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shadowqueen1220 · 3 years

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Analysis on C! Tubbo's Emotional State

Disclaimer: I am in no means a professional and I am heavily basing this off of my own experiences and general observations. (Please let me know if my wording is bad)

This is all about the roleplay characters if it wasn't clear

Warning: self harm, self sacrifice, self destructive behavior and talk of mental health and canon typical violence

Tubbo has always been a self sacrificial character. He always helps his friends at the expense of his own safety (ie disc war and L'manburg). He is a bit of an overachiever and that has gotten worse when combined with tendencies of paranoia. (all og members of L'manburg have paranoia issues, stemming from the final control room)

After the Independance War, Tubbo was involved with the elections. He made a secret bunker, saying "hope for the best plan for the worse" in case the electrons went wrong. He was proven right and then had to endure a harsh dictatorship.

Spy Tubbo was constantly under stress. He not only was secretly slipping information to Pogtopia but had his role of Security of State as well. At the Elections, Schlatt verbally abused Tubbo and scared him into following his orders. Most of the things Schlatt had told Tubbo to have shaped him into the Tubbo that internalizes and represses all his emotions. (ie don't complain, don't cry, don't talk back, agree with everything I say). Tubbo, who already naturally liked to help his friends, was forced to become a yes man in order to stay safe.

The Festival was a disaster and a huge blow to Tubbo's self esteem. The famous line here is "Wilbur said he wasn't going to hurt me" and Tubbo wholeheartedly believed that he could trust Wilbur, his former president and older brother figure. However, all he got was the fact that he was now expendable to Wilbur. His death was brushed aside and it seemed like the only person who cared was Tommy. Even Tubbo quickly became desensitized to the fact that his own pain did not matter in the chaos of the situation.

His life becomes even more chaotic when he is thrust into the role of President and his self sacrificing nature kicked in when no one else would take the presidency. And then in the first 10 minutes into his presidency, he is shot and his nation is blown up.

Tubbo takes this all in stride, repressing everything in order to rebuilt but his cabinet does not listen to him and constantly talks over him. When his vice president and best friend gets into trouble, Tubbo learns that he must be louder in order to be heard.

Tubbo felt betrayed by Tommy's actions during the exile negotiations. He felt as if Tommy didn't respect his power and the pressure of living up to President Wilbur, the threat of becoming like President Schlatt and the expectations of the entire nation all depended on him.

Tubbo once again choose sacrifice but this time, he was not only sacrificing himself but harmed Tommy in his decision as well. Immediately Tubbo regretted his decision and regressed into his yes man habits to cope with the situation.

From here on out, this may be a bit of a stretch but I love putting lore goggles on to every scene for analysis purposes and with a character like Tubbo who is rarely played, we can get some character depth from seemingly "silly" bits.

Tubbo after exiling Tommy shifted from being self sacrificial to self destructive. Both presidents before him had died and the odds were not looking good for Tubbo, already he had made an awful decision that he immediately regretted. Yet he couldn't reverse it and didn't feel worthy enough to see Tommy.

Tubbo never built himself a home in L'manburg. No stuff, no place to sleep, no roots. He told Ranboo that the presidency was all his when the elections came around. He didn't want to be president anymore. He's worryingly self depreciating.

I don't quite remember the timing of this stream but Tubbo and Ranboo once went nether exploring. Ranboo panicked as Tubbo was extremely reckless during this adventure, jumping into lava without fire res, speed bridging with few blocks and jumping off of tall places without checking his health. In addition, Tubbo went through a series of projects as a President, always doing something new and often involving things that could hurt him (ie Ravenger teleportation, tnt jumping). We can see Tubbo become subtly self destructive during this time.

(sidenote: tubbo has a habit to jump off of high things and expecting the person at the bottom to water bucket. Tommy usually is the person to "catch him" and I find it interesting that they both had self destructive tendencies while the other was gone. I'll come back to this point soon)

We never get Tubbo's opinion on the Butcher Army. He heavily opposed the idea at the beginning of the presidency but agreed to take part in it despite Techno killing him being a traumatizing event.

And then Logsteadshire. The guilt of exiling his best friend and being the cause to his death is too much for his mind to handle and he passes out. We never learn how Tubbo got back to L'manburg and the next time we see him, he is back to throwing himself into project after project.

The next time we really see Tubbo is when Tommy and Technoblade take Connor hostage. Ranboo says that Tubbo is just staring at a grass block and when Tommy appears, Tubbo is severely shaken. He is glad that his best friend is alive and upset that he's teamed with his murder but has to all shove it aside to fulfill his role as president. Tubbo takes Tommy yelling at him and Techno's accusations with no protest and once again, represses everything to move on.

Already the Green Festival reminded Tubbo of familiar events but at this time he was in control or so he thought. He had already failed an execution so he was determined to make this word so L'manburg could be safer. He had failed Tommy so he might as well try to make the server a better place by killing Dream. Yet Tubbo had doubts about it.

Dream was manipulating Tubbo during his entire presidency. Tubbo truly believed that Dream was his friend and thought that Dream supported him as a president. His self esteem was so low that he searched for validation anywhere (ie "rate my kidnapping", "phil tell me I'm doing good pls") and Dream willingly gave him companionship.

But then Dream started screaming at him and calling him and awful president, Tubbo agreed with Dream. Tubbo saw himself as weak and stupid and no one came to his defense so it had to be true.

His fight with Tommy was very impactful and led Tubbo to believe that the discs mattered more than him but we'll get back to that soon. Most of the things said during this fight were forgiven by both parties so I hope it doesn't affect him much.

Sidenote: when Quackity suggests to execute Ranboo, Tubbo chooses forgiveness for Ranboo having been in that position before and snaps at Quackity. Here we get a glimpse of Tubbo's inner emotions and we can see clearly that the events of the festival have hurt him.

Doomsday is further proof to Tubbo that he is the worst President that L'manburg had. He stares at the destruction in mute disbelief and even throws himself into tnt and in front of a firework for Tommy. By the end of the experience, Tubbo is so drained that he has given up on government, the fight beaten out of him and he lets L'manburg go, thinking it was his fault it fell.

Tubbo has suffered the most from government yet strives to make a community. Snowchester was supposed to be his healing. However, Tubbo's paranoia from all the violence and the lessons that he has learned from the others, caused him to built a way to defend himself. He doesn't even make a bed for himself in his new house.

Then his life gets shaken up by the Disc War Finale. He refuses to talk about his feelings on the odds, accepts defeat instantly as they were "doomed from the beginning" and doesn't seem to mind the fact that he might die.

