#unless they’re against oscar then oscar is number one

[justatiredhuman]

i am so so so proud of oscar, he’s done so good so far this year, and getting a podium in his rookie year??? absolutely amazing!!!

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps - Volume 8 “War”

Hello, everyone! Story time.

Yesterday food was delivered for my two idiot dogs (they’re thrilled about it) but, because it was delivered by Fed Ex, shenanigans were bound to ensue. These particular shenanigans involved realizing that the food had not been left at the front door like tracking said it had. Instead, it was down the very long driveway by the mailbox. Specifically, it was on a low wall beside the mailbox, currently inaccessible due to a mound of plowed snow.

Now, how the delivery guy managed to get it there I’ll never know, but given that our postal system is currently killing itself to get us our Amazon orders for Christmas, I shrugged, let it go, and resigned myself to lifting an 18 pound bag plus box over that snow without dying. Which meant that in reality I just dragged it, uncaring what bumps the bag might accumulate along the way. What are the dogs gonna do? Complain about presentation?

Snow successfully circumvented; I was home free!

… until I was lifting the box into the car, hit a patch of black ice, and was suddenly looking up at the sky, my right hip and leg screaming.

I’m fine. Bruised, but fine. It’s 2020. Did I expect to not fall? C’mon, Clyde. Be sensible.

The reason I'm telling you all this is because falling on ice at 10:00pm with an oversized bag of dog food was less painful than watching this episode. 

I jest... but only a little. To be fair to RWBY, it admittedly wasn't painful in any new way. Everything that's a problem this week has been a problem for years now: confusing motivations, changing semblances, unpersuasive character beats, etc. So in some ways this episode — especially as a hiatus episode — is rather underwhelming. I expected RWBY to do something big before taking six weeks off, but this episode simply set the (unstable) stage for what's to come. With the exception of Ren, nothing changed this episode, which makes for a rather "Okay..." note to end on. It's not inherently bad, it's just a bit of a letdown after hyping ourselves up over the expectation that something even crazier than grimm soup will happen. Which, to again be fair, is on us as opposed to the writers. But that feeling of, "If this was last week, what in the world will we get right before an unpredicted hiatus?" was palpable. Turns out the answer was, "A pretty tame episode." 

As always though, let's start at the beginning. This episode is titled "War" — straight to the point — and it's actually a little shorter than our last three episodes, adding to that "Okay..." feeling overall. We open on the outskirts of Atlas, amidst what appears to be a wheat field, or something similar. Upon reflection, it makes sense that the bubbled city would be able to grow things not normally growable in the tundra. This might also explain Cinder's strange beginning. Perhaps her orphanage existed on these rural outskirts and then she was brought into the city proper? We'll probably never know for sure, but at least this is a simpler answer than, "The Madame went off to an entirely different Kingdom to secure her child slave." Occam's Razor and all that.

Ironwood's army has assembled to hold off Salem's army. Wow, aren't we glad Ironwood invested in thousands of trained professionals rather than a handful of independent fighters? Seriously though, this is now a battle of numbers. May says later in the episode that Ironwood's forces are doing their best to assist Atlas, so they should go help Mantle... but that help only exists because years ago he recognized that the tiny class sizes of the Academies, this 

wasn't going to be enough if grimm attacks suddenly increased. Sure enough, now they're in a situation where Ironwood needs even more men to keep up with Salem's creation magic. The fact that he has any at all is crucial to what little hope is left. How do Jaune, Yang, and Ren think they're going to get the time to look for Oscar without everyone dying while they're gone? Because Ironwood's army is keeping the attack at bay. I love how the story keeps angling for the "Military people are evil" message while actively showing us how much a military is needed in this world. If Ironwood had been a generic Good Guy who dismantled his armed forces because others wanted to ignore that they've always been at war against objectively evil creatures — both the grimm and Salem — then there would have been nothing to hold Salem off until small team rescue/bomb plans could be implemented. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. As usual. The army is on the front lines and one guy is scared enough that he's shaking. Can't say I blame him. As always, RWBY functions best when it leans towards horror, with skeletons rising alongside the normal grimm and intense music playing to convey the stakes. Ironwood watches the onslaught and immediately calls for a civilian evacuation into the subway system. Get people below ground, behind a few, defendable entrances, rather than wandering about the city where land or sky grimm can pick them off easy-peasy. Makes sense. Yet I'm already seeing fans make snide comments about how Ironwood is "still running," which just demonstrates how many viewers take the emotions of the show at face value — who is Good and who is Bad — rather than considering the situation and deciding for themselves. What's far more egregious than viewers enjoying a story however they'd like on a Saturday before the holiday though (seriously, my salt aside, no one has to enjoy RWBY any one way) is that RT again tries to paint Ironwood as crazy when he's... just not? Beyond the choice to animate him with scary expressions 

once he gives the order the soldier starts to say, "But sir — " and Ironwood yells for him to obey right now. The scene makes it look like Ironwood is doing something shady again. Here's this goon balking at the order, but we're not told why. What's bad about getting the people to (relative) safety? Why is this order treated like something to question at all? We're not told and, from what we do know, it's not something that would be questioned, so unless we learn something new post-hiatus, that line exists only to make Ironwood look bad. It's a (nonsensical) excuse to have another ally turning against him (slightly) and to give Ironwood the chance to look scary and violent again. Nevermind that his city is under attack and if a subordinate started questioning a completely sensible and time-sensitive order? I might yell too. 

So we're off to a great start. The above looks particularly stupid given that we immediately see the flying grimm arriving in a populated area, terrifying all the civilians there. Everyone bolts for the subway and we cut away from a man trying desperately to reach his daughter, unsure if either of them survive. But people want Ironwood to not use what few resources he has? See, this is why generic messages like, "You have to stand your ground" don't work. Sometimes there are situations where you should run and that doesn't automatically equal being a coward. It means you're smart enough to take the actions necessary to save as many lives as possible. 

Later on we'll have a similar issue with the message, "You have to trust people" when my darling Oscar briefly loses his mind.  

Now though, we see that the "fugitives" Yang, Jaune, and Ren have been taken into custody. Of course they have. Look, when the preview dropped yesterday I saw a number of takes along the lines of, "How dare the Ace Ops do this. They need to put aside their differences until the attack is over!" but no, they really don't, because it's no longer their responsibility to extend trust towards this group. Especially when doing so, to their mind, has a high chance of making a horrific situation that much worse. What are they going to do if, in the middle of a Salem attack, the kids they decided to trust betray them, attack them, and leave them knocked out somewhere while the world burns? 

...Oh wait, they already did that. 

See, the group broke trust first. Numerous times. The Ace Ops listened to Yang admit that she and Blake had betrayed Ironwood days ago. Then they watched Ruby betray him again by alerting the rest of the team, turning them against him. They swore they wouldn't attack, so Team RWBY attacked them first. They learn that Qrow had a hand in murdering their leader. They encounter the group again and Weiss gleefully asks if they want a second defeat. They watch Ruby tell the entire world to dismiss Ironwood because he’s the one who can’t be trusted. Outside of JYR not immediately attacking them when they arrived to help (something I praised them for), this group has never put their trust in the Ace Ops. So why do they — and we — expect the Ace Ops to do so now? Imagine for just a moment that it was reversed. We find out that someone betrayed the group for no good reason, set themselves against them, continued to do so as everything fell apart, told the rest of the world they’re the enemy, and then a close associate is involved in Ruby's murder. How many people would expect the group to just shrug all that off? Would they put their differences aside and embrace these people because blind trust is (supposedly) the right thing to do? Of course not! Yang would punch their lights out and everyone would cheer, but that's because they're the established heroes. Outside of that role, no one else is allowed to mistrust those who have proven themselves untrustworthy and take precautions against getting betrayed again. To say nothing of how these characters don’t have our meta perspective. Meaning, they live in a world where this trio is not a part of a protagonist group destined to remain a part of the plot because that’s how story conventions work. They’re three random teens who were promoted to huntsmen early. They’re three soldiers out of many who can, at any time, be taken out of the fight. No one on the Ace Ops is working under the belief that they “have” to be a part of this fight. From their in-world perspective, you could toss them in jail for the rest of the battle and that’s that. Outside of their fugitive status they are entirely unimportant. 

So yes, Jaune, Ren, and Yang are in handcuffs. They deserve to be. Don't worry though, they get out very soon. 

Yang makes a snide comment about Winter "Still just following orders" and honestly? I've lost the love I used to have for her as a character. Yang is just an exercise in frustration whenever she speaks now. Thus far she's blamed Ruby for everything that's gone wrong (ignoring her own choices there), did a 180 to yell at Ren for acknowledging how bad things are, worried nonsensically about Blake being disappointed in her even though Ruby is the one she fought with, and is now back to the "You just follow orders" shtick. Yang will label anything she personally doesn't like as evil order following, but conveniently ignores how following Ruby's orders helped get them into this mess, and how the one time she went AWOL made things even worse. These characters don't actually have  beliefs they stand behind, they just say whatever is currently necessary to make themselves look good, even if that contradicts previous statements or actions. 

She also gets mad at Vine for saying that grimm don't take prisoners, ignoring that she only found this out a few hours ago. No one in the group is equipped to navigate the emotional minefield that is this war because they can't even take two seconds to put themselves in another’s shoes. Weiss doesn't bother to consider Whitley's situation. Jaune points at the snow and gets frustrated that Harriet doesn't magically know there's grimm soup flowing nearby. Yang snaps at Vine for stating what she also knew to be a basic fact about grimm up until Oscar's kidnapping. It's all framed as, "How can you be this stupid?" rather than, "Oh yeah, these people haven't had the experiences I have. If I was randomly told this I'd doubt it too. I should try to explain this in a way that will make sense to them and increase my chances of being believed." 

This is the group who decided it was a good idea to tell the whole world about Salem and did it just as badly as I suspected they would. The story has shoved a delicate, information-based war into the hands of punch-happy teenagers and refuses to grapple with how that's a bad thing. 

Anyway, Ironwood comes on the radio to say that the whale is pretty indestructible on the outside, but it might be vulnerable from the inside, so let's get a bomb in there. Seems like a good enough plan as any, especially given that the grimm is currently on the very outskirts of the city, away from the civilians if/when it's blown up. What kind of bomb might this be though? 

Could it, perhaps, end up being a now severely damaged android who is based off of Pinocchio? 

Time will tell. For now, the group is quite obviously upset that Ironwood is planning a big BOOM while Oscar (and Ozpin! Tellingly, no one mentions Ozpin...) is still inside. Here's the thing: Both sides are right here. YJR are right to be worried about their friend, while the Ace Ops — who have no emotional ties to Oscar and, as just established, are questioning whether or not a grimm really kidnapped him — are right that they cannot prioritize a single life over the entirety of Atlas. They just can't! And any hero worth their salt is going to recognize this. You cannot knowingly sacrifice thousands of people (if not more) for one (admittedly awesome) farm boy. It would be a different situation if the people of Atlas volunteered to remain in danger to give Oscar a chance at escape, but that obviously isn't the situation here. If someone told me, "Sorry, Clyde, we can't get you out because the place you're in is super dangerous and attempting to extract you would likely cause the rescue party to die. Also, the longer we don't blow this location up the longer lots of other people die" I'd be like, "Fair enough. Have a nice life!" I mean, obviously anyone would be terrified and devastated by the news, but if you're still thinking straight and have even an ounce of compassion for others, you don't trade all those lives for your own. Spock does not open the door to flood the whole Enterprise with radiation!

And notably, neither does Kirk. Oscar isn't given the chance to sacrifice himself — ignoring his choice to try and undermine Salem's forces rather than escaping — so Jaune, Ren, and Yang are deciding that for him. Which, again, makes sense for them emotionally, but it's still a selfish choice. They're prioritizing their family over everyone else's. If someone ever told me they’d risked a whole city for my sake I’d be touched, but also pissed as hell. Because what were you thinking? 

Which is really my biggest issue with this divide. It would have been nice if the show had done more to make me believe these three are that ride and die for Oscar. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that they are and I'll take this characterization over the apathy we had in the past, but let's be real, it kind of came out of nowhere. The group as a whole pretty much ignored Oscar up until the movie invite and two of these characters — Yang and Jaune — have actively hurt him in the name of getting at Ozpin. Now suddenly they're willing to toss aside their huntsmen duties — protect the people — in order to save him? Nice sentiment, it's just that, as always, we have very little development for it, especially given the level of emotion shown. Particularly when it comes to Ren. The prospect of someone sacrificing Nora? I 100% believe that he draws a hard line and this kick-starts a change in his semblance. Ren is shown to be thinking about how he lost his teammate Pyrrha? Totally believe it! Someone is sacrificing the kid I'm not sure he's ever had a conversation with? That's less persuasive. At the very least, it would have been nice to have the trio grapple with whether they can or should prioritize Oscar over everyone else, rather than taking such a black and white stance of, "Of course taking the time to save this one guy while everyone else dies is worth it. You're evil for thinking otherwise." 

We even get a shot of Winter's hand shaking and clenching like Yang's used to, just to hammer home who the correct party is. 

While they begin this argument we cut to Salem who is literally conducting her grimm in their attack against Atlas. 

Very nice. I love when a villain has 

Emerald watches her, clearly freaked out, and then sneaks off to where Oscar is held. In the hallway she encounters one of the jellyfish grimm, so she casually makes it not see her until it has passed. 

Her semblance works on grimm, but not “real girl” androids? Okay. 

We all realize how crazy powerful Emerald is though, right? The stuff that she could do in a fight is staggering and I'll be forever salty that all she managed in the Penny battle was to create a couple different Cinders. Emerald, Marrow, Salem herself... RWBY has a real problem of having the antagonists conveniently not use the power at their disposal when the heroes need to win. 

So Emerald starts listening in on Ozpin's torture. We learn that Hazel was recruited when he tried to kill Salem numerous times and had to watch her keep reforming. Which, if I remember correctly, is a technique she used back when she and Ozma were playing at Gods. It worked and now Hazel believes that they "share a vision. She's going to create a new world order," one without Kingdoms or Huntsmen Academies. No, says Ozpin, she's going to divide humanity past reform, summon the Gods, and hopefully die when they take out all of Remnant. 

...My god, did we finally get Salem's motivations after seven years? 

Seriously though: seven years. It's way too late, especially when we now have so many questions attached to this supposed goal. If Salem always wanted to divide the world irrevocably, why didn't she attack, oh, say, a thousand years ago? Why has she kept to the sidelines until now? None of this answers why she held off until our simple soul was conveniently ready to fight her. We also have the issue of Salem's knowledge, or lack thereof. So she obviously knows about the Relics and that they'll summon the Gods, but not how to work them? How did that come about? Even Ozpin's motivations are murky now. He repeats Salem's curse word-for-word — though notably, minus the "You must learn the importance of life and death. Only then may you rest" part — yet unless Salem told him this herself when they first reunited — and we know they both hid things from the other — Ozpin could have only gotten this line from the lore episode, something he witnessed along with us just a few weeks/months back. So is he only now realizing that this is what Salem wants the Relics for? Might he be wrong? Or did he somehow figure this out lifetimes ago and we're just not told how? If this is the case, why haven’t Salem’s motivations come up before now? 

This sudden, "Oh yeah, she's always wanted to die" feels pretty tacked on. Like RT had Salem arrive last Volume because that's ~cool~ and then suddenly realized that they have to deal with her motivations now, so they hastily cobbled this together. But, as said at the start, this is entirely expected for RWBY nowadays. A problem to be sure, though one we've been putting up with for a couple of years now. 

During all this, Hazel shouts that this is what Ozpin deserves and the first word out of his mouth is, "Yes." 

But Oscar and the rest of Remnant don't deserve it, so make the right choice for them. How did RT think they were going to make this guy an antagonist? Ozpin has so much self-hatred and yet is still trying SO HARD that he makes Ruby Drinking Tea While The World Burns Rose look laughable. 

Oh yeah, we'll be getting to that scene in just a second, but for now I just want us all to appreciate Ozpin as a character, even if the story won't. 

....

.......

..............

...Okay, moment done lol. Sorry, Oz, there's a lot to cover this episode. 

We cut to a semi-conscious Nora who asks Weiss, "Now what am I good for?" So that’s a double serving of oof. That's when Ruby arrives with fine china steaming with tea. Or coffee. Or hot chocolate. Whatever it is these girls are drinking. What comes next is accompanied by a strange kind of vindication for me. I mean, the fandom dragged me so hard for taking issue with their snuggly smiles during Ruby's message, yet now we literally have the girls sitting back in a mansion as everything goes to shit around them. I know the knee jerk reaction to this will be, "They have to watch over Nora" and “They deserve a break” but really? All three of them need to watch her? And a break during the height of the action? Blake says she hopes everyone else is okay, but who is actually out looking for information about the rest of their team? May. Who's going to do something to get Nora help? Whitley. These characters are so good at telling us they're the heroes while rarely ever displaying those traits. They all (somehow) saw the attack on Atlas and have the ability to get out there and defend people — the job they wanted — yet Ruby looks out the window and asks, "What can we even do?" while taking a long sip of tea. The people of Mantle are (supposedly) freezing to death, yet one of the few with aura, Weiss, sits by a roaring fire going, "Do we just wait for someone to come? If they even come.” I'm sorry, you didn't consider this before you told the whole world about Salem? No one questioned whether asking for potentially non-existent help was worth the risk and what they'd do if it never came? Or even just what they’d do in the meantime? I’m not saying the girls can’t have basic necessities like drinks, or that it can’t be done in style when that’s conveniently available. I’m saying them enjoying the food, warmth, and relative safety of the Schnee household (built on racism) while casually talking about what, if anything, they should do for the people dying outside looks a bit Not Good. "Should we wait for the fire department?" Asks the character as their kitchen burns, sitting beside a number of water buckets that could help slow things down. "If they even come," they sigh, taking another sip of tea. This is ridiculous! The city is currently under attack by the series' Big Bad and half our heroes are just sitting around, watching the evil lightning, wondering if they should try to do anything about it. 

"How did it all get like this?" Ruby asks her cup, ignoring the many steps she took to make things this bad. It continually boggles my mind that Ironwood is out here trying to keep people safe in the subway, coming up with a plan to blow up this whale, sending out an army to kill countless grimm... yet "What can we even do?" Ruby is supposed to be the hero here. You know, the one who has silver eyes and could one-shot huge numbers of Salem's army if she actually went out there and tried to help.  

Ironwood is taking action... and so is May. As said, she's the one out looking for info on their teammates and when she returns says that they should all get back down to Mantle. Why? Because, as mentioned earlier, Atlas at least has an army to help with things. Mantle only has them. 

Yet suddenly, Weiss doesn't want to leave. 

Where did this come from? They succeeded in their preferred plan of telling the world what's going on over Ren and Yang's plan of helping what people they could, and now they're looking for something to do. Why wouldn't they head back to help? (Especially now that the shields are down.) Weiss yells that there are people dying in Atlas too but, as established, Atlas has the army. And where was this concern when they refused to let Atlas leave? After a Volume and a half of pro-Mantle content, this seems to come out of nowhere. Worse, Weiss tries to guilt May by asking if she has family in Atlas, which leads to the reveal that she's trans. Her family rejected their daughter. 

I want to be clear that I'm very happy RT made this canon. For what she is — a side character we know incredibly little about — I really like May and the fact that they were clear in her identity rather than keeping it to twitter deserves recognition. Yet I'm not going to pretend that the reveal didn't leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, simply because we have this incredibly privileged cis girl, who knows a great deal about shitty families, hearing how horrible May's was and still trying to tell her she needs to suck it up and help Atlas over Mantle. When May angrily asks whose side she's on, Blake makes a comment about hearing that before, comparing her to Ironwood. May is painted as the misguided one here, but can you imagine if someone told Weiss to go help Jacques over her found family, Team RWBY, regardless of what he's done to her? The fandom would explode, and rightly so. There's something to be said for realism here, showing us Weiss and Blake's inability to see where May is coming from... but it doesn't feel like a commentary on that. It feels like another Penny situation: May is put in her place for being inconsiderate, even though this time it's her choosing to help people who are ALSO in danger over the people who represent family she's broken with. 

I wanted conflict this Volume and I absolutely got it, but damn if it isn’t badly thought out at times. 

Because rather than grappling with these personal motivations, Ruby brushes them aside by yelling, "There are no sides! We want to help everyone." 

Does that extend to Ironwood? Ruby's speeches started falling flat when she betrayed Ozpin, attacked Cordovin, betrayed Ironwood, attacked the Ace Ops... This girl does not want to "help everyone." She wants to help those who agree with her. 

Yet her rock solid optimism generates the question, “So how exactly do we get out of it?” which, as expected, Ruby has no answer to. The story keeps showing us how bad a leader Ruby has become, yet no one is actively responding to that. They kinda disagree about lying to Ironwood, but still go along with it. Yang kinda criticizes her sister, but that's then lost to general worry as they split (on Ruby's end, anyway). They want to know how she'll lead them next and are seemingly fine when Ruby continually says, "I don't know." At this point I'd be like, "Well... you didn't like May's plan of going back to Mantle, but apparently can't come up with a plan yourself... so I'm going to go with her." 

