#oh and exactly when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out

[apathetic-revenant]

by the skin of your teeth (part 4)

in a shockingly unrealistic and out of character move, Ford actually sits down and explains something. 

“His name is Bill. Bill Cipher.”

Ford said the words in a low, furtive voice, as though fearful of being overheard.

“Bill?” Stan said. “A demon named Bill?”

“Technically ‘demon’ is only a convenient appellation. More accurately, he’s an extradimensional being of pure energy. But, yes, the name is somewhat underwhelming. I assure you the rest of him is...not.”

Ford paused to take a cautious sip of the water Stan was making him drink. Between the illness, the apparent blood loss from... something, and Ford being Ford and probably trying to survive entirely on spite and academia, Stan was surprised his brother had any fluid left in him at all. He didn't know how to treat whatever it was Ford had, but he knew something about being dangerously dehydrated, after Arizona.

He'd gotten Ford back onto the couch and wrapped in the blankets and, for good measure, had cleaned the blood off his face. Ford's eye was bloodshot and weepy, but he'd assured Stan it wasn't his fault.

“It happens,” he'd said. “When...when he possesses me.”

Somehow this didn't make Stan feel much better.

“Okay,” he said when Ford didn't say anything for a minute, “so... how'd you get involved with this...Bill?”

Ford shifted uncomfortably and started chewing on his lip.

“I made a terrible mistake,” he said.

Well. Yeah, Stan thought. Obviously.

“I... I've been in Gravity Falls for six years now,” Ford said. “I moved here right after college. I got a research grant to study this place, you see…”

Stan blinked. “Study...this? What the hell is there here to study?”

“A lot more than you would think. Gravity Falls has the highest concentration of anomalies in the world. It's really quite amazing…”

“Anomalies? Like what?”

“Anything you could imagine,” Ford said, continuing to be spectacularly unhelpful. “I've encountered amazing creatures, evidence of alien life, magical artifacts, the undead...and there's still more to find, I'm sure. I haven't even begun to catalogue it all.”

“Wow,” Stan said weakly. “That's… really something.”

“Indeed.” Ford took another drink, wincing slightly, from nausea or pain or some uncomfortable memory, Stan couldn't tell. “But I couldn't find the reason for it. I knew there had to be some explanation, some theory as to why weirdness was attracted to this place. But it eluded me. And I...I was getting desperate. That was when I...encountered Bill.”

There was a story and a half loaded into encountered, but Stan didn't pursue it. Ford was obviously pushing himself to the limit to say this much as it was.

“He...he tricked me,” Ford said haltingly. “He told me…”

Stan waited.

“He told me he was a muse,” Ford said at last. His voice was thick with bitterness. “That he picked one great mind in a century to inspire and that I was it. He flattered me and I fell for it like the damn fool I am.”

Stan let out a long, slow breath. It wasn't really surprising. He hated to admit it, but in many ways his brother made for a damn easy mark. Ford was brilliant beyond belief, but he had always had a dangerous blind spot when it came to dealing with people.

When they were kids, Stan had been both shield and interpreter for Ford, standing between him and the outside world that his brother so often struggled to cope with himself. Ford was the smart one, the worthy one, the important one, but once upon a time that had been okay because there were still things Stan could do that Ford couldn’t, still a space left for him that his brother didn’t occupy. Once upon a time they had balanced each other out.

Only that balance had shifted, and there seemed to be less and less space for Stan-less and less reason for Stan- and he had panicked, and he had ruined everything. Ruined it more than he’d even realized, because not only had he trashed Ford’s college dream, he’d left him alone and vulnerable. He hadn’t been around to protect Ford, to do the only thing he’d ever been good for.

He’d told himself Ford would be fine. Ford didn’t need him anymore. Ford didn’t want him anymore. He’d lived ten years on the belief that his brother would carry on just fine without him. That was what he had been planning to do anyway, that was what he had been doing more and more as they grew older. Except it turned out Ford had needed him-and he hadn’t been there.

Then again, could Stan really say that things would have been better if he’d been there? After all, he had an uncontested knack for screwing up everything he touched; perhaps things would have gone even worse if Stan had been around to interfere.

“Look, I know it’s…” Ford began. “It’s...whatever you’re going to say, I can assure you I’ve said to myself already.”

Stan snapped out of his reverie. “What?”

“I was arrogant, and stupid, and I, I know that, you don’t have to-”

“Ford,” Stan said slowly, still struggling to keep up. “I wasn’t gonna say any of that.”

Ford blinked in that owlish way he had. “Oh. Er...what were you going to say?”

Stan shrugged. “Nothing, actually.”

“Oh,” Ford said. “...Right.”

He coughed and hastily took a drink of water to cover the awkward silence.

“Anyway,” he said eventually. “Needless to say, he was...not as benevolent as he made himself out to be.”

“Yeah,” Stan said. “I kinda got that.”

“Indeed.” Ford looked away. “He...he inspired me to build the portal, you see...gave me ideas, blueprints, details. He told me it would unlock the secrets I was looking for. But when we went to test it, there was...an accident. That was when I started to get suspicious-”

“Hang on,” Stan said. “We? There’s other people involved in this?”

Ford began to twist the end of one of his blankets. “Just one. I called in an old college friend to help me with some of the engineering on the portal. But when we activated it the first time for a test run he...he got tangled in the lines and pulled in...I managed to pull him back out but he saw...something on the other side. I don’t know what. I...I don’t want to think what.”

He swallowed another gulp of water, his other hand wrapping tighter and tighter around the blanket.

“He’d been...suspicious for a while, he’d tried to warn me, but I ignored him. I ignored him and he paid a terrible price for it.”

Stan had a sudden image of the melting Nazis from that adventure flick he’d caught a while back.

“Uh,” he said, trying to shoo that thought aside, “what kind of terrible price are we talking here, exactly?”

Ford shook his head. “I’m...not sure of the extent of it, to be honest, but whatever he saw... there was clearly some kind of damage to his mind. He was deeply shaken and upset... he left the project then and there, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Oh. Alright.”

Ford frowned at him. “I’m serious, Stan. What happened to him-”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, no, I’m not laughin’ or anything,” Stan said quickly. “It’s just-when you said ‘paid a terrible price’, I was wondering if there was a body to hide or something.”

“Stan!”

“Or if maybe you had him in a straitjacket down in that basement somewhere-”

“Stan!”

“Well I don’t know, Ford! I mean you’re talking about demons and horrible accidents and all that-”

“Alright, alright!” Ford was starting to look sick again, but when nothing happened Stan decided it was probably more emotional than physical. “There’s...there are no bodies to hide...as far as I know.”

“Well that’s reassuring,” Stan muttered.

“Anyway, that was when I truly began to grow suspicious,” Ford went on hastily, clearly eager to get away from this whole topic. “I confronted Bill and he admitted...no, he gloated that the entire project had been a ruse from the start. That what I had actually constructed was a means for him to enter our dimension and take it over.”

“That sounds bad.”

For a moment the look on Ford’s face was so familiar that Stan felt a strange swell of amusement and nostalgia and heartache. How many times had he seen that exasperated look, prompted by the stupid remarks he usually made while Ford tried to explain something?

“It’s indescribably bad,” Ford said tightly. “It would mean the end of the world as we know it.”

Stan whistled.

Ford gave him a narrow-eyed look suggesting that he still didn’t think Stan was taking this seriously enough. “That’s why I have to dismantle the portal before he can use it for his nefarious plans. And why I need you to take that journal somewhere safe. It contains research that must not fall into the wrong hands.”

“World-ending research?”

“...Potentially.”

Stan blew out a breath. Well, that put getting banned from 90% of the United States in some perspective.

“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands in what he hoped was a calming gesture. “You, uh...you understand, I’m not going to do anything, I just...this is just an honest question, okay?”

Ford nodded warily.

“Why not just destroy this journal? If it’s so dangerous.”

Ford’s hands tightened around his glass. “It’s my research, Stanley. It’s too valuable, I, I can’t-you can’t-I might need it later, I don’t know, I don’t know what might be in there that could be vital to fixing all this, but I can’t just leave it...if Bill found another pawn, if he got the information to someone else-I don’t know-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay.” Stan put his hands on Ford’s shoulders, steadying him; Ford was starting to shake again. “It’s okay. I’m not gonna destroy it, okay? I’m sorry for that, I just...I got mad, and...but I won’t, alright?”

Ford nodded jerkily. They sat there for a minute as Ford’s quickened breathing started to return to normal.

“So...what’s your plan?” Stan said eventually, pulling away again. “I mean, do you have a plan? Aside from getting rid of the book?”

Ford ran a hand through his hair, like it wasn’t messy enough already. “I’m...there are some caves nearby, where I first found the, um...the clues of Bill’s existence. I’m going to go back there, see if there might be anything helpful. I was just waiting for you to get here…”

Stan squinted at him. “So...your plan is to hope there’s something useful in a cave.”

“Well if you have a better idea I’d like to hear it!” Ford snapped, an angry flush creeping up his face-although under present circumstances, this only brought him back up to a normal complexion.

Stan took a few deep breaths, but oddly he found that the waspish remark didn’t irritate him nearly as much as it usually would. Maybe he was just too damn tired.

“I’m...sorry,” Ford said after a minute. Stan looked up in surprise to see Ford actually looking a little sheepish. “I acknowledge that it’s not the best plan, but I don’t know what else to do.”

Well, that was unexpected.

“‘S alright,” Stan said. “But...Ford, y’know, you barely even made it from the kitchen to here. You...you’re not up to crawling around caves right now. And that’s not even advice or anything, it’s, I mean, it’s just...it’s not gonna happen.”

Ford rubbed at his eyes and sighed heavily. “I don’t have much of a choice. The longer I wait, the more dire things get. I just...I just need to rest a bit and then I’ll go.”

Stan just barely managed to restrain himself from groaning out loud. Ford would try to go spelunking in the midst of an Oregon winter while too sick to stand upright. He would.

“Yeah, and how are you going to do that?” he said. “You’re the one saying you can’t sleep.”

“I can’t. Staying awake is the only way I can prevent Bill from possessing me. I can’t take the risk that he might...that he…”

Ford trailed off, working his lower lip in his teeth and staring into the middle distance. Stan waited a moment before waving a hand in his face. “Hello? Ford? You still here?”

“That’s it,” Ford said, more to himself than to Stan. “That’s it...Stan! Tie me up!”

Stan took a moment to process that one. It didn’t really help. “You what?”

“I can’t stop Bill taking me over while I’m asleep, but if you’re here...if you can restrain me…restrain him...he would be, would be...severely limited.” Ford swallowed. “I...I could sleep. Without...without setting him loose. As it were.”

“Oo-kay,” Stan said slowly. “You’re saying you want me to, what...chain you up like a werewolf?”

“Stan! Would you please be serious about this?” Ford considered for a moment. “Besides, it’s much more like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright. Alright. This...this is weird. This feels weird. But it’ll get you to sleep?”

“It’s the only thing I can think of,” Ford said.

There was a note in his voice that made Stan look up. Ford tended to avoid outright emotional displays when he could, especially anything like fear or pain. Partly it was just because he had all the prickly dignity of a damp cat, but mostly, Stan knew, it was because Ford couldn’t stand to show anything remotely like vulnerability.

They had that much in common.

But right now desperation and fear were written all over Ford’s face, impossible to miss, and there was a pleading note in his voice like nothing Stan had ever heard from his twin.

“Please, Stan. I...I don’t think I can stay awake all night. I’m trying but I...I…”

He trailed off hopelessly.

And by the looks of things, he was right, too, Stan thought. Ford looked like he was on the brink of collapse. Sooner or later-most likely sooner-he was simply going to shut down.

Stan squared his shoulders. “Alright,” he said. “You got any rope?”

They were unable to figure out a way to secure Ford to the couch, so they adjourned to what Ford insisted was the living room. Stan couldn’t really tell the difference between it and the rest of the house, but there was, at least, an armchair there, covered in a heap of papers and books. Ford haphazardly stacked them nearby while Stan untangled the length of rope Ford had found on top of a bookcase, along with a dead houseplant, a pair of wire cutters, and what looked like a human skull. Stan hadn’t asked any questions.

“So,” he said, as Ford dusted off the chair-a fairly useless endeavour- “does, um, Bill...he doesn’t have, you know, super strength or anything? He’s not gonna just bust outta this rope, is he?”

Ford dropped down into the chair. “No. Bill is essentially limited to the constraints of the body he is possessing.”

Stan raised his eyebrows. “Essentially?”

Ford looked away, working his jaw and refusing to meet Stan’s eyes.

“Bill is...not deterred by pain or...other sensations,” Ford said at last. “He can still feel it, but he is not, erm, particularly bothered by it. In fact he...he finds pain to be...interesting. Amusing, even.” He took a deep breath and hurried on. “I haven’t exactly been able to extensively test this, but my, er, belief is that he would therefore be able to...push beyond limits that I could not. But he is still fundamentally unable to do anything that I would physically be incapable of.”

“Ford,” Stan said, cutting off Ford’s rambling before it could really get going. “Is this...does this have to do with why you’re out of bandages?”

Ford didn’t reply for so long that Stan began to wonder if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open.

But finally he said, in a voice so low it was barely audible,“Bill...enjoys inflicting various minor injuries on me when he is in control. Mostly just for his own entertainment, but sometimes...sometimes to make a point.”

Stan clenched his fists and ground his teeth until his jaw ached. He could feel the same old anger that had always swallowed him when he saw someone trying to hurt Ford, that had gotten him more detentions and reprimands and bloody noses than he could count because when Ford was in danger Stan went in swinging without a second thought. He’d never regretted it either, no matter the consequences, no matter what punishment Stan took for Ford, no matter if even Ford himself was angry at him afterward. None of that mattered, because no one hurt Ford on Stan’s watch and that was the end of it.

But now he didn’t know what to do. There was nowhere to put that anger, no target to lash out at. He didn’t even really know if this was anything other than a byproduct of some illness, some delusion that had driven Ford to hurt himself.

“Stan,” Ford said. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not alright,” Stan ground out. “Nothing’s alright.”

Ford sighed. “Well...regardless, there’s nothing to be done about it at the moment. It’s a minor problem, really.”

“Only you, Ford,” Stan muttered, twisting the rope around his hands. “Only you would call this a minor problem.”

“It is a minor problem compared to the other problems at the moment.” Ford finally looked up and met Stan’s eyes. “I’m...I’m more concerned that he does not hurt you again.”

Stan didn’t really know what to say to that.

“Now, if you would, please,” Ford said.

Stan sighed and crossed over to the armchair.

“Now listen,” Ford said as Stan tied his arms behind the chair, doing his best to make the binds gentle but still effective, “I’m sure that Bill will try to trick you in some way. He’s a master of manipulation and trickery. So it is vitally important that you do not trust anything he says and above all do not make a deal with him! Do not shake his hand! No matter how harmless it might seem, it will certainly be a trap. Don’t engage with him at all if you can help it, in fact. Maybe you should gag me as well,” he added as an afterthought.

Stan rolled his eyes. “I’m not gonna gag you, Ford. This is weird enough already.”

“Stan, the weirdness of the situation is inconsequential if it could thwart Bill’s plans!”

Stan groaned and checked the knots before moving on to tying Ford’s legs. “Okay. Is the very real possibility of you throwing up again consequential?”

“...I can put up with that if need be.”

“Yeah, well I’m not gonna. Look, Ford, I’m not making any deals with anyone, okay? I know something about liars, ya know?”

Ford grumbled vaguely. “Maybe, but Bill’s powers of persuasion are-”

“Ah, shut up and tell me if these knots are tight enough.”

Ford struggled valiantly, but the knots held to Stan’s satisfaction.

“You’re quite good at this,” Ford muttered.

“Yeah, well. Life of crime and all that.”

In point of fact, most of what Stan knew about tying knots came from their old days of working on the Stan o’ War, but he didn’t feel like bringing that up right now.

“Alright,” he said, coming out from behind the chair. “You...uh...comfortable?”

“As much as I think I could be in this situation.”

Stan put some blankets over him. It almost made the whole setup look normal.

“So uh, is there like...some way I can tell for sure if, you know, it’s him and not you?” he said as he took Ford’s glasses off and put them on top of the nearest pile of stuff. In truth, he didn’t think he really needed it; that too-wide grin and grating voice and overall sense of wrong would be pretty damn difficult to miss, especially once he was watching for it. But maybe it would make Ford stop panicking about Stan making some kind of a deal with the devil. Or at least, make him panic a bit less.

Ford stared at him.

“What?” Stan said.

“You...you didn’t notice?”

“Notice what?” He was starting to get a bit unnerved by the way Ford was looking at him.

“My eyes. In the kitchen, you didn’t...you didn’t see…?”

“What-oh, you mean the bleeding? Yeah, of course, but that didn’t happen until after-”

“No, not the bleeding! My eyes!” Ford was starting to sound almost frantic. “You didn’t notice anything about my eyes while Bill was-was-”

Stan shrugged. “Uh, well, I guess I did think they looked a bit weird, but I couldn’t really tell…”

“Stan, when Bill is...is in control of someone, their eyes always appear yellow, with slitted pupils. It’s...you really didn’t see that? At all?”

“It was dark, okay? And I was bit distracted, you know? I’m sorry!”

Stupid stupid stupid just like you just like always you never notice anything important you never get things right-

Ford blinked. “Stan, I’m not...it’s not…” He swallowed, and for the first time Stan realized that the look on Ford’s face was closer to horror than anger.

“You really didn’t know, did you?” he said. “You really...you really must have thought that...that was me.”

“Well...well, yeah, Ford, I thought you...I mean, I told you that.”

He couldn’t quite figure out the look on Ford’s face. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“Stan…”

“Oh, go to sleep already.” Stan turned away and began clearing out a space on the floor. “Tell me if you need anything.”

There was a heavy silence for a time.

“If this were much prolonged,” Ford muttered, startling Stan into knocking a whole stack of books over, “the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown…the power of voluntary change be forfeited.”

“What,” Stan said.

