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amorisastrum · 12 days

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What if the Knox and Chris sub-plot had meaning?

WAIT NO GUYS IM SORRY PLEASE HEAR ME OUT I BEG PLE-

Okay I'm starting this post off by restating my downright hatred for Knox. I do not like his character, what he did was wrong, it's creepy and fucking disgusting. I will however like to talk about how his relationship with Chris could have potentially added to the story.

We all know (at least I hope) that practically everything in this film has meaning. I had spent ages wondering why they thought it was a good idea to include this frankly ridiculous sub plot to the story. And then I thought about it. Like really thought about it. I don't exactly remember what I was doing when I thought about it, but I do know that I had DPS playing in the background. (I initially thought about this on April 7th. It is May 29th when I am typing this up.)

So, here are all my reasons as to why I think they added the Knox and Chris sub-plot!

My first point is about this scene:

I believe that this line could be a form of foreshadowing. Yes, it is Knox being a dramatic and insufferable prick but it also feels like it could be more. Obviously it isn't Knox who dies in the end, but the idea of not being able to have something leading to suicide feels very important to the story.

Neil is unable to achieve a career in acting because of his father. As well as this, he is being taken away from his family. His real family. By not being able to have this thing that he so desperately wants, he feels like there is no other solution than death.

Knox says that if he can't have Chris he will kill himself, Neil has practically everything he loves stripped away from him- he cannot have it. So... He kills himself. There is a lot of foreshadowing in this film that hints to Neil's death at the end of the film and I do truly believe that this is a part of that foreshadowing.

My next point is that it is used as a form of contrast.

We see that Knox is extremely open about his attraction to Chris... In a multitude of ways, repeatedly throughout the film. Whether his actions that show his attraction are good or not is a different matter (Knox... God how I hate you.)

Arguably this is used as a juxtaposition. Knox (and Chris?) are relatively open about their attraction to one another- while Neil and Todd are very closed off about it. It is never explicitly stated that Neil and Todd like each other in that way, but through subtext it is heavily implied.

Why might this be? Well, considering the film is set in 1959, it could be because homosexuality simply wasn't legal at this point in time. Neil and Todd weren't allowed to be open about liking each other. Being open about it could put them in danger, they had no choice but to stay quiet.

However, as well as a contrast, it poses similarities between Knox and Chris and Neil and Todd. By setting up this contrast, it only brings to the surface some quite significant similarities.

Because let's be real.

How can THIS be a look of true love...

And THIS not be?

Or falling in love or admiring one's beauty or WHATEVER you want to call it. That's not the point. The point is, they're not that different.

You can see similarities between Knox's behaviour towards Chris and Todd's behaviour towards Neil (and vice versa). One of the main similarities is, well, how they look at one another. I personally don't see how the way Knox and Chris look at each other is true love but the way Todd and Neil look at one another is just... Them being roommates.

The juxtaposition between the two sets of people (I didn't know how else to say this) just doesn't seem accidental. The constant mention of Knox's feelings and love towards Chris just makes the way Neil and Todd interact more obviously... Romantic? Loving?

Their love is stated to allow the audience to see how similar they are to Todd and Neil, while still sticking to one of the key concepts of the film - conformity. Neil and Todd having to conform to societal standards, not being able to share their love for one another.

Knox's feelings for Chris are explicitly stated, repeatedly, because Todd's and Neil's can't. It makes it more noticeable. Neil and Todd's feelings can't really be stated due to the law. So they do it with Knox instead. The similarities can be seen throughout the film in how Knox treats Chris and how Neil and Todd treat one another.

Because again, how can Knox look at Chris like that and that show that he is in love, but Neil look at Todd like that and that just be... Them being friends?

The answer is, it can't. Not really.

Although Knox is a lot more explicit with his feelings towards Chris than the other two are with one another, the feelings they have are the same. Whether it is portrayed in the same way or not, it's love.

#dead poets society #dps #neil perry #todd anderson #knox overstreet #chris noel #anderperry #percy rambles #long post #its been a while since ive posted dps content... how we feeling fellas?#i go through phases of using tumblr regularly and then barely using it at all #hopefully i have some more dps posts for you guys soon #for now i hope you like this post #still a knox hater though 🫶#dead poets fandom #dps fandom #analysis post #sorry for yapping

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flanaganfilm · 1 year

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Hi Mike!

I am loving the LONG posts you’ve been making about your career and films. I wonder if there is any such one for ‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’?

‘Doctor Sleep’ was the first film of yours I had seen where I went “What else has this guy made?” And I was so surprised to learn Ouija was yours as well, it took me back to that college date! When I bought it on blu-ray and showed it to my friend, she saw Alice and Doris and went “It’s Shirley!”

Id love to know what your thoughts and feelings are on the film, 7 years later. Cheers!

Sure thing! This will be a fun one... I had such a great time making that movie.

Back in the spring of 2015, we were shooting Hush. Blumhouse was coproducing the movie with Intrepid Pictures. This was my second outing with Blumhouse after they came aboard Oculus at tiff in 2013, and they'd even hired me do a little uncredited consulting on another movie they'd made - a teen horror flick called Ouija. The first Ouija movie was... well... not great, but it made a lot of money. And I mean a LOT of money. A sequel was inevitable.

Jason Blum started calling me about the project while we were working on Hush. Initially I passed on it, I wasn't interested - I wasn't sure how to make a movie about a Ouija board interesting, and I didn't see myself as a sequel filmmaker. It just wasn't a movie for me.

If you know Jason at all, you know he is one of the most persistent and persuasive people in the business.

He wouldn't take "no" for an answer, and the phone kept ringing. The bar was low, he argued. The first movie performed very well, and because the franchise was just hung on a board game, there was kind of a blank canvas. "What movie do you want to make, buddy? Because I promise you'll wait your whole career for someone to make you this kind of offer again. You are a fool if you don't say yes."

He finally made me an offer that I couldn't refuse: I could approach the film from any viable creative direction I wanted, just as long as it connected somehow to the first movie and involved a Ouija board, and if I did that (and brought in the scares the kids wanted), I'd have a guaranteed worldwide theatrical release through Universal Pictures.

It's hard to understate how appealing that prospect was at the time. Oculus had been released theatrically but only performed moderately well. Before I Wake had been caught up in Relativity's bankruptcy, so the promised theatrical release never occurred (at this time, the movie was tied up in bankruptcy court without any release on the horizon), and Hush had been scooped up by Netflix, which meant it would never see the inside of a movie theater.

This offered me substantial creative freedom and a guaranteed wide theatrical release with the full weight of Universal Pictures behind it... I finally agreed.

How could I not?

The first film was a contemporary elimination horror film about a group of teenagers who awaken a scary little girl ghost with a stitched-up mouth. She kills them one by one. I wasn't really drawn to that, and I pitched Jason instead on a prequel that focused on a single mother in the late 1960s. To my astonishment, he agreed.

They had their conditions - it had to be PG-13, it had to directly connect to the first film, and I had to deliver the movie on their budget. And I had my conditions - I wanted my crew (including my producer Trevor Macy and my DP Michael Fimognari), I wanted my period setting, and I wanted the movie to look like it was made in the late sixties, down to the zooms, the film grain, and all the other aesthetic bells and whistles. This wouldn't look like a contemporary movie.

Again, to my astonishment, they agreed.

They had one more stipulation, this one from Universal Pictures - no one could smoke cigarettes. And not just that, there couldn't be evidence of smoking in the movie; not even ash trays.

"But this takes place in the sixties," I argued. The NO that came in was emphatic and resounding. There was to be no evidence of cigarettes in our 1960's, and this was non-negotiable. This was a priority for Universal Pictures, and they were far more interested in eliminating cigarettes from the eyes of their young viewers than they were interested in historical accuracy.

Frankly, they were right.

We all agreed on the terms, and to my own admitted surprise, I went off to write and direct Ouija 2.

There was an immediate skepticism in the press when the project was announced, and a fair amount of mocking online. I was determined to ignore it. I really thought this could be fun. I felt like I had been given a gift; I had a huge canvas and precious few rules, and a guaranteed theatrical audience.

I wasn't just going to make Ouija 2; I was going to make Ouija 2 as well as it could possibly be made.

Sitting to write the script was a unique process. The only thing I knew for certain was the very, very end. Our connection to the first movie was that we were telling the origin story of Doris Zander, the ghost from the first film.

She came with some backstory that we were married to: the first movie told us her mother Alice was a professional medium. When Doris had been possessed after using an Ouija board, her mother had sewn her mouth shut and killed her. And we knew her older sister, Lina, had spent the rest of her life in a mental institution (where she grew up to be Lin Shaye), and was absolutely not to be trusted.

So no matter what I did, we had to land there. Everything else was fair game.

I was very interested in the idea of a family who worked as mediums, but most interested in them if they were not authentic psychics. I'd researched a lot about fake mediumship, and the tricks that were used in those performative seances to separate willing marks from their money. What if that was the family's business? What if her mother was something of a con artist, and her kids were part of the act? And what if they ran afoul of a real haunting?

And further, what if it wasn't that they were con artists - what if they were good people, behind it all? What if they had experienced loss themselves, and had rationalized their behavior by saying they were offering people comfort? This was interesting to me. It was cool, it was fun, and I hadn't seen that movie before.

The story was a lot of fun to write. I really enjoyed the characters, I really enjoyed the world, and I kept thinking about the kinds of movies that I loved growing up. Yeah, this was a movie for a younger audience, but maybe they'd sit in that theater and have an experience that would stay with them, the way the movies of my youth had stayed with me.

