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clean-bands-dirty-stories · 4 years ago

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Breathe ~ the Doctor (part 8)

A/n: So I tried to go lighter with this one and failed a bit not gonna lie? Just... bare with me I forgot that Mr. Connolly was like THAT and I absolutely had to address it. This one goes on a bit because of that, sorry.

Word Count: 12,000+

Warnings: Implied physical/mental abuse, past homophobia, backlash of PTSD (light), possibly upsetting memories, discussion of abuse

MASTERLIST

"How does this look?" Y/n had changed out of what originally been planned for him this time. He didn't like layers like the Doctor did unless it was quite cold, and it wasn't, so he'd lessened the whole thing by ditching the blazer, looking overly casual like he usually did. The suit pants were blue, close to but just a bit nicer than the jeans he'd mostly been wearing up until now. He'd absolutely refused to do his hair like the Doctor had, so it was loose and messy instead - different than the way he did it every other day, but all he could manage after the gel had hardened the strands. Rose had tried to get Y/n to comply and it had failed for both of them. He felt too casual to be wearing dress pants, and his hair looked weird to him in the mirror. He was thinking about taking a quick shower and going for an entirely different look.

When he looked at Rose and the Doctor for input though, the two looked back at him with eyes widened, lips parted. Upon realizing they were staring, the Doctor looked away. Rose just smirked. Y/n went quite red. "You look fantastic," Rose complimented. "I didn't realize you could pull off messy so well."

"You pull off everything well," the Doctor followed up softly. It was unsure if he'd meant to keep it in his head and slipped, or had wanted to say it louder but didn't have the confidence. Y/n thanked him, but the Doctor just nodded dismissively, a blush of his own coloring his skin before he nodded to the TARDIS door. "You both ready?"

As always, Rose was first. She pulled the door open, popping outside to may her skirts swish. It was becoming quickly apparent she was in love with how her dress moved. "I thought we'd be going for the Vegas era. You know, the white flares and the-" she did a sort of growl, and Y/n raised an eyebrow but realized she'd been mocking rather than being genuine. He was going to say - if she was into that, she was out of luck with her current partners.

Like an echo of Y/n's thoughts, the Doctor leaned around the TARDIS door, his shoulder pressing against Y/n's chest. "You're kidding aren't you? If you want to see Elvis you go to the late '50's! The time before burgers!" He dipped back in and Y/n leaned against the doorway, keeping both of the other two in view. "When they called him "the Pelvis" and he still had a waist!" The Doctor continued from inside. "What's more, you see him in style!" Y/n saw it first from his vantage point in the doorway, and thankfully so because as the Doctor rolled out of the TARDIS in a fully functioning moped, Y/n would have been run over if he hadn't gotten out of the way quickly. He circled before stopping, looking at Rose with an amused smirk. "You going my way Doll?" He said in a low voice. It was a bad attempt at Elvis and made Y/n laugh.

Rose pulled out a pair of glasses that matched her dress. "Is there anyway to go, daddy o?" She shot back, her voice higher and more nasally. She approached the Doctor with an added, "Straight from the fridge, man!"

The Doctor grinned. "Hey, you speak the lingo!" He held out a helmet for her. Y/n was amused to see that it was pink, like her glasses, so it also matched her skirt. Y/n dipped inside as they continued their back and forth, looking around before he saw what he was looking for. A bike! It wouldn't be as fast as the moped mechanically but he was down to coast. Also he had a secret: he was a devil when it came to bicycling. Rose had refused to stop biking with him for a few years now; she could never keep up well enough and tired easily if she tried.

When Y/n rolled out on the bike, the Doctor rose an eyebrow. Y/n closed the TARDIS door behind him, grinning. "Don't give me that look," he dismissed. "Just lead the way. If you can keep up." Rose and Y/n laughed as he took off on the bike, surprising the Doctor with how fast he actually went. After a bit of joking, the Doctor did slow down a bit to keep pace with Y/n, the three chatting - or, the usual, which was that Rose and the Doctor chatted mostly and Y/n inputted every so often - on the way.

"Where we off to?" Rose asked at one point.

"Ed Sullivan TV studios," the Doctor yelled back in response, having to be loud over the sound of the motor. "Elvis did Hound Dog on one of the shows. There were loads of complaints. Bit of luck, we'll just catch it."

"And that would be the TV studios in, what, New York?" Rose inquired further.

Y/n immediately saw where she was going with that. The Doctor did not. "That's the one!"

The trio paused at a four-way stop as a bus passed. Rose laughed. Y/n smiled, soft and fond. "I don't think we're in New York, Doctor." And indeed it was anything but. All around them was small town views. The sky was clear and the buildings were all very similar: one story, brick, two windows, one door, colored red. There wasn't even much traffic.

"Well," the Doctor mumbled. "This could still be New York. I mean, this looks very New York to me."

Y/n rolled his eyes. "And you've memorized New York have you?" The Doctor shrugged, but before he could speak Y/n got to it first. "You forget how well I know you, Doctor. I know you have general ideas of how certain places on each planet work and that's why you usually end up in the general same place every time you come to Earth. You probably would think we were on a different planet if you went to... Australia, or France. Have you ever really been to America before?"

The Doctor glowered, but without any offense or anger. Just the cutest irritation a being called out. After all, you couldn't get mad at someone just because they were right. "I've got a lot going on in this head of mine."

A smirk rose to Y/n's face. "Is that why we always get lost?"

Rose cut in. "What are all the flags for?" And indeed, she had a point.

The first thing he noticed other than the very not-New York state of the very London town, were the flags hung above the streets. Y/n could appreciate pride for one's country, but there were flags EVERYWHERE he looked. It seemed a little odd that a town so small you could see it even in the way people talked to each other, would hang a bunch of flags around every inch of every place. What, was the Queen coming to visit?

They parked the bike and moped, going around to get a closer look and understand exactly what was going on. In their wanderings, they came across a man at the back of a truck, and boys next to him who seemed to be picking up and moving a TV. The older man said something. "There you go sir." Y/n noticed another man who was older than the boys but younger than the older gent. Maybe the father. "All wired up for the great occasion."

The Doctor approached. "Great occasion? What do you mean?"

"Where you've been living eh?" the older man asked as the boys and their father left with the TV. "Out in the colonies? The coronation of course."

Unfortunately, that didn't clear up much for the group. "And what coronation's that then?" the Doctor asked in favor of all of their cluelessness.

The older man stopped, looking at them like they were insane. Nervous, even. Skiddish. Y/n watched him, that familiar feeling twisting in his chest. Something was about to happen, and it wasn't good. "What do you mean?" the older man asked. "The Coronation."

"It's the Queen's," Rose realized. "Queen Elizabeth." Y/n felt silly then. Of course! He was getting as bad at the space man over there, so much other knowledge in his head making him forget how his own planet worked.

"Oh!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Is this 1953?"

"Last time I looked," the older man affirmed. "Time for a lovely bit of pomp and circumstance. What we do best."

Rose was looking around, her voice next distracting from the older man with his van. "Look at all the TV aerials. Looks like everyone's got one. Which is so weird, because my mum said tellies were so rare, they all had to pile into one house."

"Not round here, Love," the older man cheerily corrected. "Magpie's Marvelous Tellies." He pointed to the side of his truck, feigning proud. Pride that should have been real but so obviously wasn't. Pride that was, for some reason, very obviously strained when Y/n looked at him. Magpie - Y/n assumed that was the man's name, as the branding suggested - caught Y/n giving him an analyzing look and turned away. Hiding. "Only five quid a pop."

Before Y/n could push, the Doctor chirped, "Oh but this is a brilliant year! Classic! Technicolor! Everest climbed! Everything off the ration! A nation throwing off the shackles of war and looking forward to a happier, brighter future!" Rose laughed, and Y/n almost dismissed his weird feeling and grinned along.

Then there was screaming.

"Someone help me! Please!" The trio spun to the sound of the woman's voice. "Ted! Leave him alone, he's my husband!" The Doctor shot off, triggering Rose to follow close behind. Y/n stayed back, something eating at him. "PLEASE!" the woman begged as the other two got onto the scene where two men in black suits were pushing what seemed to be a man. It couldn't be sure because he had a blanket over his head, and he was rushed into a long black car, but the woman had called him Ted so...

"What's going on?" the Doctor demanded.

"Oi! What are you doing?" A young boy continued when the Doctor was ignored.

"Police business," was what they all got. "Get out of the way, sir." That was directed at the Doctor, who was scrambling to find some way to either intervene or understand. Y/n looked away though, his eyes drawn by some reason to Mr. Magpie, just in time to see the man's face wrought with regret and self hatred. He seemed intensely distressed, and nearly tripped over himself to leave the scene when he met Y/n's gaze. As Magpie peeled from the scene in one direction, Rose and the Doctor chasing the black car on the moped in the opposite direction, Y/n had two thoughts.

One, this happened a lot.

Two, this town was either very tight knit, which didn't seem to be the case as no one but the boy from before had tried to come to Tom's rescue. Even the boy had been pulled inside by his parents, who seemed eager to ignore the situation entirely. So if that wasn't the case, how upset he'd been only made sense if... he was somehow involved in what was going wrong with these people. Or knew something about it.

There was a scream coming from the house where the boy from earlier had disappeared into that caught Y/n's attention first. His instincts perked up, his defenses quickly activating. It had been muffled, like maybe a window was cracked and that alone was why he could hear the conversation inside, but it was enough to set him on edge. Before he could orient himself enough to go after Magpie, Rose and the Doctor pulled up and caught him up on losing the back car to a dead end, as well as their plan to ask around to the neighbors about what was happening.

When the Doctor noticed Y/n's gaze returning time and time again to the house the yelling had come from, he put a hand on Y/n's shoulder. "You okay?"

"There was yelling," Y/n explained softly. He switched gears upon hearing the frail note in his voice. "It was where the boy from earlier disappeared. I think we should look into them."

Unsure if the other two had caught onto the real reason Y/n was suddenly a little out of it, he followed along as the other two lead the way toward the house and inside. Something about how they were there in the name of the Queen, which seemed to work well enough. They were inside at least.

"Very nice," the Doctor complimented as the three filtered into the house. "Very well kept. I have to congratulate you, Mrs...?" Y/n was astonished at the Doctor's ability to slip in so easily and effortlessly, like he really was here for what he said he was here for.

The woman smiled warmly, flattered by the Doctor's praise. "Mrs. Connolly," she answered in response to his prompting question.

"Now then Rita," the man who'd answered the door dismissed. Y/n recognized his voice - he had been the one to yell. "I can handle this. These gentlemen are proper representatives." Y/n was instantly put off by the way he dismissed both of the women in the room - Rose and his wife. How he referred to the gentlemen, which would be Y/n and the Doctor, and not the woman who was with them. How he shut up his wife who was only responding to being directly spoken to. Y/n hated him immediately. "Don't mind the wife. She rattles on a bit." This he said to the Doctor, ignoring Y/n as he leaned into the back of the room and stayed quiet. That was even more annoying as it seemed he'd been trying to weed out the alpha male in the group since they walked in and address that person only. Rose was a woman and Y/n was quiet, so he addressed only the Doctor, as if he was the only stranger in the house right now.

"Well maybe she should rattle on a bit more," the Doctor responded quite easily. "I'm not convinced you're doing your patriotic duty. Those flags." His eyes fell to a box of flags on the ground. "Why are they not flying?"

Mr. Connolly, who'd looked horrified at the Doctor suggesting he wasn't being patriotic, now rushed to prove how good of a citizen he was and Y/n had to swallow a laugh to hide it. "There we are, Rita, I told you." Mrs. Connolly seemed to be suddenly upset, and Y/n felt a burning urge to step in between the two of them. He held his place only because the Doctor shot him a warning look. "Get them up. Queen and country."

"I'm sorry," Rita apologized to the Doctor.

Before she could continue, Mr. Connolly ordered, "Get it done. Do it now."

Y/n's hands tightened into fists but the Doctor was already stepping forward. "Hold on a minute." Mr. Connolly kept talking and the Doctor spoke again over him, repeating, "Hold on a minute. You've got hands, Mr. Connolly. Two big hands! Then why is that your wife's job?"

Mr. Connolly seemed derailed again, and Y/n and Rose exchanged thrilled expressions. "Well it's housework, isn't it?" It seemed like it was supposed to be expected. A simple question with an obvious answer. And, I suppose in a world where men were aggressive and angry and hard and women did what they were told and everyone else was ripped apart, it was a simple answer.

"And that's women's work?" The Doctor continued casually.

"Of course it is!" Mr. Connolly spat, astounded.

That seemed to be exactly what the Doctor wanted him to say. "Mr. Connolly, what gender is the Queen?"

Immediately Mr. Connolly was uncomfortable. "She's female."

"And are you suggesting the Queen does the housework?" A thick silence fell like cement into the room, and Y/n accidentally made eye contact with the boy from earlier. They shared two repressed smiles, and Y/n winked at him.

Finally, the Doctor's question was given an answer. "No!" Mr. Connolly gasped, incredulous. "Not at all!"

The Doctor reached down and scooped up one of the flag lines, handing it to Mr. Connolly. "Then get busy."

"Right, yes sir," the stupid man mumbled as he took the line, moving to the wall to hang it up. "You'll be proud of us sir. We'll have union jacks left, right and center."

Rose, who'd taken a seat at some point, now stood up again. "Excuse me Mr. Connoly. Hang on a minute. Union Jacks?"

Mr. Connolly froze, looking back at her with a stunned expression, taken far aback by her hot headedness and strong voice coming from a woman. "Yes, that's right, isn't it?"

"That's the Union flag," she continued. Her voice got angry and Y/n's eyes widened, his attraction to her sky rocketing. "It's the Union Jack only when it's flown at sea."

"Oh," Mr. Connolly nearly whimpered. "I'm sorry. I do apologize."

Y/n smirked, turning away from Mr. Connolly so he wouldn't see. Rose wasn't about to go easy on the man though, and Y/n appreciated that. "Well, don't get it wrong again. There's a good man. Now get to it!" She snapped the last bit, spinning around again when she'd finished with a satisfied smile on her face and moving back to the couch to sit down. Y/n stepped forward so he was leaning on the back of the couch, behind the pair.

"Right then," the Doctor continued with eyes wide and impressed. "Nice and comfy. At her majesty's leisure." When they were settled the Doctor turned to Rose with a very quiet whispered, "Union Flag?"

Rose was eager to explain. "Mum went out with a sailor."

The Doctor chuckled gleefully and Y/n shook his head, amused. "I bet she did." In a normal voice he turned to Mrs. Connolly. "Anyway, I'm the Doctor, then there's Rose and Y/n." He introduced them all to Mrs. Connolly, Rose and Y/n giving a nod or a wave respectively when they were mentioned. "And you are?" That he said to the kid.

"Tommy," the kid responded, looking at the trio like they were something amazing.

The Doctor and Rose pushed apart to make room for someone to sit between them. "Well, sit yourself down, Tommy." The Doctor pat the spot between them for Tommy, and then the chair next to the couch to encourage Mrs. Connolly to sit down as well. Y/n moved around to lean against the wall next to the fireplace, slipping his hands in his pockets and trying to seem as least threatening as possible. "Have a look at this," the Doctor continued when everyone was settled, turning attention to the TV. "I love telly, don't you?"

"Yeah, I think it's brilliant," Tommy agreed with a smile.

"Good man," the Doctor complimented. After a beat he leaned back to add, "Keep working, Mr. C!" and then leaned forward to watch the black and white program. Or, that's what Y/n thought he was doing before the Doctor suddenly turned to Mrs. Connolly with a low, soft, quiet voice that Mr. Connolly wouldn't be able to hear. "Now, why don't you tell me what's wrong?" His voice wasn't forceful but comforting, and he looked at her with a soft concern. He was open and tender - ready to help and slow to disbelieve, dismiss, or judge.

Mrs. Connolly responded to it immediately. "Did you say you were a Doctor?"

Y/n felt his heart seize, knowing what it meant when the Doctor confirmed, "Yes I am."

"Can you help her?" Y/n noticed the desperation on the woman's face. The way her hair fell out of her hairdo, and her hands clasped together, stress and every line of her face. "Oh please. Can you hep her, Doctor?"

Like an unwanted Lego you step on while walking through your house, Mr. Connolly spoke up again. "Now Rita, I don't think the gentleman needs to know.

"Yes he does." It was the first thing Y/n had said the entire time, and when Mr. Connolly looked at him to argue, the look on Y/n's face shut him down immediately. "There's something going wrong, but the Doctor can help. He can fix whatever problem you have, because he's absolutely amazing like that." He turned to Mrs. Connolly with a softer expression. "Please, continue."

Mrs. Connolly suddenly broke, raising a hand to cover her mouth as she began to cry. Rose stood up to move to her side and comfort her. "It's all right," she eased. "It's all right, come here." She hugged Mrs. Connolly, keeping the older woman against her side. "Oh, it's okay. It's alright."

"Hold on a minute," Mr. Connolly seemed to realize, fiddling with the flags still in his hand. "Queen and country's one thing, but this is my house." His voice was rising and Y/n locked up immediately. "What the..." He looked at the flags in his hand before tossing them aside. "What the hell am I doing?" He locked eyes with the Doctor, who was almost smirking. The smug look was tainted with a threatening darkness in his eyes that seemed to be brewing. A storm about to hit hard. "Now you listen here Doctor," Mr. Connolly continued. This was a man who was never questioned or put in his place, and it made Y/n begin to come undone. "You may have fancy qualifications, but what goes on under my roof is my business."

"No it's not."

Mr. Connolly turned to face Y/n with a rage in his features, but Y/n wasn't having any of it. He'd lost something suddenly. The thing that kept him quiet when he was afraid. That made him step back and close his eyes and hide. The thing that had driven him to run every time he'd been chased by things he was afraid of when he was small. Because you know what, he wasn't small anymore and Mr. Connolly was not even semi close to the scariest thing he'd seen.

"You," Mr. Connolly seethed.

"Me," Y/n confirmed, stepping forward. He glared, his eyes burning with wild, hot fire. "Am I the type of man you like to be around? The type that's easy to push around and get what you want from? Is that why you've ignored me for so long, and turned to me so quickly, because the Doctor is scarier and bigger and you know that despite the fact you shouldn't be afraid of him, you are?" Y/n pushed off the wall, standing to his full height. "You act like because you live in this house it's your special little place where you're in control and nothing can stop you? Well let me tell you," Y/n sneered, stepping forward again, his eyes narrowing. "This might be your house, but it is not up to you to control everything in it, because your wife and your son are their own people and not objects for you to put into the places that you want them and you will learn that or your son will grow up hating you and your wife will wait for the day you die, and every day of your life will be spent playing pretend king and trying to ignore how absolutely miserable you are."

Mr. Connolly seemed to be stunned, seeing nothing but truth that terrified him when he looked into Y/n's eyes. "Who are you?"

Y/n finally calmed, becoming even more terrifying by doing so. "Your worst nightmare." All of the blood drained from Mr. Connolly's face as a shadow passed over Y/n's expression that sent a chill down Mr. Connolly's spine.

"Now-" the Doctor began, but he was interrupted by Mr. Connolly turning around weakly and demanding-

"Get out."

"Excuse me?" The Doctor hissed.

"Get out!" He sounded less angry and more terrified, but scared animals were always more volatile than angry ones.

"I'm trying to-"

Mr. Connolly snapped. "I am talking!"

The Doctor shot to his feet, getting into Mr. Connolly's face. "And I'm not listening!" Mr. Connolly finally shut up, eyes wide and hands shaking. "Now you Mr. Connolly, you've dismissed my friend over there but I'm about to tell you, you will absolutely not dismiss me. You are staring into a deep, dark pit of trouble if you don't let me help. Now I'm ordering you, sir-" he spit the word, mocking rather than respectful. "-Tell me what is going on!"

Before anyone could say anything or bounce back from the Doctor absolutely losing it on this idiotic man, there was suddenly a thumping sound over head. Like someone was banging a stick on the floor above them. The family in the room finally broke, even Mr. Connolly finally looking at the Doctor with fear in his eyes and saying, "She won't stop." The paused and the rhythmic thudding came again. Four slow thuds. "She never stops," Mr. Connolly added, shifting uncomfortably.

Tommy sat forward. "We started hearing stories all round the place," he began. The Doctor turned to face him, Rose only having to look over to move her attention to the boy. Y/n's eyes had shot to the stairs when the banging had started and had not moved away. "People who have changed. Families keeping it secret because they were scared. Then the police started finding out. We don't know how, no one does. They just turn up. They come to the door and take them. Any time of the day or night."

At some point Y/n had moved from his spot before o the bottom of the steps, and when he got there, he paused only a second before he took a step up, and then another, and then another. The Doctor told Tommy one thing: "Show me." But by the time the group moved to get the key and went up the stairs so the Doctor could see what was going on, Y/n was already standing in front of the door with a distant, glassy look on his face. "Y/n?" The Doctor's voice was soft, concerned.

Y/n didn't respond. He raised a hand and it hovered over the door. He almost touched it... there was something, almost calling to him. Drawing him in. Y/n forced himself to focus. Ripped himself away from the thing that was pulling his body around without his permission. The last time this had happened, he had felt the death of hundreds and hundreds of people all being so horrified and agonized that it killed them. He couldn't feel something like that again. So he stepped back, using his other hand to force the one reaching for the door to his chest. away from the wood. He leaned against the banister behind him, a grim expression on his face. Rose and the Doctor shared worried expressions before moving to the door to unlock it and see what was going on. It was always the first step to solving the problem.

The door opened with Tommy entering the room first. They'd all agreed it would be best if she saw someone she knew first, so he was the one who greeted her. "Gran? It's Tommy. It's alright Gran. I've brought help." The door opened wider, revealing a dark room light only by the moon outside coming in through the window. There was someone inside, but only her silhouette could be seen. She began to walk toward the group coming into the room, and Y/n felt his heart seize in his chest. He wanted to reach out and pull the Doctor and Rose back, but he couldn't move.

Tommy turned the light on.

The woman in the room was revealed, in pristine, perfect condition... except that her face was gone. She had no mouth or eyes or even a nose. There light dents where all those things should be, but weren't. She just stood there, as if looking at them. But she couldn't.

Rose and the Doctor moved to her after a second. The Doctor got very close, eyebrows creasing. "Her face is completely gone." He rose his screwdriver to scan her. "Scarcely an electrical impulse left," he told them. "Almost complete neural shutdown. It's just ticking over. It's like her brain's been..." He seemed to struggle for a second. "Wiped clean."

"What are we gonna do Doctor?" Tommy asked, desperation in his voice. That was what got Y/n to move. He stepped toward the boy, his hand reaching out to comfort Tommy. Before he got there, his shoulder brushed Mr. Connolly's and a realization hit him like a freight train. He spun to face the man as Tommy added, "We can't even feed her."

Y/n made eye contact with Mr. Connolly. The men were the only ones out of the room, and therefore no one heard him when he whispered, "This is your fault."

"What?" Mr. Connolly spit.

Just then, the door downstairs banged open, and heavy footsteps could be heard on the stairs. "We've got company," Rose nearly groaned, too upset by the faceless woman to be as sassy as she usually was.

"They've come for her!" Rita lamented, clinging to her son and looking at the Doctor with desperation.

The Doctor jumped into action. "What was she doing before this happened to her?" He demanded. When Rita and Tommy looked at him with stunned confusion, he snapped, "Tell me, quickly! Think!"

"I can't think!" Tommy snapped back. "She doesn't leave the house! She was just..." He reached out to his mother as she covered her face, his words fading as men in suits suddenly surged into the room.

