#the interview itself is 10 minutes long

[akirasarchives]

[00] Valuable Addition.

Summary: You wouldn’t say you’re in debt, but the dwindling money in your bank account is looking that way. Oh yeah, and a man in a suit won’t stop bothering you about playing a stupid child’s game.

— warnings: usual squid game behaviour, female reader

platonic squid game x reader, side romantic moments but it’s for the plot

[ 12TH, MONDAY, 08:47 ]

The subway station is busy. Businessmen, students and elderly passer-bys push past and shove into you as you stand clueless next to one of the big subway posters. Despite living in Seoul for so long, you barely know your way around and you’re at mercy to the beehive system. And it takes no prisoners.

You’ve been trying for the last 10 minutes to get the attention of anyone, but each person either ignores you or runs on to grab their train, but with each train passing your anxiety grows. It feels as if time has stopped around you as the vibrant chatter of people around you turns into mumbles and whispers as you attempt to understand the subway line. Even as you trace what you think is the blue line, it eventually turns into purple and now you’re on the other side of town!

With a heavy sigh, you turn to face the crowd once more. The crowd had thinned out in the last 10 minutes of your lone confusion and with a quick glance at your phone you see that it’s quickly approaching 9am.

It’s now or never.

“Excuse me, sir!” You tap the shoulder of the nearest well-dressed businessman. The man, seemingly in his 30s or early 40s turns and flashes you a charming smile. He dons a freshly pressed, steel grey suit made of soft, rich fabric. From a quick glance, you can tell the suit is made of expensive material as you spot tiny workings of the logo within the fabric itself. You feel as if you're staining the suit by touching it.

I just had to ask the good-looking one.

“May I help you?” He asks, using his free hand to smooth down his already wrinkle-free suit. His smile drops over time, yet he makes an effort to make it appear that it meets his eyes. Though, working in hospitality makes it easy to spot a false smile.

“I am sorry to bother you, but can you tell me which train takes me to Hannam-Dong?” You glance down at your phone. Foolishly, you forgot to check which train took you in the direction of the job interview you had scheduled today for a big company which would pretty much pay off the majority of your tuition fees in one wage. You practically burst into tears when the conductor told you that you purchased a ticket for the wrong line. The image of the money decreasing from your bank account due to a stupid purchase made you want to scream.

“Are there no ticket inspectors?” He hums, looking around. He looks around and almost comically turns in a circle before sighing. As if you couldn’t feel stupid enough for thinking you had to use a different line, the man in front of you had to make a theatrical out of it.

“I think it is this line.” He motions at the platform on the other side with the hand holding his expensive looking briefcase. You watch as it swings, seemingly empty.

“Thank you, sir!” You bow your head and smile, taking off before you finish the sentence. Soon enough you’re lost in the crowd again and hopefully not too late for the train.

[ 13TH, TUESDAY, 08:29 ]

Stupid nepotism. Yesterday, you arrived at the interview 10 minutes early despite the subway fiasco but you were informed that the role was filled that morning by an “experienced candidate who met the needs of the role”. Do you want to know who the candidate is? The CEOs nephew who just left high school and took a business class.

Now what? You’re at the same subway station waiting on the train to take you to your part-time cafe job 10 minutes away. Usually, you would walk it seeing as you don’t really like throwing away ₩1500 on a ticket that takes you 6 stops away but the torrential rain outside and your cheap umbrella were blocking you from walking 15 minutes.

The ticket crumbles in your hand as you fiddle with the flimsy paper. Maybe this was God’s sick way of telling you that you’re too ahead of yourself or that you’re destined to continue spending money that you don’t have. You trace over the price stamp, thinking over what you could’ve spent the money on.

Maybe a shitty cup of ramen?

“May I sit here?” A smooth voice breaks you from your trance. You glance up, straightening your posture. It’s the man from yesterday, gleaming down at you with the same formal smile. Again, it doesn’t reach his eyes yet you nod, shuffling to the right to allow him space on the bench.

“How was your interview?” He asks casually as he sets his briefcase beside him. He turns his back to you as he traces the cool metal edges of the case, popping it open with ease.

You gape, “How did you know I was going to an interview?”

“Well, you were dressed well and now you are in an apron. I assume you don’t go everywhere in a formal blazer.” He cracks open the briefcase as he casually explains. He’s weirdly observant, but his comment on the apron makes you glance down. Each wrinkle and subtle stain becomes more noticeable, but reminds you of each gruelling hour you put into the place. Each penny earned.

You can’t help but get lost in thought, barely processing as thick blue and red folded paper is passed into your eye-line.

“I am assuming you’re a café worker… That can’t pay much, no?” He motions at the cafe’s coffee bean logo on your black shirt. You nod, still dumbfounded by the paper squares.

His stare is so intense it leaves you a bit flustered so you naturally let out a nervous laugh, swapping your attention to the time on your phone. 10 minutes until your train...

“Um, no, I suppose not.” You reply, albeit awkwardly. He hums, satisfied with your late and short answer. Oddly, this is not one of the weirder conversations you’ve had at the subway station.

He shifts so that he’s facing you, “Let’s play a game, you know Ddakji, right?”

You glance between the paper and his face. He looks so sincere, but you can’t read his eyes. They’re deep, black almost and oddly… mischevious for a middle aged man. Honestly it’s quite disturbing.

“Each round you win, you’ll get ₩100,000. How about that?” The expression on your face coaxed him to continue. Perhaps you looked just as perplexed as you feel.

“Who are—“

“If I win, you pay with your body.”

… Is this man fucking crazy? You want to just leave the station but at the same time you’re so intrigued by what the fuck this man wants. Surely he has better things to do? Was he carrying the ddakji with him yesterday too?

The way he sits still as if he’s a mannequin is also quite disturbing. It’s as if he’s giving you time to process the question but you’re not debating the game, you’re debating just running out in the pouring rain.

“Well?”

“Railway line through Cheongpa-Dong is now boarding. Please board.”

You stand quickly, jolting the businessman with your speed.

“My train is here. Bye.”

[ 13TH, TUESDAY, 22:09 ]

The whole day the scenario played through your head. You were so caught up in thought that you burned yourself with the steamer and spent 10 minutes in the office running your hand until cool water. Even then, your mind wandered back.

It’s just so odd. You’ve never seen him before but now twice you’ve spoken to him. Has he always been there and it’s just more obvious now? Does he offer everyone this game? Is he following you? Does he know where you work?

You barely knew the time. Each drink passed by in seconds and each customer morphed into each other. Every time a man entered the shop in a suit, your heart pumped ferociously.

You can’t tell if you’re terrified of him or excited for the interaction. Maybe he’s just a fucking weirdo who walks around with ddakji in hopes of getting to slap people.

Plus, you could do with the money. Even if you win just one round, it could pay for your phone bill or electric meter.

The walk home isn’t exactly easy either. It’s dark and each corner turned, you’re expecting to see him waiting under a streetlight for you holding those red and blue squares.

“If I win, you pay with your body.”

Unbothered, he extends the squares towards you. It feels as if you’re sucked out of your body as you stare at him. Time slows and no one else is there. Did he just ask you to sleep with him? What in the world could that mean? Is this man a trafficker and he has his eyes set on you? The questions flurry through your brain in a span of mere seconds, yet you still feel the cool air pass over your skin as the train rails in beside you. Your hair falls into your eyesight as you gape at him.

“Well?” He motions towards the cards.

What in the fucking world.

[ 16TH, FRIDAY, 22:35 ]

The pile of unread emails grows in your inbox. Failure to attend lectures, the price increasing of your off campus housing, monthly payments that leave you with just under ₩145,000 to survive for a month. It’s unbearable. You’ve gotten used to the growl in your stomach and the lightheadedness that comes with the fatigue of hunger. Missing night outs with your friends, walking long distances until your feet ached and slaving away at work for nasty people while your eyes threatened to close. It’s all becoming a bit much, especially as your final year in University comes to a close.

The burn on your hand doesn’t help either. It’s right between the juncture of your thumb and index finger on your right hand and it aches when any sort of warmth meets it. You can’t afford to throw away money on soothing gels at the moment, so you bear with the pain. It’s already been a few days, so hopefully it disappears soon. You hope anyway.

Walking home in the dark used to scare you but as needs be, you’ve gotten used to it. Work looms over your head as your feet trudge through fallen leaves and debris kicked up by bikes and feet. The walk from work to home isn’t too bad, the area can be sketchy at times but you’ve learned to keep your head straight, don’t make eye contact and keep a hand on the box cutter you keep in your right side coat pocket.

Luckily, you’ve come across most of the same people. An older man always passes by, seemingly walking home from work and always flashes you a smile. A few students usually run by too and the occasional office worker. Most times however, it’s quiet.

Unlike tonight.

Faint sounds of slapping, cheering and grunting bounce off the walls of the buildings surrounding the dark streets. You can’t tell where it’s coming from, who it’s coming from or why but you prefer to keep it that way, but as you grow closer to a dimly lit side street, the noises become louder.

You sigh, hand grasping the box cutter. Your thumb presses onto the button, holding it steady in case you need to use it.

Keep your head straight, [y/n]. This doesn’t involve you.

You can’t help but flicker your eyes to your left as you walk past. A man lies cowering on the ground as he grasps his face with his hands. He’s whimpering, blabbing something to the taller, well-dressed man that hovers above him.

Is that the man from the subway station?

You quicken your pace. Your feet fall over each other as you attempt to walk away as naturally as possible, but you accidentally kick up some rocks as you scatter past. The suited man turns, casting his eyes on you. The pit in your stomach grows as you continue walking with urgency, daring not to look anyway but forward.

I am so fucked!

[ 22ND, THURSDAY, 12:09 ]

“Long-time, no see.” A shadow casts over your figure, effectively blocking your view of your phone screen. You glance up at the man that is effectively disturbing one of the only peaceful moments you’ve had lately.

He’s dressed in a black variant of the steel grey suit you saw the past couple times of meeting him, but he still carried the same stupid suitcase. You sigh, swiping your music app closed and locking your phone with a click as you use a hand to cover your eyes.

Always with the same fake smile.

“I don’t want to play your game, sir.” You try to reject as kindly as possible, but you’re kind of freaked out that he found you once more. He looks slightly disheveled, as if he’s been toying with his hair or the heat today had worn him down. Weirdly, he looks more human, though little emotion lingers behind his eyes.

“That’s unfortunate. I brought it with me.” He lifts his suitcase higher into view. You frown, glancing around at other patrons. You take the time to unplug your earphones from your ears as he seems to ground his feet into the pavement before you.

He’s hard to get rid of.

“You bring it everywhere with you.” You reply, a bit more harsh than you’d want to but he seems amused by it. Suddenly, the image of him hovering over the cowering man flashes in your head.

Don’t piss him off.

You grasp your iced coffee, ignoring how the condensation soaks your hand. The subtle clinking of the ice works to calm you down as your heart begins to race at the thought of being in the position of the cowering man.

“How did you—“

“Bread or lottery?”

You blink.

“What?”

He shakes his hands, “Bread or lottery?”

“I don’t want to choose.” He seems to hold back something as he sighs.

“No matter what you choose, nothing will happen.” He assures you.

He is determined.

“I won’t have to ‘pay with my body’?” You reiterate what he said at the station. He cocks a brow, but nods nonetheless. It’s odd, it’s the most emotion he’s ever shown and it’s because you threw his words back at him.

You don’t quite fancy the idea of taking food off of him, despite its packaging being intact, so you motion for the lottery ticket silently. He hands you it quickly, fetching a spare penny from his blazer pocket. His hand lingers on your own as he passes you the coin, causing you to stare at him. His lips curl at the corners and you feel as if you just fell into a trap.

“Go ahead.” He almost sings, shuffling to stand over you.

The weight of the coin in your hand is replaced by a ton of bricks. Since when do scratch cards look so intimidating?

The lapels of the salesman’s blazer graze against your back as he stares at the blue sheet with you. You’re effectively caged against the bench that you're sitting at as he extends over your left shoulder and rests against the table.

A shaky exhale passes your lips as you stare at the sheet. The coin shakes in your hold as you begin to scratch, revealing a seven.

“Just three sevens, easy, right?” He chimes in, leaning closer to your face. The smell of his clean, fresh and most likely expensive fragrance wafts past your nose, reminding you just how close he is.

Each scratch feels like it’s taking a lifetime to reveal, but you eventually reach a second seven. You dare to glance to your left, marvelling at how close he is. You can see each fine detail across this enigma of a man’s face. In the short few seconds, you notice his asymmetrical eyes, the whisper of facial hair around his mouth and the dark excitement lingering within his eyes.

Eventually, you scratch away the last box.

“Congratulations, Miss.” The salesman hums, as he stands back straight. The hand he used to rest against the table slips up your arm to press firmly against your shoulder.

You’re astonished. I won? Seriously?

“No way.” You whisper, staring at the sheet. ₩500,000! It’s not the largest amount offered in the lottery but it’s a damn good amount for you. You can pay off a bit more of your loans and maybe afford a half-decent meal tonight.

You barely take notice as the suited man lifts his briefcase once more, and turns to look back at the park. The homeless people he once targeted are still filing through the bread he stomped on and destroyed, bar the one he left over for you. He grasps it in his hands, mulling over his options.

“Excuse me!” He yells out, tossing the bread in the air and catching it. The small crowd of people scattered around the pile of bread and some passer-by’s stop.

You gape, staring at his back.

“You can thank this young lady here for the bread!” He tosses the bread into the pile of people with a sharp throw. You watch as the homeless crowd revenge against each other, shouting and yelling their demands for the food.

You stand from the table, slipping the winning sheet in your handbag and grasping your mostly melted coffee.

I should cash in and go home.

“Hey, did she win?” A gruff voice yells out. You freeze, staring at the businessman. Anyone with any sort of wit would say no, right?

“Of course.” He smiles, standing to the side so the crowd peeps a better view at you.

He’s just fed you to a pack of very hungry wolves.

You want to say something, but the sight of about 10 people suddenly rushing towards you causes the words to die in your throat. You clutch your bag strap and almost drop your coffee as you scramble over the bench you were sitting on.

However, a barrier is formed before you. The crowd stops, staring at the swinging briefcase that blocks their path to you.

“Hey! We deserve that money!”

“You deserve nothing.” The salesman spits back. The disheveled man looks astonished, glancing between you and your new bodyguard.

“You got your card and she got hers. Play fair, weren’t you taught that in school?”

The homeless man is visibly rattled, mumbling and spewing out insults.

“I am not the one who made that decision. You are the one who threw it away!” He shouts. Suddenly, he steps forward and swings his case out, causing the crowd to fall back. Some fall over themselves and create a domino for the ones at the front.

As he revels in the chaos he creates, he misses how you slip away into the crowd.

[ 25TH, SUNDAY, 10:57 ]

“Miss, I understand you are a student but I am also a landlord, I can only wait so long without payment.” Your landlady frowns as she stands outside your door. You scramble around, picking up the last remaining notes you earned from the lottery ticket.

“I am sorry, Mrs. Kwon! Please, take this ₩300,000 I have. I promise I will get you the rest on Friday! I get paid then!” You plead, passing the money into the woman’s hands. She’s quite frazzled, pulling back her hands as you grab them to slot the notes into. Usually, the money would come out of your bank account but you locked your card as you can’t afford for her to take the last of your money.

She splutters, backing up as the money falls to her feet. You scramble to pick up the notes.

“Miss, your rent is ₩900,000 a month. You missed out a part of last month too! Where did you get this money from?” She quizzes, watching as you recount your notes. She wasn’t wrong, you were short about ₩250,000 last month and you were damn lucky she let you off on it.

“I understand, please take this to cover some of the money I missed out on.” She takes the money, sighing as she flicks the notes between her fingers and passes you back ₩150,000. You try to refuse but she uses your previous tactic on yourself.

“Take this. Listen, my granddaughter is in a place like you so I understand, but you cannot keep living like this. What happened to your last job interview? You told me you would never be short on money again!”

Your gaze drops to the floor at this point. Again, you’re forced to remember how the opportunity was practically ripped from your hands before you had a chance to even try.

“He gave it to his nephew.” You reply.

Mrs. Kwon sighs, glancing at the other tenants' doors. None of the neighbours ever cause her as much trouble as you do, yet she finds it hard to evict you. Even now, you look like her granddaughter, defeated and at the mercy of the world.

“Just pay me what you can on Friday. I will give you until your graduation to sort this out, okay?” You nod, thanking her profusely.

Maybe I should play that game of ddakji…

[ 1ST, SATURDAY, 14:26 ]

“Are you crazy? Some man keeps asking you to play ddakji and you’re going to say yes?” Your coworker pales as he finishes mixing up some drinks. You nod, glancing back out at the glass doors. The café is quiet today despite the few regulars, so you find yourself able to fall into conversation with him quite easily.

“Ddakji?” Your other coworker, Junhee, pops her head out from the kitchen. You nod, expecting the same reaction from her but it never comes.

“I’m good at that. Try to hit it with the folded part down.” She smiles, popping back in.

“Hey! Why would you tell her to do that?” Yunho scolds, passing the drinks to the collection station. You can’t help but laugh as you round the corner to pass the cups to the customers. They are used to the usual bickering behind the counter so they pay no mind as the two talk back and forth. Most of your customers are students anyway, so they don’t care much as long as the drinks and food taste nice.

The fight continues into the night, even as Yunho is locking up and watching the shutters fall.

“Are you sure you don’t want a ride home?” He offers, but both you and Junhee decline. Yunho is nice, almost a bit too nice so you don’t want to feel like you’re taking advantage of him.

“Me and [y/n] will walk home together. Thank you, though.” Junhee answers. Truthfully, she doesn’t live far from you but she is closer to the café than you are. You know she’s struggling a bit with rent too and you’ve both discussed the possibility of moving in together, but she is having trouble with her boyfriend so you don’t want to pry and become the main reason she leaves him. She hasn’t told you much but it is financial and she fears she may be pregnant.

