#stillwater 2021

[filmbook21]

[mattnben-bennmatt]

The Evolution of Matt Damon

GQ (8 September 2021)

He was the golden-boy actor who became one of Hollywood’s biggest icons. But as of late, the narrative hasn’t been so simple.

By Chris Heath | Photography by Lachlan Bailey

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No one notices the masked man sitting on a bench at the back of the Malibu Seafood Fresh Fish Market & Patio Café’s covered seating area. Nobody catches—floating in the warm ocean breeze above the drone of the cars on the Pacific Coast Highway and the smush of the crashing waves beyond—any of the telltale snippets that might prod them to look twice:

“…I mean, Bono lived down the street…”

“…There was the moment when I passed into the realm of being somebody who was an elder statesman versus the new guy. You know, I never was clear when that happened. It was just kind of like I woke up one day and that was the case…”

“…Those last few days of shooting, we knew that we were going to get shut down…”

“…You just get way too much credit for things that you normally wouldn’t get credit for. ‘Oh, you’re so nice.’ ‘No, I’m not really—I’m not so nice.’…”

Instead, Matt Damon manages to turn up here, talk about pretty much anything and everything for two hours, and leave undisturbed. The mask clearly helps. He is wearing it for our encounter because his 12-year-old daughter, Gia, has COVID. Though she has been isolated in her bedroom and has had nothing but a low fever, and although everyone in the household is having PCR tests every 18 hours, all so far negative (Gia’s aside), caution dictates that our masks stay on and we sit diagonally across a table. It only adds to the all-round strangeness. Before meeting him, I expected that Damon might be one of those polished celebrities who bombard you so affably and articulately with chosen tales from their life that you might not notice until it’s too late all of the things that they’ve carefully decided not to share. But the man I encounter will be nowhere near so controlled or straightforward.

Damon and his family spent the first part of the year in the relative sanctuary of Australia, for reasons we will come to, but about three weeks ago they returned to the Northern Hemisphere. “It’s been a whirlwind,” he begins to tell me, though neither of us is quite yet aware just how roughly some of those winds may have buffeted him. “The relative calm of a COVID-free continent,” he continues, “to L.A. and then France…”—for the Cannes Film Festival—“…and then back here. And, you know, dealing with this.” Family illness, worry, quarantine. “It’s just been a lot, like from zero to hundred again. I was excited to kind of reengage with the world, but I forgot how fast it moves.”

Shirt, $760, by Prada. Vintage shorts by Polo Ralph Lauren from Front General Store. Vintage belt by J.Crew.

At the Cannes Film Festival, Damon was promoting the release of the movie Stillwater. One possible sign of Damon’s disorientation as he reengaged with the world came during the ovation at the end of the Stillwater screening: Damon was widely reported to have teared up. He says now that he didn’t even realize that he had done so until he was told afterward. “Had it not been for a bright light and the camera literally two feet away from me in that moment,” he says, “I guarantee you nobody would have noticed. But, yeah, I was just pleasantly overwhelmed a little bit.”

Do you tear up easily?

“Sadly, yes. Now, the last few years, more than any other time. Yeah, for a whole host of reasons. I’m an easy get now.”

Why do you say, “Sadly, yes”?

“Well, I’ve never liked, you know, cheap tears. I don’t want to be, you know, the person where it’s like, ‘Oh, there he goes again.’ Because that gets pretty boring too. But, yeah, you do see it a lot as people get older, particularly men—at least in my life, I’ve noticed that—people are a little quicker to tear up.”

I guess they’ve put so much fucking effort into not crying…

“…for so many fucking years! And now they’re just like, ‘Ah, fuck it, I’m not bothering with that anymore.’ ”

Robe, $450, by George Cortina for Anderson & Sheppard. Ring (throughout), $2,700, by J.E. Caldwell and Co. from Wilson’s Estate Jewelry. Towel, $245, by Hermès.

A while back, Damon let slip a story about one other time that he cried, right at the beginning of his career. The origin saga of Good Will Hunting is now Hollywood lore: the two teenage Boston friends, Damon and Ben Affleck, both set on acting careers, who shared everything as they followed their quest (their joint BayBank account had the code “River P”: “Because,” Damon says, “he was the guy who got the jobs that we wanted, he was like the best young actor and we just admired him”); how in their early 20s, frustrated by a lack of opportunities, they decided that the only way to break through was to write their own film to star in; the years the two of them spent honing a script about a roughshod but preternaturally talented Boston kid; their willingness to walk away from huge amounts of money if they weren’t allowed to appear in the film; the eventual triumph, leading not just to Damon’s first Oscar nomination for acting but their shared win for best screenplay, which made Damon the second-youngest person ever to win a screenwriting Oscar. (Affleck was the youngest.)

These tears came on the very first day’s filming. In front of the camera were Robin Williams and Stellan Skarsgård. Damon and Affleck sat watching. At last, it was the start of everything.

“Sometimes those moments sneak up on you,” Damon reflects. “And that was another one of those moments we never thought was going to arrive. To see not only actors, but those actors, saying the stuff that we wrote, was like…fuck. Just, I guess, a mixture of joy and disbelief. And relief. And gratitude. That would probably be it. That was a really nice moment. I’m not ashamed to say it.”

I ask Damon whether Affleck was crying too.

“I remember him as crying. Now, memory is a funny thing, as we know, so you would have to ask him, but my recollection is we both were. Yeah. I think, as I recall, I put my hand on his arm, as these guys were talking. On his shoulder. Like: ‘Holy shit…’ ”

Later, I do ask Affleck, who concurs: “We both cried.”

I ask Affleck whether they’d been surprised to see each other cry.

“No, I knew Matt was an emotional…” he replies, leaving the sentence hanging, no noun required. “No, it didn’t surprise me at all to see Matt crying. It surprised me a little bit to be crying along with him, but maybe he felt that way about me.” Affleck likewise reflected to me on why that moment caught them in this way: “It was all we thought about, it was all we focused on, and we never really believed it would happen. And it sort of represented the sum total of what we tried to do. You know…”—Affleck laughs here, perhaps a little wryly—“…we might have cried for other reasons had we been able to see the whole future and understand the complexity of what we’d gotten ourselves into. But at the time, we had the sort of surety and the naivete of being just guys in our mid-20s who weren’t thinking about anything except what was happening just right there in the moment, and feeling a tremendous amount of belief and satisfaction that it actually happened. That we actually accomplished something. We just felt relieved that we hadn’t totally failed.”

-

Going into the pandemic in the early months of 2020, Matt Damon was better informed, if not better prepared, than many of us, for the most Hollywood of reasons. In 2011, he had starred in the Steven Soderbergh movie Contagion, in several respects an uncannily precise fictional preview of what was to come. After Contagion, Damon had kept in touch both with the screenwriter, Scott Burns, and the virologist, Ian Lipkin, hired as technical adviser to guide the film’s science. Over the years since, whenever some kind of outbreak or epidemic seemed to be threatening, Damon had been in the habit of checking back with them to “get kind of the down-low on what was going on.”

As the first mutterings emerged from China, Damon duly contacted Burns to ask what Lipkin was saying. “No, this one’s real” he remembers Burns telling him. “This is exponential—the world is going to look completely different in two weeks.” Damon was in France, shooting The Last Duel with director Ridley Scott, and they raced to complete vital exterior shots. The plan had been for the production to move on to Ireland, but it became increasingly obvious that this might not happen right away. The day before the scheduled move in early March, the shoot was put on hold.

Damon’s wife and three youngest children were with him in France, and they had a family meeting. Should they fly back to America while they could, or travel on the crew charter flight to Ireland and wait things out there? They chose Ireland.

In many ways, it was a decision that worked out. “We got really lucky,” says Damon. “We had about as good a lockdown as we could have ever hoped.” As well as the house waiting for them in the coastal community of Dalkey, other nearby properties had been rented by cast and crew who had returned to America. These were all now vacant, so there was plenty of room for Damon’s party to spread out. In one house, for instance, Damon installed the teachers they had been traveling with, allowing his children their own in-person private school that they could walk to each day. His assistant and trainer also got their own spaces. Within the two kilometers they were permitted to travel, they could swim in the sea, take long hikes in the Irish countryside. It was like a time out from the world.

“He has freedom. It’s the most intoxicating thing of all. And that, very few very famous people have. He’s free from self-consciousness. For a man who looks in the mirror for a living, he’s not even a little bit self-conscious.”  — Bono

“There was like a quiet,” Damon reflects. “There weren’t scripts being sent, or work to do, or people who needed answers for anything. It was just: Take the kids to school and then go train, or go for a walk. It was very simple. That part of it was eye-opening, going forward, in terms of how I’d like to spend my days.”

​​Meanwhile people elsewhere were watching a younger Damon deal with far more harrowing pandemic circumstances, as Contagion became a hit all over again. Surreally, these viewers were joined by Damon himself. “We were just flipping on Apple TV and it was just there, in our face,” he remembers. “People were kind of hungry for more information, and the information was kind of scarce at the beginning. And so, I don’t know, I think we probably went through the same kind of subconscious or conscious process that everyone did, and just pressed ‘play.’ ” Damon allows that he was pleasantly surprised by what he saw. “I remember thinking: This is better than I remember! Because when we released it, I think it felt more like a science fiction movie. It felt a lot more far-fetched than it actually was.”

