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chroniclesmacaque · 2 years

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A look into the kaleioscope: Aoi in the Wrathful route.

In which I set out to talk about the wrathful route but ended up talking about everything I have seen of the game with a focus on Aoi.

Word count: 5417

(Spoilers for the events pre-timeline branch, the Wrathful Route and part of the Moral one, plus mild allusions to Truthful and Harmony.)

Being a big fan of Girls with Problems and Issues™ (see: Rue from Princess Tutu, Any Girl from Revolutionary Girl Utena) and having gotten word about the focus of the Wrathful Route, I was naturally very curious and hyped for it.

There’s appeal in watching a girl go apeshit: showcasing their flaws in ugly and unpleasant ways not only makes for good drama, but is also refreshing in a (mainstream) media landscape that more often than not smooths out any hint of a rough edge. It’s humanizing. It’s a powerful and cathartic acknowledgement of how destructive Problems and Issues™ can be through showcasing inherently immeasurable internal issues in extreme portrayals that symbolically illustrate the Lengths of the Struggle.

Does the Wrathful Route live up to this?

TL;DR: Yes, and in a thematically rich way.

The Heart of Digimon Survive.

Whatever your opinion on Takuma, he is the lense through which the conflicts of Survive are colored. His narration and internal monologue betray a deep concern about navigating appropriate social distance and boundaries while still being able to effectively check on and care for all his friends. This is at the heart of Survive’s thematic: the clash between social propriety, duty and cooperation versus the personal wants, needs and struggles inherent to individual identity.

The need for balance and the dangers of the extremes on either side of the dichotomy show repeatedly through the events of the game. An artificial and stagnant harmony for the sake of the rule of majority often ends in the needs of the kids being neglected to tragic results, which itself diminishes the longevity of the group and polarizes the dynamics within it. The opposite is also true: not only overtly self-centered, confrontational and stubborn individualistic approaches divide and fracture the group, they also prove detrimental for the long-term chances of success for personal goals and survival. Ryo and Shuuji are early-game poster children to these conundrums.

The beginning of the spiral.

Ryo’s introduction leaves clear he’s hard to get along with: he’s often irritable, uncooperative and antisocial. When it comes to doing his part within the group, Ryo often fails— he refuses to step up to his responsibility as senpai to Takuma and Minoru, he doesn’t help in group discussions and is frequently contrarian and combative to any course of action as well to being told what to do. He’s disruptive to the group’s goals of rescuing Aoi in part 1 and looking for the Professor, Saki and Shuuji in part 2, which is met with Minoru’s taunts and mockery and, potentially, Takuma’s clueless disregard (RIP to those who did try to comfort him on their first play through LOL But I still understand where Ryo is coming from).

This furthers Ryo’s alienation from the group and forms part of the vicious cycle Ryo has found himself in even before attending camp: the intense grief and loneliness stemming from his mother’s death express themselves through high irritability and anxiousness that difficult coping with daily-life activities and socializing. He’s aware his attitude drives him away from others but retiring from public life is simply not an option— even when his mother was still battling her illness, he got pushed to keep up with his responsibilities, as evidenced when he laments right before dying about being encouraged to be strong no matter what (giving thoughtless encouragement to people who are struggling is so prevalent even Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has issued a guide advising healthcare professionals not to push phrases like 頑張れ/頑張って onto patients. Incidentally, another Digimon installment that deals with the struggle to open up in the face of thoughtless encouragement and positivity is ReArise’s season two! Worth checking out!).

Ryo’s is a case where personal struggles disrupt the harmony of the group, but also where not respecting social propriety (Minoru treating him badly, doubly glaring due their age difference) and the failure of the group to look after one of their most vulnerable members creates a spiraling effect that locks the player into the three vanilla routes, two of which end up quite tragically. His death serves as a powerful statement of a very important thesis of Survive’s: that even when the kids act out in unpleasant and disruptive ways, they still deserve to be taken care of, and failure to do so heavily limits what the group can accomplish. The contrary also proves true: looking after all the members of the group strengthens the dynamics within it and brings out everyone’s best (Hey! Who would’ve thought? Ryo is actually a pretty great and supportive guy! Really looking forward to Truthful).

The side from which Aoi pulls.

Where does Aoi fall in this tug-of-war?

She is, simply put, the mom friend of the group: she cooks for them, her partner is the only one that naturally has healing ability in child stage—not to mention she herself will patch others up with her own hands— and she will often keep in mind the needs of the group and what course of action will be most beneficial for all. She’s gentle, values cooperation and has a strong sense of responsibility that will lead her to pick up the slack from those around her.

She prioritizes harmony so much she loses herself to it: she laments her personal identity revolves around being an honor student and a class president always forced to go several extra miles for the sake of the class with no expression of individuality or personal warmth. Her struggle to maintain her personal identity extends to being unable to express or assert herself: she gets self-conscious of her interests, she can’t stand up for herself and refuse extra work load, she won’t share her misgivings out of fear of being a burden and she has great difficulty sharing her input and defending it during group discussions.

These struggles will haunt her through the events of the game: her eroded self-esteem and her self-image as a supporting side character causes her to shrink out of the responsibility of leading the group in part 2 and to be unable to speak up when the group is openly antagonizing Shuuji in part 5. This exacerbates her sense of inadequacy upon both boys’ deaths, where she will continually beat herself up for failing to respond to the situation optimally and will always minimize her contributions to the group. The extent of these regrets can be fully appreciated through her Wrathful event-horizon realizations: she should've been more assertive from the start in order to prevent others from being wrong.

It becomes apparent Aoi's character revolves around duty and responsibility (which is heavily reflected in her partner's evolutions), something she shares in common with Shuuji.

Overachiever syndrome.

Shuuji’s first appearance firmly places him as someone who’s responsible for the rest of the cast: he’s older and their chaperone—as such he needs to make sure no one wanders off, everyone stays on schedule and generally out of trouble. The way he goes about leading them is strict and even nagging. Similarly to Aoi, Shuuji places the well-being of the group and its harmony over himself and others’ individual drives. This is evidenced through his argument with Kaito in part 4: concerned for the safety of the other kids, he opposes venturing outside to search for Miu, which can come off as cowardly at best and callous risk-calculating at worst. However, neither view describes his character accurately: while he's risk-averse, it's an attitude coming from watching two people die before him. He's acutely aware of the dangers that loom over the group but, nonetheless, remains committed and dedicated to look after them. It's thanks to his scrupulous nature that he pushes himself to the extreme: even though he's suffering from nightmares from the intense pressure he's under, disagrees with the course of action the group has decided by majority and is struggling to cope so badly he can't keep his emotions in check, he won't ask for a break or any sort of help that'd alleviate his burden. Ironically, the way he disregards all his individual needs for the sake of his duties backfires and turns his behavior into something that upsets the group greatly.

Shuuji’s intransigent morality is a source of constant friction with Kaito all the way to his death in chapter 5— a clear example of how an imposed and forced unity on the group causes division within it and hurts its specific individuals: with Kaito’s already fraught trust in the group failing to cement and Shuuji ending up openly antagonized by the rest. This extreme view on duty and authority is something that we’ll see further elaboration on through Plutomon’s extremist morality and pathos.

Shuuji’s conflation of leadership with authorianism speaks volumes of his own upbringing—as do his harsh and relentless criticism towards lopmon and his constant nagging to the group to steer them to act responsibly. He mirrors the way his own father treated him growing up, and, as such, his problematic behavior is once again a symptom of deep hurt and unmet needs, a wrong that needs to be communally righted before the group can live up to their best potential.

His leadership serves as a point of contrast to Aoi’s own approach to it: unable to put up with Kaito and Shuuji’s arguing any longer, Aoi uncharacteristically explodes and puts an end to their discussion. The way she engages them, however, isn’t through anger, belittling or mockery— she reminds each of their goals and invites them to question whether their actions are conducive to their success. She’s able to guide them to better behavior instead of upsetting them any further. This is again observed when she’s able to get through the child digimon trio pestering them at the park, and is generally an approach that is highly conductive to harmony for a group that’s highly emotional and under a huge amount of stress, evidenced through Takuma using a similar leading style.

Aoi’s full potential won’t be realized until near end-game stretches, for good reason: her debilitating self-doubt hampers any ability to assert herself, another trait she and Shuuji have in common. While Aoi clams up and fails to respond to the challenges before her, Shuuji tries to force his way through them. Similarly—the way Aoi’s identity revolves around fulfilling the high demands and expectations others have of her mirrors Shuuji’s sense of worth being rooted on meeting his father’s unreasonable standards for him. This leads both to second-guess their decisions, but also to foster a bubbling and potentially monstrous anger within them out of resentment of their grueling workloads, others’ selfish behavior and the unfair treatments they endure.

Both their responses to the stress and the nature of the external expectations over them are indicative of a gendered pattern of socialization that actively stunt their development (think of the lenient, devoted and quiet mother versus the bold and imposing leader). Shuuji’s survival hinges on him being able to embrace the “softer” sensitive and nurturing side of himself embodied by Lopmon as much as Aoi’s healthy development necessitates her to allow herself to assert herself and lean on the honesty encapsulated in Labramon.

Their refusal to burden the group with their personal struggles plays a key factor in both of their downfalls. Their better end-games have them relying on other characters such as Ryo, Takuma, Kaito and Saki to cross the bridge they didn't know they needed to cross to begin with.

Oil and warm water.

If Aoi is someone who will prioritize harmony above all else, then Kaito is someone who often has trouble adhering to it. His irascible, aggressively independent and headstrong personality often puts him at odds with the group, specially during times when they're scared and indecisive (which is often). However, this doesn't mean Kaito is such a selfish guy that he won't care about imposing on the group or about their well-being. Quite the contrary, if left to his own devices, he'll try to handle his problems alone so as to not to disturb the others— after all, Takuma did have to talk him out of leaving alone to look for Miu twice in chapter 5. His affinity dialogue shows time and time again that he will fight tirelessly to defend his sister even if that isolates him from the rest of the world. The lack of external support for both Shinonome siblings to deal with their traumatic past informs Kaito’s difficulties with respecting authority— especially if it doesn't align with his goals— and with fully integrating and leaning on the group.

While seemingly irreconcilable opposites, Aoi and Kaito, at their core, are all about a strong drive to look after other people. Their different approaches can paint them either as tragic foils or a complementary leading duo.

Kaito’s steely resolution to fight doesn’t always have to be a divisive force in the group, as illustrated in the Moral Route: when they’re cornered at the throne room, he has the head not to run off and influences the group to snap out of their fear-induced paralysis to protect themselves against the kenzoku. Aoi benefits from his snappy decisions— where she’d usually have difficulty making up her mind under intense pressure, she can ride his confidence and rouse the rest of the group behind this directive. Similarly, when they’re back at the school, Kaito can take cues out of Aoi’s tirelessly behind-the-scenes managerial work and listen to her concerns about their food supply and provide much needed help to cover the group’s needs. The way they share the burden of leading and caring for the group illustrates Survive’s ideal of a balance that allows both the harmony of the group and individuals to thrive— the burden of looking after a group shouldn’t fall on a single person. This stands in contrast to Aoi deciding to take it all on herself in Wrathful: being able to trust others with her burdens and worries and delegate work is essential for her healthier development in Moral.

Their differing stances also help illustrate the extremes in Survive’s dichotomy in the Wrathful and Harmony routes. Wrathful illustrates a kind of extreme, imposed Harmony that oppresses any dissent and threatens to erase any and all individuality.

The free-spirited optimist and the older serious-minded girl.

Saving the catalyst for the Wrathful route for last, we have our cheerful and radiant personality, Kimishima Saki. The very prologue of the game makes it clear that Aoi likes Saki quite a bit.There’s a palpable sense of admiration for her junior’s refreshing honesty that’s amicable, keen and direct in a way that still jives with Aoi’s personal values. It’s easy to see why Aoi, who struggles to assert herself, would marvel at those traits in Saki. Aoi’s high regard for her shows up again during her passionate defense of Saki in part 5, much to her junior’s delight and surprise. This admiration is very much mutual: for Saki, who struggles with her sense of belonging and relevance in her interpersonal connections, Aoi’s commitment to caring for the group stands as both an example to follow as someone who can easily adhere to a group’s harmony and nurture it as well as a comforting presence that makes her feel accepted and healed.

It’s no surprise, then, that a close bond blossoms between the two. Their relationship balances each other out on a personal level: Saki will actively seek to alleviate Aoi’s workload even when she doesn’t ask, as well as look after her so she doesn’t run herself ragged. Additionally, Saki is capable of comforting her when Aoi is beating herself down or is generally affected by the grueling situation they’re in, as seen when she patiently comforts her after Ryo’s death. Aoi will reign Saki back in (or try to) when her bluntness is crossing the line and will serve as her confidant and care for her as a whole person. It’s no hyperbole to say Saki is the only camper Aoi manages to open up and bond with on a deep level, and a key figure in her budding support system. It’s only natural, then, that losing her would break Aoi’s fraught mental stability.

The momentum of the Wrathful Route.

Why do Kaito and Saki run off on their own during the amusement park debacle in the Wrathful route? Why are they able to keep their cool in Moral and not here? To answer this, we need to take a look at the function of the Karma System beyond triggering Agumon’s evolutions and showing the timeline options during the part 8 split, as well as the meaning behind the Wrathful route.

The Karma system allows for a cumulation of momentum, so to speak. Karma shouldn’t be seen only as a straight-forward system of retribution and rewards for one’s actions and decisions, but as the conjunction of all the moving parts in the universe that allow the destiny of a person to be forged, which includes one’s legacy, community and the way one interacts with it. Digimon Survive uses this concept to shape the energy the group will move through each specific route. Simply put, it shapes the mood of the group. If one balances the Karma points for all of three options, then the group’s fate can go either way. If one leans heavily into any of them, then, that heavily restricts the fate the group is able to forge for itself.

What is that fate in the Wrathful route?

Let’s start by remembering the words of the man-behind-the-project himself, Habu Kazumasa, who states in an interview that the staff tried not to think of the different timelines as the bad ones or the correct ones, and rather gave a theme to each of them; the Wrathful route being about “acting on one’s emotions” (citation pending lol). This is certainly reflected in the original name of the route itself: 激情, a term pertaining to passion: strong and/or violent emotions and convictions.

What this means for Survive’s narrative is that most of the group is favoring acting based on their individual drives and values, without prioritizing the unity of the group, which places Aoi’s harmony-based approach as the isolated attitude within it. This helps us make sense of Kaito’s hot-headedness getting the best of him, then, being an individual who already prominently acts based on his personal goals even if it puts him at odds with the group. It also informs Saki’s anxious emotions coming to a head with her impulsive urge to help out the vulnerable digimon at the park: while a noble effort, it’s informed by her antsy-ness with regards her sense of belonging, the meaningfulness of her existence and her fear of death. Aoi’s own failure to rouse the group behind a clear order reflects her being lost in her own strong fear as well as Miu’s similar mental block to open up the hidden throne room hidden pathway.

Saki’s tragic end directly parallels the cutscene containing the evolution of her Floramon into Vegiemon (lol). Back then, Saki still hadn’t experienced what it meant to truly belong in a group and to be able to interact beyond what she knows will outwardly, yet superficially, get her to be socially accepted. As a result, she wasn’t sure of the sincerity of her own emotions and actions towards others, doubting her own intentions when following Ryo around. What lies at the core of Saki’s teetering act between refreshing bluntness and faux pas leading to rejection is the isolation, and the social inexperience this brought as a result, her chronic illness has imparted Saki.

By contrast, when part 9 rolls in, Saki has experienced working together in a team for the sake of the communal good of survival. With stakes so high, she’s bound to feel united to the group. She has also gotten a taste of a deeper self-acceptance through her bond with Floramon, the budding confidence to be herself unabashedly through Takuma’s assurances, the group’s continued acceptance of her role in it and Aoi’s warm, intimate and caring support. She’s becoming someone who has a place in the world and can start acting based on values that go beyond herself, and this is what her self-sacrifice epitomizes: she’s no longer insecure or indecisive about her commitment to the group and the greater good.

Into the mist.

The Wrathful route is characterized by thorough elaboration on Aoi’s interiority and inner monologue. This allows us to see the inner turmoil, conflicting viewpoints and the full extent of her self-depreciation that she usually keeps behind locked doors while she spirals.

Upon Saki’s death, Aoi experiences intense guilt over failing to keep Saki safe, as she was her leader calling the shots and guiding her through the rescue efforts, for mistaking the kenzoku for digimon in need and for losing grasp of her hand during the tug-of-war deciding Saki’s death. She isolates herself from the group due her grief, her continuous ruminations over the mistakes she did consume her thoughts and prevent her from continuing her duties as their leader and her managerial work at their base.

Now that Aoi it’s out of commission, Kaito belatedly comes into full appreciation of the labored support Aoi has offered the group. Knowing Saki was her moral support, Kaito attempts to reach out to her in order to pay the favor back despite his advice to Takuma to give Aoi some space. Takuma’s timid, soft-spoken approach wouldn’t be befitting to challenge Aoi’s spiraling thoughts, so it’s up to Kaito’s more direct approach and his understanding of what it takes to shoulder such responsabilites to step up to the task.

He bluntly refutes her self-blaming beliefs, pushing her to recontextualize Saki’s death from her personal failure to something Saki had agency in. It’s during these exchanges that it comes to stark light how much of Aoi’s inner world never gets expressed to the others, as her replies to Kaito are merely a small fraction of all the swirling emotions and thoughts festering in her head.

While Kaito’s efforts aren’t completely fruitless, they run into the Aoi’s emotional wall and don’t manage to address her perfectionist beliefs before Harumode reappears to lure them into the library. The seed towards Plutomon’s black and white thinking is already taking root: Aoi can’t afford to let herself falter or make mistakes anymore in order not to lose anyone else, or it’d keep reflecting badly on her own integrity as a person. So she runs off on her own despite being antithetical to her own values. Kaito’s decision to go back to the group and gather them despite running off on his own being more in line with his usual Modus Operandi shows his commitment to keeping the group together and leading them in Aoi’s place, placing his development as a foil to Aoi’s spiraling.

The illusions Aoi sees within the library reflect that guilt is still ravaging her heart and fuel her self-berating back to full strength. However, Kaito’s words are not lost on Aoi and her thoughts soon start blaming Saki for own death, much to Aoi’s chagrin. Examining the root behind her reasoning reveals that just as much Aoi blames herself, she’s also intensely angry at the others for always taking unnecessary risks without sparing a thought for unity and responsibility. This touches on a sore spot for her, since being taken advantage of or having her authority diminished by others’ selfishness has been an open wound from before she even attended camp. Unable to bear being with other people, Aoi wanders into the misty woods to get lost further into her ruminations.