“Nothing. I was just thinking…” Ford yawned heavily. “...thinking about...Jekyll and Hyde.”

Stan rolled his eyes and went back to stacking.

“You know, the thing about Dr. Jekyll...” Ford said a moment later, “the thing about Dr. Jekyll…”

When there was no apparent follow-up to this Stan turned just in time to see Ford’s eyes close and his chin fall to his chest. He assumed that was the end of it, but as he looked away Ford spoke again, in a sleep-heavy mumble so low Stan could barely make it out.

“The thing about Dr. Jekyll was...he brought his curse on himself.”

Stan waited for a while, but Ford said nothing more.

Stan himself was achingly tired, but though he laid out the remaining pillows and blankets into something halfway comfortable, he had no real intention of sleeping. He couldn’t, really, not with the imminent promise of a reappearance from Bill hanging over him.

He wanted nothing less than to ever see that mocking facsimile of his brother again, but he knew he had to at some point. He had to know what was he was up against, what Bill really was, if there really was something supernatural at work or if this was all some strange sick delusion of Ford’s.

He had to know, before he could sleep, before he could do anything else, if it had really been Ford holding the knife all along.

He expected a long wait, but Ford had only been dozing for a few minutes when his head snapped up so suddenly that Stan jumped.

“Well, isn’t this cute!” Bill-and it was Bill, whatever Bill was, oh yes, because there was that grin- twisted and thrashed about, but the knots held firm. “You’re actually trying to stop me! Or did you just get tired of dealing with ol’ Fordsy and decide to put him out of the way?”

Stan wanted to either flee the room on the spot or punch Bill again, but instead he stood up and flicked on the overhead light. He had to get much closer to that grinning face than he wanted to make out the eyes. Damn his lousy eyesight anyway.

Ford’s pupils had contracted down to long slits like the eyes of a rattlesnake, and the usual warm brown had turned a bright, bright yellow.

The sight made something cold zap down Stan’s spine. He tried to think if he’d heard of anything-a drug or a sickness or something-that could make someone’s eyes change like that, but he had a sinking feeling that there was no such thing.

Well. Shit.

“Well, I guess I can’t fool you anymore!” Bill said cheerfully, and Stan drew back at once. “Good job! Brownie points for you! You’ve found out that I am not really your brother! Honestly, I was started to wonder how long it’d take you to notice, whew-”

“Uh-huh.” There was a lamp nearby that had been knocked onto the floor at some point but was still plugged in. Stan put it up on a box next to the chair and turned it on. The warm glow cast a better light on Ford’s face than the watery overhead light, and it grated less against the pounding headache he had picked up somewhere along the way.

“Buuuuuut that doesn’t mean you and I can’t still be friends,” Bill went on as Stan settled back in his spot. “I know, I know, I tried to kill you, but look-that was ages ago, and anyway, what’s a little murder between friends?”

“We’re not friends,” Stan snapped before he could stop himself. Dammit, Stan, don’t banter with the demon.

“But we could be!” Bill finally stopped twisting around against the ropes and fixed Stan with his spotlight stare. “Look, let’s have a talk, you and me, huh? I’m sure your beloved brother probably told you all kinds of terrible things about me. But why should you trust him? I mean really, after all this time, you think he has your best interests at heart?”

“Not listening,” Stan muttered, pointedly looking away. “Do-de-do, not paying attention to the creepy demon guy…”

“Aw, c’mon, there’s no need to be like that,” Bill said. “Listen, maybe I missed the mark earlier with that whole being forgiven thing. That’s not what you want? I got more! Did I mention wealth? Power? Fame and fortune?”

“Yeah,” Stan said. “You did mention all that.”

“So? All you gotta do is throw your lot in with me instead of your dumb brother. That oughta be easy, right? He betrayed you! Threw you to the curb, left you in the lurch, flicked you off like a scab and left you to rot for ten years! He only called you here so you could do something for him! Why would you turn around and help him now, huh?”

Stan gripped the edge of a pillow and looked away.

“Oh! Ohhhhhh!” From the corner of his eye Stan saw the glaring yellow eyes widen in realization. “I get it! You don’t want to reconcile-you want revenge! That’s what it is, isn’t it? You wanna get back at him for everything he cost you! Well that’s easy! No problem! Hey, I’ll even give you a free sample! You can punch him right now! No charge, no deal required, c’mon, it’s on the house!”

Bill raised Ford’s chin and waggled his eyebrows at Stan in a come-and-get-it expression that made Stan’s skin crawl.

He could see a black eye forming where he had punched Ford-no, Bill-earlier. By the looks of it it was going to be a beauty.

“Hey,” he said. “You know what I want?”

Bill dropped his chin and grinned. “Oh, I know a great many things, Stanley. But I’ll bite. What do you want?”

“It’s not money.”

“No?”

“It’s not power.”

“Really?”

“Not fame either, I definitely don’t need that.”

“Well, what is it?” Bill snapped. “You gonna tell me or what?”

Stan finally looked him right in the eye. “I want you to get the fuck out of my brother and haul ass back to whatever slimy hellhole you crawled out of in the first place.”

For a moment Bill simply stared at him with total incomprehension. Then the anger hit his stolen face like a lightning strike.

Bill tilted Ford’s head back and screamed, a high, horrible, throat-tearing sound of pure fury.

Stan waited it out, smiling tightly.

He’d been afraid. Not that he would have admitted it, but truthfully, he’d been terrified, terrified of once again encountering that nightmare of Ford, terrified that he was going to see that looming shadow at the back of his mind made manifest and this time discover that it had been real all along.

But it...wasn’t. Bill resembled that nightmare, but only in the same way he resembled Ford himself: a shallow mockery that was easily exposed. He might have said some of the same things Stan had dreaded over the years, but it sounded brittle and fake coming from him, with none of the dark weight that that nightmare brought with it.

And besides...Bill had given up. Bill was screaming and frothing in anger and that wasn’t like the nightmare at all. The nightmare never got angry. It didn’t have to, because it never lost.

“YOU PATHETIC, INSIGNIFICANT MEATBAG!” Bill raged. “WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU I’LL STRING YOUR SUFFERING OUT FOR MILLENNIA! YOU’RE GOING TO WISH YOU COULD DIE!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stan muttered, reaching for his bag. “Heard that one before.”

“YOU’VE NEVER HEARD ANYTHING LIKE ME BEFORE YOU DISGUSTING LITTLE STICK OF FLESH! I CAN DO THINGS THAT WOULD MAKE YOUR MIND CURDLE LIKE ROTTEN MILK-”

The contents of the bag were a jumbled mess, and it took Stan an earsplitting minute or two of rifling before he pulled out the Walkman. He’d stolen it from some rich asshole that had pushed him into a gutter while he was panhandling, intending only to get some revenge and quick cash, but he’d wound up liking the thing too much to give it up. Stupid, really-it would have been more sensible to sell it. Music wouldn’t put gas in your car or food in your stomach, after all. Hell, sometimes it stole your girlfriend. But it was...nice. A small luxury to hang on to.

He put the headphones in, cranked the volume up all the way, and grinned triumphantly as Bill’s ranting was drowned out by Queen.

A master of manipulation and trickery, huh? Well, Bill would have to step up his game if he wanted to take in Stan Pines.

The demon kept it up for a while, but by the end of the second track he was clearly flagging. When the noise finally died out about halfway through-appropriately enough-Sheer Heart Attack, Stan looked up to see Bill glaring at him, chest heaving with exertion. There was blood trickling from Ford’s eye again, and saliva dribbling from the corners of his mouth.

For a moment Bill just sat there, furiously gasping for breath, and then at long last he slumped forward and went still.

Stan waited briefly to see if this was going to last, and when it seemed like it was, he walked over and gently lifted one of Ford’s eyelids. Beneath was a bloodshot but otherwise normal brown eye.

He let out a breath and went to dig up a box of kleenex he’d seen earlier.

Ford blinked once while Stan was wiping the mess off his face and let out a quiet, slurred, “Stan?”

“It’s alright,” Stan said. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mmpfh,” Ford mumbled, and promptly dropped off again.

Stan tossed the bloody tissues away and went back to his makeshift bed. He meant to stay awake, to keep watch in case Bill tried anything else, but the little circle of lamplight was still and quiet and warm in the wake of the little space heater, and it had, after all, been a tremendously long day…

[immortalecstasy-blog]

You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth 18+

Chapter 3/14 Pairing: Eddie Munson / Chrissy Cunningam Need to catch up? Click Here for Chapter 1

When Chrissy finally woke up, she was mute. People are sympathetic at first, but when she doesn’t magically get better, she slowly finds herself as one of the ‘freaks’. Lucky for her, there’s one freak in particular she really doesn’t mind finding herself beside. 

Warnings: Slow Burn, Angst, PTSD, Chrissy still got attacked by Vecna but didn't die, Eddie still got mauled by bats but didn't die, Hurt/Comfort, Abuse

Read on AO3 or...

Eddie had hung up the phone, unable to wipe the grin off his face until he noticed Henderson sat on the armchair opposite, his hands on his knees, his head in his heads, staring at him with a grin on his face. In the doorway, his uncle stood leaning against the door frame, his arms folded, looking tired but watching him with interest.

Eddie’s grin vanished, a pink flush creeping up his neck.

“What?” He snapped, defensive.

“Nothing!” Dustin protested, waving his arms, “Just… I had to listen. You do the voices so good.”

“Really?”

“Dude! Yes!”

“Uh, thanks?” Eddie said tentatively, dog-earring the page and setting the book down next to the phone. He looked quickly to his uncle who gave him a small grin, nodding in agreement.

“How long have you been there?”

“Since Gandalf turned up.”

Eddie frowned and glanced at the clock.

“Aren’t you going to be late for work?”

Wayne Munson glanced at the clock. “Nah, just uh, won’t be able to eat something first.”

“My Mom packed you something.” Dustin told him, twisting in his chair, “It’s in the fridge.”

Wayne looked surprised but pleased and nodded his thanks. He said a quick goodbye and headed into the kitchen. They heard him opening the fridge, and a few moments later, heard him leaving.

“You want to watch a movie?” Dustin offered, feigning obliviousness to Eddie’s discomfort.

“What? Oh, um, yeah. Yeah sure.”

They ended up watching Indiana Jones: Raiders of the lost Ark – Eddie had always liked his horror films, but ever since his adventure in the upside down, the red filters and gore were nothing more than horrible reminders. The cheesy effects of Raiders of the lost Ark were manageable, none of it bothered him.

When the film was over and Mrs Henderson was calling them to the table for dinner, he followed after Dustin, still totally unused to being fed homecooked meals with a motherly smile.

Mrs Henderson hadn’t quite volunteered her home to him and Wayne. That was definitely Dustin. But as the weeks had passed, she’d gotten used to him, even once telling him she’d always wanted Dustin to have siblings. She was… odd. But Eddie liked odd.

Odd people. Anyway. The right kind of odd. Not upside-down odd.

He agreed with the hobbits, he decided, adventures weren’t a good thing. No more adventures for Eddie Munson. We don’t want any adventures here, thank you.

He thanked Mrs Henderson as she piled his plate with a huge serving of chicken potpie and a tower of mashed potatoes, rubbing ruefully at the worst of the scars on his side.

That night, they dragged out his mattress from under Dustin’s bed, and Eddie settled down to sleep. He felt bad, sharing a room with Dustin, taking over everything. Dustin didn’t complain, but… well, Eddie wasn’t exactly a good sleeper anymore. More than once, Dustin had had to jump out of bed and calm him down after a particularly bad nightmare.

He pulled out his Walkman, pushing his hair back from his face. ‘Bat Out of Hell’ started to play. He knew the mention of bats should’ve been some kind of trigger, and Meatloaf was nowhere near the top twenty of his favourite artists, but the song was almost a solid ten minutes, and the composition was pretty bad ass, really.

But the nightmare came anyway. At first, he was on the roof of his trailer in the upside-down, just as he had been. But then his guitar turned against him, twisted and deformed she morphed into one of those awful demo-bats and came for his throat, striking like a snake, but even as he fought it off he awoke with a start and was instead battling his duvet and the wire of his headphones, flinging the duvet away from his face, the cool night air hitting his bare sweat-slicked chest as he lurched upright, the wire of the headphones pressing into his neck, panic pooling in his stomach.

Gritting his teeth, hands shaking, he re-organised the wire. Then he rewound the tape, trying to muffle the sound under his pillow, casting looks towards Dustin to make sure he hadn’t woken him up for a third night running.

For a moment, for a blink of an eye, it wasn’t Dustin’s form he saw, it was Chrissy’s, bent and twisted and broken, eyes bleeding.

He barely had time to gasp before the image was gone but it still burned there behind his eyelids, even as the tape clicked to let him know it was finished rewinding, he tucked his knees up to his chest and started to sob silently. His mouth open but no sound escaping as hot tears streaked his cheeks.

When the worst of it had finally past and he could gain a modicum of composure, he put the headphones back on and pressed play, but as the joyous starting notes blared in his ears, he realised he had never heard anything so tacky and crap and useless in his life. Thrusting the headphones away, he rose silently. His face felt feverishly hot, cold sweat clinging to him and starting to make him itch.

He creeped out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom, his bare feet silent on the thick carpet. Fumbling for the light in the darkness.

He ran a cloth under the tap and wiped the worst of it away, letting the soaking cloth drip water down his back and absorb into the waistband of his pyjama bottoms.

Just as he was finishing up, he heard a noise somewhere else in the house and his heart started to race. He crept back into the hall, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

Then he saw his Uncle Wayne at the other end of the hall, having just let himself in after a long shift at the plant, covered in grime.

The nervous energy left him, and Eddie crumpled.

Without a word, Wayne held out his arms and Eddie launched into them.

Wayne held his nephew fiercely, blinking back his own tears, his jaw tight as Eddie clung to him like a child, his body wracking with sobs.

“It’s okay, boy.” Wayne told him, “You’re okay.”

After Eddie had hung up the phone, Chrissy had sat in a tightly curled ball on the sofa, mindlessly massaging her stiff knee until her dad had suggested she go for a shower before dinner.

She had agreed with a nod, if only for something to do other than think, smiling at him when he even went to the airing cupboard to get her a fresh towel.

Once in the bathroom, the door safely locked behind her, she stripped out of the jeans and the long jumper she had been wearing and look at herself.

She couldn’t hide the zigzag of scars on her hands, and the one small scar from fixing her jaw almost invisible, just by one ear. Her arms weren’t too bad, they’d been reasonably clean breaks and hadn’t needed pinning, and though they were atrophied from the weeks spent in a cast, she could look at them.

It was her legs that filled her with a toxic combination of disgust and shame. Scarred all over from the pins they’d used to piece her back together, withered away to nothing and as pale as milk. She had always been quietly proud of her legs, happy to walk around in her cheer uniform showing off the supple muscles, the blemish free sun-kissed skin.

Now they made her feel sick, deformed, broken. Vecna had done this to her, she knew. But if he’d have just let her die, he could have saved her from it too.

She tried to shake herself out of it, ignore the little voice in her head that told her that that would have been better. That voice was wrong. It had to be.

She kept reminding herself that she had promised that – voice or not - she wouldn’t be a silent little doll for her mother, or her ‘friends’ or even Jason, to play with anymore.

Everything about her life had been shallow. She had been starved for true happiness as well as food. The dark thoughts brought on by the state of her legs just reminded her that she had a long way to go if she wanted to remove ‘shallow’ from her self-description.

She wanted brave, happy, strong. Good words.

She didn’t want to be like Bilbo, letting people though the door and eating his pantry bare because it was expected.

People had been gnawing away at her inner reserves for years, and she had dutifully let them.

Not anymore. She wasn’t going to do it anymore.

But with all the best intentions in the world, she couldn’t stop her overbearing mother, or change the opinion that everyone around her had built up over years and years, over her entire life.

It wasn’t just her body that has been torn apart, she felt like she was two different people slammed into one body.

She bounced from marionette to determined young woman half a dozen times over the course of one shower, and when she finally gave up trying to feel clean, wrapped herself up in the towel and stared at the unrecognisable reflection in the mirror.

How could she be the person she wanted to be when she looked like this? When she lived under this roof? When she couldn’t even decide who she wanted to be? When she couldn’t even speak.

“Speak, Chrissy.” She told herself.

But when she was sat around the dinner table twenty minutes later, her throat had closed up again. She picked at her dinner, uninterested in the fact she was able to eat solid foods again. Not even bothered by the fact her own mother was telling her to eat something – that was more impossible than superpowers and alternate dimensions, and yet the words washed over Chrissy with no meaning, no purpose.

She forgot about the song list until she woke up in the middle of the night.

She had dreamt she was a little girl, walking along the street with her dad, eating an ice-cream. But then she had looked up at him to ask him something, and his eyes and his mouth had been sewn shut. She’d tried to pull her hand away – her ice-cream dropping to the floor and turning into a cluster of spiders that scuttled up her legs and poured into her mouth. She looked to her dad to beg for help, but he wasn’t there. The hand she held was Vecna’s, and he held it so tightly that all her fingers snapped, the knuckles crunching, oozing blood and bone marrow.

She’d woken up with a start, her hand throbbing, her mouth dry. Only then did she remember what Eddie had told her.

She climbed out of bed and went to her desk, turning on the desk lamp. She jumped when the light came on, as if she hadn’t expected it to work, looking quickly around her as if Vecna had been stood in the darkness, waiting.

She sat quietly – listening out for any sinister noises – and when her heart had steadied into a near normal rhythm she pulled a pad of paper towards her, removing the stubborn pen lid with her teeth.

She stared at the blank page for a long time. Long enough that birds started to sing outside her window.

Chrissy had always enjoyed music. To cheer to, dance to, sing along to.

She couldn’t think of a single song.

So, she gave up when she heard the rest of the house waking up around her, and went downstairs to join them, ignoring the gnawing feeling in her stomach. She’d only reached the bottom step before her mom was sending her back upstairs, telling her to get dressed.

Eddie had slept better during his second stint. It seems bawling like a baby was an effective way of exhausting your body to the point of dreamless sleep.