Sweater, $3,550, by Brunello Cucinelli. Shorts, $450, by Hermès.

Word soon spread that Damon and his family were here: In the upside-down world of spring 2020, this curious happenstance even prompted its own article in The New York Times. That story, “A Seaside Irish Village Adopts Matt Damon,” detailed a few Damon Dalkey sightings and explained how a photo of Damon holding a bag from the Irish supermarket SuperValu “seems to have been his ticket to local acceptance,” leading to a proliferation of “delighted memes and glowing articles in the Irish press.” The particular excitement triggered by this SuperValu image seems to have been its stars-they’re-just-like-us implication that Damon might have gone gloriously native, his plastic bag loaded with beer cans ready for a determined drinking session.

I speak to one of Damon’s neighbors from that time who recalled for me the disruptions caused by this American movie star’s unexpected presence:

“I’ve lived in this village, or next to this village, for 30 years—this fucker is there for three months and they make him the king of Dalkey! I mean, it’s unbelievable. He’s caught in some kind of local photo shoot with a SuperValu plastic bag, and the rumor that he’s carrying cans, and suddenly he’s got all this credibility that some of us just are incapable of ever achieving. He’s beloved! I mean, there’ll be a statue of him there. I don’t know what it was, and what he did. But I’m very annoyed about it. I’m not happy at all.”

The speaker is Bono. His ire—“Thirty years I’ve put into that fishing village, and suddenly the fisher of men takes over!”—is, of course, theatrical. Damon and Bono are friends, and go back some way. In fact, according to Damon, Bono was indirectly responsible for initiating the third great focus of Damon’s adult life aside from his acting career and his family: his work in expanding global access to water, primarily through the organization water.org. This was back in 2006. Damon had been exploring making a trip to Africa with Bono’s charity. He planned to go just as soon as he could find the right moment. That was when, according to Damon, Bono applied his renowned powers of persuasion: “He called me, and I said, ‘No, no, I’m going to go,’ and he said, ‘No, you’re going to go now.’ I said, ‘No, no, come on, my wife’s pregnant.’ He said, ‘There’s always going to be a reason, and you have to go now.’ And he was right. And that started the journey—it wasn’t going to start until I went. Until I started engaging, nothing was going to happen, and I think he knew that.” (For his part, Bono downplays his role here—“I think he gives me too much credit”—but extols Damon’s subsequent achievements in this arena: “I think he’s better at it than I am—subtler, less hectoring, very effective.”)

When we speak, Bono also offers up some more general reflections about Damon, ones I will come to ponder a great deal.

“In the last hour, with this call coming, I was trying to think what it is about him,” Bono says. “And I realized that he has the thing that the whole world wants: He has freedom. It’s the most intoxicating thing of all. And that, very few very famous people have. He’s free from self-consciousness. For a man who looks in the mirror for a living, he’s not even a little bit self-conscious, I’ve found. I mean, I think I’ve got freedom, but I’m self-conscious. When I walk into the newsagent’s, I can see myself walking into the newsagent’s, do you know what I mean? He’s really himself.” Bono subsequently appends to this a further, related thought: “There’s some things you shouldn’t get too good at. Celebrity’s one of them.”

I ask Bono whether he’s saying that, in the nicest possible way, Damon is not that good at being a celebrity.

“Yeah, that might be the truth,” Bono replies, and contrasts a particular glazed look he has learned to recognize in the eyes of some politicians he meets with the affect of someone like Damon. “He’s not professional,” Bono suggests. “He’s way beyond that. He’s an amateur, in the way that he should always be, regarding celebrity. You know, quite good at it on the weekends, probably falls down in the week. But the respect for people and for human life, and the squandering of it, that’s absolutely core to who he is. And he’s just trying to be useful. Trying to be helpful.”

Jacket, $3,995, by Paul Stuart. Shirt, vintage. Shorts, $480, by Hermès.

After about three months in Dalkey—the SuperValu bag, incidentally, had actually been filled with beach towels for the kids—Damon and family headed back to Los Angeles, though they would return to Ireland for two months later in the year to finish The Last Duel. Toward the end of that shoot, Damon turned 50, but the production was under a strict quarantine protocol, so there could be no party. Instead, he conferred with his old college roommates on their shared text chain: “I was just texting that I definitely bested their COVID 50th. I was shooting a battle scene in The Last Duel in which I had nine confirmed kills. We were laughing about that: ‘This is the best midlife crisis ever. I’m just slaughtering my way through my midlife crisis.’ ”

Then, near the end of last year, the possibility arose of a new escape. Damon had made a brief, surreal appearance in Taika Waititi’s 2017 Thor: Ragnarok, as “actor Loki.” Now Waititi was preparing a follow-up, Thor: Love and Thunder, to be filmed in the early months of 2021 in Australia, and asked Damon whether he would consider reprising his earlier cameo. It was not hard to see the appeal. Australia was, as we shall see, somewhere he and family already had close history. It was also one of the safest, least virus-infected places on the planet (and, consequently, not an easy place to visit). Damon agreed to take the role if he could bring his family. Discussions began, and permission was granted. “There were government officials who called me and explained to me in no uncertain terms: The only reason you’re getting in is because this production is creating jobs,” Damon explains. “Now, could the production live without me? Yeah. But you start pulling jokes away from something that’s funny and eventually it’s not, you know what I mean?”

Again, things worked out well. Although he would be required on set for only two days, Damon was able to stay there with his family for five months. He played his onscreen part as required—“It’s going to be a laugh, and it’s going to be a really good movie, so I’m always up for that”—and there is circumstantial evidence of some socializing: A photo surfaced of Damon at an Eighties birthday party thrown for one of Chris Hemsworth’s friends, dressed as…well, best let him explain.

“I didn’t know what the heck to get,” he says of preparing for this outing. “So I went kind of Run DMC and got me the old Adidas tracksuit with the Kangol hat, which was very much the look in the ’80s where I grew up. I think my wife got some plastic chain online that I accessorized with. And, funnily enough, Idris Elba came in dressed in the exact same thing.”

But mostly it was family time, and a further reprieve from what was happening elsewhere.

“So again we were really lucky,” he acknowledges. “I mean, we’ve been about as lucky as you can be throughout this pandemic.”

Which, on one hand, is very evidently true. Though, on the other hand, the fact that he is saying this when one of his daughters has tested positive and is isolating at home, and when his oldest daughter—who was in New York at the beginning of the pandemic—had her own brush with COVID in March 2020, may also show how much we have all learned to recalibrate.

Sweater, $1,200, by Prada. Shirt, $495, by Brunello Cucinelli.

When Damon and I speak for a second time, 38 hours after that first meeting, he is now unmasked (sufficient testing and quarantining has been achieved), and we are two-and-a-half-thousand miles away from Malibu. Today, we have brunch at the Osprey restaurant in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

This is Damon’s new neighborhood. He and his family have been principally living in Los Angeles for some years but are now in the process of moving back to New York. “A big transition for the kids—new schools, new everything,” he says, explaining how he’d like them to be able to have the kind of independence that a less car-dominated environment can allow. “So, ‘in flux’ will probably be the best description of my personal life. Not to say we’re not excited—we’re really excited.”

Damon and his wife, Lucy, have four daughters (the oldest, Alexia, predating their relationship). Their names are inked, one above the other, hidden high on Damon’s right arm— “Alexia,” “Isabella,” “Gia,” “Stella”—​​though Damon seems momentarily taken aback when I mention this, as though unsure that this is public knowledge. “Did I show my tattoos?” he muses. “I guess I did.”

“My own kind of sanity and mental health really benefited from having someone who I grew up with who was also going through something similar.” — Ben Affleck

He added these four names a couple of years back, but his first tattoo, on the same upper arm, was done in 2013. It had been his wife’s idea.

“She just announced it,” he says. “We were in our apartment in Manhattan, and she was, like, ‘We’re getting tattoos.’ I was, ‘Okay.’ ” Damon says that he had only one stipulation—that they fulfill a promise once made. “There is a friend of ours who did all of Heath Ledger’s tattoos,” says Damon, “and I told him if I ever got a tattoo, he was my first phone call.” That call was duly made and the friend, Scott Campbell, biked over from Brooklyn and freehanded the name “Lucy.”

Idly, I ask about the stray tattoo on Damon’s upper arm that doesn’t appear to be a name: a strange loopy line heading up toward his shoulder. This, it turns out, was done on that same day in 2013 and comes with its own story:

“That’s something that Heath had on his arm. Heath was an incredibly restless, creative person. Like, I talked to the person who did his hair on The Patriot and she said he hated sitting still so much ‘that by the time I got the wig on and I set it and everything, and I’d finished, he’d get up and there would be a sculpture of bobby pins that he’d done.’ He was really sensitive. This stuff just flowed out of him. He was really special. I just wanted to get something that Heath had. Scott showed me his laptop and I said, ‘Scott, what’s that one?’ And he goes ‘I have no idea—I think that’s just some shit that Heath squiggled.’ And I went, ‘That’s the one I want.’ ”

Lucy, who was also friends with Heath, got the same tattoo on her foot.

