#they're both just like i WILL beat a teenage boy's ass

[transjudas]

Alec Hardy and Donna Noble could bond over being ready to fuck some teenage boys up for their daughters (aka David Tennant media with protective parents)

[unique-high]

THIS IS HOW YOU FALL IN LOVE | Mingi x Black Tomboy Reader | FANFIC SERIES.

Line Inspiration: From Strangers to friends, friends into lovers.

Summary: Mingi wanted to dance in the September rain with you and eat your favorite ice cream on hot summer days. He wanted to know the things you don't tell your close friends and he wanted to know your favorite song and your favorite day of the week. He wanted to know all the things that made you, you.

Warning: Underage drinking.

Genre: Slice of life, Fluff, shaky relationship with parent, Strangers to friends to lovers, Teenagers Au.

Author's Note: FINALLY LET'S GET INTO THIS MINGI FANFIC!!! Lol. The story was kind of proofread but still there may be some mistakes. I'm just riding the vibe of this story, so please don't mind me. This scene in chapter 1 is loosely based on a scene from a book I love named open water. I really loved the feeling it gave me when I read it.

CHAPTER ONE: Hope to see you again.

It's the brief moments that two strangers share an encounter. Names are exchanged and smiles are shared. You think he's cute, but he sort of thinks you're kinda cute of, but if you weren't dressed like a boy. There are a lot of people in someone's basement who you didn't know, but your friend Seonghwa knew the person who was throwing the party. You pull Seonghwa to the side. People drank lukewarm beer, some already drunk, some getting there.

Your fingers wrap around the red solo cup of piss-looking beer. Taking a sip you cringe. This wasn't you. This party wasn't you.

“You good?”

“You know I don't do parties, Seonghwa.”

“Didn't you say you wanted to get out of the house?”

“Yea–”

“So what's the problem?” he knocks his shoulder into yours, causing beer to splash over the rim of your solo cup.

Yeah, what was the problem? Seonghwa was already having a good time. Everyone else here was already deep into a good time. And then there's you who wasn't having a good time.

You smiled. Another sip. “No, Problem.”

Seonghwa takes your forearm dragging you through the crowded basement. “Let me introduce you to someone.”

In the corner was a DJ, spinning records, fading in and out, fast and slow. Something Megen Thee Stallion fading into Back That Ass by Juvenile. It gets the girls throwing their ass back on guys. And had some girls throwing ass back on each other. Their bodies move like they're at some Freaknik.

You felt yourself wanting to move to the music, too. To be a part of something you could talk about tomorrow with Seonghwa while on your break. Another sip. The beer warmed your insides. Another sip. You're feeling good.

You and Seonghwa stood in front of a boy. Tall. Bottle blonde hair with a serene smile. It's you who reach out first to shake his hand, but he takes you aback with an open hug, the casual embrace leaving you unsure if you should hug him back. Your drink spills a little on you. Now your dad will smell it and ask if you've been drinking. You'll lie though, and say something like: “Naw, this guy, rude, spilled his beer on me.”

“Hey,” you said.

“Hey.”

He smiled. You awkwardly stood there waiting for Seonghwa to introduce the two of you, but he was chatting with some girl now. Now you're scrambling to find something to say to this boy, but you're a little buzzed. So he stares at you. You stare at him. In the beat of silence that felt like forever, Seonghwa finally squeezes himself between that awkwardness.

“Y/n this is, Mingi. Mingi, this is Y/n,” he said. “She's single, you're single.”

Mingi laughed. “Oh, a setup I see.”

You elbow your friend in the ribs making him grunt. So that's why he wanted you to meet this someone, cause you both were single.

For the longest, Seonghwa has been trying to hook you up with people he knows. Never anyone who stayed in your life permanently. They were temporarily there one minute and gone the next. It was the boys never you. They just couldn't date someone who acted like too much of a guy and who was taller than them.

“I'm sorry about Seonghwa he doesn't know to mind his business,” You said.

“Helping,” he said. “Just helping. Her cup is empty, Mingi. Get her another drink, yeah?”

Seonghwa shoved you forward to go with Mingi. You tripped bumping into him, but he caught you with a laugh.

“I'm good on the drink.”

“I figured we should just head to the makeshift bar to give Seonghwa something to be proud of. Like he actually did a good deed.”

You laughed. Mingi laughed.

The strobing of party lights lit up Mingi's face before blinding you. The makeshift bar had bottles of liquor, and red solo cups of beer. Mingi goes for a solo cup. You lean against the makeshift bar feeling it tilt a bit.

Again, you don't know what to say, so Mingi talks. You watch his eyes, watch his hands as he talks, splashing beer every which way. It's the way he talks you notice when he gets excited and can't find the right word in English. He switches to Korean like you could understand him. But it's somewhere between his English and Korean you get a small glimpse of home. Not your home. But his. You oddly think about how you would explore his home more. With him guiding you. Telling you about this and that. Pointing out things he loved and things he hated.

In a way, you wanted him to explore your home, too. To tell him why you hated being yourself. That you didn't feel American enough to be one. To teach him how to say something in your native language and watch his mouth and tongue as he mispronounces words.

“You sure you don't want a drink?” Mingi asked.

You look around the crowded basement for a sign of Seonghwa. He's busy with some brunette who's smiling at him. He's slumped over her with his arm on the wall.

“I'm good.”

“How do you know Seonghwa?”

“Childhood friends.” You said. “You?”

“He knows my cousin. We became friends that way.”

Then you wanted to ask who his cousin was because Seonghwa knew a lot of people who he would introduce you. People names you can't remember. But they remembered you as The tall tomboy. Never by your name.

Mingi was suddenly pulled away by a pretty girl who needed him. You catch a small glimpse of her. Pretty face. Pretty smile.

He calls out to you. “Y/n, hope to see you again!”

You raised your solo cup with half a drop of beer inside. “Me too.” but he's already gone.

🤍🤎🤍🤎🤍🤎🤍🤎🤍🤎🤍🤎🤍🤎🤍🤎🤍🤎

If you would like to be added to the tag list for the next chapter, please let me know. 🤗

BTW if anyone knows how to make pretty banners and borders can someone please make me some for this fic 😭

[happypotato48]

GMMTV 2024 PART 2 Unhinged Tangent Thoughts (Only The Queers Though)

Ossan’s Love Thailand รักนี้ให้ "นาย": oh here we go again for the third times. i'm still skeptical about it and Chakrit Yamnam definitely is not an ossan yet but... damnnnnn my inner slut for older men sense is tingling, i know gmmtv just gonna keep doing this boring BL idol pairs nonsense, but like can we get more older gays/age gap BLs? i haven't seen Chakrit in ages and that man still so damn fine! he and our honorary uncle earth could've been something that thai BL is currently lacking, a sloppy hotmess Daddies. but alas that will remain a dream for now.

The ​Heart Killers เขาจ้างให้ผมจีบนักฆ่า: i haven't watch the Eclipse yet and really didn't liked both Star In My Mind and Hidden Agenda and definitely never gonna watch Only Friend (seen all the sex scenes though.) i loved the chaotic energy the trailer giving and i'm always a sucker for black comedy (don't know if this show gonna be that but fingercrossed) when it done correctly. also this show better serve us so many leather bad boy looks. i may have not be completely sold on this show yet, but i'm horny for it.