As you fall into pace together, Junhee begins to wring her hands nervously. You know she’s holding out on telling you something as it’s the same thing she did before she told you what Myunggi did.

“What’s wrong?” You ask, glancing at her shorter fame. Despite her hair hanging over her eyes, you can see the worry spread across her face,

“Listen, [y/n], I played ddakji with the same man.” Junhee stops in her path. You pause. He had played with her?

“The businessman?” You ask, to which she eagerly nods.

You step closer, looking around nervously. “Did you pay with your body?”

“Yes. He slapped me.”

“He what?”

Junhee throws her head back, “I won every time, but the last round I missed. He slaps you if you fail to flip the ddakji!”

As concerned as you should be, it feels as if a lightbulb blinks above your head.

“So what you’re saying is that I just have to be good at ddakji?”

“What I’m saying is to be careful! He gave me this card too…” She fumbles in her bag, pulling out a cream card with a circle, square and triangle printed onto it. She flips it, displaying an address.

“He said to go there in 3 days. He didn’t really explain it much but he said there were still some spots open.”

[ 3RD, MONDAY, 23:07 ]

“I can’t believe my eyes.” He muses, “I almost think you’ve been looking for me.”

“And what if I was?” Defiantly, you meet his dark gaze. As long as Junhee was telling the truth and he was only going to slap you, it would be easy. It’s not like he’s going to knock your tooth out.

Hopefully.

“Give me the blue one.” You hold your right hand out, requesting the brightly coloured square. He fumbles with his suitcase as he attempts to not look as excited as he is.

He sets the red square face down onto the pavement. Yes, pavement. You caught the fucker as he was stalking down the back alleys near your house as he was probably on his way to find another player.

“You know, you’re one of the first to ask me to play.” He hums, watching as you steady your two feet. Truthfully, you never played ddakji but the guise of the game was nothing too hard to grasp. Plus, you practised a little in your house.

“Try to hit with the folded part down.”

Junhee’s word echo throughout your head as you fling the card down with a bit of force. As told, the red square flips round.

“You’re good. Here you go.” The businessman passes you ₩100,000., the first of the night.

[ 3RD, MONDAY, 23:18 ]

“Alright, last round. You have almost emptied me out.” He motions to his discarded case. The last ₩100,000 sits pretty, almost beaconing you to take it straight from its place. But, you must play fair right? Even the businessman thinks so as you remember back at the park when he fed you to the crowd and saved you at the same time.

“I’m starting to think you’re a lucky charm for me.” You laugh, taking the blue square from his hand. Since he showed up, you’ve started to notice a stronger cash flow and hopefully the card he’s bound to give you continues the lucky streak.

But, instead of laughing or seeming amused, he flashes you a sinister smirk. You stare as he fixes himself. He had long abandoned his blazer, instead opting to roll his sleeves up and really give the game his all seeing as you had won 5 rounds. You have to admit, his disheveled state wasn’t the worst sight to look at.

“I think I’m quite the opposite.” He replies, hands smoothing down his waistcoat. You try to shake off his reply as he’s most likely trying to throw you off your game.

Maybe I shouldn’t be playing ddakji in a dark alleyway with him. Alone. At 11pm.

Tearing your gaze away, you return to the form that has won you five rounds. Steady feet, steady arms and steady breathing aided you in your last rounds and it’s almost as if it’s become second nature to you.

The square leaves your hands in a flash and you don’t bother to look as you stand proudly. A large thwack jumps off of the brick walls surrounding you both as you stare at him with nothing but pride on your face.

But…

Why is he coming at me?

Within a flash, the man’s left arm swings into your peripheral and you squawk as you jump back, throwing your arms out to push him away. Your eyes clench closed as your heartbeat thumps so loudly, it sounds as if there’s drums in your ears.

“You dodged me. That’s not fair.” You stare incredulously. The speed at which he swung at you would’ve landed you on your ass in a second flat. Junhee never told you that. With a dumbfounded expression, you look to the ground.

I missed.

“You tried to punch me. What the fuck?” You scatter, grasping your bag from the ground. You don’t need that damn card, what the fuck was Junhee on about? Is she crazy? Why is she going to that place tomorrow?

“I told you. If you lose, you pay with your body.” He explains casually, as if he didn’t just try to send you to the e.r. “Plus, I was going to slap you.”

“You would’ve knocked my fucking tooth out!”

“It was your choice to play, now stand still for me.”

You step back as he steps forward. Like Hell you’re letting him lay his hands on you.

“I don’t like people who don’t play fair. Please don’t make me hate you after we had so much fun.” He stresses, caging you against the brick wall. Your eyes flicker around, attempting to find a way to slip out. But, he’s read your mind, kicking a nearby bin over on its side.

“I never agreed to you hurting me.” You retaliate, flinching as he brings his right hand to your left cheek. Your eyes clench once again, but the delicate touch of his hand makes you gasp.

What is he doing? Is he seriously caressing my cheek?

The dim light from the nearby street lamps cast a soft light across his features, softening his appearance. If you weren’t so goddamn scared for your life and it was a man 20 years younger, maybe you wouldn’t mind this.

This is a textbook murder. What the fuck have I done?

He sighs, his fingerprints tracing a light pattern across your cheek. Each touch tingles, reminding you of where he’s touched. It’s similar to how your ex boyfriends would hold and touch you. It’s wrong, so wrong.

How can I think of Haejo right now!?

But, that’s until he gets rougher. Soon, he’s manhandling your face, using his thumb and fingers to hold your face in place by your chin. You spew complaints, twisting your body and using your hands to attempt to push him away.

“Didn’t anyone tell you to not talk to strange men on the street?” He sneers, disliking how you’re gradually dislodging yourself from his grasp. You ignore him, focusing on punching, shoving and kicking. You’re so distracted you don’t notice how his hand drops from your chin until it hits you.

He hits you.

You’re yelping, falling and scraping against the brick wall as tears cloud your vision. You’re crumbling, falling into yourself as you cry fat tears. Your ears are ringing and your face feels hot to the touch.

I’m reporting this fucker to the police.

“Fuck you!” You shout, looking up at his figure. Suddenly, you are the man you saw a few weeks ago. He stands unwavering, almost enjoying your crouched form. You can barely see between your tears and clumped lashes and you’re almost one hundred percent sure your mascara has streaked across your eyes, but you don’t care. You’re so fucking angry and scared, you’re shaking as you look at him.

“You agreed to play.” He’s right, but so obnoxious about it. He crouches to meet your form, staring at you as if you’re nothing but a scrawny child or animal. You might as well be.

Suddenly, he flicks a card between his index and middle finger, dropping it into your lap. It clatters and lands on the dirty ground, but you recognise the shapes Junhee told you about.

“Go to the address tomorrow. You’ll be the most valuable addition yet.”

With that, he leaves.

masterlist

[sydwritess]

The Life of Racing Pt. 1

Lando Norris x fem!reader

Summary: through it all, the racing, the media, the meetings. What matters to Lando the most is you. His home life is just as important as track life. Some days, he doesn't balance it easily. But through it all, the both of you try. Going through some challenges, but always coming out together, hand in hand again.

Second Person POV

Notes: my first F1 series! Requests are open!

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

You were a well know journalist in the F1 community. You were known more for what your write. Articles on driving life, as well as interviewing drivers about their F1 experience as a whole.

To say the least, you were well respected in the community, and by the public, you were known as an influencer to. You showed up at multiple events and races, surly not as big of a base as the drivers, but people knew you.

You were hired by f1 around a year ago. Climbing your way up the ladder in the workforce.

You were grateful to be working there. And you weren't alone in it either. Your best friend, Lewis, has been by you for what feels like forever, seeing how your families did know each other too.

Article after article. Late night after late night. You got so well ahead that some of the drivers started talking to you and hanging out with you on paddock. Which tells the story itself, seeing how you were an interviewer.

Your main focus was on the McLaren team. Zak, your boss, knew you were a 'hard worker' from the moment he saw you, he said.

Now you were at the Canadian GP. You were walking out of the paddock and into the McLaren garage, sitting down at a desk they watched the races from.

You got out your laptop, notebook, and pen. Cliking it quickly on the desk, out of anxiousness.

"Y/n, did you get those interviews recorded today?" Zak asked, walking by you in a hurry.

"Yeah. I'm working on it." You say tiredly.

It was a long day to say the least. A long week. You look over to your right, seeing Lando sit down next to you.

He smiled slightly before logging into a computer.

"Looks like someone can't keep up with this job." And engineer said from the back.

"Will you shut the hell up?" You say, slamming your pen down and looking at the person. He just put his hands up in defense and turned around.

"Fucking Christ." You mumble, turning back around to your laptop.

"Y/n, do you need to go home? It's been a long day-." Zak said quietly, walking up behind you.

"No. I need to get this done." You say. He takes a deep breath before walking away.

You were working silently for a couple of minutes, writing down notes from today's interview.

"What are you working on?" Lando asked quietly, leaning over and looking at your screen.

"Just... today's interview." You say. He nodded his head silently.

"You know. Don't listen to Gerard. He's always and asshole." He says, a slight grin forming on his face.

"Thanks." You say, smiling slightly.

You continue working on different article drafts for Zak, hoping to get them published this week.

Next to you, you hear Lando sigh deeply, rubbing his hands on his temples slowly. He had the replay paused on his crash.

"You shouldn't let one crash define who you are." You say quietly.

"What do you mean?" He asked, looking at you with a straight face.

"Within the short time I've been here. I can tell your the type to beat yourself up about one mistake. You just... shouldn't." You say.

"You know, you definitely have some great opinions." He says, smirking.

"It's called... being open minded." You say, letting out a huffed laugh.

You continued to work on your drafts, while also looking at the interviews from today. You were deeply focused on what you were working on, signaling out Lando's voice.

"Do you want to hang out tonight?" That came clear to you.

"We can. But I'm just going to be reviewing the race. Nothing special." You say.

"That's fine. We can work, or do whatever." He smiled.

"Yeah, okay meet me at my hotel room around five." You say. You write down the floor and room number and give it to him.

"Fancy." He said slyly.

"Please, I bet you have a full house out there." You joke.

"Maybe. Maybe not. But..." He holds up the paper. "I'll meet you there." He says.

It get's closer to evening time, and people start to leave. You begin to pack up your things and leave the garage, walking down the paddock strip.

The crowds were dying down. There was a long line to get out of the gates. You walk around to the back entrance, mainly for workers.

You walk up to the gates, security guarding the entrance.

"Ms. Y/n, right this way." One of the guards say. He walks right next to you, leading you to your car.

You look at him slightly confused along the way.

"It's a new protocol. Anyone who works here, or who is known to the public eye, unfortunately needs escort." He says.

"Right, okay."

You walk down to your car, the guard opens your door for you.

"Thank you." You say, he nods and shuts it when you get in.

You slowly drive out of the parking lot, making your way out of the circuit and into downtown.

You made your way through the heavy evening traffic and to the hotel. You quickly walk through the lobby, and to the elevators.

It took a minute before the doors finally opened. You stepped inside, clicking the 30th floor button. The elevator slowly rose to the top.

You got off and walked down the hallway, entering your room at the end.

It was big to say the least. A little foyer at the front. Straight in is a small living room, to the left was a kitchen and small island, and to the right was a small hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom.

It was spacious, which you were grateful for seeing how you were spending over a week here.

You kick off your shoes, putting them under the bench near the door, and dropping your keys down on the table.

You walk into the living area, quickly turning on the TV, putting on the race to review for work.

You walk over to the kitchen, grabbing a wine glass and a bottle of Barolo wine.

Your pour some into the glass and go sit int he living room, watching the TV and taking down notes.

You continue the notes that you need to when you hear a light knock on the room door. You walk over to it, and open it slightly. Lando stood there.

"Hey, come on in." You say, moving over. He walks in slowly, standing across from you as you close the door.

"I'm just finishing his up." You say, lazily pointing to the TV as you sit on the couch.

"It's alright, I don't mind watching me be a brilliant racer." He teased. Sitting down to the left of you.

"Yeah, I mean, you totally didn't crash or anything." You smile. You press play on the race, grabbing your notebook.

"You've got a lot of notes." He says.

"Got a lot of writing to do." You say.

You keep you eyes on the TV, writing down details of different laps. You are mid sentence when Lando reaches over and takes your book and pen, setting it down on the table.

"Hey, what are you-" You cut yourself off when he put's his hands around your waist, effortlessly pulling you onto his lap, gently kissing you on the forehead.

"I hate hiding us." He sighs. You reach your hand to the back of his head gently.

"I know. But you knew this when we started going out." You say.

"Is it wrong to want to brag about my beautiful girlfriend all over social media? Or tell people that your mine when walking around the paddock?" He whines.

"No, but you can't. It might get us in trouble." You say.

"By who?"

"By our boss. Who does, might I add, have a very, very high temper some days."

"We could find a new job."

"Your really willing to let go of a Formula One career for a relationship?"

"If it means I get to stay with you, then yes." He said, putting his head into the crook of your neck.

"You'll be fine. At least we get to be together after work."

"But it's to short of time." He mumbles into your neck. There was a pause, a deep silence.

"Do you know why I crashed today?" He asked, looking up at you.

"Why?"

"Because you weren't there to hold my hand, or kiss me before getting into the car or I couldn't post you on Instagram the night before." He said, slowly, and sadly.

"So am I just your good luck charm?"

"No- no, no I'm just saying. I missed you, that's why I crashed." He said, backing up his answer.

"Hmm, I think you crashed because you thought you could get through a gap that wasn't big enough." You say, looking him in the eyes.

"Because I wanted to impress you." He said, smirking.

"Impress me?"

"Yeah. Like how you impress me."

"How do I impress you?" You ask curiously.

"Because, some people might think your just another journalist, but your good at what you do. And you even need a security escort to your car at work." He said.

"Yeah, and he told me it's for every worker on the circuit."

"He just said that to make you feel not special." He said, pausing. "He downgraded my girlfriend."

"Downgraded? Lan I don't think-"

"Yes he did." He interrupted.

"Okay... whatever you want to believe." You say, smiling. He leans to the table, grabbing your book and pen.

"You can write again." He smiles.

"Thanks." You say. You flip open the notebook to an empty page, and start writing something.

Lando tried to peer over to your book, but you turned it away, closer to you. You finish writing your sentence, and give it to him.

"Lando Norris, states privately that he crashed into Oscar in Canadian GP due to his secret girlfriend, journalist y/n, y/l/n, not giving him a kiss before getting in the car." He mumbles.

"Y/n." He gasps. "You can't write this!" He said, scrambling the notebook back into your hands.

"Oh I'm sorry. Weren't you the one who wanted to brag about e everywhere?" You ask.

"Yes but that's different. That is my love. This." He said, tapping on the page. "Is just calling me out."

"I thought." You pause, working up fake tears. "I really thought you loved me." You say.

"Awe come on, don't be sad. I do love you." He says, cradling you in his arms like a kid.

"It's a joke."

"Not a very funny joke." He says sternly. You stay like that for a couple of minutes in silence. The race playing in the background.

"Can I spend the night tonight?" Lando asks.

"You really want to risk that?" You ask, pulling your head away fro hi.

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that you and Oscar are only a couple floors above us. He's staying right next to you. And he's suspicious of like... well everything." You say.

"So, I can just leave early."

"Right. Did you forget he has early training tomorrow?"

"Wait- how do you know that?"

"Because there's a calendar in the team garage."

"Okay, then I will leave extra, extra early." He says, smirking.

"Whatever you say." You smile.

©sydwritess

Hey loves! Pt. 1 of 'The Life of Racing' is here! Hope you like it, any more chapters to come! Comment ot be added to the F1 tag list! Requests are open!

Tag list:

@mimisweetz

[cookingthehungergames]

Cooking the Hunger Games Day 0: Lamb Stew

I've been a fan of The Hunger Games since I was thirteen years old, which was fifteen years ago, which is terrifying. I've been a fan of food for even longer. These things are related: one of the things I have always loved most about The Hunger Games is how the book(s) describe food: with such lush, expressive detail, and with such attention to setting and character.

Katniss Everdeen loves food; it is survival and life itself to her, but more than that, it's something she clearly takes pleasure in - a fact that hints at a "weakness for beautiful things" that she vehemently (and falsely) denies having, and projects onto poor Peeta. I have always loved that about her: how open she is to pleasure despite her own intentions. I see that pleasure-loving nature in myself; I am also a girl who loves to eat.

This July (and possibly August, who knows how long it'll take!), I've decided to cook my way through the first Hunger Games book, creating and then eating the dishes described in the book in roughly chronological order. I'll be making some concessions for practical reasons - I fully intend to split the multi-course Capitol dinners into several meals, and I might have to skip the pine bark since I live in Southeast Asia, and where the fuck am I going to find a pine tree - but I do intend to eat as much of what Katniss eats as possible. This blog is where I'll share it with you.

We'll be kicking off properly on July 4th - Reaping Day - but first I wanted to cook what might be the book's most iconic meal: the lamb stew.

"Best of all, a tureen of that incredible lamb stew on wild rice. The very dish I told Caesar Flickerman was the most impressive thing the Capitol had to offer."

This lamb stew needs no introduction; if you're reading a Hunger Games cooking blog post, you already know what I'm talking about. Katniss eats it for breakfast the morning before her interview prep, then again in the Hunger Games proper, and, much later, from a can during the invasion of the Capitol.

I always imagined this stew to be vaguely Middle Eastern for two reasons: firstly, because cooking dried fruit with meat is A Thing in Middle Eastern cuisine, and secondly, because thirteen-year-old me got "tureen" and "tajine" mixed up. Whoops.