In fact, he says "It was about time anyway"

Tubbo thinks he is living on borrowed time. All of the presidents before him are dead and he is in a seemingly impossible situation. Death seems to be the only option and he has accepted it before hand so he is fine with it. Even Tommy seems shaken by this as Tubbo was so positive about the situation before. But Tubbo had been hiding that all for Tommy's sake as he is very self sacrificial.

When everything seems to return to "normal" Tubbo tests his nukes and later tells Ranboo that be had expected everything to go horribly wrong. He is trying to heal and does a decent job at it, starting a family and building Snowchester.

But then he gets the memo that Tommy has been trapped in prison with Dream. He checks out the prison, being a inconvenience to the guards and is hardly fazed when Sam threatens to kill him. He leaves feeling disappointed that he cannot help but that is what it is and Tubbo thinks that Tommy is the strongest person he knows.

So that's why Tommy can't be dead. Tubbo denies Sam's words and when they finally register, begins an investigation to find out who's to blame. He becomes self destructive again, wearing Dream's armor and building a familiar panic room to research the crime.

He is once again extremely reckless when investigating. With Ranboo's help, they go and investigate the egg and Tubbo shows his lack of care for his own safety. He tries to break open the egg, challenges Bad and Ant to a pvp and suggests to continue investigating. But at this point, Ranboo has noticed this recklessness and gently reminds Tubbo of Michael.

From this point, Tubbo seems to be healing again. And then to make things better, Tommy is back and they are going to kill Dream but that's okay because it hasn't really settled yet. Tubbo is once again shaken by Tommy's return and follows him in silence to make sure he is really there. He is so worried about Tommy, he reaches out to MIA Ghostbur to help him.

Tubbo is still self destructive but less so after this. He still jumps off high places but does so more out of trust. He finally gets a bed in Snowchester and things seem to be looking up.

But then Tommy's words about Dream settle in. Dying is no longer permanent and Tubbo has things he wants to protect. To do this he recommissions the nukes but is panicked when one is stolen.

We have no idea where it is going to go from here, but I can already see some problems with Tubbo's increasing paranoia.

In addition, the details about the nukes and their suicide button and Tubbo's willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good does not bode well.

Overall, Tubbo is a complex character and I greatly enjoy how he is played.

Thank you for reading and let me know if you have any comments!

#dream smp #tubbo #c! tubbo #tw suicidal ideation #tw self destruction #suicide tw #tw suicide #abuse tw #clingy duo #bee duo #bench trio #shadow talks

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the-master-cylinder · 4 years

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SUMMARY A nuclear war breaks out in 1986, expending the world’s entire nuclear arsenal, except for one missile. Two children, Philip Chandler (John Stockwell) and Marlowe Hammer (Michael Dudikoff), are abandoned by their fathers in a fallout shelter cut into the side of a wooded mountain. The pair grow up in the shelter, with 1950s detective fiction and swing music as the guiding force in their learning. Fifteen years later Marlowe succeeds in digging out the cave entrance. The pair give each other haircuts, dress in suits, and go to rejoin the world.

Philip narrates their adventure on their first day out:

My name’s Philip, and this is going to be a yarn about me and my pal, Marlowe. About the day we got out of this shelter and went off into the post-nuclear world. Now, as excited as we were about leaving the shelter, it was still a joint that held fond memories. I mean, it was the only world we’d ever known. Where I practiced my magic, Marlowe, his dancing; where we both dreamed of becoming private eyes, just like the ones we’d read about.

Marlowe hopes to find their fathers, but Philip is disgruntled that they never returned, and presumes that they are dead. The mountain is now devoid of trees. The first people they find are a trio of radiation burned “mutants” chasing a beautiful woman, Miles Archer (Lisa Blount). They rescue Miles, who kisses Marlowe as a distraction and steals his gun. This backfires, as she drops the activation keys to the last nuclear missile. Miles leaves, and the pair are immediately attacked by a biker gang of bald women in red wigs. Afterwards the boys discover the activation keys, which bears their fathers’ names. This excites Marlowe, but disturbs Philip.

They rescue another young woman, Rusty Mars (Michele Little), from a group of armed children Philip nicknames “disco mutants”. She takes a liking to Philip, and leads the two of them to Edge City which is plagued by gang warfare. Rusty takes them to a dance club, where they are captured by cannibals. They want the nuclear keys, and to eat the young men, a rarity of uncontaminated meat. Although Rusty helps them escape and apologises, Philip doesn’t trust her. Just after they part ways the pair meets up with a friend of Miles’ who also wants the keys. After he is dispatched Miles shows up and takes them to her hideout. There she tells them about the purpose of the keys. Miles then threatens to kill them, but they escape.

Rusty has followed them to the hideout, but is attacked by the child gangsters. The pair chase them away, but Philip still doesn’t trust her. He wants to shoot her, but is out of bullets. After Rusty apologises again for lying to him and originally handing him over to the cannibals he says, “That was a million years ago, and I got a short memory. In fact, I don’t even remember who you are”.

The pair resolves to rid the city of the gangs and keep the keys. They go to an abandoned warehouse, using themselves as bait, in the hopes that the gangs will kill each other before killing them. For the most part, the plan works. However, the bosses of the child-gangsters are in fact Philip and Marlowe’s fathers. Before he dies, Philip’s father tells him that the past does not matter. In the end, the only gangster left standing is Miles, who has the keys. She shoots at them, and misses, but startles Marlowe into shooting and killing her.

The film ends with Philip letting go of the angst which he had nursed for 15 years. He adopts Marlowe’s “silver-lining look on life”. The two demonstrate Marlowe’s tap-inspired “post-nuke shuffle” to the crowds of the city. In the closing narration, Philip explains that they plan to set up shop as detectives, but that first he will find Rusty and see if he can repair his relationship with her. Of the keys, he says that he and Marlowe hid them in a secret location, because “you never know, in a tight jam a nuclear missile just might come in handy”.

PRODUCTION Albert Pyun’s first film, THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, made box office waves and instantly established him as a hot property in Hollywood. If you haven’t heard much about the young director in the past two years, it’s because Pyun has been busy working on his next feature, a post-nuclear fantasy-adventure tale entitled RADIOACTIVE DREAMS. The film is scheduled for release later this year, though a distribution deal has not yet been finalized.

