Costia for lunch. Each of the three times you did it, I had two friends nearby who knew me, who understood my responses and boundaries, and who could speak for me, or intervene if needed."

Clarke nodded, starting to understand Anya's qualms, knowing how close she'd come to violating Anya's boundaries throughout the day. Her heart hurt at the idea that she almost fucked it all up again without even realizing. "But if we were alone, or you didn't have friends around, then you wouldn't feel safe." Clarke spoke slowly, remorse burning at her gut again at Anya's slow nod. "I would never purposely hurt you, I hope you believe that."

"I do. But you have to know how dangerous it is for me. I'm touch-starved, Clarke. My family...none of them have ever been touchy-feely types in the least, and I barely have any friends. Even then, the overwhelming majority of what I get are quick hugs, but even they're not real common, and maybe snuggling on the couch a small handful of times a year with Lexa and Costia." Anya explained, casting some light onto their experiences that weekend, and how hard it must have been for Anya to have done what she did the previous night in sleeping with her and keeping her wrist safe. Had she known what trouble it might have caused, she never would have taken the second option. "They understand what touch does to me...how sensitive I am to it. I don't want to react the way I do a lot of times, it's...it's embarrassing. I can lose myself in it, because I want it, I yearn for it, and that makes it dangerous, because anyone can do that to me. Anyone."

"I'd have all the control." Clarke mused.

Anya let out another sigh, slumping a little in her seat as she stretched out her legs. "Yes, you would."

"Then I promise not to touch you without asking permission. And if you say no, I'll let it go." Clarke asserted, fingers rolling in a wave atop the steering wheel as she fought to contain her emotions. "I want to be the kind of person you can feel safe around. I want to be your friend one day."

"It might take time." Anya spoke just as Clarke glanced her way. She looked small, gaze only flickering Clarke's way for a tiny blip of a second, head ducking ever so slightly. As if maybe Anya wasn't sure someone would be willing to put in the time, to have the patience to stick it out.

But she would. They were both going to New York after the summer break to start university, and even if Anya hadn't been all set to move near where she'd be living, she'd still want to have someone kind and passionate in her life.

"However long either of us needs, I'm good. You're worth it." Clarke admitted, reveling a little in the shy smile that sprouted on Anya's lips, even if Anya hid it as she turned her gaze out the side window.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Clarke."

She rolled her eyes at the predictable remark, unable to contain her own grin as she grabbed her mango-pineapple smoothie and finished it off, savoring the taste and the hint of progress she'd made, given the slight airiness of Anya's voice.

"Good thing I'm exactly where I want to be."

It might have been the warmth and humidity. Maybe it was the vague sounds nearby, or the way that the soothing rumble fell away to stillness.

Whatever it was, Anya found herself drifting out of slumber, frowning at having some restful relaxation pulled away. It'd been a long weekend, she deserved some rest.

"...ya, we're here." She heard, voice growing clearer quickly, a whole lot closer than she expected, and coming from her right. "Come on, pretty girl, you've got a bed waiting for you inside. My car's not that comfy, sleeping beauty."

Anya let out a tired groan and moved to stretch her legs, allowing her eyes to flutter open reluctantly, since she was comfortable. Clarke was right there, so close, kind blue eyes looking back at her, lips spreading into a smile as Anya's vision focused.

"Sleeping beauty married the first guy who came along and kissed her." Anya noted, blinking away the sleep from her eyes as she stretched the rest of her body and unfastened her seatbelt. "But thank you for driving me home."

Clarke stepped away, giving Anya room to get out of the SUV. "I was happy to have you along for the ride. I brought your luggage to the door, so you don't have to worry about much aside from getting inside and getting ready for bed."

"Thank you for that." Anya conceded with a smile, peeking past Clarke towards her door. Her smile twisted into a frown as she wondered why there was a large white bag beside her luggage. "What's the extra bag?"

"Well, thing is, we made a deal the other night that I owed you some things. And one of those things wasn't specified, and...well, I figured that until you figure out what that is, maybe what's in the bag could tide you over, more as thanks for giving me a good weekend than anything." Clarke rambled, teeth gnawing at her lower lip. "But don't open it until you're in your room. Do you promise?"

Anya nodded blearily, not really understanding how Clarke had a good weekend given all that had happened, but it was a nice gesture, even if it wasn't at all necessary.

"I promise. You didn't have to do that, though." Anya stated, finding it endearing how Clarke stood tall even if it was clear she was nervous.

"If I find myself in a position to do nice things, I try to do them. If I see an opportunity to show gratitude, I try to take it." Clarke clarified, shrugging her left shoulder. "I should let you get settled in for the night. I hope you sleep well, Anya."

Anya smiled, holding Clarke's soft gaze. "Sweet dreams, Clarke. Drive safe."

She watched Clarke grin and nod, backing away slowly and rounding the car over to the driver's side. It was only polite to see her off, so Anya waited, offering one last wave to the girl before the SUV made the slow descent down her driveway and vanished off down the road.

Once Clarke was out of sight, she made her way up the walkway to her house, needing a moment to find her keys so she could let herself in, knowing her parents were off visiting her aunt until Wednesday at the earliest, helping her with home renovations.

Her home was just as she'd left it, the warm familiarity bringing a wide smile to her face as she hauled her luggage and the mysteriously large and light bag up the stairs and into her room on the left. Not wanting to waste time moving around when her body and mind were tired, she made a quick detour into the bathroom with a change of clothes for a fast shower and a truncated form of her nightly routine.

It was good to be home, to revel in the comfort of her fluffy duvet, to enjoy the firm bounce of her mattress as she flopped onto it, nearly ready to zonk out. Key word being nearly, given her curiosity still demanded her higher functions remain active until she opened that bag.

With more caution than was likely necessary, Anya peeled away the tape holding the bag closed and pulled it open, not quite understanding or believing her eyes as she met the dark gaze of a stuffed elcor.

After a few blinks and gentle rubbing of her eyes, nothing changed. Calyn, the elcor ambassador, was staring back at her from in the bag. With more care than was probably warranted, she pulled him out of the bag, minding the potentially sticky tape, and set him beside her, nearly dismissing the bag until she noticed it wasn't empty. Maybe the Mass Effect colouring book had a laugh bubbling out of her throat. Maybe the Wonder Woman-themed slippers only magnified that, even if they looked nice and warm for use in the cooler weather.

Anya reluctantly left the bed and grabbed some scissors to cut the tags off the slippers and Calyn, but as she took hold of the elcor's tag, she realized there was a small note on the back.

'Told you I pay attention to details. Hope the big dude's better company than I was! - C'

She shook her head, allowing herself another laugh as she snipped the tags away, impulsively deciding to store Clarke's note in her nightstand's drawer before slipping under the covers and curling up with her very huggable elcor.

Perhaps Clarke could pull off managing to build towards a friendship with her after all.

[networkingdefinition]