My go-to lamb stew recipe is the Slow-Cooked Lamb from the excellent cookbook Souk: Feasting at the Mezze Table, by Merijn Tol and Nadia Zerouali. I used this as the base for my lamb stew, and chopped a bunch of prunes into it.

My bastard recipe goes as follows:

Ingredients:

500g lamb cubes, cut into bite-sized pieces

3 large tomatoes, diced

4 onions, thinly sliced

10 cloves garlic, chopped to shit

About 80g prunes, cut up

Stick of cinnamon

A few drops of vanilla extract

Half-teaspoon rose extract

Method:

Put lamb, tomatoes, onions, and garlic in a pot with some oil.

Fry for ten minutes, stirring constantly.

Add cinnamon, salt, prunes, and enough water to cover the lamb.

Drop the heat to medium-low and simmer for 2-3 hours

Panic because the prunes have completely changed the flavour profile of the stew, and compensate by salting the fuck out of it a second time.

Finish with the vanilla and rose.

Serve over rice.

The stew was delicious. I was running late so I didn't cook it the full two hours, so it was a little tough, but the flavour of the meat was rich, and the gravy was sweet with the onions and tomato. The prunes added a really strong and interesting sweet-sour flavour to the dish, which really did need a lot of salt to counterbalance; it made the whole thing more complex than the base recipe, though I personally prefer the stew without.

I didn't have wild rice and couldn't find any, so I used normal white rice as the base - it was a little soft and added very little to the stew, which I think would be better served with some flatbreads and yoghurt. Wild rice is a lot firmer and distinctly-textured than the white rice I used, though, so I can see it pairing well with this stew - perhaps even "perfectly".

The rose extract was a relic from the original recipe, and it makes the lamb pop while taking the edge off its gaminess. I like that the first Hunger Games dish I made for this project has roses in it.

Katniss would probably not agree.

[rhysdarbinizedarby]

Couch surfer in his 30s. Oscar winner in his 40s. Why the whole world wants Taika

**Notes: This is very long post!**

Good Weekend

In his 30s, he was sleeping on couches. By his 40s, he’d directed a Kiwi classic, taken a Marvel movie to billion-dollar success, and won an Oscar. Meet Taika Waititi, king of the oddball – and one of New Zealand’s most original creative exports.

Taika Waititi: “Be a nice person and live a good life. And just don’t be an arsehole.”

The good news? Taika Waititi is still alive. I wasn’t sure. The screen we were speaking through jolted savagely a few minutes ago, with a cacophonous bang and a confused yelp, then radio silence. Now the Kiwi ­ filmmaker is back, grinning like a loon: “I just broke the f---ing table, bro!”

Come again? “I just smashed this f---ing table and glass flew everywhere. It’s one of those old annoying colonial tables. It goes like this – see that?” Waititi says, holding up a folding furniture leg. “I hit the mechanism and it wasn’t locked. Anyway …”

I’m glad he’s fine. The stuff he’s been saying from his London hotel room could incur biblical wrath. We’re talking about his latest project, Next Goal Wins, a movie about the American Samoa soccer team’s quest to score a solitary goal, 10 years after suffering the worst loss in the game’s international history – a 31-0 ­ignominy to Australia – but our chat strays into ­spirituality, then faith, then religion.

“I don’t personally believe in a big guy sitting on a cloud judging everyone, but that’s just me,” Waititi says, deadpan. “Because I’m a grown-up.”

This is the way his interview answers often unfold. Waititi addresses your topic – dogma turns good people bad, he says, yet belief itself is worth lauding – but bookends every response with a conspiratorial nudge, wink, joke or poke. “Regardless of whether it’s some guy living on a cloud, or some other deity that you’ve made up – and they’re all made up – the message across the board is the same, and it’s important: Be a nice person, and live a good life. And just don’t be an arsehole!”

Not being an arsehole seems to have served Waititi, 48, well. Once a national treasure and indie darling (through the quirky tenderness of his breakout New Zealand films Boy in 2010 and Hunt for the Wilderpeople in 2016), Waititi then became a star of both the global box office (through his 2017 entry into the Marvel Universe, Thor: Ragnarok, which grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide) and then the Academy Awards (winning the 2020 best adapted screenplay Oscar for his subversive Holocaust dramedy JoJo Rabbit, in which he played an imaginary Hitler).

Waititi playing Adolf Hitler in the 2019 movie JoJo Rabbit. (Alamy)

A handsome devil with undeniable roguish charm, Waititi also slid seamlessly into style-icon status (attending this year’s Met Gala shirtless, in a floor-length gunmetal-grey Atelier Prabal Gurung wrap coat, with pendulous pearl necklaces), as well as becoming his own brand (releasing an eponymous line of canned ­coffee drinks) and bona fide Hollywood A-lister (he was introduced to his second wife, British singer Rita Ora, by actor Robert Pattinson at a barbecue).

Putting that platform to use, Waititi is an Indigenous pioneer and mentor, too, co-creating the critically acclaimed TV series Reservation Dogs, while co-founding the Piki Films production company, committed to promoting the next generation of storytellers – a mission that might sound all weighty and worthy, yet Waititi’s new wave of First Nations work is never earnest, always mixing hurt with heart and howling humour.

Waititi with wife Rita Ora at the 2023 Met Gala in May. (Getty Images)

Makes sense. Waititi is a byproduct of “the weirdest coupling ever” – his late Maori father from the Te Whanau-a-Apanui tribe was an artist, farmer and “Satan’s Slaves” bikie gang founder, while his Wellington schoolteacher mum descended from Russian Jews, although he’s not devout about her faith. (“No, I don’t practise,” he confirms. “I’m just good at everything, straight away.”)

He’s remained loyally tethered to his ­origin story, too – and to a cadre of creative Kiwi mates, including actors Jemaine Clement and Rhys Darby – never forgetting that not long before the actor/writer/producer/director was an industry maven, he was a penniless painter/photographer/ musician/comedian.

With no set title and no fixed address, he’s seemingly happy to be everything, everywhere (to everyone) all at once. “‘The universe’ is bandied around a lot these days, but I do believe in the kind of connective tissue of the universe, and the energy that – scientifically – we are made up of a bunch of atoms that are bouncing around off each other, and some of the atoms are just squished together a bit tighter than others,” he says, smiling. “We’re all made of the same stardust, and that’s pretty special.”

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

We’ve caught Waititi in a somewhat relaxed moment, right before the screen actors’ and media artists’ strike ends. He’s ­sensitive to the struggle but doesn’t deny enjoying the break. “I spent a lot of time thinking about writing, and not writing, and having a nice ­holiday,” he tells Good Weekend. “Honestly, it was a good chance just to recombobulate.”

Waititi, at right, with Hunt for the Wilderpeople actors, from left, Sam Neill, Rhys Darby and Julian Dennison. (Getty Images)

It’s mid-October, and he’s just headed to Paris to watch his beloved All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup. He’s deeply obsessed with the game, and sport in general. “Humans spend all of our time knowing what’s going to happen with our day. There’s no surprises ­any more. We’ve become quite stagnant. And I think that’s why people love sport, because of the air of unpredictability,” he says. “It’s the last great arena entertainment.”

The main filmic touchstone for Next Goal Wins (which premieres in Australian cinemas on New Year’s Day) would be Cool Runnings (1993), the unlikely true story of a Jamaican bobsled team, but Waititi also draws from genre classics such as Any Given Sunday and Rocky, sampling trusted tropes like the musical training montage. (His best one is set to Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears.)

Filming in Hawaii was an uplifting experience for the self-­described Polynesian Jew. “It wasn’t about death, or people being cruel to each other. Thematically, it was this simple idea, of getting a small win, and winning the game wasn’t even their goal – their goal was to get a goal,” he says. “It was a really sweet backbone.”

Waititi understands this because, growing up, he was as much an athlete as a nerd, fooling around with softball and soccer before discovering rugby league, then union. “There’s something about doing exercise when you don’t know you’re doing exercise,” he enthuses. “It’s all about the fun of throwing a ball around and trying to achieve something together.” (Whenever Waititi is in Auckland he joins his mates in a long-running weekend game of touch rugby. “And then throughout the week I work out every day. Obviously. I mean, look at me.”)

Auckland is where his kids live, too, so he spends as much time there as possible. Waititi met his first wife, producer Chelsea Winstanley, on the set of Boy in 2010, and they had two daughters, Matewa Kiritapu, 8, and his firstborn, Te Kainga O’Te Hinekahu, 11. (The latter is a derivative of his grandmother’s name, but he jokes with American friends that it means “Resurrection of Tupac” or “Mazda RX7″) Waititi and Winstanley split in about 2018, and he married the pop star Ora in 2022.

He offers a novel method for balancing work with parenthood … “Look, you just abandon them, and know that the experience will make them harder individuals later on in life. And it’s their problem,” he says. “I’m going to give them all of the things that they need, and I’m going to leave behind a decent bank ­account for their therapy, and they will be just like me, and the cycle will continue.”

Jokes aside – I think he’s joking – school holidays are always his, and he brings the girls onto the set of every movie he makes. “They know enough not to get in the way or touch anything that looks like it could kill you, and they know to be respectful and quiet when they need to. But they’re just very comfortable around filmmakers, which I’m really happy about, because eventually I hope they will get into the ­industry. One more year,” he laughs, “then they can leave school and come work for Dad.”

Theirs is certainly a different childhood than his. Growing up, he was a product of two worlds. His given names, for instance, were based on his appearance at birth: “Taika David” if he looked Maori (after his Maori grandfather) and “David Taika” if he looked Pakeha (after his white grandfather). His parents split when he was five, so he bounced between his dad’s place in Waihau Bay, where he went by the surname Waititi, and his mum, eight hours drive away in Wellington, where he went by Cohen (the last name on his birth ­certificate and passport).

Waititi was precocious, even charismatic. His mother Robin once told Radio New Zealand that people always wanted to know him, even as an infant: “I’d be on a bus with him, and he was that kind of baby who smiled at people, and next thing you know they’re saying, ‘Can I hold your baby?’ He’s always been a charmer to the public eye.”

He describes himself as a cool, sporty, good-looking nerd, raised on whatever pop culture screened on the two TV channels New Zealand offered in the early 1980s, from M*A*S*H and Taxi to Eddie Murphy and Michael Jackson. He was well-read, too. When punished by his mum, he would likely be forced to analyse a set of William Blake poems.

He puts on a whimpering voice to describe their finances – “We didn’t have much monneeey” – explaining how his mum spent her days in the classroom but also worked in pubs, where he would sit sipping a raspberry lemonade, doodling drawings and writing stories. She took in ­ironing and cleaned houses; he would help out, learning valuable lessons he imparts to his kids. “And to random people who come to my house,” he says. “I’ll say, ‘Here’s a novel idea, wash this dish,’ but people don’t know how to do anything these days.”

“Every single character I’ve ever written has been based on someone I’ve known or met or a story I’ve stolen from someone.” - Taika Waititi

He loved entertaining others, clearly, but also himself, recording little improvised radio plays on a tape deck – his own offbeat versions of ET and Indiana Jones and Star Wars. “Great free stuff where you don’t have any idea what the story is as you’re doing it,” he says. “You’re just sort of making it up and enjoying the ­freedom of playing god in this world where you can make people and characters do whatever you want.”

His other sphere of influence lay in Raukokore, the tiny town where his father lived. Although Boy is not autobiographical, it’s deeply personal insofar as it’s filmed in the house where he grew up, and where he lived a life similar to that portrayed in the story, surrounded by his recurring archetypes: warm grandmothers and worldly kids; staunch, stoic mums; and silly, stunted men. “Every single character I’ve ever written has been based on someone I’ve known or met,” he says, “or a story I’ve stolen from someone.”

He grew to love drawing and painting, obsessed early on with reproducing the Sistine Chapel. During a 2011 TED Talk on creativity, Waititi describes his odd subject matter, from swastikas and fawns to a picture of an old lady going for a walk … upon a sword … with Robocop. “My father was an outsider artist, even though he wouldn’t know what that meant,” Waititi told the audience in Doha. “I love the naive. I love people who can see things through an innocent viewpoint. It’s inspiring.”

After winning Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award for JoJo Rabbit in 2020. (Getty Images)

It was an interesting time in New Zealand, too – a coming-of-age decade in which the Maori were rediscovering their culture. His area was poor, “but only ­financially,” he says. “It’s very rich in terms of the ­people and the culture.” He learned kapa haka – the songs, dances and chants performed by competing tribes at cultural events, or to honour people at funerals and graduations – weddings, parties, ­anything. “Man, any excuse,” he explains. “A big part of doing them is to uplift your spirits.”

Photography was a passion, so I ask what he shot. “Just my penis. I sent them to people, but we didn’t have phones, so I would print them out, post them. One of the first dick pics,” he says. Actually, his lens was trained on regular people. He watches us still – in airports, ­restaurants. “Other times late at night, from a tree. Whatever it takes to get the story. You know that.”

He went to the Wellington state school Onslow College and did plays like Androcles and the Lion, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Crucible. His crew of arty students eventually ended up on stage at Bats Theatre in the city, where they would perform haphazard comedy shows for years.

“Taika was always rebellious and wild in his comedy, which I loved,” says his high school mate Jackie van Beek, who became a longtime collaborator, including working with Waititi on a Tourism New Zealand campaign this year. “I remember he went through a phase of turning up in bars around town wearing wigs, and you’d try and sit down and have a drink with him but he’d be doing some weird character that would invariably turn up in some show down the track.”

He met more like-minded peers at Victoria University, including Jemaine Clement (who’d later become co-creator of Flight of the Conchords). During a 2019 chat with actor Elijah Wood, Waititi ­describes he and Clement clocking one another from opposite sides of the library one day: a pair of Maoris experiencing hate at first sight, based on a mutual suspicion of cultural appropriation. (Clement was wearing a traditional tapa cloth Samoan shirt, and Waititi was like: “This motherf---er’s not Samoan.” Meanwhile, Waititi was wearing a Rastafarian beanie, and Clement was like, “This ­motherf---er’s not Jamaican.”)

With Jemaine Clement in 2014. (Getty Images)

But they eventually bonded over Blackadder and Fawlty Towers, and especially Kenny Everett, and did comedy shows together everywhere from Edinburgh to Melbourne. Waititi was almost itinerant, spending months at a time busking, or living in a commune in Berlin. He acted in a few small films, and then – while playing a stripper on a bad TV show – realised he wanted to try life behind the camera. “I became tired of being told what to do and ordered around,” he told Wellington’s Dominion Post in 2004. “I remember sitting around in the green room in my G-string ­thinking, ‘Why am I doing this? Just helping someone else to realise their dream.’ ”

He did two strong short films, then directed his first feature – Eagle vs Shark (2007) – when he was 32. He brought his mates along (Clement, starring with Waititi’s then-girlfriend Loren Horsley), setting something of a pattern in his career: hiring friends instead of constantly navigating new working relationships. “If you look at things I’m doing,” he tells me, “there’s ­always a few common denominators.”

Sam Neill says Waititi is the exemplar of a new New Zealand humour. “The basis of it is this: we’re just a little bit crap at things.”

This gang of collaborators shares a common Kiwi vibe, too, which his longtime friend, actor Rhys Darby, once coined “the comedy of the mundane”. Their new TV show, Our Flag Means Death, for example, leans heavily into the mundanity of pirate life – what happens on those long days at sea when the crew aren’t unsheathing swords from scabbards or burying treasure.

Waititi plays pirate captain Blackbeard, centre, in Our Flag Means Death, with Rhys Darby, left, and Rory Kinnear. (Google Images)

Sam Neill, who first met Waititi when starring in Hunt for the Wilderpeople, says Waititi is the exemplar of a new New Zealand humour. “And I think the basis of it is this,” says Neill. “We’re just a little bit crap at things, and that in itself is funny.” After all, Neill asks, what is What We Do in The Shadows (2014) if not a film (then later a TV show) about a bunch of vampires who are pretty crap at being vampires, ­living in a pretty crappy house, not quite getting busted by crappy local cops? “New Zealand often gets named as the least corrupt country in the world, and I think it’s just that we would be pretty crap at being corrupt,” Neill says. “We don’t have the capacity for it.”

Waititi’s whimsy also spurns the dominant on-screen oeuvre of his homeland – the so-called “cinema of ­unease” exemplified by the brutality of Once Were Warriors (1994) and the emotional peril of The Piano (1993). Waititi still explores pathos and pain, but through laughter and weirdness. “Taika feels to me like an ­antidote to that dark aspect, and a gift somehow,” Neill says. “And I’m grateful for that.”

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

Something happened to Taika Waititi when he was about 11 – something he doesn’t go into with Good Weekend, but which he considered a betrayal by the adults in his life. He ­mentioned it only recently – not the ­moment itself, but the lesson he learnt: “That you cannot and must not rely on grown-ups to help you – you’re basically in the world alone, and you’re gonna die alone, and you’ve just gotta make it all for yourself,” he told Irish podcast host James Brown. “I basically never forgave people in positions of responsibility.”

What does that mean in his work? First, his finest films tend to reflect the clarity of mind possessed by children, and the unseen worlds they create – fantasies conjured up as a way to understand or overcome. (His mum once summed up the main ­message of Boy: “The ­unconditional love you get from your children, and how many of us waste that, and don’t know what we’ve got.”)

Second, he’s suited to movie-making – “Russian roulette with art” – because he’s drawn to disruptive force and chaos. And that in turn produces creative defiance: allowing him to reinvigorate the Marvel Universe by making superheroes fallible, or tell a Holocaust story by making fun of Hitler. “Whenever I have to deal with someone who’s a boss, or in charge, I challenge them,” he told Brown, “and I really do take whatever they say with a pinch of salt.”

It’s no surprise then that Waititi was comfortable leaping from independent films to the vast complexity of Hollywood blockbusters. He loves the challenge of coordinating a thousand interlocking parts, requiring an army of experts in vocations as diverse as construction, sound, art, performance and logistics. “I delegate a lot,” he says, “and share the load with a lot of people.”

