#the movie was middling to mediocre after it but still. worth it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nicknellie · 4 years ago

Text

@over-under-through1 requested: I was wondering if you could do a modern au/nobody dies with Willex and a sleepover/sort of comfort?

Okay, so in my professional opinion, this is probably one of the cutest things I’ve ever written. Thank you for suggesting it, I hope you like it!

Title from All You’re Dreaming Of by Liam Gallagher.

Underneath the Moon

For the first time in almost eighteen years, Alex had the house to himself for an entire night. His father was away on a work trip, some head-office-organised bonding experience he’d been less than excited about; his mother was out of the state entirely, having a girls’ weekend with her four sisters; and his little sister was staying at his aunt and uncle’s house while both parents were away because as responsible as Alex was, he was only seventeen and his parents hadn’t been foolish enough to leave him in charge of a twelve-year-old who had a tendency to dodge rules.

Alex couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this excited – having free rule of the house felt like a dream come true. The moment he was alone, he had quietly broken every rule that had ever been set out for him: he had worn his shoes in the living room, rested his feet on the furniture, eaten ice cream straight out of the tub, watched a horror movie, and stood in the middle of the living room bellowing curse words for half an hour for no other reason than that there was nobody to stop him. They were petty acts of rebellion, sure, but to Alex they felt freeing and supremely satisfying.

His plan was to have a party. Well, not a party party – there was no way he’d be able to clean up all that mess before his father got home, and having so many people in the house would scare the living daylights out of him. The party would consist of just him and his closest friends having fun together, eating pizza and playing Just Dance and probably sleeping through most of it.

He opened up the group chat which consisted of him, his boyfriend Willie, and his best friends Luke, Reggie, Julie, Carrie, and Flynn. After typing out an invitation for them all, he read it through more times than he could count to make sure all the information was right. But before he could hit send, his phone buzzed with a notification from Willie.

Abandoning his own text, Alex opened up his private chat with just Willie. The text read: I’m feeling a little fragile, do you mind if we hang out?

Usually when Willie felt down it was something to do with his adoptive father, Caleb. They argued a lot, Alex knew, but Willie was normally quite closed off about the whole situation – Alex figured he would talk about it more when he was ready, so he had never pried.

He opened up the group chat and deleted his long message, thankful he hadn’t sent it, before going back to his conversation with Willie. Alex shot back a quick reply asking if Willie wanted to spend the night at his place before he could overthink or regret it.

Alex had stayed over at Willie’s a few times but never on purpose. He often fell asleep while they were having a movie marathon because being wrapped in Willie’s arms like that was sinfully comfortable and Willie radiated heat, so it was easy to doze off. He would wake up in the morning groggy and with no clothes to change into and no toothbrush to use. And Willie hardly ever came to Alex’s house because it was easier for them if they avoided his parents, so he’d never been able to spend the night.

But his parents weren’t here and Willie could be and this time Alex could plan to be with him all night.

Willie replied with an affirmative a moment later and Alex began the slightly unnecessary task of making the house look presentable. There wasn’t a lot to do; his mother had made sure everything was tidy before she had left for the airport, and Alex hadn’t made too much of a mess in his rule-breaking spree earlier. All he needed to do was straighten a few cushions and clear away a few plates and bowls he hadn’t taken to the kitchen earlier.

It was getting dark by the time Willie arrived. Alex could always tell when Willie was at the door because he didn’t ring the doorbell like any normal person, he held the button down and let it ring until somebody answered. It drove Alex’s parents round the bend, which was half the reason Alex found it so endearing.

Willie did the same that night, holding down the button and letting the shrill chime of the doorbell draw Alex to him. When Alex opened the door, Willie was looking up at him with a smile on his face and his board tucked under his arm.

“Hey hotdog,” he greeted, standing up on his tiptoes to press a kiss to Alex’s cheek. “Good day?”

“Yeah,” Alex replied, wrapping him in a one-armed hug and pulling him inside the threshold of the house. “How about you?”

Willie shrugged evasively. “Great now that I’m with you.”

Alex smiled in return, shut the door behind him, then took Willie’s hand and led him to the living room. They plonked themselves down on the sofa and Willie automatically curled himself around Alex like a koala.

This had been what Alex was expecting – when Willie was down, he did his best to cover it up. He hid his sadness behind avoidance and false smiles, but little gestures (like holding Alex so tightly that he thought he might actually burst) were what gave him away.

Willie picked up the remote and flicked the TV on, landing on a David Attenborough documentary. His eyes were trained on the television like it was all he ever wanted to see, which was how Alex knew that there was something he was avoiding talking about.

“Hey,” he said gently, tilting Willie’s head to face him with two fingers under his chin. “You sure you’re okay?”

Willie swallowed but clearly decided lying wasn’t worth it, giving a short shrug. “I don’t know. It’s just been a long day.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Alex pressed carefully. “Because if you do then I’m more than happy to listen.”

He was given a weak smile in return. “Not tonight. Maybe just help me cheer up?”

“Of course,” Alex said, nodding. “What do you want to do?”

“Well, first I want to do this – sit and talk with you. Then I thought we could make cookies, I even brought the ingredients for that amazing recipe you made for my birthday.” He nodded down to a plastic carrier bag that Alex hadn’t seen before, placed down by their feet – he could see an ungodly amount of chocolate in it and couldn’t help but smile. “And I want to sleep with you.”

Alex short-circuited. He had not been expecting that. His face flushed and his mouth bobbed open and closed in a half smile – he didn’t think he could form words anymore.

“Oh, wait, that sounded wrong,” Willie said hurriedly. Alex breathed a little easier. “Not like that. No, I just meant I want to sleep next to you, you know, together. Like I said, it’s been a long day.”

“Right,” Alex said, half-relieved. “Right, okay, that makes more sense.”

Willie giggled – that was always an unfair thing to do because it was guaranteed to make Alex lose his mind – and rested his head on Alex’s shoulder. “I love you, hotdog.”

“I love you too.”

They stayed curled together on the sofa until the documentary finished, Alex gently weaving his fingers through Willie’s hair, Willie clinging to Alex like his life depended on it. It was calm and quiet and hardly anything like what Alex had previously planned for that night, but he wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

As soon as the credits began to roll, though, Willie was up out of his seat, had picked up the bag of ingredients and was making his own way to the kitchen. “Come on, hotdog,” he called over his shoulder, “I’m hungry.”

Smiling fondly, Alex followed him to the kitchen and pulled from a shelf the old recipe book he had used a hundred times as a kid. He used to bake with his mother when he was little because they both enjoyed it and they had fun together – they still baked together every now and then, but it was filled with stony silences rather than banter and the only time either of them spoke was when they asked the other to pass them something.

Still, Alex enjoyed baking and he always would, and it had become his favourite pastime with Willie now. Willie was hopeless in a kitchen, but Alex was a whizz and the combination led to mediocre results – the end product didn’t matter, Alex thought, as long as he and Willie had fun making it.

It didn’t take long for things to descend into chaos, as was to be expected when Willie was placed in a kitchen.

“Willie,” Alex said, reaching for exasperation to cover up the adoration in his voice, “if you keep eating the chocolate chips then there won’t be any left to put in the cookies.”

“Don’t worry,” Willie said dismissively. “I bought plenty, there’s still three bags left.”

“We only need one bag for the cookies, why did you buy so many?”

“To eat,” Willie replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Alex tried to look unimpressed but quickly gave up when Willie fed him a chocolate chip, beaming, and he simply had to smile.

The smile had vanished when he’d smelled burning.

“Is something on fire?” he asked, peering past Willie to the cooker.

There was no fire, thankfully, but the chocolate that Willie had been melting was quickly turning black and sticky and it stank of smoke. Willie let out a curse that would have sent Alex’s mother running for the hills and tried to salvage it in vain, scraping at the sides of the bowl with a spatula, trying to un-burn the chocolate.

To top it off, the smoke alarm started beeping.

“Okay,” Alex said, steering Willie away from the stovetop and handing him a tea towel. “You go wave that at the alarm until it stops beeping, I’ll sort out the chocolate.”

Willie did as he was told, whipping the tea towel around his head like a lasso as he made his way out to the hallway to fight the fire alarm, and Alex turned the heat down on the stove, gently removing the bowl of chocolate. He disposed of it easily enough, but there was some fused to the cooker, so he scrubbed at it to get it off. By the time he’d done as much as he could, there was still a small stain, but it was hardly noticeable. As Willie came back, Alex started melting the chocolate himself.

“Sorry,” Willie said, slipping his arms around Alex’s waist from behind. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“It’s fine,” Alex replied, awkwardly turning his head to place a kiss on the tip of Willie’s nose. “It just means you get one less bag of chocolate chips to eat – I’m using them for this.”

Willie groaned and buried his head between Alex’s shoulder blades, mumbling something about life being so unfair. Alex shook with suppressed laughter.

Alex took over control of the cookies from then on, at Willie’s insistence. It wasn’t the easiest of tasks because Willie refused to let go of him, so whenever he needed to move around the kitchen he had to employ an awkward shuffle so that Willie could come too. Still, by the end they had a fresh, warm, gooey batch of heavily chocolatey cookies and the grin on Willie’s face was worth all the hassle.

Alex watched him take his first bite and smiled proudly as Willie’s eyes closed in contentedness. “Good?” he checked.

“I am so in love with you,” Willie replied. Alex wasn’t sure if it was directed at him or the cookie, but he took it as a win.

They found themselves sprawled on the sofa again, the cookies and a half-eaten packet of chocolate chips between them. They ate in comfortable silence – Alex was conscious that it was almost ten o’clock and that it would be a good idea to go to bed soon and that people weren’t supposed to eat before sleeping, but he ignored those niggling thoughts. He enjoyed simply being with Willie, together in his house for once and happy.

Willie was the one to break the silence.

“I was arguing with Caleb earlier,” he said, looking at the cookies instead of Alex.

“Yeah?” Alex said, careful to keep his voice level. “About what?”

“He wants me to start doing shows at the club again,” Willie sighed. “I thought we agreed months ago that after I turned eighteen I wouldn’t have to do the shows if I didn’t want to. And I don’t want to. But he says that apparently the crowd miss me and I should come back.”

“That sucks,” Alex said, hating how lame it sounded. “I’m sorry. Are you still looking for your own place?”

“There’s practically nowhere in my price range,” Willie said, “but I’m supposed to be viewing an apartment next week that might be doable.”

Alex tried for a smile, reached over and held Willie’s hand. “Well, if it works out then you can move out and you’ll be free. No more guilt trips, no Caleb – you won’t even have to think about going back to the club.”

Willie smiled weakly. “Will you come and view the apartment with me?”

“If you want me to then of course I will. Anything, Willie.”

With one last tiny smile, Willie dropped the subject and finished the last bite of his cookie before checking the time. Alex didn’t miss him stifle a yawn.

“Come on,” he said, tugging Willie’s hand and pulling him up. “You’re tired, let’s go to bed.”

Willie didn’t look too enthusiastic about being made to sleep, but he didn’t protest. While Alex got changed in his bedroom, Willie got ready for bed in the bathroom. Suddenly Alex wasn’t sure how all this worked – was it weird for him to be waiting in the bed when Willie entered the room? Surely it was weirder if he was just stood next to it awkwardly and only got under the covers when Willie came in? Maybe, he thought, he should try to make himself look busy so that he wouldn’t seem strange when Willie came in. He tried it, rummaging around in his chest of drawers, but then realised that if Willie asked what he was looking for he wouldn’t have an answer.

He stopped, took a deep breath, and just climbed into the bed. He picked up his phone and scrolled through social media, just for something to do with his hands. Maybe that would look more natural anyway.

When Willie came into the bedroom, he jumped beneath the bedcovers like it was all he had been wanting to do all day, curling around Alex, resting his head on his chest and his hands on his abdomen. Alex put his phone down and pulled Willie closer, hands clasped around his back. He had no idea why he had been worried about this – doing anything with Willie felt natural and safe, why should this have been any different?

“Thank you for everything, Alex,” Willie said softly.

“It was my pleasure,” Alex returned, burying his face in Willie’s hair. “You know I’d do anything for you, right?”

Willie laughed. It sent shivers down Alex’s spine. “Yeah. I know. Goodnight, hotdog.”

“Goodnight, love.”

But Alex couldn’t sleep. He tried, he really did. For whatever reason, he lay there for hours, unable to drift off. Maybe it was having Willie so close, knowing he would stay that close for a long time. Maybe it was the summer air drifting through his open window, warm and soft even though it was nearing midnight. Maybe it was the fact that he’d gone against his gut and eaten those cookies right before sleeping. Whatever it was, Alex couldn’t sleep.

He moved his head to look at Willie, the tiniest movement possible, and saw that Willie’s eyes were open too.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked, tracing Willie’s cheekbone gently with his thumb.

Willie shook his head. “Can you?”

“No,” Alex returned. Then he had an idea. “Wanna do something cool?”

Willie beamed and the two of them clambered out of bed. Alex picked up his duvet then crossed the room to his half-open window and wrenched it open completely. Because of the layout of Alex’s house, his bedroom window led directly onto a gently sloped section of roof. He hoisted himself through the window, then did the gentlemanly thing of helping Willie through too (though he was more than certain Willie could have managed it on his own, more gracefully than Alex had too).

Alex laid the duvet down on the roof like a picnic blanket, sat himself down and patted the space next to him for Willie to join him. The night wasn’t cold – it was summer, so the warm air danced across their faces, keeping them cosy and comfortable while they lay together underneath the moon, watching the stars and the deep night sky.

“I come out here sometimes,” Alex said softly, “because it feels lonely. Not in a bad way, just… it feels so far away from everything and everyone. It’s nice to just be alone sometimes.”

Willie hummed, a gentle response that settled some deep unnameable worry inside Alex’s chest. He softened, melted against Willie, relaxed.

They stayed there for hours, Willie pointing out constellations and giving them names and stories that Alex was almost certain were made up (“That’s Lord Crumpet, he vanquished the dreaded army of Abominable Snow Crabs which is why he has a pincer for a hand.”). It was simply nice.

Once Willie started to yawn, the ends of his nonsense sentences lost to his exhaustion, they crawled back in through the window and back into bed. Warm, close, cuddled, both of them were asleep within seconds.

129 notes · View notes

bevioletskies · 3 years ago

Text

spare me a little (of your love)

summary: Klavier always liked to express his love with flowers, so sending a beautiful bouquet to his boyfriend every now and then seemed like the obvious thing to do. However, there’s just one little problem - Apollo is very, very allergic to pollen.

word count: 5.3k | read on ao3

a/n: For @klapollo-week, day two of seven (prompt: "flowers"). All seven of my fics take place in the same continuity! However, each can be read as a stand-alone, with the exception of day seven being a sequel to day five.

This fic takes place at some distant point in time after Spirit of Justice where Apollo and Trucy have learned that they’re siblings, but doesn’t reference any specific plotlines otherwise. My source for flower meanings can be found here. Fic title is from the song Spare Me a Little of Your Love by Fleetwood Mac.

“The language of...flowers?”

“Oui, oui, mon ami!” Athena chirped, nodding eagerly. “That’s just one of the many languages I speak, y’know.”

Apollo eyed her skeptically over the top of his laptop screen. “...right. Elaborate, please.”

“Well, you know how people usually give roses to express their love?” Athena said, leaning across the gap between their desks. She didn’t even blink when she accidentally knocked over Apollo’s calendar and pen holder in one fell swoop. Apollo, on the other hand, shot her an affronted glance that she deftly ignored. “Well, each flower actually has its own specific meaning. It even varies from color to color! Par exemple, white roses symbolize innocence, while yellow roses symbolize friendship.”

“That seems unnecessarily complicated,” Apollo remarked. “Don’t most flowers come with a card? Why can’t people just write their messages instead?”

They turned at the sound of a disappointed groan coming from the middle of the room. “You’re so unromantic, Polly,” Trucy complained, peeking at them from over the back of the couch. “I almost feel bad for Mr. Gavin!”

“Hey,” Apollo protested. “I can be - I-I’m romantic!”

“If you say so,” Athena giggled, poking him in the shoulder. Huffing, Apollo prodded her back. Athena reached for a rubber band, fully intending to escalate things. She lowered her projectile dejectedly when Apollo raised his hands in surrender; he had no interest in losing an eye today.

“Sunflowers and tulips are supposed to symbolize happiness, right?” Phoenix asked. “Those are pretty much the only flowers I really know, so.”

There was a long, uncomfortably drawn-out silence. “...Daddy, your ex-girlfriend’s name was Dahlia. Her real name was - is - Iris.”

“Oh...right,” Phoenix chuckled, only mildly embarrassed. “Speaking of, do you know what dahlias and irises mean, Athena?”

Athena’s eyes were practically sparkling now. “Oui! Dahlias symbolize elegance and dignity.” Phoenix made a face. “...but, they also symbolize dishonesty and betrayal.”

“That’s more like it,” Phoenix muttered under his breath. “And irises?”

“Faith, wisdom, that kinda thing,” Athena shrugged. She then paused. “Y’know, if you want some ideas on the kinds of flowers Mr. Edgeworth would like, I can make some - ”

“Nope, nope, I-I’m good,” Phoenix interrupted swiftly, his face reddening. He had a vase of daffodils sitting on his desk, which Edgeworth had sent to the office a few days ago. None of them believed Phoenix when he claimed they were purely intended for decoration. “So why the sudden interest in flowers, Apollo? Is this, er...is this about Gavin?”

“If you’re not talking about your prosecutor, sir, I’m not talking about mine,” Apollo said firmly, turning back to his laptop.

“Sure, except I think your prosecutor’s fair game when he picks you up from work most days,” Phoenix teased. His tone was eerily similar to Trucy’s. If Phoenix wasn’t both his boss and his sort-of stepfather, Apollo would’ve picked up a rubber band himself.

A few hours later, Apollo was locking up the office for the evening when he heard the roar of a familiar-sounding motorcycle coming up the street. He turned, biting back a smile as Klavier pulled up beside the sidewalk and turned off his engine. “Your bike really is as obnoxious as you are.”

Klavier removed his helmet, pouting. “Achtung, is that any way to greet your boyfriend?”

“It is for me,” Apollo replied, kissing him briefly. “Hi.”

“Hallo,” Klavier murmured against Apollo’s lips, grinning as he pulled away. “Dinner?”

“Yes, please,” Apollo said, reaching for Klavier’s spare helmet. “I’m feeling...pizza and all the cheesy garlic breadsticks. Or maybe we can just get cheesy garlic breadsticks.”

“As nice as that sounds, you need more vegetables than the little bits you get in your cup noodles, baby,” Klavier said, patting Apollo’s hip affectionately. “Pizza, breadsticks, and a side salad, ja?”

“Fine, fine,” Apollo grumbled, settling in behind Klavier. “Turn me into a rabbit, why don’t you? Buy me a bag of carrot sticks the next time we go to the grocery store. Stuff my mattress with straw and newspaper - ”

“And people think I’m the dramatic one,” Klavier lamented, shaking his head in amusement.

It wasn’t long before the two of them were sitting on the floor of Klavier’s living room, pleasantly stuffed with pizza and breadsticks and a mediocre amount of Greek salad (“I’m not a fan of olives, you know.” “Not surprising, since the color doesn’t work with your complexion.” “Klavier, I swear to - ”). A random made-for-TV movie was playing in the background on mute, though neither of them were particularly interested in watching it.

“How was work?” Apollo asked, taking a much-needed gulp of cold water. He wasn’t sure if he was ever going to get the taste of garlic out of his mouth.

“Boring, unfortunately,” Klavier said with a grimace. “Herr Edgeworth didn’t have anything but paperwork to offer me. No trials, no investigations, nichts. You?”

“Same,” Apollo replied. “Mr. Wright’s mostly working with Athena this month, so they’re taking the big clients while I get stuck with the smaller cases. Not that I’m complaining, I mean - it’s a nice change from Khura’in. I don’t want every trial to feel like I’m going under, you know?”

“Nein, that would be terrible,” Klavier agreed. “Exciting, sure, but the stress wouldn’t be worth it. I already found a gray hair the other day, ach.”

Apollo snorted. “Just one? You should see mine - I’m gonna be completely gray by thirty-five at this rate.” He shuffled closer so he could snuggle up against Klavier’s side, letting his head drop to Klavier’s shoulder. “So...turns out, Athena knows all about the flower language thing. Figured she might.”

“Flower...language...thing?” Klavier echoed, confused. He then brightened. “Ah! From our video call with my mama the other day, ja? I didn’t know you were actually interested.”

“I wasn’t, not at first,” Apollo admitted, squeezing Klavier’s arm. “But...I want your parents to like me, and since she said she was taking an interest, I thought, y’know, why not look into it? And it sounds kinda...contrived, not gonna lie. But I guess it’s kinda sweet, too. Like a secret language between just two people.”

Klavier’s face softened. “Ja, exactly. My parents used to write love letters to each other when they were in school, so I think this is Mama’s way of starting a new tradition - buying Papa flowers so he can plant them in his garden. You should see our family estate in the summer, it’s absolutely stunning.”

“Sounds like it,” Apollo said, smiling. “Your parents’ lives sound so...peaceful. Baking, gardening, travelling...I know it’s a little early to start thinking about retirement, but still, they’re living the dream.”

“They’re not retired yet,” Klavier chuckled. “And stop making me feel like I’m dating an old man, bitte. You complaining about your back makes me feel like I have to start complaining about my back.”

Apollo hummed, tracing random patterns along Klavier’s forearm with his finger. He was pleasantly sleepy from a number of things - his long, if uneventful day of work, the amount of cheese and carbs he’d just consumed, and the warmth of Klavier’s skin against his. “Sorry we can’t all afford chiropractors and massage therapists, sheesh,” he teased, unable to hold back a yawn.

“Maybe we can get a massage together someday,” Klavier suggested, stretching luxuriously. “Ah, before I forget - since we were talking about my parents just now, they asked me the other day if it would be alright to text you and send you things, little gifts and whatnot.”

“Huh? They would do that?” Apollo exclaimed. “I only just met them, like, a week ago!”

“They’re a bit...much,” Klavier said carefully. “Even when I was in high school, every friend I brought home was a potential lover to them, you know? They wanted to know everything about them, to shower them with gifts and affection. Even when I started working, I would ask Papa if I could have some flowers from his garden - you know, an arrangement to thank Herr Edgeworth for giving me a raise, a bouquet for my manager when we got our first record deal - and it was always the same story. Achtung, it’s embarrassing, but they mean well. You don’t have to say ja if you don’t want to, I just thought I’d ask.”

“No, I - it’s okay, I’d love to get to know your parents more, I’m just surprised,” Apollo admitted. The thought of them liking him this easily made him both relieved and unnerved at the same time. “Should I, uh, get them something in return?”

“Nein, nein, let them spoil you.” Klavier cupped Apollo’s face in his hands, kissing him softly. “Just like I do.”

“Sap,” Apollo murmured, kissing him back.