Movie Quotes

Official Website: Movie Quotes

  • A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads. – Alan Parker • A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake. – Alfred Hitchcock • A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together. – Louis C. K. • A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar – you pretend it’s not there. – Tom Stoppard • A movie star is not an artist, he is an art object. – Richard Schickel • All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art. – George Bernard Shaw • All of my problems are rather complicated – I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It’s like a personal therapy. – Manuel Puig • All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish. – Clive James • And at the end of the day, if the movie’s no good, I’ll live to fight another day. – Scott Caan • And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it’s not you going through it. – Anthony Hopkins • And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy. – Nicolas Cage • And what movies we saw! All the actors and actresses whose photographs I collected, with their look of eternity! Their radiance, their eyes, their faces, their voices, the suavity of their movements! Their clothes! Even in prison movies, the stars shone in their prison clothes as if tailors had accompanied them in their downfall. – Paula Fox • Be your own hero, it’s cheaper than a movie ticket. – Douglas Horton • Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies. – Oliver Stone • Delay and indecision are first weapons in the armory of moviemakers. – Shirley Temple • Directing a movie is serious, it’s not a joke. – Fred Durst • Directing ain’t about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn’t want to go to film school. I didn’t know what the point was. The fact is, you don’t know what directing is until the sun is setting and you’ve got to get five shots and you’re only going to get two. – David Fincher • Do you know what makes a movie work? Moments. Give the audience half a dozen moments they can remember, and they’ll leave the theatre happy. – Rosalind Russell • Don’t be an extra in your own movie. Move out of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid of feeling uncomfortable or awkward. Step-out and make it happen. – Bob Proctor • Dude, I didn’t say Jude Law can’t act. I didn’t say Jude Law was in bad movies. I just said he’s in every movie. – Chris Rock • Ego problems are endemic in every walk of life, but in the movie business egomaniacs are megalomaniacs. – Lynda Obst • ‘Election’ is a movie I’d give a leg to cross the director’s name out and put mine in. – Jason Reitman • Every actor you learn from, take something from everyone – big actor or not. Whether they’re big movie stars or not doesn’t really matter. – Diane Kruger • Every time I’m shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don’t see the light in the end of the tunnel. – Emir Kusturica • Every time you make a movie it’s an adventure. – Shia LaBeouf • Everyone related to me in my circle was from church: church friends, church school, church activities. All my friends weren’t allowed to watch MTV or go to PG-13 movies or listen to the radio, so I didn’t really know anything different. That’s how I was raised. – Katy Perry • Everyone told me to pass on Speed because it was a ‘bus movie.’ – Sandra Bullock • Everything I learned I learned from the movies. – Audrey Hepburn • Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments. – Jason Reitman • For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying. – Salma Hayek • For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don’t do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck. – Penelope Spheeris • Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie. – Al Pacino • Give me B movies or give me death! – Clive Barker • Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. – Pauline Kael • great villains make great movies. – Staton Rabin • Hollywood’s old trick: repeat a successful formula until it dies. – Gloria Swanson • ‘Home Alone’ was a movie, not an alibi. – Jerry Orbach • I always feel like I can’t do it, that I can’t go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all. – Meryl Streep • I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead. – Michael Caine • I can direct breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I take pride in my kitchen, but I’m not going to direct a movie. – Julia Roberts • I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff. – Anthony Hopkins • I don’t know what your childhood was like, but we didn’t have much money. We’d go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book. – Robert Redford • I don’t think London has been given enough credit in a lot of the movies that we make here. – Mel Smith • I don’t think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can’t kiss a movie. – Jean-Luc Godard • I don’t want to make movies for kids, and I don’t want to make movies for adults either. – Kristen Stewart • I encourage film students who are interested in cinematography to study sculpture, paintings, music, writing and other arts. Filmmaking consists of all the arts combined. Students are always asking me for advice, and I tell them that they have to be enthusiastic, because it’s hard work. The only way to enjoy it is to be totally immersed. If you don’t get involved on that level, it could be a very miserable job. I only have one regret about my career: I’m sorry that we are not making silent movies any more. That is the purest art form I can imagine. – Vilmos Zsigmond • I first wanted to be an actress after seeing a play – not a movie. – Kim Cattrall • I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That’s never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad’s 8-millimeter movie camera. – Steven Spielberg • I have never acted he has never been cast in a romantic lead or has been cast opposite a female love interest in any movie he starred in. – Morgan Freeman • I haven’t sold to the movies. In other words, I haven’t gotten any enormous checks yet. – Jack Vance • I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That’s the magic of it to me. – Gary Oldman • I love Elmore Leonard. To me, True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I love the grandiosity of Hollywood movies, and even in independents, I love the canvas you can tell your story on. I love fiction filmmaking, you really feel like you’re creating something. – George Hickenlooper • I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved everything about them – the songs, the music, the romance and the spectacle. They were real class and I knew that I wanted to be in that world. – Sharon Stone • I loved the movies and I wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe. I thought she was so glamorous and everyone seemed to love her. I wanted to be like that and I told everyone I would be the next Marilyn Monroe. – Sharon Stone • I make movies I want to see. – Neil LaBute • I never thought about becoming a professional singer, but I am in touch with Bono about releasing a musical movie. It will be about an Irish band during the ’70s who are looking for fortune in Las Vegas. I should play the singer of the band but I don’t want to sing in front of anybody. – Liam Neeson • I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see. – Daniel Handler • I think less is more when it comes to kissing in the movies. – Julia Roberts • I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie. – Keanu Reeves • I was never a fanatical movie person. – John Malkovich • I wasn’t trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction. – Neil LaBute • I would say the film world has stopped operating as one. We have divided it into Hindi movies, Bengali movies, Tamil movies and so on. Earlier, there was only one channel and we all knew what was going on. Today, it is hard to keep track of programmes due to the advent of regional channels. – Mithun Chakraborty • If movies are causing moral decay, then crime ought to be going up, but crime is going down. – Jack Valenti • If somebody for some reason, for music or for movie, becomes famous, it’s because they have something, something special. – Roberto Cavalli • If you don’t like my movies, don’t watch them. – Dario Argento • If you have a friend who suffers, you have to help him.«My dear friend, you are on safe ground. Everything is okay now. Why do you continue to suffer? Don’t go back to the past. It’s only a ghost; it’s unreal». And whenever we recognize that these are only movies and pictures, not reality, we are free. That is the practice of mindfulness. – Nhat Hanh • If you’re a movie actor, you’re on your own – you cannot control the stage. The director controls it. – Michael Caine • I’m doing ‘Les Miserables,’ the movie. I’ve done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies, and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I’ve been like, ‘Come on, let’s do a movie/musical.’ – Hugh Jackman • I’m interested in doing movies I wouldn’t normally be interested in doing. – Eric Stoltz • I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here – Kishore Kumar • I’m not a real movie star. I’ve still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago. – Will Rogers • I’m not saying I’m a writer, but I’ve been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie. – Benicio Del Toro • I’m not surprised that Spielberg was able to capture the heroism of Schindler; so many of his movies are about the better part of mankind. – Gene Siskel • I’m terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily. – Oliver Stone • In every movie I do have a dialogue. – Jackie Chan • In the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things–love, fashion shows, and revolution. – Jeanine Basinger • It (his contract) has options through the year 2020 or until the last Rocky movie is made. – Dan Quisenberry • It is not as mirrors reflect us but, rather, as our dreams do, that movies most truly reveal the times. If the dreams we have been dreaming provide a sad picture of us, it should be remembered that – like that first book of Dante’s Comedy – they show forth only one region of the psyche. Through them we can read with a peculiar accuracy the fears and confusions that assail us – we can read, in caricature, the Hell in which we are bound. But we cannot read the best hopes of the time. – Barbara Deming • It’s just lovely to be involved in a movie that does go back to the basics – characters and great writing. – Clive Owen • It’s something that was very interesting to me to be a part of and all of them again because of the relationship. Some of the superhero movies are better than others. – Blair Underwood • I’ve always found that when you’re trying to create illusions with sound, especially in a science fiction or fantasy movie, that pulling sounds from the world around us is a great way to cement that illusion because you can go out and record an elevator in George Lucas’s house or something, and it will have that motor sound. – Ben Burtt • I’ve always wanted to do a family movie. – Adam Sandler • I’ve always wanted two lives – one for the movies, one for myself. – Greta Garbo • I’ve got to see my movie to see how I’m acting, see what little things I can learn about my craft. – LL Cool J • I’ve had to make the transition from sweeping in for 15 minutes, doing my stuff and clearing out, to carrying a movie for the duration – in a dress. – Philip Seymour Hoffman • I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry. – Jackie Chan • Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars. – Dorothea Tanning • License to Kill’ is not one of the great Bond movies. – Benicio Del Toro • Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage. – Steve Sabol • Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn’t a hit, you shouldn’t view it as a mistake. – Ang Lee • Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he’s that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it’s not, I assure you. – Michael Caine • Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good. – Akira Kurosawa • Movie failures are like the common cold. You can stay in bed and take aspirin for six days and recover. Or you can walk around and ignore it for six days and recover. – Gene Tierney • Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down – there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF. – Dan Simmons • Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts. – Yahoo Serious • Movies are the art form most like man’s imagination. – Francis Ford Coppola • Movies are very subjective. – Jeff Bridges • Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due … and we wonder why we’re a debtor nation! – Molly Haskell • Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood. – Walt Disney • movies have mirrored our moods and myths since the century began. They have taken on some of the work of religion. – Jennifer Stone • Movies have now reached the same stage as sex – it’s all technique and no feeling. – Penelope Gilliatt • Movies make you immortal and ageless. – Kristin Scott Thomas • Music is the soundtrack to the crappy movie that is my life. – Chris Rock • My dream role would probably be a psycho killer, because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life, and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also, it’s incredibly romantic. – Christina Ricci • My goal has been to learn how to get movies made without losing sight of the reasons I began. I have had to learn to recognize the insidious nature of the beast without becoming one. – Lynda Obst • My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave. – Burt Reynolds • Mystery makes movie stars! If you see someone on the cover of the weeklies all the time, why would you want to pay to see them in a movie? – Sophia Bush • No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark. – Frank Capra • oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won’t know the difference and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy – Frank O’Hara • On planes I always cry. Something about altitude, the lack of oxygen and the bad movies. I cried over a St. Bernard movie once on a plane. That was really embarrassing. – Michael Stipe • One cannot overstate the potential for hysteria on a movie set. Everyone always acts as if making the movie is as important as eradicating malaria. – Delia Ephron • One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‘fantasy woman’ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don’t think that men see things wrong and women right, just that we do see things differently. – Jane Campion • People go to movies or listen to music because they want to be inspired. – Daphne Zuniga • People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it’s interesting. It’s like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie. – Amanda Bynes • People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape. – Neil LaBute • Quite often – a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too. – John Malkovich • Really, it’s the director’s job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel. – Jason Reitman • Revealing yourself, physically or emotionally, to cast and crew is frequently uncomfortable. But it is essential if you want to to tell the truth. I felt more at ease being bold with some than I did with others. I was incredibly fortunate to have worked with Randy Harrison as Justin Taylor. We share enough taste in music and art to have had a real camaraderie, and luckily that evolved into a deep friendship. – Gale Harold • So yes, I hope to act in other people’s movies, big and small, because that’s how I make my living, really. – Stanley Tucci • So, I installed a CCTV system to tape what’s going on inside my mind.