“This is a cool concept, being able to ­afford whatever I want, as opposed to sleeping on couches until I was 35.” - Taika Waititi

But the buck stops with him. Time magazine named Waititi one of its Most Influential 100 People of 2022. “You can tell that a film was made by Taika Waititi the same way you can tell a piece was painted by Picasso,” wrote Sacha Baron Cohen. Compassionate but comic. Satirical but watchable. Rockstar but auteur. “Actually, sorry, but this guy’s really starting to piss me off,” Cohen concluded. “Can someone else write this piece?”

Directing Chris Hemsworth in 2017 in Thor: Ragnarok, which grossed more than $1.3 billion at the box office. (Alamy)

I’m curious to know how he stays grounded amid such adulation. Coming into the game late, he says, helped immensely. After all, Waititi was 40 by the time he left New Zealand to do Thor: Ragnarok. “If you let things go to your head, then it means you’ve struggled to find out who you are,” he says. “But I’ve always felt very comfortable with who I am.” Hollywood access and acclaim – and the pay cheques – don’t erase memories of poverty, either. “It’s more like, ‘Oh, this is a cool concept, being able to ­afford whatever I want, as opposed to sleeping on couches until I was 35.’ ” Small towns and strong tribes keep him in check, too. “You know you can’t piss around and be a fool, because you’re going to embarrass your family,” he says. “Hasn’t stopped me, though.”

Sam Neill says there was never any doubt Waititi would be able to steer a major movie with energy and imagination. “It’s no accident that the whole world wants Taika,” he says. “But his seductiveness comes with its own dangers. You can spread yourself a bit thin. The temptation will be to do more, more, more. That’ll be interesting to watch.”

Indeed, I find myself vicariously stressed out over the list of potential projects in Waititi’s future. A Roald Dahl animated series for Netflix. An Apple TV show based on the 1981 film Time Bandits. A sequel to What We Do In The Shadows. A reboot of Flash Gordon. A gonzo horror comedy, The Auteur, starring Jude Law. Adapting a cult graphic novel, The Incal, as a feature. A streaming series based on the novel Interior Chinatown. A film based on a Kazuo Ishiguro bestseller. Plus bringing to life the wildly popular Akira comic books. Oh, and for good measure, a new instalment of Star Wars, which he’s already warned the world will be … different.

“It’s going to change things,” he told Good Morning America. “It’s going to change what you guys know and expect.”

Did I say I was stressed for Waititi? I meant physically sick.

“Well…” he qualifies, “some of those things I’m just producing, so I come up with an idea or someone comes to me with an idea, and I shape how ‘it’s this kind of show’ and ‘here’s how we can get it made.’ It’s easier for me to have a part in those things and feel like I’ve had a meaningful role in the creative process, but also not having to do what I’ve always done, which is trying to control everything.”

In the 2014 mockumentary horror film What We Do in the Shadows, which he co-directed with Jemaine Clement. (Alamy)

What about moving away from the niche New Zealand settings he represented so well in his early work? How does he stay connected to his roots? “I think you just need to know where you’re from,” he says, “and just don’t forget that.”

They certainly haven’t forgotten him.

Jasmin McSweeney sits in her office at the New Zealand Film Commission in Wellington, surrounded by promotional posters Waititi signed for her two decades ago, when she was tasked with promoting his nascent talent. Now the organisation’s marketing chief, she talks to me after visiting the heart of thriving “Wellywood”, overseeing the traditional karakia prayer on the set of a new movie starring Geoffrey Rush.

Waititi isn’t the first great Kiwi filmmaker – dual Oscar-winner Jane Campion and blockbuster king Peter Jackson come to mind – yet his particular ascendance, she says, has spurred unparalleled enthusiasm. “Taika gave everyone here confidence. He always says, ‘Don’t sit around waiting for people to say, you can do this.’ Just do it, because he just did it. That’s the Taika effect.”

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

Taika David Waititi is known for wearing everything from technicolour dreamcoats to pineapple print rompers, and today he’s wearing a roomy teal and white Isabel Marant jumper. The mohair garment has the same wispy frizz as his hair, which curls like a wave of grey steel wool, and connects with a shorn salty beard.

A stylish silver fox, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if he suddenly announced he was launching a fashion label. He’s definitely a commercial animal, to the point of directing television commercials for Coke and Amazon, along with a fabulous 2023 spot for Belvedere vodka starring Daniel Craig. He also joined forces with a beverage company in Finland (where “taika” means “magic”) to release his coffee drinks. Announcing the partnership on social media, he flagged that he would be doing more of this kind of stuff, too (“Soz not soz”).

Waititi has long been sick of reverent portrayals of Indigenous people talking to spirits.

There’s substance behind the swank. Fashion is a creative outlet but he’s also bought sewing machines in the past with the intention of designing and making clothes, and comes from a family of tailors. “I learnt how to sew a button on when I was very young,” he says. “I learnt how to fix holes or patches in your clothes, and darn things.”

And while he gallivants around the globe watching Wimbledon or modelling for Hermès at New York Fashion Week, all that glamour belies a depth of purpose, particularly when it comes to Indigenous representation.

There’s a moment in his new movie where a Samoan player realises that their Dutch coach, played by Michael Fassbender, is emotionally struggling, and he offers a lament for white people: “They need us.” I can’t help but think Waititi meant something more by that line – maybe that First Nations people have ­wisdom to offer if others will just listen?

“Weeelllll, a little bit …” he says – but from his intonation, and what he says next, I’m dead wrong. Waititi has long been sick of reverent ­portrayals of Indigenous people talking to kehua (spirits), or riding a ghost waka (phantom canoe), or playing a flute on a mountain. “Always the boring characters,” he says. “They’ve got no real contemporary relationship with the world, because they’re always living in the past in their spiritual ways.”

A scene from Next Goal Wins, filmed earlier this year. (Alamy)

He’s part of a vanguard consciously poking fun at those stereotypes. Another is the Navajo writer and director Billy Luther, who met Waititi at Sundance Film Festival back in 2003, along with Reservation Dogs co-creator Sterlin Harjo. “We were this group of outsiders trying to make films, when nobody was really biting,” says Luther. “It was a different time. The really cool thing about it now is we’re all working. We persevered. We didn’t give up. We slept on each other’s couches and hung out. It’s like family.”

Waititi has power now, and is known for using Indigenous interns wherever possible (“because there weren’t those opportunities when I was growing up”), making important introductions, offering feedback on scripts, and lending his name to projects through executive producer credits, too, which he did for Luther’s new feature film, Frybread Face and Me (2023).

He called Luther back from the set of Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) to offer advice on working with child actors – “Don’t box them into the characters you’ve ­created,” he said, “let them naturally figure it out on their own” – but it’s definitely harder to get Waititi on the phone these days. “He’s a little bitch,” Luther says, laughing. “Nah, there’s nothing like him. He’s a genius. You just knew he was going to be something. I just knew it. He’s my brother.“

I’ve been asked to explicitly avoid political questions in this interview, probably because Waititi tends to back so many causes, from child poverty and teenage suicide to a campaign protesting offshore gas and oil exploration near his tribal lands. But it’s hard to ignore his recent Instagram post, sharing a viral video about the Voice to Parliament referendum starring Indigenous Aussie rapper Adam Briggs. After all, we speak only two days after the proposal is defeated. “Yeah, sad to say but, Australia, you really shat the bed on that one,” Waititi says, pausing. “But go see my movie!”

About that movie – the early reviews aren’t great. IndieWire called it a misfire, too wrapped in its quirks to develop its arcs, with Waititi’s directorial voice drowning out his characters, while The Guardian called it “a shoddily made and strikingly unfunny attempt to tell an interesting story in an uninteresting way”. I want to know how he moves past that kind of criticism. “For a start, I never read reviews,” he says, concerned only with the opinion of people who paid for admission, never professional appraisals. “It’s not important to me. I know I’m good at what I do.”

Criticism that Indigenous concepts weren’t sufficiently explained in Next Goal Wins gets his back up a little, though. The film’s protagonist, Jaiyah Saelua, the first transgender football player in a FIFA World Cup qualifying match, is fa’afafine – an American Samoan identifier for someone with fluid genders – but there wasn’t much exposition of this concept in the film. “That’s not my job,” Waititi says. “It’s not a movie where I have to explain every facet of Samoan culture to an audience. Our job is to retain our culture, and present a story that’s inherently Polynesian, and if you don’t like it, you can go and watch any number of those other movies out there, 99 per cent of which are terrible.”

*notes: (there is video clip in the article)

Waititi sounds momentarily cranky, but he’s mostly unflappable and hilarious. He’s the kind of guy who prefers “Correctumundo bro!” to “Yes”. When our video connection is too laggy, he plays up to it by periodically pretending to be frozen, sitting perfectly still, mouth open, his big shifting eyeballs the only giveaway.

He’s at his best on set. Saelua sat next to him in Honolulu while filming the joyous soccer sequences. “He’s so chill. He just let the actors do their thing, giving them creative freedom, barely interjecting unless it was something important. His style matches the vibe of the Pacific people. We’re a very funny people. We like to laugh. He just fit perfectly.”

People do seem to love working alongside him, citing his ability to make productions fresh and unpredictable and funny. Chris Hemsworth once said that Waititi’s favourite gag is to “forget” that his microphone is switched on, so he can go on a pantomime rant for all to hear – usually about his disastrous Australian lead actor – only to “remember” that he’s wired and the whole crew is listening.

“I wouldn’t know about that, because I don’t listen to what other people say about anything – I’ve told you this,” Waititi says. “I just try to have fun when there’s time to have fun. And when you do that, and you bring people together, they’re more willing to go the extra mile for you, and they’re more willing to believe in the thing that you’re trying to do.”

Yes, he plays music between takes, and dances out of his director’s chair, but it’s really all about relaxing amid the immense pressure and intense privilege of making movies. “Do you know how hard it is just to get anything financed or green-lit, then getting a crew, ­getting producers to put all the pieces together, and then making it to set?” Waititi asks. “It’s a real gift, even to be working, and I feel like I have to remind ­people of that: enjoy this moment.”

Source: The Age

By: Konrad Marshall (December 1, 2023)

[acesw]

UTTU Part 1: The Magazine

Welcome back to A.D. doing mega lore posting because good god this will never get old. But anyways, this post will be about UTTU and not only about their magazine, but also about their Flash Gathering. (This also counts as my birthday gift for Sonetto since she likes being info-dumped, probably. Happy Birthday Sonetto!)

“Standing in the shadow, we tell all the stories which were once unknown, like a weaver in silence, or a moth light trap in the dark night.” - Pandora Wilson, UTTU Journalist

First, who even is UTTU?

UTTU Magazine is an arcanist magazine organization that releases stories about notable arcanists. According to Blonney, they are "the greatest fashion and arcanist information magazine." They operate globally as well as privately, going so far as to hide the physical identities of their reporters and their main headquarters.

There’s not a lot of things known about how UTTU works, but what we do have is information about their magazine and their Flash Gathering event, which we can start off from there. But first, what does the name mean?

The name ‘Uttu’ comes from the Mesopotamian goddess of the same name, one of Sumerian origin. She was associated with weaving (and spiders but the claim of Uttu being envisioned as a spider is limited).

They sell their magazines in the form of seasonal subscriptions, advising to only purchase the subscription and not much else. From there, they create the articles and send out monthly updates.

UTTU also hosts “Flash Gatherings” for the game’s events as a reading club, where the arcanists are invited to see the UTTU market situated in the area of where the in-game event takes place; they can read the Flash Journal and FLASH:FAME, obtain FAME cards from retails, and get rewards. I’ll get into this in Part 2.

First, we'll explore the magazine since there's so much questions surrounding them.

UTTU Magazine

Of course, the magazine is the main brand of the organization. The magazine has properties in which only arcanists are able to read it (speculation), and it has a scheduled self-update to release new articles/artworks.

The reason why we are able to see such a large amount of information is because from what can be told, Vertin is an avid collector of this media, even being titled “Top Collector” in the introduction of the Green Lake Flash Gathering.

Anyway, the magazine has a very interesting way of how it works, and they even have their own reading guide, including instructions of how to manage the magazine and activate the self-update.

Reader’s Guide and Self-Updating system

Welcome to UTTU. This is a magazine.

Don’t skip this page. Unlike those useless prefaces filled with boring platitudes, this one is important.

1. Don't doubt the truth of UTTU. We only tell true stories that happened to real arcanists.

2. You only need one copy of UTTU. After you make the seasonal subscription, the copy will update itself on 15th every month.

3. Whenever the copy updates itself, please place it below a cupboard or the firewood in a fireplace, but do not leave any fire or light. Then step back to 8.8 feet away and wait for 10-15 minutes. It is normal to hear the sounds of sewing and crawling during the update.

4. Don't be confused about the interviews of the artworks. Please note that anything can be an artwork: they can be alive, or dead. Whoever has a story to tell can be deemed an artwork.

5. You might smell a fine aroma from the pages while reading an interview. This is normal.

6. Do not be shocked by live photographs, and do not let any of them come in contact with dark coffee or matches.

8. Keep UTTU away from fire. This is an arcanum magazine and is definitely not fireproof.

9. Although it's not fireproof, UTTU is waterproof, but please do not soak it in water for too long. If you do so by mistake, please prepare enough insect repellent.

10. Don't ask where article 7 is. (lmao)

11. If you see any ads about nightmare recycle on the attached pages, do not call the number on it or make any attempt to catch those monsters. If your children report strange goings-on to you, comfort them with one extra milk candy before bedtime.

12. Try to enjoy reading UTTU.

The way one could get the magazine is buying a seasonal subscription, and upon receiving it you’d have to take care of it regularly since it is delicate. When updating, you put it in a place where you’d most commonly find spiders. That way, these arcane weavers can multiply and add to the tapestry. Additionally, this magazine seems to be a live and interactive type of media, which does explain the “live photographs” and the spiders.

Magazine Contents

Now, what are the contents of the UTTU Magazine?

First, we look at our Role Atlas. Yes, the Role Atlas is involved in this too.

There are categories of our roster that classify them by what they are: Beyond, awakened, arcanist, mixed, and infected. Now, what are each of these?

Beyond: an Arcanist with unexplainable origins not found within Arcanum (Ex: Voyager and aliEn T are aliens born of supernatural causes rather than arcanum. Jessica is a hybrid species of a deer woman (a spirit in Native American myth) and a changeling (a supernatural creature in European folklore) )

Awakened: an Arcanist who was once an object and has been given sentience one way or another (Ex: Sputnik was a regular space probe as the real Sputnik 1 who gained sentience when entering orbit).

Arcanist: A general term for those who are born with a different physiology that makes them able to sense and use arcanum, this is not limited only to human arcanists. (Ex: Door was born of arcanum on Earth and was always sentient thus is not a Beyond nor Awakened arcanist)

Mixed: People who both have the genetics or blood of a Human and an Arcanist. (Ex: Pavia and Satsuki were implied to be born of a human and an arcanist)

Infected: Currently unknown, no arcanists within this category.

They also have a “Bound Volume”, which serves as a gallery collection of arcanists that Vertin has and has not met. Those she (and we) haven't met will be obscured.

The “Artwork”

Artworks in this game are basically the arcanists that UTTU chooses to write about. As long as there is one to tell, they will conduct an interview and report on it. For each artwork they contain: Exhibition details, Item Collection, and Story/Interview.

First, the cover. Made by my friend and fellow lore chat dweller Rabies En., this is what can be made out of what each part of the exhibition details mean:

And of course, the “Completion” date is their birthday.

When it comes to describing their inspiration, it tends to be left on a vague note and left for speculation. While concluding that the first half is the title of the arcanist’s afflatus, the second half has left most people confused. My speculation is that this latter half is something that is related to their job, hobby, skill, or interest.

For example, Balloon Party’s inspiration is quite straightforward: “Remains of a Rock Formation [Mineral] Bones Balloon.” It directly showcases her afflatus and what she is inspired by, which also goes hand in hand as to what her arcane skill is. Meanwhile, Sonetto’s is more vague and unique: “Trained Loyal Dogs [Mineral] Foreign Affairs.” These reflect her upbringing and main interest respectively. With this theory, I concluded that the afflatus and inspiration boost one’s arcanist’s medium, which in turn helps fuel their arcane skill.

Second, the items. All arcanists have a section that lists personal items that closely pertain to their character, usually, these things would be visible on their person. The author analyzes them and relates them to their story and character. And depending on the item, they are priced by clear drops.

Additionally, if a character has a garment that isn't their I2 (e.g. event garments), they will have a special section for a new set of items. (Ex. Sonetto's Parade Anthem garment isn't exactly her I2 outfit, thus she has another set of items that relate to the uniform.)

Lastly, the Story and Interview; Each and every arcanist is interviewed by Pandora Wilson, another fellow arcanist and one whose face is obscured to the world other than a pair of lips.

The first story is a retelling of their background and upbringing, the second is a story about their daily life or lifestyle, and the third is a transcripted segment of their interview. The interview segments usually starts with Pandora greeting and/or asking a few questions towards the interviewee, but occasionally they also include the end of these interviews.

They highlight parts that make the interviewee unique; It exhibits their distinction, their personality, and most importantly, their overall character and the life they lead. These help us learn about the arcanists in a more deeper level the more we bond with them, as well as learning about the world they live in considering how all of them come from different times.

Now, our magazine analysis ends here. Feel free to ask questions and Part 2 is linked below!

Part 2: The Flash Gathering

[n-m-and-p-avocados-at-law]

Born Again Initial Thoughts Based On One Watch Last Night That I Probably Don't Remember Super Well Because I Didn't Sleep As Much As I Should Have

Spoilers below the cut! Also, this started out sort of coherent and then devolved into random thoughts. Sorry. I'll probably end up having more thoughts later on (especially if I rewatch this weekend like I want to), so I might make another post later. Also, I promise I'm better at forming a coherent thought for my actual job.