“So we both have that,” says Damon. “It’s like a little creative little blessing. It’s like an angel that looks over all these names that are on the arm.”

Hoodie, $1,340, by Louis Vuitton Men’s. Vintage shorts from Front General Store.

Damon was first urged to read Eric Jager’s book The Last Duel, about a dark and dramatic episode in 14th-century France, with a mind to its movie potential, back in 2011. He demurred. Hearing that Martin Scorsese already had the rights, he felt it would be a waste of his time: “I said, ‘Well, if Marty has it, he’s going to do it with Leo.’ ” Seven years later, the rights now available, Damon relented.

At first, he couldn’t see it. “Twenty pages in, I was just thinking, We can’t do this,” he says. “Like, these guys are absolute savages. These guys are born in the middle of a hundred--year war, they do nothing but rape and pillage and fight for their entire lives.…” But then the central story gripped him: of two men, one accused of rape by the other’s wife, and of the woman at the center. “She had, at great risk to first her reputation and then to herself, stood up and told the truth, again and again and again,” says Damon. “It was just pretty amazing.” He sent the book to Ridley Scott, whom he had wanted to work with again since their successful collaboration on The Martian. Scott shared his enthusiasm. Now they needed a script.

One evening, Damon had dinner with Ben Affleck. Over the years, the two teenage friends have remained close, in a way that—as they separately acknowledge—far transcends the cartoon best-Hollywood-buddy way it can often be depicted.

“Like, I don’t want to be his friend in public, you know what I mean?” Damon says. “It’s way too important a friendship for that, and it goes so beyond this career or anything. You know, it’s a significant part of my life and not for public consumption in that way.”

“I can’t speak for Matt,” Affleck offers, “but my own kind of sanity and mental health really benefited from having someone who I grew up with and knew as a child who was also going through something similar—this 20-year-plus journey of being in the public eye—who I could reflect on it with honestly, talk things over with, be myself with, who I knew why we were friends, why he was interested and loved me, why I loved him. I often think of people who just become successful and then get thrust into this, and I think, ‘How do they do it without having somebody that they can talk to? Who they can trust? Who knew them before?’ It’s just been such an asset to me—and, I think, I hope, to Matt—this relationship that we’ve had.”

The two of them have remained periodic work colleagues—they share a production company—but after winning their Good Will Hunting Oscar, they had never even attempted to collaborate on another script. To a large extent this was a reflection of just how successful their initial strategy has been—kick-started by that movie’s success, both had long been busy with the kind of opportunities they could once have only dreamed of. But it was also that what they had done back then seemed too cumbersome to ever repeat.

“The process of writing was so time consuming when we did it, when we were 22 and 20,” says Damon.

“We didn’t have jobs, we didn’t have anything else to do,” echoes Affleck. “We had two years to sort of muddle our way through a draft, and then another draft—to spend time sitting around and drinking beer and talking about the themes and playing video games and bullshitting.”

“We really understood the characters, and so we would take them and we would put them in these different scenarios,” Damon explains, “and then at the end, we kind of mashed these disjointed parts together into what could cohere as some kind of narrative. And that’s a really inefficient way to write. And I think both of us just intuitively felt like: Well, we’re never going to have enough time to do that again.”

Sweater, $1,295, and vintage shorts by Polo Ralph Lauren. Vintage shoes by Brooks Brothers from Melet Mercantile. Socks, $13, by American Trench.

But over that dinner, Damon told Affleck about The Last Duel, and at the end of the meal lent Affleck his copy of the book. “He was recently sober,” Damon recalls. “And when he’s on his game, he really sees the matrix. At seven o’clock the next morning, he called me—he had gone home and read it—and said, ‘We should write this.’ ”

Affleck tells me that he had stayed up until three or four in the morning, reading. When Damon had solicited his opinion on material in the past, Affleck hadn’t always “been super-enthusiastic,” he says. This was different. “All of a sudden I had a very clear idea of: Absolutely, this is a movie, this is how we should do it. It just thrilled me. And the story of this woman and what she had experienced and been through and the bravery she’d exhibited and the resilience and strength of character it must have taken to have gone through this—it just became very, very clear to me right away how it could work as a movie.” He became possessed with a great sense of urgency—“we have to do this and get it done now”—that he needed Damon to share. “He’s got a busy life, he’s all over the place,” Affleck explains, “and he frankly requires being marshaled a little bit to focus and zone in.” So Affleck laid out a plan of action: “Okay, and this is how we’re going to do it: We’re going to do four hours a day, I’m going to schedule it, I’m going to come over there…”

As soon as they began, they quickly found a very different rhythm from the last time around. “It really fit in with our lives,” says Damon. “Get up, get the kids out the door, to do everything we needed to do in our personal lives, and then meet in a very relaxed setting, work for four or five hours, then go back and kind of fulfill all of our obligations at home.” He describes these sessions as involving a lot of pacing around, acting out scenes, before one of them consolidated what they had. “He’s a better typist than I am,” says Damon. “But sometimes I’m closer to the laptop.”

They also soon realized that they needed something else. Damon’s initial proposal had been that they should tell the story from the different perspectives of the principal characters, and it became obvious that they needed a third collaborator, someone who could write the wronged wife’s story in a way they never could. That’s when they brought in the director and writer Nicole Holofcener. “I mean, what a great story, what a unique story, and what a feminist story to tell,” says Holofcener. “It was daunting in that she was a real person, and I felt honored and terrified to make sure that I was doing her justice and make it very clear that her truth was the truth, and to make her a whole person. She was extraordinary for speaking the truth, despite horrible consequences if they decided she was lying.” From the way the collaborators talk about it, their aim transcended the unwrapping of a he-said/he-said/she-said tale to lay bare some of the toxic consequences of even allowing such a story to be framed in that way. “If Unforgiven is the anti-Western Western,” says Damon, “then this is the anti-chivalry chivalry movie.… I think it’s a really good movie. We’ll see what people think.”

Both Damon and Affleck now imagine collaborating together more often in the future. “The discovery, I think, for both of us,” says Affleck, “was: It’s so much more pleasant and rewarding and wonderful to go to work and work with people that you love.” But for now, Damon has nothing planned beyond The Last Duel’s release. He’d like to spend the rest of the year bedding down in New York. If there’s something suitable he can make in the spring, he will; if there isn’t, he won’t. Somewhere along the way, he will eventually direct. He has come close twice but stepped aside. He was initially scheduled to direct Promised Land, a movie about fracking that he wrote with John Krasinski, and was also supposed to direct Manchester by the Sea, which was based on an idea Krasinski had proposed to him over dinner. But when Kenneth Lonergan subsequently tendered the script that they had commissioned, it was obvious to Damon that Lonergan should direct it instead. (He likes to joke that the best move he made as the movie’s producer was to fire himself as the movie’s director.)

Most likely, though, more acting will come first. “I feel like I’ve been steadily improving at my job for a long time,” he says. “And that’s a great feeling.” He muses about how sometimes, for all one’s effort, movies may still misfire. “I really want people to care as much as I do about the things I’m putting out,” he says. “And, you know, some of them have really worked, and some of them really haven’t.”

There’s no one making films, I suggest to him, who gets it right all of the time.

He nods. “That’s what I think’s so interesting about it—it’s impossible to do it perfectly, this. It keeps you coming back, like an addict. You know more and more, but you know you never know enough to know.”

Sweater, $3,325, by Hermès.

Pandemic aside, there was one previous extended break—over 18 months between the end of 2016 and the summer of 2018—when Matt Damon stopped making films. The first year of this period was spent back in Boston, staying close, during his father Kent’s final illness.

“We rented an apartment a block from his apartment,” says Damon, “so if he was well enough, he’d come for dinner, and if he was well enough to be at home but not to come to our place, we would go to sit and have dinner with him.” And when his father was in the hospital, Damon would be there every day. It was an intense time not just for Damon but for his wife and children. “They were very much a part of that. They had a front-row seat to that process, so it was a big year for them too. For our whole family, it was a seismic event.” Echoes from this time reverberate throughout our conversations. “I remember my dad saying in his last year of life,” Damon will mention at one point, “that he didn’t feel old. His spirit felt the same.”

Damon’s father died of multiple myeloma on December 14, 2017. That same week, the orbit of Damon’s life was also knocked askew in a completely different way. It feels important to note that although Damon points out that these two events occurred at the same time, he never explicitly links them beyond that. Specifically, he doesn’t try to sidestep any of the trouble that would cascade down upon him, as perhaps he might, by excusing himself as a man distracted by grief.

