#no more plot punching bag for robby

[urjustaguyonahorse]

robby and tory have been fighting their whole lives and i really love that the longer the show goes on the more miguel and sam who were always the peaceful ones turn into their protectors because really at this point every time somebody goes after one of them you know they're gonna get throat punched by miguel and sam

[hawksbacktattoo]

Opportunity | Robby x Fem!reader

Summary: reader has a crush on Robby, training session gone right.

Warnings: smut with plot, p in v, unprotected sex, creamp!e

Word count: 2k

Not proof read

Robby Keene, every girls dream including yn's. Between school and the dojo, yn was constantly seeing him. They've shared conversations, which was inevitable since they had common friends.

Today was no different, school then straight to the dojo. Throwing her stuff into her locker at the dojo, yn started her stretches out on the mat. Miguel joining shortly after, then the other two. "Bro calc sucked ass today." Tory groaned, thinking back to the pop up test the professor gave them. "Tell me about it, if it weren't for demetri I would've been cooked." Miguel huffed, helping yn do her sit ups.

"If you two actually paid attention in class, it wouldn't be that hard." Robby snarked at the two shaking his head. Just hearing his voice gave yn butterflies. The three chatted until sensei Lawrence came in.

A loud 'Quiet' catching everyone's attention. "Now, with the All Valley competition being just three weeks away, I need to be sure you are all prepared for what's to come." He spoke, pacing back in forth in front of the group, hands crossed behind his back. "Today we're gonna do some one on one hand combat, I'll call your name and you'll come to the center of the mat. First to three point wins." With that said, everyone chirped up a bit, excited for some actual hands on training.

"First up Diaz and Moskowitz." The two stood and took their places in the center of the mat. Both getting into their stances before sensei shouted 'Ais'. The two threw kicks and jabs, Hawk gaining two points at first then Miguel began his trail of back to back points, reaching three in just a few moves. "Good shit Diaz." Sensei applauded, giving Hawk a pat on the back when he passed by.

He called out a few more names, all being just as good as the last. "Alright, Keene and yln." Her stomach churned, not only because she gets to do some one on one combat with Robby but also because she knows he's way better at her in karate.

Sighing as she took her stance, teeth grinding out of nervousness. "AIS!" Her body moved on command, doing a circle around the mat before throwing a kick which he easily blocked. Robby threw a quickly jab, too fast for yn to process was even coming. He was gentle though, being sure not to hit the girl too hard as they fought.

Yn did a turning kick, finally laying a point on him. The score was now two to one, she backed herself up a little waiting for him to come to her. Robby inched closer, hands up by the sides of his face. Yn finally threw a punch only for his to blocked and flip the girl underneath him. "Point, Robby wins." Sensei Lawrence shouted.

The two stared at one another before Robby cleared his throat and stood to his feet. He reached out a hand to help the girl up which she gladly took. He smiled at her and walked back to where they were seated before.

Class was over, most people had left at the point including sensei. He trusted yn with the keys to lock up which was a normal occurrence, she wanted to get some alone training in.

Popping her ear buds in, she took her stance and began throwing kicks and jabs at the punching bag. Today was a reminder to her that she had so much more to learn. Robby had only been in the dojo for about a month and he was already one of the best fighters there. Yn has been training with Johnny since middle school and was still struggling to compare to most.

The thought frustrated her more, throwing harder kicks and punches, she groaned out in frustration. Pressing her head against the sweating punching back, she switched off her music deciding it was enough for the night. Turning to head to the locker room, she was met with Robby leaning against the doorway. Arms crossed over his toned chest with a stern look on his face.

"Everything alright yn?" His voiced was laced with concern, brows knitted together. "Yeah just.. struggling a little." She admitted. Walking over to him, she plopped down on the bench next to the door. "I've been doing this for so long, yet I still struggle with so much." Her shoulders slouched, fingers playing with the buttons on the side of her phone.

"What are you talking about? You were amazing today, a few missed shots doesn't mean your bad." He took a seat next to the saddened girl, nudging her with his shoulder. "If it means this much to you, I can stay late tomorrow and help you train a little." She lifted her head, a smile creeping up on her face. "I would love that." She was screaming on the inside. He looked prettier up close, his eyes were so beautiful.

The next day yn sat in class looking up at the clock every five minutes, pencil between her teeth as she bounced her leg. "Damn you good?" Miguel questioned, brow lifted as he looked at the jittery girl. "You've been antsy all morning."

Turning to face the boy she gleamed. "More than okay, just wish the day would go by faster." Miguel shook his head, his focus falling back to the board in front of them.

When classes ended for the day, yn basically sprinted out of class. Being the first one at the dojo was the first time in a while. She shoved hee things in her locker like always and shook her hands to calm herself down.

The three met up with her on the mat, Miguel and Robby talking amongst themselves. Yn couldn't help but sneak a few glances at Robby every once in a while.

Robby smiled to himself each time he saw the girl look up at him from the corner of his eye. "What's with you too? You and yn have been smiling like idiots all day." Robby chuckled thinking she's been just as amped up as him for later tonight. "Nothing, just in a good mood." He replied, glancing over at the girl who was on Tory's back.

Training was simple today, sensei had them practicing their kicks and balance for most of the day. "Just drop them in my mailbox tonight, I won't be home." Johnny tossed yn the keys heading out himself.

Putting the keys in her bag, yn walked back out to see Robby stretching on the mat shirtless like the before. "Ready?" He suddenly spoke, hopping up from the mat. She smiled and nodded walking over to him.

"You want to be positioned like this." He fixed her stance, hands placed at her hips. He had been helping her adjust her accuracy. Showing her better ways to punch, easier ways to kick and now how to position herself at the start of a match.

She wasn't expecting him to touch her though. Everywhere his hands left burnt hot, just as her face did from how close he was to her. His chest pressed against her back while they looked into the large mirror so he could show her how to move.

The room fell quiet for a moment, looking at each other in the mirror, his hands still gripped at her waist. "Should we try sparing again." Yn broke the silence, pulling herself away from his hold. Scratching the back of his head he nodded.

Standing in front of each other in their stances again, Robby shouted 'Ais' and they moved closer to one another. Yn waited for the right moment just as he told her, to throw a quick kick to his side. Landing a blow pretty quickly. "Good job." He praised before landing two blows to her leg then her side. "Damn it." She groaned, hands coming back to the sides of her face.

It felt like she was getting deja vu, she back away waiting for him to make his move and just like before he blocked her kicked and flipped her to the ground. "That was much better." He smiled down at her.

Yn wasted not time pulling the boy into a kiss, she felt like this was the only opportunity she'd have. Robby kissed her back passionately, his head dipping to the side to deepen the kiss.

Pulling away, chest heaving from the lack of breath, they stared at each again before yn was pulled up and lifted into his arms. Robby pushed her up against the mirror, lips connecting back with hers with a hum. His fingers digging into her butt as he pushed himself up against her.

"Please fvck me.." she pleded into his lips, hands pressed to his cheeks. "With pleasure." He groaned, setting the girl down momentarily to strip from his clothes as she does the same.

Picking her back up, he lined himself up before slamming into her. A scream ripping from yns throat from the stretch. "oh my god." she cried out, burrowing her face into his neck as he fvcked up into her. Robby was fvcking her like there was no tomorrow, gripping her hips to make her fvck back onto him, head thrown back as deep moans left his lips.

"You look so beautiful." He praised. Letting one leg fall, he pulled the other to his chest, pumping deeper into her cvnt. Yn was basically crying at this point, the feeling so overwhelming combined with the cold glass pressed against her back. "yes robby..fvck." she breathed out. Eyes falling to where their bodies connected, whimpering at the sight of him filling her up.

Pulling out, Robby turned her around bending her over and pushing himself back in. Pulling her hair, he wanted her to see how they looked together. "Look at you.. taking me so wall." He cooed, laying a hard slap to her butt.

His thrust became sloppy as he edge closer to his release. Eyes dimming as he rolled his hips into her. Yn loved the way he looked behind her, abs tightening with her thrust, biceps flexing as he used her hair to slam her down onto his cvck.

"Cvm in me robby, i want you to fill me up." She begged through a moan, legs growing tired beneath her. That was just what Robby needed to finish. His thighs tensed, eye screwing shut as he fucked through his climax. "Fvck you feel so good." He hummed, hips coming to a stop.

Pulling himself out slowly, he lifted her top half up and wrapped his arms around her. Just then, the dojo door swung open and in came Miguel and Tory. "Hey yn you wan- OH FVCK OH MY GOD." Tory covered her eyes, turning herself around completely and Miguel stood in shock. Robby and yns eyes widened and the rushed to get something to cover themselves.

"You know, this makes so much sense now. No wonder to you too we're acting weird all day." Miguel had been prodding at the two since they left the dojo. Robby and yn sat in the back of Miguel's car after he dropped off Tory. "Never expected to see Robby's bare *ss though." Robby face palmed and told the other to just be quiet.

"Good night yn." Robby smiled at her as he hopped out of Miguel's car. "Night Keene." She responded, watching as he walked up to his apartment. "Hey how come he didn't tell me good night, little ungrateful shit." Miguel huffed. The two of them lived in the same apartment complex so it was a pretty dreadful ride back to her apartment. Miguel teased the girl the entire way back.

Throwing herself onto her couch groaning, yns phone chimed. Flipping onto her back she opened her messages and smiled. It was a mirror selfie of Robby in a towel, fresh out of the shower with a message reading. 'My place next time.' She giggled and responded. 'Oh so there's a next time?'

Shutting her phone off, she relaxed into her couch before dozing off for the night.

[purplerakath]

Cobra Kai S6 - Various Part 3 Thoughts

So I'm not going to go as far as saying 'it stuck the landing' because... it dropped a few things pretty hard, but it did much better than I expected. And at least did something approaching resolve some of my overall issues with the show.

The sorts of things I whine about whenever I post on this.

So please enjoy this rambly hastily cobbled together thing on the whole of it. Spoilers, obviously.

The most Important Thing (to just me)

Sam looked so good in the Cobra Kai gi.

...what? You thought it'd actually be important? I mean- it is, if your whole thing is 'failing to figure out how to conclude a fic where Sam is team Cobra Kai from the start.' But okay, okay, onto the real matters.

The End is the Beginning

So Team Miyagi Do (which in this case means Danny, Sam, and Robby) had the right lessons for it. If you really wanted Robby to win... anything, ever, I'm sorry. But the whole point, the whole thing, of Miyagi Do, is not fighting. Robby didn't need to win, he needed to know he could win. Sam... wasn't really fighting for herself anymore (once S4 and S5 resolved her threads with Tory she was there for Miguel and her dad, nobody else). And Daniel was trying to defeat an enemy that didn't really exist until he made it exist.

Which left only the characters with actual things they needed to fight for.

The Show isn't Miyagi Do

The pivot away from team Miyagi Do winning the tournament to Cobra Kai is one that only works because the show is Cobra Kai. And the only characters left with a thing they needed to prove were all the pinnacle of Cobra Kai.

Which isn't for themselves, for the record. Miguel knew who he was and what he can do. Johnny knew what his purpose was and where he needed to be. Tory knew she was no longer alone (although reminding her helped). And all three knew that those Iron Dragon assholes needed their kick teethed out onto the mat in front of everyone in this very arena!

I don't think they stuck the landing on Axel, balancing 'really is just a sweet kid' that 'happened to be weaponized by his sensei' but they got close enough. Wolf and Zara are entirely deserving of all that happened to them. Which helps, that of the three fights the narrative of fighting monsters was more in the latter two fights, Axel was just... there to be a punching bag for Miguel.

Old Couple's Explosive End to Marriage

So the Silver stuff is gold (pun I do not apologize for), his reason for everything, what's going on. Why he's doing this all worked. It's petty and dramatic and overblown and we love that for him. He's good, love it.

Kreese's sudden heel face was less believable largely due to less foreshadowing this season. There was plenty of it in earlier seasons showing he genuinely cares about his students (and expresses it in destructive bad ways). But this season it came out of nowhere after having him double down on evil.

That. Being. Said. Kreese's final act being to protect his student from Silver did work. He apologized to everyone, expected nothing in return, and died in a way nobody will ever really know. He doesn't get lionized in death. He just- at the last moment, did the right thing in the shadows.

Free Space: Demetri Sucks

We didn't get a lot of the rest of the cast for the finale due to... five episodes with a lot of fights. So naturally we let Demetri fail back into a relationship he blew up by cheating on her and he did nothing to win her back and I hate everything about this.

They never actually wrote this character learning anything about himself and I will be bad about it forever.

Plot Twist: Saying something Nice About Daniel

My other 'the writers do this so wrong' focus is on Daniel, and his 'do this my way and no other way' behavior (which the show never calls out and he never learns from). But he actually learned something once? Weird, I know, but it happened!

He hit Johnny with a Cobra Kai pep talk! He wore the gi, he went to Johnny's side of things and did things Johnny's way! That's way more than I ever expected from him! He even owned up to how much his emotions got hackled by the sign (in a throw away line but I'll take it!)

Odds and Ends

Sam/Miguel's romance stuff was sweet and generally good vibes. It was the right balance of grand gestures and practical 'teenagers moving on with their lives' to it.

Robby/Tory still doesn't work, largely due to it having a very poor basis two seasons ago. Their moment during the Zara fight was aces though.

Devon hugging Johnny after the fight was so wholesome, she'll be a great older sister to Johnny's daughter.

Hawk's hair was great, no notes.

The answer to Miyagi's backstory mystery was... fine? It didn't really do anything long term. It created a plot arc for Daniel he didn't need. But it ended on a message of ACAB so I'll take it.

Deepfaking dead actors is still weird and they need to stop.

The girls training storyline worked better than the boys training storyline, but at least the boys one included Robby being stunned how much his step-brother is more like his dad than he is.

So, overall...

It could have been better, but it could have been so much worse. I wasn't expecting Daniel to step aside and let it all fall to Johnny, to Trust Johnny.