สายรหัสเทวดา Perfect10 Liners: "Too Many Cooks repeated for several minutes" i'm going to be there for forcebook and juniormark but like wtf in frash glee hell is this, most of these mofos are pushing 30. let them be adults god danm it, i know that the target demographic for gmmtv is young adults and teenagers and that they really love/good at??? school settings. but come on let's our peter pans and wendies fly free. they're probably bored out of their fucking minds by now.

Us รักของเรา | GMMTV 2024 PART 2: i'm gonna be a good little homo and let's all the great wlws do all the talking for this show. i'm not keen on the sibling's lover stealing trope but hey as the great Lucille Bluth one said, good for her.

Thame - Po (เธม-โป้): HEART THAT SKIPS A BEAT: hehehe, Est is so pretty, ok i'm sold i'm easy like that. i was never into any boy bands as a teen, but there like a lot of former thai boy bands members that came out as gay in recent years so maybe i shouda had. anywhoo i probably not gonna mind the singing and dancing in this show since most of them going to be done by singers/dancers and not actors turned idols.

REVAMP THE UNDEAD STORY: i'm really not into serious vempires so this show is kinda meh for me. the goofy ones though those i'd have eat up. this one probably a pass for me.

แฟนที่ทันตแพทย์ส่วนใหญ่แนะนำ Sweet Tooth, Good Dentist: all my blorbos are here we get mark, baby ohm, poon, and หมอjim. ahhhhhhh!! i need it now. i also don't mind dentists like most people especially when they're good looking guys, those handsome doctors can put anything in my mouth😉

เพราะแฟนเก่าเปลี่ยนแปลงบ่อย The Ex-Morning: is this going to be our second coming BL? idk i never there for first one 😝this show either going to be a good meta commentary about the whole business that gone down or its head going be so up it own ass that will take several bottles of lube to get the head out to see the sunlight. we'll see.

[relatableblorbopoll]

Round 1 of preliminaries, group 7

The first two places get a place on the bracket

Little reminder: there will be 2 more rounds of preliminaries, the losing blorbos of this poll still have 2 chances of getting in the official bracket

Propaganda under the cut

Rigby (Regular Show)

"i relate to him a lot because he started the show as an insufferable piece of shit (i used to be insufferable too) and then he starts dating Eileen and becomes a better person (i became a better person after i started dating my girlfriend) and his friendship with Mordecai just reminds me a whole lot of my dynamics with my best friend. he really is just like me fr"

Angua von Überwald (Discworld)

"Okay SO she's a werewolf who ran away from home because her parents are awful and then changed her name. Her parents ignore her existence and when they're confronted by her they use her old name that she Discarded because they are the worst. She's a vegetarian by day and doesn't eat people at full moon (one drop is one too many) but she Pays for all chickens she kills because that's not what an animal does. She is So angry and So hateful and So wrong about So many things but she Learns and Grows through the books. When she falls in love she fully believes she will be chased out of the town when the clock strikes midnight because nobody can accept her for who she truly is but THEN her lover finds OUT and he is shocked and confused at first but he loves her and LEARNS about her and puts aside his prejudice and they both grow as people over the course of several books and I love her so much your honor she is just like me fr fr"

Cao Weining (Word of Honor)

"ready to risk it all for a pretty girl who can and will beat his ass. just wants to eat a bunch of good food with his girlfriend"

Aang (Avatar: The Last Air Bender)

"12 years old, told you’re going to be the most powerful and important person in the world—and that you need to start like tomorrow. I’d runaway too."

Okuyasu Nijimura (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure)

"YES, he says he isn’t too smart but he tries his best, he yells a lot when he isn’t supposed to, he puts things bluntly, he is menacing with a heart of gold, AND HE MAKE THE FUNNY FACE"

Shin Tsukimi (Your Turn to Die)

"-He is extremely weak. A literal twelve year old boy is stronger than him. He struggled to open a sliding door cabinet. -He's a liar, but like.. some of it is super funny. He lies about just the most random shit. He claimed that he simply 'didn't know how to do a push-up', and that's why he didn't want to do one. When in reality, he's actually just too physically weak to do one. -He has major beef with, (and is jealous of), a random seventeen year old girl. He is twenty something. His number one worst enemy is some random teenage girl.... same, honestly. -He uses really... strange.. wording. I mean this very affectionately. But it's hard to defend him when he says stuff like 'riffraff' and 'casting pearls before swine'. -Terrible fashion. I mean, just look at him. -Autism. -He enjoys cute cat plushies."

[tododeku-or-bust]

Imma tag it with TW child abuse so don't hit me with no anon saying "Can you tag your suffering with child abuse" this time!

I think what always makes it weird for me to think about my childhood as abuse is that my parents were not bad providers. Like when we think of the basic role of a parent, it's for the kid to survive. And they (mostly my Mom) did that; I didn't go hungry, I didn't go without. Might have had to deal with snotty kids picking on my clothes and lack of toys, and I had to work my way through college, but i had water to wash with and a nice house. As far as the outside world goes, I turned out great bc I had a great start.

And they were loving! I think that's what made it... So confusing. I love my parents. Like, my parents are very affectionate people! They're not stupid, they enjoy fun, played videogames and sang songs and read, and they generally loved us. But that shit felt so... Conditional. Like for every moment I felt like I was being loved, I felt like I had to do something to maintain it. Get good grades, be pretty, never do anything wrong.

That's why I pretty much hated my folks from age 10 to about 21. It was a constant battle, a "you're not existing and believing the way I want you to", to the point that we had bruising, blood spilling fights, many of which to this day I think about and am filled with the same murderous rage. Then my dad got depressed bc the economy and started becoming an incel right as I hit teendom, so THAT made it far worse.

and I would be pissed as hell at my mom bc she acted like that shit between me and my dad was equivalent. "You both have the same volatile temper", "I'll send him to prison and you to foster care", "stop being disobedient", "stop opening your fucking mouth" bruh I was 15 and 110 and my father was a 200+ grown man. ONE OF US is the REAL issue here and it ain't me 🤣🤣 like to this day I hear the word 'disobedient' and I wanna choke somebody.

(My dad was more physical, my mom blew up sometimes but it was more words with her. She would get pissed bc she'd cite how her mother was meaner to her and I'd be like "take that up with her then")

Fun story, I was about 12 when I realized that they could beat me all they want and it didn't make me any less right or their actions any less wrong 🤣. I think it was after realizing that sometimes they'd just... fight me. Bruh. I was INSUFFERABLE after that. "But are you gone beat my ass" personified. Like yeah I was dead but boy you gone feel hurt bc imma tear your soul up. 🤷🏾‍♀️

And idk. I wasn't a bad kid. I did well in school, had hobbies, wasn't on drugs or alcohol. A little boy crazy. Mouthy, when defensive. Pushing boundaries, often. But that's what teenagers do. They're supposed to. They were the fucking adults. And now I got fucking PTSD and shit all bc they couldn't acknowledge their own traumas and attempt actually communicating with their kid like a human being.

But EYE went to therapy, so now I got healthy options 👍🏾 that emotional intelligence and maturity is on LOCK in comparison to them. The "great person" is because of ME.