Thousands of hours of drama, confusion, discussion, huge special effects and futuristic scenarios. Also a lot of chatter, drama and suspense.

Is like to go to the movies for free, every day.

The CCTV technology used is the SSM-X45. Whose initials stand for: Sit down, Shut up and Meditate (X45 is just to sound more hi-tech) – Marcelo Goianira • Some men have a silly theory about beautiful women – that somewhere along the line they’ll turn into a monster. That movie gave them a chance to watch it happen. – Salma Hayek • Sometimes I’d like to play the bad guy and sometimes I’d like to die in a movie. – Jackie Chan • Sometimes in movies, I still have to be the hero, but it’s not all that important to me anymore. – Dennis Quaid • South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, ‘kiss-kiss’ and ‘bang-bang. – Hortense Powdermaker • Stars don’t make movies. Movies make stars. – Darryl F. Zanuck • The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex. – Twyla Tharp • The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses. – Bruce Sterling • The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this – a movie star will say, ‘How can I change the script to suit me?’ and a movie actor will say. ‘How can I change me to suit the script?’ – Michael Caine • The fact is, when I wrote ‘Juno’ – and I think this is part of its charm and appeal – I didn’t know how to write a movie. And I also had no idea it was going to get made! – Diablo Cody • The great thing about the movies … is-you’re giving people little … tiny pieces of time … that they never forget. – James Stewart • The interesting thing about a movie is the movie. – Christian Bale • The movie business is a big gamble. – Jackie Chan • The movie medium will eventually take its place as art because there is no other medium of interest to so many people. – Irving Thalberg • The movie says, You can lose your job and your way and still rescue yourself. ‘Larry Crowne’ creates a self-excavated utopia, and I love that idea, that message. – Julia Roberts • The movie, by sheer speeding up of the mechanical, carried us from the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configurations and structure. – Marshall McLuhan • The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself. – Will Rogers • The only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one. – Elvis Presley • The reason I took Early Edition – besides the fact that I liked it – was that it enabled me to start a production company in New York City. It’s a low-budget film company to produce and direct movies. – Fisher Stevens �� The shooting of the movie is the truth part and the editing of the movie is the lying part, the deceit part – Paul Hirsch • The sorrow of not being movie stars overwhelms millions. – Mason Cooley • The Super Bowl is like a movie, and the quarterback is the leading man. – Leigh Steinberg • The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment. – Alex Winter • The truth is that everyone pays attention to who’s number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie. – Tom Hanks • There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare’s. – Al Pacino • There’s an electrical thing about movies. – Oliver Stone • These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school. – Barry Sonnenfeld • To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it’s for them. – Michel Hazanavicius • To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence. – Quentin Tarantino • Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will. – Steven Soderbergh • We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies. – Walt Disney • We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who’s watching my movie. – Donald Glover • What I’ve learned is that life is too short and movies are too long. – Denis Leary • When I do a political movie, I do a political movie. – Antonio Banderas • When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. – S. E. Hinton • When the movie comes out, what anybody thinks of it doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t go to the wrap party. I don’t go to the premiere. – Henry Rollins • Whether in success or in failure, I’m proud of every single movie I’ve ever directed. – Steven Spielberg • White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I’ve never heard a black person say, ‘We’re going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here – have a nice day!’ – Michael Moore • with all these tentpoles, franchises, reboots and sequels, is there still room for movies in the movie business? – Lynda Obst • Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy. – Clive Barker • You are not just here to fill space or be a background character in someone else’s movie. Consider this: nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Every place you have ever been and everyone you have ever spoken to would be different without you. We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us. – David Niven • You just have to realize that Jet Li is a movie star. He’s great at what he does, but if he stepped into our world he wouldn’t last long. – Chuck Liddell • You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, ‘Don’t go in that door!’ because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends. – Marco Rubio • You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to. – Philip Seymour Hoffman

