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meepmoopfanfics · 4 years ago

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you don’t get a win unless you’re playing the game: Chapter 6 Part 3: Daveed Diggs x Reader

There is smut in this one so tread carefully! Xoxo

You felt the familiar racing in your heart as you reached out to push the door open the rest of the way. You thought you had strength, but the sheer anticipation of this quote on quote “quickie” made your arms limp and your legs weak.

“We gon’ be ALRIGHT...” Kendrick Lamar’s soothing, sexy voice playing over Daveed’s speakers brought confidence throughout your entire body and you entered with your eyes on the prize. Get that bread, get that head, then leave, as the kids say.

Daveed’s dressing room was dark, lit by one red lava lamp he had gotten from a Hamilfan at the stage door, a salt lamp, and a giant candle in which you couldn’t make out the brand due to the dim lighting but the smell was intoxicating: vanilla and jasmine. This man had taste. He liked his dressing room on the cool side. You could feel your nipples hardening through your sports bra as your heart rate began to climb. He walked closer towards you and grabbed your left wrist pulling you just close enough that you could hear him over the music.

Damn he looked good.

“Hey beautiful.” Daveed said, just above a whisper.

His gravely voice sent shivers down your spine. The red light of the lava lamp lit the right side of Daveed’s torso, showcasing his 6-pack, defined obliques, and the popping veins up and down his right arm. You were mesmerized. You began to breathe quicker. He took his hand and placed it right under your chin to ensure you were making direct eye contact.

“Hey handso-” Daveed cut you off by planting a sweet, slow, tender kiss on your lips, lightly sucking at your bottom lip before pulling away, gazing right back into your (your eye color) eyes. You let out a soft moan. Your knees buckled. Before you could even finish your sentence, Daveed turned you to face the mirrors at his dressing station. The view of him standing behind you grabbing your waist firmly with his large, strong hands was an image you’d have to save for later. It reminded you of the first time you were alone in the bathroom of the penthouse party.

“Look at how sexy you are, Y/N… Looking sexy as fuck even after you danced your ass off.” His hands began to rub up and down your sides. “And your fucking body… drives me wild.”

His peering gaze looking you up and down turned you on. You were never that confident in the way you looked, but now you essentially had the most confidence you’ve ever had. He leaned his head down to suck lightly on your neck quickly. It was like the curve of his hands fit perfectly around the crevices of your waist.

You couldn’t even think of the words to say and just blurted out,

“You’re so fucking hot.”

You instantly turned around to grab his face to pull him in to an instant, intense makeout.

“Shit…” Daveed whispered quickly under his breath as he tore your sweatshirt off above your head revealing your sports bra. You saw your own rib cage expand and collapse as your breath quickened with the speed of things.

He fondled your breasts with his hands and forcefully wrapped his arms around your back, pulling you as close as possible. The pulsing in your core was unbearable. You needed him. Now.

“Please, Daveed, please….” You said as you groped his cock through his briefs. You used your free hand to begin shifting to pull down your leggings. You were eager and didn’t care. You were slightly nervous due to the time constraint, but with Diggs, you felt free.

“Please what, Y/N?” Daveed asked through a smile, knowing he wanted to hear you purr commands back at him.

“Just fuck me!” You said a little too loud, but were sure the music blaring would cover it up.

Daveed let go of you and ripped off your leggings and underwear so you were sitting bottomless on his dressing room table. He pulled his boxers down so they were only around his ankles. There was no time for him to step out of them. He grabbed his cock in his hand and stroked it a couple of times to get himself fully ready for you as he continued to kiss you. You looked down to see the veins on his cock throbbing with pleasure, waiting to enter you. You were dripping. You scooted right to the edge of the table that lined up perfectly with his waist.

Without hesitation, he placed his cock right by your opening, rubbing it up and down on your slit a few times just to be sure you were wet enough to enter.

Shit that felt good.

“Fuck, Y/N, you’re so wet for me. So fucking tight…”

Your eyes rolled back as he glided right into you, bottoming out almost immediately. You were proud of yourself for taking him so quickly, but weren’t that surprised since you were hungry for him since he last came with you. He groaned loudly as he began to find his rhythm. You began to grind your hips out of eagerness. He had already begun to sweat.

Sweaty, and animalistic, Daveed picked you up and began fucking you standing. Was this real life? You’d only seen this in movies and porn scenes and it was finally an actual occurrence. First Daveed started slow and then began thrusting at a quick pace once you found your groove. You clung onto him with the strength of your inner thighs even though you were sore from running the act. Feeling his back muscles as he railed you was euphoric.

And then you felt it. The blood was rushing. The build up.

“Holy shit Diggs... I’m gonna cum…”

Hearing that drove him insane. Without warning, he slammed you against the back of the door and began pounding you into oblivion. Moans and words began coming out of your mouth without even trying. You couldn’t even make out what you were saying or where you were anymore for that matter. Daveed cupped a hand over your mouth to muffle you. He quickly placed you on a comfortable rug on the floor and entered you again, picking back up to speed. The transitions between positions were seamless and organic. As a dancer, you appreciated this most of all.

Just above a whisper, buried in your neck, Daveed instructed,

“Cum for me baby. Cum. Moan as loud as you want. Let em know. Let em fuckin know how good it feels.”

Daveed’s hand was covering your mouth. The vibrations of your moans on his palm made him wild. He stroked his thumb on your lips and you couldn’t help but suck on it while moaning, looking him directly in his eyes, your lids hooded. He felt your walls begin to tighten. He hovered over you as he continued thrusting on top of you.

“Let em fuckin know.” He struggled to moan out, beginning to lose touch of reality, focusing on his end goal.

Your walls squeezed around him as your legs began to shake reaching your climax. Your eyes instantly closed as you began clenching your walls over and over around Diggs’ pulsating cock. It took him over the edge.

“You’re gonna make me cum… you’re making me cum… fu-” Daveed moaned. As you rode out the waves of your orgasm, Daveed spilled into you.

You sighed loudly along with him and smiled. He gave you a final, slow kiss on the lips and then one on the forehead.

Quickly, he pulled out and grabbed a tissue on his dressing table to clean himself up as you quickly ran to his bathroom to get dressed and pee.

“And we’re back! FULL CAST TO THE STAGE PLEASE, FULL CAST TO THE STAGE.”

The sound of the intercom announcement gave you so much adrenaline to pick up the pace and get the HELL out of his dressing room. You emerged from the bathroom.

“Perfect timing, huh?” Your flirtatiously said to Diggs as you quickly did a double check in the mirror.

Diggs looked back at you and winked as he threw his hoodie back on.

“Yeee!” He shouted as he opened the door and blew out the candle and turned off his music. You both left his dressing room and saw Oak pass. The three of you started hysterically laughing.

“...nice sweats, Diggs.” Oak said to Daveed. Diggs looked down and realized his sweats were inside out.

“Oak... I swear to fuckin...” Diggs said as he began chasing Oak down the stairs quickly laughing.

“AHHH!” Oak playfully screamed as he pretended to be terrified, running away from Diggs hoping he wouldn’t out the two of you. “Y/N’S THE DAMN FOOL THAT SHOT YOU.”

Of fucking course... This was going way better than you ever imagined.

@alexander-hamilhoe

@riiyy

@lonelydance

@braidedchallah

@ohsoverykeri-blog

@roman0ffxnat

@lizzzaaaaaaaaaaa

@i-know-i-can

@vemazing

@ramp-it-up

@id-do-it-for-free-babe

#Daveed Diggs x reader #daveed x reader #Hamilton fanfic #fanfic #daveed smut

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firefly464 · 4 years ago

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The Real World - Chapter 8

ok this chapter is slightly shorter, so sorry about that!

Made in collaboration with @i-have-this-now

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~~~

The week passed by rather quickly, and without incident. Every day, Tommy would try to talk to Wilbur. And every day, something would happen. He would always walk in on Wilbur talking with someone else, or drawing up some sort of battle plans. Sometimes he would just end up talking himself out of it, mostly out of fear of Wilbur’s reaction. He couldn’t bear the idea of his friend looking at him with disappointment, and maybe even fear. The fact that he was lying only made it ten times worse. With every day he put it off, the harder and harder it became.

Every night, he would sneak out to go and train with George and Dream. His knowledge of sword fighting hadn’t exactly improved much, but it was odd. The repetitive motions of sword fighting felt familiar to him, as if he had done it hundreds of times before. It didn’t make any sense, considering how he had never picked up a sword in his life, but it was definitely there. Perhaps it was muscle memory from the other Tommy? That would make the most sense, but even so, it was strange. Either way, his sword fighting skills were increasing dramatically. He was still nowhere on the same level as George or any of the others, but he could at least last for nearly a minute now in a sparring session. Considering how he had started not even able to stand properly, he saw that as an improvement.

The three of them would trade stories as they trained, each one learning new things about the other world. It was nice, being able to relax and just hang out with friends again like nothing had changed. Of course, the swords broke the illusion slightly, but it was still something that Tommy looked forward to each and every day.

It was the night before Tommy’s deadline passed, and the three of them were out training like normal.

“No way. You’re lying, there's no way that's true.” George’s voice cut through the thoughts in Tommy’s mind as he tried to catch up to what was going on.

“I’m not! I swear it's true!” Dream replied.

“So you’re telling me that I can’t see all the colors?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“That’s complete bullshit. You’re such a liar. I think I would have noticed something like that.”

“I’m serious! Here, look at this.” Dream pulled Tommy over and held up his jacket sleeve to the boy's blonde hair. “How different are these two colors?”

“I dunno, they look pretty similar.”

Tommy couldn’t help but burst out laughing. He had known about George’s colorblindness, but he hadn’t actually considered the fact that he may not even know about it in this world. It made sense, there was no way for him to figure it out. And if he had lived with it his whole life, then he would have never even realized that something was wrong.

“George, these are completely different colors,” Dream said, clearly trying his best to not laugh.

“What? No way, no they aren’t. They look the same!”

“Pffft, I swear that they are completely different colors,” Dream said with a laugh.

“Christ man, I knew your eyes were messed up but I didn’t realize that they were that bad,” Tommy teased, earning an indignant squawk from George.

“My eyes are perfectly fine thank you very much!”

“Yeah, alright Big G, whatever you say.” The three of them talked like that for a while, late into the night. Tommy wasn’t sure what time it was when he finally left, but he had walked back to his little shack with a smile.

~~~

Tommy stood at the entrance to the underground bunker for what felt like the hundredth time that week. God, he hated walking through the damn tunnel. It was small and cramped, not to mention just downright creepy. The memory of the piercing bell only made it ten times worse. Every time he stepped foot inside the small tunnel, he was terrified that it was going to ring out again, leaving him shaking, scared, and alone on the rocky ground. He had already chickened out from talking to Wilbur several times that week, just out of pure hatred of the tunnel.

Now though, he didn’t really have an option. George’s deadline had passed the day before, and now his only hope was to get to Wilbur before George did. Tommy wanted Wilbur to hear the story from him, not from someone else. If George was the one to tell him, then he would likely jump to conclusions. Conclusions that George simply didn’t have the ability to explain away. No. Tommy needed to be the one to tell Wilbur. It was only right.

With a trembling breath, he stepped into the long, dark corridor. The silence surrounded instantly, suffocating him, drowning him. He shook his head desperately. He wasn’t going to let something like a stupid tunnel stop him. His fingers began to dance across the hilt of his sword, creating a slight pinging sound. It wasn’t much, but the soft noise helped to fill the all consuming silence. It was ok, he was going to be ok. The sound of his footfalls against the stone helped to comfort him as well. As long as he kept moving, the sound would continue. Just as long as he kept moving, he would be ok.

He was about three quarters of the way to the bunker when he first heard the muffled sounds of voices. It was the sound of arguing, of shouting. Wilbur’s voice drifted through the tunnel towards him, echoing throughout the small space. “What?! Then where the fuck is Tommy?!” he cried out, his voice filled with desperation and fear.

George's reply was faint, too far away to hear, but Tommy had a decent guess of what he had said. He didn’t know. No one knew. The other Tommy had disappeared and no one knew what had happened. For all they knew, he could have died. Fuck… that was probably what Wilbur was thinking as well. He needed to get in there, to explain himself.

“That doesn’t- how the fuck do I know you’re not lying?!” Wilbur shouted. Tommy ran towards the sound of voices, desperate for a chance to explain himself. He needed to tell Wilbur the whole story, from his point of view.

As he burst into the small bunker, he couldn’t help but look around in awe. What had once been a small, three by three room was now a multi-room underground house. Only the main room was surrounded by obsidian, but the other rooms had small doorways that could easily be blocked off and covered if needed. Tommy had to admit, it was an impressive sight to behold. At the center of the main room sat a table covered in different maps and plans. Bookshelves lined the walls, all filled to the brim with different books. It was the type of area that should have felt cold and empty, but was somehow filled with a lively warmth.

At the center of it all, standing over the table, were his friends. Wilbur towered over George, staring at him pleadingly. “Where the fuck is he? How did you even know any of this?!”

“Wilbur! Will, I can explain,” Tommy said, putting his hands in the air to show he meant no harm.

Wilbur crossed over to the entrance in three strides and placed his hands on Tommy’s shoulders. His eyes burned with anger and pain, but there was an undertone of regret as well. Perhaps regret that he couldn’t do anything? Or regret that he hadn’t noticed sooner? Tommy didn’t know. “Where is he?! What the fuck did you do to him?!” He shouted, shaking the younger teenager as he interrogated him.

“I-I don’t know! I didn’t do anything, I swear! Just give me a chance to explain, please!” Tommy pleaded, trying to get his friend to see reason.

“Bullshit! I fucking knew something was up with you, but I didn’t think that it was something like this! Who the fuck even are you anyways?!” “I’m still Tommy! Just give me a chance to fucking explain myself!” he cried, pushing Wilbur away. “Trust me, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here. I just want to go home”

“I don’t give a fuck about what you want. All I care about is the fact that you’ve possessed the body of my right hand man, and apparently you’ve been plotting with the men of the DreamSMP,” Wilbur snarled.

“What…? Wha- no, I didn’t! I had no say over any of this! I was living my normal life when suddenly I was here! I’ve been trying to figure out a way to go home ever since!”

“Oh really? And when did that happen? How long have you been ‘trapped’ here?” he asked, making air quotes with his fingers.

“I dunno, two weeks maybe? I-It happened during the duel with Dream…”

“Right. Two weeks that you could have come and talked to me. Two weeks that you could have come and asked for help, or just told me what was going on. Instead, you sneak out in the middle of the night to talk with Dream. God, you’re just as bad as Eret.”

Tommy’s eyes widened. “How did you…?” “I fucking saw you! Did you really think I was going to let you go out in the middle of the night without backup?! No, of course not!” “So you followed me?!” “Yeah! I needed to make sure that you weren’t going to go and do something stupid! Low and behold, you went directly to talk with Dream of all people. The only reason I didn’t confront you was because I knew I needed to trust my right hand man. But apparently he’s gone! He’s fucking gone and I had no clue!” His voice broke on the last sentence as tears started to form in his eyes. Hastily, he wiped them away.

“What the hell was I supposed to say? ‘Oh hi Wilbur, by the way I’m a Tommy from a different dimension where all of this is just a fun video game. Oh also the man that tried to kill all of you is the only person who I can actually talk to about this because he’s going through it too,’” Tommy scoffed. “Do you even realize how ridiculous that sounds?! You would have said I was insane and then called it a day. I wouldn’t even have had a chance to fucking talk.”

“You could have at least tried! If you really are just a different Tommy, than why the hell did you not trust me enough to talk to me? I would have listened!” “Because you were at war! You were in the middle of a fucking war and there was just never a good time. Believe me, I thought about it, but you just always seemed so stressed out and I couldn’t find it in myself to add more to the pile.”

“But you still should have tried.” Wilbur turned his back to the boy and walked over to the tables. “Who else knows.”

“Uh, Tubbo thinks I have slight amnesia, but other than that, it's just George. Dream knows since he’s in the same boat as me, but that's besides the point.”

He nodded gravely. “Right. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go out there and tell Tubbo that his best friend may be dead because of you, and then I want you gone. I want you out of my sight. Until you can tell me exactly what happened to the real Tommy, I want you out of these walls. Understood?”

Tommy could feel his heart shatter. No, this couldn’t be happening. He had just started to get used to the supportive family that L’Manberg provided, and now it was being taken away. Even worse than that, he needed to go face Tubbo… He wasn’t sure how his friend would react, but it likely wasn’t going to be good. Still, this was what he deserved, wasn’t it? He had technically caused the disappearance of this world's Tommy, even if he didn’t do anything on purpose. The other boy was still gone because of him. “Of course… Yes sir,” He said solemnly.

“Good. George, I want to thank you for bringing this to my attention. I may not consider you an ally, but you have gained my respect.”

“Thank you Wilbur. I felt that you had the right to know. Come on Tommy, let's go,” George said, as he walked past Tommy and into the dark tunnel once more. Tommy spared one last glance behind him before he followed George, trying to get one last look at his friend. All he could see was a tall, hunched over figure. As the two of them walked towards the daylight, the boy swore he could hear the distant sobs of a heartbroken man.

~~~

be careful what you wish for :)

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#this is what you guys wanted right?#its totally what you guys asked for :D #im just gonna tell myself that this is what you asked for :D #god everyone in this world just needs a hug #The Real World #The Real World AU #dreamteam #dreamwastaken #georgenotfound #wilbursoot #wilbur soot #mcyt #mcyt au #dream smp #my writing #fanfiction #L'manberg #tommyinnit

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figonas · 3 years ago

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Twilight Re-watch Notes Pt. 1 - A Contest for the Worst Movie Quote in History

I'd like to think I'm funny so please enjoy my scene-by-scene notes from a recent Twilight Saga re-watch.

Hey Catherine Hardwicke, opening with the death of an animal was probably not the best choice but go off I guess??

There is a lot of general Bella awkwardness that I'm skipping over here but the scene in gym class is so horrifically, painfully uncomfortable that I almost passed out from the second-hand embarrassment.

Jessica trying her best to be fake nice to the human embodiment of a crumpled soda can: "Aren't people from Arizona like....really tan"

Bella with all the cadence of a child who just found out Santa isn't real: "yeah..I guess that's why they kicked me out"

Mike clearly just trying to get his dick wet: "HAHAH you are funny"

no mike she is not.

I'm not gonna go into the biology class scene because god knows tumblr has beaten that particular horse to death. BUT the scene in the administration office immediately after that is a TRIP. Edward has one of his most dramatic lines here when they won't let him switch classes: “I’ll just have to endure it” ?!?!?!?!?!?! This is INSANITY, he sounds like he's going to burst into tears like Edward please chill you aren't even being a little subtle.

I will never get over Bella trying to put Ketchup on her burger and then just???? giving up???? when it doesn't come out after she limply shakes it approximately once.

“HOW YOU LIKIN DA RAIN GIRL” Is our first contender for the worst and most unnatural line in movie history, and trust me there are plenty more.

Bella accusatorily saying “you were gone” to Edward as if this dude who she met for approximately 30 minutes 2 weeks ago owes her even a PALTRTY SCRAP of an explanation about anything???????

Actually, this whole scene is a horrific nightmare of awkward intrusive conversation:

“You’re asking me about the weather” HOE WHAT ELSE ARE YOU GONNA TALK ABOUT YOU DON’T KNOW EACH OTHER

“hey did you get contacts” WHO JUST ASKS THAT?!?

and of course; “it’s the fluorescents” [RUNS AWAY]

Charlie and Bella have the only organic-sounding dialogue in the entire movie. Any awkwardness they have is BELIEVABLE father-daughter awkwardness and not like "I'm being forced to film this against my will" awkwardness like every other exchange in this film series.

Bella asks Edward ALL OF ONCE about him saving her from the truck and Edward gets so haughty and smug thinking that Bella won't figure it out

“you’re not gonna let this go are you?” “no” “then I hope you enjoy disappointment” [storms off] MY DUDE LITERALLY 2 SCENES LATER SHE FIGURES IT OUT IN 3 GOOGLE CLICKS

“I had an adrenaline rush, it’s very common you can google it” contender number two for the terrible dialogue award.

Edward saying “if you were smart you would stay away from me” AFTER HE APPROACHED HER LIKE FUCK OFF [skeleton throwing its own skull gif]

Kstew got a lot of flack for her performance in this movie but when she has a good partner to exchange lines with she SHINES. The scene with Angela and her at the beach where she tells her to ask Eric to prom is GOOD. EVERY scene with Charlie in THIS ENTIRE FRANCHISE is GOOD. It is nothing but pure misogyny that Rpatz didn’t catch any flack for his truly, horrifically awkward performance

I cannot believe Stephanie thought it would be a good idea to have Edward save Bella from potentially getting gang r*ped like I get it girl is about the drama but still this is just a TOOOUCH too far

“your hand is so cold,” WHO SAYS THIS TO SOMEONE THEY BARELY KNOW COMPLETELY UNPROMPTED???

SHE TRIES TO REFUSE CARRYING BEAR MACE WHEN SHE WAS ALMOST R*PED NOT 4 HOURS PREVIOUSLY LIKE SIS CARRY A KNIFE?!?!?!?!?

The “you’re impossibly fast & strong” monologue is so bad I want to barf

“I’ve killed people before” “doesn’t matter” BITCH YES IT DOES WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

“MY OWN PERSONAL BRAND OF HEROIN” IS SO BAD. Like we all recognize how bad this is right? Especially when one considered the target demographic for these films, i.e. teenage girls, have NO FUCKING FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR THIS WHAT.SO.EVER.

