#nathan lister

[tsarisfanfiction]

Family Reunion

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family Characters: Apollo, Lee, Will, Michael, Cabin Seven Apollo-as-Lester wakes up for the first time in Cabin Seven. Having children older than him is just plain wrong, thanks. TOApril day 11 - First Meeting! This is set in the aftermath of an AU of mine that I haven't yet written, and for the sake of avoiding spoiling the whole premise of that AU before I do write and post it, there is a distinct lack of explanation hanging around, oops.

Apollo jerked awake, his breathing shallow and rapid while his weak, mortal body trembled and sweated in a broadcast of distress to anyone in the vicinity – and any hope that his immediate vicinity was, in fact, vacant of company was immediately dashed into tiny pieces by the gentle touch on his forehead.

It was cool, which meant that either they ran cold or Apollo was running hot (and yes, Apollo was always hot, in both senses of the word, but Lester was not, a fact he was still struggling to come to terms with).  Apollo did not consider that a good sign, although the gentleness of the touch at least suggested it was no-one meaning immediate harm.

“Can you open your eyes?” they asked – a familiar voice, and while the identity of the owner currently escaped Apollo (an alarming fact, given Apollo wasn’t used to forgetting sounds, or anything at all), he was reasonably confident that it belonged to a male.  “Blink once for yes.”

There was a wryness to the voice, a thread that might be light-hearted at the joke.

“What if I cannot?” he asked, cringing at the raspy slur that came out of his mouth.

“Well, you can always just tell me that,” his companion pointed out, and Apollo might feel half-deaf but he could still tell there was a new note to the voice – one associated with relief.  “But given I know you’re awake, I’d rather you at least tried before giving up.”

Rather annoyingly, he had a point – and Apollo was also getting rather fed up with not being able to place the owner of the voice by aural clues alone.  He knew he knew that voice.

His eyes resisted opening, perhaps basking in the chance to be lazy for the first time since crash landing in a dumpster and becoming the servant of one Meg McCaffrey, but his companion had more or less asked nicely, so Apollo persevered until his eyelids cracked open and he could make some sense of his surroundings.

The elegant ceiling was the first thing to catch his attention, simple but homely.  It was also vaguely familiar, a feeling that increased as more of the cabin – because that was clearly what he was in – came into focus.  Plain white walls, simple wooden bunk beds, and wide windows with heart-achingly familiar yellow flowers blooming along the sills.

“Curse of Delos,” he rasped, digging a clumsy elbow into the soft material beneath him until he could force his unwilling sack of mortal flesh into something resembling a sitting position, although perhaps a pathetic recline would be a more accurate description.

“Your flowers,” his companion agreed.  “They’ve grown here for as long as I can remember.”

Finally, Apollo’s sight landed on the companion in question.  A young man, tragically older than Lester’s body by a couple of years, with short, honey blond hair and eyes closer to green than blue was perched on the edge of the cot he had awoken in.  His face was thin and drawn, a little too much to be strictly healthy, and there was dark shading around his eyes as though his eyelids had forgotten how not to have bags.

It was a sight that made Apollo’s already aching body ache a little bit more, because it was wrong.  So much of it was wrong, more wrong than right, although he’d seen those eyes before, set into the face of a first chair violinist in the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

“Lee,” he said, the name escaping him in as a breath.  His son – and the fact that his body was physically younger than that of his son’s was one of the things that was so, so, wrong – gave him a glimmer of a smile, tired and weary but a twitch of the corner of his mouth nonetheless.

“Hi, Dad,” he said.  “It’s good to see you again.”

Apollo couldn’t help the scoff that wrestled its way out of his choked up throat, because how could anything be nice about his current situation.  “Is it?” he asked despondently.

“Yes,” Lee said without hesitation.  “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not great that you’re mortal now, but I’ll take that over not knowing.”

He didn’t specify what he didn’t what to not know, but even Apollo’s patchy mortal memory could put together enough of the pieces that he couldn’t really argue that point.

Or perhaps more importantly, that arguing that point would only drag Lee’s mental state down further, and his son didn’t need to suffer any more.

He pushed himself up further, internally grumbling at his reluctant body as it begrudgingly obeyed.  Lee’s hand dropped from his forehead, but settled on his arm instead, a cool touch to Apollo’s forearm.  His son had thick, soft wrist warmers on each wrist, the flicker of gold barely visible beneath the long sleeves of his hoodie.  Had he always liked those?  Apollo couldn’t remember.