Stepping between the men and the grandma, the Doctor held up his hands to stop this from happening. "Hold on! There are three important, brilliant and complicated reasons why you should listen to me. One-"

He was cut off before he could finish, by the man closest to him snagging him with a solid right hook. The Doctor went flying to the floor and Rose scrambled after him, screaming, "Doctor!" The men threw a blanket over the old woman's head and began to lead her out of the room.

Rita tried to stop them; bless the woman. "Leave her alone!" She demanded, pulling weakly on one of the men's arms. "You'll hurt her! Mum!" She was shoved off by one of the men and Tommy rushed to help her land safely and get back up again. Which left Y/n as the one standing. But he didn't do anything. He stood as Mr. Connolly guided the men out of the house, and he followed behind slowly. Rita and Tommy were after them much faster. "Don't hurt her!" Rita begged. She followed them all the way outside, Tommy right behind her. Once outside the commotion kept up, but Y/n at the top of the stairs didn't hear it. He did however jump into action upon hearing Rita begin to cry.

Whatever spell he was under shattered and he shoved past Mr. Connolly with force, running to the moped the Doctor had left behind to go into the house, kicking it into gear and revving the engine, watching the car with the old woman inside begin to pull away. He paused only to lock eyes with Mr. Connolly yet again, accusation set in his eyes with a cold tone that made the man step back into the house to hide from it. Unfortunately for him, Tommy saw the look as well.

The moment allowed the Doctor to catch up, slipping on the bike behind Y/n and pulling his feet up just in time for TY/n to surge forward, leaving them only a beat behind the car ahead. They chased the vehicle until it turned a corner... a corner that lead to what seemed to be a dead end. There was a closed gate and a cart in front of it. Even a boy swept the street in front of the cart, seeming as if the whole operation had been there for ages.

"Oh, very good," the Doctor congratulated the two men, smirking. The man sweeping smirked back. It clicked in Y/n's head immediately. "It was like this last time too," the Doctor explained anyway. "I chased it and ended up right here, on this street, in front of that gate, with those two people set up in front of it."

"Set up indeed," Y/n sighed, shaking his head.

They settled on a simple solution. They parked the moped and went around the back, walking around the enclosure to find any other entrances or weakened points on the gate. Of course, they found it. It was a door into the building. Something small, too small to be used by people as an entrance. Big enough to be used if one had to though, and no lock was scary enough to go against the sonic screwdriver. They were inside with no problem at all.

It seemed to be some sort of factory. There was the clattering of chains in the distance that they followed into a big room with a a gated enclosure in the middle. Inside the enclosure was dozens of people, all missing their faces. The clattering was coming from the men who had come to the house, who were now locking the grandma inside as well before locking the gate again. They waited for the men to leave before jogging up to the enclosure. The Doctor took out his screwdriver, busted the lock, and they were inside. It seemed a little more complex than it had from a distance though because after opening the first gate, there was a second one that lead to where everyone was actually held. Y/n wondered briefly why there were two gates as the Doctor opened the second and the pair moved into that room, pushing their way into the crowd gently to get a closer look at the faceless people.

They were dormant at first, but as the Doctor took out a torch and began to shine the light on them, their bodies began to twitch and move. Hands began to curl into claws, heads tilting threateningly. And they all turned to Y/n and the Doctor, closing in and pressing the two men against one of the gated walls. They crowded and pushed but didn't harm, and that surprised Y/n at first. Unfortunately, they did cause a commotion, which only occurred to the men when a huge light came on behind both of them, from outside the gate. They tried to see who had turned it on and saw only two silhouettes. A man's voice rung out, "Stay where you are."

They were pulled out of the enclosure and taken to two different rooms, sat in chairs, and faced with who seemed to be detectives. The man interrogating Y/n was rather calm and pleasant. "So who are you then?"

Y/n found himself sighing. "My name is Y/n."

The officer smiled, seeming pleased with Y/n's cooperative approach. "What are you doing here?"

"We're trying to figure out what's happening, so we can help and stop it," Y/n answered without hesitating. He said it with conviction, his body so relaxed but his eyes so full of honesty that there was simply no room to doubt him. He was telling the whole truth, and nothing else.

It was the best move to make, and it went over well. "What do you know?"

"Probably as much as you guys do. Bunch of people. Faces missing. What you might not know is that their brains are basically shut off. Like someone's taken their entire consciousness. A body with no person inside it, thinking and feeling and walking. It's a wisp of a ghost of humanity. No one's manning the controls." His shoulders dropped. "They're dormant."

Fairly enough, it was upsetting to the detective as well. "That's all you know?"

Y/n scoffed. "Maybe if you did less interrogating and tying me to chairs, I could be out there figuring out what's going on. My partner, where is he? We need to start working on this. Sitting around asking someone who knows barely more than you do is getting neither of us anywhere."

Sitting back, the officer gave a sort of amused smirk. "Down to business then. Alright, let the man go."

"But sir," one of the other men questioned. "Shouldn't we wait for the DI?"

The officer shook his head. "We need to find them and reunite these men who are here to help us. Come along, we've got work to do." And with that, Y/n was untied and they all headed to where the Doctor was being kept. A man who Y/n suspected was the DI was sat with the Doctor, looking non too far off from where the man who's been with Y/n had ended up - perplexed but trusting.

When they came into the room, the Doctor grinned upon seeing Y/n. "I can always count on you to get them to trust us, Y/n. Why do people listen to you so much better?"

"I'm approachable?" Y/n offered.

The Doctor nodded. "No that sounds about right."

Once the Doctor was untied as well, they all moved into the office where the DI began to catch up the other two men. "We started finding them about a month ago. Persons left 'sans visage'. Heads just... blank."

"Any sort of pattern?" The Doctor asked, eager to get down to business.

"It's spreading out from North London, all over the city. Men, women, kids, grannies. Only real lead is, there's been quite a large number in-"

The Doctor cut him off as he began to riffle through papers, finding the information himself. "-Florizel Street," he finished. His brow was creased in the way that it did when he was thinking and trying to understand. Looking at information and dissecting it. Taking it all in and organizing it to make sense of any kind of madness. It was a look Y/n had come to look on fondly.

There was a knock at the door to the office and Y/n went from admiring to in pain rather quickly.

"Found another one sir."

All eyes turned as the DI gave a half hearted, "Oh, good man, Crabtree. Here we are, Doctor. See what you can deduce." Y/n noticed that it was a woman immediately. There was a blanket over her head, but she was wearing a skirt. A pink skirt. A pink skirt that Y/n had seen recently, and could recognize almost immediately.

No.

No!

The one who had walked the woman into the room took the blanket off of her head, revealing-

"Rose," the Doctor lamented weakly.

Y/n's body went weak. He trailed after the Doctor, moving closer to her in order to reach out and touch her cheek. If she were normal, she would have leaned into it, a smile on her face. Maybe even winked at Y/n. But now... her face was blank, all features gone, leaving only shallow dents where they all should be.

"Do you two know her?" The DI asked.

"Know her? She..." The Doctor trailed off, a tension to his face as he struggled to voice what Y/n so often did. That she was his girlfriend, or companion, or maybe something else that explained what they all were better, in stronger words that painted the picture more clearly and drove home the feelings they shared. That he so much more than just knew her.

When he said nothing else, Y/n offered something. "She's out partner. We travel together." He wished he hadn't said anything. That he'd stopped as the Doctor had, because those words weren't sufficient, but he also knew he had no right to speak for the Doctor's feelings when he couldn't even admit them to himself. And... I mean, would these old fashioned people understand it anyway, when they couldn't even be okay with the Doctor and Y/n being together, let alone Rose as well?

To fill the sudden painful silence in the room, the man who'd brought Rose in began to fill in missing information. "They found her in the street apparently, down by Damascus Road. Just abandoned. That's unusual. That's the first one out in the open." He went to talk more, but Y/n was finished right there.

"I'm sorry say that again?"

"Sorry?" the DI offered, not sure as to what part Y/n had meant.

The Doctor spoke again. "Where did you say they left her?" He kept his eyes on Rose, his features being replaced with anger where the concentration and focus and puzzle piecing had been before. Gears turned now so much faster, the fire that drove him burning brighter. He was the sort of man that moved slower when angry, because every single move counted. It was when he was soft and slow that the Doctor was most dangerous.

The other men in the room seemed to sense that. "Just... in the street."

"In the street," the Doctor repeated, his face relaxing as he rose his eyebrows. "They left her in the street. They took her face and just chucked her out and left her in the street." His voice was dropping, the anger curling around his words as his body relaxed. All his hesitations that usually kept him so in line melted away and he was calmer than he ever was. "And as a result, that makes things..." He paused, eyes still trained on where Rose's face should be. "- Simple. Very, very simple. Do you know why?" He took his glasses off, finally looking away from Rose in favor of turning to face the others in the room.

"No," the DI answered, his nervousness plain.

"Because now, Detective Inspector Bishop" the Doctor seethed. "There is no power on this Earth that can stop me." He looked at Y/n. "You ready?"

Anger had a vastly different effect on Y/n. Unlike with the Doctor where anger calmed him, anger fueled Y/n. It drove him, energized him. I suppose it was because the Doctor was a man capable of great evil, and therefore a man who had many rules that usually held him back. These rules locked that potential up tight so he could channel it into good things. When he was angry, those rules flew out the window and let him loose so that he had no inhibitions or hesitations. His potential, either good or evil, was at full capacity and would be stopped by no one. Y/n was the exact opposite. He was always calm, always level headed. His mind was a machine, and it flowed smoothly. He never felt the need to lead, only to support and pop in when it was necessary. But when he was angry? Oh, when he was angry, it blinded him and clogged those gears so the machine was stopped. All the energy that usually went into keeping him calm and level headed went into charging his mind to think better and harder, and his body into working faster and going further.

Usually, the Doctor was a man of great power and goodness and when he slipped or needed help, Y/n was there to keep the peace and fill in holes the Doctor had missed and pick up the slack. The Doctor pulled the chariot and Y/n picked up the things that fell out.

Now, Y/n was unhinged and the Doctor was unleashed and neither were about to stop the other. There were only two men on the path of vengeance for someone who had hurt the woman they both loved, and nothing - NOTHING - was going to get in the way of them getting her back.

Y/n smiled. "Always."

So they were off.

They headed out, blazing a trail of fire behind them, headed right back where they'd come from. The sun was up, and Tommy Connolly opened the door to find Y/n and the Doctor. "Tommy," the Doctor said in a voice that left no room for negotiation. "Talk to me." Tommy threw a glance to the inside of the house before coming out, closing the door behind him. "I need to know exactly what happened inside your house."

It was then Mr. Connolly decided to intervene. "What the blazes do you think you're doing?" the pathetic man spat at his son.

"I wanna help, Dad!" Tommy begged weakly.

"Mr. Connolly-" the Doctor began.

And then Mr. Connolly made a huge error. He turned to the Doctor and sneered, "Shut your face, you."

Y/n reacted immediately. He surged forward, ramming Mr. Connolly against the wall of the house. Their noses almost touched, and Y/n practically growled, "I've had enough of you. You think you're bigger than you are and I've had enough of it. You're going to stop intervening and you're going to stop disrespecting your family and the Doctor and myself, and you're going to let your son be helpful like the decent human being he is and you're going to be grateful that Tommy didn't turn out anything like you did, do you understand me?"

There was something in Y/n's eyes. Something that made Mr. Connolly genuinely cower. The Doctor put a hand on Y/n's shoulder and the man backed down immediately, letting Mr. Connolly go. "You don't understand," Mr. Connolly groaned. "You two are ruining everything! I have a position to maintain. People around here respect me. You don't care what people think of you and that's fine, but those successful know that it matters what people think!"

"Is that why you did it, Dad?" All eyes turned to Tommy.

"Did what?" Mr. Connolly asked his voice tinged with panic. "You ratted on Gran," Tommy accused. "How else would the police know where to look? Unless a coward told them."

"How dare you," Mr. Connolly hissed quietly, still beaten down by Y/n's previous actions, but fueled again by Tommy's insult. "You think I fought a war just so a mouthy scum like you could call me a coward?"

Tommy was having none of that though. "You don't get it do you? You fought against fascism, remember? People telling you how to live. Who you could be friends with. Who you could fall in love with. Who could live and who had to die. Don't you get it? You were fighting so that little twerps like me could do what we want. Say what we want. Now you've become just like them. You've been informing on everyone, haven't you? Even Gran. All to protect your precious reputation!"

"You'll learn, Mr. Connolly," Y/n said in a low voice. "It doesn't matter what OTHER people say or think about you. It matters what your friends and family think. It matters that you go to bed at night with a clear conscious and look at yourself in the mirror and see someone you like. Be honest. Have you been able to look yourself in the eye since you started tell the police where everyone was? Since you betrayed your own family, all so you could look good to what you think people wanted you to be? Cause I can tell you now, no one's going to like you for this. For taking away their family and ratting on them. For making everyone scared in their homes. On their own streets."

"Everyone who matters will appreciate what I did," Mr. Connolly spat defensively.

"So it's true then." The door opened, revealing Mrs. Connolly. Mr. Connolly reached out for her but she pulled away.

"I did it for us, Rita," Mr. Connolly explained, panicking at the betrayed look on the poor woman's face. "She was filthy! A filthy, disgusting thing!"

Y/n took a step back, and then another. He tripped on the second step as he hit the end of the concrete, but was thankfully far enough out of view that no one saw. But he saw. And what he saw... He wished he hadn’t.

"I wish people like that wouldn't go about. It's disgusting."

"Oh look away dear, it means nothing to you."

"It's just gross! Can't they do it somewhere else?"

"They're only holding hands."

"She kissed her cheek!"

"And?"

"And it's not right. I'm trying to spend time with my family. Why can't they be normal? Look, even Y/n looks upset by it."

"Are you upset, Y/n? We can go."

Y/n looked at his parents, feeling small. He was small, but he had never felt small. He'd always quite big, actually. Too big to hide in the spaces he wished he'd fit better in. Too big to run as fast and as far as he wanted to. Too big to fade away and be gone from this moment. Too big, in the middle of a quart yard, feeling like every set of eyes that could see him did. That was how he usually felt. But now... now he felt so small that he was terrified of being stepped on. He looked into his father's eyes, soft but distant. Too far away to reach. Too dislodged to understand. Y/n looked at his mother next. The way she looked at the two women who had eventually felt her stare and looked back, leaving to escape the horrible feeling her nasty glare left under their skin. Y/n wished he could go with them. How could one person hate two people being happy so much that it made one's skin crawl? That it made people run, just with the power of the look in her eyes alone. Why did she feel the need to say anything at all? Why couldn't she be pleasant and far away like dad?

A hand rested on Y/n's shoulder and he was pulled into the present. He looked over at the Doctor, who had a very knowing expression on his face at that moment. They exchanged a look and Y/n nodded, both to recognize that they would talk about it later and that he would be okay until then. For now, they had much more important things to worry about.

With that clear, they both turned their attention back to Tommy and his parents. It seemed Y/n had missed something, as the door was now closed. With the way Mr. Connolly was yelling anguished cries for his wife to open the door, Y/n got the feeling that Mr. Connolly's world had just come crashing down.

"Tommy," the Doctor said, reaching out for the boy. Tommy moved closer to him, and those two, Y/n, and DI Bishop all left Mr. Connolly at the door. They had important business to get to, and Tommy had a lot to catch them up on. As they walked, the Doctor got to business. "Tell me about that night. The night she changed."

As they walked, Tommy watched his feet, trying to remember. "She was just watching the telly," he offered weakly, obviously feeling guilty as not giving what was being looked for. How wrong he was though.

"Rose said it," the Doctor realized. He spun around, eyes shooting to all the different antenna. Too many dishes for this year, this time. "She said it from the start. All these aeriels in one little street. How come?" He settled on looking at Tommy for an answer.

The boy delivered. "The bloke Mr. Magpie. He's selling them up the street?" The Doctor and Y/n looked at each other before taking off, Tommy and the DI pausing only a second before kicking into gear after the Doctor yelled at them. The four made it to Magpie's place, the Doctor breaking the window on the door to reach through and unlock it, pushing inside. The DI actually tried to stop him - which was fair since he was a cop and all -but the Doctor wasn't listening.

The second they were inside, the Doctor was at the desk in a flash, ringing the little desk bell heatedly. "If you're here, come out and talk to me!" the Doctor screamed. "MAGPIE!"

Y/n skipped the desk and went directly behind, searching the whole place for any signs of the man, vengeance in his eyes. Luckily for Magpie, he didn't appear to be in. "No one," Y/n announced as he went back to the front, in answer o the Doctor's heated, questioning gaze.

The Doctor went behind the desk as well, beginning to dig through the drawers for any hints of clues. He was successful as always. "Oh hello," he grumbled, pulling out a sort of portable television, from what it seemed to be. It was rectangular shaped, but almost like an etch-a-sketch, with dials below a blank, dark screen.

Moving to the Doctor's shoulders, Y/n squinted his eyes as he got a better look at the thing. "That's not supposed to be here." Y/n tilted his head. "Not on Earth. Not anywhere near humans. That's too advanced for hundreds of years from now, let alone 1970's or wherever."

In response, the Doctor licked the device. "Tastes like iron." He looked at Y/n. "Bakelite." He put the thing on the counter in front of him, pulling out his sonic screwdriver to scan it. "Put together by human hands, I'll give that. But you're right, the design itself..." The sonic sounded, following by the Doctor making a noise of appreciative surprise. "Oh, beautiful work. That is so simple."

"That's incredible," DI Bishop mused. "It's like a television, but portable. A portable television." Y/n almost smiled at the amazement in his voice. He briefly wondered how the man would react to Netflix.

The thought was derailed as the Doctor lifted the screwdriver to eye level, and tellies began to switch on around them in the room. Each screen was just filled with white static, but the fact that they'd reacted so strongly to the signal in the first place wasn't the greatest of signs. "That's not the only signal in this room," the Doctor told the others. Suddenly the static died and the screens cleared, the static falling away to reveal a bunch of faces. Just faces on dark screens, all sad or scared. Some screaming, some crying, some silently shaking as they looked into a void and tried to find a way out. It was only a few seconds, each clip, and it repeated, so that people were stuck in two or three seconds of utter fear.

Y/n launched forward, eyes scanning each screen frantically until he squatted down, pausing as his hands rested on either side of a screen with the face of a girl screaming one word over and over again. It was Rose, and she was calling for the Doctor. When Y/n felt a presence beside him he scooted over to let the Doctor squat beside him, both men looking at Rose call for help over and over and over again. She looked so afraid, and in the blackness of the screen around her was reflected two expressions. One, the Doctor, whose eyes were full of pain and whose face was lined with love and worry. It was a sad expression, easy and delicate and affectionate. The other face was Y/n's, which was curled in anger. Not like it had been before, where it was hot and unforgiving and hard and terrifying. No, this anger was painful to look at. Like he was about to cry. He reached out a hand and gently touched the screen, wishing he could touch Rose's face and tell her everything was going to be okay.

Next to him, the Doctor reached out a hand too, to touch the other side of the screen that Y/n did. "We're coming," the Doctor promised.

The sound of beads being moved sounded. The same sound that had happened when Y/n had rushed into the back, searching for Magpie. Because there was a curtain of beads in the doorframe-

"What do you think you're doing?" Y/n and the Doctor looked at Magpie at the same time, pain being replaced with that anger from before. Merciless anger that could only be described as wrath.

The Doctor stood, marching toward Magpie with determination, every move fast and full of threat. "I want my friends restored and I think that's beyond a little back street electrician, so tell me, who's really in charge here?" Y/n backed him up, both of them leaning into Magpie who looked downright terrified.

Suddenly there was a voice. "Yoohoo!" It was such a shock because it was a woman's voice. A voice which shouldn't be possible as all men were in the room. Everyone turned to see a new woman on one of the screens. Except she wasn't just a face, she was hair and a body and a dress and arms as well. She sat on the telly as if she was a program, except her smile was too smug and her eyes were too cold. It probably was even more of a give away when she added, "That would probably be me," in what was definitely a response to the Doctor's question. A question she shouldn't be able to hear as she should have been a recording of something that had happened weeks ago. "Ooh," the woman hummed. "This one's smart as paint. And look at his little guard dog, ready to bite." She almost chuckled, the laugh sitting on her face even as the noise didn't come out.

"Is she talking to us?" DI Bishop asked.

"I'm sorry gentleman, I'm afraid you brought this on yourselves," Magpie apologized rather pathetically. "May I introduce you to my new-" he cut off, probably choking as he finished, "Friend." He swallowed and Y/n almost rolled his eyes.

"Truly nice to meet you," the woman on the screen greeted.

"Oh my god it's here," DI Bishop exclaimed. "That woman on the telly."

The Doctor's expression was dark. "No. It's just using her image."

"What?" Tommy asked, dumbfounded and confused. "What are you?" he asked the woman when neither the Doctor nor Y/n responded to his first question.

"I'm The Wire," the not-woman responded. "And I will gobble you up, pretty boy." On instinct Y/n pushed Tommy behind him; Tommy didn't resist. When Tommy was gone, the Wire's eyes moved up to look at Y/n instead. "Every last morsel. And when I have feasted, I shall regain the corporeal body, which my fellow kind denied me." As she spoke, the black and white screen suddenly filled with color, and Y/n realized she was showing off. Threatening and she flexed to show how much power she already had, just from the few people she'd fed off of. From Rose.

"Good lord." DI Bishop's eyes were wide. "Colour television!" Once again, Y/n had to try to not roll his eyes. To these people, that was a miracle.

The Doctor cut in on the moment. "So your own people tried to stop you."

"They executed me," the Wire spat. "But I escaped, in this form and fled across the stars."

"And now you're trapped in the television," the Doctor taunted. At his words, the color on the screen faded and it returned to black and white.

"Not for much longer." Despite her words, it gave Y/n hope to see her color fade. Her show of power had been quite temporary, which meant she was far, far weaker than she was trying to seem. That meant she would be much easy to defeat than she wanted to let on.

"This is what got my Gran?" Tommy asked, hands reaching out to tug on Y/n's sleeve.

Because Tommy was touching him, Y/n responded first. "Indeed. You don't know this yet I don't think, but people's minds work off of electricity. Little shocks all throughout the mind that send messages and information all around so it can power the rest of the body. She traps the minds and feeds off of them, and she does it by sapping away their faces. Ever heard, 'the eyes are the windows to the souls'? Well it's wrong, they're actually the doors, and once you open it it's very hard to close."

Feelings eyes on him, Y/n looked over to see the Doctor was surprised. It didn't last long though as the Doctor looked to Tommy, his anger coming back again as he added, "Problem is, it gorges itself like some great, over-fed pig." His eyes moved back to the Wire, spitting as he continued to get even angrier. "Taking people's faces, their essences, as it stuffs itself." The Wire looked very amused by that and Y/n was almost tempted to step forward and add some nasty words of his own, if Tommy hadn't still been holding onto him, keeping him back.

Probably for the best.

"And you let her do it, Magpie," the DI sneered at the electrician still cowering where the Doctor had left him before.

"I had to! She let me keep my face," Magpie whined. It was like a shark biting you then getting mad when you lashed out. It only made Y/n more angry. "She's promised to release me at the time of manifestation."

"What does that mean?" Tommy demanded.

"The appointed time," the Wire responded evenly. "My crowning glory."

That sentence set off the DI and Y/n at the same time. the DI shouted, "Doctor, the Coronation!" at the same time that Y/n lamented, "Oh my god the Coronation" as he rose a hand to cover his mouth, horrified as he began to realize the Wire's plan.