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb” YOU’VE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR ALL OF 3 SECONDS I CAN’T WITH Y'ALL. AT LEAST THE BOOK HAD SOME BUILD-UP JESUS GEEZUS

Who thought this meadow scene was a good idea, they need to be sent straight to hell. WHY ARE THEY LAYING DOWN LIKE, SIT MAYBE?????? IT’S SO WEIRD AND UNNATURAL THEY LOOK LIKE DOLLS I HATE IT

The scene where they get out of the car and Edward puts his arm around Bella while Spotlight by Mutemath plays in the background is TOP TIER teen drama bs and I love it. Far and away the best shot in the movie apart from The Baseball Scene(TM).

I will never get over the fact that Edward's bitch ass rats Bella out for already eating when she comes over to meet his family. BE FUCKING COOL EDWARD FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE, GOD!!!

Esme is too pure for this world I can’t deal with her, & Emmet waving the knife is my favorite thing in all 5 of these movies

Why tf are Alice and Jasper fucking off doing god knows what in a tree and not helping with dinner like everyone else? Y'all ain't special even Rosalie is helping

Esme talking to Rosalie “Clean this up..now” I LOVE YOU BE MY MOM

Earlier they talk about the fact that vampires don’t sleep BUT the first thing Bella says when she walks into Edward's room is “no bed” girl we know what you after you ain't slick.....

WHAT IS THIS DANCING SCENE IN HIS BEDROOM IT’S HORRIBLE TO WATCH and I want to find whoever thought “well I could always make you” was a good line for Edward to say and slap them directly in the mouth.

“hold on tight spider monkey” excuse me while I VOMIT

Mike offering his opinion on Bella dating Edward HOWEVER justified is automatically invalidated by A. his own romantic interest in Bella and B. the fact that he has also know Bella for all of 10 minutes & has no bearing on her personal life whatsoever

THE PAST COUPLE OF MONTHS THIS MAN HAS BEEN COMING INTO HER ROOM AND WATCHING HER SLEEP THIS IS RED FLAG CITY LIKE BELLA WATCH A TRUE CRIME DOCUMENTARY OR READ THE NEWS FOR FUCKS SAKE

THIS FRANCHISE HAS THE MOST HORRIBLE KISSING SCENES IN MOVIE HISTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU CAN HEAR LITERALLY EVERY BREATH, EVERY AWKWARD PRESS OF LIPS. You're telling me THIS was the best take of this???? CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW AWKWARD THIS WAS TO FILM

The whole scene when Bella is telling her dad about her date with Edward is absolutely god tier. Charlie snapping the barrel of the shotgun closed, him motioning that he has a halo on, asking her if she still has her pepper spray. BILLY BURKE LIFTED THIS MOVIE UP AND TRIED SO HARD TO CARRY IT ON HIS BROAD, MUSTACHIOED DAD SHOULDERS, WE STAN

WHERE TO START WITH THE BASEBALL SCENE:

Supermassive Black Hole in the background, Alice going AWF with her pitching, Rosalie getting all pissed when Bella says she's out and Emmett yells "c'mon babe it's just a game" like the puppy dog of a person (vampire?) he is, CARLISLE WEARING A SCARF WHILE PLAYING BASEBALL, I WILL NEVER EMOTIONALLY RECOVER FROM JASPERS BAT TRICKS, EMMET AND EDWARDS LAUGH AFTER CRASHING INTO ONE ANOTHER.

A TRULY IMMACULATE MOVIE SCENE. This scene isn’t long enough

“My monkey man” might be the worst line in this movie, I’m so torn between which one is the worst. Also, I'm just now realizing that this is the second time someone has compared a loved one to some type of monkey and I really don't like it.

Bella's defeated “I can’t hurt him” breaks my heart every time. AND FUCKING BILLY BURKE pulling out his acting chops with Charlie’s poor little broken sounding “I know I’m not that much fun to be around we can do more stuff together” & “I just gotcha back” LIKE LITERALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SCENE HURTS ME ON A PHYSICAL LEVEL AND I AM ENTITLED TO FINANCIAL COMPENSATION

I know I've skipped over a lot but it's just a lot of like star wipe level montage of nonsense, so we are mOVING ON to what is possibly the biggest plot hole I've never recognized before now: How in the hell was James planning on luring Bella out if he didn’t find that videotape of Bella's mom looking for her????? Or was he just going to bust up in the holiday inn, metaphorical guns blazing & toss Bella out a window???

This fight scene between James & Edward is VERY poorly choreographed and you can practically see the stunt wires pulling on their clothes but no one is surprised..this is Twilight after all.

Who the fuck starts the fire in the ballet studio if Carlisle & Edward are with Bella, Jasper and Emmet are holding James's arms and Alice is ripping his head off???? Esme and Rosalie aren't there so the only explanation is that Emmett's power Stephanie never told us about is his ability to start small, controlled, indoor bonfires with his mind.

If Bella was losing blood from her femoral artery it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that she would have been cognizant enough to tell them her hand was burning + THERE’S A BIG ASS BITE HOW DID THEY MISS IT???

Let Me Sign is such a good fucking song. Actually, while we're on music every song on every Twilight Saga soundtrack SLAPS. At least 1 department at Summit Entertainment was staffed with competent people. (side note, why the fuck do I know the studio by name that made this movie. I need to go lie down)

Bella acting a damn fool in the hospital bed like clingy much

CHARLIE IS SUCH A GOOD DAD FUCK!

The Edward/Jacob beef is so dramatic at prom can you both chill for 5 minutes we haven't even gotten to y'alls bullshit yet that's not until New Moon.

Bella really thought this mfer was gonna turn her at prom in the middle of the dancefloor??????????

Flightless Bird American Mouth. That's it, that's the bullet point

Victoria coming to prom, like we stan a dramatic bitch.

I will almost CERTAINLY post my New Moon (Extended Edition) notes in a few days. & yes I do have notes on the entire franchise.

#I had a lot more but I cut it down #a lot of my extra stuff was just talking about RPatz slipping inexplicably into a Spanish accent from time to time #no one seems to notice #but I fucking do #I hear the way he says 'so you're worried' and want to caCKLE OUT LOUD #I'm not nearly as funny as I think I am but ask me if I give a fuck #baby I will subject you to my poor humor #Twilight #Twilight Saga

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fandomlurker · 4 years ago

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A Ponderous Rewatch: “Win Big”

And so we begin. For real, this time.

And to start, we have to go all the way back to Animaniacs season 1, episode 2, with the very first Pinky and the Brain skit which is named “Win Big”.

Interestingly enough, the duo are not directly trying to take over the world in this episode. The premise is that Brain needs money to buy the one part needed for his actual plan to take over the world using a machine he calls the “Super-Conductive Magnetic Infindibulator”, which will “deplete hydrogen and promote gravitational collapse [to produce] a magnetic charge from the center of the Earth so strong that every person who has loose change in their pockets will be magnetically drawn to the ground and stuck there”.

…

For those of you who are new to the series and for those of you who maybe can’t remember the show very well, I want to say that yes, what you’re probably asking yourself right now is true: Brain’s plans are almost always this complex and completely absurd with giant, glaring holes in logistics. There’s been a long-time “theory” that while their theme song says “one is a genius, the other’s insane” and intends to indicate that Brain is the genius while Pinky’s insane, it’s actually the other way around. And honestly? That doesn’t exactly hold up to any kind of scrutiny at all. Brain is actually a genius…he’s just also very, very short-sighted and lacks a lot of common sense. He’s so focused on his goal of world domination that he forgets to account for even the most obvious of details that would completely ruin what he’s trying to accomplish. And Pinky? Well, Pinky’s a lot smarter than he seems, but I wouldn’t exactly mark him as a genius. He’s just more worldly, more emotionally intelligent, and has a knack for pointing out the obvious. For you D&D nerds out there, think of it like this: Brain is a high INT low WIS character while Pinky is a high WIS low INT character.

As for which one is “insane”? Disregarding the…let’s just say “problematic” baggage that comes with that word, I’d argue that Pinky is just neurodivergent and Brain has a lot of problems. Like, a lot of problems. We’ll get more into that mess much farther down the line.

In any case, the opening of this episode has Brain pulling Pinky away from watching what is obviously supposed to be The Honeymooners, complete with “Bang, zoom, right in the kisser!” quote and everything. That quote, or one like it, was what the character Ralph Kramden would frustratedly yell at his wife, Alice, after she’d dismiss a get rich quick scheme of his. It was an ultimately impotent threat of violence, as he never did hit her. A lot of folks before me have delved into how messed up and controversial that whole running gag was, so I didn’t particularly feel the need to go over it here.

However, it does become immediately relevant because as Pinky laughs at the joke and excitedly quotes it while Brain is trying to get his attention, Brain reaches up and gently holds both their faces close for a few moments…

“Stop saying that, Pinky!...”

…then more aggressively tugs Pinky’s face down as he finishes with “…Or I shall have to hurt you.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry, Brain. NARF!”

Isn’t it interesting how the very first thing this series does is juxtapose Pinky and the Brain’s relationship with that of the main married couple on The Honeymooners? Like, it’s certainly not the most healthy of a relationship parallel to make, but in Pinky and Brain’s favour their world is governed by slapstick humour and thus any and all violence is much less serious. Also, there’s Pinky’s…uh…special relationship with physical pain that will become more apparent as the series goes on. Like, of course this kind of behaviour is wrong and appalling in real life, but this is a Warner Brothers Looney Toons-style cartoon and there’s a big difference between the two.

There’s also this little tidbit of information on the Animaniacs wiki regarding this episode and its writer, Peter Hastings:

“Although Peter Hastings has stated that he always tried to have Brain threaten to hurt Pinky but never actually hit him (because he felt this was both funnier and truer to the character), Tom Ruegger and the other producers would often have Brain actually hit Pinky. Even in this very first short, the Brain does follow through.”

Moving on, though, after Brain Rube Goldberg machine’s his way out of their cage and points out that Pinky has an “inordinately short attention span” after Pinky gets briefly distracted by another TV show that’s a very blatant parody of Jeopardy, he explains to Pinky his latest plan for world domination.

“EGAD, Brain, brilliant!”

“…Uh oh, no, wait…what if they take off their pants?”

^ The face of a man who somehow managed to forget that clothes are removable.

See what I mean about Pinky having a knack for pointing out the obvious? It’s very much needed to counteract Brain’s complete lack of foresight and introspection.

“Then…we’ll have to take over the world quickly.”

…Though there’s also something to be said for Brain’s stubbornness.

So they need a part for Brain’s machine called a Infindibulator, which is for some reason listed in the Farmer’s Almanac??? Which to my knowledge doesn’t sell anything at all??? Okay, Brain, whatever you say.

Brain actually kicks Pinky directly in the ass to get him up onto the Almanac to read it,

which would be alarming if not for Pinky’s completely happy and sincere “Thanks! :D” afterwards. It’s a mere hint to Pinky’s…predilections. I find it interesting that it’s so subtly foreshadowed in this very first short. I know you newer folks might think I’m joking, but I assure you I’m not. You will see.

As a side note, it’s so odd hearing Rob Paulsen’s early Pinky voice in these first several Animaniacs shorts. I’ve seen fans say that it’s more lispy than the standard Pinky voice that we’re all familiar with, but to me it just sounds like Pinky with a very, very bad cold and a stuffy nose. Get this mouse some nasal spray.

So Pinky finds the entry for the Infindibulator and it costs a whopping $99000. Where would two little lab mice find that kind of cash?

It sure is lucky and convenient that the TV is still on during that moment and tuned into an episode of Jeopardy—I mean “Gyp-Parody” (Really, writers? Really? In addition to being a horrible and lazy pun, I would rather not have to type a slur so much, so I’m just going to call it the name of the show it’s based on) where the reward for winning totals $99000.

And here we go, the first of its kind. The birth of the most famous running joke from Pinky and the Brain!

“Pinky… Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

“I think so, Brain, but where are we going to get a duck and a hose at this hour?”

…Believe it or not, Pinky’s bizarre answers do have an explanation and a certain logic to them, but we find out the hows and whys much, much farther along in the series. That said, I’ll be damned if I know how he got to this particular train of thought right now. The inner machinations of Pinky’s mind are an enigma.

So Brain gets the idea to become a contestant on Jeopardy to win the amount of money they need for their plan. Pinky points out that the questions on the game show are very, very hard and Brain would have to get all of them right, and I just love Brain slowly turning his head to face Pinky with the most deadpan “Bitch, are you for real?” look on his face.

To Brain’s credit, he doesn’t berate the other mouse at all for his doubts. He just very calmly asks Pinky to quiz him about anything he can think of. When Pinky asks him “What is pie?”, well, see above for the summary of the answer Brain gives.

He then asks for a harder question, and Pinky asks him which TV character says “Bang! Zoom!—“ before Brain cuts him off with a wack of a pencil for quoting something inane and annoying him again.

Though he quivers a little before the smack, Pinky’s fine afterwards. Smiling, even.

And he happily gives Brain the answer anyway, complete with bows. “Ralph Kramden! TA-DAH! :D”

But Brain is insistent on preparing to go on Jeopardy, grabbing Pinky by the tail to drag him off-screen and Pinky is…

Hmm.

He’s, uhh, more than fine with it.

Now we get the debut of the human suit mecha. It’s quite the staple of the series; the go-to for a human disguise whenever the mice need one.

And it certainly is…something. You may be noticing the lack of a human head. Don’t worry about it. Brain certainly didn’t.

I love Brain’s playful little “Honey, I’m hoooome!~” when he pops his head out, despite having a deadpan look on his face the entire time. He’s having fun!

“Ahahaha! Oh, that’s a funny joke, Brain!”

“I am not devoid of humour.”

Pinky is having a little less fun with his tail accidentally tied along with the shoelaces, however.

It’s fine, he’s fine. He’ll be okay! Pinky is indestructible.

He’s a pocket pal now. He’s fine.

Makin’ my way downtown, walkin’ fast…~

Okay, sorry, he’s hailing a cab instead. Effectively, too!

Oh hi, Warners, nice to see you! Doing a literal running gag, I see. Nice, nice.

Goodbye!

So if you were wondering how regular humans would react to Brain’s “clever” and totally made without proper foresight disguise, well…

“Wh—HOA! Hey, if you don’t mind me askin’, bub, what happened to your head?”

“Nothing. I am a mouse in a large, mechanical suit.”

“Hehehehe! Okay, all right, my fault for askin’, right? Heh.”

Yup. This isn’t the first time this kind of thing happens. I guess since they’re in Hollywood the taxi driver’s seen worse.

So Brain gets on the show (don’t worry about how, shh) and the announcer calls him “Brian” instead and Brain politely tries to correct him. I can’t exactly fault the announcer because 1. “Brain” isn’t a name and 2. Look at Brain’s gloriously messed up handwriting.

The host walks on in. It’s pretty cute that they gave him the parody name “Alex Quebec”. It’s a suitable pun and rhyme to hint at the fact that Alex Trebek was born in Canada. Rest in peace, Mr. Trebek.

The first question is in the category of celebrity shoe sizes and asks what size sandals Plato wore. Umm. Okaaaaay… Thank goodness this show first aired before websites for foot fetishists cataloguing celebrity feet was a thing. Also is it just me, or does that font looks like something off of The Simpsons?

I don’t know if I should be worried or not that Brain got the correct answer to this question. (Seven and a half, if you’re curious.)

Question two is totally a trick question, though. There’s no such place as “Lestho”. “Lesotho”, however, is a real kingdom in South Africa. King Moshoeshoe I was indeed the ruler in 1820 as Brain answers, although the place was called “Basutoland” at the time and didn’t formally become a kingdom until 1822.

Educational!

Question three is a normal if extremely hard question for anyone unfamiliar with geographic locations off of the southeast of Asia. There are a lot of correct answers, and Brain answers correctly with “Bikar, Ailuk, and Ailinglaplap”. As this post notes, he is totally flexing on everyone by naming very obscure coral atoll islands that are some of the furthest neighbours from the Isle of Yap.

You smug asshole, Brain.

We don’t get the questions Brain answers correctly in the following montage, but we do get a close-up of his handwriting. Look at this. Just…look at it.

We get to see the aftermath of Brain’s monopolizing of the scores, though. The other contestants aren’t looking too good. Note that it seems there were times that they did manage to buzz in to answer before Brain did, but they must have got all of their answers or at least most of them wrong. They’re both in the negatives.

“Any plans on how you’ll spend your winnings?”

“Yes. I plan to take over the world!”

“...”

“…Ah haha, my fault for asking.”

Pinky claps and congratulates Brain on doing so well so far, because he’s a sweetheart like that, and

Brain flicks him back into the pocket. Man, you’re so quietly mean in this first episode, Brain.

Now it’s the final question, from the category “Quotable Quotes”. I remember this kind of category as usually being the easiest on Jeopardy, so it’s kind of surprising that it’s the Final Jeopardy question.

Uh-oh.

Looks like someone forgot that Jeopardy questions aren’t all science, history, and geography-related. Sometimes they’re about pop-culture.

Brain is…not very good with pop-culture. And Pinky’s been banished to the bottom of the coat pocket.

Whoops.

“Umm. Uh, who is, uhh… I, umm. Who is, uhh… Who is…uhh, Pinky…?”

Oh Brain, honey, it’s cute that you got so stumped and flustered that you just blurted out the only name that came to mind (and because Pinky was quoting it earlier, but still!), but it’s also so very, very sad.

Of course that’s incorrect, and Brain is just so monumentally defeated.

“And how much did you wager?”

“Everything…”

HUBRIS!

We then cut to the mice watching Brain’s horrible defeat on TV, and Pinky suggests a few other game shows they could try: Wheel of Misfortune, $10,000 Pile-A-Mud… The latter of which is supposed to be a parody of the old game show Pyramid, which wasn’t around in that format by the time this episode aired, so…good luck with that one, Pinky.

But no, Brain doesn’t plan on going on any more game shows. He instead walks sadly over to their cage to rest for tomorrow night.

It’s then that we are witness to the birth of the other memetic exchange this show is known for:

“Why, Brain? What are we going to do tomorrow night?”

“The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world!”

That wink, though. It’s the confident wink that sells this and tells us all you need to know about the Brain. No matter how bad his defeat, how humiliated he gets, or how sad he feels about failing, Brain always gets back to business sooner or later. He has determination on his side. And Pinky, of course.

And that was the very first Pinky and the Brain short! A pretty good start for the series, really. Nothing spectacular, and definitely not the worst, just a good start that sets the tone of the series well and establishes several of the running gags the show is known for. The creators pretty much have Brain as a character down right away: serious but not devoid of humour, single-minded, stubborn, egotistical, smart, and determined to meet his goals. There are a few things missing from him that we get later, and he certainly softens a bit by the time the spin-off starts, but they’ve set up a solid foundation to build on so far here. Pinky’s character is a little more nebulous in this episode, though. He’s shown to be generally good-natured, smarter than he first seems, easily distracted but well-meaning, and willing and able to help Brain achieve his goals. Still, he’s missing the much of the overwhelming kindness and his enthusiasm for Brain’s plans and awe at Brain’s intellect that he has as we go further through the series. I mean, there are hints of it here, too, but it’s much more understated compared to later on. Not to mention that Pinky gains a bit of a sassy side to him that somehow still manages to be friendly, like when you gently tease your friends while still caring about them.

I understand that you can’t really squeeze all of that into the first, like, fifteen minutes or so of a series, though.

Also, the animation for this episode wasn’t exactly the best of the series. There are points where Brain looks kinda muppet-y and Pinky is uncharacteristically gaunt and gangly. I mean, Pinky is usually a little gangly but not as hunched over and his nose stretched out so much. It’s not the worst, either, and serves as a decent baseline of how the characters look. Wang Film Production looks to be the animation studio behind this one, and I’d say their style is the most “normal” quality of the ones that get to animate for PatB. They do settle into a better and more consistent style for the show, so I’ll try and be on the look-out for that.

I’m not sure if the other posts I’m going to do on this rewatch will be quite so play-by-play as this one was. Since this is the first, I felt the need to establish in more detail the kind of things that happen in your average episode of PatB and the general rhythm of the show. I’m definitely going to try and include every instance of the ongoing running gags the series has, though.

I feel I should also say that from now on I might have to double or triple the amount of episodes in one post, too. There are some episodes in a long-running series like this where not too much of note happens, I’m sure, and I know at least a few are either silent shorts, cameos in other Animaniacs skits or little music videos and you can only get so much out of those entries.

Yes, music videos. Including a cameo appearance in a Macarena parody. I’ll prepare as best as I can to cringe so hard from secondhand embarrassment that I morph into a pretzel shape.

We’re only getting started, folks. Things are only going to get weirder and more interesting from here on out.

#Pinky and the Brain #PatB #Win Big

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whispersafterdusk · 4 years ago

Text

Lost in Time - ch 12

Spring was here; it was still cold but now it was a lot wetter. He missed the snow in a way, since it was essentially a readily available cold pack for sore muscles.

And oh boy, were Arlo's muscles sore.

Eli had started them out easy; a couple weeks of basic work outs with her slowly introducing new techniques and exercises each Monday with the weekend set aside for rest and recuperation. But by the second month of spring she'd started ramping things up: harder, more grueling exercises, longer sessions, diet requirements. He could tell he was starting to put on muscle mass already but all the work left him so stiff and sore that he often got back to his room in the evenings, climbed into bed, and didn't move again until morning came.