In Matt Damon’s career up until that point, there had been very few significant wrinkles: It generally seemed as though he had fluently mastered how to put his most charming face forward to the world, and that the world by and large had reciprocated by being duly charmed. Until that week. To dutifully promote Alexander Payne’s Downsizing, filmed the previous year, Damon had surfaced to record an interview for Popcorn With Peter Travers, the first part of which appeared on ABC on the morning of his father’s death. At one point, Travers asked Damon a series of questions about the wave of #MeToo allegations sweeping Hollywood. Damon replied at length and with apparent confidence, in a manner that would strike many people as that of some kind of presumptuous luminary who felt he had the answers everyone had been waiting for and who assumed it would be appreciated if he not only stepped in to tell it like it is but also set a few things straight. The response to both what Damon said and the fact that he seemed to believe it would be appropriate for him to say it was forthright.

“I mean, we all come into the world and we’re a fucking hot mess, do you know what I mean?” he says now. “And we make mistakes. And even in doing our best we make terrible mistakes.” The ensuing reaction was not one that Damon was accustomed to. “It was painful,” he says. “It’s hard to take punches for things…the person that they were saying, ‘He’s tone-deaf, and he’s…’ you know, I don’t like that guy either. So it’s hard to hear those things about yourself.”

An old friend persuaded Damon that he should rein in any instinct to wade right back into the conversation. “She said, ‘Don’t respond. You’d be inclined to say, “But I’m a good person.…” Don’t do that. Just be quiet for at least a month and just listen. Listen to the objections to what you said. Try to understand why you upset people.’ And that’s what I did. My friend’s advice was great in the sense of not getting in a defensive crouch—because that was my inclination, and you can’t hear anything in a defensive crouch—and as painful as it is, the only way forward is to really try to understand what you’ve done and really reflect on it.”

Even if Damon might still take issue with much of what was thrown at him—“95 percent of the stuff was entirely unhelpful, it was just Twitter-bashing stuff, which did put me in a defensive crouch, because you just go, ‘That’s nonsense’ ”—the more solid criticisms hit hard. “There were articles written about things that I said, about centering a man in a sexual assault situation. And I go, ‘Wow, I did do that. I thought of it entirely from his perspective.’ Like, that’s where my head went. And, ‘I didn’t think about these women’.… Because I’m trying to relate to the situation, and I relate to the person who has more in common with me. But in so doing, I’m doing damage not only to the people in that scenario but to anybody who’s ever been in that scenario and who feels like, ‘Oh, here I go again, getting overlooked.’ So it changed the way that I look at some of these things. It makes me hopefully more aware.”

A month after the initial interview, Damon resurfaced to promote a campaign for water.org and briefly addressed the situation: “I made a very sincere apology about not wanting to further anyone’s pain. Which is my truth. I mean, I don’t think it’s particularly revelatory. I think most of us would say that. But I certainly wanted to make it clear that I was truly sorry; that I didn’t mean to do that.”

And then he went away.

It was Damon’s wife who suggested to him that they go to Australia. This trip, lasting several months, was, says Damon, primarily a response to “the end of this fucking horrible year that I’d spent in the hospital with my dad.… It was like, ‘Let’s go to the other side of the world, just our family, and let’s make memories with the kids. Let’s go on an adventure.’ ” This recent media firestorm provided one further impetus. “I think that we would have gone either way. But certainly I was like: Nobody needs to hear from me for another year at least.”

In Australia, the Damon family traveled around, doing camping trips, finding remote beaches and islands, before returning to a base in Byron Bay where sympathetic friends lived. “The whole Hemsworth family,” says Damon, “and all of their friends, we’re close with all of them, and they were just a huge support system for us.”

Back then, in the year after his father’s death, Damon simply didn’t know when he’d go back to work. But eventually a script came through that enticed him: Ford v Ferrari. Nonetheless, his transition back into the world of what he used to do did not go as smoothly as Damon had anticipated. He was playing the cocksure former racing driver, now race car designer, Carroll Shelby.

“I just kind of showed up,” he tells me, “and I put on everything and none of it felt right. I’m supposed to be playing a guy who can sell anybody anything, and I didn’t feel like I could sell anything to anybody. I really didn’t. And I thought: I’m not ready to work. And I remember walking out of the trailer, it was the summertime so it was over 100 degrees. I remember walking to the set in my boots that were already giving me blisters after about 10 steps, with my cowboy hat that was stiff on my head, with this feeling that I can’t sell anything to anybody and I’m about to pretend that I can. And because I don’t feel that I can, I will be pretending. And I remember thinking: ‘This is a really stupid job.’ ”

Acting? I ask.

“Yeah, the whole thing. ‘I can’t believe this is what I decided to do with my life.’ ”

Damon’s first scene was with “a great character actor from Georgia” named Ray McKinnon. By chance, Damon had worked with McKinnon back when Damon was 19, in a TV movie called Rising Son, one of his first jobs. (Damon, naturally, was the son who was rising.) Somehow that helped. “There was something about coming back to where it all started, and doing a scene with Ray. And he just was so good that I was, ‘All right, maybe this isn’t the dumbest thing in the world to do.…’ ”

Damon’s next scene was with his costar Christian Bale—“one of my favorite actors,” says Damon, and a key reason he’d committed to the film. “Six months earlier, he had been 245 pounds,” says Damon—Bale had been playing Dick Cheney in Vice—“…and he was not a pound over 170. And I came out and he was sunburnt, and he had these coveralls on, and it looked like he’d been wearing them for his entire life, and he had this hat that was just beaten to shit, and it was just every detail. Every detail. I mean, it was fucking beautiful. And I went: ‘Okay. This is why we do it. This is a great thing to do with my life. Because we tell people stories—we tell people stories, and that’s the most human thing there is.’ And if you’re going to tell them stories, then fucking tell it well.”

It had come back to him. He was Matt Damon, and—for now, anyway—he knew what to do.

Matt Damon has never embraced social media.

“I just never saw the point,” he says. “And I feel better and better about that decision as time goes on. I understand wanting to be connected to everybody on Facebook, but my life is so full and I’m connected, really, to everybody I need to be connected to. And then Twitter, I just reflexively didn’t believe that my first knee-jerk response to something was necessarily something that should go all over the world.”

But then Damon mentions that he does, nonetheless, have “a very private Instagram account,” one he uses to see friends’ kids growing up around the world, and to which he only very occasionally posts.

I reflexively ask him what one of his typical posts would be. Slightly to my surprise, he pulls out his phone.

“I’ll show you,” he says.

As the app opens, he reads out his stats: “I have 76 followers and I’ve done 40 posts since 2013.” Then he shows me the most recent photo. It was taken of 15-year-old Isabella on her birthday. “That’s what she’s been doing,” he says, by way of explanation, “every time we take a picture of her nowadays.”

In the photo, his daughter is looking at the camera—and at her father—brandishing two raised middle fingers.

Days after our final meeting, something new blows up and I am reminded of the impulsive ways in which Damon seems to oscillate between great reserve and openness. This circumstance also stems from Damon sharing something about his family. An interview appears in the British newspaper The Sunday Times in which Damon is quoted as explaining how, some months earlier, one of his daughters had left the dinner table after he had made a joke using what he said she called “the f-slur for a homosexual”; how she had subsequently written him a letter explaining his transgression, and how Damon had agreed that she was correct and that he would retire the word. If he intended this story to show how we all must continue to learn and adapt and listen and strive to be better (and maybe also to show appreciation and deference for daughterly wisdom), that was not how it was widely received. The message that landed was: Matt Damon had been blithely using that word until a few months ago (and so might be, it was often also implied, a thoughtless homophobe). In the wake of the unfavorable coverage that followed, Damon issued a statement. In it, he sidestepped an apology, arguing for the good intentions behind the father-daughter story he had told, disputing its status as a “personal awakening,” denying that he uses “slurs of any kind,” and asserting, “I stand with the LGBTQ+ community.”

It nonetheless left an uncomfortable and unresolved mess. When GQ sought to discuss this further with Damon, he declined. In that vacuum, I found myself thinking about this, and about other unguarded moments that punctuated the conversations we did have. It made me consider how for all his poise and worldly bearing, there could be something guileless about Damon; and whether there was an aspect of himself that made him somehow vulnerable to stepping into those puddles that more deftly cynical men know how to step around. It made me wonder, too, whether a celebrity who shuns social media might also fail to learn how to inoculate themselves against the perils that lie in wait in the savage judgment chamber of the modern world. And it made me ponder anew Bono’s observation about how Damon wasn’t good at being a celebrity. Bono clearly meant this as a grand compliment, but perhaps the same virtues Bono sees may sometimes carry their own cost, out here with the rest of us, adrift in the follies and rewards of being human.

Back before, in the last few minutes of our Brooklyn brunch, I had asked Damon whether he ever felt misunderstood. In answering, he once more referenced back to his 2017 missteps. “I felt like I was being represented as something that I didn’t feel in my heart,” he said. “And the media, it’s so powerful—like, that fire hose of attention is overwhelming, no matter what. Even when it’s good, it’s really overwhelming. Some people love it, and you can see that they’re looking for it and they need it, constantly trying to get more of it. I’m not passing any judgment on that, I’m just not that way. Some people love a bright light on them. I’ve never been that person. I always really wanted to work. I really wanted to work. But not the other part.”