The long pre-production period was, in part, due to the challenge of acquiring financing (after THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, Pyun had several offers, but wanted to work independently from the studio system and a six month talent search for the roles of Phillip and Marlowe. Pyun estimates that he saw over 600 young actors, striving to find two who weren’t too modern-looking, and could believably carry a 40’s attitude as part of their characters. During this time, Pyun and Karnowski wrote some 50 drafts of the script, began scouting locations, and dove head-long into the other crucial pre-production elements.

A visit to the production office at Laird International Studios reflects just how much work had already been done on the project which, in Pyun’s words, has a budget only “slightly larger than the $3.5 million spent to film THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, the walls are covered with color storyboards by in-house illustrator Shawn Joyce (who will be preparing all the film’s matte paintings), character sketches, blueprints of sets, and even tabletop poster board miniatures of the hippie city square (modeled after San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district), and the bombshelter (which comes complete with a two-car garage). Mark Moses, a winner of several CLIO awards, serves as the film’s visual consultant, with Chester Kaczenski handling art direction.

Principal photography, by German cinematographer Thomas Mauck, who shot many of Werner Herzog’s films, began in March in Pyun’s native Hawaii, on the island of Hawaii. The remote locations-in the mountains and on the site of the Mauna Loa volcano, where an unexpected eruption occurred on the first day of shooting-generated some visually sensational dallies, according to publicist Scott Fields.

Interview with Albert Pyun

How did you come about writing Radioactive Dreams? Albert Pyun: I wanted to do something after “The Sword and the Sorcerer” that was distinctive and not like anything else. I think I felt that if I only got to make 2 movies in my life, the second had to be as imaginative as I could create. So that was the start of it and I had a lot of meetings with studios and what they liked about my first film was how it was imaginative, so I went that direction.

Did the 1980’s missile crisis have anything to do with what inspired you? Albert Pyun: Well, no, but growing up in the Col War years certainly did. I always was a fan of Dr. Strangelove and i think that and “O Lucky Man” got me going on the idea of the last nuke left.

How long did it take for the guys to get the “Post Nuke Shuffle” down? Albert Pyun: Did they ever?? To be fair, we had to shoot it really fast as the sun was coming up and we were losing extras. So we had to shoot it fast and that was unfair to John and Michael because they did work hard on that dance. We shot most of the big music scenes and extras scenes in one night so that really made it a very rushed shoot night. I don’t know if John was as comfortable with the dance as Michael. I think it went against this sort of “cool” vibe John had. He was very dedicated to what we were doing but some of it i could tell unsettled him.

The dance looked pretty amazing. I’m surprised it isn’t a staple to dance to at weddings and birthdays. Any memories of when you filmed the big final scene? Albert Pyun: Just how fast we had to do it. I was disappointed we could do it with more takes and shots. It was pretty basic and FAST. And they had a costume change in the middle of it. I had actually shot several book end scenes which were set 40 years later and had a young mutant reporter interviewing Rusty about Philip and Marlowe. It talked about what eventually happened to them and how Marlowe was murdered by a gang trying to get the launch keys and how Phillip left rusty to destroy the keys once and for all but never returned. I think there was a small shot at the end showing Philip and Rusty’s son and a quick peek of Philip watching from afar to keep them safe.

The soundtrack to this film still remains very popular. Did you personalty pick any of the artist that made it into the movie? Albert Pyun: Yeah, I selected the songs used. My friend and co-producer John Stuckmeyer was into that LA music scene and got a lot of bands to submit cassette tapes of demos. He weeded out the most appropriate ones and he and I selected the final choices to be used. I think we had a couple written for the movie specifically when we couldn’t find exactly what we wanted.

How did you end up meeting John Stockwell and Michael Dudikoff? Albert Pyun: They came in during the casting process. We saw a lot of great actors of that time, Judge Reinhold, Clancy Brown, Tim Van Patten, Harry Anderson, many really good actors. We even had a breakfast meeting with Tom Hanks, a tape submission from Ellen DeGeneres. All were young and at the start of their careers as was I.

As a special effects makeup artist, I found the mutants completely terrifying! Any memories of the makeup process on the actors? Albert Pyun: That was by Greg Cannom who would go on to win oscars for Dracula and more. He figured out the design and look. I was disappointed that I had to lose the surfing sequence in the film. We wanted to dye the ocean flourescent orange and have surfing mutants surf and rot I think but the Coastal Commission said no.

Do you think a film like that could be made today? Albert Pyun: No, Radioactive Dreams wouldn’t get made today. It’s way too eccentric and weird. Even in 1984 it was tough to get made. I raised the budget myself from a single investor. He was a real estate developer in San Bernadino California. I think he did it because he finally gave in to my dogged persistence for over a year. He said “no” many times, but I kept hearing “yes”. I’m an optimist I guess. I believed in the film and knew it would be a unique picture to follow up The Sword and the Sorcerer. Anyway halfway through production the funding disappeared.

A couple of Edge City’s best and brightest with costume designer Joseph Porro

SPECIAL EFFECTS Special prosthetic make-ups were created by Greg Cannom. His bizarre designs range from the mysterious repulse men to a wrinkled surf bunny (a girl whose excessive bathing in the post nuclear sun has given her the appearance of a 90 year-old woman) and his favorite, the mutant surfers: those who refused to give up their treasured pastime, even though the ocean has become radioactive.

The surfers’ skin, hanging loosely from their bones, is riddled with chemotherapy patches and permanently-affixed barnacles. their long. scorched, platinum blonde hair is missing entire sections. Josephine Turner, who did the intricate hair ventilating for THE HOWLING and THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN, will create the wigs. Straight and extra make-ups will be provided by Ve Neil and Rick Schwartı.

Mutant Surfer

Special fire and mechanical effects will be handled by Joe Lombardi’s Special Effects Unlimited. The film’s extensive stunt work, under the direction of Alan Gibbs offers several cliff-hanging sequences: a chase on winding mountain roads involving female bikers, a high-speed helicopter pursuit, various gun battles and a warehouse explosion. Additionally, there will be a surfing sequence in a ‘radioactive’ ocean-a portion of the real ocean near the shoreline will be chemically dyed expressly for filming.

Cast and crew spent most of their final week of production in Los Angeles, working with a 14-foot high mechanical rat created by Charles and Steven Chiodo, with 22 separate functions and 12 operators-giving it head, arm, and body movement capabilities-said to be the most advanced pneumatically controlled robot ever constructed for a motion picture. Star Lisa Blount does a scene while standing in the rat’s mouth. Her stunt double Andre Gibbs, wife of the film’s stunt coordinator Alan Gibbs, takes over for Blount’s death scene in which she is eaten alive by the rat.