He couldn't go straight home tonight though; his day had started bright and early with the group exercises, then he'd spent another afternoon down in the facility, and tonight he was supposed to meet Nora at the Round Table for dinner. It was the first arranged meeting they'd had in...awhile. No amount of sore muscles would have him missing this. ((Continued below cut))

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

The Barnarock Black was her Thursday evening drink of choice, and being as it was both a Thursday as well as right on heels of a several-hours-long social meet-up with Carol and Antoine, Eli was ready for a drink.

And food. Being as she hadn't expected the meeting to last as long as it had she'd skipped lunch, and while there were snacks and tea she had to really restrain herself from eating a ton of junk food while trying her best to ignore the rumblings in her stomach. Thankfully the chatter never really let up so she didn't think anyone had heard her gut screeching for sustenance but once they'd all parted ways she'd all but run down the street toward the Round Table.

On her way through the door she was almost knocked over by Nora leaving; the girl had thrown the door wide open and slammed it (accidentally) into Eli's hand as she'd been reaching for the handle to open it herself. As Nora shuffled by with a half-apology and all but ran toward the hill leading toward the church Eli stood there both wondering what the heck had prompted her to rush out of there while also trying to awkwardly pinch shut the fresh cut over her middle knuckle before it started to really bleed.

Inside the Round Table she could see Asher at the long side of the counter, Dawa and Dana at the far end of the counter taking up the pair of stools there, Mars and his daughters in a back booth, and Gale and his family were sitting at the round table in the middle of the room. Sonia was busy buzzing back and forth between tables and the back of the restaurant and Django was nowhere to be seen but based on the number of people in here he was probably up to his ears in food orders.

"Evening," Asher greeted her as she took a seat next to him. He tilted his head and got a look at her hand. "Need something for that?"

"Nah. It's just a scrape. Did Django not have her favorite pie or something?"

"Who?"

"Nora, isn't it? With the church?"

"Oh, yeah - that was Nora. No idea. Didn't even know she was here until she left - I never seem to notice that side room there."

Eli knew what he was talking about; there was what looked like a newer addition on the front of the restaurant - it had a large bookcase stuffed full of books, a radio on a stand alone cabinet, and a single booth with a pair of loveseats (which wasn't so odd considering that instead of benches or chairs at the other booths there were plush couches that seated 3, maybe 4 if you piled in together). It was easy to let your attention slide right passed it since you couldn't really see it or see into it unless you crossed the room to the tables on the back wall.

It looked like just Arlo was sitting-

Ah. Ok then.

Eli inhaled through her teeth - an awkward hiss, of sorts - and sat down at the counter. It took awhile for Sonia to make it over and take her order; the cut on her knuckle kept oozing and she'd resorted to periodically swiping the blood off with a thumb and then sticking said thumb into her mouth.

"You SURE you don't want something to wrap that in?"

"All the napkins here are cloth. I'd rather not stain them with a bodily fluid."

Asher rolled his eyes and pulled a rumpled, dark green handkerchief out of his pocket and offered it. "And before you ask, no, I haven't blown my nose into it. It's clean but stained so don't worry about adding to it."

As he said the handkerchief WAS stained - looked like oil, and blood too - but she wrapped it around and tied it off. "Well, at least I won't drip anywhere. Thanks. I hate how much hands bleed before clotting up."

"I agree - knees and shins too. And no problem. I've actually never, ever needed to blow my nose in one of those - my dad made me carry one around for that purpose and I always end up using it for something else. It's a pretty gross concept, really...stuffing a crud-filled cloth back into my pocket. And I'm supposed to use it several times over a day?" Asher wrinkled his nose at that. "And I say that after having gutted fish and food animals...guts and blood? Totally fine. Snot? No thank you."

Eli chuckled; he had a point, after all. He also still had a noticeable bruise across his cheek from a cross-country jog last week where he'd taken a tree limb right to the face when an end piece had snapped off and slapped the rest of it directly back into him as he'd gone to push passed it. "We usually had bandages and tissue glue on hand for little things like this. I've even stuck industrial tape over cuts to hold it over until I got back to treat it properly. Drove Peter absolutely insane doing that. Was good times..."

"Peter?" Asher repeated.

She leaned forward and braced her elbows on the counter, putting her chin in her hands. "Yeah - he was one of our team medics. Him and Ashley, kept us pieced together and put all the blood and chunks back where they belonged."

Asher nodded slowly at that. "Not a bad idea - having a dedicated medical person. It's not something we typically do unless it's a big expedition. But, we all have some basic first aid training so it's not like we're heading out without anything at all."

"Do you have assigned squads in your Flying Pigs? I'm not even sure what an adventuring guild is."

"Not really," he answered. "We're a sort of grab bag group - we pick and choose who goes where, unless someone was specifically requested for a contract job. As for what we do we inspect old ruins for dangers and clear them out, protect those who need protecting, and we help map out areas that no one's been to in centuries. We've been a bit focused on that lately - eventually we'll make better strides out into the Peripheries and the Great Begeondan and get some settlements in place there too but, no lie, those are some of the most dangerous places on the continent. Full of monsters and rogue AIs, weird weather, extreme temperatures too."

"Sounds like my kind of place."

The look he gave her was somewhere between surprise and suspicion. "You're...joking, right?"

"Not in the slightest. Believe it or not there were a lot of wild, wide open places still left in the world back in my time period. A lot of our training happened out in harsh areas, and sometimes we'd get called in to go track down some idiot tourist or terrorist that had disappeared out there. Rangers had to be ready for just about anything, in any climate or location, for any reason."

Now he looked less like he thought she was joking and more just genuinely surprised. "So - I mean. It just seems weird to me that what survived through the ages were stories of humans living lazy, luxurious lives, with robots doing everything. And then you say there were wild spaces and hard training and having to be ready at the drop of a hat. Why was there any need for soldiers, or rangers? At least, human ones anyway."

Eli shrugged. "Each time I hear 'robots did everything' it surprises ME because it seems like no one actually gives thought to what that means beyond its surface. Would YOU want your life in the hands of something that's one hack or power failure away from shutting off entirely, losing all your files, or turning on you? Most people tended to act honorably and not target the innocent and whatnot but still, there were those who wanted their voices heard or wanted power and control no matter how many people they incidentally or purposely killed. In hindsight the fact that the leaders of the world worked so hard to keep the nasty, dark, and terrible things out of the public eye seems to have...really slapped the rose colored glasses on, to the detriment of accurate historical record. Granted, "accurate records" were a bit of joke anyway - at least to those who knew what was being to told to military and what was sent out to civilians. Oh, a hospital got hacked? A train engine exploded for no reason? Power shut off mysteriously? Nah, nothing serious - just "equipment failures" causing weird quirks and shutdowns," Eli said, raising her hands to stick air quotes around 'equipment failures' and all but oozing sarcasm. "The world was...certainly something, compared to what it is now. But there's no such thing as a utopia. People are always going to be unhappy about something, or slip through the cracks of society and feel they have a justifiable reason to make their displeasure known in violent ways. There's a reason all the nations still had standing armies even though we'd had peace for centuries, before I was even a concept in Fate's outline. They kept us all busy with public works projects, organized war games - think big but friendly skirmishes with harmless paint-based or laser weapons with sensor suits - and, like I mentioned before, the occasional idiot tourist rescue, but it wasn't all sunshine and daisies unless you were a regular citizen."

Asher let out a soft noise - Eli thought it was 'geez' or something similar - and rubbed at his chin, going silent for a bit. Sonia brought out Eli's usual beer then disappeared just as quickly as she'd popped up; Eli had half the bottle downed before Asher spoke again.

"Bet you never thought you'd be correcting history books, huh?"

She sat the bottle down and did a half-assed imitation of jazz hands. "Ta da, I am full of surprises." That rapid shaking movement dislodged the handkerchief around her knuckles a bit so she untied and then re-tied it back into place, using her teeth this time to help tighten the knot a bit better.

Over the chatter and sounds of cutlery on plates Eli made out the sounds of plodding feet, and shifted on her stool just enough to see Arlo slouching his way toward the door; right as he reached it it opened and Remington was framed in the doorway briefly before he stepped aside.

"Oh, hey - how'd it--" Remington was cut off as Arlo slipped passed him and kept going without a word; the man stared after him a moment. "--go..." he finished his sentence with a frown, and a shake of his head. He came inside and up to the counter to take the empty stool on Eli's left. "Evening, guys."

"Evening. How's the knee?" Eli asked.

Remington slid his legs around and flexed his leg a bit. "Not as bad as I thought it'd be, by now. It hurts but no more than it does when the weather is bad."

"Good to hear. I wish flex-gel still existed...that stuff worked wonders."

"Well, we make do," Remington chuckled. "What's tomorrow looking like?"

"Starting with a warm up run, then I have a couple new things to show. They're...hard, so I won't keep you all too long at it, and you'll have the weekend to recover like normal."

"Something to look forward to, then," Remington replied.

Sonia came back with Asher and Eli's orders, took Remington's, and disappeared again.

As she picked up her fork Eli offered the two men a small grin. "I probably should have warned you both to eat light tonight. It's going to be a rough morning."

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

"Before today...no idea...what a burpee was," Asher wheezed from where he was laying flat on his back on the grass. "Can't say I care for them....or the reverse ones..."

"A sentiment I can get behind," Sam groaned. She wasn't laying down but she was sitting a couple feet from Asher with her arms around her legs along with her head nearly between her knees.

Remington was off to the side finishing up some additional push ups with a sack of sand on his back for weight; Eli had let him do a few burpees to see how his knee held up and had eventually decided not to risk blowing the joint out. While Sam and Asher did regular and reverse burpees with one-pound sacks of sand in each hand Remington had to do lunges, sit ups, and push ups with a five pound sack.

For whatever reason though Arlo wasn't present.

Earlier, before they'd started on their run, Eli had caught Remington and Sam sharing a knowing look, and when asked neither of them owned up to knowing why Arlo had skipped today. She'd decided not to press the issue and had gone about the morning as she'd planned; being as the burpees had wiped everyone out she was content to not do their cool down jog and was just settling on the top of the fence when she spied Arlo's figure coming toward them from Portia's gates. He was...slouching a bit, and looked a little tired.

"Morning," she called when he was within not-quite-shouting distance.

"Morning. Sorry, didn't mean to miss today."

"No problem. I can do a repeat if you're still up for it."

From his spot still flat on the ground Asher raised a hand. "Run - run while you still can."

Eli snorted. "Well, yeah - running is part of the routine."

"Not what I meant," Asher chuckled. He rolled over and groaned as he got to his feet. "I've got to get back out to the facility...maybe lay down somewhere that isn't wet and muddy for a bit before I get dragged into the depths to watch some old folks fart around in piles of dust."

With a smile Eli slid off the fence. "Remind them to leave things where they found it and to not try turning anything on. Going to be hard enough as it is to unlock personal stations without them tripping the lock out mechanisms."

"They've been fairly good at keeping their hands to themselves now that they have Stewart to entertain them but I'll remind them. See you guys later."

With that Asher headed out of the fence gate and headed toward town; he was walking in a slow, wincing manner, and Eli made a mental note to go a bit easy on them on the next couple of work days. A few moments later and Arlo was standing at the fence - on the outer side - and after a pause he sighed.

"I have something I need to speak to you privately about, if you have time."

"Sure." She hopped off the fence and looked to Sam and Remington. "If you want to do your cool downs that's up to you but otherwise I'll see you guys Monday morning, or whenever I next run into you."

She left through the gate and walked alongside Arlo down the road heading toward the shoreline; by her estimate they were halfway to the harbor before he started speaking.

"I wanted your opinion on something because it technically involves you. But first I need to ask - have you noticed anyone treating you differently, or rudely, lately?"

Eli shook her head. "Not that I've noticed. There's still some people that I think I make nervous but they're also not anyone I speak to or see often." She paused and then let out a small huff of laughter. "I think I'm doing a pretty good job proving I'm harmless to people I see on a day to day basis."

Arlo nodded at that and his pace slowed just a bit. "Have you interacted with Nora or Lee much?"

"Ha, no. Nora runs away from me and I think Lee would walk straight through the side of a building to avoid walking on the same street as me. I do notice he gets a bit louder in his sermons in the plaza if he sees me nearby but he doesn't directly single me out."

"So, you don't think Lee has had too much influence on how others are treating you?"

Eli slowed to a stop; Arlo took a few more steps before stopping but he didn't turn around. "Not that I can tell. But I'm guessing he's got some sort of influence over YOU and I'm at the center of it, right?"

He sighed heavily, sounding annoyed. "Yes, unfortunately." For several moments he stood there silently, then finally turned around to look back at her. "Nora and I were sort of dating. I'm not really sure if we were officially a couple or not. There's...something there, but I don't know what. The thing is, she broke things off with me last night because of my association with you."

Eli raised an eyebrow at that. "Don't tell me she thinks you were cheating?"

"No, nothing like that," he answered quickly. "She's not happy that I'm openly associating with something the Church is so against."

"...the past," Eli sighed; Arlo nodded in response. "You know that's a bit ridiculous, right?"

"The Church has its views, and I have my own regarding technology from the old world. I agree that there's a lot of dangerous things left behind from your time period. But I also agree that not all of it could possibly be bad. If it was ALL bad I feel like there wouldn't BE a past for us to be studying. I know Nora strongly believes we shouldn't be using things from the past but I also know she's changed her mind on a few things once she'd directly experienced it or learned about it. Knowing that, I feel like Lee is responsible for her...stance, I guess, regarding associating with you."

"So confront him about it."

"That's...something I'm considering," he replied after a pause. "But what I wanted to talk to you about was your own personal experience with Portia's townsfolk. Gale was pretty direct about wanting to hear about any sort of trouble that Lee is causing, in the context of it causing YOU trouble. But this doesn't directly affect you in any way, it just affects me. If it's not your life he's interfering with then I don't know if I should tell Gale and risk rocking the boat."

"I think you should," Eli said, crossing her arms and glancing over a shoulder toward the distant and yet somehow looming pinnacle that the Church sat on. "If she wanted to break things off it should be HER decision, not because some crusty evangelizer told her to. No preacher or employer or authority figure should be free to meddle to that degree in someone's personal life. Not to mention that he's just asking for Balance to beckon and Judgement to come reckon..."

Arlo looked briefly confused by that last bit; Eli just shrugged - she could always explain the phrase to him later if he was interested. "-look, even if it's not affecting me directly it's clear I'm being used as a sort of weapon here. I could care less if someone is cursing my name up, down, and sideways, but I really don't like the idea that I'm essentially being used as a political bludgeon. In fact, I think I'LL go talk to Nora and get the real story out of her."

"I'd rather she not know-"

"Do you really think she'd just expect you not to tell anyone?" Eli interrupted. "Or that no one would notice you two split and not have questions?"

"I... I guess not." He sighed heavily again and tilted his head back to stare up into the sky. "I just don't want to cause a rift between anyone."

"Let me see what I can find out and THEN we can decide if we want to rock this particular boat or not. Might be that IF Lee was behind this, and IF he thinks he got away with it, he might try it again with other people and then THAT might actually affect me directly. If anything it's worth it to try and stop that before the metaphorical rocking ends up capsizing instead."

Arlo nodded. "All right, I guess. I'm going to head back to the Corps building. Let me know what you found out."

"Will do."

They walked back to town in silence and at the base of the hill near the plaza Arlo kept going while Eli took a sharp left to head to the path that spiraled up to where the church sat on top of a ruins (and if it was the location she thought it was it had once been several floors of administrative offices, a number of clothing boutiques, and a ground floor restaurant). By the time she got to the top and was looking at the church's doors that familiar feeling of nostalgia had hit her...nostalgia felt like a strange emotion to be having but she supposed it was a step up from the usual soul-crushing gut punch she usually got when she let herself think about something she recognized.

"Knock knock, anyone home," she found herself muttering as she shouldered the door open and stepped into the quiet chapel.

It was nice in here, at least - nothing opulent or over the top. Pews, carpet down the aisle, banners and a chandelier, stained glass windows and murals on the walls. There was a fountain near the back wall behind the pulpit (which was just a small podium with a book sitting open on it), and she thought she could see a piano back there too.

The only thing breaking up the silence was the gurgle of water and the rhythmic sounds of sweeping coming from somewhere to her left; Eli walked up the small ramp into the sanctuary proper and from that spot she spied Nora off in the corner with a broom in hand.

The girl looked up to her and Eli saw her tense up.

"Morning. If you've got a moment I'd like to speak with you," Eli said. Not much of a greeting but the girl already didn't like her so no amount of politeness was probably going to change much.

"I uh...I need to finish sweeping." The girl was gripping her broom like she thought Eli was going to attack her; Eli wondered what exactly Lee had been telling her.

"That's fine. I can wait."

It was clear Nora had been hoping Eli would just leave but instead she watched silently as Eli moved a bit further into the room and sat down on the back pew there. Eli kept looking forward, admiring what she could see of the murals on the nearby wall; eventually she heard the sweeping start up again and could track Nora by sound as the woman finished up in that corner and moved down to the entryway, then back up and across into the corner on the right. She heard the scrape of a metal dust pan and the clatter of what she guessed was the top of a trash can opening and closing, and then silence. Eli let the silence stretch on for a bit before turning around; Nora seemed like she was debating whether she should run out the door or not but froze when she noticed Eli looking at her.

"Good to go?"

"Go...where?"

"I figured we could just step outside so if your minister shows up he can't yell at me for being on church property."

Nora inhaled and exhaled slowly then nodded, and mutely headed out the door; Eli followed along as the girl headed off to the right, to a wooden platform that was similar to the other wooden platforms that made up sections of the path that led up here -- it lined up with the path, in fact, and made it look like whoever had built it had intended to keep going up and around into the sky. She had a slight twinge of discomfort from the fact the platform gave a clear view of the land around Portia which included quite a few destroyed buildings.

Don't think about it.

"All right," she said then, blowing out a breath. "I'll get right to it: Arlo told me. And I want to know if that was YOUR decision or if Lee put you up to it. Because he's not sure and I'm not happy to be in the middle of this."

Nora winced slightly and rubbed at an arm, and at first didn't respond. Eli stuck her hand in her pockets and purposely looked to the left and down into the tree farm while trying to ignore the ruined observatory that she could still see out of the corner of her eye.

"We talked about it...and I agreed, so it was my decision," Nora finally said. "The relics of the past are dangerous, we shouldn't be embracing anything from that time period."

Eli turned her attention back to the girl. "Including me?"

"It's..."

"Look, I get it - you church folk aren't going to like that I exist. I'm a living reminder of how humanity almost wiped themselves out. I'm not asking you to like me. I am asking you if YOU made the decision to break things off with Arlo, on your own, for your own reasons, or if Lee convinced you to do it because in his mind it was the right thing to do because of Arlo's associating with me."

Nora's shoulders slumped a bit and again she was silent for a long period. "...I guess it's a bit of both. Lee's said that-"

"-let me stop you right there. Lee hasn't bothered talking to me, period. Whatever he's said I intend to do or teach is something he pulled directly out of his own ass." At that Nora's eyes widened a bit but Eli didn't know if it was due to the language or because of some possibility that she'd exposed Lee for lying. "Here's the thing. I know a lot about a lot of dangerous things everyone seems afraid of - AIs, weapons, computers, devices. Just because I know how something works, or worked, doesn't mean I can replicate it here. For every one thing I could maybe manage to write up a technical readout for there's fifty others that I can't. I know how to put a plasma pulse rifle together but I couldn't begin to tell you how to make one starting from a raw material base; I could describe step by step how to troubleshoot an anti-grav propulsion unit but hand me every single separate part, down to the nuts and bolts, and I'd have no clue how to assemble it. There's a lot of things that, if it already exists, I could probably get it working again but there's no way I could build it from the ground up because even if I knew everything about everything, the fact remains that your technological level just isn't where it needs to be to MAKE anything."

Nora simply stood and listened silently, and was staring at some indeterminate point on the horizon past the tree farm.

"...so," Eli said into the silence that followed. "Was it Lee, or was it your choice?"

Nora hung her head. "You already know the answer to that."

"I was hoping I was wrong. So, barring Lee's meddling, WOULD you have made that choice?"

To her surprise Nora lifted her head and answered immediately. "Yes. I think so, anyway. Just...not like I did, or when I did."

Eli nodded approvingly at the admission. "All right, we're getting somewhere then. What's the ACTUAL reasoning then?"

"I just... I don't know. I'm attracted to him - he's brave, and handsome, and kind. But I feel so... I love his stories, and love spending time with him, but there's so many times where once he runs out of stories it gets...it's like we run out of things to talk about. We don't have much in common it seems. I try to find things to talk about but its usually the same things each time - the weather, the news. I've even tried telling him about books I like but I feel silly trying to explain an entire book's plot. And..."

Eli raised an eyebrow. "And?" she prompted - she wasn't going to let her clam up now that the proverbial dam had apparently burst.

"-I was only supposed to stay in Portia for two years. I asked to stay longer and was granted an extension to my mission with the Church, and while I love Portia I can't stay here forever. I have schooling to finish in Atara and then I'd like to settle down and start a family, and Arlo wants to join the Flying Pigs and would be traveling all over. I don't think either of us can stay with the other unless someone wants to give up a dream."

"Aha..." Eli muttered. "That I can understand. Mine and my husband's jobs kept us apart quite a bit but neither of us would have ever asked the other one to give up their career."

"How...did it work out, then?"