His eyes were sore, almost glued together with gunk and he knew Henderson – anyone – would be able to tell he’d been crying. He had cried until there was nothing left, until his Uncle Wayne had led him back to his bed with a firm reassuring squeeze to his shoulder.

“Good morning.” Dustin yawned, stretching, his arms abnormally close together over his shoulders.

“Hey man.”

“You good?”

“Did I wake you?”

“No?”

“Then yeah, I’m good.”

Dustin studied him, but for once he didn’t say anything.

“I thought we could go out for breakfast.” Mrs Henderson told them when they’d dressed and headed out of Dustin’s room.

“Really?” Dustin asked, excited.

Eddie’s face paled, and it seemed Dustin could only not say something once per day.

“We don’t have to dude. We can chill here.”

“No, I, um, I can… yeah.”

“You sure?”

Eddie gritted his teeth and nodded.

“Great!” Mrs Henderson exclaimed, as if they’d just agreed to some incredible favour she’d asked instead of the possibility of a short stack at a local diner.

Eddie had to pause at the front door, his eyes searching the blue cloudless sky shrewdly before stepping out onto the path and out towards the car.

Dustin was watching him carefully, which Eddie resented fucking sevenfold because he wasn’t a fucking agoraphobic looney. He’d had one fucking one freak out- which he felt like he deserved, after everything.

Well, one that Dustin knew about anyway. Whatever.

He’d be flinching at anything fucking flying at him if he’d been minutes away from death thanks to a swarm of demonic flying pieces of fuck that.

His heart was pounding against his rib cage once he’d settled in the passenger seat, forcing Dustin into the back. No matter what he told himself, his body still reacted to the non-existent threat, he felt like a fucking coward. He knew Vecna was gone. Between them all, they had ensured it. But the gates… the fucking gates were still there. It didn’t matter that they’d all told him the bats had died with Vecna, that he’d watched it happen. His body acted as if they were going to come for him any moment, alert, tense, ready to fight to the fucking death just so he could go eat pancakes.

It’s like his brain and his body just didn’t sync up anymore.

Once they were driving it was somehow worse. He knew he’d have to do it again. Even if he abandoned his pride enough to veto the trip for breakfast, he would have to get out of the car at some point. He felt like he was poised on a plane, the doors open, with someone confidentially telling him to jump when he knew his parachute wouldn’t open.

“You okay bud?” Dustin had asked as they pulled up. Eddie just threw him a disdainful look and opened the car door, closing his eyes and swallowing against the bile rising his throat. He tried to just look at the floor, ignoring the endless sky bearing down from above, but he was unable to resist the urge to squint up at the sky and turn in a circle, scanning the horizon for an incoming threat.

The sky was clear and cloudless, shockingly blue. Nothing could hide in that.

It didn’t really help.

“Hey look! Chrissy’s here!��

Eddie’s head whipped around to look at Henderson and then in through the window of the diner.

It had baffled him that she had come to see him. He still felt like it was his fault. He hadn’t seen the signs; it didn’t matter that he hadn’t known what was going on at the time. Even if he’d just put the damned radio, he could have saved her from all of this. Saved his own name in the process.

She’d opened up to him. Could an extra few minutes with her before had meant anything? She’d asked him if he felt like he was losing his mind. He’d known something was wrong, had been seeking to reassure her. What would have happened if he’d probed a bit further? If she’d opened up to him like she had yesterday?

“Poor thing.” Mrs Henderson said gently, “She’s really been through it, hasn’t she?”

“You have no idea.” Eddie murmured, looking away. He followed the back of Dustin’s baseball cap like it was his anchor until they’d made it safely inside and his lungs could start working again.

Why the fuck had he agreed to go for breakfast? Whose stupid fucking idea had this been?

The bell had jangled with their arrival and Chrissy glanced over, the dimple of a frown at her brows relaxing when she saw him. Why.

Mrs Henderson made towards their table and Eddie wished he was short enough to just fucking hide.

“Laura?”

“Claudia, hi.” Laura Cunningham said with a tight smile and blatantly fake warmth. The rest of the table didn’t even look up at Mrs Henderson. Laura’s husband had his eyes on the table, and her daughter was looking right passed her. Mrs Henderson turned slightly to her son waving brightly, Eddie stood behind him, just taking the scene in.

Chrissy raised her hand and waved, Laura noticed then, and followed her daughters gaze, looking conflicted.

She had joined the Munson Manhunt as readily as any of them. He had always been a disturbing young man, a bad influence, obsessed with that devil music and that awful dungeon game.

She refused to be wrong about such things, but she had misjudged his involvement in what happened to her daughter, and for that, she was genuinely sorry, if only for the sake of her own embarrassment.

Worse, the perfect family she had built was destroyed. Her daughter had transformed from the head cheerleader, about to graduate with honours, the prom queen crown practically already on her head with her perfect prom king by her side into a broken fragile thing that everyone looked at with pity.

Even her sweetheart Jason had turned sour, imprisoned for attacking a child. It was any wonder Laura didn’t just pack up all their things and ship them all somewhere new for a fresh start.

She might, if Chrissy wasn’t still such an oddity.

She turned a cold eye onto her daughter as Claudia, her son and that boy went to sit down, and saw that Chrissy had turned back to her meal. When she caught her mother looking, she hesitated, lowering her fork, and looking down at her plate with a scowl.

After a few minutes she wrote ‘Can I be excused?’ on her whiteboard and waved to get her father’s attention. Laura pursed her lips as her husband nodded, waving her along, and harrumphed when Chrissy went straight for the Henderson’s table.

The diner wasn’t busy, but Laura couldn’t quite strain her ears enough to hear them, not that it would help as Chrissy’s whiteboard was turned away from her so she could only get a sense of the others response.

She was writing something to both Dustin and Eddie, both boys waiting patiently while she wrote, going so far as to stop talking when she went to write something else. Encouraging her behaviour.

Chrissy stood at the end of their table, and held up ‘Can I join you?’

Mrs Henderson smiled at her, “Of course dear.” And moved her handbag so Chrissy could take a seat, but instead she squeezed onto the bench with Eddie and Dustin and started writing.

“Hey Chrissy.” Dustin smiled, and Chrissy smiled back, quickly finishing her sentence and then showing it to them both.

‘I couldn’t think of any music’

“That’s okay.” Said Eddie, just as Dustin said “Do you want to look through my cassettes? Or Robin’s? Robin has loads.”

“Not mine?” Eddie asked him, raising his eyebrows.

“I don’t think Chrissy is going to want to listen to your music.” Dustin told him gently. Eddie went to fire a retort, but Chrissy was already writing something else, so he shut up, waiting,

‘Robin?’

“From band.” Eddie explained.

“She works at Family Video with Steve.” Dustin offered, and Chrissy nodded to show she knew who they meant.

The waitress arrived then with their breakfasts and set them down on the table, Chrissy made to move back to her own table, but Eddie reached out and took hold of her whiteboard, “You can hang out here if you want. Doesn’t like your missing much of a party.”

He shot her family a glance and Chrissy turned to see her mother watching them with a peculiar look on her face. Chrissy massaged the fingers of her dominant hand, watching as Eddie tipped half a jug of syrup onto his pancakes.

Her stomach gurgled.

He looked at her and then back over to her family, where her bacon and eggs was growing cold on her plate.

“You want to go finish your breakfast? We can bring it over here.”

She shook her head and frowned, miming her struggle to cut the food up.

He frowned, “Chrissy, we can cut it up for you, you know? You don’t have to struggle for no reason.”

She shook her head again and he pursed his lips, cutting the edge of his tower of pancakes into little squares and then pushing the plate towards her, offering out his fork.

She glared at him, but he didn’t relent, and she didn’t want him to just sit staring at her while his breakfast went cold.

She took the fork from him, letting him help her curl her fingers around it, and then she took a very syrupy bite. Sugar exploding on her tongue.

She handed the fork back to him, covering her mouth with her hand as she chewed and swallowed.

Eddie offered her a bite several more times, but she stubbornly refused, watching him mop up the giant pool of syrup and writing questions.

‘You came outside?’

He pulled a face, “I had one – tiny, tiny – little freak out. Well…” He popped the last piece of pancake in his mouth. “Like… three or four reasonably big freak outs. Point being, outside is… bad. Not denying that. But pancakes are good, and I wanted pancakes, so I told my brain to shut up.”

‘Did it work?’

“Kind of? I’m here, aren’t I?” Eddie answered, offering her some of his milkshake, she shook her head vehemently and wrote.

‘Wired-jaw = lots of milksh’

She didn’t have enough room to write the whole word, but she knew he understood.

“Chrissy!” A shrill voice had called, “Chrissy, come on. We’re going.”

They’ll all glanced over at Chrissy’s Mom, looking harassed as she threw her handbag over her shoulder.

Chrissy’s eyes went wide, and she held up one finger, scrambling for her whiteboard.

‘See you later?’

“Yeah, of course!” Dustin answered for him, “we’ve not got any plans, we’re in all day, just come over.”

Chrissy nodded, grinning at Eddie who tried his best to smile back, but it looked more like he was in pain than anything else.

Chrissy squeezed his shoulder, using it as leverage to climb out of the booth and waving to Mrs Henderson, she raised her board to write a thank you, but her mom summoned her again and she fled.

[lunarastrobabe]

Nathan Drake x F!Reader- One Last Time

(A LOT of fluff, no warnings)

It was a hot summer evening, the sun was setting and the sky was a mix of pink, blue and purple. A light breeze blew past your face when you took a seat on your deck chair in Nate's back yard. He had invited you over an hour ago to stay the night. You had been friends for only a few years but it felt like decades, you both knew each other more than you knew yourselves and having a close bond with him was something you treasured more than anything. The only problem is, that you had been in love with him since you first met in the cafe down the street not far from his home.

There had been times where he'd try to flirt with you, and it would end up in him stumbling over his words. You thought it was adorable, but you didn't look too much into it, from knowing his past with Chloe - who in fact, was also a close friend of yours, you decided to ignore it.

Nate came through the back door and sat down in the chair beside you, the wood creaking as he moved, handing you a beer.

"Everything alright?" He asked, taking a sip and turning his head to look at you, a warm smile across his face as he admired you.

You looked over at him as he relaxed in his seat, taking the beer from him. "Everything's fine Nate," You let out a shy giggle, taking a moment to appreciate the sunset glow on his face. "So, what movie is on the agenda this evening?"

He took a few minutes to actually acknowledge you were talking to him, not realising he was still staring.

"Uh, Nate?" You asked, awkwardly, snapping your fingers in front of his face. When he didn't answer you said loudly. "Drake!" His body jerked and he came back to reality.

"What?" He asked, laughing a little, trying to act smooth.

"The movie?" You raised an eyebrow at him, smirking because he knew you caught him.

He cleared his throat and took long gulp from the bottle. "Let's go inside. I'm sure my choice will be the better one." He said in a sarcastic tone.

"Typical of you to say that." You laughed, following him inside the house, as Nate went to the fridge to get some food. You leaned against the counter island in the middle of the kitchen, finding it difficult to resist looking him up and down. He was wearing his usual long-sleeved shirt, and his casual blue jeans.

"How is that typical?" He grabbed the plates and the cutlery and quickly looked at you in the corner of his eye then continued getting the food ready.

"Well, you always were the competitive one." You walked over to him and elbowed his side, then going to the living room and settling on the couch.

"I am not competitive, I'm just better at most things, natural talents and all." He took a seat next to you, setting the plates of food on the coffee table.

"Oh yeah? Do enlighten me." You gave him a look.

"Y'know, like um," He hesitated, trying to think of an answer. "Climbing and-and, other things?" His voice pitched at the last word.

"That may be true, you have the Midas touch, but instead of everything turning to gold, everything just turns to shit when you touch it." You rolled your eyes and pushed him slightly, his right arm then rested around your shoulders, your comment on his crappy climbing skills made him laugh. Your heart began racing, along with the summer heat and the butterflies in your stomach. He hadn't held you like this before so you decided to take advantage of it and curled up in his side, feeling his chest rise and lower every time he breathed. The sweet smell of his cologne mixed perfectly with your perfume. A comfortable silence filled the room, along with birds chirping outside and cars racing by.

Switching on the tv and turning to Netflix, scanning the countless genre's before Nate grabbed the remote from your hands.

"Hey! I was trying to find a good movie to watch." You exclaimed in offence. He ignored you and clicked 'play' on Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, undoubtedly one of Nate's favourites, to which you were not surprised in the slightest.

Pleased with his choice, you grabbed your plate of food and began eating, your eyes glued to the screen, the memories of being on your first adventure with Nate plagued your mind. The nostalgia and the adrenaline was what you had missed the most. Climbing high cliffs and scaling destroyed ancient buildings, finding small treasures along the way and sometimes just having a laugh together. Even the near death experiences were exciting for you, mostly because you always had such high energy. Losing your appetite you put the half empty plate back on the coffee table, pushing it away from you and returning to your previous position that was in between his arms.

Nate felt content and relaxed, closing his eyes and put his head back to rest on the couch cushion. You felt his finger tips brush up and down your waist, while you got lost in your thoughts, thinking about all your wants and needs, him being one of those desires eating away at you.

"Love to know what you're thinkin' about." He whispered intently, leaning close to your ear, breaking the silence between you both, the only sound coming from the television speakers. You shivered as goosebumps covered your body, only he could make you feel this way especially during a heatwave. You fiddled with the hem of his shirt enjoying the soft material between your fingers, his body shifting a little, pulling you a little bit closer to his body.

"Hm?" You hummed and looked up at him. "Oh, just, the movie brought back memories of the first time we went looking for buried treasure together," You let out a small laugh, remembering the countless times he had saved your life, either from falling into a dark, cold abyss or getting shot by mercenaries. "I still wish it hadn't ended so soon."

He sighed a little, forgetting that he also had missed the adventure just as much as you did. You smiled at him in awe, unable to pry your eyes away from his icy blue ones that took your breath away every time you gazed into them. His arm slowly left your shoulders and clung to your waist, tightening his grip slightly, the palm of your hand on his chest. Your heart was pulled to him, as if his own was calling your name, trying to get your attention.

"Who said it has to?" He said quietly.

A small smile appeared on your face, you knew exactly what was about to happen and you had waited a long time for it.

He leaned down, the soft tip of his nose brushing against yours as he kissed you. You both moved and he laid down on his back, pulling you on top of him with your bodies pressed together, holding you in the way you had always dreamed he would. You cupped his face in your hands, slow kisses and the glow from the sunset shining on him.

You pulled back for some air, a new found sense of love and comfort filled his heart.

"So, how about another adventure? One last time?" He grinned.

"Took you long enough to ask me, Drake." You pressed your lips to his cheek.

"I'll take that as a yes." He laughed, rubbing your back. He then stopped, moving some hair from your eyes. "C'mere." He brought your face close to his and kissed you once again, he never wanted to forget this moment.

[auroralightsthesky]

Hey! Okay so I’ve seen you do Eddie Jones content, and I am so so here for it! 👏🏻 A lot of people don’t do him, y’know? Whenever you get the chance and if I could make a request? Maybe headcanons about him with the prompts “first kiss” and “first time”? Thanks!

Lovely, you know you're making me an offer that I just can't refuse!! Of course I'll do this one for ya.

You and Eddie's first kiss was not exactly how you pictured it

He had just woken up in the aid station on Pavuvu and he couldn't help but kiss you

Because he was afraid he'd never see you again and you were afraid he would never wake up

And it was the best kiss you had ever experienced

Later that week when you, Eddie and Andy all went home you helped him recover once he got back to his home in the states

You were switching out the bandages one night and were looking him over

You know that famous "where does it hurt??" scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark?? Yeah......it turned into one of those instances

You loved the feeling of Eddie's hands roaming all over you

And when you'd go for his neck you loved hearing the quiet moan that came out of his mouth

And that tongue action!! Oh lordy I'm not goin down that rabbit hole......

You couldn't believe how good it felt to finally let everything out of your system

And when you two were lying side by side, you didn't want to loose yourself from Eddie's arms

Because you wanted to take in every bit of the moment that you could

So you could remember it forever

[bobasheebaby]

Howard Wolowitz Prompts

1 “You know, I'm really glad you decided to learn Mandarin.” “Why?” “Once you're fluent, you'll have a billion more people to annoy instead of me.”

2 “NAME does not cry.” “That's true, you'd rust.”

3 “I invented a game. Want to play?” “Sure.” “It's called NAME or DOG NAME. I give you actual quotes I've heard NAME say, and you guess if he/she was talking to his/her boyfriend/girlfriend or his/her dog.”

4 “Settle this. Those little animated pictures on the Internet, are they called ‘gifs’ or ‘jifs’?” “Well, the G stands for ‘graphics.’ That's a hard G, so I'd say ‘gif.’” “What? The guy who invented it says it's ‘jif.’” “I'm sorry, do you mean the guy or the juy?”

5 “So you can never take it (the sweater) off?” “No.” “Not even to sleep?” “No.” “So you're just an idiot?” “It's called proving a point.” “Is the point you're an idiot?”

6 “We have to go over some ground rules about NAME.” “Like when it turns out he’s/she's made of rubber, I don't say anything?” “He’s/She's very real.” “That's what it says on the box. Right next to dishwasher safe.”

7 “Aren't you gonna come with me?” “While you confront your father:mother about his/her sex life? I'd rather go back to that bar in assless chaps.”

8 “OK, is everyone clear on the plan?” “Yes, NAME 1’s going to wet himself/herself I'm gonna throw up, NAME 2’s gonna run away and you're going to die. Shall we synchronize our watches?”

9 “NAME, let me take this opportunity to point out that you are looking particularly ravishing today.” “Not with a thousand condoms, NAME.” “So there is a number.”

10 “Hey, you want to make sure he/she gets nowhere with NAME without jeopardizing your friendship with either of them?” “I'm listening.” “Just tell him/her to do everything you've done with him/her for the last two years.”