"For the first time in history, millions gathered round a television set," the Doctor confirmed. He turned smug as he took a step toward the screen. "But you're not strong enough yet, are you?" The Wire seemed to want to say something, but had nothing to throw back. The Doctor was right. "You can't do it all from here. That's why you need this!" He held up the screen from earlier, which Y/n only now realized he'd been carrying around the entire time. "You need something more powerful. This will turn a big transmitter into a big receiver."

"What a clever thing you are," the Wire sarcastically congratulated. "But why fret about it? Why not just relax? Kick off your shoes and enjoy the coronation. Believe me, you'll be glued to the screen."

"Well obviously we wouldn't-" But he didn't get to finish his sentence, because before Y/n could quip out a snarky response, suddenly there was a bright light and his whole body was beginning to ache. Slowly, starting at his fingers and toes, a sort of sharp numbness began to spread through his body. Began to eat at him, but by bit, until he was consumed. It never did get all of him, but even when the numbness faded and the world should have come back into view, that bright white light didn't go away. Y/n closed his eyes and felt a sort of fuzzy distance, but that white light didn't go anywhere. It was just muffled a little behind his eyelids.

For a while, Y/n didn't want to look. There was a fear in his heart that kept his eyes very closed. The white light wasn't too bright to look at or painful or consuming, it was just... terrifying. There was something that told him if he opened his eyes, he would see something terrible.

Unfortunately, Y/n was a companion of the Doctor. He maybe even had a little bit of what made the Doctor so wonderful and fantastic and brave inside of him, put there by experiences and memories that weren't his. Things that made people on such a deep level; mistakes and terrors. Things more terrible than some stupid white light could scare him with. So he opened his eyes, and he saw. And it was just as terrible as he thought it would be.

Suddenly he sucked in a breath and shot up into a sitting position, scrambling away from the wall of TV screens. He was breathing heavily, head spinning and heart racing. He looked around and saw DI Bishop, who was much more still but who seemed a little jarred himself. Though I suppose, no one was as upset by the experience just had as Y/n was. The Wire placated her victims, holding them in a cocoon of disconnection. Uncomfortable, but not upsetting. Not anything like what Y/n had just seen.

The door to Magpie's shop opened and the Doctor was there, eyes finding Y/n with an expression that was a mix of victory and worry. The worry grew as the Doctor realized Y/n seemed to be in a far more stable state than the Detective had been, which he didn't seem surprised about. Kneeling down, the Doctor placed a hand on Y/n's shoulder. "What happened?"

Y/n swallowed. "She took my face."

Even before the Doctor spoke, Y/n knew that was wrong though. "No, she didn't. You were fine. She was focused on the detective, and hadn't gotten to you, me, or Tommy yet. But when I got Tommy to wake up you just... lay there." He swallowed. "I thought you might have died."

At that, Y/n gave the only reassurance he could. "Well you and I both know that's not the case."

The Doctor nodded. "Right so. Stay here, I'll be back." He went and got Tommy, and then the four men - reunited again - all moved out of the shop. Shakily, as Y/n seemed to be having a hard time staying on his feet. Finally though, with a little help from Tommy, they managed to get Y/n out of the shop and down the street to head back to where all of the people who'd been taken were. If this was one of those happy endings, everyone would be back to normal. And considering Rose was one of them... well, they all had fingers crossed.

It didn't take long. They got far enough that Y/n only needed a little help from Tommy, and they moved a lot faster. They turned a corner, and saw a crowd of people surging out of the place where all the Wire's victims had been held. Y/n recognized a few body shapes and hair colors and outfits. Everyone was fine, just as they'd hoped. With the Wire gone, all consciousness had been returned to their bodies and people were in great condition. Well, good condition. Y/n was sure there might be some emotional damage. Disassociation was detrimental enough, without your very being being fed on.

But anyway, that wasn't the important thing. The important thing was that everyone was more or less completely fine. Which meant-

"Gran!" Tommy explained.

Tommy went to run, but paused as Y/n was still leaning on him. The man leaned away from the boy, waving him on. "I'll be fine. You go." With that, Tommy was gone. Y/n stayed where he was, leaning against the wall, afraid if he leaned off he might collapse. But then he saw Rose. He saw the Doctor surging toward her grinning face, and he felt his own body moving as well. Despite his worries about his current state of being, Y/n pushed off the wall and headed over as well. He was proud of himself for only limping a little bit.

Rose and the Doctor had the cutest reunion hug, and Y/n approached them as they parted. There was a grin on his face as he said, "All good now?"

"More than," Rose agreed. She hugged Y/n next, jumping in surprise as he groaned in pain. She leaned back much quickly, worry on her face as it had been on the Doctor's earlier, and was again. "Are you okay? You seem... hurt. What did you let happen to him?" She shot this at the Doctor, who was about to defend himself when Y/n did it for him.

"I just didn't handle the TV sucking my mind out of my body as well as you did," he tried to dismiss. "Really I'm fine. We fell after we got all zapped. I might have just landed wrong, really. Lots of different reasons, none of them anything you need to worry about." He reached up both hands, holding Rose's face. She was taken aback by the look in his eyes when he looked at her now. Like they hadn't seen each other in years, or he had believed he'd never see her again. To be fair, after the events of today, it was a fair look for one to have. "I love you. Have I said that recently?"

Rose cocked an eyebrow. "No partic-" Y/n kissed her, cutting her off. The kiss was hard and desperate and full of emotion that rocked her to her core. Rose felt her head rush and her heart race and her body shivered a bit before she registered the way he was holding her face. He was gripping it. Clinging to her like if she let go, she'd be gone forever. When they parted, she realized he was crying. "Y/n, are you sure you're okay?" She whispered, reaching a hand up to wipe the tear.

"Yeah." His voice cracked though, so it was quite unconvincing. "I'm just... I'm so glad you're okay, Rose. I really, really am." He stroked her cheek. "I'm never letting anything like that happen to you ever again."

She almost told him that he couldn't control what happened to her in this life of theirs, but Rose got the feeling that if she did, he might break down. So she just nodded and smiled and reassured, "Of course you will. You and the Doctor would never let anything really terrible happen to me. We're gonna be together forever, the three of us."

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. "Right," Y/n weakly agreed. He turned away, collecting himself. "Forever." His eyes moved across the crowd. "I think we deserved a bit of celebration. Come on!" And suddenly he was perfectly fine. Every few steps he winced just a little, but his smile was wide and his eyes were cleared. Like he had never been upset or hurt at all. The Doctor had been silent and nervous, constantly looking at Y/n again and again, but eventually the celebration got to even him and they were all forgetting their troubles and having a great time. Together again and inseparable.

For now.

Amidst all the fun, they ran into Tommy again and the Doctor gave his scooter as a present. It was a nice moment, but quickly messed up by Tommy seeing his dad again. Mr. Connolly seemed to be packed and suited up. Going somewhere. Leaving. "Good riddance," Tommy mumbled, face torn with hate.

"Is that it then, Tommy?" The Doctor asked, turning to watch Mr. Connolly go as well. "New monarch, new age, new world. No room for a man like Eddie Connolly."

"That's right," Tommy confirmed solidly. "He deserves it."

Rose leaned closer to the young boy. "Tommy, go after him."

Y/n cut in right there. "Never ever feel pressure to forgive someone who has abused you." He looked right at Tommy, and the Doctor and Rose went silent. "You are never required to let that person back into your life and don't you let anyone say otherwise." Y/n cleared his throat, his voice softening. "You should forgive him. If you don't, that anger you feel right now? It'll stay there inside you forever, and it'll turn you into him one day. You can't let it. You're too good to let someone else's mistakes ruin your future like that. You deserve better. And... you can give him another chance if you want. You can. But understand something: losing a parent is terrible. It sucks and it hurts, and it leaves a hole in your life forever. But that hole will always stay the size it is when that person leaves your life. Letting someone like your dad back in cold just widen that hole. Make it worse. Hurt it more. I'm not saying he will make it worse or he hasn't learned better. You can go after him, and that's your choice, and you're allowed to do that." Y/n reached out, placing his hand on Tommy's shoulder. "But you can't save him Tommy. Not from himself. You can't save anyone from themselves. You have to prioritize yourself and keep yourself safe first. So if you go after him, go because you want to. Not because he'll be sad or lonely or you think he needs you. Okay?"

Tommy had a very soft look on his face. One full of relief. Y/n's words had lifted a large burden off of his shoulders, and he nodded, smiling. "Thank you, Y/n. I... God, thank you."

Y/n smiled. "You're very welcome." With that, Tommy left the group. He walked back to his house, hesitated, and then did go after his dad. Y/n smiled to himself. "What a good lad."

"Very good," Rose agreed. But when Y/n looked over, she was looking at him, not Tommy.

Looking at his hands, Y/n cleared his throat. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off I just-"

"No," Rose rushed to reassure. "You were right. I forget, sometimes... that not having a dad. It's not the worse thing that can happen to you. Sometimes it's better." She swallowed. "I was lucky to have a good dad. And an even better mum." At that, she pulled Y/n's chin so their eyes met. "I never properly apologized to you. For what happened in the parallel world. I pushed you to forgive her, and you knew from the beginning you shouldn't. She really hurt you and I pushed you to get there so she could."

Y/n shook his head and then wrapped his arm around her shoulder, tucking her into his side. Her arms went around his middle to hug him, her cheek resting against his chest. "It's not your fault, Rose. It's hers. Don't you dare blame yourself for that." The Doctor moved closer, using the table behind them and his body to block the view as he took Y/n's hand.

"All that matters if we're safe and together," the Doctor finalized.

And for now, that was true enough.

Story Tag List: @e-reads-fics @shoochi

Male reader taglist: @sheepfather

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xomarauders · 4 years ago

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part four!!! read the whole thing here on ao3!!

tw: depictions of violence

—

Euphemia was trying to be a good hostess. She was trying to offer tea and light conversation, but the shakiness of her hands as she poured the kettle and the quiver of her lip gave away her worry. James stared at her, wishing he could offer some help but he was vibrating out of his own skin as it was. Remus and his mother had arrived just a few hours ago, having used the floo network despite Hope’s wariness of stepping into the green flames without her wizard of a husband to reassure her it was safe. Remus was nearly sitting on top of James, their arms touching and knees knocking together, neither of them being able to sit comfortably together on the small sofa chair now that they were practically grown. They both sat, waiting, feeling absolutely useless as Fleamont made calls in his study to anyone who could possibly help.

“Would you like any cream in your tea, Hope?” Euphemia asked.

“No, thank you. Sugar is fine.”

“Remus? Tea?”

“I’m okay, Mrs. Potter.”

“Mia is fine, dear.”

They became silent once more. James was becoming more and more impatient. He should be doing something. He should be at the Black’s home in London, pounding on the door and demanding to see Sirius. He shouldn’t be sitting there with the possibility of his friend being hurt hanging above his head. Sirius wouldn’t hesitate to look for James, to look for any of them. Sirius would rather die than abandon his friends.

James felt like an awful friend.

His thoughts of self-loathing were interrupted by a knock on the door. Remus froze next to him, his entire body tensing with anticipation of who it could be. Euphemia was up before anyone else could move, hurrying towards the entry way as if her life depended on it—as if Sirius life depended on it. When the large door swung open, it revealed a young woman with long, dark hair, skin like porcelain and vaguely familiar eyes. Rushing up the steps behind her was a young man with a much tanner complexion and a mess of curly hair a top his head. He was carrying something in a blanket. Or rather, someone.

“He kept muttering about the Potters,” The girl started, her voice wobbly as Euphemia ushered her inside. James was out of his seat, as well as Remus, when they noticed the unconscious figure in the man’s arms was Sirius. He was pale, deathly so, with a smattering of colorful bruises covering him. Most of him was being shielded by the thick quilt he had been wrapped in, but from what the two boys could tell, their friend had been through hell.

“We found him on the side of the road,” The girl was still talking, her voice almost too fast to keep up with, “We didn’t—Regulus, he wrote to me. I didn’t know he could still write to me, but he told me Sirius was gone and at first I wasn’t sure if I believed him, I thought perhaps it was a trick, but Ted and I went to search for him anyway and he was—Gods—there was so much blood. I didn’t know what to do, we had to take Dora to Ted’s parents because she just kept crying when she saw him and I—”

“Andy, slow down. You’re going to pass out.” The man—Ted—said, his voice much calmer. James looked between the two of them, realizing with a jolt that this was Sirius’ cousin, Andromeda. Sirius had spoken about her a few times and had mentioned how she had been disowned from the family for falling in love with a muggleborn. The resemblance between Andromeda and Sirius wasn’t identical, but still there in the expressions she made and the sharpness of her cheeks.

“Here, put him on the table.” Euphemia said, helping Ted lay Sirius on the now cleared off kitchen table. James stole a glance at Remus who was hovering in the doorway with a shocked look on his face, as if he couldn’t believe it was his friend lying there in a mess of his own blood. Fleamont came in, followed by Hope who must’ve been the only one who had thought to inform Fleamont of the current circumstances occurring in his home.

“Jesus Christ,” Hope mumbled, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as tears sprung into her eyes. It was as if her reaction triggered something in Remus because suddenly, he was lurching forward, smacking his knees against the kitchen tile and grasping towards Sirius. He was screaming, but James couldn’t decipher what the words were exactly—probably desperate plea for Sirius to be okay, the same one that was threatening to crawl up James’ own throat.

Andromeda grabbed hold of Remus, his head tucking against her shoulder as he wailed and James stood shell-shocked. He didn’t know what to do in situations like this. He couldn’t offer any comfort; he couldn’t even move. If he moved, he’d be on the floor just like Remus was and he couldn’t do that right now. He just couldn’t. Instead, he directed his gaze back towards his mother and Ted. They were working furiously, with Ted peeling away the remainder of Sirius’ shirt from his body while Euphemia cast as many healing spells as she could. Hope appeared in the mix at some point with damp cloths, dabbing away at the blood across Sirius’ body and Fleamont excused himself to make more calls, specifically to Dumbledore and the auror office.

Please wake up, Padfoot, James thought to himself. Please.

A gurgled cough came in response as Sirius’ body convulsed. His eyes fluttered open and for a moment, they were full of nothing but pure terror and fear. He screamed as Ted went to touch him before realizing that it wasn’t his father. Remus was still sobbing in Andromeda’s arms, though Sirius didn’t seem to notice anyone else was in the room aside from Ted.

“Sirius,” James finally spoke, his voice sounding much more broken than he thought it would.

Sirius looked toward him, eyes widening and tears spilling down his cheeks.

“James.”

#sirius black #remus lupin #james potter #wolfstar #sirius black angst #sirius black whump #fanfiction #wolfstar angst #wolfstar whump #harry potter #marauders fanfiction #💭 by kat

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bigmafluff · 3 years ago

Text

Unreal Love Story “Henry Cavill” chapters 1-3

Sequel To My Story “Tom Hiddleston”

Summery

“ Tom Dear ! She is gone!” His mother says when her son barges thru her front door. Diana Hands a sobbing Charlie to His Stunned father Leading them into the house to a computer sitting @ her kitchen table with a flash drive in it. Just as Tom is about to say something . His Mom hush's them both and starts the video. I start with calming Charlie through the computer. “ Hello Little one . I'm am sorry I have to leave you so. But You are a strong young man . Sometimes even stronger than your father at times. Just know that I love you dear one and will always be your special friend . Now dry those tears and Go see Nanna . So Your dad and I can talk.” I said to Charlie thru the computer. Tom Knew after that our relationship was over maybe had been over for a while.

Chapter 1

Numbness,& NASCAR

I couldn't Stay in London. It hurt too much all I saw was pain. I couldn't go home yet still felt like I failed myself some how so home wouldn't work. So I numbed myself out in Cali. I did what I swore I wouldn't. I went full Party Girl. Between the parties ,clubs, Bars I was wasted most of the time. But I knew that being In Love Like this before then Losing love has it's down side . Tom and I had been it for 3 years. But towards the end I was more His son's nanny than his girlfriend . Most of his friends warned me this was one sided . He never got over Sophia Di Marino ,Charlie's Mom. The split was Mutual. I'm Not mad to be truthful. Annoyed really that I let it go on this long ..

So California I went , to numb the hurt. I don't give a rat's ass what they say about better to have Loved crap ! It still hurt's dammit! So Party Shannon I became. I still wrote my stories without impairment. By day I was the mildly hungover writer coffee in hand . Luca was still Daydreaming so I was still writing. But @ night Let's just say in the great words of Bill & Ted .” Party on Dudes” So I did. Shaking my ass Beer in hand in a club in south beach ! Rockin' out to Pink. I am vaguely aware I am Jamming with a rather large Englishmen Go Figure ! He has a familiar tone I can't place ,frankly all I see is curls ,beard & muscle , Cause I'm too drunk and don't care but he was hot and can grind Like no other. But even though I was no lady ,he was a gentleman And at the end of the night I was in my Hotel room clothes and dignity intact.

Woke the next morning with another hangover that I never use to get when I was younger. They still Suck! UGH! I'm about to start typing when I get a feed from TMZ. “TWH PROPOSES TO SDM!” I switch on my TV and sure enough The rock on her finger is massive and Charlie Looks so Happy . The numbness lifts along with the pain . I can see the sun again so I finally pack my stuff .

But not for England . I head home. I decide I need time with my son . So Arkansas, Hot Springs that is. Although when I get there I find out my son is in Florida . In Daytona Beach. At the Racetrack! My nephew Christian and his wife Kiki took Lucas to a NASCAR race and Somehow Lucas Landed a job as head mechanic for Carlos Contreras's race team. Shocked as I was, I get on a flight to Florida it is a good shocked but WOW. I got a Hotel room and then went to the track . Took me a little convincing to get in . Security walked me to the Pit where I found my baby boy covered in grease. Under a car . When Lucas jumped up and hugged me they left us alone . test moment's in a parent's life is seeing your child seceded at something he loves. This was Lucas's dream !Like writing is for me. It was his turn. Lucas Introduced me to Carlos with sparkles in his eyes . Carlos seemed to Like what My Son does. Even tells me that Because of my Boy, Carlos has won 8 races. How more proud can I get I am in tears. While I was here I went to a few races and Lucas and I raided the theme parks. Then one night Lucas had a grown up moment and told me I had to go back to the U.K.. He said I write my best stuff there and I need to make peace with Myself. How did my Autistic Son get so smart. Then he tells me. He is a big Guy now and He didn't need his Mom to hover.

Chapter 2

Something New

So once I'm back in London. I dust off My flat that Luke made sure I got despite me moving in with Tom. Besides writing, a few friend's gave me the intro to the London night life and I found a outlet to unwind . But I didn't drown myself like in Cali. But I still maintained my Party Mama status. Also I am exercising regularly, to compensate for the Night life . But I found that I have way's now that I am Back to make exercising fun. I do the Gym of course. But I also like rollerskating in Hyde or St. James park, when it's sunny. I found a Ice Skating rink that is 7 day's a week. And there is a indoor pool at the Gym I go to. .

But I realized some things while I was home in the states. I can't ever forget where I came from . So I pay it forward to 4 special organizations for charity and I never write them off my taxes . I went back to church I actually found a Nazarene church in the U.K. Honestly Church is what keeps me semi sober in the clubs on Friday and Saturday. No hangovers in Gods house .So I have been busy. By maintaining the order of my life like I did way before when My soul purpose was being a MOM. God, Family Friends career is a new addition but not that high on the list.

I found a way to keep myself going .My heart has even healed to a point and I am actually making good friends with “ The Hiddleston “ I can't even comprehend The fact that Sophia took Tom's name . I didn't think her agent's would let her do that. Any how I Am officially Aunty Shannon to Charlie and he even still talks to Lucas and they talk cars regularly according to Tom. As for right now though I'm actually doing more than writing I am at The Harold Pinter theater in London as a Producer and assistant to Kenneth Branaugh the director of a play Based on one of my fan fiction stories . It's a Vampire Love story with a family twist. No Not Twilight no blood sucking fairies here. But what has me excited is the cast . Tom is in it along a whole bunch of my fave idol's Including Henry Cavill as the male lead. . OK! I fibbed Kenny doesn't need me the whole time so I am writing when I am not teaching Charlie Who is acting for the first time. Tom is One Proud Papa! I will tell you what. And Charlie Looks like he is having a wonderful time despite playing a Girl demon!

also I do have a little Mystery of my own I am trying to solve. Every morning when I get to work. Yes I'm getting paid for this production. I go to my seat and drink my coffee but I find a different colored long stem lily in the seat . I asked Tom. If Charlie was doing it and I even ask Ken. None said It was them. Both even offered to investigate with me . Saying they have a little experience because they played P.I.'s

I was actually flattered I had an admirer. I just hope I won't regret taking the Lily more seriously. Anyway The play is gearing up for opening night I called Lucas's aide Reed to Se if He will be able to be in London for my Play . Which If it does well it will head to the States and go on Broadway. Now tell me if that ain't totally awesome. I.K.R. We as far as my Book's are concerned Luca start's Middle School. So Social interaction and puberty mixes in with his amazing world which should make for a wild ride for our readers. My honorary nephew is even reading them which make's my heart sing Oh! So I don't leave it out my lily was Aquamarine and silk today not real but it had a pink bow and it sparkled . He-he! Who ever this is knows I like things that sparkle. It makes me giddy.

Opening Night!!!!

My Lucas is here . Looking Just Like he did Prom Night When he took my god daughter to the prom. My boy is So handsome. Lucas has been working out so My lucas is Tall and Jacked thanks to His Buddy Phillip Hull. We get to ride in a Limo It will be Lucas's first time in one. Me! I'm In all Red Long red hair with a touch of gray at the temple and proud of it. A Long Jessica rabbit dress that sparkles in the light. Red flat's I ain't that crazy . It's gonna be a long night and I am in my 50's Heels are not in the program. I had red cloves and a red silk Shaw. I felt amazing and all my boy could say is Wow mama Look Pretty! LOL! I am also excited not only for the play but according to the Little note I got with My Red Rose that was sitting in my seat on the last day of practice. I get to meet my admirer tonight too

So Lucas and I are off Lucas is Like a school boy Looking around and he is also a little nervous. I can tell he Keeps Playing with his collar and tie. I made sure Luke had a pair of ear buds and his fave music in a MP3. And sunglasses to help with Lucas's experience. Plus so he doesn't have to deal with the red carpet stuff Reed is here so Lucas will be with me only for a few pictures then Reed will take him inside while I deal with the popularity this sold out play has caused . New York here we come!!!!!!

Lucas went inside as planned. And Luke is by my side in his place as my escort. Luke felt I shouldn't be alone. Because of the split and Tom's marriage. Even though Tom and I are cool talking about and he is even here with Taylor so I'm cool. I was having lot's of fun taking little interview's and pictures and such. Luke always said I was surprisingly easy going in the lime light and it shows tonight. `Sophia , Ken and I had some fun with the photo people and Kissed Each side of Tom's cheeks while he was trying to pic up Kenneth, then we Bent down to Kiss Ken's cheeks when Tom dropped him on his butt ,our booties where purposely in the air. Let's Just say we made Kenny's night! I was all in good fun Tom told me that Charlie was inside with new Hot wheels car's to show Lucas cause they are NASCAR ones.

Finishing up the pictures and fixing to go inside I was about to give up hope on there being an admirer. When I went to take one last. Picture, Henry Cavill came to Join me in the picture and whispered in my ear to Look down, as he grabbed my waist for the picture . I did. And their was a pink Lily and a white rose in his hand tied in a pink bow. Let's Just say that pic had my mouth hanging open and Henry laughing as we went in to the theater. Let the new dance begin.

Lois Lane never Got Superman this way Ha!

Chapter 3

Don't jump! One moment @ a Time.