Eli gave her a small smile. "We enjoyed every moment we got together, when we had the time. Truth be told, my marriage was arranged - I just got super lucky in that I actually fell in love with the person my parents picked." At Nora's shocked look she held up a hand. "I know, it sounds weird - arranged marriages weren't at all popular back then, and were even against the law in a lot of places. But all the men I was around were all soldiers or rangers, and I didn't want to marry another serviceman. My parents picked someone I knew in gradeschool so he wasn't a total stranger, and we ended up fitting together nicely."

"Phyllis ran away from an arranged marriage...I didn't think one could be successful."

"Don't get me wrong - I thought long and hard before I asked my parents to do that for me, AND asked them to make it clear to whoever needed to hear it that I wouldn't be putting my boots away if I got married. It's not something I would ever suggest to another person. But, to get back on track, I'm only mentioning my marriage and circumstance because it's entirely possible you and Arlo could make it work even if you're apart for long periods of time. It just boils down to, do you think that's what you'd want?"

Again Nora fell quiet, and Eli stayed where she was while the other walked over to the edge of the platform and leaned against it with her arms folded across the top plank of the fence. Standing there, in the quiet, Eli could hear footsteps coming up the path and assumed they were about to be interrupted - probably by Lee. She gave Nora a couple more minutes before clearing her throat to grab her attention.

"Give it some thought, and be honest with yourself. And when you have your answer, walk your happy little butt down to the Corps building and be honest with Arlo. You're still welcome to dislike me," Eli added after a moment, smiling slightly. "I hear someone coming though so I should probably make myself scarce."

"All right...I'll do that," Nora replied, voice quiet.

Eli nodded to her and then turned to plod back down the path. As she expected she passed Lee coming up; he gave her a brief sour look then turned his nose up to her and sped up to get by her faster. She managed to keep from rolling her eyes until she had her back to him and once she'd circled around enough to put him entirely out of sight she sped up into a trot -- may as well get her cool down jog done. She would check in with Arlo later this afternoon instead (it made more sense to give Nora time to go talk to him on her own, before Eli went to tell him what she'd said -- it'd also mean a lot more for him to hear it from Nora).

As she passed under Portia's gate she paused at the split in the road; ordinarily she'd jog down to the harbor and back with the others for their cool down run. If she hung a right here she'd go up to the tree farm and she could easily keep going and check in at the facility - today was supposed to be one of her free days to do...whatever she felt like, but she didn't have much in mind to do. Maybe she could get back to rummaging through the spare parts and start the onerous duty of stripping down and re-working the auxiliary power bank to see if they could convert it over to wind power.

Yeah, that would probably be a better use of her time today.

She paused to stretch and then continued on, jogging up the road; there was someone coming down the road toward her - someone she didn't recognize. She offered the man a smile and moved off the road into the grass, and the man returned the smile and offered a little wave as she went by.

As she got to the tree farm's gate it swung open and out came Dawa, and when he saw her he waved at her and gestured for her to pause.

"Hey, Eli!"

"Hello Dawa. You need something?"

"Was Selene home when you left?"

"Uh... I actually have no idea. I usually get up and out of the house before she does and I spent the morning out exercising with the Corps folks."

Dawa nodded and grunted. "Ah, all right. Was hoping to possibly save myself a trip down there. But no big deal - it's not like I'm walking across the continent," he chuckled.

"I'm just out for a jog, I could turn around and see if she's there and then send her your way."

Dawa considered that a moment, then nodded. "If you don't mind. I've got a lot of work I need to get done by tonight and any minute I can save is worth it."

Eli raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? Need a hand with anything?"

"Nah, it's just a lot of chopping and getting things delivered on time. I can manage it...I think."

"Fair enough. I'll go have a look and come back up this way if she's not there."

"Thanks Eli!" he called after her as she turned around and jogged back down the path.

She caught up to that same man from before on the way back; he'd stopped not too far from where she'd first passed him, and was sitting on a bit of broken stone off the side of the road watching her approach. With how he had his feet propped up she could see his brown leather boots were worn and had a few holes in them, and they matched his equally worn duster coat; the man himself also looked weathered and old.

"Hello again," she said as she came up.

"Hey," was the man's response.

When she got back to the house she did in fact find Selene working in her factory and let her know Dawa was looking for her. She got a sort of distracted, non-committal promise to go talk to him and then Eli left the builder to whatever it was she was piecing together and once again jogged up the path toward the tree farm.

The man was still sitting there; he'd taken his coat off and had it draped over the rock beside him. His clothes were baggy but were in considerably better condition than his coat and boots were.

"You stuck in a rut?" was the man's gravelly greeting as she jogged near him for a third time.

She laughed quietly. "Just playing messenger for a bit."

She heard him chuckling behind her as she kept going; it didn't take long to let Dawa know Selene would be along in a bit and then she continued on out to the facility. Down there it was easy to lose track of time and before she knew it it was early evening - far later than she'd actually intended to be down here...she REALLY needed to recreate a damn Hi-Def or, bare minimum, get a pocket watch or something.

At the very least the tourist man wasn't still sitting on his rock when she went by there again; she did spot him sitting at the nearest booth in the Round Table though, and offered him a nod when she thought he was looking her way. He didn't respond but that wasn't a big deal - at least no one could claim she wasn't friendly to strangers.

"Eli!"

She paused, halfway to a stool at the counter, and turned when she heard Arlo. He looked to be in better spirits and was waving her over to the table where he, Remington, Asher, and Petra were sitting together.

As she headed over Arlo slid to the side to make room for her on the end of the couch next to him and Petra shifted around to the other side; in the few seconds it took to cross the room and sit down Sonia had come over to the table for her order. Remington, Petra, and Asher all had half-finished drinks in front of them.

"Did you find that sensor thing you were looking for?" Asher asked as she sat down.

"Nope," she answered. "Granted, I didn't spend too much time looking for it though. Started in on tearing down the aux unit and making a list of what needs replacing. We're going to need an amp converter for sure but I'm fairly confident we can manage to make it work."

"That's good news," Petra said. "We already have the wind generator blueprints and have several up near South Block that are working just fine. If you can give us an idea of the power output that's needed we can see if we need to alter those blueprints."

"I'm still working on that. The main hitch is deciding what numbers to use and how to get them - we won't be using the same amount of power that the facility did in its hey day but I also don't know of any other number to use just yet. I might have to ask Stewart to set aside a week and just run everything from lights to toasters down there to see what consumption level it can even hit, then add some zeroes to account for potential future increases and then see what I get."

Petra nodded. "That makes sense. I just hope the wind coming down from the bluffs would be enough."

"Well, if its not sufficient then my backup plan was water turbines instead. There's that waterfall that's not too far away...biggest hurdle then would be waterproofing all the equipment."

At that Petra rubbed at her chin. "Water turbines and waterproofing... It might work so long as we can avoid altering Portia's water quality."

"Shouldn't be any different from the motorized boats I see out in the harbor with the exception that there won't be any fuel runoff in the equation," Eli replied. "That ought to make it pretty clean."

Further discussion was interrupted as Sonia and Django brought out all of their orders together and they got to eating; when they finished Petra and Asher excused themselves, paid, and headed out. As Remington ordered a second lemonade Eli subtly leaned toward Arlo.

"Did she come find you?" It was barely above a whisper, and neither Sonia nor Remington seemed to have heard it.

Arlo nodded. "She did. We worked it out. Still friends." His voice was equally as quiet.

Eli straightened and flashed him a brief smile - she didn't need details; she was just glad Nora had followed through and Eli wouldn't have to have that conversation in her stead.

"So..." Arlo said then, voice loud and clear. "I hear I missed learning what a burpee is."

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

The three of them ended up sitting and chatting for quite awhile, then moved on to the back room for a couple games of darts (Remington won every single game). As they'd stood and headed back Eli again nodded to the old man in the booth and this time got a half wave and smile in response. When they came out of the game room later the man was still there nursing a single coffee. He offered them a quiet good evening and was digging in his coat pocket for gols as they were filing out through the door.

"Any plans for tomorrow?" Arlo asked, as they stood together just beyond the edge of the extended patio roof outside of the Round Table.

"Sleeping, hopefully," Remington chuckled.

Eli shrugged. "Not really. I was thinking of seeing if Selene had a rod and reel I can borrow. I'm determined to see a live frog fish for myself - it's still so hard to wrap my head around the idea of bizarre animal hybrids."

"You should talk to Qiwa - I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you all about the native fish in this region," Remington said. "He's the one who usually wears purple, if that helps."

She considered that a moment, then nodded; on her To Do list was checking with the local school to see if they had books they could lend her on wildlife, geography, and cultures of the current time period but she kept forgetting about it until it was too late in the evening to catch anyone there. "Probably a good idea. I need to start making time to learn about the world as it is, instead of focusing on telling everyone on how it was." She paused for a breath then looked to Arlo. "If you'd like to make up for today I'll have time tomorrow."

"Sounds good. In the morning, as usual?"

"Works for me. See you tomorrow," she said, smiling and heading off.

The lights were still on in Selene's factory - had she ever gone to talk to Dawa? Eli hoped so. Inside the house it was quiet; Eli took a quick bath and tiptoed into her room wrapped in just a towel. Her pajamas were not on the edge of her bed though, which where she swore she'd left them this morning. Maybe she'd overshot the edge when she'd tossed them there? As she came around to the other side of the bed to check she saw a strange pink lump partially sticking out from under the bedskirt, and under it was a single pajama pantleg.

She reached out with one bare foot, grabbed the pantleg fabric with her toes, and pulled; sliding out from under the bed came the biggest, roundest, pinkest cat she'd ever seen. It was lounging on top of her pajamas and seemed not at all disturbed by the fact it had been dragged out of its little hiding spot.

"...excuse me, who are you and also I need those." Eli had to let the towel flap open as she bent down to roll the rather sausage-shaped cat off her clothing; when she had retrieved the pajamas she dropped the towel over the animal and heard a rather confused "mrrp" noise from under it.

Selene hadn't mentioned that she owned a cat, much less a neon pink one.

The world was a very weird place nowadays.

#Lost in Time #lit #Lost in Time - ch 12 #Arlo #Dawa #Remington #Sam #Petra #Nora #Lee #My Time at Portia

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c0ry-c0nvoluted · 4 years ago

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THE ENEMY IS NOT A SKIN COLOR. THE ENEMY IS A CLASS.

White privilege. The phrase implies special rights. The phrase implies having a jumpstart in the race by way of DNA. What it doesn’t imply is that that white-skinned Jim or Judy is gonna win that race, just that the game is rigged in their favor.

I don’t hate the concept. The validity of it, I mean. It honestly rings some-kind-of-true in my brain when taking into consideration the general social status of people of color. But there’s a problem with it. Not in its validity, but in its generality, its assumption, and the overall affect it has on our society.

The biggest and most obvious problem with it is that there are tens of millions of white people (if not hundreds of millions worldwide), who are all struggling just to make ends meet (if they can at all). There are “poor white folk” everywhere. And there are white kids who are terrorized by their own parents. There are white boys and girls getting bullied at school or in their neighborhood. There are white people suffering at the hands of violent criminals, scam artists, corporations, policemen… And I’m not talking about white criminals suffering, here...

I worked with this insanely gorgeous blond who was one of several dozen (I don’t remember the actual number) of women who were raped by this cop in my city (San Diego). He’d follow them from clubs, pull them over, take what he wanted from them, then send them on their way. He got away with it up until he didn’t, but how many cops still do? His choice of victim was young and white, as are most serial killer victims, but does their skin color matter? In the sense that they’re preferred as targets, yes, but not in the sense of right and wrong. Their white skin, in this case, wasn’t doing them any favors.

But let’s get back to the topic at hand.

Is “white privilege” real?

Well that depends on what you consider “white privilege” to be, and I think that’s where our signals are getting crossed. I think that if you look at it on a more psychological level you’ll see that, yes, “white privilege” is a real thing in that “white people are less likely to be demonized or judged negatively based solely on their skin tone.” (But not on their appearance. If a white person is dressed like a thug, he/she is going to get negatively judged the same way a Hispanic would. Whereas vice versa, if a black person was dressed like a total bookworm, they’re going to get judged as such, not as a criminal.) But blacks being judged more often solely on skin color is 100% true. Black-skinned people have been demonized throughout our nation’s history (and many other nations) and this demonization, along with insidious, covert attacks on black communities by those in power, have caused two things (among a plethora of others, but two for the sake of my point). 1: It’s caused non-blacks who are not racist but are just recognizing the patterns they’ve been force-fed by the media, to unintentionally relate black-skin with ignorance, violence, and criminal behavior. And 2: It’s brought about disparity, anger, and emotional trauma in the black community that is the cause of the higher crime rates in those communities and more black-on-black crime than white-on-black crime (by the people, I mean. I’m not counting by the government because that’s a whole other fuck-storm of shit that isn’t only aimed at blacks, but at any who are considered “lower-class,” which, yes, the majority of blacks in our country are. That’s not to say there are more poor black people than poor white people. I really doubt that’s the case. But the percentage of blacks or other minorities who are poor vs the percentage of whites who are is likely leaning in the direction of exactly what makes “white privilege” a valid argument. But I’m not a “facts” guy. The numbers are just ways to distract from the problem, so you’re not gonna catch me quoting them to cry foul on the BLM movement. The reality is that yes, there are probably more poor white people total than blacks in this country, but the psychology, the demonization of blacks, is a real thing.)

But there’s a problem with looking at this as “white privilege.” Number one: if we do that we (unintentionally) discredit any white person who is or has suffered. Those who are, or have suffered, will absolutely not take kindly to being told that they are “privileged”. And what happens when they are told this? It makes anyone with white skin who has suffered or is suffering (and there’s a fuck ton of us) think to themselves, “Oh, fuck no! You think I got it good? You think you’re the only one who has problems? You think you’re the only one who’s getting fucked by the system? Well fuck you, and your white privileged bullshit excuse to whine to the guilt-ridden middle class to get your free handouts! The government has fucked me over more times than I can count!” And what does this mind-state do? It creates a racial class-war between those who have white skin and are suffering, and those who have black/brown skin and are suffering. And who wins in this scenario? If you guessed “the upper-class” you get a prize. (Whatchoo want, a fuzzy bear? A goldfish in a plastic tub? G’ahead. Pick something nice out. You earned it.) So now you got poor white people with guns itching to shoot any black person with or without a gun who supports a movement that indirectly claims that their suffering is invalid. And what does this “civil class war” accomplish? It creates more “criminals” for the fucking private-owned prisons to make money off of, further separating the upper-class from the lower, creating more suffering, more anger, more hate, MORE RACISM.

So is white privilege real? Psychologically, yes, to the extent that our society psychologically favors white skin over black/brown. But has it ever made me any more money? No. Has it ever stopped the cops from pulling me over and searching my car? Fuck no. I’ve been detained, searched, followed, fined, towed, impounded, harassed more than most people you know, regardless of your color. I’ve lost count of how many damn times I’ve been harassed by the cops in my city. Shit, I wrote a goddamn rap song about it back in the early 2000’s called SDPD, smashing on the fuckers for harassing a guy who was just trying to get by. And I was NEVER a criminal. I NEVER had any weapons or hard drugs (ok, some pills and plenty of pot, but…), I was NEVER robbing anyone or breaking into cars or homes or gang banging (maybe just a smidge of graffiti, but that shit’s art), or causing any kind of…ok, no, there was some drunken shenanigans, for sure, but that was mostly my boys, not me. Lol The point is, being white DID NOT stop me from getting constantly harassed by the cops in my city. You know what did? A new car, less homies in the ride, no smoke blowing from the windows, and a slightly more tempered demeanor while driving. I still bump my rap music, but I’m not in a car full of teenage “trouble-makers”. I still speed, but I come to a complete stop at them signs, bruh. I still run red lights, but I look reeeal fucking carefully when I do. I still zip in-and-out of lanes on the freeway, but I keep it below 80 (mostly). So the only thing that’s changed is that I “appear” to have more money (with a nicer ride), and I show more maturity in being on the road. My skin color hasn’t changed, but my run-ins with the cops have.

The bottom line: Crying out “white privilege” ain’t gonna help anyone but the rich who’re sitting back and raking in the dough off all the drama and weapon sales and fines and arrests and damaged property that needs to be rebuilt. So don’t make our society’s problem about a skin color. When you do that you divide people into groups when you should be uniting them. Divided we fall. I know most of your intentions are righteous, (and this goes out to white people too who’re acknowledging their “privilege”), but you’re doing it wrong. You’re creating enemies by unintentionally discrediting anyone with white skin who has suffered at the hands of the system, claiming that you own the rights (the privilege?) of deciding that they’re the ones who are privileged, all while they’re slowly rotting in inequity right beside you.

THE ENEMY IS NOT A SKIN COLOR. THE ENEMY IS A CLASS.

And that class is the rich. The 1%.

Are most of them white? Yes. But will that stop them from stealing money from poor white people? From bankrupting small businesses with corporate industry? From putting blue-collar white people out of work and replacing them with machines? From taking their homes when they can’t pay back their loans? From putting them in prison when they fight back right next to you for equality? No. Because the 1% only care about profit, and they don’t care who they have to manipulate, rob, demoralize, or demonize to get it, or what skin color those people have. Let’s get our heads right. Open them angry eyes and see who the enemy really is. And fight THAT enemy, not the enemy that their manipulation has created for you.

How? The real solution to “white privilege” and inequity and inequality is a very simple concept but an incredibly complex task. It involves creating a society where money is obsolete. When this happens there will be no more inequality. There will be no “superpowers” or 1%. There will be no poor. There will be no rich. There will be no profit other than the profit of betterment, progress, knowledge, discovery, science, quality of living. But there’s only one way to make money obsolete, and that’s by removing labor from our society. Sound crazy? That’s because you don’t realize how close we are to doing it anyway. A fully automated society is right around the bend, my dudes. We have the technology to make ALL LABOR OBSOLETE, in which case no one will have to work, in which case money will have no significance. What will have significance? RESOURCES. But this is a topic I’ve discussed before and will again soon and more directly. So for now what can we do? We demand a society that serves the people’s interests, not the corporations’. Unfortunately I can’t tell you how to this because I’m not into politics, I’m into actual change, not perpetuating the same system that’s fucking us all. My advice? Start spreading the concept of a RESOURCE BASED ECONOMY as loud and as often as you can. This type of society eliminates corruption and inequity and is only just now becoming possible thanks to advancements in technology. Look into it. Spread the word. AND STOP CREATING SEGREGATION AMONG OUR PEOPLE. Please, for fuck’s sake, stop adding to our problems and start moving towards eliminating them. #fightsmarter2020 Thanks for reading. -cc

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years ago

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Psycho Analysis: DIO

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Finally. After leaving this sitting in my drafts for a year, I’m finally going to tackle the big one, the man, the myth, the legend that is Dio Brando, or as he would be known at the height of his power… DIO.

DIO is one of anime and manga’s most famous antagonists, and quite frankly it isn’t too hard to see why. The guy is flamboyant, dramatic, oozes sexual charisma, and is just in general a formidable foe. He’s everything an evil vampire should be. But more than that, he’s everything a great antagonist in general should be. He’s hammy, he’s deliciously evil, he’s overly-dramatic... other villains wish they could be as delightfully extra as DIO. And even on top of all that, he continued affecting the series and pop culture long after he bit the dust.

Motivation/Goals: DIO simply starts as a selfish man who wants the sort of life he feels he is owed; to this end, he goes out of his way to screw Jonathan Joestar out of his perfect life and make him miserable while supplanting him as the golden boy in the eyes of the Joestar patriarch and become the sole inheritor of his fortune. But as time goes on and Jonathan begins to unravel Dio’s schemes, he utilizes an ancient stone mask to become a powerful vampire, and shifts his goal from merely inheriting a fortune to conquering the world. Even a silly thing like decapitation doesn’t stop him; after Jonathan ends up beheading him, he simply attaches his head onto Jonathan’s corpse and after many decades returns more powerful than ever to create the ideal world: one where he reigns supreme with the power of The World to squash all opposition.

Frankly, DIO’s motivations are incredibly standard supervillain stuff, but it’s the way he does things to achieve his goals that make them cool. Much like every great villain in the series, DIO is incapable of going a single moment without doing something either flamboyant or awesome, and much like everyone in the series he often combines the two. This is the man who figured the best way to kill a guy is to drop a steamroller on him and decided becoming a vampire was the logical response to being cornered by the police, so it stands to reason that no matter what he does he would do it with the over-the-top style of the series he hails from.

Performance: Anime voice actor extraordinaire Patrick Seitz voices DIO, and he makes him just as insane, over-the-top, and hammy as you would expect from a vampire who dresses like he had the raw essence of the 1980s injected into his veins.

Final Fate: DIO made one very simple mistake in the midst of all his scheming during the events of Stardust Crusaders: he pissed Jotaro off. It did not end well for the vampire. However, even after his death, DIO’s influence continues to effect the series in numerous ways, particularly Vento Aureo and Stone Ocean, both arcs that deal with characters that have strong ties to the man himself. Even Diamond is Unbreakable would not have happened the way it did if not for him.

Best Scene: The entire final battle with Jotaro is one of the defining moments of the whole series, but considering it takes up several episodes it would be cheating to put it here; if this were the OVA from the 90s, where his fight took up only about eleven minutes, I’d cheat and put it here. But there is a truly iconic moment that stands out even among a battle filled with standout moments: Dio, finally tired of Jotaro’s crap, decides he’s going to “roll all over” him, and drops a steamroller on his head in stopped time.

