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justafairytailofinnocence · 8 months ago

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may i request a headcanon, imagine, or oneshot (whichever is easiest and best for you!) of will turner x male (or GN if it works better for you!) who’s like..a vampire. has super sharp + long canine teeth (and whatever the ‘bottom canine’ teeth are called), slightly pointy ears, heightened senses, sensitivity to sun, obviously the, y’know, drinks blood bit-

if you want more information, or just don’t want to do it at all, no worries! also, feel free to alter anything to your wishes! have a great day! :)

Will turner x m/gn vampire reader 🧛🌊

A/n: so, in this headcanon despite it being an x reader of male or gn, your nickname is Alucard.

The night was your life. The blood was your need, and death was an old friend. You were a creature of the night; a nosferatu, a demon, a monster who preyed on the weak—draining their blood when you were hungry.

In 1696, you were a living being with a beating heart—you were able to breathe life, and you were able to feel satisfied in hunger, thirst, and desire. You had outlived your predecessors. You were a product made not of god's creation.

You went by many names, but the most known being 'diavolul nopţii' or 'el diablo de la noche'. The devil of the night 🌙.

You had no recollections of your origin. It was many centuries ago. You recalled being born in 1462, the time of the great war between vlad the imapler, son of the dracul, and the Ottoman empire.

You were but a small child, too young to remember your parents. They had perhaps abandoned you during the time of the war to save their own skin or planned to use you as a sacrifice to save themselves from the deranged vlad or ottomans themselves.

You remembered seeing the whisps of flames surrounding the outside of your home. Scared and unkowning of what to do, you ran beneath the small, chiselled wooden dining table. You knew death was imitable. The flames growing by the second, and the black smoke clouding the rooms in a whole. Sooner or later, you'll be engulfed, seeing hell before you.

As your vision became blurry and your breath running thin. A shape you barely made out gripped you by the rags you wore, carrying your small body out from the burning building. Mayhaps it was the grace of God sparing you, a child, from a horrific death.

A tall man with a stout build covered in heavy silver armour dropped you from his shoulder. You were brought before a man with wide, green eyes, a long straight nose with a thin-reddish face.

It was him. You thought. It was—Prince Vlad tepes.

You spoke no words, you didn't know how to. All you could do was bow your head as Vlad sneered at you, assuming you were a peasant.

"Kill the boy/child—" His voice was raspy with a snide. Until the army man who saved you had holted the others. "Your grace, a symbol, look! On the boy's/child's arm."

Vlad, curious, narrowed his eyes, gripping the boy's arm with brute force and lifting his rag's sleeve. "A Diavol, my lord, a chosen sacrafice." The army man spoke out.

Vlad's eyes remained narrow, depicting a decision one could assume to kill or let live.

He waved a signal to his men, and immediately, you were bounded by rope, tossed on the back of the army man's white stallion, riding back toward the bran castle in the Transylvanian Alps, the southern Cartharpian mountains.

Through your childhood, you had been adopted as an apprentice to study in the black arts of magic and alchemy. Some say you were the adopted son of vlad, yet he was far from what you expected. You were dubbed Alucard. The son of the dracul'.

Many described you as clean in appearance, appearing with innocent eyes yet written with damage from the world's doing.

You read many books and history and learnt many skills that none had been able to achieve. You had a strong connection with the strigoi and moroi. Both blood sucking creatures that rose from the dead.

As you entered your teenage years, you had a fascination for blood, a fondness rather. Studying it, observing it from animals or others. You wanted to learn the science behind it, straying from the myths and lies the churches had been trying to explain.

Many feared you would turn into Vlad himself, a monster depraved of humanity.

Vlad hadn't always been the doting father figure, yet he was proud to say you were the closet thing to a son he ever had.

One day, in the village, you were arriving back from gathering ingredients to conjure your experiment. You met a young man, same as your age. He was different, though, in contrast to your appearance. He was more fuller in life. He had dark brown hair that reached his shoulders with brown eyes. He wore a light brown garb, and he carried a book with a familiar symbol.

"Speak your name, or you shall fall from the pits of grace," you sneered, the same way your father had once when he saw you.

"Forgive me, my name is avram," he pleaded.

The boy was far weaker and submissive compared to your stature.

You didn't think much of him yet, you later learnt he was the son of a Catholic man. He was kinder, not threatening you, which was foreign in your eyes.

"Your eyes, it's as if life has crumbled before you," avram nervously commented.

"What do you know of my life, you know nothing," you said with a hiss.

"I may not know you deeply, but I know lightness can be shed even in the darkest of man," he smiled softly.

You sneered, "Your foolish tongue shall be carved onto my silver platter."

Before you said anything more, he knelt down and offered you a plant—malva. He then placed it in your hand, curling your fingers. "I can teach you life. Healing is one of many things gifted from god's love. And everything around deserves life—even you."

You found yourself staring into his deep brown eyes. There was something about this boy you found different. Your cheeks turned to a slight tinge of red. You've never felt this way before. All you've known is darkness and evil, yet when he introduced you to light, you felt an odd sensation of warmth.

In the coming days, you tried to catch up with the avram, spending every hour speaking of amenities of healing and treatment. During the nights, you dreamt of him, desiring to lie in the sun by his son as he comforted you from the darkness.

You hadn't seen vlad in days, wondering if he was dead, but for now, it didn't matter. You had, for once in your life, felt a happiness you've yearned for.

Avram was the personafication of light.

On one summer eve, you both lay in the Cartharpian mountains forest, feeling the warmth on your faces. Your eyes lingered over to his hand, and with curiosity, you grabbed it. "I never told you my name. It's Alucard."

He smiled, a lightness emitting from within his words. "I will light the way through your darkness, Alucard, I'll guide the light through hell and heaven to save you".

Filled with emotions, both your hands cupped Avram's cheek, pulling him toward you into a kiss.

His lips were soft and wet, yours rough with a slight smoothness. You found love, and he was the love of your life.

Yet, that would soon change when you arrived back at the castle's gate. You saw blood trailed from the outer path. Curious, you followed it back inside until it led you to the castle's main entrance. Bodies—the bodies of the guards and armies men lay dead among the stone floors of the castle.

Creeping inside the castle, trailing along the blood along the stone floors. You stop, the blood trailed from the floor to the walls and—to the roof. You clenched your mouth in confusion and rage. Someone had trespassed into your home and slaughtered your father's allies. Soon, your thoughts turned to fear, fearing your father would be dead.

You dashed through the main room of the castle until you reached his chambers. From there, you opened the wooden door, entering slowly, seeing more blood trails running up the wall.

Something scurried behind you. You turned, yet a dark shadow had emerged. "My dear boy/child, oh how you've grown," two elongated fingers with sharp nails like claws grasped both your shoulders.

"Tată, what happened to you?" you said, backing slowly against the wall. The fear you felt was flashing back to when you were in your house as a child surrounded by fire.

"I've read your little book of necromancy, I've taken it upon myself to become a creature not of god's grace," he said with a hiss. You could feel a hint of two long canines poking your skin.

"A vampyre," his grip hardened as you winced.

Your eyes widened as you felt two long needle like canines pierce your neck with ease. Your body paralysed, and you could feel the burning sensation overtake your throat.

"I grant you the powers of a nosferatu." Your vision turned to black as the last thing you felt was the burning sensation of fire.

————

1728, the day of the commodore's promotion. Will was making a small sword decorated with tinges of gold in the hilt.

He was excited he completed such fine mastery, but more so, it's a chance to see Elizabeth.

He placed a black leather scabbard over the fine smallsword. The hilt stuck out and attached at the very end of the end of the pammel was a silver rope like tassel.

He began to head toward the manor to show Govener Swann the Commodore's sword.

Trailing along the docks of Port Royal, he noticed a mysterious figure. The figure wasn't like anyone he had met before. However, he didn't want to meddle and dally. He disregarded the stranger and kept trailing on toward the path of the manor.

The stranger locked eyes onto his; a young man/person in their early adulthood, around the same age. You stared deeply into Will's eyes. Your frontal canines were longer than any human he knew, and his ears were angular.

Your eyes were a deep crimson that had some alluring affect to them.

Will was baffled by the appearance yet pulled in by the appeal.

You wore a dark overcoat concealing your attire and a dark laced umbrella to protect yourself from the sun.

Your ears perked up, hearing his blood flow and light breaths. You knew he was curious about you.

Your thin snake like tongue licked your lips when your eyes laid upon his neck.

Will was strangely allured to you. Your elongated fingers stretched around Will's head. "Avram, my love, I've returned at last," he heard in a muttered husk.

Will perked up his neck as you leant forward, you shifted your height at will, and your canines grew more as your irises turned from red to black.

Yet, as you leaned down, the sunlight touched your wrist, causing you to feel slightly burning. You hissed back into the shadow of the building.

Will confused stumbled back. "What are you—".

You replied with a guttural lurking growl, "not of your kind."

Will, out of instinct, drew out the commodore's sword. "I warn you sir, I do not wish to fight you, I'm saving the day for when I use a sword, it'll be for a pirate—so I can kill it."

As he lunged forward, your body turned to a black mist, tempting him forward. He dropped the smallsword as you wrapped your hands around his. "Do. Not. Fear. Me" you say sternly.

"—Avram—come to me—come to the land of the living and the damned" your lips softly press against Will's.

Will was strangely paralysed, as if it was hypnosis, holting him from any movement.

He wondered, who Avram was? Why you called him so?

He gently called out, whispering "My n-name is Will Turner."

As he closed his eyes, you vanished, dropping his weight. He steadied himself looking around.

You were no where in sight.

He picked up the commodore's sword coming to his senses, trailing on—not wanting to find out what will come next.

Over the the next few days, you stalked him, keeping up with his sleeping patterns. Leaving gifts for him and gently enamouring him in your grasp.

Though, when you learnt of Elizabeth Swann, your mouth growled with a disdainful hiss. You fell in love with Will, you needed him, he was the only connection to Avram.

Only you hatched a plan to turn Will on a dead night. To make him your lover and live in the castle of wallachia—only problem—Dracula.

#will turner #will turner x reader #will turner x vampire reader #will turner x you #will turner headcanon #pirates of the caribbean #pirates of the caribbean headcanon #potc #potc headcanon #pirates of the carribean

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ualseyoung10 · 2 years ago

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Performance Artist

Nick Cave

In invigorating performances that often involve collaborations with local musicians and choreographers, the Soundsuits can seem almost shaman-esque, a contemporary spin on kukeri, ancient European folkloric creatures said to chase away evil spirits. They recall as well something out of Maurice Sendak, ungainly wild things cutting loose on the dance floor in a gleeful, liberating rumpus. The surprising movements of the Soundsuits, which change depending on the materials used to make them, tend to guide Cave’s performances and not the other way around. There is something ritual-like and purifying about all the whirling hair and percussive music; the process of dressing the dancers in their 40-pound suits resembles preparing samurai for battle. After each performance, the suits made of synthetic hair require tender grooming, like pets. Cave’s New York gallerist, Jack Shainman, recalls the time he assisted in the elaborate process of brushing them out — “I was starting to bug out, because there were 20 or 30 of them” — only to have Cave take over and do it all himself. Much beloved and much imitated (as I write this, an Xfinity ad is airing in which a colorful, furry-suited creature is buoyantly leaping about), they can be found in permanent museum collections across America.

Their origins are less intellectual than emotional, as Cave tells it, and they’re both playful and deadly serious. He initially conceived of them as a kind of race-, class- and gender-obscuring armature, one that’s both insulating and isolating, an articulation of his profound sense of vulnerability as a black man. Using costume to unsettle and dispel assumptions about identity is part of a long tradition of drag, from Elizabethan drama to Stonewall and beyond; at the same time, the suits are the perfect expression of W.E.B. Du Bois’s idea of double consciousness, the psychological adjustments black Americans make in order to survive within a white racist society, a vigilant, anticipatory awareness of the perceptions of others. It’s no coincidence that Cave made the first Soundsuit in 1992, after the beating of Rodney King by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1991, a still-vivid racial touchstone in American history; almost three decades later, the suits are no less timely. “It was an almost inflammatory response,” he remembers, looking shaken as he recalls watching King’s beating on television 28 years ago. “I felt like my identity and who I was as a human being was up for question. I felt like that could have been me. Once that incident occurred, I was existing very differently in the world. So many things were going through my head: How do I exist in a place that sees me as a threat?”

Cave had begun teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with its predominately white faculty, two years before, and in the aftermath of the incident, followed by the acquittal of the officers responsible, he felt his isolation painfully. “I really felt there was no one there I could talk to. None of my colleagues addressed it. I just felt like, ‘I’m struggling with this, this is affecting my people.’ I would think that someone would be empathetic to that and say, ‘How are you doing?’ I held it all in internally. And that’s when I found myself sitting in the park,” he says. In Grant Park, around the corner from his classroom, he started gathering twigs — “something that was discarded, dismissed, viewed as less. And it became the catalyst for the first Soundsuit.”

For many years after he began making his signature work, Cave deliberately avoided the spotlight, shying away from an adoring public: “I knew I had the ability, but I wasn’t ready, or I didn’t want to leave my friends behind. I think this grounded me, and made me an artist with a conscience. Then, one day, something said, ‘Now or never,’ and I had to step into the light.” Initially, he wasn’t prepared for the success of the Soundsuits. For much of the ’90s, “I literally shoved all of them into the closet because I wasn’t ready for the intensity of that attention,” Cave says. He began exhibiting the Soundsuits at his first solo shows, mostly in galleries across the Midwest; he’s since made more than 500 of them. They’ve grown alongside Cave’s practice, evolving from a form of protective shell to an outsize, exuberant expression of confidence that pushes the boundaries of visibility. They demand to be seen.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/15/t-magazine/nick-cave-artist.html

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yellowocaballero · 3 years ago

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post the western apocalypse essay?

You guys are so great at enabling me thank you so much.

TL;DR: Many post-apocalyptic dystopian stories are direct imitations of the Western genre, most significantly through the way classic Westerns depict 'pre-society' while post-apoc dystopians depict 'post-society', but I think when you compare the two most influential works in these genres (The Dollars Trilogy and Mad Max, respectively), you can pick out a more nuanced understanding of what really relates the two genres and how they exist in relationship to each other.

Many post-apocalyptic works act as purposeful imitations or adaptions of the Western genre, sometimes super-imposed with a sci-fi or dystopian bent. I could give a long list - Cormac McCarthy's the Road, the Walking Dead, Fallout: New Vegas, Trigun, Mandalorian etc. Notably, in many instances the apocalypse is through nuclear warfare (the most common reason for any apocalypse!), although many give a more simple environmentalist bent or a 'Rat Utopia' situation.

A unifying factor between all of these works, and that they purposefully draw from Westerns, is the idea of a society without civilization. Lawless wastelands, ruled by violence, where people act purely out of self-interest and in which the cruel powerful rule over the powerless. If there is kindness in the wasteland, then it's found within these powerless, but as a result kindness can be ineffectual or doomed. The continuity here is from how Westerns can be viewed as 'pre-society' and how dystopians are 'post-society'. Westerns have no civilization because Mexico owned it it just hasn't been invented yet, while dystopians have no civilization because mankind squandered it in hubris and self-destruction. You can see two very different viewpoints of humanity from this, which is highly indicative of the different ways humanity viewed itself in the 1950s and in the 1980s (Modern day postapoc westerns are drawn from the '80s. Mad Max, basically, which I'll get to).

This isn't a very novel reading, and you can draw a great deal from both genres regarding their relatively pessimistic view of human nature and probably bring some deeper analysis of the connection between the two there. So I'll just draw out two (semi) trilogies that are the foundational works in both genres and bring up why I find them both interesting specifically in context to each other.

Mad Max vs Dollars Trilogy: Who's More Insane? The Answer Is Always That Psychopath Clint Eastwood under the cut.

Imagine the Western I just described up there. There's a Mexican standoff. There's a one street town and a cantina. A lone cowboy wanders the desert. If you like Red Dead Redemption just imagine that. Congratulations, that's the Dollars Trilogy: a trilogy of 1960s movies starring Clint Eastwood that started the Spaghetti Western genre. Made of A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and a movie you probably know called The Good The Bad and The Ugly. Notably, and somewhat difficult to understand today, it is a deconstruction of the OG Western genre, and thus redefined how we think of a Western. Original Westerns had good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats - Dollars trilogy suggests that, in a lawless wasteland, maybe good and bad wouldn't even exist, and maybe everything would come down to who was quickest with a gun.

Imagine the post-apoc Western I just described. If you're a Fallout: New Vegas fan just do that. Great, you just imagined Mad Max. You're probably familiar with Mad Max: Fury Road, the greatest movie of all time bar none, but I'm talking about the first 1979 movie.

The Mad Max series is, I believe, a direct reaction to the Dollars Trilogy. Mad Max: Road Warrior is literally just A Fistful of Dollars, both in visuals and imagery and worldbuilding and the role of the main character and in the important story beats. Road Warrior is the same as a Fistful of Dollars in a lot of ways, but honestly the 1979 movie I think enters into a conversation with the Dollars trilogy.

The 1979 movie is basically about a society that doesn't realize it's been destroyed. It is unique from every apoc movie I listed up there in the fact that the degradation was slow. The characters don't even realize it. The world is functioning, the police exist, but everything's degraded and shambling. The government is desperately trying to prop up a painted curtain of civilization and heroes (including cop Max, their propaganda classical hero...a White Hat, if you will...) but there is nothing behind the curtain. By the end of the movie, even the symbol of civilization Max had gone...Mad, losing all civility to the call of violence and insanity. The second, third, and fourth Mad Max movies are purely classic postapoc dystopia craziness! But the first movie is about the slow death of a society kept artificially alive - as Max says when he sees the burned body of his friend kept alive only by life support, "Whatever that is, it's not my friend."

Max self-ejects from society, tortures and kills a guy, and turns into the amoral psychopath that Clint Eastwood plays, who I'll call Blondie (imagine the Mandalorian, except if he was a terrible person). Blondie is an insane asshole and does maybe two nice things over 3 movies he's a nut he's insane I love him I hate him. Blondie is a self-insert, cool guy, don't-give-a-damn figure who every 10 year old in the 1960s and also your dad wants to be - and it is a very sad thing that Max turned into that, because society makes people like Max and Blondie and they are products of their lawless and violent environment. Max, in the first movie, is basically scared that he's turning into the amoral psychopath Blondie - and by the end of it, he has become Blondie, he's become the Western cowboy, the cool post-apoc wandering hero, and it's incredibly tragic. They both posit that a nonsocietal world is cruel, violent, and short in the exact same way, showing that this apocalypse turns Maxes into Blondies.

Any Western is about, essentially, the slow death of the West. Trains encroach. The Civil War begins, or continues, or ends. Towns pop up, large businesses start, someone builds a WalMart. The West always dies, and the romanticism lies within its inevitable end and the beginning of what we understand as society. Mad Max is about the slow death of society, the withdrawal of technology, and there are probably no WalMarts. It's slow. It changes people. There is an inevitable death, either at the beginning or the end. Like Max is changed, like the Civil War eventually encroaches into Blondie's life, there is a strong sense of impermanence.

But that's why I consider Mad Max 1979 kind of the greatest example of the postapoc Western, and why it's oft imitated but never matched. Mad Max 1979 understands that the world doesn't end with a bang, but with a whimper. And maybe it's ended already, and we just haven't admitted it to ourselves. And I think it has a perfect understanding of of the Western in a way that the media I listed above doesn't have, and why I think it's a pretty affecting continuation, reaction, and response to these Westerns and the Dollars trilogy especially.

Double TL;DR: I'm from Texas.