Is it a solid show? Yes. Is it as great of a show as the original? No. Is it fair to compare them? I can't decide. Do I think this show could get to the level of the new show? It's possible.

My understanding of what happened is that they initially wrote it to not have Foggy and Karen, they shot a bunch of stuff, the strikes happened, they overhauled things, and they tried to keep a lot of the original stuff they shot (I assume for cost reasons). I think that whole backstory informs a lot of the decisions. That backstory is the "wires behind the TV that I can still sort of see even though they tried to hid them."

I think that the first two episodes are more or less going however they originally planned the series. If they were committed to using that footage, something BIG had to explain why Foggy and Karen aren't there. It had to be big. And, unfortunately, due to timeline reasons, I don't think the Blip was an option.

I do think the decision to make the BIG thing killing Foggy was kind of lazy, and I do think they could've gotten more creative, but I get why they did it. Absent something big happening, it wouldn't make sense for Matt to try and split himself off from DD after Season 2, Defenders, and Season 3 were about him learning they're one and the same. It also wouldn't make sense for him and Karen to get that mad and split off from each other.

I also think killing Foggy was shoehorned in because it wouldn't make sense to put Matt back at rock bottom right after Season 3. I realize the fact that they ever entertained not having Foggy and Karen means I'm giving Marvel/the writers too much credit, but here we are.

All that being said, I don't think Foggy is dead permanently. I'm not sure if it's a fake-out or if he's going to come back from the dead, but I don't think it's permanent. Fake-out is hard because Matt can feel when someone dies (paaaaaaiiinful thought). Although Daredevil is a more grounded MCU show, people have come back to life. The main reason I think they're bringing him back is this interview where Charlie Cox is talking about how excited he was to text Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll that they were coming back. I just can't see him being that excited for the 10 minutes we saw.

I will say I might be willing to forgive the writers for this if we get to see Matt getting Foggy back. And not in the same way he got Elektra back, where they were fighting, and she came back wrong, and she didn't remember him. I want them to give Foggy back fully, no stops, and let Matt have the most joyous moment of his life. Give him a miracle where someone comes back for once.

I would also like Elektra back, though, thank you.

ANYWAY, the scene itself was okay. Others have said this, but it felt rushed, and the DD/Bullseye fight didn't hit as hard as the Season 3 fights. It felt like they sort of slapped it on top.

I will say Karen's reactions were a highlight of the scene. I've seen a lot of people talking about how scared she is when she hears Dex hit the ground because it could mean she lost both Matt and Foggy. But in my mind, I'm also thinking about how she knows something devastating happened either way. Because if it's Dex on the ground, it means Matt killed him, and she knows how horrible that would be for him.

I would like some explanation as to why Dex didn't die. I know he has a fancy new spine, but that was a long fall.

Geez, I've written so much and I'm still on the first 10 minutes of Ep. 1. The rest of this will probably bounce around more, I'm just the most caught up on the Foggy thing still.

I actually don't hate that Karen is gone for the moment, other than the fact that it means we don't get that much DAW screentime. I am ALLLLL for the slow burn. And they set them up to be REAL flirty in the beginning with their friend code thing. I have faith Karen is coming back.

I can't decide if I think it makes sense for Matt and Karen to be so hands-off in regards to Fisk's campaign. A part of me thinks Foggy dying is big enough to justify it. A part of me thinks that they didn't think he'd actually win. Not based on real events, what are you talking about? A part of me thinks it's wildly out of character. I don't know, but here we are.

Matt asking for Dex to be sentenced to the fullest extent of the law is such a big thing. Based on the fact that Matt is against killing, I think he's probably generally against life without parole. It makes sense because it's Foggy, but OMG.

I feel like I'm having a hard time grasping who the new characters are at this point. I think that's one of the things that's making me feel like this isn't quite as good. In Season 1, for example, I feel like you already know Foggy so well just from that initial phone call with Matt and their initial interaction with that realtor lady. I don't feel like we got that with these new characters. However, we still have a long way to go, so I'm open and excited to get to know them. In particular, I've heard a lot about Kirsten from comic fans, so excited for her in general.

Others have said this, but it is quite funny that Matt has begun dating a therapist instead of going to therapy.

The fact that Heather is now a marriage counselor for the Fisks is also very funny. At the moment. I do think she's going to die.

I was excited about the Spanish with Hector. I hope we get more, to the degree we did in Season 1 with Mrs. Cardenas (or even more).

Someone pointed out Matt was wearing his glasses inside. I think in general Matt feels off. Not in terms of characterization, just generally. On the surface, he seems okay. But everything feels a little forced to me, like he's having to put a little more effort in. He can't relax and take of his armor in his own home.

Him carrying around the funeral program is devastating.

His decision to not go into the church was so sad. I'm reaaaaallllly hoping Maggie is back at some point. For now, it would make sense if he was avoiding her and God at the same time.

That last scene of Episode 2 was crazy. He was so willing to let himself get beat up. And then they crossed a line, so he had to cross a line.

I like the Punisher foreshadowing with the tattoo. I also think it's interesting that it's something that Matt wouldn't be able to pick up on.

Lawyer!Matt stressed me out a little because it made me think about work, but I'll be okay.

Shifting gears a little bit, it sucks that Fisk getting elected is believable given real-life events.

The Fisk/Vanessa thing is...intriguing. I don't know how I feel at this point.

BB Urich! So excited for BB Urich!

That being said, KEEP BEN'S NAME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH, WILSON!

Who is the little guy from Wednesday at Heather's book signing? I feel like I didn't see anything about him in spoiler stuff.

I miss the old theme. I'm not sure how I feel about the music choices on the whole. I did like the Nick Cave song, though. I could get on board if they used Red Right Hand at some point. I do think that song is heavily associated with Peaky Blinders, though, so I don't know if they'll go there.

I also feel like the way they shot the old show was more interesting/better.

Where is Brett Mahoney? Where is Ellison? I feel like those are also two people who wouldn't let this Fisk stuff slide.

I LOVED the scene in the diner, that felt the most like the old show.

Fisk bringing up his father was interesting.

They packed A LOT into two episodes. I think that they set things up to be promising. There were a lot of seeds planted that I think could go in very interesting/satisfying directions.

I would like an explanation of what happened to everyone during the Blip, thank you.

What is the timeline with Echo/She-Hulk?

I almost forgot, but I'm glad we got a little of Josie.

What happened to Marci? Also, you can't tell me Marci wouldn't have been at that sentencing even if she and Foggy were broken up.

All in all, didn't love it as much as I was hoping I would. I think I would have liked it more if it wasn't living in the shadow of the original show. That being said, I do think there is a lot of potential for it to improve, and I'm ready to go on the ride.

[trekscribbles]

The Bushwhack Job: Bonus Chapter Part 3 (The Actual End)

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Bonus Scene Part 1 Bonus Scene Part 2

(Disclaimer: This is a relatively rough draft and subject to change when I post to AO3. I'm just overly excited and want to share what I have.)

So it's been a hot minute, but real life interrupted my plans and put this project on the backburner. But the new season of Redemption has me all up in my feels, so I came back to finally finally finish this. I hope it addresses some of the things people were looking for in an epilogue!

The call came 10 months later.

Actually, Eliot missed the call itself, and she hadn’t left a message—instead, he found two texts in the early morning hours after a long night out on a con.

Can’t talk. There’s trouble. Can you be here tomorrow?

Then, immediately after that one:

Please come.

Eliot waited just long enough to call Nate, who assured him that they’d be able to wrap up the rest of the con without him, and then Hardison, who got him a ticket on the next flight to Oklahoma City before he reached the airport. He’d called Sunny—no answer—and J.B.—no answer—and even Miguel—but it was before 6 a.m. there, and Eliot hoped that was the reason he couldn’t reach them.

He didn’t want to think about the alternative, but he’d spent most of his life doing what he didn’t want to do, and the worst scenarios filled his mind as the airplane sped too slowly through the air. Sunny’s newfound wealth was common knowledge now—she’d done interviews about it, highlighting the historical importance of the find and even donating some of it to local museums. She’d talked about the new shelter she was building thanks to the funds. Lancaster’s company had collapsed, but there were other thieves who would be more than willing to take advantage of a single, kindly woman.

And Eliot knew better than most how easy it was to make a death look like an accident.

The minute his plane touched down, he called again, leaving a string of increasingly aggressive voice mails when he failed to reach anyone. He checked in with Nate as he waited for a cab, swallowed his anxiety when Nate repeated that everything was fine on their end, and spat out Sunny’s address to the bewildered driver as his mind whirred through various plans of attack.

The car pulled up outside Sunny’s house, and Eliot dropped a wad of money in the front seat and tore out onto the sidewalk before they’d stopped moving. The house was quiet. Nothing moved inside as Eliot sprinted up the steps, and no one came to answer his barely controlled knocking. Eliot checked his phone again—still nothing—and lowered his shoulder to break down the door.

It opened a few seconds before he threw himself forward, which left him standing awkwardly off-balance as Miguel peered at him from the entryway. “You made it!” he said, blinking in combined surprise and, surprisingly, pleasure. “When we didn’t hear back from you, we thought—”

“Where’s Sunny?” Eliot demanded. He stayed where he was, adrenaline warring with cautious relief at Miguel’s presence.

Miguel tilted his head. “At the opening. It starts in an hour—I just stopped to pick up her cellphone. It died overnight, so she left it here to charge.”

“Then… she’s all right?”

“Why wouldn’t she be?” Miguel asked.

“I got a text from Sunny saying she was in trouble.”

Miguel blinked. “Oh. Oh, you thought—” He let out a bark of laughter, which had the contradictory effect of both comforting and irritating Eliot’s nerves. “No, everyone is fine. You misunderstood the text.”

“I did not misunderstand the text,” Eliot gritted out. “She said there was trouble and asked me to be here today.”

“I know what it said,” Miguel said. “I sent it.”

Eliot stared at him until he sighed and opened the door wider to let him in. “Come on. There’s some coffee left, and we have a little time. I’ll explain.”

Grudgingly, Eliot followed him into the house and sat at the familiar tiny table in the little kitchen. He let Miguel pour him a cup of coffee and then sat back in his chair, demanding answers with his silence.

“Okay,” Miguel said. “Sunny’s shelter is opening today, and she’s got a little ceremony planned; reception, press, everything. She sent you an invitation weeks ago, but we never heard back.”

“I didn’t get it,” Eliot said.

Miguel shrugged. “You’re out of town a lot, we get it—maybe it got lost in the mail or something, I dunno. Anyway, Sunny was going to call you about it, but she’s been trying to get things finalized for the opening, and the city council hasn’t been making it easy.” He broke off, his expression sheepish. “She asked me to get ahold of you.”

“And you thought 2 a.m. the day before the opening was the best time?” Eliot tried to keep the growl out of his voice, but the faint smirk on Miguel’s lips said he hadn’t quite succeeded.

“I forgot,” he said, swirling his coffee in his cup. “I didn’t remember until last night, and since I didn’t have my phone on me, I used Sunny’s. But hers was almost dead, so I only had time to send a text.”

“That mentioned nothing about the ceremony,” Eliot said.

“Well, I figured you knew about that,” Miguel said. “I know Sunny’s told you about it, even if you didn’t get the invitation. And I explained that Sunny couldn’t talk on the phone because she was dealing with some issues with the city.”

“No.” Eliot drew out the word, his eyes hard. “What you said was ‘Can’t talk, there’s trouble, can you be here tomorrow?’”

Miguel laughed. “Man, you’re even more paranoid than I remember. It’s not my fault you assumed…”

Eliot opened the message and held out his phone, and Miguel trailed off as he read it. “Hmm,” he said, glancing up when he finished. “Maybe I was a little vague. I was distracted.”

“I thought she was hurt,” Eliot snapped.

“But it got you here in time, didn’t it?” Miguel said brightly. “That’s the important part. Hurry up, we still have work to do.”

Eliot took his time with his coffee, making Miguel wait while he called to tell Nate Sunny was safe. It wasn’t much in terms of payback, but the impatient tapping of Miguel’s fingers on the counter was somehow more gratifying than annoying.

“Take your time,” Nate was saying, and Eliot brought his attention back to the call. “We’re all finished up here. No sense in rushing back.”

“Okay.” He glanced at Miguel and set his mug on the table. “Have Hardison look into our mail.”

“Why?”

“Sunny sent an invitation. Might’ve just gotten lost, but…”

“Right.” Nate was silent for a heartbeat, thinking—weighing Eliot’s paranoia against his own. “I’ll have him check it out.”

“And tell Parker not to touch the cookie dough in the freezer,” Eliot added.

“I’ll tell her.”

“Or my baker’s chocolate.”

“Fine.”

“Or—”

“Eliot,” Nate said. “I’ll keep her out of the kitchen. Don’t you have an opening to go to?”

Eliot sighed and ended the call. “All right,” he told Miguel, finishing his coffee. “Lead the way.”

The Elizabeth Classen Homeless Shelter stood on a freshly mown lawn, its doors open, its walls covered in welcome banners. A crowd of reporters waited outside, talking and posing and doing mic checks. Eliot looked them over as he followed Miguel to the door, filing away details that probably didn’t matter.

Habit and residual anxiety kept him from dismissing them completely.

Miguel led him into a reception area, and there, finally, was Sunny. She was on the phone at a large desk, her back to the door. “I sent that permit weeks ago,” she said, her tone stiff and impatient. “I have my own copy right here. Yes, I can bring another down to the office tomorrow morning, but I’m not delaying the opening. We’ve done everything we needed to do, and I won’t keep people out of a perfectly good building just because you lost my paperwork. No. No, I will not. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She slammed the phone down and sighed, then turned when she heard their footsteps. “Miguel, where have you been? I sent you for one thing—”

Her eyes widened when they met Eliot’s, and a smile as bright as her namesake broke over her face. She wore a pale blue dress with a cream jacket, and his yellow scarf was tied neatly at her throat. She looked tired, but her voice was as strong as ever. “You made it!”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Eliot said, shooting a glance at Miguel as he stepped forward to give Sunny a hug. She wrapped her arms around him, but something in the way her fingers gripped his shoulders made him pull back. “Is everything okay?”

“Now that you’re here?” Sunny said, beaming. “Everything is perfect. It’s good to see you, sugar.”

Eliot gave her a squeeze and stepped aside so he could talk to her while keeping an eye on the door. “Problem with the permits?”

She scoffed. “Nothing important. Just, every time I turn around, there’s another piece of paperwork missing, or a signature I need to chase down, or some problem with the mortgage. But it’s not stopping us. We’re opening today, paperwork or no.”

That brought his suspicion roaring back, though at least now he didn’t have the helpless anxiety to distract him. Sunny wasn’t alone. Hardison could take care of the paperwork from Portland, and if anyone tried to interfere with the opening, then…

Well. That’s why Eliot was there.

“Where’s J.B.?” Miguel asked, handing over Sunny’s phone.

She hooked a thumb back toward the door. “He’s out corralling the media. Seems like we’ve got every news station in the state out there. Must be a slow week.”

“I’ll give him a hand,” Eliot offered, and Sunny grinned.

“That might be a good idea. He was losing his patience when I left him.”

Eliot laughed to hide a burst of alarm. If J.B. was on edge, then there was a good chance there was more going on than Sunny was saying—possibly more than she knew. He left Sunny and Miguel at the desk and scanned the lawn as he reached the door, his gaze jumping between groups of people until he found a solitary man standing near a podium. It was set up before the largest welcome banner, and the reporters had started arranging themselves in a semicircle before it. Eliot slipped through the door and walked unhurriedly away from the crowd, circling around the building to come at the podium from behind.

J.B.’s attention was on the press, and the stiff set of his shoulders confirmed Eliot’s suspicions.

“Expecting trouble?” Eliot asked quietly.

J.B. turned his head, grinning at Eliot without looking at him. “Guess Miguel got ahold of you after all.”

“Came as soon as I could.”

J.B. nodded, sobering. “Glad to have you. Sunny doesn’t think there’s a problem, but I’m not so sure.”

“Does it have anything to do with her disappearing permits?” Eliot asked.

A reporter noticed Eliot’s arrival and motioned to her camera man; J.B. lowered his voice. “It might.”

“Anything else?”

“She’s been getting threats,” J.B. muttered. “Letters, phone calls—nothing traceable. She only told me this morning, but I guess it’s been going on for weeks.”

Anger twisted through the worry in Eliot’s stomach, fraying the edges into something harder to control. “What did they say?”

“She wouldn’t tell me all of it.” J.B. made a scoffing sound and turned his head, cutting off the reporters’ view of his lips. “But she gave me the latest letter. It warned her not to go through with the opening, that this area isn’t safe, and that there will be consequences if she ignores them again.”

“Who do you think it’s from?”

J.B. hitched a shoulder. “Kind of seems like someone wants us to think it’s gang-related. Sunny said there were a few mentions of turf wars and weapons, but Miguel doesn’t think that’s credible. He has a few connections, and he says none of the gangs are interested in the shelter except as that—a shelter.”

“Then who?” Eliot pressed.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

Eliot didn’t need to ask if J.B. thought the threat was real—his stance told him that—and he made another surreptitious glance around the crowd. It was a usual collection of reporters and camera operators, with a handful of suits, probably local government staff, rounding out their numbers. Nothing obviously amiss, but the buzz of adrenaline running under Eliot’s skin told him not to let down his guard.

His pocket vibrated, and he pulled out his phone just long enough to read Hardison’s message—No issues—before the crowd turned to watch Sunny stepping out of the building with Miguel at her side.

“Do you want the front or the back?” J.B. murmured.

Eliot stuffed his phone back into his pocket. “You see anyone who looks like trouble?”