Best Quote: Are you kidding? Everything out of this man’s mouth becomes a meme. I truly cannot single out one single line from the man to say is his best. EVERYTHING he says is awesome, especially his quotes when he pulls off his super move in Heritage for the Future.

youtube

Final Thoughts & Score: DIO is fascinating because he actually changes and adapts as time goes on. At the start, as a human, he is a bratty, monstrous, self-serving young man, one who was quick to blame his actions on his upbringing under his cruel father Dario. After Jonathan befriends Speedwagon and catches on to Dio’s scheming though, Dio’s justifications fall apart, and so Dio rejects his humanity, becoming a vampire who plays with his power like a child plays with his toys on Christmas. He begins to revel in his evil, and fully embraces his inhuman nature.

Then after his first defeat, Dio changes even more, becoming more self-aware of his limitations. Stardust Crusaders in particular shows that he has outgrown his immature belief of humanity’s inferiority to vampires; he has far more human followers in that arc, and it is even revealed in later arcs he sired quite a few children with human women. Still, with that in mind, it is quite apparent that he still views himself as the peak lifeform. He’s a lot more cautious and manipulative this time around as he heals and becomes accustomed to his new body. and while he is obviously dangerous, until the very end his role is far more passive.

Of course, once he finally gains the blood of a Joestar, he goes off the deep end, and his old persona rises again only far more mad than ever before, with his contempt for humanity, massive ego, and overwhelming arrogance inflating to the point that his defiance leads directly into his ultimate downfall. And it’s not like this was missing prior; these traits were very much present before he drained Joseph. But when he thought his victory was assured, he dropped all pretense and revealed his true colors.

The one thing true of DIO across all of his appearances is that he is charming, he is cunning, and he’s not a force to be taken lightly. It’s so interesting that he gets such a noticeable character arc that goes across several storylines and even expands long after he is killed. His staying power and the depth of his personality transcending his lifetime is just another element that adds onto the staying power of his character.

DIO is one of the most enjoyable anime antagonists ever made. The fact that he acts as an overarching villain for nearly the entire series, with his presence being felt even in the three parts directly after his death, is a testament to just how depraved and powerful DIO was. It’s so easy to see why DIO is so wildly popular; on top of being a powerful formidable threat, he just oozes style and charisma, with every little thing he does being the sort of insane over-the-top craziness you could want out of the series.

11/10 is the obvious score for DIO. He’s easily one of the best vampires in all of fiction, and definitely one of the coolest. The fact that even through all the craziness surrounding him, he had a well-defined character arc and managed to effect so much after his death just manages to make him one of the more successful villains out there, even if only inadvertently. The manga has already shown us all the pain that’s to come from DIO’s actions, so when it’s finally animated it will only further solidify DIO’s ranking as one of the best villains ever crafted. And that’s not even getting into his playable outings in games such as All-Star Battle and Heritage for the Future, the latter being one of his most iconic appearances ever and the source of dozens of his most famous memes. He’s such a prominent figure in popular culture that you may have seen something inspired by him without even realizing it; I was aware of many of his iconic quotes years before I ever comprehended what JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure was thanks to memes and videos online.

The fact that even through the hamminess DIO is just an unrepentantly evil bastard is incredible. He dresses like an 80s pop star, he gloats like a petty schoolchild, he’s extremely dramatic, and yet he is one of the cruelest, most evil villains ever created. He killed a dog just because he got rightfully beaten down, made a mother eat her own baby, forced a senator to run over innocent bystanders, blasted a hole through Kakyoin, and relished in every single one of those actions. And even from beyond the grave, DIO’s dark shadow still plagued the Joestar’s. Evil such as DIO just never dies, and I certainly wouldn’t want it any other way.

Before we go… All together now:

#Psycho Analysis #DIO #Dio Brando #JoJo's Bizarre Adventure #Patrick Seitz

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gwenbrightly · 5 years ago

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The Gingerbread Caper

Cross-posted from ffnet.

The quiet atmosphere of the monastery was broken by the sound of screaming originating from Kai’s bedroom, waking anyone who still happened to be asleep. Nya groaned in annoyance and covered her face with a pillow. Wu was letting them slack off from Sunrise Exercises and she really didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to take advantage of that.

“GET IT OFF ME!!!” Her brother screamed again, forming coherent words this time. That was it. Obviously, the master of water wasn’t going to be sleeping in today. She threw her pillow aside and climbed out of bed, eyeing her clock resentfully. It was far too early for this. Not that 10 am was particularly early (but still!). She trudged from her room still wrapped in one of her blankets.

“What the heck, Kai?” Nya demanded when she reached Kai’s bedroom just down the hall. The master of fire sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He tossed something at her in disgust. She caught it with minimal effort. A gingerbread man. Or, at least, what was left of one. The poor cookie didn’t have any head.

“This better not have been you, sis.” he stated. Nya rolled her eyes, tempted to return to the comfort of her bed rather than deal with her over dramatic brother.

“Like I’d ever stoop so low. Seriously, you didn’t need to scream like that. It’s just a cookie.”

Kai gaped at her indignantly.

“Would you wanna wake up with some creepy soulless human wannabe in your bed?”

“Now there’s a quote I should send to your lovely girlfriend right away.” Nya laughed. He glared at her for a moment before suddenly shooting up from his bed.

“Skylor!”

“What?” she asked, confused, “I swear I wasn’t actually planning on sending this to her.”

“No, she’s supposed to be coming over today to decorate cookies with us!” he reminded her. Nya face-palmed.

“I can’t believe I forgot about that…”

“Actually, this is perfect. She’ll be totally unbiased about this whole gingerbread man fiasco.” Kai mused, already deep in thought. His sister frowned at him. It was obvious he had something up his sleeve.

“What are you planning?”

“Don’t look so worried, Nya. This is just like one of Ninja Noir’s mysteries! I just gotta follow the trail of evidence and eventually, I’ll be able to eliminate the impossible and find the truth!” Kai told her, quoting his favorite detective series.

“Kai, no.” she said, attempting to prevent the situation from getting totally out of hand. He ignored her, instead opting to head over to his closet to grab something. When he turned to face Nya again, he was wearing a fedora.

“Since when do you own a fedora?” the master of water questioned. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

“Shhhh,” he cut her off with a wave of his hand, “Just go with it.”

Nya sighed, but followed him to go wait for Skylor to appear.

_________________________________________________________________

“Do I even wanna know what I just walked into?” Skylor wondered when she caught site of the scene playing out in the living room. Her boyfriend stared suspiciously at Lloyd and Jay, who were playing what appeared to be a rather intense game of Fist to Face (Ninja Edition!). It took him a second to register her presence. Nya waved her over, smiling apologetically.

“Someone,” Kai began to explain, holding up the cookie, which he’d gotten back from his sister, “thought it would be funny to put this in my bed and I wanna know who.”

Skylor resigned herself to another of Kai’s chaotic schemes. She already knew he had a problem with gingerbread people (and Christmas elves, and those little expanding bath toys they sold at the dollar store for that matter), though he wouldn’t tell her what it was about the holiday treats that bothered him so much.

“Eh okay. How can I help?”

“Are you sure you wanna do that?” Nya asked at the same time as Kai said, “You can be, like, the insanely hot mystery woman who helps the dashing detective (me) solve the mystery.”

“Real smooth, dork. But sure, why not.” the redhead decided, punching the master of fire’s shoulder lightly to distract from how rosy her cheeks were all of a sudden. He grinned in delight.

“Cool! Oh, and I guess Nya can help too.” Kai added as an afterthought. Nya raised an eyebrow.

“Well, you’re obviously not a suspect, sis! The gingerbread man couldn’t have been in my bed long or it would have crumbled, and you value sleep way too much to have gotten up early enough to orchestrate this.” he stated confidently. She didn’t look like she was taking this as a compliment.

“So, detective Smith, where do we start our investigation?” Skylor prompted. She had no desire to see the siblings get into a debate over their sleeping habits.

“Oh. Uh… We have to interview our suspects!” announced Kai, dragging Skylor and Nya over to the two video game playing ninja.

“Oh, hey guys. You wanna join our next round?” Jay offered, not taking his eyes off of the screen. He rapidly pressed several buttons on his controller at once.

“Yeah, it’ll be way more fun with more players!” agreed Lloyd. He gave a smirk of triumph as his avatar landed a final hit on his opponent. The master of lightning groaned, disappointed.

“Actually, I think Kai had something he wanted to ask you.” Skylor informed them. Jay and Lloyd set aside their controllers, curious. The sight of Kai in a fedora was unexpected; Lloyd was usually the only one who found them fashionable enough to wear.

“Oh, okay. What’s up?” the green ninja asked, wondering what on earth could be so pressing that Kai had gotten Nya and Skylor involved.

“I was wondering if you knew anything about this?” answered Kai he shoved the cookie under his brother’s nose. Taking note of the gingerbread man, Jay demanded, “Hey – how’d you convince Zane to let you have one of his cookies?”

He’d tried to snag one earlier that morning, only to be thwarted by the master of ice, who insisted they must save the gingerbread cookies for Skylor’s arrival. This was rather unfortunate, as they smelled utterly delicious.

“No, I- you’re telling me that you, the two biggest pranksters around, have no idea how this got in my bed?” Kai stated, skeptical. The two ninja shook their heads. It appeared he was going to have to use a different interrogation method to get answers. He judged his sister. She glared at him. He nodded pointedly at Lloyd and Jay. Not wanting to give in so easily, Nya stared at Kai silently for several minutes before finally relenting.

“If that’s true, then you won’t mind telling us what you’ve been doing all morning.” she said in her best police officer voice (and secretly wishing she had a fake mustache on her).

“Oh, that’s easy. We’ve been having a Fist to Face (Ninja Edition!) tournament for the past couple of hours. Just look at the scoreboard,” Jay told them with a shrug, “I mean, it is kinda embarrassing to see how many times Lloyd’s hooped me already today, but if it gets you to stop looking at me like that…”

Lloyd nodded, the picture of innocence. They took a closer look at the screen. Sure enough, the scores for the past thirty or so rounds, along with the times they were completed scrolled across the pause screen.

“Huh. Well, I guess you’re off the hook. For now, at least.” Kai decided, wondering who he should use his detective skills on next if the most obvious suspects had been ruled out.

“Maybe Zane knows who it was. He’s been in the kitchen all morning.” suggested Lloyd as he set up another round of the video game. Skylor grabbed Kai’s elbow and drug him towards the door, saying, “Good idea. I need to give him the extra sprinkles I brought anyway.”

Nya mouthed I’ll be back later to her boyfriend before following them. Instead of heading directly to the kitchen, Kai insisted on examining every nook and cranny of the hallway. He held a magnifying glass he’d somehow ended up with, though no one could say for sure where it had come from, and was doing his best to mutter what he thought sounded like very professional and insightful comments.

“Ahah! A trail of crumbs. Collect that for evidence, Sky.”

The redhead pretended like she hadn’t heard him, sharing a grossed out look with Nya.

“Oh, hey! Weren’t you missing an earring, Nya?”

Kai held out something sparkly and blue.

“Uh…thanks.” Nya accepted it, a look of utter surprise on her face. She’d been searching for this earring for weeks. Could it be possible that Kai was actually… good at this detective stuff?

“The detective and his sidekicks arrived at the kitchen at approximately 11:05 am., wondering what clues they would uncover inside…” Kai loudly announced, interrupting Nya’s thoughts.

“Hello!” Zane greeted them. Bowls of frosting in an impressively wide range of colors lined the counters along with several different kinds of sprinkles. Pixal was currently adding a few drops of vibrant red food dye to one of the few bowls that remained uncolored.

“Yes, welcome! Did you bring the sprinkles?” she asked. Skylor pulled a jar from her purse.

“Yep, here you go.”

“Thank goodness,” exclaimed Zane, taking them from her, “Dyeing sugar crystals by hand just isn’t effective.”

“Tell me about it. We tried it at the restaurant one time when we were in a pinch and… it didn’t work well.” the redhead recalled. Having grown bored with the conversation the others were having about epic fails with sprinkles, Kai examined the trays of cookies stacked next to the oven. Just as he’d predicted, one row of cookies was missing a gingerbread man.

“Hey, Zane, Pixal? You guys have been in here all morning, right?” he asked, casually. The two nindroids glanced at each other. Zane was the first to reply.

“Well, I stepped out for a few moments to bring Master Wu some oolong tea – he claims to be feeling a bit under the weather today – but, other than that, yes. Why?”

“I’m trying to figure out where this cookie came from. You didn’t happen to, say, give one of these to someone, did you?” Kai showed them the gingerbread man, curious to see their reaction. He was a little disappointed when neither of them did anything incriminating.

“I suppose it’s possible that Cole took it when I wasn’t looking. He came in here while Zane was gone to grab some extra tape.” Pixal said thoughtfully. Ahah! Kai’s eyes lit up.

“So he’s wrapping presents, huh,” he mused, “I wonder if he’s gotten to mine yet…”

“Kai! I thought you were being a detective, not some nosy kid!” his sister hissed disapprovingly. He huffed indignantly.

“I’m just curious, Nya. And besides, all the best detectives can multi-task.” Kai defended.

“Suuure.”

“Anyway, thank you for the info. We may be back later.” the master of fire stated in a more professional tone, heading out into the hall once more. Zane and Pixal waved as the others left, not sure how else to respond.

En route to Cole’s bedroom, Kai immediately reverted back to carefully examining every small space, carpet snag, and leafy garland in sight. Nothing escaped the lens of his magnifying glass. Not even his sister’s tennis shoes, which kept blocking his view. If he could just find something, anything, that would prove once and for all who was guilty of this delectable crime… Wait. Kai caught a whiff of something cinnamony wafting off of a wreath hung across the hall from the master of earth’s door. He sniffed the gingerbread man. It was the same smell. Reaching into the wreath, he plucked something small and round from inside. Victory! Skylor stared at him in confusion for a few minutes before realizing what he was holding.

“Is that what I think it is?”

Kai held the two pieces of the gingerbread man together.

“Yep. Looks like we might just have an official suspect.”

“You’re so weird…” Nya muttered under her breath. She was pretty sure nothing would possess her to behave like this.

“Hey, it worked pretty well, didn’t it?” Kai pointed out, slinging an arm around her shoulders. She sidestepped quickly, shrugging it off as she went.

“Well…” she started reluctantly, “I guess we’d better get in there and get some answers.” She swung the door open. They could hear the pleasant tune of the Nutcracker soundtrack playing on Cole’s phone as they entered. The ninja in question sat at his desk, surrounded by wrapping paper. He turned around and blocked their view of whatever else was on the desk before quickly asking, “Do… you need something, or are you just here to enjoy the total masterpiece that is the Nutcracker?”

“Uh, yeah. Though, it is definitely a classic.” Nya told him appreciatively. They would have to pull out the recording of Cole’s 6th grade performance of the ballet that Lou had given them one day soon.

“Let’s cut to the chase. We know why you were really in the kitchen, Cole.” Kai cut in impatiently. Cole’s face flushed with embarrassment.

“Aw, man! You’re not gonna tell Zane, are you?” he stammered.

“…What?” the master of fire attempted to ask.

“This is a one-time thing, I swear! His frosting is just too delicious to resist.” Cole continued sheepishly, oblivious to Kai’s question. Kai, Skylor, and Nya froze. This wasn’t at all what they had been expecting him to say.

“Zane’s…. Frosting?” Skylor repeated, wanting to make sure they had heard him right.

“Well yeah. I’ve been snacking in it all morning,” the master of earth admitted, showing them a mostly empty bowl, “It’s so good! Wait - what did you think I was talking about?”

No one replied at first; they were still processing the unexpected turn of events.

“We… may have thought you put a headless gingerbread man in Kai’s bed to mess with him.” Nya ultimately explained. Cole couldn’t help himself. He burst into laughter at this admission.

“Wow, I guess that explains the looks on your faces right about now. But as totally brilliant of an idea as that prank is, I had nothing to do with it. Sorry.”

“Eh, it’s okay. We probably shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions when Pixal told us you’d been in the kitchen. Or when I found the gingerbread man’s head in that wreath. In hindsight it was a pretty weird hiding place.” Kai said apologetically.

“Yeah.” his sister agreed.

“Almost…. Like someone wanted us to find it…” he continued.

“You think whoever did this tried to frame Cole?” Skylor questioned, finishing his thought. It was all coming together now.

“I guess I do…. Oolong tea not licorice…. Hang on a sec, I think I solved this thing!”

Nya gave him a look, as if questioning his sanity. His ramblings made little sense to her.

“No offense, Kai, but you lost me at tea.” she told him with a frown.

“Me too, honestly.” Cole nodded, equally lost, especially since he had missed a majority of the investigative process. Kai rolled his eyes in exasperation and said, “Just make sure everyone meets me in the living room in five minutes, and I’ll explain then, okay?”

“Even Master Wu?” Cole clarified, not wanting to disturb the old man without a good reason.

“Especially Master Wu.” Kai confirmed before dashing out of the room and leaving everyone else to wonder whether or not the master of fire was going to crash and burn.

He paced back and forth across the living room, earning the occasional odd look from Lloyd and Jay, who had moved on to arguing over the existence of a plot hole in the latest Starfarers movie.

“I’m telling you, Jay. They left that part vague so that it can be expanded on in the sequel!” Lloyd insisted. Jay didn’t look like he agreed with this statement, still stuck on his accusations of lazy writing. He was rescued from having to formulate a convincing comeback by the arrival of the rest of the residents of the monastery. Nya and Skylor had returned to the kitchen for the pair of nindroids, leaving Cole to retrieve Master Wu. The room was suddenly filled with noisy conversations as everyone claimed a seat.

“Okay. Let’s get down to business.” Kai practically shouted over the din. One by one, the others stopped talking and looked at him.

“Alright, let’s get this hare-brained scheme of yours over with so we can have lunch, then.” Cole encouraged, speaking for everyone. While they were curious to see if Kai had actually figured out who had pranked him, they had also gotten more than a little tired of being on the receiving end of his investigative tactics.

“Right. As you all know, I woke up this morning to find a decapitated gingerbread man in my bed,” the master of fire began dramatically, making sure everyone could see the cookie, “at first, it seemed like our resident pranksters, Lloyd and Jay, were the obvious suspects. However, they both had a strong alibi… It couldn’t have been them – they were right here in this room playing video games when the crime was committed.” he crossed over to Zane and Pixal, “next, my lovely assistants and I headed to the source of the cookie – the kitchen, in the hopes that someone there would know what had happened. Our ever-watchful ice ninja hadn’t seen anything suspicious. He stepped out for what, 15 minutes tops?”

“That is correct,” Zane nodded.

“He was getting Master Wu some tea because he was sick,” Kai explained, “more on that later. Pixal told us that Cole had come looking for tape while Zane was gone. We figured maybe he could give us some answers, so we headed for his room, and you know what we found in the wreath across the hall from his door?”

“That’s right,” Nya jumped in, though she still wasn’t sure how relevant it was, “The missing head!”

“Exactly. So obviously that must mean that Cole’s the culprit, right?” Jay and Lloyd looked at each other. Were they supposed to agree?

“Wrong! If he’d taken the cookie, he would’ve eaten the head right away, not hidden it. The only thing Cole was guilty of was stealing a bowl of frosting for a mid-morning snack. And that’s when it hit me. What kind of tea does Master Wu always drink when he’s sick?”

“Licorice?” Lloyd offered. Kai smiled triumphantly.

“Bingo. But when he asked Zane to bring him some tea, he asked for Oolong tea, which he never drinks when he’s sick because it tastes nasty with honey in it. Master Wu, you’re not really sick, are you?”

The elderly spinjitzu master smiled weakly at him, but did not deny the accusation.

“Here’s what happened: Master Wu asked Zane to bring him some tea because he knew it would distract him long enough for the real gingerbread prankster to put their plan into action. Knowing she only had a short amount of time, Pixal grabbed a cookie and snuck into my bedroom to plant it on me. She also hid the gingerbread man’s head in that wreath in case someone came looking for it later. She only barely made it back to the kitchen before Cole arrived.”

Skylor snapped her fingers, excitedly jumping in.

“I get it! When we showed up in the kitchen to ask Zane about the cookies, she told us about Cole because she knew we’d find the head and think it was him.”

“Exactly! And it would’ve worked, too, if the tea hadn’t made me suspicious. The only thing I haven’t figured out is why….” Kai paused, staring at them, “Why did you do this, guys?”

Wu stood and walked over to him.

“To put it simply, we wanted to help you overcome your phobia of gingerbread people. It gets in the way of you spending time with your family and friends every year. I know it wasn’t a very kind thing to do, but I honestly felt it would be worth it in the end to see you enjoy the holidays a bit more.” he admitted, placing a hand on Kai’s shoulder.

“And I do believe it worked!” Pixal added, “although you were certainly annoyed, you didn’t seem frightened at any point this morning.”

Kai made a funny face as he thought about everything that had happened. However misguided Pixal and Wu’s plan had been… he didn’t feel the disgust and terror he was used to when he looked at the gingerbread man in his hand anymore.

“You know, I think you’re right… don’t get me wrong, I’m still kinda irritated that you thought this was a good idea. But… thanks.” he told them. Out of all the holiday adventures Kai had had, he was pretty sure this was the strangest. Later that day, after they had finally eaten lunch (much to Cole’s relief), he had to smile when Zane didn’t hesitate to hand him a gingerbread man to decorate. He set to work carefully frosting it so they it resembled a detective with a trench coat and fedora, proudly displaying it with the rest when he was finished. It was nice to see that gingerbread people weren’t so bad after all. Ninja Noir would be proud.