The focus on Johnny getting his dojo at the end, loved that. So I'm pleasantly content with this.

[lordofhunger47]

The Owl House successed where Gravity Falls failed:

Don't get wrong,this isn't a hate message toward Gravity Falls,I'm not trying to say which show is better and I consider Gravity Falls to be a masterpiece but a flawed one,and I'm going to talk how The Owl House sucessed in which Gravity Falls failed(be civil):

1-Blame Game:In Gravity Falls the narration shown Ford to be the one to blame only, although it is true that he is faulty,so as Stan.

sure he didn't mean to destroy Ford's project but he didn't told him in order to fix it either because he secretly hope that his accident would make Ford stay,he was petty in weirdmaggedon and while Ford is arrogant with messiah complex, Stan is implusive with victim complex and at least Ford TRIES to take responsibilty while stan only did take responsibility when he tries to keep Mabel and Dipper out of this by FAVORITISM and HUMILIATION the fact that he do so after his father the water downed-american-ozai wannable only makes it worse(lets be honest if Dipper was gay,bi or trans everyone in media would scream for blood after seeing Dipper vs Manliness).

Besides,how would you feel if one of your relatives steal your identity,ruin your name and make a mockery out of your life's work?sure he was trying to have enough money to return you but what part of "stealing your name and mock your job" was necessary?even a simple merch shop makes as much money as a tourist trap.

The Owl House on the other hand,Doesn't play "sacepegoat" in Eda and Lilith case,instead it address both of their faults without choosing sides(Lilith for cursing Eda and Eda for letting her insecurities to push everyone away).

2-Protagonist:what makes them hard to write them is that if you are not be careful either they will end up as plot armor or being punished for anything in every turn and Dipper and Mabel examplified it.

Dipper:I get that his character arc pretty much amounts to: "Stop being a pretentious twit, stop trying to act older than you are, enjoy being a kid while you can." The problem is that the show eventually starts beating on Dipper for wanting ANYTHING at all, and that he must always put Mabel first, even if she's in the wrong. The show seems to say that Dipper should take Mabel's approach to life, and although that might make him happier, he's just not Mabel. Instead of learning to pursue his goals in a less reckless way, he is dis-alluded from having goals period, and that can get frustrating to watch,I don't have a sibiling but I do know that pleasing one in sacrifice of your dreams and everything that makes you you is NOT how healthy family relationships works in fact it is toxic.

Mabel:Now now I don't hate Mabel(the only characters in GF that I genuienly hate are Robbie and Pacifica's parents) and I oppose the idea that Mabel should be completely miserable like a CERTAIN AU,but there is no denying that her character suffers lack of change,all her antics is played for laughs only,unlike other characters she never face her consequences and she learns the same repeative lesson and yet never learns(I'm aware of Lost Legends but thats a comic not part of the show so it doesn't change this fatal flaw in the show and even if it was an episode it would still be repeative and only be in "words" not "action").

What makes Luz special?people most of the time forget that it is not her sexuality that makes her unique(sure being the first LGBT Disney protagonist is a big deal but thats just the perk not the character) is that she is balanced between two extrems,not so perfect that it is bland and unrelateable(like rey from sequel trilogy) or only exist to be the punching bag or being idiotic to feel pity(like morty from rick and morty) or despicable(like the protagonist from revenge of nerds who technically committed rape), just human(hence why me a boy who is straight as narrow and is more into sci-fi than fantasy finds her more endearing and relateable than Dipper and Mabel).

3-Ships:The Owl House unlike GF didn't reduce love interests as stereotypical(like Wendy),they didn't made a bigger deal about crushes than it needs to be,didn't fell for tropes(like Pacifica) and take time.

for instance, if you think about it lumity and dipacifica are basically alike except lumity took time,develop,didn't came out of nowhere in one episode and didn't fell for "I hate you but now I love you despite the major differences" cliché trope.

4-The line between friendly tease and humilation:it is true that GF mostly play tease for laughs but sometimes it goes too far.

Take Dipper vs Manliness for example,Stan and Mabel publicaly humiliated Dipper for his insecurities toward masculanity which is just cruel,it is like mocking a tom-boy girl for being too "boyish" and not "girly" enough.

While it is true that Eda and King sometimes mock Luz,I hardly compare those banterings with Stan forcing Dipper into being a furry stripper or giving the ozai treatment to "tough him up" and as I recall Luz and the Blight twins were condemned by the narration for invading Amity's privacy unlike Mabel's invading of privacy.

(Alex once said he didn't mean to make Pacifica's parents look abusive despite the fact that they trained Pacifica to follow the bell LIKE A PET,as much as I admire Alex I sometimes wonder if he underestimates what abuse is)

[too-loud-but-not-enough]

Of street gangs and coffee (Robbie Reyes x Male Reader)

Hey everyone! Sorry its been a while but I finally got around to finishing this fic. Been busy with Uni work but I am also working on more to post. Hope you like it.

Plot Summary: You find Gabe Reyes being harassed by thugs and try to help. Afterwards you meet his brother Robbie

Today hadn’t been like you had planned. After spending the morning studying and listening to the teacher drone on through classes, you were happy to be on your way to work. Knowing the type of neighbourhood you lived in, you weren’t too surprised to see a group of men on the street trying to dismantle car parts so they could sell. Being somewhat of a house cat and not getting out much, you didn’t do anything to stop them in fear they’d see you as a punching bag though as you walked by, you were quick to do a double take. The men had stopped trying to steal the wheels from a wagon and had now set their sights on a boy in a wheelchair. 

Shit.

You’d seen that boy around college. You didn’t know his name exactly, something like Gabe, he was younger than you yet seemed brighter than most in your class. Getting back to the present. You saw as he tried to ignore the men looking at him and push himself away. You saw the men were mainly eyeing his wheelchair yet some some were laughing at his look of fear. Before they could completely back him to the wall, something in you made you rush to stand between the boy and the group. You stood yourself firm “Please back off”. You didn’t let your voice waver nor did you come off aggressive yet you said while looking what looked to be the leader dead in the eye. You heard a *ting* sound and realised it must have been the back of Gabe’s wheelchair hitting the brick wall behind him. All the man did was laugh at your futile attempt to protect him “Yo man fuck off ok? You can’t do shit”. Before you could even try to think of a way to get Gabe out safely, a roaring could be heard, causing everyone to turn their attention away from you. Before you knew it, a slick black ZxB charger came literally charging at the group. The men jumped back in time for the car to stop right where they had been, blocking them from you and Gabe. The doors burst open and a man and woman jumped out to face the group. Gabe gasped “Robbie?!”. You turned to him, tilting your head in the direction of the man “You know him?”. Gabs looked back to you and nodded “brother”. That made sense, not a lot of people in this neighbourhood would usually come to someone else rescue, especially if their car looked that slick. The man, Robbie, had been  glaring down the group leading as he tried running his hand across the hood of the charger. Honestly, if looks could kill, this man would never have walked the earth. The leader suddenly screamed bloody murder. Wiping his hand back in pain with the smell of burnt flesh running through the air. This caused the whole gang to charge forward at the two. The woman sent a look in Gabe’s direction, neither her or the man seeming to notice you in front of him, before turning to punch one of the gang members square in the face. 

As the fight began, you looked to Gabe and saw his scared expression. Not really thinking about anything else, you got behind him and grabbed ahold of his wheelchair and steered him in the direction you were originally headed. “Wait!” He cried out, turning to make sure he could keep his eyes on his brother “what about Robbie!?”. As much as you wanted to stay and help, you doubted either Robbie or that woman, possibly his girlfriend?, wanted Game anywhere near that fight. “He looks like he can handle himself, I’m gonna get you to safety” he didn’t argue with you, not when you were basically running him across the street.

When you both arrived at the cafe you worked at, your boss came to see why you were so out of breath and were pushing a kid in a wheelchair. You informed them of the fight and what they tried to do to Gabs to which your boss let you serve counter so you could keep an eye on Gabe. There weren’t really any customers today, just a passerby or two so you were able to keep Gabs company and made sure he was all right, letting him use your phone to call his brother while waiting for him to come back. You spent that time to get to know him. He remembered you from the college as well and had actually wanted to say hi before yet never got the chance. Occasionally you’d check outside the window to see if Robbie or that woman were on their way, not that you’d be able to recognise them since you only got to see their faces once but the car and uniforms were a little harder to forget.

You and Gabe both spent to the front door when you heard a car engine, you being in front of him incase it were another gang. Speak of the devil, you saw that it was the charger that had stopped right out front your cafe, probably because they saw you through the tinted windows. Both of them got out and stalked to the front door looking pissed. “Gabe get back!” which he did obediently, not knowing why but seeing your worried expression and the look on the newcomers faces. 

The door bell rang loudly as Robbie pushed through. As soon as his eyes landed on you and Gabe who you had kept behind you, he stalked towards you most likely thinking you were a threat to his brother “get away from him!”. 

You really didn’t want to start a brawl you were pretty sure you’d lose in the small cafe but you stood your ground and glared Robbie dead in the eyes “calm down first asshole!”. Your order gave him pause, he just stared at you as his breathing gradually slowed down. His eyes were dark, nearly black yet you could still see the brown hue within them, there was something else as well. You were both so focused on each other that neither of you noticed Gabe rolling to your side.

“Robbie?”. 

That snapped you both out of it and you resumed your stature “you calm?”. 

He nodded “yeah” he said letting out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding you supposed. He then turned his full attention to Gabe, kneeling down to check if he was hurt to which Gabe took his hands in his and assured him he was fine. 

This caused a chuckle from the woman who you now got to face without there being an impending fight about to happen. She turned to you and smiled, her dark eyeliner giving her eyes stand out more in the smile. “Hi I’m Daisy, a friend of Robbie’s”. 

You smiled and stuck out your hand to shake “(Y/N), nice to meet you”. 

She took your hand and shook it “You a friend of Gabe’s”. 

You tilted your head in a ‘sorta kinda’ fashion “Sorta, I recognised him from college when those men went for him”. 

She raised an eyebrow at you “and you helped?”. 

The question made something you go off yet you tried to keep your voice steady “yeah, why not?”. 

“Just wouldn’t have picked many types like that around here” was all she said, smiling again. 

“You have to be careful around here!”. You both heard Robbie say after making sure Gabs was alright. You turned to see him still crouching near Gabe’s wheelchair thinking now might be a good time to interject. 

“It wasn’t his fault, those guys were trying to take his wheels”. 

Robbie’s head snapped in your direction before standing up, some of the tension still there from before “and you just ran off with him”. 

“Trying to get him to safety” you defended. Something in his eyes seemed to flash at you, you didn’t know whether to be cautious or defiant. 

“Robbie he was just trying get me out of there” Game pulled on his brother’s sleeve to ease the tension. Robbie’s gruff demeaneor shifted slightly. 

“Sorry” he said under breath which you no doubt heard before he let his gaze fall on you again “and thanks… for looking after Gabe”. 

You smiled, glad to see he wasn’t about to smash your face against a wall “No sweat, I’m just glad you two showed up when you did, sweet ride by the way”. 

He chuckled at that. “Heh thanks, glad you got them to back off just in time”. The four of you stayed at the cafe for a little bit, that was until the sun started to set. 

Your shift had ended and your manager let you go with the trio. As you made your way onto the street, you felt a pair of eyes on the back of your head “Hey!”. 

You turned to see Robbie who was setting Gabe in his car with Daisy trying to fold the wheelchair with no success “how about we give you a ride home?”. 

You didn’t know why but something about the way he said it seemed a tad hopeful yet worried. You didn’t want to intrude yet you did live in one of the more gritty parts of town. “Uh, sure” you said to which Robbie and Gave both smiled at your response. You took the wheelchair from Daisy and folded it up in less than a minute. 

“Damn, you really know your way round that contraption” Daisy remarked at your speed after closing the door. You’d sat next to Gabe where as she sat in the front next to Robbie.

The drive went smoothly in terms of driving. Not one run in with a group of gangsters or anything. Everyone kept clear of the charger coming through. Robbie introduced you and Gabe to Daisy who Gabe conversed about mechanics and travel for the majority of the ride while you mainly kept silent but still listening intently to the subject. 

While you heard everything they were saying, you kept your eyes out the windows checking to see if there were any obstacles Robbie wasn’t seeing. Occasionally you’d look over to the rear mirror and see him returning the gaze before looking back to the road. 

This gave you a bit of time to assess his features. His appearance was like Gabe’s due to genetics, smooth caramel complexion yet his were suited more to your age with his jaw being a bit longer and sporting a stubble and moustache surrounding a pair of smooth yet thin lips. His eyes looked back to the mirror and to you again causing you to avert your gaze quickly. You ten realised that could be considered rude so you looked back to see if he was still looking at you. 

He was.

He smirked a bit and winked at you before turning back to the road again. You were grateful no one was looking at you so they wouldn’t see you blushing.

Soon you arrived at Robbie’s house. 

Everyone got out except for Gabe as he needed his wheelchair so you retrieved it from the back and assembled it for him. 

Robbie gave you a grateful look as he lowered his brother into the seat. He then looked to Daisy, “are you able to watch him?” He asked gesturing to his brother.  

Gabe gave an indignant pout “Hey! I don’t get in that much trouble”. To that you gave a loud cough to remind of why you were here. 

“Oi not funny (Y/N)!” the look of fake betrayal he directed at you sent you into a laughing fit. 

The others chuckled at your reactions and Daisy agreed to watch Gabe. You said your goodbyes and agreed to meet him again at College before Robbie got back in the car to take you to your apartment. You slid into the front seat as he started the car. 

As the two of you drove to your apartment which only seemed like a distance because of all the twists and turns, you couldn’t help but look at Robbie’s features again. He seemed a bit tense still yet also sorta happy. His brows weren’t set in a frown which made you realise how soft his eyes were, soft dark brown that seemed to take in all surroundings. That included you looking at him. 

“See something you like?”.

Oh Shit!