Each time Aoi replays the events in her head, another edge that hurts her seems to surface. Instead of coming to terms with Saki’s self-sacrifice, Aoi distorts it into a rejection of herself and her feelings. Instead of reaching the conclusion that she should’ve been more assertive out of a genuine growth in her confidence,the conclusion is fueled by her intense disgust over being the same always weak, flawed her of the past. Instead of learning to share the responsibility with her peers, she concludes she should’ve prevented other people from being wrong. Instead of understanding how her intense self-censoring stunts her growth and makes it near-impossible for her friends —specially for Kaito and Labramon at the time, the other key figures in her support system— to reach out to her and help her, she concludes bottling up everything was for the better. If everyone is already this selfish, adding to the pile would simply be unbefitting and irresponsible of her. This makes for a highly striking and effective portrayal of grief, with Aoi being unable to relentlessly revisit the event and find more and more shortcomings in herself and everyone around her. Her trust in others is fundamentally broken at this point.

Yet, despite her increasing mistrust of others, Aoi is finally able to internalize the depth of Labramon’s love and support for her. How could she not? Even though Aoi is at her most closed off and lowest mood, Labramon is still by her side, begging her to let her know the entirety of her heart. While a moving moment, this also symbolically marks the moment where Aoi has decided that the only beings she can trust are herself and her partner. This self-aggrandizing posture fueled by her self-loathing and guilt form the basis of Plutomon’s utter self-righteousness.

Her conviction that only her harmony-based posture and feelings are right to solve the conflict between humans and kemonogami, prompt her to take the extremely ill-advised decision to try to appeal to Piemon, as well as to cure him in a show of good grace. This, of course, backfires immediately, as Piemon brutally attacks her and her partner. This last ditch-effort for a pacific resolution of the conflict informs Plutomon’s posture that if she can’t talk others into Harmony, then she will just have to force them and it’s the last step into the complete corruption of her values and growth.

Death evolutions.

Who doesn’t love a good symbolic death in their narrative? Survive generously offers two for the price of one. However, Aoi and Labramon’s gruesome agony isn’t the only time death shows in Labramon’s evolution line. It’s finally time to look into the themes woven into Labramon’s evolutions and how they relate to Aoi’s character.

Starting with Labramon herself, what we can learn from her official profile and debut is that she’s a digimon with a duty. Being an artificial digimon means she was specifically created to fulfill a function, which is further cemented by the fact it’s a literal living vaccine program. Her only skill movement in-game is Cure Liqueur, a healing skill that aims to restore and optimize weakened data (put a pin on this). Her fierce loyalty and dutiful origins already fit Aoi to a tee.

In general, devotion to one’s duty is a key theme to Labramon’s evo line. Dobermon takes this a step further being a digimon whose only purpose is to hunt viruses. Originally consumed by viruses itself, its strong vaccine nature broke through and it learned to harness violence to fulfill its mission. This adult stage marks the start of a consistent theme in the evo line about harnessing monstrous power in order to fulfill one’s duties, much like Aoi needs to embrace assertiveness and authority to be able to properly respond to the situations before her and achieve her goals. This is also the first time the theme of death as transformation will show up in the evo line. Dobermon’s evolution dialogue encourages Aoi to take pride in her efforts and work to push her into this ever on-going journey of embracing her own agency.

Cerberumon is the guardian of the Dark Area, a duty that goes a degree higher in importance than solely hunting viruses, much like Aoi will eventually have to step up into the heavier responsibility to lead the group. Cerberumon’s ferocious appearance is remarked upon in the evolution dialogue: where Aoi openly admits her desire for power— power as having the agency, authority and self-confidence to assert herself—. Cerberumon’s words encourage her not to be afraid of using this latent power already present in her heart.

Anubimon, the other possible ultimate available to unlock in the vanilla routes, is the judge of the dark area, who weighs over fallen digimon’s data to either banish them forever or grant them the chance of rebirth. Its role as a fair judge relates to Aoi’s role as a leader who listens to everyone’s input so everyone can reach either a unanimous decision or call for a timeout so the group can put their feelings back in line. (ALSO. I couldn’t unlock it in my Moral run, so this as much as I can glean from lore and plot alone.) This position as a fair judge stands in direct opposition to Aoi’s pathos as Plutomon.

Now, onto the dramatic ultimate evolution of the Wrathful route: Plutomon. Plutomon it’s a virus executioner that’s known for attacking with intense terror and violence. It’s a Death God itself that governs tyrannically over the realm of the dead. Unlike Anubimon, who weighs digimons’ worthiness, Plutomon mercilessly slays anything it deems evil and takes pleasure in it. Its cruel nature is reflected in it having become a virus itself. All of this lore is directly reflected in Aoi’s Wrathful ethos: as Plutomon, she has cast off her humanity to transcend her weaknesses, becoming scheming and even taking pleasure in venting her pent up bitterness by playing her friends like a fiddle— both when she intentionally makes them waste time arguing with her while Miyuki is dying on the floor, and when she emotionally manipulates them into avenging her by fighting the Master. Plutomon’s tyrannical rule is reflected in Aoi’s utter self-righteousness, where any dissenting opinions are deemed mistakes she needs to strong-arm others out of. She’s reached the ultimate black and white vision of her ideals, convinced she’s being the best version of herself she could possibly be. Despite Aoi!Plutomon’s goals for perfect harmony and oneness, she has become the embodiment of violent convictions herself.

Plutomon’s evolution cutscene involves Aoi and Labramon slowly and painfully agonizing after being attacked by Piemon. Since the two are the healers of the group, their friends are unable to help them beyond fighting Piemon for them. This epitomizes the isolation Aoi has felt both in the human world and the kemonogami one: in the human world, she felt alienated because only she would get admonished for undone work as well as if she went the extra mile to get it done herself. In the kemonogami world, after losing Saki and thus having lost her own confidant as well as internalizing a sense of rejection from her self-sacrifice, she laments no one can understand her heart and look after her the same way she does for the group. In a morbid parallel to how she takes on all the group’s burden upon her shoulders, if Aoi wants to live, she alone will have to drag herself through the ground to reach her partner. Driven by her loyalty and duty to Aoi to the very end, Labramon does the ultimate act of self-sacrifice by using her remaining life energy to restore Aoi (very bittersweet use of the function behind Cure Liqueur! Incidentally, Plutomon’s self-healing ability forms part of this theme as well:where Labramon heals the party, Plutomon only heals itself). The evolution that takes place responds to Aoi’s heart passionately clinging to life as well as her inner turmoil. Thus, comes Aoi back to life in a terrifying miracle marked by her deep bond with her partner and all it represents. Plutomon is the most extreme externalization of her hidden unresolved struggles to open up, her perfectionism, her self loathing, repressed emotions and extreme morality.

Acknowledgements.

Shout out to digitalsurvivor for consistently putting out helpful information that gets lost in translation and cultural differences, as well as having long talks with me that help me enrich my perspective on the topics covered.

Special thanks to all my dear friends that allowed me to explain the events of the game in detail and wall-text their inboxes with my interpretations of the narrative. Their kind and patient dialogue helped me greatly to flesh out and complement my analysis.

#Digimon Survive #Digimon Survive spoilers #Aoi Shibuya #Shibuya Aoi #Ryo Tominaga #Tominaga Ryo #Shuuji Kayama #Kayama Shuuji #Kaito Shinonome #Shinonome Kaito #Saki Kimishima #Kimishima Saki

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gegewrites · 2 years

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Geges Masterlist <3

Thank you for ur support <3

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rynnaaurelius · 3 years

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Titan’s Curse But Make It Time Loop: Nico di Angelo Edition

-Okay so I’m at work and not doing much and who wants to actually edit your shit drafts for your actual WIPs so that they’re less bad? No one, that’s who

-So I had an idea: The Titan’s Curse. Also known as the book where people start to die. It sucks to be a demigod in this book--for the first time in the original series, it really does.

-Not everything is fixed, not everyone is saved, and people start to have to make really tough decisions.

-So we fix it. Not by throwing Percy, or Annabeth, or Thalia, or, hell, even Bianca or Grover into the mix.

-Throwing the marginally more grown-up, more trained, and more knowledgeable demigods into the fire, who’d get everyone alive and safe by the third time ‘round? Nah.

-We’re making Nico fix this.

-Because here’s the thing about Nico di Angelo: Sure, he grows up to become a major badass, the Ghost King, so on and so forth. But not yet.

-For now, Nico is baby, a ten-year-old whose experience with any kind of fighting consists of one (1) Capture The Flag game and who’s still half-reliant on Mythomagic to explain what the fuck is happening.

-He’s also got the worst knowledge makeup possible! He knows he’s a son of Hades, which is bad, he knows to stick monsters with the pointy end of swords but nothing else, he knows that Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace are Very Big Deals (But also doesn’t know why beyond parents), and he’s, at best, vaguely aware that there’s some kind of bad prophecy hanging around.

-Also by the end of the book, he’s just been told his last immediate family who isn’t Hades is dead in one of the worst ways possible, and he--pretty irrationally IMO, but Nico’s a kid who has been through a lot recently, so we’re not holding that against him--blames Percy Jackson.

-Literally, you probably can’t pick an angstier or worse choice to run through the time travel trope. I love it.

-We’re making this kid save Bianca’s life via time loop, which happens due to. . .hmm, we’ll say the Fates did it.

-So, Loop 0 = Canon, only at the end of the day on December 21st, after the conversation with Percy, Nico falls asleep only gods know where only to wake up the day he meets Percy Jackson:

Loop 1:

-Nico doesn’t actually change anything meaningful at first.

-Spends most of it shellshocked and not unconvinced the last week (For him, anyway) wasn’t a horrible nightmare; shellshocked and staring at Percy Jackson, anyway.

-(Percy’s wondering what’s up with the silent kid his sister had talked up as a cheerful chatterbox)

-It’s only when Bianca agrees to join the quest for Artemis that he starts kicking up a fuss; demanding to go, screaming that she can’t leave him even more, not again.

-(Bianca hesitates; briefly, enough to remind Nico that she loves him. But she’s not their mother, and she needs this)

-Bianca still dies. Percy comes back pale and guilty. Nico doesn’t yell at him when he returns--he already knows. He accepts the Hades figurine so that he can throw it into the lake.

-He slinks off back into Cabin Eleven and falls asleep, hoping desperately that he gets a third chance.

Loop 2:

-He does.

Loop 3:

-After a very painful death at the hands of Dr. Thorn, Nico, generally being a straightforward person at this stage of life, takes the obvious path this time around: He tries to tell Bianca--who brushes it off as a dream.

-Annabeth still goes over the cliff when Nico takes the initiative of attaching himself and his sister to Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace at the dance. He tries to tell Percy and Thalia when Bianca still joins the Hunt, promising Nico that whatever he saw, she’ll be extra careful.

-(Bianca’s fearful of what Nico's saying, and thinks that if these sworn sisters can’t keep her safe, who can?)

-Artemis gives Nico a speculative look but agrees when he begs her to protect Bianca at all costs.

-He doesn’t get on the quest. Being a reasonable demigod of questionable parentage, he sneaks out of camp.

-He gets caught, because despite being aware of his awesome new powers, he doesn’t know how to use them, and is still a ten-year-old who can barely hold a sword the right way.

-He gives Percy the puppy dog eyes and shows off said awesome new powers. Percy forces him back.

-Nico follows him.

-Repeat until Percy dies saving Nico from the Nemean Lion in Washington, DC.

-Nico can’t find it in himself to be terribly sad--especially when he doesn’t make it much longer.

Loop 4:

-He’s really stuck like this, huh?

-Oh, Di Immortales.

-(Before Percy gets his chest ripped to shreds by a lion and Nico meets skeleton cats, he learned how to hold a sword properly and curse fluently in Greek. Percy probably only meant to teach him one of those things)

-In unrelated news: Having a big crush on a guy who thinks he’s only known you for a couple hours? Terrible.

-Trying to hate the guy who let your sister die when he’s that stupid and nice? Even worse.

-That stupid lion.

Loop 5, 6, 7, 8, 9:

-Nico repeats: That stupid lion.

-Somewhere in Loop 7 he starts to steal supplies out of the camp store when he follows Percy following the quest.

-They forcefeed the lion enough trail mix and frozen ice cream in Loop 9 that they don’t die this time.

-At least until someone called the General shows up and Nico’s dead before he can raise his sword.

Loop 10:

-Nico wakes up in his and Bianca’s room in Westover and starts crying. Bianca tells the headmaster they’re both sick and Nico lets her hold him all day.

-They fall asleep and Nico swears he won’t let her die again.

Loop 11, 12, 13:

-He wakes up and he still can’t get out of bed without feeling that blade cutting between his ribs, burning like it’s on fire.

-Gods, he’s so sorry, Bianca. Dispiace tanto.

Loop 14:

-He can get up without feeling like he’s about to die again. Bianca fusses but assumes it was just a bad dream.

-Nico is caught stealing and can’t follow Percy until it’s too late.

-Everyone assumes this means he’s a son of Hermes, however, and Nico can’t correct them without opening his mouth and letting the sobbing laughter out.

-Figuring he’s about to get another chance next round anyway, he takes Travis and Connor Stoll up on their offer to learn a thing or two so that he doesn’t get Cabin Eleven slapped with kitchen duty from now until Doomsday.

-He likes the Stolls. He spent most of the time, pre-looping, actively avoiding everyone at camp as he waited for Bianca and Percy to come back, but they’re not that bad.

-Percy comes back with the figurine and no sister and Nico remembers why he’s stuck.

Loop 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23:

-After Loop 12 and being killed in Washington DC again, Nico realizes: He needs to learn how to fight.

-Unless he gets killed early or refuses to leave Westover, the loop resets after seven days. So, he has seven days to train each time.

-He gets to camp, finds the arena, and meets Clarisse La Rue. He demands she teach him how to kill monsters.

-She laughs, and tells him that attitude in his size will make monsters easy to kill, they’ll laugh so hard.

-Clarisse teaches him how to swing a sword each time--but only after mocking his unamused face.

-Somehow, Percy coming back with news of Bianca’s death only hurts more each time.

Loop 24:

-Nico wakes up before Bianca this time. He looks over at her bed and knows. He’s got to try this time.

-It’s disturbingly easy making friends with Percy Jackson after the last loops.

-Bessie’s new. Cute, but new.

-Nico wonders just how much he’s missed in the past--he thinks of Annabeth Chase, and hopes she hasn’t been dying each time.

-Percy doesn’t even argue when Nico shows up in the stables with a bag slung over his shoulder, and the sword he’s been stealing out of the shed strapped to his hip.

-Nico suggests the ice cream--again--to Percy in DC before

-Nico might be getting the hang of this.

Loop 25:

-Nico is not getting the hang of this.

-Zoë Nightshade’s refusal to accept Percy and Nico on the quest--violating a prophecy, and gods, Nico’s curious if that prophecy ever mentioned this--has so far gotten them attacked and killed by spartoi once.

-And again. As Nico bleeds out on the floor, he watches a panicked blond man--a demigod--plead for mercy.

-Isn’t he on the other side?

Loop 26:

-His name is Luke Castellan and he apparently wants the gods dead.

-Nico can relate at this point.

-The General is Atlas, and Nico knows enough about Greek mythology, real and wrong, at this point to know that is bad.

Loop 27:

-Twenty-six tries, but they finally make it out of DC. Threatening the questers with Atlas killing them all is more than enough.

-For the first time, Nico doesn’t know what happens next. He glues himself to Bianca’s side and glares at anything suspicious.

-With help that Percy refuses to name, even when Nico tries his hardest, they go to New Mexico.

-There’s a boar and it’s so close, they make it to what the others are calling “the junkyard of the gods”.

-Nico sees the Hades figurine on the ground.

-Bianca grins in delight and picks it up, calling for him.

-He can’t help it.

-Nico starts screaming.

Loop 28:

-His sister’s murderer was never Percy Jackson.

-His sister’s murderer was a force of mechanics that makes Nico fully understand, for the first time, what the gods are, beyond stats on a card.

-Talos.

-Nico is going to destroy him.

Loop 29:

-She dies.

Loop 30:

-Again.

Loop 31:

-Again.

-Loop 32, 33, 34, 3536373839FortyFo r t y O n e--:

-Again. Again. Again. Again again againagainagainagainAGAIN--

Loop 42:

-Nico gets out of bed. He finds Percy Jackson at the dance, hugs him, and tells him he’s sorry.

-Nico walks outside and waits for Dr. Thorn in the snow. He can feel the shadows curling at the edge of the wood like a sixth sense, now. Waiting for him to summon the restless dead out of them.

-So many attempts to save his sister, ranging from sacrificing himself to sacrificing Percy--not that Percy needs the push, Nico has found--to any and all members of the quest.

-She dies. Always, always dies. Whatever Nico does, that junkyard is full of the death of Bianca di Angelo.

-He tried avoiding it. Once. Loop 33. Nico threw such a fit he’s surprised he wasn’t sent back to Camp Half-Blood by the Hunters, but it kept them out of the junkyard.

-He tries not to remember how little was left of his sister’s body by the monsters that time.

-Son of Hades. After all this time, Nico’s beginning to wonder if this is what it means. Death and death and death.

-Dr. Thorn walks outside, and Nico can feel a ghoulish grin crossing his face that has no place on a ten-year-old.

-One of them is going to die, this loop. And Nico will not go to New Mexico.

Loop 43:

-Nico wonders if there was a past life of his he needs to remember. Who could he have made this angry?

-He lies to Bianca and they stay in Westover again this time. Better than death, anyway.

Loop 44:

-Nico tries a different tack this time. A more roundabout way of things.

-He takes Bianca and throws the two of them in the way of the battle with the manticore.

-After all this time, he still doesn’t know much about Annabeth Chase. She gets kidnapped and returned safely to Percy every time, to the best of his knowledge.

-Nico dies holding up the sky, but at least Bianca lives, under the protection of Artemis.

Loop 45:

-Nico looks in the mirror and studies the new grey streak with fascination. And, maybe, some hope.

-Things can change.

Loop 46, 47, 48, 49, 50:

-Nico gets kidnapped a few times. Once, he’s killed in a rage by a Titan with horns, but it’s quick. Mostly, he holds up the sky to get Artemis out.

-She looks at him strangely each time and Nico wonders if she can see what he’s done.

Loop 51:

-They figure out he’s a son of Hades. They offer him Olympus. Olympus and Bessie--the Ophiotaurus, rather.

-Nico says no.

Loop 52:

-Nico says yes.

Loop 53:

-Being on the verge of overthrowing the gods and keeping everyone he’s grown to care for--in the case of several Hunters, against his will; in Percy Jackson’s case, Nico loves him as much as he hates him at this point--doesn’t do much, apparently.

-Nico stays in Westover again. He resists the urge to tell Bianca that would-be destroyers of Olympus don’t need to brush their hair, whatever she says.

Loop 54:

-Nico goes over the edge of the cliff again, but with Percy Jackson.

-This isn’t the first time; in Loop 46, Percy had taken the sky for both the sake of Artemis and Nico until it killed him.

-What’s different, is Nico’s in the middle of what’s become the usual panic attack when he’s about to die for the hundredth time, and his powers react.

-Percy holds him close and calls him cousin. Tells him he’ll never leave Nico.

-You have no idea, Nico whispers. You can’t leave me.

-You think I want to? Percy whispers back. You’re not alone, Nico.

-Nico’s sobbing sounds like laughter.

Loop 55:

-Nico tells Percy the truth for the third time. This is the first time he hasn’t told Bianca first.

-They’ve just found the Erymanthian Boar, Thalia’s told Nico his goth needs work--whatever that means--and Nico’s bracing himself for the junkyard again.