[chorus-the-mutate]

I don't know why but I think it'd be really funny if Mystery Incorporated and the heroes of the DC universe coexisted. Just imagine the Justice League being very concerned and very impressed by these random ass teenagers with no powers or training going out and successfully solving crime.

Velma has probably figured out Batman's identity at this point and hasn't told the cops because he's basically a private investigator. She also knows Superman's identity but the fact that his disguise as Clark Kent is so obvious drives her insane since no one else believes Clark and Superman are one in the same. She's told the gang both of these heroes identities and they still don't believe her on either count. (Bruce knows that Velma knows his identity and is quaking in his boots, Clark is blissfully unaware.)

The Waynes and the Blakes despise each other, Bruce and Daphne's father have been this close to getting into a fistfight and the robins hate every one of Daphne's sisters. Daphne is the only member of her immediate family the Waynes unanimously like. Even Damien warms up to Daphne because she's a sweetheart. All of the robins have tried to save Daphne when they find out she's been kidnapped only to find out that she's already saved herself. When Tim and Dick find out that Daphne is interested in journalism they point her in Clark's direction. Velma screams when she learns this.

Fred reminds Kara and the league of Clark so much it hurts. They're both the hearts of their group with a nigh unwavering sense of optimism. They're both willing to be the cheerleaders of their group yet are both natural leaders. The only difference between Clark and Fred is that a few of the brain cells Fred would use for common sense have been lost like a sock in the washing machine. Like one version of Fred didn't think he was a man anymore because he had feelings. Instead all of his brain cells went to trap making and engineering. His traps are so impressive he's accidentally caught three robins, Green Arrow and a few of the Flash's villains on separate occasions. (Tim was very sleep deprived, it was not his proudest moment.) Bruce was going to fund Fred's way through college but Oliver beat him to it.

Last but not least we have Scooby and Shaggy. And they both terrify the heroes and villains of the DC universe alike. Sure they're both as benevolent as their friends but that doesn't make them any less unnerving. Bart and Wally have never met a human being who's metabolism rivaled theirs until they met Shaggy Rogers. Not only that but they've never really seen Shaggy snap. The gang know that Shaggy is capable of kicking ass when he gains some courage but considering how fast and how long he can already run while carrying a great dane no one wants to that side of him. Not only that but everyone is surprised to see how unfazed Shaggy is by Scooby's ability to talk. You don't hear Krypto, Ace or Bat Cow talking so why can he??? No one knows. No matter who looks into it always comes to a dead end. Even Batman is stumped by the enigma that is Scooby Doo. All the gang know is that he's Scooby Doo and he's the best boy they could ever have. :)

[deanmonlover]

Of Flashbacks and Firsts

to explain the background of this fic, it's starting from the present day and jumping back to when they first met when he was pre michael leading up to post michael. also disclaimer, this is my first fic in a really long time so go easy on me please 😭 I think this might become a series, I know it's not perfect but I just wanted to contribute to the corey fic thirstfest currently taking place lmao let me know if you enjoyed this and I will definitely make more of it!

You looked up at the ticking clock on the wall, a steady reminder that you still had an hour left of your shift before you finally were able to clock out and go home to watch that horrible horror movie marathon that you and your boyfriend, Corey had planned earlier on that week. You had finally convinced him to put in all the cheesy classic movies not that it took so much convincing on your part, he always looked forward to spending time with you no matter what you both were watching or doing. The both of you could be watching paint dry and he'd be the happiest man on the planet. The two of you were inseparable since the day you had met him becoming the calm to his storm that he so very much needed everyday. You were the constant he needed in his life, the moon to his stars as cheesy as it was it was the truth. Corey couldn't imagine a world without you, you were his and his only. You only thought the same of him, nothing could ever change that. And yes he may have been acting a little differently ever since the events on the night of the halloween party but after everything that had happened it was more than understandable. He had seen a lot more than you had that night in more ways than one.

———-——————-——————-——————-

The way you both had first met, it was odd thinking back to it. The Corey Cunnigham had stopped in to buy a drink from the very store you still worked at — it was a chocolate milk to be exact. He was almost like a cryptid, rarely out but when he was everyone stopped and watched him with judgement in their unforgiving eyes. Ruthless remarks were said behind his back and some even to his face. All you could do was smile empethcially at him and shoot daggers at the ones in the store who had something to say.

After you had checked him out, one thing led to another and before you knew it a loud commotion could be heard from outside after he had walked out. "C'mon dude just buy us some. We won't tell, we promise. Be a cool psycho babysitter and get us some beer." One of the teenagers smirked stepping forward to corner Corey, daring him to do something about it.

You had had enough of the people in this town and just wanted some peace and quiet for the boy. Why couldn't they just leave him alone? These thoughts plagued your mind and never left it. Who knew threatening some spoiled ass teenagers lives would be on your to-do list that day. Not you of course but they weren't going to get by with harassing the curly haired boy with the puppy dog eyes who literally had done nothing but come to get a drink.

"Listen up, you guys better buy something or get the hell outta here."

But of course not before one of them had shoved Corey to the ground catching him off guard, the bottle breaking with a loud shatter slicing his hand on the broken bottle of milk he had just bought. You had patched him up to the best of your abilities with bandages inside, not caring who saw you.

"Why help me? I mean they're not going to stop harrasing you now that you've helped me." Corey protested, holding out his rather large calloused palm that rested in your own as you continued to patch him up, making sure to be as gentle as you could wrapping the bandage around the open gash that made you inwardly cringe.

"Mmm, because I don't think someone like you deserves to be pushed around. You haven't done anything to them and besides they're just band geeks on steroids anyways. Not like they can chase me down with their clarinets and beat me up." A soft laugh escaped your lips as you finished up your handiwork before giving his upper arm a gentle squeeze.

Corey's face flushed instantly beneath his rimmed glasses at the feeling of your hand resting on him. He hadn't ever been this close to a girl well...ever. Everyone was terrified of him, "the psycho babysitter" as he was dubbed. But not you for some odd reason. You felt like you could understand him a whole other level just by gazing into those big brown eyes. They held so much within them, so many unsaid things that a book could be written about what they had seen.

"You uh–you know who I am already, don't you." He said matter of factly, peering up at you from the corner of his eye. Your heart sunk a little hearing the way he said it. Yes, you did indeed know who he was and what happened that fateful night. However, unlike the other people in Haddonfield you didn't blame him for the accident because it was just that — an accident. It wasn't as if he had done it on purpose, the boy sitting here in front of you couldn't hurt a fly much less a kid.

Giving him a small nod, you give his upper arm a squeeze. "I do know who you are or at least I know your name. What I don't know is how one girl might go about getting to know a certain chocolate milk addict." A surprised look crossed his face as he slowly looked up at you, a small shy grin accompanying it.

"O-Oh you mean me?" In his mind there was no way you wanted to get to know him better. No one even so much as wanted to be seen within five feet of him but yet here you were sitting practically on his lap wanting to know everything about him. He really felt like he could pass out at this point but he mustered up the ability to pull out his phone out of his jacket pocket, handing it over to you for you to put in your number.

"There now you can call me whenever you need rescuing." You teased lightly, unable to stop smiling at him. That dorky side grin pulling at the corners of his mouth as he tucked his phone back away in his pocket. The pull between you both was something that was unexplainable, a fire that had been ignited and couldn't be put out had begun to develop between you both and there was no stopping it once it was started.