“No,” J.B. said. “But I got a bad feeling.”

“Me too. I’ll stay up here.”

J.B. nodded and slipped out into the crowd as Sunny made her way forward, smiling and waving at a handful of people she must have recognized. Eliot stepped back to make room for a man in a blue suit, who met Sunny at the podium and shook her hand enthusiastically.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said into the microphone, beaming as he drew Sunny forward. “As the head of the Homeless Alliance, I’m so pleased to welcome you here today. This building represents months of tireless work by many people, but no one has put in more time or effort than this woman here. Please allow me to introduce June Davidge, founder of the Elizabeth Classen Homeless Shelter, and the reason we’re all standing here today. Miss Davidge!”

He shook Sunny’s hand again and yielded the podium while the crowd clapped politely. Miguel moved aside and sent Eliot a questioning look behind her back.

“Thank you, Mr. Brackett,” Sunny said. “And thank you to everyone with the Homeless Alliance. I’m grateful for your support in making this dream a reality. It’s been a long time coming, and truth be told, I’m relieved the day is finally here. If I have to sign one more form, I think I’ll cry.”

The crowd laughed, and Sunny straightened a little pile of notecards on the podium and cleared her throat. “I want to thank the Homeless Alliance and all the folks with the Key to Home Partnership, as well as everyone at the Governor’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, for all your support in helping to build this shelter. You’ve all made the process so much easier, and I’m grateful for your hard work.”

More applause, which Sunny accepted with a nod. “Most of all, though,” she said, turning to reach a hand toward Miguel. “I want to thank my boys.” 

Miguel tried to dodge, but she caught his arm and dragged him forward. “First,” she said, trapping him against the podium with one large arm. “My Miguel, for standing by me through everything, and for all the help and comfort you’ve given me all these years. You’ve been the heart of this operation for a long time, and I never would have been able to do this without you.”

Amid the ensuing cheers, Miguel wrapped her in a hug and kissed her cheek. “Ay, jefa,” he breathed, squeezing her hands before backing up to stand by Eliot again. “Anything for you.”

She beamed and turned back to the podium. “I also want to thank J.B.,” she continued. “For being a friend when I had so few to lean on, and for keeping me safe when you had no reason to step into my problems. Without you, we wouldn’t be standing here now.”

From the back of the yard, J.B. ducked his head and shoved his hands in his pockets. Eliot tried and failed to keep a smile off his face.

Until Sunny turned to him.

“And finally,” she said, her voice softened by the distance she’d put between her and the microphone. “For his sizeable donation to the construction of this shelter, and for all the help he gave leading up to this moment, I want to thank my very dear friend…”

A blur of movement over Sunny’s shoulder drew Eliot’s attention, and the rest of her words faded out of his hearing. A car had turned the corner, its tires squealing, light flashing off its tinted windshield.

The barrels of two guns stabbed through the open windows. 

Eliot’s arms were around Sunny before she realized anything was wrong. The crowd flinched, and in his peripherals, he saw J.B. turning to face the street as he pulled Sunny down behind the podium.

The guns went off together, one shot following the other in almost the same moment. Someone screamed—Sunny gasped against his shoulder as he stretched out to cover her—Miguel hit the ground beside them. Another pair of shots split the air. Eliot lifted his head, scanning the walls of the building.

Smooth.

Miguel’s hand joined his on Sunny’s shoulder, a wordless promise to stay with her, and Eliot leaned back to see around the podium.

“J.B.,” he called.

Across the yard, J.B. was the only one still on his feet. “I heard it!” he yelled back.

The car sped past, both guns still firing, but Eliot stayed where he was and took in every detail he could before the car disappeared around the next corner.

Then he looked back at the crowd. In seconds he found what he was looking for—the disruption in the pattern. Where everyone else had sprawled over the grass with their hands over their heads, one woman was on her knees and facing the podium.

She noticed Eliot’s attention and looked away, but it was too late. He’d seen everything he needed to.

J.B. jogged toward him, his phone in his hand. “Sunny?” he asked.

“Miguel's with her.”

“I’ll call the police,” J.B. said. “Did you get the plates?”

“Yep.”

“You got this?”

Eliot nodded at the woman. “Yep.”

“Then I’ll leave the rest to you.”

The people around them were starting to sit up, calling out to one another, asking who was hurt. Eliot ignored them and made his way toward the woman. She was still on her knees, smoothing out the pencil skirt of her grey business dress, her eyes on the grass. Eliot stopped before her, folding his arms, waiting for her to look up.

At that point, there was no ignoring him. She raised her head cautiously, her face flushed. “Are they gone?”

Eliot tilted his head. “You tell me.”

“I don’t—” she sputtered. “How should I know?”

“You were the only one who didn’t go flat when the shooting started,” Eliot said.

Her eyes flashed. “You didn’t either. I saw you standing there when the car went past—you didn’t even try to get out of the way.”

“Didn’t need to,” he said. “There was no echo.”

The people nearby had started muttering, and a ring was forming around them. The woman scoffed and brushed at her skirt again. “What echo?”

“Those shots were blanks,” Eliot said. The murmurs grew louder, but when Eliot didn’t try to talk over them, they quieted to listen. “Me and J.B. can tell the difference in the sound of the report, but that’s not something I’d expect most civilians to be able to hear. How’d you know there wasn’t any danger?”

“I didn’t,” the woman insisted. She stood, and Eliot put out a hand to help her up before folding his arms again. She jerked out of his grasp and glared at him. “I couldn’t! And it doesn’t make any sense—why would the shooters use blanks? We know there’s a growing gang presence here. It’s a dangerous neighborhood, and—”

“Dangerous?” Eliot repeated. He turned his head until he found Brackett, the blue-suited head of the Homeless Alliance. “Is there a gang presence here?”

The man looked bewildered. “I wasn’t aware of any—”

“This is my ward,” the woman interrupted. “I know what’s happening here better than anyone.”

Eliot lifted his eyebrows. “Really? Then you serve on the city council?”

“I do,” she said proudly.

“Did you know that Sunny’s been getting threats?” Eliot asked. “Someone tried to pass them off as gang-related, but our contacts say there’s no connection. Why would a gang want to stop someone from opening a homeless shelter?” More questions rippled around them, but Eliot ignored them and went on. “The timing’s a bit suspicious, too—just this morning, Sunny had to deal with another paperwork issue that should’ve been handled weeks ago. Don’t suppose you know anything about that?”

The woman was silent. 

“And her mail’s gotten lost,” Eliot went on. “She sent out invitations to the opening, but I never got mine. I already had a friend of mine check that our mail wasn’t the problem.” He held up his phone, showing off Hardison’s No issues text. “For an event as big and as personal as this, you’d think there’d be a few more of Sunny’s friends, but all I see are reporters. Did anyone here get their invitation in the mail?”

His question was met with confused stares and shaking heads. Eliot looked back at the woman. “Not a single invitation was delivered? Sure seems like someone’s been trying to delay the opening. Maybe someone on the city council?”

“I didn’t—” she tried, but her voice came out in a whisper. She glanced at the cameras, which were now trained on her, and turned back on Eliot. “I didn’t do anything.”

“A gang wouldn’t have used blanks,” Eliot said softly. “But a councilwoman… she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to get hurt. She’d’ve just wanted to make Sunny rethink opening the shelter here. Maybe you had plans for this property. Maybe you’d have even offered to buy Sunny out after the shooting, huh?”

The woman paled, and Eliot lowered his voice. “Too bad for you—Sunny don’t scare easy.”

“Sarah,” Brackett said, his expression pained. “Is this true?”

 “You have no proof,” she said. Her voice was strained, and she cast around once more for support.

She found none. The lawn was silent—silent enough to hear sirens fast approaching, growing louder with every passing moment.

“I want a deal,” she said at last.

“That ain’t my department,” Eliot said, his voice too soft for anyone but her to hear. “You tell me no one else will bother Sunny, and I’ll make sure you get to the safety of a police station. You don’t, and I’ll tell the people you’ve been hoping to pin this on exactly what your plan was.”

Her eyes went wide, and after a moment of panicked stillness, she nodded.

The reporters went wild. A frenzy of questions rose up, but Eliot ignored them, ducking his head to avoid the cameras until the police arrived. Then he handed her over without a word and made his way to the podium, where J.B. was waiting with Sunny and Miguel. Miguel had his hand on Sunny’s arm, but a glance at her face told Eliot it wasn’t for support.

“Her secretary swore we’d open today,” Sunny snarled. “She didn’t even have the guts to lie to my face about it. Why would she do this?”

Eliot clicked his tongue and readjusted her scarf, which had gone askew when he tackled her. “The locals will get it out of her. She’s hoping for a deal.”

“She doesn’t deserve one.” Sunny drew in a long breath, watching the arrest with narrowed eyes. “If you weren’t here…”

“J.B. heard the same thing I did,” Eliot said. “You’d have been just fine. Miguel, did you get a look at the car?”

Miguel nodded. “I know all the rides the big players use in this area… that car wasn’t one of ‘em.”

“You may have to put that in writing,” Eliot said apologetically.

“Eh.” Miguel shrugged, his hand still on Sunny’s arm. “Better me than you. They’re gonna start questioning people soon. You might want to find another place to be.”

Sunny sighed and reached out to pat Eliot’s cheek. “He’s right. Don’t leave without saying goodbye, though, all right?”

“I’ll stick around,” he promised.

She smiled and stepped back, gesturing to J.B. “You go along, too. Make sure he sees it.”

Eliot shot him a questioning look, but he just salulted and ducked behind the podium, leading the way around the building to a back door, through the lobby, down a hallway, and finally into a wide room filled with tables. It was bright and clean, exactly the way Eliot expected a cafeteria run by Sunny to look, and he smiled.

“Not bad,” he said, craning his neck to see into the kitchen beyond a serving counter. “What kind of appliances did she—”

He stopped, blinking, as he took in the words painted in bold letters over the counter.

Spencer’s Kitchen

Eliot swallowed, then swallowed again, and J.B. folded his arms and leaned his shoulder against the wall. “Pretty nice, huh? I did the brushwork myself.”

“I don’t understand,” Eliot said.

J.B. raised an eyebrow. “I thought your memory had come back. Now you don’t recognize your own name?”

“That’s not what—I didn’t—” Eliot broke off, glaring at the grin on J.B.’s face. “Why?”

J.B. waved around the room. “The money from the Classen find got us started, but it wasn’t enough to fund the whole project. Your donation got us the rest of the way.”

“That wasn’t just me,” Eliot said. “The others helped, too—Nate, Hardison, Sophie, they all sent money, and Parker—I mean, Parker dropped off a bag of diamonds, but we got that straightened out, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, that was fun.” J.B.’s smile widened. “But Sunny’s been talking to Nate about this for months. We wanted it to be a surprise. Nate thought it would be best not to use your full name, and since we knew you as Spencer first...”

Eliot shook his head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” J.B. said. “It’s just a wall.”

But it wasn’t just a wall, and J.B. knew it. And Sunny knew it—and Nate knew it, or he wouldn’t have agreed to keep it secret when Sunny brought it up. J.B.’s eyes were still on him, and there was a part of him that bristled at the knowledge that he was so known, but he resisted the urge to withdraw.

There was nothing to hide from here.

“A lot of us don’t get monuments,” he said at last.

J.B.’s expression softened. “That’s what I told Sunny. She put my name on the shelter’s clinic, and I said there were others who deserved the honor more. She told me I didn’t get to decide what she named anything, since it was her building, and that she’d honor whoever she wanted to honor. And if I didn’t like it, I didn’t have to look at it.”

Eliot laughed. He copied J.B.’s stance, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, and breathed out the rest of the tension still coiled in his muscles. “What’d Miguel get?”

“Men’s dormitories,” J.B. said. “And I went ahead and painted Sunny’s name on the women’s hall when she said she was going to reuse Elizabeth Classen. Nate said not to put anyone else’s names on the building or the paperwork—he didn’t want any connections leading back to your team—but I hid a few things in the trim work. A diamond for Parker, a laptop for Hardison. Intertwined hearts for Sophie and Nate.”

Warmth pooled in Eliot’s chest. “Didn’t know you were a painter.”

“Sure,” J.B. said. “Picked it up a ways back.”

They stayed in the building while the police questioned the witnesses outside, drifting through the rooms and finishing up any chores they could find to do. When the lawn cleared and Sunny and Miguel came inside, Eliot accepted Sunny’s offer of a tour and happily followed her back through the building, basking in the pride in her voice as she described each room’s features. He even managed to thank her for the kitchen without embarrassing himself in front of Miguel, who bragged about his larger wing of rooms until Sunny told him to stop talking. J.B. trailed them like a shadow, inspecting vents and windows and hidden spaces and nodding at Eliot whenever Sunny turned away. When they were both satisfied that the building was safe, Eliot offered to cook a celebratory meal, and they returned to Sunny’s house in a tangle of relief and laughter. The worry that had obviously been weighing on Sunny was gone, along with J.B.’s anxiety and Miguel’s work load, and Eliot was ready to just enjoy their company without the fear of something bigger hanging over their heads.

They bundled into the tiny kitchen, refusing to leave when Eliot tried to claim the space for meal prep, and ended up pressing between and around one another as they divided up the tasks. Eliot put together a list of ingredients for Miguel to pick up, and Sunny washed vegetables for J.B. to chop while Eliot measured out flour and butter. When Miguel returned, he sat at the table and watched unashamedly as the others worked, until Eliot set a bowl of salad ingredients in front of him and told him to mix. Miguel complained, J.B. teased, Sunny threatened to kick them all out—and Eliot listened in contentment as he cooked. They ate in the kitchen, Sunny and Miguel at the table with Eliot and J.B. leaning against the counters, enjoying platesful of chicken florentine, steamed asparagus, garlic bread, and salad. Miguel insisted the salad was the best part of the meal. Eliot just looked at Sunny and smiled.

Later that night, when the kitchen was clean and the rest of the house was dark and quiet, Eliot sat on the bed in his room—“Always yours, sugar, any time you need it,” Sunny had told him—and dialed Nate’s number.

Nate answered on the first ring. “How’d the opening go?”

“A little excitement,” Eliot answered. “There are some things I’d like Hardison to keep an eye on before I’m ready to leave.”

“I’ll tell him,” Nate said. When Eliot didn’t answer, he added, “Is there something else?”

Eliot leaned forward to rest his left elbow on his knee. “The kitchen.”

“It was Sunny’s idea.”

“You went along with it.”

“Yeah.”

Eliot sighed. “I appreciate the sentiment. Really. But I didn’t do—”

“Eliot,” Nate said, and then paused as he thought through whatever he’d been about to say. He cleared his throat and went on in a slightly strained voice. “We talked about a funeral. Sophie brought it up, back when—when we found out about the bodies in the LanCast building. Sophie said you deserved to be honored.”

Eliot inhaled, straightening, but Nate wasn’t done. “You’re not likely to get that,” he continued. “I’ve been thinking about the talk we had, about what to do if things go bad on a job. About leaving your body behind.”

“You promised,” Eliot said sharply.

“I know.” Something that sounded like glass clinked against a table on Nate’s end. “I will. I don’t know when it will happen, or how, but you were right. It will probably be bloody. And depending on how bad it goes, you may not get a funeral.” He broke off, and Eliot could hear him swallowing. “Or a grave.”

“I don’t care about that,” Eliot said.

“No,” Nate said. “I know. But the others do. And if they can’t go to your grave—if they can’t say goodbye that way, then at least they can go to Sunny. They can go to a cafeteria with your name on it, and they can stand in the kitchen you helped build, and they can watch it feed the people you helped provide for. They deserve that… and so do you.”

The house settled, its pipes creaking in the soft, relenting way of a man letting out a long breath. Eliot was completely still. “And you?” he rasped.

Nate let out a dry chuckle. “Not me. I’m going first, long before the rest of you.”

Eliot heard the words he didn’t say, heavy in the silence: I can’t go through that again.

He closed his eyes. “I’ll be home in a few days.”

“Good.” Nate took a breath, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded almost normal. “Say hi to Sunny for us. And try to relax, all right?”

An uneven smile quirked up one side of Eliot’s mouth. “All right. You too.”

“Us too.”

Eliot hung up and laid back on the bed, letting his legs hang over the side as he stared up at the ceiling. His body was tired after the travel and anxiety and lack of sleep, but he wanted to stay awake and listen to the silence of the house and the distant traffic. In the morning, they’d go back to the shelter to welcome its first occupants, and Eliot would christen the kitchen with its first meal. He imagined the words on the wall, his name painted painstakingly by hand over the place where hundreds would eat, and thought about the symbols J.B. had hidden throughout the building. 

It wasn’t bad, as far as legacies went. Eliot closed his eyes, breathing in the smell of clean sheets and the lingering scents from the kitchen, and allowed himself to rest.

The End

[fersauce47]

About Will Wood's "The Normal Album"

Yesterday on my main blog I said “I personally think that ‘Love me, Normally’ should have been the final song of The Normal Album. Have it switch places with Memento Mori, because it better encapsulates and summarizes the album.” because I was relistening to The Normal Album. 

I’ve been relistening to Will Wood a lot recently. Over the past couple days I’ve relistened to most of his music, and also listened to the remake of The Normal Album: The New Normal! Will Wood and his Tapeworms have been on repeat in my headphones for the past 2 weeks, and I’m sure everyone I know personally has gotten tired of hearing about him. Anyway, I thought it was high time to review one of my all time favorite albums. 

The Normal Album was released on July 10th, separately from the Will Wood and the Tapeworm albums. Most of the songs on this album have been in the works for years. It is 45 minutes long, and has 10 songs. The songs are mostly long. The shortest is “The most important thing in the world” at 2 minutes and 49 seconds. Though the longest song is “Suburbia Overture” at 6 minutes and 16 seconds. The average song on the album is in the 4-5 minute zone. 