“S-sorry!” what left your lips was a stammer when you meant for it to be a bit more stable. Damn you.

Robbie let a little smirk form, he noticed you staring at him on the drive with Gabe and Daisy and tried looking you over without being noticed. Not that it worked for either of you. 

“Its all good” he said as smoothly as he could. It was a bit awkward for him on the inside. He didn’t usually find anyone this cute since he felt he needed to keep a tough persona for his and Gabe’s sake plus the added stress it could put on his family if he was openly hitting on a guy. It didn’t matter though, he was always going to have the stress of the ghost rider on him and ever since he met Daisy, SHIELD was included.

It wasn’t just because you were cute that attracted him though. Sure he had seen you around the College on the occasions he gave his brother a lift home and nearly enquired about who you were but wasn’t sure what type of person you’d be. It was only when he saw you running his brother to safety that he realised you were the same person, grateful Gabe was with a random passerby. 

“Thanks for saving Gabe before”.

You looked over to him again, having been trying to figure if you should start a conversation before he spoke. You smiled at him, not sure if he could see it out of his peripheral vision but nevertheless.

“Anytime, I’m just glad he didn’t get hurt though I don’t know if I could have really done anything besides being a wall”.

That spark something in Robbie.

“You did great, also surprised you were able to get away so quickly”.

It was true, first he was furious that Gave had been taken without his permission yet given the circumstances, it only made him want to finish the fight faster. Then when he stormed into your cafe, he admired how you stood your ground against him for Gabe’s safety.

You blushed at the remark, “I thought it might put him in more danger if he were close to the fight, also sorry I stopped you from seeing him straight away” you felt you needed to apologise even when you felt it was necessary. 

Robbie chuckled at your apology “no worries, I’m glad you did though, my friend Daisy’s always saying I’m a bit of a hothead when it comes to Gabe”. 

His comment on Daisy made you question. Were they just friends or on the way to being something more? You thought Robbie was straight down handsome yet thought it’d be less likely for him to like guys and maybe Daisy and him might have been a thing. “So she’s just a friend? I almost mistook her for a girlfriend”.

Robbie’s brow quirked at your question. Did you think he was off limits? He wouldn’t be surprised but that idea. “Yeah Daisy’s just a friend, why you jealous?”.

At that he wriggled his brows at you causing you to trying but failing to suppress a laugh.

That laugh was so cute, it gave Robbie even more incentive to make a move. 

As he pulled his charger up to your apartment block, he set the car into park and turned to you. “So this is where you live?” He looked at the building, it was pretty nice considering the neighbourhood yet seemed like it could use some renovations.

“Yeah” you replied sheepishly, “the neighbours are pretty nice so theres not much trouble the happens on this block”. It wasn’t the best you could do but you wanted to save more money during College so you could move somewhere else once you got the job you wanted but for now you didn’t feel the need to move out. “Thanks for driving me home, I’ll see you and Gabe around College?” You asked turning your face away from the window and back to Robbie to find him staring at you. His gaze was warm and it felt like you were being engolved by the hazel irises. Keeping you there with no sense of danger. “Well I was gonna ask, you wanna catch up for coffee? Just us two”. 

You were a tad surprised, was he asking you out? “You mean like a date?”.

His brows furrowed a tiny bit. Crap had he made a mistake? The vibes he got from you weren’t straight but he could be wrong. He chose to stay confident, if you said no then surely you two could be friends or at least you and Gabe could still talk. “Um.. yeah if thats ok with you?”.

You smiled to reassure him, seeing as he was looking a little worried. “I would love too, how does tomorrow sound?”.

Just like that, Robbie’s face lit up like a sudden combustion of flame, his eyes squinted from the smile stretching across his cheeks. “Its a date then!” He said still smiling. 

You giggled at his reaction before you leaned forward and kissed his cheek, narrowly missing the lips but close enough to get an idea. He did his best to kiss back but you could both tell it was a little awkward, not that either of you minded that. “Goodnight Robbie” you said as you climbed out of your seat and closed the door.

“Night (Y/N)” he called as he watched you walk into the building. He waited until he could see you from the window waving down at him before driving off. The wobbling feels of butterflies swirling in his chest and belly. For  the first time in a while, the drive back was normal. No gangs trying to blow him up, no ghost rider taking over to reap the evil and now a cute date that he could look forward to who his brother already seemed to approve of. 

Now what the hell was he gonna wear to the date?

[grigori77]

2019 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 2)

20.  FROZEN 2 – so, another year, then, and once again Disney doesn’t QUITE manage to net the animated feature top spot on my list, but it’s not for lack of trying – this long-awaited sequel to the studio’s runaway hit musical fantasy adventure is just what we’ve come to love from the House of Mouse, but more importantly it’s a most worthy sequel, easily on a par with the much beloved origin.  Not much of a surprise given the welcome return of all the key people, from directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee (who also once again wrote the screenplay) to composer Christophe Beck and songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, as well as all the key players in the cast.  It’s business as usual in the kingdom of Arendelle, where all is seemingly peaceful and tranquil, but Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel) is restless, haunted by a distant voice that only she can hear, calling to her from a mysterious past she just can’t place … and then she accidentally awakens the four elemental spirits, sending her homeland into mystical turmoil, prompting her to embark on a desperate search for answers with her sister Princess Anna (Kristen Bell), ice harvester Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his faithful reindeer companion Sven, and, of course, living snowman Olaf (Josh Gad). Their quest leads them into the Enchanted Forest of Northuldra, a neighbouring kingdom, ruled by simple, elemental magic, that has remained cut off from Arendelle for decades, where they discover dark, hidden truths about their own family’s past and must make peace with the spirits if they’re to save their home and their people.  So, typical Disney family fantasy fare, then, right? Well, Frozen 2 certainly dots all the Is and crosses all the Ts, but, like the original, this is no jaded blockbuster money spinner, packed with the same kind of resonant power, skilful inventiveness and pure, show-stopping WOW-factor as its predecessor, but more importantly this is a sequel that effectively carves out a fresh identity for itself, brilliantly taking the world and characters in interesting new directions to create something fresh, rewarding and worthwhile on its own merit.  The returning cast are all as strong as ever, Menzel and Bell in particular ably powering the story, while it’s nice to see both Groff and Gad getting something new to do with their own characters too, even nabbing their own major musical numbers; there’s also a welcome slew of fresh new faces to this world, particular Sterling K. Brown (This is Us, Black Panther, The Predator) as lost Anrendelle soldier Mattias and former Brat Pack star Martha Plimpton as Yelena, leader of the lost tribe of Northuldra. Once again this is Disney escapism at its very best, a heart-warming, soul-nourishing powerhouse of winning humour, emotional power and child-like wonder, but like the first film the biggest selling point is, of course, that KILLER soundtrack, with every song here a total hit, not one dud among them, and there are even ear-worms here to put Let It Go to shame – Into the Unknown was touted as the major hit, and it is impressive, but I was particularly affected by Groff’s unashamedly full-bore rendition of Lost in the Woods, a bona fide classic rock power ballad crafted in the fashion of REO Speedwagon, while the undeniable highlight for me is the unstoppable Show Yourself, with Menzel once again proving that her incredible voice is a natural force all in itself.  Altogether, then, this is an absolute feast for the eyes, the ears AND the soul, every inch the winner that its predecessor was and also EASILY one of Disney’s premier animated features for the decade.  So it’s quite the runner-up, then …

19.  ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD – since his explosion onto the scene twenty-seven years ago with his runaway smash debut Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino has become one of the most important filmmakers of his generation, a true master of the cinematic art form who consistently delivers moving picture masterpieces that thrill, entertain, challenge and amuse audiences worldwide … at least those who can stomach his love of unswerving violence, naughty talk and morally bankrupt antiheroes and despicably brutal villains who are often little more than a shade different from one another.  Time has moved on, though, and while he’s undoubtedly been one of the biggest influences on the way cinema has changed over the past quarter century, there are times now that it’s starting to feel like the scene is moving on in favour of younger, fresher blood with their own ideas.   I think Tarantino can sense this himself, because he recently made a powerful statement – after he’s made his tenth film, he plans to retire.  Given that OUATIH is his NINTH film, that deadline is already looming, and we unashamed FANS of his films are understandably aghast over this turn of events.  Thankfully he remains as uncompromisingly awesome a writer-director as ever, delivering another gold standard five-star flick which is also most definitely his most PERSONAL work to date, quite simply down to the fact that it’s a film ABOUT film.  Sure, it has a plot (of sorts, anyway), revolving around the slow decline of the career of former TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo Dicaprio), who languishes in increasing anonymity in Hollywood circa 1969 as his former western hero image is being slowly eroded by an increasingly hacky workload guest-starring on various syndicated shows as a succession of punching-bag heavies for the hero to wale on, while his only real friend is his one-time stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), a former WW2 hero with a decidedly tarnished reputation of his own; meanwhile new neighbours have moved in next door to further distract him – hot-as-shit young director Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), riding high on the success of Rosemary’s Baby, and his new wife Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie).  Certainly this all drives the film, along with real-life events involving one of the darkest crimes in modern American history, but a lot of the time the plot is largely coincidental – Quentin uses it as a springboard to wax lyrical about his very favourite subject and pay loving (if sometimes irreverently satirical) tribute to the very business he’s been indulging in with such great success since 1992.  Sure, it’s also about “Helter Skelter” and the long shadow cast by Charles Manson and his band of murderous misfits, but this is largely incidental, as we’re treated to long, entertaining interludes as we follow Rick on a shoot as the bad guy in the pilot for the Lancer TV series, visit the notorious Spahn Ranch with Cliff as he’s unwittingly drawn into the lion’s den of the deadly Manson Family, join Robbie’s Tate as she watches “herself” in The Wrecking Crew, and enjoy a brilliant montage in which we follow Rick’s adventures in Spaghetti westerns (and Eurospy cinema) after he’s offered a chance to change his flagging fortunes, before the film finally builds to a seemingly inevitable, fateful conclusion that Tarantino then, in sneakily OTT Inglourious Basterds style, mischievously turns on its head with a devilish game of “What If”.  The results are a thoroughly engrossing and endlessly entertaining romp through the seedier side of Hollywood and a brilliant warts-and-all examination of the craft’s inner workings that, interestingly, reveals as much about the Business today as it does about how it was way back in the Golden Age the film portrays, all while delivering bucket-loads of QT’s trademark cool, swagger, idiosyncratic genius and to-die-for dialogue and character-work, and, of course, a typically exceptional all-star cast firing on all cylinders. Dicaprio and Pitt are both spectacular (Brad is endearingly taciturn, playing it wonderfully close to the vest throughout, while Leo is simply ON FIRE, delivering a mercurial performance EASILY on a par with his work on Shutter Island and The Wolf of Wall Street – could this be good enough to snag him a second Oscar?), while Robbie consistently endears us to Tate as she EFFORTLESSLY brings the fallen star back to life, and there’s an incredible string of amazing supporting turns from established talent and up-and-comers alike, from Kurt Russell, Al Pacino and a very spiky Bruce Dern to Mike Moh (in a FLAWLESS take on Bruce Lee), Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler and in particular Julia Butters as precocious child star Trudi Fraser.  Packed with winning references, homages, pastiches and ingenious little in-jokes, handled with UTMOST respect for the true life subjects at all times and shot all the way through with his characteristic flair and quirky, deliciously dark sense of humour, this is cinema very much of the Old School, and EVERY INCH a Tarantino flick.  With only one more film to go the implied end of his career seems much too close, but if he delivers one more like this he’ll leave behind a legacy that ANY filmmaker would be proud of.

18.  CRAWL – summer 2019’s runner-up horror offering marks a rousing return to form for a genre talent who’s FINALLY delivered on the impressive promise of his early work – Alexandre Aja made a startling debut with Switchblade Romance, which led to his big break helming the cracking remake of slasher stalwart The Hills Have Eyes, but then he went SPECTACULARLY off the rails when he made the truly abysmal Piranha 3D, which I wholeheartedly regard as one of THE VERY WORST FILMS EVER MADE IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. He took a big step back in the right direction with the admittedly flawed but ultimately enjoyable and evocative Horns (based on the novel by Stephen King’s son Joe Hill), but it’s with this stripped back, super-tight man-against-nature survival horror that the Aja of old has TRULY returned to us. IN SPADES.  Seriously, I personally think this is his best film to date – there’s no fat on it at all, going from a simple set-up STRAIGHT into a precision-crafted exercise in sustained tension that relentlessly grips right up to the end credits.  The film is largely just a two-hander – Maze Runner star Kaya Scodelario plays Haley Keller, a Florida college student and star swimmer who ventures into the heart of a Category 5 hurricane to make sure her estranged father, Dave (Saving Private Ryan’s Barry Pepper), is okay after he drops off the grid. Finding their old family home in a state of disrepair and slowly flooding, she does a last minute check of the crawl-space underneath, only to discover her father badly wounded and a couple of hungry alligators stalking the dark, cramped, claustrophobic confines. With the flood waters rising and communications cut off, Haley and Dave must use every reserve of strength, ingenuity and survival instinct to keep each other alive in the face of increasingly daunting odds … even with a premise this simple, there was plenty of potential for this to become an overblown, clunky mess in the wrong hands (a la Snakes On a Plane), so it’s a genuinely great thing that Aja really is back at the height of his powers, milking every fraught and suspenseful set-piece to its last drop of exquisite piano-wire tension and putting his actors through hell without a reprieve in sight.  Thankfully it’s not JUST about scares and atmosphere – there’s a genuinely strong family drama at the heart of the story that helps us invest in these two, Scodelario delivering a phenomenally complex performance as she peels back Haley’s layers, from stubborn pedant, through vulnerable child of divorce, to ironclad born survivor, while reconnecting with her emotionally raw, repentantly open father, played with genuine naked intensity in a career best turn from Pepper. Their chemistry is INCREDIBLY strong, making every scene a joy even as it works your nerves and tugs on your heartstrings, and as a result you DESPERATELY want to see them make it out in one piece.  Not that Aja makes it easy for them – the gators are an impressively palpable threat, proper scary beasties even if they are largely (admittedly impressively executed) digital effects, while the storm is almost a third character in itself, becoming as much of an elemental nemesis as its scaly co-stars.  Blessedly brief (just 87 minutes!) and with every second wrung out for maximum impact, this is survival horror at its most brutally, simplistically effective, a deliciously vicious, primal chill-ride that thoroughly rewards from start to finish.  Welcome back, Mr Aja.  We’ve missed you.