[pellelavellan]

The Journals of Pelle Lavellan

14 Justinian, 9:34 Dragon

I'm scared my secret might get out. I don't know what to do. People can't find out. I'm supposed to get married to Finni in the autumn. I know that she knows my secret, but nobody else does. And for good reason too. I'd never live it down. It would be social suicide. What would my parents say? Or worse, Mallas' dad? I know he's not my dad but he really does like make sure I don't forget how much he doesn't like me.

Anyways, Faris scared me today in the woods. Jumped right out of the bushes and shouted at me so loud. I was so scared I fell over. But then he did something weird. He just like...he was just leaning over me with his hands on the grass on both sides of my head staring at me. I don't know why I thought he was going to beat me up, but I just had a bad feeling so I held my breath and waited for it.

He asked me to breathe, and cursed before telling me he wasn't going to hurt me and how jumpy I was. I guess he's right, I could stand to be a bit braver but fuck what was I supposed to think when he came out of the bushes shouting and pinning him to the ground?

He let me sit up, but he was still staring at me and I didn't know why. Because I'm a glutton for punishment I asked him why he'd even pinned me to the ground in the first place if he wasn't trying to hurt me or if there wasn't someone else hiding in the bushes waiting to do something embarrassing to me. He didn't answer me of course, he just gave me another shove and told me not to get any funny ideas.

That was the first instance I started to worry that he knew something. What funny ideas could I possibly get? Okay--a lot. I'm a teenage boy and some guy I've been crushing on just pinned me down and made direct eye contact with me. OF COURSE my mind was going all kinds of places that I would absolutely keep to myself. Faris is too old for me anyways , he's older than Nara, and she's four years older than me.

He's cute sure...and muscular, and cocky, and loud, and really good at sparring he always wins. Sure I like to watch him--for science. But I'm just looking right? What's wrong with watching? I can't believe I'm trying to justify having a crush on one of the hunters to a piece of paper right now. That's kind of weird of me, but I guess it feels like I'm talking to someone that can't answer or tell me how weird I am. Paper's a good listener, I wonder if paper ever feels a way about always being told people's deepest thoughts and just having to keep it a secret?

That doesn't really matter. Anyways, he put his hands back next to my head after he shoved and he accused me of liking him. I denied it of course. He doubled down, 'you're not a fighter Sibs, you don't have any good reason to watch me with the amount of attention that you do.' I wasn't giving in though. I told him I didn't like him, might have even told him to fuck off. What was I supposed to say? Yes, I think about you a lot and I like you a lot? I'm not that stupid.Or I didn't think so because he decided to challenge that answer.

I still can't believe this happened even writing about it, but he leaned down and kissed me, and my stupid fucking ass kissed him back. He laughed at me, not in a nice way, in that mean way people do when they've caught you in a lie and they're going to gloat about it. And he did. It was awful, like all the things that seemed so cool about him were suddenly gone and he was just mean. I don't think I've ever changed my mind about someone so fast. My face got so hot I felt someone was holding a lit match to me and passing it over my cheeks.

As if it couldn't get any worse he asked me 'Are you sure about that?' I'd really had enough of it. I had two options, wrestle him to set myself free or cry, which I was about ready to do but I'd be damned if I cried in front of him because he fucking sucked. So I pounded on his chest until he backed off and I ran home, ignored my mother when she called my name when I walked past her with the sour face I probably had on, and crawled under the covers and hid from the world.

She tried to talk to me. I told her I wasn't feeling well so she advised me to get some rest, said she was always willing to talk if I wanted to. It's been a few hours now. I didn't talk her. I didn't even really talk to Nara when she came home and asked me what was wrong as I'm sure my mum told her I was acting strange.

I haven't really talked to anyone actually all day. I only got up to make dinner for everyone and eat with them, then I went back to bed. I don't want to talk about it really. Telling people would mean I would have to explain things I'm not ready to talk about, not yet. And fuck, if I told anyone what would Faris do to me? I don't wanna think about that either.

I think I hate him. I hate him so much.

[bri-the-nautilus]

yes agreed Kerouac fucking sucks...but I also don't like any beat literature. It's telling that the best author among his contemporaries was an amphetamine-addled trust-fund kid that murdered his wife.

Yeah Burroughs was a fun case lmao. I'm pretty sure he tried to tell the cops that they were pretending to be William Tell when he killed her. Seriously, all those guys were stoned out of their minds. Probably why their books are amazing if you're a 16-22 year old boy but utterly unrelatable if you aren't; there are tons of accounts online of dudes who read the Beats as teens and loved them but revisited them as adults and were like "wow these guys are losers."

Reading that one chapter of Dharma Bums where Kerouac's self-insert and his inserts of Snyder and Ginsberg do three-day-long alcoholic naked ritual fake-Buddhism sex with a shy local teenager was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I've ever had. I was like, wait, this book is based on his life, these characters are based off him and his friends, and he writes THIS??? And PUBLISHES IT???

The only Beat scribbles that I can somewhat tolerate are some of Ginsberg's poetry. "Howl" is pretty damn good, even if Ginsberg was kind of a weirdo. (sidenote: one of Kerouac's worst transgressions in my opinion was the section of Dharma Bums when he has his self-insert go to the San Francisco "Howl" reading and changed the poem's title to "Wail." Fucking Wail??? Really Jack? That word just doesn't have even a sliver of the impact and tone of the word 'howl'. A howl is something raw and primal, a hoarse, furious refrain. A wail is like a fucking baby that needs a nap or something.)

Something that always amused me about the Beats is that many of them are super aware that they're all self-destructive, miserable hedonists, but none of them do anything about it. All of Kerouac's self-inserts go through this weird nature detox where they swear off alcohol and become functioning human beings, but Kerouac died of liver failure in his mom's basement or some shit. The way Ginsberg describes the effects of substance use on his friends in "Howl" is graphic and objectively brutal (if I wasn't already convinced to never do drugs, that poem would've done it), but then he goes and makes street drugs out to be a religious imbibement akin to the blood and body of Christ. Hypocrisy about matters of self-care is everywhere in Beat literature when you start looking for it. Kinda wild.

Honestly, the more I think about it the more I think the best modern-day analogue for Kerouac in particular is fucking Ernest Cline. The Ready Player One guy. They're the same dude. They both have this fixation with the trappings of their youth (drugs for Kerouac, shitty arcade games for Cline), they both write books about self-insert characters obsessed with said trappings, both books portray the said characters as utterly despondent and in a downward spiral that they come out of while the authors are on that same downward spiral but show no signs of recovery. Obviously Cline hasn't died of whatever the '80s-pop-culture equivalent of cirrhosis is, but if you look at the way he completely half-assed RP2, character-assassinating Wade and Halliday in the process, and how he's reacted to criticism of his books, I think it's not an awful stretch to say that Cline is to RP1 Wade as Kerouac is to Ray Smith or whatever that guy's name was just in terms of how their characters can overcome their flaws but the men themselves just can't.