Instead of letting on just how many holes his memory seemed to have, enough to make his mind a fully functional sieve, no doubt, he turned his thoughts elsewhere.  “Where’s Meg?”

The smile that crept across Lee’s face was fond.  “Making friends,” he said.  “Connor’s going to need an eyepatch for a few days, and Sherman’s going to be walking with a limp for a while after that kick to the crotch.”  He sounded amused.

Apollo couldn’t say he was surprised, given his brief but intense crash course in the consequences of spending time in the personal space of Meg McCaffrey, but he had to ask.  “Making friends?”

Lee’s smile grew.  “Michael was the same when he was her age,” he said.  “And she’s Kayla’s age.  Either those three are going to tear each other to pieces, or become a gremlin trio.  They’ll be fine.”

He seemed wholly unconcerned at the prospect of Meg potentially tearing apart other demigods – or other demigods tearing Meg apart.  Then again, the necklace around his neck was laden with beads, reminding Apollo that Lee was as close as an expert to camp dynamics as any demigod.

The cabin door crept open and quiet feet pattered across the floor, accelerating the closer they got to him until there was another blond young man in his eyeline, this one still a teenager, although still too close to Apollo’s mortal age for comfort.  “You’re awake!” he said, his hands immediately reaching for Apollo’s head.  “How are you feeling?  I tried to heal you, but-”

“Take a breath, Will,” Lee interrupted him gently, the hand that wasn’t still resting on Apollo’s arm coming to wrap around his younger brother’s shoulders.  “He can’t answer you if you’re still talking.”  Will – his hair had the exact same curl around the ears that that Texan country singer had had, this was her son – obediently silenced, and Apollo found himself the recipient of twin expectant looks.

If he hadn’t already known the two of them were brothers, he would’ve realised then.  Lee’s eyes were greener than Will’s pure blue, and of course he was about five years older, but the look was identical.

“I ache,” he admitted, his voice whining pathetically.  “I have acne and flab.”

“Welcome to mortal teenagerhood,” Lee said wryly, as Will gaped.  “Will, want to give him the rundown?”

“Swollen nose but not broken,” Apollo’s younger son – and Olympus he was not going to be getting used to this teenage son being a similar age to his body, let alone the son that looked to be more or less out of his teenager years and into full adulthood being obviously older – reported.  “Your ribs were cracked but are healing well, and your vital signs are all good for a mortal.”  His voice broke on the last word, and to Apollo’s alarm, his eyes started to dampen.  “I gave you nectar,” he admitted, his voice shaking.  “I didn’t know- your lips started smoking-”

Lee tugged him closer, rubbing his hand along Will’s arm.  “We didn’t know,” he assured him quietly, but that didn’t stop Will’s lip from quivering.  “It’s not your fault.”

Apollo distantly hoped that that explained his fire-and-brimstone-esque nightmare.

“I take it Meg didn’t think to tell you,” he said instead, and got a fond head shake from Lee.

“I think she was too busy screeching at us to remember to give medical critical information,” he said.  “Connor and Sherman winding her up didn’t help.”

“She’s waiting outside,” Will added.  “Along with everyone else.”

As if on cue, the door slammed open, the person responsible clearly not particularly caring that Apollo might have still been passed out.  It was exactly the sort of behaviour Apollo thought Meg would be capable of, but while the height of the figure was about right, the black hair was too long, and there was a distinct lack of glinty rhinestone glasses.

They were also, unmistakably, another boy.

In his wake trailed several other figures, all taller but something told Apollo they were all younger, too.  It might have been the impressive collection of beads around his neck, or – and Apollo was going to persuade himself it was the second option – his memory wasn’t so terrible that he didn’t recognise more of his children, even if some of the newcomers were also the same age or older than his Lester-body.

It took him longer than he liked to put names to faces, but at least they did come, before he had to face the awkwardness of admitting he’d forgotten any of his children.  The two African-American boys, both in their early teens and blessedly younger than Apollo’s current state still, were Elias and Austin – Elias with the long locs, and Austin with the intricate cornrows – while the third boy, the one with a permanent limp and a strangely-dangling jacket sleeve, to say nothing of the trio of slashing scars across one side of his face, was Nathan.  The older girl, liberally freckled with her hair dangling in brown bunches, was Joy, and he was pretty certain the youngest of the group with hair the colour of Greek fire was Kayla.