I’d recommend this album to my friends, without a doubt. For those of you who don’t know of Will Wood’s music, he can be included in the same “Autistic gay people music” category as people like Lemon Demon, Tally Hall, Jack Stauber, Bo Burnham, etc. 

He has a very unique sound. He mixes Jazz, Rock, Blues, and Indie campfire guitar music all into one kick ass discography. All of his music is a unique experience, and I personally don’t see how someone couldn’t like it. Actually, it is quite overstimulating. Here’s the summary of Will Wood: Imagine really Jazzy rock music that’s overstimulating as hell. His music has humour and dark undertones, and I love it for that. 

That being said, I realize that a lot of the people I find myself interacting with here on Tumblr are fellow Will Wood glazers. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you already know WAY too much about Will Wood’s music, because he’s been your hyperfixation for a good little bit. 

I love Will Wood in interviews. He has a certain vibe to him, and whenever he gets to speaking about something that he actually cares about, he’s one hell of a speaker. There’s a lot of clips of him sitting like a bisexual and vibing while being interrogated, such clips are my guilty pleasures. God, I love his style. 

You know, I should probably talk about The Normal Album itself. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? The album is about the societal push on people to be normal instead of just to be. It’s about desperately trying to fit in. I have to thank @rowansinjune for educating me on that in the comments of my post about Love Me, Normally. 

As per usual, I’ve picked out the top 5 songs for the people who can’t be bothered to listen to music at its finest. I will say that if you want to get the entire view of the album’s theme, you need to listen to the other songs. These ones are mostly my personal favorites. 

1- Second Sight Seer: Second Sight Seer is very jazzy. It’s one of those songs that convey the album’s theme, although it’s not inherently obvious. 

2- Laplace’s Angel: This might be the best song on the album IMO. It also sounds the most like a Will Wood and the Tapeworms song, specifically from Self-ish. 

3- I/Me/Myself: This song is more comical than most of the others. It’s about a trans woman, but as far as I’ve heard, the trans community not only approves of it, but loves how well the lyrics handle the subject. Correct me if I’m wrong, please. 

4- Love me, Normally: I’ve already talked about how I think that this should’ve been the real end to the album, since it encapsulates the theme so well. To me, it sounds the most like a traditional rock and roll song. 

5- BlackBoxWarrior: This song feels oddly ominous. Between the piano and Will’s tone, it seems like it could be a really fun villain’s theme. 

In conclusion, listen to Will Wood! Any song will do, they’re all great! 

Well, that was fun, goodbye!

[fansplaining]

IWTV is the best show on TV. In today’s media environment, it is singular to be able to enjoy a show without the toxicity of the large fandoms. I have found that a majority of the show’s fans are hardcore Anne Rice fans making conversations about the show far more interesting. I am concerned of how this will change once S1 premiers on Netflix. The show deserves a larger audience and it will get it after it premiers on Netflix, but I hope the show runners remain true to the source material and continue on the path they have laid. Looking forward to future IWTV episodes.

Hello! Apologies for the delay in answering this, which I believe was in response to this article I wrote about the show and its audiences. With the official announcement this week that the AMC slate of shows are coming to Netflix on August 19th—

(also: lol Netflix, thank u)

—I was reminded to come back to it!

I totally agree with you re: the show itself, of course—but I also think you've curated your feeds very well haha. I've been observing many corners of the fandom throughout s2, partly because I was reporting on the fan/creator stuff, partly because I'm in the fandom, too. Fandoms are multifarious, and I'm not trying to paint with an overly broad brush—I've seen a ton of creativity and plenty of smart analysis etc. But I have also seen *so* much toxicity and *so* many willfully bad readings over the past few weeks, it's been shocking. Twitter in particular seems to have a literal Discourse of the Day and I don't understand how this is going to be sustainable over the year+ until s3 (lord help us all when s3 arrives lol).

There's a running joke—made so many times I'm not even thinking of a specific post—that people fear ~the Netflix masses~ will bring Bad Takes, but it seems highly likely a casual viewer will go, "Wow! Entertaining!" and move on with their lives, whereas existing fans of this show are already rocket-launching The Worst Takes at each other like clockwork (and even at random viewers who love the show but aren't a part of fandom conversations—because they don't like a person's phrasing, or the picture they chose for a post, etc etc etc).

As far as the idea that Rolin Jones or AMC will waver from their plans, I absolutely don't see that happening. AMC has long licensed their shows to large-audience platforms (Netflix in particular), but they're not making TV *for* those platforms. Jones and (IWTV EP) Mark Johnson have been pretty explicit about how they only could have made this show at AMC. I also found these post-finale comments from Jones very interesting:

I’m confident that we made the best vampire show we could make. I’m proud of the adaptation. There’s the element of second windows, how these things are going to be disseminated going forward. There does seem to be a lot of legwork done by fans. I look at 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and part of me is like, Ugh, that’s way too high. If the intention here is to make something that will haunt you and that will work 15, 20 years from now, did we piss off enough people?

There was another interview I cannot find now about how a larger viewing audience in those "second windows" means more chances for the people who really connect to the show to find it. I've loved seeing that this season, even—people who hadn't checked it out for whatever reason and have now been changed by it. When I wrote that article, fans were kind of cycling in an information vacuum, with minimal signals from AMC/the creators that the metrics for success weren't a pure numbers game. But in the final press run, they hit that message hard—they are in it for the long run, they want to make the best show they can, and they understand this is a sustained partnership with fans. I think they're going to continue taking the biggest creative swings they can, and I can't wait to see what's next.

(BTW, IWTV folks: I pulled @flourish away from their baby for 90 minutes and despite their combined total of perhaps 10 hours of sleep over the past 4 weeks lol we managed to finally record a season 2 special episode. It should be out for patrons early next week!)

[canmom]

Animation Night 198: Gints Zilbalodis

animation night, coughing and spluttering: stop piling dirt on me! i'm still alive you bastards!!

Hey everyone! We've been on unofficial hiatus for a good few weeks, but I'm not done yet with streaming animated films illegally on Twitch.tv. And tonight I have a real treat!

At the Annecy film festival last year, I had the opportunity to watch Flow (Straume), a beautiful, wordless film about a cat trying to survive a sudden, mysterious flood in a world the humans abandoned, full of giant strange statues. At first timid, the cat grows into itself as it finds companions on its journey in a random assortment of animals - a capybara, a secretary bird and a lemur among them. Charming, numinous, full of characterful animal-performances and entirely animated in Blender, the film absolutely stole my heart - and indeed the jury's uh. collective heart.

Well, luckily for me, I now have the chance to show it to you!

Flow is directed by Gints Zilbalodis, of Latvia, who can be seen tiny on stage in this photo that I will self-indulgently include:

It has gone on to sort of completely outshine every other film made in Latvia at the box office. It is maybe the biggest sign that Blender has 'made it' in the film industry, and as such, the Blender world is very excited about it - for example, here's a pretty extensive interview with Zilbalodis where you can read about how it was put together over the course of five and a half years by a small Latvian team, eventually growing bigger with French and Belgian help.

Most remarkable to me is that such a pretty film was rendered entirely in Eevee, Blender's PBR rasteriser, meaning final render times per frame could be as low as 0.5-10 seconds. Zilbalodis could compose shots in Blender with a previs, hand them off for painting and detailing by environment artists, and render the whole film on a single PC. Here's a video about their workflow if you wanna spend an hour learning about how cats are like accordions:

I cannot wait to rewatch Flow and introduce more people to it. 2024 had a lot of great movies but this one's really up there. But tonight I wanna do a little more than that, because this is not Zilbalodis's first movie - even if it's his first Blender movie - and I wanna get a sense of where this whole thing came from.

Before Flow came a number of short films (all of which can be seen on his vimeo). From the beginning we see an interest in stylised rendering, mixing 2D and 3D, and a strong sense for character acting. Before long he would switch from 2D animation to 3D stylised characters, and his shorts take on more complex composition and lighting.

This all led to the feature film Away (Prōjam), which is pretty damn remarkable because Zilbalodis made the 75-minute film almost singlehandedly: writing, directing, animating, creating the score and all the rest. Much like Flow, the film depicts a wordless journey through a strange environment, with stylised rendering (here more flat kagenashi-like shading than the fur shaders in Flow) and it's got an animal (the bird that accompanies the main human character). And while it didn't reach a wide audience, it seems to have struck a similar note with the people lucky enough to see it, who throw around words like 'haunting' and 'transcendant'. Well, it's on torrent sites, so let's join that club!

There's so much more that can be said about Zilbalodis and the themes that run through his films, but for now I will leave it at that. Tonight we'll take a chronological tour, from his early shorts up through to Away and Flow. I'll go live now and we'll start the films in about half an hour at 8pm UK time - see you at twitch.tv/canmom!

[gothra]

Obsessed with thoughts of HBO!Supernatural. It would have been so good. Effectively terrifying, beautifully detailed. Masterfully written. Full-bodied and rich like wine. We would have had full-frontal nudity (bush and balls), explicit and creative kills and gore, everything.

HBO would have made the show good. HBO would have made it popular by way of quality, people would be compelled to see it because of how well composed and executed it would be. It would be an efficient show, with less characters, slower storylines.

But the camp. You can’t have quality and be camp, not according to the definition of camp itself. HBO would have had the quality, but to do so, they would have to sacrifice the silliness that makes Supernatural so popular. CW Sam and Dean go back in time to the Wild West. Dean gets turned into a dog. They get transported to a universe where they are trapped in the bodies of their real life, nonfiction counterparts. Dean gets turned into an old man. Every important character has died, at least once. Dean microwaves a fairy. Sam loses his soul and turns into a dick. Paris Hilton is in an episode, playing a wax version of herself that has come to life.

HBO Sam and Dean would have to hunt one monster over the course of a season, kicking the Monster-a-Week format to the curb. The first season would be the ghost of a woman who had psychic visions or something, but Sam and Dean wouldn’t know that until the 4th episode, which would be 50 minutes long (10 minutes shorter than every other episode in that season). The first three episodes would be spent watching Sam and Dean interview everyone in the woman’s life, in deep detail, her romantic interests, her best friends (who secretly despised her), her mother who turns to the bottle in grief, and her father, who moved out and on years ago and who feels like a failure because he couldn’t protect his beloved daughter. Eventually, they’d discover her diary, where premonitions of Sam and Dean would be scribbled in charcoal and they’d wonder what it all meant, while cutting back to moments in Sam’s life where he experienced violent and terrifying visions as a child living in motels, and at Harvard.

Every moment the ghost appeared would be a deeply terrifying visual experience, artistically crafted and truly haunting. CGI would be replaced with expert angles and amazing SFX makeup. At the end of the season, it would be revealed that the young woman turned to the Catholic Church to help her explain her premonitions, only to be murdered by a Priest who was secretly lusting after her. The drawings in her journal would be bait for the next season. Sam and Dean and Castiel would meet the Pope, who would actually be possessed by Lucifer and they’d kill him and that would be the final episode of the show, in the 5th season, because HBO would never let the show get into the 10s.

[sid-the-sandwich]

The Obey Me! Anime but as a Mockumentary

This is part 3 of stealing stuff from other franchises (LOL), but this time I'm writing about the anime because I was bored and had another thought that needs to be set free onto the world.

I want to preface this by saying I LOVE the anime, its funny and cute; its very 'slice of life'-ie and the boys are all so silly in this version. but I want something different, and hopefully longer episodes.

So, what is a 'Mockumentary'? essentially its a mix of the words 'Mock' and 'Documentary'. Google defines it as 'a type of film or television show depicting fictional events, but presented as a documentary which in itself is a subset of a faux-documentary style of film-making.' Think of shows such as 'Modern Family' and 'The Office'.

i'm going to try and follow some of the plots in the actual anime but trying to get it to fit 22 minutes which is how long episodes usually are of this type.

i try to keep it condensed or we'd be here all day <3

I tried my best

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

i've decided to write episodes down with a formula of:

Ep 1- No Motivation to Study. (All brothers)

Ep 2- Ruri-Chan Viewing Party. (Leviathan)

Ep 3- For Whom the Belly Rumbles. (Beelzebub)

Ep 4- Princess Asmodeous is in Another Castle. (Asmodeous)

Ep 5- Mammon and the Dog. (Mammon)

Ep 6- Detective Satan. (Satan)

Ep 7- Camp Lucifer. (Lucifer)

Ep 8- A Trip for 7. (Belphegor)

Ep 9- Beach Babes (All brothers)

Ep 10- A Bunny Boy's New Years' (All brothers)

Also, i thought it would be funny if MC was the one doing the interview portions; of course, we'd never see MC, but it is alluded that they are behind the camera.

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

Ep 1: No motivation to study

Main Plot points:

A plot- The brother's are studying for an exam

B plot- Mammon's makes the 'miss em' doll

Story flow:

Plot A:

The brothers are introduced

the brothers are studying for an exam

Mammon is slacking off as usual

the brothers cant concentrate as they keep getting distracted

they want MC to come back to the devildom

The brothers goof off

Plot B:

Mammon makes the Miss 'em dolls and sells them

Ep 2: Ruri-chan viewing party

Main Plot points:

A plot- Levi grabs all the dateables for a viewing party

B plot- the rest of the brothers are hiding from Levi

Story:

Plot A:

Levi squeals in excitement which means there's a new Ruri-chan movie.

he tells the camera in the 'interview' how much he LOVES the movie he wants to show them today,

he continues talking and talking

Levi tries to find his brothers around the house but can't

he decides to find ANYONE who will listen

He finds Simeon who was badly hiding behind the couch, Simeon rats Luke and Solomon out.

Levi even takes Diavolo and Barbatos

keeping the dateables in his room, not letting them leave

he over-explains everything to them

He stops them from leaving multiple times, Luke even tries to fake an illness to get out

Even Levi's snake hides from him

Plot B:

All the brothers try to tiptoe around the house, trying to avoid Levi who is constantly listening to find people who would listen find others

The brothers express in the interviews how they love Levi... but they cannot stand another one of his movies

Ep 3: For whom the belly rumbles

Main Plot points: (I got inspired by the episode of 'Modern Family', 'Connection Lost')

A plot- Beel is lost in some sort of island. the whole ep takes place on the DDD interface.

B plot- Lucifer, Satan and Asmo are at Diavolo's castle

C plot- Levi, Mammon and Belphie are in the HOL

Story:

Plot A:

Beel scrolls through apps on his phone, somehow having internet access

he then opens his contacts and dials Lucifer on facetime

Asmo pops into facetime on Lucifer's laptop

Beel dials Belphie who is asleep, then he dials Levi who is always on his phone.

they all try to find out what and where Beel is

they offer suggestions but Beel keeps getting distracted

All it ends up, is that Beel accidentally sent himself into a game world after eating a game disc

Plot B:

Lucifer has to give a speach on behalf of Diavolo

when Beel calls on Lucifer's laptop, Lucifer was going over his speach as Asmo does his makeup and Satan was checking who attended.

they try to help Beel out of where he is before Lucifer gives his speach

Plot C:

Levi was chasing Mammon around the house when Beel calls

Belphie was asleep

Ep 4: Princess Asmodeous is in another Castle

Main Plot points:

A plot- Asmodeous gets sent into Levi's game as the princess, he loves it a little too much

B plot- Lucifer giving Mammon a driving lesson

Story:

Plot A:

Asmo and the other brothers are sent into a game

at first, Asmo is annoyed but then he realises he is the princess and forces everyone to do his bidding

he wants to be saved in a certain way, dressed in a certain way, etc

Asmo likes it

Asmo becomes like an evil dictator

the brothers revolt against the prince and they win the game

Plot B:

Mammon got a parking ticket and it turned out his license expired a few months ago

Lucifer gives Mammon a driving lesson

Ep 5: Mammon and the Dog

Main Plot points:

A plot- Mammon was turned into a dog, and Mammon runs away

B plot- Levi and Asmo had a previous fight but also Satan and Belphie had a previous fight

Story:

A plot:

Starts with Mammon having a dumb look on his face, his lips not moving but he is talking with the camera zooming into Mammon's face, Mammon then says "Hey over 'ere!", the camera zooms out and shows Mammon sitting next to a dog. Mammon is the dog.

Dog Mammon explains how he got cursed and then it plays out like the anime for the first 5 minutes

The brothers go out to eat dinner where they tease Mammon like usual

Mammon mishears something Lucifer said

Mammon leaves when no one was looking

The brothers in groups look for Mammon (Group 1: Levi and Asmo, Group 2: Satan, Belphie and Beel), they go to Casinos, clubs, bars to try look

Lucifer finds Mammon in MC's bedroom, they talk

Everyone resolves their conflicts by the end

B plot:

Asmo and Levi are fighting because Levi didn't include Asmo on a stream

Satan and Belphie are fighting because of an understanding when talking about the Anti-Lucifer defense league

Ep 6: Detective Satan

Main Plot points:

A plot- Detective Satan with the younger brothers

B plot- Mammon, Lucifer and Levi are taking Mammon to his driving test

Story:

Plot A:

Satan solves his brothers mysteries, expanding on 'Detective Satan' 1 and 2.

Plot B:

Lucifer and Levi take Mammon to the driving center

When Mammon is having his exam with Little D no. 2 as the examiner, Mammon is chased by a guy who he owns a debt to

Mammon tries to out drive the debt collecters

Levi and Lucifer chase after them in a third car

Mammon somehow passes his test

Ep 7: Camp Lucifer

Main Plot points:

A plot- Lucifer takes his brothers to a camp

B plot- Mammon and Asmo want to go to a party instead

C plot- Levi, Satan and Belphie just want to go back home

Story:

Plot A:

Lucifer is overzealous about camp, he's doing everything

All the brothers gather around the campfire, and each brother wants to get away.