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Radioactive Dreams (1985) Soundtrack Most of the songs featured in the film are pop rock in the new wave vein. The exceptions are Zim Bim Zowie, a swing number, and also a tune in the American Songbook style, Daddy’s Gonna Boogie Tonight, played on a phonograph during the scene when Philip and Marlowe prepare to leave the fallout shelter. The latter and another track called All Talk were left out of the Australian and German soundtrack releases.[7]

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Nightmare – Jill Jaxx – 5:10 Radioactive Dreams – Sue Saad – 5:18 She’ll Burn You – Maureen Steele – 4:13 Young Thing – Cherri Delight – 4:09 Tickin’ Of The Clock – The Monte Carlos – 2:07 Psychedelic Man – Shari Saba – 2:41 Eat You Alive – Lisa Lee – 2:40 Guilty Pleasures – Sue Saad – 3:44 (Performed by Saad on-screen) Turn Away – Mary Ellen Quinn – 2:13 She’s A Fire – Sue Saad – 2:07 When Lightning Strikes – Sue Saad – 6:51 Zim Bim Zowie – Darryl Phinessee – 2:20 Daddy’s Gonna Boogie Tonight B.J. Ward All Talk Lynn Carey

CAST/CREW Directed Albert Pyun Produced Moctesuma Esparza Written Albert Pyun

John Stockwell – Phillip Chandler Michael Dudikoff – Marlowe Hammer Michele Little – Rusty Mars Lisa Blount – Miles Archer Don Murray – Dash Hammer George Kennedy – Spade Chandler Norbert Weisser – Sternwood Christian Andrews – Brick Bardo Paul Keller Galan – Chester (as P.K. Galán) Demian Slade – Harold Hilary Shepard – Biker Leader (as Hilary Shapiro) Sue Saad – Punk District Singer Kimberly McKillip – Sadie – Hippie Chick Gulcin Gilbert – Greaser Chick (as Gulshin Gilbert) Mark Brown – Greaser Russell Price – Greaser

Makeup Department Greg Cannom … special makeup Ve Neill … makeup designer Brian Wade … additional makeup effects designer / additional makeup effects supervisor / special makeup effects artist Kevin Yagher … prosthetic makeup assistant

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Cinefantastique v15n01 La Cosa Cine Fantastico Issue #113, July, 2005 staystillreviews

Radioactive Dreams (1985) Retrospective SUMMARY A nuclear war breaks out in 1986, expending the world's entire nuclear arsenal, except for one missile.

#ALBERT PYUN

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glitchinthesystemspiderbyte · 7 years

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[13] Glitch in the System - Apagando las Luces (The Mission: Pt. 2)

By E. A clever trap happens.

–

The life of a hacker was, while exciting, often predictable: in her downtime, to assuage boredom, Sombra surfed the internet. Idly, for the most part, until she caught the scent of something that interested her. Then she’d sniff it out like a bloodhound, following trails and leads until she’d run her quarry to ground, deciding at some point along the way what it was she planned on doing with it once she caught it.

On this particular day, Sombra’s casual perusal of the internet had ended in a chase that led her to the front door of someone who had, with an incredible lack of finesse, crawled in through Talon’s virtual windows and left a royal mess in their digital carpet. It wasn’t a mess that had done any damage, and they hadn’t left with anything of value, but they’d managed to accomplish something particularly noteworthy in their trespass:

They’d pissed Sombra off something fierce.

She’d printed off what data she could translate to a black and white image, waiting with increasing impatience as the archaic machine slowly churned out pages of blurry images she could take to Akande. She wished, not for the first time, that everyone had implanted cybernetics so she could avoid having to use such cumbersome machinery.

Once Akande had seen them, of course he’d decided to send them in. Strength through adversity and whatnot. She’d figured he would, even though it was so painfully obvious that the entire thing was a setup. The man enjoyed teaching lessons and watching the shit hit the fan, and what was better for that than sending his best and brightest after a bunch of unruly children? It would be a slaughter, but for which party Sombra wasn’t entirely certain.

It wasn’t even a compelling challenge so much as it was embarrassing, walking into a trap so obvious it felt like they were building half the cage themselves. Sombra was restless, though, and ready for something to take her mind off her increasingly complicated feelings for her coworker.

“What’s wrong?” Widowmaker asked, leaning languorously against the other side of the elevator as they descended into the basement that was, Sombra reminded herself, one-hundred-percent a trap.

“Stop doing that,” she said, narrowing her eyes at the spider.

“Doing what?” Widowmaker asked, legitimately confused in her graphene catsuit and posed with the impeccable poise of a killer.

“That,” she repeated without any clarification, waving her hand in her direction.

The doorbell dinged, cutting off any response Widowmaker may have been summoning, and the two operatives snapped into mission mode like rubber bands stretched to capacity. Sombra hacked the elevator doors, locking them in place and preventing anyone but her from activating it in the future. Someday, someone would create hackproof technology, and that might finally be the point at which Sombra found herself faced with a challenge.

Until then she’d have to settle for jumping into shark tanks and starving the animals out of their own feeding frenzy.

“Ready?” the sniper asked.

“Always.”

“Rapidement, cherie.”

Sombra activated her camo, transitioning from sarcastic companion to silent killer in less than a heartbeat. She heard Widow’s first shot, saw the body drop, and answered with her own suppressing fire to allow her another deadly second.

“Ten and two down,” came the sniper’s voice over their comms, merging with her actual voice as Sombra’s body was sucked through time and space and deposited back in the elevator.

“I know,” she replied, ignoring the wave of nausea that overtook her from her momentary displacement. It passed more quickly each time it hit. “So far, so good. Now, the hard part.”

“I know,” Widowmaker nodded, standing. “Allons-y.” Without further ado, she grappled her way up and out of sight, leaving Sombra alone to do her job.

“Time to teach that lesson.” Smirking, she activated her camo and fled from the elevator.

Widowmaker kept the sentries and backup busy while Sombra picked her way between towers, only managing not to get distracted by the trove of data she was surrounded with by force of willpower and a general sense of disappointment that they were expending this much effort for what was, essentially, a data bomb. Sombra would hack in, grab anything worthwhile, and drop a Trojan so big that they’d be on the phone with IT for years while it ate through their database like a piranha along a trail of blood. She just didn’t think there would be anything worthwhile, and it would have saved them all a load of time and effort if they’d just rigged the whole basement to explode and gone out for smoothies instead.

