#first time I saw it in motion it reminded me of a mugshot

[knackfandomarchive]

#what was I going to put here... #oh yeah! Got distracted wondering what expression this is. #first time I saw it in motion it reminded me of a mugshot #the way he walked looked like he was rather tired and his expression miserable. #But seeing it again it could just be a mean look and a saunter. #I still get a knee-jerk impulse of who the hell is this guy and I only vaguely know why. #well anyway #hmm don't really feel like putting this in the fandom tags #hero knack #Ah that reminds me I still have on the to do list: fixing the tags and figuring out knack's size categories more thoroughly #I'll get around to it #eventually

[de-profundis-ad-astra]

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Word Count || 2.5k Author’s Note || This is part two of what I posted yesterday. You don’t need to have read the first part for this to make sense, but I would recommend it. You can find it here. So, yesterday you met Kerri, today you get to meet Charlotte!

Charlotte Moore was most easily identified by the click clack of her heels on the gleaming tile floors and the way the temperature seemed to flux around her. Her thick, curling red hair—hanging down her back and spilling over her shoulders—practically bounced with a life of its own as she flounced up the stairs and through the halls of Legion’s Los Angeles corporate location. She would have used the elevator, but the prospect of a new job had her positively bursting with energy. The stairs provided an outlet, just enough to take the edge off. Even then, those she passed along her way made sure to vacate more than enough space for her. A privilege that came with her title, she knew.

For someone trained to be silent when entering new or unpredictable situations, Charlotte was capable of making a hell of an entrance. Though unpredictable, she aimed for it every time she met with her… handler.

She reached her destination, wrapped her long, freshly manicured fingers around the knob, and pushed the door open without knock or warning. Most people felt that walking from a well-lit atmosphere into a dark room was disconcerting. Charlotte thrived on such excitement.

Director Cecil Soren tried, and failed, to conceal his jolt of surprise as his office door flung open and crashed into the wall. He knew he’d failed the moment he heard a hint of low laughter join the fading echo of the door and the thud of his knee hitting the underside of his desk. The laughter subsided as Charlotte dropped her body into one of the seats directly across from him.

“You can’t be surprised to see me,” said Charlotte, grinning at the fatigue in her handler’s eyes as he hunched forward to grip his throbbing knee. It seemed her mere presence already wearied him. “I’m always on time.”

Director Soren looked at the clock above his door, his mouth forming a tight line. Eight o’clock sharp. As always. He straightened. “Your punctuality is merely a standard you’re expected to uphold, and is one of the few you actually care to meet.”

Charlotte sniffed, disappointed that he didn’t rise to meet her banter. They were always so good at it. She moved along, not without making a mental note of this, “So, if we aren’t going to play.” She crossed her arms. “What do you have for me?”

Director Soren reached into a drawer, removed a slim file, and placed it on his desk with a certain amount of delicacy. Placing one hand flat over the cover, he slid it towards Charlotte. “The panel has decided to grant you one more chance to prove your worth as a Named Agent of Legion.”

Charlotte nodded with recognition. Over a week had passed since what they considered the unmitigated disaster that had been her last meeting with her disciplinary panel. To Charlotte, it had been just another Tuesday.

What was meant to be a review of her most recent discipline case had devolved into what he could only describe was an amalgam of arguing and backtalk until Charlotte was ordered out of the building and given strict instructions to remain on call.

This was the first she’d heard from Soren since then. Hence the excitement.

Charlotte tilted her head, her eyes locking on the folder like a piece of meat. Her fiery curls fell over one shoulder with the motion. “Can’t say I’m hard pressed to disagree with the decision. What’s the job?”

“Getting you this opportunity was a hard fought victory,” said Soren, deflecting. “I do not suggest you take it lightly.”

“Whatever gave you that impression?” asked Charlotte, her eyes rounding and mouth falling open partway. The portrait of innocence.

Her whole career, actually, might have lead one to believe this. But Charlotte never passed up an opportunity to gibe at her handler.

Director Soren easily saw through the ruse. “Anyone reviewing your service record wouldn’t need to make it far to know your history of insolence.”

Air hissed from Charlotte’s nose as she exhaled, the soft features of her face hardening into hard planes and angles. “Fine,” She huffed, her long, thick eyelashes fluttering to conceal the way she rolled her eyes before her focus narrowed back to the file. Without asking, she reached for it.