11 “On the potty, what are you five?” “It's a potty, what do you call it?” “A toilet.” “That's a little vulgar for the dinner table, don't you think?” “And potty is okay?” “Potty is innocent. Potty is adorable.” “What do you do on the potty, wee-wee?” “If I don't have to boom-boom.”

12 “Try telling him/her it's a non-optional social convention.” “What?” “Just do it!” “It's a non-optional social convention.” “Oh, fair enough.” “He/She came with a manual.”

13 [NAME smiles in a grotesque way] “Oh crap that's terrifying.”

14 “He/She didn't dump me. We were just in different places in the relationship.” “I fail to see how a relationship can have the qualities of a geographical location.” “It's very simple. NAME was living in a little town called ‘Please don't leave me’, while NAME had just moved to the island of ‘Bye-bye!’”

15 “Are you planning on kidnapping a man/woman?” “Sarcasm?” “Yes, but mixed with genuine concern.”

16 “NAME knows football? I mean Quidditch, sure, but football?”

17 “Puppies, how do you stand on puppies?” “A puppy once bit my face!” “Of course it did.”

18 “NAME, there's no place for truth on the Internet.”

19 “I see. I assume since the rest of you have set the bar so low, you're saving the most impressive contribution for last. Go on NAME, dazzle me.” “Well, my power is the ability to pretend like I give a damn about your piddly-ass problem. And that's 24/7 buddy.”

20 “You can't just throw everything in the closet.” “Hey, you can tell me what to do and how to do it, but not both at the same time. This isn't sex.”

21 “We're looking for NAME, not Marmaduke.”

22 “NAME it's the phone!” “I know it's the phone NAME! I hear the phone!” “Who is calling at this ungodly hour?” “I don't know!” “Well ask them why are they calling at this ungodly hour!” “How can I ask them when I'm talking to you?”

23 “Well no, you're mistaken. You give speeches all the time. What you can't do is shut up.”

24 “The way I see it, I'm halfway to pity sex.”

25 “Why do I even try?” “I'm going to fix this right now.” “Okay, but just make it look like an accident.”

26 “Love is not a sprint, it's a marathon, a relentless pursuit that only ends when he/she falls into your arms — or hits you with the pepper spray.”

27 “Look, if you don't want to go to the party, just don't go. You're a grown man. Act like one. Tell NAME you want to spend the weekend having a sleepover and playing video games with your friends!”

28 “Can we take a moment to discuss that I just lied to the government for you?” “Yeah, I would not have done that for you.”

29 “NAME ruined Raiders of the Lost Ark* for me, so I'm trying to find something beloved of his/hers and ruin that.” “Because his/her life wasn't enough?” *[insert any movie, play or book]

30 “I think you broke the dowels. You're not gonna have time to glue it back on. You'll have to nail it.” “With what?” “Does he/she have any pillows or wine glasses?” “He/She does.”

“Great. Neither of those. Try a hammer!” “Did that feel good? You feel like a big man now?”

31 “Why're you being so quiet? You upset or are you just rebooting?”

32 “Come on, NAME, Star Wars.” “I'm pushing play. I mean it. If we don't start soon, George Lucas is going to change it again.”

33 “Come on, one day this may double in value and be worth half what I paid for it!”

34 [Chuckles] “Look at that. There's finally a man/woman in your life you can talk to.”

35 “I shouldn't be raising a kid. I don't even eat my own vegetables.”

36 “I love you. And I'm not just saying that because your breasts are gonna get bigger.”

37 “First take a picture with me.” “Why?” “Well, NAME and I always talked about learning how to make cocktails like this together, so I taught myself and I'm putting this on Instagram so he/she can see it and feel like a turd. Say cheese!”

38 “Stop hitting on my man/lady or you shall experience my wrath.” “I am not hitting on him/her.” “And I am not your Lady.” “And you have no wrath.”

39 “NAME, relax. I am not interested in your boyfriend/girlfriend.” “I hope not. Because you don't wanna mess with me.” [Gets in NAME’s face] “I'm crazy.”

40 “How did you get so brave all of a sudden?” “It's easy. The spider's crawling up your arm.”

41 “Why are you back from your date so early?” “Well, in romance, as in show business, always leave them wanting more.” “What exactly does that mean?” “He/She struck out.”

42 “Sit, you look like you've had a long day.” “Naw, she always looks like that. ... Because she married an idiot.”

43 “You guys never use that space up there. Why not get a table?” “Do you want the long answer or the short answer?” “How come we never get that option?”

44 “You're a putz. Do you what that means?” “Yeah. Do you?”

45 “Excuse me, I happen to be very comfortable with my masculinity.” “How is that possible?”

46 “Oh, you're saying I don't do anything around here? Look at my chore chart!”

47 “Well don't come crying to me when you don't get your allowance.” “It's not an allowance. It's a stipend! And we said we weren't going to call it an allowance in front of my friends.”

48 “Neither of them will be the actual cake. I'm just using it as a bargaining chip to get NAME to agree to the whole wedding party getting rings and us getting one ring to rule them all.” “I forget, which mental hospital are you guys registered at?”

49 “You know what we should do? We should show the closet to NAME.” “Why?” “Are you kidding? He’s/She’s like a savant at organizing. Everything in his/her apartment/house has a label on it. Including his/her label maker, which has a label that says label maker. And if you look really close at that label maker label, you’ll see a label that says label.”

50 “I was so smooth on that date.” “Dude, I made you smooth. You were an idiot.” “Whatever, dude. He/She kissed me.” “It might have been on your lips, but it was my kiss.” “Oh, fine. Let's agree he/she kissed both of us.” “Okay.”

[nightskythoughts22]

Thursday Night of a Long Weekend

This is part of the Stargate Fanfic Exchange set up by @brightclam. I was given two prompts and kind of linked them both together. This is story 1 which is for @goddess47. The prompt was SG1 jack/daniel sam/jack or gen. I went with a little bit of all the above. I hope you like it!

It’s a rare opportunity that the original members of SG-1 can get together. However, this week despite all Sam’s doubts, everything has come together without a hitch. There wasn’t a cloud in sight for Saturday. Teal’c made it back to earth and will be staying through Monday. Miraculously, Daniel and her have been able to secure leave that started today and goes through Monday. Jack came back to town last week, DD214 in one hand and a duffel in the other, fully ready to start the next chapter of his life.

Sam and Jack had been seeing each other, with a special dispensation, for the past year and it has all led to this weekend. They will be married in the backyard of his home, which Sam has been living in since she was recalled to the SGC and in which they’ve spent countless barbeques, team nights, and sparingly few long weekends together when they both could get away from their respective responsibilities.

Sam surveys the living room. Daniel is gesturing wildly with a beer bottle in hand. Teal’c was looking on in amusement, if you knew him well enough to accurately interpret the slight quirk of his eyebrow. Meanwhile, Jack, her Jack, sat opposite Daniel in his chair egging Daniel on. She shook her head. It’s Thursday night, the first night with them all together for the long weekend.

Jack suddenly looked in her direction and cocked his head to the side in a silent question when he notices the slight misty look in her eyes. She smiles at him, shakes her head, and looking down at the empty bottles in her hands remembers why she left her spot from the couch next to Daniel.

Jack smiles at her and she rolls her eyes back at him as she turns around and heads to the kitchen.

“Jack! Are you even listening to me?”

Jack returns his gaze to his spacemonkey and takes a sip from his bottle.

“Yes Daniel, I’ve already heard your opinion of Indiana Jones a thousand times. I’m sorry if my mind wanders to my soon-to-be-wife from time to time.”

“Aw, that’s extremely sweet, Jack.” Daniel replies.

“And you are extremely drunk, my friend.”

“And I am sufficiently tired.” Teal’c interrupts the retort on Daniel’s lips.

He stands up and heads toward the kitchen, pausing in between the two men, “Goodnight, Gentlemen. Thank you for the enjoyable evening.”

Teal’c walks into the kitchen to find Sam putting the now-rinsed out bottles into the recycling bin.

“Samantha Carter, I am retiring to the guest bedroom.”

“Aww Teal’c!” She says as she moves closer to him.

Teal’c has long since deciphered the effects of alcohol on his friends. Daniel Jackson gets talkative, expressive, and affectionate. Samantha Carter gets reflective, more open with her feelings, and affectionate. Jack O’Neill (as he has been persuaded to call him since General O’Neill no longer fits) gets introspective, and both more observant and more affectionate than usual. As a not-overly affectionate individual, Teal’c has come to love the ease with which his friends show their affection and drink makes them even freer with it. Teal’c knows his friends’ traits, quirks, and aches. Right now, he knows that Samantha Carter wants a hug, so he opens his arms to her.

Her eyes light up as she snuggles into his body. Teal’c hugs are second to only Jack’s. Teal’c’s mass makes her feel 100% enveloped and safe.

“Thank you so much for making it back to earth.” She muffles into his chest.

“I would not miss your nuptials for anything, Samantha.” He replies.

Teal’c lets her start to slowly sway them in time with the music O’Neill put on once Raiders of the Lost Ark finished, though it wasn’t until the credits were fully finished that the four realized it has ended. Why they insist on having something playing, be it music or the television, when they will only ignore it and talk to each other, is something he’s never quite understood, but he accepts as one of their human quirks.

“You’re so good to us, Teal’c.” Sam says swaying a little more noticeably.

“I am exactly as good to you as you deserve.” He says while slowly moving them in a slightly more coordinated way.

Sam chuckles into his chest and allows him to control their movements.

Back in the living room, an inebriated Daniel turns around to look into the kitchen, to see what’s caught Jack’s eyes.

“Aw they’re adorable.” Daniel tries to whisper when he turns around.

Jack smiles and says, “Yeah, they are.”

“Does it bother you how close we all are with Sam?”

“Not at all. We’re all close, Daniel.” Jack replies.

Daniel meets Jack’s eyes and quickly pulls his eyes down to his hands, now free of the empty bottle he’s placed on the table.

“Daniel,” Jack pauses with a deep breath.

Sam’s laugh reverberates and breaks the slight tension between the two men. They hear her say her goodnight to Teal’c and start to throw the remaining few empty bottles into the bin. After a few moments, they hear the door to the guest room shut. And then there were three.

“I should probably start to make up the couch.” Daniel says slapping his hands onto his knees.

“I’ll get the stuff for you.” Jack says standing, albeit a little slowly which is owed to the bottles that Sam has been taking into the kitchen all evening.

Daniel starts to get up as well, even less steady on his feet and stumbles a bit. Jack easily catches him in his arms helping him retain his balance. Without a though, he pulls Daniel in for a hug.

Daniel has missed Jack’s hugs since he moved to Washington. Even after everything, Jack has always been free with his affectionate pats, shoulder squeezes and his hugs. It’s like he puts all that he is into his hugs, fully embracing and eventually tucking his face into the other person’s neck, as if he wants to breath the essence of the person and take away all the hurt or pain they have.

“Jack, I’m happy for you two.”

Daniel can feel Jack take a deep breath before he slowly pulls back. Jack looks him in the eye and with a completely knowing gaze says “I know you are, Daniel.”

“Guys, I’ve got the stuff for the couch.” Sam says walking into the living room.

“Awesome!” Daniel jumps, trying to move out of Jack’s light hold on his shoulders. When Jack’s hold tightens, Daniel looks at him with a question in his eyes.

“Everything is fine, Daniel.” Jack says as he pulls him back into a hug. Daniel almost falls back into the hug with relief.

Sam smiles at her fiancé and Daniel as she moves behind them to start putting a sheet over the couch.

“Daniel, I know you’re not trying to steal my fiancé, you have to stop worrying.” She tosses back over her shoulder.

Daniel jerks out of the hug, taking a few steps away from Jack, and looks fervently back and forth between the soon-to-be-married couple.

Jack’s hand goes to the back of his neck, as Sam finishes making up the couch.

Daniel’s eyes finally settled on Jack with a question in them.

“I won’t get married with any secrets.” Jack shrugs.

Sam turns around and looks between the two men. Finally, realization dawns. She turns a hard, if slightly unfocused, gaze on Jack.

“You didn’t tell him you told me.”

Jack turns to Sam and gives a shrug.

“Oh my god, Jack.” She shakes her head as she walks up to an almost statuesque Daniel. She wraps him in a hug.

“Daniel, I’ve known about you two for months now.”

Daniel finally moving again, puts his arms around Sam but remains silent.

Sam pulls back from the hug and slowly maneuvers them to the couch and sits them both down. Jack grabs the last two remaining empty bottles, his and Daniel’s, and takes them into the kitchen, giving his two favorite geeks some time.

“Sam, I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for?” Sam exclaims.

“I want you to know there’s nothing there anymore, we tried, it didn’t work, we didn’t want it to interfere with work or-“ Sam cuts him off with a soft hand to his cheek.

“Daniel, I know.” She says softly. “It’s okay.”

“Does Jack know?”

Sam doesn’t even try to look confused by his question. However, before she can answer, Jack replies from the steps leading down into the living room.

“That we’re a weird little incestuous family. Yes, Daniel I know.” He walks up to Daniel and Sam handing them each a glass of water.

“Thank you.” Daniel says softly.

“Thanks.” Sam tells him with love in her eyes.

Jack sits back down in his chair.

Daniel turns his gaze to Sam, “So it doesn’t bother you that Jack and I were together years ago?”

Sam smiles at him, “I’m a little upset that you think it would bother me but no, not at all.”

Daniel smiles at her and then turns to Jack, “And it doesn’t bother you that Sam and I have slept together?”

“Multiple times.” Sam adds.

Jack laughs. “A little upset I didn’t get to witness the two most attractive people I’ve even met get it on, but no I’m not bothered by it.”

Sam grabs Daniel’s hand which pulls his gaze back to her.

“Does it bother you that Jack and I are together and getting married?” She asks sincerely.

“Not at all! I’m so happy for you two and it’s clear you’re meant to be together.”

“Then why would you think it would matter that you and Jack tried it, realized it didn’t work-“ Sam was interrupted by Jack’s snort and turned to glare at him.

“What? It worked!” he said while suggestively wiggling his eyebrows, “We just realized that we didn’t necessary work as a couple.”

“I didn’t mean the sex didn’t work, Jack.” She shook her head with a chuckle and turned back to Daniel, who had an amazed smile on his face.

“See Daniel, we both love you and would never hold anything you’ve done with either of us against you or the other person.”

Daniel nodded and replied, “I think I followed that.”  

“Great, now that we’re all aware that we all know that we’ve all slept together, want to actually sleep together?”

“Jack!” Sam exclaimed.

“I’m kidding! Maybe…” he drawled out.

“Thanks for the offer Jack, but I’m good.” Daniel said with a smile.

“Well if you change you mind,” Sam said as she stood up from the couch.

“I knew it!” Jack exclaimed as he rose to meet his soon-to-be-bride.

Jack wrapped his arm around Sam and placed a lovingly soft kiss on her lips. Pulling back from her, he looked to Daniel.

“You good?”

Daniel wasn’t sure if Jack meant if he was good with the matter, good with the situation, or just good and ready for bed. It didn’t matter. The answer was the same.

“Yeah Jack, I’m good.”

They shared a smile and Jack motioned to Sam, almost asleep on her feet with her head on his chest.

“We’ll see you in the morning.” Jack said as he slowly started to coax Sam into moving towards their bedroom.

“Goodnight guys.” Daniel said to their retreating forms.

“Goodnight Danny.”

“Goodnight Daniel. Love ya.” Came Sam’s muffled reply, already barely audible from the hallway.

Daniel chuckled to himself and was once again amazed and thankful for the friendship shared between all those under this roof. As he settled down, onto the couch he thought this is going to be great weekend.

------------------

I hope you liked it! I’ll be posting story 2 which is connected to this story shortly.

[the-captains-ayebrows]

Here, have some post-canon domestic CS while I try to remember how to write. Rated T for swearing and implied sexytimes. ~1200 words

“Ouch! Dammit! Shit!”

Emma rinsed the blood off her hand and glared at the shattered remains of Killian’s favorite coffee mug, knowing full well she only had about 5 seconds before-

“Are you alright, love?” Killian bustled into the kitchen, blue eyes wide with worry. For a fearsome pirate captain, he could sure be a fussy mother hen sometimes.

Emma sighed. “Yes, I’m fine. But I think your ‘Captain Studmuffin’ mug is a goner.” Slippery little fucker had slid right out of her soapy hands and without thinking, she’d reached for it and stabbed the hell out of her finger.

“Emma, you’re bleeding.”

“It’s fine.”

“Let me see.”

“It’s just a little cut. It’ll stop in a sec.”

“Swan.”

“Hook.”

Emma crossed her arms, holding her wounded finger up a bit so it wouldn’t touch the sleeve of her sweater, and studied her husband. These days it was usually ‘Emma’ and ‘Killian’. ‘Hook’ and ‘Swan’ only came out during the two F’s: fighting and foreplay. She hadn’t decided which F this was yet.

Killian cocked an eyebrow, leaning closer into her space and she was getting an inkling now. Yep, that feeling below her belt was definitely an inkling.

He smiled that smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle and gently took her injured hand. His thumb caressed the lifeline on her palm.

“I feel we’re treading in familiar territory, love.”

“Mmhm,” Emma answered grinning despite herself. “And you’re just as stubborn as ever, but this time you don’t have a giant as an excuse to play doctor with me.”

Killian kissed the tip of her finger, which had, in fact, stopped bleeding by now, and released her hand. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her in tight. His stubble tickled her cheek as he murmured in her ear, “Aye, but I’ve still got that scarf upstairs in the bureau drawer. Perhaps we can find some other use for it?”

Emma responded with a low, throaty laugh and pushed away from him. “Make sure the deadbolt is locked and meet me upstairs, Captain.”

Killian grinned knowingly and made to secure the front door. She only called him ‘Captain’ for the third F - their very favorite F of all.

-/-

The next morning, Killian came downstairs to find his coffee and newspaper waiting for him on the kitchen table. The scene was familiar enough, but the blue ceramic vessel holding his morning dose of caffeine was clearly new. Emblazoned on the mug was a little pale blue anchor and white letters proclaiming: “I have the vocabulary of a well educated sailor.”