That plus, once again with feeling - this was a trap.

Sidling up to the server, her sense of discomfort was growing louder like white noise crashing in her ears. From the start there was not enough resistance for a fortress of valuable data, and that they’d encountered up until now had been token violence to make them feel like they were accomplishing something. She’d hacked half the world’s systems and had found community banks with more security than this place. It felt wrong at its core, and she wanted to be out of there.

“Widow?” she hissed into her earpiece. “I’m nuking this server and we’re getting the hell out of here. Something’s not right.”

“I have you in my sight, Sombra,” was her reply, clear and comforting. She took a deep breath, gaining confidence from the sniper’s proximity and the security her watchful eye ensured. Nothing else about this operation was secure.

“Just don’t make this the one time you miss, ok?” she joked, smirking. Raising a palm to the server, she went in.

Bracing herself for the typical defense response of a high-security system, she nearly fell face first into the tower as she encountered absolutely zero resistance. One moment she was hacking the mainframe and the next she was in it, free flowing binary cradled within a SQL database that was easier to check out than a library book. Far from tantalizing, it was wrong, and she wondered if she’d misjudged the true aim of the trap they’d walked into. The question now was when it would be sprung.

If it hadn’t been already.

“This isn’t right. There’s no firewall,” she announced, vision still immersed within the neon code of the server. It began to flash like the inside of a rave, distracting her from absorbing any one aspect of the nonsense data being paraded before her. “This is not right. We have got to go.”

She pulled her hand away and found that not only was she unable to do so, but that any attempts at moving filled her body with immense pain. The rush of binary turned red, pulsing in through her fingertips and corrupting the cybernetics she was relying on to access it.

Realization hit her in a wave of nausea. It was a virus.

Sombra was being hacked.

Steeling herself against the agony, she grabbed her arm with her free left hand and pulled, tearing it from from the server in time to stop the flow of corruption, but not quickly enough to stop the pain. Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard Widowmaker talking through their comms, but by that point she’d lost the ability to focus, and her words vanished like smoke as she stumbled backwards, blind.

Her brain was telling her mouth to scream for help, but nothing was cooperating - not her eyes, not her vocal cords, and certainly not her legs as she tried desperately to get away from what was undeniably the bar springing on the mousetrap. The corruption burned through her, too hot for her to focus and too encompassing for her to escape.

She didn’t see the man as he approached her, but she did feel the tearing of a bullet through her left shoulder.

Tumbling to the floor, the burning virus searing her from the inside and the bullet wound gushing blood, she looked up in shock to see the shooter walking steadily toward her.

Widow, where are you? she thought frantically to herself, waiting for the kill-shot that would remove his head from his shoulders. So certain was she that it would come, she didn’t realize it hadn’t until she felt the cold metal of a gun barrel against her forehead.

“You must be Talon’s master hacker, yes?” the man grinned, snapping the safety off the gun. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

Sombra hadn't thought about death since she was a child, when it was a present reality, her parents crushed beneath the omnic machine, leaving her a small flame at the mercy of a hurricane. The hurricane blew itself out and she kept burning until she grew into a forest fire, and then an inferno; she was too smart, too capable, too damn resourceful to die like a dog by a man with an assault rifle.

She hadn’t thought about death in a long time. Now, forced to confront her end with the kiss of cold metal against flesh, she realized that she did not want to die. Not like this; not helpless at the mercy of a stranger with a gun for a cause she found curious at best.

In fact, she realized - she didn't want to die at all. She squeezed her eyes shut, pain spiking through her retinas, and despite the specter of death looming before her, all she could think was a profoundly confused where’s Widowmaker?

She never missed.

Where the shot of a gun and the sting of a that final bullet were expected, she heard a sharp cry instead. When she opened her eyes - the pain ebbing as she regained some focus to her sight - she saw the deadly, lithe form of Widowmaker with her grappling cord around her assailant’s neck. She hit him with such force that she fell over backward, the man’s struggling body atop hers as she pulled the line taut against his neck.

He was dead for a while before the sniper let him go. His throat was swollen and red from where she’d garotted him, and she shoved him off her like the soggy sack of flesh and guts he’d become. She stood up with tears streaming down her face - a golden-eyed angel of death staring at her like nothing else mattered in the world.

Sombra wasn’t sure what she felt at that moment: a muddled, vague mixture of relief, awe, and something else - something warmer that made her heart race even more than her brush with the grave. She struggled for control of her thoughts as well as her tongue, mind racing through a kaleidoscope of feelings too quickly for her to choose one to sit with.

When she finally found her voice, it sounded as pained as she felt. “Araña,” she said, clutching her bleeding shoulder, “we’ve gotta go.”

Widowmaker’s eyes were focused on her, and she looked as though she was struggling with something. Sombra saw the wet tears making tracks down her face and wanted to ask what was wrong, but wasn’t entirely sure she was prepared to hear the answer. “Whoever these fuckers are, they hacked me. They hacked me, Widow,” she growled, indignant and impressed all at once. They would pay so dearly and so violently when she found them again.

Something heavy banged in the distance, followed by shouting voices. Without another word, Widowmaker knelt down and wrapped her arms around Sombra’s limp and bleeding body, lifting her effortlessly against her chest.

“I’ll help you when you’re ready for revenge,” she said in a voice that was velvet lined with shards of glass. Then, softer, “Désolée.”

“I know,” Sombra replied as Widow pressed her forehead against hers. The shouting came closer, and she bounded toward the exit like a tiger after its prey, pausing only to pick up Sombra’s gun and hand it back to her to hold in shaking fingers.

Sombra rested her head in the space between Widowmaker’s collarbone and the length of her neck and listened to the disconcerting slow beat of her heart. Her skin was almost - almost - warmed from the exertion of the day. Clutching her gun, she let the sound beat like a war drum in her ear as they crashed through the basement and out to safety.