Soren yanked the folder back before she could touch it. She leaned back with a puff. “You swore an oath to support and defend this corporation. To bear allegiance to it and no others. Do you still swear it?”

Charlotte’s heart soared at those words, wings fluttering against her ribs. Excitement rose in her throat, and she tamed the face-splitting grin that threatened to break across her face to a mild conspirator’s smile. “I do.”

“You swore to serve as a living example of this corporation’s philosophies and beliefs and to uphold these values at all times. You took this obligation freely and of your own accord. Do you still swear it?”

Charlotte allowed some of her control to slip, and her resulting smile reminded Director Soren more of a predator baring its teeth than an expression of happiness. “I do.”

“Do you swear to give yourself wholly to this assignment and complete the request of its commissioner?”

“I do.”

“Thank you,” Director Soren withdrew his hand, and Charlotte greedily snatched the file off his desk. She flipped it open, immediately faced with the small headshot of a stern-looking blonde clipped to the inside of the cover.

Charlotte snorted, “Hell of a mugshot. What do we want from her.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Charlotte repeated, incredulous. “Then why—”

It dawned on her, then, and she trailed off. Her handler’s expression gave her everything she needed.

“Oh, Cecil,” Charlotte breathed, placing a hand over her heart. “You shouldn’t have.”

Soren ignored the flattery and the way she casually flung around his first name instead of addressing him by his title. “Agent Gatsby, you’ve been commissioned an assassination.”

Charlotte gave a low whistle as she skimmed over the few pages the file had to offer. “Haven’t had me one of those in… oh, what’s in been? A year? Year and a half?”

“One year, three months, and eleven days.”

Charlotte cocked an eyebrow. “You kept track?”

“It was the biggest mess I’ve ever seen a Named Agent make.”

Charlotte recalled that memory fondly. Another assignment that had put her under scrutiny from Legion’s board of directors. Perhaps even Alpha, herself. It was hard to tell, though. Alpha rarely deigned to show her face to anyone outside her cabinet.

She hummed, handling the file with tender delight, the way she supposed people may feel when holding a newborn baby. “And yet…”

“And yet, indeed.” Soren pinched at the bridge of his nose. “I advised that this kind of mission was inappropriate for your circumstances, but they did not heed my council.”

“Why would anyone ignore you? You have such a commanding presence.” She gave him a once over that seemed all too invasive. There was nothing promiscuous behind the action, but that was of little comfort to Director Soren. It was too reminiscent of a predator assessing a threat. “It’s your broad shoulders. They really work for you.”

Soren ignored the jab; Charlotte’s smile turned into a wink.

“So,” he emphasized, taking back control. “This is a very important mission, and you should treat it as such. This is your opportunity to prove to the board that you are more of an asset than a liability. Success without infraction will put you on the road back into their good graces.”

“And all it’s going to take is a ticket to Texas and one body?” There was far too much glee in Charlotte’s words.

Soren folded his hands and rested his fingers over his mouth. “It’s less about the task itself and more about your performance. Remember what you need to prove to the board.”

“Surely you don’t think I’m taking this seriously?” said Charlotte, feigning incredulity. She tugged the small, index-card sized sheet of cardstock free of its paperclip and inspected it closely.

“I’m ordering it, in fact,” he forged forward. “Your target is dangerous, and you would be wise to proceed with extreme caution.”

Charlotte kicked her feet up onto the edge of Soren’s desk, leaning heavily against the armrest of her chair. “That’s what all the girls say behind your back,” she said without looking away from the photo.

“And if you have any self-preservation instincts,” his voice grew strained. “You’ll listen to me. Please—”

“You say that so imploringly. It gives me goosebumps.”

“Please,” Soren did, indeed implore her. “Be discreet. Do not make another spectacle of yourself.”

“But I’m such a lovely spectacle,” Charlotte pouted.

Director Soren barely had the energy to glare. “There is a lot hanging in the balance, Agent Gatsby. This kind of behavior is not what will tip the scales in your favor.”

“Believe me, if you didn’t make it so fun, I wouldn’t bother,” said Charlotte. “But that’s neither here nor there. I just want to know what Blondie here did to make herself such a prize shot.”

Sure enough, Charlotte’s initial skim of her file had given her absolutely nothing to suggest that her newest target was an overt menace to society. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t above killing another for small reasons. However, she was plagued by an incessant curiosity that yearned to at least know why.