-Getting kidnapped by the Titans really gets old after a while.

-He still has the grey streak, and no number of excuses will fully soothe his sister, but the Hunt’s a good distraction from it.

-Nico doesn’t blame Bianca anymore for it. He thinks.

-Nearly a year into this loop and Nico’s finding it hard to blame anyone for much of anything, anymore. Especially when he sees what she’s faced. Again. And again.

-For now, this time, Percy Jackson is staring at Nico with wide eyes at what Nico’s told him--through these loops, Nico’s starting to wonder if he now knows more about Percy than Percy’s own best friends--and says he believes him.

-Once, Nico would’ve exploded from joy. Now, he just sighs and nods.

-Percy tells him how to condense the conversation for the next loop. He advises Nico to research Talos, “like Annabeth would.”

-He advises Nico to warn Percy’s next loop self about Annabeth’s kidnapping. Nico wonders if he’s gone insane that he’s considering it.

-Bianca dies.

Loop 56:

-Nico makes the executive decision this time to try and befriend Annabeth Chase. As such, he takes Percy’s advice.

Loop 57:

-It takes him two tries to befriend Annabeth Chase and learn about Talos.

Loop 58:

-Three times.

-But the nail. The nail in the ankle of Talos.

Loop 59:

-He hangs back at camp again this time and meets Charles Beckendorf, head of Cabin Nine, and son of Hephaestus.

-Nico figures that short of finding the god himself and committing temporary suicide--not that it hasn’t crossed Nico’s mind--his son will have to do.

-(He’s tried his hand at summoning ghosts, but Daedalus refuses to show, for some reason)

-Beckendorf frowns and tells Nico he would have to see Talos himself.

-Nico hadn’t realized just how much cursing he had picked up off of Percy and Thalia until that moment.

Loop 60:

-Nico knows what the prophecy says. One shall be lost in the land without rain.

-He knows it’s why he’s been failing so much.

-The trouble is, he no longer cares.

Loop 61:

-It took him a try, but he gets Beckendorf on the quest, prepared to defeat the Talos prototype.

Loop 62:

-Strike that, two tries.

-Nico really hates the Nemean Lion.

Loop 63, 64:

-Nico has solved half a problem: How to defeat Talos without putting someone inside the robot.

-The other half of the problem is now that they are all electrocuted by a dying automaton for their efforts.

Loop 65:

-Beckendorf’s crush--girlfriend? crush, they’re both insisting--Silena Beauregard comes along this time. Nico won’t complain over the extra manpower, even if he’s positive that eight campers and Hunters are patent overkill for one quest.

-Silena pulls Bianca out of the wreckage. Nico’s heart stops.

-Silena’s crying when she mentions that if they had been a bit earlier, she could have been revived.

-Nico wonders if Thalia’s going to stab him as he starts whooping. And takes notes about where Talos falls.

Loop 66:

-Nico swears, if Percy Jackson tries to sacrifice himself for Annabeth Chase one more time--

Loop 67:

-Bianca.

-I found you, he sobs. I found you.

-Gods damn the Hoover Dam.

Loop 68:

-And again.

-Despite having the distinct inkling at this point that he doesn’t much like like girls, Nico could kiss Silena Beauregard and Thalia Grace when they manage to revive his sister each time.

-She’s shaky and leaning on him and was dead, he could see her soul floating away--

-But she’s there.

-Nico refuses to let his sister out of the sight at the Hoover Dam and Percy befriends the Naiads this time.

-At least, until the Titans--who Nico made the very big mistake of taunting at DC--sends monsters he can’t control.

Loop 69, 70, 71, 72, 73:

-They keep dying in various combinations at the Hoover Dam now that Nico’s figured out how to save Bianca.

-At least, until he gets separated from Percy in Loop 73 and he meets a redheaded girl with a penchant for calling Nico pint-size.

-Athena dislikes Percy, Nico, Bianca, and Thalia in equal measure. Having learned of the Great Prophecy in Loop 16 and Percy’s mooning over Annabeth in. . .well, every loop, Nico can’t quite blame her.

Loop 74:

-Her name is Rachel Elizabeth Dare and Nico likes her. She takes none of their shit and if it weren’t for the fact that they already have eight people on the quest, he’d want to take her along.

-Bianca gets in a fight with the Old Man of the Sea. Thalia electrocutes him when he throws Bianca in the bay.

Loop 75:

-Nico wakes up in Westover with the distinct feeling that he was drowned on dry land.

-He stays in bed shivering, that day.

Loop 76:

-Atlas is the father of Zoë Nightshade. Nico learned this around Loop 50. He had realized around five loops ago that this probably meant she was going to die “by a parent’s hand.”

-He hadn’t realized that it was going to hurt to watch.

Loop 77, 78, 79, 80, 81:

-Now that he’s figured things out to about San Francisco, it seems the world is out to get him. The number of fights or mistakes that he either makes himself or has to head off are ridiculous.

Loop 82:

-Nico is so very tired. And wishes he felt ten years old again.

Loop 83:

-If Thalia gets in one more fight with Nereus, Nico's going to walk into the sea.

Loop 84:

-He wanders off, in this one. Grover had been killed in Hoover Dam, so Nico’s waiting for the reset at this point.

-In the meantime, Nico figures there are worse things to do than enjoy a good afternoon in San Francisco. He even meets a boy in a purple shirt.

-His name is Jason and he has hair like the sun.

-If he ever fixes this, Nico wants to find him.

Loop 85:

-Nico’s not fast enough in the junkyard.

-In San Francisco, he tries to find the ugliest, biggest trouble he can find.

-He finds a pair of teenagers in armor who yell Latin at him instead.

Loop 86:

-There’s a dragon that will attack them in the Garden of the Hesperides if they make it angry enough and Nico is so tired.

Loop 87:

- Zoë Nightshade is dead. They’ve won.

-Funny definition of “win”, considering they’ve all almost died this loop about a dozen times each, and Nico can’t explain why he’s crying on the body of a Hunter he only met a week ago, in their eyes.

-She hates him, some loops. More loops, she looks at him with ghosts of old grief in her eyes and hands him a knife.

-The gods execute Bessie, and then, Nico watches as his father turns to him and Bianca with sorrowful eyes.

-Nico should’ve figured, after almost ninety loops.

Loop 88:

-Luke offers one of them the entrails of Bessie again.

-Nico takes them.

Loop 89:

-For all the good it does. Nico wakes up as he does every time now: Powerless, in bed, and with only a grey streak to show for his efforts.

Loop 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98:

-Nico doesn’t know how to save Zoë Nightshade. Bianca, he could trick and fight his way into it. Beckendorf and Silena and Percy and a loophole in lost could save his sister.

-Her, she just. . .dies. Sometimes in DC, sometimes in San Francisco, sometimes on the hills of Mt. Tamalpais. Always at the hands of Atlas.

-Always, being murdered by her father.

-It’s not as gutting as watching his sister die, but it aches more in his chest, somehow.

Loop 99:

-He sticks close to Zoë this time. Same as he’s done with Percy, Annabeth, his sister, Thalia, and Grover, time and time again. But not her, Nico is realizing. Not the clinging he’s achieving now.

-Hoping for. . .something.

-He knows better than to tell the immortal Lieutenant of Artemis the whole truth. The loneliness is enough.

-She’s less frosty to him from the start than to, say, Grover or Percy, after Annabeth goes over the cliff again. When he shows up in DC, she’s much less angry than he’s seen her.

-Along the way to New Mexico and then San Francisco, he listens. He’s grown better at it, this far in. When the others are asleep, when Bianca is being fussed over after Talos, when everyone but them is asleep by the fire, he listens.

-And she tells him about her sisters. About her father, when the world was young and Atlas had looked on every daughter of his with pride. She tells him, pride glistening in her eyes, of the battles she has seen, the hunts she has overseen at the command of a goddess, the monsters she has killed, and the epithets she has been given.

-He doesn’t ask anything of her. Not until they’re in the house of Annabeth’s father, drinking lemonade the night before the battle, and Nico knows she is about to die again.

-What do you want, he asks. You’ve done everything. What’s left?

-She stopped, ice seems to creep over her again, and Nico wondered if he’d hit some sore spot.

-He’s opened his mouth to make his apologies when she answers, so quiet and quick he thinks he’s imagined it.

-To be remembered. When my lady has taken another lieutenant, as she must, and I have gone to where all gods go when they die, I wish for my memory to remain. And. . .

-Nico waits, and ignores the sudden, terrifying thought that he no longer knows what he wants.

-I wish to see the stars again. I was born a nymph of the sunset; starlight is precious to me. I want to see it again.

-Nico dies to preserve the memory of Zoë Nightshade.

100:

-Nico di Angelo wakes up in Westover Hall. He hopes for the last time.

-He does everything right: Annabeth goes over the cliff, his sister joins the Hunt, Percy is soon his friend, and he convinces Silena and Beckendorf to join the quest.

-The Nemean Lion never stands a chance, and Nico is glad to be rid of it.

-His sister lives.

-Nico watches Percy watch Rachel Elizabeth Dare go, looking like he’s just taken a frying pan to the face, and fights the urge to snicker.

-Thalia doesn’t start a fight with Nereus, but Percy certainly does. Nico could’ve sworn he saw the boy with sun-hair again, watching with curiosity.

- Zoë Nightshade dies in the arms of Artemis and is made into the stars she loves so dearly. Nico promises her soul that he will remember.

-For, he has found, the dead have a tendency of remembering things they shouldn’t.

-Annabeth and Percy now have grey streaks to match Nico’s, and Nico can’t wait to spend the rest of his life trying to explain that.

-It’s closer than he would like, but much less close than other lives with Olympus. The Ophiotaurus is alive and safe, and they are all alive.

-As Nico walks out of the council, he looks off to the side. By the fire is the familiar girl with red eyes--the Lady Hestia, looking much closer to Nico’s age than that of the Olympian she is.

-Besides her are three old ladies. Nico’s heard about them from Percy, in Loops 26, 53, 61, and 62.

-One lady holds a ball of string that is the color of a warm umber. The other is knitting what looked suspicious like socks. The last. . .

-Scissors, in one hand. Just as expected. Nico swallowed.

-In the other, was a knot of burnt string, tied to the socks. Behind her, Nico could see discarded string of all colors: an electric blue, a stormy grey, a black that seems to glisten with the promise of a storm, string the soft, hopeful pink of love, yarn run through with bright copper.

-Glowing threads that Nico could only describe as the color of starlight.

-As he walked out, firmly between Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace, the Hunt of Artemis behind him, Nico hears one last promise:

It is done, Nico di Angelo.

127 notes · View notes

cardest · 3 years

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New Orleans playlist

Hungry for some po boys? Feeling the Mardi Gras vibes for this weekend? This is the ultimate NOLA playlist, right here. Play the songs here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-iHPcxymC182dTlE-Gii6ZOO5ZrN1Z1T

Louisiana and New Orleans, all in the one awesome playlist. If there are songs I left out, let me know and I can add those. Or come meet me at Le Bon Temps Roulé and we’ll listen to this NOLA playlist together with drinks.

LOUISIANA & NEW ORLEANS

001 Bob James - Take Me To The Mardi Gras 002 Earl King - Ain’t no city like New Orleans 003 John Lee Hooker - goin’ to Louisiana 004 Crowbar - Wrath Of Time By Judgment 005 True Detective - Theme (The Handsome Family - Far From Any Road) 006 EyeHateGod - New Orleans Is The New Vietnam 007 The The Meters - Chicken Strut 008 Paul McCartney - Live And Let Die (from Live And Let Die) 009 The Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar 010 Lucinda Williams - Crescent City 011 King Hobo - New Or-Sa-Leans 012 Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting 013 Down - Underneath Everything 014 True Blood Theme Song (Jace Everett - Bad Things) 015 Corrosion of Conformity - Broken Man 016 The New Orleans Jazz Vipers - I Hope Your Comin' Back To New Orleans 017 Willy DeVille - Jump City 018 Left Side - Gold In New Orleans 017 Necrophagia - Reborn through Black Mass 018 Johnny Horton - The Battle Of New Orleans 019 Dr John - Litanie des Saints 020 Foo Fighters - In the Clear 021 Redbone - The Witch Queen Of New Orleans 022 Jucifer - Lautrichienne 023 Danzig - It's a long way back from hell 024 Harry Connick, Jr. - Oh, My Nola 025 The Gaturs - Gator Bait 026 Jon Bon Jovi - Queen Of New Orleans 027 Cyril Neville - Gossip 028 Carlos Santana - Black Magic Woman 029 Gentleman June Gardner - It's Gonna Rain 030 Eddy G. Giles - Soul Feeling (Part 1) 031 Tool - Swamp Song 032 Beasts of Bourbon - Psycho 033 Seratones - Gotta Get To Know Ya 034 Chuck Berry - You Never Can Tell 035 Grateful Dead - Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleoo 036 Pale Misery - Hope is a Mistake 037 Exhorder - Homicide 038 King James & the Special Men - Special Man Boogie 039 Chuck Carbo - Can I Be Your Squeeze 040 Amebix - Axeman 041 Tomahawk - Captain Midnight 042 Waylon Jennings - Jambalaya 043 Heavy Lids - Deviate 044 Red Hot Chili Peppers - Apache Rose Peacock 045 Necrophagia - Rue Morgue Disciple 046 Johnny Cash - Big River 047 Albert King - Laundromat Blues 048 Meklit Feat Preservation Hall Horns - You Are My Luck 049 Le Winston Band - En haut de la montagne 050 Dr. john - I Thought I Heard New Orleans Say 051 Down - New Orleans is a dying whore 052 Samhain - To Walk The Night 053 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River 054 Southern Culture on the Skids - Voodoo Cadillac 055 Bonnie, Sheila - You Keep Me Hanging On 056 Warren Lee - Funky Bell 057 Elf - Annie New Orleans 058 Cannonball Adderley - New Orleans Strut 059 Doug Kershaw - Louisiana Man - New Orleans Version 060 Willy deVille - Voodoo Charm 061 The Animals - The House of the Rising Sun 062 Porgy Jones - The Dapp 063 Lost Bayou Ramblers - Sabine Turnaround 064 IDRIS MUHAMMAD - New Orleans 065 John Lee Hooker - Boogie Chillen No. 2 066 Hank 3 - Hillbilly Joker 067 Nine Inch Nails - Heresy 068 Talking Heads - Swamp 069 Irma Thomas - I'd Rather Go Blind 070 Mississippi Fred McDowell - I'm Going Down the River 071 Dee Dee Bridgewater - Big Chief 072 Dr. John - Creole Moon 073 Agents of Oblivion - Slave Riot 074 Steve Vai - Voodoo Acid 075 Saviours - Slave To The Hex 076 Kris Kristofferson - Casey's Last Ride 077 JJ Cale - Louisiana Women 078 Cher - Dark Lady of New Orleans 079 LE ROUX - Take A Ride On A Riverboat 080 The Melvins - A History Of Bad Men 081 Floodgate - Through My Days Into My Nights 082 Opprobium - voices from the grave 083 Quintron & Miss Pussycat - Swamp Buggy Badass 084 Child Bite - ancestral ooze 085 Sammi Smith - The City Of New Orleans 086 The Explosions - Garden Of Four Trees 087 Bobby Boyd - straight ahead 088 Bobby Charles - Street People 089 Wall of Voodoo - Far Side of Crazy 090 Rhiannon Giddens - Freedom Highway (feat. Bhi Bhiman) 091 Elton John - Honky Cat 092 Serge Gainsbourg - Bonnie and Clyde 093 Fats Domino - I'm Walking To New Orleans 094 Cruel Sea - Orleans Stomp 095 Down - On March The Saints 096 Danzig - Ju Ju Bone 097 The Neville Brothers ~ Voodoo 098 Megadeth - The Conjuring 099 Miles Davis - Miles runs the voodoo down 100 Elvis Presley - King Creole 101 Led Zeppelin - Royal Orleans 102 The Lime Spiders - Slave Girl 103 BIG BILL BROONZY -'Mississippi River Blues' 104 Kreeps - Bad Voodoo 105 Dirty Dozen Brass Band - Caravan 106 Kirk Windstein - Dream In Motion 107 Eletric Prunes - Kyrie Eleison - Mardi Gras 108 Merle Haggard - The Legend Of Bonnie And Clyde 109 Corrosion of Conformity - River of Stone 110 THE ADVENTURES OF HUCK FINN (MAIN TITLE) 111 Zigaboo Modeliste - Guns 112 ReBirth Brass Band - Let's Go Get 'Em 113 Inell Young - What Do You See In Her? 114 Jimi Hendrix - If 6 as 9 (Studio Version) Easy Rider Soundtrack 115 Deep Purple - Speed King 116 Exhorder - The Law 117 Crowbar - The Cemetery Angels 118 A Streetcar Named Desire OST - Main Title 119 WOORMS - Take His Fucking Leg 120 steely dan - pearl of the quarter 121 Tabby Thomas - Hoodoo Party 122 Black Label Society - Parade of the Dead 123 Dwight James & The Royals - Need Your Loving 124 Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (2012) The Rampant Hunter (Soundtrack OST) 125 PanterA - The Great Southern Trendkill 126 Ween - WHO DAT? 127 Earl King - Street Parade 128 Ernie K-Doe - Here Come The Girls 129 Dejan's Olympia Brass Band ~ Mardi Gras In New Orleans 130 Body Count - KKK Bitch 131 Goatwhore - Apocalyptic Havoc 132 C.C. Adcock - Y'all d Think She Be Good To Me (from True Blood S01E01) 133 The Meters - Fire On The Bayou 134 Dr. John - I Walk On Guilded Splinters 135 Balfa Brothers - J'ai Passe Devant ta Porte 136 Ween - Voodoo Lady 137 King Diamond - 'LOA' House 138 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Born On The Bayou 139 Dax Riggs - See You All In Hell Or New Orleans 140 Professor Longhair - Go to the Mardi Gras 141 Dixie Witch - Shoot The Moon 142 Ramones - The KKK Took My Baby Away 143 Fats Waller - There's Going To Be The Devil To Pay 144 Mississippi Fred McDowell - When the Train Comes Along with Sidney Carter & Rose Hemphill 145 Treme Song (Main Title Version) 146 Tony Joe White - Even Trolls Love Rock and Roll 147 Nine Inch Nails - Sin 148 Exodus - Cajun Hell 149 NEIL DIAMOND - New Orleans 150 James Brown - Call Me Super Bad 151 Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Child ( Slight Return ) 152 Allen Toussaint - Chokin Kind 153 Dash Rip Rock - Meet Me at the River 154 Hawg Jaw- 4 Lo 155 Hot 8 Brass Band - Keepin It Funky 156 Hank Williams III - Rebel Within 157 Dejan's Original Olympia Brass Band - Shake It And Break It 158 Jelly Roll Morton - Finger Buster 159 The Royal Pendletons - (Im a) Sore Loser 160 Little Bob & The Lollipops - Nobody But You 161 Gregg Allman - Floating Bridge (True Detective Soundtrack) 162 Michael Doucel with Beausoleil - Valse de Grand Meche 163 Dolly Parton - My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy 164 Othar Turner & the Afrossippi Allstars – Shimmy She Wobble 165 Jucifer - Fleur De Lis 166 Soilent Green - Leaves Of Three 167 Ides Of Gemini - Queen of New Orleans 168 Betty Harris - Trouble with My Lover 169 Lead Belly - Pick A Bale Of Cotton 170 Candyman Opening Theme 171 Goatwhore - When Steel and Bone Meet 172 Acid Bath - Bleed Me An Ocean 173 Pere Ubu - Louisiana Train Wreck 174 Walter -Wolfman- Washington - You Can Stay But the Noise Must Go 175 Alice in Chains - Hate To Feel 176 Body Count - Voodoo 177 Live and Let Die - Jazz Funeral 178 Smoky Babe - Cotton Field Blues 179 Professor Longhair - Big Chief Part 2 180 Lewis Boogie - Walk the Line 181 James Black - Theres a Storm in the Gulf 182 The Balfa Brothers - Parlez Nous A Boire 183 The Jambalaya Cajun Band - Bayou Teche Two Step 184 The Deacons - Fagged Out 185 Thou - The Changeling Prince 186 Black Sabbath - Voodoo 187 King Diamond - Louisiana Darkness 188 Doyle - Cemeterysexxx 189 KINGDOM OF SORROW - Grieve a Lifetime 190 Hank Williams III - Louisiana Stripes 191 FORMING THE VOID - On We Sail 192 BUCK BILOXI AND THE FUCKS - fuck you 193 Down in New Orleans - The Princess and the Frog Soundtrack 194 Trombone Shorty & James Andrews - oh Poo Pah Doo 195 Whitesnake - Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City 196 The Dirty Dozen Brass band - Voodoo 197 Joe Simon - The Chokin' Kind 198 Down - Ghosts along the Mississippi 199 AEROSMITH - Voodoo Medicine Man 200 Nine Inch Nails - The Perfect Drug 201 The Byrds - [Sanctuary III] Ballad Of Easy Rider 202 The Iguauas - Boom Boom Boom 203 PJ Harvey - Down By The Water 204 Louis Armstrong - Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans 205 Dr John - Right Place Wrong Time 206 ESTHER ROSE - handyman 207 Lightnin Slim - It's Mighty Crazy 208 Slim Harpo - Blues Hangover 209 Irma Thomas - Ruler Of My Heart 210 WEATHER WARLOCK - Fukk the Plan-0 211 Superjoint Ritual - The Alcoholik (Use Once And Destroy) 212 Stressball - dust 213 Trampoline Team - Kill You On The Streetcar 214 Xander Harris - Where’s your Villain? 215 Dukes of Dixieland - When The Saints Go Marching In 216 Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds - Su Su 217 Danzig - I'm the one 218 EyeHatteGod - Pigs 219 Hank Williams Jr - Amos Moses 220 The Cramps - Alligator Stomp 221 Crowbar - The Serpent Only Lies 222 Shrüm - drip 223 Thou - The Only Law 224 DR. JOHN - Babylon 225 Garth Brooks - Callin' Baton Rouge 226 Wild Magnolias - All On A Mardi Gras Day 227 NCIS New Orleans TV Show theme 228 Skull Duggery - Big Easy 229 Harry Connick Jr. - City beaneath the sea 230 Elvis Presley - Dixieland Rock 231 Tom Waits - I Wish I Was In New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward) 232 Neil Young - Everybody's Rockin 233 Philip H. Anselmo & The Illegals - Delinquent 234 CORROSION OF CONFORMITY - Wolf Named Crow 235 Widespread Panic - Fishwater 236 Lillian Boutté - Why Don't You Go Down to New Orleans 237 Bryan Ferry - Limbo 238 Scream - Mardi Gras 239 EyeHateGod - Shoplift 240 Better Than Ezra - good 241 Duke Ellington - Perdido (1960 Version) 242 Bob Dylan - Rambling, Gambling Willie 243 Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - sAve my soul 244 Le Roux - So Fired Up 245 Concrete Blonde - The Vampire song 246 Boozoo Chavis - Zydeco Mardi Gras 247 Idris Muhammad - Piece of mind 248 Les Hooper - Back in Blue Orleans 249 Doug Kershaw - Cajun stripper 250 DOWN - Witchtripper 251 Soilent Green - So hatred 252 Professional Longhair - Big chief 253 Willie Nelson - City Of New Orleans 254 Tom Waits - Whistlin' Past The Graveyard 255 Brian Fallon - sleepwalkers 256 Patsy - Count It On Down 257 Into the Moat - The Siege Of Orleans 258 Bruce Cockburn - Down To The Delta 259 Jello Biafra · the Raunch and Soul All-Stars - Fannie Mae 260 Exhorder - Asunder 261 Cane Hill - Too Far Gone 262 The Slackers - peculiar 263 Crowbar - A Breed Apart 264 COC - Wiseblood 265 Necrophagia - Embalmed Yet I Breathe 266 EYEHATEGOD - Fake What's Yours 333 Alan Vega - Bye Bye Bayou 666 DOWN - Stone the crow