This is the same conflict we had last Volume: Ruby spoke optimistically about saving everyone, yet was unable to come up with a way to do that. Ironwood had a plan that, while horrific, might save a lot of lives. Yet Ruby is presented as the one to back. Now here she is, hours later, still unable to figure out a way to achieve her perfect outcome. Ruby wanting things to be a certain way is not going to make them so and I’m wondering when someone within the group is going to recognize and act on that. 

As Ruby fails to answer this crucial question, we pull back to see Whitley listening in at the door. 

Cutting back to Ozpin and Oscar, Hazel has listened to all this craziness about Gods, immortality, the destruction of Remnant... and literally goes, "Cool story, bro." 

Okay, he says "Nice story" but the emotion is the same. Which I'm really happy about! I mentioned in a recent post that, as far as we know, Hazel hasn't been told anything about the Gods up until now. What Ozpin is telling him sounds like gibberish at worst, incredibly hard to believe craziness at best. Now chuck in Mercury's point that as a tortured prisoner he'll say anything to get free, as well as the fact that this is Ozpin talking to Hazel... and I'm really glad Hazel just ignored his speech (for now at least). It wouldn't make sense otherwise. Granted, this means that the plan literally amounted to, “Let’s info dump a bunch of nonsense-sounding lore on our enemy in the hope that he’ll believe us and betray Salem.” It’s something to try, certainly, and it admittedly is a much better plan than what Oscar is about to cook up. 

So since Hazel won't listen to Ozpin, Oscar wants to try instead. Why did you two switch in the first place? It's really obvious that RT is having the characters do weird things in order to stretch out the plot. 

Either way, our farm boy is in control again. What new strategy will he try? 

"Her name is Jinn." 

This is BEYOND stupid. No, none of this "You have to trust people" nonsense. This is not “people,” this is Hazel. There is a Grand Canyon's width of difference between learning to trust your allies and blindly trusting an active villain who just rejected your "Please defect :(" speech. Even if we remove Hazel from the equation, this is still a monumentally foolish move. I mean, has Oscar considered where he is? This isn't some random warehouse he's been taken to, this is a semi-sentient grimm, a creature creating other creatures out of its ceiling

and whose doors automatically open when people need them to (Mercury). This is a living being created by and connected to Salem herself. How does Oscar know Salem can't hear everything he says? Or that the whale can't relay information to her? That the grimm in the walls won't pop out and run to their master? Or even that a normal person isn't listening in at the door — like Emerald is. If that had been Tyrian instead, that's it. They're done. Game over. 

Someone: "Wow. Salem got the Lamp and managed to ask where the Beacon Relic is. Since the school is still overrun by her army, she snatched it up quick, finished destroying Atlas, and is now on her way to Vacuo. She's nearly completed her plan in days! How did all this happen? 

Oscar: I, um... told her what she wanted to know?

Someone: You what?

Oscar: But not Salem! I just told Hazel! ... and then the information somehow got back to her. 

Someone: "Somehow?" You deliberately told one of Salem's henchmen this crucial piece of information, in a place where there was a good chance you would be overheard by conventional or magical means, and you're surprised that she "somehow" learned it and used that information to doom us all? 

Oscar: ...Yes? 

This is so staggeringly stupid it... well, it could only have been done by a kid. So at least that fits lol. Oscar, I love you, but Ozpin should have been screaming in horror the second those words left your mouth. Generations of precautions undone because a kid wants to believe the best of the guy currently pummeling him. Sweet, but stupid. I’m all for optimistic characters, they just can’t risk the whole world on that optimism. Oscar risking himself on the seemingly doomed plan to turn Hazel is one thing, Oscar risking all of Remnant on the seemingly doomed plan to turn Hazel is another thing entirely. 

Even though you know this is precisely how the story will go. Oscar willingly hands over Jinn's name to Salem's forces, but happily none of the THREE who hear about it will tell her. The story's unwillingness to follow through on consequences doesn't change what a bad move this was. I mean, Oscar himself accused Ironwood of playing into Salem's hands by disagreeing with them about how to not die, yet a few hours later he will willingly give Hazel the one piece of information Salem needs to move closer to world-wide destruction? That's uh... well, that's something. 

They should have just had the poor boy be tortured, spill the beans to make it stop, and start an arc of self-forgiveness. Oscar can be awesome without coming up with world-dooming plans. 

So yeah, Oscar is hoping that Hazel will use the Lamp himself and find out the truth. He wants Hazel to trust him and the man he despises most in the world enough to go against the immortal woman he's terrified of, get the Lamp away from her somehow to use for himself, wasting a once in a generation question to confirm all this, so that Salem will lose a guy with muscle who, to be frank, is absolute insignificant in the grand scheme of her power. Fantastic. 

As said, Emerald overhears all this and immediately runs to Mercury, who is less than convinced by her "Salem wants to destroy the world" talk. Just as he's expressing doubt, Tyrian appears to confirm that this is exactly what she wants to do — and he's loving it. 

“Of course she is! You’re surprised? Salem is destruction incarnate!” 

It's a legit point. Are our villains so dense they never considered that Salem might do something to the world they didn't like? It's like the group not thinking about how Salem is still around if Ozpin has been fighting her for a thousand years. RWBY continually gives the impression that these characters don't think about their situation past what they're doing at any given moment. 

Tyrian maintains his title as best villain though, simply because I understand what he's doing, why he's doing it, and he's so damn good at it. 

Also, can we appreciate Mercury's face here? 

Amazing. This is the kind of humor we should be getting in such a tragedy-laden Volume. 

The two of them, Tyrian and Mercury, head off to Vacuo for the Secret Mission, despite Mercury's newfound hesitation. I quite liked these quiet moments between him and Emerald. It has a very "Do what you've gotta do" vibe while showcasing their care for one another, something we haven't seen in a while. 

Back with the airship group. YJR are still horrified that Ironwood would blow up Oscar (even though he has no idea Oscar is there), begging the Ace Ops to give them "a chance to try to rescue him first.” Ren goes pretty hard on the "no one is replaceable" bit, which is frustrating not being what he’s saying is inaccurate (it’s not), but because that's not the issue here. The writing has Harriet start yelling about Marrow replacing her old teammate and Winter replacing Clover, but the question is not whether you'll just forget a teammate and move on with someone new, but whether you're willing to sacrifice them for the greater good. That's the stance: Should we sacrifice one life to save thousands? Will you, as a protector of the people, put those people before your own found family? Yet what RT has Harriet say is: Oscar is replaceable. Which obviously makes her come across as an ass. Like the random soldier questioning Ironwood — or making Elm about to punch a defenseless Ren in her anger — it exists solely to show how bad these character are... even as they say pretty persuasive things. 

The writing also continues to be confused about whether the Ace Ops are friends or not. Yang certainly didn't think so... up until she asks (rhetorically) whether Marrow would sacrifice himself for Elm, Harriet, and Vine. Since their introduction, the story has loudly insisted that the Ace Ops aren't friends... up until it's revealed ("revealed") that Harriet is actually gutted about Clover. So which is it? Are we supposed to believe that these are cold soldiers who only work together out of duty, or that they're a team who clearly love one another? I'd say that show has shown us the latter, but it doesn't seem to understand what point it's trying to make. Does this look like a soldier who doesn’t care? 

It’s especially weird when Ren again makes the claim that this is why they lost to Team RWBY. Because they're not a team.

...So is this why they did such a fantastic job fighting the geist, demonstrating such perfect teamwork that the group was open-mouthed impressed? Is this why they nearly took down a Maiden together? Is this why Ren, while furious at Yang and Jaune, was still able to work seamlessly with them to try and rescue Oscar? Do we think if Yang was suddenly beside Ruby again that the two would fail spectacularly in a fight because they had a minor disagreement? 

This is now the third time RT has tried to excuse nerfing the Ace Ops with, "They disagree about things and are thus not friends and thus can't fight well together" — despite all evidence to the contrary — and it's getting really old. 

At one point Harriet tells Ren, "I had you pegged as the most level-headed of the bunch, but I guess you’re just as naïve" which, ignoring her then random claim that people are replaceable, is correct. I also pegged Ren as the most level-headed of the bunch considering he was just yelling at Yang for how much damage they've caused, all the mistakes they've made, and that maybe — just maybe — they should have tried harder to work with Ironwood. Yet now here he is, in a position to start that process, and the Ren we got in the snow is simply gone. He's fully Team Yang and Jaune again, facing off against the evil Ace Ops. 

I knew this was going to happen, but it's still disappointing. The story gave Ren a great speech to appease those of us frustrated with the direction the story has taken... and now we’re back to ignoring that. Ren was told off for daring to question how great the group is, apparently thought it over in the snow, and is now of the opinion that yes, they are that great. People are going to die because of us? Who cares about that anymore! We will absolutely, single-handedly rescue Oscar and there's no reason why this might be a questionable choice when an entire city is on the line. Again, emotionally understandable (if we buy into the group suddenly loving Oscar this much), but it rings hollow right after making Ren the one person who was willing to look at the big picture. 

Good news though: Jaune got the braincell this week! He suggests that they go in to try and rescue Oscar/provide intel, but won't stop the Ace Ops from launching the bomb when necessary. 

See, this is heroic. This is what the group should have done during the Mantle conflict: Volunteering to take the personal risk of facing off against Salem while letting Atlas try to escape. Basically, not forcing everyone else to risk their lives for their pipe dream, which is what Ren and Yang want by rejecting the bomb entirely. Jaune recognizes here that they can't prioritize Oscar over an entire city, but also that they may still be able to save him before the bomb is complete and ready to go. So they compromise, with JYR the only ones at risk. 

Good job, Jaune! 

Winter agrees to this plan with a firm, "I outrank you" to Harriet. People are going to love that. 

Oh, but in his anger Ren's semblance suddenly changes. So we're back to the ridiculous. 

Truthfully, I like this direction. Granted, I would have liked some buildup to it, especially since this is the second time this Volume that RWBY has dropped a major semblance change on us, but the idea itself is really cool. Ren can now see emotions! Awesome! And I don't mean that sarcastically. I actually think that’s a neat extension of his original semblance. 

Too bad the story seems to think he's a mind reader. 

Seriously, take a look back at the dialogue. What Ren sees are confetti-like petals floating around a person, their color seeming to determine their emotional state. Red means Harriet is mad, blue is sadness for Marrow, etc. But what Ren ends up saying is a great deal closer to mind reading. Harriet is angry about Clover and is gutted at his loss. Marrow is questioning his place here and wants to leave. These aren't base emotions, they're targeted thoughts and feelings about situations not immediately apparent from the verbal conversation. “In fact, you don’t want to be a part of it at all anymore." How does Ren know that? They just gave him telepathy instead of the cool power with firm limitations that the imagery suggests. 

There are also some, uh... iffy implications in all this. For example, Ren allows Yang privacy by not reading her mind emotional state, but has no qualms about reading every one of the Ace Ops’. So privacy is only for the people you care about, huh? 

We could also say something about RT perpetuating unfortunate racial stereotypes: the two women of color are pure anger, the marginalized man is pure sadness, the Asian coded character is pure calm... and the white woman set to turn against the others gets a mix of all emotions. AKA, human complexity. 

To be clear, I don't think RT is doing this deliberately. Rather, they’re writers who have demonstrated time and time again that they don't have a good handle on depicting the sort of sensitive material that RWBY is infused with, and that extends to the mild, but still unfortunate, implications in scenes like this. Even if we ignore the iffy details — a benefit of the doubt that, at this point, many fans aren’t willing to grant — we're still left with the continuity errors. Visually, we're presented with a woman who is experiencing multiple emotions at once and is, therefore, torn. Yet Ren reads Winter definitively: "I know you [don't want this] either." It's yet another moment that makes me wonder how much communication there is between the writers and the animators, because too often the two seem to be at odds with each other. 

As the group prepares to go into the belly of the beast (literally!) we return to Ruby who is, once again, failing to make me believe she's this super compassionate person. 

“Wait! What about Qrow and Robyn? Maybe if we get them out of wherever they’re held—”

Please tell me I'm not the only one who took issue with this? Ruby doesn't express an ounce of worry for her uncle, not even when she learns he's been arrested, and the one time she brings him up it's in the context of what he can do for them in this fight? Ruby doesn't grapple with whether to rescue her uncle (personal desire), or get the message to the world (her version of the heroic action) and then realize that, now that her duty is done, she can finally turn to the more selfish act of helping her immediate family. Instead, Ruby seems perfectly happy to let Qrow stay in prison up until she's unsure what to do next and thinks that maybe he has the answer. Heaven forbid Ruby think about rescuing him because she loves him.

Sadly, this Ruby is long gone. 

In recent years she's expressed no gratitude for him saving her life, no respect for him as her teacher, demonstrated incredibly little compassion for his own struggles, and outright told him that if he wasn't going to listen to her then he doesn't need to be part of the team. Then he's arrested and she doesn't care until she deems him useful again. Like the fandom wondering where the sisterly bond between Ruby and Yang went, I'm likewise wondering where the bond between Ruby and Qrow went. 

May outright rejects this though, yelling that they still don't get it. “This is not a situation where everyone wins!" 

She tells the trio they have to choose for once: Are you going to help Mantle, or Atlas? 

...which means there's immediately a knock at the door, interrupting the moment where they have to decide. 

See, this is just like Ren. The story keeps giving us moments where characters speak absolute truth, dangling the potential for the group to grow from these realizations... only to pull back before it goes anywhere. Ren is once again aligned with Yang and Jaune in their desire to save Oscar. May's demand is interrupted by the plot. If means nothing to give us these moments unless the story acts on them. 

It's Klein at the door. Whitley called him to help with Nora because I guess he's a doctor now, as well as a butler? Fine. Let’s run with it. Weiss is super pleased to see him and hugs Whitley for the good deed. 

Why so shocked that Whitley would look out for another, Weiss? Could it be because he's had so little reason to be kind when everyone, including you, has treated him horribly? If Klein always had these medical skills — if you’ve grown up with a doctor — why didn’t you talk to your brother and ask if he knew how to contact him? And of course, she apologizes to Klein for her father’s actions, but not to Whitley for her own. Whitley's surprise isn't cute to me. 

Weiss stuck a weapon in his face, insulted him, sent him to his room like a toddler... and now is randomly hugging him because he did something she liked. The context of this scene doesn't paint Weiss in a good light. Like the rest of her friends, she only extends basic respect and kindness towards others when they're assisting her. Whitley was nothing to her until he suddenly proved himself useful. That's not cute sibling love, it's a love that's going to run out the moment Whitley puts a toe out of line, according to Weiss' unspoken list of what behavior keeps him in her good graces. 

I believe that Klein cares for Whitley because he greets him kindly and gives him that shoulder pat on the way up. Whitley didn't need to first prove himself to Klein somehow and Klein didn't start this interaction by shoving a gun in Whitley's face, just in case he wouldn't let him through the door. They feel more like family than this hug does. 

So yeah, Whitley and May have done more good this episode than our entire main cast. How about we just make this story about the side characters instead? 

We then hear a massive boom and the group runs out to find a crater. Penny has landed in front of the manor, which is pretty convenient considering we saw her pass out as she fell. 

She's somehow still in control despite the hack and apologizes to Ruby, then falls unconscious (again). 

And that's where we end! Definitely a cliffhanger, though a rather underwhelming one considering we already knew Penny was in serious trouble. As said at the start, this episode felt rather underwhelming to me, especially as a halfway point before a hiatus, and compared to some of the stuff we've seen previously. It's not bad per-se — especially if we ignore the issues that have been around for an age now, which is most of what this recap deals with — it's just not terribly exciting either. Everything of importance — Salem's attack, Oscar's rescue, Penny's demise, subordinates turning, Nora's condition, etc. — had already been established in previous episodes and very little of it moved forward. Ren's semblance is the only thing the episode gave us that we couldn't have (generically) guessed for ourselves between last Saturday and now. 

So yeah, underwhelmed is the mood of the day, with a hefty dose of salt for everything that continues to be a story-breaking problem in this show. I will say though that, as has become the trend for this Volume, all the establishing shots are gorgeous. RWBY is, at the very least, pretty to look at. 

As a final note, in lieu of the Bingo board (since, again, not a whole happens plot-wise) I want to point out something mentioned by a friend: how absolutely bonkers our timeline is now. We began the second day last episode with the sun rising (recall that Jaune had tried to sleep that night at the outpost. So it’s definitely sunrise as opposed to sunset).

And we re-confirm that it’s sunrise at the start of this episode.

Yet throughout the episode many of our shots take place at night (note the stars behind the trio).

These moments with Ruby can't take place in the past because they're talking about the attack, an attack that only happened after Jaune's group met up with the Ace Ops and the geyser attacked — during early morning. I doubt I'm supposed to believe that it has been another full day of Salem starting an attack, a full day for the group to fly to the whale, a full day for Penny to fall, a full day which would put us at the end of the Volume’s timeline at only the halfway point... so I think RT is just going for the aesthetic of night shots without thinking about what that does to the continuity. It's a mess. 

Not the highest praise to end on, but I’m working with what I’ve got lol. I feel as naïve as Oscar when I say that maybe Part II will be better. 

I will, of course, see you all in six weeks. Until then, I'll do my best to catch up on asks. Another doomed endeavor, but one can try!

A very Happy Holidays to all of you who celebrate and, as always, thanks so much for reading! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

[nothingunrealistic]

some thoughts on the question of “so when did taylor firmly Decide to leave axe cap, anyway?”, sorted by episode, under a cut because it got unexpectedly lengthy

3x11 kompenso: after an episode full of taylor checking in with winston to see how The Algorithm is going and locking horns with axe over not being given the money they want & being taken off the capital raise team, we get the reveal of Taylor Mason Capital as a company in the making, and as the occupant of the space above the quant headquarters. obviously, taylor’s decision to leave axe cap was firmly made by this point.

3x12 elmsley count: taylor officially leaves axe cap and gets tmc up and running, using The Algorithm, which served as the basis for their pitch to grigor, and some of the funds initially acquired by axe cap at the capital raise. 

3x09 icebreaker: the first appearance of the quant headquarters, and the first gathering of the quants (winston, roger, and bronwen) outside of axe capital to work on The Algorithm for extremely vague purposes. at this point, taylor must have already decided to restart the quant project for their own ends after axe dismissed it, and to reserve space in the building for their own company. 

3x10 redemption: though the quant hq already being established in 3x09 means taylor’s axe-induced breakup with oscar couldn’t have been The inciting factor that made them decide to leave, it likely strengthened their resolve to do so. to quote an interview with koppelman & levien regarding the season 3 finale: “When asked if the Oscar situation was the final straw for Taylor, Levien says, "perhaps but the split would've happened regardless."”)

actually, let’s put some more of that article in here: “As for the Axe-Taylor relationship turning as it did, Levien explains that the seeds of the breakdown were planted very early on. “We see Taylor as a reflection of what Axe was like at their age. These are people that have a lot of ambition and it’s hard to co-exist. At some point, they each have to have their own world, their own kingdom.” And, he explains, "any offenses, whether real or perceived, were built up enough so that someone would make a break."”

4x06 maximum recreational depth: axe and his lawyer discover that while taylor was running axe capital, they handled the contract for a partnership with victor mateo’s company, and they included a term in the contract that made axe cap potentially liable for any wrongdoing by victor. this term is described as a trap set by taylor for axe capital, suggesting they wouldn’t have included it in the contract unless they already intended to leave axe cap (and meant for the trap to be sprung after they were gone) by the time they handled that contract. also, mafee was a co-signer on that contract, suggesting that by that point, taylor intended to take mafee with them to tmc (rather than leaving him at axe cap to have that signature blow up in his face) and felt confident they could persuade him to come, even if mafee himself didn’t want to leave axe cap at that point.

3x02 the wrong maria gonzalez: at the episode’s start, axe is looking to make trades without getting caught by persuading the ceos of various satellite funds of axe cap, including victor and his fund, to make trades for him. throughout the episode, taylor and axe are at odds over the use of $2 billion that axe wants to invest in his satellite funds and that taylor wants to use for other purposes. the conflict is resolved by axe giving taylor control over the money and taylor agreeing to hear pitches from various investors, including axe’s satellite funds, and investing in some of them. this is likely the source of the deal that was made with victor’s fund.

3x03 a generation too late: at the episode’s start, axe is trying to convince raul gomez, a former investor in axe cap, to invest with victor’s fund. this suggests that the deal with victor has been made and axe’s money is now in his fund, or else that it will be made soon. throughout the episode, taylor is interviewing quants to hire for axe cap, and when none of them work out (thanks in part to wags sabotaging the interview process), taylor decides they’ll have to work on The Algorithm they’re envisioning alone.

3x04 hell of a ride: when craig heidecker’s spaceship explodes with him aboard, and most of the axe cappers watching it happen celebrate the impending success of their short of heidecker’s company, mafee and taylor are the only two people in the room who are both upset by his death and disgusted by everyone else’s reactions. this is likely the first moment where taylor was certain that mafee could be persuaded to leave axe cap.

3x06 the third ortolan: taylor works on The Algorithm, both alone and with the assistance of roger and bronwen, who are clearly At axe capital but are cordoned off / hidden away from the other employees. it’s unclear how they planned to implement the algorithm at axe cap, and by this point they could have intended to use it for their own purposes instead.

3x07 not you, mr. dake.: taylor talks with mafee about the pressure being placed on him due to his role in the ice juice short and reassure him that he “will earn his way in this business whether axe cap exists or not.” taylor then confronts wendy over being responsible for some of that pressure and for neglecting her role as an impartial counselor to the employees at axe cap. when mafee is rewarded for lying about the short to protect wendy, taylor notices and worries. this is probably the first point at which mafee would be willing to turn his back on axe cap.