I thought about those movies: Poltergeist, The Omen, The Changeling, Watcher in the Woods... and I thought about the theatrical experience of them. Their music (I particularly honed in on Jerry Goldsmith's score from Poltergeist), their aesthetics, even the little markers in the upper corner that signal the reel changes - "cigarette burns", as they're called in the business.

All of those things were ornaments of my earliest theatrical experiences, and I wanted to recreate that for the young viewers who might seek out Ouija 2.

One thing that set Ouija 2 apart right away was that we were going to shoot in Los Angeles. I'd lived in LA since 2003, but I had never actually filmed a movie here (and haven't ever again, sadly). This was a really exciting factor - I could spend the day in prep at Blumhouse, and then go home and sleep in my bed.

This was also great for my home life. Kate and I were engaged by then, and Blum was very happy with Hush, so she ended up playing a small role at the top of the movie. Having just spent the Spring living in a hotel in Fairhope Alabama and only working nights, it felt very novel that I'd get up in the morning and go to the office, and be home for dinner. We absolutely loved it.

Casting was also fun. Terry Taylor at Blumhouse did the casting, and for the first time in a long time I could be in the room when actors came in to audition. This was all in-person, because we were in LA. For Before I Wake, we'd had to run the whole thing through the lens of foreign sales value and over choppy, pixelated FaceTime meetings that did not give us much understanding of who we were casting. Compared to that, this process was a real delight.

For Lina, I really wanted to bring back Annalise Basso, the young actress from Oculus. She'd done a terrific job on that movie, and this was a great chance to work together again.

Henry Thomas signed on as Father Tom, and we hit it off immediately. I had been a fan of his since... well, forever I suppose, but I was really excited that he'd be in our movie.

The big revelation, though, was Lulu Wilson. We auditioned a lot of girls for Doris, and we used a particularly upsetting monologue as the audition piece - a 60 second speech about what happens when someone is strangled to death. Lulu's audition knocked me over, and we cast her immediately.

(Fun note: in the film itself, Lulu performs the monologue almost exactly as she did in her audition. And she did it so well, we never cut away. Don't know many 10 year-olds who can hold an entire monologue like that... in fact, I know a lot of 40 year-olds who can't. Lulu Wilson kicks ass.)

Production began in September 2015.

From the jump, this movie was FUN to make.

We were using an antique zoom lens package to achieve the look, and after spending much of prep obsessively watching The Changeling and The Exorcist for inspiration, we were really excited to do something fun. Every day was like a trip to an amusement park.

Michael Fimognari and I enjoy one of the vintage cars

One set, it was a family reunion. I had a lot of my crew from Oculus, Before I Wake and Hush, and a few familiar faces in the cast as well. It even reunited me with Dougie Jones, who had worked for one day in my debut feature Absentia, and agreed to let us bury him in gross demon makeup.

I really can't overstate how fun this was. The movie had more genre set pieces than most of my other work combined, which meant every day we were dealign with ghosts, ghouls, and some wild stunt work. Annalise and Lulu were just delightful, and spent their days pulling escalating pranks on the crew. I would find myself tagged with dozens of C47's (clothespins) whenever Basso was on set, and Lulu was doing all of her own stunts and making us laugh like hyenas.

I was also really enjoying Henry. Toward the end of the shoot, I told him I wanted to put him in everything I did. He laughed and said "whatever, sure man, sign me up." He's been in everything I've made since.

We didn't have a lot of money, but had a lot more money than I'd ever had before, and because Universal was committed to a theatrical release, they wanted the movie to work. I felt supported at every turn. Trevor handled the production the way we'd always done, and this was now our fourth collaboration - I knew I had a producer for life.

Blum was also a delightful collaborator, popping up frequently to check in but always just to see if there was something we needed. I felt an enormous amount of trust from Blumhouse, Hasbro, Platinum Dunes and Universal. That's a lot of cooks for one kitchen, and believe when I tell you it can easily go south... but it didn't. In this case, it just clicked.

We got to do a lot of fun things that had nothing to do with horror, too. There's a lovely little scene in the movie where Lina has her first kiss. We modeled the entire shot sequence after the best kiss in the history of movies: Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly's smooch in Rear Window.

We were even able to perfectly mimic a slower frame rate just as their lips meet, exactly as Hitchcock had done in that movie. If you look in the background, the Rear Window poster is hanging on her wall. We were always careful to cite our sources (and there were a lot of them).

My favorite scene of the whole movie was a dinner date between Elizabeth Reaser and Henry that we filmed at the Cicada Club in downtown LA. This was a restaurant that I loved, as once a month it transformed into a full-blown time machine, putting a brass band on the stage and functioning like a 20's-era speakeasy.

The scene where Alice and Father Tom spend an evening out together was among my favorites in the script. It was two adults who were clearly attracted to each other, and who acknowledge it, but recognize the reality of their situation. As we were filming, I remarked to Fimognari that - for a movie about a haunted Ouija board - we were really getting away with murder. This was lovely, sweet, subtle character development, and no one was stopping me. After what we'd gone through on Before I Wake, I had to pinch myself.

My favorite scene of the film

It was set in a restaurant in the late 1960s - almost everyone in that room would realistically be smoking. Universal had been clear that there was to be absolutely no suggestion that cigarettes even existed in this world. But for the restaurant, I had to haze up the air. It was the only time I was questioned creatively, as there was immediate pushback.

"It's a restaurant," I said. "What if there's a fire in the kitchen, an entree got burned and that's why it's smokey?"

No one bought that for even a second. But they let me go ahead anyway. Man, I love that scene. And later, when it was all said and done, Jason Blum shocked me by telling me it was his favorite as well.

We wrapped the movie just before Halloween, and off we went into post. The holidays came and went, and Kate and I got married in February 2016. There was gentle pressure in the cutting room to make the film as tight as possible, and keep things short, but as with everything else, the pressure was decidedly gentle.

The movie's test screenings were very positive. People were very engaged by the story of the family, and the only issue people took seemed to be with the ending. It was a real downer to get so attached to everyone, only to have to kill Doris so brutally. The ending was, to put it mildly, very depressing - Father Tom was dead, Alice was dead, Doris was dead (and her mouth stitched up to stop the demonic voices), and Lina was condemned to the asylum. It was exactly what was required of us, and what was dictated by the first movie. But it hurt people's feelings.

My original ending had Lina in the asylum, crafting a handmade Ouija board out of her own blood, and trying to contact her dead sister. She tries and tries, but there is no answer. It is just silence. And we leave her saying "are you there? Are you there?" over and over again, as tears fall down her face. Doris wouldn't answer - in fact, Doris wouldn't answer for decades, when the first movie finally caught up to us. It was a haunting and sad ending, and I kind of loved it.

But test audiences are a fickle thing, and so we came back to tweak the ending, as the studio wanted one last scare to send us out on - not an unreasonable position, though it was a cliched one. We shot the film's current ending, with Doris' ghost on the ceiling of the asylum. It's as rote and impersonal a horror movie ending as I can imagine, but... well, it was Ouija 2, for crying out loud.

The movie we'd made up until that point had no business being as much fun as it was.

I remember the phone call I got from Blum after the movie was done. Universal had decided that they wouldn't call the movie Ouija 2 after all, they were worried about the number 2 making it feel less interesting.

Instead, they'd taken a big swing: the movie would be called Ouija: Origin of Evil.

I laughed out loud. I thought he was kidding. When it became obvious that he wasn't, I filed a protest. "It's not very good," I said. "It's cheesy. And not to put too fine a point on it, but the movie depicts neither the origin of the Ouija board, or of - um - Evil."

"Buddy, the title tested well. That's the way the cookie crumbles. Trust us, if the studio says it's Origin of Evil, it's Origin of Evil."

With a big theatrical release comes a lot of pomp and circumstance. There was a huge premiere for Ouija: Origin of Evil that October, and whatever nerves I had about the critical reception to the movie proved to be short-lived. People really enjoyed it. The overwhelming sentiment was that a sequel to a movie like Ouija frankly had no business being this interesting.

For all the pomp and circumstance, I missed it all. I didn't get to go to a premiere or walk the red carpet, as I was already in Alabama shooting Gerald's Game. On opening weekend, I took the cast and crew to a local theater in Daphne Alabama to see Ouija: Origin of Evil on the big screen.

The projection in this little backwoods theater was NOT good. The lamp was too dim (a common cost-saving strategy in some theater chains), and it was out of focus. I ran up to complain to the manager.

"The movie's soft focus on purpose," he said. "That's what the filmmakers wanted."

"No, it really isn't," I said.

The movie ultimately was not the runaway hit that the first Ouija was. Not even close, in fact.

To everyone's surprise, the teenagers just... didn't really show up. The first movie had grossed 103 MILLION dollars worldwide, but our little prequel only managed to do about 80. It was considered a modest success, not a hit by any means, but no failure. In the end, Universal decided maybe there wasn't a franchise to be had here after all.

So in the end, I had single-handedly revitalized and destroyed the Ouija franchise.

But man, believe when I tell you I've got no regrets whatsoever. I had the time of my life making that movie. Sure, some people groan about the ending, but that was kind of our only job - those were the cards we knew we had to turn over. Did you see everything that led up to that, though??? Did you see what we got away with?!

Since this movie, I've worked with a lot of people again. True to my word, I've put Henry Thomas in every single thing I've made since. Elizabeth Reaser came back to play Shirley in The Haunting of Hill House, and little Lulu Wilson - who was so wonderful as Reaser's daughter Doris - played the younger version of Shirley on that show. Lulu is also in The Fall of the House of Usher (and if you look closely, her original Ouija board and planchette are in frame with her.)