I don’t beads by the way! Hit play here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-iHPcxymC182dTlE-Gii6ZOO5ZrN1Z1T

#new orleans #New Orleans playlist #NOLA #NOLA playlist #Louisiana #corrosion of conformity #Alan Vega #necrophagia #New Orleans songs #mardi gras #Mardi Gras songs #crowbar #eyehategod

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empatheticagent · 3 years

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Aftermath

What on Earth was he supposed to do?

At first when Germaine had shut down, Ray was desperate to help and had spent all those hours that cold, searching. He’d ended up sick, he’d had an episode and then ended up with extra appointments with Dr Lawrence to try and cope.

Germaine had been his main support after all, since Clay’s death. He was the main reason Ray had been making any progress in recovering and moving on. At first, Ray had visited regularly, even though he hated seeing Germaine like that- like he was dead.

And now there were all those messy feelings attached.

They were messy enough with the guilt of their last real conversation -the argument about whether Germaine could, or should be loved- there was still lingering hurt that had never been resolved from that, and Ray’s guilt for letting it stop him acting sooner. And then there was the love itself. It was still there, but buried under all that and grief.

Ray had started dropping by less and less before stopping entirely. As the months had stretched on, Ray had started losing hope that Germaine could be fixed (not that he asked those doing the fixing then). It had taken Dr Lawrence pointing it out for Ray to realise that he was in fact grieving the losses of both Clay and Germaine. It was only a few months difference in how long they had both been gone after all.

Then Strucker had taken him up to Canada, to Bancroft.

He was told he was only there for two weeks, but it felt so, so much longer to him and he was still recovering from it, months after on top of everything else. Ray was doing better than ever with his powers thanks to Marco and Nic, but physically and mentally it was possible he was worse than ever.

The healthier weight he had been at while staying with Germaine was gone and he was scruffier and more withdrawn. Often he didn’t bother even trying to speak and some days even refused to sign unless it was Auslan to save himself the frustration and embarrassment of making mistakes. Even while training with Nic multiple times a week to move passed it, Ray still had a very mixed reception to physical contact.

Often when he did speak, it was when he was angry, usually with Cassie. He would argue and then usually turn his anger on something else in the room and Marco insisted Ray take days off regularly, not wanting to risk training when he was already in a bad mood.

So…

What was he supposed to do, now that he was suddenly told Germaine was nearly ready to be reawakened?

How the hell was he supposed to keep befriending, learning to trust, caring for someone getting too attached too fast and then having it all ripped away again?

His other closest friend disappeared from work and hadn’t come home too, so Ray was hesitant to turn to her for support, even if Cassie spoke to JJ regularly now. And then the whole realisation his psych was actually Bancroft’s son… Ray had barely even processed that at all.

What was he supposed to do?

He could just try-

. . .

Because I care about you.

‘You- you shouldn’t’

I can’t help that.

‘That’s n-n-nnot tr-rue. If anyone c-c-could…’

@theghostofagentweiss @specialagentace @agentjjkelly

#Tagging bc relevant to how ray sees the characters at the moment #depression tw #mental health tw #Messymessymessy #will update when we get a better idea of clay situation

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nickgerlich · 4 years

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Mall In The Family

When I was growing up, enclosed shopping malls were the greatest thing since black-and-white television, a glimpse of what we thought was the future. One million square feet or more of climate-controlled hang-out space was Nirvana for a teenager. It’s not that we actually had money to shop, or the desire (at least for this guy), but it didn’t matter.

This was a social gathering place.

In recent years, though, I have frequently had to comment on the slow demise of the American shopping mall. What started in 1956 in Edina Minnesota reached its peak around 1990, the last year that new malls were opening at a feverish pace. By the end of that decade, though, things had started to change, and our fascination with shopping indoors began to wane. Besides, e-commerce had its humble beginnings around 1994, and a fellow named Jeff Bezos was starting to get some attention with his little Amazon company.

Skip forward to 2020, and still in the middle of a pandemic, the verdict for shopping malls is grim at best, and downright morbid at worst. A new report from Coresight Research indicates they predict 25% of the remaining 1000 enclosed US malls will close in three to five years. And the result will be a retail landscape littered with abandonment.

What shopping trends don’t kill, the pandemic will finish off.

It is easy to point the finger at Bezos and his now-giant Amazon, but that is to miss the point. Just like consumer behavior changed from the 1950s to 1990s, it changed again, only to be accelerated by COVID-19. The forced closure of many malls during the pandemic helped us all realize that we really don’t need them to survive.

And as my mail carrier knows all too well, most of the things we really need are only a click away. Come to think of it, I probably ought to get a parcel storage locker for my property.

The problem is what in the world we are going to do with all of these empty malls, if this dire prediction comes true. Folks like Seph Lawless have made a living out of documenting abandoned malls, which means there are enough of these decaying relics to explore, as well as a rather twisted fascination with them among his followers. Mr. Lawless may wind up with a bumper crop of new material.

Rumors have circulated that Amazon may be interested in some shuttered Sears and JC Penney locations, either as fulfillment centers or even its own storefronts. But this won’t begin to repurpose the growing number of empty department store spaces.

Other thoughts focus on more drastic remodeling into living spaces, or even corporate offices. It is almost folly, though, to think of trying to fit new uses into a building and paved parking lot that can cover 75 or more acres, short of complete demolition and simply starting over.

Personally, I think we as a society will one day come to rue the development of the enclosed shopping mall. Nothing more sterile has ever been perpetrated on the American public. With the suburban mindset that came to dominate the nation in the 1950s, we effectively killed our center cities in a rush to head to the predictable little pink houses a few miles out. Where ticky-tacky is king, the marketing jesters will follow to serve him.

Yes, I admit I had fun at the mall when I was a teen. My parents approved, if only because they thought it was safer than running around downtown Chicago. But now that I am older and wiser, I see what those malls did. They ripped the heart and soul out of our cities. And whether we may one day say the same of Mr. Bezos remains to be seen, because his domain is admittedly the polar opposite.

But at least I don’t have to shower, shave, dress, and drive to do my business. If only I had been a little smarter as a teen, maybe I would have been saving my nickels and dimes to invest in something so bold. Then again, in the black-and-white world of my youth, it was hard to see that far into the future.

Dr “I Can See Clearly Now“ Gerlich

Audio Blog

#marketing #malls #COVID-19 #abandoned #e-commerce #shopping #retail

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therookieking412 · 5 years

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Friday Spin Class

I missed last week, so there’s part two and part three. That’s all the parts.

Last week I talked primarily about Fakir and Rue, how they are villains in their own right, now we continue on with Raven!Mytho.

Raven!Mytho is great because he’s such an obvious allusion to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde it’s ridiculous but it makes for great drama. Again his hero is Princess Tutu (I mean, Fakir and Rue know that Ahiru is Princess Tutu, but does Mytho ever find out? I mean, once she gives him the last shard she turns into a duck, does he know that that duck can turn into Ahiru or does he just think Princess Tutu was a duck and that Ahiru has nothing to do with this? Does Rue try to explain it one day and he’s like, that’s a hoot honey? Does he know?) but also Fakir, I’d say more so Fakir than Princess Tutu, even.

Fakir is typically the one to fight him, if they do have to draw swords, and Princess Tutu only draws out the good in him. Actually, I think Princess Tutu is Raven!Mytho’s antagonist. All she ever does is stall his purpose in the story.

Anyway

Raven!Mytho and Princess Kraehe are two villains who aren’t actually villains.

In the state the two are in at this point in the show are a direct result to the Raven’s Blood.

Before the Raven’s blood makes a come back, Rue is very sweet and well mannered, Mytho, as far as we can see, is more or less the same, it’s still hard to judge because he hasn’t gotten all of his heart, but when these characters have Raven’s Blood in their system is when they change.

They’re almost puppets of the Monster Raven, just committing his evil acts while he’s in feather jail.

So, Now we can talk about the big baddie, Mr. Monster Raven himself the true Villain of the show!

And boy is he a let down.

As far as characters go, he’s just so one dimensional.

He’s just a giant monster that wants to what? Exactly? What are his motives? Are they ever stated? Ever made clear? He wants Mytho’s heart, and then some girl’s heart, and then what?

Just do evil things, I guess. Because that’s what you do when you’re evil!

Prince Siegfried is also a one dimensional character! Who the fuck is he!

What makes Raven!Mytho so interesting is that inner turmoil, he’s a prince so he must be good, but now he’s been tainted and must commit atrocities, he’s fighting so damn hard and sometimes he loses himself, at one point he loses himself completely! The Raven’s blood has completely consumed his heart and he turns into a raven and it isn’t until the heartshard of hope returns that he’s able to overcome it.

Prince Seigfried’s goal is to kill the Monster Raven and save his people, that’s very noble, that’s very good! But very broad, very boring, very one sided.

However, that can all be attributed to the show’s main antagonist: Drosselmeyer.

Drosselmeyer is not a Villain, and what makes this show so great is that he totally could have been.

They didn’t need both the Monster Raven and Drosselmeyer but it did that!

After watching…

Drosselmeyer is just some guy.

Like that’s it.

He’s not super evil, he’s not bloodthirsty, at most he has a bad god complex, but he’s just a guy.

(Imeanhe’sprobablyapedophilebutlet’snottalkaboutthat,yeah?)

In my first Friday Spin Class, I came to the conclusion that Drosselmeyer just wants to sit back and enjoy, he sets it all up, creates a machine that will write for him, and watches for generations as Prince Siegfried fights, and fights, and fights, and fights, and fights.

The only time he actually writes anything (as far as we can see) is when he firsts talks with Ahiru in episode two, and quite possibly, just to give his story a little something something, he ripped Ahiru from another story and put her in this one to give himself more drama and characters to watch.

Shoot, maybe he got bored of Mytho, bored of heartless!Mytho and his useless grandson and silly little baby Rue fight over whose turn it was to play with him so he added in another character just to get the ball rolling again.

And the way Drosselmeyer is set up? It’s almost like a kindly godmother granting Ahiru her wish to make the Prince smile. In the trailer, he gives her the necklace, the first episode he’s framed as creepy, but he’s not evil, in the second episode he explains the rules to her.

He’s not that bad, look at that silly hat! How silly.

Drosselmeyer is never framed as a good guy, or hero, but throughout the show we get four villains, that’s very generous show! Thank you, show! They come in at different points, some not even lasting until the end of season one, but Drosselmeyer is here from the beginning.

The narrator doesn’t talk about a duck who wanted to be a girl, but about a writer who was supposed to have died, Drosselmeyer is the first thing we know as an audience.

What does that mean? Is Drosselmeyer the protagonist?

Ew, no get out.

Ahiru is our protagonist, she’s our hero, however Drosselmeyer isn’t her villain, isn’t even her antagonist.

He’s Fakir’s.

For Ahiru, even though Drosselmeyer isn’t a good guy, he is her fairy godmother! He gives her the necklace! He tries to convince her that she needs to keep going and get Mytho all his heart shards! He’s rooting for her!

But, for Fakir?

Fakir’s main struggle in the first season is that he’s scared of his fate, he doesn’t want to die, and who gave him that fate? Drosselmeyer.

Fakir’s main struggle in season two is that he needs to overcome his fear of writing, and come into that place where he’s a writer over a knight. And that directly puts a wench in the cog.

Before, everything was fine! Everything was dandy! Drosselmeyer could just sit back in his seat and watch the show!

But as soon as another writer came on the scene?

In episode seven, Drosselmeyer goes out to talk to Ahiru, to tell her to continue writing, and as he leaves he says, “Who knows how many more times I’ll be able to use [this passageway of time]” (S1E7). He uses it twice more in the show, once again to speak with Ahiru, and then to have a word with his grandson.

This is a dangerous game he’s playing, he doesn’t know how many times he can go inside the story, any time could be his last, and yet he uses it to talk with Fakir.

We all know the scene I’m talking about. Fakir is trying to write a story but just can’t, then Drosselmeyer comes and Fakir is able to write a story about Ahiru, only this isn't a story he wants to write.

Fakir writes as he forces Ahiru to walk into a lake to try and kill herself.

Imagine if Drosselmeyer succeeded, and that was his original intent, to write through Fakir, have him create a story of ultimate tragedy, the heart shard of hope lost for forever, Rue trapped inside the stomach of the Raven and Mytho hopelessly waiting for Princess Tutu to come back.

Then Fakir would never write again.

Fakir, who already lost his parents because of his inexperienced writing, would forever have to live with the knowledge that he killed the girl he loved, that he failed Mytho, and was unable to save anybody.

Fakir would never write again.

And Drosselmeyer’s story would go on forever, never to end.

That’s terrifying.

No, I still don’t think he’s a villain, an antagonist, definitely, but he’s not super villainous, he gave that to the four other villains this show graced us with.

That being said, Princess Tutu gave us five villains, three children who didn’t really have a choice, one monster who is just super hungry, and one antagonist. The three children in the end get their happy ending, and get peace, the monster gets stabbed in the heart which is irony at its finest, and the antagonist walks off into the darkness, fully content to find himself another never ending story.

Thanks for reading, bye.

#Friday Spin Class #thanks guys #raven!mytho #the raven #drosselmeyer #daddy d #fakir #princess tutu

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chiseler · 4 years

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A Week of Kindness in the Rue Morgue

From Bela Lugosi’s Mackie Messer in the beginning to the final moments of an ape bounding over the rooftops of a pasteboard Paris, Robert Florey’s 1932 Murders in the Rue Morgue is an unselfconscious adaptation of Max Ernst’s great work, Une semaine de bonté. Ernst’s book was published two years later, so it would be even more curious to know if he saw this film – especially given the Surrealists’ bent for valorizing junk.

A wild contraption mixing sci-fi super science, eugenics, and Guignol jungle horror with European postwar exoticism, Murders rattles on for little over an hour, employing several amusing devices along the way. Viz: a send-up of Françafrique colonialism with Karl May-like Indians bedeviling a crowd of bourgeois pigs; a series of funny gags on language, nationalism, and food that break up the foggy Krafft-Ebbing carnality; Lugosi’s unboarded mad doctor, part carnival barker and part Francis Galton (Lugosi’s Brechtian pedagogy is interrupted by a gleeful sadism and misogyny, which is the real point of his supposedly ‘hammy’ line readings); phantasmagoric ‘exteriors’, beautifully exposed by the great Carl Freund, giving a moving panorama background to the essentially vaudeville goings-on. Florey’s film is a stew of pulp and pulp critique, with the requisite dynamo speed and a true populist delight in dirty innuendo.