3x08 all the wilburys: axe returns to axe capital as a free man, takes the reins of the company back from taylor, orders them to get rid of their quants, and announces that they’ll be doing a cap raise as soon as they can. taylor asks him for their own money to manage, and though axe agrees to it, he gives them less than he’d promised. this sets in motion all the components that are clearly needed for taylor to break away and start tmc — the capital raise, the reestablishment of the quant project, and the start of a clear grudge against axe over being denied autonomy and power. it’s also the end of taylor’s time in charge of axe cap, which means the deal with victor’s fund must have already been made.

3x01 tie goes to the runner: wags and taylor discuss possible Big Ideas that axe capital can bring to an idea dinner to impress other hedge fund ceos, and wags asks taylor if they’ve been looking for offers from other funds. taylor tells him they turned down krakow’s offer of a job already, and says that “until and unless it becomes necessary, I will not leave.” (this early on, they’d already come to the conclusion that leaving axe capital might ultimately be necessary — they just didn’t know when.)

in summary:

taylor must have made the deal with victor’s fund after 3x02 and before 3x08. (or maybe during 3x08, depending on when exactly their leadership of axe cap is considered to have ended.) most likely, it was closer to 3x02.

taylor first wanted to hire quants in 3x03, had succeeded in hiring them by 3x06, and was forced to dismiss them in 3x08, only to rehire them outside of axe cap in 3x09.

taylor first learned about the capital raise in 3x08, demanded to be part of it in 3x11 despite axe deciding otherwise, and successfully led the raise in 3x12.

taylor first saw that mafee was at odds with the axe cap culture in the same way they were in 3x04, and mafee was having doubts about axe cap by 3x07.

conclusion: you could argue for taylor deciding to leave axe cap as early as 3x03, as late as 3x08, or a number of points in between. i personally can’t decide on one single answer that makes The Most Sense. all i can say is that the possibility of leaving was clearly on their mind for a long time before it was inevitable and obvious that they would leave.

[mohini-musing]

Every Promise Empty

Chasing Ghosts ‘verse

~~

Wide eyes and darting irises are par for the course with Tasha on weekends. She likes her indulgences and neither James nor Steve are into conflict enough to challenge it. Which means that the drugged-out stupor on Saturday is met with blankets draped over her as she dozes and the occasional bottle of Gatorade shoved into her hand when she’s conscious. Sunday’s somnolence edges toward the concerning end of things, but she’s willing to down the fluids James offers and smiles a frankly childlike grin when asked if she’s okay.

“M’good,” she trills. “M’happy. Happy good.”

James pats her like a puppy for that one, tucks the blanket around her, and makes note to brace for impact when the hangover from this shit comes knocking.

“Any idea what’s up with Tasha?” he asks Steve over breakfast on Monday. His sister is still one with the couch. There had been a couple hours of near coherence around midnight, during which they watched an Oscar nominated but utterly forgettable film and Tasha dodged his attempts at figuring out just what she was avoiding.

She had finally retreated to her room for bed, a move James interpreted as at least sober enough to be behind a closed door. They don’t have a lot of rules. Don’t lock the door if you’re fucked up is definitely one of them. Hence Tasha’s propensity for being high as hell in the main living space. His attempt at greeting her this morning earned him a nod and a mumble that might have been hello and might have been a language known only to dwarves in dark caves.

“That’s more your area than mine,” Steve offers back, only barely looking up from the textbook spread out on the table. The class has been kicking Steve’s tail for most of the semester. The spiral bound monstrosity has become a fixture at the table and there’ve been more than a few offers to take care of the thing using various combinations of explosives and incendiaries from James when Steve’s glaring holes into it. There have also been multiple suggestions out of Tasha on how exactly to celebrate after the disposal.

“Point,” James admits. Steve makes no secret of his distaste for Tasha’s habits. There’s something under the surface there, but no one’s willing to dig for it and Steve loves James (and Tasha by extension) enough to put up with her.

The thud from the living room ends the discussion.

“Tash?”

No answer has James sticking his head around the corner to check on matters. She’s on the floor next to the couch. Seizing.

He’s on his knees and shoving a pillow between her head and the carpet in short order. Skinny arms and legs are tightening into a ball and thrashing outward in an ominous pattern. Breaths are shallow and come with a gurgling grunting sound he’ll be well pleased to not ever hear from her again. The seizure itself isn’t his highest concern. The sudden mottling of her skin definitely is.

Her arms are blotches of bright red and ghost white verging on grey. The discoloration is visible on her neck and thighs as well. When her back arches enough to pull her shirt upward, James gets a solid view of the same mottled mess. It’s not new to him. It’s definitely new on Tasha. Last time he saw it was in the barracks.

Steve has his phone in hand when James realizes what he’s about to do.

“No squad,” he tells him.

Steve glares daggers and looks fully prepared to launch into one hell of a lecture. James holds up his hand.

“She’s still in care. Ambulance ride is an automatic call to her worker.”

“Shit.”

James nods his agreement, placing two fingers at the pulse point and verifying what the visibly bounding heartrate already told him. He wasn’t technically trained as a medic. He was trained as an operator. They were expected not to have noncombatants in tow. They were expected to never feel the effects of the things they did. So they didn’t – by whatever means necessary. Some of them stopped feeling anything at all as a result.

“We need to bring her temp down, she’s boiling.” It’s probably an understatement, and when he can manage it he wants a solid read on just how high she’s gone.

Steve scurries off and returns with a couple gallon bags of what look to be the entire contents of the ice maker. James shoves them hurriedly under Tasha’s arms which have gone blessedly still while instructing Steve to go wet down some towels to wrap her up in. He props her on one side with a knee, bringing her chin upward to open her airway as she continues gurgling. A couple sound thumps to her back result in a dribble of saliva and mucus and much clearing breathing.

“Good girl,” he tells her absently.

She’s twitching, her shoulders hitching upward every few seconds. It’s not a seizure exactly. But it’s definitely not normal. Rigors, some largely dormant part of his training reminds him. The body’s attempt to cope with high temp after a spike. She goes utterly stiff, then vibrates while James counts seconds. Steve returns just as her body slackens.

“She’s pretty bad,” he comments.

“Mhmm,” James give him. Calling a squad isn’t an option unless she’s definitely dying. And James has seen enough of that to know that they’re not there yet. He tells Tasha’s he’s sorry before tugging her shirt over her head. The barely there pajama shorts won’t interfere with cooling her, a fact he’s immensely grateful for. She’s too far gone to care, but he very much does.

Once Tasha’s swaddled in wet towels and ice bags, James nearly laughs when Steve produces a thermometer from her back pocket. The thing beeps once before he kneels and slips it into Tasha’s mouth. Steve’s voice is gentle, the parental tone James associates with waking from nightmares and that one hellish bout of flu.

Bright red numbers flash over the screen. “Hot damn, that’s up there,” Steve comments, and James has to agree. It’s not brain damage worthy. But it’s not okay.

That’s when Tasha’s stomach chooses to pull inward tightly enough to show off every rib she has before James finds himself in the path of a completely unreasonable volume of stomach acid and sludge.

There’s nothing for it but to shuck off the jeans that probably ought to now be burned before tugging her mouth open enough for the last of the vomit to ooze out the side. She’s whimpering, and the sound is painful to hear. She’s definitely not coherent enough to know what’s happening, but she’s also just aware enough to not like it.

“You’re okay,” James lies to her, smoothing her hair away from her sweaty face. Skin that ought to be pale is bright red. He’s marginally relieved that she’s not gone grey on him, but the flushing combined with the mottled rest of her doesn’t do his adrenaline levels any favors.

Her eyes are mostly open but staring off into nothing. She groans, her throat working a few times before more sludge drips from her lips.

“I’ve got you,” he tells her, taking the paper towel Steve offers him to wipe the mess from her face.

She’s still twitching intermittently, and James is just about to tell Steve something not exactly comedic about at least she’s not seizing again when she goes rigid, head arching back hard and every limb ramrod straight. He can hear Steve muttering the seconds under his breath as they wait for her to stop. She doesn’t.

“Three minutes same as you?” Steve asks him as they round the corner of the second block of sixty long seconds.

“She’ll kill me if we call a squad.”

“She’ll kill her if we don’t.”

James is ready to admit that he might be right when Tasha finally takes a proper breath and goes still. “There you are,” he coos at her as though she’s an infant. She stares blankly in his general direction.

James continues stroking her hair, petting her cheek, running fingertips over her shoulder. Steve pulls the now warm towels from her skin, hauls them to the bathroom, and returns with them rinsed out and cool.

“What the hell did you take, you fucking nightmare?” James asks Tasha while they smooth the damp material over her torso and around her thighs.

“I’m going with anything that wasn’t nailed down,” Steve grumbles. The irritation in his voice isn’t a good match for the gentle touch of his hands on her still mottled skin, though. He gathers the hand towel from under her face, switching it out for a clean one and wiping a bit of stray saliva from her cheek. Then he puts one big hand on James’s shoulder.

“Does she fuck around with benzos?” he asks him.

“This isn’t benzos.”

“Good.”

James isn’t up for asking where that line of questioning came from. He doesn’t really have time to think about it before Tasha’s shoulders are jerking up to her ears and she’s retching hard enough to bring up a stream of frothy bile.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay love. Breathe,” he tells her when she makes a guttural sound he tries hard not to think of as pain. He’s lying. It’s not okay. Not even close. Her temp is still unholy, her body is twitching in fits and starts, and the couple of times she’s opened her eyes are evidence that there is absolutely nobody home.

“I can put her in the bed,” Steve offers.

James nods his agreement. The floor is carpeted, but Tasha is skinny. She’s going to be sore as hell from all the muscle jerks as it stands. Adding bruises to the mix won’t do her any favors. He sits back on his heels as Steve gathers her into his arms, towels and all. A mostly melted bag of ice falls to the floor and James takes it to the kitchen to dump in the sink. When he joins them in his and Steve’s bedroom, Tasha’s in the middle of the bed atop what looks to be a stack of spread out towels. He doesn’t ask how Steve knows what to do here. He’s just glad he does.

Tasha’s still totally out of it, but James can’t stand the idea of not being close enough to touch her. He scoots across the mattress until his leg is against her body, her head against his thigh. Even blitzed, she grips the hem of his hastily donned shorts. Some part of her knows enough to be aware that she’s got an anchor.

“I’ve got you,” he tells her again. It’s a lie. If he had her, she wouldn’t be a hair away from needing a fucking trauma bay.

“This is an overdose, right?” Steve asks.

“Most likely.”

“Anything else we should be doing?”

“Fluids if she’ll drink em, but I’m not sure that’s an option. Not holding her airway well enough to risk it, really. Keep her temp down. Hope like hell she doesn’t keep seizing. Wait until she comes around enough for me to yell at her.”

Steve nods his agreement on all accounts, then disappears through the door into the hall. He comes back with a soda he tosses at James and a Red Bull he pops open for himself. “Gonna be a long day. Might as well caffeinate for it.”

He’s not wrong. Tasha’s still twitching, vomiting up air and bile every time James starts to think she has to be empty. Her eyelids flutter and she whines, babbles in what are probably meant to be words but fall desperately short of being language. She keeps a grip on his shorts, the material wadded tightly in her fist. Steve does the work of switching out towels as they warm, bringing ice and a basin James tries to keep largely wedged between Tasha and the bed. She’s too weak to get up much distance anymore, so it’s less a matter of catching projectile funk and more a matter of collecting what oozes out of her mouth after the retching fits.

James has nearly reached a point of being able to doze off beside her when she goes rigid. It doesn’t last long, 30 seconds, but another comes on its heels, and then a third. The fourth hits and Steve’s there, reaching past James with a plastic tube of buccal versed in hand.

“Open up, love, that’s a good girl,” he coaxes, hooking a thumb between Tasha’s molars. The gel is inserted far back on both sides of her mouth, and it occurs to James that the dose is meant for him and not his barely hundred-pound sister. He sputters as much to Steve, who holds out the applicator and shows him that he’s given her a bit more than half.

For her park, Tasha switches from seizing to retching with every breath. James is more than familiar with the bitter aftertaste of the rescue meds. He’s barfed up his stomach lining plenty of times after needing it. Watching it do the same for Tasha is painful. She’s pale, skin still blotchy, shivering from both fever and cold towels. He pets her hair, wipes her dry lips, rubs lip balm across them to try to stop the cracking. She bleeds anyway.

Ten minutes pass without another seizure. Then ten minutes more. The intermittent twitching continues, but it’s not turning into anything more and James is willing to take it. After thirty seizure free minutes, he tugs Tasha against his chest, propping the pair of them up on pillows and settles in to hold her until she sleeps whatever caused this off.

“I love you,” he whispers in her ear. “I fucking love you.”

[back-and-totheleft]

“I’m not sure I’ve modified my thinking”

“It’s a strange place, England,” Oliver Stone informs me at the start of our Zoom call. “You’ve managed to make it worse than it was,” he says, speaking from his home in Los Angeles. “You’ve turned it into World War Two with your attitudes over there. The English love punishment, it’s part of their make-up.”

You sure know how to break the ice, Mr Stone. It’s a slightly galling accusation, given that he has hitched his wagon to Russia, hardly a paragon of enlightenment. The New York-born writer-director has never shied from ruffling feathers, though. Stone has taken on the American establishment to thrilling effect in his movies, from Platoon to Born on the Fourth of July, JFK to W, Salvador to Snowden, and still emerged with three Oscars. And he has admiringly interviewed a string of figures whose relations with Uncle Sam have rarely been cosy, including Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and Vladimir Putin. Those had more mixed receptions, as has his support for Julian Assange.

Yet at 74 he is still a thorn in the side of the military-industrial complex and is set to remain one for some time, having just had his second shot of Covid vaccine. This being Stone, he got his jab in Russia. A recent trial showed the Sputnik V vaccine he was given to have 92 per cent efficacy and he’s palpably delighted. Angry too, of course. “It’s strange how the US ignores that. It’s a strange bias they have against all things Russian,” he says. “I do believe it’s your best vaccine on the market, actually,” he adds, sounding weirdly Trump-like.

If his bullishness is still intact, Stone reveals a more vulnerable side in his recent memoir, Chasing the Light. The book, which he discusses in an online Q&A tonight, goes a long way to explaining his distrust of government, society and, well, pretty much everything. There are visceral accounts of him fighting in Vietnam, and fighting to get Salvador and Platoon made. “The war was lodged away in a compartment, and I made films about it,” he says. “Sometimes I have a dream that I’ve been drafted and sent back there.”

The crucial event in the book, though, is his parents’ divorce when he was 15. Stone realises now that his conservative Jewish-American father and glamorous French mother were ill-suited. Both had affairs. What really stung was the way he was told about their split: over the phone by a family friend while he was at boarding school. “It was very cold, very English,” he says. “I say English because everything about boarding school invokes the old England.” He’s really got it in for us today.

With no siblings, he says, “I had no family after that divorce. It was over. The three of us split up.” His world view stemmed from his parents being in denial about their incompatibility, he writes in the book: “Children like me are born out of that original lie. And nobody can ever be trusted again.”

That disillusionment took a few years to show itself. “All of a sudden, I just had a collapse,” Stone says. He had been admitted to Yale University but his father’s alma mater suddenly felt like part of the problem. He felt suicidal and sidestepped those thoughts by enlisting to fight in Vietnam, putting the choice of him dying into other hands.

The Stone in the book was described by one reviewer as his most sympathetic character. “It’s true probably because it’s a novel,” he says. Well, technically it’s an autobiography, but it’s a telling mistake. Fact and fiction can blur in his work, from the demonisation of Turks in Midnight Express (he wrote the screenplay) to the conspiracy theories in JFK.

Writing the book allowed him to put himself into the story, something he says he’s never been able to do in his films. He has tried. He wrote a screenplay, White Lies, in which a child of divorce repeats his parents’ mistakes, as Stone has. “I had two divorces in my life [from the Lebanese-born Najwa Sarkis and Elizabeth Burkit Cox, who worked as a “spiritual advisor” on his films] and I’m on my third marriage, which I’m very happy in.” He and Sun-jung Jung, who is from South Korea, have been together for more than 25 years. They have a grown-up daughter, Tara, and he has two sons, Sean and Michael, from his marriage to Cox.

White Lies is on ice for now. “It’s hard to get those kinds of things done,” Stone says wearily. Will he make another feature? It’s been documentaries recently, the last two on the Ukraine. “I don’t know. It’s a question of energy. In the old days, there would be a studio you’d have a relationship with, and they’d have to trust you to a certain degree. And that doesn’t exist any more.”

He thinks back to the big beasts of his early years. Alan Parker, who directed Midnight Express; John Daly, who produced Salvador and Platoon; Robert Bolt, who taught him about screenwriting. “Those three Englishmen had a lot to do with my successes,” he says. I think he feels bad about all the limey bashing. “John was a tough cockney, but I liked him a lot.” He liked him more than Parker, whom he describes as “cold” with a “serious chip on his shoulder.” He smiles. “Sure. Alan did a good job with Midnight Express, though.”

You wonder if Netflix could come to Stone’s rescue. They have given generous backing to big-name directors, from David Fincher to Martin Scorsese, Stone’s old tutor at NYU film school. Surely they would welcome him? “Well, that’s why you’re not in charge! Netflix is very engineering driven. Subject matter such as [White Lies] might register low on a demographic.”

Isn’t he also working on a JFK documentary, Destiny Betrayed? That could do better with the Netflix algorithms. “I’m having problems with that too. Americans were so concerned with Trump, I don’t know that they wanted to hear about some of the facts behind the Kennedy killing. They don’t recognise that there’s a connection between 1963 and now, that pretty much all the screws came loose when they did that in ’63.” He smiles. “I know you think I’m nuts.”

Well no, but you do wonder at his unwavering conviction that there was a conspiracy to murder Kennedy, probably involving the CIA. JFK is a big reason why a majority of Americans believe in a conspiracy and, according to Stone, led to the establishment of the Assassination Records Review Board, which he claims is “the only piece of legislation in this country that ever came out of a film.”

Yet several serious studies, including a 1,600-page book, Reclaiming History, by the former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. That book accused Stone of committing a “cultural crime” by distorting facts in JFK. “I feel like I’m in the dock with Bugliosi. I didn’t like his book at all,” Stone says. “Believe me, you cannot walk out of [his forthcoming documentary] and say Oswald did it alone. If you do, I think you’re on mushrooms.”

Stone knows whereof he speaks regarding psychedelics. On returning from Vietnam he was “a little bit radical” in his behaviour, he says: drugs, womanising, hellraising. He recently took LSD for the first time in years. “It was wonderful,” he says. He hallucinated that he was “moving from island to island on a little boat”.

What was radical in the Seventies can be problematic now. He has been accused of inappropriate behaviour by the model Carrie Stevens and the actresses Patricia Arquette and Melissa Gilbert. “As far as I know I never forced anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do,” he says. Has he modified the way he behaves around women? “Oh sure, no question.”

At the same time, he is disturbed by “the scolding going on, the shaming culture. I don’t agree with any of that. It’s like the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It scares the shit out of me. I do think the politically correct point of view will never be mine.”

He’s not a slavish follower of conspiracy theories — QAnon “sounds like nonsense”, he says, as was the theory that Donald Trump was “a Manchurian candidate for the Russians. That was a horrible thing to do and it hurt that presidency a lot. I’m not an admirer of Trump by any means, but he was picked on from day one.”

What does he make of Joe Biden? “I voted for him, not because I liked him, but as an alternative to Trump’s disasters. He’s got a far more merciful humanitarian side. But he also has a history of warmongering.” Fake news, he says, has “always happened”, in the east and west, on the left and the right. “I mean, back in the Cold War, the US was saying Russia was lying and Russia was saying the US was lying. Each one of these wars the US has been involved in was based on lies.”

It sounds as if Stone has been on the Russian Kool-Aid himself. He is making a documentary, A Bright Future, about climate change that advocates pursuing nuclear power in the short term, and has visited some Russian nuclear plants. They are “very state-of-the-art,” he says. “The US is not really pursuing the big plants, the way Russia and China are. I believe in renewables, but they’re not going to be able to handle the capacity when India and Africa and all these countries come online wanting electricity.”

Putin liked the interviews Stone did with him in 2017, he says. “I think they contributed to his election numbers.” Wasn’t he too easy on the Russian leader? “That’s what some say. But I got his ire up. I did ask him some tough questions about succession. ‘I think you should leave’ — that kind of stuff. The pressure that Russia is under from both England and the US is enormous,” he adds. “Unless you’re there I don’t know that you understand that. Because you take the English point of view, and they have been very anti-Soviet since 1920. You talk about fake news — I feel that way about MI5 and MI6.”

You can’t help but admire Stone’s conviction. If he’s modified his behaviour that’s probably a good thing, but as he says, “I’m not so sure I’ve modified my thinking. I express myself freely. I don’t want to feel muzzled.” Whatever you think of him, be grateful he hasn’t been.

-Ed Potton, “You talk about fake news. I feel that way about MI5 and MI6,” The Times of London, Feb 8 2021 [x]

[ruffiorocks]

People hating on Katie McGrath because nothing bad happened at SDCC this year.