“To borrow a phrase: that’s neither here nor there.”

“Oh, Cecil, you make me laugh.”

She wasn’t laughing.

“I should not have to remind you to remember your place, Agent Gatsby,” said Director Soren. “Everything you need to know to do your job is in that folder.”

Charlotte looked down at the pathetic excuse of a folder. Such a meager amount of information certainly was not typical for her. “You’ve given me enough high-profile jobs to know my resume is stacked with Legion’s trust. When you look me up in the database, it says Intelligence Specialist. Which is code for ‘really really likes secrets’. So—” she flicked the photo around between her fingers and shoved the image of the austere woman into Director Soren’s face. “I’d like to know who this Kerri Stevens is.”

Director Soren’s mouth formed a tight, impenetrable line.

“Classified.”

Charlotte frowned, leaned back, then schooled her features into a neutral mask. She looked pensive, considerate, even, as she secured the photograph into place with its paperclip. She lowered her feet to the floor, but when she looked up, her dark green eyes were positively aflame. Delicately, she flipped the folder shut and placed it down on the desk.

“I wonder what would happen,” she said slowly, carefully, as she slid the file towards Soren. “If I were to… rescind the mission.”

Director Soren stared at Charlotte, yielding no reaction other than a subtle tilt of his chin downwards as he swallowed. She sat back and mirrored her handler’s stare, patiently awaiting an answer. She could be a very patient person.

“I see I’ve made you speechless,” she commented at last.

“You think you can rescind an assassination that came straight from Alpha’s desk?”

Charlotte shrugged, an air of indifference about her that brought Director Soren’s blood to near boiling temperatures. “Depends. How badly do they want me to stay?”

“It’s your status being evaluated, no one else’s,” Soren shot back. “How badly do you want to stay?”

Charlotte clucked her tongue and sighed, “Well, where’s the fun in saying no to such a mysterious target?”

Soren fumed, “Fun?” He glared at the redhead casually slumped in the chair across from him. “This is all just for fun, then. The tests, the trials. All of it… fun?”

“Is working for a max-security espionage operation with blurred ethical and moral boundaries not you idea of a good time?”

“No.”

“That’s probably why you’re not a field agent, then.”

Her handler’s fingers began twitching over the metal surface of his desk. “Perhaps I should tell the board you’re not interested in taking the assignment.” He pulled the folder towards his side of the desk. “We can see how keen they are on providing you with another opportunity once they’ve learned of your apathy.”

“Ah,” Charlotte held a finger up, looking all to pleased by his chosen response. “But you just said they wouldn’t take your council when they chose this for me. They clearly want me to stick around. Maybe it’s time you jumped on the bandwagon.”

Director Soren’s hands slammed down onto his desk so hard his palms stung. It did get Charlotte to shut up, which he reaped a moment of satisfaction from. He fixed his most wrathful glare on his agent who, infuriatingly, remained unperturbed. When he leaned over his desk, her gaze turned questioning.

“Might I remind you, Agent Gatsby, that bearing a Name does not make you untouchable.”

Exhaling deeply, Charlotte leaned forward and braced her elbows on her knees. She gave Soren a wolfish smirk.

“Cecil,” she breathed. “If you want to touch me, All you gotta do is a—”

Director Soren’s hand snapped forward, wrapping her around her throat before she could finish her statement and clenched. Not hard enough to see stares, but just enough to—hopefully—remind her who was superior.

Charlotte gasped, choking on her words, but did not appear alarmed as she casually wrapped a slender hand around his. If anything, she looked more annoyed than fearful. Her manicured nails dug into the bone protruding from his wrist. But, just as she showed no reaction, Director Soren gave nothing away as he pulled her forward until the corner of his desk dug into her stomach.

Charlotte hissed, her nails scratching over his skin, “Buy me dinner, first.”

Soren tucked the pain to a corner of his brain where he would not let it bother him. “Consider the ones who earned the Director’s desk—not a mere Name.” He managed to keep his voice low, despite his rage. “I’ve done more than my due diligence.”

As annoying as the gesture was, Charlotte couldn’t blame him for lashing out like this. Legion was a cut-throat corporation and, in all honesty, she was accustomed to being treated roughly. With her, violence or other physical displays of authority were often the only thing her superiors could do to get through to her. Or at least, it was a way for Charlotte to know that she’d pushed the right buttons.