Hopefully this ridiculous story made someone smile today :) it was literally so fun to come up with hehe

#Ninjago #Ninjago fanfiction #my fics #ninjago Christmas #Kai loves detective novels #Who put a decapitated gingerbread man in his bed?#Yall are gonna have to read to find out #Pixal and wu just wanna help but are really bad at it #Cole eats frosting by the bowlful but can we blame him? No #You guys I am seriously so proud of this

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Dune Trailer Breakdown and Analysis

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains spoilers for the Dune book and probably the movie. You’ve been warned.

The first trailer for Denis Villeneueve’s Dune is here and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. Showcasing a spectacular all star cast, truly epic visuals, and a surprising Pink Floyd song choice, this looks like a faithful adaptation of Frank Herbert’s legendary sci-fi novel.

Well…half of it, at least. Y’see, Warner Bros. and Villeneueve have (wisely) opted to split the book into two films. So everything you see in this trailer is roughly from the first half (or less) of the story.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is…

Pretty spectacular, right? Now, let’s dive in…but before I start, a note about spoilers.

Look, if it’s in the marketing material, it isn’t a spoiler. And it’s tough to truly spoil a book that is almost 60 years old, especially when David Lynch adapted this back in 1984, in a version that has been widely seen and is inexplicably beloved. Nevertheless, I’m keeping this spoiler light, and trying not to allude to stuff in the latter half of the book, although you can draw some pretty strong conclusions from what’s shown in the trailer.

My own analysis here is mixed in with quotes from the cast, taken from a Q&A that was moderated by Stephen Colbert.

Paul Atreides

That’s Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides, the protagonist, if not the actual “hero” of Dune, inasmuch as this story has any actual heroes. He’s only 15 years old, leaving his comfortable existence on his home planet, because his family has just won the contract to mine the most valuable commodity in the galaxy, the spice Melange, on the planet Arrakis.

And yes, as you expect, there is more to him than there might seem to be at first. We wrote more about Paul here.

Chani

Zendaya is Chani, a Fremen of the planet Arrakis. Some of Paul’s narration in this trailer seems to be based around prophetic dreams he has had of eventually meeting Chani on Arrakis.

“I think upon their first meeting, she doesn’t … She’s tough,” Zendaya said in a cast Q&A. “She’s a warrior. She’s native to this planet. This is all she knows. And so, this kind of other kid coming in, she’s not really feeling it. And that’s to the Fremen culture, that they have strong culture and bond within and amongst each other…she obviously doesn’t know about these visions and things. And he knows her, she doesn’t know him. And there’s these moments that … don’t want to give anything away, but these moments where she sees something in him that is obviously an indicator of what is to come.”

We have more on Zendaya’s role in the film here.

Speaking of dreaming, here’s Paul in his bedroom back on his home planet of Caladan in the Atreides ancestral home, Castle Caladan. Based on the book, this scene takes place shortly before the Atreides family departs for Arrakis.

For an even more fun detail from the book, the headboard of Paul’s bed is exactly as it’s described in Herbert’s novel.

Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam

This is the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam (played by Charlotte Rampling). She reports directly to the Emperor, but was also the teacher of Paul’s mother, the Lady Jessica.

Fans of David Lynch’s film may remember the key role she played in determining that young Paul had an extraordinary destiny, and that scene plays out throughout this trailer.

Notably…

“What’s in the box?”

“Pain.”

This box literally causes pain, but with no physical damage. What’s happening here is the Reverend Mother has summoned Paul to see if he has some of the Bene Gesserit physical/mental control powers. When Paul’s hand is placed in the box, nerves are stimulated causing pain.

In the book the level of pain is described as if the flesh is being seared from his bones, although no actual damage is done.

The Gom Jabbar

Ah, but what’s a test without consequences, right? To make sure that Paul takes this little test seriously, the Reverend Mother holds this nasty little device to his neck.

It’s called a gom jabbar, described in the book’s “Terminology of the Imperium” appendix as “the high-handed enemy; that specific poison needle tipped with meta-cyanide used by Bene Gesserit proctors in the death-alternative test of human awareness.

In other words, if Paul pulls his hand out of the box of pain (please, no Grateful Dead jokes), he’ll be pricked with this extremely poisonous needle and die an agonizing actual death.

Shields

So you know how in Star Wars and Star Trek ships have shields and deflector screens? In the world of Dune, you get personal energy shields!

According to the “Terminology of the Imperium” these defensive shields “will permit entry only to objects moving at slow speeds (depending on setting, this speed ranges from six to nine centimetres per second).”

In other words, no guns or projectile weapons work with someone wearing a shield, making the art of personal combat that much more important in this universe…

…hence Paul training with blades here. And his instructor?

Gurney Halleck

That would be Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), who is responsible for teaching Paul how to use weapons and defend himself. And kick his ass when necessary.

“Gurney is the war-master,” Josh Brolin said. “He’s also kind of a parent of sorts, where Duke Leto is obviously busy, extremely busy, in what he’s doing. And he’s taken a real liking to this kid, and I think he has a real soft spot. So Gurney Halleck is like a great dichotomist character, because he’s this great kind of brave-heart warrior, but at the same time, has a love of poetry and kind of heart, and there’s a softness to him…It was fun to play.”

Duke Leto Atreides

Paul’s father, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) appears to be taking one last look at his home planet of Caladan before departing for Arrakis.

“He’s a father, and he’s got all the qualities of, I think, what the epitome of what a father should be,” Isaac told Colbert. “He’s noble … and under incredible pressure to save his family, save his house, but to adapt to this new existential threat situation, which is moving to this strange planet, and being forced to, and being able to see that there could be a trap, that it could be … there’s a lot of things at work, and yet, trying to live up to those bigger ideals, which is sensitivity and empathy and love and order, and trying to give that and show that to his son, knowing that he’s not going to be there forever, in the hopes that they can use this dark, strange situation to their advantage.”

The Planet Caladan

This is the surface of planet Caladan, the lush, watery planet that the Atreides family leaves for um…dryer pastures on Arrakis.

Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson)

This is the Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), the Duke’s concubine and the mother of Paul Atreides. Don’t mistake her for a passive observer, though. She’s a Bene Gesserit, which makes her something like a combination of a psychic badass and a superspy. She’s absolutely central to the story.

“She’s [Leto’s] dearest partner in greatness, but she has her own weird, Bene Gesserit, prophet, spy thing going on,” Isaac said. “And I think he kind of doesn’t really get too much into what that’s all about. He understands she has this specific role to play. And then he’s got a son that might be the messiah, so there’s a lot going on there.”

“She’s the engine of the family,” he continued. “She’s the engine of the events that happen, and it’s a long game that’s being played, over millennia, and she’s part of that…she’s in a very interesting place too, because she understands that there’s a much greater mission to accomplish, and yet, she also loves her family and wants to protect them in any way she can. So it is. They’re a family in an insane amount of pressure and a lot of conflict. But I think at the core of that, it’s an intense love that they have for each other.”

Timothee Chalamet also sings the praises of both the character and the actress.

“There is no Dune without Lady Jessica,” Chalamet said. “And without giving anything away, although the book has been out for decades, anybody can read it, they … Lady Jessica ignores the order of the Bene Gesserit. She’s supposed to have a girl, and she has a boy instead. And that’s one of the triggering events of Dune.”

The Planet Arrakis

Arrakis, the titular Dune of the film, is quite a change from Caladan, isn’t it? It’s a planet of great strategic importance, with an incredibly valuable natural resource, that powerful factions are willing to go to war over.

So, you know, nothing political about this at all.

Thufir Hawat

I’m pretty sure that’s Stephen McKinley Henderson as Atreides family Mentat (and Master of Assassins) Thufir Hawat visible between Paul and Gurney here.

Duncan Idaho

Meet Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), swordmaster of the Atreides and one of the most trusted lieutenants of Duke Leto. Duncan was sent ahead to Arrakis which is why he’s so pleased to see everyone here.

Momoa described his character with his typical aplomb as “basically the greatest fighter in the fucking world,” before adding, “he just would do anything to protect Paul…and looks up to all these guys.”

The “these guys” in question are the Fremen, the fierce natives of Arrakis who the charming Idaho is trying to make into allies for the Atreides.

Stilgar

Stilgar (Javier Bardem) is a powerful Fremen leader and potential ally of the Atreides as they acclimate to Arrakis.

“Stilgar is the head chief of the people that live deep in the desert of planet Arrakis, which is also known as Dune,” Bardem said. “He’s a leader, and he’s a fighter. He has a lot of ethics and morals, and he’s taken by the message that the messiah, Paul Atreides, is bringing with him…They are kind of protecting their environment and their planet…So there’s a lot of ethics and morality and also environmental thinking in their ways, which I think is brilliant in the book and in the movie.”

The Harkonnen Homeworld

I’m not completely certain, but I’m pretty sure this is Giedi Prime, the homeworld of House Harkonnen.

Beast Rabban

That’s Dave Bautista as “Beast” Glossu Rabban, the nephew of the film’s nasty villain, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. He doesn’t look particularly healthy, does he?

“I grew up a massive WWE fan, and I’d never met Bautista… let alone Bautista, the real human,” Timothee Chalamet said. “And his excitement being there, having already worked with Denis [on Blade Runner 2049]. And when you see an actor that’s already worked with a director and is more humbled than ever and is more excited to be there than ever…just kind of set the bar on these kind of movies.”

Anyway, speaking of the Harkonnens…

Baron Harkonnen

This might be a completely unrecognizable (and disgusting) Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

“I will say that my secret weapon for that was Stellan Skarsgård, because you put Stellan with the way we designed the Baron and we shoot him,” Villeneuve said. “People will understand right away what his position regarding the Atreides and what is the difference of moral values between the Atreides and the Harkonnens.”

If the above shot is any indication, he ain’t kidding.

I’m not totally sure what we’re looking at here, but the most likely explanation is Harkonnen soldiers.

Liet Kynes

Sharon Duncan-Brewster is Liet Kynes, an ecologist studying Arrakis. In the book and Lynch film, Kynes was a male character, but that has been swapped here.

“Denis was adamant that we just concentrate on what Kynes represents and thematically, the sense of … he’s an integral role,’ Duncan-Brewster said. “He connects all the dots. He connects the Harkonnens, he connects House of Atreides, he connects the Fremen, planet Arrakis, the sand-worms. This is somebody who understands … and moves in between each and every one, seemingly with one agenda. But however, as things go, we start to understand that there is more gameplay-ing or survival or preservation for the good of certain people or individuals or beings.”

Dr. Yueh

This is Dr. Wellington Yueh (Chang Chen), a doctor who works for the Atreides. The black diamond tattoo on his forehead identifies him as a member of the Suk School, the greatest doctors in the known universe.

Spice Harvester

There’s a great scene in the book (and in the Lynch film) where a spice harvester gets swallowed by a sandworm and, well…here it is.

Ornithopters

These weird dragonfly like vehicles you’re seeing here are Ornithopters. They’re man made aircraft that flap their wings like birds.

Sandworms

And there it is, Shai-Halud, the notorious and iconic sandworm of Arrakis. These things can be 400 meters long, are essentially immortal, and unless another sandworm kills them or they drown in water (which isn’t exactly in great supply on Arrakis), they aren’t going anywhere.

The “Terminology of the Imperium” gives an ominous indicator of how powerful these are, with “most of the sand on Arrakis is credited to sandworm action.”

Dune is currently scheduled to open on Dec. 18.

Did you spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Dune Trailer Breakdown and Analysis appeared first on Den of Geek.

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tormundjonthings · 5 years ago

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GOT Politics Thoughts! (I know, I’m not original)

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the last couple seasons again after reading the finale script last week, specifically about how Game of Thrones handled politics in it’s last few seasons. A lot has been written about how the characters or relationships or fantasy elements were bungled, but I’m interested in how they muddled the political end too. And not just the in universe politics, like conflicts between houses or the challenges of moving/feeding armies. Although...that also pretty much vanishes, outside of that stray line of Sansa’s from s8 about feeding Dany’s armies (which is mainly there so Dany can get in a sick line about how cool dragons are.)

No, I’m more interested in how the larger political questions / parallels to politics in the real world vanish or become so confused that any message is lost entirely.

Lets venture back a few seasons, say to like season 5, and look at some of the big political topics being addressed. (This got SUPER long, so more under the cut)

Political Question One: What are borders?

The storyline at the Wall was always one of the most interesting parts of the show to me, mostly because of the nature of the conflict between the Nights Watch and the Free Folk. The the Wall was always a foil to the pettier political games happening elsewhere in the series. That whole Mormont quote “when the dead rise, do you think it matters who sits on the Iron Throne?” Like they’ve got a big, giant existential disaster to deal with, makes all the squabbling between houses look pretty damn silly!

Yet they also participate in some of this political squabbling, which is very interesting to me! They spend several SEVERAL seasons dealing primarily not with the existential threat at hand, but trying to fight off people who largely just want to escape to safety.

The reason Jon Snow is one of my favorite characters in the series is that he’s one of the very few people who looks at an underlying bit of “common political wisdom” in Westeros, something that’s been unchanged for thousands of years regardless of who sits on the Iron Throne, and says, “Hey, this is both very wrong and very dumb.”

He meets the Wildlings, notes that they follow the same religion as the North, speak the same language, have a lot of the same customs, and most importantly notes that they’re just people trying to live their lives in safety.

Some of them raid and kill, yes. But lets be honest...plenty plenty plenty of people born and bred in the Seven Kingdoms do that too.

The division between people of the Seven Kingdoms is entirely arbitrary. Other people in the series have noted this (Benjen, Tyrion) but Jon actually tries to do something about it. He says they’re all the same, that the Free Folk are part of the realms of men, and manages to get many of them south of the Wall.

This is incredibly controversial; he’s broken a huge political taboo here. The northern Lords hate “Wildling invaders.” Many members of the Nights Watch don’t care much about the White Walkers and see the Free Folk as their primary enemy. This is so controversial that Jon is murdered for it.

Now, if you live in almost any part of the world right now, you’ll note that this has many, many parallels to real life events. Especially if you see White Walkers as Climate Change. People trying to escape to safety from disasters and the complete immorality of holding up largely arbitrary borders in the face of existential threats to humanity is already an enormous political issue, and likely to be more so in the years to come. This is a good thing, maybe an essential thing, to explore and talk about through fiction right now.

So how is it handled after Jon is resurrected? Well...it kind of isn’t really. Some of the northern Lords are pissed about it when Jon asks for support during the Battle of the Bastards, but Robb’s old mess-ups are generally more the issue there. Apparently all the Nights Watch members who were uncool with it get hung for treason and...no one else in the manned castles says anything. There are some pissed off northern Lords again who mention Wildling invaders once they’re back in Winterfell but its pretty much skated over and they still all crown Jon king like immediately. The focus on borders and arbitrary divisions, how harmful and damaging they can be, which was a big part of the Wall plotline for several seasons, is pretty much just dropped.

Political Question Two: What is a Revolutionary?

So this is pretty much the whole question surrounding Dany’s plotline. I do think, especially in her earlier seasons, that Dany genuinely felt sympathy for enslaved people in Slavers Bay and wanted to free them. Like, if Jon is one person who looks at the underlying nature of this world and sees injustice, the other person who does so is Dany (at least initially.) I do truly think she saw parallels to her own terrifying situation when Viserys sold her to Drogo, and she wanted to help.

The problem is, despite her dragons and her military power, she is absolutely the wrong type of person to lead a revolution.

This is actually a quote from my sister, we were talking and she said “Dany is the kind of person who believes in a better world, but can’t see that she’s not the one who can bring that world into being.”

Dany was raised by an insanely scary brother who constantly went off about his rightful claim to the throne and their noble family history. The only adults in her life were the kind of Targaryen loyalists who wanted to see the precious heirs safe, or else the kind of people who thought they could get something out of Viserys and repeated his own bullshit back to him.

This has all clearly sunk into Dany; despite the fact that she started the incredibly huge political project of ending slavery, something that will require years YEARS of work, she still constantly wants to go off to Westeros and rule because she believes it’s her right. She’s also got a huge self myth about herself as a queen, and what that means, versus an interest in being a leader.

I’m not a politician, I’m a queen.

She likes to command, demand, pull the whole fire and blood thing. This all comes from her upbringing, from her understanding of who the Targaryens were and what they conquered/deserved.

Her status as someone from an old Westerosi house also means that she has a tendency to trust the rich and well named, especially rich people from Westeros, waaaaay more than she should. Trusting Tyrion, for example, is a huge huge error. Especially, again, given that she’s attempting the truly revolutionary project of ending fucking slavery. Tyrion is part of an old rich house, part of an old rich system. He is from a culture that does not have slavery, but he is still from a culture with a HIGHLY stratified class system. Fundamentally, he’s got more in common with the slavers than the slaves. Which is why he listens to the slavers, why he comes up with the oh so reasonable compromise of phasing slavery out over several years, and why he gives the slavers HUMAN BEINGS as presents to seal the deal.

One of the most interesting scenes in the entire series for me is the bit directly after Tyrion makes this deal, when we see Missandei and Grey Worm’s reaction to it. They are horrified.

Because the ones with a real read on this situation, the ones Dany should let have more input, are absolutely Missandei and Grey Worm. They are the two people the former slaves look to most when they have questions. They are seen as leaders by Dany’s base in the city, the formerly enslaved peoples. They are the ones who have suffered under the hands of this system, who know that it is not wise to make “reasonable compromises” with the kind of people willing to own human beings. The kind of person willing to buy and sell people will always try to take advantage, there is nothing to which they won’t sink. You don’t use them, they use you.

Yet Missandei and Grey Worm’s power is largely often ceremonial. Dany makes a lot of her real big choices listening to people like Jorah, like Tyrion. People from old Westerosi houses. Because she’s been raised to value that kind of power.

Dany’s whole plotline; her freeing slaves quickly without a plan, then letting the slavers into her ear, letting them take back some control, and ultimately leaving the situation in a whole mess to gain more personal power, is a great example of why top-down revolutions, revolutions where a wealthy savior wants to free/help the less fortunate, do not generally work out.

For a revolution to stick, for it’s ideas to stick, it needs to be led by those from below, people who are fully invested, people who understand the monstrosities of the system. People like Missandei and Grey Worm.

That whole scene where Dany talks to Tyrion about breaking the wheel is also super interesting to me. Because...they are both part of the wheel. And as long as Dany’s goal is still to rule, and Tyrion’s goal is to help her, they aren’t going to break that thing. That wheel won’t break until monastic power, until rule by a few families, ends, and that’s not really Dany’s goal. Because she wants to rule. And her family is part of the wheel.

Again...all of these poltical questions are important. We live under a system where the few, the very rich, rule us. This power is often inherited (because money is often inherited.) Some of them say they want to help...but ultimately nothing really changes.

And there’s a pretty recent example in world history of slavery ending, but politicians failing to root the perpetrators of that system out of power. Letting those people stay in power, letting them use influence and take advantage, led to slavery essentially returning in a different form (hello 13th amendment of the US Constitution!) So it’s an important thing to explore through fiction.

I kind of thought all this was going to come to a head, especially with Missandei and Grey Worm. Dany clearly trusts them with some power, but she lets Westerosi advisors like Tyrion make more and more of her decisions. The whole plotline with Missendei and Grey Worm is them moving past their trauma and becoming more self-actualized people. I thought they’d start to challenge Dany. I thought maybe they’d take issue with Dany’s desire for power at any cost, especially use of the Dothraki, who famously take and sell slaves. I thought they’d take issue with Dany wanting to leave for Westeros at all, with leaving the slaves of Mereen in such a desperate, hopeless situation. I thought maybe the show would highlight how becoming more folded into the powers that be in Westeros and ignoring the downtrodden people she met in Essos led to her downfall. It certainly seemed to be heading that way.

But then...Missandei and Grey Worm were relegated fully to the background. They don’t differ with Dany on anything at all in the last half of the series. Issues were raised with how Dany was approaching power, but most of these were centered around her individually being a bad person, having the “Targaryen madness,” not with her being part of a system that sees rule by a few powerful families as just and right. It’s just all a problem of one person being insane and power hungry! Not a problem of systems!

And then a member of another house on the wheel takes control at the end, but he’s from the Good House...so it’s framed as a win!

Political Question Three: What happens when the rich ignore the poor / What happens when religious movements redirect class consciousness?

This is one I really really wanted the series to get more into. The smallfolk are often talked about and seen in the background as the true victims in the wars that tear through Westeros. They suffer and starve and die because of things they had absolutely no say in, so a few people they’ll never meet can have a little power. And this tension between the poor and the rich was building throughout the series; the smallfolk were getting pissed the fuck off. That riot in King’s Landing where the poor literally tear the septon to pieces still gives me chills.

And we finally, finally started to see this start to come to a head with the Sparrows. I think it’s really interesting that they chose to use a religious movement. Religious grifters often do swoop in during moments of desperation and steal the energy / direct people away from class consciousness to build their own power. And the poor are so desperate for something anything different that it becomes easy for these grifters to thrive.

And the High Sparrow is this kind of religious grifter to his bones. It’s very interesting to me that when we finally learn his backstory, he wasn’t truly poor. He was a merchant, and one doing pretty okay. If Westeros had an emerging middle class, he was part of it. He wasn’t the lowest of the low in Flea Bottom; Gendry for example was likely worse off. But the Sparrow presents himself as of the poor, part of the poor, truly one of the people, and because of this he is able to build a shitton of power very quickly from smallfolk who are fed up with all the bullshit and want to see something anything done about it.