Kate sported a fun blonde hairdo for her small role in Ouija: Origin of Evil, and it was a really fun stepping stone between Hush and Hill House for her as an actor. There's a fun deleted scene where she goes home and murders her father, played by the great Sam Anderson. I really dug that scene, and I wish it was in there. You can see it on the blu-ray and DVD though, because even in a world where Netflix is trying to erase such things, Universal Pictures actually takes care of their movies with proper physical media releases.

I haven't yet found the next project to do with my friends at Blumhouse, but it's not for lack of trying, and my dance card has been booked solid since we wrapped this movie. It was an important step for my career, and their support was amazing. I know that we'll work together again, as soon as the timing is right.

Also, get this...

Ouija: Origin of Evil is my most successful movie.

Ever. Of all of them.

It did 82 million worldwide. That's better than Doctor Sleep, which did 72 million. It's better than Oculus, which did 44 million. The rest were all dumped to Netflix.

So yeah, Ouija: Origin of Evil is my most successful movie. Ain't that a trip?

We weren't trying to change the world, or reinvent the genre. I was making the second entry in a PG-13 franchise about an evil board game, and dammit if I didn't get to do everything I set out to do. There's an exuberance to the camera movement, the staging, the set design, and the lighting. There's an unbridled joy in this movie, and I smile whenever I think about it.

Up until this point in my career, every movie I had was hard-fought. Oculus was a trial by fire whose distribution deal was detonated days before it premiered. Before I Wake was a brutal experience both creatively and logistically. Hush was a labor of love and determination against all odds. But this one... man, this one reminded me why I wanted to make movies in the first place.

Because it can be really, really fucking fun.

#ouija board #ouija #ouija origin of evil #blumhouse #behind the scenes

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madebypointlesswords · 1 year

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Rating all the Latin authors I've read in the past two years in honor of my oral Latin exam tomorrow

Caesar (De Bello Gallico)

This is a weird one because while his prose isn't extremely difficult, it was also the first unedited work I read, so for lil 15-year-old me, this was very difficult. But I learned a lot from Caesar (especially that he made it an art to making his sentences as long as possible. We read an entire 200 words, and IT WAS JUST ONE SENTENCE.), and the sense of nostalgia while rereading it is very pleasant, so I will give you a solid 6/10

Pliny the Younger (Epistulae)

Mixed feelings about this one again. This could also be just because I despise prose. I really do not like it at all. Pliny's epistulae were pretty okay. I liked them a little better than Caesar's because of their variety (for those that don't know, epistulae means letters). His letter about the Vesuvius was a lot of fun to translate, even with all the hyperbata, but his letters about or to his third wife were very uncomfortable. Like, I get things were different back then. BUT YOU WERE 45, PLINY. 45. SHE WAS WHAT? 14? 15 TOPS? MY GOD. THAT'S A BIGGER AGE DIFFERENCE THAN I HAVE WITH MY FATHER.

7/10

Ovid (Metamorphoses)

Ovid is life Ovid is love. He was the one who introduced me to Latin poetry, and I will always love him for it. He was an icon and a legend. The poems of his that we read (Daedalus & Icarus, Latona and the Lycian peasants, Diana and Actaeon) were all bangers, and I love them all to death. I never wanted to go back to reading prose after this (but unfortunately, I will have to next year. ew)

11/10 (I love you, Ovid)

Vergil (The Aeneid)

*deep sigh* Listen. I love his complex works, and I have great respect for this poem but by the GODS. Vergil's poetry is the most difficult I've had to translate by a long shot. He made me rethink my entire career in Latin. I have considered quitting so many times because of this man. I felt like a complete idiot most of the time. This is not a guy to fuck with. Luckily I got through it on my finals (barely.) but Christ alive this man made my life difficult.

5/10

Horatius (Satires and Odes)

Horatius will always have a special place in my heart. We read his poetry right after Vergil's, and it almost completely restored my faith in my abilities. He's just my little guy and I have fond memories of translating his works. We still know many Latin phrases that he wrote (Carpe Diem being the most famous. Hello, DPS fandom). Also, he and Vergil were most definitely in love. I don't make the rules. I have evidence if you want me to elaborate.

9/10

Catullus (love poems)

Ah, Catullus. Horny poet of the year. Had a wild affair with an older married woman. Nepotism baby. Sappho stan. Didn't know how to budget, but we aren't holding that against him. Just wanted to write poetry and dance (who doesn't, honestly). Gave fuck-all about education. Wrote nearly all of his poetry about the older woman he had an affair with. Might I add that this woman was married to one of his father's bestest buddies? Yeah. Icon. Here's a kid's choice award.

8/10

Martialis (Epigrams)

This dude had ZERO chill. Roasted everyone in the city. Literally, no one is safe. Wasn't afraid to call people out by their real names. Some people allegedly committed suicide after being roasted by this guy. Translating his epigrams gave me more joy than hearing we had seen the end of Vergil. His humour may be a little silly now, but I will not accept any Martialis slander on my blog.

10/10

And that is all folks

#latin student #latin memes #latin literature #publius ovidius naso #classics #ancient greek #martialis #how is that not a tag #this guy is the epitome of Tumblr humour #pliny the younger #pliny #julius caesar #roman history #roman literature #catullus #vergil #the aeneid #vergil and horatius were gay and in love pass it on #horatius

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larnax · 4 months

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no therion's story doesn't only make sense if you do a solo run. i've seen this take multiple times and every time i'm completely baffled because No It Doesn't. not true. false. incorrect.

like okay this does require you to understand that the literal words a character says are not necessarily the truth, but therion's story and gameplay both make way more sense if you accept the fact that therion is not a loner and shouldn't be one.

let's start with the beginning! the FIRST scene you see of therion is him meeting darius at age 11, who he will spend the entire rest of his childhood with and implied some time into adulthood, so he has spent probably the majority of his career as a thief working in a team, which is also borne out in his gameplay, because thief is a support class.

don't argue with me i'm right. while you can run therion as a DPS, investing in attack over speed and evasion means that therion's frailty gets in the way, and he struggles to do damage on par with olberic/h'aanit/alfyn, and cyrus/tressa do way more elemental damage than he does. however, if you instead spec him for support, share SP becomes the most insane skill in the game. a speedy therion can debuff a boss into oblivion before they have a chance to do much before stealing enough SP to let olberic fire off three divine skills without needing a refill. dancer therion is worth doubling up on weapons because his speed and evasion means that he can buff allies quickly and a dancer/thief is the only combo that will regularly dodge attacks before the late game.

therion's skills primarily revolve around giving allies openings to more easily take down enemies(i mean for balancing reasons but play with me in this space) because that's the job he had when he worked with darius. he's not an especially skilled combatant on his own because he didn't need to be, his job was to pin foes down so darius could spam sweep.

additionally, while i hate this decision badly, therion's percentages are fixed so that every chapter past the first has a necessary skill check that's very difficult to pass without either a glean info character and a KO NPC character(why did they do base 3% brigand leader's garb to him.), again because he's used to having someone else deal with gathering information and doing the majority of the fighting for him. he's not terrible at getting info out of people, but he's also not great at it, for example he just goes along with barham's scheme instead of finding a way to threaten or coerce him into revealing the info right away. like basically all of his plans would've failed if the guards or his informant had just said No and refused to help him as opposed to cyrus who responds to being told no by finding out that his informant's daughter died in order to manipulate them into coughing up the info he wants. therion might be capable of manipulation beyond basic impersonation or pretending to be friendly, but if he is we don't see it.

therion in general is also a very passive character if you look past his words at his actual actions. he resists for about two seconds when heathcote cuffs him before following their orders for the rest of the story even when he's uncuffed in chapter 2 when he's still not a huge fan of the ravuses. he again goes along with barham even when he's almost certain he's being fucked with. he is almost always either acting on someone else's orders or defending himself from someone else's attacks. the reason for this is best illustrated in one of the cutscenes with darius where it's made pretty clear that for the majority of their partnership, he kept therion dependent on him to make decisions, and because that started when he was relatively young it's likely that therion just doesn't have that strong of an instinct for advocating for himself or firmly saying no to people twisting his arm(he asks darius a question once and gets thrown off a cliff for it, implying he was even more obedient before that). he can say no once, but we have no idea if he would've given in to the bandits at the beginning if they hadn't responded to his initial no by attacking him, so it does actually make perfect sense that any of the stronger-willed travelers could just respond to that no by saying they weren't asking and dragging him along. he's prickly and verbally hostile, but that mostly seems like a defense mechanism because otherwise he's easier to coerce than ophilia. i get that this seems like i'm trying to infantilize therion but that's really not my intention, in fact that takes the Therion Doesn't Kill People point i made awhile back reflect less on his being a secretly good person and more being too passive to feel the need to finish the job and generally makes him more morally ambiguous because it's less clear what decisions he makes due to personal growth and what he makes due to inertia. is he a good person, or is he just too tired to be a bad person? ideally the story would actually go somewhere with that theme but it wouldn't be octopath if they didn't periodically drop the most insane writing that rewires my brain before either doing nothing with it or actively ruining it.

also, therion's story gets way stronger if he's in a party, because while cordelia and heathcote are (TREATED AS) the reason he learns to trust again, in-story they spend, what, one hour together maybe? cordy and heathcote are his bosses and the most either of them do cordelia using her empath powers to deduce that therion looks sad or heathcote telling him that he's the real asshole for being mad that he's being blackmailed. they're also canonically lying to him when they say they don't know what the dragonstones are, so even at the end of the story they don't really trust him(i wont spend too much time complaining abt them i just don't think you get to be a savior character if the town you own has a ghetto). on the other hand, if you do his story with a party the travel banters all make some attempt at showing therion slowly coming to trust and rely on them despite initial friction, and in gameplay therion acting as a support expresses the theme of him realizing that he actually can work in a team where his allies have his back and there are people he can trust. in that instance his final conversation with darius includes him talking about his companions, because to be here at all they have accepted him after seeing him at his worst and helped him despite it, and who he's been able to help in turn. if you're doing a therion solo run he's just talking about how his boss who's blackmailing him for free labor said he looked sad one time, which is a pretty weak climax if we're going to be real. i stand by saying that octopath works best when it's episodic and stories shouldn't rely on specific characters to work, but genuinely i do think therion's story's themes being expressed strongly in gameplay and the nature of rpgs with a party system are quite cool and my favorite thing about his story.

so it specifically annoys me when people are like "oh well he limply says no before letting you continue to drag him around" like it's a plot hole and not a character trait especially when therion's being a prickly asshole who is also a complete doormat is i think very interesting characterization!!!! ophilia commenting on the fact that therion has no instinct for revenge and therion says "yeah what's the point" makes me so normal.

