#this has clips from the funeral scene and made me remember that even though it IS true that they all kinda sugarcoat the way he was

[oddlittlestories]

Life Is Pain edit

Apparently this is youtube day, so another edit for you. This person even has a tumblr. Thank you @stileslyfer

#house md #gregory house #this has clips from the funeral scene and made me remember that even though it IS true that they all kinda sugarcoat the way he was #everything they say every positive thing is also completely TRUE #anyways #video edit #this is truly incredible #suicidal ideation #suicidality #chronic pain #depression #suicide reference #Youtube

[falsebooles123]

An Incredible Long Couple of Weeks. Diary of a Big Ole Gay.

Hey Whores, this is going to be a really long post because I may not have the energy to finish this this week.

So I guess I haven't done one of these in about two weeks and a lot of that is me being very busy. Last week of March I was working on like fifteen million different articles and videos and other content creation thingies and the first week of April literally started with my co-worker HAVING A MENTAL BREAK AND LEAVING TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LITERAL COUNTRY.

(i'm posting a funny GIF but I'm actually kinda pissed)

so instead of having a lot of great help to ease into running a full ass kitchen by myself doing 70 heads a day. I was doing this with exactly one other person doing the bare minimum to help me. It was a lot of hard work, and of course it went great. But I was extremly exhausted.

I also didn't watch that many queer films because of it.

but lets get into it.

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) dir. John Huston

OK so I don't remember a lot about any of these films because I watched this one in particular, *checks notes* the 27th of last month. Yeah theres a reason why theres no date on this one.

So this one I think is based on a book or something and features Marlon Brando being a CLOSET HOMOSEXUAL. oh also he stays right in that closet.

(god this gif is something else. so creepy)

Hes like yeah I'm going to spend this entire movie staring at this naked guys ass, (yeah I'm not going to explain the plot your'll either love this movie or hate it but you can't say it doesn't have a plot), but I ain't going to act on it. I'm just going to fight with my beautiful neglected wife who beats my ass for beating her horse.

See the relationship is super toxic but its liz taylor and Marlon Brando so its also the hottest thing ever.

anyway lot of repressed homos in the background of the entire rest of the plot. One of the more fun dramas I watched cause it was MESSY!

Flesh (1968) dir. Paul Morrissey

ok so Flesh is one of those weird cineme verite movies that Morrissey made and it is very artsy and very gay but there isn't actually any guy on guy stuff. The main actor spends most of his time naked, and some of that is like eroticized but also its kinda meant to desexualize nudity. Or rather the film is using casual nudity as a way to lampshade the way we objectify people because after we see this long scene were hes just laying in bed with his dick out (relatable), we get a 5 minutes scene of him starting his day buck ass naked feeding his 1 year old real daughter a muffin. they actually use that as one of the posters

so like yeah hes naked but hes clearly not erotised in that moment in fact even though the main character is a hustler he never actually has gay sex on screen. His only client is a man who wants to draw him for like classical sculpture. Hes someone whose literally objectified scene for his body and not as a living person.

OMFG am I a film critic or something.

anyway this is another pretty cool film and especially something gay people should watch even through there isn't that much PDA.

Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) dir. Toshio Matsumoto

ok first look at this iconic photo.

Pretty this follows a bunch of transwoman in like Tokyo just honestly vibing and being faggot punks. We love, we stan, we support.

theres a lot to enjoy about this film and honestly just iconic trans woman you need to watch this. oh also all these ladies are straight so theres no gay kissing.

My Hustler (1966) dir. Andy Warhol, Chuck Wein

NOTE: This is a clip from the 1961 SPORTS THRILLER "The Hustler" but also this is pretty good dupe to the experience of My Hustler

Yeah so My Hustler is the story of a rich gay bringing a gay whore for his vacation and then having his fag hag friend and then the hustler friend show up and they all get in to this contest about whos going to fuck him. So I guess more objectification of men through the queer lens. Noone actually fucks him and its a lot of naturalistic dialogue. Its warhol you get it.

The Children's Hour (1961) dir. William Wyler

Ok so Childrens Hour is about Audrey Hepburn and her GAL PAL Shirley McClaine who run a school together. They are in fact just roommates but doesn't stop snot nose little brats from spreading rumors that like she totally saw Mrs. Hepburn drowning in pussy. So yeah they have there lives ruined and there not even dykes da fuck. Its very Tea and Sympathy in that regard about how homophobia hurts those that arn't even faggots. Y'know the innocent. /s

except it turns out that Shirley McClaine is in fact like a totally LESBIAN HAROLD. and this was the push she needed to admit how fucking gay she is for audrey hepburn, (which like we get it girl it audrey), oh and then she fucking kills herself. Thanks I hate it.

The movie up to that points pretty good.

The Leather Boys (1964) dir. Sidney J. Furie

ok so this is another British New Wave movie and it manly follows this newly married couple. And like the wife Dot, is literally the worst fucking person. She spends all her money on her hair which 1. He doens't like and 2. Doesn't even look good on her. She doesn't have a job and she doesn't keep the house. And then she won't move into his mom's house after his dad fucking dies and his mom literally can't take care of herself which like sorry girl I get if you don't like your mother-in-law but um kinda a consequence of marrying someone at some point you kinda have to deal with there parents getting old and dying. Oh also shes cheating on him. SPOILERS.

Anyway so they spend most of the time seperated while this guy sleeps with his best friend.... in like the same bed. hahaha not like in a gay way that would be ..... gay.

Also I'm totally sure his best friend isn't like a faggot or something.

Yeah, basically this guy was sleeping next to a gay guy the whole time and everytime his friend was like "omg babe lets ditch your looser wife, (can confirm she sucks), and move to america together" that he meant it in like a gay way.

and so the dude just fucking leaves. Honestly I would try sucking dick just once if I was him. You guys have a great relationship and your wifes a bitch.

Advise & Consent (1962) dir. Otto Preminger

The Best Man (1964) dir. Franklin J. Schaffner

just going to throw these together. Basically there both about some future were the president wants to nominate some dude and people are like ew no. also some random other person is getting blackmailed for being a faggot in the war. Yeah both of these movies have like the same exact plot.

I like The Best Man a little bit more but there both kinda awful. Also Betty White is in the first one and SHES A SENATOR. yaaaas girl.

Manji (1964) dir. Yasuzo Masumura

THESE LESBIANS ARE TOXIC.