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Movie Quotes

Official Website: Movie Quotes

  • A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads. – Alan Parker • A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake. – Alfred Hitchcock • A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together. – Louis C. K. • A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar – you pretend it’s not there. – Tom Stoppard • A movie star is not an artist, he is an art object. – Richard Schickel • All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art. – George Bernard Shaw • All of my problems are rather complicated – I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It’s like a personal therapy. – Manuel Puig • All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish. – Clive James • And at the end of the day, if the movie’s no good, I’ll live to fight another day. – Scott Caan • And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it’s not you going through it. – Anthony Hopkins • And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy. – Nicolas Cage • And what movies we saw! All the actors and actresses whose photographs I collected, with their look of eternity! Their radiance, their eyes, their faces, their voices, the suavity of their movements! Their clothes! Even in prison movies, the stars shone in their prison clothes as if tailors had accompanied them in their downfall. – Paula Fox • Be your own hero, it’s cheaper than a movie ticket. – Douglas Horton • Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies. – Oliver Stone • Delay and indecision are first weapons in the armory of moviemakers. – Shirley Temple • Directing a movie is serious, it’s not a joke. – Fred Durst • Directing ain’t about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn’t want to go to film school. I didn’t know what the point was. The fact is, you don’t know what directing is until the sun is setting and you’ve got to get five shots and you’re only going to get two. – David Fincher • Do you know what makes a movie work? Moments. Give the audience half a dozen moments they can remember, and they’ll leave the theatre happy. – Rosalind Russell • Don’t be an extra in your own movie. Move out of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid of feeling uncomfortable or awkward. Step-out and make it happen. – Bob Proctor • Dude, I didn’t say Jude Law can’t act. I didn’t say Jude Law was in bad movies. I just said he’s in every movie. – Chris Rock • Ego problems are endemic in every walk of life, but in the movie business egomaniacs are megalomaniacs. – Lynda Obst • ‘Election’ is a movie I’d give a leg to cross the director’s name out and put mine in. – Jason Reitman • Every actor you learn from, take something from everyone – big actor or not. Whether they’re big movie stars or not doesn’t really matter. – Diane Kruger • Every time I’m shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don’t see the light in the end of the tunnel. – Emir Kusturica • Every time you make a movie it’s an adventure. – Shia LaBeouf • Everyone related to me in my circle was from church: church friends, church school, church activities. All my friends weren’t allowed to watch MTV or go to PG-13 movies or listen to the radio, so I didn’t really know anything different. That’s how I was raised. – Katy Perry • Everyone told me to pass on Speed because it was a ‘bus movie.’ – Sandra Bullock • Everything I learned I learned from the movies. – Audrey Hepburn • Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments. – Jason Reitman • For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying. – Salma Hayek • For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don’t do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck. – Penelope Spheeris • Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie. – Al Pacino • Give me B movies or give me death! – Clive Barker • Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. – Pauline Kael • great villains make great movies. – Staton Rabin • Hollywood’s old trick: repeat a successful formula until it dies. – Gloria Swanson • ‘Home Alone’ was a movie, not an alibi. – Jerry Orbach • I always feel like I can’t do it, that I can’t go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all. – Meryl Streep • I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead. – Michael Caine • I can direct breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I take pride in my kitchen, but I’m not going to direct a movie. – Julia Roberts • I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff. – Anthony Hopkins • I don’t know what your childhood was like, but we didn’t have much money. We’d go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book. – Robert Redford • I don’t think London has been given enough credit in a lot of the movies that we make here. – Mel Smith • I don’t think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can’t kiss a movie. – Jean-Luc Godard • I don’t want to make movies for kids, and I don’t want to make movies for adults either. – Kristen Stewart • I encourage film students who are interested in cinematography to study sculpture, paintings, music, writing and other arts. Filmmaking consists of all the arts combined. Students are always asking me for advice, and I tell them that they have to be enthusiastic, because it’s hard work. The only way to enjoy it is to be totally immersed. If you don’t get involved on that level, it could be a very miserable job. I only have one regret about my career: I’m sorry that we are not making silent movies any more. That is the purest art form I can imagine. – Vilmos Zsigmond • I first wanted to be an actress after seeing a play – not a movie. – Kim Cattrall • I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That’s never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad’s 8-millimeter movie camera. – Steven Spielberg • I have never acted he has never been cast in a romantic lead or has been cast opposite a female love interest in any movie he starred in. – Morgan Freeman • I haven’t sold to the movies. In other words, I haven’t gotten any enormous checks yet. – Jack Vance • I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That’s the magic of it to me. – Gary Oldman • I love Elmore Leonard. To me, True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I love the grandiosity of Hollywood movies, and even in independents, I love the canvas you can tell your story on. I love fiction filmmaking, you really feel like you’re creating something. ��� George Hickenlooper • I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved everything about them – the songs, the music, the romance and the spectacle. They were real class and I knew that I wanted to be in that world. – Sharon Stone • I loved the movies and I wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe. I thought she was so glamorous and everyone seemed to love her. I wanted to be like that and I told everyone I would be the next Marilyn Monroe. – Sharon Stone • I make movies I want to see. – Neil LaBute • I never thought about becoming a professional singer, but I am in touch with Bono about releasing a musical movie. It will be about an Irish band during the ’70s who are looking for fortune in Las Vegas. I should play the singer of the band but I don’t want to sing in front of anybody. – Liam Neeson • I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see. – Daniel Handler • I think less is more when it comes to kissing in the movies. – Julia Roberts • I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie. – Keanu Reeves • I was never a fanatical movie person. – John Malkovich • I wasn’t trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction. – Neil LaBute • I would say the film world has stopped operating as one. We have divided it into Hindi movies, Bengali movies, Tamil movies and so on. Earlier, there was only one channel and we all knew what was going on. Today, it is hard to keep track of programmes due to the advent of regional channels. – Mithun Chakraborty • If movies are causing moral decay, then crime ought to be going up, but crime is going down. – Jack Valenti • If somebody for some reason, for music or for movie, becomes famous, it’s because they have something, something special. – Roberto Cavalli • If you don’t like my movies, don’t watch them. – Dario Argento • If you have a friend who suffers, you have to help him.«My dear friend, you are on safe ground. Everything is okay now. Why do you continue to suffer? Don’t go back to the past. It’s only a ghost; it’s unreal». And whenever we recognize that these are only movies and pictures, not reality, we are free. That is the practice of mindfulness. – Nhat Hanh • If you’re a movie actor, you’re on your own – you cannot control the stage. The director controls it. – Michael Caine • I’m doing ‘Les Miserables,’ the movie. I’ve done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies, and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I’ve been like, ‘Come on, let’s do a movie/musical.’ – Hugh Jackman • I’m interested in doing movies I wouldn’t normally be interested in doing. – Eric Stoltz • I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here – Kishore Kumar • I’m not a real movie star. I’ve still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago. – Will Rogers • I’m not saying I’m a writer, but I’ve been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie. – Benicio Del Toro • I’m not surprised that Spielberg was able to capture the heroism of Schindler; so many of his movies are about the better part of mankind. – Gene Siskel • I’m terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily. – Oliver Stone • In every movie I do have a dialogue. – Jackie Chan • In the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things–love, fashion shows, and revolution. – Jeanine Basinger • It (his contract) has options through the year 2020 or until the last Rocky movie is made. – Dan Quisenberry • It is not as mirrors reflect us but, rather, as our dreams do, that movies most truly reveal the times. If the dreams we have been dreaming provide a sad picture of us, it should be remembered that – like that first book of Dante’s Comedy – they show forth only one region of the psyche. Through them we can read with a peculiar accuracy the fears and confusions that assail us – we can read, in caricature, the Hell in which we are bound. But we cannot read the best hopes of the time. – Barbara Deming • It’s just lovely to be involved in a movie that does go back to the basics – characters and great writing. – Clive Owen • It’s something that was very interesting to me to be a part of and all of them again because of the relationship. Some of the superhero movies are better than others. – Blair Underwood • I’ve always found that when you’re trying to create illusions with sound, especially in a science fiction or fantasy movie, that pulling sounds from the world around us is a great way to cement that illusion because you can go out and record an elevator in George Lucas’s house or something, and it will have that motor sound. – Ben Burtt • I’ve always wanted to do a family movie. – Adam Sandler • I’ve always wanted two lives – one for the movies, one for myself. – Greta Garbo • I’ve got to see my movie to see how I’m acting, see what little things I can learn about my craft. – LL Cool J • I’ve had to make the transition from sweeping in for 15 minutes, doing my stuff and clearing out, to carrying a movie for the duration – in a dress. – Philip Seymour Hoffman • I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry. – Jackie Chan • Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars. – Dorothea Tanning • License to Kill’ is not one of the great Bond movies. – Benicio Del Toro • Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage. – Steve Sabol • Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn’t a hit, you shouldn’t view it as a mistake. – Ang Lee • Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he’s that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it’s not, I assure you. – Michael Caine • Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good. – Akira Kurosawa • Movie failures are like the common cold. You can stay in bed and take aspirin for six days and recover. Or you can walk around and ignore it for six days and recover. – Gene Tierney • Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down – there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF. – Dan Simmons • Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts. – Yahoo Serious • Movies are the art form most like man’s imagination. – Francis Ford Coppola • Movies are very subjective. – Jeff Bridges • Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due … and we wonder why we’re a debtor nation! – Molly Haskell • Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood. – Walt Disney • movies have mirrored our moods and myths since the century began. They have taken on some of the work of religion. – Jennifer Stone • Movies have now reached the same stage as sex – it’s all technique and no feeling. – Penelope Gilliatt • Movies make you immortal and ageless. – Kristin Scott Thomas • Music is the soundtrack to the crappy movie that is my life. – Chris Rock • My dream role would probably be a psycho killer, because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life, and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also, it’s incredibly romantic. – Christina Ricci • My goal has been to learn how to get movies made without losing sight of the reasons I began. I have had to learn to recognize the insidious nature of the beast without becoming one. – Lynda Obst • My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave. – Burt Reynolds • Mystery makes movie stars! If you see someone on the cover of the weeklies all the time, why would you want to pay to see them in a movie? – Sophia Bush • No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark. – Frank Capra • oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won’t know the difference and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy – Frank O’Hara • On planes I always cry. Something about altitude, the lack of oxygen and the bad movies. I cried over a St. Bernard movie once on a plane. That was really embarrassing. – Michael Stipe • One cannot overstate the potential for hysteria on a movie set. Everyone always acts as if making the movie is as important as eradicating malaria. – Delia Ephron • One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‘fantasy woman’ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don’t think that men see things wrong and women right, just that we do see things differently. – Jane Campion • People go to movies or listen to music because they want to be inspired. – Daphne Zuniga • People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it’s interesting. It’s like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie. – Amanda Bynes • People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape. – Neil LaBute • Quite often – a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too. – John Malkovich • Really, it’s the director’s job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel. – Jason Reitman • Revealing yourself, physically or emotionally, to cast and crew is frequently uncomfortable. But it is essential if you want to to tell the truth. I felt more at ease being bold with some than I did with others. I was incredibly fortunate to have worked with Randy Harrison as Justin Taylor. We share enough taste in music and art to have had a real camaraderie, and luckily that evolved into a deep friendship. – Gale Harold • So yes, I hope to act in other people’s movies, big and small, because that’s how I make my living, really. – Stanley Tucci • So, I installed a CCTV system to tape what’s going on inside my mind.

Thousands of hours of drama, confusion, discussion, huge special effects and futuristic scenarios. Also a lot of chatter, drama and suspense.

Is like to go to the movies for free, every day.