#mad max #mad max fury road #the dollars trilogy #the good the bad and the ugly #sergio leone #westerns #post apocalyptic #asks #my writing #I suppose #this was long enough so I didn't go into why Blondie HILARIOUSLY sucks #but he just chronically rolls up into murdertown USA starts a ponzi scheme murders the entire town and then bounces with so much money #he SUCKS it's great #i want to make a joke about how this isn't the content you follow me for #but it's absolutely the content you follow me for #also for the people who are now here for star wars: the Mandalorian is literally just like the dollars trilogy and akira kurosawa #and lone wolf and cub stuffed in a blender #in a way that's honestly a little lazy but it is a lot of fun!

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bts-weverse-trans · 4 years ago

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201128 Weverse Magazine ‘BE’ Comeback Interview - Namjoon

RM: “I spend a lot of time thinking about where I am now” BTS BE comeback interview 2020.11.28

The story of BTS’ new album BE started on April 17, 2020 when group member RM announced its production on the BANGTANTV YouTube channel. In the seven months that followed until the album’s release, RM’s mind was full, his thoughts flowing in and out of his head.

How do you feel about the unique approach you took to making your new album, BE? RM: The other members were a ton of help to me. My lyrics made it on the album, but the music I composed didn’t, so I’m really thankful to the group for the music. How should I say this? I feel like everyone is doing a great job. There are so many parts in these songs that I’m indebted to them for. “Stay” was originally going to be the title song on Jung Kook’s mixtape, but everyone liked it so much, and they all agreed to put that on our album. That’s how much influence they had. I’m really happy my room idea was chosen to be the album photos. Since we’re spending a lot of time in our rooms because of COVID-19, we laid out the idea of each of us decorating a room in our own style. I can’t remember for sure (laughs) but I think I’m the one who came up with that. I made a comfortable room, one that’s modern and warm because that’s what I like.

There’s a painting in the middle, and symmetrically arranged figurines. RM: The figures are from my own collection. I wanted to show one of my paintings, but that didn’t pan out. But still, those are the things I hold most dear to me right now, so I let the room embody the things I wish I had, too.

It’s well known that you like art and frequent exhibitions, but how do you feel when you look at art in your home or another space where there are no people, like in the album art? RM: Someone said, “You don’t have to buy this painting; it’s yours so long as you’re looking at it.” That’s my favorite sound bite these days. What I most envied about painters was that, even after they died, their work would be hanging up somewhere, maybe even in another country, still defining that space. Musicians leave behind their songs and videos, too, but it’s only through fine art that viewers in the future are able to completely meet artists from the past. I’m envious that this is only possible for painters. These days I’m trying to find spaces where I can have more relaxed viewing experiences.

There’s a full experience involved, from the time you get ready to leave your house until the time you’re actually looking at artwork in the gallery. RM: That’s perfect to me. There’s art you can keep at home, and then there’s art that should always be viewed in museums.

What effect do you think that type of experience has on your music? You didn’t compose any of the songs but instead participated in writing the lyrics to all of the tracks. Did that experience affect your lyric writing in any way? RM: I think it’s helped me develop a way of thinking using all the senses. I used to be attuned to speech and focus on language and auditory textures, but now I can look at my thoughts from many different angles. That’s why I spend more time studying art now. I’m waiting for the day that it all comes to the surface, like when you paint the base on a canvas over and over so the colors pop. It’s hard to answer in one word if it has a direct influence on my work, but I think people who create music develop a way of seeing the world through their personal experience and their creative process. Painters naturally exhibit their art over a very long period of time. I think it gave me an eye for looking at the world in one long, continuous stroke. So now it’s become a little challenging for me to write lyrics these days. I’ve become more cautious.

Why is it so challenging? RM: I used to have so many ideas pouring out that it was hard to pluck one out. So I would stack them up like a Jenga tower and ponder over which one to remove. But now, it’s hard to even add a block to the stack. I’m not sure why but, when I look at these artists whose works span their entire lives, I sense that the rhythm of my creativity is slowing down more and more. That’s the source of my dilemma. I’m only 27 years old. I still need to wander around and get tripped up a little. But am I just trying to imitate what the fine artists are doing? Or maybe BTS experienced so much in the past seven years, that now it’s time for us to take a breather? I’ve got so many questions, I feel like my hair’s turning white. That’s why none of my songs are on the album. I wrote some, but they were too personal to use there. I don’t exactly like myself like this, but I have to see through to the end in this direction and find the answer.

Maybe for that reason, your rapping has shifted focus to the lyrics more so than trend or musicality. It emphasizes the feeling of the words over a particular format or beat. RM: Exactly. In—was it 2017? Pdogg was talking to Yoongi, Hobi and me about our style, and said, “Namjoon, it feels like you’re becoming a lyricist,” and it really stuck with me. I have a lot of thoughts lately when I watch Show Me the Money or listen to hip hop songs from the Billboard chart. My music started out all about my life as a rapper, so I spend a lot of time thinking about where I am now.

So you’ve started to ask yourself who you are as a musician? RM: I listened to Lee So-ra’s seventh album again today. I keep changing my mind but, if I had to pick between her sixth and seventh album, I like her seventh a little more. And then I listen to the most popular songs on Billboard, and I feel kind of thrown off. Um … There’s something Whanki Kim said that’s been running around in my head lately: After moving to New York, he embraced the style of artists like Mark Rothko and Adolf Gottlieb, but then he said, “I’m Korean, and I can’t do anything not Korean. I can’t do anything apart from this, because I am an outsider.” And I keep thinking that way, too. That’s my main concern lately.

You can feel that on BE. As the members take on more prominent roles as songwriters and producers, characteristics of old Korean music—the kind of music you likely listened to in middle and high school—gradually entered your sound. But your music isn’t from that era, and it sounds like pop, but not quite. RM: The sound has to fit with the whole album so I couldn’t incorporate that feel into BTS songs, but the songs I’m listening to most lately have been Korean. Songs like P-Type’s “Don Quixote,” Dead’P’s “Spread My Wings,” Soul Company’s album The Bangerz. The impressions the songs from back then have left on me, the lyrics from back then and the lyrics from now, they’re different. So BE is both Korean and pop; it’s very unique, in my view.

I think that’s especially true for “Life Goes On.” It’s got a pop melody, but compared to “Dynamite,” it has a very different feel. It doesn’t slip deep into the sentimental, instead allowing the melody to flow naturally. RM: Exactly. The chorus is totally pop, and one of the writers was also American. But the song doesn’t really follow American music trends, weirdly. So I don’t know how “Life Goes On” is going to be received. It’s really calm, almost contemplative. So there’s lyrics, like, “Like an echo in the forest,” and, “Like an arrow in the blue sky.” The song kind of feels like that: It could just float off and disappear. It might even come off as bland next to “Dynamite.”

If nothing else, it seems the song will stick around for a long time. Maybe kids now will listen to it later on in the future. RM: I hope so. That’s the one thing I really hope for, people in the future, thinking back and saying, “Oh, right! Remember that one song?” That’s what my favorite artists and other people who leave a lasting impression on me have in common. One thing common among the songs that have affected me a lot, like Lee So-ra’s seventh album, is that the lyrics they utter in their voice along with the overall sound stick with me. I hope when people look back, my words uttered with the sound of my voice, echoes for a long time in an auditory or visual way, or even throughout their entire lives. But that’s the dilemma: We have all these bling-bling symbols of our success, but we’re not that kind of team.

And yet, BTS’s career path is even more “bling-bling” than ever. “Dynamite” was the top song on the Billboard Hot 100. RM: I was the first one to check our position (laughs) but I didn’t want to get too excited about it. I was scared of facing disappointment so I put the brakes on out of habit, and restrained myself. But on the other hand, I feel like I should relish this moment. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing; shouldn’t I enjoy myself a bit? But I disliked that sensation of only feeling elated so I tried to be as objective as possible. I was just one small part of everything that made this happen.

It reminds me of that part, “Running faster than that cloud of rain / Thought that would be enough / Guess I’m only human after all,” from “Life Goes On.” RM: “Only human” sounds so appropriate for me right now. One time, I saw a dark cloud over the N Seoul Tower while I was walking along the Han River. I was with a friend and we talked about where the border between where it’s raining and where it’s not might be, and suddenly, we came up with the idea to run and find that spot. But after running for 10 minutes, the cloud was even further away than it had been. At that moment, the puzzle pieces snapped into place. You think you can go faster than that dark cloud? No. That’s what I realized then. And I just like what Whanki Kim said, that maybe I can’t do anything not Korean, because that’s what I am. I used to work late and then stay up all night when things weren’t working out, sometimes walking from Samseong to Sinsa station, thinking everything through. But now, like the saying, I realize that maybe I can’t do more than what I am.

On Weverse, you said that you gained some muscle from working out. Could the change to your body improve your creativity in the long term? RM: I started to think I better change myself a little, physically or mentally. I’m talking about being steady. I used to bombard myself with challenges and worries and just get over them, but now I think it’s time to find that one sturdy thing and plant myself there. The best choice was working out, and I think it’s changing my behavior a lot. I’m hoping that, if I keep working out for a year or two, I’ll become a different person.

Music is your job, but also your life. Like you expressed in “Dis-ease,” how would you say you feel about your work? RM: This is my job and my calling and I feel a great sense of responsibility. I think I’m lucky and happy that I can solely worry about my creative process. And I feel very responsible to those people who put their trust in me, so I try not to cross any lines, judge myself honestly, and always be professional. Those are the responsibilities that come with the job—the things I have to do and the promises I won’t betray. But if I’m going to do it, I’m going to be happy while I do it. That’s not always going to be possible, but that’s generally how I feel.

Well then, how do you feel about BTS at the moment? RM: BTS is … Well, it’s really hard to tell. (laughs) When BTS started out, I thought, “I know everything there is to know about BTS,” but now it’s, “I don’t know a single thing about BTS.” In the past, I felt like I knew everything, and that anything was possible. Call it childish or ambitious. But if I were to ask myself, “What is BTS to me?” I would say, we’re just people who met each other because we were meant to. But it feels like the stars aligned and a startup company became a unicorn, with perfect timing and lots of smart people. Looking back, there were a lot of ironies and contradictions in this industry. I thought I figured them out one by one, and then finally understood the whole thing. But now I feel like I don’t know anything at all. Anyway, to sum up: My young, reckless twenties. The events of my twenties. There were a lot of contradictions, people, fame, and conflict all tangled together, but it was my choice and I got a lot out of it, so my twenties were an intense but also happy time.

And what about you, as one individual person? RM: I’m a real Korean person. (laughs) A person who wants to do something in Korea. I think millennials are charging into society stuck between the analog and digital generations, and what I chose is BTS. So I try to integrate myself into our generation, try to understand what people like me are thinking, and try to work hard to capture that feeling without being a burden on them. This might be another kind of irony itself, but this is who I am. I’m a 27-year-old Korean. That’s what I think.

Trans © Weverse

#bangtan #namjoon #weverse #weverse magazine #comeback interview #be album #201128 #2020

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tymime · 3 years ago

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Rescue Rangers movie review

Hoo boy. I have a lot of opinions about this... thing. And a lot of mixed emotions.

The good:

Making fun of poorly made reboots and remakes. It’s about time somebody with a lot of clout (Disney that is) came out and said “hey these are terrible”. For years I’ve felt like too many animation fans have been too apologetic about these sort of things. The fact that Disney of all people, who are one of the main makers of such reboots/remakes, let someone do this is pretty amazing. I’ll give them credit for that.

Making fun of uncanny valley animation. Again, something that should have been made fun of years ago, and also something Disney is very much guilty of.

Including toons from other countries and mediums. For a very long time I’ve thought that characters that are CG, stop-motion, anime, etc. can and should be considered toons, and interact with more traditional Western cartoon characters. I’m very glad to see it, though I am bummed that somebody else beat me to it. The Amazing World of Gumball already kinda beat them to it though.

Disney acknowledging the existence of mockbusters is surprising. But again, Gumball already kinda beat them to it.

Acknowledging some toons that have been unfairly forgotten. It was nice to see Roger Rabbit and Bonkers get cameos.

The bad:

This movie is most emphatically NOT canon to the Roger Rabbit universe. It’s some strange alternate world where the rules and the timeline are radically different, and I have no idea why they didn’t bother trying to make it not contradict WFRR and its kin.

For example: Chip and Dale have (obviously) existed as a pair well before the 1980s, and have appeared in many other cartoons since. The same goes for Peter Pan.

In the Roger Rabbit universe, toons don’t usually age. (Otherwise how would Baby Herman remain a baby?) In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode “Fields of Honey”, it’s established that toons keep their youth via laughter, and that toons that don’t get enough laughter grow old and eventually fade away. I suspect some people wouldn’t regard Tiny Toons as a canon source of lore- I’ve talked to at least one person who didn’t think so- but I don’t see why not, since it’s so obviously inspired by WFRR, including unofficial cameos by Roger himself: https://tinytoons.fandom.com/wiki/Roger_Rabbit If you want something closer to WFRR, there’s Mickey Mouse’s 60th birthday TV special, which has Roger in it. Mickey definitely doesn’t look 60 years old in that, now does he? And besides, this movie contradicts itself by showing all the other toons as ageless. Chip and Dale themselves stop aging once they become adults. Why should Peter Pan be the exception? Especially since his whole bit is being forever young? Just for the lulz?

(Also apparently Peter’s backstory is awfully close to what happened to his voice actor Bobby Driscoll in real life. In extremely poor taste I’d say.)

The movie also contradicts itself regarding the whole “CG makeover” thing. Somehow “Ugly Sonic” is a separate character from regular Sonic, and yet Baloo and Pumbaa retain their “live-action” designs. On top of that, Lumiere has somehow not retained his “live-action” design. The movie’s internal logic is basically non-existent.

Uncanny-valley CG characters being toons. This is partly a matter of taste, because I refuse to accept the idea that such characters would ever be considered cartoons. For one thing, none of them have ever been created in our universe to be cartoon characters- why or how would they be elsewhere?

The Rescue Rangers characters being CG animation masquerading as traditional 2D. The animation was good, but it was incredibly obvious that it wasn’t what it was trying to imitate. They had real 2D animation elsewhere, but I guess they spent most of the budget on other things to do it for real.

The voices. I don’t know why Hollywood studios keep replacing voice actors with celebrities I’ve never heard of. Fans of the original voices would object, and people who have never seen or don’t like Rescue Rangers probably wouldn’t be tempted to see this movie anyway. They could have at least made them sound sped-up. Why Tress MacNeille was the only original voice to return I have no idea.

Gadget having children with Zipper was incredibly squick-y. I don’t even wanna think about it.

I have no clue where the writers got the idea that the original Rescue Rangers show frequently had Dale get hit on the head with a pipe, or that Gadget told bad jokes that got everyone laughing. I admit I haven’t watched the series religiously, but I have seen every episode at least once, most of them twice, and I don’t remember anything like that happening that often.

The cameos. Animation has gotten way too obsessed with packing their movies full to the brim with cameos lately and it’s getting tiresome. It works in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Lego Movie, and Wreck-It Ralph because it helps set up the worlds of the movies. Ralph Breaks the Internet and Space Jam: A New Legacy felt more like “Look how many properties we own!”, and this movie feels like “Look how much money we spent convincing other studios to lend us their characters!”.

I really take offense at the idea that the Paw Patrol would turn vicious enough to permanently injure someone’s private parts. It just felt like an unnecessary jab by some mean-spirited writer who doesn’t like the show. (It’s an okay show. I’ve watched a few episodes, and yes, it’s kinda dumb, but there’s nothing really wrong with it.) Also, I was very confused as to why they kept calling Nick Jr. “Nickelodeon Junior”. Did some Paramount lawyers object or something?

In conclusion: This movie could have been absolutely amazing, if only somebody had said “wait a minute, that doesn’t make any sense”. It’s like... it was written by people who only had a passing familiarity with what they were referencing, who were trying very, very hard to appeal to superfans, not realizing that those superfans would be able to point out all its flaws. It just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

#chip n dale rescue rangers #rescue rangers #disney #roger rabbit #who framed roger rabbit #unpopular opinion #toon #cartoon #animation

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amiedala · 3 years ago

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SOMETHING DEEPER

CHAPTER 4: An Open Wound

RATING: Explicit (18+ ONLY!!!)

WARNINGS: sexual content, canon-compliant violence, graphic descriptions of violence, mentions of past abuse/trauma

SUMMARY: “I don’t expect you to follow what I say. I’m not a dictator, and I have no interest in becoming one. But if a single one of you brings danger to this planet you claim to love to hurt me or my wife,” Din continues, and the way his lips shape around the word wife makes something warm and wet unhinge in Nova, “there will be no place in this galaxy where you can hide from me.”

If you're a newcomer, my fic "Something More" is the first installment of this story! <3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: hello my loves and happy Something Deeper Saturday! this chapter is truly a whirlwind, it's hard and sweet and intense and simple all at once. there are very graphic descriptions of violence and death in the one (in the form of Force visions, no one's actually dying, I PROMISE!!!), so please be aware that there is potentially triggering material in what you're about to read. it mentions past abuse and dives pretty deep into current violence, so please just read with caution! i hope you enjoy this journey—i certainly did writing it! more notes at the end!!! <3

Mandalore isn’t a ghost town.

Not how Nova originally thought, anyway. The throne room is filled with wary, armored people. Some are the guards that usually stand watch outside, through the giant palace doors. Nova recognizes Koska Reeves and Axe Woves from the brief, charged encounters she’s had with each of them. Bo-Katan is there, of course, regal and pristine, her shoulders pushed back, her red hair impeccable. There are a handful of villagers that Nova’s seen in passing, but besides the few faces she recognizes, most of the people gathered in the throne room have been hidden somewhere on Mandalore, away from this strange Capitol, away from the everyday. Half of them are without armor, without impressive beskar helmets to hide their wary expressions. Bo-Katan’s icy, measured gaze is clearly a popular currency on Mandalore, because every single person in this room looks skeptical at best and enraged at worst. Nova keeps her eyes on Din, who’s decided to stand at the helm of the dais instead of taking a seat on the beskar throne, watching his every movement to ensure he’s safe up there, and that he stays unharmed.

“I want...to be your leader,” Din says, his voice quiet but earnest. He sounds like he’s incredulous at his own words, like he’s reading off a script he’s never seen before. But there’s power hidden underneath whatever’s scaring him, an undercurrent that Nova knows is unfettered, genuine passion. “I wasn’t raised in the way of Mandalore. Not in the ways that you were—”

“Clearly,” Koska whispers, and the Mnadalorians standing closest to her proximity offer uncharacteristic smiles and snorts. Nova steps forward, but Bo-Katan raises her sharp hand at her side, and they immediately fall silent.