Then there was the oldest teenager at the head of the pack, striding forwards with all the confidence of someone that was going to get his answers, regardless of anyone else’s wishes – or Apollo’s injuries.

Michael came to a stop next to Will, flanking his younger brother and just about in arm’s reach of Lee if the young man chose to reach out any further, and Apollo found himself fixed with an unimpressed look.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

[hannahwatcheshorror]

BEAU IS AFRAID (2023)

This is a trip of a movie and it is a long one at that so buckle up and bring snacks (no, not paint). Beau is Afraid and he damn well should be since the world is just sort of happening around him or to him but Beau is just kind of there. This is a little bit of an absurd comedy at parts but otherwise is just strange and weird to navigate.

⭐⭐⭐

(Trigger Warning Male Nudity, PTSD)

Beau lives in a dangerous neighborhood with scary as fuck neighbors (though there is always a maintenance man in the hallway who doesn’t give a fuck either way as if the danger doesn’t touch him somehow). He is supposed to go visit his mother but the keys to his apartment get stolen and he isn’t sure how to proceed. What ends up happening is that the whole neighborhood breaks in and they trash his place, poor guy. Next day he calls his mom and finds out she is dead, chandelier to the head. Beau is having a bad day to be sure and it is about to get even worse when he is in the bathtub and a stranger literally falls on him (with a recluse spider on him) and Beau runs out into the street naked. This leads him to get hit by a car and stabbed!

He wakes up in a girls bedroom being taken care of by the family that accidently hit him with their car, apparently the father is a surgeon so he stitched Beau up himself… No hospitals here, and nothing suspicious or weird about that! He is a low-key captive here with his injuries. They have a daughter Toni who is very mean to him and eventually she drinks paint because she is really upset and this kills her?! It was wack, all I can tell you. The family blamed Beau for her paint sipping and sent Jeeves, the PTSD veteran after him. Among the forest folk (a traveling theatre company) Beau finds some comfort/discomfort in the play he watches about the long life of a man he sees as himself. Then Jeeves arrives and kills a bunch of people, Beau escapes.

Finally making it to his mothers home, he just misses her funeral. He is just in time to see the casket and her made up body with no head though and notes the birthmark on her hand. Then a girl he used to know and love stops by and he has sex with her but she dies while finishing on top of him which scares Beau badly. At this point his mother comes out of hiding. Beau’s mom faked her own death because she thought that Beau was being a bad son. Wack and a half. She hired her maid to die in her place and when Beau actually got to the house he recognized the birthmark on the maids hand and knew his mother was alive. They have a very terse conversation before mother drags Beau into the attic and…

Y’all. What? What did I just watch? Why was there a giant dick and balls monster? Is this a serious movie to be taken seriously? Apparently it is a horror comedy but to what end because that thing is just too much. Okay. So. In the attic, there is his brother who has been locked up there for years and, yes, you guessed it, a GIANT DICK AND BALLS MONSTER who happens to be Beau’s dad. Also Jeeves comes back but the dad kills him, so, thanks? I guess? Anyway, Beau leaves the attic because, I mean, duh. And then his mom is mean to him some more and he tried to strangle her. He says he is sorry but the shock from it kills his mom.

Then we are in a Truman Show-like world where Beau is being held in some cosmic court for his crimes against his mother. Richard Kind is there, not being very kind at all, telling him off for every even slightly naughty thing he had ever done to a crowd of spectators. Beau begged and pleaded but these fell on deaf ears. The trail was rigged. The movie ends after Beau is found guilty and is sunk for his transgressions against his mother. A somber end to a weird film.

[esqueletosgays]

BEAU IS AFRAID (2023)

Director: Ari Aster Cinematography: Pawel Pogorzelski

[purpletrashcans]

(excluding Nick, Charlie and Tori because i want the others to have a chance too, but i obviously love them)

[irljackietaylor]

Intro post 🧸ྀི

ᣟ݂ ✩͏⚹︎ᣟ݂ victoria + jackie

< jax, vic, riri, etc. please give me nicknames!