*Read from the beginning or check out our intro post! All stories tagged under #glitchfic

#spiderbyte #sombramaker #widowsombra #widowmaker x sombra #sombra x widowmaker #sombra #widowmaker #overwatch #overwatch fandom #overwatch fanfic #fanfic #glitch in the system #glitchfic #amélie lacroix

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vizkopa · 7 years

Text

Celestial (FallenAngel!Doflamingo x Reader) CHAPTER 2

Chapter 2: Morning Star ~

You opened your eyes to the warm spring sunshine of Saturday morning and, for just a moment, you forgot all about the events of the previous night. It was a morning like any other, birds singing in the forest, a light breeze jostling the boughs. But as you lay there, staring at the patterns the sunlight made on the ceiling, you felt the creeping sense that something was not quite right—a feeling that only comes from living alone for so many years. You felt a presence in the house that could not be ignored. With a groan of protest, you heaved yourself out of bed. A quick glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand told you you’d overslept—not surprising considering the night you’d had. It was starting to come back to you now. Your gaze shifted from the red LED numbers to the handgun perched on the stand, proof that it all hadn’t all been just a dream. In the guest room downstairs, beneath your very feet, was the man you had seen fall from the stars. You dressed quickly, tucking the pistol into the waistband of your jeans at the small of your back, and stumbled downstairs. Cautiously, you peered into the guest room. The stranger was still sleeping deeply. It seemed as though he hadn’t even moved an inch during the night. If you looked closely, you could see his chest rise and fall ever so slightly in a steady rhythm, but at first glance he could easily have been dead.