Din looks back at Nova, and for the first time, she can see the fear in his eyes. She nods, encouragingly, even though she has absolutely no clue what point he’s trying to make. Every time she closes her eyes, even if it’s only for a heartbeat, she sees the strange, young hologram of her face, with the word MURDER, MURDER, MURDER flashing back at her, a ceaseless and terrible pattern. Nervously, she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, realizing that she’s the only person in this room who isn’t outfitted in Mandalorian regalia. Her black shirt has remnants of dust on the sleeves from the amphitheater. Her pants saw their best days weeks ago. Her shawl, the only proof that she wears any sort of allegiance to the throne, Mandalorian blue and regal, is thrown haphazardly over her rounded shoulders. The boots on her feet are older than her relationship with Din, picked up planets and planets ago, somewhere sunny and warm and an entire lifetime away. When Din’s panicked brown eyes find hers again, Nova smiles, taking a half-step forward, trying to portray anything other than her own frenzied state, the hammering heartbeat that could likely be heard outside of the palace.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Din finally continues, turning back to the crowd. Even from this angle, with most of his face obscured, Nova knows how hard it is for him to stand here, in front of dozens of people, without his helmet, how many rules he thinks he’s breaking, how this must feel like agony. He reaches for the Darksaber hanging on his belt, and when it ignites, every single face in the room is on Din, on that horrific, captivating blade of electricity and death. “I won this in battle. Twice. Both were accidents,” He inhales heavily, studying the flickering, wicked blade. “But they still happened. I wasn’t born on Mandalore. I wasn’t raised here, either. I’ve given some of you this speech before, when I first took the throne.” He exhales through his nose, and Nova wets her dry lips. Her throat feels like the middle of the day on Tatooine, parched and treacherous. “I...I am not a Mandalorian in the way that you’re Mandalorians.” Nova chances another half-step forward, letting the captive, tensioned room blur in her vision as she just focuses on Din. There’s a tremor in his voice, something alive and unsteady, something she only notices because she’s spent over a year studying every inch of him, memorizing Din right down to his bloodstream. “I follow a Creed that you don’t. I’ve spent most of my life trying...trying to be a good soldier, a true Mandalorian. I know I’m not the leader you wanted. I’m not even sure if I’m the leader I wanted. But I’m the one we’ve got, at least for right now. And—” Din exhales sharply, his breath strained, and Nova knows he’s suppressing a sigh, “I swear, I will try my best to do right by this planet. But—but I’m not only the reigning Mand’alor. I’m—”

“Right,” Axe interjects, but there's no malice in his tone. Nova stiffens, crossing her arms over her chest, staring over at him. But he doesn’t look threatening. His smile seems genuine, like he;s just attempting to get Din to lighten up. “And a bounty hunter. A damn good one, at that. He’s caught me twice.”

“Three times,” Nova corrects, and her eyes go wide when she realizes that everyone’s attention is now on her. “But,” she continues, rather nervously, trying to square back her shoulders in a shoddy imitation of Bo-Katan to not display that nervousness, “Din hasn’t been just a bounty hunter in a long time.”

Din sheathes the Darksaber, and instead turns his outstretched hand to Nova. Heart pounding, she slides her hand into his large, gloved one, trying not to show the massive tremble in her fingers. Quietly, he reaches for the Skywaker lightsaber hanging from her belt, and when Nova hesitates, he lets her hand close over the grip instead. Bo-Katan moves forward, so quickly Nova doesn’t even notice, and when she ignites the crisp, illuminated blue blade, half of the people gathered in the throne room draw a weapon. Nova’s expecting Bo-Katan to do the same, but she raises one impeccable eyebrow and turns back towards the room.

“Stop,” she says, and immediately, the majority of the room lowers whatever weapon of choice they’re gripping. Nova manages a tiny, stuttered breath. “She’s not going to hurt us.”

“She,” a voice says from the back of the room, “is wanted by multiple parties. Contacts all over the galaxy will pay a pretty price for Andromeda Maluev, you know. I accepted the cult member as Mand’alor. I accepted you standing down from the throne, Bo-Katan. I will not accept harboring a criminal,” he continues, voice as icy as Hoth, “and a Jedi, at that.”

Din moves forward, all tension, all rage, but Bo-Katan holds up that same, steady hand, and the man making his way across the foreground halts in the same beat that Din does. Nova pulls her own lightsaber back, pocketing it, pulling the shawl higher over her shoulders, trying to unclench her jaw before all of her teeth break off in her mouth. She’s tired. So tired. Exhausted, slogging through this conversation, her heartbeat accelerating, stars shooting out behind her eyes. And still, this time, when she closes them, all she sees is MURDER, MURDER, MURDER.

“Her name,” Bo-Katan returns, measured and cool, “is Novalise Djarin. And yes, she is wanted by both the scum that still survived after the Empire’s demise, and a middleman somewhere in between which we cannot identify yet. Yes, she is a Jedi, or at least is certainly heading in that way. Yes, I stood down from the title. But that wasn’t because I was weak, or because I wanted them on the throne.”

“Bo-Katan—”

“Nova,” Bo-Katan interjects, “I’ve got this.” She steps off the lowest stair on the dias, posture perfect, right arm curled around her distinctive helmet. Everything in her screams royalty, regality. Behind her eyes is a fire so much stronger than the ice in her voice. “I didn’t want this. Neither did you. But Din won the Darksaber, fair and square. And Mandalore isn’t what it used to be. None of us are, either. We’re good at surviving, but we’re even better at fighting. And I believe,” she says, pointedly, glancing over at Din, who’s still coiled in an attack position, “that was the point our Mand’alor was getting to. So let him finish. With your mouths closed.”

The man who spoke, wizened but grizzled, exhales angrily through his nose, but his mouth stays clamped shut. Bo-Katan stands at attention, nodding back at Din.

“War is coming,” Din continues stiffly, and half of the people crowded around the room roll their eyes or mutter under their breath.

“War is always coming,” another woman enunciates, “it’s what the galaxy knows best.”

“War is coming,” Din repeats, and Nova has to force herself to unfurl her palms. Before she can even try to jump to his aid, though, he walks down the steps and presses his flat palm against the holotable. Reflected in the glittering dome above them is thousands of pixels of blue light. Nova’s juvenile mugshot is up there for the entire room to see, but so are statistics from every mission they’ve engaged in, anything even remotely related to the Order. Hundreds of faces swarm the screen, all with interwoven lines connecting them to other profiles and rotating planets. There, at the center of the screen, is the First Order’s name in menacing, large letters. Underneath are the silhouettes of Luke, Nova, and Grogu. When Din opens his mouth this time, his words are vivid and clear. “I know that Mandalore has been razed and sieged. I know that in your eyes, I’m not one of you. I know that none of you signed up for another battle. But I also know that fighting,” Din says, his voice weary, but his dark eyebrow raised, “is what’s in our blood. All of us.”

“I won’t follow a ruler who isn’t a true Mandalorian,” the same man finally continues. He steps towards them, and his face is angry and ghastly in the flickering blue light. His rage is barely concealed, and Nova’s hand flies unconsciously to the lightsaber hanging from her belt. “And I certainly won’t protect a Jedi who doesn’t belong here.”

“Well, then,” Nova says, and she’s so bone-dead tired that she doesn’t realize she’s the one who’s speaking until the second word is out of her mouth, “good thing I can protect myself.” She chances a glance at Din, who could very easily be aggravated at her stoking the fire. The only thing written across his face, though, is pride. Nova’s eyes flicker over to Bo-Katan, who is somehow, unbelievably, wearing the same exact expression.

Din slams his fist down on the holotable, sending all of the blue light back into the atmosphere it came from. The low light of the war room is returned to its usual state, but no one speaks. “I don’t expect you to follow what I say. I’m not a dictator, and I have no interest in becoming one. But if a single one of you brings danger to this planet you claim to love to hurt me or my wife,” Din continues, and the way his lips shape around the word wife makes something warm and wet unhinge in Nova, “there will be no place in this galaxy where you can hide from me.”

Still, no one moves.

“Mand’alor,” Bo-Katan snaps, icily, all of her usual vigor and venom back in her voice, and it’s like she’s given an order no one can deny. Half of the Mandalorians nod in wary agreement, and the other half keep their low mumbles close to their chests, all of them shuffling out of the throne room, presumably to disperse outside. When the heavy door closes shut, with only the three of them remaining, Bo-Katan turns back to Nova. Din is already climbing the steps back up the dais where the menacing beskar throne sits to retrieve his fallen helmet. When he pulls it back over his handsome face, it’s like closing an open wound.

Nova looks at Bo-Katan, who doesn’t look nearly as threatening in this low light. Her hair is slightly ruffled, and the hard set of her jaw is tense, electric. “Bo-Katan,” Nova whispers, and her gaze snaps impeccably back to Nova’s. “Thank you,” Nova continues, earnest, “for defending me. Defending us. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I did,” Bo-Katan counters, but there’s the ghost of a small smile on her beautiful, cold face. “They were wrong, and they needed to hear that. See? I’m not always a total bitch.”

The word—so commonplace, so foreign—sounds absolutely ludicrous coming out of her mouth that it makes Nova laugh out loud. The sound is both musical and jarring, and the tension held in Bo-Katan’s shoulders evaporates, even if it’s only momentarily.

“Noted,” Nova says, smiling. Maker and all the stars above, she’s exhausted. Bo-Katan glances back at Din, armored and impenetrable, and then back at Nova.

“You need sleep,” Bo-Katan allows, pulling her own helmet back over her head. “Both of you. I’ll stay down here and monitor any incoming correspondence. I’m too wired to go to bed anytime soon.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do,” Bo-Katan interrupts, and her usual edge is back in her tone. “And I will. Go.” She raises that commanding arm again, and Nova’s too exhausted to resist. She wants to take a shower and wash the last few days off of her, and then sleep for three more. Her scar hurts. Her shoulders ache. Her head feels impossibly heavy. Silently, she lets Din lead her over to the heavy double doors, her ears buzzing with fatigue, but before they step into the hall, Nova hears her name chase her across the war room. In tandem, she and Din turn, watching Bo-Katan ignite the blue holotable. There’s something unreadable about her, even under the helmet. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Bo-Katan says, finally, and the heaviness of her words is louder than the doors when they close on her impenetrable face.

Steam from the shower fills the entire fresher. It’s wet and hot, the humidity seeping deep into Nova’s skin, burrowing under the residual ache from the last few days, nestling between her cold bones from the chill back on Ahch-To, the frigidity back on Hoth. Din joins her once he wrestles off the rest of the armor, and before Nova can explain she wants him, but it’s impossible right now with how exhausted she is, how she can barely keep her eyes open, Din wordlessly lathers up his hands with her favorite, clean-smelling soap, gently raking the suds through her hair.

Nova sighs in the silence, letting her shoulders hunch over, her body weight alleviated by sagging against the warm shower walls and by the soft grip Din has on her arms, making sure she stays upward. For what feels like years, they stand together under the warm running water, reveling in the steam, the heat, without either of them needing to say anything. Din wraps Nova’s long hair up in the freshly washed towel, while she dries off the residual runoff down her arms, her thighs.

The room is cool and dark in the blue twilight, that same fog and haze sinking over the horizon. Wherever the rest of the Mandalorians went, they’ve all but disappeared off the face of the planet. Everything is an eerie kind of quiet, no bugs, no animals, no clamor, nothing that signifies any kind of sentient life outside of the castle. Most nights, that kind of awful silence makes Nova wired, like it permeates even into her dreams, but not here, not now. She has what feels like years’ worth of sleep to catch up on, and the second that Din pulls back the fluffy, silk comforter on their giant bed, Nova steps out of the towel and into the soft cocoon. Din’s barely even settled up behind her before she drifts off somewhere peaceful, somewhere that’s not here.

She sleeps. For hours, maybe days, Nova sleeps. It’s dreamless and empty, warm and safe. Usually, nightmares flicker and flash through her mind, her legs sprinting away from whatever menace or threat is chasing her, but not tonight. Nothing wakes Nova up, not the strange quiet, not Din tossing next to her, not the immeasurable weight of saving the galaxy on her shoulders. She sleeps, uninterrupted and powerfully, swaddled up under the light blue blankets that are somehow keeping all the bad things away.

In the end, it’s not a nightmare that startles her away, nor is it Din’s unshaven face pressing into the crook of her neck. It’s the sleepy, quiet beeping of her commlink, which has somehow been removed from its usual place on her wrist and is buried under the extra pillows that stand sentinel over their bed when neither Nova or Din is there.

Din, at this very moment, is also nowhere to be found, and Nova rakes a hand through her hair, tries and fails to suppress a yawn, and digs through the array of pillows on the floor until she can see the bright, red light. “Hello?” she asks, her voice still off somewhere in dreamland, and she rubs sleep from her eyes as she collapses down on the bed, body still stuck in sleep.

“Hey,” Nova hears, and it’s halfway through another yawn before she realizes it’s Cara calling. “Listen, I’d love to actually catch up, but—”

“You have news?” Nova asks, suddenly wide awake. She smooths the comforter out under her hand, crossing one of her legs underneath the other. Outside, the sky is dark.

“I have news,” Cara confirms, grimly. “I know Wedge called you to Hoth a week or so ago because there was a prison break somewhere outside of my jurisdiction.”

Nova nods before she remembers Cara can’t see her. “Yeah,” she adds, belatedly. “Yeah, but no one seemed suspicious or in league with the Order, and it was a holding cell full of minor offenders, so it was kind of a dead end.”

“Well, it was,” Cara sighs, “until it wasn’t. We were right, kind of, because no one who escaped was linked to the First Order. But the night after that prison break happened, your photo with your old name and manufactured crimes popped up as a hit from the Guild.”

Nova’s heart sinks. Something suffocating is blocking her airway, and she tries to swallow past the feeling before she can exhale. “What does that mean?” she manages, barely, hand fluttering around her necklace, pressing into the embossed star.

“Someone’s setting you up,” Cara continues, and her voice is gentler than Nova’s ever heard it. “Someone who likely knows you or Din, knows how to get under your skin. The reason why this is so dangerous is because whoever did it knows exactly what they’re doing. I’ve tried, and Karga has tried, but we can’t even identify where the hit originated from, let alone who put it out. We’re not going to stop looking, but it’s going to be hard to figure out who did it. And because the warrant is for you alive or dead…” Cara trails off, the silence buzzing and dangerous.

Nova closes her eyes before she fills in the blanks. “I’m going to be in danger anywhere I go.”

“Listen,” Cara tries, but it’s too late. Nova’s still exhausted, she’s in pain, she has no idea where Din went, and all she wants to do is to bury her face in Grogu’s head and smell his sweet, reassuring baby smell. Her heart aches. “Novalise, I’m not going to let them get to you. You have some of the strongest forces in the galaxy who’ve got your back.”

“Yeah,” Nova whispers, “and I appreciate that, Cara, I do, so much, but—but Mandalore isn’t exactly a safe haven, either. The planet knows I can use the Force, and besides that, most of the people Din’s supposed to be ruling hate our guts. I’m not scared of being left to defend myself, because it’s kind of what I’ve learned to be best at. But with what you’re telling me, there’s not a single safe place left in the galaxy for me right now.”

Cara’s silence is deafening. Nova’s heart sinks just a little bit deeper, swimming around somewhere in her stomach. “It’s not forever,” she says, but her voice is a little too glum to be anywhere near reassuring.

“I’m so tired,” Nova admits, feeling tears bubbling up at the corners of her eyes. “And I can’t rest, because that’s when someone can get me. I mean—what would you do, if you were me, Cara?”

Nova can hear Cara moving, a soft rustle underneath the comm. When she speaks again, her voice is low and clear, like she’s telling a secret that only Nova can hear. “I would do what we both know you’re going to do. You’re the rebel girl, remember?” She pauses. “So rebel.”

Nova watches as the comm clicks off, everything in her body electric, a live wire. Before she can bolt to Kicker, or try to find where Din’s hidden in the chambers of the palace, or call Wedge and tell him she’s coming back to Hoth, the door opens, and Din walks in.

“Hi,” Nova breathes, suddenly very aware she’s not wearing any clothes, which is completely ridiculous, because Din has seen, ravaged, and worshipped every inch of it. “Where were you?”

She watches as Din crosses over the floor, the low light of the day catching on his armor. He sighs, moving closer to Nova until he’s standing in between her open legs. Halfheartedly, he hooks his fingers under the rim of the helmet, but gives up completely the second Nova’s hands reach to pull it off instead. Underneath, his mustache isn’t manicured, his hair has been weighed down by the metal, and he looks about as exhausted as she feels.

“Ruling,” Din says, tiredly, and there’s a flint to it Nova hardly hears. He lets out a small scoff in the silence, and she reaches out the smooth palm of her right hand for his cheek to nestle against. “Trying to get the people of this planet to recognize I’m not here to destroy it, or that you—we’re not the enemy.” He catches his slip almost as quickly as it comes out of his mouth, but still, Nova’s heart sinks deep down in her chest again. “I didn’t—look, Nova, I’m not blaming you—”

“It’s okay,” she whispers, even though they both know it’s not. For a second, Din just stares at her, and then he presses his forehead against hers. The warmth his skin gives off is almost enough to make her forget about where they are, about the people that refuse to see her as an ally, about having to save the galaxy from forces that want her dead or for their own malicious intent. “They’ll come around,” she offers, her voice barely there, and Din shakes his head, his hair rustling against Nova’s forehead.

“What if they don’t?” Din asks, and by the weight in his voice, it’s clear he’s not just talking about Mandalore accepting her as the Mand’alor’s riduur, as an ally, as on their side, but about the infiltrated Guild that’s out to kill her, and the First Order that’s out for worse.

Nova’s quiet for a long time, just listening to him breathe, trying to map both of their heartbeats, yearning for the constellations hiding above the hazy Mandalore sky. “What if we can’t do it?” she whispers, her mouth hollow, her head aching. “Any of this? What if we can’t pull this off, Din?” She doesn’t point out the specifics, the weight of planets hanging over both of their heads. They both know what she means. The silence is horrible, but Nova keeps her eyes closed, just like she used to, predicting every move Din will make in the dark.

“Then we don’t,” Din breathes back, and Nova’s about to resist, tears springing back to life in her eyes, and then Din’s mouth is on hers and nothing else matters. She lets him sprawl her back on the bed, the smooth satin coaxing and cool under her skin. Stars are burning out behind her eyes, the same celestial imprints that flood through hyperspace, something more, something deeper, something beyond this planet, this moment, this darkness. When Din’s mouth leaves Nova’s, her eyes stay shut, and his lips trail down to her ear. “I’d give everything else up but you.”

They both know he’s lying—Din’s heart is too big, Nova’s purpose is too bright—but neither of them say it out loud. Nova keeps his words in the hollow of her mouth, something shiny and devastating, a supernova or a pearl.

Din kisses Nova like he’s never had her before, low and desperate. It’s an echo of what happened in the amphitheater just hours ago, but it’s sustained, huge, warm. His mouth is made to devour, and if he’s whispering anything to feel the silence, Nova can’t hear it. She’s focused on where his kisses are trailing, desperate and hot and everything she didn’t know she needed. It’s freezing in here, but he’s so warm, his body heat louder than the cold.

“Kiss me,” Din whispers, his voice rough, a plea. One of his hands comes up and braces against Nova’s chin, not an order, but a question. She reaches towards his neck, trying to pull him down, to anchor their bodies together. It’s dark in their room. Without the stars shining above, it’s even darker.

She’s so tired. Still, even after all that rest, it’s like the exhaustion has permeated Nova straight down to her bones. She shudders and sighs as Din moves down her naked body, his lips planting kisses that she doesn’t know she needs until he’s already there. It’s easy and devastating and wonderful and crushing all at once. When Nova tries to return the favor, Din gently pushes her down, mumbling something about taking care of her.

It’s sweet. So sweet, even, that she’s on the verge of tears. Nova would do anything to stay here forever, to feel her husband’s lips on her bare skin, washing away all of the horror, the trauma, the darkness. She doesn’t open her eyes, even though she wants to. Din’s spent so much time without his helmet to appear like one of the people that call themselves Mandalorians, and she wants to give him back every single second of the time that prying eyes stole away.

Before long, Nova’s already close—her orgasm bubbling up quietly, without fanfare, without dramatics, just because Din knows exactly how to make her body sing—and when she taps at his arm to let him know, his mouth unlatches from the small hickies he’s leaving on the terrain of her bare stomach, and moves in between her thighs.

Effortlessly, he hold her legs up, hooking both of them around his shoulders so that his tongue can stay anchored in place. Nova moans, a quiet, radiant thing, and Din’s tongue finds exactly where she needs it to go. It pulses there, on the sweetest of spots, over and over again until she’s finished.

Breathless, she claws at his pants again, but Din shakes his head, his mouth dropping to her forehead as he pulls her into bed. “Rest, Nova,” he whispers, his voice faraway, a deep rumble. He pulls her in against his body, warm and soothing, and both of them are out before their heads hit their pillow.