── .✦

ྀᖭ༏ᖫི i ♡ my gf .☘︎ ݁˖

> @snipers-eye my love, and the light of my life ᵕ̈

the real jackie taylor (trust, believe) ⚘( ၴႅၴ

me core ⋆｡‧˚ʚ🌼ɞ˚‧｡⋆ me and the loml

[ruleof3bobby]

BEAU IS AFRAID (2023) Grade: C-

The good; Phenomenal cinematography. The bad; it mostly 3 hours of rambling. It's visually stimulating but has a disappointing ending.

[brokehorrorfan]

Beau Is Afraid will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 11 via Lionsgate. The 2023 surrealist horror-comedy-drama is available on Digital via A24.

Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) writes and directs. Joaquin Phoenix stars with Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Parker Posey, Kylie Rogers, Hayley Squires, Michael Gandolfini, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Richard Kind.

Special features are listed below.

Special features:

Finally Home: Making Beau Is Afraid

A paranoid man embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother in this bold and ingeniously depraved new film from writer/director Ari Aster.

Pre-order Beau Is Afraid.

[letterboxd-loggd]

Beau Is Afraid (2023) Ari Aster

June 17th 2023

[laserpinksteam]

Film after film: Beau Is Afraid (dir. Ari Aster, 2023)

Another masterpiece by Aster, who shifts gears, fascinatingly, with every film. This one comes after massively popular and liked two films, and, for some reason, there's absolute clarity around it not ever approaching these levels. It's not a pop song anymore, though it plays plenty of catchy tunes. As usual, Aster has an amazing cast, led by predictably (which is not a bad thing) charismatic Phoenix, whose strained and exhausted fragility nicely bounces off of his softer and emotionally intense takes in Her and C'mon C'mon. So it's thanks to his take on Beau that the film offers this possibly frustrating but incredibly fascinating chasm: everyone around him does different shades of comedy. Posey, always my favorite player, of whom I cannot turn my eyes away, starts in the immediate soft emotional cadence to eventually turns master-whacky-comic. Ryan and Lane are beautifully hysterical, threatening, emotionally generous, and clueless to what they, as characters, do to Beau, whom they technically want take care of. Kind and particularly Lupone are bolts of dead seriousness, which, due to its pathos, quickly becomes and stops being funny. Lupone should land dozens of similarly rich roles, she's amazing. This film is very rich, it has a beautiful animated sequence in the middle, it's touching, tiring, stifling, and beautiful. I remember craving exactly this from Aronofsky's mother!, but instead I got post-traumatic goosebumps.

[screenzealots]

"Beau is Afraid"

A wonderfully weird, polarizing film that stretches the outer limits of neurotic self-indulgence. It's both too abstract yet packed with clunky metaphors and overt symbolism, but it strikes gold and finds success more often than not.

Artists often use their work as an outlet to wrestle with their personal demons and the more haunted corners of their psyche, and “Beau is Afraid” is like a long, distressing therapy session for writer-director Ari Aster. His film about a fortysomething paranoid man named Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) who embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother (Patti LuPone) is self-indulgent to a fault.…

[tsarisfanfiction]

Truth Comes Out of His Well (Chapter 21)

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: Lee Fletcher, Kronos, Apollo, Apollo Cabin (and many more) RL has delayed this week's podfic, unfortunately. I'll update this when it's out! << Chapter 20

It didn’t take long for Joy to return with their siblings, sans Will.  Lee ached at the absence, but he didn’t even know where Percy and Will had gone, so until they got news on that, they didn’t know where to go – but once they did know, Lee was going to work out how to transport all of them wherever there was, as long as it was away from the front line.

If it wasn’t away from the front line, he was going to have words with Percy about dragging Will into more danger.

It was a subdued procession of siblings that approached him.  They’d rigged up some sort of stretcher out of a blanket or two – no doubt requisitioned from some unguarded cars – and between them, Joy, Robyn, Sally and Elias were carefully bearing a still-unconscious Nathan.  He’d been patched up more since Lee had left him with Tris, clean bandages wrapping the worst of the exposed wounds.  It didn’t do anything to hide the missing arm – if anything, the sudden mass of bandaging around the mauled shoulder highlighted it, instead.

Alice had Kayla under one arm, the youngest’s eyes rimmed red with tears still spilling down her cheek.  Sam was similarly holding onto Austin, and Tris alternated between hovering next to Nathan and darting forwards, leading the way instead.