[larabiatasstuff]

Can you do a little something where Daniel comes to the cobra kai dojo and sess terry teaching kids but not how he teached him and he has to get involved theses are. Much younger kids so terry will be talking and one of the kids will notice Daniel standing at the door the kid pops up saying "try it on him" Terry's eyes looks at the door seeing Danny there he smiles um I don't know if, Daniel cuts him off "yeah come on" they do a little fight both if them enjoying it and Daniel actually had fun after the class terry says a thank you to him for staying around and not beating his ass in front of his students which makes Danny laugh "wanna get coffee?" Danny askes which shocks terry, which terry just nods "I mean we have to do something next lesson right?" he says. Wait you are going to be here next lesson terry asks and Danny nods

Omg thank you for your request anon 🖤I hope you like it 🙏

Since Cobra Kai expanded and the new senseis were teaching the adult classes and the other students, he decides to offer classes for younger children. It was so much fun to see all the little boys and girls look up at him with their big eyes, always eager to learn new things. Of course he doesn't teach them as strict as the other students but even if he teaches them playfully they're still going home with new knowledge. After every class Terry makes a small Q&A, session with the kids where they can ask him anything karate related. A boy in the first row holds his hand up. "Yes Tommy, what do you want to know?" "What is your favorite karate move and can you show it to us please?" Terry smiles "Well, I can tell you but I can't show it to you since I'm alone." "Maybe the Mr can help you." Tommy says looking at the front door. Terry follows his look confused and is a bit shocked when he sees Daniel standing there. "Oh I don't know if..." he starts. "It's okay, I'm glad to help." Daniel says taking his shoes off and walking towards Terry. They both have a little fight and the kids are cheering and laughing. When the class ends and all kids are gone, Terry and Daniel are left alone in the dojo. "Danny listen I'm really thankful that you helped me out today." Terry says. "No thanks needed, I... I actually had much fun. I didn't know you were teaching young kids. Do you have time for a coffee?" Terry looked at him with big eyes "I... Yes I'm Free. But why would you want to drink a coffee with me?" Daniel smiles. "Well we have to talk about the next lessons or not?" "Does that mean you join me again?" Terry asks. "I'd love to, teaching those kids was so much fun and they're easier to entertain than teenagers." They both started laughing and went to the next coffee shop and talked about how they teach the kids together.

[bunny-rambles]

Ah, no I don't mind at all! I've been trying to find someone who brainrots about them as well and I'm so happy to finally find one!

Part 2 of older sibling reader: Angst and romance!

By that I mean, the reason I thought of an older sibling rather than a younger. Don't get me wrong, the overprotective sibling trope is one of my absolute favorites and I adore it each time but after a while it kinda looses its charm, I guess? I mean it happens in literally every piece of media or manhwa that I've read and it's kinda getting boring st this point. So, I thought: why not switch it up a bit and go with an older sibling instead!

Eldest Ragvindir MC who is completely unamused by the brothers attempts to intimidate whatever poor soul they're trying to romance because, and I quote: I'm older than you dammit! And smacks them both on the head before pulling their date away.

The boys used to do it all the time as kids, since MC became a teenager before them and began dating. It used to be cute back then since the boys were just cute kids in general but now? Now???? Mc is so done with this bullshit, because they are grown ass men, why are they still doing this?!?!? And again, they're older than them! They're allowed to date whoever they like and can tell when someone is shitty enough, thank you very much.

The boys don't listen and this continues for a while before MC offers them a deal: if the boys can work together and beat them in a fight, then MC will stop dating. For a few months at least, they're not gonna give it up altogether. The problem? Mc taught the boys how to fight, from the basics to their present day fighting styles. Which means, MC knows their moves and how they think. What's more, even as kids the boys were never able to beat MC in a spar and they still remember each and every one of those times they lost. So everytime they take the deal it's a sort of: Will the students finally surpass the master?

No. The answer is no.

The boys will feel that sting on their pride for the rest of time.

And now: The angst. Aka the reason I gave MC an electro vision.

Mc wasn't able to arrive on time when Crepus died. Due to a variety of reasons, all they found was Diluc hunched over their dad's body and Kaeya watching blankly. They immediately brought the boys home, the knights deciding to wait until a different date to get a statement on the incident.

Mc is in their room trying to figure out what to do next when Adelinde calls them outside urgently. They arrive on time to see sparks in the air and watch as Diluc and Kaeya fight, not a friendly spar but an actual battle between enemies. Confused but with no time to think, they rush forward using their vision and arrive seconds after Kaeyas vision appears. Shoving him out of the way leaves them open to take the brunt of Dilucs attack and the moment electro makes contact with pyro-

Boom.

The resulting overload reaction caused severe burns on their hands, almost permanently crippling them. It will take some time before they're healed enough to work properly and even then the phantom pains will persist, especially on bad days.

What if- they had an incredibly bright career in the knights? What if they were considered the best candidate for Grandmaster? (Not because Jean was bad in anyway, of course, but they were older and more experienced so it makes sense) well throw that out the window because they're too injured to continue working and so have no choice but to resign.

As for Diluc and Kaeyas reaction...

I'll leave that up to you hehehe...

If Kaeya was reluctant to tell Diluc, his best friend and brother, twin even, then Kaeya is extremely reluctant to tell MC about him bring a spy. They were the one who found and brought him to the manor, as the eldest they own the manor now and have all the power to throw him out. Dilucs reaction was bad enough, could he continue living if MC hated him as well? They're too important to him.

(It takes a long time for them to convince him it's ok, over the span of a few days since they're injured and everyone's recovering from Crepus but eventually they do. For the most part they stay silent but eventually pull Kaeya into a hug and silently promise themselves that they're going to beat the shit out of his dad if they ever get the chance.)

The boys take turns sticking to MC as much as possible, being one of the few things they now agree on. Though they only ever stay when the other isn't around, the timing indicates some kind of silently agreed on schedule. It isn't until they one day hear MC break down in front of Crepus's portrait that they realize MC has been ignoring their feelings this entire time and focusing entirely on healing, managing the winery and making sure the boys are ok. They're doing everything they can to ignore what's happened to them (Losing their dad, their brothers fighting, losing their career and severe burns) and it takes its toll on them. That's when the brothers finally decide to sit down and talk. They agree to make an effort for their eldest but whether or not it'll work has to wait until Diluc returns from Snezhnaya.

When Diluc returns, he insists on taking over managing the family business even though MC is the oldest. He knows that becoming an adventurer had been another dream of theirs and his guilt from ending their career as a knight persists as well as leaving them to manage a business while still healing. As such he firmly promises them and himself that no matter what, he won't ruin their next career as an adventurer. Once is more than enough. As such, MC gains the freedom of an adventurer and travels around Mondstadt (sometimes Liyue as well) as a Catalyst user. (They had to switch to it as a weapon to put less strain on their hands and as a form of physical therapy.)

I also like to think that MC would wear a mobility aid on their hand from Fontaine just because even years after the incident, sometimes their hand won't move properly. The brothers are always especially protective of them when this happens because it can come out of nowhere which makes it dangerous at times.

I'll stop here for now since it's alot but hope you enjoy the brain rot!

🐈‍⬛-anon

hm I understand what you mean about that, some tropes do lose their charm over time, I don’t really like the whole typical romance situations like ‘there’s only one bed’ or ‘meet cute’ anymore because it list it’s charm for me;;;

I can imagine mc doing that one smile kaeya does when he’s angry, or y’know, the closed eye smile thing before banging both their heads together and whispering in their ear that they should leave if they don’t want to get their asses beat

Hm, interesting idea about them teaching the boys how to fight, Kaeya fights really elegantly and Diluc fights more aggressively, maybe the two sides of MC? Graceful big sibling but terrifying in a fight or when they’re angry? Just a thought.