Din’s asleep next to her, his slow, even breaths barely anything even in all the silence. Nova wants to fall back to sleep, but she knows she can’t. Her heartbeat is running itself rampant, and she’s a tangle of wants and needs, everything pulled in opposite directions. As quietly as she can, she slides herself out from the protective warmth of Din’s arms and the comforter, gently placing her feet on the floor. Even in the cool darkness of the night, her wardrobe, sleek but huge, has nothing but clothes in the same shades of Mandalorian blue, of beskar silver, but right now, Novalise doesn’t want to be a Mandalorian. She doesn’t want to be royalty, doesn’t want to be a figurehead. She doesn’t exactly want to be a Rebel either, because both titles mean the ultimate fate of the Outer Rim and beyond in her hands, so she settles for somewhere in between.

When she’s all dressed—black monochrome right down to her scuffed boots, in a weak imitation of the Luke Skywalker style—she braids the top half of her hair back, sleek and functional, and chooses a shawl buried at the back of her closet, underneath all of the Mandalorian haze of clothing. It’s a stormy grey that shimmers with the silver her husband wears when the fabric catches the light. If you pay close enough attention to the shawl, small, intentional stitches of rust and orange are woven into the fabric, hidden, furious, tiny flames.

Not exactly Mandalorian, but not entirely Rebel, either. And when Nova looks at herself in the mirror, studying the way her eyes flash with all that fire she was so certain was gone a few minutes ago, she sees herself right down to the quick, the high wire in between—she looks something like a Jedi.

So she pulls the Skywalker family lightsaber out of the hook on her door and pulls it to her belt loop, watching as the metal sways and dances in the low light. The weapon seems ancient, like something from another world. Something holy, even though she knows Luke Skywalker is a man and not a myth.

When she closes the bedroom door behind her, Din doesn’t even move. Usually, Nova’s the loud and clumsy one, worlds more obnoxious than Din’s practiced quiet, but she’s grown into her stealth over the last few weeks, especially living here, in a palace that has more rooms than the planet does people. It’s strange and eerie here at night, down the sprawling marble stairs, and she takes the first corridor she can find, just trying to walk off some of the pressure, to put her head back on her shoulders.

It’s lit only by candlelight, an archaic, flickering warmth, so in contrast to the rest of the steel and metal that Mandalore is made up of. It’s like she’s stepped into something that’s been around for years, even though she knows that it’s not possible. Mandalore was sieged, usurped, sieged again, razed and brought to the ground, destroyed. The planet’s atmosphere is mostly ash and haze, all that leftover war from years ago. But this part of the palace looks older, like a tomb that somehow survived.

It’s too creepy, Nova decides, even though the curious part of her is itching to explore it. She wants to pore through every aspect of it, try to find remnants of lost Mandalore, like her father used to unearth texts, like her mother used to excavate history. Before the war, before the Alliance was necessary, before all this death and darkness. When Nova comes out the other end of the corridor, she’s right next to the intimidating double doors of the war room, the holiest place Mandalore has. She pulls her shawl a little closer to her body, trying to retain the warmth she left back upstairs, trying to hold onto a memory more than anything tangible.

Nova isn’t intending to slip into the war room, let alone walk towards the sprawling dais that holds the beskar throne, but she does. It’s still quiet, so quiet, and the dark is coaxing her closer, pulling her up the steps, something beyond a simple want or need. She has the sneaking suspicion that she’s not supposed to be in here, not this late, not without Din, not when she has no legal or physical right to this place, but when she sits down on the throne, something deeper echoes out from within her chest.

It feels like a hymn and a battle cry. Before she has a second to adjust, to rationalize anything, everything becomes starry and disconnected. It’s been so long since she had a Force vision this immediate, this intense, and it hurls her through the proverbial hyperspace, everything dropping away.

It takes three steps forward in this strange, terrifying liminal space before Nova can even identify what’s scaring her. It’s the same kind of evil she felt way back on Takodana, before she was married to the ruler of a planet, before she even knew it was her destiny to be both Rebel and Jedi. There’s a mask she doesn’t recognize, twisted and devious. Behind its menacing, blank expression is something horrifying. Looking into the visor, it’s like her own soul is being fractured into pieces.

It’s humanoid until it’s not. The figure wearing the mask of destruction is tall, easily a foot taller than she is, horrible and menacing. But when the lightsaber they’re using ignites, it’s scarier than the vision of the person at all. It’s awful. It looks like it was forged out of lava, menacing red, the blade flickering and hissing in a way that’s somehow even more terrifying than the stark contrast of the Darksaber’s blade. Nova gasps, the light too bright, too sudden, and she can feel the residual thud on the floor, even in the vision. She knows when she comes out of it, she’ll be hurt, but the blade is getting closer. It looks like a giant rapier, a sword made only for evil things. At the hilt, spraying out in both directions, the blade extends. When the figure in the mask swings, it’s without remorse, so quick, so terrible.

But Nova’s not the target. She rolls away, out of the strike zone, and then she hears Luke Skywalker’s voice cutting through the darkness. She turns, and suddenly she’s not in the horror of the vision, anymore. She doesn’t know where she is. The ground looks icy, like Hoth, but there’s red powder spit everywhere, vomited across giant salt deposits. It’s so bright that her hand comes up in front of her eyes, and when she lowers it, Luke is gone. She’s gone, too. She turns around, hair whipping in the furious wind, trying to find where her name is being cried, and she trips over a mound on the salty ground, and when she falls to her knees, it’s a person, newly slain. The blood is so red, redder than the powder, redder than the evil lightsaber. It drowns through the lines on her hands, slips through her long fingers. She screams, trying to back up from the body, and then she realizes it’s Bo-Katan, gurgling through the slit in her throat, and when Nova tries desperately, in vain, to buffer the blood spilled, Luke Skywalker calls her name again.

But it’s not Luke. It is him—for a second, for the tiniest fraction of a moment—but then it’s not. His lightsaber floods with red, cancelling out the green light. The hallway flickers, once, twice, and then Darth Vader is charging towards her, and all Nova can hear is her blood pounding frantically in her ears and his heavy breathing through his mask, the sound that used to fill all of her nightmares. She’s slamming on the door at the other end of the hallway, and when it opens, the only person standing there isn’t a person at all, but a small alien baby all of two feet tall, green and adorable, and Nova drops her body around her son, protective and sobbing, curling every single inch of her around his tiny little frame, trying to shield him from Vader’s wrath, but when she cries, the vision changes again.

She can feel the motion sickness bubbling up in her stomach, horrible and nauseating. When Nova lands, she doesn’t open her eyes. She’s seen more than enough. Even right now, in the middle of her Force vision, all she wants to do is go back to sleep. She can feel the ache she slept away burrowing right back into her bones. Her scar is pulsing, enraged and angry. The headache she spent the last two and a half weeks fighting off is back, radiating straight down to behind her left eye. It’s all too much, and she can’t look. She doesn’t want to see anything else.

“Novalise,” she hears again, and the only reason she opens her eyes this time is because it’s her mother speaking. Her mother, who only ever called her Andromeda. Her mother, who spent half her life in the stars. Her mother, long dead. Her mother, who never got to know this version of her daughter, this Jedi-in-training, royal Rebel Girl that just desperately needs a hug from her mom.

“Mom,” she cries, and it’s so white. Everything here is antiseptic and deafening. It doesn’t even look like a planet, or even a room, or anything at all. She’s not even sure if there’s a floor, but Nova starts running like she’s never ran before in her life. Her breath is ragged and coming out in bursts. The jiggle in her chest and thighs burn under her speed, but she doesn’t care. She’s racing towards her mother, towards open arms, towards everything she’s been cheated out of for the last ten years.

It lasts for a second. Just a second. The figure is Piper Maluev, her skin dark and radiant, her hair down to her waist. Her lips are wide open and welcoming, her eyes crinkled at the seams. She’s tall and radiant and strong, and she’s everything Nova’s missed for nearly half her life.

And then it isn’t Piper. It’s not Luke, either, or Darth Vader, or whoever the dark, terrible, masked figure was. It’s not her usual nightmare transformation of Jacterr Calican. It’s not Bo-Katan, convulsing and dying. It’s Din. Just for a moment, a tiny fraction of relief, and then it’s not Din, either.

It’s a woman Nova’s never seen before, and her hand is clamped firmly around Nova’s windpipe. Like it’s nothing, she pulls her right off the disappearing floor and choking the life out of her. Her eyes are light but so terrifyingly menacing, her hair is a mess of a dark blonde. She’s pale and awful and her face is gleeful as she pulls the life out of Nova, a sucking, open wound.

She can’t talk. She doesn’t even want to plead for her life. If she’s this close to death anyway, and she just saw her mother, Nova figures there’s a pretty damn good chance that both of her parents are just over the other side. The woman is so happy to be killing Nova off, she doesn’t want to fight it. When her grip recedes, just for a half a second, Nova chokes out a confession that makes everything else grind to a halt.

It’s four words. Barely anything. Tears are streaming down her cheeks when her lips finally open. “I want my mom.”

Then she’s being dropped onto the floor, which very much exists now, and the light room filled with nothingness curls away, receding like it’s being burned. It’s dark in here, the tiled floor slippery and treacherous. In the background, there’s a makeshift trophy made from what looks like bones. Nova’s gasping for air, fighting back with a newfound vigor, kicking her legs helplessly to try and get some leverage on this woman who wants her dead, when, suddenly, she’s at eye level with her.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she seethes, a terrifying smile still spread across her horrible, beautiful face. “When I find you, you’re going to be begging for your life instead of your death.”

“Who—who are you?” Nova manages, through agony. Her shoulders hurt. Her headache feels like it’s trying to split her jaw in half. Her scar feels like it’s being reopened. Everything is torture, and she can’t even breathe.

“You’ll see,” the woman whispers, and her voice is so deadly that Nova internally corrects every time she’s ever called Bo-Katan venomous. Bo-Katan Kryze is a flower. One of the iridescent, gorgeous ones, that lined all the brush on Yavin, the ones Nova’s spent years pressing into the pages of every journal she’s ever owned. She’s kind and lovely and Nova’s very best friend, and when she gets out of this alive, Nova’s going to tell Bo-Katan that. “I’m going to enjoy killing you, Andromeda.”

Nova heaves one giant breath into her lungs, trying to muster up anything that she can, even if it’s just more air. “I—” she starts, and the woman smiles again, loaded and dangerous. “I—I already did that, you miserable bitch,” Nova manages, and when she’s slammed into the awful floor, it’s worth it. There’s some kind of desperation behind the woman’s eyes, now and when her hand finds Nova’s throat again, she spits in her face.

And then she’s out of it. Hurtled out of it, actually, like a dying starfighter in the middle of space. She gasps and heaves on the floor, and as her sight comes back, her breathing does, too. Her head is still killing her. Her shoulders feel like they’re trying to carry the entire weight of Mandalore. Her scar is awful, white-hot and painful to the touch. Somewhere, distantly, her knees hurt like she’s fallen to them, and when she gains back her sense of sight and the feeling of her life being choked out of her body subsides, Nova realizes she has fallen to them. She’s fallen a lot, actually, down multiple steps leading to the floor from the raised platform where she was once sitting in the beskar throne. Nova shudders, inhaling through a terrible wheeze, curling her legs up close to her chest, trying to shake off the absolute shitshow that just hurtled her through the most traumatic Force vision she’s ever had.

“You,” comes a booming, rueful voice, and when Nova’s eyes flutter open, she’s expecting it to be the malicious, purple-haired woman from her vision. Her eyes take a second to adjust, her left one throbbing from the horrid ache pulsing behind it, and when she finally locates the source, it’s the miserable man from the gathering earlier.

“Can I help you?” Nova asks, her voice shooting up at the end, on the verge of tears.

“You aren’t supposed to be up there,” he spits, and Nova squints up at the throne she’d just fallen from.

“I know,” she whispers, dully. She presses a shaking hand to the ache behind her eye, trying to shut out this conversation like she wishes she’d ignored the vision. She tries to stand up, but her knees are too bruised to sustain pulling her to her feet, so she just slumps back against the step she’s on, trying to muster all the strength she has in her exhausted body to not break down. “I’m sorry,” Nova tacks on, the words barely there. “I—I wasn’t intending to sit here, or even come in the room, it just—”

“Happened,” he finishes, oddly calm. His voice sounds closer. Much closer. Nova opens her right eye, and he’s only at the bottom of the staircase. There’s something so wretched and dangerous about the energy he’s giving off, and she wants to run, but she’s in no position to even stand, let alone fight him off, so she just sits there, curling her knees into her chest, pulling her shawl as tight as she can against her upper body. “You’re an abomination.”

A laugh, the traitorous thing, bubbles up inside Nova’s throat. It’s not funny. It’s not. It’s pathetic, and likely racially motivated, but she can’t help herself. Her ribs ache, like they got banged up in her distant fall down these sharp, steep marble steps. “That, surprisingly, is not the first time I’ve been called an abomination in my life.”

“Do you know what the Jedi did to our people, little girl?” He’s angry. Nova can hear it in his voice. And normally, it would scare her, trigger her fight or flight reflex, keep her moving, but after her paranormal face-off with two of the scariest figures she’s ever seen, this one isn’t really that high up on our list. “I do. You were eradicated for good reason. You scorched our planet down to nothing, and now you and your cult leader husband come back here and try to take over? Not on my watch.”

Nova can feel him getting closer. He’s so much bigger than she is, up close, tall and buff, menacing and taut. She weakly pulls her hand away from her eye, trying to at the very least give him her full attention, but she’s so fucking tired. It’s in her bones, at this point. She doesn’t want to be royalty. She doesn’t want to be a Rebel. And, in contrast to what the man in front of her is screaming, she doesn’t want to be a Jedi.

She wants to be the Novalise she was on Naator, with nothing but domesticity and yellow leaves and pink skies. She wants to be the protector she was out there in hyperspace. And, for the first time in ten years, she wants to be Andromeda Maluev, fifteen and gleeful, running around Yavin knowing the stars were her destiny and that evil could always be defeated.

“I don’t even want to be here,” Nova whispers, finally, and it’s like something inside her breaks.

“Good,” the man spits, “then we’re in agreement.” And then his hands are yanking away the hood of her shawl and tangling in her braided hair. Nova’s scream gets cut off as she’s thrown down the rest of the stairs, like her body’s giving up. She chokes out something horrible, fighting to get to her bruised, banged up knees, sore from the fall, aching from the blissful time riding Din’s face less than an hour ago, but she can’t summon the strength. Somewhere, she knows Luke Skywalker is yelling at her to use the Force, but Nova’s had enough force today to last a lifetime. When she’s kicked in the stomach, brutal and awful, she just curls in on herself, hoping her death isn’t a slow one. He startles towards her again, ripping her shawl off of her body, clawing at the meat of her upper arm, and something snaps inside of her. If she’s going to die, really die, it’s not because she succumbed to the injuries this rabid Mandalorian is giving her to try and put the blame on her shoulders. She survived Moff Gideon. She survived Din and Grogu leaving her. She survived her parents dying. And she survived the abuse of Jacterr Calican’s awful hands. Novalise can survive this.

When her lightsaber roars to life in her hands, it’s not only Nova swinging. She can feel the weight of what it being the Skywalker family lightsaber, of Luke and Leia before her, of his father before him, of all the generations yet to come to wield this weapon, this holy sword, this impossible thing. It takes all of her energy, a brilliant beam of blue light, and then she falls to the floor, knowing that even if this is where it ends, that she fought back.

Everything next comes in flashes. It’s in these tiny fractals like what happened when the Crest had died right over Dagobah and crashed to the surface. She sees a blade ignite, and in between the rhythm of her fading in and out of consciousness, Nova thinks she’s just watching herself fight the man back. Suddenly, he drops to the floor, his body nothing but dead weight, and she wants to scream, but she’s back out. It’s horrible and deafening. She’s being scooped up, she can feel that. She’s crying. She’s definitely crying. There are voices, loud ones. When she has enough strength to open her eyes again, Din is slamming his gloved fist against the airlock on Kicker, his voice frantic. She can’t make out what he’s saying, though, and another face appears above her. Din gently transfers Nova’s limp body into someone else’s arms, and when Nova looks up, it’s Bo-Katan, her face so panicked it’s almost impossible to recognize who it is.

“Nova, you gotta stay awake,” Bo-Katan whispers, her palm slapping softly at Nova’s cheek. “C’mon, I mean it. If you die here on this planet you hate, I will haunt you in the afterlife. I swear, you have to stay awake.”

“I don’t—” Nova starts, and Bo-Katan shakes her head.

“You literally should not be talking,” Bo-Katan says, her eyesight dipping to Nova’s neck. Her eyes widen for a second and then her smooth fingers ghost over the outline. Nova coughs at her light touch, and she realizes that the marks from the vision she had of being choked within an inch of her life are here, that they followed her back out of the vision and into this moment. “Nova, no, shut up, I’m serious—”

“I don’t—don’t hate Mandalore,” she manages, her voice sounding like shards of glass, and Bo-Katan offers her a hasty, worried smile.

“You do,” Bo-Katan argues, but her voice is so gentle. “But don’t worry, princess, we’re getting you the hell off of it. No complaints now that you’re off Mandalore, you got it? The second you got here, I knew both of you wanted to leave.”

Din’s at her side again, and Bo-Katan kneels down, gently placing Nova in her familiar tangle of blankets and pillows. Nova’s eyes close again, and when they slide back open, Bo-Katan is standing, trading worried glances and hushed tones with Din.

Nova’s head hurts. So bad. It’s splitting down the middle of her skull, actually, but all she can do is press a hand over her eye and try to block out the familiar low light of the ship that smells more like home than this entire planet ever had.

“Listen, about what I told you back on Hoth—”

“It’s fine,” Din cuts her off, and his next few words are warbled. “I get it. Your allegiance is to Mandalore, not to us.”

Nova can’t hear Bo-Katan’s answer. In fact, she’s not even sure if there’s even words being spoken, because the next time she looks up, Bo-Katan is just staring down at her, incredibly concerned, such an obvious change from her usually stoic expression. Nova’s whole body feels like it’s on fire. She’s exhausted. Bo-Katan kneels down again, just for a split second, to pull the loose end of Nova’s shawl over the rest of her folded body. Nova wants to cry.

“Flower,” she garbles, nonsensically. She’s trying to tell Bo-Katan that she’s sorry for all the animosity, that she trusts her, and more than that, she likes her. It doesn't make a single lick of sense to anyone outside of Nova’s head, but Bo-Katan offers a tiny smile anyway.

“Here,” Din says, stiffly, holding out the sheathed blade of the Darksaber to Bo-Katan. Nova’s eyes flutter closed, just for a beat, and when they open back up, Bo-Katan is pushing the weapon back into Din’s grip.

“It’s not mine,” she insists. “Besides, you’re not getting out of it that easy. You’ll be back.”

“Bo-Katan—”

“Take care of her,” Bo-Katan interrupts. Nova blacks out again until they’re up in hyperspace. Din’s body is shielding her from the cold, his limbs draped all over the places that hurt the least. When she opens her eyes, they’re floating through the cosmos, and all her eyes can see is sweet, sweet stardust.

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jasontoddiefor · 4 years ago

Text

Summary: Jason Todd was raised on the streets, in Gotham’s filth, but the blood that was running through his veins was everything but. Jason was the last of a line of gruesome, death stained mages, necromancers who dealt in souls and flickering images of immortality. Jason was a fifteen-year-old boy who crawled out of his grave, weeks after he died, reanimated by powers he couldn’t understand or control, and struggled to feel alive even when his father was holding onto him.

AN: I finally get to post my @batfam-big-bang fanfic! I My lovely beta readers for this wonderful project were @nycis and @queerbutstillhere while my amazing artists were @darkmagyk and @paperedking and @zannakai. Check out their stunning pieces!!!