Shirt, $760, by Prada. Vintage shorts by Polo Ralph Lauren from Front General Store. Vintage belt by J.Crew.

Chris Heath is a GQ correspondent.

A version of this story originally appeared in the October 2021 issue with the title "​​Sincerely, Matt Damon."

[calchexxis]

This series is concerning what follows the story of my Lightcannon opus, Flashbangs & Frag Grenades. While Lux and Jinx are present in this, I'm adamant that the story isn't strictly about them. To me, they have earned their happy ending--they get to live peacefully and have their kid, and they deserve that after everything I put them through, lol.

No, this is about Seraphine. This is about what happens after everything ends atop Stillwater, and all the consequences therein. It's about Seraphine, Renata, and loss, and grief, and the weight of painful choices, because, in Sera and Renata's story, there has always been something of Hades & Persephone. That's truer now than even I had known it would be at the start because now we find that, bereft of her cold and oft cruel Hades, our Persephone does not flower into the softness of spring. Rather, she turns cruel, herself, and wintery. Without her quiet Lord of Riches Beneath, we learn sweet Kore is bitter, in truth, and that her humors are not as mild as we had imagined.

That is to say, then, that it's Seraphine's turn to go a bit mad.

[ao3feed-piltovers-finest]

99 Ways That You're Willing To Die

by inkbots

Two weeks have passed since the day Jinx shot her attack at the council and everything toppled on it's head. Unable to find a place in Piltover or Zaun, Vi ends up going to her roots as a fighter, going from fight to fight to try and give herself something, anything, that would make her feel better. There's someone that she can't stop seeing in the crowd though. Why did life have to get so complicated?

THIS IS A ONESHOT BASED OFF A SCENE SHOWN IN THE ANNECY FILM FESTIVAL IN FRANCE. THERE MAY BE SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2. 

Words: 2958, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/F

Characters: Vi (League of Legends), Caitlyn (League of Legends)

Relationships: Caitlyn/Vi (League of Legends)

Additional Tags: Post-Arcane: League of Legends Season 01, Vi Needs a Hug (League of Legends), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shimmer (Arcane: League of Legends), Mentioned Jinx (League of Legends), Mentioned Silco (Arcane: League of Legends), Fights, Competition, Blood and Injury, Minor Injuries, Hallucinations, Guilt, Grief/Mourning, Emotionally Repressed, Mentioned Vander (League of Legends), Zaun (League of Legends), Usage of "Cupcake" Endearment (League of Legends), Hextech (League of Legends), Spoilers, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Emotional Baggage, Episode: s01e09 The Monster You Created, Piltover's Finest, Piltover (League of Legends), Vi Has PTSD (League of Legends), Internal Conflict, Poverty, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol, Drinking to Cope, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Stillwater Hold (Arcane: League of Legends), Police Brutality, Mental Health Issues, Physical Abuse, Past Abuse, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Depression, Dissociation, Canon-Typical Violence, Self-Hatred, Self-Worth Issues, Self-Esteem, Self-Destruction

Read on A03. from AO3 works tagged ‘Caitlyn/Vi (League of Legends)���

[in-love-with-movies]

Stillwater (2021)

[michaeltillotson]

Stillwater (2021)

[msclaritea]

Report: Jake Gyllenhaal Destroyed $30 Million Film With Strange, Erratic Behavior — World of Reel

Thomas Bidegain, one of the more famous French screenwriters, and longtime collaborator of Jacques Audiard (he also wrote Tom McCarthy’s “Stillwater”), recently released his second film as a director in France, titled “Soudain Seuls.”

Although the film was shot in French, with French actors, it was originally supposed to be shot in 2021, in English, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Vanessa Kirby as the main couple. It was a hot project that even had the likes of Margot Robbie eyeing to star.

As chronicled in the latest issue of Technikart, this $30 million film collapsed, mainly due to a paranoid, capricious and power-hungry Gyllenhaal — who was not just the lead actor, but also producer on the film. This story is wild.

It turns out Gylenhaal was very keen on rewriting and rethinking the whole project a mere 8 weeks before production was scheduled to begin, and as the sets were being built. It led to some major power moves on his part.

The report states how the film broke down as the crew was working hard on it in Iceland. The way Gyllenhaal is portrayed is rather, shall we say, unpleasant, bordering on psychopathic behavior.

Gyllenhaal had some incomprehensible whims (he demanded to drive a car "neither red nor white") to paranoia (asking the set constructors to sleep in their cars because he feared they'd bring covid to the hotel he shared with the crew) to many episodes of yelling at his director (he supposedly did the first reading rehearsal in the accent of Pepe Le Pew).

The strangest anecdote has Gyllenhaal, while visiting set locations, deciding to strip to his underwear and diving into the freezing ocean because "When I see the sea, I swim in the sea.” This bewildered the crew, which included Bidegain.

The nightmare finally ended when Bidegain had to make a “heartbreaking” call to producer Alain Attal, conceding defeat, “Our visions diverge too much. We won’t be able to shoot in September. … It’s all over, and the €26 million is gone!”

It’s not like this story is coming from a dubious source either. It’s been talked about heavily in France the last week, having been covered in some of the biggest media outlets in the country. I’m actually surprised nobody in the U.S. has picked up on this yet.

I'll bet old Jake won't be making anymore cracks about Cabbage Patch Kids, anytime soon.

[marshmeowllows]

I wanna talk about this visual novel. It's not new-in fact it was released in October 2021 and won that year's Spooktober VN Jam.

It's called Stillwater, by Studio Clump.

From the itch.io page:

"I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU"

Private Investigator Hugo Laurent was ready to busy himself with more paperwork until a young disturbed woman entered his office to request an investigation regarding her grandfather's safety. What danger awaits underneath the surface of this mystery?

(From picture left to right are Hugo Laurent, Colby, and Noah De Leon.)

What's the danger, and what mystery?

Well, the mystery turns out to concern the grandfather of this woman, Nina Mortimer. His name is Henry Mortimer, and despite being Nina's grandfather...

...He looks like this.

Yeah, it's been that way since a few nights ago. The Mortimers' caretaker also quit because she kept noticing random puddles of water everywhere in the house, stopping in front of Henry's room.

Anyway, Henry received a letter from someone named Louis-someone Nina doesn't recognize. She shows the letter to Hugo, who notices an ominous message on it: "I AM COMING FOR YOU HENRY".

Later while investigating at the estate, Hugo checks the letter again. It looks different-no more creepy message.

This is the locket Louis was talking about. Looks like Henry did keep it.

After finding the locket, Hugo can choose to take it or leave it. Water appears, followed by an ominous figure that tells him "don't get in my way"-then the door jams shut. Hugo has to leave via the window.

Outside, Henry is heading towards the lake, as Nina tries to stop him. Hugo goes after him in her stead. He first tries to appeal to Henry's love for his granddaughter, which works briefly before Henry resumes blaming himself for the death of Louis. Hugo then tries to tell him that Henry dying won't resolve anything for him or for Louis.

If Hugo didn't take the locket, he'll fail to save Henry and end up dying in the lake as well (mundane: drowned, supernatural: killed by the entity). If he took the locket, he can give it to the entity, which lets him and Henry go. Hugo ends up unconscious, meeting the ghost of Louis, who thanks him. Fortunately, Louis tells him he can't "rest" there, and he and Henry are saved by Noah.

Henry has now returned to what's he's supposed to look like in the present. He tells Hugo about how he never got to say goodbye to Louis, how he kept wishing if Louis stayed longer in the world with him. He thanks Hugo for doing so much for a stranger, and also tells him he hopes Hugo can also overcome whatever's troubling him.

Who's Louis?

My interpretation is that Louis was Henry's romantic partner from when he was younger. One day, Louis asked Henry to meet him by the lake, but Henry didn't show. Louis, who's described as "troubled" in the newspaper article about his death, ended up drowning himself. Henry felt guilty after he heard the news, but eventually moved on with his life and had a family.

What's going on with Henry?

Noah mentions that the Mortimers faced many deaths over the years, to the point people believed they were cursed. All these deaths likely took a toll on Henry, who's reminded of the death of someone he loved and who loved him, all those years ago. Over time it culminates-until Henry is returned to the age he was that fateful day, and he tries to drown himself in the lake on what's likely its anniversary.

What's with Henry's eyes and the ominous figure?

Henry's eyes were glowing green. If Hugo took the locket, a green entity will appear at the lake and drag Henry down with it.

I suspect that's part supernatural, part manifestation of Henry's feelings.

What's the thing Henry hopes Hugo can overcome?

In the good ending, Henry says he hopes that Hugo can overcome "it". What's "it"? His troubles with work, troubles with experiencing supernatural shit, troubles with Noah who he maybe wants to be more than coworkers with? I think Henry was speaking in general, but no matter which is it it looks like things are looking up.