As far as the play went it was as major success. I couldn't pay attention at all . I was staring at Henry the whole time In awe of all of this.As far as I was concerned it was like I had never tasted this before . I won't lie, it scares the shit out of me . I was a ball of nerves the whole play . It was Thomas all over again. @ least that was what I thought. Until Henry asked if I would sign a book for is Nephews Daughter who has Down syndrome. I was politely surprised . He then introduced himself to my Son. Which Lucas can recognize any actor who has ever played a Superhero or villain . Henry was one of our faves. He asked if we wanted to grab a bite to eat . Lucas always could eat. Even in his 30's endless Belly! Can you see 3 adult's in fancy dress in Mc. Donald's. I Loved it Because Henry took the liberty to date Lucas first. To me that Mc. Donald's was 5 stars. The Limo dropped 2 very full and sleepy men at My son's Hotel. I was sparkling in happiness. We pulled up in front of my flat but Henry wouldn't let me out yet. I think he wants to talk . So naturally I listened.

fore I could even say anything He Quieted me and held my hand . Baby Blues connected. Then he spoke. “ Shannon I know what you went through with Hiddleston. I grilled him after meeting you . Actually I'm kinda surprised he didn't rat me out. Story for another time. Now that you understand my intent. I want time. Time to know you. Also before you get nervous, will it help If I got permission from Lucas to date you and Charlie Hiddleston second's the permission. I'm normally a prideful Man But Shannon something inside Tell's me I am supposed to started something new with You. I want get to know you Date you proper. If anything let's see where it goes. Even if we don't connect more personally . We can at least catch a grind to a tune and groove like buddies”.

My breath hitch because I just realize that dude I was grinding with in California at that club. The English Dude. That was Henry!!!!! He notices my blush and Shakes his head showing me the bracelet. I smack his shoulder Laughing my Blush off. Then I told him I am willing to try and if all else fails Partying in New York won't get boring . Then he kissed my Palm and let me out . I gave him my # and told him to give me a call when he was ready to try. The Limo waited till I was Inside. But instead of Leaving The door opened and Henry came running up to me . Grabbed my waist, pulled me close and Kissed me. We exploded!!!!

Hand in Hand at JFK airport Henry and I go straight to the Hotel . No Not for that . We came early so Henry could as he says Court me proper. LOL! There is nothing I'd rather do the then run all over NYC for the first time with Henry. I have jumped in fully no comparing to any other love . This is true Eros and I'm going with the flow. That was our agreement for each other the next morning after the Play. To Just Love & enjoy till the fluffy lady quits singing.

I exploded because of SuperMan!

{None of this story is real the pic are from Googles images !!!!!!!!!!!!}

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elshopper · 5 years ago

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Cure for a Blue Christmas

Wow, y’all, it is a Christmas miracle. For I have written something. I hope you enjoy.

WC: 2.9k

Ao3 link coming soon.

December 25, 1986 Somewhere North of Bloomington, Indiana

“By the way, I loved the way you told dad to shove it,” Nancy said, glancing over to her brother in the passenger seat.

Mike was right in the middle of fiddling with the radio dial now that Hawkins Best Hits was out of range. Every station was either annoying Christmas music or old standards or weird nighttime talk shows. He sighed.

“Yeah, I’m going to get a lot of shit for that one when we get home,” he said, finally settling on whatever station that was currently playing that one Christmas song about the kids in Africa that he decided he could tolerate.

“He was asking for it,” Nancy replied, both her hands steady on the wheel. “He was just being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole.”

It had been a rather frustrating Christmas in the Wheeler household. Their mother had been tapped to host the whole family this year, and she was at her wits end this morning - pulling endless breakfast casseroles out of the oven only to be immediately devoured and criticized by extended family members.

Mike had to share his room with his cousins, Richie and Timothy, who were too annoying to bunk in the basement with the older cousins. Nancy got a room to herself, and Mike had carefully maneuver around the bodies sleeping on his floor if he wanted to get to the bathroom.

Holly was being particularly bratty, too. Mike’s grandmother was being especially critical of his mom, following her around the house and making comments about the table setting this and the Christmas ham that. His dad was flipping through classical holiday films (ironically about the value of family and unconditional love) while making exactly zero contributions from his recliner in the den.

To top it all off, due to the Wheeler family Christmas nightmare occurring under their roof, Mike and Nancy had to back out of their promises to drive down to Allendale to visit the Byers on Christmas Day because “we have to entertain the family, Michael,” which was just stupid and hypocritical of him to even say on account of the fact that Mr. Wheeler had been doing zilch the entire shitty three days.

When the family finally left that afternoon, Mike and Nancy made a point to help their mother start up loads of laundry and clean up in the kitchen before asking very very nicely if they could make the trip anyway.

“The family’s gone now, and we could give you some time to just relax…” Nancy pitched, her fingers drumming on their kitchen island. “I promise we’ll be back tomorrow morning. First thing.”

Mrs. Wheeler squinted her eyes and hummed to herself, saying something about being careful driving in the dark before she shouted into the den for Mr. Wheeler’s approval.

“No, Karen, tell the kids they can stay right here,” he yelled back. “Need to have a little family time.”

Nancy, who had been doing most of the negotiating with their mother, rolled her eyes, but something about his dad’s whole schtick of being a lazy ass-wipe made something that had been building and building in Mike finally snap.

“Family time? You’re shitting me, family time?!” Mike raised his voice a little and headed into the den.

“Language, Michael...”

“All you’ve done is sit on your ass while we’ve been absolutely drowning in family time for three whole days!”

His dad’s eyes finally - for the first time in probably days - moved over from the TV to look at his kids standing defiantly in the doorframe. Mike went on.

“So if you don’t mind, Nancy and I are going to go for the night to go see our friends - who we never get to spend any time with, by the way!”

He crossed the room for the coat rack by the door and threw his coat on. To his surprise, Nancy followed and grabbed the keys off the hook by the door.

“Michael, if you walk out that door, you’re grounded,” Ted retorted. “Same goes for you Nancy.”

“Great! I’m fine with that! Maybe then we’ll get that family time I’ve been hearing so much about!”

They were they had already thrown some overnight bags in the car, because with one slam of the front door for emphasis, Mike was finally on the way to see his girlfriend.

They decided to make their arrival a surprise, and the excitement of that prospect was slowly beginning to overshadow the seething anger towards his dad.

“I know Jonathan said he and Will were going to be at Lonnie’s today,” Nancy started, “but they’re coming back tonight. Maybe we’ll beat them home.”

“Yeah maybe,” Mike said. “I know El said she’s just staying in with Mrs. Byers. She sounded kind of bummed about it, though.”

“Well, maybe this will cheer everyone up,” Nancy said, before turning up the volume on the radio.

Allendale, Illinois

Now get this, it’s from London. “Mr. Gower cabled you need cash. Stop. My office instructed to advance you up to $25,000. Stop. Hee-haw and Merry Christmas. Sam Wainwright.”

El closed the door to the oven, and sauntered back over to the couch. Joyce was sitting in one corner, legs drawn up under a throw blanket, while she worked on sewing a button back on one of Jonathan’s old shirts so Will could wear it.

“Okay the cookies are in,” El said, but Joyce’s eyes stayed fixated on the television. They had been watching It’s a Wonderful Life on channel 5, and it was one of Joyce’s favorite holiday films. Despite the majority of the movie being… sort of depressing, El was glad she was here to spend time with Joyce who would otherwise be alone on the holiday.

They had spent the afternoon just like this - cleaning up around the house, finishing up mundane chores, and baking here and there. Even though she was fairly new at it, El actually wasn’t half bad at following the recipes in Joyce’s family cookbook. Often, she was learning, numbers made more sense to her than words.

Jonathan and Will had driven up to Indiana after opening morning presents to spend some “quality time” with their father and stepmother. Joyce had insisted (albeit, reluctantly) once she discovered they hadn’t gone to see them in over a year. El had never met him, but he didn’t sound all that pleasant when Will brought him up on occasion... kind of like he was inconvenienced by the fact that he had kids in the first place.

Kind of like a grade-A asshole, as Dustin would proudly put it.

She hadn’t even seen an old picture of him and Joyce anywhere in the old photo albums. She knew they had been married, but were now divorced, so it was just Joyce now. Taking care of her sons, and now the daughter that she never meant to have.

Last Christmas had been great - wonderful even - because it was her first time back in Hawkins since the big move a couple months prior. Despite absolutely dreading the cold, El loved the holiday season now that she got to be a part of it - all Mrs. Wheeler’s pies and nicely wrapped gifts and the smell of pine trees and mistletoe...

This year, the Byers clan had stayed behind. Mrs. Wheeler had to host the family for Christmas, and that apparently meant that Mike couldn’t even come visit - not even for a few hours.

He had sounded so bummed about it over the phone, but promised to send her present in the mail once the holiday rush ended. He even called her this morning to wish her a Merry Christmas, and tell her that the holiday didn’t feel right without her being home. It was nice of him, but it just made her feel more gloomy about the whole thing. It was a joyful time of year for most, but El couldn’t be with all of her favorite people.

On the TV, the Bailey household erupted in a spirited rendition of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing as all the townspeople showed up to give George their donations and Joyce’s eyes were getting a little misty.

Joyful all ye nations rise! Join the triumph of the skies!

“This part always makes me cry, every single time!” Joyce said, using the fabric of Jonathan’s shirt to dab at her eyes. “Oh, look at me.”

Hark! The herald angels sing…

“I like this movie too,” El said, reaching for a hand full of popcorn from the bowl on the coffee table. “It’s sweet.”

“You’ve seen this movie before?”

“Yes…” El started. “Two Christmases ago I think. But I didn’t really understand it then. Now it all makes more sense.”

She didn’t want to touch on a sore subject if Joyce didn’t want to talk about it - especially this time of year, so she didn’t go into detail about how Hopper had turned it on one snowy evening in December 1984 and cracked a beer open before telling her to pay attention because this was one of the greatest films of all time. She could practically hear him…

“...Now I used to sit on the couch with my old man and watch this movie every single Christmas.” Hopper said, “It’s about being thankful for what you’ve got and that you’re never alone in the world if you’re a good person… you know… cheesy stuff like that...”

It was in black and white and she didn’t know what all the yelling was about, but El liked it because Hopper seemed to. She thought George’s life was interesting and she thought his wife Mary was really pretty. She asked Hopper to find her a dress just like Mary’s to wear to the big dance she was invited to the following week and he had said “Jesus, kid, I don’t think they make ‘em like that anymore…”

A small smile crept across El’s face.

Good idea Ernie, a toast! To my big brother George. The richest man in town.

“Did Hop turn it on for you before he would go to the station?” Joyce asked.

“No, actually he sat down to watch with me.” El said, “He didn’t do a great job of explaining anything, but he wanted me to see it for some reason.”

“Well, everyone should see It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s one of the greatest films of all time!”

The crowd on the screen erupted in another joyful tune and Joyce started humming along.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and days of auld lang syne?

Then a note from Clarence the angel appeared on the screen, and it was El’s turn to feel tears pinch the back of her eyes.

“Remember, no man is a failure who has friends!” the note read in beautiful swooping cursive.

El had been trying to keep a smile on her face all day for Joyce, but she missed her friends so much she thought she might burst.

She and Will called them on the phone as often as they could, but of course it wasn’t the same. They knew they were missing the making of memories, and as hard as it was, El couldn’t help but feel jealous that everyone in Hawkins all still had each other.

She and Will would talk with Lucas who would tell them some outlandish stories about something Max got up to or Steve said or Mike did in school. Then, they would give Dustin a call for the real story. Max would complain to her about being ‘surrounded by idiots’ and fill her in on the most recent fight Mike picked with Lucas over something stupid and El would call him after just to check on him. Out of everyone, Mike probably took it the hardest with his best friend and his girlfriend both leaving town all at once.

She was glad she had Will sulk and feign happiness with sometimes. She could tell he felt the same as she did, that they were kind of incomplete without everyone. Jonathan was busy with work and college courses, and was planning to transfer to be closer to Nancy next year now that he’d saved up enough, so the reality of the move hadn’t hit him as hard because he had just a little more freedom.

“When you go through all that, I think the people you’re with end up being your family, like it or not,” Will said to her once. “I don’t feel like I can let anyone else in. It’s just us, you know? And most of our family is about a four hour drive away.”

To make matters worse, when Mike and Nancy cancelled, El’s teeny ounce of excitement about the holidays vanished.

It was just… lonely. And El knew Joyce was pretty lonely too. Joyce’s parents were originally from Allendale, but her extended family had all moved or passed away before El was ever around. She just moved her children back somewhere familiar where she was fairly sure there weren’t any secret government conspiracies at work beneath the surface. Since El hadn’t had the use of her powers in over a year, there wasn’t a lot to hide except for the past.

“I love this song,” Joyce said, humming along with the melody and snapping El back to the present.

For auld lang syne, my dear

For auld lang syne

The words sounded like absolute gibberish to El.

“What does ‘old hang sign’ mean anyway?” El asked.

“Auld Lang Syne,” Joyce replied. “It’s in another language - Scottish, maybe? I’m not sure exactly what it means, but you sing it on New Years Eve.”

“Why on New Years Eve?”

“Because it's a time to reflect on the past and look forward to the future… I guess it means that you’re thankful for everything you have and the people in your life and the experiences you’ve had so far, but you’re looking to the future for better things.”

El nodded.

“Kind of hard to look back and be thankful,” El muttered.

Look daddy. Teacher says, ‘Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.’

She felt Joyce turn on the couch to face her.

“Oh, honey, I’m thankful! If I didn’t have you, I’d be spending Christmas Eve alone,” she said as she wrapped one arm around El’s shoulders. “And the world would be a much sadder place.”

“Thanks,” El said, fiddling with the hem on her sweatshirt. “It’s hard though.”

“You’re right, but you have to try your hardest to see the good in life…”

Atta boy, Clarence!

Just then, the oven dinged that the cookies were ready, and El hopped up to grab them. She was setting the cookie sheet on the stove when she saw a pair of headlights pulling into the driveway.

“Looks like Jonathan and Will are home,” El said, pulling out the cooling sheet.

“Oh, good. Just in time for the next film.”

But just as El was putting the last of the cookies on the cooling sheet, she heard a frantic little knock at the door followed by a couple of dings on their doorbell. Startled, she almost dropped her spatula.

“Why on earth are they making all that noise?” Joyce asked as she stood up to turn down the ending credits and answer the door. “Surely Jonathan and Will don’t need any help carrying gifts to the house after an evening at Lonnie’s…”

When she opened the door, instead of hearing Jonathan or Will’s voice, she heard Mike’s.

“Mrs. Byers! Merry Christmas!”

“Mike! And Nancy! I thought you couldn’t make it!”

“We came anyway,” Nancy said from behind him. “Didn’t want to let the holiday pass without coming to see you.”

“Oh, I hope you didn’t upset your mother too much...”

El dropped the spatula - on purpose this time - and was over at the door in a matter of seconds. If there was any cure for a blue Christmas, it was the look on Mike’s beaming face when she rounded the corner, still wearing Joyce’s favorite holiday apron.

“I can’t believe you made it!”

El caught the bright smile on Nancy’s face as Mike met her with open arms.

“Merry Christmas, El,” Mike said, pulling back to hold her face in his hands. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Just as Joyce was about to move everyone indoors and out of the cold, Jonathan’s old station wagon pulled up, making their arrival some of the most perfect timing El had seen in a while.

“Nance? What are you doing here?”

The bags were brought in and the cookies were set on the coffee table. Will was congratulating Mike on standing up to his dad, Nancy was talking with Joyce about winters in New York, and El was all snuggled up on Mike’s right side, her cheek against his shoulder and everything seemed right with the world - at least for the moment.

Even through hard times and sad days, El was so happy she had lived through them. Without them, she couldn’t have moments like these where everything felt perfect. She knew everyone in the room would agree - the smiles and laughs and shining eyes were enough for her to feel completely and simply surrounded by such a warm, fuzzy feeling.

El lifted her head to place a kiss on Mike’s shoulder and he turned to look down at her, eyes all glassy and warm.

“What was that for?”

“Just because,” she said.

I’ll love you ‘til the day I die, she thought.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours!! Can y’all tell which movie I’ve been watching all week... I hope it doesn’t sound like the ramblings of a Christmas lunatic :) Love y’all, miss y’all everyday <3

Tagging some lovelies: @milesfairchild, @mikewheeler, @milevenhearteyes, @serendipitousrambles, @fatechica, @summer-in-hawkins, @milevens, @stevehharrington, @elhoppers, @dustinhendrsn, @lyrawills, @partwayhappy and @robinbuckely

#stranger things #stranger things fic #mileven #mileven fic #writing things #brandnewbabysantas #merry christmas to all!!!

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whatevenismyaestheticidk · 5 years ago

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Things I’ve heard high schoolers say pt 1

-Person:I don't want to go to college. I want to join a rock band.

-Person 1: A dangerous pogo stick

Person 2: Do you mean a jackhammer?

-Person 1: I only have five minutes, what can I do in five minutes!?

Person 2: Masturbate

Person 3: Dab

-*Person 1 snaps fingers in a Z formation and points* No.

-Person: It's the computer Jesus.

Person: I’m okay with being the human embodiment of a cookie recipe.

-Person: Her eyes were as blue as... the color blue.

-Person: angrily clicks pen

-Person: Fight me *said while dabbing*

-Person: Did you just assume the gender of that table?

-Person: How does that child have popcorn! It's Wednesday!

-Person: Yo no speako Shakespearean Englisho.

-Person: I AM looking at an AC! *shouted across campus during finals week*

-Person: You fancy English tomboy! *shouted during an argument*

-Person: The salt the salt it burns! *followed by horrendous screaming and someone collapsing on the ground*

-Person 1: It's spiky.

Person 2: Depression?

Person 1: No a porcupine.

-Person: I don't know what fake tan you put on, but you’re not brown. *Indian girl to another Indian girl when one thought a food was spicy*

-Person: Thicce. When she thicc but she French. *pronounced thick-ay*

-Person: Everything's breaking and falling apart. *cue a chorus of 'my life' and 'same'*

-Person: I searched up the word 'search'. Nailed it!

-Person: *to the tune of making my way downtown* Make a meringue right now.

-Person: Legiterally. *legit +literally*

-Person: See, the problem is, I don’t want to.

-Person: We're boycotting Amazon. Siri play despacito.

-Person: Dishwashers are just machines from the evil overlords. You don't do the dishes, the dishes do you.

-Person: It makes me want to dig my own eyeballs out of my sockets and eat them but I'm fine.

-Person 1: Is this strawberry jam?

Person 2: Yes

Person 1: Ehhh I'm allergic but it's fine.

-Person: You human bobby pin.

-Person: Technically, Fire trucks are just giant water guns.

-Person 1: But what happens if you take helium and sulfur hexafluoride at the same time?

Person 2: You die.

-Person: I want to breath fire like the dragon that I am.

-Person: (girls name)! Stop trying to graph life!

-Person 1: Great I’m a pterodactyl with 3D printers for ears.

Person 2: Oh my god it’s me!

-Person: I will consume your soul!!!

-Person 1: Did you just fall and accept it?

Person 2: Yes.

-Person: Dang. Life is just crunchy.

-Person: I relate to that shoe, because I am also alone in this world.

-Person: Being alive is to0 much of a commitment. TBH I have enough commitment issues as it is and I’m just not fully committed to this whole life thing.

-Person: Swiper no swiping! *shouted as another student tried to steal their water bottle

-Person: (persons name), you either have to solve the problem, or you have to stop whining and ignore it. That’s how life works.

-Person: I want an emotional support komodo dragon to emotionally support me by killing my enemies.

-Person 1: Move the table by (mans name).

Person 2: What? Physically?

Person 1: No, mentally… of course physically (person’s name)!

-Person: What do they speak in Brazil? Brazilian?

-Person: I’m not going to have five kids fuck you buzzfeed.

-Person: How many calories are in a Pringles container? Cause I just ate all of them.

-Person: I could listen to him say penguin forever. If someone ever says penguin as good as he does I’ll just….

-Person: And then his reply just savaged me yeah!? I just want him to like me.

-Person: Me watching my life fall apart like ‘that’s a shame’.

-Person: Carry yourself upstairs! For gods sake (person’s name) it’s not that difficult!!

-Person: Do I look like the basic gluten free white bitch? Okay I thought so.

-Person: How could I give up on life when I never even lived it in the first place?

-Person: Have you ever gotten into a TED talk spiral? Like just a spiral of knowledge and inspiration?

-Person: You don’t know true fear until you almost drop your laptop without its case.

-Person: So they just yeet you into the water when you die.”

-Person: And in that moment she made four very straight girls turn gay for five seconds. That’s how fine she was.

-Person 1: Why is the sky screaming?

*thunder*

Person 2:It probably has cramps.

-Person: I’m here, I’m queer, and I shall be scoping you my dear.

-Person: You. 20-20. Vision. Person. Gah!

-Person: I guess I’ll just phase through the walls.

-Person: He has the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair.

-Person 1: Not even sarcastically though, why do you care more about my life and health more than I do?

-Random Girl walking by: same though

-Person: Wait are potatoes a fruit?

-Person 1: Come on (person’s name), chop chop!

Person 2: I’m chopping!

-Person: I thought I ran into (boys name) but it was actually just a bench.

-Person: Are streptsils supposed to burn?

-Person: Does static electricity work here?

-Bro 1: Close your eyes bro

Bro 2: Okay bro

Bro 1: What do you see bro?

Bro 2: Nothing bro

Bro 1: That’s my world without you bro

Bro 2: Bro

Girl: I swear to god if you two do that again… *insinuating that this wasn’t the first time they had done so*

-Person 1: And how do you exactly get to the sketchy parts of London?

Person 2: Google maps.

-Girl in a dark room to roommate: Well you know what? *Turns on light* well fuck you I hope your eyes burn.

-Person: Oh my crapety crap crap.

-Person: Oh yes, we love a spiky shistar

-Person: Tbh no one else can hate me as much as I hate me sooo yeahhh

-Person: So I guess I’m just gunna dab and pretend like everything’s okay then cry later.

-Person 1: Well you’re... fricking... stupid.

Person 2:Wow language.

Person 1: I’m 15 I can do whatever the frick I want!

-Person: *shouting*I don’t have energy for this today!

-Person: I didn’t know the lady was not wearing garments.

-Person: That went from getting water to doing drugs. That wasn’t a jump at all.

-Person: I am a bright and colorful piñata and god is a 13 year old birthday boy whose parents have just announced their divorce.

-Person: Oh my god I just got a message! *pause* Never mind it’s just my cellular company

-Person: I only know how to express love in either dramatic, multi-page, 19th-century-style love letters or single memes presented without commentary so jot that down

-Person 1: As a member of the stop the bull community I kindly request for you to cease this activity.

Person 2: Oh yah? Well as a member of the START the bull community I wanna ask you to umm BACK OFF.

-Person: I’m feeling very third wheel. You and (boys name), (boys name) and (girls name), (girls name) and 8-ball.

-Person: My entire life is the ‘awkward YouTube phase’.

-Person: Sliding into (girlfriends name) dms like *proceeds to perform a giant sock on hardwood floor style slide*

-Person: (Teacher’s name)��s voice just puts you to sleep. If you need to take a nap, just listen to a recording.

-Person: And then there’s me, having a mental breakdown over a water bottle.

-Person: Like girl, I know you’re thirsty but just drink some soda.

-Person 1: I’m sad lemme have some.

Person 2: Who broke up with you this time?

Person 1: HEY!

-Person: Excuse you, I’m always ashy.

-Person 1: 3/8 people on this group chat aren’t straight. That’s 0.375. Quick maths. Who needs to pass the math final when you can calculate the amount of gay in the group chat?

Person 2: Politicians use statistics to argue their points anyway so you need it in life.