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I had a night I had a day I did one million stupid things I said one billion foolish things I'm not okay

If there are two emotions Jason knows well, they are fear and anger. Both had accompanied him since his earliest childhood memories. His father’s shouting had been a constant source of anger and fear. His loud voice had forced Jason to hide beneath the table, his bed, the closet, all spaces he had falsely assumed would be too small for his father to reach. With bated breath he had waited for the screeching to stop until only his mother’s soft sobs had echoed through the rooms. Those too had angered Jason. He didn’t know whether it was on her behalf, because he had hated his father so much for causing her any pain, or because that anger had been for himself, the poor child whose mother wasn’t strong enough to leave her piece of shit husband.

On the streets, anger had kept him warm at night and fear had ensured he stayed alive. He had marveled at the shiny tires of the Batmobile, but even then, deep down, he had been so incredibly angry. He was going hungry while another drove a car like that. He had ignored his fear then and stolen the tires regardless.

It had been the best decision of his life.

So now, when once again he was stuck between fear and anger, he chose to dismiss his fear and lash out instead.

“You can’t be serious!” Jason hissed, throwing up his arms.

Rage boiled beneath his skin like an active volcano. It infected his voice, his stance. He rose to his full height, making him the tallest in the room, but none of his siblings even blinked at it. They were too used to such simpleminded intimidation tactics, employed similar ones in front of villains who thought they could get the better of them.

“This is the right way,” Dick said, his voice strained with finality, a kind of authority he had no right to evoke.

He was not their leader, and he sure as hell was not their father. Dick barely understood what Jason was capable of and when he did, was too scared of it. The others didn’t see it, but Jason knew a coward when he saw one. Dick always tip-toed around Jason’s room like he expected the undead to crawl right out of it and drag him into a bloody casket. Beyond that, he also always took the patrol routes far away from Jason’s apartment complex and city district. Jason didn’t mind, he preferred it when the others kept their noses out of the Narrows and Crime Alley. His people didn’t particularly enjoy it either when the other bats and birds came around to play there as they tended to mess with the wards and ask uncomfortable questions. Jason understood too well how unsettling his presence could be and therefore knew very well that Dick had no room to make such decisions or judge Jason for them.

“The right way,” Jason repeated. “Do you even hear yourself? If everything was right, Bruce would still be here!”

Tim and Steph both winced when Jason said his name and even Dick’s face fell. They all didn’t understand it. Death was so final to them instead of just another state of being, one that Jason could reverse.

“I can bring him back,” Jason continued, desperation seeping into his voice. “Everything will be alright again. It’s all in these books. I just need your help.”

Why couldn’t his siblings just understand that he would fix it and then everything would go back to being the way it was before Darkseid had torn their lives to shreds. The Cave had become messy since Bruce’s death. It had been barely a month ago but it already showed despite best efforts. Jason had dragged all his books here to study and take notes, the constant hum of the technology as much a motivational hymn as it was a lullaby. His notes now were spread out all across the table, proudly displaying the work Dick was disregarding so very easily.

Dick only stubbornly shook his head. “No, Bruce wouldn’t want that.”

This wasn’t about what Bruce wanted, he was dead. This was simply about deciding how they were going to fix it.

“You don’t know that,” Jason countered. “It’s not like he wrote it in his will.”

Dick let out a low breath and dragged his hands through his hair as if Jason were causing him a headache. They had attended the reading of the will just hours before. Alfred had made sure they had all dressed up in proper suits the way they had for the closed casket funeral because there hadn’t been a body to recover. It would make it all more difficult to bring Bruce back without his original body to tie his soul too, but Jason was confident that he would be able to pull it off. Jason had only listened half-heartedly to the reading of the will. He knew its contents by heart, they all did. Every hero had a will set up and about ten proxies who knew every word and could recite it in case their death had been unnatural.

Alfred had been given custody over Damian while Tim had been emancipated. The Wayne fortune had been split five ways between Dick, Jason, Tim, Cass, and Damian while Steph and Barbara both got a huge stipend. It was all for nothing, Bruce would be back. Cass knew it as well, or so Jason hoped. She hadn’t even bothered to show for the funeral but had left the city the night before. Jason wished she had stayed, she would support him.

Instead, Jason had to make everyone else listen to him.

Tim was still straight up in denial and didn’t believe that Bruce was dead. His parents had died around the same time, just two years earlier. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to handle it and escape into his delusions instead. Steph, for all that she was a part of the team and family, Jason’s closest confidant out of all of them, had chosen to stay neutral while Dick protested vehemently.

Damian, meanwhile, just thought that Jason wouldn’t be able to pull it off, but that could be blamed on his superiority complex. While the kid, a perfect mix of Talia and Bruce, could imitate Bruce’s accent and body language as well as he wanted to, he still reeked of al Ghul arrogance and the Lazarus pit’s side effects. It was a foul stench, poisonous, and foreign to this world. It had hurt Bruce when Jason had told him what exactly was keeping Damian’s heart beating, but there was nothing that could be done about it. It wasn’t like anybody else besides Jason actually noticed.

“Had he wanted to, we would know,” Dick said.

“But-“

“Jason, stop.” Dick’s order, his tone couldn’t be mistaken for anything but a bark, was harsh. “Bruce is dead and he will stay dead. You will not experiment on his soul just because you think you can bring him back.”

“I don’t think so, I know so,” Jason argued. “You’re just incapable of trusting me! You still think I’m a foolish kid who is just playing around with powers he doesn’t understand!”

His voice rose with every shouted word. It had always been like this. Dick thinking that Jason was crossing too many lines, wasn’t good enough to be Robin or anything. Hell, he had accepted Tim more readily as Robin than he ever had Jason.

“Jason-“ Tim tried to speak up, but was harshly cut off by Dick.

Trust big brother to always know best.

“Because you are!” Dick shouted back. It hurt, cut into flesh like sharp knives, but at the same time it was liberating. Finally, Dick was actually speaking his mind. Honesty, so Jason had learned, was the only way to keep moving forward. They all lied, it was a part of their training, came as natural as breathing, but there was a line you had to be aware of.

“Bruce is dead and you can’t let go. Instead of helping me figure out how to keep Gotham running, you run off and bury your head in old books to find a solution to a problem that isn’t there! He’s gone. I needed you on patrol tonight and you didn’t show.”

Patrol had been just fine, Dick hadn’t needed him. Jason had kept an eye on the comms, they had done as good as they could with three men down. It hadn’t even been a busy night.

“You’re just giving up!”

“And you’re delusional!” Dick retorted.

He picked up one of the pages the closest to him. The originally white paper was covered by ink stains, diagrams smeared uncaringly all over it while Jason had been trying to figure out what exactly his ancestors had gotten up to when they tried to raise the dead.

“This is too much, Jason. You’re only setting yourself up for my failure. I let you keep researching because I thought it would help, but it’s only hurting you. You have to let go.”

“And leave?” Jason spat out. “Like you always do the moment something goes wrong with Bruce?”

Dick froze. His annoyance and misguided worry slowly twisted into dark anger. At that moment, it just felt right. Dick had ceased pretending that he was so much better than them, that he wasn’t struggling without Bruce around. Jason loathed how he sat at breakfast every day, acting as if it was all still alright and fine, smiling and lying continuously.

“I-“ Dick interrupted himself, reigning in his anger as everybody else watched him with keen eyes. “No, no, I’m not having this discussion with you. None of us are on board with your reckless endeavor, so you’re not doing it and that’s final.”

Jason turned to look at the rest of his family, but they were all averting their eyes. Of course, they would all side with Dick over him. He was older, more experienced, the first Robin out of all of them.

He wasn’t the resurrected boy who talked to ghosts and turned living beings to worthless decay with nothing more than a touch.

“I see,” Jason replied and grabbed his jacket from the chair.

Fine, it wasn’t like he needed any of them anyway. It would have been easier with more living anchors, but Batman had left his mark all over the city. Gotham was his, even the magic that buried itself so far underground that hardly anybody could see it knew who it belonged to. Jason had plenty of anchors he could use to bring Bruce back. What were five children compared to an entire city?

“Where are you going?” Tim spoke up. He had barely said a word since Jason and Dick had started fighting, but Jason supposed that it made sense given that Tim thought both of them were wrong.

“Away from here,” Jason replied. “Since Dick is so keen on running this show himself, he can do it. I’m out.”

“What?” Steph asked. “Wait! Jason, no, you have to stay!”

“What I need to do is fix this.”

Jason picked his backpack up from the ground and started stuffing his papers into it. He didn’t particularly care in which order he did it, he would have to sort through them all anyway once he was back in his apartment. He needed to toss those that were trash and copy the calculations and incantations that actually made sense and seemed like they were a good first step onto fresh sheets. Maybe he should get actual parchment. He didn’t usually work with dead writing materials, but with whatever he had on hand. His spells were powerful enough without, but he couldn’t afford any mistakes here.

Once he was finished, he threw his backpack over his shoulder and headed towards his bike, not sparing the group behind him another glance.

“Jason,” Dick started once more.

Jason just threw his hands up, dismissing him.

“Don’t worry, Richard,” he said. “It’s not like I can stay dead for long if something goes wrong. Don’t bother contacting me. I’ll come back once I’m finished.”

He couldn’t see his older brother’s reaction, but Jason would bet that he had flinched. They all hated to be reminded of Jason’s death, but it wasn’t like Jason could erase that part of him.

Jason put on his bright red helmet and turned on his bike. Then, without looking back, he drove off, disappearing into the dawn of a new day.

#jason todd #dick grayson #bruce wayne #dc #batfam #batman #fanfic #batfam big bang 2020 #AAAH IM SO HYPED

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tragidean · 4 years ago

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moon river [7.8k] (ao3)

He hears the car before he ever sees it.

Sitting in the shadow of a lone saguaro, Castiel looks up in the direction of the noise, louder than the rest of the cars passing him by. The steady rumble reverberates through the ground, rattling the individual grains of dirt, the rocks beneath his shoes. At first, he sees nothing, only the occasional minivan or truck making their way down the lonely expanse of Interstate 8. Overhead, the sun beats down and bakes the desert, and a haze steadily pours off the asphalt.

Sweat beads at his nape. Might as well try again, since the last fifteen attempts haven’t worked.

Standing, Castiel grabs his briefcase and adjusts his hat, and makes his way to the shoulder. Wind whips through his coattails as car after car passes, none of them bothering to stop. He imitates the few movies he’s seen and lifts a thumb, pointing in the direction of Tucson. Or, where he hopes is Tucson. Anywhere would be more preferable than sitting on the side of the road.

The roar of the engine grows louder. Why Castiel can hear this one specific car, he doesn’t know, but refuses to question it. A faint glimmer makes its way into his vision, shimmering black in the sunlight. Originally in the far lane, it flips on a blinker and makes its way in Castiel’s direction. His heart races—I can finally leave.

Stepping away from the shoulder, he watches the behemoth of a vehicle pull to a stop on the side of the road, sending dust into the air and pebbles scattering. Compared to every other car he’s seen today, this one’s a monster, liquid black in color and scalding just to stand next to. Definitely older, judging by the steel paneling and the wear on the tires. Heat pours off of the hood, and the engine ticks, crackling in a way that makes him antsy.

A hand cranks the window down, and a bright face looks at him from within. Castiel loses himself in the green of the occupant’s eyes, juxtaposed against the utter brown and tan of the desert. “You headed somewhere?” he asks, voice as rough as the road, and Castiel can’t help but nod. “Then hop in.”

He pulls the lock up. Popping the door open, Castiel slides into the passenger seat and nearly groans at the rush of cool air that meets him. Not frigid, but comfortable, infinitely better than sitting out in the heat. Reaching over the bench, he places his briefcase in the backseat and straightens up, only to find eyes once again him. Or, more likely, they never left.

For a brief second—or a lifetime, really—Castiel looks right back, raking his eyes over freckled, sun-warmed skin. Ink covers every inch of the stranger’s arms, some ornate, others looking like he drew them on himself with a ballpoint pen and a needle. His shirt hangs off his frame, a size too large but well-worn and verging on threadbare. Holes mar the knees of his jeans, and his boots are scuffed, repaired one too many times at the sole. A heavy flush heats his cheeks, and sweat tickles the edges of his hair from driving into the sun for too long.

He’s beautiful, even more so under his skin, where a bright gold pulses through his veins. Of all the humans Castiel has ever met, this one is special, he can tell.

“Name’s Dean,” Dean says, offering a hand. Castiel takes it, feeling the calluses on his fingers and the warmth of his palm.

continue reading on ao3

#my writings #destiel #destiel fic #hello everyone have some blogger dean/hitchhiking angel cas!#it's super fun and cute and i love it

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fyeah-bangtan7 · 4 years ago

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RM: “I spend a lot of time thinking about where I am now”

#bangtan #rm #m:weverse magazine #o:interview #201128

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michaelbogild · 3 years ago

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Quotes by Benjamin Franklin

A false friend and a shadow attend only while the sun shines.

A friend in need is a friend indeed!

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

A man of words and not of deeds, Is like a garden full of weeds

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned

A place for everything, everything in its place.

A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.

Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.

After the signing of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street, What have you given us, sir? Franklin Responded, A Republic, if you can keep it.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

All the little money that ever came into my hands was ever laid out in books.

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.

Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. At least you will, by such conduct, stand the be.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.

but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

But on the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it; as those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, their hand is mended by the endevour, and is tolerable while it continues fair and legible"

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Chess teaches foresight, by having to plan ahead; vigilance, by having to keep watch over the whole chess board; caution, by having to restrain ourselves from making hasty moves; and finally, we learn from chess the greatest maxim in life - that even when everything seems to be going badly for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems.

Clean your Finger, before you point at my Spots.

Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Eat to live, don't live to eat.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Fools make feasts and wise men eat them.

For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.

Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

God helps them that help themselves.

Great beauty, great strength, and great riches are really and truly of no great use; a right heart exceeds all

Happiness consists more in the small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.

Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances.

Haste makes waste.

He that can have patience can have what he will.

He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

He that lieth down with Dogs, shall rise up with Fleas.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

He’s a Fool that cannot conceal his Wisdom

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

If Jack's in love, he's no judge of Jill's beauty.

If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins.

If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.

Life biggest tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late

Little strokes fell great oaks.

Lost Time is never found again.

Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.

Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it; There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has, the more one wants.

Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes

My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chided for my singularity, but, with this lighter repast, I made the greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension. Flesh eating is unprovoked murder.

Never confuse Motion with Action.

Never leave till tomorrow that which you can do today.

No one cares what you know until they know that you care!

O powerful goodness! Bountiful Father! Merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolution to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to thy other children as the only return in my power for thy continual favours to me.

One today is worth two tomorrows

Originality is the art of concealing your sources.

Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.

Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs. "

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.

Serving God is doing good to man, but praying is thought an easier service and therefore more generally chosen.

Speak little, do much.

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

The only thing that is more expensive than education is ignorance.

The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary.

The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.

The Proud hate Pride – in others.

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.

there will be sleeping enough in the grave....

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Thinking aloud is a habit which is responsible for most of mankind's misery.

Those things that hurt, instruct.

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.

Tis easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.

To all apparent beauties blind, each blemish strikes an envious mind.

To cease to think creatively is to cease to live

To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girlfriends.

To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that don't have brains enough to be honest.

Trouble knocked at the door, but, hearing laughter, hurried away

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.

We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing!

Well done is better than well said.

What you would seem to be, be really.

Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame.

When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.

When you are finished changing, you're finished.

Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

wine [is] a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.

Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.

Wise Men learn by other's harms; Fools by their own.

Without Freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom;and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.

Women are books, and men the readers be

Write to Please Yourself. When You write to Please Others You end up Pleasing No one.

You may delay, but time will not.

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones

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thirsty-x1 · 5 years ago

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Walking In The Winter | Kim Wooseok

Request:

Can I request a Wooseok scenario in which the reader is a single parent and both of them have known each other for a long time. Wooseok starts to get closer to the reader as well as the child gradually and the once suppressed feelings of both the reader and Wooseok, towards each other start to return stronger than ever. Fluff please ^_^

↬ Pairing: Wooseok x fem!reader.

↬ Genre: Fluff, super slight past Angst?

↬ Warnings: Wooseok being too fucking cute?

↬ Word Count: 4.3k

↬ Song Recommendation: “Walking in the Winter” by Yun Ddan Ddan. Originally I was going for another title but after reading the lyrics it fit too well... plus Wooseok is obsessed with this song and that’s adorable.

The tiredness spread on every inch of your body, the pain making itself notice with each step you took while going upstairs, the view of the hall becoming slightly comforting as you searched for the keys in your purse. Before unlocking the door, you took a deep breath, trying to put on your best face and getting in to be greeted with a walking Wooseok that constantly shushed the asleep kid in his arms. When your friend heard the door closing, he turned around to give you a small smile, pointing a few times towards your child.

“Thank you for taking care of him today…” Leaving everything by the entrance, you silently went to him, extending your arms to grab your son and quickly taking him to your room.

As soon as you made sure he was sleeping comfortably and kissed his forehead, you went back to the living room. You were about to grab your wallet when Wooseok stopped you.

“How many times do I need to tell you that this isn’t necessary?” His hands were gentle as he put the money down. Just then was that you noticed the small cut under his right eye.

Getting closer to examine it, you held his chin. “What happened to you?” He blinked a few times, the words not coming out and making you notice the rushed action, instantly pulling away while muttering an apology.

“Ah, I must have gotten it with him… he really likes to play with my face.” Wooseok let out a small laugh as he tapped his skin a few times and checked his fingertips.

“Must be because you have such pretty eyes.” He lowered his gaze, hiding the light blush on his cheeks. “Wait here, I will go look for something to cure it.”

There was no place for him to deny your offer this time as you left him alone, grabbing the first aid kit you kept close just in case and telling him to sit down on the couch. Imitating him, you faced him, cleaning the tiny wound and blowing on it when the alcohol made Wooseok flinch, your expression distracting him from the stinging. He would be lying if he denied that his heartbeat got faster with your every touch, so lost in the moment that it almost surprised him that it was over so soon. Now he felt the bandit on the place and held back a laugh as you took a picture of him and showed how it looked, the Doraemon design making a fun contrast on his usually serious face.

“Thank you.”

“I think it might leave a scar though…”

He scoffed at the mention. “It’s fine, really, don’t worry about it.” His phone rang and right after he picked up his stuff. “Ah, I think it’s pretty late so I should get going–”

A sound coming from the bed room interrupted both of you, making you sigh as you got up. Of course you missed sharing more time with your kid, but it became a bit hard to do so when you came after work, your body and mind not being ready to handle with it even if that’s what you wanted with all your might.

“You can go Wooseok, thank you so much–”

He shook his head. “Let me help and then I’ll go, you look too tired.” Ah, so he noticed. His pace got quicker towards the bedroom. “Besides, you don’t need to thank me every time, it’s been two months already.”

With a slight chuckle, you dragged your feet behind him, laying down next to the small body of your son and playing with his hair as he let out a few cries. Apparently, he had a nightmare and since he was alone, he got scared.

“What’s your plan?”

Your question made Wooseok roll his eyes as if it wasn’t obvious, a sweet melody filling the room as he sang the lullaby you knew well. He was making some arrangements to the song, the beat becoming slower and somehow sadder, but it seemed to work nonetheless. However, like this you got to pay more attention to the lyrics, your sight fixed on his expression and how the feeling seemed to be completely different from other times he had sang it, but Wooseok stared at the way the kid’s eyelids started to close again at the sound of his voice.

When he finished, he looked your way, only to find you sleeping soundly just like the child next to you, the resemblance striking him as funny. He stood up, trying to not disturb you as he put a blanket over you and left the room, flicking the lights off. Grabbing a pen, he scribbled a message on one of the notebooks he had used to color with his new favorite person and grabbed his keys, more like the ones you had given him in case an emergency happened and left the apartment.