And that was all of them.  Ten siblings, not including Michael or Will, for a total of twelve.  Thirteen, including Lee.

Lee had never seen the Apollo cabin number so few in all his years at camp, and feared the reason why.

“Lee!”  Tris was the first one to reach him, darting forwards ahead of the rest and slamming straight into Lee’s chest, wrapping his arms around him tightly.  Lee gripped him back, burying his face in his brother’s dark, damp hair, and taking a moment to breathe before he had to face everyone else, and the realities that went along with them.

A young voice shrieked “Michael!” and frantic feet started to run, before stopping sharply.

“He’s hurt,” Alice said, almost a snap but gentle enough that it wasn’t, quite.  “Be careful, Kayla.”  Lee raised his head from Tris’ hair to see the young girl tugging away from Alice’s restraining hand and racing towards him, skidding to a stop on her knees next to Michael in a move that made Lee wince slightly.

“Michael?” she tried, her fingers lacing between Michael’s cautiously.  “Michael, wake up.”  He didn’t stir and she dissolved into tears, gripping his arm more firmly and starting to shake it, only for Alice to swoop in and grab her.

The older girl didn’t look much better.  She’d forgone the make-up she’d refused to leave the cabin without for the whole of the previous summer, but Lee thought that if she hadn’t, the mascara would’ve long since smudged, so it was probably a good thing, even if it made her look younger, more like the barely-teenager that she was than the older teenager she’d been trying to emulate back when she’d only been twelve.

But Alice was sending him looks, like she couldn’t believe he was real, and while he knew she liked Michael, he also knew that for most of their siblings, he had been their first head counsellor, and their longest head counsellor.  Alice wasn’t the only one looking at him like he was a minor miracle.

Lee didn’t feel like a miracle of any degree.

“Is this everyone?” he asked, belatedly tacking on, “aside from Will.”

“Yeah,” Robyn threw over her shoulder, one of the few not looking at him.  She was kneeling beside Nathan, still fussing over his bandages.  The pair of them had been thick as thieves ever since Nathan’s arrival, two years ago, and Lee wasn’t surprised at all to find her sticking to his side like glue now.  “Everyone else left.”

“They didn’t come back,” Elias corrected, sitting himself down on Nathan’s other side, cross-legged on the asphalt and hands flopping lazily in his lap.  However he’d tied his long locs up before the battle had started to fail, and some of them were escaping confines to pool on the ground next to him.  “After… you… Phoebe and Morton decided that was it.  They didn’t want to spend their last summer fighting again, so they said goodbye last summer.”

Joy gestured sharply, catching Lee’s attention before her hands started to flicker.  “Nye and Xavier got pulled out by their moms,” she signed.  “Last we heard they were all still alive.  I think Xavier went back to Spain.”

It was those two signs, the hands with three fingers curled and thumb and little finger extended, pulsing and rotating into mirrored thumbs’ ups that settled Lee’s heart.

Still alive.

The absences weren’t because they were dead, it was because they had fled the war while they could, and Lee could never be upset about that.  He’d have loved it if all his siblings had been able to flee and get away from it, but that wasn’t really an option for those of them with nowhere else to go, and some of them were too loyal to stay away even if they did have the choice.

It was a choice that had almost killed Tris.  Robyn making the same choice would probably save lives even though it risked hers.  Alice was young but too stubborn not to come back, and Sally was quieter but still got her own way most of the time.

He didn’t even know if Sam had gone home at the end of last summer.  He’d barely known the younger boy at all; he hadn’t even arrived at camp a whole month before the battle that tore Lee away for so long.

The rest of them, the year rounders like Michael, Will and Joy, the new kids Austin and Kayla – none of them had really had a choice.  Lee wouldn’t have done, either – but he knew he would’ve chosen to fight even if he had.   Michael and Will would have been the same, and so would Nathan.  But the others, Joy and Elias…  Given the choice, they might have preferred to stay away – they were musicians, and not fighters.

They were fighting anyway.

Lee hated it.

“So what happened to you?” Alice asked, and she was trying to sound sharper, like Robyn would have done if she had been the one to ask the question, but it came out as less a demand and more a plea.  “Who did we burn, if it wasn’t you?”