Killian smiled to himself at Emma’s thoughtfulness. He knew she had always enjoyed his way with words, but it surprised him that she had managed to find a gift so specifically suited to him. He was, in fact, a well educated sailor after all, both from his time in the Royal Navy and his years of personal study thereafter. He planned to thank her very thoroughly whenever she returned home from her early shift at the station.

He settled into his morning routine, taking the occasional sip from his new mug between filling in the answers to the daily crossword. He found himself stuck on 12 down when he heard keys jangling at the back door. Killian looked up as his step-son strode into the kitchen, backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Henry, m’lad! Everything alright? We weren’t expecting you back until after school.”

“I’m good, I just left a book upstairs that I need for class today.”

“Ah, I see. Can you spare a moment? You’re just the man I need for this accursed puzzle.”

Henry raised an eyebrow. “Another pop culture reference in the crossword?” Killian nodded and Henry sat down across from him, placing his backpack in another empty chair. “Let’s hear it.”

“Four letters. ‘Professor Henry Walton Jones, as called by his friends’.”

“It’s ‘Indy’. I-N-D-Y,” Henry answered. “As in Indiana Jones? Yeah, we’re definitely watching Raiders of the Lost Ark on our next movie night.”

Killian penciled in the letters as Henry had spelled them. “Perfect! These bloody modern references catch me every time. Thank you, lad. I like to think I otherwise have a rather impressive command of the English language.”

Henry laughed. “Yeah, we could probably call you Professor Jones.”

“Too right.” Killian took a sip of his coffee, making sure the print on the side of the cup faced Henry. “Your mother seems to be enamored of my vocabulary.”

Henry squinted at the writing. “Wait, mom gave you that? That’s a little ironic coming from her.”

“How do you mean?”

Henry stood, a wry smile tilting his lips. “Well, if anyone in this house swears like a sailor, it’s mom.”

Killian scowls, completely taken aback. “Swears like a-”

“Anyway, I better grab my book before I miss the bus.” Henry snatched up his book bag and headed toward the stairs before Killian could finish his thought.

He was still stewing a couple minutes later when he heard a muffled “See you guys tonight!” followed by an unceremonious slam of the door.

‘Swear like a sailor’, eh? In his day, the Royal Navy highly disapproved of swearing. Terrible form for a man in uniform. Pirates were a different matter, he supposed, but even as the dreaded Captain Hook he only ever uttered the occasional ‘damn’ or ‘bloody.’ Foul language had never been his vice of choice.

So, this must be a modern expression lost on him. Usually, he knew when Emma was quoting something - as much as he knew she loved that he didn’t know what it was - but this? This felt more like an opening salvo. Shots fired across his bow. Far be it from him to ignore a challenge from his Swan.

-/-

When Emma came back to her office after a quick trip to the ladies’ room, she hadn’t expected to find her pirate sitting on her desk. Manspreading should be annoying, not attractive, but dammit if he didn’t look tempting perched up there wearing that stupid smirk that still did things to her even after a year of marriage.

She bit her lower lip to stifle a smile and moved to stand between his thighs, fully planning to kiss the smirk off his face. Before she reached him, however, he hopped down and held out his left arm, a small gift bag dangling from his hook.

Emma tentatively accepted the bag. “What’s this?”

“Can’t a man give his wife a present for no reason at all?”

“He can…” Emma narrowed her eyes. Yes, Killian was prone to spontaneous romantic gestures, but he was giving off a weird vibe here. No, not weird exactly. What’s the word?

“Don’t open it until I leave, darling, but I saw this in an after-Christmas sale and it struck me as the perfect thank you to you for the lovely mug you gave me yesterday morning.” He leaned in and gave her a quick-and-dirty kiss that left her toes tingling, then slipped past her out of her office.

“See you at home, love,” he called back over his shoulder.

Frisky, Emma decided. The word she was looking for was frisky.

Emma rushed to her desk chair and sat down to open her present. Inside the bag she found a white porcelain coffee mug emblazoned with a smiling gingerbread man holding a candy cane. Well that explained the ‘after-Christmas’ part, but-

“Sonnuvabitch.” Emma grinned, shaking her head slightly. Just above the gingerbread man’s shoulder in cheerful red and green letters were the words “Bite Me!”

“Oh, Captain,” she thought aloud, “just wait ‘til I get home.”

[nancykali]

This is for @rhoeysama, who asked for Jancy with one of them taking care of the other when they’re sick. Both me and rhoeysama are sick today, so it seemed only fitting.

January 1986

Nancy knocked on the Byers’ door, adjusting the backpack over her shoulder, biting her lip, looking off to the side.

Joyce answered, and they exchanged wide smiles.

“Hi Ms. Byers,” Nancy said, stepping inside, shaking the snow out of her hair. Joyce didn’t even close the door first before pulling her in a tight hug. Nancy hugged her back, her smile growing.

“Hey sweetie. You didn’t have to do this,” Joyce said, before letting her go, and shutting the front door.

Nancy made an incredulous sound. “I wanted to. How is he doing?”

Joyce was leading her into the kitchen, and Nancy spotted the remnants of lunch scattered across the counter. Peanut butter and a jar of jelly, a half-gone loaf of bread, still open. She set the backpack down in one of the kitchen chairs and hung her coat over the chair’s back.

“He just had some chicken noodle soup,” Joyce said distractedly, wringing her hands once before resuming cleaning up. Nancy came forward to help, grabbing up the jelly and putting it back in the fridge, getting a Pepsi for herself as she did so. “Want anything?” Nancy asked, turning to Joyce with the fridge still open. Joyce shook her head.

“I’m glad you came though, I have to go to the store and get more medicine. How’s Will doing?” Joyce asked, her eyes almost brimming over with anxiety.

“He’s fine! He and Mike have been in the basement all morning,” Nancy said, smiling back reassuringly. Will had been staying at the Wheeler’s for nearly a week now, since Jonathan had gotten sick. It had been Nancy’s idea, but Joyce didn’t know that. Karen had brought it up to Joyce, and she had only relented when Jonathan agreed it was better Will not get exposed to the flu. Joyce shouldn’t have to worry about both of her sons when she needed to work extra shifts to try covering the days Jonathan couldn’t work. Karen didn’t exactly mention that—because Nancy had told her not to, when she’d suggested the whole idea in the first place.

Joyce was restlessly wiping the counters while Nancy took out the food she’d brought from home. Oreos, cheese and crackers, and Jonathan’s favorite candy, Twizzlers. Something occurred to Nancy.

“Jonathan told me you had to work tonight,” Nancy said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Isn’t that in another hour?”

Joyce nodded, still wiping the counters.

Nancy’s brows drew together. “Why don’t you let me get the medicine, Ms. Byers? So you don’t have to make an extra trip?”

“Oh, sweetie, would you?” Joyce turned to her, and Nancy noticed the shadows under her eyes.

“Of course!” Nancy took the dishtowel from Joyce’s hand, setting it on the edge of the sink. “Go relax a bit before you have to go to work. I got this.”

Joyce swept her up in another hug, and Nancy felt that pang in her chest again. She wasn’t used to hugs, but she loved every single one Joyce gave her. Because they were genuine, always.

Joyce patted her cheek as she leaned away. “Thank you. I’ll just check on Jonathan before I start getting ready.”

Joyce disappeared down the hall before Nancy could say anything. She had to bite back the words, You’re supposed to relax! But how did you convince a mother like Joyce to relax?

Nancy sighed to herself and finished cleaning up the kitchen. While she was drying dishes and putting them away, Joyce peeked her head around the corner.

“I told him not to get out of bed, but he’s anxious to see you,” Joyce said, her nose crinkling with the teasing smile she gave Nancy.

As Joyce went back to her bedroom, Nancy took up her backpack and made her way to Jonathan’s room.

The door was partially open, but still Nancy gave a soft knock as she opened it wider.

She was greeted by hoarse coughing and Jonathan’s sorry attempt at a smile.

“Nance,” he said, sitting up further on his bed, running his hand through his hair to get his bangs out of his eyes. He still had bedhead and he was far too pale.

“Hey,” Nancy said, smiling back and sitting on the bed, dropping the backpack on the floor in front of her. She reached out and took Jonathan’s hand, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles.

“I told you, you didn’t have to come,” he said, leaning back against the five or six pillows behind him, his face resigned. His chest rose with a deep breath, and he let out a long sigh. Nancy did not like how he sounded. She squeezed his hand in sympathy.

“Yeah, but I’ve already been sick, and your mom won’t give herself even a little break unless I’m here,” Nancy said, her smile growing as she felt Jonathan squeeze her hand in silent thanks.

They looked at each other for a moment, Nancy noting the gauntness of his face now that he’d lost nearly three days of proper sleep. According to Joyce, his coughing kept him up till he dropped from exhaustion.

Nancy knew she had already apologized too much, in Jonathan’s view. Even though she knew it was she who had got him sick.

“I’m glad you came, Nance,” Jonathan said, and she tried to believe some of the tenseness had eased from his shoulders since she’d entered the room.

But he stiffened again as another coughing fit hit him. She let go of his hand to rub his back, scooting closer to him, moving the tissue box on his nightstand closer.

She handed him a tissue, then after his coughing stopped, she asked, “Do you guys have any VaporRub?”

“We do, but we’re almost out,” Jonathan said, his words barely audible.

Even though it was under several layers of blankets, Nancy found his knee and rubbed it soothingly. “I’ll pick up some more. What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”

Jonathan gave her a sharp look. It was less intense than he would like, she knew, because he was so tired, his nose was red and raw looking, and he was surrounded by several soft duvets and had half of the house’s pillows piled behind him. “You don’t have to get me ice cream.”

“No, I don’t. What’s your favorite flavor?” Nancy asked again, her eyes steady on his face.

He sighed, holding back his smile. “Anything with cookie dough in it,” he said, his voice quiet, like he was ashamed of liking something so indulgent.

“You got it.” And she took up his hand and kissed the top of it, just so she could catch the blush on his face. Then she turned and reached for her backpack, lifting it into her lap and unzipping it.

“I brought you three choices for entertainment,” she said, pulling out the three VHS tapes. “Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner, and Sixteen Candles.”

“In a romantic mood, aren’t you?” Jonathan said, and she looked over to see him really holding back laughter now. It reminded her of the first time she’d really seen him smile—when they’d just bought that bear trap and he’d asked her what was weirder. That look still made her want to take his face in her hands and kiss him soundly.

“Well yeah. I’m with you,” she said, smiling. Jonathan’s blush got darker. So she really had no choice but to pull him in for a kiss.

All she did was grasp the back of his neck, lean in, and kiss him briefly on the lips, dry and chapped. He smelled of clean laundry and the patchouli incense he liked to burn so much. For the cigarette smell. But when she ended the kiss, he looked almost disapproving.

“You don’t know that it was you who gave me this flu. What if you catch it?” he said, frowning with real concern.

“Then you can bring me all the horror movies you want for us to watch when I’m bedridden,” Nancy said cheerfully, and held the movies up for him. “Which one?”

[aion-rsa]

From Hitchcock to Star Wars: What Makes a Great MacGuffin

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In the fall of 1939, director Alfred Hitchcock stood before Columbia University to tell a story we can only hope he invented. With a ruthless, dry delivery, Hitch spoke of two Scotsmen on a train. One of these fellows carried with him a mysterious package he says is a “MacGuffin.” When the other man asks what exactly is a MacGuffin, the carrier responds, “It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.” What an odd response, the other guy thinks. After all, there is no such thing as highland lions! When he points this out though, the MacGuffin’s owner says, “Well then, that’s no MacGuffin!”

It’s an amusing anecdote which is as circuitous as it appears pointless. But that very pointlessness was always the appeal for Hitch, who four years earlier popularized the storytelling term of a “MacGuffin” with his film The 39 Steps. In that movie, a man is mistaken for a spy and is constantly hounded for information about “the 39 Steps,” a mysterious object or piece of information worth killing over. Yet when the movie ends, the viewer is really no closer to learning what those 39 steps are. Or as Hitchcock told Columbia students in ‘39, “You see, that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all!”

Even so, the storytelling tool has dominated our pop culture, from cinema to literature, for nearly a century since Hitchcock left the stage.

“The best MacGuffin is the one that 30 minutes after the movie is over, you have no idea what it was,” says Eddie Muller, the host of Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley. “To me, that represents the essence of the MacGuffin. It’s like you remember everything that happens in the story, but you have no idea what it was that they were after. ‘Like, what was that again? I can’t remember!’”

For Muller and fellow TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, what matters is the great chase through the train; not what the Scotsman is hiding in the box on it. Even so, distinguishing what actually constitutes a MacGuffin is something TCM hosts are thinking a lot about these days thanks to their network’s new Friday night series about some of the greatest MacGuffins in movie history. Last Friday, TCM aired Hitchcock’s groundbreaking The 39 Steps, as well as Psycho (1960) and North by Northwest (1959). This week, the series continues with The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), and Citizen Kane (1941).

“I never really thought about [MacGuffins] ever, I must say, until getting to TCM and until we started talking about scripts,” Mankiewicz says to Muller and myself over a joint Zoom interview. Yet it’s also why he appreciates having Muller as a co-host (and occasional sparring partner), with the latter being intimately familiar with the narrative tools of the trade. For in addition to setting up shop in Noir Alley, Muller’s also a novelist, having authored The Distance (2002) and Shadow Boxer (2003).

“I write fiction, and we have these things that we always use,” Muller says. “The characters have to have a goal and there have to be obstacles; there has to be conflict. And when you write mystery fiction, there’s even more rules involved. Then there’s the red herring and there’s the whodunit. The MacGuffin is, by and large to me, part of that style of fiction.”

The emphasis on characters fighting over an object or prize of incredible importance to themselves, if not necessarily to the audience, is what facilitates some of the greatest thrillers and adventures in cinema. Hitchcock famously put uranium in wine bottles in Notorious (1946), but all anyone remembers about the ending of that movie is Cary Grant saving his fellow spy, Ingrid Bergman, from the Nazi house where the wine bottles are stored. Indeed, Mankiewicz muses that audiences may have gotten that MacGuffin confused with other Hitchcock spy thrillers.

“Is it uranium in wine bottles in Notorious and a microfilm with state secrets in North by Northwest or is it the other way around?” Mankiewicz ponders. “Really, it could be either in both.” Mankiewicz even argues one of the most famous MacGuffins in movie history is still essentially meaningless. John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon is credited by some as the kickoff of the Hollywood film noir movement, and in that picture everyone is lying and dying for the eponymous bird, an allegedly jewel-encrusted statuette of antiquity. But by the time the movie ends, the Maltese Falcon that’s accrued a high body count is discovered to be made of lead.

“Every time I see the movie, I’m struck by the end,” Mankiewicz says. “There’s no Maltese Falcon anywhere. No one’s stolen it from anybody … I’m like these poor sons of bitches, they got to roam the Earth, looking for this thing. Someone could have thrown it away or it never existed.”

Similarly, Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca pivots its entire World War II melodrama on something called “letters of transit,” documents so unassailable that even Nazis will respect their authority and let French freedom fighters travel with them unmolested.

“No such thing exists!” Muller laughs. “That’s why that’s such a good MacGuffin, because it’s all BS.”

Mankiewicz agrees, “Somebody [in the movie] says, ‘The letters of transit cannot be rescinded.’ And I’m like the Nazis were taking over the world, and they’re going to be like, ‘Oh man, you got the letters of transit?! We gotta let them on the plane. Dammit!’” Yet the bit of screenwriting balderdash allowed one of the greatest romantic dramas in movie history to play out in front of an impatient plane propeller.

All that said, both men are apprehensive about the term MacGuffin getting thrown around too liberally.

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“I hadn’t really thought about the MacGuffins until TCM came up with this idea,” Muller says. “I hadn’t thought about it in years and years, and now I curse this series because I am watching every movie and thinking somebody’s going to call this a MacGuffin.” Both are even circumspect about several of the movies in the series that TCM has deemed prime examples of MacGuffins.

For example, Citizen Kane has one of the greatest mysteries in the movies, with the search for the meaning of “Rosebud,” the final word uttered by Orson Welles’ Charles Foster Kane in the movie’s opening moments. Yet Ben Mankiewicz, whose own grandfather Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote the vast majority of Citizen Kane, including “Rosebud,” is hesitant to include that as a classic example.

“When you Google ‘MacGuffins,’ you see ‘Rosebud’ is there from Citizen Kane,” Ben Mankiewicz says, “but neither Eddie nor I think of that as a true MacGuffin. I guess in some sense it is, but it is also the [thing] the audience cares about, and it tells you everything you need to know about the lead character in the final frame of the picture…. If you’re calling the MacGuffin the thing that motivates the lead character in every movie, well, I mean, there’s a MacGuffin in every movie then.”

Muller also has skepticism toward the inclusion of Hitchcock’s own Psycho. While that movie opens with heavy emphasis on a bundle of $40,000—only for it to wind up at the bottom of a swamp after impulsive thief Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is murdered in the shower—for Muller that does not make it a true MacGuffin.

“I consider that a red herring,” Muller says. “It is splitting things in a fine way here, but it is something that triggers the action, and then about 40 minutes in, who cares about the money? But it’s really interesting the way Hitchcock understands certain people in the audience are going to always ask that question. ‘But what about the money?’ Because it’s $40,000, so there are those shots where it’s like the envelope with the cash in it, and in the newspaper. Hitchcock is like, ‘Yeah, let’s hold on that for a second, because somebody is going to care about it.’”

That nagging care is the problem for Mankiewicz, who also prefers the MacGuffin to be almost an abstraction.

“Money is tangible,” Mankiewicz says, “it’s something we know. Everybody knows what $40,000 is and what it means, and it’s a crime she’s committed, and she’s either going to go to prison or she’s going to have a life on the run.”

But that distinction of how important a MacGuffin needs to be to the audience is something filmmakers and storytellers have interrogated with each generation. In the complete inverse of Hitchcock, George Lucas famously argued that the MacGuffin is something audiences should care about almost as much as the heroes and villains. Hence why the first Indiana Jones movie is named after its MacGuffin with the title Raiders of the Lost Ark. Mankiewicz acknowledges this evolution.