17.  SHAZAM! – there were actually THREE movies featuring Captain Marvel out in 2019, but this offering from the hit-and-miss DCEU cinematic franchise is a very different beast from his MCU-based namesake, and besides, THIS Cap long ago ditched said monicker for the far more catchy (albeit rather more oddball) title that graces Warner Bros’ last step back on the right track for their superhero Universe following the equally enjoyable Aquaman and franchise high-point Wonder Woman.  Although he’s never actually referred to in the film by this name, Shazam (Chuck’s Eugene Levy) is the magically-powered alternate persona bestowed upon wayward fifteen year-old foster kid Billy Batson (Andi Mack’s Asher Angel) by an ancient wizard (Djimon Hounsou) seeking one pure soul to battle Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong), a morally corrupt physicist who turns into a monstrous supervillain after becoming the vessel for the spiritual essences of the Seven Deadly Sins (yup, that thoroughly batshit setup is just the tip of the iceberg of bonkersness on offer in this movie).  Yes, this IS set in the DC Extended Universe, Shazam sharing his world with Superman, Batman, the Flash et al, and there are numerous references (both overt and sly) to this fact throughout (especially in the cheeky animated closing title sequence), but it’s never laboured, and the film largely exists in its own comfortably enclosed narrative bubble, allowing us to focus on Billy, his alter ego and in particular his clunky (but oh so much fun) bonding experiences with his new foster family, headed by former foster kid couple Victor and Rosa Vazquez (The Walking Dead’s Cooper Andrews and Marta Milans) – the most enjoyably portions of the film, however, are when Billy explores the mechanics and limits of his newfound superpowers with his new foster brother Freddy Freeman (It Chapter 1’s Jack Dylan Glazer), a consistently hilarious riot of bad behaviour, wanton (often accidental) destruction and perfectly-observed character development, the blissful culmination of a gleefully anarchic sense of humour that, until recently, has been rather lacking in the DCEU but which is writ large in bright, wacky primary colours right through this film. Sure, there are darker moments, particularly when Sivana sets loose his fantastic icky brood of semi-corporeal monsters, and these scenes are handled with seasoned skill by director David F. Sandberg, who cut his teeth on ingenious little horror gem Lights Out (following up with Annabelle: Creation, but we don’t have to dwell on that), but for the most part the film is played for laughs, thrills and pure, unadulterated FUN, almost never taking itself too seriously, essentially intended to do for the DCEU what Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man did for the MCU, and a huge part of its resounding success must of course be attributed to the universally willing cast. Eugene Levy’s so ridiculously pumped-up he almost looks like a special effect all on his own, but he’s lost none of his razor-sharp comic ability, perfectly encapsulating a teenage boy in a grown man’s body, while his chemistry with genuine little comedic dynamo Glazer is simply exquisite, a flawless balance shared with Angel, who similarly excels at the humour but also delivers quality goods in some far more serious moments too, while the rest of Billy’s newfound family are all brilliant, particularly ridiculously adorable newcomer Faithe Herman as precocious little motor-mouth Darla; Djimon Hounsou, meanwhile, adds significant class and gravitas to what could have been a cartoonish Gandalf spoof, and Mark Strong, as usual, gives great bad guy as Sivana, providing just the right amount of malevolent swagger and self-important smirk to proceedings without ever losing sight of the deeper darkness within.  All round, this is EXACTLY the kind of expertly crafted superhero package we’ve come to appreciate in the genre, another definite shot in the arm for the DCEU that holds great hope for the future of the franchise, and some of the biggest fun I had at the cinema this past year.  Granted, it’s still not a patch on the MCU, but the quality gap finally seems to be closing …

16.  ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL – y’know, there was a time when James Cameron was quite a prolific director, who could be counted upon to provide THE big event pic of the blockbuster season. These days, we’re lucky to hear from him once a decade, and now we don’t even seem to be getting that – the dream project Cameron’s been trying to make since the end of the 90s, a big live action adaptation of one of my favourite mangas of all time, Gunnm (or Battle Angel Alita to use its more well-known sobriquet) by Yukito Kishiro, has FINALLY arrived, but it isn’t the big man behind the camera here since he’s still messing around with his intended FIVE MOVIE Avatar arc.  That said, he made a damn good choice of proxy to bring his vision to fruition – Robert Rodriguez is, of course, a fellow master of action cinema, albeit one with a much more quirky style, and this adap is child’s play to him, the creator of the El Mariachi trilogy and co-director of Frank Miller’s Sin City effortlessly capturing the dark, edgy life-and-death danger and brutal wonder of Kishiro’s world in moving pictures.  300 years after the Earth was decimated in a massive war with URM (the United Republics of Mars) known as “the Fall”, only one bastion of civilization remains – Iron City, a sprawling, makeshift community of scavengers that lies in the shadow of the floating city of Zalem, home of Earth’s remaining aristocracy.  Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) runs a clinic in Iron City customising and repairing the bodies of its cyborg citizens, from the mercenary “hunter killers” to the fast-living players of Motorball (a kind of supercharged mixture of Rollerball and Death Race), one day discovering the wrecked remains of a female ‘borg in the junkyard of scrap accumulated beneath Zalem.  Finding her human brain is still alive, he gives her a new chassis and christens her Alita, raising her as best he can as she attempts to piece together her mysterious, missing past, only for them both to discover that the truth of her origins has the potential to tear their fragile little world apart forever. The Maze Runner trilogy’s Rosa Salazar is the heart and soul of the film as Alita (originally Gally in the comics), perfectly bringing her (literal) wide-eyed innocence and irrepressible spirit to life, as well as proving every inch the diminutive badass fans have been expecting – while her overly anime-styled look might have seemed a potentially jarring distraction in the trailers, Salazar’s mocap performance is SO strong you’ve forgotten all about it within the first five minutes, convinced she’s a real, flesh-and-metal character – and she’s well supported by an exceptional ensemble cast both new and well-established.  Waltz is the most kind and sympathetic he’s been since Django Unchained, instilling Ido with a worldly warmth and gentility that makes him a perfect mentor/father-figure, while Spooksville star Keean Johnson makes a VERY impressive big screen breakthrough as Hugo, the streetwise young dreamer with a dark secret that Alita falls for in a big way, Jennifer Connelly is icily classy as Ido’s ex-wife Chiren, Mahershala Ali is enjoyably suave and mysterious as the film’s nominal villain, Vector, an influential but seriously shady local entrepreneur with a major hidden agenda, and a selection of actors shine through the CGI in various strong mocap performances, such as Deadpool’s Ed Skrein, Derek Mears, From Dusk Til Dawn’s Eiza Gonzalez and a thoroughly unrecognisable but typically awesome Jackie Earle Haley.  As you’d expect from Rodriguez, the film delivers BIG TIME on the action front, unleashing a series of spectacular set-pieces that peak with Alita’s pulse-pounding Motorball debut, but there’s a pleasingly robust story under all the thrills and wow-factor, riffing on BIG THEMES and providing plenty of emotional power, especially in the heartbreaking character-driven climax – Cameron, meanwhile, has clearly maintained strict control over the project throughout, his eye and voice writ large across every scene as we’re thrust headfirst into a fully-immersive post-apocalyptic, rusty cyberpunk world as thoroughly fleshed-out as Avatar’s Pandora, but most importantly he’s still done exactly what he set out to do, paying the utmost respect to a cracking character as he brings her to vital, vivid life on the big screen.  Don’t believe the detractors – this is a MAGNIFICENT piece of work that deserves all the recognition it can muster, perfectly set up for a sequel that I fear we may never get to see.  Oh well, at least it’s renewed my flagging hopes for a return to Pandora …

15.  AD ASTRA – last century, making a space exploration movie after 2001: A Space Odyssey was a pretty tall order. THIS century, looks like it’s trying to follow Chris Nolan’s Interstellar – love it or hate it, you can’t deny that particular epic space opera for the IMAX crowd is a REALLY tough act to follow.  At first glance, then, writer-director James Gray (The Yards, We Own the Night) is an interesting choice to try, at least until you consider his last feature – he may be best known for understated, gritty little crime thrillers, but I was most impressed by 2016’s ambitious period biopic The Lost City of Z, which focused on the groundbreaking career of pioneering explorer Percy Fawcett, and couldn’t have been MORE about the indomitable spirit of discovery if it tried.  His latest shares much of the same DNA, albeit presented in a VERY different package, as we’re introduced to a more expansive Solar System of the near future, in which humanity has begun to colonize our neighbouring worlds and is now pushing its reach beyond our own star’s light in order to discover what truly lies beyond the void of OUTER space.  Brad Pitt stars as Major Roy McBride, a career astronaut whose whole life has been defined by growing up in the shadow of his father, H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), a true pioneer who led an unprecedented expedition to the orbit of our furthest neighbour, Neptune, in order to search for signs of intelligent life beyond our solar system, only for the whole mission to go quiet for the past sixteen years.  Then a mysterious, interplanetary power surge throws the Earth into chaos, and Roy must travel farther than he’s ever gone before in order to discover the truth behind the source of the pulse – his father’s own ill-fated Lima Project … this is a very different beast from Interstellar, a much more introspective, stately affair, revelling in its glacial pacing and emphasis on character motivation over plot, but it’s no less impressive from a visual, visceral standpoint – Gray and cinematographer Hoyt van Hoytema (who, interestingly, ALSO shot Interstellar, along with Nolan’s Dunkirk and his upcoming feature Tenet) certainly make space look truly EPIC, crafting astonishing visuals that deserve to be seen on the big screen (or at the very least on the best quality HDTV you can find).  There’s also no denying the quality of the writing, Gray weaving an intricate story that reveals far greater depth and complexity than can be seen at first glance, while Roy’s palpable “thought-process” voiceover puts us right into the head of the character as we follow him across the endless void on a fateful journey into a cosmic Heart of Darkness.  There is, indeed, a strong sense of Apocalypse Now to proceedings, with the younger McBride definitely following a similar path to Martin Sheen’s ill-fated captain as he travels “up-river” to find his Colonel Kurtz-esque father, and the performances certainly match the heft of the material – there’s an impressive collection of talent on offer in a series of top-quality supporting turns, Jones being just the icing on the cake in the company of Donald Sutherland, Liv Tyler, John Ortiz and Preacher’s Ruth Negga, but the undeniable driving force of the film is Pitt, his cool, laconic control hiding uncharted depths of emotional turmoil as he’s forced to call every choice into question.  It’s EASILY one of the finest performances of his career to date, just one of the MANY great selling points in a film that definitely deserves to be remembered as one of the all-time sci-fi greats of the decade. An absolute masterpiece, then, but does it stand tall in comparison to Interstellar?  I should say so …

14.  BRIGHTBURN – torpedoing Crawl right out of the water in the summer, this refreshing, revisionist superhero movie takes one of the most classic mythologies in the genre and turns it on its head in true horror style.  The basic premise is an absolute blinder – what if, when he crashed in small-town America as a baby, Superman had turned out to be a bad seed?  Unsurprising, then, that it came from James Gunn, who here produces a screenplay by his brother and cousin Brian and Mark Gunn (best known for penning the likes of Journey 2: the Mysterious Island, but nobody’s perfect) and the directorial big break of his old mate David Yarovesky (whose only previous feature is obscure sci-fi horror The Hive) – Gunn is, of course, an old pro at taking classic comic book tropes and creating something completely new with them, having previously done so with HUGE success on cult indie black comedy Super and, in particular, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and his fingerprints are ALL OVER this one too.  The Hunger Games’ Elizabeth Banks (who starred in Gunn’s own directorial debut Slither) and David Denman (The Office) are Tori and Kyle Breyer, a farming couple living in Brightburn, Kansas, who are trying for a baby when a mysterious pod falls from the sky onto their land, containing an infant boy.  As you’d expect, they adopt him, determined to keep his origin a secret, and for the first twelve years of his life all seems perfectly fine – Brandon’s growing up into an intelligent, artistic child who loves his family. Then his powers manifest and he starts to change – not just physically (he’s impervious to harm, incredibly strong, has laser eyes and the ability to disrupt electronic devices … oh, and he can fly, too), but also in personality, as he becomes cold, distant, even cruel as he begins to demonstrate some seriously sociopathic tendencies.  As his parents begin to fear what he’s becoming, things begin to spiral out of control and people start to disappear or turn up brutally murdered, and it becomes clear that Brandon might actually be something out of a nightmare … needless to say this is superhero cinema as full-on horror, Brandon’s proclivities leading to some proper nasty moments once he really starts to cut loose, and there’s no mistaking this future super for one of the good guys – he pulverises bones, shatters faces and melts skulls with nary a twitch, just the tiniest hint of a smile.  It’s an astonishing performance from newcomer Jackson A. Dunn, who perfectly captures the nuanced subtleties as Brandon goes from happy child to lethal psychopath, clearly demonstrating that he’s gonna be an incredible talent in future; the two grown leads, meanwhile, are both excellent, Denman growing increasingly haunted and exasperated as he tries to prove his own son is a wrong ‘un, while Banks has rarely been better, perfectly embodying a mother desperately wanting to belief the best of her son no matter how compelling the evidence becomes, and there’s quality support from Breaking Bad’s Matt Jones and Search Party’s Meredith Hagner as Brandon’s aunt and uncle, Noah and Meredith, and Becky Wahlstrom as the mother of one of his school-friends, who seems to see him for what he really is right from the start.  Dark, suspenseful and genuinely nasty, this is definitely not your typical superhero movie, often playing like Kick-Ass’ deeply twisted cousin, and there are times when it displays some of the same edgy, black-hearted sense of humour, too.  In other words, it’s all very James Gunn. It’s one sweet piece of work, everyone involved showing real skill and devotion, and Yarovesky in particular proves he’ll definitely be one-to-watch in the future.  There are already plans for a potential sequel, and given where this particular little superhero universe seems to be heading I think it could be something pretty special, so fair to say I can’t wait.