And I was very interested in this! Again, this is a good political problem to discuss; religious movements and charismatic grifters build power all the time by telling people that really they’re unhappy because of “these sinners or outsiders” and not because of the larger systemic issues. A LOT OF THAT has been happening lately.

Like this was the moment that the political scheming of people like Cersei and her absolute lack of interest in helping the people she’d supposedly ruling should have come home to roost. I was interested to see what would happen; how that tension would be resolved, IF that tension could be resolved.

And then...Cersei just blows up the Sept of Baelor and apparently every single member of the reactionary religious movement was inside of it because it’s never really brought up again.

There are no riots, no anger from the smallfolk at her destroying both the major religious figures AND the major religious site for a large chunk of Westeros. People still gladly flock to Cersei when Dany shows up with dragons, even though they KNOW Cersei is very willing to blow people up. It’s just..all dropped. Cersei spends the next several seasons drinking wine and wearing spiky dresses.

Granted, there were a few big political issues that D&D still tried to discuss through the end but uhh...I don’t think they did very well. For example -

They Tried! #1 - White Walkers = Climate Change and the Uselessness of the System as Usual in the Face of Existential Threats

So I do think D&D were kind of going for this a little bit, and it was certainly discussed a lot in all the blogs and meta posts leading up to season 8. And there was a lot of talk, especially in season 7, about how silly the petty political differences between Cersei and Dany were in the face of such a threat.

But the fact that the White Walkers were destroyed relatively easily all things considered, without fundamentally changing the existing power dynamic, without being forced to resolve the differences between Dany and Cersei...kind of ruins this whole parallel. Jon’s been saying throughout the whole series that they needed to fully unite to defeat the threat but uhh...they didn’t unite with Cersei and they still won so I guess it was all good!

Don’t worry guys, we don’t need to fundamentally approach politics differently to deal with climate change, lets just go to Antartica and stab the carbon emissions monster in the heart!

And the fact that ultimately the main battle of the series, the finale of the series, was focused on the various ruling houses opposing each other...kind of ends up saying that the most important thing really is the petty politics after all.

Well that’s a bad message!

They Tried! #2 - Dany the Imperialist

Now of all the political messages D&D were trying to get across in the series, I am absolutely 100% certain this one was intentional. They were trying to draw parallels between Dany and modern imperial regimes, specifically the US.

It’s all over that last script, explicitly. The dragons have frequently been portrayed as weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, and in the script here there is an explicit connection between the destruction of King’s Landing and Hiroshima, an atrocity committed by the US. In the finale script, they also use the phrase “they burned the village in order to save it” which is a famous quote from a US general regarding the destruction of a Vietnamese village by American troops during the Vietnam War.

And Tyrion’s whole speech about Dany destroying evil men looking great from afar but horrible when you’re on the ground / closer to the reality of it has clear US parallels. The US often uses humanitarian justifications for war (taking out dictators, spreading democracy, etc) and does not much care about the atrocities the actual human beings who live in those countries face when their countries are torn apart by war (Afghanistan and Iraq are prime examples of this.)

They are very very clearly trying to make this parallel. To make a political point about how imperialism is bad. But Jesus Christ, it’s so muddled.

For one, it’s uhhh not great that the perpetrators of these atrocities are largely non-white and the victims are members of a culture that closely parallels western Europe. Given that the way the last several hundred years have played out...it’s usually been the other way around. This shows a lack of care in D&D’s part in truly wrestling with this topic, a lack of interest in really dealing with real world politics and history. Just no interest exploring how imperialism and white supremacy, how the idea that “we come from a ‘superior culture’ so clearly we know what’s best and can go around the world doing as we please” are INCREDIBLY linked.

For two...it’s mostly just Dany that’s the problem. Jon doesn’t want to destroy King’s Landing, Varys doesn’t, Tyrion doesn’t. Grey Worm does, but he’s barely a character at this point in the story. They all give her like, a million outs. Especially the bells. And those bells ring, the battle is won, but Dany decides to go on her murder rampage anyway.

The problem isn’t a system, it’s one person who has “the madness!” It’s one person being a psychotic dictator, and all the problems are solved when that person gets stabbed.

Which is absolutely not how it works in real life. We didn’t just go to war in Afghanistan in Iraq because George Bush was a bad person. If we had, we would have been out when Obama got into office. The US went to war in those countries because of a giant system of war and profit, a system that benefits many many people, that has been built over the past several generations. The US went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and stayed there, because weapons contractors wanted to be there so they could make money. Because oil companies and heavy mineral companies wanted the resources those countries had. Because the military itself has a huge amount influence over the government, and to justify their massive budget and continued influence they need to have things to do. The Afghanistan War continues loooong after the death of Osama Bin Laden because of a whole web of CEOs and lobbyists and generals and politicians, all of whom benefit from it. The problem is not one person. It’s a fundamental flaw in how the system is set up. How it rewards those who can buy influence.

And it’s so so clear to me that D&D do not understand this. Like...even a little. They don’t think in terms of systems, just good people and bad people. That’s why the end of the series, which is still a fucking monarchy, is framed positively. Because it’s not the system of power that’s the problem, it’s just that bad people were in charge! But now the good people are in charge, so it’s all good!

They like talking about the tragedy of war, like referencing historical atrocities in scripts, like talking about how deep it all is. They love to talk about how they wanted to create a fantasy series grounded not in magic, but political reality. But they have no understanding of political reality beyond the most basic basic shit. Like war is bad dontcha know! Yeah, no shit!

So these two messed up the characters, they messed up the fantasy, but they also messed up the part they claimed to care about most, the politics. Because they’re dumbshits.

Jesus this got long. If you read all this, thank you for listening to the ramblings I wrote while I should be working.

#got #got season 8 #game of thrones #anti game of thrones #anti d&d #holy shit why did i write so much #this is entirely just for me #no one else can be expected to read this

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douxreviews · 5 years ago

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Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) Review

Quentin Beck: "Don't ever apologize for being the smartest one in the room."

Half teen romp in Europe, half superhero extravaganza, this is most definitely unlike any Spider-man movie we have ever seen.

While tonally hewing closer to Spider-Man: Homecoming, this installment (which is the third version of a Spider-Man sequel) was a lot of fun. I won’t go into spoilers, especially when I talk about characters. However, I did want to mention how this particular version of Spider-Man is now the most prolific on film having been in five movies to date (Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame and now this movie). I don’t know how many appearances Tom Holland signed up for but since the producers and director are already talking a Spider-Man 3 I would assume at least one more.

As far as spectacle goes, this was bigger than the Homecoming, but more intimate than Infinity War or Endgame, with an adversary that creates personal stakes for Peter. His friends are more fleshed out, especially Michele and Ned. Ned continues to be a wonderful foil for Peter and a true friend and confidant. While Ned does get his own plot in this one, it was played up more for fun and acts as mostly comic relief between moments of drama and action.

Michele, now MJ, is officially a new version of the comic book character Mary Jane Watson and Peter’s main romantic interest. Peter does spend a majority of the movie pining for her and trying to figure out how to tell her how he feels, she isn’t there to be his reward for being a hero. She is strong and independent, her personality is clearly defined and consistent. She has a eclectic and somewhat dark sense of style and humor, and yet is not afraid to be feminine. She has agency and she’s willing to run into danger to protect those she cares about. I wasn’t so sure about her in the last movie, but she might be my favorite character in this one.

The rest of Peter’s group of friends also had moments to shine, especially Betty Brandt and their poor put-upon teacher Mr. Harrington. Flash Thompson isn’t given much to do, but his few moments stood out and even managed to give the character a bit of pathos. Marisa Tomei (Aunt May) and Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan) have a fun subplot that gave each enough screen time, without distracting from the core characters or action. Happy Hogan in particular had some truly wonderful moments as a character we have known for over a decade.

There are three more important characters that I would want to address, but I can’t go into much detail for spoiler reasons. The first is Maria Hill, whose screen time was minimal but had some appropriately kick ass moments. Next was Nick Fury, who wasn’t as fun as he was in Captain Marvel, but was still a highlight. Then there is Quentin Beck, as the mysterious dimension-jumping hero Mysterio. The less said about this character the better, but I have to give Jake Gyllenhaal a lot of credit for making him as three dimensional as he is.

Of course, I have to mention Tom Holland’s performance as Peter. He continues to be the best part of these movies, with this earnest delivery and easy likability. He conveys Peter’s geekiness without overdoing it; he seems genuinely sweet and a little naive and yet manages to be believable when he shows his intelligence. While he spends a majority of this film trying to escape being a hero and just be a kid for a few minutes. Which is understandable for a sixteen year old who was erased from existence for five years, lost his father figure and fought against Thanos… twice. His defining characteristic is that he is good, almost to a fault. That’s just as powerful as repeating the mantra; "With great power comes great responsibility."

There is also the fact that this film is more than just a sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming. It is also the movie directly following Avengers: Endgame, and of course it has some big shoes to fill as a coda, epilogue and glimpse into the next phase of the MCU. Thankfully it succeeds by addressing the aftermath of that movie head on, and uses the fallout to give all the characters some emotional weight. Yet it also lets itself poke fun at those same consequences, the bizarre and somewhat absurd ways in which the world changed due to what happened in Endgame. I honestly have no idea how this film managed to pull all of that off and still be good.

Bits:

Kevin Feige has stated that Mr. Harrington was in fact the computer geek in the Incredible Hulk. While that is a bit of a recon, it’s about as bad as saying Peter was the kid in the Iron Man mask in Iron Man 2.

While it goes without saying that you should watch the after credits scenes, this time I must insist you stay until the end of the credits. While both scenes are fun, they are also massively important to the MCU as a whole going forward.

Each of the elemental monsters that show up in this film correspond to classic Spider-man enemies while they are never called by name.

Peter wears four different Spider-man costumes in this film. Four. That's insane.

Quotes:

Nick Fury: "We have a job to do, and you're coming with us." Peter Parker: "There's gotta be someone else you can use. What about Thor?" Nick Fury: "Off-world." Peter Parker: "Doctor Strange." Maria Hill: "Unavailable." Peter Parker: "Captain Marvel." Nick Fury: "Don't you invoke her name!" Peter Parker: "I'm just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man." Nick Fury: "Bitch, please! You've been to space."

This was nearly a perfect coda to the Infinity War saga and a fitting end to the first ten years of the MCU. While it does set up some new things, and is a game changer for Spider-man in particular, it feels like a lovely epilogue to a huge franchise.

4 out of 4 Giant elemental monsters taken down by a man with a fishbowl on his head.

---

J.D. Balthazar is a confirmed nerd who loves most things sci-fi or fantasy-related.

#Spider-Man #Spider-Man: Far From Home #Peter Parker #Mysterio #Nick Fury #Marvel #MCU #Spiderman #Doux Reviews #Movie Reviews

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stylo-xx · 7 years ago

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Eyes Closed (M)

G-Dragon: Angst/Small amount of fluff/Smut

PART 9-A: Telephone Games

A/N: more to come soon

P.S: songs for your listening pleasure (The Horrors)

(Part One)||(Part Two-A)||(Part Two-B)||(Part Three)||(Part Four)||(Part Five-A)||(Part Five-B)||(Part Five-C)||(Part Six)(Part Seven)||(Part Eight)||(Part Nine-B)

Ji-Yong twirled his phone in his hands before unlocking it for the hundredth time before sighing heavily and locking it back up.

“You know, they say doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is insanity right?” Young-Bae raised an eyebrow.

Ji-Yong ignoring his best friend, absentmindedly scoffed as he stared at the black screen of his phone.

“How many weeks is it now that you’ve been waiting for her to hit you up?” “I don’t know I lost count...but I’m betting less than the amount of texts I’ve sent her” Ji-Yong sighed as he plopped his phone on his chest as he slunk into the couch “the fucked up thing is that she never has her read receipts on but she turned them on just so I could see she that she left me on read...” “Ouch, that’s a bit harsh” “A bit? She’s rubbing that bullshit excuse for a relationship in my face” he furrowed his brows. “By not responding to your texts?” “In case you’ve forgotten, any of those millions of pictures she’s been posting of her and that asshole, she made it official. Like to the public! God! it’s like even when we first got together we kept it as low key as we could for a while but suddenly she just wants everyone and their mother to know how great her newfound relationship with Satan is” “I mean you did kinda rub your non existent, happy relationship with Cassie in her face so—” “So nothing! That wasn’t an invite for her to stay pissed at me while she’s out ‘having the time of her life’ and rub it in my face” “What did you want her to do exactly?” “I don’t fucking know! Tell me that she’s sorry and she made a mistake and she needs me back” “So you basically want her to feel guilty for being in a functioning relationship with someone else?” “I guess when you put it that way then...yeah, kinda...yeah” Young-Bae sighed as he sat on the couch beside his best friend. “I’ve done everything she wanted me to do and yet here I am still not with her! I mean I got sober!—for the most part at least...I haven’t fucked anyone else!—except for those three girls in Japan I tried to distract myself with...but she practically has me crawling on my hands and knees begging her to get back with me” “I mean she does think you have a girlfriend…”

“That’s beside the point!”

“I don’t know maybe just tell her Cassie isn’t your actual girlfriend? Maybe just tell her the truth? Ever think about that?” “And run the risk of her getting even more pissed at me for lying? I think I’m good” Young-Bae sighed heavily “you ever think about just moving on? Clearly she has” Jiyong raised an eyebrow “you’re joking right? Besides, I can’t just ‘move on…” “Why not?” “Because I love her. And I know I fucked up, on more than one occasion, but I wanna make up for it before I don’t get the chance to” Young-Bae nodded his head absentmindedly “Also because I just can’t...I can’t. Physically, mentally I can’t. And I know it sounds stupid but I can’t” “Doesn’t sound stupid, just tiresome for the both of you” Ji-Yong bit his lip as he sat in deep thought for a moment. “Okay let’s say that, for instance, I were to just let her go and I ‘move on’ with someone else” he air quoted “--further down the line we’re able to see each other happy with someone else and not have any kind of feelings for one another and we manage to be best friends again—” “Doesn’t sound like a bad scenario to me” Young-Bae interjected.

“—let’s say that even further down the line, a year from now, two years from now things go great with both of our significant others and one day she calls me up all excited to tell me she got engaged to him—” Young-Bae opened his mouth to speak, Ji-Yong held up a hand to shush him before he could utter a single syllable “Then it hits me like a ton of bricks that I in-fact am not only not over her, but this wave of panic takes over me and come the day of her wedding all I’m gonna wanna do is to get wasted and tell her I’m still in love her and that she’s making a huge mistake marrying him and she should just run away with me. But then she tells me that she doesn’t feel that same way anymore and she marries him any way. But where the hell does that leave me Young-Bae? Huh? Where does that leave me? All alone wishing I had done something earlier”

He had gotten so worked up he stood up mid monologue. “I mean you see I’m in the right here, right?” Ji-Yong turned his body toward him. “Honestly I’m not so inclined to tell you where I stand on this whole mess between the two of you” “What why not?” “Because no matter what I say, you two do the complete opposite and frankly just don’t know how to help anymore. I will be here for you until the very end but I just don’t know how to help either of you” Ji-Yong furrowed his brows. Young-Bae crossed his arms across his chest “sure you say you got ‘sober’ and you haven’t screwed anyone else, not counting those three girls, but...do you honestly think you can change at this point?” “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” “What I think I’m trying to say is, Ji-Yong nobody believes you anymore. You’re a sad ass liar” “What did you just call me?” “You deserve to be lonely”

“What the fuck Young-Bae?!” “You can’t change. You wouldn’t know how to even if you actually tried” Ji-Yong squared up to his best friend. “She is much happier with him...you? You’ll only be the end of her...you’re just poison” The words and the image of his best friend started to become distorted as his words began to echo in his head as if in some horror movie. Tossing and turning in bed he awoke in a cold sweat

“Fuck!” He ran his hands over his face before he turned to face the glowing green numbers on his alarm clock on his night stand. Three AM.

‘Goddamn it’ he thought He sat up on one elbow to reach across the night stand to grab his phone. He groaned as he hit the home button prompting the screen to turn on blinding him with the light. He shut one eye as he turned down the brightness and began to scroll through his texts. He bit his lip contemplating opening the thread that read ‘Alex’. He had finally changed her name in his phone, considering he had called her now on more than one occasion, he wasn’t afraid of drunk dialing her anymore. What he was afraid of was that the reason she wasn’t responding was because she had blocked his number and all together tossed any and all memory of him in the figurative garbage. For the past month and a half, Ji-Yong had for the most part managed to stay sober despite his own brain clawing at his skull telling him to just down a few bottles until he wound up in the hospital again; that way she would have to come see him. And with his onset new sobriety, he’s even managed to stay celibate somehow. Though in retrospect he thought he went a bit overboard with trying to clean his act up. With his body not used to not having some sort of release it had inadvertently made him sensitive to the human touch. Just days prior at press junket during the translators speaking to the press, Seung-Hyun had leaned over to whisper something in Ji-Yong’s ear and it almost instantaneously sent shivers down his spine. Since then the others had teased Ji-Yong relentlessly randomly blowing on his neck, massaging his head and so on and so forth. Not having sex for as long as he had, had only made him rely on his imagination and his right hand. Though admittedly it just wasn’t the same as watching the person beneath beneath him squirm and claw at his back in ecstasy.

His thumb hesitantly hovered over her name in bold black text in his recent calls list; he weighed his options in his head as his bit his lip.

‘Was twenty-two unanswered calls one too many past desperate?’ he thought.

He sighed heavily placing one arm behind his head and leaning back into his mountain of pillows.

“Fuck it” he muttered to himself pressing dial anticipating the robotic voice he had come to know far too well.

Sure enough, not even a full ring on the receiver and he was sent directly to voicemail. Sighing again, he pulled his phone away from his ear readying to hang up as the robotic woman delivered her speech he had come to know by heart. Just as his finger was mere centimeters away from the red button he retracted his finger placing the phone back up to his ear.

‘--Please leave your message after the tone’

He took a deep breath before speaking

“Hey uh Alex its me...Ji-Yong” he chuckled awkwardly “I mean I guess you already know that ‘cause of the caller ID...umm it’s three AM here...I--I thought I’d actually leave you a message finally. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay...you hadn’t called me back so--just let me know how you’re doing...even just a--”

Two beeps signaling the call ending cut him off mid sentence.

“Mother fucker...” he muttered as he plopped his phone onto his chest and slunk even further into his sea of pillows and bed sheets.

He wasn’t sure where to go from here. He had tried his best to backpedal from when his own plan backfired straight onto his face the night of the dinner with Suho and company, though his efforts were all for naught. It had been a month and a half now and he still hadn’t heard back from Alex. At this point things weren’t looking to be in his favor; or so he felt that way.

“A-Bomb, calm down!”

“Liar!” she slurred as she drunkenly threw another half eaten chocolate at the mural advertisement on the side of the building.

“You’re wasting perfectly good chocolate!” Sash struggled behind Alex trying to grasp her by the wrist “besides the Guess model with the nice ass didn’t do anything to you!”

“No!”

“Alex, give me the box of chocolates!”

“No!” she wriggled herself free sprinting in the opposite direction.

“Alexandra!” Sash panted as she chased behind her.

“No, she’s fine...” Saige sighed as she looked behind her “we’re walking back from the pub to the hotel now”

‘All that yelling doesn’t sound fine to me’

“Don’t even worry, she’ll be over it soon”

‘I just don’t want her to have some sort of meltdown at that award show for it to be broadcasted for millions of people to see. Saige, you promised me that this new guy was going to help keep her reputation in pristine status’

“Chill out Davis, trust me on this. This guy is actually good for her, if not just making her look good”

‘Looking good is part of her job, that’s not the problem Sai--’

“To the public!” she scoffed “you know what I meant”

‘Listen, all I want out of this is that this show makes it look like she got her shit together and judging by how things sound on your end I am not so convinced’

“They’ve made it this far without her looking like a complete lunatic--”

‘Have you gone deaf or am I the only one hearing her screaming ‘fuck these stupid fucking chocolates’ Saige?’

“Trust me--”

‘You keep telling me to trust you Saige but your argument is mute!’

“Listen to me you hard headed genius of a man!” she huffed into the receiver “you asked me to take over her social media and make it look like she’s unbelievably happy and in love, and did I deliver?”

‘Yes…’

“You asked me to make sure she didn’t run her career into the ground when she came back to Seoul a few months ago, and did I not do that?”

‘It didn’t exactly go as smoothly as I asked...’ he sighed.

“Did I or did I not manage to turn that scandle into making her look good?”

‘Yes, but she almost went completely off the deep end with that asshole again Saige! Don’t think I didn’t find out about that’

“That is besides the point!” she scoffed “point is I got her to open her eyes, and with a little coaxing from Suho and from the douchebag’s own stupidity, she made the right choice and chose Suho”

‘This isn’t another episode of Grey’s Anatomy of McDreamy VS. McVet we’re talking about here kid, we’re talking about one of my biggest money makers almost running away with the Rebel Without a Cause and costing me lots of money when she can’t film anything because she’s either too distraught to work or because studios don’t want her because she has too much baggage following her!’

“Okay, first of all don’t talk about her like she’s some piggy bank” she furrowed her brows “you’ve known her since she was like twelve! And secondly the big picture here is Davis, she didn’t run away with that egotistical sadomasochist--”

‘The big picture here Saige, is she’s drunkenly running around throwing confectioneries on the darkened street corners of London at two in the morning!’

She sighed heavily.