So I was shown a link to someone who said they wished that Katie McGrath would speak out against all the bullying the cast receive and come and 'collect her fans' because it's all done in her name. 'She' , apparently posted all the pics of her and Mechad (because somehow she got hold of his phone took selfie's and then posted them to Mehcads instagram and Twitter, she then wrote a caption in his voice and then replied to all the comments still using Mehcads account and pretending to be him??) but she's nowhere to be seen when he's being bullied, she also pops up in the Nikazie pics but when trolls come out she'd nowhere to be seen.

Note: Mehcad actually stated under a pic of him and Katie that she had seen the comments and wasn't happy. Mechad even said that Katie didn't want Social media when someone in his comments told him to tell her to get it. He clearly supports her decision not to.

They say that Mehcad,. Nicole and Azei get abuse and they speak out. Grant Gustin has 'finally' spoken out against the abuse Candice gets.

Ok, so... what? You are all aware Katie doesn't have social media right? She has never had Social media (save WhatsApp) and is a very private person. She's so private in fact that no one really knows much about her at all, we only know her birthday because of a SOCIAL MEDIA mistake. Katie even said at SDCC that the fact even if her phone is in airplane mode she can still be tracked is scary.

Katie isn't responsible for shit other people do. Mehcad, Mel, etc Azei and Nicole are the examples used? Yeah.. no, the fact is that they all choose to put their lives out there onto social media. They IN NO WAY deserve the crap thrown at them, but the fact is celebrity along with Social media means you will get a degree of criticism, it is the risk you take and they are perfectly capable of defending themselves and their fans do it to. It sounds harsh but you can't be niaeve enough to be famous and publish your life and your sometimes controversial views on line and expect everyone to either love you or ignore you. That doesn't justify bullying, but social media comes with the risk of criticism, it's just the way it works.

Mehcad gets hate - Katie takes pics with him ans gives permission for them to go on social media. In Interviews she also talks about how much she cares about him, his talent and even his looks.

Nicole gets hate - in interviews Katie is shown to be fully supportive and to adore Nicole.

SDCC this year was a non stop cuddle fest between all the cast. If they were p**sed at her for not having social media and defended them well they sure as hell are worthy of Oscars!

Katie is ridiculously shy as well, remember how she needed support when she's at a ComiCon? This year she seemed a bit more relaxed. She can't even bring herself to watch herself act. She is in no way obligated to break what she's comfortable with to start more controversy. It's all well and good people saying the others cast members have been called names and they've spoken up but Katie hasn't, but I don't see the cast ditching Katie, I don't see Mehcad, or Azei or Nicole condeming her, you know the ones actually being bullied? No they continuously post pics with her and declare their love and admiration. If the actual victims aren't bothered then neither should anyone else be. Katie praises her cast mates all the time, that's her speaking up. Didn't Azie and Nicole state that their advice to newcomers was to get Katie's number? That she was the welcoming committee? Sounds like they real dislike her right?

Plus 'white privilege' was brought up, im out at this point, it's everyone's answer for everything. A white woman doesn't go on social media and start calling people out and the only people bothered by it aren't even the POC or Trans victims affected. It's ironic that white privilege is used to describe Katie for not getting bullied while she is being bullied??

Sorry but people blaming Katie for not getting involved with online drama are just looking for someone to blame and trying to justify hatred ('i don't hate Katie but....' 😑) for the actress because they don't like her character and think she's taking time away from Kara. You know? The EXACT same thing people got upset about over Mon El? How best to fight and contridicate an argument? Use the same exact argument apparently.

Lastly, I saw posts hating on Katie because in one of the interviews when Mel was talking about her reaction to Lena punching Kara, Kaite said 'she deserved it' and they ALL laughed. Apparently this JOKE is being taken seriously and people are saying nasty things about Katie. I understand why though, it's easy, the concept of SARCASM is lost on these people. They are desperate to be offended by something, honestly at this point they are acting like being offended is their security blanket. They aren't actually happy unless they feel like they have something to be upset about . Katie did this in interviews back when she was on Merlin, she and Colin would act like Merlin and Morgana and Katie would send Colin running. It's called sarcasm and having fun. Just like Katie saying that Lena was the first to give Kara pants and pretending to be annoyed about that not being addressed, she's just playing.

Lastly, they're having a go because she defends Lena, just like she defended Morgana. Katie is asked questions about the depth of the character she is playing, about their thought process. Katie isn't just going to read the lines and not think about the character, she wants to understand her character and where she is coming from, just like the others do. It's not just Good or Evil one dimensional characters. If you didn't want to hear about the characters why the f**k would you watch a panel where they are asked about them?

In conclusion, nothing bad happened this year at SDCC, nothing at all. But this isn't sitting well with the people who were clearly watching for something to be offended by. Nothing major happened, so what to do? How can we keep our blogs updated and stay relevant? Oh I know! We'll hate on one of the most unproblematic people ever, we'll call her out for not defending her cast mates! Oh no we don't care that they love her and they're family! It doesn't matter, we've decided that Katie is bad because essentially she isn't obsessed with social media like us and she isn't doing what we want her to do, plus we don't like her character.

Hating on Katie is just ridiculous. These are the same people that got upset (actually rightfully so) because Chris Wood got hate for being Mon El.

The cast love Katie, YOU know nothing about them other than the small percentage they let you see. Stop pretending to be offended on another person's behalf when they themselves have no issues with the person you are condemning.

Learn to understand sarcasm and an actor/actress understanding the character she's playing. Oh and for God's sake stop WANTING to be offended.

Rant over.

[smileyjaeminies]

The flirt with the biggest heart

Synopsis: You weren’t feeling so well, but gladly Nana was always there to comfort you. You leave yourself exposed to him, simply laying your heart at his feet. With your upcoming competition, how will everything turn out?

Word Count: 4,6k

Genre: slow burn, angst, fluff

Warnings: none

Member: 00z, ft. Yangyang

A/N: I’m so sorry these have been taking forever to come out :( I hope you like this, make sure you keep an eye out for the finale!

~Series Masterlist~

  School would be your demise. After spring had finally showed the face you liked, the carefree and shining side you always longed for, your dance competitions stopped you from truly enjoying her gift.

  Your competitions lasted for three weeks in total, which meant daily practices for everyone. This year, your number was intense with flips and jumps, difficult formations and sharp moves. You loved it though, you thrived within the hard beat and the long hours.

  Elena was always there to pull you out from your slump, helping you with homework and assignments and basically carrying your weight for almost a month. But she would never say a word, and you loved her for it.

  The first two weeks of your competitions had already passed, with the previous Sunday being victorious for you and your team as you got second place. You celebrated grandly at a pizza place downtown when the worst thing that could happen did.

  You got your period.

  Okay, maybe you were exaggerating a little bit, but this was no time for your body to be making its own battle against you. You needed every cell you had under your control and that was vital.

  After a quick word with your dance instructor, you both decided that it would be for the best that you stayed inside on Monday, to rest and gather your strength for a good practice on Tuesday. And then… Well, you’d have to see.

  Which brought you right to this moment, early Monday afternoon, all alone in your house, watching whatever popped up in your recommended on Youtube. You mindlessly watched video after video, just lying down and trying not to think about the searing pain that tortured your abdomen.

  The stillness of your room helped the stillness of your mind which for once decided to stop its racing; the numbness was welcome, an old friend you greeted at the door and bid to come in. You wrapped yourself in her arms, allowing her to lead you back and rest.

  Uncalled for, the ringtone of your phone disturbed the delicate balance. You debated answering for a few seconds but as you saw Jaemin’s name you knew that he wouldn’t stop calling until you picked up. You took him out of his misery, answering with a simple, “Hi Nana”

  “Y/N!!” he shouted.

  “I need to teach you kids to talk more quietly” you mumbled under your breath.

  “Y/N!!!” Jaemin repeated. “Today is Monday!!!”

  “I’m aware of that Jaemin” you replied.

  “You missed the club meeting” He said and you could distinguish the pout in his voice.

  “I know, I am supposed to stay at home and rest today.” You explained.

  “Are you sick? I heard you won yesterday, congratulations!” he said.

  “No, I’m just tired. And, yes we got second place, exciting stuff!” you answered.

  “Well, if you’re not sick, then I’m coming over! Movies and coffee afternoon, just the two of us!”

  “No coffee allowed, Jaemin” you informed him.

  “Why not?” he said, sounding hurt.

  “Jaemin, I’m having one of those days” you tried to explain.

  “Why? Are you feeling sad? Did Donghyuck say something to you?” He asked question after question as you chuckled.

  “Jaemin, listen to me, I’m having those days of the month…” you cut him off, explaining again.

  You heard him take a deep breath as realization hit him. He stayed quiet for a few seconds, and then:

  “Wait! No magic bean juice, like at all? No wonder girls are so grumpy when they’re on their periods!”

  “Nana!” you reprimanded him slightly.

  “Okay, okay. No magic bean juice… Snacks then?” he asked.

  You wanted to say no. You knew your dad would be furious when he came home and found a boy in his house. But it had been weeks since you had hang out with Jaemin and you missed him a lot. Just one movie wouldn’t hurt.

  “Alright. But bring me a lot of chocolate.” You requested.

  “Yes ma’am!” Jaemin answered, hanging up the phone.

  You managed to peel yourself off your bed and went to the bathroom to freshen up a little. You were looking pretty rough if you were being honest, but oh well, this was just Jaemin. You went back into your room and tidied it up, folding all your clothes and making your bed. The bell rang, announcing Jaemin’s arrival and you rushed to greet him.

  “Is this enough?” Jaemin asked, holding up a huge grocery bag.

  “It will do I guess” you answered him, grinning.

  After one tight hug and another round of congratulations on second place, you both made your way inside, getting comfortable under the covers. You tried (and failed) to convince Jaemin to watch a new movie that you were sure would get an Oscar nomination. But he wouldn’t budge.

  “Disney movies are like a painkiller! It will help with your cramps!” he insisted.

  “Oh please, we’ll shut it off before 30 minutes are up. Besides, I don’t even like Disney that much.” You countered.

  “Ha! Sure you don’t. Who are you kidding Y/N? You’ve picked up on every single reference I’ve made!” he scoffed.

  You blushed and chuckled at his words. Disney and Pixar movies were indeed some of your favourites. You could recite whole movies by heart, you knew every lyric and song. But you wouldn’t admit it to Jaemin.

  “Fine, fine! You win! Play the movie.” You told him.

  Jaemin bent down to press a kiss to your cheek, before grabbing your computer and finding the movie he wanted. You watched him, eyes filled with concentration as he went on about how he hadn’t watched the movie in ages.

  Soon enough, you found yourself wrapped up on Jaemin’s side, your favourite chocolate in your hands and the Disney movie filling the silence in the room. However, that didn’t last long.

  The movie Jaemin suggested turned out to be a total bore, so you shut it off only 20 minutes in. You had made a brand new playlist, its soft music now drifting through your laptop's speakers and dancing through the room. You had laid back onto Jaemin, and he was now playing with your hair. The gesture should've been intimate, but it was more comfortable than anything.

  Your thoughts drifted of course, to the boy next to you. Nana was playful flirting and rosy cheeks. Jaemin was constantly pushing the boundaries and a fluttering heart. Jaemin was the buzz of morning coffee, the heat seeping from it onto your palm warming up your hand and your heart.

  Jaemin was everything but routine. He was the unpredictable, racing through the night and screaming the lyrics to your favourite songs. He was sneaking into his parent’s liquor cabinet for alcohol, letting your insides burn with its fumes.

  Jaemin was the easiest person to love. He poured and poured his love onto anything his life touched and never held back. Jaemin was thinking about the consequences after the action.

  That's why, when your tears started to fall, you did nothing to conceal them. You didn't have to. Not with Nana.

  “You want to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked, his voice low.

  And so you did. You poured and poured your heart out to him. You left nothing out, from your breakup, to Renjun, then Jeno and Yangyang. You went over that dreadful afternoon with Kyle, how Donghyuck found you later. You talked to him about how scared you still were, how anxious and heartbroken and confused.

  He sat next to you and then continued to sit on your bed as you got up and started pacing around the room. He never said a word, he allowed you to talk for as long as you needed, to give him all the facts and details before he said anything.

  It took a while for you to sit back down at the foot of your bed, only to drop your face in your hands.

  “I’m such a mess” you admitted.

  “You want to know what I think? These are my friends after all” Jaemin offered. You only nodded slightly at his words turning to look at him.

  “I think if someone had caught feelings, you’d have known by now. The kisses were spontaneous and that’s why no one mentioned them after. And because you asked. You know us Y/N, all of us. Do you think we’d ever go against your wishes? Especially on something like this? No. None of us would, not even Hyuck.”

  “About the Kyle… situation. I wish you’d let me beat up his face. I may have tiny fists, but I’m sure if I took him by surprise… Whatever. You should’ve reported it. I understand why you didn’t, I do. But that was dumb baby, I’m sorry. The good thing is, he has drawn himself back into the fiery pit he likes to call home.” Jaemin finished.

  “His house is actually very pretty” you joked.

  Jaemin’s face lit up at your silly joke.

  “She jokes! Ladies and gentlemen, after an hour of crying, she jokes!” he teased you.

  He moved over on the bed, making his way next to you. He wrapped you in his arms in a weird embrace filled with arms and limbs and bodies. But you wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “Nana?” you asked after a few minutes dragged on.

  “Yes?” he responded.

  “Can you come to my last competition on Friday? For moral support?” you asked.

  “I’ll be at the first row.” Jaemin agreed, running his hands through your hair.

  Your peaceful moment was interrupted by keys at your front door and your mother’s excited voice.

  “Shit. Mom’s home.” You mumbled under your breath.

  “Is that bad?” Jaemin asked.

  “Not that bad, unless Dad’s with her” you answered and paused to listen carefully for your father’s voice.

  Luck was on your side however as your Dad hadn’t returned just yet. Your mother called your name, announcing she’s back and you pulled Jaemin to his feet as quickly as possible.

  “Best behavior. Do not try to charm my mom or I will kill you. You say hello you DECLINE dinner and you’re out the door. Deal??” you turned to him.

  “Damn baby, are you embarrassed of me?” he asked, slightly hurt.

  “Not you…” you whisper under your breath, already pushing him out of the door.

  “Hi Mommy! Did you have a good day at work?” you greet your Mom in the kitchen, putting back some groceries.

  “It was okay. You know, work is work.” She answered as she hugged you.

  “Mommy, this is Jaemin. He came to keep me some company.” You introduced your friend.

  “Jaemin, it’s really nice to meet you! Y/N talks about you all the time!” your Mom said and you couldn’t help but glare at her.

  Jaemin however only shot you a funny look and proceeded to greet your mother kindly. He declined dinner like you asked him, but he couldn’t help charming his way into your mother’s heart. After he left, your mother wouldn’t stop talking about him, asking about him and going on about what a kind young man he was already.

  You didn’t really mind, on the contrary, you were glad your Mom had liked Nana. But the untold promise was that you wouldn’t talk about any of this in front of your Dad. Your father was… Old fashioned let’s say, so this was a strictly only girls topic.

  After helping your mom with the groceries, you excused yourself back to your room. Once you got there, you opened your phone, your hand hovering over the familiar username, before you took the next step and dialed his number.

  He picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?” he asked.

  “Hi” you answered.

  “What’s up, Y/N? I missed you today… In fact, it feels like I haven’t seen you in forever.” He scolded you.

  “I know, I know… That’s why I called… I have a favour to ask you.” You said.

  “Oh? Let’s hear it then!” he responded.

  “I need a good luck charm…” you trailed off.

  “The tables have turned then?” Jeno teased you.

  “They have… You think you could help a friend in a tight place?” you asked.

  “I’ll be in the front row” Jeno said, not hesitating.

  How ironic, you thought, that both of them had said the exact same thing. Or maybe it wasn’t ironic at all…  

  “You want me to bring everyone?” Jeno asked.

  “I already asked Jaemin and Yangyang is going to be there since we’re competing against each other. I doubt Donghyuck will be willing to come, so that just leaves Renjun. You should ask him though, maybe he’ll need a ride or something.” You finished.

  “I think you don’t give Donghyuck enough credit. I’m sure he’ll want to support you and Yangyang. Anyway, I’m going to ask.” Jeno said.

  “I think you forget that Donghyuck hates my guts but oh well! Ask away! Maybe he’ll come for Yangyang.” You replied.

  Jeno mumbled something under his breath that sounded a lot like “Typical”. He brushed it off right after however, hanging up the phone.

  After talking to both Jaemin and Jeno, you felt significantly better. A weight had been lifted off your shoulders, first by Jaemin’s wise words and comforting hugs. Second, the weight was shared with the knowledge that Jeno would be there at your last competition, knowing exactly what you were feeling and helping you through it.

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

  The day of the competition arrived sooner than you thought. Elena drove with you in your Dad’s car, holding your hand throughout the ride and sharing her earphones with you. Calm, comforting music rushed through them into your ears, but your mind was replaying the beat you would be dancing to in a few hours, going over every move.

  Once you stepped foot at the venue, you were met with the familiar rumble of the competition. You signed some forms and you headed straight backstage to meet your instructor and the rest of your team. You were carried away for a warm up as you had to rehearse on stage soon enough.

  Rehearsals were a blur, your mind failing to concentrate at more than one thing at a time. Your instructor scolded you slightly but stayed reassured that you’d keep your head in the game for the actual erformance.

  Backstage, Elena scooped you up in her arms, reassuring you that you did great and that you hadn’t shown anything yet. You calmed down after a bit, still sharing Elena’s earphones and keeping your hands together in a tight hold.

  Before long, Elena led you to a make-up stand and got to work. As an artist, Elena had her way with make-up, producing looks that you couldn’t even dream of. She even helped you tie your hair back in a tight ponytail to match everyone. When she finished, she didn’t allow you to look at the result, but helped you get into costume first.

  Once your whole outfit was complete, you walked in front of a full length mirror. The result was outstanding. Your outfit fitted you well, the black and red contradicting each other. Your eye look matched the outfit, red eye-shadow dancing over your eyelids with a fierce cat eye completing the look.

  You hugged Elena and thanked her a thousand times for her help. You had begun to really calm down, a tranquility taking over you. You decided to look for Yangyang and soon enough you found his group’s dressing room and made a beeline to his arms.

  “Are you sure you’re Y/N? You look amazing!” Yangyang complemented you, twirling you around.

  “Elena does work wonders, what can I say!” you said.

  “Well Elena clearly needs to do my make-up as well! You think I could steal her for a while?” he asked, turning to Elena.

  “You want your make-up done? Really?” Elena asked.

  “I don’t have the words toxic masculinity on my vocabulary, ma’am. I’d be honored.” Yangyang replied, and you had never felt more proud.

  Elena fumbled for words for a few seconds before ushering Yangyang to a seat. You talked with both of them and Cat, Yangyang’s official girlfriend now, for a while before Elena turned to you.

  “You know, it’s getting late, if you want to see the boys, you better get out now” she said.

  “You’re probably right. Yangyang, don’t you dare move before I check the final result. I’ll be back in a second.” You announced, taking your leave.

  You walked out of the dressing room and headed to the stage. Taking out your phone, you saw a message from Renjun.

    Junnie

Hey Y/N! Traffic is being a bitch so we’ll be there in like, 10 minutes. Wait for us!! We want to give you good luck hugs!

  You

I’ll be waiting! Tell Jeno to be careful, you have time!

    After replying to Renjun’s message, you decided to step out anyway, to get some air and talk with some of your friends. You were introduced to some people from opposing teams and you were currently discussing the judges when you felt a hand on your shoulder.

  You were surprised to find Donghyuck smiling at you once you turned around. Quickly composing yourself, you tried to hide your nervousness as you greeted him. You almost screamed when he bent down to give you a hug and wish you good luck.

  “So, what do you think about today? An easy win?” Donghyuck asked.

  You were still perplexed by his hug and his overall nice demeanor before you answered.

  “Winning is never easy. All the teams put in a lot of work, or else they wouldn’t be here.”

  “Here, here tiger, no need to get defensive. Besides, I’m supporting two teams today, aren’t I?” he asked.

  “You don’t mean to make me believe that you’re here to support me, are you?” you asked him in return.

  Donghyuck’s face flashed with emotion.

  “Why not? Aren’t you my friend?” he asked and you could hear the hurt in his voice.

  “I don’t know Donghyuck… Are we? I mean, you always have some snarky remark to make about me day in, day out. You don’t even allow me to call you by your nickname while everyone and their mothers do… I’m not sure that’s friendship.” You replied.

  His face flashed with emotion once again. He took a few seconds to gather his thoughts before saying:

  “You know Y/N, that’s…” but you wouldn’t find out what it was.

  A huge burden was pushed on top of you as two strong hands lifted you up and twirled you around. Laughter erupted from you as you heard Jaemin praising you. All of the boys gave you their ‘good luck hugs’ and you spiraled into conversation with them.

  Donghyuck wasn’t excluded from this, but your moment was clearly over. Renjun was talking about your make-up and Elena’s skills and the others were asking you how long it would take you to perform. They almost made you dizzy, all talking at the same time but you didn’t mind; not at the moment.

  You kept stealing glances at Donghyuck and you would always find him staring right back at you. It made you nervous and it made you blush, but you couldn’t even pretend that it was a bad thing.