[books-to-add-to-your-tbr]

Title: You Can Go Your Own Way

Author: Eric Smith

Series or standalone: standalone

Publication year: 2021

Genres: fiction, romance, contemporary

Blurb: Adam Stillwater is in over his head...at least, that's what his best friend would say. And his mom. And the guy who runs the hardware store down the street. But this pinball arcade is the only piece of his dad that Adam has left, and he's determined to protect it from Philadelphia's newest tech mogul, who wants to turn it into another one of his cold, lifeless gaming cafés. Whitney Mitchell doesn't know how she got here. Her parents split up; she lost all her friends; her boyfriend dumped her. Now, she's spending her senior year running social media for her dad's chain of super-successful gaming cafés...which mostly consists of trading insults with that decrepit old pinball arcade across town. But when a huge snowstorm hits, Adam and Whitney suddenly find themselves trapped inside the arcade. Cut off from their families, their worlds, and their responsibilities, the tension between them seems to melt away, leaving something else in its place...but what happens when the storm stops?

[fruitynancywheeler]

Title: All I Wanted Rating: E Pairing: Caitlyn/Vi Words: 3,128 Summary: As Caitlyn descended down the halls of Stillwater to meet with the prisoner who caused her only lead to have their jaw wired shut, she didn’t really know what to expect. She imagined a myriad of burly, lumbering men to be the ones pounding against the concrete wall, but the last thing she expected was to see the first and only person she has ever loved.

AU in which Caitlyn and Vi knew each other before everything went down with Silco. Caitlyn, under the assumption Vi died in the explosion, works tirelessly to end the corruption that Piltover inflicts on the Undercity in honor of her lost love.

Violet’s last punch landed on the wall, her body going rigid at the sound of her name. She stood there sucking in deep, haggard breaths, sweat dripping down her body from the exertion of her workout. Caitlyn watched her like a hawk, not believing that Vi was actually in front of her. Seven years hadn’t changed the way her heart still fluttered in her chest at the sight of the woman she loved so deeply. She noticed the pink-haired woman squeeze her eyes tightly shut, shaking her head and muttering something under her breath that Cait couldn’t quite hear.

“You’re not real, go away,” Vi growled louder, taking Caitlyn aback with the hostility in her tone.

“W-what?” Cait stammered, wanting so badly to reach out for her love but uncertain of the reaction she’d receive if she tried.

“You’re not real!” Vi shouted now, moving swiftly towards the bars that separated them to glare at Caitlyn. Her bloody hands gripped the bars, and her face pressed in between them. “You’re just in my head, a ghost. You’re not really here.”

Even though her eyes hadn’t left Vi for a single moment, only now did Cait finally see Violet fully. She noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the pain that was written all over her face, and seeing Vi like this had her heart splitting in two. Vi had been in this horrible place the entire time, all alone, dealing with God knows what.

As if on autopilot, Caitlyn placed her notebook on the floor and stepped over the red line, the urge to reach out, to feel Vi again to prove to herself and to Vi that this was actually real, overpowering the fear of being rejected. She slowly lifted her arm out toward the bars, gauging Violet’s reaction to Cait intruding on her personal space. Vi flinched but made no effort to pull away, so Cait slid her hand between the bar and placed it against the woman’s chest, feeling the rapidly beating heart beneath her fingertips like she had all those years ago when they first kissed. With her other hand, she took one of Vi’s, prying it away from the bars to place it against her own thundering heart.

“It’s me, darling,” Cait whispered, feeling as if she spoke too loudly, it would cause Vi to pull away from her. She couldn’t stop the tears brimming in her eyes even if she tried; the years of pain she had felt hit her like a freight train as she gazed upon the woman she thought she had lost. Her own inner turmoil probably did not even come close to what Vi had dealt with being trapped in this dreaded place.

“I’m really here. With you.”

She watched as Vi’s eyes scanned her from head to toe as if trying to process that what she was seeing wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Cait squeezed Vi’s hand that was still resting atop her chest, hoping to convey that this wasn’t a dream.

Suddenly, the hand that Caitlyn had cradled gently against her was wrenched away. Vi put distance between them, a look of betrayal and anger on her face. The delicate features Cait knew and loved were now stone cold as Vi glared at her.

“You’re one of them,” Vi snarled, her fists clenched at her sides and shoulders hunched like a wild animal, trapped but ready to defend itself from a predator.

“Violet, let me explain. It’s not what it looks like!” Cait tried to reach out again– to get Vi to understand what she’s missed, being locked in here for the last seven years, but the woman she loved took another step back.

“Not what it looks like? How can you walk in here dressed like that and tell me, ‘it’s not what it looks like’?” Vi chuckled bitterly, her voice cracked and sounded slightly hysteric. Her eyes were like daggers cutting into Cait’s heart, but they were so hollow. It was as if all the life that once sparkled in those grey eyes had been completely snuffed out. “Do me a favor and stay the hell away from me, Cupcake.”

The nickname that had once been a fond memory of Caitlyn’s felt like a slap in the face, but she wasn’t ready to give up so quickly. She knew that Vi had to have an extreme amount of trauma to deal with from what had happened all those years ago, and adding whatever horrors she’d had to suffer through here in Stillwater wouldn’t be going to make that any easier. There was also Powder, Silco, and all this madness in the Undercity that Caitlyn knew Vi would dive into as soon as she learned about it because that’s just who Vi was. And Cait would be damned if she let the love of her life go through all of this alone, whether she wanted Cait there for her or not.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Caitlyn said determinedly, ignoring the anger radiating from the other woman. “I’m going to get you out, and I just ask that you please let me explain myself, and if afterward, you still want me gone, then I will respect that.”

She held Vi’s gaze, trying to see beyond the walls that Vi had constructed to try to find her Violet still in there somewhere. All she needed was a little crack in the impenetrable stone, and she could wriggle herself in and pull Vi back to her, breaking down the fortress that had been constructed within the seven years of complete isolation. Caitlyn waited for any type of reaction, and when she’d almost started to give up, she saw an almost imperceptible nod. If she hadn’t been looking so closely, she would have missed it.

“I will be back, I promise you,” Cait said before gathering her things and quickly making her way toward the elevator. She already had a plan set in motion in her head, and it may get her into some trouble, but quite frankly, she didn’t give a damn. The only thing that mattered to her at that moment was getting Vi out of this awful place.

Once she was back on the boat heading into Piltover, her adrenaline wore off, and tears finally started to fall. The pain of knowing that the love of her life had been alive all this time, and she hadn’t had a clue about it, made her feel like her heart was shattering all over again. All the time that they had lost that could have possibly been avoided if she had just stayed all those years ago instead of returning home made her want to scream. She was grateful for the rushing water to drown out the sounds of her sobs so as not to alert the man steering the boat. When they reached shore, she wiped her tear-stained cheeks and quickly made her way home. Cait arranged another boat to bring her back within the hour, not wanting Vi to be in there any longer than she had to.

As she entered her house, she made a quick stop at her mother’s office before heading to her own room, glad that it was late and her parents were already in bed for the night. She’d been in here enough times over the years to know where her mother kept her important paperwork, easily finding the inmate release forms in the top left drawer of the desk. She grabbed a pen and quickly filled out the form, forging Jayce’s signature at the bottom. There was a chance this wouldn’t work, but the Warden hadn’t seemed to care enough to look into the fact that she wasn’t actually an enforcer anymore, so she hoped that he wouldn’t dig deeper now that she was requesting the release of an inmate. All she knew was that Violet was worth the risk of getting caught.

A couple of hours and a very unpleasant chat with the Warden that left her feeling sick to her stomach and anger boiling in her veins later, she was unlocking the cell that had caged Vi for the last seven years. When their eyes locked, it knocked all the air out of Caitlyn’s lungs, seeing that small spark of life in those grey orbs again. It was just for a short moment, but it was enough to give Cait hope that this could work, that they could work.

“What’s happening?” Vi asked, seemingly not believing that Cait had actually pulled this little stunt off.

“I told you I’d get you out of here,” Cait simply said, holding their eye contact so Vi would understand that this was really happening. It wasn’t some twisted joke being played on her. “Come on, before they start getting suspicious.”

“Why would they get suspicious of another enforcer?”

“I told you I’ll tell you everything, but not here. It’s not safe,” Cait quickly promised, trying to stay calm even though her anxiety felt like it was gnawing at her heart.

They quickly made their way out of the prison that had kept her lover locked away from her for years, and it wasn’t until they were back on the boat heading towards the Undercity that either of them released the air that had been trapped in their lungs from the anticipation of potentially getting caught. Caitlyn had very low expectations that her plan to speak to the tattooed man would even work. She really didn’t think she’d successfully aid an inmate to get out of Stillwater, but miraculously, her shoddy plan had worked out better than she could have imagined.

Once they were off the boat, they found a quiet location away from prying eyes near the bridge to get into Zaun to discuss everything. It was nearing sunrise now. Cait had been up all night breaking Vi out of that prison, and exhaustion was starting to hit her. But this was it for her– if she couldn’t convince Vi to trust her, she would end up losing the love of her life again, and she’d be damned if she let that happen.