About the angst - Oh Diluc would be heartbroken. Not only did he injure his brother that night, but also his beloved big sibling? I’m not surprised he left after that. Kaeya would probably feel guilty and see it like it was his fault since he was the one meant for the attack, not MC. Probably another reason why he’s so reluctant to reveal the truth.

I just read that the boys look after mc, so maybe Diluc didn’t leave? Personally, I would think it would be even more of a reason to leave Mondstat than the original reason, but if you think he’d stay then I’d say Diluc would be much more overprotective of them, but in a way where he’s not near them so he doesn’t have to see what he’s done (to either of his siblings now that Kaeya’s eye is scarred)

But, settling their differences and looking after mc after their break? That I can see happening.

Aw Diluc, he really is a sweetheart even though he makes the wrong decisions sometimes, I can see that happening too. I really like the idea of mc being a catalyst, kind of proves that even though they’re disabled they’re still capable, very nice touch.

Sorry for the delay this was just very long and I was working through sections so maybe my ideas might contradict your thoughts (sorry if this is the case-)

I’ll try and reply to the other one a little more quicker, but I think that one’s longer so please be patient I have one working brain cell and it’s flickering from low power OTL

(Oh, can I just ask, in future if you send angst, before it starts can you put a trigger warning? Not really for me but just in case anyone wants to skip over it, thank you 💞)

[kirascottage]

dating jj maybank

jj maybank x gender neutral. reader

word count: 1.8k

cw: headcanons, overall domestic fluff, angst if you squint till ur visions blurry, mentions of poor emotional expression, mentions of sex / sexual innuendos, mentions of fighting / injury, strong pda, kissing, consensual groping, swearing, soft!jj

okay so this is the first time i’ve ever written dating headcanons so i’m gonna try my best

• jj and expressing emotions are a very complicated duo and almost everyone knows it, including you. he knows how he feels for you, and feels it strongly, but the way it comes out of his mouth is like gibberish and completely not understandable. 

“so you know — like — i don’t know, man. i feel heavy for you, like do you feel heavy for me, too?”

“jj, i don’t even know what heavy means in this context and what you’re referring to.”

• but he comes from a good place, and you come to know, learn and love that, because well he loves you, and with jj you just have to infer by his mess of words.

• this boy tries to be as romantic as possible but he’s literally never had a s/o before. the only thing he knows are one nighters so there is a lot that pope and john b advise him on because miscommunication is quite literally the worst. (stated by john b himself)

• for this instance and the sake of the headcanons: you are a member of the pogues, through and through.

• so most of the time you’re together, the pogues are there too. even dates. they love to occupy and jj could shout at the top of his lungs how they are the biggest cock-blockers to ever exist and they would not care. 

• so at that point he doesn’t even try to keep his hands to himself, he will touch you or quite literally make out with you in front of anyone and everyone he can.

• i mean he can get a little protective. (also considering he would never let you around his dad because he wants to protect you and would never let you near anyone that could hurt you) 

• i mean this guy would fight for you till the very end; punches thrown countless of times and harsh words absolutely shouted more times than you could count on your fingers, but no matter how many times you chastise jj, he would never stop to defend your honour because at the end of the night you’re the one playing with his hair and kissing his cuts and bruises.

• especially after everything as well with rafe, topper and the kooks he just wants everyone (including the tourons you see once a millennium) to know that you and him are romantically involved and you are very much taken.

• he even lets the most irrelevant people know the both of you are dating because he loves you that much:

“okay, babe, here me out—”

“jj a whole group of kids just asked me about our relationship! i love you, but the whole population does not need to know that we’re together.”

“obviously we can't tell the whole population! or I would, duh.”

•  even though he could blabber on about everything about you, including what shampoo you use and which perfume of yours is his favourite, affection is more his style: 

• this includes walking around with his hand in your back pocket because wearing anything but jean shorts is really not an option in that heat, (and this does include ass grabbing at every opportunity he can)—

• — his hand gently placed on your thigh while driving / while he’s next to you, interlocking pinkies 98% of the time as you walk together —

• — and peppering kisses is always happening. whether they’re ticking at your checks, suffocating your neck or affectionately placed on your forehead he’s always kissing you.

• other key, and essential, things that come to mind are that his arm is always around you; after everything that’s happened to him he just needs to physically know you’re there and that’s enough to subdue him.

• it’s almost routine for him arm to go around your waist or your shoulder, whether you’re tall or short, tbh he doesn’t really care, his arms and lips are always on you.

• dating jj is dating a teenage boy with absolutely no impulse control and zero control over what he says—

“I mean, dude, if you think about it, why isn’t a banana called a yellow if an orange is called an orange? and why are phones called ‘telephones’ like who the fuck came up with that crap?”

or

“i mean, hey, we could bang out here and it’s not like anyone would know. like jb could be out in the living room and be like clueless.”

“jj, there’s two windows pointing directly at us. i think he would know.”

• —if you don’t understand then he definitely does not either.

• you also flip each other off a lot and people are like ??? but you both are like — fuck you —(affectionate & full of love with my middle fingers)

• one thing he does know is how to flatter you, whether he’s obnoxiously winking at you or bringing you flowers with his tips from work, or he picked them himself, it’s all in the effort.

• any effort from you is like kids getting their favourite toy they’ve been wanting on christmas, for instance: anytime you bring him food, or offer to stay with him at john b’s is like swelling up his heart to the maximum.

• so when he’s not with you, or the pogues, which is rare he is outside. and jj is like diego the explorer he always finds little places just for himself, or for this instance with you.

• so a lot of dates include going to these secluded spots: sometimes it’s a picnic, or a walk, and stargazing is his absolute favourite as he listens to you drone on about the constellations and even just watching the sky with your presence next to him is so comforting and makes him feel safe. 

• of course when the pogues find out they’re brutal with their teasing.

“awww, look at the cute and happy couple!”

“my wittle babies, growing up so fast.”

“god, kie, you make it sound like we’re five?!”

• speaking of alone time, jj loves to cuddle when you guys are alone and that’s one thing he’s not fond of being teased about.

• his head is firm on your chest, his arms wrapped around your waist and his leg flung over your hips. to him it’s just a perfect way to start and end the day.

• he also loves to watch movies while cuddling and he has a set of movies and their genres completely memorized for the occasion.

• he has such a good memory to the weirdest things. like he can state in the exact order your makeup routine, or talk about all the caves and sinkholes in yukatan but ask him how many states there are in america and he’s completely bummed.

• back to what i was saying, cuddling and movie times together.

• he’s the little spoon i will not argue with anyone about this, especially if something happened that day.

• like if rafe pissed him off, some kooks stepped on his toes, his dad had been particularly agitated that day or he was just frustrated. your embrace is what keeps his together. he just loves the feeling of your arms around him, essentially protecting him.

• and the pogues always get a kick out of it when they see you too snuggled in the morning. they even take pictures, a lot of pictures of everything and anything they can. 

• their fav times to take pictures is when you both are off guard: like when he’s putting his hat on you, he’s sharing his juul with you, you guys are laying together on the boat or maybe your surfing together in the water.