It didn’t feel like the right time for a story, but they were stuck waiting, anyway – even if most of his siblings didn’t know that – and with so many pairs of eyes on him, Lee knew he couldn’t just brush them off.  His siblings, at least, he owed the truth to.

He’d tell Michael and Nathan later, and hope that the two of them could stop sniping at each other long enough to listen, because they weren’t anywhere near as bad as Michael with Clarisse, but Nathan loved to push Michael’s buttons and Michael never failed to push right back.  Lee was pretty sure he was at least partially doing it on purpose, because he knew Michael did actually like Nathan, or at least accepted him as family – and for Michael, that was a big thing.  He still needed to tell Will, too, and maybe Will would be enough of a buffer to stop the sniping.

He tapped Tris on the shoulder, asking him to let go long enough so that he could sit down.  He wasn’t telling the story on his feet, with his siblings gathered around on the asphalt like it was story time in elementary school.

Tris grumbled but obliged, giving Lee just enough range of movement to sit himself down, next to Michael, before curling back up in his lap again, the same way he had done back in Kronos’ stone cavern, except this time Lee had the use of his arms and legs, and used the former liberally to pin his little brother in place, almost like an oversized plush.  He rested his head on Tris’ shoulder, trying not to feel like Tris was a human shield against the judgement of his siblings and hating himself for the idea even worming itself into his head, because they were his siblings.

The few that hadn’t yet sat followed suit, settling into a loose and sloppy horseshoe that somehow also encompassed the unconscious Michael and Nathan.

“I was told the guy’s name was Marcus,” he started, latching onto Alice’s question as a way to start because it was as good as anywhere else, he supposed.  “I don’t know anything else about him.  He was never a camper.”

No-one looked particularly surprised at that – if he had been a camper, he’d have been recognised, and not mistaken for Lee.  At least, Lee liked to think that his siblings would’ve recognised it wasn’t him if it had been someone else they knew.

“Why go through that effort?” Robyn asked.  “Don’t get me wrong, Lee, you’re awesome and I know it, but why did Kronos go that far?”

Lee felt Tris burrow deeper against his chest, a silent support that Lee appreciated more than he could ever say, even though the movement caught the attention of most of his siblings, whose eyes sharpened, clearly knowing they were about to hear something different.  Interesting, perhaps, if it was in another context and didn’t directly involve Lee.  Apollo kids generally liked interesting – they weren’t often as obvious as Athena kids, but most of them were veritable sponges for new information, too.

He really, really didn’t want to tell them.  Didn’t want them to start looking at him differently, using him as a lie detector even if it wasn’t malicious, or even on purpose.  Didn’t want to have to deal with the guilt of knowing their lies, of them knowing he knew when they’d lied, and feeling bad for it, or conflicted, or even betrayed.  Because he’d never told them, let them lie to his face when he asked them if they’d cleaned their bunk properly or just shoved everything haphazardly under the bed (it was almost, almost always the latter) and smiled and pretended to believe them.

But they deserved to know, and they deserved to know first, before he had to repeat it to Clarisse, and probably most of the rest of camp, too, before they even started to consider believing he hadn’t gone of his own free will – because Lee wasn’t a fool.  He could see where some of the other campers, the ones that didn’t understand cabin seven’s mutual adoration for their father, might draw those conclusions.

That didn’t make it easy.

“I…” he started, but a lump formed in his throat and forced him to stop, trying to swallow it back down again.

“I can tell them,” Tris volunteered, his too kind little brother, and Lee choked up again.

“No, no,” he said weakly, clearing his throat a little and swallowing painfully.  “No, it’s okay, Tris.  I can do it.”

“If you’re sure,” Tris assured him, and Lee hated that his little brother felt the need to try and reassure him, to try and help him with this.  It wasn’t on Tris, it should never be on Tris.  Tris should never have been involved in this at all.

“I’m sure,” he said, and his voice was thin but it was still true.  Still, he kept his eyes on the top of Tris’ head, where his hair was plastered to his scalp and still dripping wet – if Tris had his way, that would be his natural state.  Looking at Tris’ parting was much easier than facing his siblings, right then.  He wished Michael was still conscious, the one that had known for years and never judged him for it.

None of his siblings pushed him, not even Robyn, who alongside Nathan and Michael could be the pushiest of the lot.  Lee appreciated that.