Like don't get me wrong they kiss, they suck, they fuck. Lot of Women absolutely just being the most, this is the most lesbian thing I've seen.

Oh also eventually they start a death cult it goes to some really weird places. Also theres like three remakes.

anyway whores, sorry that its taking so long for me to post this diary update. I'm going to draft the next post and try to get it out by the end of the month. Thanks love you.

#diary #queer cinema #early queer cinema #firstgaykiss #reflections in a golden eye #flesh 1968 #funeral parade of roses 1969 #my hustler 1966 #the childrens hour 1961 #The Leather Boys #Advise & Consent 1962 #The Best Man 1964 #Manji 1964 #slurs(reclaimed) #Buried Gays #CW Suicide

[angelthefirst1]

Diverged 2021, and converging.

We are getting very close to Beth, the symbolism in Diverged is extremely exciting.

What are we watching? A combination of many things... 1. Mostly Beth's missing funeral story (symbolically) 2. Repeats from 510 Them, 506 Consumed, Grady and many more... 3. A recap of Carol's past including her constant desire over the years to run away... Beth as Jesus = Light, salt, water symbolically, remember that as we go. And also Leah's knife = Beth. The previously on clip is showing the past and future at once. It's a play on Carol at Terminus saving the group while covered in walker slim, her family took her back in then, because of what she did to save everyone at Terminus, even though she was banished for killing Karen and David.

But...Carol here is also a Beth repeat and Lydia becomes Daryl. Daryl will do something to stop Beth's body being eaten/killed after Grady/The tower (which was the hospital) He will put/pull her somewhere safe just as Lydia does here with Carol, stopping her from dying.

Carol then talks about food being scarce, and Maggie's people returning, so there are more mouths to feed. Repeating season 5 when Carol first comes across Maggie's new group (Abraham and co)

Terminus had just been destroyed and the group had no supplies. Its also repeating the second time Maggie's people return...to the church after the failed trip to Washington because Eugene lied. Not long after returning with her people the second time, Maggie finds out Beth is alive.

Carol talks about the decisions she's made being all to protect them. Repeating her season 4 self killing Karen and David to "protect the group".

Back then Rick banished her effectively separating Daryl and Carol, which is re-done here in Diverged, because she “killed” Connie. Carol leaves Rick in a car with a "I love my dog" sticker...

Repeating her-this time leaving with actual Dog... As I mentioned in my previous post on Diverged, Carol leaving at the crossroads with Dog is also a representation of Beth and Carol both ending up at Grady.

They are combining and converging every scene where Carol/Daryl, Beth/Daryl go in different directions... The opening scene shows Carol and Daryl walking together, Carol struggling to open her water bottle. Daryl offers to help, but Carol won't let him, just like this scene below from season 5, after Terminus.

Daryl offers to help carry the water, he even spills water on the ground, which he repeats when he gives Dog a drink.

Daryl then offers "Leah's" (Beth's) knife to Carol to help get into the water bottle, inverting Carol giving Daryl, Beth's knife in 510.

This scene is a combination of Carol following Daryl when looking for water in 510, giving him the knife and then leaving. In 510 Carol asks to come looking for water, Daryl says no but Carol says "You gonna stop me" repeating her jumping on the back of his bike in "Find me" even though he didn't want her to come...

He didn't stop her then or now, and we see them exchange knives and Carol go a different way, while Daryl wants to stay out longer to look. Just like 510, when they don't find water Carol says " We should head back" Daryl says "nah, I'll stay out a little longer" and then the knife exchange happens, it's reversed.

All this, is about repeating and converging the events leading up to Beth's Death, inverted they will lead to Beth alive... Past, present and future combined = infinity When Carol first gets back to Alexandria she comes across this scarf... 

This scarf is a call back to her head scarf in 304, the episode Rick (Daryl) loses his wife (Future wife Beth). Carol lost this head scarf while in the tombs...

Carol and T-(dog) get stuck together while in the tombs where Carol loses her head scarf, which Daryl eventually finds and throws away on the floor.

Carol finds it on the floor and eventually puts it in the trash, at the end of this episode... Carol and T-(dog) in the tombs with her head scarf is also repeating Beth and Noah at Grady trying to escape.

Surrounded by walkers Carol/Beth shoot at them in the dark. The lights go on and off, but the opposite happens in that Beth doesn't escape Grady just like T-(Dog) while Carol/Noah do. The lost head scarf will eventually become Beth's, in that it will be used to wrap her head wound after Grady, but she then gets "lost in the tombs" or goes missing for all these years...

The one Carol finds even has a "gun shot hole",and she wants to "Fix it" because somebody (Daryl) loved it!

She finds the head scarf which someone dropped during "The evacuation" basically repeating Carol "evacuating"-running into the tombs from the past and in the future it will come off Beth's head when she "evacuates" or leaves her "tomb" because of walkers-around the time of her funeral. Carol offers to make soup (so around the time Beth's funeral/body is lost, someone tries to make food for the group) Stone soup is a story about strangers convincing a village to share their food to make soup for everyone. 

Part of me thinks this will possibly come into play after Grady at the White houses, possibly with Chase, who was seen filming at the houses. Strangers will want some of the supplies the group found at the food bank before Coda and I have a feeling they will probably "pirate" the food, not so much "share it"-like the stone soup story depicts.

More like the book Carol picks up, mid way through making the soup would suggest...

So... we have: 1. A lost head scarf/bandage 2. An offer to prepare food. Possibly by a stranger. (Stone soup story) 3. A "rat" causing a... 4. Lack of food. 5. And Carol/Beth going missing into the "tombs" Beth like Carol will lose her "head scarf" or bandage as she "disappeared" into the dark "tombs" after her "funeral". Opposite to Carol

It’s during the time Carol is in the tombs, that Rick hallucinates Lori, the three stories combined (Carol, Sofia and Lori) will lead to Beth

Carol offers to make the soup with mushrooms...

Which could be what leads to Daryl hallucinating. As I talked about in Find me 2018, when Daryl was hallucinating Merle during his search for Sofia, Merle accused him of eating special mushrooms, which made him "see" the Chupacabra a blood sucking dog ("Walker" Beth after her funeral).

Daryl in the episode Chupacabra is looking for Sofia so it's fitting that this is repeated with his search for Beth (Sofia 2.0) If this "Rat"/"Stranger" convinced the group to let them make food for everyone, they could have "spiked" the food with special mushrooms. Leaving the group especially Daryl in a vulnerable state, unable to fight back and making it easy to steal their supplies and leave. Meanwhile Beth gets out of her "resting place" whether that's in a car or coffin and she leaves or gets taken away. (I'll explain this more soon)

Daryl then sees what he thinks is "Walker Beth" the blood sucking dog or Chupacabra fulfilling season 2 episode 5.