The CCTV technology used is the SSM-X45. Whose initials stand for: Sit down, Shut up and Meditate (X45 is just to sound more hi-tech) – Marcelo Goianira • Some men have a silly theory about beautiful women – that somewhere along the line they’ll turn into a monster. That movie gave them a chance to watch it happen. – Salma Hayek • Sometimes I’d like to play the bad guy and sometimes I’d like to die in a movie. – Jackie Chan • Sometimes in movies, I still have to be the hero, but it’s not all that important to me anymore. – Dennis Quaid • South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, ‘kiss-kiss’ and ‘bang-bang. – Hortense Powdermaker • Stars don’t make movies. Movies make stars. – Darryl F. Zanuck • The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex. – Twyla Tharp • The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses. – Bruce Sterling • The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this – a movie star will say, ‘How can I change the script to suit me?’ and a movie actor will say. ‘How can I change me to suit the script?’ – Michael Caine • The fact is, when I wrote ‘Juno’ – and I think this is part of its charm and appeal – I didn’t know how to write a movie. And I also had no idea it was going to get made! – Diablo Cody • The great thing about the movies … is-you’re giving people little … tiny pieces of time … that they never forget. – James Stewart • The interesting thing about a movie is the movie. – Christian Bale • The movie business is a big gamble. – Jackie Chan • The movie medium will eventually take its place as art because there is no other medium of interest to so many people. – Irving Thalberg • The movie says, You can lose your job and your way and still rescue yourself. ‘Larry Crowne’ creates a self-excavated utopia, and I love that idea, that message. – Julia Roberts • The movie, by sheer speeding up of the mechanical, carried us from the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configurations and structure. – Marshall McLuhan • The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself. – Will Rogers • The only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one. – Elvis Presley • The reason I took Early Edition – besides the fact that I liked it – was that it enabled me to start a production company in New York City. It’s a low-budget film company to produce and direct movies. – Fisher Stevens • The shooting of the movie is the truth part and the editing of the movie is the lying part, the deceit part – Paul Hirsch • The sorrow of not being movie stars overwhelms millions. – Mason Cooley • The Super Bowl is like a movie, and the quarterback is the leading man. – Leigh Steinberg • The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment. – Alex Winter • The truth is that everyone pays attention to who’s number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie. – Tom Hanks • There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare’s. – Al Pacino • There’s an electrical thing about movies. – Oliver Stone • These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school. – Barry Sonnenfeld • To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it’s for them. – Michel Hazanavicius • To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence. – Quentin Tarantino • Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will. – Steven Soderbergh • We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies. – Walt Disney • We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who’s watching my movie. – Donald Glover • What I’ve learned is that life is too short and movies are too long. – Denis Leary • When I do a political movie, I do a political movie. – Antonio Banderas • When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. – S. E. Hinton • When the movie comes out, what anybody thinks of it doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t go to the wrap party. I don’t go to the premiere. – Henry Rollins • Whether in success or in failure, I’m proud of every single movie I’ve ever directed. – Steven Spielberg • White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I’ve never heard a black person say, ‘We’re going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here – have a nice day!’ – Michael Moore • with all these tentpoles, franchises, reboots and sequels, is there still room for movies in the movie business? – Lynda Obst • Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy. – Clive Barker • You are not just here to fill space or be a background character in someone else’s movie. Consider this: nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Every place you have ever been and everyone you have ever spoken to would be different without you. We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us. – David Niven • You just have to realize that Jet Li is a movie star. He’s great at what he does, but if he stepped into our world he wouldn’t last long. – Chuck Liddell • You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, ‘Don’t go in that door!’ because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends. – Marco Rubio • You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to. – Philip Seymour Hoffman

[joneswilliam72]

"I believe in having no regrets in life..." - Meet Stormi Maya and David Vaughn of the satirical sex robots tale 2050

Technology is a double-edged sword. It was designed to improve humanity's lot by making our lives easier, and in many ways it has – just look at advances in medical technology or even your smart phone, how many devices did it replace all in one mini computer in your pocket?

Yet, technology also has enabled the worst drives of humanity. Tragedies like the Holocaust and devices like the Atomic Bomb are unequivocal proof of that. Still with certain other types of technology, we are not yet sure of the scope of the impact on humanity as a whole. For instance, we simply do not know enough yet – scientifically speaking – to say how damaging social media really can be or whether too much screen time will always turn people into head cases. We’re getting closer to understanding, but the science is anything but settled.

Still, the questions entailed in looking at this issue are also quintessentially existential. Director Princeton Holt's thoughtful, romantic, sci-fi, satire 2050 tackles these issues from that very human direction. In it, Dean Cain plays Maxwell, a purveyor of perfectly obedient and submissive sex robots who gets his claws into struggling family man Michael Greene (played by 2050 producer and co-writer David Vaughn).

Michael was seduced by Maxwell's sex robot parlor precisely because of what is being offered: perfect obedience without him having to put forth any effort of his own. All of the upside, seemingly none of the down. But is a relationship with one of Maxwell's robots – specifically Quin, played by creative force of nature, artist, musician, emcee, model, actress, producer, writer, and director Stormi Maya (She's Gotta Have It Season 2) – enough to displace anything human? What does that question and its implications have to say about the human condition and our growing technological dependencies?

2050 probes all these questions in a smart, thought-provoking, and elegant way – while not mincing on the satirical side of its essence as a film. Check out the film's website here for release information as it makes its way on the theater circuit this spring. Also, enjoy the separate interviews below with Stormi Maya and David Vaughn.

David Vaughn as Michael Greene in this still from 2050.

Stormi Maya as Quin in this still from 2050.

Stormi Maya

Hello Stormi and welcome to The 405! To start things off, what initially attracted you to 2050?

When I saw the casting the concept instantly intrigued me. To play a robot was something I'd never thought I play and it was a challenge that excited me. I am always attracted to super unique and creative things.

You did it very well, 2050 was intriguing to watch in no small part because of your contribution. What was it like getting into the head space of Quin?

It was crazy to play Quin because in acting you're supposed to have emotion and be relatable. Quin is not human so I had to have no emotions and act extremely non-human.

That's interesting and actually gets into a related question I had: what were the other challenges like?

It was interesting to go into a state of no emotion and to act like I didn't understand certain human problems and emotions. It was fun though.

That's fantastic. Any funny or memorable moments that stick out from the process of filming?

The sex scenes were very new to everyone – it was the director's first one and for myself and the other actor, so it was a little awkward and new, but everyone was extremely professional and respectful. Also our lunches and breaks were amazing: it was full of laughter, jokes and great stories. We really bonded.

Interesting. Those scenes do arguably form a lot of the core of what 2050's story is, with its tremendous social commentary on technology, dependence, and relationships. What do you hope audiences will take away with them from the film?

The film is a satire of how we are so dependent on technology that we are losing human connections and I hope people grasp that.

Me too. The message is very timely with all the new findings science has on the effects of technologies like social media on humanity.

Stormi Maya. Pic courtesy of Stormi Maya.

Switching gears a bit, to a question I put to most everybody: what films, directors, actors and/or performances have shaped you as an artist?

I love Pam Grier because she’s a strong black woman who embraces her sexuality and sexual power… I am inspired by Eartha Kitt – she was extremely intelligent, knowing multiple languages and holding many talents. I also admire her energy, she was sassy, strong and someone you could not push over.

Pam Grier and Eartha Kitt are fantastic. I loved Grier especially in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown and, of course, her earlier work like Foxy Brown. She has a presence about her, an x factor, which you also have Stormi. You are insanely multi-talented: model, actress, writer, director, musician, a theatre background. Any advice for people out there? How do you balance all those things so well?

I believe in having no regrets in life, I want to do everything my heart desires and everyone should try doing that in life at least once before dying. The key to balancing many things is to do them stress free, have moments where you focus all your energy on one skill and build on it; also, truly love and enjoy what you do and it will not feel like work . My talents and skills over all are all related – it's art. That's why it's easy for me to transition back and forth. If your various careers are related or similar you can easily work on them simultaneously.

I have great respect for people with the boldness and ability to do that. Speaking of art, what artists and works of any discipline or media have really influenced you?

Spike Lee is a huge influence – his talent, dedication and drive. I was blessed to work with him on SGHI2. I'm also a huge fan of Frida Kahlo; I love her feminism, her rebellious spirit and her rawness.

Spike is great – so is Frida, I'm a big fan of the symbolism and surrealism of her work.

Stormi Maya. Pic courtesy of Stormi Maya.

It saddens me BlacKkKlansman didn't get Best Picture when it clearly deserved it. Not just because of its message either – it was great entertainment, a compellingly-told good versus evil story with Sgt. Stallworth versus the Klan, I thought. Those are things that to me define a truly great film – it has to be entertaining and suck you in.

Which naturally leads to our next question, what makes a great film?

Rawness. The art being valued over the commercial. I like films that make me feel like I'm truly there. Draw me in.

Me too. If I can't suspend my disbelief and forget I'm watching a movie, I'm done. Might as well turn it off. With 2050 I had no trouble getting lost in the film because the story, acting, and satirical value were all strong.

Our last question Stormi, what's next for you? Will we be seeing more directing and writing from you? Cattle: The Cult was interesting to say the least, but it felt like it's an idea that needs more exploring in perhaps a feature film.