The cold breeze reminded him of the song, scoffing annoyed at the lyrics. Well, he wasn’t annoyed at the song itself, but rather the memories it brought to him. It hadn’t been long since you two got in contact again… Years had passed since he heard your name, but three months ago that had changed when he crossed paths with that asshole. No, it wasn’t his intention to listen to his conversation, but he couldn’t quite help himself when he started talking about you with his friends, laughing at the mention of how he had cheated on you and you asking him to leave. After that, he tried to somehow find you, knowing that you would most probably need someone’s help, and at the time he didn’t think about others being able to lend a hand. Maybe it was because he wanted to be the one to be there for you, to fulfill the promise he made when you two were young, or maybe he simply wanted an excuse to see you again. He wasn’t quite sure, even to this day.

But he didn’t need to understand it. He tried to convince himself about it. Letting go of you had been extremely painful for him, and now that he was able to be with you again, he didn’t want to ruin it. So, he didn’t need to understand his feelings now. It wasn’t the time to be selfish.

Ignoring the freezing cold, he put on his air pods and hit the play button, scoffing once again as his healing song started playing. Without putting much resistance, he started walking, humming to the melody while doing it so.

When you walk, your heart will tell you. Wooseok didn’t need to understand, but he really hoped his heart would tell him whether he was doing the right thing or not this time.

It was one of those miraculous days where you got to go home early, your mood brightening even if there was still some tiredness in your system. The reason? Because you would be able to spend some time with your beloved son, and maybe get to spend some time with Wooseok, invite him to have dinner now that you got the time to prepare it, just as a way to thank him for all the help he had provided you the past few months.

You weren’t expecting his call that day, nor any other day, if you had to be honest. It had been some years since you last saw him, things between you not ending well and that weighed you, but there was nothing any of you could have done to avoid it. After your ex and father of your son left, you felt a little bit lost, almost instantly regretting your decisions when the screen of your phone lit up with an unknown number. Slightly scared of it belonging to him, you picked up, your eyes filling with tears as the familiar low voice greeted on the other side of the line, wondering if it was your phone number. Of course he went silent the second you said yes, the awkwardness lingering in the air before he proceeded to ask how you were, and since then none touched the topic about what had happened once a long time ago.

Maybe because both of you knew what happened, and understood each other and your reasons to have done that. You were pregnant, and at the moment you thought about prioritizing family… how were you supposed to know that the man next to you would turn out to be an ungrateful asshole? And although kicking him out pained you, in the end you hoped to have taken the best decision, both for you and for the future of your son, but even then the thought of him asking for his father someday hunt you every day.

Reaching for the doorknob, you breathed in, collecting yourself as you opened the door and heard a cheering scream followed by tiny steps running towards you. The bags on your arms almost fell to the floor as you picked up the overjoyed kid, not caring about the paint in his small hands staining your clothes and kissing his plump cheeks. Wooseok stood up from the floor, giving you a small nod as a greeting before he helped you out with the groceries, taking them to the kitchen and starting to put everything in its place. The subtle detail made you smile; nothing had seemed to change between you two, and it made you happy. It was as if you had never stopped being friends, as if he had never left, making himself comfortable in your apartment after the six months you had shared together.

“Thank you for babysitting him again.” Wooseok sighed frustrated but shook his head the same way he had the last two months, giving up telling you to stop doing that.

The kid in your arms held your face, his fingers leaving a trace of paint along the bridge of your nose before laughing hysterically. “Hyung and I have been painting! Want to see?”

You giggled at his enthusiasm, getting closer to the table where a spectrum of different drawings were spread. Your son pointed out the fox, the cat and the wolf that he drew, ignoring what seemed to be panels that told a story in a similar way to a comic, the style reminiscing you of the drawings that Wooseok used to make when you were young. Right as you were about to read it, delicate fingers covered the paper, your friend coming back just in time to have you more intrigued about the story.

Trying to ignore it, you complimented the rest of the paintings. “You did so well! Aren’t you a whole artist? I think you deserve a prize…” His eyes got bigger waiting for it. “A thousand kisses!”

The whole room was filled with his vibrating chuckles as you snuggled and pressed your lips to his cute face, Wooseok smirking as he saw you two, warmth spreading through his body before remembering he was staying more time than what was needed.

“I should go now–”

“Hyung deserves kisses too!” The innocent demand made you both stop. “He also drew a lot and he’s good, right?”

How to explain this to a four year old? “Well, yes, but–” You could already sense the grumpy expression coming and that usually was followed by a waterfall of questions, so you simply leaned in and pressed a kiss on Wooseok’s cheek.

“That was one kiss.” What a witty kid. “And you should do it like in dramas!” His body stretched to grab one of the drawings by the older to show you an example, but what was pictured made your cheeks burn.

It had been a memorable day for him too, apparently.

“Those kisses are for special people!” Wooseok’s voice got high pitched as he snatched the paper as delicately as he could in order to not scare the kid. “Friends don’t give those to each other.”

The frown on the child’s face grew. “But mom said you were someone special for her.”

“N-no, I didn’t say that–”

“Yes, you did! After the first time hyung came home!” His memory was a blessing when you were forgetting to take something to your work, but right now it was closer to become a curse than anything else.

“Playtime is over, go wash your hands so that you help me cook, yes?” Sighing in defeat, he ran to the bathroom as soon as you put him on the ground, the mention of food distracting him enough to forget the recent argument.

You walked to the kitchen, ignoring Wooseok’s lingering gaze as you ran the water in the kitchen and scrubbed the rests of paint off your hands.

But he had to clear his throat. “So I’m a special person to you, huh?” That was something you wished had changed: his teasing nature.

“Uh, yeah…” The hesitation in your voice was obvious as you turned around to face him, not expecting him to be that close. “Am I?”

By the way his eyes started shaking, you could say he wasn’t ready for a comeback. Even if he hadn’t changed much, you did, and it appeared as if he was noticing it just now. However, his actions didn’t waver as he took a few tissues behind you, dampening them with water and pressing them against your face, cleaning what your son had left.

“You always were.”

It was hard to breathe if he stared at you with such intensity that made you forget how to even pronounce words, the sincerity sounding too real for you to brush it off as a joke. Thankfully, his phone received a message, giving you the perfect opportunity to turn around and hide the blush in your face while grabbing what you needed to cook.

“Hyung, will you stay for dinner?” The small voice caused you to close your eyes, slightly cursing at yourself for not having asked that to Wooseok before.

“Ah, I don’t think I can tonight, buddy… maybe next time, yes?” He ruffled the little one’s hair before grabbing his stuff and walking to the door. “Sorry to leave so hurriedly but I have to be somewhere, is it–”

“Yes!” It wasn’t your intention to raise your voice like that, but the mix of emotions inside you was hard to control. “I mean, yeah… it’s totally fine, don’t worry.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Mhmm.”

If you tried to talk again, you were almost sure that you wouldn’t be able to hide anything, so the only option was to give a short, simple answer. You could sense his hesitation but still the door closed behind you, the air becoming much lighter.

A sigh caught your attention. “I wanted hyung to stay…”

You smiled picking up the kid and handing him the plastic mixing bowl he liked to play with. “Me too, baby, me too.”

After that day, none of you exchanged more words or looks than necessary. He would get home right on time for you to go work, and as soon as he came he would say goodbye. The atmosphere had somehow became more awkward than the first day you met each other again, and it was hard for you to figure how to change it. Each time you were about to ask if he wanted to stay, he had already left the apartment, your anxiety increasing. You didn’t want him to think that you were merely using him as a babysitter, although you had to recognize that it helped you out quite a lot and even more during holidays.

The couch welcomed your body as you flipped the pages of one an album, the unusual silence making you feel lonely and causing you to come up with ways to find comfort, old photos apparently doing the work. You had asked for the day off and it was also the birthday of a friend of your kid, so you dropped him there early and now a good few hours awaited… but it had been so long since the last time you had an opportunity like this that you weren’t sure what to do.

Getting overwhelmed with the nostalgia, you left the photo album on top of the small table and went to your room, taking off the old pajamas and instead trying on a dress you hadn’t worn in a long time. It looked nice… and it also felt nice. You tried fixing your hair in different ways, laughing when you realized you had been making faces in front of the mirror for the past ten minutes.

A knock on the door interrupted your fun, nervousness starting to settle in your system while you tried to remember whether you had told Wooseok that he didn’t need to come today or not. When you got to the door, taking a glance through the peephole was enough to confirm your suspicions: you hadn’t. Hiding behind the door, you opened, him walking right inside with a heavy bag, stopping a second to take off his shoes and then continued, slumping down on the couch.

“I brought the games you asked for, kiddo, better come here before your mom leaves or… Wow.” His eyes finally looked your way when you closed the door, his mouth dropping open before he cleared his throat and stared at the bag he had. “Where is–”

“He had a birthday party today.” He froze. “And I have the day off.” You could see his posture change. “I forgot to tell you, I’m so sorry–”

Not a second later, he stood up, picking up the bag and walking to the entrance. “That’s fine, don’t worry, I’ll leave right now.”

This was your chance, and it was slipping right between your fingers, so you took it. His steps came to a halt, the grip on his sleeve making it impossible for him to move and you made the biggest effort to get over your fear.

“Would you like to stay?” Wooseok didn’t say anything. “You already came all the way here… and I’ve meant to thank you for these past months.” What a ridiculous excuse.

As if he could read your mind, he turned around, giving you a half smile. “I would like that.”

It was your turn to freeze, appreciating the small distance that separated both of your hands before waking up from the trance to go to the kitchen. “Coffee?”

“Mhmm.”

The silence prolonged, although the weird feeling that was present the other days had vanished. You weren’t sure if something changed, but it made you feel relieved. Quickly, you prepared a cup for each, smiling to yourself when you noticed you still remembered the way he liked it. When you turned around, he wasn’t behind you, but rather checking the album you were flipping through before on the couch. You handed him his cup, cautiously analyzing his expression when he took a sip of it and feeling warm when he smiled.

“Glad you like it.”

You sat next to him, getting comfortable as you peeped over his shoulder to see the picture he was staring at fondly, your heart tumbling seeing it was you and him years ago, the dress you were wearing looking more alive than now. And the look in your eyes was different too, even if it wasn’t evident because you were staring at Wooseok laughing, one of the few pictures you had of him doing it.

“You looked beautiful that day.” It seemed as if he was talking to himself, studying the picture and comparing it with his drawing. “Just like now.”

Taking compliments wasn’t your biggest talent and he knew that, flipping the page and stopping abruptly at the envelope that rested in the next one. The edges were worn out from the amount of times you had opened it to read the letter inside, the words in it becoming your healing song whenever you faced a hardship in the past.

“Ah, that–”

“I can’t believe you kept it.” His eyes looked sad as his fingers caressed his own calligraphy spelling your name on the front.

You had to swallow before answering. “It’s precious to me.”

“My confession letter?” He laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “It was so bad.”

Even if he was talking about himself, it made you feel offended, grabbing it and holding it close to your chest. “It’s not!” Wooseok stared at you wide eyed. “The only bad thing was the timing.”

He couldn’t hold back his laugh. “You are right there… I don’t know what was I expecting.” He scratched the back of his head.

“The truth, I guess.”

“What?”

Was there any use in lying about it now? “Well, I liked you too… but I was already dating with–”

“The asshole.”

You chuckled. “Yeah.”

The silence grew between you two, but this time Wooseok was the one to cut it.

“You never told me.”

Shrugging, you caressed the letter. “When I had made up my mind, you had left and I was pregnant, so… I thought the right thing was to move on.”

Wooseok’s piercing gaze was fixed on you, but the confessions were too many for you to face him while saying it out loud, so you kept fidgeting with the end of your dress, remembering how he had complimented you back then during your birthday party and how later his hands had been on the exact same place when you shared your first kiss. The next day you pretended nothing had happened, afraid to ruin the friendship, and it wasn’t until a year later that the paper between your hands confessed that he had done the exact same thing for the exact same reason. But it was too late.

“And what do you think is the right thing now?” You raised your head, finding Wooseok just a few centimeters away from you.

“I don’t know…” Your eyes dropped to his mouth. “I don’t think it matters, either.”

Just like that, his lips were on yours, the same feelings that invaded you that one time making themselves notice again. The electricity itched in your fingertips as the letter slipped of them, his hand resting on the back of your neck to bring you closer, stealing your breath right after you recovered it over and over again. You lost track of time, your chest welling up with all the repressed feelings as he held you between his arms, feeling weightless under his touch and becoming conscious of the burning sensation that his fingers left on your skin as he traced senseless figures on it.

When he finally pulled away, both shared the stupidest grins.

“That felt right, at least.”

Maybe it was the dress, or the kiss, or the situation, or simply Wooseok, but for the first time in years you laughed the way you did back then, and he did the same. Silently, you thanked to the objects next to you for helping you recreate a new cherished memory, although you were sure you wouldn’t need anything to remember this one.

The coffee went cold as the two of you kept talking about the past, confessing each other small secrets, some reminiscing of ancient times while others were incredibly recent, like him saying he was really happy when you cured the small wound on his face, or you telling him that you really loved his voice when he sang and that you wanted to hear it again since that night, or him explaining that the reason why he always left was because he didn’t trust his friend Seungyoun to take care of his apartment not one bit (sometimes threatening him to move his whole studio there).

A familiar melody caught your attention, making you grab your phone and pick up the call ignoring Wooseok’s mocking faces (“that’s my song”), nodding a few times before hanging up.

“The party is about to finish… do you want to walk with me there? It’s not very far away from here.”

“Sure, but under one condition.” You hummed for him to continue as you got up. “Keep the dress on. It really looks pretty on you.”

If it weren’t because you were in a rush, you would have called him out on his cheesiness, but secretly you appreciated it. “Shut up.”

Not ten minutes later you were already walking down the street, close to each other without being able to erase your silly grins from your faces. As you got close to the address, you saw your son running towards you, immediately blabbering about all he had done during the day and greeting Wooseok as if nothing. A few blocks later, he was complaining about walking, saying he was too tired for it and demanding to be picked up and of course Wooseok gave in immediately, the child falling asleep on his shoulder in record time as you continued walking. You felt a small touch on your hand, turning to see the male’s fingers hitting yours on purpose while pretending to look away until you finally held his hand, intertwining your fingers with his.

“You know…” His voice was soft as if to not wake up the toddler. “I could get used to this.” His eyes dropped to your hands and then to his other arm holding your kid. “If you agree on it, of course.”

The tightness in your throat didn’t let you answer, just like the day he had handed you the letter, but this time you simply nodded and kissed the back of his hand, ignoring the pressure in your chest. “I would like that.”

Wooseok pressed his lips together, his eyes becoming small as he tried to hide his happiness.

“I would like that too.”

A sleepy voice added its opinion: “Me too!”

I’m... quite proud of this one. Yes, it’s fucking long for the kind of stories I tend to write but it just;; happened;;; I really hope you enjoyed it tho kasjkdjks. I was going to try and make the child gender neutral but since I wanted them to interact plenty with the kid I just went for he/him pronouns to fit the gif ^^;

~Nani

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leverage-commentary · 5 years ago

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Leverage Season 2, Episode 1, The Beantown Bailout Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi I'm Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and Director of this episode of Leverage.

John: This is John Rogers, Executive Producer and Writer of this episode of Leverage.

Chris: This is Chris Downey, Executive Producer, and this the Beantown Bailout Job.

John: Season two, first episode. Chris, how badly did we bone ourselves at the end of the first season?

Chris: Oh, we really wrote ourselves in a corner, didn't we?

John: A massive corner.

Chris: In a massive corner.

John: We wrote- understand, we didn't- because of the way season one aired, we had no idea if we were coming back for a second season. So we really wrote the first season as if- with no idea, but really writing a complete ending to the show.

Chris: If we had cork ceiling tiles, there would've been a lot of pencils hanging from it before this episode was broken.

John: Exactly. And so we really- so we just- this it the way we came back in. We decided to pick up a year later, everyone's been separated and-

Dean: -and here we see Nates character trying to go back-

John: Exactly.

Dean: -into who he was, originally, in the world of insurance, and suddenly the whole world just isn't what it was. You can't go home again.

Chris: Right.

John: Yeah. And this really sets up this very first scene that Dean constructed in this beautiful office, thank you Portland.

Chris: Yes.

John: It constructs the theme for the entire season, which is Nate’s quest for identity. He- who is Nate Ford now? He's not the guy he used to be. And a perfect example of great Portland actors.

Dean: Yeah. Two local actors, just terrific as we've said on some of these commentaries already. The level of talent that we've found in Portland was extraordinary. We thought we were gonna be flying a lot more people up than we did.

John: And this is- did we shoot this with the Ex1, or we shot-?

Dean: Yeah.

John: Yeah, this is all shot with the Ex1 Pro Level camera. One of the great- a great little workhorse.

Chris: Interesting, too, this season we worked a lot with younger actors.

John: Yeah, we used kids.

Chris: We used kids a lot this season, and she really just-

John: Really set the bar.

Chris: I think just- she really set the bar.

John: Yeah, fantastic.

Dean: Speaking of bars...

[Laughter]

John: Very sudden. Now, nice ninja zoom through the window of the bar, nicely done.

Dean: That was Dave Connell’s idea, and I just thought it was great to bring back our tricks from season 1 to season 2 right off the bat.

John: Yeah. And then the brakes go and I like that little move, that actually wasn't scripted, he reached- just reached across to protect her as they fall apart.

Dean: And this sequence in the car was directed entirely by Marc Roskin.

John: Yeah, and this was really the first day we realized what a find Portland was, because now, like, do we wanna close down a block? It’s a hundred cops, you don't always get and it’s impossible. Portland’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah shut down a big chunk of downtown. We’re gonna be crashing cars? Alright, just don't break anything.’

Chris: And it made the local news, didn't it?

John: Yeah it did.

Chris: [imitating a reporter] ‘Today in Portland, they shut down the center of town to do a fantastic car crash.’

John: Now that's a CG shot, and that was one of the things is, now knowing what we do, we probably would just flip the car now. Cause this was, like, the first day we were there and we really- we wanted to be, like, nice, new visitors to the city.

Dean: I think the mistake I made with that flipping car is that I designed that car to be a slow motion flipping car, but when we saw it in slow motion, it lost some of the impact. So we sped it up, but since it wasn't designed to be sped up, it always had a little bit of a CG feel to it. I think I could do that shot better today.

John: That's alright. Look, it’s a car on fire in the middle of Portland for God's sakes.

Chris: Oh he's always beating himself up.

John: I know. I mean, I think there's some- We really rolled from one season to the next; there was no hiatus. We were picked up for the summer; we were originally a winter show, which meant we rolled straight from season 1 to season 2, so even I'll be the first to admit I probably would have struck the opening of this a little more aggressively. It sounds insane when there’s a car crash and flipping and exploding.

Chris: Yeah, aggressively. There's too much self flagellation; this is a great episode. I gotta say, guys, being on the other side over here, this is one of my favorite episodes of the year. I know people talk about, you know, The Two Live Crew job; I like this episode better.

John: And that's a real blow in downtown Portland; that was a great explosion.

Dean: It was frightening, cause all the glass in the surrounding buildings started rattling and I was so terrified that all the glass was gonna blow out and we were gonna start our adventure in Portland by destroying all this property, but luckily everything held.

John: And so- and it was interesting that at this time, when we really launched season one- you can see the influence of what was happening in the fall of 2008 by the- what was in the first two or three episodes of Leverage, and particularly the bailout-

Chris: Yeah, we were really reading a lot about the TARP money, and not to pat ourselves on the back, but when we looked at the amount of money that was being given to bailout banks and other financial institutions, our first thought, being crime writers, was this is a massive opportunity to grab-

John: -for fraud. Yeah there's no way $700 billion just floats through the economy and nobody steals some.

Chris: And pretty soon after we started breaking this story, the first news articles hit that-

John: And they made the first arrests the week this aired.