  Not long after, your teammates had to separate you from your friends. You hugged them again and you even got a kiss in the cheek from each of them for good luck. You promised to convey the same message to Yangyang and you were off.

  Backstage, it seemed like everyone was moving to every direction. People were talking loudly, making last minute checks and changes. You headed straight to Yangyang’s dressing room, to grab Elena and reunite with your team.

  “So, what do you think?” Yangyang asked, facing you.

  You were shocked. He was all angles, high contour on his cheeks and bright orange eye shadow around his eyes.

  “Yangyang you look…” you trailed off.

  “Show stopping? Spectacular? Like the man of your dreams?” he offered.

  “Beautiful” you said.

  “I know right? It’s hardly fair, my own boyfriend is more beautiful than me” Cat teased, smiling at Yangyang.

  “I could never” Yangyang answered.

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re in love okay OKAY. Don’t you need to go?” Elena said, turning to you.

  You nodded and hugged both Yangyang and Cat, exchanging good lucks. You finally stepped back in your team’s dressing room. Your instructor reprimanded you for being late, but you hardly listened. The blood in your veins had already begun to boil, the familiar buzz of the upcoming performance taking over you already.

  There were only about 10 teams competing, your team taking the number 8 spot. Not too early, not too late. You were restless, pacing up and down the small room and annoying your teammates. Elena managed to pull you down on your chair as yet another group took the stage.

  Your eyes were glued to the screen. They were good, too good. They moved as one, never missing a beat. The strong choreography worked amazing, their formations tight and moving around all the time. As they finished, you all took looks amongst yourselves. These people were the real stars of the night and the crowd went crazy over them.

  Next was Yangyang’s group. You found Yangyang and refused to take your eyes off of him. He did well, really well. He was nervous though and you could tell by the way he would keep looking at his teammates to make sure his position was correct. You could feel he was extra nervous in the couples’ part. But his hard work paid off. He didn’t make any mistakes you could see and overall their performance was very well structured and interesting.

  Before you even had time to process the performances, it was already time for you to standby. Elena pestered you with hugs and whispered soothing things in your ear, but you were buzzing. It was hard for you to stay still once again, and you felt your hands shaking uncontrollably. Your teammates moved around you and it was already time for you to step on the stage.

  The bright lights blinded you, but your mind was finally still. The music flowed through you, your body moving on its own accord. You were focused and not at the same time, moving right on the beat but without fully understanding what you were doing. And just like that, it was over.

  The cheers were deafening and with a simple glimpse at the crowd, you failed to see your friends. Your teammates pulled you backstage and a river of hugs and praise came over you. Elena jumped in your arms and praised how focused you were. If only she knew…

  Slowly but surely, the high of the stage left your system. You remained in your seat as the two teams left performed. Then, it was time for a short break for the judges to decide on the three best teams.

  Nervousness seeped through you once again. Elena had a tight grip on your hand and you felt dizzy, getting hotter and hotter, your back sweating. Before long it was time to go back on stage for the results to be announced.

  “I’m scared” you whispered.

  “It’s okay. You’re going to be fine” Elena tried to console you.

  Your friend Alex dragged you back on stage. You were standing amongst the rest of the teams and you were on the edge of your toes.  You tried to look for the boys to no avail; they were either too far away, or you needed contacts.

  The judges took the stage and seconds seemed to drag into hours. Third place was announced. It was Yangyang’s team. You let out a small scream and you couldn’t hold back the huge smile that took over your face. He did it. The idiot did it. As they raised their trophy, your eyes filled with tears. It felt like your own win.

  It was time to announce first place. You took a deep breath. It wouldn’t be you. You had settled within your heart that this wasn’t a winning day and it was okay.

  The envelope was opened and the name was called. Your group’s name. Your groups name. You’d won. You were pushed in a sweaty and smelly group hug, as tears left your eyes. You were full on sobbing as you saw the trophy being pushed from hand to hand until you were holding it.

  First place. It felt like a dream. Your mind was hazy as the team that ranked second, the “stars” like you had named them, gave their speech. And it was over.

  The crowd flowed on stage, loved ones finding loved ones and hugs being exchanged everyone. You stood frozen in the back of the stage. First place.

  Your name was called from somewhere. Your mind registered it, but your body failed to move at the sound.

  “Y/N!” You heard again, and finally your head moved towards the sound.

  Jaemin ran over you, arms extended. He lifted you up screaming in your ear.

  “FIRST PLACE! Y/N OH MY GOD, I CAN’T BELIEVE IT, YOU DID IT”

  His loud voice quieted down to a whisper as you sobbed silently into his shirt. Low words of praise filled your ears as several pairs of arms rubbed your back, trying to calm you down. You grabbed fistfuls of Jaemin’s shirt in an attempt to ground yourself, burying your face in the crook of his neck.

  After a while, you were finally able to move away from him and into the rest of the boys’ arms.

  “Oh, your little cry baby” Renjun said, hugging you tightly.

  “Good luck charm worked” Jeno said, giving you his signature eye smile and keeping you close.

  “You were amazing up there” Donghyuck said and hugged you tightly. You felt dizzy again. Your mind finally decided to start working, only to note that he smelled like the sea.

  “Y/N! There you are!” Yangyang shouted, running up to you, Cat and Elena not far behind him.

  You jumped onto him without second thought, screaming.

  “YANGYANG! YOU DID THAT! I, I’M, OH MY GOD, I’M SO PROUD OF YOU” you screamed, squeezing him tight.

  “ME? FORGET ABOUT ME YOU IDIOT, YOU GOT FIRST PLACE! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!!! Y/N YOU GOT F I R S T” Yangyang screamed back.

  You went over each of your steps, each praising the other.

  “Although I love the spirit” Renjun interrupted, “Wouldn’t you want to celebrate somewhere more private?”

  “Re- group for burgers downtown?” Jeno offered.

  Everyone quickly agreed and you went backstage to change. Your dad picked you and Elena up, driving you back home for a quick shower and change of clothes. You headed downtown and met the boys in front of your favourite burger place.

  The night was easy going, a celebration with the people that mattered the most to you. Squeezed in the booth between Donghyuck and Yangyang, you laughed and enjoyed your food. All your senses were heightened to Donghyuck moving and laughing next to you. You tried to take your mind away from him, but your gaze would always go to your right, where Donghyuck was usually looking right back at you.

  That night, you hardly got any sleep despite being tucked inside your warm covers. Your mind was replaying the events of the day in an endless loop, the high of being on stage, the thrill of coming first, being in Donghyuck’s arms, the way the area around his eyes creased when he laughed.

  You were going crazy. There was no other word for it. You were going crazy over a boy that only recently stopped hating your existence. Great. You were screwed.

[marveliciousfanace]

Crowley and Zira either having too much pda or bickering as a tactic to scare away a potential book buyer

I fried my brain doing this and the other prompt I was sent, so they’re not edited and I apologize if it’s garbage, but I actually had a ton of fun with this, so thank you. I went with the pda option, so people may want to skip this one if they don’t want to read slightly mature content (but not very mature. Crowley certainly isn’t).

—

“He won’t go away!”

“Well, hello to you too, angel,” Crowley said, hisgrin audible even over the phone.

Aziraphale peered over his counter, where he’d beenpretending to rummage for something, and glared at the offending man, who wascurrently eyeing a shelf of very expensive – and more importantly very rare – firstedition playscripts with the air of someone who is looking for a price tagbecause they don’t want to seem caught out by the number when they purchase it.“He’s been here ages already,” Aziraphale hissed into the receiver. “Normallythey would have given up by now, but he won’tgo away.”

“Have you tried that thing you do where you breathedown his neck looking like a stern librarian?”

“Naturally,” Aziraphale sniffed. He knew how to runhis own bookshop. “He just started asking me questions about differentmanuscripts! I’ve resorted to hidin- er, tacticallysurveying from behind the counter so he doesn’t keep trying to speak to me.He’s after the Wilde, I know he is.”

“You have plenty of Wilde,” Crowley said, with only atrace of bitterness. Oscar was a still a bit of a sore subject between the twoof them. “Anyway, what are you suggesting I do?”

“I don’t know!” Aziraphale huffed. He peeked over thecounter again. The would-be customer was running a finger along the shelves,like he had any right to touch them. Aziraphale resisted the very un-angelictemptation to snarl. “Just…come over and help me! Please!”

There was a pause as Crowley contemplated. Aziraphaleprepared to resort to begging. He didn’t usually have to with Crowley, but needsmust. In this case, however, needs didn’t, and Crowley finally said, “I’ll beover in a few.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale sighed in relief, even as the receiverwent dead. He snaked a hand up onto the counter to replace it, and decided thenext few minutes – it wouldn’t take Crowley long to get there, no matter wherehe was in London, what with the way he drove – would be best spent under thecounter. If Aziraphale made eye contact with the potential customer, he knew itwould all be over.

He popped up when he heard the tinkle of the bell, reliefflooding through his body as Crowley strolled into the shop, the door swingingshut behind him. He looked around leisurely, gaze pausing momentarily on theman, who stared back at him nervously, likely put out by Crowley’s dark glassesand general “no-good” vibe. Then Crowley’s gaze fell, very naturally, onAziraphale. He brightened so realistically that even Aziraphale was impressedwith his acting abilities. “Angel!” he exclaimed. “God, it’s been ages!”

Aziraphale opened his mouth, a slight crease furrowinghis brow. What he meant to say was, “What do you mean, it’s been ages? I justsaw you last week for dinner. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already. And it’snot like we don’t speak regularly on the phone. Unless you’re trying to make ascene, which I suppose is the more likely option, in which case ignore all thatand I’ll play along, so long as it gets rid of him.”

What he actually said was, “Wha-mphf!”

Crowley had made it to the counter in two strides,hopped up over it in one bound, landed solidly on his feet on the other side,pushed the angel back against the wall with the skilful application of a handon either hip, and crashed their lips together. That accounted for the initial soundAziraphale made. The rather embarrassing moan that followed was caused by avery long, very flexible tongue sliding itself into Aziraphale’s open mouth anddoing that thing, which he had oncetold Crowley, with no small amount of blushing, made making an effortredundant. In this particular moment, had Crowley not been holding him up,Aziraphale would have slid bonelessly to the floor. As it was, he was abruptlyvery weak in the knees.

Crowley moaned theatrically, sliding his hands alittle farther back. “Fuck, I missed you, angel,” he said, loud enough that theman in the shop, who’d been pretending he hadn’t noticed what was going on behindthe counter, couldn’t help but turn and look. Crowley pressed himself morefirmly to Aziraphale’s front, sliding a knee between the angel’s legs andbiting a careful row of kisses down his neck. “Did you miss me?”

“I- uh- oh-“Aziraphale stuttered, his fingers clutching at a fistful of Crowley’s hair. Hishead fell back against the shelf behind him with a loud thunk.

“Mmm,” Crowley purred. “I think you did. I think you’rehappy to see me. Unless that’s something elseyou’ve got in your pocket. Naughty, angel.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale managed to form the word, and iteven manged to almost sound scolding.

“That’s right,” Crowley nipped at an earlobe. “Say myname, angel. Bet I can make you scream it right here, bend you over the counterand-“

“Crowley!”Aziraphale said again, this time with much less difficultly and a good dealmore shock. “We are not alone!”

Crowley pulled back just far enough to grin at him. “Aren’twe, though?”

Aziraphale blinked. He looked around the bookshop. Itwas empty. The bell, which he hadn’t heard go off, was swinging to a silent stopabove the door. “Oh,” he said.

“You asked for help,” Crowley said. “I provided.”

“Yes, but…” Aziraphale trailed off. “Er, Crowley?”

“Yes, angel?”

“Your hands…if you could kindly remove them from my trousers-“

Crowley gave Aziraphale’s arse another squeeze. “Yousure you want me to? I mean, he is gone and all.”

“Er…”

“And I didsave your precious Wilde, didn’t I?”

“Yes, I suppose you did…”

“So,” Crowley wiggled his eyebrows. “What do you say youlock the door, and I do that other thingwith my tongue that you like so much, hmm?”

Across the room, the lock clicked shut, and with alaugh, Crowley dropped to his knees.

[real-jaune-isms]

RWBY Volume 7 Chapter 6 Review/Runthrough

I know I’m very late with this, but finals were hell. 

This chapter went from a middle ground of curious tension to the highest hype to the deepest dread and despair over the course of its roughly 16 minutes of run time and I hated that. And I love it. I hope y’all did too, but let’s take it step by step together.

It starts somewhat close to where chapter 5 left off, the riots in Mantle have been quelled and several people are in handcuffs, including three familiar thirsty moms. Guess the Happy Huntresses are popular with housewives, wish fulfillment of making a difference in the world yourself and all that. Robyn herself is being interviewed as we’re shown the riot aftermath and people getting in line to vote at electronic polling machines. And we get our first major surprise of the episode. There were two other candidates we never heard about, Ivy Brown and Pearl Wistier! So can we get some F’s in the comments for these two, who didn’t get any recognition or screen time and with the election ending probably never will? As Robyn talks about hoping voters will make the right choice and that the connection between her supporters and the riots is pure coincidence, we see Team RWBY and JNR training while Oscar watches. Blake and Yang are jumping around atop towers, Weiss is sparring with Winter again, Ruby is practicing her semblance, Ren meditates, and Nora and Jaune are bouncing a dodgeball back and forth to test his new shield. The Bees jumping around reminded me a little of the Chibi episode where they played tag, so I liked that. Weiss bounces Winter’s Beowolf around on black glyphs in a manner that made me think of a move Sans uses in Undertale, a very fun connection, and then she knocks Winter off guard by sending a small version of her knight to attack Winter’s ankle. Her playful smirk says she’s not sorry~ Ruby’s petal form splits into three parts to go around a pillar, and Oscar finally calls her out on that being a little unusual if her Semblance really is speed. The dodgeball keeps getting hit harder and harder as Nora puts her thunderous all into it until it dissolves against Jaune’s shield when he uses the Dust upgrades to better defend. He takes some damage to his Aura but recovers again very quickly, much to Oscar’s enthusiasm. Ren’s meditation seems to suggest he’s trying to unlock some kind of precognition or ability to sense other people like he had in Volume 4 when Tyrian was approaching to ambush them. But he doesn’t quite get it down yet and instead Ironwood and Clover enter.

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Ironwood is impressed by how hard the teens are pushing themselves, with Ruby affirming it to be necessary with the current state of affairs, and Ironwood seems to think the info on his Scroll is evidence of that. The poll numbers favor Robyn, which is undeniably better than Jacques winning even if the Happy Huntresses and the military are in a silent stand off, and the young heroes think the general should make more of an effort to be open with her about what they are doing since they’re all on the same side of wanting to help Mantle. Nora argues for the sake of Mantle quite vehemently, furthering my theory and probably many others’ that she was born here. Jaune seems to agree, but Ironwood says that kind of communication will have to be a two way street and by his tone of voice I’m guessing he doubts that will happen any time soon. Before Nora can offer a rebuttal Ren asks why the General is here. Turns out, with the election happening tonight and the teams having done so much work recently, they’ve decided the kids should get the night off before things really start changing once Robyn or Jacques is elected. Ruby doesn’t seem to like thinking about that, probably because everything  in Atlas will get very different once the Amity Project is complete and she still doesn’t know how that will go. 

Regardless, Team RWBY make plans for the evening. While Weiss stands around glumly looking at the news feed on her Scroll, Blake puts on some eye makeup that I’m too uninformed to know the name of and Yang stares longingly at her from her bed. At least, that’s how I saw it. The two of them are going dancing with Team FNKI, in a club where it will be too loud for Yang to be able to hear Neon’s voice. Just the way she likes it~ Meanwhile Ruby is going with Ren and Nora to meet up with Penny at a party in Mantle to celebrate Robyn’s surefire win of the election. Because overconfidence like that has never backfired in media before. Weiss is still mentally torn about her father’s big layoff stunt and how in the world he thought it would actually work out for him with what a cunning man he’s always been. Yang thinks it was just a power play that backfired, but Weiss worries there’s a grander scheme below the surface. Then she’s asked which group activity she would rather be a part of, so after seeing Blake’s adorkable attempt to do a dance move Yang is showing her she chooses the suddenly appearing third option: going to the movies with Jaune and Oscar. Volume 2 Jaune would be so impressed his older self got Weiss to agree to that kind of thing with minimal effort... but also be very upset by all the terrible things that happened to the guy up to that point. So it barely matters to our Jaune anymore. Still, hope it was a good movie cuz that’s the last we see of those three for the rest of the chapter.

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Ruby and Renora are next seen walking down the street as celebrating Robyn fans pass by in a truck. Ren admits he sees Weiss’ point about celebrating a bit soon but Nora tries to be an optimist about it, that the people should be allowed to enjoy this supposed surefire thing. Ruby admits nothing will probably be a sure thing anymore once the Tower goes up and Salem’s existence becomes known, with Ren and Nora affirming that they’ve spent so long worrying about the secrets they’ve been keeping they haven’t thought about how they would have no plan to face her even once they get past that. Afterall, Jinn said she can’t be beaten. Ruby reminds them the exact phrasing was that she told Oz he couldn’t destroy her, and Nora picks up on the specifics. If Oz can’t, then maybe someone else can. And with her Silver Eyed powers Ruby seems like their best gamble for that. Personally I’m still of the mind that the point Jinn was trying to make wasn’t that “Oz can’t destroy Salem” and was instead that “Oz can’t destroy Salem”. Redemption and the restoration of her kinder former soul may be the best solution to this. But who knows? Regardless, Ren is restless and thinks they should go back to training, that they don’t have time to waste with social gatherings and fun distractions, but Nora says they’ve done enough for now and they need to unwind otherwise they’ll snap. So they’re at odds now, unfortunately...

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The three reach the town hall/auditorium where the rally is taking place and meet up with Penny, who is very happy to see them but wonders why it is only these three. Nora explains what Weiss and the boys are doing and that the bees are off doing their own thing, and Ren comments that he’s relieved the two are back on good terms after everything that happened. But Nora sees this as an opportunity to be passive aggressive. See, the situation with Blake and Yang is very similar to her tumultuous “will they won’t they” with Ren. So she calls into question whether or not Blake and Yang are actually just friends or something more intimate and close after being through such deep bonding experiences, but we can tell she’s actually asking about where she and Ren stand. Ren picks up on what she means immediately and fires back how he feels on the matter while keeping up the pretext of this being about the others. It’s kinda funny to realize they’re being so indirect and also teasing how romantic things seem with Blake and Yang when the fandom has been having similar arguments. But it does offer insight into their actual feelings: Nora wants to take that step and has always worn her heart on her sleeve so she’s ready to show how she feels but she also wants to be sure Ren feels the same so she doesn’t misread the signs. But Ren is worried that with all the deep political stuff happening and the impending threat of chaos Salem’s reveal will bring, now isn’t really the right time for relationship stuff. Nora fires back that they can’t figure anything out unless they talk about it, and I do kind of agree. If there’s tension like this between the pair then it might affect their teamwork and trust.

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Ruby wants no part of this awkward conversation and slides over to Penny’s side, who also realizes the argument probably isn’t about the Bees. So the two head backstage instead, where Marrow is waiting and initially seems happy to see Ruby before getting back into a work mindset and says she shouldn’t be here since she’s still an amateur who wasn’t assigned to this job. But Ruby says she’s just here to be with her friend, and offers Penny a fistbump. Penny looks overjoyed to see this invitation, and eagerly gives Ruby a bump. Unfortunately, steel fists really hurt and Ruby’s hand starts throbbing red. Ouch~ Marrow just tells her not to get in the way, since they need to stay vigilant in case of any trouble. He is interrupted by the one and only... May Marigold, one of the Happy Huntresses we saw when they stopped the truck last episode. 

May is... a deep new kind of character, for reasons that have become clear in recent days and were first brought to my mind when I saw the cast list for this episode. May is voiced by Kdin Jenzen, a lovely woman who works for Rooster Teeth and is memorable for such feats as being able to handle super hot chips with ease on the last two RT Extra Life livestreams. She is also a trans woman. This does nothing to diminish my opinion of her and it should not affect yours. This fact also adds a layer of depth to the character, as the likelihood of May being trans as well seemed rather possible. And as of December 17, this is confirmed: May Marigold is RWBY’s first confirmed trans character. An extra layer of diversity to the world of Remnant is most definitely welcome, and it also adds some depth of character to Robyn Hill. Her group is comprised solely of women, and its a very good look for her that she sees May as one every bit as much as Fiona or herself. Because as we all know, TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN. Okay, tangent over for now.

May sasses Marrow a bit, saying the Happy Huntresses won’t be the ones causing any trouble and are there to make sure nothing goes wrong. So Marrow can scram, he’s not welcome. The poor pup tries to stand up for his faction, saying Ironwood just wants to help and the Ace Ops are there for good reasons. He’s interrupted by Robyn herself though, who accepts his presence as protective assistance as long as he stays out of the way. Clearly this isn’t what May or Joanna were expecting to hear, but Robyn says they need to learn how to get along if she’s gonna be on the council. Marrow tries to give her attitude by saying getting along will be easy as long as she stays within the law. Clearly her prior roadblocking activities make him think she hasn’t been. She tries to appeal to him and get through the strict military obedience, saying the law isn’t fair to everyone and he shouldn’t always have to obey it to the word. But he’s a Faunus in Atlas, it’s preaching to the choir at this point. She says all she wants to do as a council member is make Mantle and Atlas a better place for everyone, including the Faunus. But Marrow is unmoved, he still wants to guilt her about keeping her activities legal. But she matches his attitude tit for tat, everything so far has been totally legal and he can’t prove otherwise~ Their staredown is interrupted by the absolute angel that is Fiona Thyme causing feedback on the microphone and reminding Robyn she needs to get back to the party activities. Marrow backs off and tells Ruby to leave so he and Penny can do their jobs, so she sticks her tongue out at him behind his back and waves goodbye to Penny before returning to Ren and Nora... where things haven’t gotten any better. So she just turns right around to hang out at the front of the crowd.