ALSO why's therion the poster boy for "hey this character's story doesn't make sense with their gameplay" when primrose exists???? why it so contradictory a character whose story is about them learning to trust in their companions again to be in a party while a character who starts off by telling you to fuck off and leave her alone because this is her fight before heel-turning for no reason and then just continuing to be your ally with no justification is totally fine. also why is primrose a support class???? she's not a dancer she's an assassin she doesn't support anyone in her story and her character is about her singleminded and specific familial revenge. she's also a very strongwilled character so it makes no sense that she wouldn't just say no and mean it. i know the answer is that octopath doesn't like women so primrose just got slapped into a princess jasmine costume and femme fatale character before any of her story was actually developed but like oh my goddddddd. primrose girl im so sorry they put you in the nightmare hell dimension.

#c.paradisi #octoposting #i get that to a degree this is an interpretation #octopath never says any of this stuff explicitly enough that i for sure think thats what they were going for #but at the very least it feels like a really weirdly uncharitable reading of his character #his entire story is abt learning to trust his companions again. why would it not make sense for him to have companions #to be uncharitable right back i think its a thing that happens a lot in fandom #where characters are reduced to who they are at the very beginning of a story #and then further simplified into tropes #therions a criminal so he is an evilbadman who hates people and loves crime #which is boring. i think thats a boring direction to take his character in.#it also makes other characters more boring bc you have people infantilizing tressa or alfyn so therion can be evilbadman-er in comparison #i have so many thoughts on cordelia and heathcote though #theyre very well-written villains that do a really good job of mirroring darius and illustrating therions passivity as a character #ot just doesnt uhhhh. seem to realize that.

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bellabrooks1510 · 22 days

Text

It's just like every other job.

Until it's not. When the risk is lives and love is it still worth it?

Ted Martin aka David Smith isn't new to the undercover life so how did he mess this mission up so badly? Carrie... that's how.

Her spunky personality and dedication to the bar her grandparents left her is just what Ted doesn't need in his not-so-stable life. As the small town she calls home begins to stink of corruption and drugs Ted shows up to play his part in removing it. Ted goes undercover as a solo musician looking for a band and gig.

A link to the drug trafficking ring in his much larger city sends him to Carrie's small town.

Carrie wants her quiet town back and the mysterious new neighbor with the gravely voice that makes her body quake is a bonus she didn't see coming.

After all is said and done will Ted be able to disappear and forget Carrie? Or will their newfound love force him to choose between his career and his heart?

Love Undercover is an MF romance set in the 1980's.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D195ND2P pre-order link.

#terickablack #loveundercover #mfromance #preorder #coverreveal

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the-book-wyverns-lair · 25 days

Text

It's just like every other job.

Until it's not. When the risk is lives and love is it still worth it?

Ted Martin aka David Smith isn't new to the undercover life so how did he mess this mission up so badly? Carrie... that's how.

A link to the drug trafficking ring in his much larger city sends him to Carrie's small town.

Carrie wants her quiet town back and the mysterious new neighbor with the gravely voice that makes her body quake is a bonus she didn't see coming.

After all is said and done will Ted be able to disappear and forget Carrie? Or will their newfound love force him to choose between his career and his heart?

Love Undercover is an MF romance set in the 1980's.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D195ND2P pre-order link.

#terickablack #loveundercover #mfromance #preorder #coverreveal

#book recommendations #bookish #booklover #bookstagram #booktok #bookworm #romance #new books #book cover

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aleriaya-reads · 27 days

Text

It's just like every other job.

Until it's not. When the risk is lives and love is it still worth it?

Ted Martin aka David Smith isn't new to the undercover life so how did he mess this mission up so badly? Carrie... that's how.

A link to the drug trafficking ring in his much larger city sends him to Carrie's small town.

Carrie wants her quiet town back and the mysterious new neighbor with the gravely voice that makes her body quake is a bonus she didn't see coming.

After all is said and done will Ted be able to disappear and forget Carrie? Or will their newfound love force him to choose between his career and his heart?

Love Undercover is an MF romance set in the 1980's.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D195ND2P pre-order link.

#terickablack #loveundercover #mfromance #preorder #coverreveal

#books and reading #bookworm #books #book quotes

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sage-nebula · 2 years

Note

Do you not like Ash anymore? I'm not happy with how the series treated him but I still like him as a character I've loved the whole series. I feel like that's not the case with you though?

It's not that I dislike Ash, it's just that I don't care about him at all and in fact find him extraordinarily and fundamentally boring.

Look, if we're talking about the Ash Ketchum from the original series—and even AG and DP, to be quite honest—then yeah, I still really like that character and find him entertaining and endearing. He was a sassy dumbass who routinely made mistakes and let his temper and ego get the best of him, but really loved and cared about his pokémon and his friends and, over time, learned from his mistakes and grew as a trainer. If we look at Ash as having a character arc that started in the original series, then that arc would have ended with the culmination of DP, wherein he'd learned the lessons that he needed to learn and had reached a height in his training career, even if the title of "Pokémon Master" (which we all know doesn't actually exist and means absolutely nothing) wasn't bestowed upon him.

But the problem—and I feel like I've made a post on this before—is that Ash's story wasn't allowed to conclude with DP. It actually hasn't been allowed to conclude at all and probably never will. A "soft reset" was done in BW where although they kept Ash's history in tact, they reset a lot of his experienced, dialed back maturity that he'd gained, and so on and so forth so that they could have him re-learn a lot of the lessons that he'd learned before and give him room to grow, albeit by retreading the same ground. And that's boring. BW has its strengths in other characters (most notably Iris), but when you have to rewind character development to have story to tell, you have a problem. And the problem didn't end there.

The writers of the anime have this going for them: they listen to feedback from the audience and adjust to try to make the audience happy. So when people didn't like how the TRio suddenly gained a ton of competence so that they, too, could have a story to tell (because they are just as boring and tired as Ash is at this point) and everyone got mad that they weren't the Ha Ha Funnymen anymore, they regressed back to their previous personalities. And when people were mad that Ash was reset, they decided to make him much more battle-focused in XY. But this change in direction came with another issue: now Ash's personality was watered down to Red Lite. He was a Super Strong Trainer That Everyone, Yes Everyone, Idolized. And while we can make up internal conflict for him in that he can't really have fun with battles anymore because everyone has all these expectations on him, a.) that's people like me trying to make this story interesting, and b.) that still doesn't change how farfetched it is that characters like Lysandre would have any interest in him at all, because seriously, the whole "messiah" thing was shoehorned in at the last minute because the Flare crisis had absolutely nothing to do with Ash at all and everyone knew it. They just had to have an excuse to put him at the scene. The Flare crisis was the best part of XYZ but we all know that part was pretty bogus.

Anyway, they still wouldn't retire Ash after XYZ because retiring him means retiring Pikachu and his specific Pikachu is the mascot of the franchise, so they needed another angle since, funnily enough, kids really weren't into the more serious plots of XYZ and were instead into more slice-of-life anime like Yo-Kai Watch. Enter SM, where he had his maturity dialed back again (but without making him the brat he was in the original series because giving him flaws nowadays is a big No No) . . . but kept the battle expertise that made everyone gush and fawn all over him (and he also got to steal Nebby from Lillie, got to have a Super Special Lycanroc, etc). Losses for Ash were rare and when they did happen he bounced back pretty quickly. He even won a League for the second time! Although everyone treated it like his first because the Orange Islands was looked down upon because it didn't feature in the games, even though the Orange League was tbh more impressive than Professor Kukui's Backyard BBQ League that anyone could participate in with no qualifications. But you know, he won! He had a trophy and accolades. So the people who project onto him and live vicariously through this perpetual ten-year-old were happy.

But still, they can't retire him without retiring Pikachu, so we got Journeys. Journeys, in which he's basically the same as SM, in that he is hyperactive but has no real flaws and is a pro at battling. In fact he is such a pro at battling that he doesn't even have to spend any real time training his pokémon. His Dragonite evolved before he caught it. His Gengar was already fully evolved when he caught it. He did raise Lucario from an egg, but he also has Special Magic Aura Powers that help him unlock Lucario's potential and mega evolution without any real struggles there. He has a super powerful ace team basically handed to him, and the few times when he does do something uncool (such as scolding Pikachu for being bored while he spent all his time training Riolu / Lucario), it's not a big deal and not treated as something that he really needs to learn to grow and overcome as a character arc. And why would it? Ash can't have a character arc. No, he literally cannot have one, because character arcs have to have an ending point in order to complete the arc and Ash's story can never end. He can't have personality flaws because he can't grow from them because that would end an arc he's not allowed to have. He can't struggle with and lose battles at any point ever because that would make the grown-ass adults who live vicariously through him (a.k.a. Ash Stans™) upset. He can't have other characters who dislike him, because again, that makes the Ash Stans™ upset because everyone has to gush over Ash and think he is the most wonderful character at all times. He has to have the best of everything, and he can't lose battles, and he can't have real flaws and he is boring as fuck.