_____

It was a sort of gradual thing, for the most part. Barely a day had gone by when Apollo found himself in a group text with Klavier’s parents; he quickly discovered how witty and sweet and whip-smart they both were. Klavier’s father sent gorgeous photos of his garden - and calling it a garden seemed almost too modest when it seemed to be the size of a soccer field - while Klavier’s mother sent book recommendations, even the occasional movie recommendation.

“I never thought I’d be at that point in my life where my boyfriend’s mother sends me three long paragraphs about how she ‘discovered’ the Legally Blonde musical, but here we are,” Apollo had mused to the other agency members.

“Did you tell her that Klavier reminds everyone of that song, the one that goes - ”

“No, Athena, I did not. I want her to like me, remember?”

Soon after that, gifts started to arrive. Apollo had requested they send them to the agency, given how little he trusted his apartment building’s security after they nearly let his cat escape not too long ago. Unfortunately, it was too late before he realized that sometimes, he trusted his co-workers - or more specifically, his sister - even less.

“Trucy, do you know who ate the last piece of pie? Y’know, the one I was saving for today, to celebrate the end of my trial?”

“...huh. No idea, sorry, Polly!”

“Wait - th-there’s graham crumbs on Mr. Hat, what the hell - ”

His sister’s betrayal aside, Apollo felt good about things, almost unusually good. He soon started texting Klavier’s parents just as frequently as he did his own mother, thanking them for their generosity whenever they sent the occasional box of pastries or discounted event tickets. They also exchanged anecdotes about Klavier, along with stories about their own lives. He even received celebratory emojis whenever he told them about his victories in court - over their son, no less.

“I’m starting to think they like you more than they like me,” Klavier had lamented, though he seemed pleased all the same.

Then, a month into their budding familial relationship, a problem arrived on Apollo’s desk in the form of a bouquet the size of his head.

“Ah-choo!”

Trucy and Athena, who had been standing by the latter’s desk, both startled at the sound. “Ay Dios mío!” Athena exclaimed, clutching her heart in shock. “Are you okay, Apollo? That was some sneeze. I thought we were having another earthquake!”

“Har, har,” Apollo said dryly, reaching for a tissue. “It’s just the - achoo - flowers, that’s all.”

“They’re beautiful - very classic,” Athena added, dropping into Apollo’s desk chair so she could get a closer look. “Red roses and white lilies, claro. Ooh, I see some red carnations and white chrysanthemums, too!”

“Well, I see a card,” Trucy said, plucking a small white notecard from between the leaves. “Let’s see what it says!”

“That’s for - achoo - me, thank you very much.” Apollo snatched the card out of her hands, then squinted through his watery eyes to read it. “I...oh. Klavier says his mom helped him make the arrangement, with flowers from his dad’s garden.”

“How sweet!” Trucy gushed, taking a moment to sniff them, inhaling deeply as her eyes drifted closed. “Ooh, and they smell amazing. Mr. Gavin is such a good - ”

“Ah-choo!” Apollo sniffled, wiping his nose carefully. “...dammit.”

“I didn’t know you were allergic to pollen, Apollo,” Phoenix commented; he was on the other side of the room, pouring himself a cup of tea. “You never had any problems with the flowers Edgeworth sent to m - I mean, to the office.”

“Maybe it’s a freshly-cut thing?” Athena guessed, ignoring Phoenix’s awkward laugh. “Or, y’know, some flowers are worse for allergies than others. Dahlias, for example, are the worst.” Phoenix made another face before turning back to what he was doing.

“You should tell him you’re allergic,” Trucy said, patting Apollo’s free hand in sympathy. “I’m sure he’d understand.”

“But…” Apollo hesitated. The others braced themselves, anticipating another sneeze. “...this is from Klavier and his parents, you know? I can put up with a sneeze or two if it makes them happy. He loves sending flowers, and his dad’s really into gardening, so...if I tell them, they’ll stop doing it, and they’ll be too understanding, and I - I can’t deal with that. The, uh, the niceness, I mean.”

“Poor you, having the sweetest in-laws in the world,” Athena teased, pouting exaggeratedly. Oh, the humanity, Widget added. Apollo would have glared at them both, had he not started sneezing again. “Como tú quieras, I guess.”

Hours later, when Klavier met Apollo at the agency, the sight of his face brightening when he saw the bouquet confirmed Apollo’s fears. “Ah, how wunderschön,” Klavier declared, beaming. “I was worried they wouldn’t hold up during delivery. Do you like them, liebe?”

“They’re beautiful,” Apollo said, as honest as he could be. “Thanks, Klavier. I, uh, I hope it didn’t take you too long to put together.”

“You know how picky I can be,” Klavier hummed, carefully drawing a carnation out of the vase between two practiced fingers and bringing it up to his nose to smell. “I don’t settle for anything less than perfekt.” He turned, smirking. “That’s why I’m dating you, after all.”

“Gross,” Apollo said, wrinkling his nose; the effect was ruined by his affectionate laughter. “Hey, is it okay if I press them after they’ve wilted? I was thinking I could keep ‘em in my journal as a nice little reminder.”

Klavier chuckled, reaching over to squeeze Apollo’s hand. “Of course, Forehead. They’re all yours, you don’t have to ask for my permission. And I’m sure Mama and Papa would be delighted to hear you’re planning to give Papa’s flowers a second life. We’ll have to send you more in the future, ja?”

“...ja,” Apollo said weakly, his heart sinking.

_____

The next bouquet arrived two weeks later, bigger and bolder than before. According to Athena, it consisted of pink and orange roses, pink lilies, and yellow alstroemeria. However, it seemed to be the handful of sunflowers that topped everything off that left Apollo’s nose running all day.

“I think the only sunflower I can stand to be around is my attorney’s badge,” Apollo had bemoaned.

After that came an arrangement of white daisies, red gerbera, and white limonium (or, as Trucy liked to call it - she liked practicing tongue twisters when she was bored - “linoleum”). Then green hydrangeas and Queen Anne’s lace, which admittedly wasn't so bad, followed by purple daisies and pink gerbera, which was very, very bad. Apollo did not like the fact that he was getting used to the taste of Benadryl. He did manage to get some reprieve when Klavier sent him a simple vase of pink peonies.

“They’re hypoallergenic,” Athena had informed him. “But...mein Gott, Apollo, just tell him already!”

“But if I do, i-it’s…” Apollo had gestured wildly, unable to find the right words. Athena and Trucy had exchanged glances, then shook their heads in eerily synchronized disappointment.

Pink carnations and pink alstroemeria, purple irises and white aster, yellow daisies and orange roses; Apollo was starting to think the Gavin family garden was endless. And while his journal had never looked prettier, every page decorated with carefully pressed petals, every other page detailed with a date and a description courtesy of Athena’s expertise, his nose had never looked worse, his skin pink and dry and irritated. He was getting too used to the smell of CeraVe as well.

Finally, a bouquet of red roses - thankfully, also hypoallergenic - arrived with Klavier himself. He seemed delighted to be at the agency while everyone else was present for once, chatting happily with Athena and marvelling at Trucy’s card tricks. He and Phoenix seemed awkward around each other, though Apollo supposed that was to be expected. Even now, they hesitated whenever Apollo brought the other one up.

“So what’re you doing here, Mr. Gavin?” Trucy asked after she’d successfully duped him three times in a row. Apollo had to stop her before she started charging him for it. “Is it date night?”

“Not exactly,” Klavier said, turning to Apollo. “I came here to ask you something in person, liebe.”

Apollo raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s not suspicious at all. What’s up?”

“I think it’s about time you meet my parents in person.” Klavier took both of Apollo’s hands in his, smiling hopefully. “So, if you’re ready...are you free this weekend? We could go to my family estate, spend the day - Mama would love to teach you how to make those puff pastries you like, and Papa wants to show you around the garden so you can see where all your wunderschön flowers came from.”

“I...oh.” Apollo’s face fell for a split second before he quickly regained his composure. “Sorry, Klav, that sounds incredible, but I-I was gonna stay with Mom this weekend. Maybe another time?”

“Natürlich,” Klavier replied, still smiling. While his smiles usually made Apollo feel warm and fuzzy, now all he was feeling was gnawing guilt. “Let me know when you have a free weekend, ja?”

“For sure,” Apollo promised, pecking him briefly on the cheek. “And thanks for the roses, even though I, uh, kinda ruined the occasion.”

“Ruined?” Klavier repeated, chuckling. “Ach, it’s no big deal, you’re busy. We have time, don’t we?”

“Of course!” Apollo exclaimed, far too loudly. Klavier didn’t seem to mind, though; he leaned down to kiss Apollo properly, humming all the while.

“Anyway, I should get going before Herr Edgeworth notices I’m not in my office,” Klavier said, reluctantly pulling away. The look on Phoenix's face suggested he knew that Edgeworth had figured it out long ago. “Auf Wiedersehen, süßer!”

The second Klavier left, Apollo let out the breath he’d been holding. He didn’t even need to look up to know the others were staring at him very judgmentally. “...I don’t wanna hear it.”

“You really shouldn’t lie to your boyfriend, Apollo,” Phoenix said gently; his voice had taken on the sort of “dad” tone that made Apollo feel even guiltier. “Er, that is, you shouldn’t lie to anyone, but you know what I mean. Are you really protecting his feelings by doing this?”

Sighing, Apollo collapsed into his desk chair, dropping his forehead to his desk with an audible thunk. “I know, I know. It was stupid from the start, but...I-I honestly wasn’t expecting him to send this many! I thought it’d be, y’know, for special occasions only, like every few months or whatever. Then I could deal with it, and he would never have to know. Not, like, just ‘cos he felt like it. Though I guess I really should’ve seen it coming, knowing him.”

“You really gotta tell him,” Trucy insisted. “Next time you see him, okay? Or else you’re never gonna say anything!”

“I will, I swear,” Apollo insisted, combing his fingers through his hair. He could feel more grays coming in by the second. “I have no interest in being the worst boyfriend ever, believe me.”

_____

It didn’t take long for Apollo to realize that while he was perfectly fine - or, at least, reasonably fine - with confrontation in the courtroom, he was very much not fine with confrontation in his personal life. The flower arrangements came less frequently now, and when they did, they seemed to be exclusively hypoallergenic. Klavier’s invitations, on the other hand, seemed more persistent.

“I don’t mean to push,” Klavier would say. “It’s just that exam week is coming up and, being professors and all, they’re going to be very busy soon. I was hoping we’d be able to spend some time with them before then.”

“Yeah, o-of course,” Apollo would reply, his stomach twisting every time, knowing full well he was about to turn him down again.

Another weekend went by, then another. There always seemed to be something, whether it was Apollo’s sudden frequent visits to Thalassa’s, Trucy’s sudden need for a magic show assistant, or that Apollo was just too tired to be good company. Eventually, Klavier seemed to simply stop asking. In fact, he seemed to stop asking him about anything at all.

“Do you wanna grab lunch?” Apollo had once asked Klavier while they were both packing up after the end of a lengthy trial.

“I don’t know.” Klavier had sounded tired, subdued; he refused to look Apollo in the eyes. “I think I’m just going to head back to the office and catch up on my emails. Take care, Herr Forehead.” He’d quickly swept out of the courtroom before Apollo could even say goodbye.

Apollo’s group text with his parents seemed to slow down, too, especially when it came to Klavier’s papa’s photos of his garden. Klavier’s mama, on the other hand, sent him short, stilted messages, now seemingly out of obligation instead of affection. Their near-radio silence, Apollo had to admit, was well-deserved. He knew he had to do something before it was too late, if it wasn’t already too late.

“I was surprised you wanted me to join you today,” Klavier said one morning as the two of them were taking a leisurely stroll around People Park, hand-in-hand. “Lately, I feel like I’ve been dating a ghost, achtung. We only ever see each other in court. Maybe at crime scenes, too, if we’re lucky.”

“And I’m surprised you agreed to come,” Apollo admitted. “I missed you, Klavier. Only...I, uh, I know that’s really my fault, not yours.”

“You do, do you?” Klavier sounded bitter. His grip on Apollo’s hand was looser than usual, like he was ready to pull away at any second, like he wanted to run. The thought made Apollo’s chest ache. “And here, I thought you were as oblivious as ever.”

“Hey,” Apollo protested, frowning. Then, he sighed. “No, you - you’re right. This is on me. Will you - I - listen, I have something for you, back at the office. Can we go get it before you head to work?”

Klavier nodded shortly. While his eyes had softened, his smile was still strained. “Ja, let’s go.”

Thankfully, the agency was empty when they got there, save for a certain something sitting patiently on Apollo’s desk. He set his bag down, then turned on all the lights, his heart pounding rapidly against his ribcage. “So these aren’t as nice as your dad’s, but, uh. This is for you...and your parents.”

“What do you - ah!” Klavier approached Apollo’s desk with wide, disbelieving eyes, his gaze fixated on the beautiful arrangement of white lilies, yellow tulips, and white orchids wrapped in white decorative tissue paper. “Apollo, these are...they’re lovely! Did you pick these out yourself?”

“Athena helped,” Apollo said, hovering nervously. “She said white lilies are for humility, yellow tulips can mean forgiveness, and white orchids symbolize strength. Fitting, since I wanted to...apologize. For being a horrible boyfriend.”

“I don’t know about ‘horrible’,” Klavier said, gently running a finger down the length of one of the orchids. “...but you have been distant. If you’re not actually interested in meeting my parents, or if you...if you want to end things, just say so, will you?” His voice cracked. “I might like a bit of drama every now and then, but not in my own life. Not in my own relationship.”

“What?! No, no, I-I don’t wanna end things at all!” Apollo exclaimed, his voice filling the room. He took a few deep, even breaths to calm himself. “Just...will you hear me out? Please?” Klavier nodded, though he refused to look at him. “I’m...I’m sorry for avoiding you and your parents. And before you ask...yes. I was doing it on purpose. It’s nothing that - none of you did anything wrong, okay? It’s me, i-it’s - it - I - ah - ”

Klavier turned on his heel, worried. “Apollo? Are you - ”

“Ah-choo!”

Klavier jumped. “Ach - Apollo?”

“I forgot there were asters in there,” Apollo grumbled, reaching for a tissue. He wasn’t sure which was redder now, his nose or his cheeks. “It’s - I - achoo - ”

“Apollo,” Klavier said slowly; if Apollo didn’t know any better, he would've thought he was trying not to laugh. “Are you, by chance...allergic to pollen?”

Apollo sniffed sharply. “...yes, dammit, yes! That’s literally what I’ve been trying to say - achoo - just now, until - achoo - my sinuses decided to - achoo - speak for me!” He was half-doubled over at this point, clenching a fistful of tissues in both hands.

“Baby, have you been rejecting my invitation to meet my parents because you’re allergic to all the flowers we’ve been sending you for the last several weeks?” Klavier sounded more incredulous than angry.

“...yes. Yes, I have, yes, I’m an idiot and an asshole and - achoo - I’m so sorry, Klavier, I - achoo - ”

“Bitte, say it, don’t spray it.” Klavier held up Apollo’s tissue box for him, keeping it - and Apollo himself - at a good distance. “Mein Gott, Apollo, I thought you wanted to break up with me! Why didn’t you say anything earlier?!”

It took another minute or so before Apollo finally stopped sneezing long enough to get a full sentence out. He sniffled again, wiping his nose completely clean. “...have you ever told, like, the tiniest lie to make someone happy, only for it to turn into a big...thing? And then you know you have to come clean, that it’s what you’re s’posed to do, but the thought of doing it makes you anxious, even if not doing it also makes you anxious, and then...it just...it, uh, it stays with you.” He swallowed thickly, shaking his head. “Not that that’s an excuse, it’s just - that’s just what happened. I’m sorry, Klavier, I really am. I really do want to meet your parents, they’re so sweet and friendly a-and funny, I’m just...I’m bad at this. Really, really bad at this.”

Klavier sighed. Apollo held his breath, anticipating the worst. Then, Klavier wrapped him in his arms, letting out another sigh of relief. “I understand, liebe, and...I forgive you. Danke for explaining yourself.” He kissed the top of Apollo’s head. “Maybe we should’ve stuck to sending you pies, ja?”

Apollo laughed wetly. “I don’t know how you’re joking right now. That’s usually my job.” He lifted his head from Klavier’s chest to look up at him with a grateful smile. “I really did love the flowers, you know. When they weren’t attacking my respiratory system, that is.”

“Still, let’s not push it any further,” Klavier said wryly. “Now - two things, if you don’t mind. First, let me give you some moisturizer for your poor, poor nose. I’m not kissing you until I’m sure your skin won’t flake off in the process.”

“Ew, thanks for the gross visual,” Apollo grimaced. “And the second thing?”

Klavier smiled. “If you're alright with it, I’d like you to tell my parents what happened...in person.”

_____

The garden was just as beautiful as Apollo imagined it to be, given the dozens and dozens of photos he’d gotten from Klavier’s papa. It was full and lush and vibrant, with towering trees that provided ample shade, a beautiful gazebo with a built-in fireplace, a gorgeous two-tiered fish pond, and of course, a plethora of flowers, as far as they could see. Everything was especially beautiful, in Apollo’s opinion, from the relative safety of the conservatory.

“We’re not throwing you to the wolves, darling,” Klavier’s mama insisted, as if she were talking about actual wild animals and not her husband’s hobby. “We’ll stay in here for high tea so you can admire the garden at a safe distance, yes?”

“Yes, th-thank you,” Apollo stammered, relieved. “High tea?”

“Today’s menu is German chocolate scones and mini-sandwiches. With the crusts cut off for my fussy baby boy, of course,” she added, pinching Klavier’s cheek with a devious grin.

“Mama,” Klavier protested, embarrassed. His papa chuckled, settling into the chair across from his son; he still had a smudge of dirt on his nose. “I’m a grown man, achtung. I have my own health insurance and everything!”

“I really am sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Gavin,” Apollo said sincerely. Despite their kindness and generosity, he was still somewhat intimidated by them, by how tall and beautiful and well-spoken they were. As much as he didn’t want to think about his former boss, Apollo could see where he and Klavier got their good looks and charm from. “I wanted to make a good impression, but I, uh, I didn’t go about it the right way. I’ve been wanting to meet you for a while now, but...I kept it from happening for a dumb reason, and it led to me hurting your feelings and Klavier’s feelings. I’m sorry.”

“All is forgiven,” Klavier’s papa insisted, waving a hand. “Just promise you’ll stop by every now and then, alright? Our doors are open to you, Apollo. Consider us your parents, too, if you’d like.”

Apollo smiled softly. “I would, sir.”

“It’ll be a good, allergy-free time, I promise,” he continued with a teasing wink. “We’ll bake some bread, watch some home movies...are you interested in seeing - ach, what do the kids call it - Klavier’s ‘goth phase’?”

Apollo’s mouth dropped open. “...his what.”

“Papa, nein,” Klavier whined; he really did sound like a child now. “Maybe it was a mistake to bring you here, liebling.”

“Oh, I disagree,” Apollo said, his grin widening. “I would love to see Klavier’s goth phase. Did he dye his hair?”

“Oh, did he,” Klavier’s mama said slyly with the exasperated sigh of a parent who had dealt with too much. “It’s a miracle he managed to get back to blond at all.” She then got to her feet, smoothing out the front of her apron. “Anyway, Papa and I should go check on the scones now. You two sit tight, okay?” Before Apollo could blink, she’d dropped kisses on both his and Klavier’s foreheads, then disappeared down the hallway and into the kitchen, her husband in tow. He turned to look at Klavier, who was watching him nervously.

“I love them,” Apollo admitted. “They’re so sweet, Klav, they - stop looking at me like that, will you?”

“You can’t blame me for worrying,” Klavier said, kissing him briefly. “But I’m glad to hear it. Ich liebe dich, schatz.”

“Love you too, dork,” Apollo murmured against Klavier’s lips. “...so. Did you have a lip ring, or snake bites, or - ”

“Get out of my house,” Klavier huffed, pinching Apollo’s arm with an exaggerated pout.

“Hey! This isn’t your house, it’s your parents’ house, and they said their doors were open,” Apollo teased, laughing. Rolling his eyes, Klavier pulled Apollo into his arms, the two of them snuggled up on the loveseat. In the distance, they could see birds and butterflies fluttering among the flowers, a stray squirrel or two sniffing curiously at the edge of the fish pond. It was peaceful, serene. If it wasn't for the pollen, Apollo could see himself staying outside for hours at a time. “...but seriously, I’m looking forward to the video evidence.”

“I’m sure you are,” Klavier sighed, giving Apollo one last kiss before his parents returned with a large tray of sandwiches, scones, tea, and a vase with a single red rose for decoration - hypoallergenic, of course.

_____

a/n: Welcome to my second entry for Klapollo Week 2021! Continuity-wise, this is the fourth of seven fics, but again, there is no need to read the others to follow each fic on its own. Today, I have projected my allergies and anxiety onto Apollo, because that's what fanfiction is for, right? I hope y'all like my version of the Gavins; I've written them as cold and distant a couple of times, but I usually prefer to write them as warm and witty so that Klavier has a good support system in his life.

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! Likes and reblogs would be much appreciated. Hoping you're all safe and healthy and doing well ❤️

#KlapolloWeek2021 #klapollo #kyodoroki #klapollo fic #ace attorney #ace attorney fic #myfic #long post #sorry these previews are so massive!!#today's and day four's are probably the most lighthearted

28 notes · View notes

carriagelamp · 3 years ago

Photo

Since it’s Pride Month, I decided this year I wanted to raid the library for a bunch of different queer books to read. Mostly graphic novels in this case, because I’ve had a hard time settling into much reading lately... thought hopefully now that it’s summer and I finally have my second shot I’ll be able to relax a bit more and dig into some heavier novels again. For now, enjoy some light, queer reads that I indulged in this June.

A Wolf Called Wander

A beautiful novel I had been hearing lots about. This story follows the young wolf Swift, who grows up knowing that he and his pack are the mountains, and the mountains are them. It’s in those mountains that he grows and learns and loves… until disaster strikes and he finds himself viciously torn apart from his family and forced out of the mountains that have always meant home to him. Forced to survive on his own. Swift then begins a gruelling journey that makes him face injury, starvation, and the everpresent danger of humans as he seeks a new place he can call home, and new people with whom he can form a pack.

This is all based on the true story of a tagged wolf known as OR-7, following the unbelievable route he took through Oregon and northern California! It was a very neat read, and I’d definitely recommend it if you enjoy stories told from an animal’s perspective because this book is a master class in it.

Bloom

I decided for June to try to read a handful of different queer books, and this was one of the first graphic novels I picked up. It is a super sweet story and the art is lovely. It’s about Ari, a boy who has just graduated high school and is now desperate to move away from his small town and his family’s struggling bakery, to join his band in the city where they hope to make it big. An agreement is finally reached: Ari’s father will let him leave, if he can find someone who can replace him in the bakery, which is how Ari meets Hector, someone who sees artistry and peace in baking. For anyone that’s read Check, Please, it gives off those types of vibes!