This delusion could also be in part the reason for the episode we now know as 2018 Find me. If he is somewhat intoxicated with some form of poisoning and then tries to find Beth, it could make some sense of 2018. Jerry says to Carol

Which is symbolic of Beth the "Light of the world" being broken or gone. Biblically it represents Jesus and his followers “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden" "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” Carol later in the episode fixes the lights with the solar panel using Leah's knife (Beth) but it ends up flashing on and off again too, when the rat gets away. Which would also = Beth leaving, because the two are connected, which I will go through soon...

Carol adds salt to the soup, and she uses "Beth's" knife to get into it just like the water bottle.

Jesus who we all know Beth's story is paralleling, is not only called the light of the world and the living water that wells up to eternal life...but his followers are called the salt of the earth. Jesus said: You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, with what will it be salted? It is then good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under the feet of men. Salt is used as a preservative to save meat and food from spoiling, as Jesus saves and is the cure to mans soul being separated from God for sinning and falling from grace. This is why Beth is going to bring a cure at some point, because just as Jesus provides a cure to mankind, she will too... Beth the (knife, salt and light) is in the same location as the food and Carol. Carol adds salt to the soup but also throws salt over her shoulder which is something done as a superstition after a funeral, to keep away bad spirits.

Depicting this is about Beth's funeral. Carol then hears dog (Daryl) going crazy in the next room he is destroying the room trying to find the "rat". When Carol goes to check on Daryl the dog she leaves the knife (Beth) with the food. It's while Both Carol and Daryl are not around that the rat runs into where Beth and the food are kept. Someone in those 3 missing weeks is a "Rat" that compromised Beth and the group, leading to her going missing... This theme was backed up by Father G saying that they sacrificed one of their own, referring to the aftermath of events with Beth.

As Carol is trying to settle dog (Daryl) Carol picks up The Golden Age Of Piracy, a book about:

Whomever they come across during Beth's "funeral" and while food is being prepared will be a "pirate" or thief. But it's also referring to 509 when Ty on the radio hallucinates hearing about inhabitants of coastal towns being plundered and attacked. This will come into play again when Beth is back but a version of it would have happened back then too. Carol is telling Daryl the "dog" off, for going crazy because of this "rat".

The rat has chewed through or compromised Daryl's lamp or "light" (Beth) and Daryl the dog is not happy...

Dog then runs after the rat and in the process the little food Carol had gets destroyed...

Sirius reference is always about Beth, but it also now links Beth to the “missing” food.

I’m thinking that the car Beth will be left in will also have the groups supplies in it and the rat will take off with both.

The rat gets away, Carol banishes Dog (Daryl) and Carol tires to catch the rat so she makes a trap using Leah's knife (Beth), but then she needs butterfly pliers to finish it, so she goes and gets a set in Daryl's room.

The funny thing is that Daryl is doing the exact same thing on his mission, because the tubing on his vehicle has been “Chewed through” just like the lamp.

Carol then lays the trap for the rat and says:

Daryl repeats and inverts this later on when he kills the soldier walker... linking the "rat" to these "soldiers" So Daryl goes looking for this "soldier/rat" and finds it stuck in "a trap"... He looks for this soldier rat on foot because his ride is not working, and he doesn't have the knife (Beth) which he panics over losing...

He kills the "soldier" and takes back what the soldier/Rat "stole"... Food, ammo and a set of butterfly pliers...which is what Carol needed to finish the trap.

And again, along the way he sees "walker Beth" the Chupacabra...

Which he doesn’t put down...

They are repeating and inverting this, going one way with Carol and another way with Daryl, but Daryl and Carol's stories here are the same. Prior to this we see Daryl is out in his own and his main mission is to get his broken down ride (motorbike) going...

He is searching high and low through cars for a replacement tube. As i said before the tube has also been "chewed" from the looks of it, just like the lamp wire, by the rat.

His search though cars is not only repeating he search for the car with the white cross that took Beth originally, but it seems Daryl after Grady, will repeat this search for Beth who gets taken in a second car. 

This bottom picture is from 509, while the top two are from 1021

The "Rat" not only drugs them and steals their supplies and Beth’s body, but also stops them following by "chewing" through or messing with their vehicle so it doesn't work... Again linking the "rat" to the problem's with Daryl’s vehicle... Daryl can't find Leah's knife (Beth), because he left it with Carol...

Carol does catch the rat, in her trap for a time, but it gets away, and runs into the hole in the wall which she then blocks up with the scarf...

So Carol may well have this rat trapped but lets it get away, leading to the events above and Daryl trying to follow and kill the rat to get Beth and the supplies back.

The hole in the wall = Beth's bullet wound which gets covered with the scarf... Symbolically I believe the wall with hole/scarf and the rat hiding behind it, is Beth in a car possibly being driven away and used as a “shied” by the rat...

So Daryl hunts the rat and sees the Beth walker at a distance but can’t get to her. Once he has killed the solider rat (there ends up being 3 of them) and gets the tools he needs, he starts fixing his bike.

This takes all night and while he works we hear wolves howling in the distance. A good sign that Beth is close considering she is the Wolf that will come home.

And a call back to 509 where Michonne stands in front of the Wolves not far sign. Carol and dog share a bed for the night and it's telling future Beth/Daryl romantic story, but also Daryl with Beth's “body” wanting to be close to her and possibly kissing her, because "the fights gone out of her"...

It's also depicting Beth and Carol at Grady with Dawn. Dawn talks about Noah coming back, because they always come back...

Obviously it’s a callback to Beth saying “you miss him don’t you” to Daryl regarding Merle.

And...Carol leaving the group after Terminus, Daryl comes along to stop her leaving and that's what leads to them taking off after the car with the cross and finding Beth.

Which is then depicted in the very next scene as Daryl gets his bike going and takes off along this road repeating this...

Carol and Dog (Daryl) then go down stairs with flashlights and look for the hole in the wall with the scarf (Beth) and the rat. Repeating but reversing Daryl and Carol back in Consumed looking for Beth when they sleep at an emergency accommodation at a place that Carol had been before.

Carol fighting through the wall, will be inverted with Beth fighting to get out of a car or coffin and that's why we see through it from the other side.