Person 3: That was intelligent, (Person 1) you’ve been outplayed.

-Person 1: YAY WERE ALL GOING TO DIE

Person 2: Me in the face of the apocalypse.

-Person: God I miss Lagos, even the bumpy ass roads. at least Lagos had LESBIANS.

-Person: Does anyone else want to pretend their okay with me? No?

-Person: 8-Ball Bitches!

-Person: I’VE GONE BACK SO FAR INTO THE CLOSET I’M IN FUCKING NARNIA NOW

-Person: Attack! *Squeals as she’s squirted wit a water-bottle* Ahhhh you fricking fudger!

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scarlettsabetlondongirl · 6 years ago

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The Town and The City Festival Lowell, MA October 19 & 20, 2018 – Day 1 – The Poets by Kathy Murray for Live Music News and Review

An interview with Scarlett Sabet

I had first heard about the innaugural run of The Town and The City Festival on Instagram from the acclaimed poetess, Scarlett Sabet. The festival had been created surrounding the life and works of Jack Kerouac, a Lowell resident for most of his life. Scarlett herself was an avid fan of Kerouac, and she was traveling from England to perform a reading for the festival. I was absolutely thrilled. I had been waiting for her to come back to the States, more specifically to the Northeast, so that I could go see her read. I had been a fan of her poetry for quite some time, but had only seen snippets of her incredibly moving readings online and I could not wait to experience it firsthand.

I reached out to her soon after getting my press credentials for the show, to find out if she would like to sit down for an interview. I was pleasantly surprised when she agreed, and doubly so when she asked if I would like to also include the poet Janaka Stucky, who was on the bill with her that night. I, of course, was more than happy to agree!

We had discussed meeting at the venue just after they did their soundcheck at about 6:00pm, to allow enough time before the readings began. When I arrived, I entered the Parish Hall, and waited while one of the staff went to get Scarlett and Janaka. When they came out, Scarlett greeted me like an old friend, giving me a big hug, and I presented her with a small token of appreciation for agreeing to do our interview, a painting I had done for her. Janaka suggested we go into the room that had been set up as the ‘Green Room’ for the event, so we made our way in there.

Kathy: With ‘Zoreh’, I noticed that with ‘Elegy’, well first, it’s like the longest piece in the book, and I was wondering, what was your inspiration for it?

Scarlett: So with ‘Elegy’, whenever I read it, I always say this is a poem I didn’t want to write; but I knew I’d have to. It was, I mean, it was personal grief across death, and also kind of old grief, reliving childhood stuff. I’m sure there are more layers to come, but when you’re an adult, you kind of think okay, I’ve already dealt with anything that upset me as a kid. But it’s events that happen that kind of brought it up again, and I was like, I’m going to give myself one poem for this and that’s it. I was abroad this January, and it was like the pressure, with just the physical moving, and I just sat down and just wrote it all. Pretty much that’s just how it came out. And it is a long one, and it’s interesting performing it.

Kathy: Very raw. Very emotional. I know I definitely connected with it having lost numerous people in my life, not just as an adult, but at a very young age, and experiencing grief at very different emotional levels. You can definitely feel the emotion of the piece and connect with it through that.

Scarlett: That’s good. That’s good, because I think something like that personal grief, you don’t want it to be – and this is the other thing of being an adult, being like well everyone goes through this. I think there’s a line in the poem like, ‘but what about this is special, that which has happened to you?’ because part of it’s like pull yourself together, you know, getting sick of yourself. And it just becomes the wait, and that thing of ‘it’s going to take time’ and then the question ‘well how long does time take?’. People are like, ‘time takes time, give time time’. Like, no one wants to hear that, I want to be better now. And looking back, I learned so much and I’m a stronger person getting on the other side of it. But it was uncomfortable, but I also think that it’s uncomfortable, awkward things, restriction or difficulties, you know, good things come out of it sometimes.

Kathy: There’s an element of rediscovery of yourself. I know in some ways it was for me. One of the parts I was curious of; you spoke of the ‘wet isle of Lavender in bloom’. What isle were you talking about?

Scarlett: It’s a place called the Isle of Bute in Scotland. So my mom is French-Scottish, and it was where her burial was taking place. And I’ve got generations of family buried there. And it was just going over on the ferry, and I know I say in the poem that it was ‘small and unrelenting’ cause it was just like, ‘Why am I in London? I should just move here,’ you know what I mean? And I was just reassessing stuff, and it just made a mockery of city life; it was all the stuff of it, like it was this tiny small place, but it was making a pilgrimage back to it. I hadn’t been there with someone, I hadn’t been there since I was seventeen, so a hell of a lot had happened. So it had been, like, ten years, and it was very interesting, just the gap of what had changed personally and professionally. What is also interesting, the Marquess of Bute, the nobleman that lived there – and his descendants still live there – in the Victorian times, commissioned William Burges to build The Tower House (in Kensington), where he was Burges’ patron. So that was kind of an interesting thing. And Mount Stuart is also very similar to the Tower Houses design.

Kathy: So I know that we talked online about this, but there’s a common astrological theme that moves throughout ‘Zoreh’, and I know that you’re very into astrology, as am I, being Pagan. I wondered how you got into it initially and how you choose to incorporate it into your work.

Scarlett: That’s a good question. It was actually when Jimmy and I got together. We’d been together a couple of months, and he was like, ‘Let’s get your chart done.’ I knew my Sun sign but I didn’t know anything beyond that. So we got it done. And he opened it and was like hmmm, and I was like what does that mean? And I was like wait he’s got the blueprint to me and I don’t want to see this; let’s put it away. So I got really superstitious, and I put it away for a year. And then I read it, and it was actually really good, it was really accurate. And just kind of delving into it, and studying it; I think good astrology is very mathematical, it’s, you know, physics and math and it’s an ancient science. I think it is just, with bad astrology, I always say especially referencing ‘Lilith in the Midheaven’ from ‘Zoreh’, I always say that bad astrology gives good astrology a bad name. And when you mention it [astrology], people are like, oh you believe in that; it’s like yeah, I do believe in the coordinates, and the position of where I was born.

I think Ted Hughes was very into astrology and he was very connected to nature, the kind of bloodiness of nature, and he wrote a letter of his daughter’s birth chart when she was born (Frieda Hughes). Every President up until JFK had an astrologer and, it’s just, it’s not something new, it’s something old that’s kind of been lost touch with. I don’t know, looking back, it’s certain astrological points denote my life. Going back to ‘Elegy’, Neptune and Sagittarius, those 2 years from 2015 to 2017, were pretty intense for me. I’m Sagittarius rising, and obviously now I’ve got a Saturn return, which is really interesting. So there’s a new poem I’ll be reading tonight as well where I mention Kerouacs astrology. It’s something that is there, that I use in the imagery, and people can delve more into it if they want to. And people, like yourself, that already get the references. But, like with ‘Lilith in the Midheaven’, I like the structure of the Synastry [chart], and just discovering it and being like like ‘oh so that’s why its like that’.

Kathy: So it’s funny that you had mentioned ‘Lillith’, because that was actually going to be my next question for you. People interpret all art differently, and the way that I was experiencing it, was that love kind of renews your life every day. And how you can find somebody that is your signs mate and the connections that you share across those intricate ties. Like, within myself, finding someone who can feed my creative fire, and reciprocate it, which I feel is very important to a strong relationship. Now, I was going to ask your thoughts on that, but you already answered that in my last question to you. Who would you consider, other than Kerouac, your poetic infulences to be?

Scarlett: Influences? That’s really interesting. I think I always say Ted Hughes and a lot of people are like, ‘but Sylvia Plath, don’t you like her?’. And I do, but there’s something about Ted Hughes. He’s so fairly, or unfairly, targeted after the very tragic circumstances of both of his wives [Sylvia Plath and Assia Wevill] suicides, and I kind of admire the way he carried on regardless. And also, just the kind of bloodiness, just…the intensity of his work, the bloodiness of nature, his whole energy and focus, and just how prolific he was. I think he’s an influence, not necessarily in style but in just [that raw emotion] yeah and I think it’s continuing on in the face of adversity. I also think it’s really interesting that he’d written all these love poems for Sylvia Plath that he didn’t publish until nine months before he died, and if he’d done that earlier, the public perception of him might have been a bit more sympathetic, and he kind of kept it to himself. And when his daughter – he won an award for it after his death, collected it on his behalf, she quoted him, I’m just paraphrasing, she said, ‘it’s a shame we have to give away our secrets’, which was just really interesting, him referring to the fact, that he released this massive volume of love poems for Sylvia Plath, which kind of proved that he did care.

But intense influence, obviously my partner [Jimmy Page] is very influential, just in terms of how hard working he is and still is. And really, if I have an editor, it’s him. Like, and it’s funny, with ‘Lilith and the Midheaven’, the night before I sent it to the publisher, I was like, “Oh, I’m not sure, I don’t know, I was going to cut some stuff out”, and he was like, “Why are you doing that? That’s good, keep that in.” And he actually read [aloud] ‘Lillith in the Midheaven’. I was really questioning it. And he read it and in his voice I think, just the separation, it not being in my voice, I was like, ‘Oh okay, you know, I’m good with it.’ And he was like, “Yeah, you see, let’s keep that in, yeah?” So I did. And obviously talent is good and essential, but it’s just also working really hard and letting go of stuff. So I think he’s a great example for me, on a day to day basis.

Kathy: I want to ask both of you this next question – do you have any reading’s coming up?

Scarlett: Yeah, so I’ve got in November in London I’m doing actually a kind of reading at the Troubador, and I’m doing it with Reel Art Press, because they put out a beat book earlier this year, so we’re kind of going to be exhibiting some beat paraphernalia, some of Ginsberg’s letters, and photos from the beat book. I’m going to be performing with this amazing poet called, Oakley, and I saw him perform, well we performed together at the Byline Festival [August 2018]. That’s real exciting.

Kathy: Will either of you be performing any of Jack Kerouacs works tonight?

Scarlett: I’m performing tonight a poem I wrote kind of as soon as it was confirmed I was doing this event; so what is interesting is, Janaka and I, this is only the second time we’ve met. But we’ve got a friendship spanning years now, and its through correspondence because obviously we live in different countries. But the common thread that brought us together is the Beats. So we met at the 50th anniversary of the Holy Communion, and the Holy Communion was a four hour poetry reading in London at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965 that Jimmy went to. So we went to the 50th anniversary of that, and Janaka was this stand out poet and I was just like, ‘fuck, who is this guy??’ We connected through social media, and then when I was bringing out Zoreh and set to perform at City Lights, they were like okay we’ll find a poet for you to read with. I said, no, I know who I want to read with. And I said to him, okay we’ve never met, and I don’t know you, but if you’re able to fly to San Francisco in March? and Janaka was like yeah, I can do it. So we met for the first time, a half an hour before. And it was at that reading that we met Chris Porter and he came up to us at the end and was like, hey I’m doing this thing in Lowell, and my eyes like lit up, because when I read at Wellesley College, I visited and paid my respects in Lowell at Kerouacs grave, so coming here feels like everything aligned. When this was confirmed I wrote a poem for Jack Kerouac, just kind of it had so much beauty and purity to it as well but obviously kind of the tragedy, of his demise kind of drinking himself to death, and just being ridiculed as well being because he was new, he was popular. People said he was not a real writer. Kapote said he’s not writing, he’s just typing. So anyway, I’m performing a poem that’s still a work in progress, but it just felt right to share and infuse it with the energy of this evening. So I’m looking forward to doing that.

Kathy: They [Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones] just put out a new book, ‘Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin’, it features never before seen photos and correspondences. Can you respond to that? What is your take on it, like what do you think of it?

Scarlett: Can you believe that there are still never been seen images? I think the book is really important because it’s from the people that were actually there and lived it. And obviously it’s Jimmy’s band, and he created it and his notes you know he’s got a great memory. He was there and he was creating it and everything he did was intentional. And I think people always assume he’s so mysterious but even like on his website, that changes ever day, if you just look he’s giving you the answers. But I feel like so often there are books or interviews people do with him and they’ll ask him questions about an alleged story that may or may not have happened that keeps getting repeated and they want an updated quote on something that may not even be true. And I think it’s really, if you want to know anything about him, just read his own words and the music and that’s where kind of the motivation and the fact that he’s still working like 12 hour days, like insane work ethic, 50 years later, is why he is where he is and who he is. So I never have an excuse, no matter, you know my day job or whatever else I’ve been doing, I can never like slack because he’s there like, I can’t complain about being tired. And he has children and is a great dad so it’s like God I can’t complain about it. So I say get it because he really respects and loves people like you, and his fans, who love his music and get it and I think a lot of what he does it out of respect for that.

Scarlett came up next, performing pieces from Zoreh, The Lock and The Key and Rocking Underground, as well as her work-in-progress poem to Jack Kerouac. I can honestly say that reading her poetry is amazing, but hearing her read her poetry is an experience unto itself. The power and emotion that she conveys when she speaks her written word is cathartic.

#scarlett sabet #jimmy page #jimmy page girlfriend #led zeppelin #poet #poetry #the town and the city #the town and the city festival #zoreh #The lock and the key #Rocking Underground

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sightsoundrhythm · 6 years ago

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DALE CROVER

Dale Crover is a Los Angeles based musician best known for being the drummer in The Melvins. Since joining the band in 1984, The Melvins have released 21 albums to date, as well as numerous E.P.s, compilations and live recordings. Their most recent album, Pinkus Abortion Technician, is available now via Ipecac Recordings.

Dale's readily identifiable, bombastic, and creatively boundless style has remained an integral part of the band's sound throughout their 35 years together, helping to shape their unique output as well as influencing countless musicians and bands along the way.

In Addition to his work with The Melvins, Dale was also an early member of Nirvana, performing on their first demo as a band and appearing on three album releases, including their debut album Bleach on Sub Pop Records. He has also recorded and performed music with a multitude of different bands over the years including: Crystal Fairy, Hank Williams III and Shrinebuilder, to name a few, and he currently plays in Redd Kross, Altamont and leads the Dale Crover Band on vocals and guitar.

Pinkus Abortion Technician by Melvins

SIGHT/SOUND/RHYTHM spoke to Dale a few hours before a Melvins show at Leeds University, UK, to discuss his musical background, the past and present of The Melvins, and a few of the many musical projects that he's been involved in.

How's the tour been going so far?

Good, thanks. We have three shows left for this run after tonight.

You played here at Leeds University before, didn't you?

Yeah, we last played here about ten years ago.

Have you been next door to see where The Who's Live at Leeds was recorded?

Yeah, I just went over there to check it out. I'd seen it before when we were here last time but I had to go and take a picture of it. Buzz (Osbourne, Melvins frontman) was saying that he remembered seeing photos from Live at Leeds and that the stage was really shallow.

The Stones, Zeppelin, and tons of other bands played there, which is pretty impressive. I remember the last time we were here they had pictures up of The Who when they played there again in the mid '00s.

Whenever I'd listen to that record I always imagined that it was recorded in some really nice, pristine theatre, then I saw it and was like, this is where they recorded it? A crappy lunch room?! [laughs] It kind of makes sense I guess.

I was listening to Live at Leeds recently and I can hear some of that vocabulary in your playing – the way he played fills around the kit. Was Keith Moon a big influence on you?

Yeah, pretty big. I didn't really know The Who until I joined The Melvins. I heard them through Buzz, and he's a huge Who fan. They were, and probably still are, his favourite band. He always talked about how you can tell that Pete Townshend was writing with his drumming in mind on a lot of their material.

I met Jim Fox who drums in The James Gang not too long ago. Somebody had made him aware that we'd covered the song Stop on our new record, which they had done a cover of, too, so he came down to one of our shows.

They had done a bunch of shows with The Who in the U.S. during the seventies. Townsend really liked Joe Walsh's playing, so they invited them to come over here to the U.K. and tour. He said that the way that those guys toured was that they each had their own car and driver, so they got paired up together. So it'd be Joe Walsh with Pete Townshend, and Jim Fox got paired up with Keith Moon. Sometimes they'd ride with Roger (Daltrey) but they didn't like it because he drove his own car and they said that his driving was really crappy. [laughs]

I knew Jim would have a million Keith Moon stories, and he was like, 'Yeah... but he'd just pretty much pass out in the car for the whole day and then wake up at around 5pm'. Keith would be there asking, 'How was the show last night?' It was probably amazing, judging by how good Live at Leeds is.

What were you like as a kid?

I was kind of a goofy kid, glasses, but pretty normal. I heard music early on though. I had Beatles and Monkees records from when I was about six years old. I liked baseball, and still do. I didn't like it for a long time but now I like it again.

I grew up in a very small town with not a lot going on...

That's Aberdeen, Washington?

Yeah. I actually had parents that weren't divorced, unlike all of my other friends.

[Dale's phone vibrates]

Sorry, that's my friend Bob (Hannam). He's the guy who made our documentary. He's actually from Bradford.

[Laughs] Ah, ok. You and I actually met in Bradford in 1996 when you guys were touring Stag.

Oh, wow! Really?

Yeah, you'd just finished playing at a club called Rios. We hung out for a while afterwards and you, Buzz and Mark Deutrom were teaching me and my friend how to play Craps in the car park with some dice that you'd recently picked up in Las Vegas.

[Laughs] That's crazy!

I remember that tour. The Seattle thing was kind of over by that point and I remember our booking agent trying to talk us out of doing the whole tour in the U.K. He was saying, 'Look, it's going to be bad. London will be fine, but you just shouldn't do it'. We really wanted to do it though... but, on the whole, it was really under-attended.

Yeah, I think there were probably around 50 people there and you guys were doing three sets.

That's right, we did!

I remember you ending one of the sets with Cottonmouth...

Right! We were just talking about that the other day, about how I used to play guitar from behind the kit and sing that.

I gotta ask my friend really quick about this show. [Dale sends a text to Bob Hannam]

Melvins were playing three sets a night on that tour. How did you prepare yourself for that?

Practicing a lot, plus when you get on tour you get used to playing pretty quickly. I think by that point we had been on tour for a while. Prior to that we had already played shows before where we had done two or three sets. Once you get past the second set you're already warmed up and can do it without any problems.

I did it last year when we were playing over here in England with Melvins and Redd Kross, so I'd be doing a set with both bands, and by the Melvins set I'd be fully warmed up.

How old were you when you first started playing?

I guess officially I would've probably been about eleven or twelve.

I found out that my neighbour had a drum set in their basement that they didn't really play and I somehow talked him into letting me take it home, just to bang around on it. I also played guitar from when I was around eight years old, and I always liked both.

I remember being in a talent show in fifth or sixth grade and playing guitar. I taught my friend that lived across the alley from me how to play the drums for it.

Around that same time I had this older friend who lived a block away, who eventually went on to play in the band Metal Church, and he befriended me. By that point I was already into Kiss, who I had seen play when I was in sixth grade, but he turned me on to Zeppelin and stuff like that. He was even showing me how to play rock songs on the guitar, like Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent, but then at some point he said, 'You know, you should get a drum set so we can jam!' So that's kind of how I started.

Did you have an immediate connection with the instrument?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I was already really into it, even before that... especially with Kiss. That was the band that made me want to play music.

I don't even know if schools have much of a music program anymore, but starting in fourth grade back then you could play a stringed instrument, so I started playing cello. Then in fifth grade you could play a brass instrument, so I wanted to play the tuba [laughs], but then rock and roll basically took over and I switched in the following year and got a snare drum. I had a paper route and I delivered papers to buy my first drum set, and I had it by the seventh grade.

That first drum set was from the 60's and it got pretty thrashed. I used it when I was in The Melvins, too.

What was it like growing up somewhere that didn't have a music scene?

It was weird. Even then a lot of the music that I liked wasn't being played on the local radio, so I found out about stuff through my older friends. One of my friends got into a cover band and I used to go and watch them practice all the time.

I actually met a drummer who was pretty good from the neighbouring town, whose brother actually ended up marrying my sister. He had a Ludwig Octaplus drum set with double bass drums and eight toms. After a while I wasn't into Kiss anymore and I got into Rush, so I was really into Neil Peart.

You're going to need those toms!

[laughs] Exactly! I never got there though.

At one point, the drum set I had in The Melvins was a red sparkle kit which had two mismatched bass drums from different kits. They were the same colour but they didn't quite match.

So I had two bass drums, two rack toms, a floor tom, and then another big floor tom in the centre, so it was this kind of weird pyramid/diamond shape. It was held up by gravity and shitty stands and I couldn't afford cymbals. When I eventually could, I remember buying one and bringing it to practice and those guys taking it from me and hiding it. I could only use it when we played shows because I just used to break them, you know.

Did the geographical isolation of Aberdeen help you guys as a band?

Definitely. I mean, all we did was practice when we started, but really we made most of our music away from there. It inspired us to play because there was really nothing else to do, besides smoke weed and drink.

Do you still have family there?

No, not anymore. Both of my parents have passed away. My mom had actually already moved out of there when she retired and so she went to Olympia. There was a lot more going on there, and when The Melvins first started out that's where we would go and play. I mean, there was no place to play in Aberdeen at all, and nobody would've liked it anyway.

How supportive were they when you first started playing?

They were really supportive. I remember the day that Buzz and Matt came over to talk to me about playing in The Melvins. My mom had just been saying to me, 'You know, you've got to find a band that's really going to do something', because the stuff I was doing at the time really wasn't going anywhere.

I already knew who they were from seeing them open for Metal Church in Aberdeen, and nobody liked them. That was the one gig that happened there ever, besides some school dances.

I'd actually seen them already because this cover band that I played in had done a benefit for a live radio show which was happening at Christmas time at Elk's Lodge, which The Melvins were also playing. They were the only band around who were playing original material, which I thought was kind of cool. I didn't know anything about punk rock then besides what I'd read, and I'd never heard it because you couldn't find any of those records. I'd seen the film Rock & Roll High School, and the only thing I could relate it to was that they kind of sounded like The Ramones and also like Motorhead, so I liked it. My other band mates thought it sucked, probably because it was competition for them.

Before all of that my bands were practicing at our house. We had a little four bedroom house and my older brothers had already moved out and gone to college, so I had command of three bedrooms. The one at the back of the house was where we would practice. When I first joined the Melvins we practiced for about a month before our first show.

Where was that first show?

In Olympia.

Do you remember much about it?

It was us opening for D.O.A., and I think it went well.

There was another one a week later that was with Green River and a band called The He-Sluts at the Tropicana in Olympia. The U-Men were supposed to play, who were a pretty popular Seattle band, but for whatever reason they didn't show up. There is a recording of that show available.

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[Dale receives a text from Bob Hannam]

Bob said about that Bradford show: “Yeah, you did three sets. My friend left half way through because he couldn't stand it.” [laughs]

What were the things that were important to you when you first started playing and how have they changed over time?

Good question. Well, it's not so important for me to play fast anymore. [laughs]

Things have changed and grown so much that it's really hard to say. Even from our first recordings to now, they're far different, but I guess that comes with experience. We still practice a lot, so some things haven't changed. We have our own studio now and we're able to record whenever we want to. I think that's helped us musically.

When we did our first record, we'd rehearse those songs so much before we ever got to record them, and we probably beat some of them into the ground and ruined what the original feeling was.

Did you record the first album with a label in mind to release it?

No, not with the first record. There are probably a chunk of songs that never got recorded because we didn't have the means to do it. We'd play them live a few times and then get sick of them and write new songs that we liked more, so there were probably at least a full album's worth of songs that we never even recorded, which we've probably since forgotten about, too.

They might be on some cassette tape somewhere. When we can't play anymore we'll dig up all the stuff from the archives, kind of like the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series.

Similar to The Mangled Demos?

Yeah. That stuff was all with Mike Dillard who was the original drummer.

How long was Mike playing in The Melvins before you joined?