The picture was not a great success upon release (Universal’s Carl Laemmle Jr. was hoping for a second Frankenstein – which Lugosi turned down in ‘31, both as monster and doctor). But the real casualty of the picture was Arlene Francis, pictured above on the cross being adored by a monastic Béla (this blasphemous altarpiece was partially mangled by edits for the general release, but remains in press stills). For promotional material, the crucifixion scene was reproduced in life-size card mock-ups and displayed in theater lobbies around the country – which enflamed the Presbyterians and also Miss Francis’ father, who successfully petitioned Universal to remove the offending cut-outs (the family’s actual last name was Kazanjian, which is Armenian; the grandparents were victims of the Genocide, with the remnant moving to the US soon after). The ancillary activities in this Rue Morgue are almost as fascinating as those of Ulmer’s Black Cat, which makes a strong case for a profound revision of the entire Lugosi constellation.

Aside from the ape, the only real Poe characters to appear in the film are a far more dashing version of Auguste Dupin, the great father of all neurotic detectives, and a bumbling police prefect (who is clearly the Inspector ‘G’ of the three canonical Dupin mysteries). Dupin lives in the kind of artist’s garret Arlene Francis’ father knew during his years as a painter in the real Paris, c. 1896 – or at least he would have registered it as a soapy parody of that time. Dark and unforgettable, Miss Francis had lucked into her small silent role in the film, and it damped her subsequent career. She did later become well-known as a regular on What’s My Line, but anyone who saw her ragdoll body and necrophiliac sexuality in Murders couldn’t possibly have forgotten her. And there is racism too: her agent recommended a nose-job after this film, doubtless because she looked too ‘Asiatic’ (Jewish). She complied – needing work, like we do.

Closest scene to Ernst: the ape’s arm lolls out a carriage window in the mist, as Dr Mirakle (Lugosi’s preposterously-named heavy) summons him to carry off the comely Sidney Fox (a second subject for devolution after Arlene Francis dies). The ape appears also as a great shadowy hand, an actual ape in facial close-up, and as a shaggy clump loping in long shot. Though it is simian blood Lugosi injects into women in his quest to breed supercreatures, the audience easily reads ‘bestiality’. Perhaps here too, we can see the paranoia of French who suspected a devilish plot between Oriental doctors with near-Yiddish names and noirs? Dreyfuss and his Apelings?

WWI Europe thrilled American servicemen, even as it destroyed their minds. Stateside horror films of the period are strange reflections of battlefields and louche flâneur, Puritanism, VD, and slipping borders. The unreal cities of occupation and prostitutes are essays of wandering Yanks, flashed in stark documentary and astral bodies; dirty reels of malaprop, anachronism, and funhouse fantasy contra the phantasmagoria of czar and kaiser lands fast falling into particle dust. The Universal or PRC cheapie is an unholy conspiracy between the homeless Euro sophisticate and the American canine – a junk and junkier art where plot is subservient to scene, as the new medium technically demanded.

Along with the static, hallucinatory Dracula’s Daughter and Karl Freund’s gamy film of The Mummy (1932), Florey’s flick is one of the most sensual of early Universal horrors and probably the sleaziest. The Hays Code was not strictly enforced until 1934, but it was gaining traction all the while. It succeeded in removing some of Francis’ bound body to make up for letting Zita Jahnn dance for Pharaoh and Karloff a year earlier. But in 1936, Dracula’s daughter’s lesbian fling with a model missed them completely, even though they monitored horror like hawks. Despite the bloody lips and ripped blouses of the later Hammer or hippie cult shows, horror was a truly Modernist organ in these 1930s workingman’s shows. Requiescat in pace

Post-Watergate, even the most interesting genre pictures could muster only an amusing retro-viral pastiche or guilt about the human body as real estate. As in economics, neoliberalism and its discontents emerged triumphant after a time of monsters. But perhaps the story isn’t over yet, and the ape will ignore liberty and again go straight for the throat.

(watch here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21gvsx )

by Martin Billheimer

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arecomicsevengood · 4 years

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Watching Movies In Self-Isolation, Part Two

L’Assassin Habite Au Rue 21 (1942), dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot. Clouzot is better known for directing The Wages Of Fear (the movie William Friedkin remade as Sorcerer) and Diabolique, but this is the first movie he directed. It’s a pretty effective comedy, as well as an Agatha Christie style murder-mystery thriller. It’s really cool to watch these things that feel like they are just “movies,” before a bunch of genre conventions got built up and put in place. This one’s also eighty minutes long, super-short. The premise of the movie is there’s a serial killer on the loose, leaving a business card on every dead body. A dude passes along to the police that he found a stash of the business cards in the attic of a boarding house, so the killer must live there. A police officer goes undercover as a priest moving into the boarding house to investigate the residents. His wife, an aspiring singer, has made a bet with him she can solve the crime first, and in doing so become a celebrity that will be hired to perform places, so she also moves into the boarding house, partly to annoy him. The stuff at the boarding house is basically the film’s second act, while the first and third act are more typical murder-mystery stuff, although the tone of comedy is maintained throughout, despite all the cold-blooded murders.

All These Women (1964), dir. Ingmar Bergman. Kind of dumb sex comedy directed by Ingmar Bergman, but with gorgeous Sven Nykvist cinematography, bright jewel-toned pastels, and sort of theatrical staging in spots seeming to foreshadow Parajanov’s The Color Of Pomegranates or eighties Greenaway stuff. About a critic who visits the palatial estate of a famous cellist to write a biography of him only to find a harem of women; the whole thing unfolding from the cellist’s funeral a few days later. The winking humor is both music-hall bawdy but in a way that feels self-aware or “meta” in the context of a sixties film.

The Touch (1971), dir. Ingmar Bergman. Bergman’s one of my favorites, many of his canonized classics resonate deeply with me, but he was also astonishingly prolific, with a bunch of movies of his blurring together in my mind, and even more that I didn’t know existed, like this English-language one, starring Elliott Gould. Gould’s another favorite of mine, being in a bunch of great movies in the sixties and seventies, but damn, he’s unlikable here. Unlikable characters “hit different” in older material because I’m not sure if you’re supposed to sympathize with them according to the sexist cultural attitudes of the day. Here he’s “the other man” Liv Ullman is cheating on Max Von Sydow (RIP) with, but he’s pretty emotionally abusive, just a shit to her, extremely demanding of her in a relationship he did nothing to earn, though it does feel like the movie is kind of treating him as a romantic lead.

The Anderson Tapes (1971), dir. Sidney Lumet. This is heist movie, starring Sean Connery as a dude fresh out of prison, planning to rob his girlfriend’s apartment building, costarring Christopher Walken in his first film role. It contains all the plot beats of a typical heist thing, all the satisfying “getting the gang together, planning things out in advance, chaotic elements interfere” stuff but also a totally superfluous bit of framing about like constant surveillance, video monitoring and audio tape. All this dystopian police-state stuff seems, implicitly, like it would make a crime impossible to execute, the criminals are monitored every step of the way, by assorted agencies. But then the punchline, after everyone’s arrested for reasons having nothing to do with that, is that all this recording is illegal and all the tapes should be erased as the high-profile nature of the case makes it likely the monitoring agencies will get caught. Sidney Lumet directs a good thriller, even though I don’t find Connery (or Dyan Cannon, who plays the girlfriend) particularly compelling.

The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse (1933), dir. Fritz Lang. I watched this years ago, after reading Matt Fraction praise it, particularly how skillful the transitions between scenes were, and I really enjoyed it, but didn’t remember much about it and was excited to rewatch it. It’s got a lot going for it: An exceedingly elaborate criminal plot whose only goal is to wreak chaos, low-level criminals caught up in something they’re morally unprepared to reckon with, a charismatic police detective interviewing a bunch of weirdos, Fritz Lang following up M by continuing to be a master of film and sound editing very early stitching it all together. The Mabuse character was previously the star of a silent film I haven’t watched, and here he’s mute, which is a clever choice I didn’t register until writing it out just now. He’s gone completely insane, but is nonetheless writing a journal filled with elaborate crime plots, and his psychologist is completely insane and following these directions, in a commentary on the rise of Nazism in Germany at the time.

House By The River (1950), dir. Fritz Lang. I watched this in the pre-Quarantine days, but it totally rules. Again, it feels sordid in part because of how old it is and my assumption you’re meant to identify on some level with the completely loathsome protagonist’s sexual desire and anger at getting turned down. It’s so creepy, he’s listening to the sound of his maid showering at one point. All the characters seem very fun to play, they’re all pretty cartoonish. This guy murder his maid, and then gets the idea that he should write a book about the murder when someone explains the idea of “writing what you know” to him, and he is then surprised when his wife reads the book and puts together that it’s a murder confession, saying something like “Really? I thought I disguised it pretty well.” The film functions as a dark comedy because every character is completely mortifying. Lang’s work becoming less ambitious and more reduced in budget during his time working in America is pretty sad but this movie feels legit deranged.

Midsommar (2019), Ari Aster. Heard good things about Hereditary, but haven’t watched it yet, having been put off by the plot summary of Aster’s preceding short film, about a kid who rapes his dad. This is like a longer version of The Wicker Man, basically, starring Florence Pugh, who I had heard was like the new actress everyone’s enamored with, but didn’t think was that compelling in this. A bunch of Americans go to a Swedish village, one of them (played by Chidi from The Good Place) has studied their anthropology extensively, but all are unprepared for the fact that their whole culture seems to revolve around human sacrifice and having sex with outsiders so they don’t become totally inbred. There’s a monstrously deformed, cognitively impaired child who’s been bred specifically so his abstract splashings of paint can be interpreted as culture-defining profound lore, which I took away as being comparable to the role Joe Biden plays within the death cult of the DNC.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2019), dir. Bi Gan. This got a lot of acclaim, but I am almost certain the main reason I watched it is because the director made a list of his favorite movies and included Masaaki Yuasa’s anime series Kemonozume on it. Does a sort of bisected narrative thing, where half of the movie is this sort of fragmented crime thing, a little hard to follow, and then you get the title card, and then the second half is this pretty dreamlike atmospheric piece done in a single shot, with a moving camera. I’m not the sort to jerk off over long shots, although I appreciate the large amount of technical pre-planning that goes into pulling them off. The second part is pretty compelling though, enveloping, I guess it was in 3-D at certain theatrical screenings? I’m a little unclear on how my fucked-up eyes can deal with 3-D these days and I was never that into it. The first half is easy to turn off and walk away from, the second half isn’t but I’m unsure on how much it amounts to beyond its atmosphere.

Black Sun (1964), dir. Koreyoshi Kurahara. This one’s about a Japanese Jazz fan and dirtbag squatter who meets a black American soldier who’s gone crazy and AWOL. He loves him because he loves Jazz and all Black people, but the soldier is pretty crazy and can’t understand him anyway. Jazz is, or was, huge in Japan and this is a cooler depiction of that fandom than you get in Murakami novels but it’s a fairly uncomfortable watch, I guess because the black dude seems so crazy it feels a little racist to an American audience? Maybe he wasn’t being directed that well because there would be a language barrier but it’s weird.

Honestly the thing to watch from sixties Japan on The Criterion Channel is Black Lizard (1962), dir. Umetsugu Inoue, which I watched shortly after Trump’s election in 2016, when all the Criterion stuff was still on Hulu, and it cheered me up considerably in those dark days. It feels a little like The Abominable Dr. Phibes, but with a couple musical numbers, and is about a master detective who thinks crime is super-cool and wishes there was a criminal who would challenge his intellect. Then the Black Lizard kidnaps someone. It’s a lot of fun, with a tone that feels close to camp but is so knowing and smart it feels more genuinely strange and precise. One of those things you get fairly often where the Japanese outsider’s take on American genre stuff gets what it’s about more deeply and so feels like it’s operating on a higher level. I really love this movie.

I had this larger point I wanted to make about just feeling repulsed by genre stuff that self-consciously attempts to mimic its canonical influences and that might not be all the way present in this post. Still, something that really should be implicit when talking about movies from the past is that they are not superhero movies, and how repulsed I am by that particular genre’s domination of cinema right now, and how much of cinema has a history of something far looser and more freewheeling in its ideas of how to make work that appealed to a broad audience, and how much weird formal playfulness can be understood intuitively by an audience without being offputting, and the sort of spirit of formal interrogation connects the films I like to the comics I like (as well as the books I like, and the visual art I like), this sense of doing something that can only be done within that medium even as certain other aspects translate.

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winters-cursed-king · 6 years

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Skulduggery Pleasant High School AU Pt. 5

You thought I was finished with this, didn’t you? Darling, I am never finished with this.

Tanith is that one person that never wears her uniform properly

Her tie’s undone, top two buttons open, her shirt untucked

Don’t get me started on the rips in her tights

Ghastly’s not sure if he finds it annoying

Or cute

Sanguine’s dad is on the PTA

So he gets away with everything

Guild is that one English teacher that give out too much homework

Really, just too much work in general

And over-analyises everything

Mevolent is the school bully

With Serpine and Vengeous as his cronies

There are these benches on the school grounds

And the Dead Men + Tanith, China and Fletcher have commandeered these benches

No one sits there but them

It is practically a school rule now

Saracen Rue refuses to wear safety glasses in science

He puts them on his head like sunglasses

Once, all of his friends put their safety glasses on his head, too

So he had a row of glasses on his head

Science teacher Dr Nye was not impressed

Everyone’s constantly surprised on how much China can fit in her school bag

Once, they pulled out all of her school books

The Faceless Ones equivalent of a bible and a book on runes

A hairbrush and a full bag of makeup

High-heeled shoes

And a ceramic vase before finally finding a packet of tissues

Shudder is probably part of the art club

Larrikin forced him to sign up

And he’s actually enjoying it

To literally no one’s surprise

Ravel ended up as head boy

Ghastly got deputy

In all honesty, no one was that surprised when China got head girl

But when Mist got deputy

Well, no one saw that coming

All the teachers fear Skulduggery and Valkyrie

In fact, there are several classes where they’re not allowed to sit next to each other

Science, for instance

They didn’t mean to fill the classroom with toxic gas

Guild has banned them, too

That doesn’t mean they listen

Hopeless is the only one with a reliable pencil case

Dexter always forgets his

Larrikin’s is filled with lollies

Shudder’s is broken and he can’t be screwed to fix it

Skulduggery only has one pen

And he keeps taking it apart

Ravel has 20 pens, 15 pencils and an eraser

But only two pens work, the pencils are broken and the eraser doesn’t work

Ghastly’s is just filled with highlighters and felt-tip pens and tailor’s chalk

Valkyrie lost her’s back in term 1 and never saw a reason to get another

Tanith only has a pencil that she keeps behind her ear

Fletcher has a collection of highlighters, and that’s about it

China has a decent pencil case with decent stationary

But she’s not sharing

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everlarkstories · 6 years

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You’re back

This is my vision of how the last chapter of the third book, Mockingjay, should have ended. I hope you like it as much as I do! :)

Note: Not all sentences are mine. Credit goes to Suzanne Collins.

It’s the first day of spring. The sun is shining bright and the birds are singing their song. I’m staring out of the window, thinking about, well, nothing. Sometimes my head is empty. Which is strange, since it’s usually full with all kinds of thoughts. About Gale. About Finnick. About Cinna. About Prim.

I can’t do this anymore. I’ve no one left, except Greasy Sae, but I’m not really in the mood to talk to her. ‘’Breakfast is ready,’’ she calls from behind me. I turn from the window and walk towards the kitchen table. She has made me eggs and toast, like almost every morning. I’m going to sit and start eating the food, very slowly. All the hunger from the past few years, gone. Somehow I manage to finish my plate. Greasy Sae always makes sure I do, by sitting there until I’ve eaten it all. After that, she does the dishes and leaves. I’m alone again, sitting by the fire. The flames make me remember all of it. The forest fire. The outfits of the Games. The hospital. The bombs. It hurts, but it makes me stay focussed.

A couple of days later I feel it’s going to be a different day, but I’m not sure if it’s a good thing. I can see Greasy Sae standing in front of the stove, again making me some eggs and toast. It goes on and on. Her coming over. Me waiting for something. But nothing special ever happens. ‘’Spring’s in the air today. Why aren’t you going outside? I’m sure it will cheer you up. Maybe you can even go hunting.’’ It takes a few seconds before I realize she’s talking to me. I haven’t left the house since I came back from the Capitol. And why should I. It isn’t the same anymore as before. Everything is different now. And I definitely do not like it.

‘’I don’t have a bow,’’ I answer. ‘’Check down the hall,’’ she says. After she leaves, I decide to leave the kitchen and make my way down the hall. I end up in the study room. All the memories come back right at me. Those stupid berries. I should’ve eaten them and die, like I was supposed to. It would’ve saved me a lot of effort and pain. And all those people would still be alive. But now, they’re all dead because of me. And the worse part is that I am still here.

I look around and find a box with my father’s hunting jacket, our plant book, my parents’ wedding photo, the spile Haymitch sent in, and the locket Peeta gave me in the clock arena. The two bows and a sheath of arrows Gale rescued on the night of the firebombing lie on the desk. I put on the hunting jacket and leave the rest untouched. I’ve accepted the death of my father, but I can’t get myself in contact with the other stuff. I lay down on the sofa, trying to clear up my mind, when I fall asleep.

I find myself dreaming. Or well, it isn’t exactly a dream. It’s a horrendous nightmare, where I’m laying at the bottom of a deep grave, and every dead person I know by name comes by and throws a shovel full of ashes on me. Glimmer. Marvel. Rue. Clove. Cato. Cinna. Mags. Wiress. Gloss. Cashmere. Leeg 2. Mitchell. Boggs. Messalla. Finnick. Prim. And so many others. I try to call out, begging them to stop, but the ashes fill my mouth and nose and I can’t make any sound. Still the shovel scrapes on and on and on…

I wake from the sound. The scraping of the shovel continues. It’s hard to breath. Was this really just another nightmare? I run down the hall, out the front door and towards the sound. This can be it. Death. And I’m ready for it.

Instead the dark, deep hole I expected, I see him. I reduce my speed and make it to a walk until I stop. It can’t be. I’m sure it’s another trick. Maybe I’m still dreaming. His face is flushed from digging up the ground under the window. In a wheelbarrow are five scraggly bushes. I can’t make out what kind of bushes from this distance. What is he even doing? ‘’You’re back,’’ I say. He looks up, right into my eyes. It’s right at that moment that I know it’s not a dream. He’s real.