Here's the thing: Characters who aren't allowed to develop aren't really characters. Ash has always been an audience surrogate in the sense that he's a child whom the child-aged audience uses as a vessel to be introduced to the world of Pokémon. But originally, before the series grew into the giant it is today and they didn't know that it was going to go on for infinity, Ash was allowed to be the audience surrogate and also a character. Ash was inexperienced, he was rude, he was a sore loser, he was cocky, and he had a hot temper. He was also incredibly loving toward pokémon, friendly, brave, and energetic. He wasn't the best character ever written because his ultimate goal was nonsense and all he really wanted was accolades for the sake of accolades, but he was still fun to watch because he was allowed to screw up and learn and grow. Yes, it is stupid to try to punch a legendary pokémon that has psychic powers even once, let alone twice, but watching him try to punch Mewtwo multiple times because he was a pissed off dumbass is still so much more interesting than the writers having to tiptoe around making him less than perfect.

Ash is boring. I don't care about him. Any flaws he has are superficial because to give him real flaws would require him to be able to grow, and he can't do that because he has to stay on the show forever. His companions can—Gou has grown a lot since Journeys started, because he can grow, because he gets to complete his arc and leave the show. But Ash can't, because he'll be around forever. And because he can't have losses, because there can't be any real stakes for him, the Masters 8 has been completely boring as well. We know that he's going to battle Leon because that's been set up since episode 13. Which means there were absolutely zero stakes for his battle with Steven, and there are absolutely zero stakes for his battle with Cynthia. It's a foregone conclusion. He's going to win. This isn't like the earlier leagues where we hoped Ash would make it but there was no certainty. We know that he'll make it now. The only question is whether he'll beat Leon or not, and I'm betting he will because he has to be The Best because the anime team doesn't want a repeat of the Kalos League Bitchfest, but who knows how they'll justify keeping him around after that. I mean, undoubtedly they'll find a way, but it's a question of how.

Anyway, all of this is to say that Ash is boring. I don't dislike him, because that would require caring about him enough to dislike him, and I don't. I don't care about him at all, and the same goes for Team Rocket. In fact, if the series ended with Ash and the TRio getting hit by a gigantamax bus, my reaction would probably be:

#i feel like this ask was bait but I'm in a feisty mood so why not #tbf the gigantamax bus would be a p shocking way to end the show #so i would probably be a bit more surprised #but more in the ''wow that's a surprisingly dark way to end this children's anime''#rather than any upset that the characters died

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treadmilltreats · 1 year

Text

Happy anniversary to me

I woke up and realized that today was my old anniversary, it would have been 31 years since I was married to my ex. I woke up ecstatic knowing that I am no longer married. I no longer have to pretend to be happy, to pretend that I am a perfect wife. When you first say I do, you never imagine what will come later on. You're in "love" till death do us part and all of that. You never think about the bad only the "happily ever after"

Then you wake up one morning 23 later thinking, who am I? Who is this man I married? What happened to the sweet man who first persuaded me? How could he treat me this badly and still say he loves me? You have lost yourself to become the perfect wife and perfect mother. You gave up your career and your life to make everyone else happy. In doing so you have lost yourself and made yourself miserable.

Until one day you can no longer breathe, you're dying a slow death and you need to get out before you die. At all costs, you need to go!

You don't care about the big house, the fancy cars, the big vacations, all of the showy things that you thought were so important when you were young, mean nothing to you now. You know eating peanut butter and jelly will taste a lot better when you are free than filet mignon behind bars.

And so break out, you run for your life, and you no longer care what he or others say about you. You are not looking back, you can see your new life, and God it looks so good!

Yes, it was hard and yes, there are days that it is scary, knowing you have to do it all on your own but the feeling of relief and peace you feel overruns all of the fear you have. Would I ever in a million years have thought that these last 9 years could be so wonderful? No, it has been beyond my wildest dreams. Do I have any regrets? Yes, just one ... that I didn't do it sooner!

So on my anniversary of being my own person, I would like to share my joy with you all and give you some words of wisdom.

If you're in a horrible marriage and yet another anniversary is coming up and you're dreading it, stop and think about how short life is. Be present, be happy, have peace in your heart and if that's not happening change it, tomorrow might be too late!

"Be the change you want to see"

@TreadmillTreats

"Be the change you want to see"

@Treadmilltreats

"And just when the caterpillar thought his life over...he turned into a beautiful butterfly"

**Now released my latest book**

The Blessing in Disguise.... revealed

https://www.amazon.com/Blessing-Disguise-Revealed-story-faith/dp/1074340493/ref=sr_1_19?keywords=the+blessing+in+disguise&qid=1561392004&s=books&sr=1-19

***Now available***

My 1st book The blessing in Disguise

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batpham-discord-highlights · 2 years

Text

Freakshow & Dick

wish we could put Freakshow doing a show in gotham post danny's first run-in with him... But danny literally ruined that man's whole career within 1 episode it's so funny.

BREAKING! [famous gothic circus meets tragic end when showman gets arrested for robbery in small-city/big-town Amity Park, Illinois]

like,,, i can do whatever i want with DP canon... but still.

really funny

yea LOL

i do think freakshow would be a perfect mix for a gotham rogue though

yeah seriously tho! if someone wrote that Freakshow was actually a gotham native in a crossover fic i would not be surprised by the decision. it just feels right.

oh yes definitely

him being a native

it would be so insulting for dick, though

oh definitely

especially if this happen after they adopted Danny so in light of celebrating to take them to the circus. Danny looking nervous like what circus is this eoe- only for freakshow to notice and control danny before Danny can voice concerns..

gawd that be such a salt in wound moment

OH GAWD but imagine dick actually swinging like his family use to while trying to break the new way freakshow controlling ghosts (maybe the sphere shard was saved into a ring so not as strong)

Phantom: me and circus's don't happen to mix well....

Nightwing: why? afraid of clowns? because fair if true

Phantom: no clowns are fine,,,, i just ran into a circus once that left a bad impression...

Nightwing: aw, that's a shame.

-(post identity reveal)-

Dick: wait,,,, where did you say you were from?

Danny: Amity Park, Illinois?

Dick, having laughed at the news of Freakshow finally eating shit: ..... Oh!!! that bad circus!

LOL yes

aw imagine Dick catching Danny as he falls now out of the spell but still daze. Giving him the tightest hug like im so sorry.

"nah its fine.. just sucks this is the only circus i been too heh.. =w=' "

aww what if that night Dick shares something personal like maybe an old video tape that maybe bruce or tim found of the grayson's circus back in the hayday. Show danny what a real circus was like.

just very personal bonding moment

nightwing and phantom teamup to teach the old man (freakshow) a lesson

yess

lol they both being acrobatic

cute!

maybe he takes danny to a real circus and they have fun together?

i making myself have emotions

yes but first Dick shows it through the video. He doesn't expect Danny wanting to go to one.. but wants to show him what a real one is. and then they talk about parents.

AMG and its actually Danny's idea having help from like tim and the others to find a good circus similar to what Dick showed him.

Dick ends up tearing up at the circus even tensing up as memory of his parents but then smiling as the ones of the swings make it out ok. Danny and his siblings looking happy...

Kind of wonders how different life be if his parents didn't die.. but he thinks they be happy with how he ended up. just becomes very emotional moment and a wonderful memory for Dick.

now YOU are making me have emotions

dammit

uwu

its like combing both his families together

counter point,

Dick is like: man, i heard Freakshow broke out of his prison tho, hate to think he might be scheming for revenge.

Danny, who had beat ass after getting knocked around a bit during his second meeting with the man: i don't think he's gonna be a problem

Dick: what makes you say that?

Danny: call it a hunch

Tim: bullshit you obviously had something to do with it. spill the beans.

Danny: wha- dang, not gonna let it go?

the bat kids simutaniously: No ❤️

(((they almost hide their smiles/snickers when danny says he got turned into jelly)))

now im just stuck thinking of Dick telling his newest brother all about how the circus was growing up. reliving his own past even though it feels like such a small part of his life now.

Danny enjoying seeing how Dick talks about it.. amg and then dick showing off some moves on Danny's request. Excited lol

it just a cute person bonding moment

#ghosts and bats channel #freakshow #dc x dp #danny fenton #danny phantom #batman #dick grayson #flying graysons #circus #tim drake

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mypoisonedvine · 3 years

Text

𝙧𝙞𝙫𝙖𝙡𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙡𝙧𝙮 || niki lauda x reader x james hunt

𝙨𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮 : flirting with james shouldn’t have been a problem, because you and niki weren’t even that serious anyways, right? well, it turns out you are serious, but it also turns out not to be quite the problem you expected.

𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙙 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩 : 2.8k

𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 : smut (threesome, dubcon (slight), oral f and m receiving, dp/anal, spitroasting, slight degradation/dumbification, overstimulation, spanking), touch of angst, possessiveness, niki being mean (guys, it’s niki), pwp

based on a request by @creme-bruhlee which was based on a thing I told him I was working on which I wasn’t actually working on yet but then I casually wrote in one sitting when I was supposed to be doing my sleepover gah

You certainly didn’t like James Hunt. After all, you were all but contractually obligated to hate him in solidarity with your boyfriend and his biggest rival, Niki.