It's will also be what causes Beth's head scarf covering her bullet hole to get caught and left behind.

Carol sits down exhausted after trying to get through the wall and dog comes and sits next to her...

Repeating Carol being found in the tombs by Daryl, exhausted but alive-but not wearing her scarf.

Carol tells Jerry she had a bad day and Jerry figures out its because she didn't come back with Daryl, repeating Carol being taken to Grady and not coming back with Daryl. Jerry says 2+2 = Eureka

2+2 episode 22?

Let's hope! Carol tries to give Daryl Leah's knife back (Beth) But it stays with her because Beth the knife and Carol are symbolically both at Grady.

In the future we may see Daryl try to return Beth's real knife to her. Daryl and Carol end the way they began by going separate ways, but this time it's with doors closing.

Daryl and dog (Carol) go one way and Carol (Beth) the other. Carol goes into the “Car” garage, repeating Beth getting in to the car on the way to Grady. All why the music plays "Oh oh oh" (oh moment)

In the future we will see Daryl and Beth together and Carol go a different way. One last thing I want to talk about is this drawing in Daryl's room. While it's "Dog" front on, it's also a side portrait of 2 creatures touching noses or kissing...

Aw....

#team delusional #team defiance #bethyl #beth greene #beth is alive #beth is coming

[current-mcr-news]

Behind the Scenes: The Umbrella Academy - Episode 1

BRANDON JENKINS: In 1953, a 25 year old director named Phil Tucker had $16,000 and just four days to make his first sci-fi film. The plot? A creature comes to Earth with a death ray and wipes out all of humanity, except for eight people who are immune to the creature’s weapons. He called the film Robot Monster.

Movie clip: With the swiftness of a deadly cosmic ray, the Earth is inundated by indestructible moon monsters. Their ghastly mission? Death for all humans.

B: The film was so low budget, Tucker couldn’t even afford to get alien costumes, so he had the monster in a gorilla suit with a TV for a head.

Movie clip: What astounding technical developments are being made to protect mankind?

B: The release was a disaster. It was widely panned. Its lasting legacy would’ve been that it was one of the worst movies of all time. But in the early 2000s, a kid from New Jersey with a knack for drawing comics saw a picture of the Robot Monster and it stuck with him.

Gerard Way: I’ve never even actually seen the film, but I saw pictures of this creature over the years, and they’ve got a TV set, kind of circular space looking head, and they have a gorilla body, and I was like, “I want a superhero that’s kind of inspired by this.”

B: The kid’s name was Gerard. He’d been writing comics since he was 15 and was on his way to making it as a professional comic book artist.

WAY: I went to art school and I was an illustration and cartooning major, so comics were kind of like my major, and I was like this perpetual intern. I interned at DC, I pitched a cartoon to Cartoon Network, and then I landed a job as a toy designer at this place called FunHaus in Hoboken. But that’s like right when the band took off.

B: That band, Gerard’s side hustle, would become massive alt-punk sensation, My Chemical Romance. Seemingly overnight, My Chemical Romance and Gerard were making some of the most popular music in the world, getting spins on terrestrial radio, dominating music video countdowns, they were even nominated for a Grammy. But while he traveled across the globe leading a rockstar life, Gerard kept up with his first love - drawing.

WAY: So I really missed comics and we were in Japan and we did a signing at a shop, and one of the fans gave me a little marker set and it was Copic markers. They were like the greatest markers that I’d ever used before, and so I started to create Luther.

B: Luther, a superhero with a gorilla body and space helmet who lives on the moon was the very first character Gerard drew in what would become his hit comic The Umbrella Academy. I’m Branden Jenkins and this is Behind the Scenes: The Umbrella Academy. This season, we’re going backstage and inside the making of season 2. The first season of the show, based on Gerard’s comic of the same name, launched in February of last year and quickly became one of the most beloved series on Netflix. Now it’s back for its second season with bigger effects, bigger characters, and bigger drama. We’re going to catch you up on everything that’s gone down in The Umbrella Academy universe so far, and we’ll spend the next five episodes breaking down how the team shot the multi-million dollar superhero production across two countries, and how in the midst of a global pandemic, they managed to finish it from inside their own homes. But first, we wanted to take a look back and dig into the roots of The Umbrella Academy. So today, I’m catching up with the creators of the comic and the guy tasked with making the TV series. We talk about how the graphic novel was adapted for your screens.

B: Alright, so if you haven’t watched season 1, go back and watch season 1 on Netflix. For those of you who just need a quick recap: At 12pm on October 1, 1989, a supernatural event occurred. Forty-three babies across the planet were born to mothers who were not pregnant just seconds before. The world was confused, intrigued, and one eccentric billionaire wanted to find the babies and adopt them. He ended up with seven. Each baby had a superpower, and what do you do when you’re a billionaire with a group of kids with superpowers? You train them to become a crime fighting family.

Reginald: I give you the inaugural class of The Umbrella Academy!

B: When Gerard Way started creating the members of the Academy, he started with the most fundamental material. 

WAY: I created a list of all the things that interested me. It could be anything from ouija board, fortune teller, spaceman, gorilla body, just a list of stuff.

B: Then he drew from that list and started creating these characters. All in all, he would draw seven. The first, Luther, the half-man half-gorilla, was the team’s defective leader. He was also the child closest with their father. 

Luther: Just at Dad’s favorite spot. Allison: Dad had a favorite spot? Luther: Yeah, you know, under the oak tree. We used to sit out there all the time, none of you ever did that?

B: Next, he created Klaus and Allison, the boy who talks to the dead and the girl who can make people bend to her will with just a few words.

WAY: Klaus, he has some pretty serious addiction and addiction is something that I dealt with in my life. He’s also a little bit spooky and supernatural, and my personality in My Chemical Romance was very similar to that.

Klaus: I can’t just call Dad in the afterlife and be like, “Dad, could you just stop playing tennis with Hitler for a moment and take a quick call?” Luther: Since when? That’s your thing. Klaus: I’m not in the right frame of mind! Allison: You’re high? Klaus: Yeah yeah! I mean, how are you not listening to this nonsense?

WAY: He was kind of my version of Doctor Strange. I find Allison to be the one that is easiest to write and I put the most of myself into Allison.

B: Her superpower is that she can make you do pretty much anything she tells you with a few magic words.

Allison: I heard a rumor you want to be my friend. I heard a rumor that you like Bradley. I heard a rumor that you left me alone. I heard a rumor that you stop crying.