‘’Dr Aurelius wouldn’t let me leave the Capitol until yesterday. He wanted to make sure I could handle this,’’ Peeta says. He looks so well since the last time I’ve seen him. Still thin and covered with those pink burn scars like mine, but his eyes have lost that clouded, tortured look. He almost looks like the old Peeta, staring at me with those same blue eyes that used to meet mine and then flit away at school. Only now he holds my gaze. He’s frowning slightly while he does. I come back to my senses and realize I must look like a mess, because I am one. I try to push the hair out of my face and feel the clumps that are formed over the past few weeks. I feel ashamed. This is not how I imagined to meet him again. Not that I ever thought that I’d see him again. I push the feeling away and walk closer to him. ‘’What are you doing?’’ He relaxes his face. ‘’Yesterday the hovercraft landed on a small field with flowerbeds just next to the Victor’s Village. I saw these in the corner of my eye when I got out, but it was pretty late so I decided to come back in the morning. I dug them up and thought we could plant them along the side of the house. For her.’’ I want to yell at him. Tell him how ridiculous it is. At the moment I open my mouth, I see the bushes behind him and the name of the plant comes to me. Primrose. I close my mouth again, trying to look normal, and give him a nod of assent. I turn and start walking back towards the front door. When I’m around the corner I start running.

I slam the door shut and lock it. This can’t be happening. I sink to the ground, my back against the door. I want to scream. After a moment, a shiver creeps over my back. It’s not the plant or Peeta I’m angry with, it’s everything that happened in those last two years. Then I remember it. The poisonous thing upstairs in my bedroom. I force myself to rise and run up the stairs. When I enter my room, the smell’s still there. Not as strong as before, but it’s there. I walk towards the table, grab the vase, stumble down to the kitchen and throw the terrible thing with the rest of the dried flowers into the fire. Full of disgust and hatred I watch the flowers burn. The white rose, however, bursts into a blue flame, destroying it completely. Good. To make sure everything’s gone, I smash the vase on the floor. It shatters into a dozen pieces, spreading all over the stone tiles.

I run back upstairs to my bedroom and throw open the windows to make sure the smell gets out. But it’s already everywhere. On my clothes. In my hair. In my pores. I can’t take it anymore. I tear my clothes apart, walk towards the shower and scrub the horrible smell out of my hair and body. I wipe myself dry with the first towel I can find and walk back to my bedroom. I find something clean to wear that doesn’t smell like roses. Back in the bathroom I try to comb out my hair, without any success. I take some scissors from the drawer and start cutting it. Most of it was burned anyway.

I walk downstairs, back to the kitchen, when I see Greasy Sae, making breakfast. I walk towards the fire and throw the ripped clothes into the flames. Between the bites of food, I ask her, ‘’Where did Gale go?’’ ‘’District Two. Got himself a pretty good job, working for Panem’s new government.’’ That means he won’t come back to Twelve. Good.

‘’I’m going hunting today,’’ I say after a moment. Greasy Sae looks up to me and smiles. I wonder how long she’s been waiting to hear that from me. I take a bow and arrows from the study room and walk out of the front door, intending to go to the Meadow. While I head towards the town, I see dead bodies everywhere. Some people are trying to clean them up. I try to avoid their eyes and walk straight towards the Seam. From the ruins of my old house, I can see it. A deep pit has been dug, the bottom already filled with bones, a mass grave for the thousands of people of Twelve. Even this beautiful place had to change in something horrible. That’s it. The Meadow’s gone.

I try to walk towards the lake, but it’s too far. I stop at my meeting place with Gale and sit down on a rock. I close my eyes. Hoping it was all just a really long nightmare. Hoping when I open them again, Gale will be sitting next to me like he used to. But when I do, nothing has changed. Gale is still in Two and he won’t come back. Ever.

By the time I make it back to the fence, it’s almost dinnertime. I’m walking back to the town, trying to ignore the dead, but I can’t. I start running. When I’m at my front door, I collapse. I wake from a hissing sound. For a few seconds I don’t know where I am. I look around and see that I’m laying on the sofa. How did I get here? When I turn my head to the other side, I can see him in the moonlight. How did he get here? He’s probably come on foot, all the way from Thirteen. ‘’She’s not here. Go away,’’ I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. ‘’She’s gone. You won’t find Prim anymore.’’ At her name, he looks up, starting to meow hopefully. ‘’She’s gone! Get out!’’ I sit up straight and throw a pillow at him, but he dodges it. ‘’Don’t you get it, you stupid cat? She’s not coming back! And she never will! She’s dead!’’ I feel myself shaking. It’s the first time I said it out loud. It feels so real now. Suddenly, tears come streaming down my face. I sink to the ground, take another pillow in my hands, and I start rocking back and forth, back and forth. After all these weeks, it finally comes to me. Reality. ‘’She’s dead.’’ I’m crying and sobbing. Buttercup crouches beside me, wailing as well. Who would’ve ever thought there would be a time where we’d comfort each other.

Morning falls and there’s a knock on the door. I stand up, walk past a mirror and take a moment to look at myself. My hair falls just over my shoulders. My eyes are red and swollen. I look awful. I turn away from the mirror and open the door. On the other side are Peeta, bearing a warm loaf of bread, and Greasy Sae. I step aside and head towards the kitchen. I’m trying to hide my face, so I keep looking down. While Greasy Sae is making us breakfast, I walk towards the phone. I dial the phone number my mom wrote in her letter and talk to her for the first time in weeks. I also decide to call Dr Aurelius. When I’m done, I walk back to the kitchen again and start eating my breakfast.

I’m quiet. I’ve always been quiet, but not like this. Peeta notices it and I feel him staring at me. I rise from my chair and walk towards the living room, avoiding his eyes. I’m going to sit in the seat, my legs dangling over the armrest. I’m looking around the room. It feels so empty without them. Buttercups is laying down on the carpet. I’m sure he feels it too. After an hour or so, I hear the front door close. They left. I stand up and walk towards the kitchen to make me some tea, when I see him. Still sitting on the same chair as earlier today.

‘’I thought you left, too,’’ I say to Peeta. Now he is avoiding my eyes. I try to pretend he’s not there and find me some mint leaves. When I pour the boiling water into a cup, he calls me by my name. ‘’Katniss, we need to talk. No excuses. No running away.’’ He’s looking at me. His perfect blue eyes locked with mine. ‘’Okay,’’ I say hesitantly. ‘’Let’s go sitting in the living room.’’ This is it, I think. Maybe death would’ve been a better option.

When he sits down, his eyes are still focused on me. ‘’What do you want to talk about?’’ I know I can’t run away from this. After all, this has to happen once. I’m sure he has been thinking about this conversation, because he doesn’t talk that easy like he used to. ‘’I know I did things to you and others that were out of my control. And I’m sorry. Dr Aurelius helped me to figure out most of the things in my head. He even showed me the Games again, how it really happened, and all the interviews. Of us, of our families, all of it. It was hard, really hard, seeing the people again that are now gone. And even though it was painful, I’m glad he made me do it anyway. It made me realise something as well. I know that nothing will be ever the same as before, not even if all those people were still alive. The Games and the war changed us, and we can’t do anything about what happened anymore. The only thing we can do is move on. And I’m sure it will be hard, but maybe, just maybe, we can be the same like before. Haymitch, you and I. We can be a team again. Trying to get through this. Together.’’

It feels like he slapped me in the face. Does he really think I can do this? His eyes don’t leave mine. The look of them, I recognise it immediately. Hope. He has lost his entire family and almost all of his friends, and he still has hope. And when he can have it, why not me? I give him a true and honest nod. When I think about what he said, I get an idea. We have to make a book, to write down all the things we can remember about the people we lost. It’s like the plant book, were my family and I recorded the things that we can’t trust to our memory. Before Peeta can ask me anything, I’m dialling the number of Dr Aurelius again, telling him about the plan. When I’m finished I walk back to the living room and tell Peeta about the plan. A couple of days later, a large box of parchment sheets arrives on the train from the Capitol.

In the months that follow, Peeta and I are working on the book. The page begins with what the person used to look like. A photo if we can find it, otherwise Peeta sketches or paints them. Underneath the picture, the name and dates of birth and death are mentioned. On the next page, I write in my most beautiful handwriting all the details we can remember about them. The first time Prim tried to get milk from her goat, Lady. The places my father and I used to go to in the woods. Peeta’s father buying my squirrels. Finnick’s sea-green eyes. Cinna’s most craziest ideas with only a piece of silk. The way Rue could sneak up to you. Madge giving me the golden pin. On and on we go. After several weeks Haymitch finally joins us, adding the names of twenty-three years of tributes he was forced to mentor to the list. The additions run out. Sometimes there’s an old memory that comes to surface. A dried primrose is being kept between the pages. There’s even a photo of Finnick and Annie’s newborn son in it. Without them we wouldn’t be sitting here today. And because of that, we promise to make their deaths count.

A year after the Games Twelve has been almost fully rebuilt. The signs of the war are nowhere to be seen. Even the Meadow turned green again. Peeta and I are laying in the grass. Beneath us are thousands of our people. Our friends, our family. Dead. We don’t talk about it, but we know it all too well. However, the Meadow is a beautiful place. The birds are singing and we can even see flowers here and there. Dandelions. The ones that always gave me hope, and they still do, since that day at school, years ago.

It’s true, what Peeta said earlier. We moved on. We got through this. Together. Peeta and I even grew back together. No, we’re not the same as before, and we never will be. Peeta still hasn’t fully recovered from the Hijacking. Sometimes he’s clutched to the back of a chair, screaming, until his mind is good again. One time he even tackled me because of the flashbacks. But he’s doing better every day. There are still nights where I wake up screaming from my nightmares. Sometimes I even run away, like those days were my mom had dying patients on our kitchen table. But it’s different now. I want to run away from my thoughts, but I can’t. Luckily I have him. The boy with the bread. The dandelion in the spring. The one that’s always there for me. And no matter how bad our losses are, life can go on. It can be good again. And we are the living proof of that.

We don’t say much. We’re just laying there, my head on his chest, both looking up to the perfectly blue sky. I’m so happy to be here. I’m so happy to be here with him. I would’ve never imagined ending up here. I always thought I’d now live in fear. Afraid Prim would be picked at the reaping, while I wouldn’t be able to do anything anymore. If someone would’ve told me I’d end up like this, I wouldn’t believe it for a second. But now I’m thankful for it. For all of it. I’m finally happy again. All because of him.

So after, when he whispers, ‘’You love me. Real or not real?’’ I tell him, ‘’Real.’’

#everlarkstories #everlark #everlark fanfiction #katniss everdeen #writing #mine #second fanfic

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dotshiiki · 6 years

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more of the GA AU

You know what sucks? Being sick while on holiday. But this AU must thrive on cold meds or something. So the blatant rip-off of Grey's Anatomy continues … For something that started out as a shapeless piece of I don't even know what, this is actually starting to have some semblance of a plot.

Have some more intern!Annabeth x patient!Percy. And bonus Leo, Nico, Thalia, Rachel, Octavian, and Travis Stoll to join the cast now!

Half the dialogue and narrative is ripped from Grey's, though I kinda picked and chose from a variety of episodes this time.

(Still no title. I have no idea what to call this.)

Parts I and II [here] and [here].

Surgery is like a dance: a precise, carefully-choreographed dance where every member of the team moves in perfect synchrony. It's the first time Annabeth has been part of the steps, and it's breathtaking.

She forgets that it's Dr Castellan leading; she forgets that she's an intern fresh from med school; she even almost forgets that it's Percy on the table (one glance at his unconscious face reminds her of it—tubed and under anaesthesia, he still manages to look like an innocent sleeping child. He might even be drooling a little, good heavens).

Sure, she's practised on cadavers and observed and imagined what it'd be like to stand over the operating table, but nothing really prepared her for this moment.

The moment she steps forward and takes the scalpel from the surgical nurse, this is more than just a game. All those reasons she should quit—the stress, the competition, the crazy hours and long, seven-year slog ahead of her—fly out of her head. It's just her and the body open on the table—this beautiful man who doesn't stand a chance without them—and they get to save his life. She gets to save his life.

Who needs drugs when you have this sort of high?

She could quit. But here's the thing. She's fallen in love with surgery.

Piper's waiting for her when she comes out of the OR, still riding the high of the surgery. She's sitting in one of the plastic chairs that line the walls.

'Hey.'

Annabeth takes a seat next to her. 'Hey.'

'Good surgery.'

'Yeah.'

Piper takes a deep breath, and for a moment, Annabeth's scared she's going to do that thing where she spills her feelings, and Annabeth will have to explain herself, and then there'll be a long discussion that inevitably involves the complicated relationship with Luke/Dr Castellan, which she really doesn't want to get into.

But Piper surprises her. 'Look, we're not gonna do that thing where you say something, and I say something, and somebody cries, and there's a moment—'

Annabeth's breath escapes her in a throaty laugh. 'God, no. I mean, unless you—'

'Nah.' Piper cocks her head to the side. 'Can't believe you can burst an aneurysm surfing. Kinda makes me think twice about it.'

'You surf?'

'You got a problem with that?'

Annabeth holds her hands up. 'No. Surfing's cool. Surfers are cool.' Although cool is too inadequate a word to describe Percy Jackson, not after she's heard him talk—funny, and kind, and so incredibly sweet, maybe—

'Damn straight we are. You should try it some time. Nothing like riding a good wave. And the dudes out there are hot.'

'Oh?' Annabeth keeps her tone carefully neutral.

'Oh come on, don't tell me you didn't notice. I know you're sleeping with McHottie, but it doesn't mean you can't look.'

'I'm not sleeping with Mc—Castellan,' Annabeth mutters. Piper raises her eyebrows. 'Not any more. That's gotta stop.'

'Okay.' They're silent for a moment. Then Piper says, 'So, surfer dude. Kinda hot, if you like the bad boy type.'

'He's not the bad boy type,' Annabeth says automatically.

'No?'

'No.' She thinks of his eyes, serious and so deep when he told her she deserved better. In that moment, she could almost believe that she deserved more than a screwed up relationship with a guy closer to her mom's age than hers, who keeps her around for the off-hour booty calls and the hero worship she flatters him with (because why would anyone else get involved in the mess that is Annabeth Chase's life?)

'Oh my god, you like him.'

She immediately wipes off the goofy smile that's spread across her face without her noticing. 'No I don't!'

'You so do. I know that look.'

'No I don't.'

'Uh huh.'

'He's a patient.'

'For now.'

'Shut up.'

Piper laughs and gets up, stretching. 'You should get some sleep. You look like crap.'

'I look better than you,' Annabeth throws back.

'Not possible.' Piper's still laughing as she walks away.

+++

She leaves Percy Jackson till the last on her evening rounds. He's finally coming up off the anaesthesia and he smiles groggily at her as she does her post-op checks.

'Everything's checking out,' she tells him. 'Looks like you're gonna be just fine.'

'You fixed me?'

'We fixed you.' She pats his hand. 'You'll be out on your surfboard again in no time.'

His fingers curl around hers, give a little squeeze, and let go. 'That's good. Though I think I lost my shot at Nationals this year.'

'There's always the next.'

'Mmm.' Percy closes his eyes momentarily. 'You were in my surgery after all?'

'I was.'

'Good. I'm glad you didn't let Dr Douchebag ruin your chance for you.'

There's something in his stare that makes her heart skip a beat. In spite of her best intentions, she finds herself leaning closer, as if those Carribean-green eyes have their own gravitational field tugging her in.

It's probably a good thing Percy's mom and Callie show up then, this time with a short, spiky-haired dude in tow, because Annabeth isn't sure what might have happened otherwise. She jerks away and starts scribbling quickly on Percy's chart as he tears his eyes away from her to greet them.

'Leo, buddy!'

'Up top!' says Leo, holding out his hand for a high-five. They go into some complicated fist-bump routine that Callie rolls her eyes fondly at. Annabeth forces a smile on her face and nods politely to all of them before she leaves the room.

Nurse Hazel is deep in an argument with another intern when Annabeth goes to return her charts, so she leans over the nurses' station to file them away herself, listening absently to the argument as she does.

'Are you sure that's the right diagnosis?'

'Well, I don't know, I'm only an intern. Here's an idea, why don't you go spend four years in med school and let me know if it's the right diagnosis. She's short of breath, she's got fever, she's post-op. Start the antibiotics.'

Annabeth isn't sure who this intern is—his name's Stoll, she thinks? There are way too many guys in the intern programme to keep track of them all—but he's definitely an idiot. Annabeth didn't need Dr Ramírez-Arellano's warning to know that you keep the nurses happy, period. From the look on Hazel's face, the next explosive diarrhoea case is going to have Dr Stoll's name on it.

Well, better him than her.

Stoll chucks his chart at Hazel, who takes it and marches away, muttering under her breath about arrogant interns and incompetent doctors.

Silena Beauregard, Annabeth's fellow intern, is charting behind the counter. Stoll leans over it and flashes a grin at her.

'God, I hate nurses. I'm Travis Stoll. I'm with La Rue. Who're you with?'

Silena has obviously been following Stoll's argument with Hazel. 'She may not have pneumonia, you know. She could be splinting, or have a PE.' She delivers this admonishment with a toss of her pretty ponytail. Annabeth isn't really sure what to think of Silena yet. She's blonde, too, but unlike Annabeth, Silena has the kind of statuesque figure you'd expect to see on a supermodel runway, not wandering about a hospital in scrubs. Case in point: they're both well into a twenty-hour shift, but the tiredness that makes Annabeth look like a wreck actually hangs attractively from Silena's curvy frame.

Stoll has clearly noticed this, too, from the way his eyebrows shoot up. But he's evidently one of the race of egotistical male doctors, because he says, 'Like I said, I hate nurses.'

Silena glares at him like he's a disgusting glob of bodily fluid that has landed on her shoes. She slams her chart shut and flounces off without another word.

Stoll whistles under his breath. He sees Annabeth watching, and winks. 'She's hot. She seeing anybody?'

Annabeth gives him a withering look, but there's not time to deliver a scathing comeback. Her pager has just gone off.

+++

Piper must have just started a new shift—she has that fresh, put-together look that disintegrates within an hour of being in the hospital (less if you're working in the pit). She and Will Solace are following the gurney rolling into the ER from the ambulance bay. It's one of several; half a dozen burly women in biker jackets are being wheeled in simultaneously, all in various states of injury.

'I don't know what happened!' one yells.

'I heard a crash, checked my rearview,' snarls another.

'Half the club is eating asphalt, banging around like tenpins.'

Annabeth rolls up her sleeves. She's only got two hours of her shift left, but if there's any chance she can get in on a surgery …

It's not like she's in a rush to go home, anyway.

'Donor cycle crash?' she asks.

'Bowling for bikers,' Piper says.

Dr Ramírez-Arellano directs them into the nearest exam room. 'What've we got?'

'Nico di Angelo, 24,' says the paramedic. 'Multiple contusions, pelvis stabilised in transport. Alert before we pushed five of morphine. For a left arm degloving injury.'

Will winces at the state of the crushed bones in di Angelo's hand. 'He must have been thrown out of his car!'

'He was on one of the bikes.'

'Seriously, this guy?' Aside from the fact that the rest of the bikers are all women, their patient is thin and wiry, with a face that looks a lot younger than his twenty-four years. Hell, he barely looks like he's out of high school.

'I know, right?' The paramedic shrugs and leaves di Angelo in their hands.

Dr Ramírez-Arellano makes a quick decision. 'Okay, trauma one, and page ortho. Two of you, stay with him.'

Five hands go up immediately. Dr Ramírez-Arellano purses her lips for a second. 'McLean and Solace.'