“You have about five seconds to start explaining what’s going on and why you’re an enforcer, or else I’m heading off on my own,” Vi demanded, her tone still cold and detached.

“I’m not– I mean, I was, but not anymore. It’s complicated,” Caitlyn sighed, feeling frustrated that her brain wasn’t cooperating with her mouth to properly explain.

“Then how are you wearing that?” Vi snarled, a grimace on her face from just looking at Caitlyn. It broke her heart all over again that Violet couldn’t even look at her without obvious disdain. “Seems pretty straightforward to me, princess. I should have known not to trust a Piltie. I should have known you’d be just like every other Topsider–”

“I went back for you!” Caitlyn shouted, not being able to hear another dig aimed at her anymore. Her outburst made Vi’s mouth snap shut, shock evident on her face from what Caitlyn had said. “That day, when everything fell apart– I saw the explosion from my bedroom. I ran as fast as I could, but I was too late. I saw what happened to Benzo and Sheriff Grayson. I followed to where all the smoke was coming from, and I–”

She choked on her words, feeling all the emotions that she had spent so long trying to shove down into neat little boxes so she could continue to move forward. Tears were gliding down her cheeks, but she didn’t care to wipe them away. Caitlyn longed to reach out for Vi, finally seeing some semblance of emotion from the other woman aside from resentment. But she knew it was too soon. She knew that the trust they once had wasn’t there anymore, and it would take a long time to get it back, if they could ever get it back. But the tears that were brimming in those grey eyes that she loved so dearly gave her hope that maybe there was a chance.

“I found Ekko in front of Vander’s body. Saw Claggor’s bloody goggles clutched in his hands. And he said all of you were dead. I thought you were dead,” Caitlyn cried, taking a step forward into Vi’s personal space. If she hadn’t been so tormented by the memories of the past, she would’ve been pleased that Vi didn’t back away. “I mourned for you. Every day for the last seven years, I have mourned for you. I became an enforcer to try to figure out what enforcers were on Silco’s payroll. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly, and god knows Ekko wasn’t pleased with my decision either, but he saw the importance behind it.”

“You’re still in contact with Ekko?” Vi croaked, the first words she was able to speak since Caitlyn had started to rehash the events of the past. Cait nodded in response and saw a soft smile form on Vi’s face. “How is he?”

“He’s so good, Vi,” she whispered. “As good as he can be considering the downfall of the Lanes. He formed his own group. He has a place for orphans or anyone looking for an escape from Silco’s grasp. He’s become quite the leader.”

“You’ve helped him?”

“As much as I can,” she confirmed. “Not nearly enough as I’d like, but that’s why I decided to join the enforcers until my mother got me laid off after an injury.”

“How did you get injured?” Vi asked, almost sounding a little concerned for the ex-enforcer’s well-being.

The momentum of Caitlyn’s explanation died on her tongue with the realization that she was about to break Violet’s heart all over again. She knew the information that she had on Powder would create an enormous amount of pain for her refound love, and she hated that she had to be the one to break the news to Vi. Cait licked her suddenly dry lips as she tried to formulate a way to say what she needed as painless as possible, but deep down she knew that trying to sugarcoat the truth wouldn’t help in this situation.

“After– that day, I thought all of you had died, but…” Cait stammered, choking on the words she so desperately needed to get out. “Silco, he got–”

“He has Powder,” Vi interrupted, a sad, knowing look in her gaze. “I saw him approach her after everything went down. After I blamed her for what happened.”

Cait watched as Vi started pacing, a calloused hand rubbing the back of her neck as she got lost in her own memories of what happened all those years ago. The turmoil Vi was experiencing made Caitlyn want to reach out to her again, but she knew that she shouldn’t, so she stood by and waited for the other woman to process her feelings.

“I tried to get to her when I saw him approach, but then Marcus knocked me out and dragged me to Stillwater.”

“It’s Marcus,” Cait whispered, not surprised but angry she hadn’t found evidence on him sooner. “He’s the one on Silco’s payroll.”

“Yup,” Vi scoffed, hatred for the coward dripping from her tone. “That poor excuse of a man is why Silco has gotten away with destroying the Undercity. Why Silco has Powder. I need to get her back.”

“Vi, you have to understand… she’s different now,” Cait tentatively said, stepping forward to finally reach out against her better judgment to stop the pacing. Her hand gently rested on Vi’s shoulder, feeling her initially stiffen at the touch but relaxing shortly after.

“Different, how?”

“You asked about my injury before, and– it was due to an explosion that she caused. It killed four other enforcers,” Cait explained, hoping the gravity of the circumstances was properly conveyed to the woman who had not seen the outside world in years. “She… goes by the name Jinx now.”

Vi stumbled back from Cait’s touch as if she had been burned, tears immediately threatening to spill from those hauntingly beautiful grey eyes that Caitlyn had longed to look into again since the day she had lost Vi. Vi’s breathing became labored as the words washed over her as if she was fighting off a panic attack.

“This is my fault,” she cried, a tear falling that she angrily swiped away. She looked as if she was about to collapse, and Caitlyn quickly reached back out to catch her. They both crumpled to the ground, Cait’s arm wrapped tightly around Vi’s shoulders as the other girl sobbed into her chest. “This is all my fault.”

“No, darling,” Caitlyn soothed, stroking her free hand through pink hair. “The only one to blame is Silco.”

“I told her she was a jinx. I blamed her for all of them dying. She only wanted to help,” Vi continued to sob, clutching onto Caitlyn’s uniform. “She only wanted to help.”

All Caitlyn could do was hold Violet until her tears stopped falling and her breathing was back under control. There were no reassuring words that Caitlyn could provide the other woman because she didn’t know where this road was going to lead them. She didn’t know if Vi would even want her to be by her side through all of this, so she just held onto Vi while she still had the chance to. The ex-enforcer didn’t know how much time had passed as they sat there together, but when Vi finally pulled back, the sun had fully risen, and the rest of the city seemed to be waking up.

“I have to get her back. I have to get through to her,” Vi sniffled, a look of determination reflected in her eyes. She slowly stood from their seated position, and Cait suddenly felt cold from the loss of contact with her former girlfriend.

“I know you do, but Vi, it isn’t going to be easy. Silco has done a number on her over the years,” Caitlyn warned.

“I have to try anyway. I can’t give up on her again,” Vi said. Her grey eyes scanned Caitlyn’s face as if weighing the decision of whether or not she could trust the ex-enforcer. After a moment, a wrapped, calloused hand reached down towards Caitlyn. “Are you with me?”

There wasn’t a moment of hesitation. Caitlyn immediately grasped the hand extended to her. She wouldn’t allow Vi to slip away from her again after years apart. She was more determined than she ever had been to rebuild the relationship they once shared, even if it only ever led to friendship. Violet was far too important to her to let the other woman do this on her own.

“Always.”

[myrtenasterrose]

"They say before you start a war, you better know what you're fighting for." - Angel With a Shotgun, The Cab

Vi's been fighting all her life. In the sumps scraping together enough for her and her siblings to survive. In Stillwater enduring abuse after abuse. Upon her miraculous release, however, she returns to find she wasn't the only one affected by all the war. It's taken Powder--her innocent baby sister, hardened into a teen haunted by her past--and it's taken Caitlyn--a mysterious, silent girl troubled by something she can't even articulate.

Vi never thought life after prison would be a walk in the park, but she never expected to walk away from one war and straight into another.

____

*big exhale*

My first multi-chaptered story in over two years? In this mental state?? It's more likely than you think.

[caitjinxsource]

The Seven Year Plan

by FireGire96

If she had to choose between living in Stillwater and becoming Piltover’s new hound dog… Then Powder would be their wild beast.

AKA: Enforcer!Jinx AU

Words: 1833, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021), League of Legends

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: F/F

Characters: Jinx (League of Legends), Powder, Vi (League of Legends), Viktor (League of Legends), Jayce (League of Legends), Marcus (Arcane: League of Legends), Ren (Arcane: League of Legends), Caitlyn (League of Legends), Cassandra Kiramman, Tobias Kiramman, Heimerdinger (League of Legends), Ekko (League of Legends), Vander (League of Legends), Silco (Arcane: League of Legends), Benzo (Arcane: League of Legends), Mel Medarda

Relationships: Caitlyn/Jinx (League of Legends), Caitlyn & Jinx (League of Legends), Jinx & Vi (League of Legends), Jayce & Jinx & Viktor (League of Legends), Jayce & Viktor (League of Legends), Marcus & Ren (Arcane: League of Legends)

Additional Tags: Jinx Goes by Powder (League of Legends), Protective Jinx (League of Legends), Soft Jinx (League of Legends), Caitlyn & Jinx are more than friends, Vi Needs a Hug (League of Legends), Jinx & Ren are sisters, Marcus & Jinx are "family", Canon-Typical Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enforcer Jinx (League of Legends), Evil Vi (League of Legends), Everyone Is Gay, Implied/Referenced Sex, Drug Use, Drug Addiction

from AO3 works tagged 'Caitlyn/Jinx (League of Legends)'

[jukeboxcwb]

Rolling Stone EUA lista as 50 melhores músicas de artistas e bandas da ficção

Foram consideradas apenas canções originais, e excluídas produções que envolvem músicos interpretando a si mesmos

A Rolling Stone Estados Unidos publicou uma lista das 50 melhores músicas de artistas e bandas fictícias, criados para filmes e séries de TV. Foram consideradas apenas canções originais, sem covers, e excluídas produções que envolvem músicos interpretando a si mesmos.