WAY: There’s a bit of a tragic nature that comes with her power.

B: Allison, out of all of her super powered siblings, is the only one grasping for a normal life - career, husband, children. In a way, she’s the most human. The fourth character Gerard created is Diego, a guy with an uncanny ability to throw knives. He’s also stubborn as hell.

WAY: I knew early on he was gonna be the one that was gonna be really difficult with the leader. I figured that.

Diego: You know, you of all people should be on my side here, Number One. Luther: I am warning you. Diego: After everything he did to you, he had to ship you a million miles away. Luther: Diego, stop talking! Diego: That’s how much he couldn’t stand the sight of you!

B: The fifth character, a kid who can travel through time and space, who simply goes by Five. Despite the other character growing up into adults, he has remained a teenager, sort of.

WAY: He was a time traveler who then got stuck in his young body when he traveled back in time because time travel is complicated. 

Klaus: Where are you going? Five: To get a decent cup of coffee. Allison: Do you even know how to drive? Five: I know how to do everything.

WAY: So then came The Horror.

B: The Horror, aka Ben, aka the dead sibling who only Klaus can see.

WAY: I imagined this character that had all these monsters living under his skin that came from another dimension. And he was very tortured to me. It actually kind of hurts him and it’s scary to him.

Ben: Do I really have to do this? Klaus: Come on, Ben. There’s more guys in the vault. Ben: I didn’t sign up for this.

B: And then finally, Number Seven, Vanya, who seemingly has no powers besides playing the violin.

WAY: I was at this cafe in Manhattan when I was living in Brooklyn, and it was called The Sidewalk Cafe I believe, and on the wall they had a white violin just as decoration. And I remember looking at that and thinking to myself, “That would be a cool superhero.” And Vanya was always kind of designed to be a character who wasn’t special, that was going to transform into that.

Vanya: Look, if I was special I would’ve been in The Umbrella Academy. I’m so sorry you got stuck with the ordinary one.

B: These seven adopted siblings forced together by supernatural events formed The Umbrella Academy. Both the original comic and season 1 of the show start at the funeral for the Academy’s patriarch, the eccentric Sir Reginald Hargreeves. We learn that while the siblings ventured away from home as teenagers, after years of fighting and a toxic upbringing, they’ve returned home, back together for the first time in years, and all their dysfunctions and old conflicts come bubbling to the surface.

Diego: He was a bad person and a worse father. The world’s better off without him. Allison: Diego! Diego: My name is Number Two.

B: When he started writing the comic, Gerard was focused on his own strained relationships. He saw his band as his own dysfunctional family at the time.

WAY: When you’re a baby band, you’re in this van and it’s like a submarine but it’s smaller. It’s like a closet that you're all living in and sometimes you’re going on seventeen hour drives, and you have very strong personalities. This dynamic starts to develop between all of the members and you really do kind of become a dysfunctional family. Like, there’s times where I felt like I was the mom.

GABRIEL BA: They know each other’s weaknesses.

B: Turns out, family dynamics was a theme with everyone who joined the Umbrella team, including the illustrator and Umbrella’s co-creator, a Brazilian artist named Gabriel Ba.

BA: And sometimes they say it to hurt the other intentionally and they do that a lot in Umbrella because they’re all angry at each other all the time. And even though I have a great relationship with my brother, I have that. We have a younger sister as well, so she’s very opinionated and she’s strong. I wouldn’t say we fight a lot, but sometimes we- I just know how to hurt her if I want to say something.

B: Family is present in Gabriel’s life more than for most people. He works every day with his twin brother, fellow comic book artist, Fabio Moon. But his work made him an unconventional choice for Umbrella.

BA: In the mid 90s, we moved away from superheroes. We, my brother and I, we figured the type of story that we liked to tell and wanted to tell was more real life, day by day life relationship, this kind of stuff. 

B: Gabriel grew up in Brazil and now lives in Sao Paulo. His brother had been making experimental comics for well over a decade.

BA: But The Umbrella Academy was a superhero book with this day by day life relationship drama, and that was really interesting for me.

B: What excited Gerard about Gabriel was his style. His characters weren’t macho. They didn’t have big ripped muscles. They’re the kind of comics you could imagine being drawn in the margins of a notebook. There's nothing stereotypically super about them.

BA: It was not a straightforward American superhero artstyle. It was a mix of European and more fluid, but also could handle action and crazy stuff. And also, I can’t deny The Umbrella Academy was my first paid job in the U.S.

B: Wow.

BA: For the first ten years of our career, my brother and I were making comics for free. Just for ourselves, just getting [?], if there were any. So when I got the invitation to get involved with The Umbrella Academy it was this whole package of factors.

WAY: Gabriel climbing on board was a huge thing for us because he’s such a fantastic artist. He brought these characters to life. The interesting thing about Gabriel,  he didn’t have to make Umbrella Academy. He was doing really well on his own and making really experimental artistic comics, but he liked the idea so much that he said, “I’m gonna do superheroes.”

BA: The superhero aspect of The Umbrella Academy is really just a layer in the story. I like the development of these characters, their struggles, their relationships, there’s romance, there’s deception.

Vanya: You are unbelievable, you’re trying to dig up dirt on a guy I like? Who does that? Allison: Look, I’ve had my fair share of stalkers and creeps, I don’t trust him! Vanya: You mean you don’t trust me.

BA: And it had the fun explosions and action scenes. So that’s the good mix.

B: The first book of the comic is called Apocalypse Suite. After their father’s death, The Umbrella Academy gets a warning from their time traveling brother that the world is going to end in 10 days. They don’t know how, they just know that it will. And now, back together for the first time, they’ve got to figure out how to save the planet and learn how to look past their differences. Which sounds dope, right? But when it first published back in 2007, it wasn’t immediately clear that people would dig it.

WAY: So one of the things I was dealing with when Umbrella Academy came out was a lot of people in the press before the comic came out saying things like, “Here’s a musician and he’s writing a comic.” They didn’t really know my background, they didn’t know that I’d written at 15, they didn’t know I went to art school. All they knew was that I was the singer in this rock band that a lot of teenagers liked. So, all I really wanted was a fair shake. I didn’t write The Umbrella Academy to become a TV show or a film. I wrote it to be an amazing comic. But we knew that first issue, and we knew it was good, and we knew that if you didn't get it by the first seven pages you just weren’t gonna like it, and I was totally fine with that. But then it came out and then the response started to happen and then reviewers loved it and people loved it.