Probably for about a year. The band started in 1983 and I think that once Buzz started to write songs that were a little more complicated, Mike wasn't quite comprehending it. We're all still good friends and we did the Melvins 1983 record with him on drums.

It's cool because he still feels like a part of the band, and whenever we hang out with him it's like we're back in eighth grade again. [laughs] He and Buzz used to cause a lot of trouble when they were teenagers.

It's nice that you still have that connection. Were there any things in particular that you remember trying to master when you first started?

Oh, gosh. Well, I remember playing to Kiss records.

I'm sure that there were triplet fills which incorporated the bass drum and stuff like that, or just trying to figure how drummers did certain things.

I remember even before I started taking lessons that the Bay City Rollers had a Saturday morning variety show in the States and they were huge. I wasn't really a fan of those guys but I could watch the drummer on the show and I could see how he played certain things.

I mean, I had a pretty good time figuring stuff out, and it wasn't too difficult.

How long were you taking lessons for?

Probably about three or four years, and that started because there was a school band when I was in Junior High School, which had a lot of drummers, probably more than most school bands would have. Most schools would have one or two and we had up to eight.

There was a professor at the junior college who was a jazz drummer and he offered lessons for 50 cents per kid if we'd go in on Saturdays. So there were drummers there who were older than me who had seniority and they were first chair, but none of them showed up. So it was me and one other kid, who couldn't play very well.

The next week came and only I showed up and the drum teacher said, 'I was hoping that this was going to go a little better and that more people would show up, but I can't really give you lessons for just fifty cents [laughs], but if you want to take private lessons with me I can do it for six bucks an hour'. So that's where I started learning rudiments as well as working on proper technique, which I still practice now.

A lot of players who hit as hard as you do aren't always that aware of their own technique but this seems to be something that you're definitely aware of.

Yeah, these days there's less movement in my drumming. I realised this recently that I use my fingers when I'm playing a lot more now. When I was younger I didn't really sit around and practice all of that stuff too much – I just wanted to play rock songs, but now I do a lot more of that stuff. Also, I still feel like I'm still learning. I'll go on Youtube and figure stuff out and look at how other people play, which is great.

It's a process that never ends.

Yeah!

Have you had any physical problems from playing at all?

I pinched a nerve in my shoulder when we were playing with Jello Biafra. We were practicing a lot and I moved my arm in a weird way and that was it. It took a long time to heal. It was... it was fucked, [laughs] but I still had to play and get through it.

How are your ears holding up?

I'm hard of hearing and they're going for sure. I've actually got hearing aids but I don't wear them all of the time. When I'm around my kids I have a hard time hearing them, so it was something that I'd thought about for a long time and I finally got them.

You've always struck me as a very ego-less player in a lot of ways. I can't imagine many drummers being completely willing to include a second drummer into a band, or switching to bass for an entire record and letting another drummer take over.

Likewise with your playing itself. I remember first hearing the intro to the song 'Queen' from Stoner Witch and being impressed at how simple the opening part was, which I found to be equally as impressive as some of your more complex playing. I feel that a lot of drummers wouldn't dare to play something so simplistic like that.

Do you have a particular philosophy towards drumming that informs how you play?

No, not necessarily. It all depends on the song.

With regards to being ego-less, there are a lot of drummers who wouldn't like it if a guitar player said, 'I want you to play it like this'. But, for me, it's like: well, he wrote the song!

Sometimes I might not know what exactly to play and Buzz might have an idea for what he's already hearing. This gets back to how someone like Pete Townshend wrote for Keith Moon, and a lot of the time Buzz writes with me in mind. That isn't always the case. Sometimes he might not know what needs to be played and then I'll come up with something.

How does Buzz dictate some of those ideas to you?

A lot of it is just him telling me where he hears certain ideas, and sometimes some of that is hard to learn in order to get it right, but he's got great ideas.

The band has gone through many line up changes over the course of 35 years. Most bands wouldn't have lasted as long under the same circumstances. Do you think that this has worked to your advantage as a band?

Yeah, it's certainly kept it fresh. We never wanted to part ways with anybody in particular, it just always came down to personal problems. After we had Kevin Rutmanis playing bass – that was a really hard break up because we really liked him but he had troubles that were affecting the band.

After that we went back into it not wanting to have anyone that we would consider permanent anymore. We want to have an open relationship basically [laughs], and that's worked great!

This current line up of The Melvins features two bass players (Jeff Pinkus and Steve McDonald). Has playing in this configuration forced you to alter your approach at all?

I don't think so.

Does it help to create more musical opportunities?

Yeah. I try to play with them both, so I'm not really following one or the other. They've both come up with their own parts for the whole thing.

What were the musical challenges for you when including Cody Willis from Big Business into the band as a second drummer? I know that you had talked in the past about including Dave Grohl as a second drummer in the mid nineties so I'm guessing that this was something you'd been interested in doing for a while.

Yeah, after Nirvana broke up we actually asked him if he'd like to come and join us. It was an open invitation to come and do whatever, whether that would have been recording or playing a show. We heard that he was into it, and we saw his old band mates in Scream who said that Dave had even drawn up some plans for building one large drum set that we would both play, but it never went any further. Soon after he formed Foo Fighters and that was that.

So, yeah, it was something that we had been thinking about for a while, and we kind of did it with the Melvins/Fantomas Big Band with Dave Lombardo, so we knew that it would work. There was another guy that we asked who was in a band called Hovercraft but he didn't want to do it. We had toured with them and he would keep his drum set out and then come out and play the song 'Amazon' with us, so we knew that it was an idea that would work.

After Kevin left the band my wife actually suggested that we ask Jared, who plays bass in Big Business alongside Cody, to join the band, because she'd been friends with him, and we'd played shows with them before. So I mentioned that to Buzz and he said, 'Why don't we just ask both of them to do it?'

I thought it'd be cool. Cody plays left handed so we were able to put the two sets together and share certain parts of the kit.

We just asked them to come down and play, not to try out for the band, just to see what they thought, and it happened right away. We worked really hard on everything. Funnily enough, they were already thinking about moving down to L.A. to begin with.

You played on some really early Nirvana recordings, including tracks that ended up on the album Bleach. What are some of the standout memories you have from recording those sessions with Jack Endino at Reciprocal?

They wanted to do a demo so that they could get a permanent drummer, basically, and I worked it all out with those guys. We drove over to Reciprocal Recording and did ten songs, which were done really quickly. Whenever I listen to some of those songs now I'm reminded that we were drinking coffee and eating chocolate covered espresso beans, so you can hear some of those songs speed up, but we weren't really too worried about because it was just a demo. They ended up going back later to remix and use some of those songs. That night after recording we went and played our first show, then the next day we shot a video at Radio Shack in Aberdeen.

We had a friend who was the manager there and the video is just us miming along to one of the songs [laughs]. We were sort of messing around. It was fun!

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Among the many projects that you've been involved with, you and Buzz played with Omar and Teri in Crystal Fairy not so long ago. What was it like doing that project? Will you be doing anything more with it?

Unfortunately I don't know that any more will happen with it but we really liked writing songs with Teri. We just got in a room to figure out what kind of songs we wanted to write, and both Buzz and Teri had a few ideas. Within the first day of getting together we had written and recorded three songs that were damn near done. She's really quick at writing and comes up with amazing lyrics. I'd never played with a singer who could just come up with melody and good lyrics right off the top of their head like that. It's crazy.

Yeah, it was cool hearing her in a different context to what I had heard her in before. It's a great record.

Yeah! I'm involved in it of course but I think she was doing things that she'd never done before with that record. It was one of my favourite things that I've been involved in at that point, so I was really bummed that it fell apart and that we didn't get to play any shows.

Buzz and I were really committed to it. We were going to put The Melvins on hold because we thought that it was something that was really special. So that was a tough loss.

Your musical relationship with Buzz is now into its third decade. What is it that makes the relationship between the two of you work so well?

I don't know. We were in a working relationship before we were really friends, which is probably different from most bands.

I think just keeping our heads together and being realistic about everything, and really wanting it to work. Bands usually break up for stupid reasons but, for whatever reason, we never wanted to quit. I'm really happy about it. We've never really gotten into fights or anything like that. We get along well.

When we're at home we sometimes hang out and go to a baseball game together, or maybe the movies or go play golf. We don't live in the same neighbourhood, so we aren't over at each other's houses much, maybe once or twice a year, but we see each other all of the time elsewhere anyway.

How does being a dad fit in with being a touring musician at this point? What do your kids make of what you do?

I think they like it. Sometimes kids at their school even know who the band is. They've come to see us play and have pretty much grown up with it but it is hard for them, especially when I first leave. It's hard for me, too.

Before we even had kids, me and my wife would have long talks about how it would work. I mean, I have to keep doing this because this is how I make money, so it's going to be hard but we just have to deal with it the best we can. It's a strange life. Not everybody has that. The one thing I could maybe relate it to would be like someone being in the military, but then those people are sometimes gone for longer.

I relate things to baseball a lot, too, [laughs] but baseball players will play a hundred and sixty two games a year and half of those are away. The only thing that's probably easier for them is that they aren't in one place for a single night, so they'll play at a place for three or four nights. I wish we could do that. That'd be great! [laughs]

What are the things you spend the most amount of time thinking about these days?

You mean besides baseball? [laughs] I honestly don't know. I try to live in the moment.

What are some of the things that are currently challenging you?

Trying to schedule everything in my life, because there's so much going on.

Melvins is always a solid schedule, but when I get home I also have a solo band now and I also play with Redd Kross, then there will be more Melvins shows. So just trying to get everything to fit in and still have time for family.

I'm trying to do all of these things and not feel like I've got too much on my plate and still be able to get everything done.

It's a hard balance.

Yeah, it is.

Well, thanks for taking the time to do this, Dale. It's massively appreciated.

Thank you!

Interview by Dave Jones.

2 notes · View notes

ronanwazlib · 7 years ago

Note

Request: maybe Remus has a little sister who is the flower girl at his wedding (marrying Sirius?)

Sirius’ hands shook as his fingers stumbled over the buttons at his collar.

“Are you nervous, mate?” Ron asked, and with a quick flick of his wand, finished off the rows of open buttons trailing down Black’s chest.

“Thanks.” Sirius breathed, and then scrubbed a hand over his face, the stark light of the dressing room illuminating his cheekbones with a shiny pallor. “Nah. Me? Nervous? Course not… Just worried it’ll be even worse than the first time.”

“Wait… what happened the first time?” One Of the boys, he thinks maybe one of Harry’s, chimes in from where he’s allowing Arthur to polish his shoes via magical grease.

Sirius barks out a brisk laugh, thinking back to the day. They’d never thought of getting married, not really. Being together after everything was enough for them. They’d survived his family’s prejudices, lycanthropy, becoming animagi as children, the Prank, Hogwarts, and were on their way to fight a bloody war, and still their fondness of each other never faltered. That was enough for them, he’d thought. They didn’t need rings or declarations or charmed wedding cake toppers at that. But then Lily and James had gotten engaged, and they’d each done their fair share planning the slapdash wedding, no matter how small-scale. And as they all shed tears that day which felt a bit more anxious than happy, the mood overall was too “This life is semi-permanent” rather than “this love will last forever” and seeing Moony preen over a slice of chocolate wedding cake (one layer especially made for him by the Potter’s overly fond house elf) and knowing they might not have each other forever, Sirius suddenly wanted this. Wanted just one moment of time that could be theirs forever, link them together once more in case the other ties that bound their hearts frayed and tethers were torn apart.

So following the Potter’s frantic summer wedding, Remus and Sirius had their own, even more thrown together and hasty. Lily was fuming of course because “of all the stupid and daft ideas” they had to go wanting an autumn wedding literal weeks before she gave birth? She still helped them plan it all anyways. It was a rather small affair, held in the field outside one of the Order’s safehouses.

Their friends from the Order, those alive anyways, all attended, as did Dumbledore, which was odd because of all the things they’d never have figured, it would be their former headmaster in support of their union while danger lurked and there was a battle to be won. They’d all supposed he just enjoyed a good party that much until Minerva had found all those letters he’d written to Grindlewald as a boy, sealed within a compartment of his desk, and realized why it was so important to him. The Blacks were not informed of the occasion, partly because many of them were Deatheaters, but mostly because Sirius would rather vomit out his own organs than see any of them again, besides Andy, but it was too rushed for her and Ted to come.

Remus wore a lovely suit sewn for him by Molly Prewitt out of his dad’s old wedding attire, and Sirius wore Fleamont’s best dress robes, as he didn’t quite think he could squeeze into the tiny Hope Howell’s decadent white gown (although he did try). Only Lyall himself was in attendance, looking aged and rather small in his chair, Remus’ mother having died while they were finishing school. And Remus’ young sister, just nearly six years old by that time.

She’d been quite the surprise, born in the winter of their third year just before hols. A thirteen year old Remus hadn’t even know his mother was pregnant, he got a letter by owl the week before their vacation began revealing all to him so as to avoid total shock upon his arrival back to the family home, which was, at the time somewhere in Northern England. They’d had to move for much of his childhood to avoid suspicion, but once he began at Hogwarts, his parents were able to be stationary for much longer with him gone most of the year. But after what had happened, his father’s guilt and the rift it drove between his parents, not to mention his mother’s hesitance to let her only son go off to wizard school and the overall taxation of having a lycanthropic son would all be things he would have assumed would have prevented any further offspring. But then, there she was in his arms that Christmas morning, little baby Rudina.

Moony wasn’t much for children, Sirius recalled. He was too worried he’d drop them or hurt them, and the fact that he spent most of his own time as one in pain and hiding rather than around other kids made him awkward about how to interact. But, damn, if he didn’t love Rudie. She walked down the aisle at their wedding, shrugging around in the garishly poofy white… thing… Marlene had stuffed her in, trying to precisely toss out exactly 4 petals each time her hand dipped into the basket of tiny star jasmine. She had her mother’s wispy hair, the same goldenrod hue as her brother, and like him her skin had a bronze undertone, but rather than being littered with scars, it was blessedly (in Moony’s opinion, since Sirius loved every scar because it was part of him) sprinkled with hundreds of freckles. Her gap toothed grin beamed up at her adored sibling as she scattered petals down the makeshift aisle, before Sirius approached, lead by James as they both tried not to think about how Fleamont hadn’t done this for either of them.

The ceremony was short, Dumbledore spoke the words to marry them. Of course, their marriage was in spirit only; registered werewolves were forbidden from spousal unions, and even if they weren’t, Moony’s match would have had to be a woman to be recognized under Ministry laws. But it had been a good day, despite the rushed cobbling together of everything, the absence of so many loved ones, the way Sirius had felt Remus’ grip on his wrist tighten to the point of discomfort as he slid on the silver band engraved with tiny stars.

“What didn’t go wrong, honestly…” Sirius joked in reply to the boy, whom he now realized was Teddy himself, his stepson. And it was true… They went straight back after that one night. No honeymoon period did soldiers get, and sleeping side by side in the same bed they’d shared since leaving school in their dingy London flat, it almost felt like he’d dreamed the entire affair. In truth, Remus had been acting strange for a while, and it seemed as though having the ring encircling one finger served as a constant reminder of the bond he was betraying; he was coarse and irritable from then on.

Harry was born, and Sirius and Remus were both swept up in that joy for such a short time before Dumbledore appeared in their fireplace with grim tidings of a prophecy, and the Potters went into hiding. Acting as Secret-Keeper and saving James from his incessant restlessness and terror consumed so much of his time, but being honest Sirius didn’t mind as it kept him from pondering well into many a sleepless night where his husband was going off to in secret, and why he’d heard tellings that the “Lupin boy” had finally gone round to the dark side. When he did return, climbing beneath the covers with all the silence of the weight settled between them, Sirius bit his lip until it bled, trying to ignore the foreign scent of smoke and wood and musk which lingered in his lover’s hair, in the lines on his skin, and forbid himself to think it was that of Fenrir Greyback or some other such devil.

Handing his duty over to Pete, who was ever more elusive following his role as groomsman, he had no reason to leave the house. He went out into Muggle London when he could force himself to leave his bed. The whole world seemed awash in runny slate greys and deep blue. He got tattoos… a lot of them, just to feel something, and worked on his bike. But not even hands covered in violet bruises and engine grease couldn’t entice a hold, and his rows with Remus grew in increasing frequency, although after a while his responses became automatic, and within he only felt lost and tired. His brother died, he saw the obit in the Prophet. There was probably a funeral… he wasn’t invited. He spent the entire day after he found out on the Tonk’s couch, while his young cousin petted and braided ribbons into his unkept locks.

One morning in spring, Rudie began showing signs of magic. She knocked a stack of books off the shelf in her father’s study from the kitchenette. Lyall called Remus right away, because directly after the little girl had collapsed. Rudie had always been a frail child; she’d come a bit early but St. Mungo’s had given their all into saving both her and the mother from harm, though her birth weakened Hope considerably… and a few short years later, nearing the Marauders final terms, she’d succumbed to cancer and left her two cariads behind. Now it seemed the strain magic had on her slight frame was too much, and she took to bed often, where sometimes pillows would fluff themselves, or handkerchiefs would fly above her sweating head of their own accord. That simmering summer brought a fresh wave of the dragon pox which had robbed James and Sirius of the two people besides their merry band of four they’d loved the most, and when it dissipated with the first crisp bite of chilly weather, Moony was an only child again. And thus the tendrils of unexpected sunshine that had beamed into his life crept beneath the cooling soil, and he was left with only the bitter embrace of the moon.

They spent much more time with Andromeda, Sirius to have some sort of mourning with his family, for his family, and Remus because he suddenly took new joy in playing and babysitting little Nymphadora, whose spunky, gaptoothed grin reminded him of Rudie’s.

Then came that fateful Halloween. And they’d buried their two best friends, begrudging trust keeping them just close enough to each hold onto infant Harry. Neither of them knew what they were doing. Even less so when Sirius knew he had to find Peter, or Remus and Harry would never be safe. When he did, it all fell to shit. Sirius lost control, and Peter was gone. Sirius met the eyes of his former headmaster as he was lead away to Azkaban, Remus shouting at the Aurors both for his release and for Harry, who was being pried from his “unfit” parental grip. Despite his high seat of power, and his knowledge of their arrangement, the only thing Sirius found in his shifting gaze was a cool acceptance which sent shivers down to his bones. In that moment he had lost all hope, and some days he couldn’t scrounge up one happy though from his cavernous skull, and had to settle for twisting the silver band round his bony knuckles so often a red ring bloomed across his blueing flesh.

Escape, freedom, a war. He returned to find Remus a broken man who dared not look him in the eyes and an empty house full of ghosts. Harry was alright, he’d ended up back with Lupin after a stint round his dreadful muggle family’s, and later a short while with Andromeda, as she was his godfather’s blood. Sirius was glad of that at least. The Dark Lord returned and was defeated. Black found Nymphadora and Remus had grown very close in his absence, a camaraderie he soon fell in step alongside after he’d wept for hours one silent night on the stairs of Grimmauld Place in his Moony’s arms, and they’d finally become the two of them again. Remus never wanted to let go of him, or have Sirius be from his sight. He’d cut his hair, just some, healed his wounds, silenced every whimper in the night with soft words and softer lips against his brow.

Tonks, as his cousin was now called, mothered him much too well for his liking, the impish grin she wore paired with her bossy jabs at him to eat. She was young, but comfortable in herself. Turned out she was like him, a family shame in more ways than one, but most especially for fancying fillies. Yet as the war grew worse and worse, she struggled with the thought that she would give up everything to its gapping maw and vanish unfulfilled. She wanted something to leave behind, a legacy beyond remnants of a cheeky greeting in young Potter’s ears and flashes of bubblegum hair tucked behind her hooped ears. She pestered Remus constantly, as he and Sirius were the only men she felt comfortable with, and both Black sheep rather wanted to end the traditional incestuous liaisons so common within their Most Noble House.

Eventually, he conceded, if only because Harry wouldn’t be young forever, and he’d found himself rather taken with fatherhood once he’d begun it. And thus, Teddy was born, with the aid of a little Mungo magic, of course. It was a rather odd arrangement if one overthought it, but then again, so much of their lives had seemed impossible. The blue haired bundle was a light in the coming darkness, and when it had passed, Sirius thought for once he might have that proper family he’d promised his godson.

And then the changing tide brought new tidings once again. The Ministry finally found a change of spell-encircled heart: The Registry was overturned, the records erased, and unions were now recognized between Muggles and Wizards of any gender, so long as they were within legal age. And thus, in their 50s, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin did one more ridiculous thing… They got married for a second time. Moony’s hair was nearly all grey now, but Padfoot had proudly retained all his ebony locks, save for one or two “distinguished” silver strands at his browline.

“Aw, don’t worry, Uncle Pads.” said Al from his spot by the long mirror, currently chanting out compliments to any who stopped to fix a stray hair or adjust a bow tie. “If ‘twere really that bad, it cant be any worse now!”

“And plus, it’s official this time!” Said Fred the Second as he tied a shoelace, and was met with a chorus of “Yea, Freddy two!” from the men in the room. Hugo made an affirmative noise, then told his cousin to stop trying to make “Fred the Second” an established nickname because it was pompous and dumb. Al and his brother laughed, chins ducked to pin on boutonnieres.

“Nah.” Sirius murmured, as they all prepared to exit, this wonderful family they’d amassed from nothing, and greet a hall full of many more important people in attendance this second time round, like Minnie at last, and the Tonks, Hagrid, Poppy, who’d always known when they were back at school because no normal “friend” spent that many nights sneaking into those uncomfortable cots in her hospital wing, nor had to be woken up tangled carefully together with the injured limbs of a still sleeping werewolf to be ushered off the morning Potions every time. Many were absent too… but this was finally their moment. No fear, or secrecy. It wasn’t a do over… it wasn’t their happy ending. It was a grateful, overjoyed beginning. Sirius pushed open the doors, Harry’s arm looped through his own, and broke out into a grin the moment Remus turned to meet his eyes, gasping out, “Pads,” as though he were seeing him with new eyes.

#this took so so long I'm sorry #also it got rlly angsty SORRY I don't like deviating from canon and Remus is an only child and his life is sad #I really liked the idea of them getting married when it was legalized so.... I just went with the uk's 2014 legalization #but also I was like well they had to have done SOMETHJNG enforce that #and lmfao Sirius would be extra enough to demand his own wedding #also rudina is just a girls name in many Latin languages meaning of the wolf or something of that sort #and I liked the r like Remus so....#moony #wolfstar #wolfstar fanfic #wolfstar fanfiction #wolfstar au #wolfstar wedding #wedding au #harry potter fandom #harry potter fanfic #hp #hp fanfic #remus x sirius #remus lupin #sirius black #harry potter #fanfic requests #fanfic #ask #lgbt wedding #wizarding world wedding #pads #honeydukesfinestfanfics

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the-master-cylinder · 5 years ago

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SUMMARY At a corporation’s base on the Neptunian moon Triton, mercenaries are setting up a defense perimeter to try to hold off an unstoppable cyborg warrior. The commander Saggs and scientist Nabel seal themselves inside the control room. The cyborg destroys the soldiers’ tank and then attacks a helicopter, which crashes into the control room. The soldiers are killed one by one, until Nabel finally deactivates the cyborg with a remote control. The remaining corporate employees discover that the cyborg was created by Nabel for company owner E.J. Saggs. Saggs takes the remote from Nabel. He reactivates the cyborg and orders it to kill Nabel.