“Part of the fun of this is that there’s no science to it,” Mankiewicz says. “So to me, the plans for the Death Star, they’re the MacGuffin in Star Wars until the point where an entire planet and millions of people or living beings are incinerated. Then it stops being a MacGuffin; it becomes a massive weapon of war! It tells you, ‘Holly shit, they weren’t kidding around!’”

That dueling impulse continues in modern cinema—it flourishes, even, with the ascension of superhero movies. But then that also has literary roots.

“I remember paying my 12 cents to buy Marvel Comics back in the day,” Muller says, “and they were filled with MacGuffins… In comic books, the MacGuffin’s always whatever the villain needs to possess in order to fulfill his plans for world domination. And I guess it’s the same way in Hitchcock, right? Isn’t that what James Mason was doing in North by Northwest? I need this to fulfill my goal of world domination?”

It’s quite the line between Mason’s microfilm and Thanos’ magic stones in Avengers: Infinity War. Nevertheless, it’s a straight one. Mankiewicz similarly notes that the Marvel movies of today can have great writers who know the craft, especially when the better Marvel movies lean into their humor.

Says Mankiewicz, “Iron Man, to me, remains one of the great movies of the first part of the century and I loved it to death. I stopped feeling that way later.” After a laugh he adds, “The fact is I don’t know that the MacGuffin has changed, we just talk about it differently.”

At the end of the day, it remains a writer’s tool to set action in motion. If a story is told well enough, audiences should care that their characters care—or at least the audience will care about how good the characters look while chasing it.

“I don’t think the MacGuffin is ever the exclamation point at the end of the movie,” Muller says. “In Citizen Kane, the revelation of Rosebud is an exclamation point, and nobody’s going to forget it when they leave the theater. At the end of North by Northwest, you’re talking about Cary Grant hanging off Mount Rushmore, you’re talking about the incredibly sexy scenes on the train. You’re not talking about what it was everybody was after, because you’ve forgotten it five minutes after you’ve seen the movie.”

Adds Mankiewicz, “To me, the MacGuffin is the dash. It leads to a big thing.” You just shouldn’t spend too much time pausing for emphasis on it.

TCM’s MacGuffin series concludes on Friday, March 12, beginning with The Maltese Falcon at 8 pm.

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[petermorwood]

When I was a kid, our local newsagent had a wall-rack labelled “American Comics”, rather like this...

...which contained a jumble of everything you could think of, from Marvel and DC to Gold Key, Harvey, Archie and Classics Illustrated. There were also “true adventure” mags, comics-for-grownups, though their use of the word “true” in connection with, oh, most things, is dubious at best.

(The sleazier ones were known in the trade as “sweats”, so I suppose the more action-oriented ones could be called something like “permastubbles”. Sweats had covers showing lots of bondage, torture and as much skin as their period permitted and were right up at the top, out of reach. Officially, at least...)

I made lots of carefully-researched model kits when I was young, and was once chucked out of the shop for laughing too loudly at errors in cover art (including the costume-Nazi uniforms on the sweats) so this cover of “Male” takes me right back. I’d have laughed at it, too.

Here’s what I presume is the interior splash illo at the top of the story (AFAIK they’re both by the same artist, Mort Künstler, so I’m curious why he changed the camo)...

Camo or not, both prompt the same response: “Buddy, you really picked the wrong sort of plane to stow away on...”

This piggyback aircraft is called a “Mistel” (mistletoe) and was real enough (also very popular as a two-for-one kit).

It was a crude guided missile. In action the only source of control came from the fighter on top (the Yank of the story didn’t “steal” anything, he just found himself along for a one-way ride) while the bomber was an unmanned drone. The connections were a lot less complicated than in the art version, too.

Once close to the target, the pilot lined up the explosive-packed bomber, detached his fighter and got the Hell out of Dodge (or dodged out of Hell, if the flak was really hot.)

During ferry and test flights Mistel drone units kept their ordinary bomber nose and had a crew, or at least a pilot, but for combat purposes (as on the cover) the crew compartment was replaced by a gigantic shaped-charge warhead capable of taking out a bridge, a bunker or a battleship.

If it hit them.

The problem was aiming correctly, since unlike ordinary bombs a shaped charge only works to best effect if it makes a direct hit. A miss makes a very satisfying bang, but not the desired big hole, and the only guidance was an assumption, or hope, or wishful thinking, that the bomber would keep going in exactly the direction it was pointed when the fighter broke away.

Despite what the cover claims it wasn’t meant for a suicide flight, but it’s definitely not intended for a round trip either.

Assuming he’s not nabbed as the warhead’s being put on, our hero’s not going to be climbing out afterwards (due to an obvious lack of windows) and any Plot Armour insurance had better be fully paid up.

Of all the aircraft in the Luftwaffe inventory, the unmanned drone section of a Mistel is one* of the worst for any hairy-chested adventurer to stow away in, escape in or even just steal. Lashing himself by bullwhip to the periscope of a submerged U-Boat - that’s the official explanation from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” - is almost sensible by comparison (and Raiders made no claim to be true...)

* I’d not recommend the Me-163 either. It’s the Discworld swamp dragon of fighter aircraft, and would blow up if it was landed hard, was refuelled carelessly, was looked at funny or just bloody well felt like it.

But that’s another story, and one which really is true.

[theabominableblogger]

Rewatching “Batman” (1989)

Decided to rewatch this classic before I watch the new Justice League movie that’s out this week

I, for one, am so glad Danny Elfman brought the Batman theme back into “Justice League”

*jams out to the Batman theme*

JACK NICHOLSON

Billy Dee Williams!  And he’s only in it for like 5 minutes

Jack Palance! 

Oh my gosh, I forgot Prince did music for this movie

Aaaand it’s the Batman symbol!

Matte painting!  Matte paintings everywhere!

Why do they always portray Gotham as freaking packed?  I know it’s supposed to be a bustling metropolis but this is too much.

Why yes, random family, let’s take a shortcut through a shady ass alleyway.

What the...

Batman, brought to you by American Express

*Batman floats down behind the robbers*  Eeeyyyy!!

*Batman gets shot*  Welp, he’s dead.  End of movie.  Cue end credits music.

Gotta take your sweet ass time revealing your cape...

He raises his arms so high in the air in order to do it.

“I want you to tell all your friends about me.”  “What are you?!?!?”  I’M BATMAN! DAAAA NA NA NAAAA NAAAAA

Lando?!?

Mayor Borg?!?!?

“People of Gotham City, I [Harvey Dent] am a man of few words.”  Nah, he’s a double-crossing, no-good swindler.

All righty, unpopular opinion time:  I don’t like Jack Nicholson as the Joker.  I just don’t.  He’s just... Jack Nicholson in clown paint.  Plus they establish him as a character before he becomes the Joker.

Oh, and of course, they name the Jack Nicholson character “Jack”

So who’s the Lieutenant character again?

Heelllooo shady lookin’- oh it’s Jack Nicholson.

Bob the Goon!

Matte painting!

This movie should be subtitled “Matte Paintings:  The Movie”

Oh my God, Lando, what did they do to your hair?

Eeeeyyy!!  Bob Kane!

“Vale, will you marry me [Knox]?”  “Nope?”  “Wanna buy me lunch?”  “Maybe.”  “I eat light!”  Pffftt....

Story time:  the Quidditch coach/captain of the team here at college (who is notorious for being a flirt) asked me to buy him supper one time before practice.  I knew it was a joke but I told him “Nah, you gotta earn it” and I was applauded by the team

Obligatory purple Joker suit!

Obligatory Joker card!

Why is it such a big deal that Jack Nicholson is involved with that one particular moll?

You gotta hammer it in that Jack Nicholson’s gonna become the Joker

Why is there a casino set up in Wayne Manor?

Michael Gough!

Why is Vicki Vale dressed like she’s getting ready to be married?

I like that we don’t actually meet Bruce until like 20 minutes into the movie.  Plus they establish him as a mystery character- technically the main characters at the beginning of the movie is Knox and Vicki and then it shifts to Batman.  And then again, we don’t get a lot of background on either Batman or Bruce.

I never really had time to appreciate how great Michael Keaton is as Bruce Wayne but dang he’s good.  And I love the reasoning behind this casting:  there’s no way he could be seen as Batman and when we do find out, it’s a big shock.

Holy crap, how many cameras are set up around the manor?

Oh my gosh, Bruce has reading glasses!

Sound stage!

FreEEEZZZEE!!!

AN:  I’m only 25 minutes into this movie.  We gots a bit to go because I’m such a motormouth

Boom goes the dynamite!

Yes, let’s have a police shootout in a chemical factory!  Great plan, guys!

Man, Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon would be on the ball when it came to this situation.  Pat Hingle’s Commissioner Gordon just stands around and gives orders

Um, officers, you’re walking into a puddle of toxic chemicals...

In all seriousness though, I want Jack Nicholson’s hat

Never have I seen a smirkier Batman than Michael Keaton’s Batman

Well there’s also Kevin Conroy’s Batman

*Jack Nicholson falls into the chemical vat*  Welp, he’s dead.  End of movie.  Cue end credits music.

AXIS

Why were Jack Nicholson’s fingernails dyed green from the chemicals?  I know it’s comic book logic but still...

This scene in the dining hall is my dad’s favorite scene in the movie.

That is an impossibly long dining table.

Aaww, they’re having dinner with Alfred in the butlers’ quarters!

“Alfred’s great.  I [Bruce] couldn’t find my socks without him.”  Cue in Batman:  The Animated Series, Joker literally cannot find his socks because Harley’s not there.

That is no way to take bandages off properly, Jack...

Mirror... MIRROR!!

“You see what I have to work with here.”  Yeah, those are some shitty surgical tools there, buddy.

Oh, throw that shoe, Bruce

“Who the hell are you?”  “It’s me [the Joker].”  *sings* IT’S MEEEEEE

“Jack?  Jack is dead, my friend.  You can call me.. Joker!  And as you can see, I’m a lot happier!”

This freaking circus music though

*Bruce and Vicki cuddle while sleeping*  Cue Bruce going “Aw man, I can’t enjoy spending time with this awesome lady because I gotta brood, man.”

WHY IS HE UPSIDE DOWN?!?!?

WAIT ‘TIL THEY GET A LOAD OF ME!

Why the hell is Jack Nicholson dressed like that?

What kind of hand buzzer is that?!?

HAVEN���T YOU HEARD THE HEALING POWER OF LAUGHTER?  NOW GET OUTTA HERE!

YOUUU... ARE MY NUMBER ONEEEE... GUUUYYYYYY!!

How does Bruce Wayne AKA Batman not notice Vicki trailing him from his house to Crime Alley?

Random mime... more random mimes...

Why is Bruce just standing there?  Ooohhhh... wait a minute.. there’s this whole schindig about him recognizing Jack later in the movie

There is literally no reason why Jack Nicholson becomes the Joker since he’s already been established as Jack Napier before the whole ACE Chemicals thing. 

THIS TOWN NEEDS AN ENEMA!

Alfred just wants some grandkids, gosh dang it

How the hell did you get those pics, Vicki?

Oh my God, I hate that this Joker has this weird crush on Vicki.  I hate it so much.

“I’m in a mind to make some mooky.” Ugghh...

Oh my gosh, the Smylex commercial

Oh my gosh, the newspeople aren’t wearing any care products... pfftt...

What kind of cake foundation does Joker have?  That’s like the stuff we had to wear in high school

That waiter just addressed Vicki as “sir”

Did Joker write that message in crayon?

That elderly couple is dead after falling off the balcony like that

LET’S BROADEN OUR MINDS!

*jams the crap out to “Party Man” by Prince*

*One goon paints over a bust*  Hey look, it’s the Jared Leto Joker

What the crap is this music that plays?  It plays during one of the trailers for “The Shape of Water”

Oh wait, it’s the theme from something called “A Summer Place”

I quote the “one dollar bill” quote all the freaking time at my house.

The prosthetic work on Alicia looks pretty sweet, I gotta say

Oh, a little song.. a little dance... Batman’s head on a lance...

Oh my gosh, I forgot how much Kim Basinger screamed in this movie

They even color coded the cars for Joker’s goons

*The police get involved in an accident involving a farmer’s market truck*  NO, NOT THE CABBAGES!

There is no way in hell that Vicki only weighs like 108

Remember when the Batsuit was made out of rubber, you guys?

*Crazy, sword-wielding guy goes after Batman*  Seriously?  Did you not see “Raiders of the Lost Ark?”

For the Batmobile, it looks like they made the toy first before constructing it for the movie

Gotta love that Danny Elfman score...

*Vicki tries to see under Batman’s cowl*  Yo, Vicki, don’t distract Batman while he’s driving

The Batcave!

Why is there just this one random bat hanging out in a bird cage?

Forgot that Michael Keaton literally could not turn his head in the Batsuit

Oh my gosh, how short is Michael Keaton here?

Oooohhh nice transition!

How the hell did Vicki end up back there?

Gotta admit, that’s a nice apartment

“You see, my life is really...”  Batsy!

JUST TELL HER YOU’RE [Vicki] BATMAN!

I like how Bruce walks right by the fire poker in order to get a freaking tray to hit Joker with

YOU WANNA GET NUTS?!?  C’MON, LET’S GET NUTS!

EVER DANCE WITH THE DEVIL IN THE PALE MOONLIGHT?

“Never rub another man’s rhubarb.”  What?

There is no way in hell that Bruce deflected that bullet with the tray

Matte painting!

“Can you hear me?  Just the two of us.”  *sings “Just the Two of Us” by Will Smith*

Gotta admit, Michael Keaton’s Batman has an awesome thinking/pensive face.  It’s probably the eyebrows that help

What is it with families being targeted by random gun-wielding criminals in abandoned alleyways?

There’s no way that that’s Jack Nicholson playing young Jack Napier

Nevermind, it’s some dude named Hugo Blick

*scats the Batman theme obnoxiously out of tune*

Batman’s belt just slipped.  Never gonna un-see that

Why is it that every time this Batman is in the Batsuit and glaring at somebody, he looks like he’s really constipated?

Seriously, is there not a bathroom in the Batcave?

Is this another Prince song?

So where exactly did Joker find the time to find all of this stuff and prepare for an impromptu 200th anniversary parade?

The Batplane!

Matte painting!

“Me?  I’m giving away free money!”  And it looks faaaaakkkeee...

Something is up with that clown balloon’s nose... just saying...

Yeah, lets go after the Joker’s goons with a baseball bat, Knox.  That’ll go well.

I love the sounds all the buttons make on the Batplane dashboard

“My balloons.  Those are my balloons!  He stole my balloons!”  Iconic.

Hahaha he [Joker] used Bob the Goon as a step stool off the parade float!

*The Batplane pauses in front of the moon*  Eeeeyyy!!

*Joker pulls out the gun with the really long muzzle out of the front of his pants*  No comment

Again, why is Vicki Vale dressed like she’s either getting ready to get married or go to a wedding?

“Better make it ten [minutes].”  What makes this awesome is that ten minutes actually goes by both in-universe time and movie run time.  My dad actually timed it the first time I watched this with him.

Mad respect to Tim Burton for the aesthetic in this movie, I gotta say

The eyebrows on Batman’s cowl strangely match Michael Keaton’s.  Was this intentional?

*Joker “dances” with Vicki* Now see the last time I recall Joker dancing with somebody was the 5 second long Alex Ross scene with Harley Quinn in “Suicide Squad”

Unpopular opinion time:  I like Jared Leto’s Joker better than Jack Nicholson’s Joker  *gets bombarded with hate mail and darts*

Eugghhhh Vicki’s pulling a freaking Jasmine from “Aladdin”

“You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses now, would ya?”  Cue Wreck-It-Ralph

How the hell did Joker pull Batman and Vicki off the roof like that?

Oh my gosh that 80s falling effect

Yeah no, from that drop, the Joker’s body would be a freaking mess

“The reign of crime [in Gotham City] is over.”  BWAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh hi Billy Dee Williams!

You know what would be awesome:  if Kim Basinger had a cameo somewhere in the Batman solo movie directed by Ben Affleck.  Just saying

Yoooo....

[samanthasroberts]

5 Eerie Conspiracies Theorists Were Right About All Along

Conspiracy theories are a stupidly easy target for comedy, since they’re mostly spread by those who screech about lizard people on websites with a design aesthetic that was already dated in the 1990s. It’s just that every once in a while, what may look like a stupid conspiracy theory turns out to be something that very much happened …

#5. The World’s Most Rich And Powerful Meet To Perform Weird Secret Rituals

The Conspiracy Theory:

All conspiracy theories stem from the idea that a cabal of rich and powerful men control the world. This is true, in a way, but it’s really nothing but a bunch of entrepreneurs and investors fighting each other for market shares. Can you imagine if the rich and powerful actually donned robes and got together to perform ridiculous rituals, like in that Simpsons episode?

The Reality:

The truth is much weirder. Sure, there are famous public gatherings of wealthy types like the Bilderberg Group, but they mostly shoot the shit over drinks and big dinners instead of sacrificing goats in the name of the Illuminati. What we’re talking about are the Bohemian Grove gatherings, in which members — which have included U.S. presidents — gather to perform rituals before a 30-foot-tall idol shaped like an owl. We’re absolutely not making this up. You can go visit the site if you want.

You can play everyone’s favorite party game, “Which Bush spewed all over the owl’s dick?”

Founded in 1872, the Bohemian Grove club started out as a social occasion for relatively harmless newspapermen and artists, like Mark Twain. However, many of their members were ambitious, and grew mighty. The club’s gatherings went on, their power increased, and by the 1930s, Bohemian Grove had become an exclusive haunt of the rich and famous. By the 1980s, the club had 2,300 members, including influential senators, businessmen, and highly-placed U.S. government officials. Its waiting list for membership was 33 years long.