B: The comic went on to win an Eisner award, which is like the Oscar of comics, and pretty quickly, Gerard gets an offer to turn the comic into a full length movie.

WAY: I got swept up in the Hollywood thing.

B: But it doesn’t pan out.

WAY: That’s actually one of the reasons why there was such a big gap between comics, is because I was really, you know, I was trying- at the end of the day, I was trying to be helpful. If this was gonna be a movie version of what Gabriel and I had made, I wanted it to be great so I put in a lot of time and it kept me away from the comics.

B: But then Netflix hits you up and is interested in making this into a series.

WAY: Right.

B: I guess I'm curious, as someone who just initially wanted to make just a really good comic, what about turning that project into a television show was interesting?

WAY: Straight up, I want to make a great comic and that’s all I’m really interested in. If I can write great comics, you’ll have great material to make TV shows. So let me focus on that.

B: In other words, Gerard wanted to focus on the comics and let someone else adapt it.

WAY: And that’s when Steve came in and he changed things and he ran with it. 

STEVE BLACKMAN: I’m Steve Blackman, I’m the showrunner and I’m executive producer.

B: Steve is a master at adapting books, comics, and film into television. Before The Umbrella Academy, he’d worked on shows like Fargo, Legion, and Altered Carbon, all of which originated from other sources. So he knew coming in that adaptation can be tricky work.

BLACKMAN: At first, I think Gerard and Gabriel, who co-did this with him, were very protective of the work like parents of their baby. And I think I had to prove to them initially that I would love and protect this child that they had worked on for so many years, so here I am, an outsider coming in and they were very nice to me, but I could see there was like, “Is this guy gonna totally screw up our baby here?”

B: Is it something that you can come to the table with Gerard and be like, “Hey, here’s my arsenal of adaptations, this is why it will work.”

BLACKMAN: Yeah, I worked on the show Fargo for three years. Fargo was obviously based on the Joel and Ethan Coen movie from 1996. I don’t think Gerard had ever seen my shows, I don’t think he watches a lot of television, so for him, it didn’t matter what I’d done before. It’s just what I was gonna do in the here and now on this show. I wasn’t intimidated by the challenge but I really did sort of have a sense of I know which direction I’m going.

B: What was your first initial reaction? Were you sort of like, “Oh, maybe I’ve never done anything like this, or this does feel familiar to other work  that I’ve done.” Or, “I can do this, this is right up my alley.”

BLACKMAN: Well, what I liked about it from the beginning was what I saw in the subject matter and I saw a dysfunctional family. But right away, I was very inspired by Wes Anderson’s work. The Royal Tenenbaums is one of those movies that really was always something I truly loved. So, I saw that in this show.

Five: An entire square block, 42 bedrooms, 19 bathrooms, but not a single drop of coffee. Vanya: Dad hated caffeine.  Klaus: Well he hated children too and he had plenty of us.

BLACKMAN: It was a family show, it was a very relatable dysfunctional family show that I wanted to tell.

WAY: Steve’s a great collaborator. Steve Blackman, the showrunner, he had a vision. I respected him and his vision. I realized it was gonna be different from the comic, and I let him run with it because he cared deeply about it.

BLACKMAN: My first conversation with Gerard over the phone, I said to him, I told him one of the words was subversive, we wanted to subvert the expectation of what a superhero show could be because there were many other shows, either on the air or coming down the pipe to be next, and we wanted this to stand out. And that was sort of the first hurdle with me, was to say to Gerard that I could do that and I could definitely make this thing feel special. And right away he said, “Okay, yeah. You get it.”

B: You’ve adapted something like Fargo which is a unique adaptation, right? You’re adapting from a different medium, like a feature film. Does that change the way you understand adaptation?

BLACKMAN: At a story point of view, no, I don’t think they’re that different. I think adapting a story, whether it's a graphic novel or the source material comes from a movie, a book, there’s a lot of care into doing it that the tricky thing is, I need to put my creative spin on it. I had Gerard and Gabriel, who lived with this for ten years, and then I have to come in and say, “Look, I’m going to honor you. At the same time, what is the Steve Blackman part of the show? How can I add my spin to it?”

B: For fans of the comic who’ve seen season 1 of the show, you’ll recognize some of that Steve Blackman spin. For example, the group who governs the laws of time in the comics, the Temps Aeternalis, in the TV show they become the Commission, an entire bureaucratic system running and adjusting linear time. Steve made some other changes too. 

WAY: One of the things that I thought was an ingenious idea was making Ben a ghost that Klaus could communicate with. I was most impressed by that change.

Ben: You know what the worst part of being dead is? You’re stuck. Nowhere to go, nowhere to change, that’s the real torture if you gotta know. Watching your brother take for granted everything you lost, and pissing it all away.

B: Perhaps the biggest change from the comic to the show is the diversity of the characters. Diverse in race, diverse in region, diverse in sexual orientation, these characters on screen look a lot more like what the world actually looks like.

WAY: It’s built into it. They’re all from different places, they’re all from different countries, so I think that’s really the biggest improvement on the source material, is how diverse it is.

B: Steve felt the pressure of both fan expectations, and Gerard and Gabriel’s trust in him.

BLACKMAN: There’s nothing worse than having pre-existing source material and having the fans dislike it. You want to make the fans feel honored and respected, at the same time I felt it was incredibly important that Gerard and Gabriel walked out of this thinking, “He did a good job.” If they hated it, I would’ve been crushed. If the fans hated it, I think I’d also be crushed. I knew I couldn’t make everybody happy, but I wasn’t doing a page for page translation. My adaptation wasn’t gonna be that.

B: The adaption worked. Season 1 was a massive success. In the finale of the first season, the Academy thinks they’ve managed to stop the end of the world from happening, but unintentionally, they’ve actually just initiated it. The moon has been destroyed and its remnants are now heading directly for Earth.

Five: We might as well accept our fate because in less than a minute we’re gonna be vaporized.  Diego: What’s your idea then? Five: We use my ability to time travel, but this time I’ll take you with me. Luther: You can do that?

B: The family, latching onto their time traveling brother Five, manage to escape the chaos. But we’re left to wonder where and when they’ll turn up, and that’s where season 2 begins.

Five: We brought the end of the world back here with us. Klaus: Oh my god, again?

BLACKMAN: It’s a pretty crazy journey this year and I think people will be hooked. I hope they binge the hell out of it and love every second of it.