“A desk,” she snorted, her fist jabbing out and catching Director Soren in the throat. An eye for an eye, a trachea for a trachea.

When his hand retracted, Charlotte calmly drew in a full breath, and scooped up Kerri Stevens’s file from her chair. In a stunning whirl of leather and red curls, she swept towards the back of the office and opened the door.

“You can keep your desk,” she said with pointed lethality.

And with that, the door slammed behind her, leaving Director Soren coughing and ruing the day he was assigned to be Agent Gatsby’s handler.

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#atlastracking #writeblr #writing community #my writing #original stuff #legion #excerpt #nanowrimo #nanowrimo 2020 #once again i am posting this early bc i require immediate validation #and i'm trying to figure out the best times to post shit so it gets seen sjafkldjakf

[robertdowneyjjr]

RDJ on Off Camera #200: Highlights

excerpts from the interview under the read more

(you can buy the digital magazine with the full transcript here)

On his start as an actor, and getting to a point where he has more confidence in what he does:

[...] what’s important right now is that you know I am mirroring your physicality [points to Sam’s posture in chair], which by the way, I don’t know if I did it consciously or not. Son of a bitch...now I lost my rhythm. A lot of life for me is monkey see monkey do. Whether it’s development, or if you’re in a situation that’s very stressful. Like right now, I think if you took either of our biometrics, we would be in a really sweet zone because we have a love for each other. We’ve also created an ease by doing creative stuff together. We always like the result, but more so, we like the process. Whenever you engage with a new group of people in a process, it’s like you’re going to a new school.

And whatever part of my personality was set, it was fractured enough to be useful in a creative medium, but there’s also a work ethic born out of desperation that I would not wish on an enemy. It was just something that I was outfitted with. No matter how you slice it, as I was learning, going along, making mistakes, and noticing how Michael Apted or John Hughes operate, I would go, “Oh, I like that. That looks like it would feel good to be able to do it like that.”

On making the first Iron Man:

[...] I remember for the screen test, I was playing it a little straighter. There weren’t a bunch of funny lines. I was probably like half out- of-my-body hoping I got the part. And then, in executing the film, we found this tone that was really somewhere between mine, Jon’s, and Kevin [Feige]’s sensibilities. Gwyneth Paltrow would come in and go, “Oh, testosterone fest! Can we talk about what’s true north? What the reality of these relationships are?” And Jon would be like, “That’s right. Everybody stop and listen to her.” There was this great sense of each of us being corralled by passing the talking stick and deferring to each other like any good community. The amalgamation of all those little moments of thoughtfulness and open-mindedness are suddenly what this character is remembered for. I look back on it, and I go, “I don’t know how I did that. I don’t think I was in a good mood that day. I think I was really tired. I think my hair looked ridiculous.” And yet, the great thing about cinema, is you forget all of that as the viewer.

On rebuilding, Chaplin, and mentors:

[...] Which makes me think about the coolest letter I ever got. I won’t say where I was...prison. But I got it from Jodie Foster. This was years after Chaplin had come out, and she wrote me a letter about how relevant Chaplin’s life was. The precision, the dedication, what he had to do to be who he was in the epoch that he was. He was such an innovator, a genius. You can’t not believe that Charlie Chaplin was a genius. Some people would even say that he created pathos in cinema. That’s kind of a big deal. But Jodie wrote me this letter basically reminding me that, like Chaplin, I had already gone through the motions of understanding what kind of personality would preserve in a hostile environment. It was a new version of red scares, the public turning against you, and personal proclivities becoming public and almost damning you.

[...] And by the way, I was looking at an old mugshot of mine recently, and there was a bit of sadness in my eyes. There’s nothing like getting sent up the river, but I was okay. You know, like Figueroa Slim would say, “They got me. They got me, because I was there to be got, and I wasn’t doing the right thing.” And this is life. This can happen in relationships. This can happen at a stop sign with a stranger in a car across from you. You never know.

[...] Some people do things that you think are abhorrent and very difficult to explain. Those outliers are the first people who won’t make it very far if they wind up in a correctional facility, and people find out what they did to get there. But in the larger sense of things, it’s just...that was my life. There was a genetic predisposition. A signal wire got tripped, and once you’ve burned neuropathways repeatedly, it’s no longer a behavior. But I also know this, which gives me great comfort—if you’re fucked up or come from a fucked up family, if you get through it, you’re going to have a better chance of pushing our society forward in some way. It’s just the way it is.