Chris: Yes, that's right.

John: And so- and there's Charlie.

Dean: Now, by the way, those of you who have the entire season, this particular hospital actually appears again in the season finale.

John: So are we doing the split, or we doing the-?

Dean: I don't know yet.

John: There you go. So you may have all the episodes, or we may be teasing you. I don't know yet.

Chris: Yeah, well. What was behind casting Charles Martin Smith in this? Cause it’s a departure.

Dean: We had worked with Charles Martin Smith on a mini series called The Triangle, and he was very good friends with our DP Dave Connell. And aside from being a wonderful actor, you may remember him from American Graffiti or The Untouchables, but aside he's also a really accomplished director. So when his name came up it was such an unusual choice for the role, but he was game to do it. And I got very excited cause I love working with him and he just did us a real big, solid favor by coming down from Canada and doing the part for us.

Chris: He’s fantastic.

John: Yeah. She's fantastic in this scene. This breaks my heart. I mean really. And the fact that Tim’s a dad, actually, really comes through here. I mean, he really, you know, when we were shooting this late at night, it was a very moving sequence-

Dean: And Tim really worked with her; he was very generous to her, and was doing a lot of off camera improv.

John: Well she punched her to get her to cry.

Dean: That was a little over the top.

John: That was a little much, but, I mean, it got us what we were looking for.

Chris: Welcome to show business.

[All Laugh]

John: Welcome to show business, Portland actors. It's actually interesting, too, this is the first example of a configurable set. That hospital room is basically every other set.

Dean: Oh after- this is the single most complicated shot I've ever done. I’ve ever seen done. This whole sequence is all one shot.

John: Yes. And this sequence, that the thing we do where we speed up, and then we turn around, we speed zoom through, is all done in post. Right. But when we get people to freeze, we don't freeze them. We tell them to freeze, and then we zoom the camera towards them at normal speed. That's Gary Camp walking. So this is four times in a row, getting 75 extras to freeze in place.

Chris: How many times did we shoot that?

John: With crosses. Just three times.

Dean: Yeah.

John: Yeah, cause the first time Dean described the shot to me, I was standing next to him on the set.

Dean: Then it turns into a 180- I mean 360.

John: Then it turns into a 360. The first time Dean described this shot I said, ‘You think this'll work?’ He went, ‘Yeah...ahh...I got a pretty good idea. It'll work’. I said, that’s like Moses standing at the red sea going, ‘I think we're in good shape here.’

Chris: Did you give Gary an epidural for [unintelligible] this? I mean, that was long time to walk this steadicam-

John: This whole thing is Gary Camp doing steadicam. This whole sequence, from when Nate walks into steadicam shot.

Chris: Yeah, steadicam is giant apparatus.

John: A 70 pound rig.

Chris: A rig that you're wearing.

John: Yeah, and not a lot of actresses would appear their first shot back in season 2 in curlers. That was very nice of Gina to do that for us. There's a lot of very good subtle stuff going in here. It was very interesting to really play the awkwardness. These are people who have not seen each other for a year, you know? And the family wants to get back together, but doesn't- None of them have the emotional equipment to do this, you know, which was a lot of fun. And this is where we establish the bar. And coming up- sitting around and coming up with the worst possible reviews for Sound of Music was good; it was a lot of fun. This is the first time we've seen a bar, and we establish that this is where Nate lives, right above. And this is the bar, and what was great, cause we talk about in a couple other episodes - the bar was really the secondary set and became our favorite set. I mean it really- it shoots well. It's interesting to move around in; we wanna meet clients there all the time.

Dean: One of the things that John always gives me grief about and always teases me, is that I really always like to shoot every scene that I direct like it was a feature film, and try to come up with these complicated moves and complicate blockings. And I had a whole other way of doing this scene, but in the first rehearsal, clearly, it was not possible to do in the time we had. And so Tim actually came up with this really great idea that they all sit around the bar, so I tried to come up with these wild camera moves around the bar and it just was self conscious and stupid and bad. And then finally in a huff I just went, ‘Alright, fine, I'll shoot it like television.’

John: And I'm sitting behind him, I'm like ‘Oh God help us we should shoot like a television show, Dean. God help the audience actually hear what the actors are saying and pay attention to the words for, like, a whole half a scene. Nooo. Rather than the camera flying around.’

Dean: But of course even then Gary Camp, our operator, and Dave Connell found a way to get little subtle movements.

John: Throwing them behind the L, and around the bar.

Chris: Yeah, always moving. Well the little elbow here, I think we shot, we probably had this shot in almost every episode.

John: Some variation of this.

Chris: I mean, we really- some variation of them sitting right around this corner.

John: And this is really where you see them start to fall into the family relationships, the rhythms. If you notice, it goes from Eliot to Hardison to Gina to Beth; it hops, like, right around and they're all right back in.

Dean: And it also immediately flips the dynamic from season one. In season one, Tim is trying to keep this team together and they're always ready to split apart. Here, we start the season with the team wants to get together, but it's really Tim that's not sure- Nate who’s not sure if he wants to be-

Chris: Now let me ask you, Dean. What’s the challenge when the actors haven't been together? I mean, for you as a director, how do you get them back into it?

John: Yeah, cause they hadn’t seen each other for like six months.

Chris: There's no training camp like the NFL.

Dean: I tell you, it's one of those things you really worry about, because you have the rhythm down so well at the end of the year and there'd been this long separation. But I think because we decided to shoot this season in Portland, it created that bonding just from the first couple days. Cause all of them were in a new city, all of them didn't know other people, so they immediately clung onto each other, and within seconds their dynamic just came right back.

John: Yeah, and this is where we establish the apartment. And who came up with the shiny-? The kettle is how we see the reflection, cause this was originally blocked differently.

Dean: Yeah I think- I actually think it was the stunt guy who came up with it.

John: Yeah, and this is murderous intent, if ever there was one.

Chris: Oh there it is.

John: It's a nice fight. You know, an awful lot does happen in the first act of this.

Chris: Oh, it's packed.

John: I will go back. And then- and what's interesting here is that when this aired, right after Sophie- Gina's Sophie does the headbutt, she says something in an accent, and a lot of people were like, ‘Oh Gina fuged the accent.’ It’s actually a subtle clue to what Sophie's real voice sounds like.

Dean: Right.

John: Also, Gina really hit Tim once. Remember she really popped him? She really popped him with the tray once, it was pretty funny; he went down like a sack of hammers. And this may be my favorite act opening in the season.

Dean: And in the script, we originally started with her pouring soda pop into her- into her cereal.

John: Yeah, the orange soda.

Dean: Which is a funny idea, but when we went to shoot it, we just thought it was so great to start on Tim; his eyes opening and just seeing a nun eating.

John: Yeah. It’s disturbing. And this is the first time we really found- and again, this is the first time we shot in these sets, and look how quickly we gravitated to that back corner.

Dean: Yeah.

John: You know, you really-

Chris: That’s the family part of the set. I mean the kitchen, the table right there, that's really where you feel it.

John: And this is a little thing there, too, where the- this is where it starts is, he never controls his kitchen again once they've moved in. Is that the fact he's got nothing but coffee in there. Again, it's the implication he's just trading addictions; he's not in any way, shape, or form dealing with stopping drinking right. He's just not good at it because he's too much of a control freak to go through the process. I like the little golf clap there, the little ‘good for you, you're a hero.’

Dean: This was also, you know, a situation where our first episode back in, and when Gina had returned to the show she was pregnant, and we had not yet decided whether or not we were gonna make the pregnancy part of the show or not part of the show. So in this episode we decided, well let's hide it until we make a decision. So part of the whole blocking of these scenes with her and wardrobe was always to conceal the pregnancy.

John: What Frakes said was the strike zone. It’s just, you're just working around the strike zone.

[All Laugh]

John: And there's a lot of info dump - a lot of clues here. This is a fairly complex one. I will admit that that's- in mine I really kinda go back to my failed attempt as a mystery novelist. There's always a long clue path in here. Yeah, and this is the ATM security camera stuff was great, too.

Chris: Yeah, its all-

John: Cause what it calls back later is the fact that London is the most highly surveilled one, but Boston is the same thing.

Chris: And they- our graphics guy did a great job with the stuff.

John: Yeah graphics did a great job

Dean: One of the relationships that really developed over the course of this year, more so in the back half, is the brother/sister relationship of Eliot and Parker. And, for me, this was the very beginning of it, is just the way he accepts-

John: “It’s Parker.”

Dean: “It’s Parker.”

Chris: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: You never know why she might be dressed as something.

Chris: Yeah, and wasn't-? The model of this was like, the kids have gone to college and you finally- mom and dad finally have the house back, and then all of a sudden they're back?

Dean: They show up.

Chris: That's it. That was kinda the model.

John: Yeah, he got the place to himself-

Dean: He doesn't want to be involved. He doesn't want to be part of it.

John: And this is another- we talk about it in a couple of the other episodes, the Sophie/Eliot relationship became kind of one of the a nice [unintelligible mumbles] acts this year, and this was one of the first beats of it.

Dean: And this was an all improv little section here, which was fun.

Chris: Oh, look at this bank vault.

John: Look at this vault. Wow. Thank you, Portland.

Chris: Wow.

John: I can't say ‘thank you, Portland’ enough.

Chris: I know.

Dean: OK, so this is a scene, I have to say as a director, that I get on my hands and knees and thank John Rogers, because-

John: We've saved each other a bunch of times.

Dean: When we went to-

Chris: Tell us what happened here.

Dean: OK, that big giant vault door. This is a real-

John: This is a real safe deposit vault.

Dean: -safe deposit vaults and that door shuts every day and locks at a certain time. When we got in to shoot this, I didn't know that. So I start to block the scene, I'm lighting it, I'm getting ready to shoot the sequence, and suddenly they tell me you have 20 minutes before that vault door shuts and we can’t open it again until tomorrow. And I went into a full blown panic attack. I literally had no idea how to shoot this scene in 20 minutes, and John starts pacing behind me, he starts shuffling the dialogue around, shuffling- and was like, Here. Here's how you do it.’ I'm like, ‘thank you.’ And this whole scene was shot in 20 minutes.

John: Well it's one of the reasons you have a writer on the set.

Chris: Wasn’t there something with locks? Didn't you flip locks upside down?

John: What happened is, when you actually look at this, right? Those locks, you need keys to open this - you can't pick them. And the problem was, they don't close if they're not locked.

Chris: Right.

John: And so we had no way of faking one of these doors closed, but then I realized that those are two key bolts, right?

Chris: Right.

John: If you go on the inside of the door, and you take it off and flip it-

Chris: Right.

John: -the bolt side is now on the inside of the door, and the flat side is on the edge, so all Beth had to do was hold the door closed.

Chris: So they-

John: So it was just rotating objects in three-dimensional space.

Dean: Talk about-

John: That was a good day. That really justified me drinking, that was.

Dean: Talk about the writing. Because we had set up this relationship between the two of them that got a little hot and heavy at the end of season one, and you found a way to get a balance of it in this scene.

John: Well it was basically to reset. Because we- you know, to me one of the big mistakes of shows like this is progressing those relationships too quickly and you burn it out. And so it was really going back and looking, how would- Parker walked away. She spent six months on the road. Why did she do that? And it's because she thinks there could be something real here; she knows she's broken, and so she’s trying to explain why she needs that time. And the- Hardison will give that time to her. And it won't interfere with their friendship; it won't interfere with anything else and- but it allowed us to sort of restart this on a pace that was a lot, sort of, hotter at the end of season one. Cause, again, we didn't know if there'd be a season two, you know? We really wanted to go out of season one thinking, maybe they get together in the imaginary second season of Leverage, not realizing we'd be writing the imaginary second season of Leverage.

Chris: Almost instantaneously.

John: Almost instantaneously. Why is Tim in a towel here? This is- [Laughs]

Chris: The shirt/towel is an interesting combo.

John: The shirt/towel is an interesting combo.

Dean: Well originally I wanted him to come down in his underwear, and the thought was, is that he thinks that he's rid himself of them, and he thinks he’s alone, and his privacy is ruined.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: But towel seemed better, at the end of the day, than skivvies.

John: Yeah. Yeah, really, especially, since you're shooting down that spiral staircase. It’s like not that, Tim Hutton doesn’t have a lovely set of legs, but I'm gonna go with you here. I also like how the wall of evidence is slowly taking over Nate's house.

Dean: Yeah, it keeps growing.

Chris: Well this is interesting, too, because I think we kind of early in this season, wanted to do things a little more low tech. We wanted to have cork boards and clippings and photos.

John: Well its cause how much we liked how the mansion looked in season one finale...

Chris: Yeah, we really liked that.

John: So probably, season three, you'll see a blend.

Chris: Maybe it’ll be a little more of a blend.

John: More of a mix there. And this is Eliot's first fight with the local stunt guys. This was a lot of fun. This, I think, is one of the first things we shot.

Dean: Yes. In fact, the day we shot this we had bright sun, we had dark rain, and then we had the worst hailstorm I had ever seen in my life, all within 15-

John: The city tried to kill us for, like, 15 minutes.

Dean: And I thought ‘This can’t be like what it’s like to shoot in Portland.’ But, of course, we never had another day like that again.

Chris: And guess what, Dean? Aren't we shooting in March?

Dean: Yeah. Good luck, season three.

[All Laugh]

John: A lot of interiors, a lot of bottle episodes.

Chris: A lot of gloom.

John: Always wanted to do a baseball bat fight, ever since I had a- The bartender that taught me to bartend in Montreal spent a good 20 minutes how to properly use a baseball bat in a bar fight. It's- the whole thing is, it's the inside and the outside; you block with the inside, but the bat’s really only effective for about 4 inches. Anything inside that is good. Ahh and the orange soda returns.

Chris: And I love a good refrigerator shot.

John: Me too!

Chris: Any shot from the inside of an appliance.

John: The inside of a microwave last year. That’s good.

Chris: I love that. I like that.

Dean: I love the fact that they're a mess; these people cannot clean up after themselves.

[All Laugh]

John: This is his house. HIS house. Nate Ford is a control freak, and look what they're doing to his house. And this was basically just giving them props and letting them go.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Like I’ve- what the hell is that? I would've never written that in a million years, but Beth just did. Coming up with the different 80’s references, that was a lot of fun and Nadine, our costume director-

Chris: Oates takes it on the nose.

John: Oates really takes it on the nose, doesn't he?

Chris: He really does.

John. And he’s the more successful one, isn’t he? He's the big songwriter.

Chris: There's nothing wrong with Oates.

John: Nothing wrong; just give Oates a little love, that's all we’re saying. This- how they’re sucking him in here, by the way, is actually something Dean does to me on a regular basis. Where he tries to trick me into working on something, go ‘just how would you solve this problem’ ‘I'm not helping you!’ About 20 minutes later-

Chris: It's an actual flip joke.

John: It’s an actual flip joke.

Chris: When you go into Dean's office, the screen flips. ‘Oh no, I'm not writing a pilot for you. No way, no how!’

John: ‘Alright, here's something you do.’ Cause he knows I can't- I'm obsessive compulsive. Much like Nate Ford, I can't help it. And what they're doing is, they know Nate Ford well enough that if you leave an unsolved problem in front of him-

Chris: This is very Rockford, too, right? Is that what this scene was?

John: Richie Brockelman was always doing that to Rockford.

Chris: Richie Brockelman was always coming to Rockford and Rockford was always saying, ‘Get out of here! Alright, lemme tell ya. If you wanna do this, this is how you do it.’

John: And the- Beth- That’s the first beat there, Parker realizing that Nate sober is actually more of a bastard, which is something that was in your episode last year, 12 Step. ‘Maybe when I'm sober, I'm more of a bastard.’ And this is where they realized, yes he is. He's a really unpleasant, vaguely sadistic human being. And as our protagonist, nicely done. And this is where he lays out exactly what you'd want to do- wind up doing. A con they've probably all agreed that they will do. And I love the looks. And this is also interesting, you had done the staging as the varying degrees of physical separation from Nate through the episode.

Dean: Right. Always trying to keep him separated until he finally joins up with them.

John: Yeah, so he's always back on the desk, or he's always by the fridge if they're by the table. No, it's like you put some thought into this.

[All Laugh]

Dean: Sometimes you get lucky.

John: Yeah. I do- we really made her wear the coat for the whole scene; that was nice. And they're, oh they're just sad.

Dean: I love the-

John: Yeah, the “oh if only we had 5” and there he knows. He knows he's screwed. No, it’s- it was kind of, also, on that day was kinda the day we felt like we were back. You know?

Dean: Yeah.

John: And- yeah and-

Dean: All the dynamics start kicking in again.

John: And they're all doing the banter. It is tough, six months down, you know, when you do 13 episodes. I mean, I'm glad we're on cable schedule, cause 22 would kill us.

Chris: But it's true, when there's a big lag like that, you know, you get out of rhythm. Everybody does.

John: Yeah.And that's why, probably, I'm glad we killed- Oh, never mind, that’s- you'll see that later.

[All Laugh]

John: Yeah, and there’s- yeah and again, there's that sort of Sophie/Eliot axis kicking up. Oh this is a ton of fun. I cannot get enough of them as FBI agents.

Chris: Yeah, I love this.

John: And this is again, streets of Portland. Charlie Martin Smith, by the way, little trivia bit for you, is the father of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Charlie directed the original-

Chris: Is that true?

John: Yes, he directed the original presentation. The original dead pilot.

Chris: Oh, wow.

John: So, and this is something we do with Eliot a lot, we actually have him cross the background, cause he's terrifying. And so, just to give you-

Chris: We get a lot of mileage out of his looks. Both comedic and menacing.

Dean: And an unintentional connection in this show is in the previous scene, they were talking about how they got Al Capone [mumbles] and Charlie Martin Smith, of course, played the guy in The Untouchables who figured that out.

Chris: Oh yes, yeah.

John: Yeah. This was a lot of fun, was the- was talking about the micro explosives that they wound up using here; cause they exist and we were gonna try to get them. And then we realized that would put us on a lot of watch lists. And this is also one ofmy favorite things is Parker, yet again, not sure she behaved like a normal human and getting reassurance from Hardison or Eliot. That's who she always goes to for that. It’s like ‘was I normal?’ and then the little happy smile when she’s like, ‘I passed.’

Dean: Right.

John: And this is where-

Chris: Oh, this is a great comedy beat.

John: And again, locked-

Dean: These two guys together? Always fun.

John: Always fun. And this is a big comedy beat, too, this has got two or three takes. He’s fishing around in his pants, you know.

Dean: The idea of him blowing up Eliot's crotch is somehow funny.

Chris: And great- and great reactions to the car.

John: This take, this is- the thing is, we’re very lucky - and that’s a locked off comedy frame folks - is that we have all actors who can do comedic beats. And at any point, any one of them can land a joke.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And here we have a real Rockford moment, is him getting-

Chris: A real Rockford moment, gut punched into a chair.

Dean: This also shows you, right here in this next shot, why Portland was such a great choice for us.

John: Look at that, that’s huge!

Dean: We get so much production value there.

Chris: That was great.

Dean: And even in a large set like this, in the time we had, Dave Connell just knows how to light this.

Chris: Yeah, what's the challenge when you have something like this?

John: The production value ie-

Chris: This is a real crumbling warehouse, but in terms of lighting it-

Dean: That’s always a big challenge. Wut who joined us in season two is our gaffer, Neil Holcomb, who had worked with me on Stargate and some of my biggest films.

Chris: Oh cool.

Dean: And he lives up there, and so to put him together with Connell, suddenly we were, again, going feature film in television world.

Chris: Yeah.

John: But also, I remember because of the weather and stuff the first day, we shot all the stuff in here in two days. The second day, we had four crews going. And it was- it was like- you know, ordinarily, there's one camera and a B-camera, maybe, going. We had four camera crews running simultaneously just- and it was- and the- it was- the Portland crew was great, because people going and going up there, they don't have any experience doing television. They were scrappy, man, they were into it.