B: Coming up in this season of Behind the Scenes, we’ll be taking you on that crazy journey with the people who make it happen.

“We hired meteorologists, we knew that snow was gonna come, but we had planned it. We went away for a day, we came back, and there was four feet of snow on the ground.”

“It’s 60s Dallas. Okay, so that’s a very different story for Allison. We have to talk about this somehow. Her experience is just different from her siblings.”

EMMY LAMPMAN: And a lot of people would come up to me and apologize for doing their job and I was like, “Please stop apologizing.”

“That was a wishlist fight scene that Steve had always wanted to do.”

“So we actually had our guys throwing plates up in the air and taking photos of them to try to get these UFO imageries.”

“You know, we have a new point in our resume: Can produce and deliver a show during a pandemic.”

B: Behind the Scenes of The Umbrella Academy is a Netflix and Pineapple Street Studios Production. I’m your host, Brandon Jenkins. Make sure to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. It really does help other people find it. Thank you all for listening. 

#behind the scenes of the umbrella academy #episode 1 #gerard way #gabriel ba #steve blackman #full transcription

[nobody-wants-ice-cream]

Everything Wrong With The Umbrella Academy. Episode 8, I Heard a Rumor.

This episode is particularly brutal. Warnings include child abuse, domestic abuse, suicide, rape, gore, and manipulation. Keep yourself safe.

We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals

Run Boy Run

Extra Ordinary

Man on the Moon

Number Five

The Day That Wasn’t

The Day That Was

Disclaimer: This is all in good fun! I wanted to do a really nitpicky re-watch of the series and found some really cool and interesting things I didn’t notice before. This is meant to have a Cinema Sins-esque tone. However, I did take off a lot more sins than Cinema Sins would have because I do genuinely like the series and the people that made it possible. So all of the good things got one sin off and all the bad things got one sin added. This is a really long post, so grab some popcorn. If there’s anything that I missed, feel free to add it!

I would also like to add that normally you wouldn’t watch a show this way. I am purposefully looking for mistakes, easter eggs, and other things that we’re not supposed to notice. I am watching not with the goal of entertainment, but for analysis. So most of the things that I sin, I am seeing for the first time.

Also, no I can’t do better. I am in no way qualified to give this level of criticism about anything. I am not taking this seriously. At all. 

I Heard a Rumor

Stormy Weather by Etta James. I adore this song. When I first watched the show I was so happy when this song came on.-1

I am also taking a sin off for the Emmy Raver-Lampman version -1

It looks like Allison genuinely adores her daughter. And Claire’s bedroom? I would want to have that room now and I am at least ten years older than her. -1

Speaking of, how old is Claire? Sin until we have answers. +1

The animations for the story of The Umbrella Academy defeating the robbers at the museum. -2

“While your Uncle Klaus got a little distracted.” What did Klaus do on missions again? +1

Allison carefully censors the mission so she is still telling the truth but doesn’t actually say that Diego used knives or that Ben used the horror to (presumably, we don’t know how much control Ben had) kill four people. Good job. See Reggie, this is how you don’t traumatise your kid with violence. -1

“Their leader.” Looks suspiciously like a villain from the comics. -1

“I wanna hear the one about the Eiffel tower.” Me too, Claire. Especially since the magazine clips we see suggest Five was there this time. -1

Mind control. ON A CHILD. This is what bothers me the most about Allison as a character and I am glad that she is moving past it. However, in no universe can I let this go. Depending on how Allison used it, Claire’s emotional control could be fucked for life. +40

Patrick behaves like a rational human being and doesn’t blow up at Allison for this in front of their child. He also divorces her in order to keep said child safe. Good. -1

“I heard a rumor you love me.” Who did she say this to? It doesn’t matter who, it’s still disturbing, but oh dear God who did she say this to? I think this is the second most fucked up thing we hear Allison say after the rumoring Claire scene. +10

Allison is going 120 kmh, or 75 mph, in the rain. If you have ever driven a car in the rain then you know exactly why I am sinning this. For those who don’t know, google hydroplaning. Allison could have died here very, very easily. +3

Title screen on a billboard! I forgot how cool the episode 8 title screen was. -1

Allison doesn’t bring her proof with her when going to confront Vanya, who has been shown to be irrational when it comes to Leonard. +1

Bird jumpscare. +1

“They want me to come back tomorrow be fitted for a prosthetic eye”. Leonard places emphasis on the words “prosthetic eye” to remind the viewers that Leonard is bad news. Good acting choice. -1

Leonard’s clothes look freshly bloody when the blood should be several hours old and therefore a more rusty brown color than a bright red. I think. I don’t know if that’s how it works with such large amounts of blood. +1

Luther’s bed is now magically big enough to fit both him and the rave girl. +1

Luther’s reaction to the rave girl. Rewatch this scene to get such a laugh at Luther’s face. -1

How out of it was Luther vs the rave girl? Consent issues on both sides. +3

Luther treated the rave girl to some wine? Or cranberry juice? How thoughtful. -1

I really, really hope they were safe though. There is no evidence to imply they were safe. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you’re too young to be watching TUA). +1

Klaus is such a little shit. “Wakey wakey! Eggs and bakey!” while ringing the bell. Peak sibling culture is doing this sort of thing while knowing that the other sibling is NOT going to appreciate it. Also, Klaus deserves his revenge after last night. -1

The little wave the rave girl gives Klaus. -1

Go back and watch this scene. Holy shit this is so underrated. This is the funniest thing ever. -1

“He popped his cherry! Now you’re gonna have to marry her” -4

Klaus doesn’t remember his first time. Consent issues. +3

“No dilly-dallying, alright?” I love Klaus. -1

Klaus makes french press coffee for Luther and Ben. Klaus is a good brother. -1

I would kill to see Ben’s reaction to Luther and the rave girl. +1

Five snatches Luther’s coffee and not Ben’s, ya know, the guy who can’t drink the coffee. And is invisible. Five is a dick to Luther or Five wanted to be a little shit to Luther after having to hear him and the rave girl. Either way, +1

He steals the coffee and he complains about it. +1

Ben! -1

“This is a bad idea” no shit. +1

The awkward pauses where Ben is presumably speaking don’t make sense here. +1

The camera trickery used to make Luther look like a giant compared to Five. -1

Five knows where the aspirin is “top shelf next to the crackers” because he was also hungover. I think. I can’t remember if FIve stopped back at the house, but presumably he and Luther had to go there to get the car. -1