‘Listen…’ he paused ‘I get that you have got your work cut out for you especially since you are her best friend, and I know sometimes it’s hard to draw the line between PR rep and her best friend but I won’t allow her to make her make a mockery of herself and this agency again. Only way I’ll let her even show up to that award show is if you guarantee me she and that new guy make as big of headlines as the Royal Wedding and if she has absolutely zero contact with that dragon mother fucker’

“Don’t even worry I’m already way ahead of you on that…”

‘Meaning?’

“Meaning that since you’ve had me manage her social media that means I am in full control of her phone...”

‘Go on keep talking’

“And ‘dragon mother fucker’ for the past month and a half since they saw each other last, has been relentlessly trying to contact her so I’ve just--more or less been withholding that information from her and deleting the messages; hence the drunken meltdown, she thinks he’s completely forgotten about her”

‘You keeping secrets from her now?’

She could hear the amused grin spreading across his face.

“What she doesn’t know wont hurt her...besides her being this pissed at him will only make it easier for her not wanting anything to do with him at the award show or any time after that. If she thinks he just up and moved on with that girl he’s supposedly dating she has no choice but to swallow her pride and move on too; for good”

He chuckled ‘wouldn’t be show business if a little scheming wasn’t involved. I love it, keep her as far removed from him as possible, soon enough he’ll be nothing more than a memory; if we’re lucky he won’t be anything at all to her any time soon’

“We can only hope, and Suho is completely onboard with the idea so that’s another person in our corner”

‘The new boyfriend is even in on this?!’ he cackled ‘oh Saige, I knew you were the best of the best but this is just fantastic! But aren’t you scared of what she’ll do to you if she finds out this whole plan of yours?’

She bit her lip “I’ve thought about it--”

‘And?’

“And she might--no, she will hate me but it’s in her best interest. Besides he’s been helping keeping her distracted by taking her on dates and umm… keeping her physically entertained…”

‘She hates to work out, she likes this guy that much?’

“Sometimes I wonder how you’ve managed to become a multimillionaire with the things that come out of your mouth” she scoffed “sex Davis, I’m talking about sex!”

‘Oh! Well why didn’t you just say they’ve been fucking then?!’ he cackled again.

“Didn’t really think that’d be suiting conversation to have with my boss”

‘So what happened tonight then? Sex got stale all of a sudden?’ he chortled.

She made a eugh noise “oh no they had sex, multiple times so she said. She just came knocking on my room door saying that she couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to bother him and since the pubs stay open late here she said she just wanted to get a few drinks to maybe help her chill out and then two hours and three heart-shaped boxes of chocolates later and well here we are...she’s piss ass drunk throwing chocolates all over the place and yelling at denim advertisements”

‘Well aside from her drunken rampage it seems like you have things more under control that I thought. Keep it that way, and keep that dragon guy as far away from her as possible’

“Oh, believe me I plan to”

#g dragon smut #g dragon scenarios #g dragon fanfiction #g dragon imagines #g dragon fluff #gdragon scenarios #gdragon fanfiction #gdragon smut #gdragon angst #gdragon imagines #bigbang scenarios #bigbang fanfic #bigbang fanfiction #bigbang imagines #bigbang angst

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twothreads-archive · 6 years ago

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CHARACTER META - PART 1. ( INSPIRATIONS )

So, I decided to turn this meta into two different parts. This first part, the “inspirations” part, is the part where I basically just list up all the most important quotes, scenes and overall storylines from other canon Joker stories outside of the telltale game, that I take inspiration from when it comes to my portrayal of John (note that when I say inspiration, I mainly mean that I look at what kind of mindset / person it takes to say and/or do these things, not that my John actually has done any of these things yet...)

The second part, which will be the “character study” part, will be in another post, and will be the post where I talk about how everything listed here plays into my portrayal of John, and basically try to explain as much as possible about John’s mindset / behavior / beliefs / etc, etc.

Anyways, this part is basically just for those who are interested to know just exactly what it is I’m looking at, and what I keep in mind while I try to flesh out John’s character beyond what just the telltale games did, because (as I will get more into in the second part of this meta, the John we see in the telltale games, and the John you mostly see in my interactions on here, is just a facade that he puts up, and not actually the real him.)

Either way, here’s the list of the most important things I draw inspiration from.

inspirations

THE DARK KNIGHT

“ Do I really seem like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it. I just do things.” - The Joker, about himself

“ I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.” - The Joker, about his “plan” so to speak

“ See, their morals, their code... It’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble.” - The Joker, about people in general

“ Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” - Alfred, about the Joker.

We also have a few scenes in this movie I think is important to his character too. There’s the scene where the Joker laughs while being beaten by Batman in the GCPD interrogation room. There’s the scene where Batman is driving the Batcycle towards the Joker, and Joker, in turn, walks towards him, shooting at random cars driving by, while talking about wanting Batman to hit him. There’s the scene where he gets thrilled when Dent decides to flip his coin on whether or not he’ll shoot him in the head, and there’s the scene with the Joker laughing while he’s falling towards his death, before Batman saves him.

Every scene he comes up with a new backstory for how he got his scars, are also scenes that I find worth taking note of.

And of course the iconic scene of the Joker burning up basically a small mountain of money.

There’s also the scene at the very beginning, where the Joker comes up with a plan to rob a bank, except he executes it by telling some of his men, individually, to kill the others once their part of the job is finished, basically setting them all up to take out each other, until there’s only one left, who the Joker then proceed to kill, before driving off with all the money alone.

THE KILLING JOKE

Here, I think the storyline overall is a very important aspect of his character. For anyone unfamiliar with this comic, we see the Joker trying to prove his point to Batman, that everyone can go insane by just having one bad day. Though instead of targeting Batman directly, he decides to prove his point by targeting Jim Gordon. So the Joker and some of his men shows up at Gordon’s home, shoots his daughter, right in front of him, the bullet ending up paralyzing her. then the Joker proceeds to take Gordon with him and tries to mentally torture him to break him and make him go “insane” just to prove to Batman that he’s right.

There’s also a few quotes from this comic that I find important to his character.

“ Most repulsive of all are it’s frail and useless notions of order and sanity. If too much weight is placed upon them... they snap.” - The Joker, talking about people in general

“ Faced with the inescapable fact that human existence is mad, random and pointless, one in eight of them crack and go stark slavering buggo! Who can blame them? In a world as psychotic as this... any other response would be crazy!” - The Joker, about people in general

“ No. I’m sorry, but... No. It’s too late for that. Far too late.” - The Joker, after Batman offers to help him at the end of the comic.

BATMAN: ARKHAM ORIGINS

In the Arkham Origins game, I look at how the Joker is shown to be capable of pulling off making others believe he is Roman Sionis ( Black Mask ) by dressing up as him, imitating his voice, general mannerisms, behaving more “sane”, etc. I think it really shows an interesting aspect of his character that we don’t get to see a whole lot outside of telltale, which is that he is very talented at deception, acting, manipulation, etc, and that he’s not necessarily always blowing things up or killing people off left and right.

There’s also the scene where the Joker was ready to be shot by a bazooka by Bane, laughing excitedly as he’s blown off the building and falling towards his death before the Bat saves him (quite similar to near the end of the Dark Knight movie.) Then, after Batman saves him, he even puts a gun to his head, with every intention to pull the trigger, only to see if the Batman would save him again or not.

BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY

Here, it’s not so much the Joker’s quotes I take inspiration from, but more the various Joker thugs on the streets talking about him.

“ Today, however, we shoot ‘em. Yesterday we took 'em in the back room and burnt off their skin. But sometimes, Joker just lets anyone join. Keeps things interesting. [...] You’re just lucky you joined on a good day.” - The Joker’s men, talking about Joker’s way of “recruitment”

“ At least with the Joker, you know he’s got a plan.” - one of Joker’s men, arguing why he thinks it’s better to work for the Joker than Two-Face.

“ The Joker’s crazy.” - thug 1 “ At least he’s funny.” - thug 2 “ ‘til he kills ya.” - thug 3. - ( Joker’s men, discussing working for the Joker)

“ We do this for the Joker!” - Joker’s men, basically expressing their loyalty for the Joker, even when he’s sick and possibly dying.

There’s plenty more quotes like these, but you get the drift. Some of them aren’t so sure about working for the Joker, while others actually seem to like / prefer working for him.

There is also two scenes with the Joker that I find important in this game. First, the one where Harley approaches a tied up Batman, wanting to remove his mask, but the Joker stops her, because he doesn’t want Batman’s identity to be revealed as he thinks it would spoil the fun.

The second, which is more the overall storyline, is that the Joker wants a cure from the deadly disease he has, so he won’t die, showing that sometimes he actually doesn’t want to die / is worried about death.

BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT.

In the Arkham Knight game, I take inspiration from the “flashback” scenes that Batman hallucinates / sees Joker’s memories, where the Joker physically and mentally tortures Jason Todd (a teenager at the time) for an extended period of time, and the flashback scene (and Killing Joke reference) of the Joker showing up at the Gordon’s house and shooting Barbara Gordon, paralyzing her, then taking photos of her to show her dad in an attempt to drive him insane.

I also draw inspiration from the generally really dark sense of humor he shows in this game, such as "joking” with Batman by saying that he can’t really save ALL of Barbara, as he (the Joker) killed half of her already, or after he shot Barbara, saying “oh, don’t pass out just yet. Show a little spine.” etc. You get the drift. Really dark “jokes” that aren’t really jokes at all.

BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES

While I don’t draw a whole lot of inspiration from the animated series, I do think a few small scenes are kind of interesting that we don’t really see a whole lot of in other Joker canons, and that is that in certain moments, he actually does seem worried at the thought of dying. e.g. in the ‘Last Laugh’ episode where he’s dangling upside down over a pit of fire, a wire around his foot being the only thing between him and certain death, while he’s not terrified, or even straight up scared, he does seem mildly concerned at the thought of Batman not saving him. Or in the ‘Joker’s Favor’ episode, when Charlie threatens to blow them both up with Joker’s bomb, the Joker seems genuinely worried, scared even, at the thought of dying there with him. Even to the point of being relieved when Batman shows up, and then, when Charlie tosses the “bomb” at him (which turns out just to be a fake bomb.) he runs to take cover behind Batman.

I also notice in the animated series, that the Joker often pulls out dangerous toys / weapons a lot, which are usually in locations he’s familiar with / spends time around, for example one of Gotham’s abandoned carnivals, which suggests that he makes sure to have lots of getaways and back-up plans to get out of unexpected situations that may arise.

... There’s probably a whole lot more canon Joker stories that I also take inspiration from that I just can’t think of right now, but if I do think of something, I’ll update this list later. For now, I think this summarizes the most important things I look at pretty well, though. So, stay tuned for the second part of this meta, where I go into detail about how all this plays into my portrayal.

[ PART 2 ] - [ PART 3 LINK TBA ]

#long post for ts #♚. known issue. «character study.»#i have to make this into a two parter otherwise it'd have gotten SO LONG lol #literally this is just the list of what i take inspiration from. then it's like multiple paragraphs talking about john's actual character #which i'll probably work on for another few days before posting #but hey look i got the most exhausting part of this meta done. i guess that's something ;u;

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roman-reigns-princess · 7 years ago

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The Pack Survives (Roman Reigns): Chapter 1

Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Writing Masterlist

Summary: Andromeda has spent years overseas trying to outrun her past. She finally decides to come back to Florida to try and settle down in the house her grandmother left her. She meets Leati and feels instantly drawn to him; but there's something he's not telling her, a secret he's hiding. A secret that may cost Andromeda her life if she can't accept it.

Warnings (for the fic over all, not specifically this chapter): cis-female OC, 18+, mentions/flashbacks of previous physical and/or mental abuse, smut at some point, werewolves. I will be switching between their wrestling names & their actual names in this fanfic, im sorry if it gets confusing (I’ll make sure to mention who’s who below so yall dont get the twins mixed up lol)

Andromeda Drakos (OFC) Face Claim: Naomi Scott

Word Count: 2019

A/N: Did I really steal the title from that Game of Thrones quote? Yes I did lmao, dont @ me. I don’t really know where I’m going w this fic, I’ve had about 3 chapters written since may, so we’ll see where it goes lol. I love my werewolf shit, but I also love my Hellenic/Greek stuff so it might get confusing im sorry. Also idk why it wont let me tag some of yall, dont hate me.

Tag List: @savmontreal @vivalavonvon @hardykat @racingandreigns @inkedirishbbydoll-blog-blog @fivefootxo @lovetusk @captainrogersbucky @imamoxbrose24 @kamdog0014 @empress-with-the-crown @sabrina-blyton @littledeadrottinghood @vanity1385 @wweburnitdown @maahsrandom @glowrioustrash @roman-reigns-empire-1996

Roman = Leati Jimmy = Jon Jey = Josh

Andromeda’s house:

Andromeda huffed as she hauled box after box into her new home; a large house in Tampa left to her by her grandmother when she passed. Meda was beginning to wish she'd just sent all of her stuff with the moving trucks that would arrive in a day or so, but she needed stuff for that day itself.

As she walked back out to get the third box from the back of her truck she spotted two men standing by it. A smile stretched across her face as she recognized them.

"Jon! Josh!" she exclaimed as she jogged back down the driveway. She'd known the twins for most of her life. Despite the age difference and the fact that she barely saw them more than once or twice a year as a kid, they'd become good friends and she'd grown to trust them. The last time she'd seen them was at her grandmother's funeral nearly seven years ago.

"Good seein you again, Meda," greeted Jon as he pulled her into a hug. "It's been too long."

"You all grown up now," smirked Josh, eyeing her as he hugged her in turn. She laughed and shoved him with her shoulder, though he didn't really move at all. "Need a hand with your stuff?"

"Yeah I'd appreciate it," she replied with a smile as they started grabbing several boxes each. "Be careful though, I've got a bunch of expensive camera equipment in some of them."

"Yes ma'am," teased Jon, she stuck her tongue out at him and grabbed another box, leading them up the driveway.

"You can leave 'em anywhere," she said, gesturing around the house.

All it took was one more trip, as the boys managed to carry most of the boxes between them. She was about to say something to them when Jon yelped, nearly jumping out of his skin.

Andromeda's cat Enyo had startled him by winding around his legs; Josh tried and failed to hide his chuckles while Jon grumbled under his breath. She bent down and picked the cat up.

"Sorry that's Enyo, she's a very friendly cat," she said, trying to hide her own smile. "I'd offer you guys drinks, but I just got here."

"'S alright. We'd love to stay and catch up , but we actually gotta get goin now," said Josh sharing a look with Jon that she couldn't decipher. "However, if you're free tonight around 8, we usually have a couple drinks with a few friends at Boomer's. Give you a chance to meet new people."

"Yeah sure I'd love to," she replied as she walked them to the door. "I'll see you guys later."

Roman's POV:

Roman paced back and forth in front of the large oak desk; he'd already sent a message through the pack bond to his cousins to get their asses back. The patrols had just reported four sets of foreign tracks.

If he had to take a guess he'd probably say they were rogues, which he could easily take on himself, but he couldn't be completely sure without engaging them, and he wasn't about to leave the pack mansion unprotected.

Roman came to a stop when the twins barged in; he had half a mind to chew them out for taking so long. But his thought process was halted by a new scent. It was coming from his two cousins standing before him, but it belonged to neither one of them; it was new, and intoxicating, and Roman knew he had to find the owner before his wolf drove him insane.

"Who were you with?" He growled, his eyes flashing grey for a moment as he unintentionally let his power seep into his demand. The two brothers exchanged a panicked glance, wondering if they'd done something wrong. "You didn't do anything, just tell me who's scent is all over the two of you."

"Oh, that would probably be Andromeda, she's Sophia's granddaughter, she moved in today," explained Jimmy, Roman barely waited for him to finish before marching out of the room. "Yo, uce, what the fuck's going on?"

"I'll explain later, just stay with the pack," Roman ordered as he walked out of the house and into the woods, leaving the twins staring after him in confusion. Quickly shedding his clothes at a familiar tree, he shifted into his wolf form.

Find her, find her, find her, findherfindherfindher

He sprinted through the trees, heading down the familiar path to the Drakos house. Her scent grew more and more enticing as he neared the house. She smelled like honey, and lime, and roses; soothing and invigorating at the same time.

The trees gave way to the backyard, and he silently walked up to the backdoor. The house was silent but he knew she was in there, he could sense her, and he wondered if she could feel his presence too. Her scent seemed human enough, but there was something about it that made him wonder if there was more to it.

Still driven by his wolf, he shifted back to his human form to yank the door open, but now that he was back in his human form, he managed to stop himself before he went any further; he took a deep breath, trying to shake himself out of the trance.

Showing up naked probably isn't the best way to meet her even if she is my mate, he argued with himself. Besides, he was supposed to be dealing with the invaders.

His ears pricked up as he heard distant howls that he knew didn't come from any of his pack members. Shifting once more, he took off into the woods, trying to clear his head as he set out to hunt down the rogues.

Andromeda's POV:

Meda shut the front door and set Enyo down as she walked over to the boxes. She grumbled at herself for not labeling them, she had to open more than a couple before she found some clothes, towels, and Enyo's cat stuff. She set up the litter box, food, and water by the kitchen before dragging the box of clothes upstairs to the masterbedroom on the second floor.

After spending half an hour digging through her clothes, she threw together a pair of dark green jeans, a black tank top, and a mismatched set of underwear for that evening.

She made her way to the conjoined bathroom to draw herself a relaxing bath. She groaned softly as she leaned back in the tub, her hand absentmindedly reaching up to rub an old scar on her shoulder. The bath proved to be too relaxing, and very soon she found herself asleep and dreaming.

It was a full moon and Andromeda was in the middle of a clearing in a forest, crouching low behind a fallen log. She was scanning the trees with weary eyes when they settled on a dark figure on the edge of the clearing right beneath the moon.

The world stilled around her as it moved into the moonlight, revealing a giant black wolf. She knew she should've been scared as it approached her, but instead she felt an eerie calm she'd ever felt before as it came to a stop right in front of her.

She held a hand out for him to sniff as she looked into his intelligent grey eyes. She flinched a little when his tongue flicked out to lick her fingers. She slowly reached further to run her fingers through his fur when-

Andromeda was abruptly pulled out of the dream by a throbbing pain in her right shoulder; she'd come to learn that the mark on her shoulder blade only hurt when something was bad was happening or going to happen.

She quickly got out of the tub, letting it drain as she rinsed and dried herself off. She pulled her clothes on in a hurry and padded downstairs. Andromeda looked outside to see that the sun had set, a chill settling in her bones; Enyo loved wandering in the dark. What if she'd left a door open and her cat had run out?

"Enyo," she called out, checking the kitchen first of all, but she wasn't there. "Come here, Enyo!"

Nothing.

Meda continued to call for the cat as she searched the house; the front door was shut, but that did nothing to calm her nerves. She became more and more frantic, searching under couches and behind cabinets. She finally made her way to the back and her heart nearly stopped beating. The back door was open, she had no idea how, and the back yard was directly connected to the woods behind the house.

Not thinking clearly, she ran out of the house, into the woods, barefoot calling for Enyo. She nearly sobbed with relief when she heard a faint meow coming from the depths of the woods; not wanting to let Enyo wander further away, she ventured on without any light, playing a weird game of Marco Polo in the dark with her cat.

Something brushed against her leg, making her screech before she realized it was Enyo. She scooped up the cat, who proceeded to rub her face against Andromeda's neck, purring. Despite finding her safe and sound, Meda was still on edge, something didn't feel right.

She froze when she heard a twig snap behind her, and Enyo hissed at something over her shoulder. Very slowly she turned her head, holding her breath, hoping that she was just being paranoid. Her fears were not unfounded as several vicious growls sounded before she could even turn her head half way.

Gripping the cat tightly, she bolted in the opposite direction, further into the woods. She, somehow, managed not to trip in the dark as the adrenaline heightened her senses. She ran till the trees finally broke to reveal a small clearing.

She forced herself to halt in the middle as she saw two wolves at the other end; albeit rather mangy wolves, but they were as tall as her waist, and their fangs sharp enough to tear her to bits.

She turned around and confirmed her suspicions when she saw two other wolves behind her. As she stood panting in the middle, her mind raced, trying to get her out of this situation.

Duck down.

She whipped her head around, thinking that someone else was in the clearing with her before she realized she'd heard that voice in her head. She was trying to figure out what to make of it when she heard it again.

Duck, NOW.

She automatically obeyed, dropping to the ground behind a log, curling her body around her cat just as two of the wolves pounced towards her. She shut her eyes, waiting to feel their claws and fangs pierce her skin but there was nothing except the cool evening air and a lot of growling. Instead it sounded like a fight was ensuing; she dared to sit up and peer over the log.

The four wolves seemed to be fighting a giant black mass. It was mesmerizing to watch as it threw one wolf half way across the clearing, into a tree; the wolf howled and yelped as it fell to the ground.

She heard the sickening crack of bones as another wolf had one of its legs snapped. Soon the black mass was chasing them back into the woods until the howls became fainter and fainter.

She gulped, shivering with adrenaline rather than cold as she looked around, making sure nothing else was there. She looked up into the sky and her breath hitched, a feeling of deja vu slamming into her as she saw a full moon. This was almost exactly like her dream except Enyo was squirming in her hands. Deciding it was safe enough, she set the cat down on the log she was still kneeling behind.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood as she could feel herself being watched; her eyes instinctively went to the woods below the moon, and sure enough there was the giant black wolf standing there.

#roman reigns #roman reigns fanfiction #roman reigns fanfic #roman reigns fic #fic #my writing #my post #wwe fanfiction #wwe fanfic #roman reigns werewolf

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