On Saturday Night Live and Anthony Michael Hall:

[...] I came through the Weird Science country academy because a bunch of us met up on that John Hughes film. I was like, “Oh wow, I had a part in that.” I was starting to get a little notice. And then, Michael Hall was doing bigger stuff and making creative decisions about what he wanted the next chapter of his career to be, and we became friends. In a way, he was my first Jon Favreau. He was someone who said to me, “I’m going to go do SNL. I’m going to get you an audition, and I bet you’re going to get yourself on the show too. They’ll be lucky to have us.”

[...] I learned so much in that year about what I wasn’t. I was not somebody who was going to come up with a catchphrase. I was not somebody who’s going to do impressions. I was somebody who was very ill-suited for rapid fire sketch comedy. I was not of that ilk of The Groundlings. I had never been part of an improv group. I was kind of like, “Wow, this seems really hard. A lot of work.” But to this day, I would still say that there’s not a more exciting 90 minutes you could have...whether you are any good or not. It’s just amazing.

[...] In the 90-minute moment, you get such validation not because you’re the standup guy, not because they’re not going to say later on that you were the worst cast member they ever had, which is another lie, but because it’s such a difficult thing to try to pull off. You get a lot of cred just for being able to participate in that real-time stress and excitement.

On life after Marvel:

[...] I had an incredible ten year run that was creatively satisfying. It was very hard work, and I dug very deep. At the same time, you always have to recognize that everything has a price and a downside. For me, it’s that I’ve had to up my game and my focus. Also, first and foremost, having a family. But I have not been forced to explore the new frontier of, “What is my creative and personal life after this?” For me, it’s always good to get ahead of where you’re about to be, because nothing really happens when it happens.

[...] it’s always in the transitions between one phase and the next where people fall apart. So, just as a matter of me wanting to be a fit father, husband, and citizen...you know, roughly in that order, you’ve got to put eyes down the road and say, “I’m being irresponsible if I don’t start figuring out what is after that.” So, part of it is that there’s a dependency.

[...] The first thing you learn in theater arts is aesthetic distance. I am not this play I’m doing. I’m not Will from Oklahoma. I’m not that cop in a detective story.  [...] So for me, it just translates to this: I’m not my work. I’m not what I did with that studio. I’m not that period of time that I spent playing this character.

[...] the good boy note is not that I want to do what’s expected of me, it’s that I listen to feedback, and while that’s not what guides my decision making process, I sometimes get a little daunted. People are like, “Well, now that he’s done with this Iron Man thing, we look forward to what he’s going to do next and see him get back to...” And I go, “Alright, wait a minute. Does the good boy revert back to something he was doing before that, because that’s what people...?” No, what do they really mean?

On Susan:

[...] You want to talk about validation, mentors, and people who have been with me at critical times. I mentioned some male directors. All of them together could not hold a candle to the power of partnership, when you find somebody and without meaning to you just get each other. And then, you cash in all your chips and say, “We’re going to do this difficult thing, which is called relationship building and being in the same industry.” All that stuff. But it’s the greatest mystery in life, you know. All creativity is about the right relationship.

[...] Between the two of us, there’s been this creative engine of dialogue and discussion. For me, just self-betterment, because she’s the only person in my entire life and career who I can nail it on a take, and I look over at the monitor, and she’s just like, “You had gum. Take your gum out,” or whatever. It’s not that she doesn’t give me validation. She doesn’t do what everyone else has done; she doesn’t think I need to be taken care of, validated, compensated for. I need to this and that.

[...] Here’s what I’ll say. This is it, dude. This is definitive. If anything, movies saved my life, because she saw me in Weird Science. And at the time, I had a space between my teeth, and she had a space between her teeth. We wound up both getting them filled in, because that’s what you did in the late ‘80s. Everybody had to get their gaps filled or nobody was going to like you. But she looked at me in Weird Science, and her first thought of me was, “Oh my god, he’s like me! He has a space between his teeth. It’s okay that I have a space between my teeth.”

#robert downey jr #rdj #robert downey jr. #dailyrdjposts #off camera #off camera with sam jones #sam jones