Piper and Will exchange high fives through their eyes and disappear into the exam room.

'What about us?' Silena says.

Dr Ramírez-Arellano checks her pager and groans. 'Page from—hey, what do you think you're doing?'

The abrupt question is directed at a spiky-haired whirlwind of a woman, who is limping down the ER floor, flanked by two cronies, both wearing the same thick leather jacket and biker jeans. She's a lot skinnier than the other women, with lean, ropy muscles, but from the way she's issuing her orders, there's no question that she's in charge.

'You two make the rounds.' Biker Chick clutches at a bloody wound in her side. 'I want status reports on all the injured. And find out what happened out there.'

'Oh no, you two aren't going anywhere except the waiting room.' Dr Ramírez-Arellano steps in front of the bikers. 'And you, ma'am, need to let us have a look at that injury.'

'Don't call me "ma'am,"' snaps Biker Chick. 'And you don't want to get in the way of club business. You screw with one of us, and we will all screw with you.'

Dr Ramírez-Arellano doesn't flinch. Annabeth is impressed. Her attending must have nerves of steel.

'Look around.' She points at the beds full of injured bikers. 'You want your girls taken care of? That's all my guys are trying to do. And that wound needs attention. So I'll make a deal with you. I'll let these ladies conduct their investigation, as long as they do not bother any of my patients. And you will settle down and let Dr Zhang here take care of you.'

Biker Chick scowls, but evidently finds this an acceptable compromise, because she lets Frank help her to a bed.

'What's your name, ma—um, you prefer sir?' he stammers when Biker Chick shoots him another death glare.

Annabeth hears her laugh harshly as Dr Ramírez-Arellano pulls the curtains shut on them.

'Call me Thalia,' she says.

Dr Ramírez-Arellano purses her lips and checks her pager again. 'You two—' she nods to Annabeth and Silena, 'get up to the neuro floor. Psych's just sent down a patient, they're paging for a consult.'

'Psych?' Annabeth barely bites back her groan. 'Dr Ramírez-Arellano, I was hoping I could scrub in on—'

Her resident's dark eyes flash dangerously. 'Every intern wants to scrub in. That's not your job. Do you know what your job is? Keeping the labs delivered. Keeping the code team staffed. And making sure the damned pages are answered so I can do my job.'

She flings back the curtain on Frank and Thalia and starts to harangue Thalia, who's resisting Frank's attempt to palpate her abdomen, into sitting still.

Silena sighs. 'Come on.'

The consult turns out to be for a freckled redhead with frizzy curls that fan out in a halo around her head. Silena scans her X-rays—all clean—while Annabeth runs through the chart.

'She belongs in psych,' Silena complains to the psychiatrist. He's skinny and blond, with an upturned nose like there's a perpetual bad smell under it. His name tag reads A. Octavian. 'What are you doing turfing her here?'

Octavian shrugs. 'She's my gift to you. Had a seizure this morning, and another an hour ago.'

'What are you talking about?' Annabeth points to the chart. 'Says right here, "She talks to dead people, her family had her committed." That's psych, not neuro.'

'Well, I don't know what correspondence school you attended, but they obviously didn't teach you not to jump to conclusions,' Octavian sniffs.

Silena's face reddens. 'Why, you—'

'Sorry, ladies.' Octavian's tone clearly says he isn't at all. 'We can't take her back until she's cleared.'

'So you're dumping her on us.'

'She thinks her seizures are visions.' Octavian wrinkles his nose.

'Hello,' says their patient. 'They're not seizures. I'm psychic.'

Annabeth and Silena exchange a look.

'Sure you are,' Silena says. 'And I'm Heidi Klum.'

'You could've been,' their patient says solemnly. 'Why'd you give it up?'

Silena makes an impatient noise in the back of her throat. 'Don't you start. I get enough of that shit from the guys.'

Octavian takes this chance to walk away. 'Hey!' Annabeth calls after him, but he's already halfway down the hall, leaving them to their psych(ic) case. Annabeth sighs and checks the chart again.

'Miss Dare. We're gonna start our workup now.'

The redhead shudders. 'Rachel, please. And it's a waste of time. I'm telling you—'

'Humour us,' Silena says. 'Can you grip my fingers, please?'

Rachel stares blankly at them. Her eyes shift out of focus, turning inwards. Annabeth nudges Silena.

'Miss Dare? Are you okay?'

'Someone …' Rachel whispers.

'Someone what?'

'Someone's gonna check out.'

Silena groans. 'Oh man, she is nuts.'

'I'm dizzy, not deaf,' Rachel snaps. 'And I'm telling you, someone on the fourth floor is gonna die.'

At that moment, a code blue comes blaring over the PA system. Rachel raises her eyebrows at them as the code team charges past on their way to the fourth floor.

'ICU's on the fourth floor,' Silena says crossly. 'People are always dying there.'

Rachel shrugs. 'Believe me or not. I'm just saying, I know things.'

'We're gonna get a CT anyway,' Annabeth says.

+++

'Look.' Annabeth points to the scans. 'Spikes in the temporal lobe. It is seizures. Epilepsy.'

'Huh, so neuro after all,' Silena says. 'I'll page—'

'You think I'm epileptic?' Rachel crosses her arms. 'No—that's wrong.'

Annabeth shows Rachel the scans. 'That's your brain activity. See these spikes here? That's abnormal activity—consistent with epilepsy. Not visions. We should get an MRI, get a better look at what's going on in your brain.'

'There's no way …' Rachel trails off. Her eyes close.

'Is she having another seizure?' Silena asks.

'Rachel? Miss Dare?' Annabeth waves her hand in front of their patient's eyes. 'Can you see me? Can you hear me?'

Rachel's eyes snap open. Her fingers close around Annabeth's wrist. 'When your dad left,' she says, 'it wasn't because he didn't love you.'

Annabeth steps back, stunned.

'I told you I know things,' Rachel says simply.

Silena rolls her eyes. 'You keep telling yourself that.' She steers Annabeth out of the room. 'You okay?'

'Yeah. She just—' Annabeth shakes her head, as if that will clear it of Rachel's words. He didn't love you.

'Did your dad die, or—?'

'No. He didn't.' Annabeth rubs her hands up and down her arms. Is it just her, or is the thermostat in the hallway malfunctioning?'

Silena gives her a sympathetic smile. 'Look, I know the type,' she says, jerking her head towards the room where Rachel is now gesturing to an invisible audience. 'These people just want everybody to think they're a sideshow. They're really good at reading people, telling them what they want to hear—I can handle the case, if you want.'

'You sure?'

'Yeah. Your shift's almost over anyway, isn't it? I'll take her to MRI.'

Annabeth lets her. She'd fight harder for it, but chances are, if the scans turn up anything, it'll be Dr Castellan's case.

There's less than ten minutes left to her shift. She could go straight to the locker room and change out, go home. That's what any sane person would do. She doesn't need to run a last check on any of her patients. They're already settled in for the night.

Her feet carry her to the post-op floor anyway.

She expects him to be sleeping—it's nearly midnight, after all, and his visitors are long gone—so it makes her jump when he speaks up.

'God, they really keep your noses to the grindstone around here, don't they? Do you ever get to clock out?'

'Actually, my shift ends in five minutes.'

'Ah, and I'm your final hurdle before freedom.'

Percy grins when she cracks a smile. 'I knew it,' he says.

'Knew what?'

'You can't leave without saying goodbye to me.'

'I'm just doing my job.'

'Uh huh.'

He has his arm around a round, black-and-white object—a panda pillow pet that his friends or his mom must have brought for him. 'Well, I can't think of a better way to end the day than by saying good night to someone cute.'

Annabeth raises her chart to hide her face. 'You flatter yourself, Mr Jackson.'

Percy blanches. 'Seriously, you gotta call me Percy. Mr Jackson makes me feel like I'm fifty. Anyway, who said I was talking about me? I meant I get to say goodnight to a cute girl.'

'You say that to all the girls, or just the ones that have to put up with you?'

'Only the ones who are hot doctors?'

Her face is definitely flaming now. 'You obviously haven't seen Dr Beauregard.'

'The supermodel chick?' he asks.

There's a sharp stab in her chest that feels somewhat like the one that hit her the first time she laid eyes on Percy's not-girlfriend Callie. Of course he's noticed Silena. Who doesn't notice Silena?

When she doesn't reply, he continues, 'All of you come in during rounds, you know. It's like this whole entourage. But the five of you are interns, right? You and your friend Piper, and Dr Beauregard, Dr Solace, and Dr Zhang.'

Annabeth stares at him, her embarrassment giving way to surprise. 'You know all our names?'

'Shouldn't I?'

'Well, most people don't bother. I mean, we're just interns. Dr Castellan and Dr Ramírez-Arellano are the ones in charge.'

'That's dumb,' Percy says with a frown. 'You're all my doctors. Hell, doctor or not, you're all people. You deserve for me to remember your names.'

People. She thinks of the doctors who refuse to learn their interns' names—or their patients', for that matter.

'My mom would say "personal feelings cloud the medicine."' If you want to be one of the greats, you have to learn to detach yourself, Annabeth. Yeah, that's the great Dr Athena Chase all over. Sometimes Annabeth wonders if her mother is so distant because she's a surgeon, or if she became a surgeon because she was already so detached. 'A lot of surgeons don't bother learning their patients' names. They just see them as case files.'

'But not you. You don't believe that.'

She slings her stethoscope over her shoulders and rests her hands on its ends. 'How do you know?'

'Well, for starters, I don't think I'm just a case file to you.'

I'm not going to blush. I'm not going to blush. 'And what makes you say that?'

'Because your shift ended five minutes ago now, and you're still here.'

And when Percy Jackson gives her that roguish, lopsided grin, Annabeth loses her battle against blushing.

#percy jackson fanfic #grey's anatomy au #grey's/pjo crossover #intern!annabeth #patient!percy #still a blatant rip-off of grey's #these two so want to hook up at some point but how to get them there #the backstory is seriously f-ed up #this is my brain on medication #percabeth

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reverseblackholeofwords · 7 years

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Monster Inside (pt. 5)

Previous and Next

Green runs another diagnostic on Oliver’s core, but the results are the same. Under the pressure of having Anti in his system, Oliver is dying. Green’s hands begin to shake minutely, and he hides them behind his back when he notices that Oliver—Anti—is watching him.

“What’s wrong, brother?” Oliver’s brown eyes are tinged with sadness, genuine sadness that Anti can turn on like a switch now that he’s in control. “Are you worried about my heart?”

Green can’t help but see the numbers, the odds. He knows the likelihood that Ollie won’t make it out of this alive because of that stupid programming that makes him protect the injured with all he has, throwing his own safety to the wind. Part of him loves that about Oliver, that he’s so caring, but part of him wants to rip apart whoever decided that it should be part of his little brother’s coding. Because it's why Oliver is currently dying like a bug in a jar.

It's why Anti is currently smiling through Oliver’s teeth.

Green walks up to the glass, face impassive. “Anti, you might as well know that if my brother dies, you’ll pay with your life. And when your precious adoring fans inevitably bring you back to life, I’ll kill you again and again.” Green’s eyes flash. “As many times as it takes until you rue being brought back with every fiber of your being and you fade permanently.”

Oliver’s face crumbles. “Terrance, please, I want out of here.” Oliver presses his forehead to the glass, using the human name given to Green by the yellow android. Hearing it said, knowing that Anti is pulling the strings, Green almost glitches into the next room.

“Red,” he calls, voice trembling as Oliver pouts at him. “R-red, it’s y-your tu-turn!”

The other android steps into the room slowly. He’s been working on Google Blue ever since the incident with Dark, and he looks like he desperately needs to charge. Green instantly feels guilty for calling his other brother in, but Red pushes his hair back and sighs, “Green, I…”

He’s interrupted when Oliver screams, one hand clutching at the front of his shirt in the area just over his core, and he sags against the glass, panting and gasping as his systems continually hiccup from the core’s malfunctions. His eyes flicker like an old projector, and when he looks up at Red and Green, the other androids are certain that it’s Oliver, really Oliver looking back at them.

Anti manifests within the cell, his head glitching to either side and a knife clutched in his hand. “L͓o̠̥̬o̜̼̠k̻̰̬̤͕s̤̮̦͜ ̶̭̞̱̫̲̯̝l̻̭̖į̮̹ķ̗̘͕͙̭̜̭e̛ ͍̟͍̳̬͜h͟ìs͓͜ t̩̖̲̤̘im҉̰̜͓e̸̖̜̼͖̜̜ͅ ̹͟i͇̪͉̬̙͢s̟ ̯̻͕̭̞̯u͖̳̫͈̭̭̕p̩̖̥͙!̰̲͙̤̹̬͟”

Dr. Iplier and Wilford Warfstache appear outside of Sean’s old cabin where the Jacksepticeye Egos have been living together for a few months. The cabin is small and quaint from the outside, but the stillness puts Wilford on edge. There are no signs of life anywhere nearby.

Dr. Iplier walks up to the front door and knocks three times, waits for a moment, and then tries the doorknob. It’s unlocked, and as Dr. Iplier sticks his head in, Wilford watches the other man go rigid in fear.

“Chase…” Dr. Iplier raises his hands up to either side of his face. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to help.”

Chase throws open the door with one hand, but with the other, he points a gun at Doc’s head. “How do I know you’re not Anti?”

Wilford flashes his own gun at the other figment. “Put the gun down, Brody.”

A flicker of rebellion flashes across the green-haired man’s face for a just a moment before his arm drops to his side. He gestures a bit for them to enter. “It’s not good.”

#antisepticeye #chase brody #dr. iplier #googleplier #dr. schneeplestein #wilford warfstache #monster inside #monster part 5

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rollingstonemag · 6 years

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Un nouvel article a été publié sur https://www.rollingstone.fr/john-lennon-dernier-tango-in-l-a/

John Lennon : dernier tango in L.A.

Le 26 septembre 1974, John Lennon publie l’album Walls and Bridges qui met un terme à son légendaire Lost Weekend, et décroche le premier – et seul – numéro 1 de sa carrière solo avec “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night”. Rolling Stone revisite l’une des périodes les plus déjantées mais aussi les plus prolifiques de l’ex-Beatle

Un juillet 1974, John Lennon prend ses quartiers au studio Record Plant de New York. Il est là pour enregistrer et produire lui-même les chansons qu’il a écrites depuis son retour à New York, après avoir séjourné plusieurs mois à Los Angeles en compagnie de May Pang, sa jeune assistante (ou son “esclave”, selon l’affreux Albert Goldman, biographe totalement non officiel de Lennon), avec laquelle il entretient une liaison plus ou moins téléguidée par sa femme, Yoko Ono. Soit l’une des périodes les plus troublées de la vie de John, que l’histoire retiendra sous le nom de Lost Weekend mais qui s’avérera aussi l’une des plus créatives de sa carrière solo. Au printemps, celui qui selon le journaliste Elliot Mintz “ne s’est jamais habitué à L. A.”, s’est installé dans un petit appartement de la 52e Rue Est avec May Pang. Les deux amants ont pour voisine Greta Garbo, la “Divine”. Après les excès du Lost Weekend, durant lequel, de son propre aveu, il s’est “noyé dans l’alcool”, John est dans une période plutôt positive. Il lui arrive encore de se soûler mais pas excessivement, et il reçoit chez lui, avec beaucoup d’affabilité, quelques vieilles connaissances de passage en ville comme Paul et Linda McCartney ou encore Mick Jagger, avec et parfois sans Bianca… Il y accueille surtout Julian, le fils né de son premier mariage avec Cynthia, qu’il n’a pas vu depuis plusieurs années et avec lequel il vient de renouer. Lennon essaie d’être un bon père. Pour Julian, il endosse même le rôle de professeur de guitare, et l’invite à jouer (de la batterie) au Record Plant le temps d’une courte reprise de “Ya Ya”, lors des sessions de ce qui deviendra l’album Walls and Bridges.

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C’est au pierre, en face de Central Park, où il s’est installé en rentrant de L. A., que Lennon a composé la plupart des chansons de cet album qui doit succéder à Mind Games, publié l’année précédente. Le thème qui domine ses nouveaux morceaux, c’est l’absence de Yoko Ono, dont il est séparé depuis l’été précédent – on lui attribue cette fameuse phrase prononcée a posteriori : “Notre séparation a été un échec total.” –, dans une tentative complètement ratée de pallier certains manques qui semblent déséquilibrer une relation jusque-là incroyablement fusionnelle.

“Going Down on Love”, le premier titre, donne par exemple une assez bonne indication de l’état d’esprit plutôt sombre qui a dominé les derniers mois, Lennon paraissant totalement désorienté par l’absence de Yoko. Un peu plus loin “Bless You”, qu’il considérait comme la meilleure chanson du disque, est une réflexion sur l’amour qu’il lui porte et “la façon dont l’amour évolue, ce qui est une des surprises que nous réserve la vie. Ce n’est plus tout à fait la même chose même si c’est encore de l’amour, et ‘Bless You’ parle en partie de ça”. “What You Got”, quant à elle, évoque directement Yoko et ce qu’il a perdu en la quittant. Au départ une chanson rockabilly inspirée par Carl Perkins et pastichant le “Rip It Up” de Little Richard, elle se transforme en performance disco-funk telle que les O’Jays pouvaient la pratiquer alors avec succès. Pourtant c’est bel et bien May Pang, sa compagne du moment, qu’on entend sur “#9 Dream”, somptueux titre mid-tempo gorgé de chœurs et de cordes, aux arrangements directement inspirés de ceux que John avait écrits pour la reprise du “Many Rivers to Cross” de Jimmy Cliff, enregistrée par son ami Harry Nilsson, lequel cosigne la ballade “Old Dirt Road” – sur laquelle il assure également les backing vocals.

Il y a beaucoup moins de tendresse, en revanche, dans “Steel and Glass”, une attaque directe (“And you leave your smell like an alley cat”) contre Allen Klein, l’ex-manager des Beatles et conseiller financier de Lennon et de Ringo Starr, avec lequel il est alors en procès. Même si Lennon lui-même a toujours affirmé “que la chanson ne s’adresse pas à une personne en particulier. J’ai utilisé plusieurs personnes, un peu comme un romancier qui compose un personnage à partir de plusieurs de ses connaissances. En tout cas, ça ne s’adresse pas à Paul”. À la différence de “How Do You Sleep” qui, dans Imagine, reprochait amèrement à McCartney d’avoir refusé de s’associer à Klein, précipitant ainsi la dissolution de leur partenariat. Tout aussi lugubre, “Scared” livre cette phrase terrible qui sonne comme un aveu : “Hatred and jealousy/Is gonna be a death of me”. Enfin, “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)”, composée au début du Lost Weekend et illuminée par un solo merveilleux du guitariste Jesse Ed Davis, reflète son sentiment de solitude extrême autant que ses désillusions par rapport au music business. Lennon dira plus tard l’avoir imaginée chantée par Frank Sinatra. “Je ne sais pas trop pourquoi mais c’est un genre de chanson sinatraesque, vraiment. Il ferait du super-boulot avec. Tu m’entends Frank ?”