13.  STAR WARS EPISODE IX: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER – wow, this one’s proven particularly divisive, hasn’t it? And I thought The Last Jedi caused a stir … say what you will about Rian Johnson’s previous entry in the juggernaut science fiction saga, while it certainly riled up the hardcore fanbase it was at least well-received by the critics, not to mention myself, who found it refreshing and absolutely ingenious after the crowd-pleasing simplicity of JJ Abrams’ admittedly still thoroughly brilliant The Force Awakens.  After such radical experimentation, Abrams’ return to the director’s chair can’t help feeling a bit like desperate backpedalling in order to sooth a whole lot of seriously ruffled feathers, and I’ll admit that, on initial viewing, I couldn’t help feeling just a touch cheated given what might have been if similarly offbeat, experimentally-minded filmmaker Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed, Jurassic World) had stayed on board to helm the picture.  Then I got home, thought about it for a bit and it started to grow on me, before a second viewing helped me to reconcile all everything that bugged me first time around, seemingly the same things that have, perversely, ruffled so many more feathers THIS TIME.  This doesn’t feel like a retcon job, no matter what some might think – new developments in the story that might feel like whitewash actually do make sense once you think about them, and the major twists actually work when viewed within the larger, overarching storyline.  Not that I’m willing to go into any kind of detail here, mind you – this is a spoiler-free zone, thank you very much.  Suffice to say, the honour of the saga has in no way been besmirched by Abrams and his co-writer Chris Terrio (sure, he worked on Batman V Superman and Justice League, but he also wrote Argo), the final film ultimately standing up very well indeed alongside its trilogy contemporaries, and still MILES ABOVE anything we got in George Lucas’ decidedly second-rate prequels.  The dangling plot strands from The Last Jedi certainly get tied up with great satisfaction, particularly the decidedly loaded drama of new Jedi Rey (Daisy Ridley) and troubled First Order Supreme Leader Kylo Ren/Ben Solo (Adam Driver), while the seemingly controversial choice of reintroducing Ian McDiarmid’s fantastically monstrous Emperor Palpatine as the ultimate big bad ultimately works out spectacularly well, a far cry from any perceived botched fan-service.  Everyone involved was clearly working at the height of their powers – Ridley and Driver are EXCEPTIONAL, both up-and-coming young leads truly growing into the their roles, while co-stars John Boyega and Oscar Isaac land a pleasingly meaty chunk of the story to finally get to really explore that fantastic chemistry they teased on The Last Jedi, and Carrie Fisher gets a truly MAGNIFICENT send off in the role that defined her as the incomparable General Leia Organa (one which it’s still heartbreaking she never quite got to complete); other old faces, meanwhile, return in fun ways, from Anthony Daniels’ C-3PO FINALLY getting to play a PROPER role in the action again to a brilliant supporting flourish from the mighty Billy Dee Williams as the Galaxy-Far-Far-Away’s own King of Cool, Lando Calrissian, while there’s a wealth of strong new faces here too, such as Lady Macbeth’s Naomie Ackie as rookie rebel Jannah, Richard E. Grant as suitably slimy former-Imperial First Order bigshot Allegiant General Pryde, The Americans’ Keri Russell as tough smuggler Zorii Bliss and Lord of the Rings star Dominic Monaghan as Resistance tech Beaumont Kin.  As fans have come to expect, Abrams certainly doesn’t skim on the spectacle, delivering bombastic thrill-ride set-pieces that yet again set the benchmark for the year’s action stakes (particularly in the blistering mid-picture showdown between Rey and Kylo among the wave-lashed remains of Return of the Jedi’s blasted Death Star) and awe-inspiring visuals that truly boggle the mind with their sheer beauty and complexity, but he also injects plenty of the raw emotion, inspired character work, knowing humour and pure, unadulterated geeky FUN he’s so well known for.  In conclusion, then, this is MILES AWAY from the clunky, compromised mess it’s been labelled as in some quarters, ultimately still very much in keeping with the high standards set by its trilogy predecessors and EVERY INCH a proper, full-blooded Star Wars movie.  Ultimately, Rogue One remains THE BEST of the big screen run since Lucas’ Original Trilogy, but this one still emerges as a Force to be reckoned with …

12.  JOKER – no-one was more wary than me when it was first announced that DC and Warner Bros. were going to make a standalone, live-action movie centred entirely around Batman’s ultimate nemesis, the Joker, especially with it coming hot on the heels of Jared Leto’s thoroughly polarizing portrayal in Suicide Squad.  More so once it was made clear that this WOULD NOT be part of the studio’s overarching DC Extended Universe cinematic franchise, which was FINALLY starting to find its feet – then what’s the point? I found myself asking.  I should have just sat back and gone with it, especially since the finished product would have made me eat a big slice of humble pie had I not already been won over once the trailers started making the rounds.  This is something new, different and completely original in the DC cinematic pantheon, even if it does draw major inspiration from Alan Moore’s game-changing DC comics mini-series The Killing Joke – a complete standalone origin story for one of our most enduring villains, re-imagined as a blistering, bruising psychological thriller examining what can happen to a man when he’s pushed far beyond the brink by terrible circumstance, societal neglect and crippling mental illness. Joaquin Phoenix delivers the performance of his career as Arthur Fleck, a down-at-heel clown-for-hire struggling to launch a career as a stand-up-comic (badly hampered by the fact that he’s just not funny) while suffering from an acute dissociative condition and terrible attacks of pathological laughter at moments of heightened stress – the actor lost 52 pounds of weight to become a horrifically emaciated scarecrow painfully reminiscent of Christian Bale’s similar preparation for his acclaimed turn in The Machinist, and frequently contorts himself into seemingly impossible positions that prominently accentuate the fact.  Fleck is a truly pathetic creature, thoroughly put-upon by a pitiless society that couldn’t care less about him, driven by inner demons and increasingly compelling dark thoughts to act out in increasingly desperate, destructive ways that ultimately lead him to cross lines he just can’t come back from, and Phoenix gives his all in every scene, utterly mesmerising even when his character commits some truly heinous acts.  Certainly he dominates the film, but then there are plenty of winning supporting turns from a universally excellent cast to bolster him along, from Zazie Beetz as an impoverished young mother Arthur bonds with and Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under, American Horror Story) as Arthur’s decidedly fragile mother Penny to Brett Cullen (The Thorn Birds, Lost) as a surprisingly unsympathetic Thomas Wayne (the philanthropic father of future Batman Bruce Wayne), while Robert De Niro himself casts a very long shadow indeed as Murray Franklin, a successful comedian and talk show host that Arthur idolizes, a character intentionally referential to his role in The King of Comedy.  Indeed, Martin Scorsese’s influence is writ large throughout the entire film, reinforced by the choice to set the film in a 1981-set Gotham City which feels very much like the crumbling New York of Mean Streets or Taxi Driver.  This is a dark, edgy, grim and unflinchingly BRUTAL film, frequently difficult to watch as Arthur is driven further into a blazing psychological hell by his increasingly stricken life, but addictively, devastatingly compelling all the same, impossible to turn away from even in the truly DEVASTATING final act.  Initially director Todd Phillips seemed like a decidedly odd choice for the project, hailing as he does from a predominantly comedy-based filmmaking background (most notably Due Date and The Hangover trilogy), but he’s actually a perfect fit here, finding a strangely twisted beauty in many of his compositions and a kind of almost uplifting transcendence in his subject’s darkest moments, while his screenwriting collaboration with Scott Silver (8 Mile, The Fighter) means that the script is as rich as it can be, almost overflowing with brilliant ideas and rife with biting social commentary which is even more relevant today than in the period in which it’s set.  Intense, gripping, powerful and utterly devastating, this truly is one of the best films of 2019.  If this was a purely critical Top 30 this would have placed in the Top 5, guaranteed …

11.  FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS HOBBS & SHAW – summer 2019’s most OTT movie was some of THE MOST FUN I had at the cinema all year, a genuinely batshit crazy, pure bonkers rollercoaster ride of a film I just couldn’t get enough of, the perfect sum of all its baffling parts.  The Fast & Furious franchise has always revelled in its extremes, subtle as a brick and very much playing to the blockbuster, popcorn movie crowd right from the start, but it wasn’t until Fate of the Furious (yup, the ridiculous title says it all) that it really started to play to the inherent ridiculousness of its overall setup, paving the way for this first crack at a new spin-off series sans-Vin Diesel.  Needless to say this one fully embraces the ludicrousness, with director David Leitch the perfect choice to shepherd it into the future, having previously mastered OTT action through John Wick and Atomic Blonde before helming manic screwball comedy Deadpool 2, which certainly is the strongest comparison point here – Hobbs & Shaw is every bit as loud, violent, chaotic and thoroughly irreverent, definitely playing up the inherent comic potential at the core of the material as he cranks up the humour.  Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham take centre stage as, respectively, DSS agent Luke Hobbs and former SAS black operative Deckard Shaw, the ultimate action movie odd couple once again forced to work together to foil the bad guy and save the world from a potentially cataclysmic disaster.  Specifically Brixton Lore (Idris Elba), a self-proclaimed “black superman” enhanced with cybernetic implants and genetic manipulation to turn him into the ultimate warrior, who plans to use a lethal designer supervirus to eradicate half of humanity (as supervillains tend to do), but there’s one small flaw in his plan – the virus has been stolen by Hattie Shaw (Mission: Impossible – Fallout’s Vanessa Kirby), a rogue MI6 agent who also happens to be Deckard’s sister.  Got all that?  Yup, the movie really is as mad as it sounds, but that’s part of the charm – there’s an enormous amount of fun to be had in just giving in and going along with the madness as Hobbs and the two Shaws bounce from one overblown, ludicrously destructive set-piece to the next, kicking plenty of arse along the way when they’re not jumping out of tall buildings or driving fast cars at ludicrous speeds in heavy traffic, and when they’re not doing that they’re bickering with enthusiasm, each exchange crackling with exquisite hate-hate chemistry and liberally laced with hilarious dialogue delivered with gleeful, fervent venom (turns out there’s few things so enjoyable as watching Johnson and Statham verbally rip each other a new one), and the two action cinema heavyweights have never been better than they are here, each bringing the very best performances of their respective careers out of each other as they vacillate, while Kirby holds her own with consummate skill that goes to show she’s got a bright future of her own.  As for Idris Elba, the one-time potential future Bond deserves to be remembered as one of the all-time great screen villains ever, investing Brixton with the perfect combination of arrogant swagger and lethal menace to steal every scene he’s in while simultaneously proving he can be just as big a badass in the action stakes; Leitch also scatters a selection of familiar faces from his previous movies throughout a solid supporting cast which also includes the likes of Fear the Walking Dead’s Cliff Curtis, From Dusk Till Dawn’s Eiza Gonzalez and Helen Mirren (who returns as Deckard and Hattie’s mum Queenie Shaw), while there’s more than one genuinely brilliant surprise cameo to enjoy. As we’ve come to expect, the action sequences are MASSIVE, powered by nitrous oxide and high octane as property is demolished and vehicles are driven with reckless abandon when our protagonists aren’t engaged in bruising, bone-crunching fights choreographed with all the flawless skill you’d expect from a director who used to be a professional stuntman, but this time round the biggest fun comes from the downtime, as the aforementioned banter becomes king.  It’s an interesting makeover for the franchise, going from heavyweight action stalwart to comedy gold, and it’s a direction I hope they’ll maintain for the inevitable follow-up – barring Fast Five, this is THE BEST Fast & Furious to date, and a strong indicator of how it should go to keep conquering multiplexes in future.  Sign me up for more, please.

[kitkat1003]

Your hair must be fall, it’s changing like the leaves.

@alcordraws @snarkyowl @egoiplier-shenanigans

So this is basically an after the whole BMC plot ends and follows Jack(Rich) in the aftermath of everything

Sean basks in the light of the sun and the fresh air, breathing in and leaving the noxious scents of hair products and sweat behind as the door to the hair salon swing shut. He feels…lighter, if anything, reborn into something that feels right.  He doesn’t know if he should feel this way; after all, it’s only hair.

Well, it’s more than that.

Green has colored his life for nearly two years.  Green and black, back to back.  Fear grips him when the colors appear too close, too sudden, and he knows it’s silly but he can’t help how the two hues send panic shooting up his arms, just like he can’t help listening for another voice or checking behind him for a flickering program that is no longer there.

Well, again, that’s not entirely true.

Freshman year had been…hard. Moving from one country to another as high school’s open maw grabbed you in isn’t an easy adjustment.  People mocked him for his accent, his loudness, his everything, so he shut himself down, didn’t speak, and became invisible. Even then, it wasn’t enough. Whilst the losers like Mark and Tyler and Ethan hung out and rolled with the punches, Sean was left alone to handle the bullies who tripped and belittled him.  They all wondered when his burgeoning alcohol addiction would spring in, when he’d grow orange hair, when he’d show them his gold.  The jeers and physical abuse left him defenseless, and the voices, the people in his head he’d created didn’t help.

‘A change was just what ze doctor ordered’

‘It’s like before!  Presto!  Like magic!’

‘Heroics come in small forms, like making changes in yourself’

‘You look good, dude!’

They whisper now; what used to be loud, almost mean-spirited suggestions tumbling over each other are now quiet, uplifting comments.  Robbie and JJ don’t talk, but Robbie groans in approval, a near humming sound, and he can hear JJ clapping excitedly.  The original four all learned from before, when Jackie told him that his indecipherable accent wasn’t becoming of a hero, when Marvin told him that disappearing was the best act, when Schneep told him that he perhaps could use medical assistance to fix himself, when Chase told him that he had to be cooler.