As you watched him, you pondered what to do. The man had no clothes, no identification and no distinguishing features. You could call the police, lie about where he came from and hand him over to them. He’d be out of your hair, simple as that, and if he turned out to be dangerous, you’d know you made the right choice. But if he didn’t then you’d be condemning an innocent man to ending up just another John Doe in the hospital. And if he really did come from the stars, a John Doe was all he’d ever be to them. No. You’d wait for now. If he really was what you suspected him to be, he would probably thank you for not delivering him straight into the hands of doctors and scientists who would only use him to satisfy their own curiosities. And if he was dangerous? Well… You only hoped a bullet was enough to stop him. As quietly as you could, you approached the side of the bed. You checked his pulse—still strong and steady—before rolling him carefully onto his side to check his bandages. There were a few spots of blood here and there, but for the most part, they were clean. Frowning, you pulled back part of the dressing and gasped at what you found. He appeared to have miraculously healed overnight. The new skin was till red and raw, and the resulting scars would not be pretty, but the wounds looked as if they had been there for weeks rather than mere hours. Had you simply imagined all the blood, the bone, the broken feathers? You returned him to his previous position and took a long step backwards. He hadn’t stirred once, eyes still shut tight and oblivious to the world. Things were getting stranger by the minute and you were finding it increasingly difficult not to believe you were stuck in some crazy dream you couldn’t wake up from. You let out a shaky breath and rubbed your eyes. You needed coffee. ASAP. You found the pot still full from the night before. It had long gone cold, of course, but you weren’t about to waste an entire pot. You poured yourself a mug and nuked it in the microwave for a minute, adding a splash of milk to try and mask the bitterness, but it still brought a grimace to your face. Bitter coffee and an unconscious stranger in your guest room was not how you imagined kicking off your weekend. In an effort to bring some sense of normalcy to the morning, you retrieved your laptop from upstairs (the battery was drained from leaving it switched on by your telescope the whole night) and decided to get a head start on grading your latest batch of papers. You found yourself having difficulty focusing, your mind wandering to the man in the next room. Surely, he couldn’t be what you thought he was… could he? Curiosity burning, you opened a new tab in your browser and typed the word ‘angels’ into the search engine. You selected the first result and began to read. Words jumped out at you: ‘benevolent’, ‘guardian spirits’, ‘purity’, ‘selflessness’. It all sounded like idealistic nonsense to you, but maybe... After a moment’s thought, you changed your search slightly and you felt your blood chill as you skimmed the new information. ’A fallen angel is a wicked or rebellious angel that has been cast out of heaven. The term “fallen angel” …is used of angels who sinned …of angels cast down to the earth in the War in Heaven, of Satan, demons, or of certain Watchers.’ You glanced up frightfully at the door to the guest room, as if the stranger would suddenly wake and prove all the words you had just read to be true. But, of course, nothing of the sort happened. No. There had to be a logical explanation. You’d much sooner believe he was extra-terrestrial than some all-powerful celestial being from a book you never took much stock in. For all you knew, he could be just a man and this was just a misunderstanding. Hell, maybe this was all just one big prank. Anything was more likely than an angel crash landing in your garden. You shook your head, appalled at yourself, and closed the tab. This wasn’t like you. You dealt in fact, in your own senses, in science. It was illogical to come to a conclusion without first gathering all the evidence, and your key witness had yet to take the stand. But were you prepared for the possibility that everything you knew, everything you believed in was wrong? That night you slept fitfully, your dreams plagued by the sound of great wings, and the stench of burnt feathers and blood. The remainder of the weekend passed uneventfully. The man slept through Saturday night and Sunday morning with no signs of stirring. Loathe as you were to leave him alone in case he finally did wake, your fridge and pantry were getting dangerously close to empty. You decided you could risk a trip to the grocery store. Half an hour, tops. You took one last peek into the guest room to make sure Sleeping Beauty was where you’d left him, before snatching up your keys and rushing out the door. Thanks to the quiet Sunday afternoon roads, you made the round trip in twenty minutes. When you got home, you set down your shopping bags in the kitchen then, out of habit, went to check on the stranger. You had grown so used to seeing his sleeping form in the last two days that you almost turned around and left the room before your brain registered that this time he was not where he should be. The bed was empty. The covers had been thrown back hastily, and the sheets still held the impression of his body where it had lain only minutes before. You touched them. Still warm… He couldn’t have been awake for long. You had noticed nothing amiss when you’d returned from the store. The front door had been locked, and the back door bolted from the inside, just as you’d left them. The guest room window that opened onto the back yard was still shut tight, and a strong, crisp breeze had been blowing all day so you would have felt it if any other window in the house had been left open. It all led you to only one conclusion: he was still in the house. You whirled around, hand hovering by the grip of the handgun concealed at your back, but before you could free it, a body slammed into you, pushing you roughly against the wall. Your head cracked painfully against the drywall and you saw stars for a moment. The breath had been knocked from your lungs but before you could recover it, a large hand enclosed around your throat. Dazed, you looked up into the face of your assailant for the first time. You gasped as your eyes met his. They were a stunning, clear electric blue—impossible and inhuman. They were eyes that had seen millennia, that spoke of intelligence far beyond your own. They were the most exquisite eyes you had ever seen, but you only had a moment to admire them before the hand around your throat tightened harshly. The man glared down at you, teeth bared in a grimace. “Where am I?” You gasped for breath, fingers clawing uselessly at the iron grip crushing your windpipe. The edges of your vision were already beginning to turn black. The man snarled and loosened his hold slightly. “Speak!” “Starfall, Oregon,” you managed to croak out. “Why am I here? What have you done to me?” “You fell. I found you.” “Where?” “Forest.” He glanced over his shoulder and out the window to where the dark shadow of the tree line encroached on your back yard. He turned back to you. “How long ago?” “Two days.” He cursed, rage crossing his features for a split second before composing himself. “Show me.” You forced yourself to hold his gaze, heart beating wildly against your ribs. “Say please.” You felt a small swell of pride at your ability to keep your voice from shaking as you spoke the words. He seemed taken aback for a moment, then scowled. “Do you know who I am?” “I have my suspicions.” “Then you know you’re expendable to me. I can kill you in a heartbeat.” “So can I.” He froze at the resounding metallic click and looked down to find the barrel of your .45 pointed straight at his heart. The pressure on your throat lessened and you gulped down a lungful of precious air, but he still had you pinned to the wall. “So you at least know what this does.” He eyed the pistol warily. “I’ve seen what they can do,” he snarled. “Humans and their toys, do you really think you can kill me with that?” “If you’re so confident, why are you afraid of it?” He hesitated, the vein in his forehead pulsing with each second that ticked by. He growled in frustration and pulled back abruptly, finally releasing you from his grip. You slumped against the wall, blinking away tears of relief, and glowered up at him. You lifted a hand to your throat to massage the tender flesh, cringing as you felt the bruises already beginning to blossom there. “I thought angels were supposed to protect people.” He scowled. “We are warriors of the Lord, not babysitters.” “Guess that got lost in translation somewhere.” He watched you warily as you caught your breath, those impossible eyes fixed on the gun. You kept it levelled at him, willing your hands to stop trembling. Your father taught you long ago how to shoot at painted targets and old tin cans. It was a whole other story when you were aiming at flesh and bone. “Take me to where I fell.” You shot him a glare and he returned it. The two of your stared each other down for a moment before he gave in and rolled his eyes. “Please,” he finished and you almost laughed at the absurdity of it. “Why should I help you? You haven’t exactly done anything to deserve it.” The vein in his forehead throbbed. Maybe it was a bad idea to piss off someone who could probably snap your neck with two fingers. But hey, if he was going to kill you anyway, you might as well go down swinging. “Because the sooner I get there, the sooner I can leave and I never have to lay eyes on you again.” “Now you’re speaking my language. Fine. But you need to put on some clothes first.” In all the excitement, it had only just occurred to you that stranger before you was still very much naked. As if the day couldn’t get any worse. “If I never have to lay eyes on this again,” you gestured vaguely to his nether regions, determinedly keeping your eyes above his waist. Still, you couldn’t fight the blush slowly spreading across your cheeks. “I’ll be glad for it.” For a moment, he looked as if he was about to retort but changed his mind, closing his mouth and choosing instead to fume in silence while you made your way to the dresser across the room. Watching him carefully from the corner of your eye, you rummaged in the drawers and pulled out a pair of pants and a button down shirt that had belonged to an old boyfriend of yours. You tossed them to him and he caught them deftly in one hand, looking down at them in distaste. “They might be a little small, but they’ll do. Hurry up and get dressed, I’ll wait in the kitchen.” As soon as you were out of the room, you felt your legs begin to shake. They carried you as far as the dining table before they collapsed from under you and you sat down heavily in the seat. You set the gun down on the table away from your trembling hands. You wanted to cry. But you wouldn’t. You refused to show that man any shred of weakness. You’d somehow managed to convince him that killing you was too much trouble and you needed to keep it that way. And when he was finally out of your life and this all seemed like just a passing dream, then you could cry. Please, God, let this be over quickly, you prayed silently. Then you laughed at the irony of it all. Maybe God was punishing you being a non-believer. This was certainly a rude awakening to his existence. “Why are you laughing?” Your head snapped up at the voice. The stranger was watching you from the doorway with contempt, his shoulders stiff as he stood awkwardly in his new clothes. As predicted, the ends of the pants stopped well above his ankles and evidently he didn’t even attempt to button the shirt given how tight it already was around his broad shoulders. But it was far better than staring at his junk all night. “No reason,” you said all too quickly, jumping to your feet and reaching once more for the pistol. It’s cool weight against your palm seemed to have a calming effect and your trembling subsided. Regaining your former composure, you glared up at the man. “Let’s go. You first.” You gestured with the barrel to the back door and followed him through it into the orange light of the setting sun. “Straight ahead,” you said as the two of you reached the edge of the trees. You kept your eyes trained on him, gun at the ready. You had yet to turn off the safety, but he didn’t need to know that. His feet made no noise on the forest floor as he walked. It only made you more aware of your own footfalls, cringing at every snapped twig and crushed leaf as the noise seemed to be magnified tenfold in the secluded space. It was then that you noticed everything else was silent as well. No birds sang and not even a breeze rustled the tips of the trees, as if they were all holding their breath in the presence of this being. Whether it was out of awe or fear, you couldn’t be sure. You knew you had reached the clearing when he stopped abruptly in front of you, almost causing you to walk right into him. “Wait here,” he said and you nodded silently, watching wide-eyed as he approached the crater. What exactly was he hoping to accomplish? Were they just going to beam him back up into the sky? A moment later, you heard his voice ring out through the clearing. “Father!” Silence. “Father, why have you forsaken me!” No reply came. Not that you had been expecting any. What was he waiting for, a disembodied voice from the sky? Like The Lion King? “You would cast out your own son?” He stumbled forward, face upturned to the sky. You could see the despair in his gait, in the way his clenched fists fell limp at his sides. “You would leave him to rot here, amongst the dirt and worms and filth?” Dead silence. Not even a whisper on the breeze. At the centre of the crater he fell to his hands and knees, fingers curling in the blackened soil. He raised one hand up to his face and in his grip he held a single, singed feather. He began to shake, the feather crumbling to dust in his fist, and he raised his head and let out an anguished cry to the heavens. You jumped in fright and lifted your gun as a flock of birds shot out of the trees and took to the sky at the sound. He sounded like a madman, a wounded animal in its last throes of life, and in that moment your heart ached for him. When his lungs were empty, he fell silent and hung his head. He was still for a long time, but your dared not take your eyes off him and you kept your gun trained on his back. “You can put that away; I’m not going to hurt you.” You hesitated at his words. His tone was one of a defeated man, shoulders slumped and head bowed. But your throat still burned with the imprint of his fingers from earlier. “Not until I get some answers.” He was silent for a long time. You couldn’t see his face, but you could see the muscles of his jaw work as he clenched his teeth. “Fine,” he said finally. “But not here.” He got to his feet and turned to you, a look of resentment on his face. You gestured toward the house with the barrel of the gun. “Then lead the way.” He scowled, eyeing you with a look that could only be disgust. But he complied. You were the one with the firearm after all. As you followed him back to the house, you couldn’t help but think how absurd it was, holding an angel at gunpoint. You were probably going to hell for this.