Boule et Bill: Bill est Maboul

Another book of Dupuis comics, because I can’t get enough of them! This one I just stumbled across and ended up reading on a whim but it was very cute. Geared younger than the others I’ve read, but still quite funny. It’s the charming hijinks of a young boy, his dog, and the family they live with. Each page or so is a different stand alone joke, a bit like Calvin and Hobbes except expanded beyond a single strip.

Chicken Run: Chicken Pies for the Soul

This was a ridiculous urge I got and had to follow. I recently rewatched Chicken Run (which is, of course, one of the best movies ever made) and felt the need to see if it had ever been novelized. Well, I found something better than a novelization! This is a chapter book with “advice” and stories written by the various characters, post-movie. It really does a good job with grasping the different characters’ voices and making something simple and funny out of it. It was very cute (and available on The Internet Archive if anyone else feels like reading something ridiculous!)

Doodleville

I picked this up on a whim and honestly, I shouldn’t have bothered. It was not very impressive. Very mediocre, awkward feeling artwork, and a story that only slightly manages to redeem it. The concept was kind of neat, and I did like how the ending came about, the rest was rather… plodding. I did not like the main character at all, her friends felt very Intentionally Quirky Aren’t We Cute :3 in a way that just tries too hard, and… yeah. Meh. It technically gets the “queer graphic novel flag” but it’s so in-passing that it feels rather excessive to give it that.

If you are interested, it’s about a world were doodles actually exist as living creatures that can be drawn into existence (the rather unsettling implications of which is never fully explored). This is all well and good, until the main character draws a monster and takes it with her to her art club... where it begins ravanging not only her doodles, but those of her friends. Together they need to work together to figure out how to stop this menace.

FRNCK v4

Phenomenal. I adore the FRNCK series, and book four wrapped up the first “cycle”, revealing several of the big secrets dogging the series so far, and changing how things are going to be able to run in the future.

If you haven’t seen me talk about it before, FRNCK is a graphic novel (a franco-belgian bande dessinée) about a young orphan, Franck, who’s chafing under the constant parade of uninterested foster parents that visit the orphanage he lives in. Determined to learn about his mysterious abandonment instead, he flees the orphanage… but finds himself tumbling through time, landing among a family of cave-people who rather reluctantly take him in and ensure this modern boy doesn’t die in the strange, dangerous new surroundings he finds himself in. You can get these ones in English as e-books, so if you want a really kickass graphic novel series to read please try these.

Haikyu!!

I’ve heard so much about Haikyu!! that I finally gave in and picked up the first book from the library. And I gotta say, it’s well worth the hype! This series really does capture the best parts of a good sports manga -- which is to say the team is filled with interesting, enjoyable character who all need to learn to pull together, boost each other’s strengths, and cover for each other’s weaknesses. Love me some found family tropes and this series oozes it in the best possible way. And then you also get some very cool action scenes as it makes high school volleyball seem like the most intense thing on earth. I can’t wait to continue it

Queer Eye

I haven’t been keeping up with Queer Eye but I was watching it ravenously when it first came out, and this seemed like a very cathartic book to read… and it really was. It had the same gentle, loving encouragement as the show. It doesn’t expect you to change your entire life, but to learn to embrace who you are, and take small steps to enhance those things. There a segment written (presumably) by each member of the Fab Five, explaining the mentality behind what they do on the show and how you can grow in those areas too. It’s very zen.

Spinning

I got this graphic novel out at the same time as Bloom, but it was the one that interested me less of the two... though that’s just because I have less interest in “real world” slice of life as a genre and this one is meant to be autobiographical. If you’re into that, you’ll probably love this because it really is stunning. Very pretty, and the format and pacing is all really well done. It’s a coming of age story for Tillie as she grows up dealing with a crosscountry move, complicated friendships, a burgeoning attraction to girls, and attending competitive figure skating classes.

This Place: 150 Years Retold

A stunning and heart-wrenching graphic novel told by a collection of different First Nation’s authors/artists, recounting oral histories about the 150 years since the colonialist formation of the country known as “Canada”. In other words, this is a post-apocalypse story, but one that really happened and that entire peoples are still fighting to survive. It’s very eye opening and beautifully told. Very strongly recommend the read, especially if you’re at all interested in history.

Torchwood: Serenity

Whoops, not technically a book. I had thought these were technically audiobooks at first, but rather they’re audio dramas that were played on the radio. Still, I decided to include one because I’ve been listening to them like a person possessed and they’re too fun not to at least mention. Let me indulge in my obsessions.

If you don’t know Torchwood, it’s a BBC series that spins-off from Doctor Who, focusing on the enigmatic and flirtatious Captain Jack Harkness, who is running the covert organization known as Torchwood, which is tasked to protect humanity from and prepare them for alien contact. It’s goofy and campy but also more adult and heavy than Doctor Who tends to get, so it is (in my opinion) a really fascinating series. Though it also has content warnings coming out the wazoo so maybe make sure it’s for you before delving in.

Serenity specifically is possibly one of the best Torchwood stories I’ve ever experienced. The Torchwood team concludes that there’s an undercover alien hiding in the idyllic gated community Serenity Plaza, and so that means it’s up to Jack and Ianto to go undercover as a happily married couple and flush out the alien without being discovered first. Even if it means being sickly sweet together, pretending to care about the local neighbourhood barbecues, and actually caring a bit too much about the Best Front Lawn competition. What is truly magical about this one, is that it manages to make it a Fake Dating AU despite the fact that Jack and Ianto are actually dating in canon. But they’re both used to dating as a pair of alien hunters with insanely dysfunctional lives, and who now need to figure out how to deal with domesticity. It is marvellous.

Wilderlore: The Accidental Apprentice

A middle grade novel that felt a bit like a cross between Harry Potter and Pokemon. It’s about orphan Barclay Thorne who wants nothing more than to be accepted in the rule-bound village of Dullshire, and live up to his apprenticeship as a mushroom farmer. He certainly wants nothing to do with the fearsome Beasts who live beyond the village, deep in the Woods or the sinister Lorekeepers that bond with them. It was, after all, a Beast that had killed his parents all those years ago. But when he finds himself at the very edge of the forest, hunting for an elusive mushroom, he is suddenly unable to avoid any of that. Not when a wild girl and her bonded dragon appear to summon a horrible Beast and end up getting Barclay bonded to it instead. Now, if Barclay ever wants to be welcomed back into his home, he has no choice but to venture into the Woods and find a way to sever the bond imprisoning him to the massive, monstrous wolf now imprinted on his body as a living tattoo.

I honestly can’t decide how I felt about this one. I feel like it’d be a really fun read for maybe a grade 5 to 7 student? I was a bit more meh about it. It was fine, but it was very hard not to draw unfavourable parallels to Harry Potter. But for a kid who’s never read Harry Potter? Or even an adult that has but is looking for something different to scratch that itch, this might be a good book to try. I’ll probably try reading the second book when it comes out.

25 notes · View notes

gentlemancrow · 3 years ago

Link

In the quiet haven of Daisy's safehouse, Martin notices he is regurgitating cliche romantic lines from beloved movies in place of his own words when he should be finally able to tell Jon how he's felt about him all along. He becomes convinced this means The Lonely has stolen his ability to love from him and Jon has to reassure him that that, above all else, is a thing absolutely impossible to do.

Presented in Technicolor

The first time it happened, neither of them noticed. It was so fast, so very quick, just a twitch of tracking on a well-loved VHS or a blip of a warped cellulose acetate bubble drowning in a sea of feedback and static.

There was only one bed in the safehouse. So exhausted in body, in essence, in soul, neither of them argued, neither even thought to argue, as they collapsed together and apart on either side to sink into silence. They’d held each other until then, until that moment of tense intimacy foisted upon them, on the endless soundless train ride to Scotland while Martin searched inside the hollowed-out cavern of himself for his voice and Jon held the atoms of him together to keep both of them from vanishing into the ether. But in the bed, in the hallowed safety of soft blankets and distance, they polarized. Still yanking magnetically for each other from around the insurmountable corners of themselves, but held apart by the unspeakable, unseeable force of everything still between them. They could not give it voice or life. It gave life to itself in the not speaking and not seeing, in the friction of invisible things looping around and around and shining an aurora green that burned hot and sang with a shrieking fluorescent crescendo. They lay, back-to-back, vibrating and glowing in swelling, whining incandescence before Jon finally burst in an argon bright concussion of light.

“Thank you, Martin.”

Another pop of flash powder.

“…For what?”

“For loving-“ a bruised pause, “For seeing something, anything to love about me. Before. For writing me into the pages of your heart as someone worth penning an epic about. For thinking me worthy, even in the slightest, of your tragic hero’s end. Of your sacrifice. I’m… I’m sorry.”

Afraid to move the mattress, a cotton scum of fragile ice that might shatter and tip them both into frothing white mist, Martin turned only his head, the ozone burnt agates of his eyes shining.

“What makes you think this is an ending?”

Jon’s head swiveled now, with both twisted bodies at parallel meridians and an ocean between them before their eyes could meet.

“I… I only thought. You said-?”

“I’m still… me.”

Words were still so hard, wickedly barbed on his tongue, raw and blistering as they bubbled over, but it seemed to encapsulate what he wanted to say as best he could.

“Oh…” that carved with a serrated blade from Jon’s chest, “Oh god, Martin...”

His name on his lips sounded like a prayer. Devotion of one gone from heretic to nonbeliever to basking in the glories of his own personal god of love, descended to anoint his forehead in blood and sing the forbidden gospels of passion snatched from the jaws of things that lurked and preyed. He hated how brightly he burned so that he could not look directly at him, how much the light still hurt, hated the jagged rip of yearning through his middle too wide now to suture shut. But the comforter whispered softly as Jon turned and his fingers danced over its oceanic crests toward him, for him. Martin’s fingers sailed swiftly in kind, as he too, turned and surrendered into the magnetism of this beautiful, clueless acolyte, worthier than any, who bound up his colliding hands and kissed them desperately.

“I’m so sorry it took me so long to get to you,” Jon breathed into his strong, cold fingers, “I’m so sorry.”

The warmth of those hands, those lips and breath, bled into his, turned his paperwhite skin pink again and brought the noontide sky rising in his eyes. He smiled in faint, glimmering adulation.

“It doesn’t matter. We’re here now.”

“Yes. Yes, we are.”

Martin freed one hand to cup preciously over Jon’s pockmarked cheek, over the gospel of him, to thread his fingers into the silken swatch of silvered hair behind his ear and feel out the elegant curve of his neck. Jon’s hand followed a mirror path, painting color and life into his freckled cheek in its wake and stealing the iconographic crystal tears quivering glimmeringly on darkly red lashes. They closed the distance between them forever, nuzzled foreheads piously bowed and touching. A tiny laugh of mingled breathlessness and shattered walls that portended the first smiles bloomed in defiance of endless gray seas.

“I love you.”

Martin’s throat hitched painfully as twin tears rolled down his cheeks. His chest heaved and burned, his lips and teeth clanked and ground to make the sounds he so violently wanted to make, but they were too heavy. Too burdensome, wrapped in rusted chains and sunken too deep somewhere in the hole bored out of him in white acid fog to haul up, but still there. Still there.

“Shhh. It’s okay if you can’t say it back yet. Or if you don’t want to. I understand,” Jon soothed, touching the corner of his mouth.

Martin kissed into his palm feverishly as tears streaked down his cheeks. He couldn’t say much more. He could not possibly convey the magnitude of his endless, ceaseless want, only whisper in a weak, resolute treble into the scarred piano fingers playing a sonata on lips.

“I want to. I-I would have waited… forever for you. I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you. You complete me.”

Three simple, stolen words that ultimately meant nothing at all in the wake of the kiss that followed. A solar flare of months, years, of plasmic longing dripped into the pits of their hearts effused, hands tangled into hair, hot tears mingling on cold crushed cheeks. They kissed into, through, around each other, kissed until they couldn’t breathe, kissed to atone for all the ones they had missed, for all the ones stolen from them. They kissed until they were thoroughly wound together and sleep claimed them, Martin’s head atop Jon’s chest so he could hear and feel his heartbeat all through the night.

Martin only realized late into the next morning that his words had sounded tinny and stuck like an ugly, thorny burr to the knit of his memory, sifting its way to the surface only after the floodwaters of love had receded. They awoke in a waking dream of gauzy, liminal sunlight in dancing ribbons, of unbelieving laughter and kissing and touching each other’s faces just to make sure it had all been real after all. And it had. Their words of love could be rewound and replayed, etched into magnetic tape finally untangled and wound straight and true around the stalwart barrel of a pencil eraser.

It wasn’t until they were halfway through scraping together a quiet breakfast of stale tea and long expired porridge that the scene his words really belonged to came to Martin in a whipcrack flash of sipping lukewarm beer at two something in the morning in a darkened room lit only by whatever was on the tele that could hold his attention for more than a few minutes. Those three stolen words. A line he had snorted cynically, jealously, at, even then, drunker than he wanted to be and in the solitary throes of habitual insomnia. Three stupid, hackneyed words of pop culture parody. He smoldered in wordless humiliation, but promptly forgot again when Jon interrupted him at the stove to slide his arms around his waist and press a kiss to the corner of his lips for no reason at all other than the late morning rays looked particularly beautiful spiraling in his russet gold curls.

Martin abandoned the bubbling sludge in the pot and kissed him back because didn’t matter in the slightest. Thoughtlessly plagiarizing a mediocre romantic movie with a single line eternally embedded in the zeitgeist of the era and lingering in the subconscious of all who endured it meant nothing at all, especially when they couldn’t stop kissing. Giddy with the freedom of just being together, dizzy with the new toy of kissing, of Jon’s lips, Martin’s hands, of the way they fit against each other, and the thrill of newness in radiant insolence of everything they had escaped. Of course, though, he had to come clean over plain porridge with too much cinnamon and not enough sugar, over-steeped tea, and nervous laughter, lest Jon think he was an even worse poet than he already was.

“It’s the worst thing ever, right? THAT movie. Out of all the movies…”

Jon shrugged through the fluttering bird wings of his laughter.

“I didn’t even notice, I mean, how could I? Kind of a small thing, after… everything… and it was finally just us.”

Martin’s voice came easier now, more like sweet, sugary tea just a little too hot to drink comfortably, so he could laugh and blush and splutter into his hands.

“Still. I can’t believe I could only choke out all of three sentences to you after I’d been waiting so long to tell you how I feel, and one of them was from Jerry fucking Maguire.”

“Hey, it’s a good line,” Jon chuckled, “Cheesy, sure, but good. And I don’t care where you got it, so long as I’ve got you.”

“Pfft, who’s being cheesy now?”

“Us.”

Jon took his hand across the rickety breakfast table with its faded flowered cloth and the line was written over in his mind like hitting record on the high-fidelity cassette right at the first chords of your favorite song on the radio. And none of the DJ’s chatter to boot.

The next time it happened it lingered longer, like a vapid slogan from a commercial, devoid of anything but flagrant rhyme and earworms frustratingly buoyant on the brain. It wasn’t until the next day though, when the shadows of everything caught them up and the newness of their love had dimmed just enough to cast them, mangled and black, across their joined hands. Jon had attempted to breach the unbreachable bulwark of The Plan, because they’d had a day, that was plenty, and he couldn’t not be thinking about watching his own feet and his back at the same time because he was him. They couldn’t stay there forever, after all. Though Martin was always quick with a plaintive ‘why not?’ every time Jon reminded him of that fact. He had tried valiantly, oh so valiantly, to keep pace and contribute, to hear Jon’s voice, to process the things he was saying, as horrible as they were, but everything he said clanged around in his skull like a moth trapped in a mason jar, buzzing and fluttering and indistinct in its blind, supersonic lostness. Every shred of Beholding, or Jonah Magnus, or Smirke’s fourteen, maybe fifteen, was another drop of condensation leaking down the foggy panes of him, scoring a clear, bloodless wound that only fogged over to be slashed open again.

Sometime in the haze of late afternoon, when the sun is pale and stagnant, when the second hand lingers on the twelve a little longer than it should on each revolution, Martin began to breathe just a little quicker than Jon would have liked. Even after he gave up the frantic turning of the gears in his head that was a little too loud, even for him, for softer dialog, Martin’s eyes darted just a little too frantically, pupils frosted over just a little too white and a little too small while his tongue tripped over simple words and his hand leapt shyly away from his touch. Jon knew he had tread too far. Suddenly, mid banal and desperate Band-Aid conversation about how to make a proper Scottish shortbread because he had no idea what else to ask about that wouldn’t recall beaches, loneliness, or eyes, Jon closed his mouth, took one look at the fading marigold of his love, and gently took his hand to lead him outside the back of the cottage. Neither said a word as Jon propped the ghost of Martin comfortably on the small garden bench, set his phone to a classic music station at whisper volume beside him, and kissed his temple fiercely.

“You just breathe for me out here a while, alright?” he said against his translucent skin, the words so quiet Martin could barely hear them. He heard them louder and clearer than anything all day, “Just breathe and I’ll be right inside if you need me. You’re not alone.”

Martin nodded mutely, and closed his eyes to let the sound of the wind in the overgrown hedgerows and the petals of pink primroses, of violins and chaffinches flitting in the trees wash the waxed-on layers of static away. A few hours later, when the sun had tipped to the west and the sky was flushed with peachy orange daubs of cloud, Jon peeked out of the back door of the safehouse. Martin was exactly where he had left him, but his eyes were serenely closed, his full lips were a rosy pink and curved into a gentle smile, and he glowed with the flaxen veil of near dusk settling atop their tiny haven.

Jon smiled and padded as quietly as he could to his side. He perched beside him on the bench, saying nothing, just sitting with him, watching as Martin opened his eyes like bright blue forget-me-nots blooming in a dewy April morning and threaded his warm, sunset kissed fingers into his.

“Hi, you.”

“Hi,” Jon replied breathlessly, heart thrumming, “Feeling better?”

“Much, thank you…”

“I’m glad of it. Mind if I sit with you a bit?”

“Please do.”

Unbinding their fingers for only the time it took to extricate his pack of cigarettes from his pocket, fish one out, and light it, Jon scooped Martin’s hand back into his and held it atop the cool stone of the bench as cinders glowed bright against the balmy stirrings of eventide.

“Forgive me my vices in these trying times,” he snickered facetiously, seeing the lovingly judgmental look on Martin’s face.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind,” Martin answered behind willowy wisps of smoke, “For now, anyway. I can nag you to quit again when this is all over.”

Jon didn’t reply right away, taking a long drag of the cigarette and exhaling it slowly, pensively, letting the heavy smoke curl up from his lips and through his nostrils like some ancient sentinel dragon. His warm, dark eyes reflected the tilting sky as he gazed up into its aching emptiness and quelled the bored and hungry thrashing of the thing inside him.

“Do you think it will be…? Over? That is?” he mused in that gravelly tone he only got when he was carrying something heavy.

“Of course I do. I have to believe that,” came Martin’s fervent rejoinder, “I have to believe it. For everyone. For us.”

“For love?”

Jon’s eyes flicked away finally from the crawling heaps of clouds on the horizon toward the man at his side, tethering his hand to solid rock. Martin squeezed that hand as he filled those woody, heady depths with his own gaze of boundless blue.

"People do fall in love. People do belong to each other, because that's the only chance that anyone's got for true happiness," he murmured, reaching up to touch his cheek.

Jon closed those eyes of empty galaxies and polished mahogany and tipped his cheek fully into Martin’s palm, pressing it there with his free hand. The smoldering cigarette balanced elegantly between the knobs of his first two knuckles, painting a wispy circlet of smoke around his head.

“Mmm. That is a nice thought, what’s it from?” he wondered aloud as Martin’s thumb stroked his cheek.

He snorted incredulously.

“Me…? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Really? But it sounds so familiar… oh-!” Jon gasped in epiphany, “I got it! Breakfast at Tiffany’s!”

Martin’s brows knitted tightly on his face as his hand slipped away from Jon’s cheek.

“What? No… No, it can’t be. I-“

“Yeah, it is! You remember! The scene at the end in the cab where he throws the ring at her… tells her she’s… built herself a cage and has to live with herself in it…” Jon recollected, suddenly going darkly joking, “Are you trying to tell me something?”

It was lost in the razor-sharp film reel slithering through Martin’s subconscious, flickering and snapping mockingly in the dark.

“Oh, you’re… you’re right. Hah, dunno where that came from,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his head embarrassedly. The other hand, still entwined with Jon’s on the bench, tightened skittishly.

“I should hope you wouldn’t compare me to Holly Golightly,” Jon retorted amusedly, fingers rooting his in reply.

“Oh, there is so much to unpack there, but no. No Jon, it’s just a movie I accidentally pulled a line from because it was one of my mum’s favorites and I used to put it on for her all time,” Martin chuckled, though it was a little thin for his liking, “Don’t read too deep into it. I’ve just seen it a zillion times is all.”

A noncommittal, teasing hum rumbled from Jon’s lips as he put them back around the cigarette and pulled luxuriantly. His long, silvered chestnut waves spilled over his shoulders as he tipped his head back, catching the wavelengths of light in a way that stole Martin’s breath away.

“And anyway. She still makes the choice to put on the Cracker Jack ring and she still finds Cat and they end up kissing in the rain, remember?” he added.

Jon chuckled a husky, smoky chuckle.

“That she does…”

Martin looked down at their joined hands and felt the shuddering reverb of everything that had gone before. A sickly tide of guilt washed up over his heart. He was the reason they were sitting outside quoting Audrey Hepburn movies and idly holding hands when so much was behind them and so much ahead, wedged in the middle of tragedy gone and unknown tragedies to come.

“S-Sorry about all this…”

Jon snapped instantly to attention, sword and shield of emotional chivalry drawn and at the ready.

“For what? Needing a break from me? For chrissakes Martin, I’m not easy to deal with even before… before everything that happened to you. Not to mention I’m probably just about the worst person to learn how to be human again with, if we’re brutally honest. Since I’m… neither here nor there myself. I don’t blame you at all.”

His words struck so obtusely, so off the mark, Martin felt hurled into a vacuum, spinning helplessly in space.

“Th-That’s not it! That’s not it at all! Th-There’s no one in the world I’d rather be learning to be human again with, Jon. I want to be here with you, I just… can’t we just be us? For a little while anyway? I just want to be with you…”

His words settled for a moment, whispering in echo like dust and dry leaves tinkling after a whirlwind. The corner of Jon’s mouth curled into a puckish grin. He paused, just a moment, as if deciding the flash of an idea in his mind was genius or completely deranged, but then stabbed out his cigarette on the cobblestones at his feet. He let Martin’s hand go so he could pick up his phone, still insistently playing some obscure old string quartet composition, searched through the music app, then turned up the volume as Moon River began its first lilting notes through the speakers. Setting it down on the bench and rising primly to his feet, he swept himself up in a gentlemanly bow and offered his hand back out an invitational gesture. Martin stared at it, blinking, and peal of robust laughter rang joyously through his chest.

“…You’re not serious.”

“Deadly.”