I am a rapper /emcee so I’m focusing a lot on my music now and going on tour soon, performing all over the world. She's Gotta Have It season two is coming in the summer and you'll see me on the Netflix screen as Yennifer Clemente. I'm always filming and you'll definitely see more movies of mine soon.

________________________________________________________________________________

Stormi's socials can all be found at the links here: Instagram, Twitter, music YouTube channel, other YouTube channel, Facebook. Head over to her website here to see the full version of her short film Cattle: The Cult after checking out the trailer below along with the music video to her song "STFU" in her Instagram post embedded below.

CATTLE: THE CULT (2018) trailer.

View this post on Instagram

Yo ! Storm Chasers ! ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️☔️Link In Bio My New Single “STFU” available on all platforms @itunes @spotify @tidal @applemusic @youtube etc • Producer @donaldrcole • • Directed/Film/Edited @donaldrcole Sound Engineer @lexwiththerecords • Cover Art @calebartxero • • #music #stormimaya #stormi #afro #black #musicvideo #musicproducer #musicians #rap #rapper #rappers #rapping #femalerapper #femalemc #female #dj #hiphop #hiphopmusic #hiphopblog #hiphopculture #hiphopartist #beats #itunes #spotify #artist #actress

A post shared by ⚡️tormi MF Maya (@stormimaya) on Apr 2, 2019 at 11:06pm PDT

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Still from 2050.

David Vaughn

Hello David and welcome to The 405! To start things off, what attracted you to 2050 and initially inspired you on the project? I know you are one of the credited writers and a producer in addition to lead actor.

What initially sparked this project was simply a need to produce a genre movie that was marketable. The idea itself came from an article that Princeton [Holt] read and subsequently sent to Brian [Ackley] and myself. It made the claim that by the year 2050 humans and robots would be in fully functioning romantic relationships.

Interesting.

All we had to do then was imagine what that world would look like. While it was a collaborative effort in creating the story, Brian did a fantastic job of actually writing the script. For me the biggest attraction to 2050 was the opportunity to not only be a lead on the project but to also produce at the same time. My inspiration came from my love of the genre, and Princeton's continuous enthusiasm for pushing creative limits on a budget. I wouldn't have been able to do what I did without his constant reminder that we are in this to create and not to settle.

Love that ethos, "low budget high concept." What was your individual and the collective creative process like as the film was being written?

It was a very collaborative effort. We would brainstorm about the story, characters, relationships, etc then Brian would put it into writing. After he had a draft ready, we would all read it, and start the process over again until we had a story that we all agreed was ready to produce. It wasn't easy. The three of us have very different tastes and styles, so I believe that what we ended up with is the most universal version that we could have made.

Awesome when those things click. What were the other challenges like?

Like all indie movies, we had many challenges to overcome. There were time constraints, budgetary deficits, locations falling through at the last minute, talent pulling out at the last minute – if it could go wrong it did. Murphy's Law was in full effect.

That sucks David. But yeah these things do tend to happen with film generally.

On the other hand we had amazing friends and support staff who worked their asses off to make sure that we would always land on our feet. Princeton and I would always be up until 2 or 3 AM after shooting trying to lock down locations for the following day, or finding an actor, or reworking a scene, or going over dailies. It was like being in a pressure cooker and trying to stay in character at the same time.

I love hearing about that kind of perseverance. What was it like getting in that head space of Michael Greene?

Becoming Michael Greene was easy. He and I are very similar. The challenge was staying in that head space and producing at the same time. There were a lot of days when I was literally running back and forth between takes because we didn't have an art department or costume department, or a script supervisor, so I was wearing a lot of hats at the same time.

Wow, yeah, I bet. Not too often I get to talk to someone wearing as many hats as you did.

Still from 2050.

Any funny or memorable moments which stick out from behind the scenes during filming?

There are, but you'll have to wait and hear them on the director's cut with commentary. I give all the secrets away!

[Laughs] fair enough. What do you hope people will take from 2050?

It was – I thought – very funny with some pointed observations about relationships but sad at the same time as we see the effects of the robots. The other thing that really stuck out for me was the music, too.

The music was perfect. It really accented the existential nature of the story while juxtaposing it with the artificial nature of 2050's technology.

Classical seemed to perfectly punctuate it and also serve as a nice juxtaposition with the action happening on screen. At any rate, quite a few existential questions were posed and answered eloquently. Well, the eMates didn't affect everyone negatively. That's the takeaway. I want people to see that happiness is different for everyone. The process to find what that happiness looks like can be painful, but it's necessary. To me the eMates are a metaphor for whatever it is that brings you happiness. I hope people's minds are opened a little, and they see that just because they believe something is right, it doesn't mean it's right for everyone.

GREAT takeaway. Switching gears to a question I ask everybody: what films, directors, actors, and/or particular performances have shaped and molded you as an artist?

Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, P.T. Anderson, Lars von Trier, the Coen brothers, Tony Kaye, Darren Aronofsky, Martin Scorsese, to name a few directors. De Niro in Taxi Driver, Hoffman in The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy, Nicholson in The Shining, Hopkins in everything he's ever done… the actor list could go on forever. As for films that have influenced me, there's a litany of them.

Yeah, it's a big question by nature. What makes a great film?

A story that moves people, filmed in a way that keeps them interested, by a team that cares about making the best possible work.

I like that. Great, succinct, to the point.

Dean Cain as Maxwell in this still from 2050.

Our last question, will we be seeing more from you as a director and writer? What’s next for you?

Absolutely you will be seeing more of me as a writer/director. Currently I'm working on a movie franchise. I've written the first screenplay and have the next four in development.

Follow David Vaughn on Twitter here.

2050 (2018) trailer.

from The 405 https://ift.tt/2HYWIve

[expatabroad]

First 3 Days (Akihabara Base Camp) - Japan Trip Report Pt 1

Top Observations:

Russians call diet Pepsi "Pepsi light" (and it tastes flatter than a flat thing). 

Had a realisation that nobody ever seems to follow simple directions on a plane. During take off and landing, there will always be at least 2 or 3 people who think they're above the rules and get up to use the bathroom or grab something out of their overhead bag. (WHY?! They aren’t even difficult rules!)

Vending Machine are on nearly every street corner...

...And, conversely, there aren't many bins on the street for your litter outside the vending machine areas.

The Japanese pay SO much attention to detail - whether it's recreating their own culture in video games/anime (E.G. Akiba's Trip) or another culture for something as simple as a restaurant (E.G. HUB)

So many people in Japan seem resistant to even glance up from their phone screen. It’s like they’ve melded with their phone. They quite literally have signs in public areas (such as train stations) advising the general public to remember to look up.

Japanese people seem to properly LOVE their dogs. I regularly saw people pushing them in strollers (maybe because it was still hot and humid and the puppers couldn't walk too far as they're little?). They also dress them up in all kinds of outfits (not costumes, actual outfits...some that end up making them look like 45 year old librarians).

Not only do they love dogs, but they seem to also be big fans of coffee (hot AND iced). I’m dying for a coffee boss as I type this...

They will actually reject your ticket when exiting the metro and prompt you to get a fare adjustment IF YOU OVERPAY! (I cannot envision that ever happening in London.)

All restaurants offer free water. It's brilliant and you don't even have to make the effort to ask for it, it's just given to you instantly. Sometimes it's water that seems to be mixed to a degree with green tea and other times it's just nice and refreshing ice water. Every time it was welcomed.

Top Pieces of Advice:

Always look up! Space is utilised everywhere and sometimes the best shops or restaurants are on the higher levels of a building.

Trust your gut. Be realistic but do what's right for you based off your previous personal experiences. For example: I posted on Reddit some rough plans for my husband and I for the first few days of our trip looking for feedback. The plan included exploring Akihabara's arcades and shops on the day we landed. For context, we were flying into Narita on an overnight flight from the UK with a stop over in Moscow where we know we can't sleep on planes (and I'm not a great flyer on the shortest of flights). We were strongly advised that this would be a recipe for disaster in that the loud and noisy arcades would not be what we'd want after getting to Akihabara (where we were staying for part 1 of our trip) and that it would take time to adjust to the new surroundings/being in a new country and to get our bearings. We knew the reality of the situation but also knew our own limits. Though it would be our first time in Japan, we're more experienced travellers and knew that we'd be so excited just to be there and that our adrenaline would actually help us push through any exhaustion. I'm glad we stuck to our guns because it ended up being the exact right choice for us and it meant that we actually made the most of our first day without overdoing it (we explored the city but had a fairly early night to try to get our bodies into the right timezone). I wouldn't recommend this approach to everybody, but I would recommend listening to your gut, doing your research so you know what to expect, and drawing from past experiences to make sure you make the choice that best suits you and your needs.