Meanwhile, John Canyon, one of the last independent “space truckers”, drops off his cargo of square pigs at a “truck stop” space station, but becomes embroiled in a brawl with the trucking company head, Keller, who is sucked out into space. He and his two passengers—Cindy, a waitress who has promised to marry him in exchange for a ride to Earth to see her mother, and Mike, an up-and-coming trucker working for the company—take on a deal to transport alleged sex dolls to Earth. Chased by police investigating Keller’s death, John takes his rig into the “scum zone”, a region controlled by pirates. The rig takes damage, leaving them adrift; they are soon captured by the pirate ship Regalia, commanded by the company-hating Captain Macanudo. Cindy agrees to have sex with him if he would take the cargo and let them go.

The captain is revealed to be Nabel, who rebuilt his grievously injured body and went into piracy as revenge against Saggs for betraying him. The cargo that John’s rig is carrying is in fact a full supply of the cyborg warriors Nabel designed and built for Saggs’ company. One of the cyborgs comes alive, kills most of the crew, and severely damages the ship. John, Cindy and Mike take their rig and escape as the Regalia explodes. As they make their way back to Earth, John and Mike find a mortally wounded Macanudo in the hold, who reveals the true nature of the cargo to them. John releases Cindy from any obligation of marrying him, and tells her and Mike to take the escape pod while he releases the cargo in the atmosphere, where it will burn up on re-entry. Cindy and Mike land safely, but the rig is unable to return to space and explodes in the sky; however, John is able to safely escape before the explosion.

John, Cindy and Mike go to the hospital to see Cindy’s mother, who became sick twenty years earlier and was frozen until a cure was found; John is smitten with her at first sight. Meanwhile, Saggs—now President of Earth after the government was privatized—visits John, Cindy and Mike in the hospital, where he offers John a new rig and gives the trio a suitcase full of money to keep them quiet about his cyborg invasion plan. John agrees to the deal, but Mike angrily throws the suitcase out the window. Below, Saggs re-enters his presidential limousine; having planted a bomb in the suitcase, he triggers the detonator just as the suitcase lands on his limousine’s roof, killing him. With Saggs dead and Earth safe, Mike, Cindy, John and Cindy’s mother blast off in their brand new rig.

DEVELOPMENT/PRE-PRODUCTION Unlike a lot of studio pictures, SPACE TRUCKERS had only one screenwriter, Ted Mann. “Ted and I just knocked out the scenes of the story together, and he would go out and write a draft,” Gordon explained. “We would go over it together, and make changes. It was done very much in tandem. We were both frustrated astronauts, so we were on the same wavelength.

We had to start dealing with the budget and realized that certain sequences as written would not be affordable, so Ted and I would go back and think about how could we do this simpler. Instead of having five locations, could we do the sequence in two?”

According to Gordon, the solutions he and Mann found often improved the sequences. “For example,” he said, “in the earlier drafts, the InterPork henchmen hijack John Canyon’s load, and there was this elaborate scene of him having to couple his rig to the back end of their booster and work his way across the cargo, break into the tow truck, where there’s a fight, and it ends up with one of these characters getting sucked out through the window.

Once the film was written and designed, it needed to be cast. Gordon selected Dennis Hopper to play John Canyon because he was a fan of Hopper’s work and because he needed someone who conveyed the impression of being a veteran of life, a quintessential maverick. Hopper proved interested in playing a sympathetic character for a change. “Dennis Hopper has really been quite wonderful,” said Gordon, “because what he did from the very beginning is made it very clear that he wanted John Canyon to be a real person. I felt that his decision was right on the money. He felt that there was so much stuff in the movie that was strange and funny and weird, that there had to be somebody in there who grounded it. He really underplayed him and made him a very real guy and resisted getting too big with him, because if you do that, it’s like a parody of a parody and you end up with nothing. He wanted to be someone who the audience could relate to and think, “This is me in this situation.’ It’s a very rich portrayal. The fear in something like this is that it could turn into something like SPACEBALLS. In order for there to be real tension, there had to be characters that you cared about and were worried about, and Dennis was able to do that.

“He contributed a lot of things,” Gordon added. “The hat he wears is something that Dennis came up with. The costume designer had come up with a whole bunch of hats, and one of the hats that he made had a brim that would snap off so that you could wear it inside a space helmet. Dennis took a look at it and just unsnapped it and wore it like that, and the result is a hat that looks very much like a rebel soldier’s in the Civil War when he wears it with the short brim, which I think really set up the sense that John Canyon was an independent trucker, a postmodern rebel.

“One of best lines in the movie is something that Dennis came up with right on the set, that was not scripted at all: after they have made a daring escape Mike says, “That’s some of the best driving I ever saw.’ Dennis just turns to him and says, “Pedal to the metal and played footsie with fate.’ The whole crew just sat there with their mouths hanging open, which was great.

“He was very much there for us. He was also supportive of the whole process when there were those delays. Other movie stars would have gotten nervous and gone with another project or bailed, but Dennis stuck with us. Dennis brought in Stephen Dorff, and Stephen really idolizes Dennis. Stephen had some questions whether a film called SPACE TRUCKERS would be a good career move, and Dennis said to him, “You can have fun with this,’ and they really kind of bonded in a kind of father son relationship.”

Stephen Dorff plays Mike Pucci, who makes a deal with Cindy the waitress that if he can get her to Earth, she will marry him. “Dorff is like a young Dennis Hopper,” Gordon said. “In the story his character starts out wanting to work for the big corporation, but by the end of the movie he is an independent trucker. He becomes a young John Canyon. There’s even a line in the movie John Canyon says, “I don’t want you to end up like me. ‘Stephen Dorff says, ‘Heaven forbid.’ At that point you know he will.

“Stephen Dorff is like Dennis in that he approaches things very realistically. If he can’t believe it, he can’t do it. He took what was a very sketchy character in the script and fleshed him out to make him real. He caught on to what we’re going for. “White trash in space’ is how he put it, trailer park guys who are in space.”

Cindy is played by Debi Mazar. Claimed Gordon, “I could actually say the part was written for her. Ted Mann and she worked together on a TV series called CIVIL WARS, where she played a secretary in a divorce attorney’s office. I used to watch the show and became a big fan of hers. When we were working on the first couple of drafts, the part was very bland and uninteresting, and Ted and I were talking about some ways to develop the character, and at one point, one of us mentioned why don’t we make it to Debi Mazar and from that point on, the part just took on a life of its own. She came in and read the part. There were no doubts that she should play that part.”

Gordon originally went with Ron Houser for the part of Captain Macanudo, who has been partially disintegrated and rebuilt, his inner workings visible through a transparent plastic shell. But the actor was replaced partway into shooting. Explains Gordon, “He is a wonderful actor, but it was one of those situations where his style of acting was at odds with what everyone else was doing. While everyone else was trying to ground their performances for the audience, Ron went in the opposite direction a bit.”

To replace him, Gordon went with Charles Dance, who had also been under consideration for the part. “Charles Dance was a happy accident, in a way,” Gordon recalls. “We were staying at the same hotel as he was, in London, and ran into him in the lobby one day and described the movie, and he said, ‘Let me look at the script. About a week later, I got a call from him that he wanted to play Captain Macanudo. I found out later that he had liked the script but wasn’t sure as this character was very different from anything that he had ever played before, and he showed it to his teenage daughter who said, ‘This is great, Dad. You should do this.’ That convinced him. No one has ever seen him play comedy before, and he’s wonderful. He had to undergo four to six hours of makeup every day to play the part, but again, he found a way to humanize a character who could have been just a cartoon, and there is this almost sexy quality about him as well, even though he’s half man and half machine. There is still a charisma that comes through all that makeup. By the end of it, you really like him. It’s funny, he saw the movie in Spain, and his wife said it was just terrible the character was not going to be around if there’s a sequel. I said, ‘Well, in this kind of movie, being blown up does not mean you won’t be around for the sequel.”

Also on hand is Barbara Crampton, who starred in Gordon’s first few features. “Barbara Crampton is an old friend,” he said. “We were trying to find an actress to play a very small but pivotal role, and we needed a sense that she and Debi Mazar were related to each other. Barbara is a wonderful mimic, and after spending a little time with Debi, she was able to get the accent down, so the two of them seemed like they were two peas from the same pod.”

With script, pre-production and cast apparently in place, Gordon went to Ireland to shoot—when disaster seemingly struck. “We went to Ireland because we were promised half the budget from our investors provided we shot there,” Gordon explained. “Then less than half a month before we started, it turned out the Irish producer who had promised us £7 million had only £2 million.”

Gordon credits his American producers, Peter Newman and Greg Johnson, for not abandoning the project. “I assumed that was it,” said the director, “but they went out and scrambled and found other producers and the movie never even had to shut down. The Irish government helped the film, which was made under Section 35, by which the Irish government would put up a portion of the film’s budget in exchange for filmmakers using Irish facilities and labor. But this was the first time that the government ever granted two Section 35s. For the first Section 35 we did not meet the terms, because the producer had not provided the correct amount of money. So the Irish government said, ‘We will allow you to post a second time for new investors to help you complete the film. ‘A new producer, Morgan Sullivan, came on board, one of the most renowned Irish producers, and he straightened out the mess and got us back on track, along with Peter Newman and Greg Johnson, and Guy Collins brought Goldcrest in with a lot of investors. Goldcrest would only come in if we did all the post-production work in London, so this is the first movie where I had to do the post-production as well as production away from home. What was originally to have been a three-month stint became over a year abroad.”

Regarding working in the U.K., Gordon reported, “I like Ireland very much, and the crew was sensational. This was not an easy movie to make. Every single shot had some level of difficulty—if it wasn’t zero gravity, it was creatures or prosthetics or pyro. It was never just simply two people sitting in a shot. The schedule was not that different from an ordinary film. We had an eleven-week period, which is still pretty tight for a normal movie, and our crew was very disciplined and quick and had wonderful attitudes. There never was any grumbling or complaining.”

Murton remembers it a little bit differently. “There were a lot of moments when we thought it wasn’t going to make it,” he said. “I had to send out letters for me and my crew saying, ‘If we don’t get paid, we’re leaving.’ That happened a couple of times, because sometimes we were three weeks in arrears, and they were trying desperately to bring money in. It certainly wasn’t a very smooth road, but we fought hard enough and it came through. My hat goes off to the American producers who kept it going, when we thought, “Well, that’s it.’ What they went through would send a lot of other people into the looney bin.”

Initially the production rejected Ireland’s Ardmore Studios because it did not have a stage large enough to encompass the scope of the production; however, it soon became apparent that Ardmore was the only true studio set-up in the country. Production designer Murton wanted a large stage for the Regalia interior. “I’m a great believer in using light to build a set,” he said. “If you can’t build it physically, we can use some good old theatrical tricks to make it work, and sometimes you need the space to throw light through stuff, and we didn’t have that (at Ardmore). We started looking in other areas. The only thing that was big enough was these old ex-meat storage places; unfortunately, they ended up being a very dangerous site because they have all this insulation that was highly flammable. Someone should have booked up Ardmore just in case, but we didn’t because we thought we were going somewhere else, so time was wasted.”

Gordon became concerned that if production did not begin on time, he might lose his cast. “Our start date would have to be pushed back about six months,” he recalled, “and our first reaction was, “We have commitments to people to start at a specific time,’ and so we explored other ways of making the film. One was converting a warehouse into a studio, and the space available was a huge meat carving facility with these gigantic refrigerators, which were about the size of a large sound stage. Unfortunately, the costs of converting it would have been the whole budget of the film; also, the time to get it ready would take up the six months that we’d be waiting anyway to get into Ardmore, so we decided to use the extra time to work and plan some more.”

Filming in Ireland proved a fairly copacetic experience. The shore of Dublin Bay ended up filling in for White Sands, New Mexico. The Dublin Civic Center, considered an eyesore by the inhabitants because its modern design clashes with the pastoral countryside, proved an ideal location for a hospital scene. The Irish and English crew members largely got along, but the resumption of hostilities during post-production created some nervousness on the part of the director.

As Gordon noted, “I was there when the truce was on, and it was really some of the best feeling between England and Ireland, and then right as we started post-production, the bombings started again. It was done outside of Ardmore in Ireland and also in London, and I was going back and forth between the two on a regular basis. There was a bombing about a block away from where the post-production house was in London, which was nerve-wracking. There were a lot of discussions because half the crew was Irish and the other half English, and they had all been able to work together as a team, and all of this broke out again, and there were a lot of discussions how to solve this problem. As an American, this seemed like something that should be settled fairly easily, and they would look at me like I was an idiot. It is very complicated and there doesn’t seem to be any easy answer.”

PRODUCTION DESIGN Once the story was in place, Gordon elaborately planned out how to visualize it unlike any previous space opera. То achieve this, he brought in a variety of artists like Ron Cobb, Berni Wrightson, Hajime Sorayama, and Bruce McCall.

Bringing these visions together and designing the overall movie is first-time production designer Simon Murton. “We deliberately did not want to use other films as references,” Gordon explained. “Instead of going with a sterile, white NASA feeling, we went the opposite, into bright colors and a commercialized feel. In 2001, they built the wonderful set that spins 360 degrees. In our film that became the diner which looks like a Bob’s Big Boy, so there’s the juxtaposition of science fiction and the familiar.”

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Another important element in the design of the film came from costume designer John Bloomfield. According to Gordon, they started by looking at the actual spacesuits. “We have a book called Space Gear; it went through the whole evolution of the space suit from a study point,” he said. “We also wanted the suit to look-rather than a real high-tech perfect suit like a beat-up, used suit that John Canyon got with his used truck. It’s like, when you change a tire: the gear you’ve got in your car is not pristine; it’s well used and some of the pieces are missing.” The result is a cross between a spacesuit and an old diving suit. “It’s really a kind of clumsy, bulky looking thing,” Gordon recalled, “and then he did a more modern, spiffed-up version for what the new models are like. They’re the slimmed-down, high-tech version.”

Bloomfield did a lot with plastic. “We moved away from natural materials and went for a lot of bright colors and corporate logos,” said Gordon. “The t entire costume is covered in logos, kind of taking this idea about how people wear logos on their clothes. Basically, the logo becomes the clothes. In this futuristic world, we are walking billboards.

“He’s a very witty designer,” Gordon continued. “A lot of the things he did were strange but familiar at the same time. You s see a lot of things like cowboy hats and baseball caps and 1 things that have been with us : for a long time and will probably be with us a few years from 1 now, so that you can look at these guys and recognize them immediately as truck drivers, 1 but they don’t look exactly like any truck drivers you’ve ever seen before.”

One of the key members of the SPACE TRUCKERS staff is Simon Murton, an experienced art director making his debut as production designer with this film. In addition to previously working with Gordon on FORTRESS, Murton has provided designs for such films as THE CROW, STARGATE, and JUDGE DREDD. His father is English production designer Peter Murton, but Simon forsook England to come to the U.S. because of the greater opportunities offered here.

“My basic premise for what we did is that human beings—especially Americans—don’t like change too much,” explained Murton. “For example, the [space station’s] diner, which was a plagiarism of 2001 the big circular set, but of course we couldn’t do that, so we built just over a third. It was kind of funny to have this circular set with everyone strapped in and the food stuck down. By the side of the set you would have stunt men walking down these rubber mats, almost horizontal and walking down to vertical positions. It was very weird to watch, but it was nice to actually recreate a Denny’s or a Bob’s Big Boy-only it’s in space—and use the same colors, the same kind of feeling for the whole thing. Let’s face it, truckers, if they are driving across America or driving through space, are still going to be the same type of people.”

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Murton likes to research his work, and so he and Gordon went to truck stops and examined books detailing spacecraft interiors and such. “I like to have a good reference around me because usually truth is stranger than fiction,” Murton claimed. “I always like to try and keep a certain logic in there, so the background is very believable. Everyone is getting sick and tired of things like in 2010, where everyone is inside of the Russian spaceship and every surface is covered with buttons. Let’s face it, even though it’s (visually) boring, there’s going to be a lot fewer buttons. One pushes oneself to make it look interesting and to make it look believable.”

That believability was abetted by pre-production “field trips,” according to Stuart Gordon, who added, “Simon likes to do a lot of research, so before we started working on the movie we went to a truck stop, to a guy who sold trucks, and we went to watch them unload container ships, what some people call ‘seafaring trucking’ and ‘offshore trucking.’ The containers that they bring are essentially truck trailers. What we discovered is that whole system, now accounting for 90% of all cargo, was invented by a trucking company.

“The idea is that the unit for transporting goods is the trailer of a truck. So we decided in our movie to do the same thing. We said that these trailers are not going to change; they are going to be the same in space as they are on earth, and instead of being pulled by ships, they’ll be pulled by rocket-powered trucks. Watching the loading and unloading of them, the different colors of the containers, the enormous cranes and so on-it really helped us get a sense of the size that we were dealing with. Simon started doing the drawings based on that research.”

Set 200 years into the future, when mankind is colonizing the other planets and moons of the solar system, the film presents space as a frontier, like the old American West, and it’s the truckers who bring in the much-needed supplies. Gordon felt that the controls should be kept low tech, because these are just working class joes doing their jobs. “The truck, for example, has all the controls of a truck,” said Gordon, “steering wheel and pedals on the floor for acceleration and breaking. We wanted an audience to look at this thing and say, ‘I could drive that, it’s not that far out.””

Gordon added, “One of the things we noticed about the way people deal with the future is that they want things to be recognizable and familiar, and to certain degrees, they will just make themselves feel more comfortable. Even though in space there is no up or down, we want one and we have to have one. You have to create those things just to maintain a sense of well being.”

In designing Canyon’s trucker’s cab, Murton explained, “I was trying to use the technology of the space shuttle and mix it in with what someone’s cabin was going to look like after three months in space, how it would be personalized and trashed. Would he wear clean socks, or would he wear socks at all? It was quite fun that way.

“There was also a problem in shooting it in that you have three actors and a film crew in this small, cramped kind of area. I seem to remember the d.p. complaining bitterly about it, but I didn’t feel like for one space trucker-making the starship Enterprise bridge.”

The space trucks in the film are rocket rigs that haul enormous loads throughout the solar system. “Apart from 2001, nobody has really shown the solar system. Everyone has conveniently gone out a bit further. I would like to see more space movies that actually take place within the solar system,” said Murton. “Originally, it was going to be traveling across space, but we all thought, ‘Let’s face it: even 300 years in the future, that was going to be ridiculous.’ Stuart wanted it to be 300 years in the future, and we brought it back to 150 years in the future.

“We took inspiration from the big, long freight trains out here,” Murton continued. “I went for the three-tiered container in the Y. shaped configuration, because it made the interiors and the exteriors kind of interesting—we could do a trick where we turn the camera on its side and the actor looks like he’s walking on one of the sides. It was a bit of a bother to work out the continuity sometimes. You can design all these elements, but the character’s got to go from A to B to C, and whatever way they cut it, it has to be in a kind of logical progression.”

Gordon also wanted to explore the idea of the future of private enterprise in space. “A company is not going to spend that kind of money on exploration and settling space without putting a corporate logo on everything they touch,” Gordon declared. “Rather than the silver and white sterile worlds you see in so many science fiction movies, you get just the opposite. We’ve made it colorful and tacky.

“Another thing we learned,” Gordon continued, “is that people get starved for color in space, because you look out your window and all you see is black. One of the things we talked about is when they had the Skylab, the astronauts got so starved for color that they began watching the color bars on the TV screen. We decided to go with some really bright colors and that commercialization that they would be selling stuff so when you’re flying into the space station, this is what you’ll see, a clutter. Not a well-designed space station, but a modular mess where stuff has just been added on and stuck on.

“I also think it’s the way it would be in space, with everything modular. You would constantly send things up which would be added on, so it’s not like it’s just been designed by some master architect. It probably starts out as a much smaller thing they did. This is the first section that was there, and then all the rest of the stuff was added on to it and just stuck together and built onto it.

“It’s funny, because we had some great designers on this movie, and I would have to say to them it should be badly designed, like the Mount Lakemore projects—a mixture of styles, and there are different places in the movie that you go to that each has its own style to it.”

Bernie Wrightson Conceptual Art

Former advertising and National Lampoon artist Bruce McCall designed most of the film’s satirical billboards and advertisements. According to Murton, “We ended up really using Bruce for the signage and advertising and stuff, because he used to be a very big advertising art director. He came up with some really funny stuff. ‘Laxigo-Go, go, go with Laxigo.’ It’s nice having someone come in and just do that kind of stuff. He also came up with the Captain Macanudo look. Bruce throws these wonderful, crazy ideas together; he’s fun for that kind of look. It’s like driving along the highway with billboards, but we wanted to do it in space. Stuff like that made it work quite well. I would like to have seen more of it.”

“The thing about creating a movie like this is that you are really creating a whole world,” explained Gordon. “You get down to all the little details of that world. Some of the details I don’t think really make it into the film because they are so small, unless you do a macro-closeup of a label on a packet of cigarettes. They put a sign that said, *These cigarettes will kill you. What do we have to say here?’ Or there is a sign in the hospital that says, ‘If you can pay, we can care.’ Little details like that.” For example, on the thousand dollar bills, the designers added a sticker good for a burger and fries at McDonald’s. The money is also labeled, “The United States of America, a Subsidiary of Tokyo Bank.”

Bernie Wrightson Conceptual Art

One of Murton’s important design challenges was designing the interior and exterior of the space pirate ship, the Regalia, which was rendered in CGI by Electric Image. “I wanted to make this huge radical space liner that ends up looking like a massive U-boat. I felt very strong about doing it like a very retro, old rusty ocean liner type of thing. We know that things don’t rust in space, but at that point I didn’t care, I just thought it was a very good looking design,” said Murton. “It was a really difficult design to do, because of what Ted Mann had written or what Stuart had come up with. This is the problem with a lot of shows: the director wants a parameter; it is written as another parameter; and confines of the budget or time are another parameter; and you have to try to punch them together and see what you come out with. Like Stuart always wanted this rotating gravity type of thing; plus we needed to get the space truck into the Regalia, and the truck is two miles long with all-its containers, so it’s like ‘How the hell are we going to come up with something that’s going to work out and visually look good?’ Eventually we came up with an Eiffel Tower on its sidethat kind of rationalization.”

Still, Murton has found designing SPACE TRUCKERS to be both a unique, enjoyable experience. “I had a lot of fun with the movie,” he said. “I could do different things. It didn’t have to be the normal sci-fi look; I think everyone is getting sick and tired of hardware—it’s been done to death. 2001 and ALIEN still did it better than most people. This is why films like CITY OF THE LOST CHILDREN are so refreshing. That’s a bit industrial, but it had a certain style and look which was very cool. Unfortunately the story failed a bit, but the visuals and the action was pretty wild. I don’t know if SPACE TRUCKERS does look like any other sci-fi movie, but it’s pretty wacky. The story itself, about a space trucker hauling strange cargo, gave us the inspiration of doing normality here, but throwing curves and just doing some wacky stuff.”

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Hajime Sorayama, famed as the designer of sexy robots, was having his first show in Los Angeles at the Tamara Bane Gallery in the spring of 1994 that director Stuart Gordon contacted him on opening day and asked him to design SPACE TRUCKERS’ biomechanical robot warriors. One of the key images in the film is the moment when Captain Macanudo and his companions encounter the as yet unfully formed menacing being for the first time: the embryonic warriors-created by Dr. Nabel to be phenomenally lethal, capable of wiping out legions of highly trained and well-equipped space marines adorn the sides of the cargo hold like obscene crosses, from which mechanical tentacles sprout and upraised thighs quickly become legs.