Unable, unwanting to refuse, Martin took Jon’s hand and was lifted up into a weightless, awkward dance in the tiny unkept garden to a metallic cellphone rendition of Moon River. They spun with indulgent slowness, as the stars peeked out and the music crooned on, hand in hand and unsure who exactly was supposed to be leading this waltz, no foxtrot, no definitely tango. But they laughed each time they stepped on each other’s feet, as they melded back into congruent shapes, and everything was forgotten again in a kiss like a silver streak of comet dust across the luminous pink-purple horizon.

“Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker. Wherever you're goin', I'm goin' your way…”

The third time it happened, it was a bloody record scratch and a haunting, grainy skipping of warped vinyl. Jon had woken up after their night full of neon and technicolor splendor completely drained of it and awash in dark-eyed, ailing sallowness. Only able to insist he was fine as far as collapsing into Martin’s arms the moment he tried to get out of bed, he had been stuffed bodily back in and given a stern talking to about neglecting his needs, however unsavory they might be. And unsavory they were, Martin’s gut remembered, as he dutifully fetched the tape recorder and the meager folder of statements they’d managed to filch to tide him over until Basira could secret them some more. They felt grimy and insurmountably tainted in his trembling hands, sticky somehow and cloying with the acrid reminder of what Jon was, what they both were, and what had touched them both with filthy hands and sharp nails. He laid them on the bed beside Jon like they burned, who watched as he took two steps back and faded into the slice of sunlight spilling through the bedroom curtains.

“You… you don’t have to stay,” he told him flatly.

“Do you… do you want me to?”

“Not really?”

“Okay… Okay, then I’ll go make us some breakfast and come back when you’re through. Take your time.”

Jon nodded through the kiss Martin planted on top of his head before escaping the room like mist gliding through the black crags of a lagoon back out to sea. He cooked in choking silence, trying not to let his mind decode words from the indistinct timbre of Jon’s voice in the bedroom through the walls, but it was almost impossible. They dripped like blood rain through the leaves of a tree, fat and blistering and scattered onto the top of his head. Words like sobbed, watching, knife, burned, or devoured, scant snatches of oblique terror from people he didn’t know, would never know, people who were probably long gone and far past their reach to help. Especially now.

The eggs frying in the pan sizzled and popped distantly beside the sliced tomatoes and mushrooms obtained on the day prior’s shopping trip, and together the bright yellows and reds bled out into the cast iron until they were a vague monochromatic hue of cooked. A proper fry-up needed bacon, though, didn’t it, Martin thought, mostly to give his brain something, anything to look at while he waited for the disembodied voice to cease, yes, he should really go fetch the bacon. Staring blankly at the stove, his cloudy, foggy eyes refused to focus on any single point and his feet refused to move, detached and dangling each from a silver thread somewhere. Once he could connect enough points of radio snow to hew a coherent thought, he doubted the kindness of eating bacon, of all things, beside Jon after he’d had to read whatever unknown horror. Instead, just mounded an extra helping of beans onto his plate as he loaded up the tray with tea and toast and everything else and ferried it into the silent bedroom.

Jon was still in bed, as expected, sitting up cross-legged and chewing his thumbnail idly with no sign of the statements or the tape recorder. Martin hated how relieved he was not to see them again, but he loved how much better Jon looked, and how the distance in his eyes fled in bright starry gleams to see him through the gray filter settling over his own.

“Oh, breakfast in bed hmm? To what do I owe this honor?”

“Just one of the many perks of deciding to put up with me,” Martin replied with as much cheer as he could muster to match him.

Jon frowned a little, but said nothing as the laden tray was alighted over his lap and Martin slid carefully onto the bed to join him. Martin was an excellent cook, always had been, but both of them picked at the limp, lifeless spread with appetites long truant and senses perverted. A bit of runny yolk on slightly burnt toast was nothing to a wet crunch of bone and a scream of ire. The canned beans tasted of seawater and squelched like kelp bulbs impaled on the tongs of his fork. Martin poked at them distractedly, watching them leave gruesome red streaks of their innards on the chipped plate until the soft, slender backs of Jon’s fingers pressed worriedly into his too cool forehead.

“Are you alright? You’re the one looking a bit peaky now.”

Martin looked up and nuzzled into the warmth of his fingers needily.

“Am I?” he asked absently, “Sorry, I just… I hate this.”

The miniscule points of light in Jon’s eyes that had winked on at his return, despite everything, dimmed like an empty stage again as he looked down at his mangled plate, crestfallen. His hand shied back away to his lap where it twisted the hem of the comforter instead.

“I’m sorry, Martin…”

Martin’s chest seized. The bright red tartan comforter faded to gray.

“Oh shit- no, Jon, not like that! I-I mean I hate it for you! I hate what it does to you. I hate that the pain of other people is necessary for your continued existence in this world. I hate that it makes you… like it… That’s all. I-I just need to get used to it.”

Protest withered and died in the atmosphere the moment Jon’s lips parted to unleash it. They closed as thought flickered behind his eyes, parted, then closed again before he finally conjured the right words.

“Then… I guess I’m just sorry being with me involves learning the ah… care and feeding of an eldritch demigod…?” he offered with a wan smile and a shrug.

Martin blinked, then chuckled softly, mournfully, and leaned over to press his lips in a slow, indulgent kiss into Jon’s forehead.

“It’s alright,” he mumbled against the scarred skin, closing his eyes and letting the sandalwood scent of his shampoo waft over him in verdant waves, “I think I can manage. Everyone goes through this. Just, most people have to deal with ‘oh he’s a vegan and she hates cats.’ Ours just so happens to be ‘oh he sustains himself on being a voyeur to gut-wrenching terror and he fades from literal existence every so often.’ No better, no worse really, if you think about it.”

Jon laughed in kind, a little deeper, a little louder.

“You’re not going to tell me you hate cats next, are you?”

“Not in the least.”

“Good, because that would have been a deal breaker.”

“And now I know you’re a cat person,” Martin chuckled, reaching out and stealing Jon’s scarred right hand.

He unfolded it reverently out on the comforter, like the painted paper wings of a butterfly, and traced the old lines of it with a fingertip flushing pink again. The trails of his life and heart and fate lines were faint and obscure beneath the crumbling ramparts of healed flesh, but still there.

“But that’s the greatest part about being with someone, isn’t it…?” he continued quixotically, the glow spreading back to his cheeks as his fingers danced atop Jon’s palm, “That’s where the adventure is. Learning about them every day, learning about yourself, too, and how to be two people, but also somehow two people together? And now I can say I have the privilege, no, the honor, to have embarked on the epic journey to learn how to be with you, weird metaphysical dietary needs and all. Because the greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return. Don’t you think?”

It was Jon’s turn to snatch up Martin’s hand with a wry grin, warm again in his palms, and kiss every one of his freckled knuckles as they blazed back to life in ruddy constellations.

“Fancy me a very strange enchanted boy then, do you?” he teased.

Martin balked dubiously.

“I… I’m sorry?” he snorted, raising an eyebrow.

“You know- That song you just quoted. Nat King Cole? Nature Boy? They say he wandered very far. Very far, over land and sea. A little shy and sad of eye. But very wise was he…” Jon hummed, half-singing the lyrics in a drowsy velvet purr, “Heh, I suppose I’m a little flattered this time.”

Too much of a pool of serenaded bewitchment to ponder where he’d gotten the lyrics, Martin’s eyes went positively limpid with love as they flushed songbird blue.

“God, you have… such a gorgeous voice…” he gushed, astonished and humbled to have heard it, even if he could never convince him to do it again.

Jon rolled his eyes fondly as the tips of his ears turned a little rosy.

“Oh, shut up.”

“You know I’m never, ever letting that go now,” Martin said with ruthless affection, laughing sheepishly, “B-But yeah I know the song. I guess. I think I must have been thinking of Moulin Rouge though. Didn’t know it was a song before that…”

“Right, right, that film. Excellent use of it. If I recall correctly, didn’t David Bowie do a cover for it as well?”

Jon prattled on for a moment about David Bowie, or covers of songs most people didn’t know were actually covers, or Baz Luhrmann movies, Martin couldn’t tell. There was another sinkhole opening in him. Not one filled with frigid fog that eroded him layer by agonizing layer with the tide in a seaside cave like the first, but one more of rusted metal, jagged and eaten away by the creep of something infectious and voracious. It had started so small, just three stolen words, but now it spread and ate tiny holes in him wherever something beautiful, something his, should have lived, replaced it with a brown patina of rot and decay and overuse. His fragile armor crumbled while Jon shone, animatedly talking about cinema and devouring, with gusto, the breakfast made for him. The least Martin could do was allow his radiant light to pierce the ugly, unnamed holes in him and shine in love-wrought florals and wreaths made beautiful through him.

“You know if movies are a-a thing of yours, I wouldn’t mind… err that is to say, I like movies, too?” Jon continued on in his hopeful ramblings, desperate to catch the drooping sails of Martin once again, “I took a film class like everyone does back at uni and I found it absolutely fascinating. I mean there’s a good reason everyone does, right? There were a few in there I wouldn’t mind watching with y- Ahah, well we don’t have to watch THOSE kinds of movies, any kind will do, really. And I swear I won’t get pretentious or academic about it, or- oh u-unless you like picking apart movies like that? I probably don’t seem the type but, trust me, I am actually capable of watching something and just enjoying it without-“

“Jon,” Martin halted him adoringly, smiling as he met his timid gaze and mentally scrubbing over his rusty spots stubbornly with steel wool and vinegar, for him, for Jon, “I’d love to overanalyze movies with you.”

The anxious bowstring of Jon’s reedy body finally went slack, and he smiled radiantly.

“Oh. Oh! Good!” he breathed eagerly, “I um- I know this place doesn’t have internet for obvious reasons, but I think there’s an old VCR hooked up to the TV? We can hunt around and see if Daisy has any cassettes squirreled away somewhere. She must have.”

“Sure, after you finish your breakfast though. Don’t want you keeling over from starvation of either kind, lesson number one in ‘The Care and Feeding of Your Cryptid Boyfriend’,” Martin reprimanded lovingly.

“Hey, same goes for you, baked bean Picasso over here,” Jon shot back.

They laughed, and for a brief, halcyon moment, Martin felt the holes spackled shut. Perhaps it could be enough, Jon could be enough. Perhaps it was nothing but paranoia and the lingering fingerprints drawn in sea salt and sand on his throat. If he only forged ahead, if Jon’s godlike hands could sculpt him into something sealed and whole, perhaps the stuttering film reel could come to a raucous, flapping conclusion in the projector and fade to black. He only needed to heal. He just needed time. That’s what Jon would say. And that’s what he said, too, but the breakfast still tasted of brine and Bakelite.

The fourth time it happened was the time Martin stopped counting, and instead just let them stack up, sharp and hot, against the back of his skull. It came, a slow and lumbering sound test later that very evening sprawled on the couch in front of an old VHS from the dusty collection Daisy had indeed accrued. They had settled on Say Anything from her surprisingly romcom heavy library, which Martin had seen many times but Jon had never bothered. Horrified and aghast he had never seen the origin of the oft parodied and iconic boombox scene, and then even further scandalized Jon didn’t even know what ‘the boombox scene’ was in the first place, he put it in and figured out the tuning and setup while Jon filched a dusty old bottle of wine of indiscriminate origin and poured it recklessly into two mugs without even searching for proper glasses. Neither could decide if the wine was awful because it was just awful to begin with, or if wine just tasted weird in general out of a chintzy floral ceramic mug, but they both drank to boneless giddiness as they watched the classic tale of Diane and Lloyd by firelight.

They began ever so politely, each on their own cushion on the couch, just close enough to touch knees or hold hands or brush a thigh on the way to pour more wine. One mug in and they were happily squashed side by side between the back cushions, battling for whose head got to be on whose shoulder with encircled arms and fingers twined adamantly together. Martin sitting up to pour a second round freed Jon to slink, catlike, into a curled-up puddle on his lap, all but demanding Martin’s hands in his hair. He happily obliged, sipping mediocre red blend in one hand while the other stroked Jon languidly, starting at the crown of his long, silvered locks and laying out the waves of them in reverent oaky garlands on his thighs. The bottle only yielded a half pour for their third and final serving, which Jon downed in several hurried gulps so that he could claim the lay of the couch, wriggling his back into the cushions and opening his arms invitingly for Martin, a dopey grin on his face and his ears bright crimson with drink.

A more sober Martin would have been deeply concerned about their ability to squeeze horizontally together on the couch, but as it was all he saw was a sliver of very inviting cushion and the tantalizing glimmer of a little spoon. He crashed into those arms, resulting in no less than several minutes of laughing and yelping in pain and mashed limbs, but eventually they wormed their way to equilibrium. Jon had to tuck Martin’s mop of rusty curls under his chin to see the television, and Martin’s knees dangled precariously off the edge, but their ankles tangled together and Jon’s arm draped preciously over Martin’s chest as he folded him protectively in his embrace and kissed into the crown of his head. They glowed softly in their final performance after a tableau of love for each act of the film, watching the seminal scene in inebriated reverie. Both of them pointedly ignored the lyrics of the song that went with it.

“So… the film’s called Say Anything…” Jon mumbled into Martin’s hair as the film marched on, half sleepy, half drunk.

“Mmhmm,” Martin intoned in response, idly toying with Jon’s fingers twiddling at his chest as the room twirled merrily around his head.

“And supposedly she can say anything to her father… but then he’s the one who lied to her? And encouraged her to break up with John Cusack even though she clearly loves him?”

“That is indeed what happened, yes.”

“So it’s sort of all about honesty, then?”

“You could put it that way, yeah!” Martin replied, tilting his head up spiritedly, “That sometimes we do horrible things, we lie, to protect and care for the people who mean the most to us. But we still mean it. He’s sort of a foil to Lloyd in that way, you know? Both of them unquestionably love Diane, it’s just Lloyd is going to do it despite not being what society deems worthy, being himself, and Jim’s going to do it to make life perfect for her even though he actually can’t and has to lie his way through it. But the film doesn’t really condemn either of them for their choices though! Sorry spoiler, she forgives him at the end and she gives him the pen to remember her by instead. They all learn something about truth and what it means to love someone, familiarly, romantically…”

Jon melted around Martin, his poet, his bard, his untangler of the mysticism of art and the soul.

“But that’s why Lloyd is such a beloved protagonist, he just loves, uncomplicatedly, honestly. He just exists to exist, you know? No plan, no need for one, he just wants to live life and love her.”

“So you are good at film analysis…” Jon snickered, lips fluttering in barely a kiss behind his ear.

“Heh, well I didn’t get to take a fancy class at uni like you did, but I guess so? I dunno, I guess I always just admired him, choosing the ‘no thanks’ option when it wasn’t even an option.”

“Would you like to?”

“Hmm? Choose the no thanks option? I think the answer to that’s pretty obvious,” Martin snorted.

“No no… If you got the chance to go. To uni, I mean. Would you want to?”

“Oh… that. You know? Yeah… yeah I think I would.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah… I could take that pretentious film class and get a better grade than you. Take a real poetry course for once. Study all the classics and run an on-campus podcast no one listens to except you about classical themes and motifs in modern media.”

Jon laughed, the joy fizzing in his chest for a past that never was, but a future that still could be spilling into another electric kiss, this time at the nape of his neck.

“Incredible. Then what? Business degree? Run an old arthouse cinema?” he inquired, nuzzling into Martin’s broad shoulder.

“Business degree yes, cinema no. I run a bookshop,” Martin said emphatically, “A bookshop with a café… I do all the baking and you curate all the books and run the till. We have this pompous fluffy tuxedo cat who will literally do anything for ear scratches or tuna that we take in everyday and she’s our mascot and everyone loves her.”

“Love it, keep going.”

“Heh… Dunno her name though… Maybe we just call her Cat, a homage to Holly, or no-! No, we do just call her Cat, but it’s because I finally made you read T.S Eliot and now you can’t stand the thought of naming something that already has a name even if we humans can never know it. Feels far too cruel. But we try and guess at her true name anyway and for a few weeks she’ll be called Mrs. Snickelfritz and then it changes for a while to Bumblybabs or The Princess Prisspat or something. I name a cookie after her and it’s the most popular thing on the menu. We secretly mock the people coming in to find an antique copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland just to look cool on the coffee table and we don’t even feel bad about it. Every day we go home and I fiddle about in the garden and my vegetable patch and you take up astronomy. We drink a lot of wine and watch a lot of really awful tele and fall asleep cuddling on the couch before we remember to go to bed most nights. And life’s just… just quiet.”

Jon took a moment to rearrange the twisted vocal cords in his throat, just to make sure the tone of his voice was dry and clear and unburdened with saltwater.

“And uh, what would you call the shop? Our shop…”

“Out of Sight, out of Mind Books,” Martin replied, a smug grin plastered to his flushed face.

“Pfft. A little on the nose, isn’t it?”

“Hey, be nice. It took me weeks of fantasizing at my desk when I should have been researching to come up with that name.”

“I knew it. I knew you were picking out drapes for our proverbial cottage rather than following up on leads,” Jon cackled, “You really had this all planned out huh? Our life together?”

“Well, the cat’s a new character, didn’t know you liked them before,” Martin answered gleefully, “And what can I say? So much of my life’s been a story of some kind or another, but so little of it has actually been written by me or about me. Guess I just wanted a little say over my ending.”

Silence ensued, punctuated with the subtle shuddering of Jon’s breath as it passed through the machinery of him and the pining of the wrinkles raised on Martin’s sweater as he tightened himself around him.

“God I envy you Martin, being able to see a future like that,” he finally whispered, “I can see… well, there’s no telling what I can actually see, but I still have such a hard time picturing anything beyond this… I can’t see the future even in a hypothetical sense. A-And I don’t know if it’s The Eye or-”

“Hey, hey, no. Don’t talk like that,” Martin scolded, grabbing his hand firmly as he wriggled his way inelegantly into turning about face to look up into his eyes, “It’s okay, there doesn’t have to be a whole life and retirement plan or anything. I was literally just talking about how I envied Lloyd for that! It’s just that, for me, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

The crescendo of proclamation hung in the air, sacred, immovable, honeyed on Martin’s smiling lips. It shattered with one strike of Jon’s crinkling eyes and tittering laughter.

“Ohh, that’s a good one. You know they weren’t actually supposed to be together in the end in the first draft of the film and that line was basically adlibbed for the new happy ending?”

Martin’s body buzzed numbly as the color drained from the television set and the dying flames in the fireplace, the pleasant buzz of alcohol immediately warping into a frigid tremor and a dull whine in his ears.

“Wh… what film?”

“When Harry Met Sally! Isn’t that what you were quoting? I actually love that one,” Jon went on, oblivious, snuggling up against the vast warmness of Martin's chest.

He laughed, still euphorically tipsy with any incorporeal green eyes just as quickly thumbed shut with coins on ashy gray lids as they were opened, as he went on about how no one ever expected him to like movies like that, but how achingly, awkwardly, and awfully human they always were. The ringing in Martin’s ears turned to the soft hiss of tracking on a blank VHS, the short dead space when the story was over and there were still a few feet of regimented magnetic tape left on the reel, as his eyes swam and danced in points of light. One time was happenstance, two a coincidence, three and four were a pattern. The Fog was still there, it had been all along, translated, parasitic, through his soul in static and tracking and monochrome and snow. His very own personal exile riveted to his bones with rusty old quotes from movies he knew forward and backward and in his sleep.

And it was still so gentle. A gentle fear of redundancy and acquaintance, of the Lonely routine of watching the same two fake people fall in fake love in exactly the same way time and time again with a safe throw rug and a coffee table’s distance between it all, severed from life and adrift on that small chunk of it. It fizzled and crackled with fuzzy unfeeling, draped a velvet mantle over his eyes and burned with just enough limelight to see the one shadowy figure emerging for curtain call on the stage. To see Jon, whose mouth was moving with no sound, whose eyes burned with crystal fires of so many worlds and so many paths that all led back to him, whose hands he could not feel on his cheeks.

Even without sound or touch or sight or feeling, he could still reach back through the nothing for him as he had before. He could still take the glossy black bindings of ancient digital tape and wind them tight through their fingers and around his heart for he who had fought through the Fog to bring him home. He could not be selfish enough to ask to be saved a second time, especially not when his heart still surged and swelled and fought with bound and ragged wings to go to him, when Jon was right there, in his arms, warm and soft and heroic and so very fragile.

“I wish I could give you that, Martin, so badly,” Jon was saying as he clicked the THX stereo back on, “Just… rewrite the script to give us a happy ending. I wish I could be The Architect of our happily ever after instead of The Archivist of our path to ruin already walked, but I can’t. I can’t promise you forever, Martin.”

“I know that,” he interjected, his voice unshakable and brimming with adoration, “So just… just promise me tonight then?”

Scenes could still be paused, still be rewound. One beautiful moment could live forever, frozen in time, watched, quoted, uplifting again and again, eternal in its splendor with so much comfort in the not changing. Just like he could rewind the first time Jon told him he loved him, just like he had so many times already when he could not say it back, he could still have this.

“…What?”

“Just promise me tonight. That we have tonight, here, us. That’s all you have to do. Then in a little while, maybe tomorrow, maybe a week from now, who knows? I’ll ask again. ‘Promise me tonight, Jon.’ And all you have to do is promise you’ll promise me that one night again, then I’ll always know I can count on at least one more promise, and that’s good enough for me. Just… a promise of a promise, no obligations attached.”

Jon mulled it over and around in his mind, the corner of his mouth tugging back up in a grin.

“Just a promise to promise, huh?”

“Yep… no grand gestures, no happily ever, no riding off into the sunset on white horses. Just right here, right now, every time, and we’ll figure it out as we go.”

“I think I can manage that.”

There were sunsets and white horses in both their eyes as they smiled at each other.

“Then promise me, Jon.”

“I promise you tonight, Martin, just this moment, just tonight.”

“That’s all I need.”

The rest of Say Anything faded into the background of their heartbeats and breathing and the kiss that the clocks stopped ticking in reverence for. They kissed each other into an exhausted stupor as the finale of the film rolled on, twisted relentlessly into one another, heedless as the ding of the fasten seatbelts sign turning on heralded the end. Everything would be okay. So long as he had the anchor of Jon to come back to, he could plumb the depths of the rusted-out holes in him and scour out the rot himself.

They lay like that for a while, half an hour, an hour, longer, Martin couldn’t say. He just reveled in the stillness and the blanket of quiet darkness settling over them, of Jon’s touch and Jon’s scent all around him and the peaceful rise and fall of his chest. Perhaps he dozed in the absolute safety of his couch haven while it evaded his protector, but after a time he stirred, snuggling up experimentally into Martin’s chest and nudging him gently, feeling out his consciousness to emerge into the emptiness of his wake.

“…Martin?”

Feigning sleep, Martin slipped back into the shadows to keep his plastic touch off the raw earnestness of the moment that was for Jon and Jon alone. Satisfied he was well beyond the reach of him and in the realm of dreams, Jon smiled as he laid a whispered offering of riotous color and bloom against his fluttering chest.