Fiona has a very touching speech about how this victory has been a product of Mantle’s united effort to make things better, how this is their moment and they all know Robyn will do right by them. She even gets emotional herself, and then invites Robyn herself to come on stage and talk to the crowd a bit. The two seem to whisper to each other a little, likely encouragement by Fiona that she’ll nail her speech and reassurance from Robyn that the dear girl did a good job just now. Robyn opens with a joke that her difficulty with public speaking is a bad match for this career in politics, and Ruby seems amused. She always has seemed to sympathize with Robyn and think she’s a good person, and for the most part I would agree. 

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The speech proper starts with Robyn thanking her gathered followers for their votes and for thus putting their faith and belief in her. And she assures them the feeling is mutual, that she believes in the strength and change a single determined person can bring just as much as she knows there is unlimited potential to what people can do when they work together.

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And with that unity, it doesn’t matter if she wins or loses because they will all continue to fight for the sake of the city that brings them together. That earns a lot of applause and she leaves the stage, though she starts to show visible concern as the radio announcer points out how close the votes are as the deadline draws fatally near. The Happy Huntresses are still confident she’s got this in the bag...

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But she’s no less tense.

With all this talk of unity in mind, Nora tries again to try and address the tension between her and Ren, but deep talks like this really aren’t his thing. Ren has always been emotionally closed off, it’s just in his nature and with emotion being so important for his Semblance it’s clearly been ingrained in his mindset for a long time. Talking is not his love language, he’s always shown how he feels through acts of physical contact. Hugs, leaning on her, holding her hand at the end of Volume 4. So while she’s seeking verbal validation that it is something deeper between them, he’s not used to that and doesn’t really know how to articulate himself and express all his feelings how he wants to. That’s how I interpret it anyway. Nora gets her own read out of his attempt at an answer, and it seems pretty similar to my takeaway from it. Clearly it was encouraging enough for her to know he does like her back he just has so much on his mind he can’t figure out how to say it. Why? Because she literally says “screw talking” and kisses him!!! A KISS FOR RENORA, 7 YEARS IN THE MAKING!!!!! So the two get blissfully lost in the kiss and each other’s company for a little while, and I’m so happy for them.

Unfortunately, this is where we start to have a bad time. We cut to Watts hiding out somewhere booting up several Scrolls in front of a screen showing drone footage of the party as well as older video of Penny’s hero work in Mantle, and he’s activating tech in his rings as we see that Tyrian is in the party crowd in a cloak ready to strike on his partner’s command. The polls are about to close, Ruby is looking over at Penny happy as can be... and sees Tyrian’s tail. She moves to get a closer look, and eyes meet between former foes. She screams towards the stage to watch out, but it’s too late. The lights go out as the election countdown chant hits one, Ren and Nora are holding each other close unsure what’s happening... and Watts gives the order to begin.

He starts doing vague techno stuff with the Scrolls that‘s mostly theatrical hand waving, while at the party Robyn drops her microphone and Ruby gets knocked to the ground by the panicking crowd. Tyrian has started killing people in the audience, in an attacking style seemingly unlike his usual work. Penny activates her night vision at the prompting of Marrow (who SHOULD be able to see in the dark as a Faunus but maybe he’s in a bad position to see what’s happening or her tech optics can do more than ordinary eyes Faunus or otherwise?) and pulls out her swords before she tells Tyrian to surrender. But either that scorpion boy has some mad jumping skills to get to the rafters or Watts could hack Penny’s eyes, because in the time it takes a panicked person to run in front of her he is gone. Watt’s puppeteer act continues as he seems to lift Penny’s movements from one video and put them into the footage of Tyrian’s massacre over the image of his body. How terribly devious. And with a single tap of a district map on one Scroll he changes which candidate several entire parts of Mantle voted for. He may very well have been doing this little by little over the course of the night so the election fraud would look natural, or maybe a significant portion of people actually were voting for Jacques and Arthur just forced the final push. I think the former is a lot more likely.

Meanwhile, Marrow is calling for backup and Robyn calls her Happy Huntresses to her side so they can all keep each other safe. Fiona wants to get Robyn to safety, and at the last second sees Tyrian running across the stage to attack them. His eyes and right arm both glow purple, and he scratches a hole in Fiona’s Aura before slicing at the exposed spot with the blades on his other arm. Seems his Semblances is being able to tear through Aura and then attack a person’s body directly. Useful skill for a killer like him... Still, we know only his tail is poisonous so she probably won’t die. That was likely on purpose too though... If they found venom in her they would know Penny didn’t do it cuz she doesn’t have anything like that. Speaking of Penny, she flies up to tackle Robyn to the floor when it looks like Tyrian is going to attack her next, but he just jumps up to the rafters and giggles maniacally. This part was planned too, because when the lights come on Penny is the one standing on stage with swords drawn over an injured Fiona and confused Robyn. Much like Pyrrha and to a lesser extend Yang before her, Penny has been set up as a brutal killer. Worse yet...

47%-53%

Jacques has officially won the election and gives a live acceptance speech that seems like a total slap in the face. And if we look more carefully at those lying dead on the floor, a few familiar outfits can be seen. The same thirsty moms last seen getting in trouble for taking part in the riots are now going to be orphaning their children... Whether he meant to or not, Tyrian has proven his ultimate villainous status above all others. Ruby, Marrow, Ren and Nora all rush onto the stage to help Penny and Robyn, but the latter doesn’t trust them at all and the former is in shock that such brutality is blamed on her, that she’s failed her purpose as Mantle’s protector when it mattered most. It’s not helped by the fact that a survivor loudly proclaims Penny did it, and refers to her simply as “Ironwood’s Robot”. Dehumanizing her, saying she’s just another machine that’s been taken over and used as a tool of evil. When the Happy Huntresses and angry members of the crowd charge to attack Penny and those that would try to help her, Marrow uses his Semblance for some literal crowd control, making all of them freeze in place. Ren and Nora are quite unnerved to hear Tyrian was the perpetrator, but they get Penny out the back door to relative safety while Robyn stops pointing her weapon at the girl long enough to shove Ruby out of the way when she was trying to help Fiona. Our dear sheepy says she’s gonna be okay, but Marrow still feels bad and offers assistance. Too bad that means he relaxed enough for his Semblance effect to wear off and Joanna starts shooting at him so he and Ruby leave too, though he does try to assure Robyn that Atlas had nothing to do with this.

Watts uploads his deep faked footage and packs up for the night, telling Tyrian their good work is done. Out in an alley, the good guys catch their breath and quietly panic how bad things just got while Penny just stands in despair and shock. Ruby reaches out a hand to try and reassure her before realizing it’s covered in Fiona’s blood. Marrow tells Penny she has to go back to Atlas, but she’s initially not responsive. She does fly off though,, just as the Grimm attack alarms go off and the others get ready for the long night ahead... with the girls not having their weapons unfortunately. As Manticores are seen flying over Mantle and into the streets, Jacques’ victory speech continues to lay faintly veiled dread into our hearts. 

So yeah. Hell of an episode, and one I took way too long to review. School was hell, just like this chapter.

[calliecat93]

Top 5 Things I Disliked About RWBY Volume 4

(Top 5 Likes)

Ah, Volume 4. Our first of many things. First volume to be animated in Maya. First volume to take place outside Beacon/Vale. First part of the Mistral Saga. And the first volume in RWBY’s new direction after how V3 shattered the status quo to the point of no return. It had a lot to live up, maybe too much in all honesty. At this point, V4 is kind of in this middle ground I think. It isn’t as loved as V6, but it isn’t as hated as V5. I guess you can say that it’s just average. Personally? I really like V4! It’s an arc about recovery, and it did that very well in my eyes.

But, of course, it isn’t perfect. So let’s go over the Top 5 Things I Disliked About RWBY Volume 4!

#5. Blake Plotline

Honestly… I remembered hating this storyline back when V4 aired. I felt like Blake had regressed and just could not sympathize with her. I knew why she was acting the way that she was, but it was just… not fun to watch. Especially with how she acted towards Sun, who while I could understand her annoyance at him, her slapping him and such was… really uncalled for. In fairness, some of my negativity might be because of all the shipping arguments going on at the same time, but I remember just not liking Blake at all. It’s Number 5 mainly because of the negative connotations that I had with the storyline.

But… this was the first time that I’ve rewatched it since it aired I think. And… I didn’t have any of those negative feelings. Honestly, I enjoyed it much more than I did back in 2016-17. Maybe it’s just because I know how it gets resolved and that Blake comes back with a vengeance in V5. But still, I w fine with her here. I had a better understanding of why she was acting like he was. Adam came back, hurt her friends, and she ran out of fear and guilt. Of course, she behaved the way that she did. Fortunately, Sun snaps her out of it by the end and she decides to stop running and face her fears. And by golly, does she.

It was a good storyline. We got to see Menagerie. We got to meet Blake’s parents. We got a cool Dragon Grimm fight The captain and his crew were fun. I honestly have no real complaints about Blake’s plot. Not even with Blake herself. It’s only here because I needed a Number 5, and I thought that this was a shoo-in due to how much I disliked it back during the original airing. It doe snot hold true anymore, but still, I disliked it at one point and I couldn’t think of anything else for Number 5. So it is here, but high up since I’ve had my epiphany regarding it.

#4. Oscar/Ozpin Storyline Was Rushed

It’s hard for me to get mad at rushed plotlines in this volume. Multi-plotlined stories like this are incredibly hard to balance out and it’s even harder to give everyone screentime. For example, Ruby’s development was super subtle because she had to share her time with JNR and then Qrow as well as other plotlines going on. It was there, but it just wasn’t able to be as focused on as other things that needed it. For Oscar, I do think that they did it as best as possible. Very least, they got him to where he needed to be by the end, and that’s better than holding it back and stalling.

But even so, Oscar’s… really gotten the short end of the stick since his intro. They’ve had to develop him very quickly, and it just feels like they’re trying to get through it as quickly as possible. Like they’re skimming through their notes and just putting them in there instead of developing it int he scripts naturally. V6 is the worst offender, but V4 was meant to be Oscar’s intro. We know that he’s a kid who lives with his aunt on a farm and… that’s it. We don’t get to know him as a character. We now things about him. We know of his importance in the story. But what o we know about Oscar as a character? What growth has he had? What do we know about Oscar’s farm life? About his dreams? About the process of realizing that he suddenly had voices in his head?

All fo this goes unexplored. Again, it just feels like they wanted to get it over with. With all the plotline, things really were against the writers and they couldn’t hold this one off until there was a better time to do so. So for V4 at least, I don’t hold it against them and they at least made Oscar likable. And like I said, they got him to where he needed to be, which is better than nothing. Nevertheless, especially with how Oscar still has this problem, it’s annoying to see that they still haven’t improved on this. Will they in V7? Hopefully.. But yeah, ti’s a problem with the Volume so at Number 4 it shall remain.

#3. Mute Cinder

This didn’t bother me much when I watched the volume. But now that I think about it? This was a misstep. IDK why they decided to do this. I thought maybe Jessica Nigri wasn’t available, but I think I read an interview where she indicated that this had been intended. Really, I think that V4 should have been when we got the Cinder backstory. Where we got a better understanding of why she’s obsessed with power as well as clarify what happened in V3 that got her so beat up. Yeah, yeah, we know that it was caused by RUby… but it doesn’t really align with what we know about the Silver Eyes. But I’ll get to that here in a bit.

To this day, we know very little about Cinder. While I think that there’s enough that one can figure out what her deal is, it’s become a pretty frequent issue among people. V4 had CInder in her worst state, and it would have been good to hear her express how much she hated it. Let us learn about her history from her. Hear her and Salem interact. I still really don’t get why they decided to mute CInder unless it was to avoid going into any of that because they’re holding it off. Hopefully, they won’t be doing that for much longer, because it’s safe to say that people are getting tired of waiting. It just really bugs me now, and I think was utterly pointless and wasteful to do this. And if it was just to not delve into anything… that was a poor story choice on their part.

#2. Lack of Clarity About What Ruby Did to Cinder

Okay, yes I know that Ruby awakened her Silver Eyes and took down Cinder due to it. But… it doesn’t make sense when you think about it. Ruby’s Eyes only work on Grimm. As far as we know, at that point, Cinder was still 100% human. Or at least if the Spider Grimm she used to get the Maiden powers is inside her, they haven’t really made it clear. But as such, that should mean that RUby’s Eyes did nothing to her aside maybe blind her for a bit. TO be fair, that could just mean that there’s more to the Eyes that we don’t know about. After all, even Maria only knew so much and Ruby awakened it at an emotional moment. So that makes sense.

Really, this kinda correlates into the Mute Cinder thing. I’m still not sure what exactly happened to her. I want some clarity about what happened. Is there more to the Silver Eyes? How will Ruby react to that? Heck, how much is Ruby aware of the damage that she dished out? She’s got no real reason to think that she cost CInder an arm and an eye. I don’t know if she knows, and I guess we won’t until Ruy and Cinder face off and she finds out about the Grimm arm. But you’d think that we’d hear a little bit… but CInder can’t talk and Salem doesn’t go into it. So nope!

This might just be a me thing. But it’s been frustrating me the more that I think over it. I want to now more about what happened. I wnt to hear from CInder about it. I want to see RUby react to it and about her power. Power that she still doesn’t fully understand. Will future volumes do that? Hopefully. But it just irks me since, as I said, we could have gotten some answers here. But we don’t. So yeah, this is a growing annoyance for me, and I hope that they resolve it sooner rather than later.

#1. The Multiple Plotlines

Again, this kind of feels unfair. On the one hand, the multiple plotlines clearly caused problems. Not everyone could get equal attention or screentime. Some parts like Oscar had to be rushed. It was a difficult balancing act and while I think that it could have been worse, it came with consequences. There were pacing problems. Some stories felt more satisfying than others. Some characters felt more developed than others. A lot of this is subjective and in general, RWBY’s plotlines I thought were fine. But the villain stuff was meh and Oscar’s was by far the weakest and both with the writing and in the execution. but needless to say, it’s generally agreed that Mile and Kerry got a little too ambitious here. Even they’ve said it, which is good since it means that they’ve learned from it.

It’s hard for me to say if the split plots was a bad idea. Because it was good for individual character growth. I think that they all made considerable progress, even if some like Yang didn’t get as much screentime as say RNJR. And I do admire Miel and Kerry experimenting and at least trying. Fear holds us back a lot, and that stifles creative growth. In the end, even if the experiment failed in their eyes, I’m glad that they did it. V5 arguably suffered due to it, but again they tried and grew due to it. I can respect that. But still, it did cause problems. Maybe more than they were prepared for. As such, I’m going to put it at Number One.

And there we go. Luckily, the Likes list will be coming out sometime tonight. So thanks for reading, and hope that you’ll check out the next post~!

[hereticpriest]

Lockwood & Associates Chapter 1

Le Chiffre encounters a mysterious woman by the name of Delilah Lockwood at a hotel while he makes new connections.

Black Pigalle Follies Louboutin heels click across the marble floor, each step measured like a predator stalking its prey. A woman in a black chantilly lace and velvet Oscar de la Renta cocktail dress stops at the front desk, platinum blonde hair flowing down her back, and pushes up a pair of cat-eye sunglasses. Her eyes are cold, the same shade as an iceberg underwater.

“Ahh, Miss Lockwood. Welcome back.” The petite brunette behind the front desk smiled politely, sliding a keycard across the desk, and placing a small stack of packages and letters beside it, “Your mail, ma’am.”

Miss Lockwood takes the keycard, then puts the mail into her large Hermes bag and drops a couple of bills on the clean counter. The receptionist smiles again and takes the bills.

“Will that be all, Miss Lockwood?”

“My gym access is instated?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“The sauna as well, then?”

“Of course, Miss Lockwood.”

“Wonderful. Thank you, Maria. A bottle of George T. Stagg to my room. I will take dinner in the dining room, my usual table if you will. Steak frites and a molten lava cake for dessert, please, darling. The chef knows how I like it.”

“Of course, Miss Lockwood.”

The blonde turns on her heel and heads for the elevator, clocking an older gentleman watching her, but feigning obliviousness. When she arrives at her room, the bellboy has already brought her luggage up, along with the bottle of bourbon, crystal glasses and a silver briefcase with a number lock on it. She opens her suitcase and empties it into the dresser provided, then opens a compartment in the top and removes the contents. She verifies them, then returns them to their space, closing her suitcase and locking it again. She sets the briefcase on her night table, then opens her smaller suitcase and empties one half into the bathroom, and the other onto the end of the bed. A dress, heels, jewelry pouch and clutch.

Miss Lockwood finally opens the briefcase and removes a stunning dagger from one side, strapping a holster to her thigh and sliding the dagger into it. She closes and locks the briefcase, then takes her mail from her purse. The letters are invitations, and she drops both of them on her dresser without a care. One package contains a medical device that looks suspiciously like a gun, while the other contains several packs of sim cards and a burner phone. She puts the phone and cards into her purse, then presses the device to her arm and pulls the trigger. She doesn’t hiss at the injection, simply taps the injection site and discards the medical device back into the package it arrived in.

The woman leaves her suite barely fifteen minutes after arriving, her eyeliner retouched and a snake earcuff on her left ear. She enters the dining room, padding over to the table in the corner furthest from the door where her name is marked on a piece of cardstock.

Miss D. Lockwood

“Miss Lockwood, your meal. A gentleman at another table was inquiring about you and asked to buy you a drink, but I thought I’d verify with you first.” A waiter, middle-aged and dumpy, with a kind face and a polite smile approaches her table not long after she has sat down.

“Which gentleman?”

“Older fellow, but handsome. He’s at the table four up and two over, with a bald fellow and a brown-haired man. All in suits.” The waiter replies.

“Thank you. Would you be a dear and ask him to choose something for me? And he can bring it to me himself.”

“Of course, Miss Lockwood.”

“Thank you, Marc, was it?” The blonde confirms, holding out a bill which he takes gratefully.

“Yes, ma’am. Kind of you to remember.” Marc replies, and she smiles in return as he puts the bill in his apron and heads to the bar, then over to the table he’d been describing. She watches as the man puts a hand to his mouth for a moment, then speaks, and Marc nods and walks away. He places the drink in front of the man only a couple of minutes later, and the man thanks Marc before lifting the drink and turning around. Marc was right; he is handsome. His left eye is blue and scarred, but it adds to his character and she likes the contrast against his brown eye. He has sharp cheekbones and is well-groomed, his hair a lovely shade of peppering brown that she wants to run her fingers through.

“Miss Lockwood, a pleasure to meet you.” The man smiles like he may eat her, and she smiles back, enjoying the way his smile becomes more genuine when he recognizes a fellow predator, “Winter-spiced old fashioned.”

“Delilah, please. I believe I’ve heard of you. Le Chiffre? Interesting title.” Miss Lockwood holds out her hand for him and chuckles as he kisses her knuckles. She takes her drink and sips it, then smiles and indicates for him to sit with her, “Unless you need to go back to your… friends?”

He sits, and she wets her lips, then takes another sip of her drink. Her dinner arrives before she’s set the drink down, and she thanks Marc again for his service before returning her attention to Le Chiffre. She cuts the steak and lets out a happy sigh when she sees it is a perfect mid-rare. She takes a bite of one piece, then stabs another and offers it to her tablemate.

“Would you like a bite?”

“If you’re offering.” Le Chiffre replies with a cheeky smirk, taking the piece of steak and nodding as he chews and swallows, “Delicious. Thank you.”

Delilah takes a couple of frites on her fork and dips them in one of the three sauces provided, making an intrigued hum at the taste.

“Business or pleasure, Monsieur?”

“Can’t it be both?” He asks, and she smiles in return.

“I’m here for business, but I could use a little pleasure.” Delilah admits, eying his broad shoulders shamelessly.

“What sort of business?”

“Asset management and disposal.” Her smile is dangerous, and she sees the way he lights up. Clearly, she’s caught his interest. He’s lucky he’s not her target, because she would hate to disappoint him now. She’s about to slip her foot out of her heel and run it up his leg when he moves, sitting beside her. He offers her another piece of steak, smirking when she takes it obediently, his hand finding her thigh and gripping it tightly. He skims his hand up under her dress when she spreads her legs, and he isn’t very subtle about touching her through her underwear.

“My room is penthouse B. Don’t bring your friends.” She purrs in his ear, “Will I be seeing you at the game tonight?”

“Poker in the lounge? Of course.” His hand slips under her panties, fingers swiping through the wet heat of her cunt.

“Wonderful. May I distract you?”

“And how would you be distracting me?” Le Chiffre finds and circles her clit, but Delilah remains visually unaffected.