But you did appreciate James— for his undeniable talent as a driver, and for what he brought out in your boyfriend. Not just on the track, but at times like this as well.

It started rather innocently, at least as innocent as any press event could be. Niki wore you proudly on his arm, for most of the interviews: you knew that a lot of this for him was simply a publicity ploy to improve his image, but it honestly didn’t bother you that much since it was partially for publicity on your part as well (you had your own career to advance, after all).

What bothered him, though, was when James started to suddenly chat you up, undeniably flirty but just to the level that it could almost be construed as polite.

He waited until Niki was pulled away for an interview and stood just behind the camera, asking you a million questions and finding dumb excuses to touch you: first it was something in your hair, then admiring your bracelet (Niki gave it to me, you told him; Twice now he’s shown that he has fine taste, James winked in reply) until he finally stepped closer and rested his hand on your lower back.

“Let me show you what a real driver can do, sweetheart,” he offered lowly, leaning in so close that his lips brushed against your temple, and you caught Niki leaving the interview suddenly in the corner of your eye.

“And let me show you what happens when you can’t keep your hands to yourself,” Niki interrupted, shoving James back off of you before hitting him square in the jaw. You gasped, as did the many reporters and drivers watching, but soon Niki’s attention was turned back to you, fire in his glare.

“Hey, I was just trying to be personable—” James defended as he held his face in his hand, but Niki ignored him, grabbing you by the wrist and dragging you behind him out of the press tent.

“Looks like the infamous Hunt/Lauda rivalry has come to a bit of a head, possibly over Lauda’s girlfriend—” you heard one of the reporters explain to a camera, but soon the buzz faded to silence as Niki took you further away.

“Where are we going, Niki?” you asked nervously, trailing behind him as best you could.

“Somewhere private where you can learn your lesson,” Niki answered, making you swallow dryly. He wasn’t the sort of person you wanted to be in trouble with.

He found an empty garage and all but tossed you inside, pinning you to the wall at each shoulder.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing, letting Hunt put his hands on you like that?” he hissed.

“I didn’t let him, he just did it!” you defended.

“Then you tell him to stop!” Niki explained, exasperated. “Instead of standing right there, right in front of my face and doing nothing! You can’t imagine how it feels to see another man put his hands on you— and that man...”

You hadn’t realized he cared about that sort of thing; you hadn’t realized he cared about you that much. “I’m sorry, Niki, it won’t happen again.”

“You’re right about that,” he hissed, “it won’t happen again because you’re going to bend over that toolbox and learn not to test me."

You opened your mouth to protest and yet you were already doing it, feeling your cheeks burn as he pulled your dress up and rubbed his calloused hands over your ass and thighs.

A yelp jumped from your mouth when he hit you, but your thighs clenched together, too. "Now would be a good time to start apologizing," he suggested coldly.

"Niki, baby, I'm so so sorr— ah!" you whined again when he hit you even harder, the sound of his skin on yours echoing around the garage.

"Do you want to flirt with him? Would you rather be his flavor of the week?" Niki interrogated.

"No! Just want you, I swear," you promised, biting your lip to hold back a moan when he hit you twice in a row.

"You'll have me," he promised. "You need to remember who you belong to."

If you weren't so desperate you would've probably protested to that language, but your panties were soaked from almost nothing at all and you were in no position to debate with him.

The sound of his uniform unzipping was like music to your ears, and you purred a little when he pulled your panties down your thighs slowly. "Are you enjoying this?" he realized. "It's supposed to be a punishment and still you're soaking wet. Is that for him or me?"

"You, Niki, fuck me, please," you whined, the sound shifting into a gasp as he pushed inside you roughly, a little too deep and a little too fast for how little you'd been prepared. It was usually some level of struggle to take him but this was a very new circumstance: now he was fucking you with a point to make, with a message to send. And you got that message loud and clear as he mercilessly pounded into you, nearly knocking over the toolkit you were bent onto. "Fffuck," you stammered, holding onto the aluminum for dear life while he grunted behind you.

"You can moan louder than that, no need to suppress yourself," he encouraged.

"They could hear us, they're not too far away—"

He spanked you again and you cried out, realizing he likely wanted them to hear you; he wanted those reporters to make sure everyone knew that you were his. "Tell them who's fucking you so good, hm? Tell them who you belong to."

"Niki," you sobbed, "yours, baby, I'm yours..."

Just then, the door to the garage swung open and you gasped at the sight of James Hunt. You tried to kick Niki away and cover yourself but he didn't budge— he didn't even stop fucking you, much to your humiliation.

"I'm a little busy here, James," Niki explained with a smug grin.

"I can tell— listen, if you're gonna make us all hear this, could you at least do it right?" James frowned. "Your girl has many talents but acting is not one of them."

"Are you saying this is a performance?" Niki realized.

"You'd be able to tell the difference if you'd ever heard a woman actually finish but with you, that's impossible," James laughed. "Smart move going from behind, though, spare her from having to look at—" James motioned to his face broadly— "this whole situation you have going on."

"If you think you can do better, Hunt, I'd love to see you try."

You started about a thousand questions but didn't finish any of them, and James grinned as he shut the door behind himself. "I told you I'd show you what a real driver can do, didn't I?" he addressed you, crossing the room to where Niki had you pinned down.

Before you could say anything (not that you knew what to say), James grabbed your hair and kissed you, not quite rough yet but completely dominating as his tongue slid over yours and tickled the roof of your mouth.

"You wouldn't be doing that if you knew where her mouth had been, James," Niki chuckled.

"That sort of shit doesn't bother me, Lauda," James explained once he'd broken his lips away from yours. "It's called confidence in my masculinity, look it up sometime. I know exactly what's been in her cunt, too, and I'm still gonna show her how a real man eats pussy."

You got a little nervous at the sound of that, but wetter as well.

Niki circled to face you, clutching your jaw and examining your expression carefully as James hungrily licked and sucked at your cunt.

"If you're going to eat her cunt then let me fill it with my come first, give you a little taste of victory, eh?" Niki joked, but James pushed him away and you whined slightly when your boyfriend's cock slipped out of you... but it was only a moment before James knelt behind you, swiping his tongue over your swollen bud and drenched opening as you purred.

"I hope your jaw isn't too sore, Hunt," Niki sneered.

"It's not," James assured with saccharine faux-sweetness before diving back in to taste you further.

James stopped to lean his head out to the side. "Think she likes the sound of that, Niki— she clenched down on my tongue real tight."

"If you come for him, you won't like what I'll do to you," Niki warned you harshly. "You won't sit right for a week, at least."

"Oh, I see," Niki smirked. "You want me to tear up that little ass... should've known, you have that look about you: the kind of girl who acts innocent in public but turns into a whore when the lights go out."

Yet again James caught you reacting to what Niki said, though this time he didn't need to announce it since your own moan gave you away.

"Go ahead and fuck her then, Hunt, and get her ass ready for me," Niki instructed. You were surprised when James obeyed, standing up and unzipping his uniform as well to start rubbing his cock over your dripping pussy.

"You want it, sweetheart?" James taunted. "Ask very nicely."

"Fuck me, James, please," you sighed, and he was much more gentle than Niki had been as he filled you, letting you savor every inch of his length.

"Sounds so lovely when you say my name like that, do it again," James demanded, slowly beginning to rock into you.

"James," you breathed, gasping when Niki pushed his cock against your lips; you could taste yourself on him and it turned you on even more.

"I think we can find a better use for your mouth than boosting James' ego, yes?" Niki groaned as he started to fuck your mouth, holding your head steady. "Certainly he doesn't need any more of that."

You moaned loudly around Niki's cock when James circled his finger around your tighter rim. The first knuckle pushed in and you felt your knees wobble. Then back out again, then to the second knuckle-- each twist of his finger he went a little deeper, he even went so far as to spit on your hole which made you choke from more than just Niki's cock down your throat.

"Your girl's gotta sweet little cunt, Niki," James groaned as he fucked you faster. "You should let your pit crew use her, too, give 'em a morale boost."

"Maybe I will if she doesn't behave for us today," Niki considered, weaving his fingers into your hair to start fucking your face more roughly.

Your legs threatened to give out with the way James was fucking you; your eyes rolled back in your head with a suppressed moan as Niki kept using your mouth.

Around the same time Niki pulled his cock out to rub it over your face, James pulled out to slap his swollen head on your clit.

Another finger pushed into your ass and you made a sound that you hardly recognized as your own. "If I had known you liked it up the ass so much, you would've never taken it anywhere else," Niki promised with a growl.

Once James decided both your holes were ready, they seemed to have no trouble at all manhandling you into the position they needed— surely it was the first time you'd ever seen them work together— and soon you found yourself balanced on James' lap while Niki found his place behind you.

"Do you think you can take us both, sweetheart?" James taunted as you felt both of them teasing your holes.

"Well, I've never been fucked by two massive dicks before," you admitted, "and you have big cocks, so..."

"I'll miss that wit of yours when you become a mindless, drooling fuckdoll in the next two minutes," Niki stated plainly.

It only took ten seconds.

Your hands weakly held onto James' shoulders as you bounced on top of him, moaning lowly as you were filled beyond what you thought possible. Niki had to hold your waist to help guide you, occasionally thrusting forward to fill your ass with every inch of him.

"Ah, fuck," you moaned, reaching beside you to grab Niki's forearm in an attempt to stabilize yourself.

James tore your dress down the front and latched onto your tits, sucking hard and even letting his teeth graze one nipple while Niki used his free hand to pinch the other.

Even when your eyes fell shut and your brain was totally empty, you could tell them apart just by touch. It was Niki sucking a mark on the side of your neck, but James grabbing a rough handful of your ass. It was Niki that reached around to rub your clit, but James that nibbled and sucked on your earlobe while whispering things so dirty that your face burned hot.