O ranking levou como inspiração o lançamento da série Daisy Jones & The Six, baseada no livro de Taylor Jenkins Red, que chegou ao Prime Video na última semana.

A lista é assinada pelos jornalistas: Jonathan Bernstein, David Browne, Mankaprr Conteh, Brenna Ehrlich, Elisabeth Garber-Paul, Kory Grow, Brian Hiatt, Tatiana Krisztina, Angie Martoccio, Alan Sepinwall, Rob Sheffield, Brittany Spanos, Larisha Paul e Lisa Tozzi.

Confira:

50. ‘Time To Change’, The Brady Bunch - série The Brady Bunch (1972) 49. ‘A Little Bit Alexis’, Alexis Rose - série Schitt's Creek (2019) 48. ‘Catalina Breeze’, The Blue Jean Committee - série Documentary Now! (2015) 47. ‘Werewolf Bar Mitzvah’, Tracy Jordan - série 30 Rock (2010) 46. ‘Let’s Go to the Mall’, Robin Sparkles - série How I Met Your Mother (2007) 45. ‘Give Him Something He Can Feel’, Sister and the Sisters - filme Sparkle (1976) 44. ‘Baby on Board’, The Be Sharps - série Os Simpsons (1993) 43. ‘Sweet Talkin’ Candy Man’, The Kelly Affair - filme Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970) 42. ‘Walk Hard’, Dewey Cox - A Vida É Dura - filme A História de Dewey Cox 41. ‘5000 Candles in the Wind,’ Mouse Rat - série Parks And Recreation (2011) 40. ‘I Love U So Much (It’s Scary)’, Boyz 4 Now - série Bob's Burgers (2015) 39. ‘Edge of Great’, Julie and the Phantoms - série Julie And The Phantom (2020) 38. ‘Spend This Night With Me’, Nick Rivers - filme Top Secret! Superconfidencial (1984) 37. ‘I Enjoy Being A Boy’, The Banana Splits - programa Banana Splits (1968) 36. ‘Can you Picture That’, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem - filme The Muppet Movie (1979) 35. ‘She’s So Gone’, Lemonade Mouth - filme Lemonade Mouth (2011) 34. ‘Fever Dog’, Stillwater - filme Quase Famosos (2000) 33. ‘Tear Me Down’, Hedwig and the Angry Inch - musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1999) 32. ‘He Still Loves Me’, The Fighting Temptations - filme The Fighting Temptations (2003) 31. ‘Way Back Into Love’, Cora Corman e Alex Fletcher - filme Letra e Música (2007) 30. ‘Look At Us Now (Honeycomb)’, Daisy Jones & The Six - série Daisy Jones & The Six (2023) 29. ‘It Don’t Worry Me’, Winifred Albuquerque - filme Nashville (1975) 28. ‘We Are Sex Bob-omb’, Sex Bob-omb - filme Scott Pilgrim contra o Mundo (2010) 27. ‘I2I’, Powerline - filme Pateta: O Filme (1995) 26. ‘B.P.E.’, Girls5eva - série Girls5eva (2022) 25. ‘Earache My Eye’, Alice Bowie - filme Cheech and Chong: Queimando Tudo (1978) 24. ‘Please Mr. Kennedy’, The John Glenn Singers - filme Inside Llewyn Davis - Balada de um Homem Comum (2013) 23. ‘Big Bottom,’ Spinal Tap - filme This is Spinal Tap (1984) 22. ‘I Think I Love You’, The Partridge Family - série A Família Dó-Ré-Mi (1970) 21. ‘When the Right One Comes Along’, Gunnar Scott and Scarlett O’Connor - série Nashville (2012) 20. ‘Nobody Like U’, 4*TOWN - filme Red: Crescer É uma Fera (2022) 19. ‘Bashir With the Good Beard’, We Are Lady Parts - série We Are Lady Parts (2021) 18. ‘Sugar Sugar’, The Archies - série The Archie Show (1969) 17. ‘Falling Slowly’, Guy e Girl - Apenas Uma Vez (2007) 16. ‘Cheese And Onions’, The Rutles - Os Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978) 15. ‘You’re So Beautiful’, Jamal - série Empire (2015) 14. ‘Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young’, Ellen Aim and the Attackers - filme Ruas de Fogo (1984) 13. ‘On the Dark Side’, Eddie and the Cruisers - filme Eddie, o Ídolo Pop (1983) 12. ‘A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow’, Mitch & Mickey - filme A Mighty Wind (2003) 11. ‘Drive It Like You Stole It’, Sing Street - filme Sing Street: Música e Sonho (2016) 10. ‘Straight Outta Locash’, CB4 - filme CB4 (1993) 09. ‘Light of Day’, The Barbusters - filme Luz da Fama (1987) 08. ‘Finest Girl’, Conner4Real - filme Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) 07. ‘Best of Both Worlds’, Hannah Montana - série Hannah Montana (2006) 06. ‘School of Rock’, School of Rock - filme Escola de Rock (2003) 05. ‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp’, DJay - filme Ritmo de um Sonho (2005) 04. ‘3 Small Words’, Josie and the Pussycats - filme Josie e as Gatinhas (2001) 03. ‘Shallow’, Jackson Maine e Ally - filme Nasce Uma Estrela (2018) 02. ‘Scotty Doesn’t Know’, Lustra - filme Eurotrip (2004) 01. ‘That Thing You Do!’, The Wonders - The Wonders: O Sonho Não Acabou (1996)

[ao3feed-piltovers-finest]

You Feel Like Home

by Vraila45

“Vi.” A whisper so quiet and fragile that Vi’s heart shatters in her chest. She takes Caitlyn’s hand in her lap, her thumb brushing the back in what she hopes is a soothing motion. It seems to work as Caitlyn shifts and rests her body against Vi’s, practically melting into her side. After years in Stillwater, Vi’s only ever felt her hands were good for fighting. She’s not used to this. Comfort. Caring.

or

After the attack on the council, Vi and Caitlyn find comfort in one another.

Words: 4194, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/F

Characters: Caitlyn (League of Legends), Vi (League of Legends)

Relationships: Caitlyn/Vi (League of Legends)

Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Vaginal Fingering, Canon Compliant, Smut, Fluff and Smut, there is some fluff if you squint I promise, Caitlyn asks Vi to join the Enforcers, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, I can and will overuse italics for emphasis

Read on A03.

from AO3 works tagged ‘Caitlyn/Vi (League of Legends)’

[michaeltillotson]

Stillwater (2021)

[iffoundreturntosea]

October 28, Day 301/302

Day 301 2015

Apparently, you can never have too many sunset pictures!

#beautiful #fall #sunset #texas #trees #silhouette #clouds #color #onfire #nature #outdoors #sky

Absolutely never!!!

Day 302 2016

I don't think I like the green pumpkins!

#pumpkins #green #purple #orange #shadesofspooky #october #picoftheday #project365 #302

They're not that bad.

Day 301 2017

Halloween party!

#halloweenparty #halloween #halloweencostume #costume #kitties #cats #catsofinstagram #bestfriends #love #catober #october #picoftheday #project365 #301

Day 301 2018

I love this dog ❤️

#pup #dog #dogsofinstagram #doggytongue #tonguesout #happy #doglove #love #animal #popart #inspiration #wildwarhol #october #picoftheday #project365 #301

Myers was my favorite boarder. She was super sweet and always smelled good!

Day 301 2019

Fancy chocolate for the best day of the year!

#christopheartisanchocolatier #adeliciouspieceofart #freshmintchocolate #texture #yummy #chocolate #nationalchocolateday #bestdayoftheyear #october28 #october #2019 #nationalday #nationaldaycalendar #picoftheday #project365 #301

Day 302 2020

Booo, fungus week is over

#booo #tistheseason #fall #fallseasons #falldecorations #falldecor #halloween #spooky #october #october28 #2020 #picoftheday #project365 #302

Day 301 2021

Makin' tracks

#dirtroad #tracks #texture #rocks #october #october28 #2021 #picoftheday #project365 #301

Day 301 2022

So serious

#leo #kitty #cat #furbaby #catober #october #october28 #2022 #picoftheday #project365 #301

Looking extra soft and pettable this day 💖

Day 301 2023

It's been so hazy lately!

#onespot #seawall #beach #haze #cloudy #sunny #october #october28 #2023 #picoftheday #project365 #301

Day 302 2024

The quiet of the marsh

#flat #dailytheme #stillwaters #marsh #marshgrass #reflection #october #october28 #2024 #picoftheday #project365 #day302