If you don't have an appetite of a god, don't expect you'll be able to eat multiple bowls at Ramen at the Shin- Yokohama Ramen Museum. Each bowl in itself was filling. 

If you're going to go to a shopping mall, definitely know what shops you're looking to go into. The malls are bigger than you can even imagine (with, perhaps, the exception of those who've been to somewhere like the Mall of America). If you go in to just browse around all of the shops like you might do in the UK or US, you will lose entire chunks of your day.

In addition to the above point, make sure you're keeping track of the time. It's far too easy to fall into a dark void when going into shopping malls or even just standard shops/arcades as there are often times very few or absolutely no windows. You get lost in looking at all the merch and thoroughly covering every inch of every shop with no way to even guess how the day is passing in the outside world, only to glance at your phone and see an hour or more has gone by. From personal experience, I would definitely suggest setting a rough limit on how long you want to dedicate to a particular shop or gaming session and try to stick with it in an effort to make the most of your time and not fall victim to the time-suck.  

I'm a nervous flyer at the best of times so I can't pretend that I was all too enthused to have to make not only one, but two flights to get to Tokyo. Beyond there being two flights involved, the second flight has also been the longest flight I've taken to-date, coming in at just over 9 hours. Thankfully I had remembered to load up my iPad with loads of downloaded content from Netflix - including the entire new series of Jack Whitehall: Adventures with my Father (highly recommend, by the way). While we physically survived the flight unscathed, my patience definitely took a battering from the point we landed in Moscow until we had made it through the doors of the arrivals area in Narita. Perhaps it was just shitty luck that day, but it just seemed like we came into contact with every rude bugger Russia had to offer and they all had their attitudes dialled up to 11. It also didn't help that between Russia and Japan we were sat directly behind a couple who had aspirations of flying first class but only a budget fit for cattle like the rest of us. ::cue the constant dinging of the call button for the flight attendants and the multiple reminders from staff about what they could/couldn't do:: 

I am always in a state of sheer wonderment when it comes to flying and how planes manage to stay up in the air for such long periods (I know the science, but my brain just always want to remind me that today might just be the day that gravity says 'not today, Satan!' and we go hurling downwards through the sky). That wonderment was trumped only by sheer excitement once we made it swiftly through immigration in Tokyo and boarded the Skyliner for part one of our train ride to Akihabara station. The experience only got better when we were approached by a woman who asked us to do a survey in exchange for a discount coupon for Family Mart. She was, as we would find the majority of Japanese people who interacted with us to be, exceptionally pleasant and polite and we couldn't bring ourselves to say anything other than "SURE!" (we even got to keep our pens for free heh). In honesty, we were just pleased to have gone from multiple rude interactions in Moscow to the exact opposite in Japan. 

Immediately upon arrival into Electric Town on the Tokyo Metro, we sought out our Airbnb location so that we could drop our bags off ASAP. Official check-in wasn't until after 3PM and we had quite a few hours to kill before then, but I was fortunate enough to have our Airbnb host agree to let us drop out bags off early for storage so we didn't have to find a locker or lug them around further than necessary. Completely reinvigorated by our own adrenaline, we hit second wind despite not sleeping on the overnight flight and got right out to survey the lay of the land around us.This is where we'd be spending our next 3 nights and we needed to become acquainted. 

As odd as it sounds, Electric Town in Akihabara just seemed so incredibly familiar to me for somewhere I've never physically been, like a very old friend who you can remember fondly down to their specific physical features despite not having seen them for quite some time. I can only attribute this feeling to having stemmed from playing "Akiba's Trip", which turned out to feature a pretty exact replica of the area. This was just the first of a few experiences throughout our two weeks in Japan that had me stop and say "Wow....the Japanese really do pay SO MUCH attention to detail. It's crazy!".

Running off fumes and crappy plane food alone, we decided we had no choice but to grab something to eat as soon as we could and the first thing to jump out at us was a street food vendor selling kara-age. From there, we proceeded to check out all the big shops and arcades up and down the main strip. To be completely honest, the first two days blurred together, so it gets a bit hazy regarding which activity we did on which of the two days. There are few things I can, however, be sure of. One thing  I can say for certain is that, on day one, we most definitely called it an early-ish night. I know we went back to the Airbnb shortly after check-in time (where I proceeded to nap for a few hours on what felt like the most comfortable futon in all of existence) and I know we went out for a chicken katsu curry at CoCo Curry (where I made the mistake of ordering curry with a heat-level of 5, but it was so good that I regret nothing). I also know for a fact that on the morning of day 2, I was privileged enough to enjoy a culinary delight that only an American could love known as Honey Toast. What I would give to have a honey toast and their thirst-quenching special "honey toast latte" here in England cannot be measured in GBP. On day two, we had intended to go on a day trip to Enoshima and Kamakura. But, when we woke up (late, I will add), it was quite rainy out and we had admitted that we'd underestimated just how much there was in Akiba for us to do/see, so we decided to cut this out of the plan for this trip in favour of spending more time around the neighbourhood. 

Given the jet-lag had absolutely demolished the functionality of my brain at the time, I will just list below the things I know we did in no particular order within those two days:

* We ate at Carl's Jr - which doesn't seem like something most people travel to Japan to do, but I thought it'd be funny to have my first - and probably only - CJ experience, as an American, be in Japan. Was a bit over-priced for fast food IMO, but I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it all the same. Full food report will follow..

* We paid a visit to the Kanda Shrine where we prayed for the first of many times throughout our trip. It was an easy walk and it gave us a chance to see some quieter parts of the area we wouldn't have seen otherwise. Neither my husband nor I am particularly religious, but we both admitted later that doing a prayer a day and having that serene moment of reflection a day to send some positive thoughts out into the universe was actually really nice.

* We hunted down a taiyaki stand that does Magikarp-shaped taiyaki. None of the magi's are filled with the typical red-bean paste unfortunately, just custard or chocolate, but we found that the chocolate filling tasted lighter and more like hot, American, chocolate pudding than the heavier rich chocolate you get here in the UK so it was actually a lot nicer than we thought it would be. 

* We drank in what we believe was a Brewdog (but not actually called "Brewdog" as it usually would be).

* We visited many game shops - including Super Potato - which was filled with so much retro stuff that we almost couldn't believe it - and board game shop Yellow submarine in an effort to find Coffee Roaster (no such luck and I was pretty much laughed at given it was so rare to find on shelves).

* We ordered coffees (one with latte art) at the Gundam cafe. Hint to those visiting: definitely go and thoroughly check out the toilets.

* We enjoyed a beer by the water at Hitachino Brewing Lab. It seemed like there was just as much love for craft beers in the area as there was for coffee and the weather in the evening was perfect for enjoying a pint outside on the patio. The only downside was that there were so many mosquitos.

Day 3 in Japan involved a trip out to Yokohama to visit the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. Interestingly enough, you could buy a yearly pass if you so desired, which it appeared that many Salary men were doing. This made a fair amount of sense once we got to the basement level of the museum where you could visit several different Ramen bars each specialising in a different regional ramen dish (amongst other offerings). You paid outside at the machine and a hostess escorted you inside the "bar" to your seat, took your ticket, and gave you some water. Once it's ready, they’d bring you over a massive bowl of ramen to feast on. At this point, it totally made sense why you might buy a yearly pass if you work in the area because you could eat a new, fresh bowl of ramen every day for a fairly cheap price (outside of the cost of the yearly pass itself). A word to the wise (as mentioned in the first section): don't bother eating breakfast if you're wanting to eat more than one bowl of Ramen. I was surprisingly full before I even finished my one bowl. Definitely bring your A-game appetite if you're wanting a chance to try out different varieties but need to compact it into one visit.

From there, we trekked over to the Landmark Tower. Before we could make our way to the entrance, we spotted an older gentleman with his chunky but adorable pooch. To make a long story short, in true Rik fashion, my husband managed to befriend the dog. The owner ended up giving us treats to give to the little guy/gal. This was yet another demonstration of just how friendly some of the locals were; that they would go out of their way, even with a language barrier, to have a positive interaction with two obvious tourists. It was a very welcoming experience compared to other places we've visited even in the last year alone (E.G. in Poland, people don't seem to want you to even acknowledge they have a dog, let alone ask to pet it). 

We made our way inside the building and started to head over to the lift to get to the actual Sky Garden when we caught a glance of a Pokémon centre on the floor above where we made a quick detour before continuing on to the entrance for the sky garden. After a fairly quick wait, we boarded the lift that would shoot us rapidly up to the top floor. The ascension was so quick that my ears actually popped in the lift. According to the website, it makes it up all 69 floors in just under 40 seconds - making it the fastest elevator in the country. The view from the top was the first of many 360-panoramics on our trip and we enjoyed it over a cocktail. It was definitely an experience to see just how big the city was. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very clear day so we were unable to see Mt. Fuji through the clouds. 