“I love you. I love you so much…”

It could have broken him. It should have broken him. It should have been a single, tiny stone hurled through a window that brought the entire house of glass crashing in on itself. How many times had he secretly, politely left flowers of ‘I love you’ at the gravestone of his love without his knowing? Instead, it was merely a clean pistol shot through a projector screen. A tiny chink in white vinyl silver screen armor stretched taut and infallible around him. He still could not dredge up those words, not knowing what else would cling to them on the way up from the darkest parts of himself. The film reel snagged and caught fire while he pretended to be asleep for a few minutes more, then feigned rousing to urge them both into bed while melted cellulose acetate pooled in the bottom of his heart. Jon pouted so adorably he almost relented to staying in a tangle on the couch, but for the sake of both of their not particularly young spines he ushered them both off to bed.

Martin fell asleep groping in the darkness for any other films his heart might filch a line from and impale upon his unwilling armor shrike-like, searched for their fetid corpses so he might purge them before rending into them for a meal of festering, gangrenous love. He woke up telling Jon that he liked him very much, just as he was, and fleeing the bedroom in a panic to brush his teeth before the line could percolate through Jon’s mind to truth, his own or Knowing. After lunch and a particularly vexing check-in with Basira at the phonebox that roused more than a few demons and stoked the embers of arguments, in the ashes of the mutual apologies he wielded the ubiquitous sentiment of love meaning never having to say you’re sorry. Jon had laughed. Martin had felt sick.

As they days dragged on the tally marks stacked up in turn. Martin caught himself talking about how love doesn’t make things nice, and how they were there to ruin themselves and love the wrong people. He could not stop his tongue as it churned and clanked out another platitude about his poetry, and how poetry, beauty, romance, love, were the things they stayed alive for. The thing in rusty white armor that had taken the place of him became a thing unhinged, carving the crumbling façade of himself with more and more dead word trophies that sagged, heavy and bloated, slowed its stride and left it sinking into greyscale silt and sand as it marched obsessively out to a colorless sea.

All it took was the tiniest one, three words, just like the first, to bring the battlements down at last. It was nothing more than scooping up empty tea mugs and asking if Jon would like a refill. When he replied that he would very much like one, Martin leaned down and kissed his cheek while the crack in the cornerstone of himself exploded into a fatal fractal.

“As you wish.”

Jon said nothing at first, but as Martin headed into the kitchen, he heard him musing innocently to himself.

“Heh, The Princess Bride. Been ages since I’ve seen it. I bet Daisy’s got a copy of that one here.”

The mugs slipped from Martin’s hands and shattered catastrophically on the tile at his feet. It was over. If he couldn’t do something as simple as fetch tea without tacking on some pilfered sentiment from technicolor pixels, he was too far gone. No one would be able to find him in the fog this time. He would be lost in the dark of a theatre forever, the lone patron applauding a blank screen long after the final credits had rolled and waiting for the same film to begin again. Martin’s thoughts were eerily calm, even as his body collapsed to its knees and slumped against the kitchen cupboards, his eyes white and wild, chest heaving as he gulped desperately for a breath that would stay in his lungs.

He never even heard Jon call his name, or the frantic beat of his footsteps as he flew to his side. He barely felt his hands on his shoulders, then his cheeks, and he could not hear the words spilling from his mouth over the high-pitched test tone in his ears. But there were tears in Jon’s eyes, and his face was twisted and wrought in an expression Martin had never seen on it before. His eyes were just a little too wide and too hollow, skin too taut and creased, lips too thin and pale, and as he finally heard his voice, clear and clarion above the rushing and ringing in his ears he realized what it was.

“Martin, Martin PLEASE. Please look at me! Please, you’ve got to breathe please!”

Jon was afraid. Afraid for him. Jon who had leapt headfirst into countless domains belonging solely to fear itself without a second thought, Jon who bore the scars of every time it had lashed out hungrily for him and survived. He was afraid for him. He was still pounding and screaming for him at the gate of his second ruin, or perhaps from the first he had been swallowed by the moment Jon had left it, hand still clinging to his buried beneath the rubble. Martin reached out to grasp it at last, looking into Jon’s earthen eyes as the tears he had not felt before burned like hellfire down his cheeks and his voice choked out tiny and terrified.

“Jon… Jon I can’t… breathe...”

“Yes, you can. You can. Just look at me, listen to my voice and breathe in while I count, okay? Just listen to my voice and breathe with me, in for one, two, three…”

Through wracking sobs that shook him through every fiber of his entire being, Jon led him through breathing in deep, holding it in his chest, and exhaling slowly, all the while never once letting go of his grip on his hand or letting their gaze break. Each breath he drew in calmed the violent sounds in his ears, each time he held it he could feel the firm, cold kitchen tile beneath his knees and the solidly wiry strength of Jon grounding him, coaxing him back from the brink until he was a wilted, weeping heap against his shoulder with enough air and enough pain to just cry.

“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…. I’m sorry, Jon,” he wailed repeatedly in answer to his prayer from the first night into the crook of his neck.

“Shhhh, shhh. It’s okay, you’re alright. I’m here. I’m right here. I’ve got you. What happened?” Jon breathed in reply, arms wrapped tight around him with one hand tangled comfortingly in the back of his ginger curls.

“N-Nothing…”

If he could not conjure his own words of love, he could not conjure words of pain. He could not tell him.

“It’s obviously not nothing. I mean, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, of course, but please at least let me help you. Tell me how I can help, Martin.”

“I can’t…”

“We’re safe here, you know. Peter’s gone, he’s dead, he can’t hurt you anymore. I made sure of that,” there was an edge to Jon’s voice, not unkind, protective, warriorlike, “We’re far away from the institute and Basira’s looking out for us back home, and I-“

“I KNOW,” Martin snapped through his tears, immediately regretting the venom, “Sorry… M’sorry. I know… I know all that. I-I just… I just…”

“Martin, please…” desperation now, “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“…Me,” he finally sobbed inconsolably.

Jon frowned, unsure he had even heard correctly.

“…What?”

“Me. I’m wrong. I-I came back wrong.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t quite follow. What in the hell are you talking about?”

What he once felt as an empty suit of silver screen armor around him, rusted and eaten away by cliché and prosaism and pinned with their trophies had become a leaking vessel of molten cellulose and mylar mixed in the putrid bile and puss of their rotting, full to the brim and seeping out of the lacy holes in him with only two hands to cover them up. His tongue felt hot and sticky and coated in that death shroud of plastic and mawkishness but truth spilled out of him regardless.

“Jon do you… do you have any clue how long I’ve burned for you? Do you have any scope or scale for the magnitude and depth of my feelings for you? Can you even begin to understand the hell I walked through for you?”

Biting his lower lip and stroking the back of Martin’s head soothingly, Jon weighed his words.

“I-I mean… I wouldn’t try to, I would never. That experience was yours and yours alone, I can’t even pretend to-“

“That’s not the point!”

A thin thread of frustration finally twanged and snapped.

“Then what IS the point? Talk to me! I can’t help you if you won’t tell me!”

“The point is-!” Martin snarled, sitting upright and pulling away from Jon’s tear-soaked shoulder.

He looked so lost in the terrifying shadow of his grief, in piebald splotches of the grey light filtering through Martin in reverse, the guilty polycarbonate cased words vomited out of him like magma.

“The point is… the point is I finally got what I’d always dreamed of. For years. You. You coming to save me, whisking me away, looking into my eyes and promising to fight evil, together, side by side. And not only that, but you telling me love me, wholly and completely. You didn’t waste a second telling me how you felt and kissing me absolutely senseless. D-Do you have any idea how many times I imagined how that might actually happen before it did? Or how much better it was in reality? It was every dream I’d ever had come true, and I…” the tears welled, scalding and heavy, in his eyes as he buried his face in his hands and wept again, “And I ruined them. All of them. Every time we find even a tiny shred of something delicate and beautiful between us even despite all the shit we’ve been through, I ruin it because the broken fucking record in my brain dredges up some stupid movie quote instead of what I want to say that derails and destroys our entire conversation! You were supposed to say it BACK… not first. Not first.”

Jon opened his mouth and closed it again thoughtfully, still pulling gently at the tangled mire of Martin’s sorrow to find the origin.

“O-Okay? Forgive me, I’m still trying to understand. I don’t see how that’s-“

“It’s GONE Jon. I’m gone!” Martin bellowed, red-faced and bawling as he slammed his hands into his lap, “The me that used to pen pages and pages of awful poetry about everything, anything and how wonderful and sad and amazing the world was! Gone! Burnt out of me… I once wrote a goddamn poem about how we used to hide the biscuits from each other at work, you know? But now I… The words aren’t there anymore, my words aren’t there anymore. It’s just an empty hole. Every time I’ve tried to tell you how I feel about you it’s just come from some stupid sappy romcom, not me… That part of me, the part of me that loved with my whole heart, that open, senseless, sappy idiot… It took it from me…”

“What did?” Jon asked gently, reaching out but not touching.

“Please don’t make me say it, Jon. Please,” Martin replied, head bowed and tears dripping from his chin.

“Oh… Oh.”

He rolled his lower lip between his teeth as he let Martin’s words fade to indistinct reverb, his light and color growing dim in the harsh glare of the fluorescent kitchen tubes.

“I see. I think… I understand now,” he finally began in a slow, deliberate tone.

“Do you?” Martin cut in nastily, his voice wetly sawtoothed, and was almost sick with regret even midway between words.

He slapped his hands over his mouth, more tears rolling down his cheeks, “Oh god. Sorry that was… Fuck me, I’m sorry that was so unbelievably- of course you do I-“

Jon chuckled hoarsely as he managed a sympathetic smile and reached out to gently brush the messy white gold curls away from Martin’s forehead and tuck them behind his ears.

“It’s fine, I know you didn’t mean it,” he assured him, “We can’t really ever be sure of the full effect they have on us, or how the different entities manifest their… gifts. But I do know this. There are things inside us, inside humanity, that, if not given up willingly, can never, ever be stolen from us. Inherent goodness and beauty impossible to snuff out. Of that much I am certain.”

Martin’s eyes shifted to the baseboards while he scrubbed at his face messily with his sleeve.

“Doesn’t it bother you, though? That after all that, you said it to me, that you told me you-“ he tripped on the word, swallowing hard, “H-How you felt… and I still haven’t said it back? I can’t even say it now…”

“No,” Jon answered swiftly, firmly, “No it doesn’t.”

Surprise finally drew Martin’s eyes back to him, and Jon reached out to touch his wrist, just to let him know he was there, he was real, and what he was about to say was just as real as him. Color sang a single note of a bell and washed out over his hand in rippling circlets while Jon wrapped it tight in both of his to keep them pinging brightly inside.

“Hear me out, Martin. Isn’t it possible… that, and god help me I’m about to use an idiom. But isn’t it a distinct possibility that the cobbler’s children have no shoes?” he ventured coyly.

The sheer random ridiculousness of that apparent non-sequitur strummed a short, tearful bitter laugh out of Martin as he shook his head.

“I… Sorry what…?”

“You know that stupid, asinine saying about how, basically when one is good at something, one is so busy doing it for other people they have no time left to do it for themselves or their family?”

Jon drew light little circles on Martin’s palm with the pad of his forefinger as he watched the color and light trickle thinly into his eyes in a dim wave of serious contemplation.

“Perhaps you’ve poured out so much of your love, so many of your beautiful words, for other people, for the world around you, that you never let yourself have any of them. You wrote with so much feverish, boundless love for everything there was never anything left for you. You let your words be like a… a gilded cage for your own heart, with you looking out of the bars, pretty for everyone else to look at, but keeping you like a little bird inside and thinking it would be awfully nice if someone would only just join you. You spent so long seeing beauty in the world and beauty in other people, you wrote yourself out of the story.”

Martin sniffed back his tears and pursed his lips.

“I suppose that makes some semblance of sense.”

“Of course it does,” Jon chorused without missing his cue, “And let’s be honest. You never thought you’d actually have… me. You never thought even in your wildest dreams that I would actually fall in love with you. But you were okay with that. In fact, maybe in some ways you even preferred it like that? Not because you don’t have feelings for me, just that… Well. It’s easy to make a dream look beautiful, something you can never touch, something that isn’t yours. Just like your poetry. Honoring and cherishing something from afar is easy. The real thing is different. When you have it it’s still that beautiful thing you loved so much, but it’s beautiful in a way you can’t even comprehend because it’s real. You can touch it, hold it, and it’s yours. And how could you ever fully comprehend that? How can anyone?”

The tears glittered like drops of diamond on russet lashes, rays of sunset shot out from behind the discs of cobalt in his eyes. They streaked hot, vibrant pink trails down his face and painted him in pantone heartache.

“It’s so hard, and it hurts,” Martin whispered, voice cracking painfully, “It hurts so much and I can’t tell anymore which are the good hurts and which are the bad...”

Jon held fast to his hand with one of his, while the other shot to Martin’s face, brushing the tears away from his cheek and leaving behind a masterstroke of freckles, peppery and vivacious against flushed pink.

“I know. But it gets easier. Not any easier to bear, of course, but… easier to sort out which bits are you, which bits aren’t, and which bits aren’t even really there to begin with. And once you’ve worked it out then you can fight whatever it was left inside you. Nothing is gone, Martin, least of all you. And even if it DID take something, theoretically. If it was even possible to-to burn your love out of you, as you said. Who’s to say it’s gone forever? Things heal. Worst case scenario, the movie quotes are just your heart going to physio or something, you know? Your words will come back to you once you’ve healed.”

“But you-“ Martin meekly protested to an emphatic shake of Jon’s head.

“Stop. Stop right now. We’ve both been hurt, and we’re never going to get anywhere if we keep ignoring our own in favor of the other.”

Wordlessly nodding, Martin bowed his head again to speak his timid, visceral truths to the ground where they fell just a little quieter.

“I’m just… I’m… I’m so scared…”

“So am I, Martin. So am I,” Jon echoed, scooping his chin in his hands and holding his cheeks tenderly, “But it’s alright. It’s okay to be frightened, I’m with you now. We can both be afraid together.”

Martin looked up and finally caught Jon’s gaze, really caught it, as the lacings of his armor began to fray and the boundless forest song of his eyes hummed its ancient melody through him and bid him to join.

“I’m so afraid that I’ll never… never look at a puddle in the rain and find something indulgently sad about it again. Or wax melancholy at a particularly colorful sunset. Or be charmed by a silly little bird oblivious to the world,” he said, heavy words weightless in their unburdening, “But mainly… mainly I’m so, so deeply, petrifyingly scared I’ll never be able to write a poem meant for you and you alone… all I ever wanted was to gift you my words.”

Jon’s eyes hooded with a mischievous fox’s grin as his fingers settled comfortably on the back of Martin’s neck and he tugged him close to nestle their foreheads together, whispering against his lips.

“But you already have…”

“Wh-What?”

“Don’t you see? You already have written me a beautiful love ballad over the last few days, or at least your wounded heart did the best way it knew how.”

“And how is that?” Martin snickered tearfully, a bit more levity in his voice, tip of his nose brushing up shyly against Jon’s.

“Well, let’s see. Once upon a time… you began with a quote from a movie about a man who was so wrapped up in his work he felt inhuman, who made a choice to go against what everyone else thought was right, who loses everyone around him while he struggles to live up to his own ideals. Then we have a film about two people who are both hiding something, but who are so inexorably drawn to one another they can’t help but be drawn into each other’s orbits, deep flaws and dark secrets and all, who can’t help but love each other even as they learn the truth. Next one features a love for the ages, a love pure and bright and good in the dark underbelly of Paris… but one of them belongs to someone they don’t love, but must serve for the greater good even as their heart yearns for another. And then lastly, a movie that was originally a bit of a tragedy, a movie about a romance that was doomed from the start, became one about a love that flourished in the face of everyone and everything telling them it could never be…. You were writing a story all along, Martin. Our story. Sure, for now the pieces don’t belong to us, but you’re still singing that ballad, loud and clear. You said to me that night you would have waited forever for me, so I’m returning the favor, I’m just waiting until you finish it.”

With each step of his journey recounted in glimmering fondness, the rusted and rotten silver screen white armor sloughed off chunk by chunk. The plastic effluvium that had choked him flooded out in an epiphanic tide while the misquoted rivets snapped and crumbled away, all shriveling into ash and nothing. Stripped down to an open ribcage with delicate, quivering heart throbbing in defiance, Martin shone in full, thrumming, beating technicolor life. Broken and naked, incalculably vulnerable, but divinely free. The words did not have to belong to him to be from him, to sing the gospel of his truth in reply at last, to reach out for the touch of another through bars of poetry and VHS tape further than his own trembling fingers had ever dared to go, and to bind them, once and for all, together.

“Oh my god,” Martin half breathed, half mad laughed, “Oh my god you’re right… Jon you’re right! You’re right! Jon! Jon I-!”

The wings of his heart erupted free of their film reel chains, burst out of his poetic gilded cage, and flew, carrying beginning, ending, epilogue now featherlight in three simple words.

“…I love you.”

Jon laughed euphorically through his own burst of tears, hesitated to allow the quip on his lips to escape, but set it free anyway.

“I know…”

It took a second to filter through the golden haze of joy, but once it did Martin laughed and shoved at his shoulders playfully.

“Oh, you absolute prick! Star Wars? Right now? Are you serious!?”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

They both laughed and sobbed and tussled with one another around a messy, raw kiss, repeated until lips were bruised, breath came in desperate pants, and they were a tangled, idyllic muddle of a tearstained embrace on the kitchen floor still surrounded by teacup debris.

“I love you…” Martin sighed blissfully, kissing the words firmly against Jon’s mouth, just to feel them again and make up for lost time, “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…”

“I love you, too,” Jon murmured back, kiss drunk and dizzy with love, “And you’re still Martin. Martin K. Blackwood, or MKB, or Mr. Blackwood or whatever it is these days. Whatever you want it to be.”

“Just Martin, I think. For now. I just want to be Martin. Your Martin.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Martin’s breath hitched in his chest with a familiar and all too welcome urge, an itch in his chest and a flutter of his tongue. He teased out a few words from that sensitive and bloodied heart hopping eagerly there in the open, roughhewn and salt of the earth, but undeniably his.

“My love is presented in full Cinemascope tonight. Unspooled, unwound, free from circular aluminum prisons and plastic spools that twist back inside, alight, alive in full glory, My Technicolor Muse…”

Jon pulled back, stunned by the sudden bashful kaleidoscope flash of affection.

“Oh shit, that was- I… Is that me? I’m your muse?”

“Who do you think?” Martin chastised affectionately, “You always have been.”

“A-Ah, well, I-I um…” Jon stammered shyly, grinning from ear to blushing ear, “Thanks. I-I really like that. A-And it’s a nice line regardless, better write it down before you forget.”

“I won’t. Not anymore. Never again.”

“Good.”

Jon nodded, and finally rose carefully from the floor, offering his hand out for Martin. He took it, and rose with clumsy, but effortless elegance into his arms. Together, they set about sweeping up the ruins of Daisy’s tacky mugs and putting the kettle on for a sorely needed and very late cup of tea.

“You know… I’ve never actually seen Star Wars? I only know the line because it’s so famous,” Jon announced as he brushed the last of the ceramic bits and floor dust off his hands into the bin.

“Seriously? Well, we had better remedy that tonight, who knows when we’ll have time like this again,” Martin thought aloud as Jon’s arms snaked around his waist and a kiss was planted firmly on his freckled cheek.

“Well, no matter what happens, we’ll always have the safehouse,” he purred teasingly in his ear.

“Jon, keep that bit up and I swear I will kill you…”

Martin grinned and turned his head to kiss him again while the kettle bubbled, the sun sank low in the west, and they made their tea to drink in front of Star Wars into the night. Jon spent the entirety of the first film draped on Martin’s chest, utterly enchanted and entranced, babbling on about spaghetti Westerns and Kurosawa films and all the various influences he could so clearly see, reminding Martin that beautiful things really did come from a colorful patchwork of those who came before. He knew it now, but for that night, he was content to just hold him and listen to him wax poetic about The Force, just to hear the fervor in his velvety voice. That night they could just be, he could close his eyes to the sounds of lightsabers and X-Wings and the destruction of the Death Star and the comfortable weight of Jon on his chest, to just be wholly in love with him, with any doubt left like so many scraps of 35 millimeter on the cutting room floor.

#The Magnus Archives #TMA #Magnuspod #Jonmartin #Jmart #Jonathan sims #Martin Blackwood #scottish safehouse period #fan fic #Crow Writes

15 notes · View notes

a-wayne-at-heart-too · 4 years ago

Text

The Robins as...

DICK:

If truth be told, he’s not that fond of being in the driver’s seat on these trips. After all, he’s usually the one who initiates them, and being at the wheel robs him of some bonding time with his siblings while in transit.

Tim: “Now, Simon says, try to reach the little toe of your left foot with the little finger of your right hand from the back --”

Dick: *starts to do as Tim says*

BatRV: *swerves dangerously close to a cliff*

Jason: “Uh, you’re NOT PART OF THE GAME, DICKWAD!”

Dick: *regains control of the vehicle* “Whoops, sorry!”

Dick: *smirks* “You just don’t want me to win.”

Damian: “One of these days we’re leaving you at home, Grayson.”

His taste in music... Okay, it’s not that bad. Once in a while it’s even really good. But what drives everyone else restless is that his playlists are on repeat.

Damian: *in the passenger seat, reaching out for the console*

Dick: *wiggles his finger at Damian* “Uh uh uuuuh! You know the consequence of touching that dial.”

Damian: *retracts his hand and sulks* “-Tt- I’m not interested in your hour-long hugs.”

Dick: “Okay, that’s a teeny bit hurtful, Little D. But, guys, this stuff helps me stay awake. And since you’re not letting me join any of your games...”

Jason: *grabbing fistfuls of his own hair* “I swear, Goldie, one more ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ and I’m leavin’ this loco --”

Tim: *grabbing his backpack and his Bathoverboard* “Want me to come with you?”

Dick: *activates the Child Lock* “This is why you bring that hoverboard?”

>>>---<<<

JASON:

He might as well have coined the phrase “pedal to the metal” because when he’s at the wheel, you can expect the travel time to be cut by at least half (when it’s done properly, that is).

Dick: *sheepishly waving at the horrified cashier lady as he whispers to Jason* “When I said ‘Let’s drive-through’, this wasn’t what I meant, Jay...”

Damian: *shaking his head at what’s left of the wall at the Batburger drive-through lane* “Todd, remind me to thank you for delaying our vacation for at least another hour and a half.”

Jason: *revving up the engine* “Then maybe next time we don’t take the Batmonster truck when it’s my turn to drive, huh?”

Tim: *returns to the truck after speaking with the manager and grabs a checkbook from his backpack* “I hope Bruce likes owning a fast food chain.”

As much as he’s in a hurry when he’s driving to their destination, he sure takes his sweet time on the way back home. By then, everyone else is already worn out from all the fun they’ve had and he welcomes the peace that comes with it.