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

#one piece #doflamingo #donquixote doflamingo #doflamingo x reader #fallenangel!doffy #alternate universe #angel!au #reader insert #xreader #one piece fanfic #one piece fan fiction #one piece scenarios #one piece imagines #angst #romance

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caredogstips · 7 years

Text

Leaving heart and dwelling: when your mansion of memories becomes someone else’s | Paul Daley

Its nearly time to go now from this cocoon thats been ours for almost two decades: an archive of elation and observance, of weep and disappointment

My father was never much paid attention to feeling , nostalgia, spiritualism or superstition.

He was practical and banal in belief and taste. In his last years he continued to attend faith principally because he had always had said and done and, I believe, to have done otherwise wouldve compelled an explanation to my excessively churchy mother.

Im not sure he believed in saints or even the Holy spirit. He allows one to scoff at what he regarded the oddness of nuns, especially at the traffic lights if they were behind the wheel of the next car. He certainly never believed in ghosts.

Which is why I was flummoxed when he told me hed once checked his mother wandering around his old category residence. It might have been on the working day she died or, perhaps, where reference is locked up the age-old neighbourhood for the last time upon selling it years later. I cant quite remember. And its too late to ask him now.

Grief will do strange things to ones envisages, for certain. Perhaps hed simply fantasy his mother. I dont know. But I do know that I dream of my parents often. I know they are dead. But in my dreams they are always alive and inside or around my house. My subconscious wants to keep them here, in my home.

Its virtually time to go now from the members of this house thats been my cocoon for almost two decades. An archive of lightnes and gala, of anguish and disappointment, extremely, its the place where Ive written six volumes and a million other words, many of them cruel but all of them from the very heart of home.

Its where we produced our newborns. And its where we still, at certain times of the year, mourn one who never reached it.

Our dead mothers are here, very, and in more than only our dreamings. Yes, their personas are on the walls, just as they will be wherever we go next. But their day lived in this house, the working day and weeks and months when they marvelled at “their childrens” primarily just for their plateau ordinariness( everyone, especially on Facebook, boasts that their teenagers are extraordinary, right ?) is simply remain here.

In some directions its my mother-in-law whose proximity I still feel and miss most acutely around this plaza. She ever managed to crowd the seam, such was her capacity to simultaneously solve any maths difficulty, recite the words to an obscure hymn, administer piano rehearsal, sew a button, iron a shirt, change a nappy and feed the dogs, all while nuking my favourite Le Creuset, before settling in at the kitchen bench while we talked about anything and drank wine-colored as I cooked for the both adults and chiselled the charcoal-gray from the pot.

The dead parents are fixed in my recognitions, in my experiences, merely here, within these walls. Those who live here next, perhaps having abandoned their own souls, wont know any of that of course.

And, so, I think: “whats happening in” all of that life lived, ours and that of the departed, all of that human era expended here, when we move?

One of my Indigenous mates anticipates you should have a meagre smoking formality when you leave a house and another at the other goal when you settle into a new plaza. That draws sense to me: a smoking rite( by which I signify some smouldering gum needles and jasmine in a recipe, with no deliberate breath) to signal to ancestors that youre leaving and to please follow, and another in the new lieu to assure incumbent tones you make no harm.

We havent moved yet. But already I feel like Im chiselling with all of this eyeing off of pretty residences by the water where I might mash my( by necessary brand-new, smaller) writing desk, pack our books and hang our prowes, where the dogs( and kids; not quite a secondary circumstance) might cavort merrily. A plaza in which to live brand-new know-hows, accrue more remembrances, promote people and bird-dogs, change veggies and blooms and books.

Theres so much material we cant take.

Like the majestic golden ash out the back, the possum ladder to our roof, whose buds clog our troughs each autumn.

We carved our initials, the three of us, in the stem when we moved in back in 1997: our older daughter, EM , and us adults leaner, darker-haired, little battered by lifes vagaries and chagrins: PD 4 LT .

Soon originated the JD of the son , now nearly 18. We didnt couldnt engrave the initials of the babe who didnt make it, into the golden ash. It was, perhaps, a year later when we observed the boy had taken it upon himself to write of our loss by engraving heartbreak into the stem for all of us: 4 JD 4 ED …. Years subsequently another living little girl, lastly, at last, became the tree: … 4 CJ .

When our son was born we started on what we called the 21 -year project. The theory was that, like Michael Apteds Up series, we would chronicle on cinema, through interviews and footage, his life to age 21. Life constant pas, juggling same, though often uncomplementary, occupations, corroborating ailing parents and other children went in accordance with the rules. We gave up when he was about three. But we did observe his proliferation with ways of pen and appointments on the side of a bookcase that is fixed to one of the walls. Over the years all sorts of random tourists sidekicks, rellos, tradies were recognized off on the side of that bookcase.

It was our visitors notebook. It has to stay, I suppose.

Im not at all handy. But I wonder if a mallet and chisel would do the trick.

Im not much of a gardener, either. Our front is often the unruliest in what is, even by Canberras criteria, a preferably ruly street. But our magnolia, which briefly buds in a prosper of aubergine and white yearly, is the most magnificent in the neighbourhood. Every year the teenagers from when they first sounded as bulges in their fathers belly have been photographed beneath that blooming tree with their mum.

For years Ive waged crusade on the possums who sit in the tree from late wintertime and heckle the dogs while fattening on my magnolia buds. Theyre protected, so you cant kill them, but theyre startled of bright sun. By photo time in early September, only about half the tree blooms. But its enough for the annual photograph.

And as fate or life or occasion or something would have it, the woman from the Australian Bureau of Statistics whos been leaving little memoranda for me for weeks, pushing me to complete the ill-fated census, only knocked on the door again to ask if Id done it hitherto. No. Sorry. Not yet.

I love your home, she said.

I always reckon it seems so messy from wall street, I replied.

No. It gazes interesting and loved.

Its photo time No 18 this weekend. God, it comes around rapidly. It will be our last-place here. Soon well leave.

And our house, our vessel of occasion, of remembrances and beings, will be coming someone elses.