While business-making is discouraged — the club straight-up tells its members that “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here” — it happens all the time, because of course it does. Some of the most influential deals in history have been made in Bohemian Grove encampments. Such as, oh, the initial planning for the Manhattan Project. Yeah, you have the 1942 Bohemian Grove meeting to thank for the freaking nuclear bomb.

Not a Hogwarts set prop from Harry Potter.

This isn’t some huge secret, by the way. Outside visitors aren’t allowed, but no one denies it goes on. People who have managed to sneak into the party say it has a distinctively frat vibe. The world’s most powerful men have a right to urinate wherever they desire, so mix that with the inevitable beer-drinking, and you get a lot of rich drunk dudes peeing against the base of towering redwoods. Which they then worship as a part of their traditional druidic rituals, in which they wear costumes and burn an effigy they call “care” in front of that huge concrete owl. Oh, and the owl is wired for sound, so it talks. News anchor Walter Cronkite did the voice for a while.

So yeah, it’s a three-weekend encampment where the most powerful people in the world get frat-boy drunk for two weeks in the row, worship trees, and decide to build weapons of mass destruction all at the same time. Now bring this up at work tomorrow and observe the looks you get from your co-workers.

#4. The U.S. Military Stole Dead Babies To Do Experiments

The Conspiracy Theory:

This theory takes many forms, but all comes back to the idea that in some secret government lab, they’re doing human experimentation without our knowledge. If it was an episode of the X-Files, it’d probably involve some shady agency secretly collecting DNA samples from the public to breed with aliens or create super soldiers or some shit.

This alien is already in the perfect position.

The Reality:

We’ll have to disappoint you on the aliens and super soldiers, but the rest of it is almost weirder than fiction. Imagine you’re a parent who lost an infant … then found out that after death, a government agent sneaked in and stole parts from it for experimentation. That happened. A lot.

During the 1950s, the U.S. government was interested in how fallout from nuclear weapons would affect human bodies, and whether nuclear testing would be a hazard to human health. A valid concern, gents! But they needed tissue samples from humans to test, and since most people would have objected strenuously to their bones being removed to test for the presence of radioactive isotopes, the government instead targeted a demographic that couldn’t put up a fuss (or, more importantly, vote): dead bodies.

Turns out the “cold” in Cold War was short for “cold-hearted.”

So the government went grave-robbing. Here, we’ll let one of the project’s scientists, Dr. Willard Libby, explain: “[H]uman samples are of prime importance, and if anybody knows how to do a good job of body-snatching, they will really be serving their country.” That’s a quote from a secret meeting in 1955, and he went on to point out that these corpses needed to be young. So most of these bodies were recently-deceased infants, often from other countries where that kind of thing was easier to get away with.

Every James Bond villain magically sprung to life just to say, “The fuck, dude?”

Yes, consent was of no concern here — one mother named Jean Prichard gave birth to a stillborn baby in 1957, asked for the body so she could dress it for a burial, and was refused. It turned out they were trying to hide the fact that they’d cut its legs off to hand them over for testing.

The mission was dubbed Project Sunshine, presumably to mask the abject terror of robbing and maiming scores upon scores of baby corpses under a veil of cheerfulness. The Clinton administration’s Advisory Committee dug up the details of the project as part of their mission to uncover ethical issues in past radiation experiments. The fact that they managed to turn in a full report instead of a stained cocktail napkin with “What the hell, past?” scribbled all over it remains a shining testament to the scientific method.

#3. A “Big Pharma” Company Knowingly Made Patients Sick For Profit

The Conspiracy Theory:

According to conspiracy theorists, Big Pharma is an evil machine that makes people sick for profit. You might be surprised to learn that they’re right … about the last half of the sentence. Because let’s face it, we all already believe the rest of it.

The Reality:

In the mid-1980s, German pharmaceutical company Bayer discovered that one of their products — a blood-clotting medicine designed for hemophiliacs — carried a high risk of transmitting HIV to its users. Swinging into action, they immediately recalled the affected lines and released a safer alternative. However, this left them with a problem: What to do with all the old, dangerous product? Sure, they could destroy it, or lock it up forever in a warehouse a la Raiders Of The Lost Ark, but that would cause them to lose sweet, sweet profits. And they couldn’t make the shareholders angry, now could they?

“It belongs in a Swiss bank account!”

The solution was simple: Without batting an eyelid, Bayer started selling the shit out of their flawed medication anyway. They just did it in places where no one could have heard about their little screw-up, like Latin America and Asia. The new, safer product was reserved for the United States and Europe. As a result of their antics, it’s estimated that at least 100 people in Taiwan and Hong Kong contracted HIV. We wouldn’t be exactly shocked to find out there were plenty more, considering that the drug was also sold in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, and Argentina for an entire year before someone came to their senses.

Americans died too, because AIDS doesn’t give a shit how free you are.

When unearthed documents slapped the ugly truth out in the public eye in 2003, Bayer refused to admit liability, and essentially claimed that their ethics were, like, the best, guys. Of course, their innocent whistling act was somewhat tainted by the also-uncovered 15-year lawsuit conga their antics had earned them, and the $600 million they and other involved companies had surreptitiously paid in compensation to the victims.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/5-eerie-conspiracies-theorists-were-right-about-all-along/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/5-eerie-conspiracies-theorists-were-right-about-all-along/

[prosciuttoe]

Hi! So for the prompt thing, I recently just watched raiders of the lost ark and I could definitely see bellamy as an adventuring archaeologist/professor OR doing like a type of the mummy au except where bellamy is the librarian and clarke is his guide....or something? idk up to you completely if you feel like writing something along those lines. Thanks!

A|N: I decided to go with archaeologist!Bellamy, or to be more accurate, palentologist!Bellamy because I’m such a sucker for Jurassic Park. 

__________________________

Generally, Bellamy’s job description doesn’t involve dealing with billionaires and their hotshot lawyers, and yet here they are.

“For the last time,” he huffs, his arm curling instinctively around her waist to haul her away from the excavation site, “I’m really not interested in advocating some theme park for extinct animals, okay?”

“Dinosaurs,” the girl- Clarke, he reminds himself- tells him, her mouth twisting into a frown. “And why wouldn’t you? Look, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but Jurassic Park is going to be a revolutionary experience. Thelonious Jaha has—”

“Jurassic Park?” he manages, a derisive laugh escaping. “Yeah, that’s the final nail in the coffin. I’m not advocating anything that sounds as if they sell brachiosaurus shaped churros out front.”

The crinkle between her brows deepens at that, and he tries not to appear too smug at having gotten to her. “It’s actually triceratops shaped, and they’re marshmallows.”

“So you guys couldn’t even get churros? That’s rough.”

She spins on her heel, stepping cleanly into his path and forcing him to stop short. “Look, Dr. Blake. You’re leaving this site in about two weeks, right?”

He stares, biding his time as he weighs the possible ways in which she could twist his answer into a less than ideal situation for him. Fucking lawyers.

“Yeah,” he says with exaggerated slowness, bracing himself for a fight. “So what?”

“So,” she goes, mimicking his tone, “tie up your loose ends, and I’ll personally escort you down to Isla Nublar after, where I’m sure Thelonious will be more than happy to discuss the possibility of funding your paleontological dig for the next three years.”

It’s hard to conceal his shock at that, though he does try his damn hardest. Dusting his hands off on his pants, he pretends to consider it for all about three seconds before he bites out, “It’ll be about two weeks.”

The obnoxious tilt of her chin makes him feel as if she’s the one issuing the challenge, instead. “Fine.”

“It means you’re going to have to stay here on site for two weeks, Princess.” He sneers, deliberately running his gaze from the office blouse she has tucked into her pencil skirt down to the delicate heels strapped around her ankles. “Sure you can handle it?”

Her smile is saccharine sweet; practiced. “I don’t think I’m going to be much of a problem, Dr. Blake.”

It’s impossible to miss the little jibe she made there, but Bellamy decides to let it slip anyway. “If you’re sure, Ms. Griffin.” He smirks, accompanying it with a mocking bow. “Make yourself at home.”

+

He catches her trying (valiantly) to pitch a tent a few hours after; heels sinking in the sand and immaculate updo a mess on the top of her head.

“Shouldn’t someone tell her,” Miller interjects, mild, “that we have trailers to stay in?”

“Nah,” he grins, watching as the unsecured poles sway and clatter back to the ground, her frustrated half-shout lost in the wind. “I think she’s having fun. Maybe it’ll help dislodge the stick up her butt.”

The look Miller shoots his way is pointed. “You do realize that this is the girl that’s supposed to assist us with getting funded for the next couple of years, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“So shouldn’t we be making sure that she gets out of this alive?” he goes, exasperated. “And like, make her experience here as pleasant as possible? Considering she’s the one with the connections to Jaha?”

He can’t help the snort that escapes at that, directing his attention back to the chisel in his hand. “She’s just a messenger. Plus, I’m pretty sure he’ll give us the funding as long as I give their stupid theme park five stars on Yelp, or something.”

“Right,” Miller nods, thoughtful. Then in a voice that’s way too innocent for his liking, “So, it’s not likely that she’ll rescind the invitation at all, right?”

“Not when they need me.” He snaps, though he can’t help sneaking a quick peek over at her. She’s gotten the poles secured this time, at least, though she seems to be struggling to get it upright with the howling of the wind. The look of grim determination on her face would be comical, if he didn’t already know how brutal the winds could get at this time of the year.

Scowling, Bellamy rubs at his face, gets to his feet. “Don’t start,” he mutters darkly, stomping over to her and flipping Miller off when he begins to laugh.

+

Surprisingly enough, she doesn’t stay cooped up in her trailer like he expects her to.

It’s not like he wants to notice her, really, but she tends to be a conspicuous presence; all infectious, lilting laugh and bright hair gleaming under the sunlight. It takes her a matter of days to charm almost everyone else on site, which annoys him for reasons that he can’t really fathom. Even Raven has taken to her, for fuck’s sake, and she hates about ninety eight percent of the entire human population.

(Fine, maybe he’ll admit that it’s a little unnerving that she’s turned this supposed charm on for everyone else but him. Not that he’s keeping track, or anything, but considering the way she glared at him when he helped himself to second servings this morning? Yeah. Nothing’s changed on that front.)

He’s dusting off what possibly might be a velociraptor skull when she plops down next to him, drawing her knees up to her chest. “Dr. Blake.”

“Griffin,” he says tightly, sparing her a quick glance before getting back to work. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Not much,” she shrugs, running her fingers idly over the series of brushes he has lined up next to him. “I just came over to see what you’re working on.”

Arching a brow over at her, he sets his brush down on his knee. “I didn’t think you were interested in fossils.”

“I’m a lawyer for someone who’s opening up a dinosaur-themed amusement park,” she says, in a voice that suggests the statement be followed up with a pointed duh. “You’d think I’ll do that if I had no interest in dinosaurs whatsoever?”

“Honestly?” he snorts, raking his gaze over her once more. She’s changed, though he’s pretty sure the clothes aren’t hers from the way they hug to her every curve. Her skin is pink from the sun, a splattering of freckles evident against the side of her jaw, and he tries not to think about how nice she looks with her hair loose. “Yeah, probably. I don’t have a very high opinion of lawyers.”

That pulls a disgruntled noise from her. “Oh, yeah. You definitely kept that under wraps. Couldn’t tell at all.”

“Shut up,” he grouses, bumping his elbow against hers. “Besides, it’s not like you made the best first impression. You came down in a copter, which disrupted our work for an whole hour. You started off your pitch by telling me how lucky I was to be hand-picked by Jaha.”

Clarke makes a noise of mock-outrage at that, slapping at his arm lightly. “Please. I had a script to follow, okay? I didn’t think you’d take it that personally.”

“Well, I’m really in touch with my feelings.”

“Duly noted,” she deadpans, rolling her eyes at him. “Though to be entirely honest, Jaha wasn’t the one who picked you. I did.”

He frowns, turning over to look at her. “You did?”

“Yeah.” She says briskly, averting her gaze. “I looked at a bunch of files, and I thought you were the best candidate. I mean, you weren’t under consideration before, but I added you in because of the paper you wrote, and—”

“You read my papers?” he laughs, grinning when her cheeks pink in response.

“Fine, I did.” She mumbles, folding her hands in her lap. “So, uhm. Maybe your paper on viewing dinosaurs as cultural icons is what made me decide to approach Jaha in the first place.”

It’s a little hard to keep his smile from showing at this point, and he finds himself trying to catch her eye despite her sudden shyness at being caught out. “Wow. I can’t believe my own impact, sometimes.”

“It was a really well-written paper,” she argues, crossing her arms over her chest. Then, a little dramatically, “Too bad the author is kind of a dick.”

Whistling, he picks the brush up once more, twirling it between his fingers cockily. “You’re just mad because you revealed yourself to be one of my groupies.”

“You wish, Bellamy Blake.”

The rest of the afternoon passes exactly like this; bickering and talking and maybe a little flirting, too, and by the end of it, he’ll willingly admit that maybe he can see the appeal that Clarke Griffin has going for her.

(Okay fine, he definitely gets the appeal now.)

+

He doesn’t object when she starts joining them during digs, snapping photos or dusting off fossils right alongside him; her brows furrowed in concentration and tongue poking out from between teeth. Besides, she’s pretty helpful, and it’s nice for him to be able to talk about his discoveries at length without worrying about boring her. She starts joining him during mealtimes, too, always settling in next to him like she belongs there; to the point where he starts looking for her when she doesn’t show up.

If he was being totally and entirely honest with himself, he’d admit that they’re sort of- kind of- friends, now. Or fun work colleagues, at least.

It’s probably why he can’t help feeling a little excited about the whole Jurassic Park venture, even though he’s willingly spending hours stranded in a tiny, cramped helicopter. Swallowing, he adjusts at his seatbelt; his pulse skipping erratically when she reaches over to adjust the headphones clamped over his ears, grinning.

“Ready for this, Dr. Blake?”

He’s not sure what possesses him to say it, really, but he finds himself telling her, “It’s Bellamy, okay? Just— stop being all formal, already.”

Her grin is fucking blinding under the light of the rapidly setting sun, and he’s not sure if the swoop he feels in his stomach is in reaction to her or the jerk of the copter as it begins to ascend in the sky.

“Clarke,” she says, mock-solemn, a small smile playing on her lips as she offers her hand out to shake. “And now we have that out of the way— you ready to go?”

He can’t help squeezing at her palm when he slides his fingers against hers; warm and reassuring and filled with some sort of possibility that makes him grin stupidly at her. “Bombs away, Clarke.”

[adambstingus]

5 Eerie Conspiracies Theorists Were Right About All Along

Conspiracy theories are a stupidly easy target for comedy, since they’re mostly spread by those who screech about lizard people on websites with a design aesthetic that was already dated in the 1990s. It’s just that every once in a while, what may look like a stupid conspiracy theory turns out to be something that very much happened …

#5. The World’s Most Rich And Powerful Meet To Perform Weird Secret Rituals

The Conspiracy Theory:

All conspiracy theories stem from the idea that a cabal of rich and powerful men control the world. This is true, in a way, but it’s really nothing but a bunch of entrepreneurs and investors fighting each other for market shares. Can you imagine if the rich and powerful actually donned robes and got together to perform ridiculous rituals, like in that Simpsons episode?

The Reality:

The truth is much weirder. Sure, there are famous public gatherings of wealthy types like the Bilderberg Group, but they mostly shoot the shit over drinks and big dinners instead of sacrificing goats in the name of the Illuminati. What we’re talking about are the Bohemian Grove gatherings, in which members — which have included U.S. presidents — gather to perform rituals before a 30-foot-tall idol shaped like an owl. We’re absolutely not making this up. You can go visit the site if you want.

You can play everyone’s favorite party game, “Which Bush spewed all over the owl’s dick?”

Founded in 1872, the Bohemian Grove club started out as a social occasion for relatively harmless newspapermen and artists, like Mark Twain. However, many of their members were ambitious, and grew mighty. The club’s gatherings went on, their power increased, and by the 1930s, Bohemian Grove had become an exclusive haunt of the rich and famous. By the 1980s, the club had 2,300 members, including influential senators, businessmen, and highly-placed U.S. government officials. Its waiting list for membership was 33 years long.

While business-making is discouraged — the club straight-up tells its members that “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here” — it happens all the time, because of course it does. Some of the most influential deals in history have been made in Bohemian Grove encampments. Such as, oh, the initial planning for the Manhattan Project. Yeah, you have the 1942 Bohemian Grove meeting to thank for the freaking nuclear bomb.

Not a Hogwarts set prop from Harry Potter.

This isn’t some huge secret, by the way. Outside visitors aren’t allowed, but no one denies it goes on. People who have managed to sneak into the party say it has a distinctively frat vibe. The world’s most powerful men have a right to urinate wherever they desire, so mix that with the inevitable beer-drinking, and you get a lot of rich drunk dudes peeing against the base of towering redwoods. Which they then worship as a part of their traditional druidic rituals, in which they wear costumes and burn an effigy they call “care” in front of that huge concrete owl. Oh, and the owl is wired for sound, so it talks. News anchor Walter Cronkite did the voice for a while.

So yeah, it’s a three-weekend encampment where the most powerful people in the world get frat-boy drunk for two weeks in the row, worship trees, and decide to build weapons of mass destruction all at the same time. Now bring this up at work tomorrow and observe the looks you get from your co-workers.

#4. The U.S. Military Stole Dead Babies To Do Experiments

The Conspiracy Theory:

This theory takes many forms, but all comes back to the idea that in some secret government lab, they’re doing human experimentation without our knowledge. If it was an episode of the X-Files, it’d probably involve some shady agency secretly collecting DNA samples from the public to breed with aliens or create super soldiers or some shit.

This alien is already in the perfect position.

The Reality:

We’ll have to disappoint you on the aliens and super soldiers, but the rest of it is almost weirder than fiction. Imagine you’re a parent who lost an infant … then found out that after death, a government agent sneaked in and stole parts from it for experimentation. That happened. A lot.