Dick: *in the backseat, snoring lightly*

Tim: *in the passenger seat, mumbling in his sleep*

Jason: *grins as he secretly admits to himself that trips like this were worth it, right before he notices the bloody roadkill in their path, which induces a flashback of -- *

Jason: *hits the brakes suddenly, causing the truck to jerk forward*

Dick: *shifts positions, then resumes snoring*

Tim: *wipes slobber off his face, then remains unconscious*

Damian: “Todd.”

Jason: *breathing heavily* “Damian? You’re up?”

Damian: “I haven’t slept.”

Jason: “Well, it’s still a long way out, little buddy. Go to sleep.”

Damian: “Perhaps... you could use the company.”

Jason: “... Okay.”

Damian: “Okay.”

>>>---<<<

TIM:

Backseat driver. Literally.

Jason: *staring at the self-steering wheel in front of him, frowning* “So... What am I supposed to do here, Timbo?”

Tim: *reclining the backseat until his legs are up, then puts his hands behind his head as he relaxes into it* “Nothing. That’s the beauty of it.”

Dick: *shaking his head, amused* “You’re no fun.”

Tim: *sips coffee from his guzzler helmet* “Oh, yeah? Activate ‘Mask of Zorro’ protocol. Code 1940.”

Windshield: *morphs into a projection screen and starts playing a movie*

Damian: “Perhaps you're not totally useless after all, Drake.”

He doesn’t “text and drive”. Oh, goodness, no... That’d be too easy. (Also, his concept of a “vacation” is a bit muddled.)

Tim [speaking into the Bluetooth headset]: “No, Lucius, I totally get that, but if LexCorp stock were to plummet --” *rattles on in corporate jargon as he navigates through a myriad of encrypted folders on his laptop (which is expertly balanced on the dashboard) with one hand and steers the BatSUV with the other*

Damian: *in the passenger seat, gesturing to Tim* “Pennyworth repeatedly brings up that one time I read an urgent text message from Superboy while driving and he gets away with this behavior?”

Dick: “First of all, technically, you shouldn’t even be driving yet. And, secondly, trust me, Tim’s gonna have his day in court with Alfred.”

Tim: “Hack into it? You’re asking me if I can hack into Luthor’s system?” *turns on his hologram projector, which instantly generates a virtual map of the entire LexCorp database* “Do robins fly --” *pauses, then nods his head slowly and shuts off the projector* “Oh... You’re telling me I shouldn’t do that. Got it.”

Jason: *grabs a handful of popcorn from a bowl before passing it to Dick, who’s in the backseat with him* “Why doesn’t he just activate that autopilot crap again?”

Dick: *shrugs* “Boy Wonder loves a challenge.”

>>>---<<<

DAMIAN:

Sure, he drives. But only when they’ve gotten at least fifty miles away from Bruce and Alfred and have ensured that all tracking devices have been disabled (at least to the best of their knowledge).

Damian: *frantically searching the Batcampervan while they’re parked at an abandoned gas station in the middle of nowhere* “Where are those boots --” *looks up to see Jason holding them above his head* “Todd, you piece of $#^% --”

Dick: “Hey. Language.”

Damian: “You’d rather I break Todd’s bones, Grayson?”

Jason: *smirks* “Say you’re the mediocre Robin and I’ll give them back.”

Tim: *sniggers* “Oh, what’s the matter, tiny bird? Can’t reach the pedals without them?”

Damian: *clenching his fists* “When I’m through with the both of you, you’ll have those pedals jammed down your --”

Dick: *checks his watch and sighs* “That’s enough, guys. Let Damian drive. It's his turn. And we’re running late.”

And since he also inherited his father’s “drama queen gene"...

Tim: *staring at the clouds through a window in the Batjet* “What part of road trip didn’t you get, brat?”

Damian: “You’re free to jump off at any time, Drake. I’ll even open the hatch for you.”

Dick: “Bruce is gonna pop a vein when he finds out this thing’s missing from the Batcave, but I have to say... Not bad, Little D.”

Tim: *rolls his eyes* “Because you wanna jump.”

Dick: *smirks as he adjusts his jumpsuit and puts on goggles* “Because I wanna jump.”

Jason: *strapping on a parachute* “Man, I don’t remember the last time we did this just for fun, and not for ‘justice’ or whatever. Now, open that hatch, baby!”

Damian: *with smug grin on his face* “Say I’m the excellent Robin and I’ll open it.”

>>>---<<<

Hey, @nocanonhere, I’m sorry it took a while for me to answer this Ask. It was honestly a fun suggestion. Thank you!

P.S. While it did occur to me to feature other Batfamily members (since I love the idea of them being on family trips), my sleep-deprived brain cells only had enough energy to focus on these four. I’m hoping to expound on this idea someday soon, though.

#a-wayne-at-heart-too | originals #The Robins as #Richard Grayson #Jason Todd #Timothy Drake #Damian Wayne

533 notes · View notes

ordinaryschmuck · 3 years ago

Text

What I Thought About Loki (Season One)

(Sorry this is later than it should have been. I may or may not be experiencing burnout from reviewing every episode of the gayest show Disney has ever produced)

Salutations, random people on the internet. I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

Do you want to know what's fun about the Marvel Cinematic Universe? It is now officially at the point where the writers can do whatever the hell they want.

A TV series about two Avengers getting stuck in a series of sitcoms as one of them explores their personal grief? Sure.

Another series as a guy with metal bird wings fights the inner racism of his nation to take the mantel of representing the idea of what that nation should be? Why not?

A forgettable movie about a superspy and her much more mildly entertaining pretend family working together to kill the Godfather? F**king go for it (Let that be a taste for my Black Widow review in October)!

There is no limit to what you can get with these movies and shows anymore, and I personally consider that a good thing. It allows this franchise to lean further into creative insanity, thus embracing its comic roots in the process. Take Loki, for example. It is a series about an alternate version of one of Marvel's best villains bouncing around the timeline with Owen Wilson to prevent the end of the universe. It sounds like just the right amount of wackiness that it should be too good to fail.

But that's today's question: Did it fail? To find out my own answer to that, we're gonna have to dive deep into spoilers. So be wary as you continue reading.

With that said, let's review, shall we?

WHAT I LIKED

Loki Himself: Let's get this out of the way: This isn't the same Loki we've seen grow within five movies. The Loki in this series, while similar in many ways, is still his very own character. He goes through his own redemption and developments that fleshes out Loki, all through ways that, if I'm being honest with you, is done much better in six-hour-long episodes than in past films. Loki's story was already entertaining, but he didn't really grow that much aside from being this chaotic neutral character instead of this wickedly evil supervillain. Through his series, we get to see a gradual change in his personality, witnessing him understand his true nature and "glorious purpose," to the point where he's already this completely different person after one season. Large in part because of the position he's forced into.

Some fans might say that the series is less about Loki and more about the TVA. And while I can unquestionably see their point, I still believe that the TVA is the perfect way for Loki to grow. He's a character all about causing chaos and controlling others, so forcing him to work for an organization that takes that away allows Loki time to really do some introspection. Because if his tricks don't work, and his deceptions can't fool others, then who is he? Well, through this series, we see who he truly is: A character who is alone and is intended to be nothing more than a villain whose only truly selfless act got him killed in the end. Even if he wants to better himself, he can't because that "goes against the sacred timeline." Loki is a person who is destined to fail, and he gets to see it all with his own eyes by looking at what his life was meant to be and by observing what it could have been. It's all tragic and yet another example of these shows proving how they allow underdeveloped characters in the MCU a better chance to shine. Because if Loki can give even more depth to a character who's already compelling as is, then that is a feat worth admiration.

The Score: Let's give our gratitude toward Natalie Holt, who f**king killed it with this series score. Every piece she made is nothing short of glorious. Sylvie's and the TVA's themes particularly stand out, as they perfectly capture who/what they're representing. Such as how Sylvie's is big and boisterous where the TVA's sound eerie and almost unnatural. Holt also finds genius ways to implement other scores into the series, from using familiar tracks from the Thor movies to even rescoring "Ride of the Valkyries" in a way that makes a scene even more epic than it already could have been. The MCU isn't best known for its musical scores, partly because they aim to be suitable rather than memorable. But every now and again, something as spectacular as the Loki soundtrack sprinkles through the cracks of mediocrity. Making fans all the more grateful because of it.

There’s a lot of Talking: To some, this will be considered a complaint. Most fans of the MCU come for the action, comedy, and insanely lovable characters. Not so much for the dialogue and exposition. That being said, I consider all of the talking to be one of Loki's best features. All the background information about the TVA added with the character's backstories fascinates me, making me enthusiastic about learning more. Not everyone else will be as interested in lore and world-building as others, but just because something doesn't grab you, in particular, doesn't mean it isn't appealing at all. Case in point: There's a reason why the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise has lasted as long as it has, and it's not entirely because of how "scary" it is.

There's also the fact that most of the dialogue in Loki is highly engaging. I'll admit, some scenes do drag a bit. However, every line is delivered so well that I'm more likely to hang on to every word when characters simply have honest conversations with each other. And if I can be entertained by Loki talking with Morbius about jetskis, then I know a show is doing at least something right.

It’s Funny: This shouldn't be a surprise. The MCU is well-known for its quippy humor in the direct acknowledgment that it doesn't take itself too seriously. With that said, it is clear which movies and shows are intended to be taken seriously, while others are meant to be comedies. Loki tries to be a bit of both. There are some heavy scenes that impact the characters, and probably even some fans, due to how well-acted and professionally written they can be. However, this is also a series about a Norse god traveling through time to deal with alternate versions of himself, with one of them being an alligator. I'd personally consider it a crime against storytelling to not make it funny. Thankfully, the writers aren't idiots and know to make the series fun with a few flawlessly timed and delivered jokes that never really take away from the few good grim moments that actually work.

It Kept Me Surprised: About everything I appreciate about Loki, the fact that I could never really tell what direction it was going is what I consider its absolute best feature. Every time I think I knew what was going to happen, there was always this one big twist that heavily subverted any and every one of my expectations. Such as how each time I thought I knew who the big bad was in this series, it turns out that there was an even worse threat built up in the background. The best part is that these twists aren't meant for shock value. It's always supposed to drive the story forward, and on a rewatch, you can always tell how the seeds have been planted for making each surprise work. It's good that it kept fans guessing, as being predictable and expected would probably be the worst path to take when making a series about Loki, a character who's all about trickery and deception. So bonus points for being in line with the character.

The TVA: You can complain all you want about how the show is more about the TVA than it is Loki, but you can't deny how the organization in question is a solid addition to the MCU. Initially, it was entertaining to see Loki of all characters be taken aback by how the whole process works. And it was worth a chuckle seeing Infinity Stones, the most powerful objects in the universe, get treated as paperweights. However, as the season continues and we learn about the TVA, the writers show that their intention is to try and write a message about freedom vs. control. We've seen this before in movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Captain America: Civil War, but with those films, it always felt like the writers were leaning more towards one answer instead of making it obscure over which decision is correct. This is why I enjoy the fact that Loki went on saying that there really is no right answer for this scenario. If the TVA doesn't prune variants, it could result in utter chaos and destruction that no one from any timeline can prepare themselves for. But when they do prune variants along with their timelines, it takes away all free will, forcing people to be someone they probably don't even want to be. It's a situation where there really is no middle ground. Even if you bring up how people could erase timelines more destructive than others, that still takes away free will on top of how there's no unbiased way of deciding which timelines are better or worse. And the series found a brilliant way to explain this moral: The season starts by showing how the TVA is necessary, to later point out how there are flaws and evil secrets within it, and ends things with the revelation that there are consequences without the TVA keeping the timeline in check. It's an epic showcase of fantastic ideas met with exquisite execution that I can't help but give my seal of approval to.

Miss Minutes: Not much to say. This was just a cute character, and I love that Tara Strong, one of the most popular voice actors, basically plays a role in the MCU now.

Justifying Avengers: Endgame: Smartest. Decision. This series. Made. Bar none.

Because when you establish that the main plot is about a character getting arrested for f**king over the timeline, you're immediately going to get people questioning, "Why do the Avengers get off scot-free?" So by quickly explaining how their time-traveling antics were supposed to happen, it negates every one of those complaints...or most of them. There are probably still a-holes who are poking holes in that logic, but they're not the ones writing this review, so f**k them.

Mobius: I didn't really expect Owen Wilson to do that good of a job in Loki. Primarily due to how the Cars franchise discredits him as a professional actor for...forever. With that said, Owen Wilson's Mobius might just be one of the most entertaining characters in the series. Yes, even more so than Loki himself. Mobius acts as the perfect straight man to Loki's antics, what with being so familiar with the supposed god of mischief through past variations of him. Because of that, it's always a blast seeing these two bounce off one another through Loki trying to trick a Loki expert, and said expert even deceiving Loki at times. Also, on his own, Mobius is still pretty fun. He has this sort of witty energy that's often present in Phil Coulson (Love that character too, BTW), but thanks to Owen Wilson's quirks in his acting, there's a lot more energy to Mobius than one would find in Coulson. As well as a tad bit of tragedy because of Mobius being a variant and having no clue what his life used to be. It's a lot to unpack and is impressively written, added to how it's Owen Wilson who helps make the character work as well as he did. Cars may not have done much for his career, but Loki sure as hell showed his strengths.

Ravonna Renslayer: Probably the least entertaining character, but definitely one of the most intriguing. At least to me.

Ravonna is a character who is so steadfast in her believes that she refuses to accept that she may be wrong. Without the proper writing, someone like Ravonna could tick off (ha) certain people. Personally, I believe that Ravonna is written well enough where even though I disagree with her belief, I can understand where she's coming from. She's done so much for the TVA, bringing an end to so many variants and timelines that she can't accept that it was all for nothing. In short, Ravonna represents the control side of the freedom vs. control theme that the writers are pushing. Her presence is necessary while still being an appealing character instead of a plot device. Again, at least to me.

Hunter B-15: I have no strong feelings one way or another towards B-15's personality, but I will admit that I love the expectation-subversion done with her. She has this air of someone who's like, "I'm this by-the-books badass cop, and I will only warm up to this cocky rookie after several instances of them proving themselves." That's...technically not B-15. She's the first to see Loki isn't that bad, but only because B-15 is the first in the main cast to learn the hidden vile present in the TVA. It makes her change in point of view more believable than how writers usually work a character like hers, on top of adding a new type of engaging motivation for why she fights. I may not particularly enjoy her personality, but I do love her contributions.

Loki Watching What His Life Could Have Been: This was a brilliant decision by the writers. It's basically having Loki speedrun his own character development through witnessing what he could have gone through and seeing the person he's meant to be, providing a decent explanation for why he decides to work for the TVA. And on the plus side, Tom Hiddleston did a fantastic job at portraying the right emotions the character would have through a moment like this. Such as grief, tearful mirth, and borderline shock and horror. It's a scene that no other character could go through, as no one but Loki needed a wake-up call for who he truly is. This series might heavily focus on the TVA, but scenes like this prove just who's the star of the show.

Loki Causing Mischief in Pompeii: I just really love this scene. It's so chaotic and hilarious, all heavily carried by the fact that you can tell that Tom Hiddleston is having the time of his damn life being this character. What more can I say about it.

Sylvie: The first of many surprises this season offered, and boy was she a great one.

Despite being an alternate version of Loki, I do appreciate that Sylvie's her own character and not just "Loki, but with boobs." She still has the charm and charisma, but she also comes across as more hardened and intelligent when compared to the mischievous prick we've grown to love. A large part of that is due to her backstory, which might just be the most tragic one these movies and shows have ever made. Sylvie got taken away when she was a little girl, losing everything she knew and loved, and it was all for something that the people who arrested her don't even remember. How sad is that? The fact that her life got permanently screwed over, leaving zero impact on the people responsible for it. As badass as it is to hear her say she grew up at the ends of a thousand worlds (that's an album title if I ever heard one), it really is depressing to know what she went through. It also makes her the perfect candidate to represent the freedom side of the freedom vs. control argument. Because she's absolutely going to want to fight to put an end to the people who decide how the lives of trillions should be. Those same people took everything from Sylvie, and if I were in her position, I'd probably do the same thing. Of course, we all know the consequences that come from this, and people might criticize Sylvie the same way they complain about Thor and Star Lord for screwing over the universe in Avengers: Infinity War. But here's the thing: Sylvie's goals are driven by vengeance, which can blind people from any other alternatives. Meaning her killing He Who Remains is less of a story flaw and more of a character flaw. It may be a bad decision, but that's for Season Two Sylvie to figure out. For now, I'll just appreciate the well-written and highly compelling character we got this season and eagerly wait as we see what happens next with her.

The Oneshot in Episode Three: Not as epic as the hallway scene in Daredevil, but I do find it impressive that it tries to combine real effects, fighting, and CGI in a way where it's all convincing enough.

Lady Sif Kicking Loki in the D**k: This is a scene that makes me realize why I love this series. At first, I laugh at Loki being stuck in a time loop where Lady Sif kicks him in the d**k over and over again. But a few scenes later, this setup actually works as a character moment that explains why Loki does the things he does.

This series crafted phenomenal character development through Loki getting kicked in the d**k by the most underrated badass of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's a perfect balance of comedy and drama that not every story can nail, yet Loki seemed like it did with very little effort.

Classic Loki: This variant shows the true tragedy of being Loki. The only way to survive is to live in isolation, far away from everything and everyone he loves, only to end up having his one good deed result in his death anyways. Classic Loki is definitive proof that no matter what face they have, Lokis never gets happy endings. They're destined to lose, but at least this version knows that if you're going out, you're going out big. And at least he got to go out with a mischievous laugh.

(Plus, the fact that he's wearing Loki's first costume from the comics is a pretty cute callback).

Alligator Loki: Alligator Loki is surprisingly adorable, and if you know me, you know that I can't resist cute s**t. It's not in my nature.

Loki on Loki Violence: If you thought Loki going ham in Pompeii was chaotic, that was nothing to this scene. Because watching these Lokis backstab one another, to full-on murdering each other, is a moment that is best described as pure, unadulterated chaos. And I. Loved. Every. Second of it.

The Opening Logo for the Season Finale: I'm still not that big of a fan of the opening fanfare playing for each episode, but I will admit that it was a cool feature to play vocal clips of famous quotes when the corresponding character appears. It's a great way of showing the chaos of how the "sacred timeline" works without having it to be explained further.

The Citadel: I adore the set design of the Citadel. So much history and backstory shine through the state of every room the characters walk into. You get a perfect picture of what exactly happened, but seeing how ninety percent of the place is in shambles, it's pretty evident that not everything turned out peachy keen. And as a personal note, my favorite aspect of the Citadel is the yellow cracks in the walls. It looks as though reality itself is cracking apart, which is pretty fitting when considering where the Citadel actually is.

He Who Remains: This man. I. Love. This man.

I love this man for two reasons.

A. He's a ton of fun. Credit to that goes to the performance delivered by Jonathon Majors. Not only is it apparent that Majors is having a blast, but he does a great job at conveying how He Who Remains is a strategic individual but is still very much off his rocker. These villains are always my favorite due to how much of a blast it is seeing someone with high intelligence just embracing their own insanity. If you ask me, personalities are always essential for villains. Because even when they have the generic plot to rule everything around them, you're at least going to remember who they are for how entertaining they were. Thankfully He Who Remains has that entertainment value, as it makes me really excited for his eventual return, whether it'd be strictly through Loki Season Two or perhaps future movies.

And B. He Who Remains is a fantastic foil for Loki. He Who Remains is everything Loki wishes he could have been, causing so much death, destruction, and chaos to the multiverse. The important factor is that he does it all through order and control. The one thing Loki despises, and He Who Remains uses it to his advantage. I feel like that's what makes him the perfect antagonist to Loki, thanks to him winning the game by not playing it. I would love it if He Who Remains makes further appearances in future movies and shows, especially given how he's hinted to be Kane the Conqueror, but if he's only the main antagonist in Loki, I'm still all for it. He was a great character in his short time on screen, and I can't wait to see what happens next with him.

WHAT I DISLIKED

Revealing that Loki was D.B. Cooper: A cute scene, but it's really unnecessary. It adds nothing to the plot, and I feel like if it was cut out entirely, it wouldn't have been the end of the world...Yeah. That's it.

That's my one and only complaint about this season.

Maybe some scenes drag a bit, and I guess Episode Three is kind of the weakest, but there's not really anything that this series does poorly that warrants an in-depth complaint.

Nope.

Nothing at all...

…

...

...I'm not touching that "controversy" of Loki falling for Sylvie instead of Mobius. That's a situation where there are no winners.

Only losers.

Exclusively losers.

Other than that, this season was amazing!

IN CONCLUSION

I'd give the first season of Loki a well-earned A, with a 9.5 through my usual MCU ranking system. It turns out, it really is the best type of wackiness that was just too good to fail. The characters are fun and likable, the comedy and drama worked excellently, and the expansive world-building made me really intrigued with the more we learned. It's hard to say if Season Two will keep this momentum, but that's for the future to figure out. For now, let's just sit back and enjoy the chaos.

(Now, if you don't excuse me, I have to figure out how to review Marvel's What If...)

#marvel cinematic universe #mcu reviews #loki tv series #loki #sylvie #mobius #ravonna renslayer #hunter b 15 #classic loki #alligator loki #he who remains #kang the conqueror #what i thought about

10 notes · View notes

secret-diary-of-an-fa · 3 years ago

Text

Resolutions Are Here Again

So, with last year out of the way, it’s time to turn our collective attention to the New Year and the completely unfounded belief that it represents a clean slate and the opportunity to improve ourselves as people. With that in mind, it’s time for my contractually-obligated selection of New Year’s Resolution suggestions. Some of these are actually good advice- most of them are likely to get you killed. I’m not going to tell you which is which. Let the games begin.

1. Move Away from the Cities I spent a lot of time living in London and its surrounding environments and- as I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries- it was very wearing on the soul. London is a pathological city: a form of psychosis that has crystallised in our corporeal world as a set of spindly glass skyscrapers and stone monuments to the constipated military dead. While I sometimes miss its grandiosity, I’ve found that moving away from it to the bleak, beautiful middle of nowhere has had a beneficial effect on my mental health (well, that and my gorgeous fiance). I strongly suspect that all big cities are a bit awful- I’ve never really found one that seems to be conducive to general well-being. If you live in one but have the opportunity to leave, I can heartily recommend taking it.

2. Pirate More Films I love movies. Well, I love good movies. And some interestingly bad movies, too. Unfortunately, I fucking hate mediocre movies, which make up the majority of the film industry’s output. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to tell whether a movie will be good, interesting-bad, regular-bad or just meh based on trailers (which are carefully edited to cast the flick in the best possible light) and reviews (which are written by either idiots, shills, or me- and nobody fucking agrees with me). Luckily, there’s a solution to the problem of wasting your money on cinema tickets and DVDs only to be disappointed. It’s called Piracy and here in the upcoming space-year of 2022, you don’t even need a funny Cornish accent to do it (eyepatches are still encouraged, but not mandatory). Pirating movies is a great form of quality control and allows you to decide if something is worth your time before you spend money on it, rather than after. Of course, some spectacular cinematic experiences deserve to be seen on the big-screen first, but you can usually intuit which those are and which you can safely watch at home with your feet up first. So yeah: go piracy (NOTE: This entry is an abstract speculation and a joke and in no way counts as a confession to piracy for legal purposes- though I have committed several crimes on and in boats, which is similar).