“You’ll see. Just say yes.”

“Yes.”

Delilah smirks, finishing her steak frites and her drink. She allows him to play a little longer before taking his hand away from her to lick one of his fingers clean. She guides the remaining two to his mouth, wetting her lips as he obeys and sucks them clean. She offers him her phone, and he obediently enters his number and texts her to get hers, jolting a bit with surprise when she lifts her napkin to wipe a tear of blood from his ruined eye.

“Would you like dessert? I’ve ordered lava cake.” Delilah offers, leaning happily into his grip when he runs his hand along her waist.

“I suppose a bite couldn’t hurt.”

“Oh, it certainly could.” The blonde offers her companion a wicked smile, and his answering grin shows he is impressed.

“Where have you been hiding?” Le Chiffre asks, and Delilah chuckles, offering Marc a warm smile when he brings her dessert and removes her dinner plate.

“Thank you, Marc.”

“You’re most welcome, Miss Lockwood.”

Delilah watches him go, then slices into her lava cake, beaming as the centre runs. Her dining partner takes a bit on a spoon and offers it to her, putting the spoon down while she swallows, and leaning in to kiss away the smear of chocolate on her lower lip. She allows it, hissing when he bites her lip rather hard, cupping his crotch just to sample the merchandise. She shares her lava cake with him, catching his associates watching them frequently, and offering them a wicked, dangerous smile that seemed to make them tense up. Good. They should be afraid of her.

“Monsieur Le Chiffre, I would advise you bring a clean bill of health or condoms to the lounge.” Miss Lockwood gestures for him to move when she’s finished her dessert, and he does, politely helping her up.

“Of course, Miss Lockwood.” He doesn’t seem surprised by her forwardness, and he tips her head back for a kiss before she leaves. Delilah breaks the kiss quickly, moving away before he can lean in for another, and heading back towards her room. She showers, pampering herself with body scrubs and an expensive lotion, drying her hair while her the lotion sank in. She styles her hair into waves of platinum, then changes into the dress laid out on her bed and steps into the heels. Her dress is form-fitting and short, a shimmery navy little thing with a sweetheart neckline and no sleeves. Her heels are lace Louboutins covered in crystals, and her jewelry is silver, with diamonds in the earrings and necklace. They’re delicate pieces, but intricate and beautiful, a web of silver across her chest and dangling from her ears. She puts her phone, burner, spare sims, and money clip in her purse, then descends to the lounge.

Le Chiffre is already at the table when she arrives, and she smirks when he looks at her. She circles the table, leaning against his back and putting her arms around his shoulders, placing kisses from his ear to his pulse. Delilah bites his ear, then slides into his lap and grinds her ass into his crotch. His hands grip her hips, and he lays a firm kiss on her shoulder, kissing up to her ear.

“If you sit, you’ve got to stay here until the end of the game. I don’t want to be accused of cheating, darling.” He whispers in her ear, and she smiles at him over her shoulder.

“Of course. I’ll stay right where I am.” Delilah grins, twisting in his lap just a little so she could kiss him, “You got what I asked for?”

He shimmies a bit to get his phone from his pocket, showing her clean records from his annual two weeks prior. She beams, nipping at his neck and kissing her way up to his ear.

“If you win, I’ll let you do whatever you want with me tonight. If you lose, I’m going to do whatever I want with you. Deal?” she purrs, which earns her a confident smirk.

“You’re betting against me and you’re not even playing?”

“I’m making a bet where everyone wins, regardless of who loses, darling. If I were making actual stakes, we’d be having a very different conversation.” Delilah smiled, looking around the room for a moment before spotting a man with a blonde crew cut and muscles for days. She grinned, kissing the point of Le Chiffre’s cheek and slipping from his lap, dancing out of the way of his attempts to grab her back to him.

“I’ll be back in just a second, darling. Business.” She purrs, and he relaxes, watching her while he waits for the table to with players. Delilah steps up to the bar, running her hand over his arm, and he walks with her to a side room after only a bit of chatting. She returns five minutes later without the man, and her hair a little messy. Not much, but enough that Le Chiffre caught it. When she returns to him, he pulls her into his lap and carefully fixes her hair under the guise of playing with her hair as he kisses her. Delilah responds happily, kissing him deeply, all tongue and teeth and quiet hums of approval. The dealer huffs and attempts to interrupt them, and Delilah turns an icy glare on him but shifts in Le Chiffre’s lap to give him space to play.

The game is interesting, especially since her paramour is a far better player than the others. He’s brilliant, and he knows it, so Delilah evens things out by occasionally nipping at his ear, grinding her ass down into his crotch, or whispering to him about all of the things she wants him to do to her. He pretends to ignore her, but she can always tell when he’s distracted because he shifts his legs beneath her. Despite her attempts to make it more difficult for him, he wins. Easily.

“Monsieur Le Chiffre, please come to my suite when you’re done collecting your winnings.” Delilah purrs, departing with a final kiss to his cheek. She makes a call, and the only thing she says is ‘It’s done, picture to follow’ before hanging up. She sends the picture, then removes the sim card and replaces it with a new one. As she passes a black-haired man in the hallway, she hands him a key without stopping, and then she rides the elevator up to her penthouse with a smug grin on her face. Popping the bottle of bourbon, she pours herself a glass and downs it, then pours another and sets it on her bedside table. Stretching out on her luxurious bed, Delilah Lockwood takes a sip of her bourbon and turns on the tv to watch something while she waits for her paramour.

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Greta

I’ll grant you that most horror movies (or thrillers, a label under which Greta more neatly fits) some improbabilities are probably going to happen. Even the smart ones like Scream make a point to show us “see? People do dumb things when fear gets involved.” But then there are certain decisions that no human person would ever make, that are so out-of-this-world bananas that it takes you right out of the movie. And then, somewhere in a land beyond that, there’s Greta. A movie that relies heavily on 1) the kindness of strangers in Manhattan, 2) people asking no follow-up questions about anything, and 3) two college-age girls owning a LAND LINE TELEPHONE like it’s goddamn 1953. Is all this enough to take the thrill right out of Greta? Well...

Shockingly, no. The pacing is an absolute trainwreck, but there’s still quite a lot of tension to be wrung from this good samaritan tale gone horribly wrong. Frances (Chloe Grace Moretz) finds a nice handbag on the subway and when she looks inside she sees it belongs to sweet old lady Greta (Isabelle Huppert). She returns the handbag and Greta is so grateful and kindly that she and Frances strike up a friendship, against the advice of Frances’ best friend/roommate Erica (Maika Monroe). Frances helps her adopt a dog, Greta makes them dinner - and then Frances discovers a cabinet full of handbags just like the one she found on the subway, all of them with the same contents, and post-its on them with names and phone numbers of young women, including her own name and number. That’s enough to freak her out royally and she cuts off all contact, except for the tiny thing that Greta is now stalking her. All of this covers about the first 20 minutes of the film. From there it devolves into a tale of stalking, intimidation, harassment, then finally escalates to drugging and kidnapping. I’ll say one thing for her - Greta is not fucking around. The last third of the film focuses on Frances’ internment in Greta’s apartment and her hope for potential rescue.

Some thoughts:

“I don’t want asparagus juice shot up my butt under any circumstances” is not a line I thought I’d ever hear in a movie and yet it’s uttered in this one less than 5 minutes in.  So this is what this screenwriter thinks millennials are into? Okayyyy...

It’s so clear this was written by a man (writer/director Neil Jordan) because I don’t know any young women that would go to a stranger’s apartment without telling their roommate first, without bringing someone along, even if they thought it was an old lady, to return a handbag in person. You’ve got her address, girl - mail it! You have a landline for fuck’s sake, why not embrace the post office as well?

Also I don’t know who told Mr. Jordan that people from Boston are so aw, shucks nice and polite all the time compared to Manhattanites but they’re full of shit. If you want Frances to seem like a naive rube, make her from some small town in Idaho or something - don’t act like people in Boston are SO much more LIKELY to return handbags.

The closer I am in proximity to the Oscars, the more likely I am to notice this because I have to look up the definition every year - the sound mixing in this movie is terrible. You can’t hear Greta over her piano playing, you can’t hear Frances over the taunting background music - it’s all muddled and a big mess.

The performances from both Moretz and Huppert are strong, but not as developed as they could have been because of the weak script. Huppert is surprisingly menacing for an old lady, but especially if anyone has been stalked (or simply had someone in their life they really really don’t want to see), they will be familiar with the flood of cold dread that Huppert evokes simply from standing still on a street corner, watching, waiting.

That being said, I don’t know any single woman - especially one with a known stalker - who doesn’t CLOSE and LOCK their doors and turn on lights when they get home.  You know what else they don’t do? Have any fucking problem lying to their stalker if necessary. I’m not victim-blaming here, I’m simply disappointed at the absolutely incomprehensible dreck being presented in this script as if it had any relation to how a person would behave in the history of ever.

Big shout out goes to Morton, the sweet and perfect dog whom Greta adopts and who does not make it out of the movie alive. Morton deserved better, you MONSTERS.

In spite of this shitshow of a script, the film manages to wring a fair amount of tension out of some surreal sequences as Greta is drugging and kidnapping her victim. For long stretches, it was difficult to determine what was real and what was a dream, which caused my anxiety to shoot through the roof. Any tension achieved is impressive in a film with pacing this bizarre.

Overall, Greta is a story in what could have been with a stronger script to bolster the admittedly committed performances. So much of it feels like a wasted opportunity, though, unless Neil Jordan just has a vendetta against trusting old ladies? Perhaps the most important takeaway is the accurate and detailed portrayal of how the police help stalking victims, which is to say, not at all until it is too late. Ah, there it is - the one thing that actually makes this feel like a horror movie.

[itspatsy]

Part of me thinks JJS2 didn't want to acknowledge they'd majorly dropped the ball on race in S1, so in S2 they amped up the "Jessica is a part of a minority group" aspect, had a black woman say "you people," to turn the narrative even further away from Jessica's own white privilege, and destroyed Trish, who was a viable target because she wasn't a traumatized white woman like Jessica - she was a RICH white woman. And they were desperate to avoid their fuck-ups so they made Patsy a patsy.

okay, so this turned into a long, generally incoherent rant that starts with “this show absolutely fails at dealing with race” and ends with “wtf were they even trying to do with trish’s story,” and it should probably be separate posts or better yet just not posted at all, but it’s all generally related to this ask, so whatever. it’s a mess, i have a lot of confusing thoughts, ignore me.

rather than acknowledging the mistakes of s1 regarding race and trying to course correct, the show definitely seemed like it decided to double down. before the season started, as it was becoming clear they were going to do this “prejudice against powered people” thing, i was really weary about how they would handle it, and apparently my instinct was right. 

to start with, it felt kind of pulled out of nowhere. realistically, sure, people would be weary of powered individuals, but it hasn’t really been fully built into the fabric of the mcu or the netflix mcu as a realized form of bigotry. it was also really only a thematic element in the first half of the season, and they made no effort to really explore it and its implications before they tossed it out and changed gears. it was just there to be used as a device for conflict and drama. 

and it’s such a ridiculous thing when you only have one powered person in the show that’s experiencing that bigotry and she’s a skinny white heterosexual cis woman? like, the most direct parallel for this wasn’t misogyny or homophobia, but racism, and they didn’t try to tell multiple perspectives about it. having a black woman say “you people” at jessica was the most tone deaf bullshit, like, i could not fucking believe it (and then they later killed her off in the most disposable way, which is a whole other issue, and something this show has done repeatedly). they had oscar, a moc that had been in prison (of course), start out the same way, seemingly expressing bigotry and getting “righteously” called out for it by jessica. then there was pryce, another moc, aggressively going after jessica, trying to steal her business, calling her an animal because of her anger and powers, and he “never takes no for an answer” and jessica gets to be like “how rape-y of you” in what was supposed to be a moment of #femaleempowerment. but it just feels like white lady empowerment at the expense of poc. 

but hey, gotta pile on to show how very oppressed jessica is in every aspect of her life, right? which, yes, she has absolutely been oppressed and violated and traumatized, and that is so important and real and should never be diminished, but the show didn’t attempt to contend with the ways she’s also privileged and the ways she’s been able to use it to her advantage and having her acknowledge it (including the fact that having powers, being able to protect herself, is an incredible privilege instead of only the awful burden it’s been portrayed as and she’s always interpreted it as). i probably wouldn’t have even said they’d need to explicitly deal with this under other circumstances, if they were focused on telling a different story, but they’re the ones that decided to make analogies to racist prejudice and have poc express it towards a white woman, so they put the expectation on themselves to tell a nuanced story about oppression and privilege and intersectionality, and they didn’t do that at all. they clearly weren’t actually interested in talking about prejudice in a serious, meaningful way. 

but here’s the even bigger issue: the show tries to present itself as being feminist, but it can’t be feminist when there are no women of color in main roles or even supporting roles. it makes no effort to tell the stories and perspectives and experiences of woc, and that is an absolute failure. it’s inexcusable that they made no effort to fix this. it absolutely doesn’t help that the woc that are actually present in small roles keep getting killed off unceremoniously. i had some hopes when i saw that they had females directors that actually included some woc, but i don’t think they have any in the writing room, and that matters SO MUCH. it makes such a difference, and they could’ve probably avoided so many of these missteps if they just had other voices represented in the creative process. i just saw a headline with melissa rosenberg where she says, “oh yeah, i totally agree with the criticism we don’t have enough women of color,” okay, except this is not a new criticism, people were saying the same thing after s1, so if she agrees with it and cares about it, why didn’t she do anything about it while they were making s2?

the show has sort of attempted with men of color, in that they actually exist in the cast, but it doesn’t handle them well at all, some of which i mentioned before. then you’ve got malcolm. the only lead character of color in s2. he was set up to be the moral center of the show, but there was no real follow through. he was ultimately treated like an afterthought in most situations. he just? disappeared? constantly? when shit went down? i lost count of the number of times i was like, “umm, where the fuck did malcolm go? is he all right?” and the characters around him were pretty consistently awful to him. jessica almost always treated him like shit. his relationship with trish was a train wreck they both kind of contributed to, but trish turned on him pretty epically, and the emotional fallout for him wasn’t really dealt with. and the writers told his “proxy addiction” story in the laziest, grossest way possible (sex? really? that’s all they could think up? and then to use it as excuse to have him treat women like they’re disposable and faceless?). they just clearly have no respect for him. 

it’s such a mess, and s2 was probably worse than s1 in this regard, and there’s no reason it needed to be. this isn’t an impossible thing. when people tell you, “hey, you fucked up. this is how,” you don’t double down or pretend it didn’t happen, you listen and you do better. this should be a show for everyone, not just white women. 

turning to trish, since you mentioned her: i’ve mostly tried to avoid post-s2 reviews, but one of the few i read described her character arc as a critique of the white savior mindset. i highly doubt that’s what the show had in mind. as we established above, careful thoughtful commentary about race is not this show’s strong suit, and writing a critique of the white savior mold wouldn’t even occur to them. i could kind of see where the reviewer was coming from, there were some flavors of white savior-ism in trish’s behavior, but they had to pretend she had never experienced an ounce of hardship in order to make it fit. this was basically the conclusion: “trish is rich and has a family and could never under poor traumatized orphaned jessica’s life.” nevermind that money doesn’t stop you from being abused and traumatized, that a family member was her primary abuser, and that living in poverty and wanting money was the motivation for her abuser to sell her out. this take also ignores the thing driving trish the most. it wasn’t “i want to help people, and they should listen to me because i know best” or even “i want to be special, i want to matter.” it was “nobody touches me anymore unless i want them to.” she was tired of being the victim, of never feeling safe. that’s why she wanted powers. it was muddied by the writing, but it really is as straight-forward as that.

i think trish being rich has likely had some influence in the audience diminishing how she was violated and abused in most every kind of way (physically, emotionally, sexually, financially), but i definitely don’t think the show went after her for being a rich famous white lady as a cover for its various racial fuck-ups. i don’t think the show even really tried to contend with or acknowledge her rich white privilege anymore than it tried to contend with jessica’s privilege. if anything, it tried to do the opposite by showing her to be belittled and demeaned and disrespected by everyone around her, similar to how they were upping the ante on jessica’s oppression by having her face bigotry about her powers. granted, it’s clear the audience had an easier time relating to jessica (probably partly due to the money and fame aspect again; also partly because the narrative backed her up more: for instance, the dynamic of having trish envy the privilege of jessica’s power, but the show seeming to say “oh, gosh, trish just doesn’t understand it’s not a privilege at all, it’s a terrible burden” even though that’s kind of ridiculous, as i mentioned earlier). the execution was shitty, but they were definitely still trying to show that trish’s life was not good and people treated her like she was nothing and worthless in a way that paralleled jessica’s treatment.

tbh, rather than punishing trish for being rich or whatever, i sometimes got the vibe they were actually punishing her for daring to have ambition, but that probably wasn’t on purpose, just an unfortunate implication of the way they treated her in general. at first, i’d assumed they were trying to tell a story about addiction and the ways it can destroy your life, and they just sucked at handling it with any kind of thoughtfulness, but now i think that’s being too generous. they didn’t even really try to grapple with the reality of her addiction and mental illness, so much as use it as an excuse to make her more unstable and put her in a position where she’d keep escalating things. 

i read an interview before the season dropped where melissa rosenberg talked about female anger (or, as the reality of the show is, white female anger), and anger definitely was a theme for all the female characters. if you recognize trish’s main motivator as mentioned above (protecting herself from further abuses), you can see where it fits into this theme, and that it wasn’t just senseless anger and was driven by vulnerabilities and never feeling safe. so, i don’t know, i guess trish’s story was maybe intended to be about an abused woman finally being so goddamn fed up with victimhood and disrespect and belittlement that she decided to take what she needed instead of quietly waiting for other people to acknowledge her humanity and treat her accordingly. that she finally said “fuck it” and tried to find her own power and become her own hero. except, if that was the story, the way it was executed was, wow… exceptionally awful and not remotely clear and not at all done in a positive way. a storyline like that could’ve had the potential to be powerful and affirming and perhaps empowering (once again, for white women at least), but that’s not the story they ended up telling. 

like, i honestly don’t get what i’m supposed to take away from it. they seemingly gave her what she was after, but they spent the entirety of the season shitting on her and had her destroy everything good in her life to get what she believed she needed, which was really just to feel safe. what’s the point here exactly? you do you boo and fuck everybody else because it’ll pay off? don’t have dreams and ambitions for yourself because they’ll make you heartless and selfish and you’ll hurt other people? the desire for power always corrupts even when you’ve been a victim and just want the power to protect yourself? trauma doesn’t go away and can make you do terrible self-destructive shit that you think is helping you but actually isn’t? drug addicts are awful, amirite? what. are. they. trying. to. say?

[analogscum]

HELLS ANGELS ON WHEELS (1967, d. Richard Rush)

Way back in 1966, before he was reduced to a Johnny Depp caricature and the personal hero of that one libertarian douchebag in your college Philosophy 101 class, Hunter S. Thompson burst onto the literary scene with his debut book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. Expanded from a 1965 article for The Nation, Hell’s Angels introduced America to not only the Doctor’s freewheeling, lysergic brand of prose, but this new underground culture of the motorcycle gang. No longer the leather-bound toughs of The Wild Ones, these bikers were hairier, freakier, and ten times more drugged up. They didn’t even bother to ask what you had for them to rebel against, they let their chains to the talkin’, maaaaaaan.

Hells Angels on Wheels roared into movie theaters the following year, when the Summer of Love had cooled down into the Winter of…I guess still Love? I dunno. I imagine the film must’ve been very shocking in its day and age, but for today’s viewer, Hells Angels on Wheels is notable for other reasons, namely its nascency. It represents ground zero for an entire sub-genre which played a major part in cementing the explosion of creativity that was American cinema in the 1970s, and provided a launching pad for a number of players who would go on to become indispensable cornerstones of that scene. But, before they could do that, they had to shoot a bunch of establishing shots of bikes parking in places.

In the spirit of the Peace movement, why don’t we be generous and describe the narrative structure of Hells Angels on Wheels as…episodic? Yeah, that’s the ticket! Basically every scene in the movie follows this structure: the Hells Angels show up somewhere and park their bikes for like five minutes, go into a place where everyone hates them, get into a fight with the people who hate them, then leave when either they kill someone or the cops show up. That’s it. That’s the whole movie. The audience’s surrogate is a young man named Poet, who quits his job at a gas station when a customer is a total jerk to him. Then his bike gets sideswiped by one of the Angels, who has, shall we say, questionable facial hair. Either this guy’s mustache just grows weird, or they did a terrible makeup job on him, anyway, you be the judge:  

So Poet’s headlight is damaged, and he proceeds to start a fight with the Angel with the questionable facial hair. Now, instead of just beating him to death with some wrenches, the lead Angel, Buddy, appreciates Poet’s ability to scrap. They all hang out for awhile. They get into a fight in a bar with a rival biker gang. They get into a fight at a carnival with some sailors. Then they all go back to a swingin’ pad full of groovy wall decor and have a drug orgy for what feels like nine hours. At one point, a painter who looks and talks suspiciously like Hunter S. Thompson — floppy hat, sunglasses, gruff mumble — begins doing body paint on all the women, which takes up roughly six hours of this nine hour scene. But most importantly, Poet falls for Shrill, one of the biker mamas who he can tell is a little too smart to be around this scene, because so is he. Just one problem: Shrill is Buddy’s woman. I’m sure this won’t lead to awkward, poorly choreographed violence at all!