They were listening to his thoughts and trying to help as best they could, but they weren’t sure exactly how, and the eventuality was that their comments hurt more than they helped. They know now, from the events that transpired with the SQUIP, what they could’ve done.

‘Jack, what on earth are you doing?’

‘You told me to change, and I did!  What more do you want from me?!’  

‘Yez, but ze things zat you have been doing with Anti, it-‘

‘What, it makes me cool?  He makes me popular!  People like me now!’

‘But, bro, he’s-‘

‘Anti’s done more for me than you four have!  Y’know what, I’m done!  I’m done listening to any of you!  Come back when you’ve decided to care about me!’

Robbie and JJ came later. They are quiet, reflective of the moments when Sean needs to settle.  There is Jack and there is Sean and Sean cannot be everything Jack is sometimes, but that’s okay.  No one minds. No one who matters, anyway.  Sean has learned to distinguish those whose opinions matter, and those whose opinions don’t.  Bullies don’t matter.  People he doesn’t know don’t matter.  His friends matter(and he has them now; friends!).

Anti is silent on the change.

Sean had been dreading the appointment because of said murderous glitch.  Even if the SQUIP program had been deleted from his body, even if Anti no longer had the power to control him, Sean still feared the screaming, the demands to change it back.  Yet, there are none.  Anti has no complaints, and the corner reserved for Anti in Sean’s head is still.

Somehow, that’s even more foreboding than the expected.  What if Anti’s waiting for Sean to let his guard down, before taking him over and forcing him to watch as the glitch uses Sean’s body to change the color back? What if Anti actually gets angry enough to kill him?  What if-

‘We’ll protect you.’

Shaking him out of the spiraling train of thought are four resolute voices in unison.  They all spread warm comfort through him, and he nods in reply, taking in a deep breath to calm himself.

It wasn’t the actual loss of control that had made Sean so terrified, because Anti, well, SQUIP Anti anyway, had never expressed taking complete control of Sean.  No, it was the slippery loss of a line separating Sean from Anti that scared him.  It was him waking up late, freaking out, and suddenly finding himself at school on time. The memories would filter in the moment he questioned the lack of memory; of course he rushed to make breakfast and then caught a ride with one of the popular girls to school, how could he be so silly to forget?

And yet, he could never place himself in those memories, like he wasn’t the person in them.  That was the terrifying thing, how the moments where he was Sean and the moments where he was Jack and the moments where he was Anti were no longer differing to a noticeable point.  The loss of who he was, until he didn’t know if the green hair was something he liked or if it was because Anti wanted it.

He remembers the flames licking the soles of his shoes, mind so loud with the laughter of Anti that I became a buzzing quiet, screams of teenagers around him petering out as they left the burning building.  He remembers sitting on the edge of the bed and waiting, so, so terrified but numbly excited, the excitement not him but Anti and the code splitting the glitch apart as they collided.

He remembers the sounds of fighting, four voices screeching over the laughter to stop, before Jackie had taken his limbs, his body, and forced him up and out of the second story window into the bushes, using his voice to shout so the firefighters and paramedics would find him.

He remembers sobbing in the hospital room when his parents finally left, and the chorus of voices whispering apologies in his head as he breathed through a mask and had bandages on his back for the burns.

What he remembers now, continuing to walk to towards where he and Signe had agreed to meet, is Signe coming to his hospital bed, tears in her eyes, and asking the question everyone else had.

Why?

And he had told her everything.  She was the only one, but he told her every single thing, until he couldn’t speak over the tears and she had hugged him.

They’re together now, and he’s so, so happy.  The girls he bounced around with he cared for but never loved the way he should have, what with the SQUIP Anti pushing him to do this and that, until he couldn’t find the emotion to care about anything, much less the people.  Signe loves him, loves Sean and not the person he pretended to be, and that’s more than he can say for a lot of people.  He loves her too, and the others in his head seem to approve.

Slowly, Sean is rising to be himself.  Slowly, his accent is coming back.  It didn’t leave completely, but it was hidden for a long, long time.  Now Signe points it out with a smile, or Mark will laugh not unkindly at the way he says car, or he’ll get excited enough to run into Mark’s game room and shout “TOP OF THE MORNIN TO YA LADDIES” just to hear Mark and his friends burst into hysterics.

He’d apologized to Mark, when it was over.  Apologized for th bullying and for recommending the SQUIP, but Mark had shrugged it off.  

“If yours did anything to you like mine did to me, I get it,” Was the response.  They’re friends now.

Sean finds himself surrounded by friends now.  It’s amazing. Robin, Ethan, Bob, Wade, Felix, Mark; they’re all there for him now, a group to hang with at lunch and to play games with over online, picking on Wade as the running joke and playing with each other’s accents and laughing like there’s no tomorrow.  

“If you ever need to talk about.” Mark had gestured to his head.  “I’m here.”

Mark has a near million people in his head to talk to, and Sean wonders how the man isn’t insane at this point, much less sane enough to offer help, but he’d nodded at the time, and they’d been on their way.

Signe had been the one to coax him to finally get his hair back to brown.  He’d let it fade to a lighter green, now that he no longer was forced to re-dye it every two weeks to keep the dark, dark green SQUIP Anti favored, but to fully go out of his way to change it back to brown, to go in complete defiance of SQUIP Anti’s wishes, was a daunting task.

“You don’t have to if you really can’t,” She’d said, a hand grasping his gently, “But if you can, I think you should.  It’ll help.”

He’d found the courage and the money somehow, and got it done.  

When he’d looked in the mirror after, he’d seen his freshman year self staring back.

His head is quiet save for the hum of his thoughts when he reaches Signe.  She’d proposed that she go shopping whilst he got his hair done, and she is surrounded by bags and…plants?

When she sees him, Signe jumps up, grabbing a little potted plant to show him.

“I got some cacti for my room!  Aren’t they cute?” Then, seeing his hair she gasps.  “It looks great!”

He smiles, and she hands him some bags and a cactus she picked out for him- it is adorable, with teeny purple flowers sprouting from it along with the needles-and conversation picks up, discussions of the daily as Signe suggests a place for them to eat lunch.  Sean feels bright, happier than he has been in two long years.

As they walk, a burst of static erupts in Sean’s ear, almost swallowed by the rising hackles accompanying the four very defensive people in his head.  After a moment, they lean back, and the static hums softly with a whisper.

"̰̜I̤͍t̲̯͉͓͟ s͏̪͉̥u͓̠̤̤̹̼i̯͇t̤̣̩͝ş̮͕̗͈͇͖ ̬y̠̰͎̤̜͝o̤̞̖u̺͟."̬̳̺

Sean never expected an apology, but this is a start.

[acheaptrickandacheesyoneline]

Chapters: 1/5 Fandom: Arrow (TV 2012) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak Characters: Oliver Queen, Slade Wilson, Patience and Fortitude the New York Library Lions, Felicity Smoak Additional Tags: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Remember the fic I’ve been talking about only as IndyFic, This is Indyfic, Indiana Jones inspired, If you think you recognize a plot device or nod from somewhere you’re probably right, I have stol…Borrowed so much, From Uncharted to Indiana Jones to The Mummy to Clive Cussler books to Aladdin Summary:

She didn’t plan on ever having an adventure unless it said ‘turn to page 34 to open the door’, but somewhere between being kissed in the library and running from a one-eyed man with a gun, Felicity was pretty sure adventure had found her whether she wanted it or not.

It’s like The Mummy, only not really.

~~~

Author’s Note: This fic has been over a year in the making now, and I owe so many people thanks for the help they gave me along the way. First, to @dettiot, for being the first person to cheerlead for me on this, and for the beta work to make this first chapter pack some punch. Really, the entire fic idea wouldn’t have happened without your comment about Robbie Amell’s Twin being a patron that one day. Happy birthday!

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank all of the people who betaed for me with all the drafts that this went through. @andcreation, @adiwriting, @ohemgeeitscoley for their grammer catches and tense hunting, and @ellefraser17, @almostvivian, @lynslogic and @nightkeepyr for yelling at me with excitement as they read. Couldn’t ask for better cheerleaders!

Many MANY thanks to @green-arrows-of-karamel for assistance with later chapters and answering my many questions about Venezuela! 

Finally, there will be artwork throughout this fic. This chapter features BEAUTIFUL art from the wonderfully talented @cherchersketch

~~~

Tagging the few people that expressed interest in knowing when I posted this: @thatmasquedgirl, @realityisoverrated-fic, @imusuallyobsessed

Read it below or on AO3

Growing up, she had never planned to be a librarian. Felicity’s life had been computers from the moment she built her first one at age seven, all the way through her graduation from MIT with her Masters at age nineteen. While IT work had never been her ultimate goal — she couldn’t think about a life of telling people, “have you tried turning if off and on again” and not lose her mind — she knew it would have been the first step into a company through which she could then rise the ranks.

Of course, by the time she had graduated, the economy had gone down the toilet faster than her hacktivist days had. Given that the only other job she could find was working part time at Tech Village in her own personal version of hell, clearly the best option was to go back to school to get another degree, especially if she wasn’t the one paying for it.

Growing up in Vegas with an income coming only from her mother’s waitressing, she spent a lot of summers in the library, reading programming books, joining in on book clubs they had going on, or even a few of the arts and crafts things. Of course, that had all been when she wasn’t old enough to be allowed on the computers that weren’t just full of learning games.

She could have gotten around those blocks in a minute now, but at eight years old, it was a different thing entirely.

Basically, she had good memories of the librarians and libraries from growing up. When she did her research and saw that it would take a year, at most, for her to get her degree in Library Sciences, Felicity didn’t think twice before resigning her lease in Boston for another year. That was followed up with an email to her old advisor to let them know she was interested in coming back to MIT and could she maybe sign up for courses even though it was technically after the due date?

As it turned out, having masters in both library science and computer science & cyber security, along with a minor in Latin America studies (a few electives here and there and the next thing she knew, she had somehow gotten a minor) made her quite a catch for any library that was hiring.

The main branch of the New York Public Library had given her an offer she would have been stupid to refuse. Not only was it in New York, where she knew she could still apply for tech jobs while she worked at the library, but she would also have full access to their archives. Plus, moving from Boston to New York wasn’t all that expensive, especially once she had gone through her belongings and had donated what she didn’t need.

After a year working at the Schwarzman Building, living in New York, and taking the subway into Grand Central every morning, Felicity knew there was no way she would be leaving any time soon.  There was something so incredibly wonderful about being surrounded by books, hearing their rustling pages as patrons flipped through the new arrivals, or smelling that old book smell when she went to reshelve the returns that had come in.

Her favorite days were the ones that she could spend in the archives. Felicity was more than able to indulge in her love of history, especially those of some of the more fabled lost cities of the world, like Atlantis, El Dorado, Avalon, Shangri-La, or the supposed lost continent of Mu. Even if the last couldn’t exist due to scientific impossibility.

But today was not an archive day. Today was her day working in the Reading Room, helping patrons gather and read over research materials for whatever project they were working on that day.

“Good morning Patience, Fortitude,” she told the stone lions on her way past, giving Patience her customary pat on her paw.

Thankfully, it was a warm morning for May, so she didn’t need to try to store her coat under the small amount of open space under the desk. Felicity slid her bag into its spot before she clipped her name badge on, ready to face the day.

Five hours later, she was less ready to face the remainder of the day after answering the same questions ten times in a row. Her tablet in hand, Felicity motioned to Lyn that she was taking a fifteen minute break, before leaving the room and starting down the stairs into Astor Hall in all of its splendor.

She leaned against the marble wall at the landing for a moment, taking in the view of both patrons and tourists walking around. Her attention was drawn towards a commotion at the entry from Fifth Avenue.  A rather well dressed man rushed in, pushing through the crowd. He paused for a moment, and Felicity met his eyes when he looked her way, and saw the smile on his face before he started almost running towards her.

She had about thirty seconds — long enough to see three or four men run in, each with a hand under their jackets — before the man was right up next to her.

“Hi, sorry about this,” he told her with a grin that let her know that he was anything but.

He didn’t give her a chance to actually ask what he was apologizing for before his hands were on either side of her head against the wall and his lips were pressed firmly against her. She let out a gasp of surprise, letting him slide his tongue into her mouth a bit before slowly retreating back, running it softly over her lips for another second. With her eyes closed, she felt more than saw him pull away and begin to kiss up her jaw to her ear. “Are they gone?” he whispered to her with a lick to her earlobe.

“Huh?” It was about as much as she could manage to get out, with her brain shut down as it was.

“The guys who followed me in. Are they gone?”

Oh, now he was biting right where her neck met her shoulder and that was completely unfair. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw the four suits gathering back together at the doors, before they walked back outside.

“Yes” she gasped.

“Yes, they’re gone or yes, more?” he asked, lips brushing hers.

Shaking herself mentally, she brought her hands up to his chest — she would not notice how nice his chest felt under her hands, she would not — and pushed him away. “What was that?” she asked him. “You can’t just go around...kissing people like that!”

He tucked his hands into his jacket pockets and shrugged. “I’m assuming they’re gone, given as how there is currently no one shooting at me? Great.” He turned and began to walk up the stairs Felicity had just come down . . . God, had it only been five minutes ago?

“You can’t just do that!” She rushed after him and reached for his upper arm to get his attention. “You can’t go around kissing random people.”

He gave a pointed look at her name badge before holding out his hand. “Oliver. And I see you’re Felicity. There. Now we’re not random people.” He gave her a smirk that told her that he was anything but sorry when she took his hand and shook it. “And, since you work here, maybe you can help me out. There’s an older journal that I’m looking for. One that the NYPL has.”

“I’m on break.” She closed her eyes in a brief wince. “I’m...I’m sorry. What I meant is that you’ll need to go to the reading room upstairs. If Lyn can’t help you find it, I’ll be up in just a bit and can go search the archives for it, if you tell me what the journal is.” With a final ‘have a nice day’ smile, Felicity turned her back on Oliver.  She was determined to enjoy the remaining ten minutes of her break, out on the steps of the library with her tablet.