3. Stalk a Better Class of Celebrity Miley Cyrus definitely has stalkers. So does that bloke out of One Direction- you know: the one with the hair. And fucking Beyoncé. Justin Timberlake probably has stalkers. Willem Defoe has friends he hasn’t met yet (seriously- he seems like a guy who would get on with his own stalkers). And it’s a bit depressing. Because it means there are people who actually think these people are worth wasting their lives on and risking a jail sentence over. Okay, Willem Defoe might be, but if you’re stalking someone who would happily just be your friend to alleviate the crushing loneliness of being Willem Defoe, then you’re doing something wrong. So, if you’re a stalker, I suggest taking the opportunity of the impending New Year to choose a new target- someone who’s actually worth stalking. Maybe chance your arm in an intense cat-and-mouse game with Leonardo DiCaprio, unsure of whether you’re the hunter of the hunted. Or go camping in Joanna Lumley’s back garden (if nothing else, it’ll be an education in fashion choices). Or hang around in graveyards, pestering Leonard Cohen’s restless ghost! Or, if you really want a challenge, try to track down Nicholas Cage, who is known to disappear into heavy mist and dense forests between the bizarre celluloid fever-dreams that are his career. Like a majestic Bigfoot.

4. Avoid Jumanji Merchandise Like the Fucking Plague Yeah, I know this is a suspiciously specific one, but it’s more important than you might think. My Fiancé and I recently purchased a replica of the Jumanji boardgame from, y’know, the movie of the same name, expecting an exciting game we could play with friends and family with different events and twists. What we got was a tiny plastic board with a light-up centre, no rule-sheet and no special spaces or cards with events on to liven up the game. We might as well have played fucking Ludo in silly explorer’s hats. It set us back £23, too. I mean, pretty much every major I.P. you can think of has some shite merchandise attached to it (I once saw a Rick and Morty toilet-roll holder, for fuck sake), but there’s something about Jumanji that seems to invite a whole new level of flagrant piss-taking. Be warned, ye travellers on the road of nerdy merch.

5. Eat More Exotic Cheeses I really can’t sing the praises of cheese highly enough at the moment. It’s nature’s perfect food-stuff. Just stick in on a cracker with a sliced up grape and you suddenly feel like the most sophisticated fucker in the world, even though you’ve made next to zero effort to combine a fruit, a dry thing and some seriously gone-off milk. Best of all, cheeses comes in a staggering array of enticing variants, from truffle-stuffed brie to Wensleydale with Cranberry. My personal favourite is a creamy little number with pineapple and almonds and I have no idea what the technical name for the type of cheese is, but YOU MEDICALLY HAVE TO TRY IT. Yeah. I’m going to shut up about cheese now.

6. Get into Buggery and Cannibalism Because those smug bastards in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy don’t own a fucking patent! Go out there and live your big gay cannibal dreams! (And yes, I’m aware that this joke won’t land for anyone unfamiliar with British naval stereotypes or Monty Python’s Flying Circus, but I also don’t care so it balances out).

7. ‘Discover’ a New Cryptid Cryptozoology is by far my favourite daffy, half-baked pseudo-science. Sure, astrology is a fascinating system of rules and lore, all of which are excellently silly because they presume that burning balls of plasma thousands of lightyears away give a shit whether some guy named Kenneth is entering a time of prosperity and change. But fundamentally, there’s not a lot of get-up-and-go in it. One ‘studies’ astrology by reading heavy books and trying not to laugh at terms like ‘Uranus is in Retrograde’. And sure, Homeopathy has got an actual body-count, thanks to everyone who’s embraced it instead of real medicine, which is pretty metal. But none of these things are as fundamentally cool as going into the wilderness hunting something that definitely does not exist dressed like Doctor Fucking Livingstone. There’s something harmless and whimsical about Cryptozoology, which is why I invite you all to go out into your nearest place of abject desolation, convince yourself that there’s ‘something’ out there and take a few blurry photos from which you can develop an entire made-up species for other raving loonies to chase forever after. Who knows? You might do your town’s tourist trade the world of good. Fuck knows the economy could use all the help it can get at the moment, what with all the COVID that’s been happening.

8. Google ‘I’m Sorry, Jon’ and be Afraid… Very Afraid Like most people, I hadn’t consciously thought about Garfield in years. He’s just a cat who likes lasagna- what’s to think about? Then I discovered that Weirdos on The Internet (bless their little cotton socks) have decided that Garfield is secretly a terrifying eldritch abomination with the power to bend reality itself- a being of pure malevolence that delights only in the torment of ‘Jon’, the foolish human who once believed himself his owner. And there is some fucking amazing fanart and lore devoted to this concept and I can’t stress enough how wild and out there this is. It’s like something H.P. Lovecraft would write if you injected him full of LSD and sat him in a cat cafe for three days. The most comprehensive repository is the ‘I’m Sorry, Jon’ thread on Reddit, though there’s a lot of trash to ferret through before you get to the well-drawn and truly nightmarish stuff. The art of a guy named Rojorn is also a good place to start, if you want to cut straight to the point. Anyway, it’s a fucking trip- a trip right down the gaping throat of gibbering online madness. I recommend it: it’ll blow away the cobwebs and, if nothing else, remind you that human beings are really fucking weird creatures. The perfect way to start the New Year.

9. Give up on the Device and Go the Fuck Outside. Maybe on a Date Look. I don’t want to admit and I know you don’t either, but those doomsday devices we’ve all been building just aren’t going to bring the world to its knees as effectively as COVID already has. It was a beautiful dream- the world finally crushed under the heal of the cackling mad scientists who should have been in charge all along- but it’s time to let it go. It’s really hard to source Uranium and the Souls of Dead Dragons nowadays, anyway. Fucking red tape. Put the dust-sheet back on your ‘The Device’, go outside and meet a nice lady Mad Scientist. You can do cute couple-y stuff like vivisections and unearthing the curse of Lost Atlantis. Take it from someone who’s found his partner in supervillainy: you’ll thank me for it later.

10. Murder Chris Chibnall with a Bowling Ball Look- I already told you that I no longer live in London, where the prick works, so it’s up to you, dear reader, to keep the dream alive. Resolve, here and now, gentle, brainwashed minion, to go forth and end this hack’s Who-ruining spree with a good old-fashioned bowling-ball-to-the-head!

11. Tell a Dolphin to Fuck Off Dolphins are beautiful, intelligent creatures with a sophisticated language that scientists are finally starting to decode and, apparently, an abiding love of us humans. But here’s an experiement nobody has thought to run: would dolphins still love and aid humans if they could actually understand us? Let’s try insulting them in their own language and find out. Let’s see how fucking friendly Flipper is after you’ve called him a bottle-nosed tosspot directly to his face. I’m guessing ‘not very’, but that’s what science is for: to test these little hypotheses. And no, I can’t think of how to tie this one to the New Year either, but it made me laugh so it’s going on the list.

12. Stop Making Resolutions Dude (or Dudette), if you’re still reading at this point, I think you might have an addiction to resolutions. It’s time to go cold turkey. I’m cutting off this blog… right… now.

#Secret-Diary-of-an-FA #Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer #New Years Resolutions #new year #Happy new year #that time of year #piracy #dolphins #cryptids

2 notes · View notes

caffeinated-moonchild · 4 years ago

Text

stormy nights [min yoongi]

writer: michiko

genre: short story, fan fiction, scenario

synopsis: time is gold and can’t be paused...so talk.

character/s: min yoongi, reader [you]

story:

Night after night, your work consumed you. Sometimes, it felt normal as if it was just some crazy routine that you got used to, but more often is it a bad habit that you have no courage to break. Fueled by coffee in such a fast-paced industry made you an obvious workaholic, but no one could force you to take a break...not even your boyfriend.

But that was a different case. Your boyfriend, Yoongi, happens to be the exact same as you—life driven by work as if you were being held at gunpoint if you stop. He did not mind that you worked 'till late because he was doing the same. It did not bother you that he missed dates and forgets special occasions because you often do as well. Neither of you were active enough in your relationship these days that during those brief idle moments in your life, that goes a second or two, you wonder what it was like before things have gotten crazy.

That was the thing, your work has always been this demanding just as his, too. But lately, both of you reminisce the early days of your relationship as you long for that feeling. It was not that you no longer love each other because despite the busy schedule and brief conversation, the glimmer of that spark remains. It just happens to be resting rather than burning...and that might not be a completely bad thing.

For the first time in a long while, you finished your tasks early and without immediate revisions or any awaiting new set of tasks. It was a miracle and you were gladly to take it with the thought of more hours of rest—a well-deserved present for all of your hard work. You dropped by at the convenience store to grab a few snacks to eat, while you watch an episode or two of the series you have wanted to check, before you headed straight home.

Surprisingly, Yoongi was home early, too.

His cat-like eyes grew a little as your presence was the last thing he thought to have at such an hour. He gave you a smile as he went over to help you with the couple of bags that you were carrying.

"I didn't know you were home, I should have gotten more snacks," you apologized as you set your bag down and started to settle in.

He placed the bags on the living room table where a bunch of snacks were already laid out. "I also got some because I didn't think you'd be home this early. That's new."

"I could say the same thing about you." You smiled. "Wait. I'll just freshen up and then we can watch anything." You took a quick shower, something that has always relieved a stressful day out of your skin, then changed into more comfortable clothes—a large shirt that you stole from Yoongi and old sweatpants—perfect for the rainy night.

The two of you settle on the sofa and start to look for a common ground on what you would watch for the night, ending up with a family comedy to contrast the loud rain. The movie made you both laugh...until the power went off right before the resolution of the story.

And for a moment, you sat quietly in the dark.

Yoongi cleared his throat as he stood up to get the lamp and placed it in the middle of the room. And with the silence, you realized how loud the rain was and so you hurriedly checked the news that was already reporting about the storm.

A sigh left your lips as you stared at the television that had gone dark and the table of snacks that you felt had gone to waste. Of all nights that could have ended dark and cold, did it really have to be the night when you finally have the time to unwind?

"Hey. How was your day?" Yoongi asked to break the deafening silence. It was kind of rare for Yoongi to be the one who starts the conversation since you were the chatty one in the relationship, but it was appreciated nevertheless.

It had been a while since the two of you had a talk, may it be small talk or something serious and yet despite that fact, it did not feel awkward at all. With a soft smile, you went on to tell him about your day. "My butt hurts from sitting on that damned chair for hours just to end up with four mediocre concepts because mine was too realistic." Your work truly frustrated you at times but you just could not find the will to leave and to quit because you honestly enjoyed it, too. "Surprisingly, there were no additional tasks. What about you?" You asked as you grabbed a pack of strawberry Pocky and started to munch on it. "What about you? You're home early."

He was already on his second bottle of cold brew, leaning a little closer to you. "They kinda forced me to go home early since I got locked out of the studio." There was a hint of frustration in his voice as he recalled how they practically pushed him out of the door, telling him how he needed to get a day off.

"You got what?" You laughed, trying to imagine how he might have looked as he stood in front of his beloved studio without any means to get in. "I would love to see you locked out."

If it were the other guys teasing him, he would probably answer back with a sharp response but it was you. It was always different with you. "Don't get any ideas of locking me out of the apartment."

No matter how mundane it seemed, talking to each other has always been something you both enjoyed. Sharing about what went on about your day was refreshing and reminiscent of your early days of being together. Having stressful jobs kind of takes a toll on the two of you and talking it out at the end of the day was quite a good way of relieving it and taking all of the weight on your shoulders.

"As much as I love Namjoon, he can be such a child at times." She shakes her head as they talked about his friends whom you have grown close to as well.

Yoongi's eyes widened as he listened to your stories about how you were starting to stand up for yourself when your boss abuses your hard work. "Wow. I'm so proud of you for knowing your worth."

The sound of the heavy rain and strong winds outside seemed to blur into a background noise of every story and opinion that you exchanged. With that, you also demolished your snack table. As it seemed, you did not need a movie to be entertained because he was way more interesting than any movie on your to-watch list.

It was almost two in the morning that you found yourselves cuddled up on the sofa in complete silence, waiting for someone to break it. "I wish most nights are like this," you whisper, soft voice dancing into the breeze. "Not the storm but talking to you and spending time with you."

To answer you, Yoongi gave you a gentle squeeze as he pressed a soft kiss on the back of your head. "We can always be like this if not for our schedules." An exasperated sigh slipped past his lips. "But maybe we can start making time for each other. I know it can't be every day but I'd love to know about your day as often as we can."

Your lips stretched to a smile just by hearing his suggestion, glad that you were not the only one thinking about it. "I would love that, too."

Yoongi held your hand to intertwine your fingers, bringing your hand closer to his lips as he pressed a soft kiss on the back of your hand.

It was those soft and pure moments that you have forgotten for a moment because both of you were so wrapped up in the things that take most of your time.

It was not that love was gone but you were people who valued work above most things, thinking that nothing else matters as much. But one stormy night was able to remind you that being with each other is more important than any of your jobs combined.

Time is gold because no one can go back once it passes. Most times people take time to do things because they believe that there is a time for everything. That may be true but that does not mean that time stands still. Life is a huge task that demands people to multi-task because no one can pause an aspect of their life and expect it to still be there when they are ready. And that night, you both realized that you need to make time no matter how hectic your schedules could be...because amidst all the chaos in your life, being with each other makes you happy.

And that is worth more than anything.

"I love you."

"*나도."

━

*나도 - (Romanization: Nado) It means 'Me too'.

39 notes · View notes

hannaswritingblog · 4 years ago

Note

haha, okay, so here I go! Only 5 questions from me! 🌸 Asks for book meme:

3. A book you found overhyped, and why

5. Which genre(s) don’t you read? Why not?

6. If you read in more than one language, is there a difference between the experience of reading in your native language(s) and reading in other languages?

10. The book(s) you bought because the cover was pretty, and whether it was worth it

15. The book that you reread over and over again and get new things from every time

After some turbulences, here come book meme answers! haha (I swear I'm not gonna delete those ask games so soon again)

Also, next time you don't have to send the whole questions, you can just give me numbers and I'll copy them myself. Only if I ever happen to reblog two or more of those at the same time, please be specific which one they are for. :)

3. A book you found overhyped, and why

The first title to appear in my head was All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven. I don't know if I can fully say it's overhyped but it has surprisingly good ratings on all those book pages (as in goodreads and lubimyczytać) and I remember at the point I read it, it felt really mediocre and definitely not as good as I expected. It wasn't too bad, but I read better books around that time, and I don't even have the urge to come back to it and check if my opinion would change.

5. Which genre(s) don't you read? Why not?

Apparently in last, like, 10 years I haven't read a single horror book. I'd love to say it's because I don't like the scary vibe, but on the other hand, I've watched a couple of horror movies in my life that I liked and I'm a huge fan of creepypastas, but I consume them in audio forms or in those short bits on forums and stuff. I guess getting the same thing in a form of a whole book just isn't tempting.

6. If you read in more than one language, is there a difference between the experience of reading in your native language(s) and reading in other languages?

My native language is Polish, but I'm also fluent in English and I read in both those languages. I feel like when I read in English it's harder for me to get the emotional load that specific scenes are supposed to have. I can get very emotional while reading in Polish, but with English I still need to focus a little more on understaning the direct meaning of the words and as much as I can still imagine how the scenes go this way, filtering the words makes it harder for me to understand this emotional layer that isn't always conveyed directly with words. So yeah, there is a difference, it might be getting better with time but I still feel it.

10. The book(s) you bought because the cover was pretty, and whether it was worth it

It was really hard to answer this one because I am a visualiser when it comes to buying books. The cover is usually a deciding factor for me and I can say oh, the cover is pretty about the majority of books I own. But I decided to pick three that stood out to me the most when I scanned my bookshelves.

I bought Girl Online mainly because of its contents but the cover is the aesthetic and it was a deciding factor when I bought it.

The second book (Dziewczyna o kruchym sercu) is my main example for buying a book because the cover was pretty. When I was roaming around the book store one time I found it and five minutes later I owned it.

The last cover (Przepowiednia dla Romanowów) isn't pretty per se but I spotted it in the bookstore when I was in the middle on my Russian history interest and that photo of Rasputin literally haunted me for months until I bought it.

Was it worth it? I'd say yes. None of those books ended up being my all time favourite but I enjoyed them and I might even reread all of them one day unlike All The Bright Places lol.

15. The book that you reread over and over again and get new things from every time

I don't really have any books that I would reread over and over again. I mean, I reread some books recently but mainly because I didn't actually remember anything and what I got from them was either ooh, I like them more than I thought or meh, I thought it was better.

Thanks for asking! 💜

#Hanna's reading thoughts #get to know me #ask game #ask #non anon ask #winterxisxcomingx

3 notes · View notes

suffering-and-happy-about-it · 4 years ago

Text

Nicole's Rambling: The Avengers Problem (for PS4)

Let's start with the usual chanting: ❗this is my opinion, it's biased as hell (since I grew up with Marvel comic books and movies) and you don't have to agree❗

I was wondering why Avengers game gets so hated... So I took a look and I played it myself. Let’s have a look.

SPOILERS AHEAD

First off: the game isn't in any way horribly bad. It's just a button smasher with a story that has its good and bad beats. It's not memorable at all, but it could've gone way more downhill in my opinion.

At the start of the game, you meet the mighty Avengers through child fan's eyes - it's pure fanservice and let's be honest, it's dope. It was sweet, but pretty dragged, to be honest. I really didn't need to play as all five Avengers (HAWKEYE IS MISSING, AGAIN) in the first hour of the game, but sure, why not?

For the most part, you see the squad through Kamala Khan's eyes. For those who might have not a clue who the hell Kamala is; I am not wondering about why you don't know who the hell she is. She's a Marvel heroine who outed in 2013 and who will have her own spinoff on Disney+.

And again, Ms Marvel is fine, but not memorable at all. I've never, until this day, met anyone who would say that 'Ms Marvel is my favourite superhero'. I was halfway through the game before I even realized it's Ms Marvel - AFTER SHE PULLED HER DAMN COSTUME OUT. That can be due to my utter ignorance or because I heard of her so little that I can count it on my fingers. In all honesty, I loved Kamala as the story progressed, the gal's not bad at all - but as the whole game, she had good and bad beats. There were times where I wished to play as Iron Man and the game forced me to play as her... Whatever.

Let's look at the three problems I have with this game and three positives I found in the game:

0. (Technically zero since it's a personal problem of mine) The soundtrack and the voice actors:

By any means, I am not trying to say they should hire RDJ for the role of Iron Man and Mark Ruffalo for the role of Banner... But it was so hard to distinguish the voice of Nolan North (For example: Nathan Drake x Iron Man) and Troy Baker (Samuel Drake x Bruce Banner). For me, as for a PS4 gamer, it's annoying to hear the same voices again and again in every game I am genuinely excited about (Idk how Xbox players are familiar with them). Of course, there's even Laura Bailey as the Black Widow; I feel like these are the three only people who do voice acting for games these days and sure, I should've seen that coming.

Side note: Nolan North is not a good fit for Iron Man in the slightest in my opinion, but if you like his Iron Man, that's cool as well!

The soundtrack... M A N, the soundtrack. When I heard Marvel gave a green light to the Avengers game, I expected to hear at least the iconic Alan Silvestri's 'The Avengers'. Problem with this is simple: Marvel had spoiled its consumers with good and memorable soundtracks (don't you tell me you don't remember as they all gathered for the first time). Since it was Marvel itself who gave the green light for this project, which was supposed to be based loosely on the movies' and comic book success, I hoped to get all of it.

It's not Iron Man when AC/DC song isn't playing in the background as he flies through a canyon for his life. I mean, Iron Maiden are fine; but come on. COME ON. It's not the same. It's not the Avengers (WITHOUT HAWKEYE) without their significant theme.

1. IT. BUGS. ALL. THE. TIME and the combat is incredibly repetitive:

When I was little, I was a rage gamer. I could barely play Crash Bandicoot or Rayman without losing my cool. Since then, I grew up, skilled and etc. I try not to rage when playing games since it's simply not worth it.

But when you're replaying a boring mission for the tenth part and you're almost over and SUDDENLY, the game bugs out and you lose control over the character (it starts running in circles, etc.) it sucks shit. And don't let me start on the minor bugs. Like when you don't cross the platform by one pixel and the game doesn't let you make combos when you're in the air and bug into a tree when you bug into a wall, a rock, fucking nothing... Bruh. It was released in August, shouldn't these bugs be fixed by now? The game is fucking broken, hoes. It barely feels like a game ready to launch at times.

When you're so lucky that you don't bug out in the middle of doing something, the combat... It isn't bad. It's not terrible, but the Avengers deserved something better. It didn't deserve mediocre combat that repeats itself in every level. Once you find yourself good combo, you're done for. You can use it to finish the game if you will.

2. There's too many missions, too much information and too much things player has to understand if he wants to play the game properly:

Okay, this might seem to be a little confusing; I didn't understand the game system at all when I first ran it on my PS4. There's story missions, HARM training sessions, daily missions for particular heroes, faction missions (SHIELD, Pym, Stark, etc.) and character-side-story missions, and a lot more.

Trust me, it doesn't sound that hard, but once you open the map menu for yourself... Oh boy, that's a different story. And if it only was the map menu. The inventory and such aren't too collected all together either. Before you can safely tell what is what, it will take you at least a whole afternoon. Also, the fact that game just spills it on you just like that, one thing after another, it doesn't help the overall feel.

On top of that, there are MULTIPLE currencies in the game; some even involve microtransaction. It mostly is involving the customization of the Avengers, so it's not THAT big of a deal; you can get one currency by collecting boxes and stuff, but it takes ages before you can buy one single thingy.

Also, if you would like to get stuff (very useful stuff) from factions (SHIELD and Pym mainly), you have to do in-factions daily quests, which usually require to do a certain amount of things as a particular hero (you can do some quests with Ms Marvel only, some with Black Widow, it usually involves the damage dealt while playing as a character etc.). And if you forget to fetch these minies? Well, no faction points for you, bucko.

The system feels overall too complicated in the begging and even after finishing the game, I am not certain by some.

3. The gameplay of the one and only... Natasha Romanov, and the entirety of Steve Rogers:

Right off the bat: IT. SUCKS. SHIT.

This was your shot in opening our mouths and showing why Black Widow BELONGS to the Avengers in the first place. Like, sure, storywise you proved the point, but gameplaywise... That's a different story.

Out of the bunch, Natasha feels the slowest, most clumsy and overall not too pleasant to play as. Mainly is because her attacks do... Nothing. The gun reloading is basically constant when I have to put it simply and it takes about 3-5 seconds for her to even reload; which can be a matter of life and death inside the game. Sure, she can make herself invisible; but that's like... It. It's not that it would be suffering when you are forced to play as Nat... But not a pleasant experience either.