• he’s surprisingly intimate about everything even though they’re such mundane things for him.

• he expresses his love for you by actions rather than words. for example, he has a guitar (an absolutely beat up one with missing strings and chipped wood, but he says it has more character that way as well as your signature on the back of it)—

• —and just strums it for you absolutely whenever and however your mood is because no matter what its always calming. sometimes he even hums a little tune or starts singing a bit.  

• another few ways he depicts his love for you is by shoving his baseball hat on your head (the one that absolutely nobody is allowed to wear) because he doesn’t want you frying in the sun or dying of heatstroke.

• a lot of his tank tops are now yours because they’re so comfortable and you can wear them literally anywhere.

• he shares, only with you but, he shares. his rings are on your fingers, his bandana is around your neck, his boxers are your sleep shorts, and he absolutely eats that shit up.

• he also gets extremely comfortable with you, like even more than john b in a way. example: you could just be chilling, his arm wrapped around your neck and — boom — he’s shoving your face in his armpit and trying to tickle you.

• it gets to the point where the pogues are so used to it and sometimes even they join in because they even like being included in on your affections but would absolutely rather drown than admit it. they love watching their two best friends love grow for each other, and they're happy jj has found sanctuary to love and be with someone freely. 

• speaking of love, jj is also like a puppy: praise, reassurance and kisses are the way to his heart and staying there.

• i’m gonna say it, jj has self confidence and love issues. they are not detectable at all but with his mother gone and the way his father treated him, there’s shit buried in his heart that it takes awhile for him to open up about.

• once he does: he cries, and he cried a lot. but after that it was like never letting go again. he trusts you with his whole heart and soul and he knows you won’t take advantage of that.

• the way you both accept each other into each others lives is so important to him no matter where you live, who you are and what your family is like everything counts for him and that just makes you the person who you are. 

• dating jj can be complicated and messy and wonderful and passionate and relationships aren’t easy but he would def be worth it <3

[astraskylark]

Thoughts on Jaune? He gets such a raw deal in the FNDM, both being hated and loved far too much in my opinion.

Jaune. My boi. My really traumatised son boi.

I did not hate him but i sure as hell did not like him, especially during volume 1 and 2. I feel like the general dislike for him in volume 1 was because everyone (including me) really wanted to see more of RWBY but we got slapped with Jaundice which is arguable not a bad (predictable and clichéd yes) arc, but it literally could have happened at any other time.

He was an ass in volume 2, take no for an answer my dude pls but once his whole crush on Weiss ended he really did become a lovable little dork and he did have moments of character growth (chaotic team leader for the win!) before the events of volume 3.

And Jaune has not a had a peaceful moment since. No seriously he lost his partner and found out that it was all because an immortal wizard didn't take a flu shot and his wife left him and killed took the kids and the world is fucked but he has to help cause he's a huntsman and what else does he have but he has no semblance and then he meets his 'what could have been' person's killer and has a glorious breakdown with tears and screaming and randomly flinging his sword around and yikesss he is literally almost ready to die (concerned eyes from teammates) and then his friend gets stabbed but he's got his semblance and okay things are looking up but NO the evil witch divorcee is unkillable but hey he's got his team and his friends so yes he's gonna fight and he's also really following his passion for crime (STEAL STEAL STEAL) cause better late than never but then it turns out the kingdom they're headed to is actually being governed by a fascist but hey he's got some new beats, his hair is fruity fresh and dare he say it he might just be the most mentally stable person in their squad of depressed teenagers he's helping kids cross the streets! and he's finally doing something he's proud of! cause its all him and okay things are spiralling but he's still got his funky clothes and his fresh haircut and he's in a whale but he's okay and then there's a bomb but he's okay and it's kinda bad but he's got his Johnny Bravo hairstyle and so ITS FINE they've got a magic gateway with zero regulations and he just got hit with a rock but HE'S FINE he can do this he is cool he is calm he can do this and things go to shit there's chaos his friends are hurt but he's still here and he can help its still okay and-- OH WAIT ITS MERCY KILLING WITH A STEAL CHAIR!! and then his mental health falls into the void.

So yeah personally I'm kinda worried because he has not been having a very good time at all and now he's alone on freaky magical talking mice land and now he has to live with the guilt that he made a choice at a time and I honestly can't judge whether he did the right thing or not and maybe he can't either there's no right or wrong he did it and if the psychedelic island is supposed to help you figure out who you are I wonder if Jaune will be able to accept what he finds.

[royalty-subway]

Hello I hope you're having a nice day today :> headcannons for the boys with a S/O that looks extremely intimidating but is actually a big softie? S/O is very tall and has big muscles, wears lots of black, and is very quiet and seems scary, but once you get to know them you realise they are actually really kind and gentle, and just have a hard time socializing with others because they're really shy

shy bean

Sordward

… Okay, so he was probably scared of you. Since you’re pretty tall and have all these other features, he thought you’d absolutely annihilate him on the spot. But turns out you’re a softie-

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just pretty misleading. But it’s not like he can complain, since he’s kinda like that in his own ways; an asshole on the outside, but can be a softie once he lets his guard down and has a very close friend/partner. But he won’t admit that-

He… probably did try to poke at you when he first met you. Maybe because you wear a lot of black and you’re quiet (he assumed that you were an edgy teenager). And he nearly died since he lost all of his confidence once you turned your head towards his direction-

He thought he was going to die there, until you literally just said “hi” or “are you okay?” in the most polite and shy way possible. Despite him probably insulting you before, you’re still nice to him. And he soon became more nicer to you.

Huh. You guys are like complete opposites. You’re tall, nice and shy. While he’s short, rude and confident as fuck. So of course he’s willing to talk for you, but like, how are you this shy you silly scary goose-

Shielbert

Honestly, your scary appearance probably frightened him. Like, he wanted nothing to do with you since you’ll actually kill him. Or at least it looks like it. It’s kinda likely his older brother picked on you and that’s kinda how it all started.

… He definitely didn’t expect you to be shy, like at all. And yet, it says a lot more about you than what meets the eye. But like, why do you look like this in the first place-

He’s kinda interested in your existence now, maybe not in the same way as his older brother would since all he does is pick on people. But like, interested in a good way. As if he wants to know more about you.

And I mean, you're tall and buff. So that sort of makes him a bit more flustered when he’s around you. And yet, he gets flustered easily, but this is a bit of a different story. Basically, just picking him up will murder him-

He can understand being shy, and he’s willing to talk for you. He’s a bit shy himself, but it’s not that bad. He can still talk to people. I suppose he’s just… a bit introverted. But not by much.

Emmet

Honestly, he likes people like you. People that are tall, buff as fuck, quiet and scary to a point they look like part of a mafia gang, but pretty shy and nice in general. Mainly because it’s kinda funny but also interesting.

It’s probably going to be one of those things where he tells people “excuse me, they didn’t ask for pickles” while his s/o just stands there; being tall, scary, and shy.

So yeah, he doesn’t mind talking for you, since he kinda does that with his Pokemons sometimes. Since they’re kinda shy themselves, even his Eelektross, who’s the tallest and probably the scariest looking one in his team is pretty shy-

Normally, he isn’t one to hug people, depending on his mood and such. But like, you’re so pog and stuff it just makes him want to hug you, you silly scary sus shy bean. If you’re okay with that.