She found it harder than normal to concentrate on her usual plethora of tech articles. Her thoughts kept drifting back to the kiss she had shared with Oliver on the stairs. Did it count as sharing if she hadn’t been kissing back, she wondered. Or was it more of something that she had experienced at that point. If she was honest with herself, which she did try to be, it had been an experience. Thinking back on her very few previous relationships, she didn’t think she had ever been kissed with such a degree of thoroughness before.

Felicity closed her eyes, counted back from three, and pushed the kiss from her mind for two reasons. One, she had to go back to work and deal with Oliver as a patron. Two, it had been an unwelcome kiss. A good one, but unwelcome. Like she had told him, going around kissing random people wasn’t something that could be done. But he had done it, and it had been a very good kiss from an objective standpoint and she really didn’t have time to deal with this right now.  

“Later tonight. With wine and mint chocolate chip,” she muttered under her breath as she stood and closed the lid on her tablet. There, now she had a plan.

While she was hesitant to go back inside, she was thankful Oliver was nowhere in sight when she went back to the reading room. Felicity gave Gladys a smile when she met her behind the desk to take her spot back. Hopefully, the older woman had already helped Oliver find whatever he needed and he wouldn’t be back. As much as she enjoyed helping and answering questions, she could now firmly add patrons who randomly kissed her to the ‘con’ side of working at the library.

Which she was totally going to stop thinking about. Right now.

Not seeing anyone approaching the help desk, Felicity ducked under the counter to slide her tablet back into her bag and pulled out her small notebook and pen, intent on working more on her pet project. Her hopes for a quiet afternoon were quickly shattered when she stood up and saw Oliver leaning against the counter.

He had appeared so quietly she hadn’t even heard him coming over. She let out a small ‘eep’ of a noise before catching herself and attempting to calm her racing heart. Not only did he kiss random people, but he snuck up on them, too. He was a ninja. A kissing ninja.

“Hello again,” he said, his quiet voice breaking her out of her thoughts.

“Hi,” Felicity responded.

“You said you could help me find a journal?”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “Journal, right. You had said you were looking for that earlier. Which of course you are. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Unless it was to use the computers.”

A pause for a breath as she took him in:  jeans that hugged everything, tailored shirt with the first two buttons undone.

“But you look like the type of person who probably has their own computer. Not that there is a specific look for computer owners, because that would be ridiculous. But considering the ratio of computers versus books in this place, it’s easy to assume, which, you know what they say. Not that I’m calling you an ass! I might be calling myself one, though, and I need to stop talking in three, two, one…”

Felicity closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see the likely smirk on Oliver’s face from her babble and took a deep breath, forcing her racing heart and brain to slow down. When she opened them, she was surprised to see that he was giving her a small smile, amusement on his face but not like he was laughing at her. It was different from the normal reactions to her babble, and it made her smile back at him a moment before she remembered that no, she should not be smiling at the Kissing Ninja, especially not while on the clock.

Turning to her computer, she pulled up the classic catalog and quickly typed in a few search terms, so that the results would only bring back journals. No biographies, no history books. “What’s the name of the author of this journal?” she asked, hands poised for typing.

“His name is Diego de Ordaz. Born in Spain in 1480, died in Venezuela in 1532,” Oliver said. “He wrote a journal during his time in South America, right before he died there.”

Her fingers moved swiftly across the keys, typing in the keyword fields in order to narrow the search parameters. A part of her mind noticed how earnest Oliver’s voice had gotten when he started describing the journal, all the teasing gone from it. This was something that was important to him, far more than anything else. He wasn’t giving off the vibe of a student desperate for a final thesis source, either.  Especially not with how he had run into the library, being chased by men he was trying to get away from.

The de Ordaz name was ringing bells in her head, too, though she wasn’t positive as to why. Had she reshelved that one earlier today? Or maybe another patron had asked her for it earlier this week? Given that it had been written in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, it was no surprise that the actual handwritten copy itself wasn't allowed out of the archives. But there was a copy of it that could be loaned out. Or could be if it hadn’t already been checked out by another patr…

Oh.

It had been her.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what is in this journal you’re hoping to find, Oliver,” she asked him. Felicity shuffled through the papers that were on the desk around there and found the copy of the Ordaz journal she had been reading earlier in the week. Meeting his eyes, she told him, “Because if it’s information on pre-Spanish South America, there are better sources out there than one of the conquerors themselves.”

“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said with a smile.

Their hands brushed when he reached out to take it, but Felicity didn’t make any move to let go of the book. She just raised an eyebrow and waited for him to answer her question. His shoulders slumped slightly, making him seem less of a giant as he sighed.  

“Diego led an expedition up the Río Orinoco. No one is sure why, but a prevailing theory is that he was searching for--”

“El Dorado,” Felicity cut in.

She knew this story. It was one of the reasons she had checked the book out in the first place. It was also why she knew that there was next to nothing in it regarding El Dorado or any mention about finding it. She had a better chance of getting information from the old Amazon Trail game she had played at the Las Vegas Public Library than from Diego’s writings.

“Well, yeah.” Oliver flashed her another smile when he was finally able to take the journal from her. “Been working on tracking this down for a while.”

He gave her a wink before he walked away, leaving Felicity to stare after him as he took a seat at a table near the edge of the room, away from the entrance. She watched him a moment longer, now that there was no one around to stop her and nothing else she had to be doing. He was staring intently at what looked like a rock he had pulled out of his pocket, before staring at the journal for a few seconds. Then he wrote something in a notebook, after which the whole process started again.

Not a grad student from the local university, that was for sure.

Felicity gave a mental shrug and returned her focus to the other patrons in the room and the mess that was her desk for the afternoon. As much as she didn’t want to clean it up, some of the papers could do with organizing. But that could probably wait until later that evening, when there wasn’t the risk of someone coming in and her not being on desk. And while she couldn’t keep her mind on her tech articles from before, she knew that a bit of mindless online reading would be just the thing.

Gothamist it was. “Just an article or two,” she promised herself quietly. Everyone at the desk seemed to look at Gothamist, given how it was the first option to show up as soon as she had typed in ‘g’. “Or maybe three if I only look at the short ones.”

The first article that caught her eye was the fact that Staten Island was getting a new restaurant that was brunch only, a fact that made her breakfast-loving heart leap for joy. She was about to click it when she scrolled down a bit further than planned and saw a photo of Oliver, the Oliver that was sitting less than twenty feet from her. The Oliver who had run into the library earlier with guys chasing after him — guys she was pretty sure were carrying guns. The Oliver who had kissed her. The photo of Oliver attached to a headline of “Oliver Queen Spotted in Manhattan; Astors and Vanderbilts Put Extra Locks on Family Mausoleums."

“Oh, frak.”

Now that she knew just what family Oliver belonged to, it made the past hour even worse than she had thought. Before it had just been embarrassment on her part. But now, she had actively helped a member of the Queen family — who was well known for having made their riches through their grave robbing and tomb desecration along with finding the average shipwreck location — locate where the City of Gold and the Golden Man were said to be, according to legend.

The papers never called it robbing. It was exploration. Like they were some sort of family full of Indiana Joneses. The books also never confirmed that the reason the Queen family had enough money to finance all of these globe trotting adventures throughout the last two generations was because they had found the lost ship that had held the Amber Room, before quietly and illegally selling all of it on the black market. Pieces of that treasure had turned up in various private collections throughout the years, but never anything to confirm whom they had purchased it from.

It wasn’t all that hard to put the pieces together though. Especially not if you were Felicity Smoak. And she was.

Which likely meant that Oliver was going after El Dorado.

Holding her head high, Felicity walked quickly across the room towards where Oliver was sitting, still engrossed in his writing. Her heels struck out a staccato rhythm on the marble floor, a sound that made her walk tall, filling the room with her presence as she had watched her mother do on the floors of Vegas casinos to garner tips.

A good pair of heels was just as much a set of armor as a computer’s firewall was.

She stopped cold next to Oliver and waited for him to look up at her as she invaded his space. What she really wanted to do was reach her hand across his line of sight and slam the book shut, but there was only so far she could go, even if she was upset with him.

“You’re Oliver Queen,” she stated, trying to keep her voice down.

“I am, yes,” he said slowly, looking up at her. He had paused in his writing, but didn’t close his notes. “I thought you knew that from earlier? After all, we aren’t strangers.”

She ignored his comment and instead leaned over and planted her hands on the table. “What are you doing with the De Ordaz book? Couldn’t just buy your own?”

“Why spend money when I can just pop in here for a moment to get what I need?”

His innocent face as he looked up at her… nope, she wasn’t buying that. There was something else going on and she was going to find out what. History was one thing that was allowed to have mysteries. There was no way to sort out what was real and what was not based on books alone, as much as she might try. But people? Computers? That was another thing entirely.

“Why are you looking into...into El Dorado?” She almost whispered the words even though there was no one around them.

Felicity could perfectly picture what would happen if word got out that the Queen family was looking into that mythical place. There was a reason they were known as some of the most successful treasure hunters; they never went after something unless they were sure it existed. As soon as they found it, they quickly brought it to auction, selling to the highest bidder rather than donating it to a museum, ensuring that only the rich would be able to see priceless things on a daily basis.

“I want to find it,” Oliver said simply. After a moment where she held her tongue and held his gaze, he relented. “I want to be the one who finds it, have my name connected with it.” Setting his pen down, he met her eyes. “Everyone knows who my parents are. Especially my dad.”

Felicity couldn’t help but nod in response. For all that she was upset with him right now, he wasn’t telling her anything that she didn’t know there. Robert had been the one responsible for finding Nuestra Senora in the 1980s, one of the biggest shipwreck finds given the amount of gold and silver and other valuables that had been recovered.

“See? Even you know of him,” Oliver said.  And that there was what stopped Felicity for a moment, made her stand up instead and take note of just how dejected he sounded. “Which means I am always going to be Robert’s son, never Oliver, unless I find something bigger, better. At least to the people who matter.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that he was Oliver to her, that it didn’t matter what others thought as long as he was happy. Thankfully, Felicity caught the words before they could bubble forth in a babble that was sure to cause trouble. It shouldn’t matter to her what he thought of himself, it shouldn’t.

But it did.

“That’s why I’ve been looking for El Dorado,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. “This,” he held up the arrowhead, “is said to unlock the code that Ordaz wrote in his journal. Which will then tell us how to get to the location.”

“Us?” Way to go, self, she thought. Of course it was the word ‘us’ that she had focused on.

He looked almost as shocked as she felt, so there was that. “Me. I meant me.”  He looked down at his notes. “But I must have done it wrong, I can’t figure out what this says. Or maybe the story of the arrowhead leading the way is just as fake as the story of the city.”

“There is always some truth in every story,” Felicity told him, spinning his notebook towards her before she could second guess herself. Pulling her red pen out from behind her ear, she nibbled on the end while she stared at his tidy writing. “If you make these into words here,” she drew a line between two strings of letters, “here,” another line, “and here, it starts making sense.”

“I don’t see it,” he said.

She wrote out the words under his pencil in her red pen. “Na caixa atada,” Felicity said. “It’s Portuguese.”

“Which is not a language I know. Dammit.” His pencil almost broke in half with the amount of force he slammed it onto the table.

“Oliver!” She widened her eyes at him before gesturing to the room around him. “I might be helping you with this, but that doesn’t mean I won’t ask you to leave for being too loud! This is a library. Not your private lair.”

“You speak Portuguese?”

“That’s all you got out of that?”

“It’s the important bit!”

Felicity had never before wanted to take her glasses off to rub at her eyes in annoyance. It was a new feeling, and not one that she enjoyed. “I don’t speak it, but reading it is a lot easier.”

“Will you translate this?”

“Are you asking me to help you find El Dorado so that you can stake your claim on it and become famous?”

“Would it help if I said please?” he asked. That stupid smile of his was back on his face again.

She could feel her heart being near torn in two at the choice in front of her. On the one hand, there was the thrill of being on the hunt for something she had only read about, a chance to actually help find and prove that a fabled lost city was actually real. On the other, she would be helping Oliver Queen. Felicity was pretty sure that there was no way he was just going to be okay with telling the UN about it and letting the gold that was said to exist just stay there. Likely all of the other artifacts she was sure actually would once again be put up on the auction block too, and the myth would be as good as gone.

She never got a chance to turn him down. With a speed that rivaled his earlier random kissing — no, still not thinking about that, it was just a kiss and really, it wasn’t even that good of one — Oliver was shoving everything from the table into a satchel before grabbing her arm as he stood.

“What are you…” she tried to ask while he dragged her quickly over to a corner, well out of sight from the door.

“We need to go, now. What is the quickest way out of here?”

She pulled her wrist out of his grip with a force born of anger. “What is going on? I can’t just leave!”

“Felicity.” Oliver reached for both of her hands, trapping them in between his larger ones. His voice was low and serious, a tone she hadn’t heard from him yet, one that instantly had her paying attention. “At the entrance to this room right now is a very dangerous man, who is trying very hard to get me. It was his men who were after me when I ran in here be — No, don’t loo—”

She wriggled out of his grasp and peered around his body, in order to see who it was he was talking about, before he could finish his warning of not looking. A man who would have worked very well as a James Bond villain was leaning against the doors, taking in the room with a practiced eye. One eye, given the eyepatch that he was wearing.

Oliver tugged her back behind him, away from the man’s line of sight. But the movement had drawn his attention like a mouse does a cat’s, and the well dressed man began a slow stalk towards her and Oliver.

“Frak,” she found herself saying for the second time that day. Her gut was telling her that Eyepatch was bad news. And while her brain might have been wrong on occasion before, trusting her gut had rarely gotten her into trouble.

“We need to move. Now, Felicity. He’s seen you with me. We both need to leave.”