Once descended, we made our way back to the train station for part 2 of our day trip extravaganza: Kawasaki. We pulled into the station and made our way to higher ground to discover a fairly large open-air lawn space in the centre of yet another endless shopping mall. We didn't hang around too long as we were keen to arrive at Anata No Warehouse; our final planned destination of the day. I don't have words to describe what a unique experience this was as far as arcades go. The place had gone viral and I remember seeing it in a video shared on Facebook thinking that it would be awesome to see this place in person. I also remember thinking how there was no way it could be that cool in real life. Having now been in person, I can now confirm it *IS* indeed that cool in real life.

We sufficiently tired ourselves out enough to head "home". We arrived back in Akiba around 9-9:30, just at the point where I was starting to get hangry. Just as I was ready to throw in the towel for the night, Rik swiftly found us a place to eat that had high ratings on TripAdvisor and was only a 10-minute walk away. It turned out to be a teeny, back-alley izakaya that couldn't have sat more than 15 people MAX. Panic began to set in in my already ravenous state as we couldn't get google translate to work on the handwritten menu that sat above the bar. The man whom I assumed to be the owner didn't appear to speak much English and - obviously - our Japanese was extremely limited. A local who seemed to already be pissed jumped in with her limited English skills to try to bridge the gap between us all, and for that I was very grateful. With her help, we managed to order some chicken and noodles which was so delicious that it was worth every yen and then some. I had thought I was going to end up going to bed hungry but couldn't have been happier that we ended up where we did. 

It lifted my spirits up enough that we decided we weren't actually as ready to go home as we thought. Before we could go home, we decided we just had to stop into the HUB we passed by for a bit of a laugh, especially for how infamous it seems to be with regards to places Japanese want to go to practise English. As it turns out, it was just another fine example of how well researched the Japanese are as a society. Rik and I kept wanting to find things we could point out and laugh at in a "they think *thaaaat* is English?!" type way but we honestly could find very little to fault in that sense. I don't think we realised just how hopping HUB would be (and how hopping it seemed to be at EVERY HUB we came across....and we came across a lottttt of HUBs). Deciding to call it a somewhat early-ish night, we got ready and headed back out into the night. But, not before we managed to win some type of Jack Daniels plastic folder thing from scratch cards we got with our Halloween-themed cocktails (these will forever be known as our "Shellfish Awards" due to a comedic dodge-y translation)... The night was still young for the majority in Electric Town, but we had some serious packing and tidying to do and another 11 days ahead of us to experience.

And with that, we left Akiba the following morning for Kyoto having started our trip off on the right foot.

(If you’ve made it this far, be aware that I will update with actual photo albums with more pictures once a full trip report is written)

[303magazine]

With the perpetual boom and bust of Denver’s dining scene, the closing of a restaurant isn’t out of the ordinary. Every week there’s an establishment that’s either thriving or dying in this increasingly competitive playing field and often it goes relatively unnoticed. That was not the case of Rebel Restaurant. The RiNo joint, located off 38th and Brighton Boulevard, served its last meal Saturday, August 4 and there was a visceral reaction from the Denver dining community. Almost every publication and TV station rushed to interview Dan Laisy and Bo Portyko, the restaurant owners and chefs. Admittedly, the closure had a tint of topicality since the restaurant decided to shutter in part because of the debated construction on Brighton. But roadblocks and jackhammers aside — many are mourning the loss of Rebel for what it provided Denver’s culinary culture.

Bo Portyko (left) and Dan Laisy (right). Photo by Glenn Ross.

“We weren’t trying to do what everyone else was doing,” said Laisy — which in this case may be an understatement. Rebel was known for serving offal on the regular — including chicken hearts, cow’s stomach and a legendary fried pig’s head. Like many other nose-to-tail concepts or even farm-to-table restaurants, they did this to draw people’s attention to what they’re consuming and consider the impact. But it’d be hard to argue that eating a whole animal head is less memorable and life-altering than knowing where your carrots came from. And in this sense, they committed to changing peoples minds wholeheartedly.

“We have to get to that point as a society where we’re conscious of our consumption, because we’re kind of screwing ourselves right now,” Laisy said in an interview with 303 about offal. “I don’t think it’s right for someone to go to Whole Foods in the middle of winter and get mangoes from Argentina or a boneless, skinless chicken breast and not worry about the rest of the chicken.”

But even though it became known for its other meats, Rebel often broke its own rules. Case and point — the week Laisy and Portyko served a purely vegetarian menu. This might not seem outrageous but for the duo known for posing with pig heads and throwing anniversary parties called “The Slaughter,” taking meat off the menu was by far the riskiest and controversial thing they could do — and at first, not everyone loved it.

READ: Rebel Restaurant Explains Why You Should Eat the Entire Animal, Head Included

“We literally had people take the menu, and flick it at us and be like, “no meat?” and just walk out and, like, will be angry with us for trying to do something unique,” said Portyko.

But as Portyko explained, for people who were willing to open themselves up, ended up happy. (I can personally attest to that and distinctly remember equally enjoying both their giant fried broccoli and pigs heads).

“We tried to make really, really, really unique vegetarian dish,” said Portyko.

This risk-taking is ultimately what made Rebel so invaluable to Denver’s diners. No matter the time of year, you could walk into Rebel and expect to be tested or surprised. Did that mean every single dish that came out of the kitchen was a best seller or a home run? No. But thanks to the tireless efforts, Laisy and Portyko always kept it interesting.

But a big part of what made Rebel work, for the amount of time that it did, wasn’t only about the food — it was about fun. The team was constantly throwing parties, or special menus that would keep diners on their toes. And not just beer pairings or anniversary parties — we’re talking custom murder mystery dinners that involved special effects, a three-week long pop-up inspired by the night markets of Asia, “Kamayan” style Filipino holiday dinners, Hawaiian New Years and more weird shit they could cook up.

Kamayan style Filipino holiday dinner. Photo by Brittany Werges

In this, and almost every other way, Rebel really lived up to its name. This type of rule-breaking is what Denver needs more than ever right now because as competition grows there’s more immediate incentive for people to play it safe. Longtime Denver food writer, Ruth Tobias, explains:

“A new food town, like Denver, is only as good as its boundaries. If they’re not being constantly tested, if they’re not expanding, stagnation sets in prematurely,” she said.

Or as Laisy put it: “How many fucking burger restaurants can you go to?”

As the birthplace of fast casual, Denver has an affinity for whats quick and easy — but on the same vein, it also has a soft spot for innovation. Just look at the craft beer industry if you need any proof — who would have thought a milkshake IPA would be a thing?

Tapping into the latter is definitely harder but not unheard of. In fact, the new owners of the Rebel spot — Nocturne ( a part restaurant, part jazz club) is a prime example of making a unique concept work. Rebel wouldn’t point to their desire to innovate as their ultimate downfall either — it’s actually what made them happy and find success in its run (their average 4.9 rating on various rating sites would attest to that as well). Rather, the duo looks not at the risks they took on their menu but at the lack of funds they started off with.

“We never did this get rich quick scheme and we’d never expected to make a lot of money for this space but didn’t know how much it costs to actually operate it,” said Portyko. “You need a nest egg, just in case something goes wrong… just for surviving long enough to get through a bad patch.”

Bo Portyko (left) and Dan Laisy (right) the day before they closed Rebel. Photo by Brittany Werges.

Additionally, risk-taking is really only successful if you know how to market it and unfortunately Portko and Laisy agree they could have improved in that area.

“Our advertising budget is not what it should have been,” said Laisy. “Now you have to be in people’s faces. All day you’re going through Instagram, Facebook, and all you see is other people’s advertisements.”

And then of course, the construction on Brighton didn’t help because it made it more than a pain to access that area. However, despite some of the missteps — both Laisy and Portyko have no regrets, particularly when it comes to the food they served and the impact they made on people.

“We had this older couple. I’m taking my grandma’s age with the smock and everything and we were playing Metallica or Slayer and I thought, ‘oh they are going to fucking hate this,’ and they loved it,” said Laisy. “And that was our goal… we wanted to connect with people and kind of change their perspective.”

If anything, Rebel was able to move the needle in what some Denver diners were willing to try. And while going from burrito bowls to brains is a giant leap — testing those boundaries allows for new growth that benefits not only diners but chefs as well. Here’s to hoping that more will follow in their steps — or that Laisy and Portyko don’t stay strangers for too long.

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Why Denver Needs More Restaurants Like Rebel With the perpetual boom and bust of Denver's dining scene, the closing of a restaurant isn't out of the ordinary.