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Mais la chanson phare de ces séances de l’été 1974, c’est “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night”. D’après May Pang, celle-ci a été inspirée à John par la prestation télévisée nocturne d’un pasteur évangéliste noir, Reverend Ike. Musica- lement, la progression harmonique s’inspire du hit (prédisco) “Rock Your Baby” par le chanteur George McCrae, que Lennon aime beaucoup. Mais le morceau va surtout bénéficier de l’apparition impromptue d’Elton John au Record Plant, alors que John travaille déjà sur le titre avec ce groupe de sessionmen – pour la plupart de vieilles connaissances –, dont le noyau dur est composé de Nicky Hopkins au piano, de Klaus Voormann à la basse, de Jim Keltner à la batterie et de Jesse Ed Davis aux guitares.

John et Elton se sont rencontrés récemment à Los Angeles et Lennon ne cache pas son admiration pour l’exubérant chanteur et pianiste anglais, alors au sommet de la gloire. Aussi, lorsque Elton demande s’il peut “ajouter un peu de piano” à la chanson, Lennon acquiesce avec enthou- siasme. Au final, ils finiront par chanter le refrain en chœur – sur le même micro – et Elton John ajoutera un peu d’orgue à l’ensemble, histoire de pimenter l’affaire. Contre l’avis de Lennon, la chanson est très vite choisie par Capitol comme premier single et donne l’occasion de mesurer l’incroyable culot d’Elton, qui n’hésite pas à provoquer Lennon. Si jamais “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night” devient no 1 des ventes de singles aux États-Unis, l’ex-Beatle doit promettre de monter sur scène avec lui lors de son futur concert au Madison Square Garden, le soir de Thanksgiving. Curieusement, Lennon accepte. Probablement parce qu’il n’y croit pas beaucoup, après l’échec commercial rencontré par Mind Games.

Je sais qu’il peut faire mieux que Walls and Bridges

Walls and Bridges est mis sur le marché le 26 septembre 1974, trois jours après la mise en vente du single “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night”. Invité à donner son opinion sur le nouveau 33 tours de son ex-“partner in crime”, McCartney déclare : “C’est un très bon album, un grand album, mais je sais qu’il peut faire mieux. J’ai entendu ‘I Am the Walrus’ aujourd’hui, par exemple, et c’est ce que je veux dire. Je sais qu’il peut faire mieux que Walls and Bridges. Je trouve que ‘Walrus’ est mieux. C’est plus aventureux. Plus excitant.”

D’autres se montrent plus enthousiastes que Paul. Bien décidé à redorer le blason de son nouvel ami, Elton John décide de reprendre “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”, l’un des joyaux psychédéliques de Sgt. Pepper’s, dans une version légèrement colorée reggae. Lennon est présent lors de l’enregistrement au Caribou Ranch, studio situé dans les montagnes rocheuses au Colorado, à 3 000 mètres d’altitude. Il y joue de la guitare sous le pseudonyme de Dr. Winston O’Boogie et assure également les chœurs sur la face B du single, “One Day (at a Time)”, une composition extraite de Mind Games.

Le 18 octobre, la surprise est totale pour Lennon : “Whatever Gets You…” devient no 1 des charts et Walls and Bridges suit aussitôt le même chemin. En partie grâce à Elton, Lennon a réussi son come-back, mais il a perdu son pari et va devoir tenir sa promesse de se produire sur scène, ce qu’il n’a pas fait depuis le concert du 30 août 1972 au Madison Square Garden – si l’on excepte un bœuf impromptu au Troubadour de L. A., le 30 novembre 1973, à l’occasion d’un concert de Dr. John.

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Mais avant cela, Lennon a décidé de retourner au Record Plant en compagnie du noyau dur des musiciens qui ont par- ticipé aux sessions de Walls and Bridges. Il souhaite terminer l’enregistrement de cet album de reprises de classiques du rock fifties, Oldies but Mouldies, entamé un an plus tôt à L.A. sous la houlette de Phil Spector et demeuré inachevé.

Pour bien comprendre de quoi nous parlons ici, il convient de revenir au début de l’année 1973. Celle-ci a fort mal commencé, avec la réélection de Richard Nixon, l’ennemi juré de John. Le prenant – plutôt à raison (l’album Some Time in New York City, entre autres) – pour un personnage dangereusement subversif, Nixon a en effet fait des pieds et des mains pour favoriser son expulsion du territoire américain. En réalité, maintenant qu’il a réinvesti la Maison Blanche, Nixon se moque comme d’une guigne de Lennon. Mais celui-ci n’en sait rien et se croit toujours espionné par le FBI. De toute façon, son sort est toujours suspendu à la décision de l’Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Suite à une condamnation pour usage et possession de drogue au Royaume-Uni, son ordre d’expulsion est confirmé le 23 mars. Il a soixante jours pour quitter le territoire.

C’est d’autant plus dramatique, que Lennon a enfin trouvé un lieu de vie qui semble lui convenir parfaitement. Un vieil immeuble gothique, un peu inquiétant, construit en 1880 et qui domine Central Park, le Dakota. C’est en partie là que Roman Polanski a tourné son chef-d’œuvre Rosemary’s Baby, et l’endroit comptera au fil de sa longue histoire nombre de résidents célèbres, tels que Lauren Bacall, Arthur Rubinstein ou encore Boris Karloff. Les Lennon y achètent un premier appartement (ils finiront par en posséder cinq) de douze pièces, lequel a appartenu à l’acteur Robert Ryan. En apparence, tout semble aller pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes pour le couple…

Un mois plus tôt, Lennon est en outre parvenu à se débarrasser légalement du calamiteux Allen Klein, qui se désintéresse désormais totalement du sort de ses poulains, John, George et Ringo. Bien évidemment, Klein intente un procès à John, affirmant lui avoir prêté 500 000 dollars, que ce dernier ne lui aurait jamais rendus. Cela n’empêche nullement le musicien d’être très productif, écrivant de courts essais et des réflexions (qui seront publiées à titre posthume sous le titre Skywriting by Word of Mouth, soit “Éclats de ciel par ouï-dire”) ainsi que des chansons qu’il destine à Ringo Starr (“Goodnight Vienna”), à Johnny Winter (“Rock’n’Roll People”) ou à Keith Moon (“Move Over Ms. L”). Il “supervise” également l’enregistrement du nouvel album de Yoko, tout en travaillant sur Mind Games. Enfin, tous deux sont désormais clean, après une longue dépendance à la méthadone, clean au point de ne “même plus fumer d’herbe”.

Pourtant, il se produit alors une chose incroyable. John et Yoko vont prendre la décision de se séparer. En cause, l’appétit sexuel de John qui, même s’il n’a quasiment jamais été infidèle à sa femme, semble le tarauder sans relâche. Appétit que Yoko ne paraît plus en mesure de satisfaire. Le couple prend le problème à bras-le-corps et décide, d’un commun accord, que John peut aller voir ailleurs si l’envie lui prend. Loin, si possible, et de préférence avec quelqu’un que Yoko connaît. Voire qu’elle pourra contrôler. Le choix se porte donc sur May Pang, cette jeune sino-américaine qui travaille pour eux depuis deux ans, tandis que John suggère que Yoko aille butiner du coté de David Spinozza, ce jeune guitariste très doué qui a participé aux séances de Mind Games.

Le 18 septembre, John s’envole pour Los Angeles en compagnie de la ravissante May Pang qui doit lui servir tout à la fois de gouvernante, d’assistante et de maîtresse. “Yoko m’a littéralement foutu à la porte, racontera-t-il plus tard. Je ne suis pas parti en disant que j’allais me faire un trip de célibataire rock’n’roll. Elle m’a vraiment dit : ‘Fous le camp’ et j’ai répondu : ‘OK, OK, je m’en vais… célibataire et libre.’ J’avais été marié toute ma vie et je me suis dit : Whooo- yippie ! Mais ça a été vraiment horrible.”

C’est là que commence ce que John lui-même va appeler son “Lost Weekend”, en référence sans doute à un classique du film noir réalisé en 1945 par Billy Wilder, avec Ray Milland dans le rôle d’un jeune écrivain alcoolique qui se retrouve seul un week-end à New York à lutter contre ses démons. Lennon, lui, n’est pas seul : dès son arrivée avec May, il est accueilli par Elliot Mintz. Ancien DJ qui s’est fait virer pour avoir diffusé en intégralité et sans interruption Some Time in New York City à l’antenne, il travaille désormais pour l’émission Eyewitness News sur la chaîne ABC.

J’avais été marié toute ma vie et je me suis dit : Whooo- yippie ! Mais ça a été vraiment horrible

D’après Mintz, “dès que John a débarqué, il n’avait qu’une idée en tête : retrouver Yoko”. Se révèle ainsi toute l’ambiguïté de ce “week-end perdu”. Lennon va se comporter comme le plus invétéré des célibataires tout en appelant Yoko vingt fois par jour, celle-ci contactant May presque aussi souvent pour être au courant des faits et gestes de son mari. Ce qui est certain, c’est que John est complètement paumé. Théoriquement, il est censé rencontrer les gens de sa maison de disques, Capitol, pour promouvoir Mind Games, puis profiter de sa présence à Los Angeles pour régler un vieux contentieux avec l’éditeur Morris Levy. Ce “conflit” – qui finira devant les tribunaux – va obliger Lennon a enregistrer au moins trois chansons tirées du très abondant catalogue que possède celui que l’on surnomme “La Pieuvre” dans le métier. Un catalogue riche en classiques du rock’n’roll et du rhythm’n’blues, obtenus dans des conditions souvent douteuses, mais qui inspirent suffisamment Lennon pour qu’il envisage d’enregistrer un album complet dont le titre de travail est Oldies but Mouldies.

L es clés en sont confiées à Phil Spector, avec qui l’ancien Beatle a enregistré ces deux premiers disques post-Beatles, Plastic Ono Band et Imagine, et les musiciens constitués d’un aréopage de requins de haut vol au nombre desquels figurent, Jim Keltner, Klaus Voormann, Steve Cropper et Jesse Ed Davis. S’échelonnant d’octobre à décembre 1973, les séances du futur Rock’n’Roll, on le sait, dégénèrent très vite, Spector s’illustrant surtout par ses déguisements extravagants, sa consommation gargantuesque de cognac Courvoisier, son penchant qui s’avérera funeste pour les armes à feu et le kidnapping final des bandes enregistrées. Lennon n’est pas en reste, décrit par Jim Keltner comme “assis la plupart du temps sur un tabouret un casque sur les oreilles, avec un seau rempli de vodka d’une taille carrément ridicule à ses pieds”. Installé avec May Pang dans la maison du producteur Lou Adler, Lennon “biberonne, comme jamais depuis mes 20 ans”. Il laisse surtout libre cours à la partie la plus destructrice de sa personnalité, malgré la présence a priori rassurante de Mal Evans, l’ancien roadie des Beatles, qui le raccroche à ses racines liverpuldiennes.

À Los Angeles, les frasques de Lennon deviennent vite légendaires, même si tout le monde fait son possible pour éviter qu’elles ne s’ébruitent dans la presse afin de ne pas aggraver son cas vis-à-vis de l’INS. Mais même celles qui paraissent les plus invraisemblables, telles que narrées par Albert Goldman dans son abominable Une vie avec les Beatles, seront a posteriori confirmées par des sources plus fiables. Il y a ce jour où, excédé par l’attitude laborieuse de Spector, il manque de violer May Pang devant tous les musiciens, avant de sortir du studio avec Jesse Ed Davis, de rouler une énorme pelle à celui-ci, puis de le repousser violemment. Une fois en voiture, il entreprend de rouer de coups les autres passagers, en hurlant alternativement : “May ! Yoko ! May ! Yoko !” Arrivé à Bel Air, Lennon tente d’étrangler Phil Spector, qui heureusement ne se déplace jamais sans George, son garde du corps. Celui-ci finit par ligoter Lennon à son lit, mais ce dernier, totalement incontrôlable, parvient à se libérer et commence à balancer les meubles par la fenêtre. Lennon finira par se calmer dans les bras de Tony King, un employé du label Apple, non sans avoir réduit en poussière la collection de disques d’or accumulée par Lou Adler grâce aux Mamas & the Papas.

Même si toute cette histoire a sans doute été un peu exagérée, les exactions de Lennon en compagnie de Harry Nilsson, qui est devenu son compagnon de beuverie préféré, puis de Keith Moon venu rejoindre la petite bande de fêtards, sont généralement avérées. Il y a d’abord cette soirée de février 1974 au Troubadour, où se produit la chanteuse Ann Peebles, alors au sommet de sa carrière grâce au formidable “I Can’t Stand the Rain”. Même s’il déclare qu’“il s’agit de la meilleure chanson de tous les temps”, Lennon a l’idée saugrenue d’arborer une serviette hygiénique trouvée dans les toilettes de l’établissement en guise de couvre-chef pendant la prestation de Peebles. Puis, le 12 mars, au même endroit, c’est le grand retour des Smothers Brothers, un duo de comédiens et musiciens folk, dont le Comedy Hour télévisé était très populaire dans les années 60, avant qu’il ne soit supprimé pour cause de sympathie avouée du duo pour la contre-culture. Ce soir-là, John et Nilsson entonnent à tue-tête le même “I Can’t Stand the Rain” de Peebles, avant d’être pris à partie par le manager des Smoothers Brothers et de se faire éjecter du Troubadour. “J’étais comme un poulet sans tête, déclarera ensuite Lennon. Je me réveillais dans des endroits étranges, ou bien je découvrais des trucs sur moi dans le journal racontant des choses extraordinaires que j’avais faites, pour moitié vraies et pour moitié fausses. Et je me suis retrouvé dans une sorte de rêve dingue pendant un an…”

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Pourtant, si l’on en croit Elliot Mintz, pour “une journée d’incohérence alcoolisée, il y en avait dix où il était parfaitement clair”. Notamment lorsqu’il reçoit Cynthia et Julian, qu’il emmène plusieurs fois à Disneyland, et surtout quand il prend en main l’enregistrement d’un album de Nilsson, Pussy Cats. Lennon réalise qu’au milieu du chaos qu’il engendre plus ou moins malgré lui – le nombre de stars hollywoodiennes qui débarquent en studio ou dans la grande maison qu’il loue à Santa Monica est carrément hallucinant – il est le seul capable de prendre des responsabilités.

Les séances de Pussy Cats démarrent le 28 mars 1974 aux studios Burbank, avec plus ou moins les mêmes musiciens que ceux qui officient sur Oldies but Mouldies, et bénéficient, dès la première semaine, de la visite inattendue de Paul et Linda McCartney de passage en ville. La soirée finira par une longue jam sur “Midnight Special”, au cours de laquelle les fameuses harmonies vocales, passablement entamées par l’alcool toutefois, résonneront pour la toute dernière fois. Le partenariat ATV/ Northern Songs ayant été dissous et Klein évincé, les rapports entre les deux vieux complices se sont nettement améliorés. D’ailleurs, quelques mois plus tard, au cours d’interviews données à la presse anglaise, Lennon évoque pour la première fois la possibilité de reformer les Beatles. “Il n’existe aucune loi qui dise que nous ne ferons plus rien ensemble, et aucune loi qui dise qu’on le fera. Si on faisait quelque chose (ensemble) je suis certain que ce ne serait pas permanent. On le ferait juste pour ce moment-là. Je pense que nous sommes plus proches à présent que nous ne l’avons été depuis longtemps.”

Entre-temps, John est revenu à New York où il entreprend d’apporter la touche finale à Pussy Cats et de régler ses problèmes avec l’Immigration. Ayant également réussi, moyennant la coquette somme de 90 000 dollars, à persuader Phil Spector de lui restituer les bandes du fameux Rock’n’Roll, il a enfin la possibilité de boucler – en cinq jours seulement – les derniers titres de l’album.

En attendant le 28 novembre, date du concert d’Elton John, il s’occupe en assurant la promo de Walls and Bridges. Assez ironiquement, les interviews qu’il accorde à la presse anglaise ont lieu juste à côté d’une convention Beatles, à l’occasion de laquelle il finit par avouer à la journaliste Lisa Robinson qu’il collectionne lui-même les objets Beatles. “Elton John m’a offert des poupées Beatles. Je n’ai pas la lunchbox. J’aimerais bien. C’est plutôt utile comme objet.”

Une semaine avant le concert du Madison Square Garden, John assiste à un show d’Elton John à Boston. Une prestation dont il ressort terrorisé, face à l’aisance du musicien et à la ferveur du public. Pourtant, malgré son appréhension, il se rend le 27 novembre aux répétitions avec Elton et son groupe. Le choix des chansons se porte sur “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night”, la version dite reggae de “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” et, plus curieusement, à la suggestion d’Elton, sur “I Saw Her Standing There” des Beatles, une chanson que Paul McCartney a toujours chantée.

Elton John m’a offert des poupées Beatles. Je n’ai pas la lunchbox. J’aimerais bien. C’est plutôt utile comme objet.

Le lendemain soir, à l’heure dite, John débarque au Madison Square Garden, littéralement dévoré par le trac. Après avoir vomi backstage, il est sur le point de renoncer quand Bernie Taupin, le parolier d’Elton, le pousse littéralement sur scène aux deux tiers du concert, comme cela était prévu. Et Elton annonce, non sans fierté : “Comme c’est Thanksgiving, nous nous sommes dit que nous allions faire de cette soirée un événement un peu joyeux en invitant quelqu’un à nous rejoindre sur scène.” John arrive, mâchant nerveusement son chewing-gum comme il l’a toujours fait en concert, les yeux dissimulés derrière ses lunettes noires. Il salue longuement le public, et soudain c’est l’émeute : 18 000 personnes deviennent totalement hystériques. Même s’il est encore nerveux, Lennon prend rapidement ses marques et se lance avec Elton dans une version débridée de “Whatever Gets Thru the Night”. Au moment d’entamer “I Saw Her Standing There”, Lennon esquisse même un semblant de plaisanterie, en annonçant : “Un morceau écrit par un ancien fiancé à moi, nommé Paul ! »

Trois petites minutes plus tard, c’est terminé. Tout le monde s’étreint et pleure, et Lennon disparaît dans les coulisses. On ne le reverra jamais plus sur une scène. Tandis que Elton termine son show, Yoko, venue assister secrètement à l’événement, le rejoint dans les loges, où ils restent un long moment assis, comme seul au monde, non loin d’une May Pang visiblement mal à l’aise.

Le Lost Weekend de John Lennon vient de prendre fin ; il réintègre le Dakota au début de l’année 1975 et, deux mois plus tard, Yoko lui annonce qu’elle attend un enfant. Au moment où sort officiellement l’album Rock’n’Roll, au terme d’un invraisemblable imbroglio impliquant l’ineffable Morris Levy, Lennon a pris la décision de se retirer de la vie publique et de ne plus faire de musique, pour se consacrer entièrement à son fils Sean, né le 9 octobre, pendant que Yoko “gérerait les affaires”. Une nouvelle vie commence. Partiellement reclus au Dakota, Lennon ignore encore qu’il ne lui reste plus que cinq années à vivre avant de tomber sous les balles d’un déséquilibré.

Par Manuel Rabasse

#John Lennon #Lost Weekend #paul mccartney #phil spector #yoko ono

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