Felicity bit her lower lip a moment before nodding. He was right. She could feel her heart pounding as she led Oliver away from Eyepatch, weaving between tables and patrons with an ease she had developed only through her months of working here. There was a staircase that was used for emergencies at the back of the room. She thought she could get them both to it before anything happened.

They were almost there when she heard who she assumed was Eyepatch yell out, “Queen!” It echoed over the marble and off the high ceilings, filling the room and causing everyone in it to freeze. Well, everyone but her and Oliver.

“Run!” Oliver commanded, racing ahead of her towards the door. Behind her came a loud crack that had Felicity ducking her head on instinct. Had that been...was that a gunshot?!

The yells and shouts of the patrons behind her were all the confirmation she needed that yes, it had been. “Frak!”

They burst through the emergency door, setting off an alarm in the process. The one corner of her thoughts that wasn’t scared out of its wits about being shot at recognized the alarm as a good thing, since it would get people moving and exiting the building.

In front of her, Oliver was running down the stairs, leaping when close to the bottom and swinging around the railing to get to the next, in an attempt to go even faster. And while she could run in heels if she was forced to, running in heels down a staircase was something even her mother, the indomitable Donna Smoak, would have had problems with.

“Felicity, hurry,” Oliver called up to her. They both froze for a moment as they heard a door above them slam open.

The same voice from before called out, “C’mon kid, I know you’re here. You might have given my men the slip before, but you won’t get away from me!”

Felicity found herself making a panicked face at Oliver, who had quietly approached her while Eyepatch had been speaking. She knew there was no way she could run fast enough in her heels to get down the stairs and out in the streets to lose him in time.

“Go,” she hissed at Oliver, already hearing steps, carefully measured steps, coming down the stairs, closer to them. “I’ll only slow you down!”

“He’ll kill you,” he muttered. “I won’t let that happen.”

Suddenly, she was in Oliver’s arms and he was flying down the staircase again. He didn’t seem at all bothered by her weight. She was very glad that she had decided to wear pants to work that morning. Being shot at and carried down the stairs by a very muscle-y man hadn’t been what she had planned on happening when she had picked out her outfit that morning, but a skirt flying up around her hips would have just made it all even worse.

With a shove against the street level door, Oliver stumbled outside. Felicity had to take a moment to blink at the sudden sunlight after the darker confines of the stairwell in order to see where they were. He began to run towards the street, talking to her at the same time. “We need to lose him.”

“Grand Central station,” she said without hesitation. It would be busy this time of day, easy to slip through the throng of people and constantly moving trains. “That way.”

Holy crap. Somehow Oliver was running even faster than before, which should not have been possible given that he was carrying her. She could feel his heart pounding, felt him inhale and exhale, pushing himself to race the two blocks to the safety the station would offer.

And here she was, happy to reach her goal of five situps on Tuesday mornings.

“I need to take up running,” she told herself. Especially if being chased was going to become a regular thing, which looked like it might, given that she planned to help Oliver translate that jounal of his.

“Good to know you’re going to help me,” Oliver said with a grin, though his legs never faltered.

Of course she had spoken that. Because really, wasn’t that just the sort of day this had turned into.

At the doors to the station, Oliver set her down. She grabbed his hand, determined not to lose him in the crush of people. She risked a quick glance behind them and saw Eyepatch still coming towards them. “He’s coming!”

Normally, Grand Central Terminal held a grandeur that was enough to capture Felicity’s attention every time she walked inside, no matter how many times she had seen it before. The stately columns, the gold constellations against the dark blue ceiling, the marble flooring that saw hundreds of thousands steps against it every day. It was enough to make her stop for a second every day, to count her blessings that she got to see something so wonderful twice a day.

So it said something that she didn’t even glance up as they rushed in. Felicity led them right down the first escalator she could see, pushing past people like it was her God-given right. She had experienced it from the other end, being the one shoved, the first time she had come to New York and had made a promise to herself that she would never be that stereotypical resident of the Isle of Manhattan.

There was a first time for everything.

At the turnstile, Felicity fumbled for a moment with her pockets as she tried to find her MetroCard. Oliver leapt over it like he was some sort of action hero before he turned and lifted her over the turnstile. “Don’t have time for that!”

“There are cameras! I don’t want a fine!”  Her desire to pay her fare was something normal to hold onto during all of this madness, she supposed. Why else would she be worried about a fine for jumping the turnstile when there was Eyepatch with a gun after them?

Oliver stopping suddenly in front of her had Felicity running into his back. She took a moment to appreciate how his back and muscles felt under her hands as she caught her balance. “What’s wrong?”

“I...I’ve never used the subways. I don’t know where to go from here,” he admitted to her, looking lost as he stared at the different arrows and colors and signs hanging all around them.

This. This she could do.

It was with that knowledge that she led the way to the platform for the 7 train, reaching it just as the train arrived. There was a moment of feeling like a salmon swimming upstream when she tried to get in as other commuters were getting out, but the press of people quickly passed and then they were both inside, moving to seats as the doors closed.

As the doors closed, Felicity could see Eyepatch standing on the platform, staring after them, but she quickly lost sight of him as the train gained speed and entered the tunnels.

“Where are we going?” Oliver asked her. He was slightly out of breath compared to her panting and she wanted to hate him for it, even as she was on the verge of holding on to him and never letting go.

“Queens,” she told him after a moment. “We’re going into Queens. There are so many stops between here and ours, there is no way Eyepatch is going to be able to track us down anytime soon.”

He raised an eyebrow and turned to look at her. “Eyepatch?”

She gave a little half shrug. “I needed to call him something in my head.”

“His name is Slade Wilson,” he said after a bit. “And if you couldn’t tell, he’s sort of insane.”

Yeah. Bond movie bad guy, Felicity decided. With a name like that though, it was inevitable.

[realestate63141]

Trump Era Ignorance Triumphs Over Shakespeare

What’s to be said about the Public Theater’s production of “Julius Caesar,” which, having dressed the titular dictator in President Donald Trump’s weeds, has fulfilled its most obvious destiny by earning the relentless enmity of Trump’s fan base?

Here’s my offer: What a time to be alive but also mostly dead inside! What a thrill it is to have another dose of that fulminate-of-mercury outrage delivered to our screens. And what a terrific way to highlight two key features of our age ― the extreme uselessness of ever knowing anything and our tendency to expend too much of our spirit in a waste of shame.

Like all the great conservative mavens of “cultural literacy” recommended that we Gen-Xers do in college, I’ve spent many thousands of hours with William Shakespeare and the canon of Western Literature. And that’s fine. The canon is mostly pretty good, except for Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

In particular, I’ve spent more time with “Julius Caesar” than any reasonable person should be required to. But this weekend’s burst of psychopathic indignation over one production of the play was a good reminder of what a futile pursuit that was. America, circa now, is more apt to valorize people who don’t know a single thing about what they’re talking about than it is to reward those who do. Being armed too strong in honesty, I ended up on the losing end of this weekend’s joust over “Julius Caesar.”

So, thanks for nothing, E.D. Hirsch! I’ve really wasted my time. But since it’s my time to waste, let’s make the most of it.

OK. The thing about Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar” is that it’s not actually about Caesar. The main character is a politician named Brutus who, greatly concerned about Caesar’s violations of democratic norms and thoroughly convinced that he alone understands what ails Rome, is seduced into a plot to murder the Roman dictator by conspirators who know that Brutus’ yen for high-mindedness will give them cover for their base ambitions. The play is a “tragedy” because Brutus, a decent man, doesn’t figure out that he’s a fool who has made Rome worse until it’s far too late.

This story is pretty squarely in Shakespeare’s wheelhouse. When he wasn’t writing what many people dismiss as “Tudor propaganda,” he was pretty concerned about how easily an established order could be tipped into chaos. Shakespeare wasn’t too keen on people stepping out of their place. The “Great Chain of Being” didn’t offer much encouragement to populist revolutions. Of course, it would be interesting to know what the Bard might have made of Trump, but I suspect that if the real estate mogul demonstrated a willingness to keep his actors gainfully employed, Shakespeare would have ruffled very few feathers.

Nevertheless, over the weekend, when the Public Theater’s “Julius Caesar” became the latest piece of cultural bric-a-brac to get laundered through the media outrage machine, I found it hilarious and appalling because the outrage only succeeds if you’re aggressively ignorant about the play. A day later, what I’m finding funny is the thought that somewhere in New York right now, there are some liberals, equally ignorant about the play, who will rush to see the Public Theater’s production, salivating at the notion that this version really sticks it to Donald Trump.

They are in for a real surprise, because if anything, “Julius Caesar” aims its daggers at the notion of a high-on-their-own-supply Resistance, flush with the belief that the best solution to all their political problems is the quickest one.

The second scene in Act 3 is going to be especially unsettling for them. That’s the famous scene of competing orations where Brutus first recites a “Stronger Together” speech that could have been penned by Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook. Supremely confident that his elite standing is sufficient to the task of educating the crowd in the correct course of action, Brutus then leaves them alone with Mark Antony ― and immediately loses them to Antony’s devil-tongued “Make Rome Great Again” incitement to mob violence. For his part, Caesar exits the play as a man more sinned against than sinning.

Rome, meanwhile, descends into violence. The very next thing the mob does, in fact, is murder a poet named Cinna who had nothing at all to do with the assassination of Caesar. Cinna tells the mob that they’ve mistaken him for another man, a conspirator who shares his name, but the crowd decides to murder him anyway, shouting, “Tear him for his bad verses!” and “It’s no matter, his name’s Cinna!”

I feel you, Cinna, wherever you are. What, indeed, is the point of being right about anything?

But Cinna’s murder is pretty fitting to think about in this moment. With all of their future at stake and society in the balance, the whipped-up crowd demonstrates that the only thing that they’re actually good at is tearing to pieces someone completely inconsequential ― someone who just accidentally wandered into their lives, who they would otherwise never have noticed.

That’s what we’re good at now. That’s what has been done to this production of “Julius Caesar.” 

It’s a good thing that such easy targets exist because otherwise we would have to confront bigger problems. For instance, the president is an utterly venal, shameless liar. But he exists because of decades of choices that we all made, together. We really should be doing the hard work of sorting out our own house in a sensible fashion and taking stock of our failings, but you know what’s easier? Utterly destroying the woman who played “Vicki” on the all-but-forgotten show “Suddenly Susan,” for a really epically hack piece of “art.”

Bank of America, which hopefully has figured out how not to accidentally repossess people’s homes, will probably not breathe a discouraging word should some 20 million people lose their health insurance in the next few weeks. But the bank made sure to register its extreme displeasure with the Public Theater, withdrawing the funding from the theater company that I am almost positive it had forgotten proffering in the first place.

You want to be mad that this production presented Caesar in Trumpian fashion? Be my guest. But I have to be honest with you: If you’re going to be angry about it, be angry at the fact that it’s kind of a cheap move on the director’s part. 

Presidents portrayed as Julius Caesar in U.S. productions: Lincoln, Reagan, Clinton, GWB, Obama, Trump. (Caesar died in all of them.)

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) June 12, 2017

Replacing Caesar with a recognizable world leader is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Did you know that the Acting Company partnered with the Guthrie Theatre on a 2012 production of “Julius Caesar” that put an analogue of President Barack Obama in the title role? It’s true. Somehow, liberals forgot they were supposed to be outraged at the sight of the murder, and I’m left to speculate that Psalm 109:8-chanting conservatives loved it and were literally brought to the point of violent sexual ecstasy when Brutus murdered Barry O. in cold blood on the stage.

Dolling Caesar up like Trump is basically a quick-and-dirty, shorthand way to drag an audience into the world of this particular play ― a society on the edge that teeters and breaks thanks to the actions of a few powerful men. And when I say “quick-and-dirty,” I mean that it’s like dropping a damned anvil on the stage. It’s not subtle!

Here’s the rub, though ― maybe it can’t afford to be subtle.

This play is being produced for an audience of affluent theater-going New Yorkers, and they live a life that is, psychologically speaking, about as far away from epochal societal instability as you can get. So you hand them a Trump-Caesar, and it stimulates their liberal, professional-class mores. “This is not normal,” they think as the play begins. “I was born as free as Caesar,” Cassius whispers to Brutus, adding, “So were you.” It’s time for some Roman-style game theory! And total wish fulfillment comes before intermission in the form of Caesar’s murder.

If the production is good enough (and I’ve no idea if the Public Theater’s is), it forces this audience to confront the way everything works out for those anti-Caesar revolutionaries and gives them a moment of unexpected frisson when they realize they’re supposed to see themselves in Brutus’ tragic aspect.

So it’s possible that the way this play is being produced is actually beneficial for its intended audience. Perhaps this production is capable of shaking its particular audience out of their dull and easy way of thinking about the world, putting them in touch with more meaningful ideas.

Now that I think about it, I might actually do “Julius Caesar” this way if I had to produce the play. But I’d be utterly mystified if anyone, hearing about my production, was compelled to attempt to set the Guinness record for Being Mad On The Internet about it. The only thing I can say about such people is that they must lead a pretty blissful existence if this is what gets them worked up.

Besides, you should know that if I really wanted to savage Donald Trump ― if I just wanted to turn him into a punching bag for my own cheap thrills ― I wouldn’t put him in Caesar’s shoes. No, I’d feature him in the title role of “Macbeth” (Ivanka could be Lady Macbeth!) and I’d hire the most pornographically violent fight director that money could buy.

And what would that prove? I have no idea! But I guess that’s the point: LOL, nothing matters.

~~~~~

Jason Linkins edits “Eat The Press” for HuffPost and co-hosts the HuffPost Politics podcast “So, That Happened.” Subscribe here, and listen to the latest episode below. 

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[seeker-of-stories19]

The new episodes are not beating the Kiaz/SamTory allegations

robby and tory have been fighting their whole lives and i really love that the longer the show goes on the more miguel and sam who were always the peaceful ones turn into their protectors because really at this point every time somebody goes after one of them you know they're gonna get throat punched by miguel and sam