When Lucifer goes away to deal with an argument Beel caused because he ate the next door camp's food

When he comes back all his brothers except for Beel have gone

Beel is eating all the food at the campfire, Lucifer pets him on the head

after a while of Lucifer and Beel alone, where Lucifer is just watching Beel eat, Lucifer goes away to wash his hands

the rest of the brothers feel bad, and return

Lucifer returns and sees ALL his brothers back around the campfire again roasting marshmallows

Lucifer joins them

Plot B:

Asmo and Mammon have big plans to escape for the night because they heard that a devildom celeb was at a club

they sneak out when lucifer is distracted

but eventually they return after a while

Plot C:

Levi, Belphie and Satan hide in the tents wanting to just rest and get away from all the insects and flies

Ep 8: A trip for 7

Main Plot points:

A plot- Belphie is sad because his brothers are treating him different

B plot- Road trip with all the brothers in a caravan

Story:

Plot A:

Part one and two of 'A trip for 7'

Belphie is just watching as his brothers interact

but most of the trip takes place in a caravan as they going to their destination

Plot B:

The brothers have a pillow fight and play cards without belphie because things are still awkward with him

Ep 9: Beach Babes

Main Plot points:

A plot- Mammon trying to get pics of Lucifer shirtless

B plot- Asmo takes Beel as his wingman to pick up some 'babes'

Story:

Plot A:

Mammon wraps up each of his brothers to help him in his endeavours

he asks Levi to dress like an octopus to catch Lucifer off guard

he asks Satan to place a curse of Lucifer that raises his body heat until he is so warm he wants to take his shirt off

he asks Belphie to create an elaborate trap but Belphie just throws crabs at Lucifer while not even moving from his place under the umbrella

Plot B:

Asmo takes Beel with the promise of food to find some 'babes'

Asmo tries flirting with some people but Beel is somehow doing better than him

Asmo finds someone from behind

the 'babe' is actually Solomon

Ep 10: A bunny boy's New Years'

Main Plot points:

A plot- Brothers as Bunny boys

B plot- the dateables come to the Bunny boy restaurant for New Years

Story:

Plot A:

the brothers have to be bunny boys to make up for Mammon's debt

they attend to the dateables

Plot B:

Season finale where the dateables recap the whole season

-----------

Yh... idk what this one was- i think i hallucinated half of it <3

[fersauce47mediatalk]

About Will Wood's "The Normal Album"

Yesterday on my main blog I said “I personally think that ‘Love me, Normally’ should have been the final song of The Normal Album. Have it switch places with Memento Mori, because it better encapsulates and summarizes the album.” because I was relistening to The Normal Album. 

I’ve been relistening to Will Wood a lot recently. Over the past couple days I’ve relistened to most of his music, and also listened to the remake of The Normal Album: The New Normal! Will Wood and his Tapeworms have been on repeat in my headphones for the past 2 weeks, and I’m sure everyone I know personally has gotten tired of hearing about him. Anyway, I thought it was high time to review one of my all time favorite albums. 

The Normal Album was released on July 10th, separately from the Will Wood and the Tapeworm albums. Most of the songs on this album have been in the works for years. It is 45 minutes long, and has 10 songs. The songs are mostly long. The shortest is “The most important thing in the world” at 2 minutes and 49 seconds. Though the longest song is “Suburbia Overture” at 6 minutes and 16 seconds. The average song on the album is in the 4-5 minute zone. 

I’d recommend this album to my friends, without a doubt. For those of you who don’t know of Will Wood’s music, he can be included in the same “Autistic gay people music” category as people like Lemon Demon, Tally Hall, Jack Stauber, Bo Burnham, etc. 

He has a very unique sound. He mixes Jazz, Rock, Blues, and Indie campfire guitar music all into one kick ass discography. All of his music is a unique experience, and I personally don’t see how someone couldn’t like it. Actually, it is quite overstimulating. Here’s the summary of Will Wood: Imagine really Jazzy rock music that’s overstimulating as hell. His music has humour and dark undertones, and I love it for that. 

That being said, I realize that a lot of the people I find myself interacting with here on Tumblr are fellow Will Wood glazers. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you already know WAY too much about Will Wood’s music, because he’s been your hyperfixation for a good little bit. 

I love Will Wood in interviews. He has a certain vibe to him, and whenever he gets to speaking about something that he actually cares about, he’s one hell of a speaker. There’s a lot of clips of him sitting like a bisexual and vibing while being interrogated, such clips are my guilty pleasures. God, I love his style. 

You know, I should probably talk about The Normal Album itself. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? The album is about the societal push on people to be normal instead of just to be. It’s about desperately trying to fit in. I have to thank @rowansinjune for educating me on that in the comments of my post about Love Me, Normally. 

As per usual, I’ve picked out the top 5 songs for the people who can’t be bothered to listen to music at its finest. I will say that if you want to get the entire view of the album’s theme, you need to listen to the other songs. These ones are mostly my personal favorites. 

1- Second Sight Seer: Second Sight Seer is very jazzy. It’s one of those songs that convey the album’s theme, although it’s not inherently obvious. 

2- Laplace’s Angel: This might be the best song on the album IMO. It also sounds the most like a Will Wood and the Tapeworms song, specifically from Self-ish. 

3- I/Me/Myself: This song is more comical than most of the others. It’s about a trans woman, but as far as I’ve heard, the trans community not only approves of it, but loves how well the lyrics handle the subject. Correct me if I’m wrong, please. 

4- Love me, Normally: I’ve already talked about how I think that this should’ve been the real end to the album, since it encapsulates the theme so well. To me, it sounds the most like a traditional rock and roll song. 

5- BlackBoxWarrior: This song feels oddly ominous. Between the piano and Will’s tone, it seems like it could be a really fun villain’s theme. 

In conclusion, listen to Will Wood! Any song will do, they’re all great! 

Well, that was fun, goodbye!

[thedragonagebigbang]

Bang Creator Interview: Tumblr: @oxygenforthewicked  |  AO3: Oxygenforthewicked

The Collaboration period has begun! In these quiet months before works are due, we want to foster a sense of excitement, camaraderie, and celebration among our participants. To that end, all participants were given the option of a formal interview by our mod, Dema, or an informal “ask-game” survey. We hope you enjoy getting to know our phenomenal creators as much as we have!

10 Reasons Why Rift Hopping Is Probably Hazardous to Your Health (Hint: Cassandra Is One of Them)

Gin and Dema talk process, inspiration, and what to do when a character kicks down your door

Dema: Since this is a Big Bang I'll start there: have you done one before? If you have, what made you want to do it again? If not: what made you wanna give it a go? 

Gin: I've considered being a part of a Big Bang event before but I haven't actually done one yet. However, after seeing all of the fics and artwork that came out of other bangs last year, I got a better feel for it and decided I wanted to give it a try!

Dema: So exciting! Are you finding that this process feels different from how you usually write?

Gin: Not really, honestly. I've done NaNoWriMo in the past, and this feels similar in terms of working towards a set goal. I think the big difference (and better difference, honestly) is that this is much more community-centered, and the goal is to finish the project instead of just reaching a word count minimum. That in and of itself is a really refreshing new challenge.

Dema: When you tackle a project like this, what does that look like for you?

Gin: Usually I like to prepare a concept/vague outline first, write out in more detail the major plot points, create a mood playlist, and just start writing! I do tend to carve out time for writing, too, as that helps me focus better.

Dema: How much time do you feel like you need in a chunk? (Me, interviewing: “So, writing. How Do You Do It. AND WHY??)

Gin: It depends. Sometimes I can write for several consecutive hours, other times my brain can only handle about thirty minutes. Either way, I know that as long as I get words on the page, I'm making progress! But creativity isn't something that can be forced, so if the words just aren't coming out, I'll take a break for a while and refresh my brain by reading a book or watching something. Once my creative battery is full again, I can knock out a huge chunk of the project, and that usually feels so much better than trying to strongarm my brain into getting words out.

Dema: Is there something you are reading or watching right now that is providing particular inspiration? Or if not inspiration, rejuvenation?

Gin: Yes, actually! I'm currently reading A Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, and it's been giving me all sorts of good inspiration.

Dema: Oh yes! I love that book. Is there anything in particular about it that's scratching the itch?

Gin: The lore and worldbuilding are both so interesting, but I'm also just very invested in the characters. This series so far has done a great job of creating a rich world with fleshed-out characters, an intricate magic system, and I love the complexity of the relationships. (In short, all of it!) 

Dema: Hard agree, I love those complicated characters and dynamics. Speaking of characters, when you're crafting an OC, what's your starting point? What was the spark that birthed Saeris, if you want to be more specific?

Gin: Most of the time, it's a picture or a song that sparks the initial concept. But there are other times when OCs kick down the door in my head and decide that they live there rent-free. Saeris was one of those characters. Admittedly, I did intend on creating Saeris for a specific project after reading The Horror of Hormak, but he was supposed to be a minor character that I was going to write once and never write again after that. (Boy was I wrong.) But what really sparked the inspiration for him was a photo I found while looking up references for gray eyes. The vibe of that photo just seemed like it fit him so well that his entire character quickly started unfolding bit by bit after that. I chose a name for him, a class, and all of it snowballed until he became my most fleshed-out character (and my favorite).

Dema: How long ago was that?

Gin: April 2022

Dema: Awwww! He’s two! 

Gin: LOL! It was when the event I was writing him for took place. 

Dema: I will not ask you if your Bang fic involves Saeris because I do not want to pry any spoilers from you, but thank you for your click-bait title and for your interview! Gin: Sounds good! And thank you!! It was very fun chatting.

[catty-words]

i was tagged by @winterlovesong1 nearly a month ago - thank you!! - to "shuffle [my] repeat playlist and post the first ten tracks, then tag ten people."

as i am an album girlie but also someone incapable of not pouncing on any opportunity to talk music, i'm posting my ten most on repeat albums of the moment and tagging no one. ✨

1. going grey (2017) by the front bottoms - a front bottoms' album topping the list? groundbreaking.

going grey was one of the first tfb albums i connected with, and then it kinda fell from grace in my rotation. i'd be drawn to it only infrequently while surveying my complete tbf collection and deciding for what i was in the mood. the last couple months, though, it's every other album i play, period.

i recently read an interview brian sella did while promoting the album/tour (found via my browsing of google image results for 'the front bottoms'. leave me alone.) and he mentions that the ocean noises at the start and finish make it so you can put the album on perfect loop. well. i'm here to report to you that doing so is immensely satisfying.

2. the balance (2019) by catfish and the bottlemen - i periodically pick through the 'you might also like' section itunes provides at the bottom of every album page these days, so i found this particular album via beautiful people will ruin your life (2018). i like the toucan on the cover, and i like the opening track "longshot" even more!

3. all hell (2024) by los campesinos! - the first time i listened to this album, i had the audacity to be a little bored. i thought it dragged. pshaw!

i'm actually in love with every track. fifty full minutes of jams, and i count myself blessed. i think "clown blood; or, orpheus' bobbing head" is my favorite, though.

4. the horror and the wild (2020) by the amazing devil - okay, this one hasn't actually been in rotation, but i did play it on my recent drive to ohio and "battle cries" moved me to tears. again.

i worship music that rips into your chest and demands you love your monotonous life. speaking of...

5. talon of the hawk (2013) by the front bottoms - i mean. this one is pretty much always on repeat. i wanna contribute to the chaos, i don't wanna watch and then complain.

in related news, "backflip" has always been a glossed-over track in my listening experience, but my latest run through the album had me connecting with it. art revealing itself to you slowly, haltingly is one of my favorite things about being alive.

6. the loveliest time (2023) by carly rae jepsen - this was another one i put on for my drive, but i was compelled to come back a few subsequent times. every crj album is like a seed planted inside me. as long as i'm nurturing joy, it will burst into bloom.

7. collide with the sky (2012) by pierce the veil - i was having mild success writing for betty and jughead while this played in the background idk

8. and everyone else smiled back (2021) by bears in trees - in theory, they described themselves in a way so perfectly tailored to me!! i have not decided how i feel about their music in practice. guess i gotta listen one more time...

9. sobermore (2025) by cj the x - not a full album but what if i derive all my present-day musical enrichment from it anyway?

10. back on top (2015) by the front bottoms - this album turns ten this year!!! i have not had it in my life for nearly that long, but i find myself wondering how i will feel about it ten years into knowing it. certain moments (when my mind is uncertain, my body decides) are now knotted messily into my understanding of my own history, so i'll certainly never be neutral. but will i have listened so much, i never reach for it unless sparingly? will this album be foundational but firmly of my past? will i be sick of it?

i've loved things this hard before and grown indifferent. but the fact of the matter is, as i've tried to sum up this looking forward to an ending while living in a meaningful present, no fewer than three tfb songs have flitted through my head ("swimming pool", "everything i own", "leaf pile"). they have me by the throat now, and i am enjoying it while it lasts.

[animesavior]

"The Earth just draw the attention of some of the most despicable beings the universe has to offer. If something isn't done soon, we could find ourselves in a lot of trouble. what can we do? We could try to wish our enemies away, but even the great Shenron might be powerless against their tremendous strength. Goku is the greatest Warrior the Earth has ever known. Yet to these Saiyans, he's nothing more than an inconvenience. I wonder if King Kai's instruction will even help? Until Goku returns, it seems Gohan is our best hope. He's young though, and there's so little time." -          Kami, Dragon Ball Z Kai (Ep. 04)

The Toonami Trending Rundown for March 2-4, 9-10, and 16-17, 2024. The 27th anniversary of the better cartoon came on a somber note, as it was reported on March 8th that Akira Toriyama, the creator of the Dragon Ball franchise, had passed away on March 1st at the age of 68 due to acute subdural hematoma. Dragon Ball is considered to be Toonami’s greatest success story, as since DBZ first aired in the lineup back in 1999, the show led the charge to bring about the 90’s-2000’s anime boom and the overall popularity of anime in the west today.

And as the anime world paid their respects to a legend, Toonami fans celebrated the life and legacy of Toriyama the best way they knew how, by enjoying Dragon Ball Z on Toonami.

Toonami made a quick tribute to Toriyama during the night of March 9 as the news came on short notice for the Toonami staff. But for the following week on the night of March 16-17, following the regular schedule (save for One Piece and Naruto which took the night off), Toonami aired a marathon of the first eight episodes of DBZ Kai.

In regards to social media buzz, For the night of March 2-3, #Toonami trended in the United States on Twitter alongside Ninja Kamui, Demon Slayer, and Lycoris Recoil. #Toonami also trended on Tumblr alongside Naruto Shippuden. Later, on the night of March 9-10, #Toonami also trended alongside Ninja Kamui, Demon Slayer, and Lycoris Recoil; with #Toonami and Demon Slayer trending alongside the late Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball Z, and DBZ. And on the night of March 16-17, #Toonami trended on Twitter alongside Ninja Kamui, Lycoris Recoil and DBZ Kai. #Toonami also trended on Tumblr.

As a bonus, this rundown includes a list of trends that occurred when we got the news of Toriyama’s passing to showcase his impact to the world. Besides Akira Toriyama, #Toonami and other Dragon Ball related content trended as fans made their tributes to Toriyama.

On a more positive note, on March 8, Viz Media and Toonami announced that Zom 100, the hit new anime series by Haro Aso and Kotaro Takata, will be airing on Toonami beginning this March 30, 2024 at 12:30 a.m. Zom 100 will be replacing Demon Slayer on the lineup, which will be going on hiatus from the block after completing the Entertainment District Arc the week before on March 23. There is no word when Toonami and Aniplex plan on airing the show’s next season, the Swordsmith Village Arc, at this time.

In an interview with Variety released on March 22, James Gibbons, President of Warner Bros Discovery’s Asia-Pacific division, revealed that WBD plans on increasing its anime output for 2024 and beyond, saying “We have a Japanese anime studio, which has been producing five or ten anime series per year, over the last few years. [...] We’ve approved expansion to take that to more than ten series per year.” How many of those titles Toonami itself will get to broadcast is yet to be seen, but it's a good sign that WBD remains committed to anime overall.

Tune in tonight for the finale of Demon Slayer’s Entertainment District Arc, among other great moments. Do note that as the season finale of Demon Slayer is 45 minutes long, every show after will air 15 minutes later than usual tonight. Stay gold as always, and Toriyama-san, may you rest in peace in the Other World and thank you for everything. Until we meet again.

Legend: The shows listed are ordered based on their appearance on the schedule. Show trends are listed in bold. The number next to the listed trend represents the highest it trended on the list (not counting the promoted trend), judging only by the images placed in the rundown. For the Twitter tweet counts, the listed number of tweets are also sorely based on the highest number shown based on the images on the rundown.

March 2-3, 2024 Trends

United States Trends:

#Toonami [#6]

#NinjaKamui [#3]

#DemonSlayer [#11]

#LycorisRecoil [#10]

Tweet Counts:

#Toonami [3,490 tweets]

#DemonSlayer [3,256 tweets]

#LycorisRecoil [1,812 tweets]

Tumblr Trends:

#toonami [#4]

#naruto shippuden [Trended with #toonami]

March 9-10, 2024 Trends

United States Trends:

#Toonami [#9]

#NinjaKamui [#10]

#DemonSlayer [Trended with #NinjaKamui]

#LycorisRecoil [#9]

Tweet Counts:

#Toonami [4,435 tweets]

Tumblr Trends:

#toonami [#1]

#DemonSlayer [#6]

#akira toriyama [#7]

#dragon ball z [Trended with #akira toriyama]

#dbz [Trended with #akira toriyama]

March 16-17, 2024 Trends

United States Trends:

#Toonami [#5]

#NinjaKamui [#8]

#LycorisRecoil [#Toonami]

#DBZKai [#Toonami]

Tumblr Trends:

#toonami [#2]

If you wish to send me a tip for the work on the trending rundown, donations can be sent to PayPal.Me/DanielLimjoco.

Until we meet again…Only Toonami on [adult swim] on Cartoon Network.