"We can both feel it when you come, do it again," Niki demanded just before your third hit you.

"Give us a good squeeze, sweetheart, wanna feel that cunt milk me," James agreed.

"I-I'm coming," you gasped as your head fell back, both of them laughing and cooing proudly.

"There she goes."

"Good fucking girl."

"Gets tighter every time."

You only regained your ability to tell who said what when you felt Niki's lips against your ear, his voice soothing your aching, quivering body. "You want to be full of come, don't you?" he presumed, and you nodded sleepily. "We'll fill you as deep as we can, and you need to keep it in you for the rest of the day."

"Yes, Niki," you agreed softly.

They picked up their pace and you felt like a ragdoll as they thrust into your limp body, chasing their highs as recklessly as always until you lost your voice from moaning so loud.

James finished first, though you imagined this was one race he would’ve preferred not to win. He bit down on your shoulder as he filled you, hard enough to leave a mark which you knew would anger Niki when he realized it.

"Tell me who you belong to," Niki pleaded one last time, coming inside you the moment you answered "you, Niki."

And then it was just the three of you, standing there in a sweaty jumble of limbs, catching your breath and trying to process what had just occurred.

“Do you think we can get out of here without too many reporters seeing?” Niki asked James.

“I’m going to worry about getting out of the girl first, then the building,” James decided, and the two of them helped lift you onto your numb legs, your body slow to recover from the onslaught of sensations that had been forced on you this long. If anything was more jarring than being filled by both of them, it was both of them pulling out at once. Come leaked out of you from more places than you cared to admit, and since James had torn your dress, Niki gave you his uniform to wear which left him in only the undershirt and boxers he wore beneath.

“I can’t believe I’m getting your spunk on my uniform right now, Hunt,” Niki grimaced, making James laugh as he zipped himself back up. Funny enough, he looked the most normal after all this of the three of you; maybe because he always had that ‘just had some freaky sex’ look about him. You and Niki were a bit newer to the game, so you didn’t wear it as well, but honestly you thought he looked pretty cute with his curls all messed up from when you’d run your fingers through them.

“Well,” James announced with a puffed chest and proud smile, “next time you two are having a lover’s spat, give me a call and I’ll lend a hand or cock as needed. But I think I’ll take my leave now.”

What do you say after something like that? Apparently the answer is nothing, considering you just nodded slightly and Niki gave him an awkward wave as he disappeared out the door with the nonchalance as his arrival.

Plunged into silence, you glanced over at Niki who was already staring at you. “So?” he asked. “Was he better?”

“No,” you answered right away.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Relief washed over you when he pulled you into an embrace and kissed your forehead; you couldn’t think of the last time he was so affectionate. “Let’s get back to the track and find you a new dress, hm?” he suggested. “One that James Hunt absolutely won’t get his hands on.”

#niki lauda x reader #james hunt x reader

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goloyieng · 3 years

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Yugi Riong'o, the Debate Smith of Muriethi: A Memoir

I was born on July 1st, 1952 in an Agikuyun village of Muriethi. I am of the Yonye clan; a cluster group that make up 25 major clans of Kikuyu people( also called Agikuyu). The Agikuyu people are close to numbering to 7 million living souls; it won’t take a mathematical guru to figure out how we became the largest tribe in Kenya. The Agikuyu must have done something extraordinary to have generated such a large number of people when some tribes number only 800,000 mere souls. My father was a ladies man through and through; he had 16 wives; my mother was the seventh wife. My childhood coincided with the arrival of the British 88 years earlier. They came because we Africans believe in the ubuntu philosophy: meaning, you are a person through other people. The world had to be connected somehow, and they did their ultimate best to bring Africa on par with the rest of the advanced world. There were some instants were they look down on black Africans, but that is because they were trying to know us. Even now, in the 21st century, those Africans who earlier ventured into farming look down on the red ochre, pastoral communities, because they are stereotypically thought to be still more attached to their animals who they largely depend upon for survival necessities. Even within the same racial groups, cultural differences still abound. Contemporary African nation states are no exception either; Zambian leaders have sold their nation to China in the name of having gone stale on the western economic developmental ideals who took pains to leave their motherland in droves to make sure economic infrastructure of the likes of Zambia become the launching pad for the rest of continental Africa; however, the leaders had their own agenda at hand, and soon after, they became mired in debt; the end result was that, Chinese started arriving in Lusaka in the name of saying you owe us and it is time to show you how wrong you were from the very beginning. I went to Yube High School; in those days, both the elementary and secondary schools were not separate institutions, as we know them today; one had to start from the first grade and stayed until the 12th grade. At Yube, I was more interested in getting good grades with the ultimate mission to earning a full scholarship to Makerere College (as Makerere University was known by then). I wanted a sustained reputation of a classy and great scholarly student; the one meant to presevere even when the conditions change during the course of my further studies, I won't fall out with my sponsors; so I studied and read all kinds of subjects, from mathematics to social sciences to natural sciences; not to discredit the mighty field of literature, which is perhaps the first field I fell in love with. Now, people have come to love my novels such as Weep Not, Child; the River Between, A grain of Wheat, Matigari, Wizard of the Crow and the memoir series ranging from the Birth of a Dream Weaver to, In the House of Interpreter; however, my political writings in the fold of Moving the Centre and Decolonizing the Mind, are equally scholarly master pieces on their own right. Just as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Elechi Amadi's the Concubine are regular required readings for African literature in high schools and colleges around the world; Moving the Centre and Decolonizing the Mind, are also read widely across the globe. In these political writings, I argued that the arrival of Europeans was ubuntu at its core, connecting humanity through trade, technology and being able to compete through cultural customs and that was how Moving the centre came to assert itself; the development of home grown languages so that the past teachings of our people become our launching pad for economic development; it was in essence, allowing our cultures to join hands with the rest of the world. I was one of the first clansmen from the whole tribe to have gone to school because rigorous academic pursuits were considered foreign imperial influences and were less considered prospective lifetime careers. The British didn't require

our families to pay our fees; for one, it wasn't that our families were too poor to pay, but on the other hand, it was considered a trial and error period. By 1965, I was enrolled at Makerere College. Makerere was a meeting plethora of academic minds from all over Africa and some even came from Afghanistan. Makerere College was one of the best institutions of learning in those days; it was one of the top 7 elite colleges on the continent; unlike the washed up Makerere University of Yoweri Museveni of today, that had become copy and paste come and go as like you like slut. Milton Obote knew that our female counterparts were not naturally reliable in the career world; so it was better to equip the boy child with the best education that life could afford, besides, it wasn't his business to change the God way of life, where women are required to be natural incubators of life.

At Makerere, I immersed myself in deep and intense literature studies, but as I always had an insatiable appetite for learning; I took extra courses on mathematics, natural sciences and physical sciences; the so-called STEM of today. Milton Obote may have been weak on the development front, but he made sure 25% of the national budget went to the educational sector. Education was free from the elementary level all the way to the tertiary institutions of higher learning; so by the time, the students attend the universities, it was something unlike any other in the world, students were great at debate, laboratory sciences and had a knack of imagining greater future world for the fatherland. For this, Makerere College had lots of money going into the hands of their star students of which I was a proud member of. Our quarterly vacations were spent on, you know, 'my baby got back moments.' These Ugandan mama booty became something else when they find out you have a weakness for romance. They came in all sizes; from the Northern Uganda lean looka to the lumpy Buganda type; size didn't matter, because they knew how to play their role well. My rigorous academic pursuits with a multidisciplinary approach served me well after I became the professor of African literature at Yanykath University in Yeng; I have been teaching African literature for 34 years and counting at Yanykath, after I had a fall out with both Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi's administrations. I have been invited to lecture about African literature and the political future of the African continent in colleges across the globe; and I have to say, had I not studied all kinds of subjects at Makerere, I would have been a scholarly beggar; DP William Ruto is a prime example; those who depend on thieving the hard won scholarly research of others is the exact opposite of the mind field of the meeting of the debate smiths.

Yanykathing Golo Yieng to Rooy Gapayer

We have been particularly hard on the kid from Gapayer; I mean, the homeless lad we tragically sent to America in the early 2000s; we did this without thinking everything through, because we thought we would be better off with him suffering on the streets of Yauketui, New Mexico, when he should be eating good meals in Gualyek, Yekker, every single day. Hey look, how he turned now, he cries every single day because he has no inborn stamina to withstand the nonsecured life on the harsher streets of Yauketui. Why didn't we send Jacob Mabior Dau, who I truly think has the hunger to serve his people well with all his heart. We still don't know how this lad, who called himself Golo Yieng came to live among us; I mean, are we sure that he is of the same blood as everyone of us. He claims, the ancestor of his adopted father, Maliduon artificially maneuvered his way onto the love canal(wall) of his adopted grandmother, and for that he was never ryithfully born among the Maliduonei. Southern Sudanese leaders of Rer Reclamation Army/Movement robbed him of the right to return to his rayierooy, Gapayer when they started a meaningless war against the Yemenis of Sudan, when in fact, hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese, if not millions still live in refugee camps up to this very day. Why didn't we give him enough money meant to last his lifetime before we sent him to America? Was our greed that too great that we refuse to help out the great guest from another yunerse. How do we speedily sent him to his homeland now that he seemed stuck in the quagmire wretched life of our blue earth? It is a give and take world; therefore, we must give him the just kind of treatment he truly deserves, if we want to continue to keep our heads held high. Are we truly sure that it is growth that we were all after with Golo Yieng; what if he just suddenly disappear after greasing himself with corn the same way as the yonce scene he saw with Jimmy Dyke and Mama G with a Nollywood flick?