During the 1950s, the U.S. government was interested in how fallout from nuclear weapons would affect human bodies, and whether nuclear testing would be a hazard to human health. A valid concern, gents! But they needed tissue samples from humans to test, and since most people would have objected strenuously to their bones being removed to test for the presence of radioactive isotopes, the government instead targeted a demographic that couldn’t put up a fuss (or, more importantly, vote): dead bodies.

Turns out the “cold” in Cold War was short for “cold-hearted.”

So the government went grave-robbing. Here, we’ll let one of the project’s scientists, Dr. Willard Libby, explain: “[H]uman samples are of prime importance, and if anybody knows how to do a good job of body-snatching, they will really be serving their country.” That’s a quote from a secret meeting in 1955, and he went on to point out that these corpses needed to be young. So most of these bodies were recently-deceased infants, often from other countries where that kind of thing was easier to get away with.

Every James Bond villain magically sprung to life just to say, “The fuck, dude?”

Yes, consent was of no concern here — one mother named Jean Prichard gave birth to a stillborn baby in 1957, asked for the body so she could dress it for a burial, and was refused. It turned out they were trying to hide the fact that they’d cut its legs off to hand them over for testing.

The mission was dubbed Project Sunshine, presumably to mask the abject terror of robbing and maiming scores upon scores of baby corpses under a veil of cheerfulness. The Clinton administration’s Advisory Committee dug up the details of the project as part of their mission to uncover ethical issues in past radiation experiments. The fact that they managed to turn in a full report instead of a stained cocktail napkin with “What the hell, past?” scribbled all over it remains a shining testament to the scientific method.

#3. A “Big Pharma” Company Knowingly Made Patients Sick For Profit

The Conspiracy Theory:

According to conspiracy theorists, Big Pharma is an evil machine that makes people sick for profit. You might be surprised to learn that they’re right … about the last half of the sentence. Because let’s face it, we all already believe the rest of it.

The Reality:

In the mid-1980s, German pharmaceutical company Bayer discovered that one of their products — a blood-clotting medicine designed for hemophiliacs — carried a high risk of transmitting HIV to its users. Swinging into action, they immediately recalled the affected lines and released a safer alternative. However, this left them with a problem: What to do with all the old, dangerous product? Sure, they could destroy it, or lock it up forever in a warehouse a la Raiders Of The Lost Ark, but that would cause them to lose sweet, sweet profits. And they couldn’t make the shareholders angry, now could they?

“It belongs in a Swiss bank account!”

The solution was simple: Without batting an eyelid, Bayer started selling the shit out of their flawed medication anyway. They just did it in places where no one could have heard about their little screw-up, like Latin America and Asia. The new, safer product was reserved for the United States and Europe. As a result of their antics, it’s estimated that at least 100 people in Taiwan and Hong Kong contracted HIV. We wouldn’t be exactly shocked to find out there were plenty more, considering that the drug was also sold in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, and Argentina for an entire year before someone came to their senses.

Americans died too, because AIDS doesn’t give a shit how free you are.

When unearthed documents slapped the ugly truth out in the public eye in 2003, Bayer refused to admit liability, and essentially claimed that their ethics were, like, the best, guys. Of course, their innocent whistling act was somewhat tainted by the also-uncovered 15-year lawsuit conga their antics had earned them, and the $600 million they and other involved companies had surreptitiously paid in compensation to the victims.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-eerie-conspiracies-theorists-were-right-about-all-along/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/182900891777

[allofbeercom]

5 Eerie Conspiracies Theorists Were Right About All Along

Conspiracy theories are a stupidly easy target for comedy, since they’re mostly spread by those who screech about lizard people on websites with a design aesthetic that was already dated in the 1990s. It’s just that every once in a while, what may look like a stupid conspiracy theory turns out to be something that very much happened …

#5. The World’s Most Rich And Powerful Meet To Perform Weird Secret Rituals

The Conspiracy Theory:

All conspiracy theories stem from the idea that a cabal of rich and powerful men control the world. This is true, in a way, but it’s really nothing but a bunch of entrepreneurs and investors fighting each other for market shares. Can you imagine if the rich and powerful actually donned robes and got together to perform ridiculous rituals, like in that Simpsons episode?

The Reality:

The truth is much weirder. Sure, there are famous public gatherings of wealthy types like the Bilderberg Group, but they mostly shoot the shit over drinks and big dinners instead of sacrificing goats in the name of the Illuminati. What we’re talking about are the Bohemian Grove gatherings, in which members — which have included U.S. presidents — gather to perform rituals before a 30-foot-tall idol shaped like an owl. We’re absolutely not making this up. You can go visit the site if you want.

You can play everyone’s favorite party game, “Which Bush spewed all over the owl’s dick?”

Founded in 1872, the Bohemian Grove club started out as a social occasion for relatively harmless newspapermen and artists, like Mark Twain. However, many of their members were ambitious, and grew mighty. The club’s gatherings went on, their power increased, and by the 1930s, Bohemian Grove had become an exclusive haunt of the rich and famous. By the 1980s, the club had 2,300 members, including influential senators, businessmen, and highly-placed U.S. government officials. Its waiting list for membership was 33 years long.

While business-making is discouraged — the club straight-up tells its members that “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here” — it happens all the time, because of course it does. Some of the most influential deals in history have been made in Bohemian Grove encampments. Such as, oh, the initial planning for the Manhattan Project. Yeah, you have the 1942 Bohemian Grove meeting to thank for the freaking nuclear bomb.

Not a Hogwarts set prop from Harry Potter.

This isn’t some huge secret, by the way. Outside visitors aren’t allowed, but no one denies it goes on. People who have managed to sneak into the party say it has a distinctively frat vibe. The world’s most powerful men have a right to urinate wherever they desire, so mix that with the inevitable beer-drinking, and you get a lot of rich drunk dudes peeing against the base of towering redwoods. Which they then worship as a part of their traditional druidic rituals, in which they wear costumes and burn an effigy they call “care” in front of that huge concrete owl. Oh, and the owl is wired for sound, so it talks. News anchor Walter Cronkite did the voice for a while.

So yeah, it’s a three-weekend encampment where the most powerful people in the world get frat-boy drunk for two weeks in the row, worship trees, and decide to build weapons of mass destruction all at the same time. Now bring this up at work tomorrow and observe the looks you get from your co-workers.

#4. The U.S. Military Stole Dead Babies To Do Experiments

The Conspiracy Theory:

This theory takes many forms, but all comes back to the idea that in some secret government lab, they’re doing human experimentation without our knowledge. If it was an episode of the X-Files, it’d probably involve some shady agency secretly collecting DNA samples from the public to breed with aliens or create super soldiers or some shit.

This alien is already in the perfect position.

The Reality:

We’ll have to disappoint you on the aliens and super soldiers, but the rest of it is almost weirder than fiction. Imagine you’re a parent who lost an infant … then found out that after death, a government agent sneaked in and stole parts from it for experimentation. That happened. A lot.

During the 1950s, the U.S. government was interested in how fallout from nuclear weapons would affect human bodies, and whether nuclear testing would be a hazard to human health. A valid concern, gents! But they needed tissue samples from humans to test, and since most people would have objected strenuously to their bones being removed to test for the presence of radioactive isotopes, the government instead targeted a demographic that couldn’t put up a fuss (or, more importantly, vote): dead bodies.

Turns out the “cold” in Cold War was short for “cold-hearted.”

So the government went grave-robbing. Here, we’ll let one of the project’s scientists, Dr. Willard Libby, explain: “[H]uman samples are of prime importance, and if anybody knows how to do a good job of body-snatching, they will really be serving their country.” That’s a quote from a secret meeting in 1955, and he went on to point out that these corpses needed to be young. So most of these bodies were recently-deceased infants, often from other countries where that kind of thing was easier to get away with.

Every James Bond villain magically sprung to life just to say, “The fuck, dude?”

Yes, consent was of no concern here — one mother named Jean Prichard gave birth to a stillborn baby in 1957, asked for the body so she could dress it for a burial, and was refused. It turned out they were trying to hide the fact that they’d cut its legs off to hand them over for testing.

The mission was dubbed Project Sunshine, presumably to mask the abject terror of robbing and maiming scores upon scores of baby corpses under a veil of cheerfulness. The Clinton administration’s Advisory Committee dug up the details of the project as part of their mission to uncover ethical issues in past radiation experiments. The fact that they managed to turn in a full report instead of a stained cocktail napkin with “What the hell, past?” scribbled all over it remains a shining testament to the scientific method.

#3. A “Big Pharma” Company Knowingly Made Patients Sick For Profit

The Conspiracy Theory:

According to conspiracy theorists, Big Pharma is an evil machine that makes people sick for profit. You might be surprised to learn that they’re right … about the last half of the sentence. Because let’s face it, we all already believe the rest of it.

The Reality:

In the mid-1980s, German pharmaceutical company Bayer discovered that one of their products — a blood-clotting medicine designed for hemophiliacs — carried a high risk of transmitting HIV to its users. Swinging into action, they immediately recalled the affected lines and released a safer alternative. However, this left them with a problem: What to do with all the old, dangerous product? Sure, they could destroy it, or lock it up forever in a warehouse a la Raiders Of The Lost Ark, but that would cause them to lose sweet, sweet profits. And they couldn’t make the shareholders angry, now could they?

“It belongs in a Swiss bank account!”

The solution was simple: Without batting an eyelid, Bayer started selling the shit out of their flawed medication anyway. They just did it in places where no one could have heard about their little screw-up, like Latin America and Asia. The new, safer product was reserved for the United States and Europe. As a result of their antics, it’s estimated that at least 100 people in Taiwan and Hong Kong contracted HIV. We wouldn’t be exactly shocked to find out there were plenty more, considering that the drug was also sold in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, and Argentina for an entire year before someone came to their senses.

Americans died too, because AIDS doesn’t give a shit how free you are.

When unearthed documents slapped the ugly truth out in the public eye in 2003, Bayer refused to admit liability, and essentially claimed that their ethics were, like, the best, guys. Of course, their innocent whistling act was somewhat tainted by the also-uncovered 15-year lawsuit conga their antics had earned them, and the $600 million they and other involved companies had surreptitiously paid in compensation to the victims.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-eerie-conspiracies-theorists-were-right-about-all-along/

[joneswilliam72]

The power of mythic storytelling - Meet writer/director Robert Kryzkowski of The Man Who Killed Hitler & Then The Bigfoot, with Sam Elliott.

The incredible chronicler and student of mythic storytelling and the human condition Joseph Campbell said in his iconic tome "The Power of Myth": "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive…"

I caught up with writer and director Robert Kryzkowski of The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot – starring Sam Elliott as the American mythic hero who attempts exactly what the title says – for a chat on just this kind of myth-making, constructing the "adult bedtime story" as Kryzkowski aptly calls it, film, writing, the challenges of film-making, influences and so much more.  

The Man is one hell of a unique adventure of a film following our hero, WWII vet Calvin Barr (Sam Elliott in Barr's more aged but still badass state, and Aidan Turner in the flashbacks of young Barr) who secretly killed Hitler in WWII. Barr is recruited for a new mission by his government (Office Space's Ron Livingston is perfectly utilized as the bureaucrat Flag Pin) to eradicate a plague-carrying beast threatening the US – in the process, we get a look back at the hero's life as he once again does battle.

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot is a one of a kind yet also classic study in the power of myth and that goal Campbell mentioned of helping us to feel alive by tapping into these greater stories that thrill and entertain us, while giving us a look at the creative process that builds the very myth itself – something the interview below also does.

Catch The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot in theaters and on VOD and Digital HD February 8. Enjoy the interview below.

Hello Robert and welcome to The 405!

Hello Wess!

Starting things off, what was your initial inspiration behind the film? It was quite well-done and entertaining, especially for a feature debut.

Early on, in the first ten pages, I was writing a pulp adventure. And when I reached the end of those pages, the hero had just killed Hitler, because he thought Hitler was a monster.

Realizing that, this hero could go fight another monster in the minutes left later in his life. One of them is spreading a plague of ideas in World War II and the other one: he's spreading a literal plague.

Great symbolism.

So, I went back to the beginning and put that title on it and I started writing my way toward it, and the things that happened in my life right around that time, mostly involving loss, started making me really think about loss and fear and regret.

Sorry to hear about that part of it Bob.

Thanks. That way – in spreading the two timelines apart – I could really focus on this character study aspect with Sam Elliott's character Calvin Barr.

(L-R) Sam Elliott as Calvin Barr and Ron Livingston as Flag Pin in the action-thriller“THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT,” an RLJE Films release. Photo courtesy of RLJE Films.

Yeah, I found that really fascinating. That actually gets into the next question I had which was: What was it like constructing this very mythic storytelling that you were doing? What was it like constructing the man, the myth, the legend of Calvin Barr?

I wanted it to be a bit of a deconstruction of the typical mythic American hero. It would embrace all of the things that we expect from that type of person, but I wanted to really get into who he was and where he came from and how he feels about his final action and I thought that there'd be something revealing to that and also the notion that he carries these frailties that are familiar to all of us. Then he could be this kind of iconic avatar for our common enemies which again are fear and loss and pain.

Absolutely.

So I was thinking about that very much in the mythic sense of trying to tell the story almost like a parable or I sometimes describe them as a bedtime story for adults.

That's a really a good way of putting it. I hadn't thought about it like a bedtime story for adults.

In casting that part, and even I guess in writing it, too, did you have anyone in particular in mind? I honestly don't know if I could picture anybody but Sam Elliott in that part.

I mean when I was writing it, there wasn't any real inspiration for Calvin Barr. I very much pictured a Norman Rockwell painting. I could see him so clearly in my head, and I have a background in illustration, so I did a lot of storyboard and professional design in the twelve years it took to make this movie. They looked exactly like Sam Elliott with the mustache and the hair and the tall build.  

Interesting.

And when it came time to cast the movie, [executive producer] John Sayles and I talked at length about who that might be. When Sam Elliott's name came up, it just became this epiphany that if Sam were to do it, the words on the page would come to life, and that they would feel real and that he would bring a truth to it. And then I got really worried that there might not be anyone else, like you just said, so that was a fear for me, too.

Oh, definitely. He did bring that role and indeed this story to life.

Pivoting into the process of filming, what was that like for you? What were the challenges like with the film in terms of that process?

The greatest challenge was just trying to do a movie this ambitious and with this kind of scope in 25 days, and then having to make certain sacrifices. As much fun as it would be to spend five days in the fight with Bigfoot, in the time it'd take – we only had about a day and a half.

So the thing that John Sayles told me was, "Do the most important thing. Just do what this movie is. Just stay on schedule, keep your takes down, and just tell the story. Get the whole story told, don't miss any scenes. Go to the edit completely confident that you can shape it then, so you have your whole movie, all 93 pages of your script get captured with no exceptions."

And so, our first A.D. – Elaine Gibson – created a schedule that made that happen, and then our line producer who became an executive producer – Louise Lovegrove – created a budget that just barely made every single one of these elements happen on an incredibly tight budget and schedule. So, it was a collaboration between all the different department heads bringing their gifts to this movie to help pull it off.

It was extremely challenging before there was a lot of communication and a lot of press.

That's great. Like you said, very ambitious, especially for a feature debut, especially. You executed really well on that challenge, I think.

Sam Elliott as Calvin Barr in the action-thriller“THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT,” an RLJE Films release. Photo courtesy of RLJE Films.

Any funny or memorable moments from that process that stick out?

I mean, we were having fun every day. Just the shoot itself was incredibly intense and the pace was so rapid so Sam and I were just in constant communication and we were always talking about the character and focusing on the task at hand; but on the weekends we all hung out like a family, and we'd go to picnics and we'd all go swimming in the Connecticut River.

We'd go to the bar that opens the film, and it was very much a family atmosphere so there was a lot of laughter and a lot of fun and we were all really sad to say goodbye to each other when it was all done.

But we also knew it wasn't goodbye. We've all stayed in touch and we're all still meeting each other at festivals and if I go to a festival and somebody's there with me, we go host this thing together so that the audience can learn this thing about what some of the other departments do and how special each person is in the process of making a movie. It's not just three or four people making a movie, it's over a hundred, and they're all bringing their specialty to that and making it what it is, so.

My favorite memories are just working with this team and having fun.

I always love hearing how art brings people together like that

Switching gears just a little bit to the question I ask most everybody: What films and directors would you consider most pivotal on you as an artist? Influences, basically.

Hal Ashby is very, very important to me. The Last Detail and Being There ... those movies mean a lot to me.

Raiders of the Lost Ark and Steven Spielberg Close Encounters of the Third Kind, obviously with Douglas Trumbull's contributions...

Absolutely.

I look up to the Coen brothers immensely. Fargo is one of my favorite movies of all time and had a big influence on this movie where you can have this dark, brutal kidnapping story on one end and you have this incredibly human, decent story on the other end between this pregnant police officer and her husband who just love each other in a very real, simple way. Fargo juxtaposed the brutality against the small-town decency. That felt radical to me the first time that I saw it.

Me too. Love all their work but especially Fargo and their 1984 debut Blood Simple..

There's so many ... Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. My favorite movie – probably with Raiders of the Lost Ark. I've watched The Conversation many times to try to understand Walter Murch's sound design and editing and the construction of the story itself and how it has this very art house feel to it, yet it's extremely intense and intelligent...

Absolutely.

There's a handful of movies that I go back to and I just love. Lawrence of Arabia, I try to watch every year…

Great, and that's a great selection there.

Aidan Turner as Calvin Barr in the action-thriller“THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT,” an RLJE Films release. Photo courtesy of RLJE Films.

Getting into our last question because we don't have a lot of time: What's next for you?

I don't know exactly yet. Some things have come across my radar that might be interesting, and I've written a couple things that I share about a lot.

But this process has taken like I said, 12 years and when all is said and done, I just want to take a full stop and look over it and assess what just happened and then make a decision that feels right and true and good.

Especially if it's an independent film. You're asking a lot of good people to gather around you – sometimes for not very much money – to do a whole new thing that's rewarding unless the work itself is something we can all be proud of and is worth doing.

So, I think the next thing I do, I just want to really make sure that it's worth doing.

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