Dean: And Gina showed up with this character of Annie Kroy. We fell so in love with this character, it has to return.

John: Yeah, Annie Kroy comes back.

Chris: Now Kray being the-

John: The Kray brothers.

Chris The Kray brothers.

John: It was a reference to the Kray brothers. We always wanted to, and we never did it first season, let her play, like, a really hardass, scary British gangster. You know, the whole idea- and she's chilling in this - I really like this character, you know. I would watch Gina play this character on another show.

Dean: Gina brought her game this season. She really was on top of every scene she did.

John: Just bloody ruthless. I love her hair in this, too.

Chris: Yeah.

John: It's just cold. Also, the beat Tim does here, where maybe she is gonna throw him to the wolves, just to maybe give him a little bit of an example; that's nice.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Now the- and setting the hook, there's like five plots in this one, too.

Chris: Oh, yeah. Sure.

John: It's like the- there’s the bank con, there's the murder, there's the- there’s this, where it's basically they're buying out the businesses.

Chris: Yup.

John: You know, what they're basically doing here is a collateralized debt obligation on- it's a metaphor. It's not really much of a metaphor.

Dean: And fans of the show Brotherhood may recognize our gangster here from that show.

John: Yeah.

Dean: I fell in love with him on Brotherhood and when he was available to play our Southie here-

John: Chappie? Yeah, he was fantastic.

Chris: Yeah, he's great. I mean, I thought that our bad guys- every cast, top to bottom in this one, was fantastic.

John: And in, yeah, in this one little bargaining scene, the little look he gives her there, the look she gives back, she's playing a totally different character at this point.

Chris: And she totally- The great thing is, she totally takes over the room. I mean, that's a big crowd of gangsters and she makes an entrance.

Dean: And the little hint of Belushi here, where these go off.

John: Just a little bit, yeah.

[All Laugh]

Dean: And by the way, that laugh of Eliot's - he was watching the actual playback of it, so it was a completely genuine laugh.

John: Yeah. And then we scare this guy and then there's the flip. My God this thing seems insane.

Chris: Oh yeah, you forgot this.

John: 42 minutes. How was there-? What was I thinking?

Chris: How many twists and turns there are in this one.

John: And this scene I love. I will give our network credit for this. Michael Rice, [person], [person] and Lou McCartney- McCarthy are all like, you know, we'd like to see the little girl again - she's a great actress. But even, like, she’s a great character. They were reading the script, and we'd like to reset why they're doing it. And I bitched and moaned cause I'm a writer, and then wrote this scene and it's a great scene. It’s-

Dean: Yeah. And it really resets why they're doing everything they're doing.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And that idea, there are wolves in the world, is something that Tim and I have been talking about on the phone before the season started, talking about the fact that Nate Ford is just a wolf who hunts other wolves. That's who these people are. That's what you need in a dangerous world. And the fact that we were able to turn it in dialogue was great. She's also, I think as a reference being in this scene - she's chewing on a Saint Bridget medal and- that was chosen for a specific purpose. Saint Bridget is the patron saint of wanderers. And so, you know, when she gives it to him at the end of the episode, that's sort of a sign of exactly what his role is in the world: is to wander is to never have a home is to- you know, basically walk the earth righting wrongs. You know. And this is a nice, you know, again, a nice reminder of why we do this.

Chris: And this-

John: People just get away with stuff.

Chris: This was another change from season one, you know, these plots are so complicated that we tend to- They were like a boulder rolling downhill, and we would tend to lose kind of track of the victim in season one. And we- in season two we made an effort to make sure that there's a moment in the middle of the episode where we saw them.

John: Yeah, to make them really present. And to reset the tech again, just for new viewers, exactly how the earbuds worked.

Dean: Now fans of steadicam will appreciate, this is a particularly difficult steadicam shot. It's not that elaborate, but it has to go through a circle, then around a circle, bullet time out. This is actually a pretty complicated shot.

Chris: In terms of folks focus pulling, too.

Dean: Exactly. On a technical level.

John: Boom. And then you're out. That's basically Gary backing the hell up and keeping everybody in focus and then we speed it up in camera.

Dean: And then he follows Tim around as he makes his phone call. It was quite a difficult move. Maybe not the most impressive that you see on screen, but on a technical level, very difficult. And that shot, I think, is just absolutely gorgeous. Dave Connell at his best.

John: Well that's the shot Tim and I were standing- cause that was our first shot in Portland, is Chappie standing on the water there. Tim and I were standing there going, ‘I know exactly where we are in Boston. We’re on Quincy, we’re on Houseneck, we’re looking across.’ It really helped convince us that, you know, this was the right choice.

Chris: Yeah. Look at that, that's production value.

John: It's gorgeous.

Dean: These are two phone conversations going on simultaneously where the camera literally never stops moving.

John: Yeah. And you're welcome.

[All Laugh]

Chris: And then, I mean, Dean, are you-?

John: I love writing those cross cut scenes.

Chris: Are you cognisant- I mean, in this case the camera's always turning around. Do you try and orient the people when one’s on one phone, that they are facing one way and the other person’s facing the other way?

Dean: Absolutely. And that's the hardest part of it, is we try to keep track of at what point he's looking right-left, so that when I’m on the other side he's looking left-right. And this is one of the few times that John actually wrote in the script, ‘the camera is moving around the people. You're welcome Dean.’

[All Laugh]

John: You love a good 360, Dean. You love a good 360. I know, I actually called this one out for yeah. Yeah, and then this is the- in theory what we've done is, we've planted the seed and knowing that he would call him and summon him.

Chris: That's great.

Dean: And, again, an amazing looking bank.

John: This was in- the vault we shot in was downstairs.

Chris: And I love this shot, too, I mean, here we've got this beautiful movie shot.

John: A suitcase full of money, you know, where. You know, yeah, full of money that’s from the bank, that actually ties together. You forgot about that.

Chris: You forgot about that.

John: I was pretty drunk the whole time.

Chris: Just literally towards the end you think it's over and then there's a whole other 10 minutes.

John: I know the whole scaring the guy to go to the warehouse would be the end of a lot of shows, but we've got like three more plot twists.

Dean: And this is the big twist, that the guy that they thought was the main villain is not the main villain, and now they've gotta rethink everything they're doing.

John: Yeah, they've gotta call on the fly. That'- When things go wrong on Leverage, that's the rule. It has to be something unexpected yet believable, or they've succeeded too well.

Chris: You think it's the- and the great casting of Charles Martin Smith is that you think- you know, he plays-

Dean: Nebbish-y

Chris: Nebbish-y characters. You think he's in the pocket of the mobsters. Well little did you know, the banker’s calling the shots.

John: This is Nate calling the audible. We do this in the finale, Nate calling the audible and you have no idea what it is.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah. At this point, the show becomes a closed mystery. Good lord. The- but what's interesting, also, is that we weren't making a very subtle comment about the fact that, you know, guys like this, Charles Martin Smith's character, the banker, they stole hundreds.

Chris: Who’s the real bad guy?

John: Yeah.

Chris: Right. I mean, that's really what this episode is about. Is it the mob guy that does rackets of-?

Dean: Hundred grand a year? Or the guy that steals hundreds of millions?

John: Yeah, exactly. And gets away with it. I mean, writing this evil speech of evil was- and this is the big first big Evil Speech of Evil for the year- was a delight because there's nothing he says here that's wrong.

Dean: That's true.

John: You know what? He's a good guy in his world view. And he's right in the way the world rewarded these guys. No man, when we were writing these-

Dean: He really nailed it as an actor.

John: Yeah.

Dean: He just delivers this scene.

John: And just from a directing standpoint, we ran out of time, so how did you shoot this whole sequence?

Dean: Multi-cameras in locked shooting. This was what happened was - we had two days here, and the first day we fell half a day behind because of the rain and the hail. So the second day, which was supposed to be a 7-page day, suddenly became a 12-page day.

Chris: Wow.

Dean: So we were running and gunning like never before.

Chris: Wow.

John: So yeah, rather than splitting this up into small sequences, which we'd originally do, we ran this scene from beginning to end, from Nate arriving with the briefcase, all the way to Chappie running away, to the reveal and just kept moving the camera. And ran it again and again and again with you moving the camera around to pick up the different angles.

Dean: And we didn't stop moving the camera either, so we always were in danger of one camera shooting the other camera.

John: Yeah. And oh, by the way, that's brutal on the actors. The actors basically have to deliver, without screwing up, an act's worth of dialogue here. Not a scene, an act.

Dean: It's almost like shooting a play.

John: Yeah, it was fantastic; they were just fantastic. And the blocking was- and then we see, yeah, you know, put a bullet in him and he's sick of doing his dirty work.

Dean: One of my favorite act outs.

Chris: Oh yeah.

John: Yeah, this is a great act out.

Dean: And really because of how Christian sells it. If you look at Christian’s face right here, he really sells that like he has no idea that was coming.

John: Yeah, and then the look to Nate like he's been-

Chris: Oh great.

John: Like, Nate fucked up. Yeah, it's a great act out.

Chris: Yeah, this is great. I mean, you know, and you think aren't convinced. People- when we screened this, people gasped.

John: Oh I love that reveal of Sophie. I love that reveal of Gina with that moment with the gun; and the smoking gun is so noir. To totally geek out, that's a totally Donnelly Dook moment right there. Yeah. and the secondary line, ‘We usually do it with a razor blade.’ You can totally see her standing in an [something unintelligible] somewhere cutting some dude’s throat.

Chris: Sure.

John: And it's hot. Yes. and then the phone- the phone it's funny, the phone is planted- Jesus-

Chris: Oh, the planted phone.

John: Yeah and getting him to do- this is one of Apollo's favorite things, by the way, is everything's set up, and he lets you do the last stage of the trick, so you have forgotten that he has handled the object.

Chris: Right right, that's true.

John: You know, and he's- give him something, give it back to you, it's all a matter of just getting people's attention span. We talk about this sometimes in the show, outside of the 15-30 seconds. Anything outside of that 15 seconds, they forget.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

John: And then pinning swinging the blame around on him. No. It was really nice. And this was- basically we did research into the Whitey Bulger case and the whole idea that- and we played around with that idea for a while, that it was actually the mob guy who was the Fed.

Chris: Oh yeah.

John: The federal informant, was a real federal informant, not we fake him into it. Because the Boston mob was basically broken out by a mob boss who was a federal informant, but the feds protected him.

Chris: And he disappeared, right? He's still-?

John: He did disappear.

Chris: He's still out there.

John: And then elements of that show up in the finale. No it’s- and I love the bolt, just the aaahhh get him. And the-

Dean: And the gloat.

John: -the gloat. That's Dean’s big rule. His big rule is there has to be a gloat and also the villain must suffer. You must see the villain suffer.

Dean: Yeah, it's not enough to win.

John: And then punching holes- this was great, too. We just bought this truck- you see this truck get shot up a lot this year. We bought this truck and really just shot the shit out of it.

Chris: Is that true?

John: Yeah we did-

Dean: Well actually, we bought that truck and it was riddled with holes so we just covered the holes.

John: When you see it look good, it's actually been gimmicked.

Chris: Oh, that’s great.

John: And then we just kept- we put in the squibs.

Dean: How to do a lot with a little.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Dean: Beth is great in this scene.

Chris: She's great.

John: She's really terrifying. And so’s- and Aldis doing the Samuel Jackson. Every now and then he brings it out; it’s very nice.

Dean: This is also when we first establish Parker’s love of the taser gun. Which you will come to see again in later episodes.

Chris: That's true. That pays off later.

John: Well it’s like Parker’s found something that allows her to put people down without getting other people angry at her, and that's like a loophole in human behavior. Also, her enthusiasm- I don't know if we got the most gleeful look with the duct tape; there's one there that's kind of a weird mix of scary and dirty.

Dean: And this is my favorite steadicam shot of the episode. And again, whole scene done: one shot. And there's a lot of information that has to get tagged. You need all of this dialogue; we need these three; then we have to establish the body on the ground; we have to establish the gun on the table; we have to establish the money in the briefcase.

Chris: Was this steadicam a product of our time crunch?

Dean: Absolutely.

Chris: You see, sometimes when- sometimes when you're under the gun-

Dean: Necessity, mother of invention.

John: Yeah and then the whole, “clean up your own mess” - he's out. He takes the money. And that's another thing. That's one of the rules - the villain’s always undone by some version of his original sin. In this case, it's trying to kill the guy, but it's his greed. If he had left his money behind, he would've had a chance.

Dean: And I love- because they had to do this on the fly, he actually had to use ketchup packets.

Chris: Yeah.

John: That was a lot of fun.

Chris: And also making things pay off from act 1. That's, you know-

John: And Gina's glee there? That was really- that was really- I have to admit that's not how I imagined that line delivery, but seeing it in dailies, it was such a nice little ‘and we're back’.

Chris: Yeah.

John: This season two, we’re having fun!

Chris: I like to think she was channelling, you know, Gina the person, that she's back on the show and she's saying that-

John: Yes, exactly; a lot of fun. And the reveal. And-

Dean: This is also when we fall in love with-

John: Bonanno.

Dean: Bonanno. Who you will see a few times this season.

John: Multiple times this season. We actually found him really useful - to have a character who was a cop, who we could use as someone we threw cases to. You know, not really friendly, but kind of a neutral. Kind of a force for good within a system we say is pretty corrupt.

Dean: And frankly we found an actor who was so good, who was local, and we thought ‘well gosh, we got a guy this good in town, we gotta get him back again and again.’

John: Yeah, he was fantastic. He was very Columbo.

Chris: Was he a Boston native, or was he kinda just-?

John: No, no he was a Portland guy and he was doing a great Boston accent, and he was really Columbo-ing it up here. ‘I’m not a really smart guy. See if you can help me understand this.’ Yeah, he's really nailing it. And then we do the flashback, sort of, revelation.

Dean: I love that shot.

John: Yes, and this particular bit where she kisses the money, just a reminder that she has a distinctly unhealthy relationship with physical cash. And all of the evidence that he was trying to hide is in the briefcase you grabbed, cause it has money, it all falls together.

Dean: Hoisted on his own petard.

John: Exactly. That's the theme. And also, this is where we hang a lantern on the impossibility of this much evidence in one place because then it must be real; no one could put together a frame up this good.

Chris: Right. No one- nobody would frame you like this.

John: Yes, it’s a lot of fun.

Dean: And bringing back the briefcase-

John: Exactly, exactly. Wow we- there’s a lot of flashbacks in this one.

Chris: It’s a lot. And right now you're thinking the episodes over. Well you're wrong my friend; there’s a lot more show left.

John: There's, like, five more minutes to go. Yeah. I also love the choice there, that- cause I think the way it’s originally written is: he comes in, Bonanno comes in behind him. The way you blocked it is: he pulls back the curtain and Bonanno’s just there. This guy is dead from the second he walks in the hospital; he’s got no chance.

Dean: Right.

John: John McRory's place. And you actually see the waitresses recur; we got a lot of great locals to kind of establish continuity.

Dean: And I thought this scene ended up being surprisingly emotional, and really from the performances-

Chris: Oh yeah.

John: Yeah, yeah. It was- again, the trick we were facing this year was we had a lot of new viewers and we had to, kind of, re-establish what they did, but outside the context of the first season, which is where they had the actual law firm patina. So this scene had to kinda help establish this is what they do. They come in, they put the bad guy away, they help fix your life. And then they disappear. Yeah. And this is the- she really did a nice job here. It's sort of nice- you know, cause he had a son. He'd be about this kid’s age, you know? It’s a very paternal moment there.

Chris: Yeah. Right.

John: And handing over the cross.

Dean: And the path of the wolf’s line.

John: Yeah. We should've had- we should've brought the Saint Bridget's medal back in the finale. I should've thought of that.

Dean: There's plenty in the finale.

[All Laugh]

John: There is. There is. It's packed.

Chris: There's a lot.

John: There is a lot. Yeah, it's bigger than last year which makes me- which bothers me.

Dean: So season three, boy.

John: Yeah, no, season three. I think it's kind of a return to classicism.

Chris: Oh boy, what did we do?

John: When you go big, you go the other way - you go very small. Yeah, that's a saucy little-

Dean: Oh, and this was another element we brought into the season. We talked about changing the dynamics of relationships. Because in season one, clearly Nate and Sophie have had a history together. They- there was no reason for them not to be together, but yet they couldn't be together, so how does the next season begin?

John: Oh yes, with the boyfriend.

Chris: Yeah.

John: The boyfriend, which wound up truncated because- I think we were shooting this day when Gina found out she was pregnant. Remember? She told us during rehearsal.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And so the boyfriend was supposed to be a seasonal runner.

Chris: Was gonna to recur.

John: He was gonna recur.

Chris: But it's a great scene here that I just love.

John: Yeah it is.

Chris: I just love the -

John: -the look on his face.

Chris: Finally he's there, and he's happy.

John: Cause you know what? She’s right; he’s too fucked up to be

Chris: I'm happy for you one of those moments-

John: But he's right; he's not- he wasn't there, he's not emotionally available. He’s not, you know-

Dean: And this is what also brought in Andy Lang’s song which we loved so much, and we- and which comes back again because it actually becomes a character in their relationship.

John: The song?

Dean: Yeah.

John: The song is sort of the- the symbol of their relationship. And then this is the temptation. You know, to drink. And what I love here is, people go ‘oh that's great, he didn't drink.’ And what they miss is, speaking as someone with an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, this is absolutely the wrong way to stop drinking - just through sheer force of will, you won't win. Pardon me as I reach for my Guinness.

[Laughter]

John: The thing is- but Tim really dug in on this just to smell. Cause that's something we talked about, was the fact that- cause I was a stand up in New York, in bars, a lot. It's the smell. It’s really the smell of the bars, the smell of booze, that's the really evocative-, yeah.

Chris: Sure.

John: And then he just leaves the bill, walks away. It's a great ‘and the look and I'm done’. And he’s out.

Chris: And look at- look at the symbol, the Christian symbolism here, if I may get post-grad on you. Look at the cross, the catholicism of it all. And you think that the episode’s over, but it’s not! There’s still more story!

Dean: And just when you're thinking they're getting a little too soap opera here, and then-

John: The laughter.

Dean: Bring the fun in.

John: What I love is, this got exactly the response we wanted from the fans, which wass - ‘we know those screens!’ We know exactly what those are supposed to be. And again, this is, again, and this is-

Chris: And this got a great laugh, too, here.

John: Yeah when she brings back- And this was an improv, if I remember correctly. ‘I'm old Nate and I live here too.’ Yeah, no, they really dug in here. They love scenes where they get to torture Tim. They do.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Because it really is- he's a great straight man. Look at that glare. He's a great straight man. And that-

Dean: And I love bringing back the painting.

John: The painting pays off later. The painting pays off later in the season. And this was a lot of fun because we actually had to just cut through the wall. He hadn't really thought this out clearly. So that’s Chris Kane with a chainsaw-

Dean: Actually cutting through the wall.

John: -cutting through the set.

Chris: That's great. That's an iconic shot right there.

John: Right there, with the chain and the laugh. That's nice. That’s a nice moment, that’s the family back together.

Dean: And that is the beginning of season 2.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Oh, great episode.

Dean: Thank you for joining us.

John: That was a lot of fun, I gotta admit. That was a little crazy doing it; it was good to watch it again. Dean, anything to say before we take off?

Dean: Just that it was so good to start it off that way, and especially have you writing it. And this turned out to be a really great season. Not the season we thought were gonna make-

John: Not at all.

Dean: -but in a way even better.

John: Man, we have a lot of stuff for season three, let's put it that way. So thanks for joining us.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 1 #Season 2 Episode 1 #The Beantown Bailout Job

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