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petervintonjr · 3 years

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Lesson 103: Today I'm celebrating the achievements of a fellow comic book writer and illustrator, (though of course in terms of relative scale, he rates as a god among us mere mortals). On this Free Comic Book Day, expect little-to-no objectivity in my biography of Brian Stelfreeze. Born into a military family that tended to move around, Stelfreeze was exposed to the so-called "lowcountry" coastal South and its Gullah communities (Mount Pleasant, McClellanville, Georgetown, etc.), that managed to preserve more of their African cultural origins than most American Black populations. A comic book fan from a very early age, Stelfreeze didn't seriously consider the idea of one day making a career of such a thing --for a while it seemed as though he would follow his father into Army life, who had become an instructor at West Point.

During his high school years Stelfreeze took a job as an editorial cartoonist for a local paper, which in turn prompted a (necessary) interest in politics and current events. For two summers he worked as an airbrush artist in Myrtle Beach (yes everyone, THAT dude who would airbrush your favorite thrash metal band's logo onto the back of your denim jacket in five minutes). Having mastered the essential zen of quick turnaround time, and with the money earned from this gig, he enrolled at The Art Institute of Atlanta. During his second year, on a whim he presented a portfolio at the prominent Whole Hog Studios. Quite unexpectedly he was offered a starting salary, and at the advice of his own art instructor, left school and took the job.

Stelfreeze's first foray into the comic book world was a short series titled CyCops in 1988. While working on some commercial assignments for a comic book shop in Charlotte, N. Carolina, Stelfreeze knocked off a quick Batman illustration on the premises, which happened to catch the attention of Pat Bastienne, a DC Comics executive. Recommendations followed, and in short order Stelfreeze found himself working on a Batman series with editor Denny O'Neil. Stelfreeze's painted cover art eventually landed him a long run as the principal cover artist on Batman: Shadow of the Bat. Other long-running titles included Marvel’s Domino, and Matador for DC Comics’ Wildstorm imprint.

Stelfreeze was one of the founding members of Gaijin Studios in 1991. He won the coveted Inkpot Award in 2014, and his lush sequential illustrations for Ta-Nehisi Coates's 2016 Black Panther series, "A Nation Under Our Feet," not only won the 2017 Glyph Comics Award for Best Artist, but also directly influenced the style and design of Marvel Studios’ 2018 Black Panther movie. His current project for 12-Gauge Comics is Thomas River, a crowdfunded political/spy thriller.

Permit me to enthusiastically recommend The Signature Art of Brian Stelfreeze:

https://www.amazon.com/Signature-Art-Brian-Stelfreeze/dp/1608864960/

"When you do a single piece of art, you’re really trying to make a statement. But with comics, the thing that keeps me here is actually taking you through a story and knowing that, 'OK, over here, I want you to feel this way. And then here, I want you to feel this way.' And it’s just this little symphony that you’re conducting... ...I want you to understand I’m manipulating you. That’s what a storyteller is supposed to do. They’re supposed to manipulate you. They’re supposed to manipulate your feelings."

#blacklivesmatter #brianstelfreeze #gaijinstudios #batman #dccomics #thomasriver #blackpanther #showup #dothework #teachtruth

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kandrsdarkangelsbookblog · 5 years

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📕ᑕOᐯEᖇ ᖇEᐯEᗩᒪ + ᑭᖇEOᖇᗪEᖇ📕

Releasing 10/22 ➜ Defending Roxanne (GHOST Series) by PJ Fiala

US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XDKZ3KH

CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07XDKZ3KH

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07XDKZ3KH

AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07XDKZ3KH

#TBR ➜ www.pjfiala.com/books/DR-Goodreads

#CoverDesign ➜ Cover Me Photography & Design

#InTheSeries

Defending Sophie (GHOST #1)

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/2w1hTFj

Amazon CA: https://amzn.to/2Hgzzlf

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2vTNMPX

Amazon AU: https://amzn.to/2VkTWCM

📕Chapter 1📕

"Roxanne, it was weird, he looked like your dad's cousin, Raymond. Do you remember Raymond? He was always a bit different and he had so much trouble dealing with people. That's why when I saw this man following me, it completely scared the crap out of me. Then, I saw him again yesterday and I don't know what to do."

Roxanne's eyes flew open. Staring at the ceiling, her heart pounded in her chest as her mother's words came back to her. Throwing back the covers, she sat up and turned so her feet were touching the floor. Her childhood bedroom still had the same furniture, same bookcase across from her bed, same creeks in the floor. The only things that had changed were that her mother had repainted the room to a soft gray last year and had updated the bedding to match.

"I want you to be comfortable when you come home, and you've outgrown the pink floral patterns. This suits you so much better," her mother had said. Oh, how she wished she could speak to her mom now.

Sliding on her slipper socks, she walked out of her room and hesitated. This home seemed too large and ominous somehow now. Glancing down the hall to her right, her parents’ bedroom door was closed now and would be forever if it was up to her. But, only time would tell. Her brothers, Brendan and Matthew’s, bedrooms were to her left. It had been her paternal grandparents’ home before they passed, then her family's. Now it belonged to her and her brothers.

Descending the enormous, dark mahogany staircase with its white-painted handrails, which curved to the right of the large foyer in their old Georgetown home, she turned left and entered her parents’ office.

Her mother had remodeled this room twenty years ago, but it still suited the era of the house. Majestic mahogany pillars stood adjacent to the wall behind her father's desk and in between those pillars were towering shelves of books. She loved playing in this room when she was a girl. Her father spent countless hours in here as his military career soared. His final position landed him at the State Department working as the Chief of Protocol, appointed by the President. It's also the position that got him and her mother killed.

Turning to the opposite side of the room, where her mother's identical desk sat, she walked behind the desk and opened the left top drawer. Somewhere in here her mother had kept the key to the storage units in the basement. She needed to find a picture of Raymond. Her first order of business tomorrow morning would be to find Raymond and figure out why he had been stalking her mother and if he had anything to do with her death. The sheer level of chaos, not to mention the political uproar, that had enveloped her parents’ deaths and that of Kanan Mammodov, Prime Minister of Azerbaitani at the same time was monumental. Feeling around the papers in the drawer, she also found office supplies, staples, tape, and a ruler but she couldn't feel the key. The moonlight that shone through the tall windows to her right was ample light for moving around the house, but didn't offer enough light to see a small key. Yet, she enjoyed this darkness and the anonymity it offered. There had been at a minimum a handful of reporters on the street in front of the house since her parents died two weeks ago. Turning on the lights would allow them to see in better and use the zoom lenses on their cameras. Fuck that.

Pulling the papers out of the drawer and laying them on top of the clean desk, she felt around a bit more. Nothing.

The top drawer on the right was next. Pulling the multitude of tablets and notepads from the drawer, she felt around the bottom of the drawer and found nothing. Repeating this motion for the five remaining drawers on each side, she had a mess to show for her efforts laying all around her and still no key. Standing with her hands on her hips, she looked across the room to her father's desk, then remembered, he'd hidden things on the underside of drawers from time to time. Pulling out the top right drawer of her mother's desk, she ran her hands underneath and smiled when she felt an envelope taped to the underside. Peeling the tape away and pulling the envelope from underneath, she smiled to herself as she removed the key and stepped over her mess to make her way to the basement. Through the foyer and into the living room, she turned right and headed to the back of the house and the kitchen.

The basement door was directly to the right of the entrance to the kitchen. Opening the door, she clicked on the light and descended to the basement. Over the years her parents had reinforced the basement and added lighting and the locked storage units, which her father had insisted upon having, since his position meant he had access to and possession of confidential information. Her mother then had insisted they have a room in the basement where family heirlooms and pictures were stored, keeping the room at a constant temperature and humidity free.

Opening her mom's storage room, she looked at the shelves, walking down the row until she found the storage boxes marked "Family Photos.” Her mother, ever the organizer, had them stored by year. Trying to recall the last time they'd seen Raymond, she remembered being around ten, which was twenty-nine years ago. Finding this box, and pulling it down from the shelf with both hands, she turned to take it upstairs and lay the photographs out on the dining room table.

At the top of the steps, she nudged the light switch with her right elbow and closed the door with her behind. Turning to her left, she headed into the dining room from the kitchen and set the box on top of the table.

A noise from her parents' office caused her to freeze. Papers softly shuffling, then nothing. Slowly reaching around her back, her heartbeat increased rapidly, and dread filled her gut as she realized she'd left her gun upstairs in her nightstand. Shit.

Softly she crept to the door of the dining room which was directly behind the huge staircase she'd come down earlier. Staying close to the wall she listened again. Inhaling, she took a slow deep breath and crept out of the room and around the staircase.

A massive hulk emerged from the office, and she froze for only a moment before turning to run in the opposite direction. The back door was in the kitchen; if she could get there, she'd run across the lawn and to the neighbor's home for help.

Three steps from the kitchen she was grabbed from behind, an iron band of arm around her waist and one hand over her mouth. She was pulled into the hardened chest of her attacker and barely able to move. Her left arm was trapped next to her body in the steel grip of the man who now began to drag her deeper into her home.

Panic flooded her brain and her stomach. She struggled to get free, twisting her body as much as she could, hoping to find a weakness to exploit. She began kicking back, but her slipper socks weren't going to do any damage to this man. A second man appeared in her peripheral vision and chuckled before saying, "Well, Hawk, looks like you found yourself a thief."

#defendingroxannecoverreveal #pjfialacoverreveal #pjfialadefendingroxanne #ghostseries #romancesuspense #novel #author

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