Speaking of, kudos to the filmmakers for going for realism; there’s a lot of handheld camerawork, plenty of Nouvelle Vague-influenced jump cuts, and the film seems to feature quite a few actual Hells Angels. In fact, Sonny Barger, the president of the Angels’ Oakland chapter, gets his own title card in the opening credits, even though he appears on camera for less than two seconds. Surely this title was properly earned, and not the result of any threats against studio people with switchblades. However, we’re talking about an era where filmmakers still hadn’t quite figured out how to properly choreograph a fight scene, so every scuffle still kinda looks like drunken acrobatics. And the death scenes are even worse. Here’s a short list of how people die in this movie: they’re awkwardly knocked down and punched once; their car is run off the road but otherwise totally unharmed; and their bike runs into a two by four, slowly tilts over, and catches on fire for no discernible reason. It’s a shame that the one thing that reads as hokey in a movie dedicated to portraying the reality of this violent lifestyle is, well, the violence.

Eventually Poet is made a “prospect” by Buddy, and the whole gang hits the road. One of the bikers and his woman get married at a Catholic Church in Nevada. There are more fights with people who don’t like them. In once scene a biker drives his bike up a real tall hill for awhile. One biker gets arrested on a murder beef, but the gang busts him loose less than a minute later, because stakes or tension is for squares, I guess. By far the most interesting part of this movie is watching the relationship between Poet and Shrill develop, and how that begins to threaten Buddy. These two are joined together by their discontent: they both want something outside of the ordinary from life, but are paralyzed by their self-destructive tendencies. This is especially true of Shrill, who isn’t happy unless she is causing unhappiness all around her, which leads her to play Poet and Buddy off of one another, until it all blows up in a powerful final confrontation that is unfortunately capped off by a truly stupid coda that never should’ve happened.

Hells Angels on Wheels was directed by a gentleman named Richard Rush. Though he wouldn’t be as prolific after the sixties, and hasn’t directed a feature film since 1994’s Color of Night (speaking of truly stupid codas that never should’ve happened), this film helped propel him to greater artistic heights: 1970’s Getting Straight was a critical darling and called the “best American film of the decade” by none other than Ingmar Bergman; 1974’s Freebie and the Bean was a box office smash and more or less invented the buddy cop movie; and 1980’s The Stunt Man earned him two Oscar nominations. Richard Rush has kinda been forgotten these days, but, I mean, François Truffaut called this guy his favorite American director. Have YOU ever been François Truffaut’s favorite anything? I doubt it, he’s been dead since 1984, genius.

Eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed that the cinematography on Hells Angels on Wheels was credited to one “Leslie Kovacs.” If you’re a hopeless dork like me, you probably whispered to yourself, “I bet that’s Lázló Kovacs.” Well, fellow hopeless dork, we were both right: this was one of Kovacs’s first American feature jobs, after shooting commercials and nature documentaries for much of the early sixties. He continued to collaborate with Rush throughout the seventies, as well as lensing classic films by the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Bob Rafelson, Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, and Norman Jewison. Shockingly, he never won an Oscar, but odds are if you paint a mental picture of American cinema in the seventies, you’re imagining an image shot by Lázló Kovacs.

That finally brings us to Poet, who was played by a young upstart named Jack Nicholson. Is it even necessary to point out that he’s the best actor in the film? Well, he is. The character is a bit underwritten, but he makes the most out of it. Nicholson can do more with a smile or a glance than other actors in the film attempt with an entire monologue. Best of all, he still hadn’t gone full on bug-eyed, jive talkin’, scenery chewin’, Lakers court side Jaaaaaaaack yet. There’s a vulnerable, wounded quality to his acting here that is incredibly compelling, I would argue that he perfected it in Five Easy Pieces, one of yours truly’s favorite films of all time, before moving on to the more ostentatious work that would net him 3 Oscars and turn him into a tabloid playboy.

Hells Angels on Wheels would help establish the counterculture motorcycle gang as a cinematic force to be reckoned with, at least on the drive-in circuit. More quick and dirty films of that ilk followed in its wake, such as The Wild Angels, Born Losers, and Hells Angels ’69, before one such film broke on through to the other side: an acid-soaked exploration that pitted the battle between the bikers and normal society as the struggle for the very soul of America in the Vietnam age. Oh, and they brought Kovacs and Nicholson along too. Obviously I’m talking about Otto Preminger’s Skidoo.

Nah, just kidding, I’m talking about Easy Rider. Released in 1969, the film proved to be the flashpoint for the most artistically fertile decade in the history of American cinema. And to think, it all may not have happened if it wasn’t for a little movie that’s mostly establishing shots of bikes being parked.

[muzzmurray]

year in fic review (2017)

You can find all of the fic mentioned below on my ao3 account, savedby. If you’re looking for my football fic edition, you can find it here.

Year at a glance: Total number of completed stories: 32 Total word count: 77707

Overall Thoughts:

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted? I wrote way more than I realized for this fandom, um, wow. There were a couple of months where I was writing like four or five fics and I have no idea how that happened.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? Oh, the Vegas Golden Knights! Because when they signed two, I was joking around on twitter about how I could ship them now, and my friend was like ‘well, why don’t you’ and then that evolved into Sabaton and by extension into the Bold in Gold series, which was one of the most rewarding parts of my year for sure.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? these tornadoes are for you, which was Nick/Bob and written for the Cannon Fodder exchange. The combination of magic realism, humor and their general softness was really nice to write, and @frecklebombfic did a beautiful podfic of it.

Did you take any writing risks this year? Purely in terms of style, I wrote descent, in second person, which I know tends to polarize opinions. I love it, for whenever I want to write something that feels more immediate and intimate. I actually tried to rewrite it in third person, because the friend I was writing it for told me she wasn’t a big fan of second person, but it just wouldn’t work. It had to be written exactly as it is.

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year? I’d like to finish this chaptered Mcdrai magic AU fic that I’m working on and I’d like to continue writing the Vegas Golden Knights as their narrative unfolds, so the Bold in Gold series can become a sort of written history of the team and its fandom. Ambitious, but. We’ll see. I’m already working on the next part.

From my past year of writing, what was…

My best story of this year: armet. I think this was in the works the moment I realized that there was a possibility that Flower might go to Vegas and it ended up becoming exactly what I had hoped it would be.

My most popular story of this year: i still get jealous of your old boyfriends, judging by kudos, which is actually funny to me, because for the longest time I really hated what I wrote for that fic and I ended up posting it after having it written for a period of time.

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: foundations, my Marleau/Thornton fic. I mean, it’s a niche pairing and a character study, so it’s probably as good as it’s going to get, but it’s basically peak me and my love for old men and their narratives.

Most fun story to write: world i can call mine , which was my Pod_together project with @frecklebombfic . Having her input on it was so essential (as it was in many of my fics this year) and I had such a fun time discussing Auston, Zach and Mitch, and poly with her. And her podfic ended up being perfect. It was just a great project.

Story with the single sexiest moment: Man, I don’t know, I’m an ace essentially floundering in the world of smut. But I did manage to post, like 4 explicit stories this year, which just goes to show you that you can be anything you set your mind to, kids. As it is, I’m nominating this line from wake me up come tomorrow

Oscar does, adds another finger only when he feels Adam completely relax into the first. He fingers him slow and easy, watching his face as it relaxes from discomfort to pleasure. Adam makes these noises too, cut off moans, helpless and involuntary. Oscar adds a third finger and he whines, high in his throat.

Most “holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” story: circumstance, which I hadn’t realized was still posted on anon until right now. So I’m owning up to it, I suppose. I’m not ashamed of it, because it still makes me laugh a lot on re-read, but please heed the warnings.

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: your morning cup, my Tim Horton character study. I didn’t even really know anything about him when I decided I was going to be writing this fic. But as I researched and wrote, the story ended up being one of the most important things I wrote this year.

Hardest story to write: something like hope was an exercise in frustration, until I figured out how to frame it with quotes from Pekka’s Players’ Tribune article.

Biggest disappointment: I don’t really post things I’m actually unhappy with.

Biggest surprise: I was most surprised by how well fandom received Sabaton, because I figured it was something so niche that only a few people would actually click on, but it became one of my most popular stories. I’m really grateful for that.

Highlights + Wrap-up:

Favorite Opening Lines (4):

From tomorrow is going to be pretty pawsome

Ryan is halfway through his breakfast when he hears his front door opening. It’s 9am and he’s not wearing pants, so if he’s going to be robbed, he’s pretty much defenceless, unless he pelts the robber with some granola.

What still gets me is how real this ship became as the season progressed.

From Sabaton

There’re a few things Vadim expects to see when he lands in Las Vegas. His new teammate holding up a big sign with his name on it, decorated with footballs and pucks and glitter, isn’t one of them.

Am I still prissy about how badly they treated Shippy? Yes. Absolutely.

From LXXXVII

Sidney Crosby isn’t high on the list of people that Vadim expects to see in the hotel bar in Pittsburgh before the Knights game against the Penguins, and yet, there he is. Crosby is wearing a pair of thick rimmed glasses and a hat, presumably as some sort of disguise. It only makes him stand out more.

He also seems to be getting closer, swapping stools whenever Vadim glances away, until they’re sitting elbow to elbow.

Ridiculous Sid is my favorite plot device and he was in full effect in this fic.

From your morning cup

Strictly speaking, there’s never been a hockey player called Tim Horton.

I just liked the way this commands attention when you read it. I think it when you have something so niche, you need the first paragraph to grab your attention, and I think I did well here.

Favorite Closing Lines (5):

From dust in your veins

Then, Geno pulls him into another kiss, desperate, his chest shaking under Sid’s hands and Sid thinks that maybe he won't have to separate them after all.

That he can have this – his heart beating rapid fire in his chest, and Geno’s steadying palms on the muscles of his back, and the ghost of ice above them both.

I love the removable heart AU (not to be confused with the escaping heart AU) because it just works so incredibly well for those sports narratives.

From knight

“You know, it’s actually a pun, because I used to play for the London Knights and-”

“Oh my god, please stop.”

From we were a house on fire

“I want.”

“It’s been years.”

“Want still.”

“...yeah, okay.”

“Like that?”

“Yeah. Just like that.”

I love how deceptively simple this is, with no dialogue tags, but it feels like it packs a lot of punch, cutting through the complexity of their situation.

From descent

The streets of Edmonton turn slick, coated with fallen snow. Daylight is scarce, and cold besides, and you wear a jersey that doesn’t mean much to you and you watch out for the boy that means everything.

At night your curl around Connor in your bed. He always runs hot, burning in your bones and warming you from the inside out.

He presses his mouth to the nape of your neck, and you blink, mind muddled with sleep, and you realize you don’t know which one of you is the one doing the protecting.

Ask me sometime about my thoughts about enforcers and their relationships with star players, and why end up romanticizing them so much.

From armet

“Fleuuuurrrryyyy,” the fans scream, without a hint of mocking, echoing off the concrete of the building,  “Fleuuuurrrryyyyyyyy!” and it’s all he can do to smile through his tears, waving at these people who have crucified and martyred him over the years, but have loved him through it all.

His crease hasn’t changed. He pats the pipes, feels them steady beneath his palm, familiar. His teammates are all on the ice now, circling his goal, and he catches sight of Nealer coming forward with the puck. His face is grim and determined, and Flower remembers he’s got something to prove too.

He gives Nealer a sharp nod and crouches. Smiles.

He’s ready.

Flower’s game against the Pens in Vegas was emotionally devastating and I can only imagine how it’ll be when they play in Pittsburgh.

Favorite Lines From Anywhere (6):

From be your spine

The Bruins seem just fine without him, which is just a metaphor for his life, really. He notices the absence of Boston, but Boston is too big to notice he’s gone.

He limits his texts to Tuukka, and eventually they taper off, growing sparser and more impersonal as months go by. It’s understandable. Anton feels the absence of Tuukka like a phantom limb, but Tuukka is too brilliant, too beautiful, to be affected by Anton’s absence.

My first fic of the year was a homage to the journeyman player, the one who isn’t a star anywhere, the one that’s expendable. And this was one of the lines that summarized it pretty well.

From teddy bear

“I just want to be a cool dad, like Bozie! You’re the lame dad, Zach is the big brother figure and Leo is the grumpy grandpa. We all have roles to play!”

Matt bites back his first comment, and the second one. They’re both swearwords.

This whole sequence between Mo and Matt still makes me laugh really really hard.

From foundations

The Sharks are Joe’s team by virtue of wanting him more than anyone else did, but they aren’t his team like they’re Patty’s, who’s left pieces of himself in every crack in the Shark Tank concrete and who wears the jersey with more pride than anyone Joe’s ever known.

This fic hurts more now that Patty got traded.

From heart like a home

Roman is still sprawled across PK’s bed, entirely naked, reading one of PK’s magazines. His tanned skin glows in the soft yellow light of the bedside lamps. The sight never fails to make PK’s mouth go dry. As if sensing his gaze, Roman looks up, arching an elegant eyebrow, a stray curl falling across his forehead.

I want to eventually try to capture the various details of Roman/PK in a longer fic but for now this image of naked Roman will have to do.

From these tornadoes are for you

Bob is standing at the stove, muttering something to himself. He still looks like he did last night, little bolts of lightning racing across his skin, and when he turns around his eyes are still glowing pale in his face. It’s a little disconcerting, but Nick goes with it.

“What are you doing?” Nick asks, walking next to him to look at the pan and wincing. He’s careful not to touch Bob, doesn’t know what it’ll do to him. “Was this supposed to be scrambled eggs?”

I really enjoyed writing the whole scene of Bob releasing his magic in the woods, but what made me happiest to write was the morning after and how all that magic becomes somewhat of a hindrance.

From i still get jealous of your old boyfriends

“Are you telling me that Connor McDavid’s favorite show is My Super Sweet 16?” he asks incredulously. Mitch grins at him.

“Oh, no,” he says and Auston lets out a sigh of relief, “it used to be his favorite show. I think his favorite right now is Extreme Couponing.”

Connor and Extreme Couponing is the greatest love story I’ve written this year.

Fic Goals for 2017: I want to finish off the four WIPs that I didn’t manage to this year. Beyond that, I don’t have any particular expectations. I hope I can continue to enjoy writing in this fandom and that people will continue to enjoy my work.

year in fic review (2016)

[xtruss]

Italian lawmaker demands Bill Gates be ARRESTED for ‘crimes against humanity’... But WHY?

Bill Gates and his latest anti-coronavirus efforts have been at the center of the wildest theories that explore possible sinister motives behind the billionaire’s activities.

— 18 May, 2020 | RT

The lower house of the Italian Parliament

An Italian lawmaker has managed to bring the conspiracy blame-game to an entirely new level, exercising her parliamentary chamber free speech to blast Bill Gates as a “vaccine criminal” and a globalist tool.

Bill Gates and his latest anti-coronavirus efforts have been at the center of the wildest theories that explore possible sinister motives behind the billionaire’s activities. In arguably the most high-profile outcry last week, an Italian MP for Rome Sara Cunial delivered a speech rarely (if ever at all) heard at any parliament.

In her passionate address, Cunial called upon fellow lawmakers to defy any plans of compulsory vaccination against Covid-19. Such endeavors are being pushed by the corrupt elites – the Deep State – she claimed, pointing the finger at Bill Gates as one of the main culprits behind the vaccination drive, if not the pandemic itself.

For decades, Gates has been working on depopulation policy and dictatorial control plans on global politics, aiming to obtain the primacy on agriculture, technology and energy.

Being a well-known anti-vax activist, Cunial singled-out Gates as the villain primarily because of the vaccination campaigns that his foundation has been conducting for years in less-developed countries. But while boldly accusing the billionaire of sterilizing millions of women in Africa and paralyzing hundreds of thousands of children in India, she also added a good pinch of GMOs and 5G tech to the dense conspiracy mix of his ‘sins.’

The Italian politician also harshly criticized the anti-coronavirus lockdown measures that her country was among the first to impose. According to Cunial, the isolation serves the globalist agenda too, while the Italians have been subjected to a “Holy Inquisition of false science.”

“It is our children who will lose more, who are ‘raped souls,’” Cunial said. “In this way, the right to school will be granted only with a bracelet to get them used to probation, to get them used to slavery and involuntary treatment.”

The real goal of all of this is total control. Absolute domination of human beings, transformed into guinea pigs and slaves, violating sovereignty and free will.

When hecklers attempted to interrupt her, the president of the chamber called to order – because in a “free parliament anyone has the right to express their opinion” – and scored a round of applause.

Allowed to finish her speech, Cunial raised the stakes even further, pleading to the Italian PM to submit Gates to international justice – unless of course Giuseppe Conte is himself part of the global Deep State conspiracy.

Next time you receive a phone call from the philanthropist Bill Gates forward it directly to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

While Bill Gates has often been a target of assorted conspiracy theories in the past, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has ramped up interest in his persona. His quest for a vaccine against the Covid-19, as well as a recent Microsoft patent vaguely describing a device that tracks ‘body activity’, caused a lot of fuss.

Despite the fact that Bill Gates has technically stepped down from Microsoft’s board and is no longer associated with the corporation, while the ‘sinister’ patent WO/2020/060606 never mentioned any implants, some deduced the billionaire might be planning to sneakily microchip humanity under the guise of coronavirus vaccination… for reasons.

While Cunial’s tirade might sound unprecedented, it’s not particularly shocking coming from a fierce anti-vax activist who was expelled from the 5 Star Movement party last year over her dissenting views.

She also wouldn't be the first high-profile figure to scapegoat Gates. Russian Oscar-winning director Nikita Mikhalkov made headlines earlier this month after he, just like Cunial, sounded alarm on national TV about the alleged plot to decimate and control the population of the planet.

Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov (left) claims billionaire Bill Gates (right) might be seeking to implant humanity with microchips under the guise of vaccination, seeking to control people and ultimately “solve” overpopulation. ‘Bill Gates seeks to microchip humanity!’ Russian Oscar-winning director pushes vaccine conspiracy… loosely-based on REAL patent, 3 May, 2020

The ongoing coronavirus crisis has produced a number of wild conspiracy theories, as some are trying to find the “secret” reasons behind the pandemic. A handful of them revolve around Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his efforts to develop a vaccine against Covid-19.

One Microsoft patent that recently received international recognition has been found by many ‘truth-seekers’ to be particularly alarming. The patent WO/2020/060606 describes a “Cryptocurrency system using body activity data” – basically, a device which can be used to ‘mine’ some digital coins using one’s body. Or, rather, “award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified,” as the patent abstractly puts it.

The patent did not escape Nikita Mikhalkov, renowned Oscar-winning film director, who pushed quite a theory in a new issue of ‘Besogon TV’ (roughly translated as ‘demon banisher’, dubbed, ‘In whose pocket the state is?’ The episode was aired by the Rossiya 24 TV channel on Friday, but was then quietly taken down from its schedule and not repeated – something Mikhalkov has taken for an act of “censorship.”

'It's man-made to test 5G': Boxer Khan spreads coronavirus conspiracy claims, suggests pandemic could be 'population control' plot. 4 Apr, 2020

Mikhalkov claims the very name of the patent has an occult meaning in it, accusing Gates of actually seeking to implant humans with microchips to control them, and tying it to his potential vaccination program.

The 060606 part is somewhat alarming. You probably understand this, right? Is this a coincidence or an intentional selection of such a symbol, which in the Apocalypse of John is called the ‘number of the beast’ – the 666.

Mikhalkov then goes on a rant about a dystopian future where digitized (and microchipped) society is split into two unequal parts, namely the elite and the human drones they control. In search of Gates’ global “co-conspirators,” he squarely points finger at Herman Gref, the head of Russia’s state-owned bank Sberbank, a known proponent of the digitalization of society. The director’s theory falls short of explaining how that system would solve the overpopulation problem, though – or why Russia would be keen to follow the American business magnate’s lead, for that matter.

Like any other outrageous theory peddled by a celebrity, the new issue of ‘Besogon TV’ went viral online, getting around 700,000 views in less than in a day.

Mikhalkov’s conclusions might be quite far-fetched, and the patent WO/2020/060606 is not directly linked to Gates, who has technically stepped down from Microsoft’s board to focus on running his and his wife’s Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Neither does it mention microchipping, instead describing “sensors” coupled with a “device” to register the body activity. One alleged purpose of such a technology described is to encourage healthy lifestyle with users awarded cryptocurrency for exercising.

Should that be a hype killer then? Hardly, as some would still be freaked out by the potential Black Mirror-esque applications of this tech, while the discussion on the encroachment of technology (and various forms of controls) on our daily lives has never been more relevant. And those who fear being forcefully microchipped by an evil corporation, should probably first check their own pockets for a little “tracking device” called a smartphone, which they had purchased and carry around voluntarily.

'They’re preparing people for microchip implants': Tennis legend Marat Safin shares coronavirus conspiracy theory, 14 Apr, 2020.

Russian tennis legend Marat Safin has suggested the coronavirus pandemic could be a pretext for the mass implanting of microchips into humans, as the former world number one gave an unexpected take on the crisis.

“I think they are preparing people for 'chipization' [chip implants]," Safin, 40, said in an Instagram chat with Russian outlet Sports.ru.