“Not many people know… knew,” he corrected, because thanks to Kronos the number of people that knew was far, far too high, much more so than Lee would ever be comfortable with.  “But I inherited… something rare from Dad.”  He took a deep breath, then faltered and dived down a sideways tangent.  “Luke knew.  He was… when I was younger, when Luke was nice and didn’t show any signs of wanting to raise Kronos and kill us all… I told him about it.”

“And he told Kronos,” Alice guessed, but from her tone it was less a guess and more a foregone conclusion.

Strictly speaking, Kronos had somehow dragged it out of Luke’s brain after taking over his body, rather than Luke telling him of his own accord, but it was close enough that the difference didn’t really matter.  It mattered a little bit, that Luke hadn’t thrown Lee’s secret straight to the titan as an offering, but also if Luke hadn’t raised Kronos in the first place, it would never have been an issue at all.

“Yeah,” Lee confirmed, figuring the simple answer was best.  They didn’t need to hear about the rest of it.  That bit wasn’t important.  “Kronos decided it was useful.”

“But Lee wouldn’t use it for him,” Tris piped up, and he sounded so proud that it almost broke Lee’s heart.  “He held out, even when Kronos hurt him.”  Then his voice faltered, and Lee had the horrific feeling that his little brother was crying.  “That’s why Kronos grabbed me,” he sobbed, and the entire gathering of their siblings took a single, indignant intake of breath.

Clearly, neither Lee nor Tris needed to say anything more on that subject.  Lee glanced up at them to see a ring of furious faces.  Even Austin and Kayla seemed to understand enough, and they’d never met Lee before now.

“That bastard,” Robyn growled, one hand balling into a fist.  “I’m going to punch that bastard in his smug face.”  There were various murmurs of agreement from the rest of Lee’s siblings, and Lee couldn’t take that, couldn’t have any more of his siblings in Kronos’ vicinity.

“Stay away from him,” he begged, and it felt like a low blow to gesture at Michael in a reminder of how easily Kronos could take any of them out, but he did it anyway, because he needed them to stay safe.

The silence that followed was a heavy, awkward one, until Sally broke it, her voice small but steady, asking the one question Lee had been dancing around answering even though he knew he had to.

“What is it you can do?” she asked.  “It must be powerful, if Kronos wanted it.”

Lee made a disagreeing sound, one hand letting go of Tris to see-saw.

Tris, his amazing little traitor of a brother, nodded vigorously.  “It is,” he said, and he didn’t sound like he’d stopped crying, but he did sound proud of Lee, like he didn’t find it somewhat unsettling and potentially terrifying.

There was no way he was going to escape answering now.  He also knew that if he didn’t answer it now, he wasn’t going to at all.

“I’m a truth sensor,” he said, tempted to murmur it into Tris’ hair but forcing himself to say it clearly, just so he didn’t have to repeat himself.  “Or more accurately, I can tell whenever anyone says a lie.”

The silence that fell felt damning.  Lee didn’t risk looking at them, burying his face back into Tris’ hair, aware he was definitely using his youngest brother as a human shield and hating himself for it but unable to pull away.  Tris gripped hold of his arms, not letting him move even if he tried.

It was Austin that eventually broke that silence, the little brother that Lee didn’t know, had no idea what to expect from.

Also the only little brother that had never lied to him, if only because he’d never had the chance.

“That sounds pretty cool,” he said.  “No-one gets to lie to you and get away with it, right?”

Lee winced, but before he could say anything, Alice let out a horrified gasp.

“That means you knew I was lying that time you asked me what I’d been doing with Tiana behind the Hephaestus cabin that one time!” she exclaimed, sounding almost mortified, and Lee winced again.

“I try not to call out lies,” he admitted.  “Lying is normal, it’s natural.  I don’t police them.  And just because I know you lied doesn’t mean I know what the truth is, either,” he added, glancing at Alice with her horrified face.  Given Tiana was an unclaimed kid with a fondness for making things out of metal, he imagined it was probably something innocent enough – he seemed to recall there had been some incident or other shortly afterwards with fire and mechanical creatures whirring around.

“So why did Kronos want a human lie detector?” Robyn asked.  “Did he not trust his own followers?”

“No,” Lee said bluntly.  “He didn’t.”