I mean, whenever someone decided to mess with him. All he has to do is to show his s/o around and it’s pretty likely that those people will just leave him alone; thinking you’ll actually beat their ass because of your tallness and buffness.

Ingo

Well, you kinda caught him off guard with your gentle and shy side. Despite being tall with big muscles, and having the air of an edgy teenager who tries to become an anime protagonist. But eh, you’re still cool in his book.

Now people will probably accuse you both of being “the people who are actually misunderstood because they’re scary and intimidating on the outside but chill on the inside''.

Not to say he’s shy as well (or has big muscles, man is an actual stick-), he’s just introverted, if anything. But he can still talk to people. He screams “ALL ABOARD” every 2 seconds. I think he can talk for you just fine. Oh, and he’ll apologize if he startles you with his screaming.

I mean, he can try to help you out of your shyness. Since he usually tries to improve on people’s stuff, like if they lack social skills or something. Just to help them succeed in stuff. It’s what he does best.

I mean, sure, he’s kinda curious about why you appear like this when you’re shy. This sounds like a character you’d see in a kid’s movie. But I guess it really doesn’t matter now-

[bestjeanistmonster]

For rewriting the Isolde-Tristan character dynamic:

Definitely make her more confident around Tristan. This is a mace wielding warrior who doesn't hesitate to fuck shit up. Make her act like it.

On that note, maybe a little bit less volatile. Instead of trying to murder Percival and crush his dick, maybe something more like pushing him away and "Hey, what the Hell is your problem??"

I saw someone somewhere mention her picking up Tristan and sprinting away with him, and that is a fantastic idea. She cares about him and wants to support him and make sure he's OK. She can do that without putting him on a pedestal.

As for how Tristan acts around her... Look, they're teenagers. When teenagers have crushes on each other, they're stupid cringey confused little creatures. Our boy is half goddess, half demon. In both those cultures, gift giving is an important gesture. Except he doesn't want it to be SUPER obvious.

He gives her a rock. (His parents are absolutely laughing at him.) And if they should try to flirt...

"Isolde! Hi! You- You look very today!"

"...Very? I- thank you?"

"Uh... yes... very, you look very. Because you have eyes!"

"You, uh, also have eyes! They're good!"

"Yes, I do! I-I can like... see and stuff... with them..."

"Me too!"

"Hah, who knew? Haha!" *flees*

(Meliodas is trying very hard not to blow his cover where he's listening in around a corner)

( I wrote this while I was tired so it’s probably shit but-)

Meliodas would probably want to scream in frustration while simultaneously laugh burst out laughing at his sons attempts at flirting, while Elizabeth thinks it’s adorable and it reminds her a little about her and her husband’s attempts at flirting when they were younger.

[at breakfast]

Tristan: guess what dad, i wrote Isolde a letter telling her how i feel!

Meliodas, excited: that’s progress!

Tristan: yeah, i tore it up and burned it!

Meliodas, his expression immediately falling into a small grimace: uhh

Tristan, pouting while playing with his food: it’s still progress...

also

Isolde, bench pressing a barbell during training:

Tristan crushing his metal water canister in his fist while bright red: gods i wish that was me-

I also imagine her as being the tough as nails type of character, the type you definitely wouldn't want to fuck with but at same time being chill around people she likes and a bit softer with Tristan. Not like simping, but like: checking on him more than everyone else, her eyes softening when he enters a room, letting him rest on her shoulder when he’s tired, stuff like that.

And with the whole volatile thing, i thought it'd be better if Isolde was that prone to violence when she was still training to be a knight but then had mostly grown out of it . (since their like 16, I'm gonna say she started training at like 10-12) 

Queue backstory that i just pulled out my ass and will most probably change later:

Back then she would always attack first and ask questions later, but her opponents usually couldn't answer those questions cuz they'd be too beat up and injured to answer said questions. 

The holy knight that was training her didn’t exactly help her in that department, he didn’t take her training seriously, often slacking off only taught her the  bare bones basics once and never helped her to improve. He didn’t even try to correct her stances or anything, forcing her to spy on the other knights training and copy them to the best of her ability.

This only served to make her angrier.

Isolde would often let her emotions cloud her judgement, leading her to be reckless and make rash (usually violent) decisions

...until she met Tristan that is.

Howser, wanting this child to take a chill pill, made her the personal knight of Prince Tristan. Isolde wasn’t exactly thrilled with this, why would she want to look after some snobby prince when she could be learning how to fight dragons and destroy armies?! 

Despite that, she took her job very seriously because her trainer promised to take her out on a mission if she did. (imagine this scruffy 11-12 year old girl, who might have a lisp, puffing up her chest trying to be serious lol)

But to her surprise, the tiny prince (well tiny compared to her anyway) wasn’t snobby in the slightest, he was a hyper ball of sunshine who basically bounced off the walls and ran away whenever he got the chance. That kid could run fast

Tristan was a little scared of her at first, the girl was intense and terrifying, but eventually with a bit of encouragement from Elizabeth, tried to befriend her.

He noticed that Isolde’s form was off when she swung her mace making her lose a bit of balance, so he offered to teach her what he knew. Isolde begrudgingly accepted because although the prince’s weapon of choice was a sword he did know a few things about how to use a mace cuz he thought they were cool.

Plus he kicked her ass in training in like 2 seconds flat, so she needed all the help she could get.

Eventually Isolde found herself endeared by his friendly goofball nature and she started to recuperate his friendship.

Their friendship became official after the two were walking through the streets of Liones and they almost got mugged. Through joint teamwork they beat the thrives up, but Isolde was pissed off and nearly broke one of their legs in a fit of rage.

Thankfully Tristan held her wrist tightly to stop her mace from coming down.

“Prince Tristan?! What’re you-“

“Isolde, they’ve had enough, look at them.” Tristan gestured to the three thieves on the ground, they looked thin, incredibly thin. “Their just hungry and needed some money.”

Tristan gently pulled her wrist down and then offered the thieves the loaf of bread they had bought to share. The thieves ran away with it obviously, and left them both staring after them.

“Welp come on Isolde we still have to go to park!”

“…how did you notice that they were-“

“Hungry? I don’t like running into things before I know all the facts cuz you never know what could’ve actually happened or if it was a misunderstanding, you can’t just rush in weapons first cuz it’ll just make the situation worse, ya’know?”

“…right?”

They make it to the park and sit on the swings, Isolde being deep in thought while Tristan is swinging so high that it’s likely he’s gonna fly off any second.

“…do you wanna be friends with me?”

“Hah?!!”

Tristan let’s go in shock and catapults himself face first into the grass.

“Prince Tristan!!!” Isolde ran over to check on him.

He immediately sat up, his face bruised slightly and covered in dirt, “I will absolutely be your friend!!!”

“Great…uhm but are you, like, okay?”

The hybrid held up his baby tooth that had been knocked out in the crash before smiling at her with a bloody smile.

“Yep!”

“…let’s get you to the infirmary.”

“Yes please-“

After that they became friends and Isolde started working on her anger issues, and by the present manga she’s seriously improved! Although there are a few times where she lets her emotions get the best of her but not to the extent of her trying to crush someone’s balls.

Basically I like to think that Tris and Isolde would be a calming presence for each-other.

(I’m open to changes)

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.