When asked what inspired his conception of the bio-engineered warriors, Sorayama responded, “I imagined nautiluses. They have about 90 tentacle-like feelers and with these feelers they catch their food. When you think about that, isn’t it amazing? I explained to Mr. Gordon how I came up with the idea when I drew the design of the Bio-Mechanical Warrior: In the past three to four years, I became very interested in the forms of plants’ roots, branches, organs of insects, tentacles of sea anemone, and their similarity to blood vessels such as arteries or veins. If they have their own wills and energy and move on their own, how amazing it must be! When I was drawing this, I was imagining armory which is a combination of the organic body of plants or insects and high-tech metals and plastics. These tentacles work like radar or sensors. If there is some sound in the direction of four o’clock, one tentacle moves in that direction.”

In creating his design, Sorayama had to keep in mind the rapid, fluid movements that were expected of the BMWs. Indeed, by using female dancers in the roles, the film does manage to create menaces which are both graceful and lightning quick in their lethalness. Still, what is drawn on a page cannot always be reproduced on a soundstage, particularly if it has to be inhabited by human beings. “The image can’t always be reproduced in 3-D,” Sorayama explained. “One hundred percent of the realization of my idea is almost impossible, so we have to find a way to compromise in the best way. The process of realization of the design came as a result of continual compromises during its creation.”

Makeup surrealist and artist Screaming Mad George was given the difficult assignment of bringing Sorayama’s concepts to life. Sorayama commented on George’s efforts, saying, “Screaming Mad George felt from the beginning that building a perfect realization of my design was just physically impossible, so he put great effort to make me realize this.

The reality is you have to learn to compromise, because it is almost impossible to reproduce two-dimensional designs into three dimensions exactly how we wish. I think Screaming Mad George did an excellent job, and I really appreciate his proper advice to me during the course of this project. I really would like to work with him again.”

Sorayama has long held an interest in making films and relishes the challenge of working on future film projects. “It makes me very excited and gives me ecstacy to have all those other people’s help in making my fantasy come true,” he noted. Originally, he intended to have a more hands-on approach to the production of the BMWs, but he realized that it would be better to leave make up effects to specialists who know that field while restricting his labors to what he does best: design.

Overall, in assessing his experience on the film, the artist noted, “There are many things I experienced for the first time. The whole experience was very new and fresh to me. Although I enjoyed the process of making it very much, I realized that the reality of it was a lot of physical labor, a lot of sweat.”

Regarding the film itself, Sorayama noted, “I saw the premiere of the movie SPACE TRUCKERS in Tokyo in September. I enjoyed it very much and I am pleased so much. There are many details that made me enjoy it. Mr. Gordon’s own world of retrospective reality in sci-fi movie-making is so unique.”

PHYSICAL EFFECTS A key member of the SPACE TRUCKERS production team was Paul Gentry, an experienced effects man with films such as MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL, ADDAMS FAMILY, and THE LAST ACTION HERO to his credit. He had worked with David Allen on DOLLS and ROBOT JOX, and also worked previously with Gordon on FORTRESS. I introduced him to certain things which he didn’t know the camera could do, just little tricks of the trade, such as the use of lightning strikes, which is a very basic tool of the industry, but it’s interesting to use it in a battle scene. Traditionally, lighting strikes are used to create lightning effects. Of course, you can change the color of it, which makes it more the color of a gunflash, so you can have several lighting strikes going off in the background, and then you have soldiers firing in the foreground, and it makes it appear much bigger than it is because you have flashing all over the place. It creates a lot of excitement, and it’s something Stuart hadn’t used before, and on top of that you throw in white frames in editorial.”

One of the biggest problems faced by the special effects crew in SPACE TRUCKERS was zero gravity, which, Gordon notes, “is something you don’t see in too many space movies any more. It’s expensive and very time consuming, but we felt that it was important enough to spend the time to do it. Unlike Ron Howard, we couldn’t afford to send people up in the Vomit Comet and get real zero gravity, so we had to find another way to do it. Some of the solutions were very simple. Sometimes we used string; other times we would turn things upside down. The best solution sometimes was to have the actors play weightlessness, and we were able to convincingly portray weightlessness just by the way they moved their bodies.”

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To assist with the weightless wire work, Gordon hired a stunt coordinator from A CHINESE GHOST STORY and POWER RANGERS, Koichi Sakamoto, who had done work in Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States, and who spoke English. Many of the stuntmen on the project were Asian martial artists and acrobats. “We had a perfect stunt team: Apple Stunts it’s called,” said Gordon. “They did some amazing things. We had a sequence where a guy takes a punch and flips end over end for 30 feet into a wall. This was all done right there live on the set. As a matter of fact, in terms of the zero gravity, there was very little in the way of optical effects.”

Recalled Gentry, “Koichi and I did these augmented scenes of this whole battle going on. We had limited time, only four days, and we all realized we needed two weeks for this elaborate sequence because it’s so difficult setting up these stunt shots. One guy (Tatsuro Koike), absolutely the most fearless stunt guy I’ve seen, was slamming into this or that. He looked like he’d just broken his neck. You’d yell, ‘Cut! Tatsuro, are you all right? You’d think he’s dead, and he’d just look up and smile. “That OK?’

“It’s going to be hard to watch SPACE TRUCKERS and not see the same faces scene after scene, doing any stunts that are going on. Tatsuro we had in any costume imaginable-it was funny. You do things safely, and with a certain amount of care, it takes time. These things can’t be rushed; it’s counterproductive. We barely got through them by the skin of our teeth.”

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Since there was not a lot of money left over for wire removal, most of the wire work had to be hidden by the cinematographer while on set. “I think it’s a testament to Mac Ahlberg, our cinematographer, who’s an expert at this,” said Gordon. “Part of the solution was built into the set design. Simon Murton was aware we’d have to hide wires, so he designed the set to have all kinds of strips on it. It fakes your eye out, allows the background to camouflage the wires.”

“I wanted the lines in the set going the other way to make the sets look wider,” said Murton, “but they had the problem that they weren’t going to have enough money to do wire removal. Stuart wanted to do realistic space freefall, and in reality, we should have had the set on a gimbel, but we never had the money nor the time to do it properly, so we came up with something like the space shuttle where they have these velcro pads absolutely everywhere so they can stick things like cameras or paraphernalia to the walls to keep them from floating around and bumping into things. We just did all these vertical lines to help camouflage the cables. I’d say 70% of the time it works. The other 30% it didn’t. Sometimes you see it; sometimes you don’t.”

Gordon employed simple misdirection to prevent viewers from spotting the wires. “When you’re looking at somebody floating, the audience always looks above him for the wires,” the director explained, “but if you shoot it upside down, tilting the camera in some strange way, the wires are below, where you’re not expecting to see them. There are a couple of shots in the movie where the wires are clearly visible—they are not hidden at all—but nobody has ever spotted them because they are looking in the wrong place. There are places where we did have to do some wire removal, but I think the total number of wire removal shots in the whole movie was something like three, thanks to Mac and Simon’s ingenuity, which saved us a fortune.”

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MAKEUP EFFECTS On SPACE TRUCKERS John Vulich was brought in at the production design phase of the project. “At that point I was talking to them about doing all of the effects on the film,” he recalled. “We broke it down into three really major categories. There were dummies, all the dead bodies of the characters killed by these creatures, body effects; there were the creatures; and there was Macanudo, who was the main bad guy.”

It was decided to break up the makeup effects chores. Greg Cannom, who won the Academy Award for BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA and MRS. DOUBTFIRE, was selected to head the Macanudo design team, with his associate Scott Oshita taking care of all the on-site chores. Screaming Mad George wound up executing the Bio-Mechanical Warriors designed by Hajime Sorayama.

All other makeup effects for the film were handled by Vulich’s Optic Nerve, with the on-site chores executed by technical makeup supervisor Mike Measimer, assisted by John Snyder. “Stuart knew we did the best gore in the business, so we ended up doing a lot of the gore-type stuff,” said Vulich. “He wanted something that had never been done before, and he also wanted to get away with a lesser rating. He wanted the visceral impact of serious gore, but he wanted it to be almost pretty in a way. So we had to figure out a way to make that work.”

One bizarre effect created by Vulich was the genetically engineered, box-like, stackable swine that John Canyon transports for UniPork. “That was always Stuart’s joke,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be funny if they were like pig boxes, so you could stack and maximize their storage space, which I thought was a brilliant idea.

“We made these pigs kind of square, going back and forth design-wise. Simon Murton came up with his version of it, and then we sculpted it and sent Stuart off some Polaroids. He wanted everything to be squared, the nose, the eyes; he just wanted everything to echo the square shape, and since it was a cartoon film, I think they work fine. We tried to make the pigs as realistic as possible in texture and detail and paint job, with wrinkles and all that, but ultimately, they are square, and it’s a little bit of a cartoony concept and there’s only so far that you can go with it. There’s a little bit of that aspect, but I think in the context of that film, every project has its own requirements, and on this one, anything goes. It’s OK for them to be that way.”

Originally, Optic Nerve planned to manufacture some 40 or 50 of the cubist porcine creatures, but in the interests of economy eventually settled for between 25 or 30 exteriors with four mechanically operated boars for closeups.

“One of them was a fully mechanized puppet with a lot of different lip snarls, tongue wiggling, nose, eye blinks, ears and all that,” explains Vulich. “Then there were two that maybe just had eye blinks and maybe another one that just had ear wiggles. There were different ranges of organization. The way it was storyboarded, you really only see one where I think he’s supposed to be feeding it a hot dog, which is another Gordon joke. We had one that had to be really intricate to hold up for that.”

Another makeup handled by Optic Nerve was the scene in which Keller gets sucked out a hole that gets blown in a window. “We had to do a head cast of George Wendt, and he actually wasn’t available at the time, so we had one of the guys sculpt this agonized face going through the hole,” said Vulich. “That was one of those real quick cuts, so it was a simple puppet that didn’t require any mechanization or anything like that. It was one of those puppets that is really ideal because its eyes are closed, it’s making an expression, and there’s already some dynamics there. One of the hardest things to do in our business is doing a mechanical puppet of a living person. It is very rare, it’s ever been done right, and it’s phenomenally expensive. There is just something about the character of the eyes that is really hard to replicate, so it was one of those things where it was a good situation for us. You had a great expression, the eyes are closed, there are just some quick cuts of him slamming through there, so we designed this beanbag-like dummy of him, with a really rough armature and this material that collapsed in on itself and pulled through there.

“We planned on doing it two different ways,” Vulich continued. “We wanted to start off with him and actually cut the set away, to make it look like he went through a small hole. Actually the hole is cut bigger than it is, but his clothing is hiding that. There’s a beat where he’s trapped in agony like that, and there’s a second beat and he gets sucked all the way through it, and at that point, it’s our dummy being pulled through it. It was just a matter of playing with the right materials we could get to collapse right and design the understructure of the clothing that would just pull through with this collapsible armature. It was a little scissor-like thing.”

Vulich has become a great believer in working with silicon rather than latex to achieve a more lifelike look. “We did the head in a silicon-type material because it has a more life-like texture, and punched in the hair, did a lot of detail,” he said. “As usual, we end up putting two or three months of work into something you see for seven frames, but whether it’s seven frames or seven hundred, it has to hold up for that moment; otherwise, it’s useless. There are only so many shortcuts that you can take. In this case, the shortcut was we didn’t have to worry too much mechanically about what was going on, those expressions, but cosmetically it had to look like him.”

Silicon is a much more lifelike material for makeup effects, but there are still problems in terms of finding appropriate adhesives that will adhere to skin and silicon. “I think it’s got to be the next step in technology-makeup to get out of using foam latex, which is a wonderful material but also has a lot of limitations,” said Vulich. “Silicon, however, is more expensive, definitely, but you also find a lot less of a reject rate. The cost of material in any project is nowhere near as extensive as the cost of the labor involved. For what you’re getting out of it, I certainly think it’s worthwhile. You paint them with silicon and silicon chalking, like what you use to seal an aquarium. You thin that out and mix colors into it. It’s better than something like vinyl—they are really comparable lookwise, but vinyl when you paint it sometimes tends to bleed through after a few months.”

Nevertheless, vinyl proved to be exactly the right material for one of the film’s more startling effects. “The dowager, the woman in the bathroom that’s a robot, that’s the other effect we did that’s similar to the George Wendt thing,” said Vulich. “That head we did in vinyl, because we needed it to stretch 300-400%, so we pushed the envelope as far as plasticizing it as far as we could plasticize it before it just wouldn’t work anymore. For that, silicon would have been a little trickier. Silicon is more durable in a denser state, it’s actually better lasting than vinyl, but vinyl is more flexible. You can’t plasticize the silicon because it tears a little easier.

“This woman had a wonderful face, just really great,” Vulich continued. “We sculpted it with the eyes open, took a lot of great care to try and capture the character and all that. She already had a nice big mouth to begin with. We also came up with a keypad. The keypad actually worked—you could hit a button and things would go off. Stuart even wanted to make a sound on set-he knew he’d replace the sound later-just something to lend a reality. We put a little beeper in it, a little Radio Shack kind of thing. We played around with different modes of plasticity. and I was amazed at how wide you could do this before it would rip apart. It seemed to work pretty well.”

Optic Nerve was also assigned the task of depicting the victims of the Bio-Mechanical Warriors. “Stuart wanted something visceral but not gory,” recalled Vulich. “He wanted to go for—not necessarily a family picture, but something a little bit more wider in appeal. He knew he had to come up with something not bloody but almost pretty in a way. Somewhere, I came up with the idea of opalescent colors. I just theorized off the top of my head: let’s say it hit your atoms; it does something so different to your atoms that it disembodies them and all of a sudden you see these opalescent colors, almost like what happens when you burnish metal and it has a blue opalescence, like tempered steel-almost like the reaction steel would have, but on your flesh, just something totally different happens, so you don’t see blood pouring out, you see all these kind of golds and greens and all these weird colors.

“We did all these tests,” continued Vulich, “and it sounds like a ludicrous idea, but it actually looked interesting, like something weird and molecular was going on, and Stuart seemed really pleased with that. It was just a matter of working with metallic powders and opalescent powders, all these different kinds of almost garish colors, and then we also experimented a lot with mixing these powders with things like Alka Seltzer and different foams and stuff like that to get it to foam up almost like it was disintegrating. They also did some tests with computer graphics to mix in this look like everything is breaking up into balls, something similar to LAWNMOWER MAN, that whatever cell structures that make up the body break up and keep getting smaller and smaller into this dust or foam. So instead of shredded meat and tissue, it was more like balls of green and metallic things, like we’re disintegrating these things. I think with the tone being a little bit more comic, these ideas work fine with it. It’s hard to say if it would work in a different context or not. It was just another example of trying to do something different than what’s been done before, which is really typical of Stuart’s work.”

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VISUAL EFFECTS British CGI company Electric Image, building on its 13-year reputation for commercial advertising and broadcast work, takes a leap into the feature arena with SPACE TRUCKERS. The assignment came about because the company’s digital effects supervisor Paul Docherty had a working relationship with the film’s special effects supervisor Brian Johnson. Docherty said, “When Brian landed the assignment, there came the opportunity for us to quote on it. We looked at it from every angle and realized it was unique in that it involved a certain amount of original 3-D work plus a lot of composites like blue-/green-screen effects, lasers, people being blasted, morphed and melted. Our proposal also included a communications system between ourselves and Ireland. So we were able to answer problems in terms of the kind of work we’d done before but also with the right kind of communication between all factions.”

Originally, director Stuart Gordon wanted as many of the effects done in-camera as possible. But, Docherty noted, “The reasons for moving into the digital area are because the advanced technology can solve a lot more problems than ever before. The level of detail and believability is much greater as the software improves on a month-by month basis. The argument that digitals have a cartoon look is receding as the technology inexorably moves towards a greater realism. Now you can allow an image to spend a longer time on screen without sophisticated audiences ‘spotting the wires’ so to speak. Most directors, especially those with no special effects knowledge, are turning towards digitals because it’s fast becoming the best way to help them tell their story.”

Electric Image’s main task was to build the pirate spaceship, Regalia. “The Regalia lurks in this scummy sea of asteroids waiting to prey on anything that comes near it, like the pirates of old,” explained Docherty. “The Regalia crew-led by the bionic Captain Macanudo take over another craft, dismantle it, and reform it into something else. The visual reference point for us was the James Bond movie where the front of a boat opens to scoop up its prey. Halfway through, the story, trucker John Canyon and his pachyderm rig are captured by the Regalia because they are escaping from the TransGen company with an unusual cargo connected to Macanudo.”

Simon Haddocks, head of animation at Electric Image, came up with the design of the Regalia: “Basically, what I did was raid all the fantasy film magazines in specialist shops—your own included-took out those old STAR WARS books and made a whole portfolio of designs, ‘Let’s take a bit of this, a bit of that I like this detail’-and that’s how we got there. It’s Captain Nemo’s Nautilus with an even more Gothic feel.

“Scale was a bit of a worry,” Haddocks continued. “The Regalia had to look like a huge spaceship-one of those colossal mile-long numbers that soars over the audience’s heads. That meant we had to have smaller windows. You do tend to sit at your workstation for weeks on end adding detail and embellishing on textures. It had to look less computer. The good thing about the ship is it really does look better on film-it’s slightly more contrast in that medium. I like the fact that it looks like a vast bit of Victorian ironwork. That was an accident because of the old pirate feel we went for. For example, we’ve given the windows a yellowish glow rather than a white one to suggest the possibility of oil lamps lighting the interiors. There’s also this big skull design on the side, should anyone be in any doubt as to what craft it is. It’s also docked in a belt of dark shiny asteroids. That, more than anything else, made us decide to go the digital route as black shiny asteroids are impossible to build as models whereas computers can do it relatively easily.”

If any one image influenced the design of the Regalia the most, it was the Nostromo ship in ALIEN, admitted Haddocks. He said, “It’s hard to imagine building something like that on the computer because there is just so much detail on that model. To be perfectly honest, there is only just enough detail on the Regalia. There’s only one machine at Electric Image that can render the whole spaceship at once—and we need 400 megabytes of on-line RAM just to do that. To render close-ups of it takes 30 minutes a frame. If you take models from past space epics, it’s the stuff with all the barnacles that’s most fun. But we can’t simply stick more model kit pieces on the side. Modelmakers can add detail without penalty; the computer animator can’t. We always have to think in terms of how hard it is to render, but machines do double their speed every 18 months or so. A year ago we couldn’t have done this job. In a year’s time we could have done it far faster.”

In all, Electric Image’s 15 strong team had 100 different shots to accomplish. Because of this workload, Electric Image upgraded its Onyx multiprocessor super computer and brought in Descreet Logic ‘Inferno’ to add to the existing complement of high-end Silicon Graphics work stations running Wavefront ‘Explore’ software. Docherty said, “We decided to upgrade to ‘Inferno’ because of the higher resolutions and quality levels a feature film requires and because it is the best at providing us with a high-level multi-layer compositing system that not only runs in real time but also operates at resolutions for just about any large screen format.”

CONCLUSION Principal shooting finished in October, 1995, with seven months allotted to complete the special effects. To make things easier, the film was extensively storyboarded. Docherty said, “That way things could be prepared and started whilst the live action shoot was going on. We had enough skilled people to pre-plan every shot-so much so, in fact, we’ve had hardly any contact with Stuart Gordon we’ve dealt solely with Brian Johnson and the other special effects supervisor, Paul Gentry. The problem with working on most feature films is that decisions are left to the last minute. We evened that process out greatly because we were so well prepared.”

Both Docherty and Haddocks were watchful about not getting carried away by the latest technology. Haddocks remarked, “We are all still fascinated by the digital technology to a large degree, and the danger is to overdo it. As long as the Regalia looks authentic, though, I’ll be happy. We met the guys in the Dublin model shop recently, and they said how relieved they were about not building the spaceship because of the mechanics involved. There’s a revolving centrifuge in the ship which would be a nightmare to create as a mechanical model, whereas it’s a relatively simple process for us.”

Docherty continued, “The basic difference between computer work and miniature work is that we can build a model layer by layer to a very high degree of detail which can be seen pretty well at any angle necessary with complete control over lighting and texture. Traditionally, the miniature shop would have to build a series of different models for each shot, rig them separately, and then shoot them. What we’ve learned on our side is that in producing the Regalia as a computer model it’s very close to what it would take if you were doing it as a miniature, but the shooting is obviously easier than motion control. I feel we’ve used digital technology appropriately in SPACE TRUCKERS. It’s taking its place in the special effects canon as another tool to be used in completing the whole. And you still have to have artists at the work stations to give the technology the imaginative edge it needs.” Alan Jones

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CAST/CREW Directed Stuart Gordon

Writing Credits Ted Mann Stuart Gordon

Music Colin Towns

Dennis Hopper as John Canyon Debi Mazar as Cindy Stephen Dorff as Mike Pucci Barbara Crampton as Carol Charles Dance as Nabel/Macanudo George Wendt as Keller Seamus Flavin as Chopper 4 Jason O’Mara as Chopper 3 Vernon Wells as Mr. Cutt Sandra Dickinson as Bitchin’ Betty

Makeup Department Mark Alfrey … special makeup effects artist Rosie Blackmore … chief makeup Deborah Boylan … makeup trainee Greg Cannom … designer and creator: Macanudo Liz Dean … special makeup effects assistant: Optic Nerve Rob Hinderstein … special makeup effects artist Mike Measimer … special effects makeup supervisor: Optic Nerve Tina Phelan … makeup trainee (as Christina Phelan) Dave Snyder … special makeup effects technical supervisor: Optic Nerve

Art Department Ron Cobb … conceptual artist Bernie Wrightson … conceptual artist Bruce McCall … conceptual art Yasushi Nirasawa … conceptual artist Hajime Sorayama… conceptual artist Tamara Conboy … graphic designer

Special Effects by Chiharu Akimoto … lab technician: S.M.G. Inc. Linda Benavente-Notaro … lab technician: Cannom Creations (as Linda Benevente-Notaro) Roland Blancaflor … lab technician: Cannom Creations Evan Brainard … mechanical design: Optic Nerve Maria Bruce … lab technician: S.M.G. Inc. Brendan Byrne … physical effects technician: second unit Kevin Byrne … physical effects technician: second unit Neil Carr … special effects rigger Ron Cartwright … senior special effects technician James Conrad … lab technician: S.M.G. Inc. John Crawford … mechanics: S.M.G. Inc. Jeff L. Deist … lab technician: Cannom Creations (as Jeff Deist) Eric Fox … lab technician: S.M.G. Inc. André Freitas … lab technician: Cannom Creations (as Andre Freitas) Misa Uo Gardner … coordinator: S.M.G. Inc. (as Misa U. Gardner) Paul Gentry … special effects supervisor Screaming Mad George … special effects designer: Bio-Mechanical Warriors, S.M.G. Inc. (as Screaming Mad George [Joji Tani]) Asao Goto … key effects: S.M.G. Inc. Mimi Hagi … lab technician: S.M.G. Inc. Angela Hajianis … lab technician: Cannom Creations Shinobu Hamada … lab technician: S.M.G. Inc. Rufus Hearn … construction: Optic Nerve Chris Heeter … construction: Optic Nerve David Hoehn … special effects prosthetics: Cannom Creations Stephen Hutchinson �� … senior special effects technician (as Steve Hutchinson) Bill Jacob … lab technician: Cannom Creations Brian Johnson … special effects supervisor Gerry Johnston … physical effects supervisor: second unit (as Gerry Johnson) J.P. Keating … assistant: Optic Nerve Louis Kiss … production assistant: Cannom Creations Taishiro Kiya … key effects: S.M.G. Inc. Phil Knowles … practical senior effects technician (as Philip Knowles)

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Starlog#241 Cinefantastique v27n11-12 Cinefantastique v28n08 Femme Fatales v07n06

Space Truckers (1996) Retrospective SUMMARY At a corporation's base on the Neptunian moon Triton, mercenaries are setting up a defense perimeter to try to hold off an unstoppable cyborg warrior.

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