“Was he right not to?” Austin leaned in, looking eager.  Lee comforted himself with the knowledge that Austin was too young to put things together, and that he didn’t know Lee.  Some of the older ones, the ones that had known him longer, were starting to give him considering looks that he didn’t think he liked.

“Michael knows,” Joy said, her quiet, rasping voice cutting across the silence before Lee had to answer.  “Doesn’t he?”

Lee glanced at their brother and nodded.  “He figured me out a few years ago,” he admitted.

Robyn snorted.  “Of course he did.”

He risked looking back at his siblings again.  None of them seemed to be looking at him like they suddenly hated him, so that was a good start.

Then Tris twisted in his arms, and gave Lee a tight, tight hug.  “He hurt him,” he said, turning his head back to everyone else, and there was intent in the movement.  An expectation, and Lee wasn’t sure what for, but then there was a sea of movement and he once again found himself in the middle of a pile of Apollo kids, all of them clinging to him somehow.

It was acceptance, sincere and warm, and Lee didn’t mean to break down, had hoped that his siblings wouldn’t hate him, but with the proof and the love and everything…

Tris’ hair was already wet with saltwater.  It wouldn’t notice if it got any wetter.

Chapter 22>>>

[twenty-words-or-less]

Beau Is Afraid

Summary: Beau Wassermann (Joaquin Phoenix) does everything he can to make his way to his mother's (Patti LuPone) funeral after her apparent death.

Aster’s Babylon in terms of scope, length, departure from previous style(s), and difficult commercial appeal. Nice break from fire, though.

Rating: 3.25/5

Photo credit: Vanity Fair

[movienized-com]

Beau Is Afraid (2023)

Jahr: 2023 (April) Genre: Comedy / Drama / Horror Regie: Ari Aster Hauptrollen: Joaquin Phoenix, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zoe Lister-Jones, Armen Nahapetian, Parker Posey, Patti LuPone… Filmbeschreibung: Beau (Joaquin Pheonix) ist erfolgreicher Unternehmer und leidet zugleich an einer schweren Paranoia, die nicht zuletzt sehr wahrscheinlich im Zusammenhang mit seiner…

[cinemacentral666]

Beau is Afraid (2023)

Movie #1,172 • SPOOKY MONTH 2023

Listen to my "podcast" review that I recorded on my phone driving home from Philadelphia immediately after seeing this in the theater on Thursday, June the 8th...

I think this movie is an excellent exercise in being able to accept a piece of art as both an indulgent, sloppy mess and uncompromising masterpiece; these things feel part and parcel in this case. All of the elements, and especially the most insane scenes/choices, feel crucial to the greater point: the unknowable and weird bigness inherent in the mystery of the child-mother relationship.

On the one hand, the themes are bludgeoning you to the death, but there also seems to be a layered puzzle lurking in the background. It feels almost too obvious to say this is begging you to pick through the background, to find clues hidden in the various threads/settings, either to figure out 'what's really going on' or to expand on the motifs and messaging; a single glance at Reddit will show you comment threads within comments threads that seem to go on forever. This level of attention to detail, regardless of how much is window dressing and/or dead ends, is remarkably admirable and clearly part of Ari Aster's intentions (imo! I can totally see how this would be off-putting/pretentious as well). I would go as far to say that I wish ALL movies were made with this much care and love and psychotic precision (even if the latter is, in part, something of a mirage).

But you know what? Despite it screaming at you to examine it, to discuss it endlessly, I found it to be genuinely entertaining and funny throughout. Some lines of dialogues and abrupt moments/cuts almost come off like non-sequiturs or Tim and Eric level absurdism. So in this sense, there seems like a real danger/futility in over-analyzing it. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a bait and switch — I love digging into a film with repeat viewings — but it also seems like one could (and maybe should) try submitting to the craziness and just enjoying the ride.

(Ed. Note: Because I've added the quarter-star system to this new scoring system, I think it's fitting/funny to give this a 9.75 but I think it's spiritually a 10. Jeffy Too Tens strikes again!)

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¾

[rickchung]

Beau Is Afraid (dir. Ari Aster).

Joaquin Phoenix stars in a three-hour-long nightmare fuelled fever dream of middle-aged anxieties unfolding as a series of existential crises steeped in maternal Jewish neuroses. It's an artfully thoughtful and the ultimate definition of a tough watch. Aster's surrealist vision of upsetting tragicomedy is a disorienting experience.