On the other hand, maybe it's just me. I have friends who told me the same about her gameplay, but maybe there's someone who enjoys the Black Widow. It's my personal with the entirety of the gameplay.

Steve, on the other hand, isn't hard to play as. It's just fucking boring. At the start of the game, I couldn't wait to play as Steve's character. He seemed to be awesome - Jesus fuck, how could I be so wrong? As I said, he's incredibly boring and dry, his skills would do the same amount of work if they even weren't there. I think that Rogers is there just for the shock value (as a value that doesn't even work in the slightest) and nothing more.

As you learn to do the tricks and combos with them, it gets slightly better and skill tree and equipment upgrades can help almost unnoticeable... But really, Steve and Natasha are the absolute worst.

Now the reasons why the game convinced me it isn't a hot mess as I initially thought:

1. The characters, dynamics, chemistry and the overall story:

Sure, it is mainly a basic plotline, a cookie-cutter one, full of cliché - Avengers have to regroup after a traumatic event and you're the one who has to find them and bring them together.

Yet it is quite interesting; the game leads you to believe that Steve Rogers is dead after an event called the 'A-Day' (which you won't believe even if the game does the hardest to make you to, constantly remaining you that 'Oh boy, Cap died, did you know that?') and the Avengers had left to exile because they were considered as big bad for the people and the country. They have their emotional baggage and the banter between Banner and Stark (though it ends too soon), is just the thing that makes them human and relatable.

Even the villains are quite compelling; not like ultra super convincing, but the game can turn around when you least expect it to; which is definitely a huge plus.

The characters were done GOOD. The dialogues are full of personality and jokes you'd expect from each one of them; Banner is a wallflower cutie, Tony fishes for compliments all the time, Natasha is the big independent woman she always was and Thor? CHEF'S KISS, I swear. It hits the Shakespearean vibe perfectly and at the same time, he still is charming and quite funny to hang around.

Every time you can listen to a chit-chat between two characters, it is a great pleasure for you as a Marvel fan. Also, I need to say that regardless of my personal issue with the dub (regarding Tony and Bruce; since they're the people you spend most of your time with), the dialogues for these two characters are on point without a doubt. And I kinda grew fond of the in-game Bruce Banner throughout the course of the game, to be honest.

There are references, jokes, inside jokes, one-liners... The dialogue was done amazingly and that's a huge T H A N K Y O U to the developers.

2. The mind-blowing gameplay of... Tony Stark and Thor and AI, while not being too bright, getting stronger as you do:

In what the Natasha gameplay lacks, these two give you exactly what would you expect and way, way more than you'd ask for. Again, it mainly reflects the personal gameplay preferences of the player; let me tell you why I think these gameplays are, in my opinion, the best.

a) Tony's gadgets and weaponry: The suit itself is bloody brilliant. Once you master the ability to attack and fly at the same time, you have the moments when you can not only feel like Iron Man - but really be Iron Man. It's not even that your gameplay would suddenly become 10x easier; it significantly becomes funnier.

b) Thor's heavy fist-to-fist and Mjolnir preferences: the Mjolnir is bloody brilliant as well. Thor's combat is mainly physically based, but when you want to throw the hammer around like the madman you are, you can suit yourself. You can use the lightning if you please and you can fly if this style of combat suits you. It's all in your hands. Thor can take quite a bit of damage, which is significantly supporting you in this style. If you accidentally drop Mjolnir? Well, call it back and smash them!

Also, regarding the AI... As I said, they're certainly not the brightest sparks in the flame; yet thanks to the power getting bigger as you level up and continue with your story and a huge variety of enemies - from turrets to flying men with flamethrowers. It is just button smasher, but a pleasing one in this regard, I must say.

3. The fanservice to comic book fans, movie fans and loyalty to the property:

As one IGN review once said... "This game makes you feel like Batman." And this game more or less accomplished it as well, but diluted and stripped down. Of course, in no way I can compare this to the masterpiece to the Arkham saga; these games are brilliant.

But there are moments when the game can just drag you inside the story and tell you: "You're Iron Man now, boss. It's in your hands." And it's there. I think the only issue was that the team of devs just took too big of a bite. I wouldn't mind stand-alone titles emerging into one and big Avengers game. That would be fun as well and I would spend my time with it gladly.

To end it: it's a mess, but a good mess you might like. If I was to rate it, would be 5.1/10 Wait until it is on sale, don't rush it. I'm overall disappointed and I most likely will forget I have ever played it.

#avengers #marvel's avengers #avnegers ps4 game #avengers game #black widow #captain america #iron man #ms marvel #the incredible hulk #nicole's rambling #thor #WHERE DID YOU LEAVE CLINT #WHERE IS HE #Marvel Comics #why the fuck did you do

12 notes · View notes

anhed-nia · 4 years ago

Text

BLOGTOBER PRE-GAME 9/30/2020: 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE/CONFESSIONAL (2019)

Spoiler alert. Or whatever. It’s not going to matter, you don’t care.

So, I've been away for a minute. Just about any reason to be away from Tumblr is probably a good reason, but I have an especially good one. I'm finally working on a "real" writing project, which demands, and deserves, all of my attention. My social media abstinence isn't just a matter of time management, though. Once I had a long term obligation on my plate, I became very aware of how the short term satisfaction I get from posting mindless rants was eating away at the fuel I have available for sustained efforts. When I wind myself up with a 500-1000 word blog post, it generates a lot of electricity, but I blow it all as soon as I experience the catharsis of posting it, and I'm further pacified by ego-stroking likes and reblogs. Not to sound like a sanctimonious luddite--I mean, I'm still here, after all!--but it turns out that the staying focused on the long haul has been surprisingly revivifying. In fact, I haven't been talking about my big fancy project for the same reason; I don't want to lose any of the juice I've been storing up by wasting it on the shallow pleasure of describing it. Also such things should probably be somewhat confidential until they're approaching the publishing stage, but I digress! There is an actual reason I'm saying all this, that has more to do with this blog.

(Don’t get all excited, I’m not doing EVIL ED right now, I just need a relatable image.)

As I got deeper into my experience of "real" film writing, I started to reflect on the meaning of my personal writing. Like, the point of it. I tend to write in a sweaty, compulsive, sadomasochistic haze, in which I'm sometimes hyperbolically generous, and sometimes--perhaps more often, unfortunately--as nasty as humanly possible. Sometimes the movies deserve it, when they're lazy, pretentious, or otherwise demonstrate an open contempt for the audience aka ME. Often, though, I'm just creating an opportunity to vent my generalized rage and frustration. That can be very entertaining for myself and (hopefully) my teensy-but-devoted readership, but lately I've asked myself whether there isn't some negative tradeoff for all this amusement. In this phase of my life, it's reasonable to assume I'll make more and more friends and acquaintances who create things I don't always care for, but I don't necessarily think they deserve to be abused for it. As much as I have a right to say whatever I want, technically, I'd be embarrassed if I were caught just jacking myself off by making fun of their work in public. And more to the point, I don't necessarily want to contribute to the growing atmosphere in which people feel more afraid to try and fail, because the public so commonly misidentifies sarcasm and mean-spiritedness as intelligence and superiority, and that form of petty darkness spreads across the internet a lot faster than a movie can reach a wider audience. After all, I'm in the process of potentially turning myself into one of those well-meaning failures right now. I could stand to be a little more deliberate about how I speak, and about what, in general.

My father is an art critic, and once in an extra petulant moment, teenage-me asked him in an accusative tone what he thought the point of his profession was. He replied calmly that he wouldn't publish any comment that he didn't think the artist could make use of somehow. I don't know if he always stuck to that policy, but the thought sure stuck with me.

So anyway, over the last few months I've been giving myself a bit of an attitude adjustment, through a combination of personal reflection, and hard work on something meaningful/not for the internet. I've been feeling all proud of myself and shit, but today reminded me that any path to enlightenment is always marked by setbacks, doubt, and temptation. For today, in complete innocence (or at least a melange of innocence and ignorance, as I very much invite this type of problem), I managed to watch TWO (2) movies about an academic film-cum-psychology project, focused on a gang of college buddies who inevitably reveal what bad people they are under the unique conditions of the project, and then the project turns out to be run NOT by its presumed-dead originator, but by the originator's even-crazier lover. It's amazing how particular something can be, and still be utterly obvious and cliche. In my defense, I really tried to turn the second movie off, because it was...just instantly terrible, but the seed of suspicion had taken root--is this randomly selected movie ACTUALLY EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE PREVIOUS MOVIE?--and I just had to find out if this could be true. I suffered, deliberately, for another hour and a half, to confirm my awful hunch. I don't know how I would have felt if I had turned out to be wrong (better? worse?), but I don't have to worry about that now. Now I just have to worry about my overpowering impulse to be as ugly as possible about what I have personally subjected myself to.

(The completely deceptive poster for our not at all witchy or eerie opening feature.)

In need of a passable time-waster this afternoon, I put on 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE. Released in March of 2019, Caitlin Koller's claustrophobic black comedy feels oddly like a product of 2020. A group of estranged, middle-aged college pals of the BIG CHILL ilk--which one of the characters calls out, out loud, just so ya know--come together for a fallen comrade's funeral, only to find themselves trapped in his widow's increasingly creepy cabin in the woods. Said comrade was driven to suicide by the failure of a psychological experiment he conducted that plunged its subject into madness, and if you don't realize right away that the obnoxious and unstable cast are the new subjects of their not-quite-dead friend's renewed project, then you're firing a lot slower than 24 frames per second. The dialog is often decent, aiding a handful of funny, natural performances...but it's hard to forget that you're just waiting for the conspicuously crazy widow to reveal that the "unexplained events" in and around the cabin are part of a controlled attempt to get the guests to devolve into their worst selves, which isn't such a difficult task considering the undesirable state they all arrive in.

It just made me ask myself, what was the point of this? Why do people make movies that are entirely predicated on the shock of the twist, knowing that if the twist isn't so shocking--or is baldly obvious from the start--then the whole experience just falls apart? Why not hedge your bets with a little more depth, or purpose, or style, or really anything more reliable than a smug attempt to prove that your script is smarter than your audience? Even if you do manage to pull off this dubious accomplishment, it reduces your movie to something like the experience of having somebody jump out of a closet and scream in your ear to "get" you. I've always felt concerned that if somebody ever tries to "get" me like that, I might just automatically punch them in the face. But anyway, whatever shred of good will this movie could have accrued with its plucky performances is blown away by the final insult, when the cops arrive to clean up the inevitable bloody mess. The responding officers are hilariously unimpressed and unsurprised by the byzantine scheme that has resulted in a shocking act of violence, because the cabin's "guest book", which our heroes all filled out, was actually the signatory page of a complicated waiver form granting full permission to the hosts to, like, do whatever the hell they want to everybody. Presumably this shit just goes on all the time, leading the local law to shrug off anything that happens to or because of the dumbassed lab rats who frequent the cabin? I dunno. I mean, what can I say? ACAB, I guess!

At the time, I managed to resist the urge to take to the internet and decry the crimes of this lame-o party joke. I really don't like the sensation that a movie is just trying to trick me into thinking something that isn't true. But, this isn't, like, an affront to cinema. People make annoying, below average movies all the time, and maybe you kinda have to, if you eventually want to make better movies. I imagine myself in the shoes of the people who actually put some elbow grease into this production, having to wade through the rantings of internet ghouls like myself while they're trying to see how their efforts are paying off. Making a movie is probably a lot harder than I think it is.

But that's part of the point I'm heading toward. I'm always amazed by people's willingness to pour huge amounts of energy and capital into something to which there is ultimately very little point. I mean, I have bad, unoriginal, boring ideas every single day of my life. But I almost never DO any of them. I have a hard enough time convincing myself to just get out of bed in the morning, let alone devote blood, sweat, and money to deliver unto the world material evidence of my personal mediocrity. I can't imagine thinking it would be worth it, for myself or the unfortunate people who are subjected to my project, to actually execute on my bad ideas. I'm being judgmental, but honestly, I don't even know if my attitude makes me better or worse than someone who accomplishes the task of completing and selling a movie that's mainly a waste of time. Movies are so complicated, and realizing them requires the consensus of so many people, that it's sort of incredible that there are people capable of making one that doesn't have a powerfully compelling motivation behind it. People who are able to do such a thing obviously have something that I don't, and it isn't just "consideration for the audience."

So, I could probably stand to be more forgiving--or just, less eager to absolutely flay someone alive on my dumb little blog because they so opened themselves up to my arsenal of elaborate insults. But like...not all the time. Sometimes, a movie really fucking asks for it, and in revealing itself to me, it has effectively signed a waiver giving me patent freedom to do whatever I want to it. CONFESSIONAL is the latest movie to give me such a gift. After the final credit rolled in 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE, I looked for a little palate cleanser. As little as I like movies that put their single egg in the motheaten basket of a "shocking twist", I also have a problem with what I identify as canned theater. Not that I think all movies have to be lavish productions, but I think they should try to do something that is natively cinematic. It's very rare that I'm impressed by anything that is literally all talk. So, I went in search of some more familiar form of trash to help me recallibrate, and trash is definitely what I got.

(Me crying over my own bad decisions.)

To be fair, I kind of should have known that I was in for a challenging experience. The 2019 found footage thriller CONFESSIONAL is more or less based on the "confessional" part of sleazy reality TV shows, isolating each cast member in a soundproof stall so they can spill the rotten contents of their guts. Unfortunately, I spotted a review suggesting that the movie succeeded, against all odds, at remaining visually dynamic despite the unchanging scenery, and I was intrigued. The reviewer was correct, impressively; the monotony of the coffin-like environment with its dark foam walls was the least of my concerns. Other problems superseded that threat, immediately. The plot concerns a group of college pals who come together to remember a recently deceased friend--a filmmaker who expired mysteriously while completing a psychology-tinged project in which she recorded all of her friends' most shameful personal secrets. Now, somebody else has taken over the project...someone who "has never been identified", according to an early title card in this movie-within-a-movie (EVEN THOUGH THIS PERSON WILL BE EXPLICITLY IDENTIFIED AT THE END OF THE MOVIE SO LIKE WHY), but who seems likely to be the decedent's ex-lover...who continues to expose their subjects' most shameful secrets on film. I mean, what the fuck? Did I somehow manage to pick a second movie with almost the exact same plot??? I couldn't believe it. I didn't know if I could take it. My prospects only got worse when the cast showed up and started talking. I tried to turn the movie off. I backed out and walked away from it, twice. But I couldn't leave it alone. I had to know if it was really the same movie.

CONFESSIONAL concerns characters who are contemporaneously in college, which actually goes a long way to making everything worse. Each of these walking cliches is connected in some way to Amelia, a film student whose mysterious death has created a campus scandal, leaving shattered hearts and lives in its wake. The living have each received a blackmail-flavored invitation to speak about the deceased in a tiny "confessional booth" somewhere on campus, where, predictably, they find themselves locked in until they confess whatever they know about Amelia, and their classmates. I don't know why practically every single movie about young people has to be so miserable, but this is one of those. I assume that it has something to do with the fact that youth is simultaneously so desired and so ignored. People in their teens and early 20s are so sexually coveted, yet so easily dismissed as individuals, that we wind up with all this media that panders to them relentlessly (or at least, panders to the legions of ticket-buying perverts who enjoy watching them prance around), without almost any consideration of how they actually think and act, and look. Movies like FAT GIRL and WELCOME TO THE DOLL HOUSE may be accused of their own form of pandering, a venal form of voyeuristic schadenfreude, but at least they reflect something of the awkwardness, isolation, and incompleteness of adolescence; something more than the dissociated, pornographic fantasies of adults who have long since forgotten what it was like to be powerless and ignored, or desired by people who don't even like you.

Not that CONFESSIONAL is supposed to be a work of grim realism, but it is most definitely rooted in a fantasy about college life that makes its contrived, message-y plot a lot harder to take. With almost the sole exception of "the nerdy one", every single character looks like a Bratz doll, oozing an exaggerated indecency that belies the movie's pretentious insistence on addressing the sex & gender Issues of the Day. What you get is a really good example of what happens when millennial characters are modeled, not on any actual millennials, but on other forms of marketing that are aimed at millennials, which are themselves just based on other preexisting youth-targeted commercials, et al ad nauseam. Even setting aside the deliriously slutty wardrobe choices, makeup appears to have been laid on with a trowel, coating each actor in a thick creamy layer of spackle that only makes any scars, pits, or other evidence of individuality look utterly bizarre. Accordingly, everybody preens, pouts, and generally behaves as if they're about to take off their clothes, which might be a huge relief given the profusion of chafing, cheapo mesh and straps they're laboring under.

So, ok, not every movie can have a great costume department, but the dialog here is a perfect match for the disastrous aesthetic decisions. Actually, this is the real reason I almost walked out on CONFESSIONAL. If I may ramble briefly, without substantiating any of my broad-ranging claims: Sometime in the late 90s/early 00s, horror cinema seemed to suffer a degenerative slide away from genuine thrills and chills, and into a version of the genre that is best characterized as the Slutty Halloween Costume approach. Any sense of existential dread, revulsion, or bodily vulnerability was widely replaced by a cutesy, Hot Topic-y preference for fast fashion and sex appeal, in which bloodshed more facilitated an informal wet teeshirt contest than any real fear induction. Horror's new mall goth look came with an equally shallow, boring verbal affectation: a sullen, sleazy, tooth-sucking sarcasm, that ushered in a new era in which, instead of making fun of the scummy coked-out dialog in porno movies, we now expect everybody to just talk like that, because it's hot. There's probably a line to be drawn between this unfortunate development, and the boneheaded real-world trend of identifying "sarcasm" as an important personal selling point on dating sites, but I won't try to prove that here. For now, I will just say that as soon as I heard the CONFESSIONAL characters start to speak, with their sneering, insinuating tones, with the vocal fry, with the head wagging, the jutting jaws, the smoldering gazes, the juvenile dragging-out of horny grownup words like de-bauch-er-y...I almost lost my nerve. Listening to these little creeps hissing and spitting for 84 minutes is a lot like being hit on by some barfly who continues to bludgeon you with his hot breath and corny lines without ever noticing that you've thrown up into your pint.

Uh, anyway. So what actually happens in the movie. Why would anyone ever allow someone to record video of them revealing the ugliest, most embarrassing parts of themselves? Especially a kid, for whom popularity and reputation are often a matter of life or death--literally and specifically, in the case of this story. The flimsy reason is that the late filmmaker, Amelia, was the most awesomest girl ever. Everybody loved her, because she was so sweet, and so smart, and so cool, and so nice, and so deep, and so original, and so talented, and so sexy, and just like, the bestest most perfectest girl in the whole wide world. N.B. "The greatest of all time" is, perhaps counter-intuitively, a really bad quality that makes for really shitty, boring characters. For better or worse, Amelia is rarely on screen (and when she is, she's no Laura Palmer, frankly), so it's up to the viewer to just sort of imagine a type of person who could make you act against your best interests on account of you just like them so much. After all, so many of the characters were obsessed with her in some way, that it's like they're here to help you clap your hands and believe in this seductive, compelling part of the movie, that just isn't actually there on the screen. The anonymous antihero behind the confessional booth scheme slowly extracts from each character the selfish, destructive behavior that in some way contributed to the tragic loss of the most amazing person of all time--and part of the result is, if not a very interesting excuse for Amelia's death, then a story so wacky that I really wish they had centered the movie on it, instead of on the tawdry soap opera we're locked into. Even if that imaginary movie had been really bad, and it probably would have been, at it would at least have been entertaining.

Part of what leads up to the death of Amelia is the existence of a secret school fight club, led by a stereotypically sleazy gender studies major, named Major, who is out to prove men's inherent superiority. The club is called CFB, or Cock Fights Back, which is somehow a garbled pun relating to cock fights, and Trump's famous line of "locker room talk": "grab'em by the pussy" > "pussy grabs back" > "cock fights back". CFB is different from your ordinary fight club in that the fights are always between girls and boys, and the boys are always blindfolded, in order to prove that a fully-abled female is no match for even a handicapped male. To complicate things, a new designer amphetamine is gaining popularity on campus, called "odds-on", meaning that it makes you the odds-on favorite in your CFB fight. As awkward as that is, it also seems that men are never the guaranteed winners of these fights, which makes you wonder why Major insists on continuing to host them. As much as I would have preferred to watch a stupid movie about this stupid idea, I'm stuck instead with a movie in which Major is such an aggressive MRA because he's secretly gay, and he thinks that hating women is a great way to hide that...as if that isn't what we all openly suspect about aggro MRAs. Secret gayness is a big part of this movie, involving multiple characters, although it amounts to very little other than the perpetuation of some stale, harmful cliches about how unfulfilled homosexual urges lead to suicide, sexual abuse, and murder. CONFESSIONAL is just as reliant on this grim vision of gay life, as it is on its weirdly obtuse discussion of drug addiction, for the suffocating sense of self-importance that it uses to try to elevate itself above its porn-y trappings. None of the movie's hot button issues are given any real thought, but are only dragged through the mud to create the illusion that there's a point to all this, thus relieving the film of any sense of innocence that could have made its condescending sleaziness forgivable.

Admittedly, I can't really remember all the details of the film's tortured intrigue anymore, even though I basically just saw it. A lot of its meandering revelations just left me thinking, "Why did I need to know that? Why should I care?" I do know that about half way through this ordeal, I became really anxious about whether it would turn out that CONFESSIONAL did NOT have exactly the same plot as 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE after all, and I put myself through all this for nothing. But no, I was right to begin with. The wonderful Amelia's ethically dubious film project has been picked up by the unhinged lesbian character who loved her so much she wanted to become her, and killing Amelia and usurping her confessional project was apparently the best way of doing that. I guess exposing all the dark, violent secrets of all these tangentially involved characters was just an added bonus, or whatever. Ultimately, this ugly, ignorant PSA about something-or-other only deals itself further damage by relying so heavily on the potential of its clumsy twist to blow your mind, which it does not at all.

So that was it, that's how I burned a whole afternoon allowing my mind to implode-not-explode under the ponderous force of TWO (2) movies about exactly the same exhausted cliche that is still being peddled by certain pretentious assholes as fresh and exciting, and beyond the capacity of the audience to anticipate. There's probably a whole slew of other movies that employ this overly familiar "surprise", but I don't have it in me to dig them out of my long-suffering brain. Feel free to contribute in the comments. For now, I must prepare myself for the ordeal of Blogtober, during which I will *hopefully* choose my screening selections and words more thoughtfully than I have in previous years, when this blog was motivated by just as much abject misanthropy as these movies, which do nothing but willfully insult the audience's intelligence. Maybe today's detour into degradation will help me go forth toward more additive experiences, having purged several lungfuls of meaningless venom from my system, and this season will bring with it more interesting, provocative posts than the last. Or maybe not! In any case, I promise to keep trying my hardest to make it funny.