Luther still isn’t getting up to get the aspirin even though he can listen just fine while getting it. +1

Ben adding to the dramatic tension of the scene in a uniquely humorous way that only this show can pull off. -2

Luther doesn’t believe Klaus about Reggie’s suicide. What reason would Klaus have to lie about this, Luther? +1

Five believes him right away. -1

Convenient Pogo backing up Klaus is convenient. +1

This has nothing to do with this very dramatic and important scene, but the mismatched chairs, while cute, don’t appear in any other scene. +1

Five calls Reggie a “sick bastard” under his breath. That’s one way to describe him. -1

Pogo kept this secret for a long time. Not telling the kids was a strange choice and I’m not sure why Pogo made it. On one hand, he would be respecting the wishes of his creator and friend but on the other he would be helping these people come to terms with their father’s death. Pogo’s character motivations are strange and I don’t understand them. +1

Luther said it best, “there’s always choice.” +1

Random thought I had, where was Harold’s grandmother when he was being abused and then going to jail because he killed his abuser? +1

Leonard says some nice things in this scene. If we didn’t know how manipulative he was I would give him credit for this line. +1

Agnes looks adorable out of the Griddy’s uniform. Costume/hair people, you did good. -1

Agnes keeps saying things like “we aren’t in a rush” and talking about seeing three years worth of stops to remind us that there is no time. Hazel looks heartbroken by it. -1

Allison abandons her vehicle. Do not take driving advice from The Umbrella Academy, ever! +1

Allison sees a random scarf from several cars away and immediately connects it with Vanya. Does she also have super sight? +1

The first time we see Allison get recognized by a random stranger for her acting is eight episodes in. +1

Cheddar (the cop Allison is talking to) is so enamored by Allison that he stops doing his job correctly. +1

“Jackpine cove” who named these towns? +1

Allison and Five have the same little shrug when they finish telling terrible lies. -1

Allison is a terrible liar. +1

Diego is still in jail. They’re talking about transferring him upstate. This is really bad news. +1

“Did she use that word? Contentious?” The definitions of contentious all say the word argument. Beeman says that Diego and Patch had an argumentative relationship. This matters to Diego. Why? +1

This conversation was written by someone who doesn’t understand the connotation of the word contentious. +1

Beeman encourages Diego to escape and go on the run. Are all the cops incompitent on this show? You have Patch, who hasn’t pinned Diego for obstruction of justice despite the show implying that Diego has touched evidence he wasn’t supposed to many times, Cheddar, who is so distracted by Allison freakin’ Hargreeves that he forgets that taking her along to a murder case is unethical at best, and Beeman who straight up encourages Diego to escape from jail. That last one is definitely illegal. +10

The parallel between Five and Leonard reading something they aren’t supposed to have in the bathroom. Both the apocalypse file and the journal are red, too. This means something but I don’t have the analysis skills to really go into it. If anyone wants to take a crack at it, go ahead. Sin removed because I know this is smart even if I can’t figure out why.-1

Vanya’s training implies that Reggie has been training these kids hard since they were at least four years old. +7

Current Sin Count: 73

Reggie doesn’t praise Vanya for breaking the glass, he just demands that she does it again. Say it with me now, Reggie is a dick. +1

Leonard straight up uses the word extraordinary. Sigh. +1

The description for how Vanya’s powers work (concentrate on a constant sound until that’s all you can hear and then use an emotional connection to target) is surprisingly good. This is the best description of somebody’s powers we’ve ever gotten in this show. -1

Klaus is attempting to get the yarn on the needle and failing miserably. This is one of the simpler, if tedious, things we do in knitting. Therefore, it is completely understandable how a beginner can’t make heads or tails of it. -1

Five is still injured. The old man walk gives it away. +1

Five treats Klaus like a second in command. I want more of this duo. -1

“So how’d the crazy bastard actually know to kill himself a week before the end of the world?” We would all like to know the answer to that question. Five would be excellent at cinema sins. +1

“Don’t answer, that was purely rhetorical.” Nice cop out, show. +1

Reggie used The Apocalypse to make his kids do the dishes. Checks out. +1

Five and Klaus bond over hating doing the dishes and the person making them do the dishes. Sibling culture. -1

“Where have you been?” “Jail. Long story.” The looks on Klaus and Five’s faces! -2

Vanya breaks the monocle. Good job, kid. However, if you know the comics then you know why I am mildly concerned about this. -1

“That will conclude your training for the time being.” Meaning the next 25 years. Reggie, you suck. +1

Now Vanya’s powers are a bit more vague and imply that she has super hearing. +1

Leonard’s training routine actually includes some praise, which is a step up from Reggie. However, a step up from Reggie is still someplace in hell, so it’s still a sin. +1

It’s also a sin because it’s uncontrolled and Vanya is afraid of it, yet Leonard keeps pushing her. +1

Leonard uses the kind of language Reggie would use to describe Vanya’s powers. Checks out because he read Reggie’s book and is using his ideas to train Vanya. +1

Helen Cho’s missing person poster reminds the viewer that Leonard is bad news. +1

Vanya plays for the St. Pluvium Chamber Orchestra. First of all, no they have a conductor. +1

Second of all, “Pluvium” means of or relating to rain. The Umbrella Academy fights against the leader of the rain orchestra in episode 10. Who came up with that pun? That is absolutely hilarious. -1

Based on a post by @seven-valid-libras I think Griddy’s is across the street from this bar? I am not 100% sure. If it is then that’s a sin off because Agnes definitely has a bunch of drunk people coming in for doughnuts every now and then. I lowkey want to write this fic. -1

“Maybe they’ll brood each other to death” Is this a reference to the fact that Luther and Diego were both too emo for umbrellas in episode 1? -1

I feel so bad for Luther right now. Reggie really fucked with his head. +1

After hearing that Vanya’s boyfriend is a convicted murderer, Luther is more concerned for Allison than he is for Vanya. +1

Diego’s face when Luther says “you should have led with that!” [the fact that Allison went after a convicted murderer alone] -1

Luther is right. Diego should have led with that. +1

Luther breaks the door in his rush to get out of the bar. Checks out. -1

Mary J. Blige. -1

The shop is closing because Agnes is leaving? Who owns Griddy’s? +1

And if the shop is closing, then why leave doughnuts on the shelf? Are they gifts for the other waitresses who are now out of a job? +1

Agnes keeps a flamingo (presumably, scented) candle in a bakery. +1

Cha Cha was way too close to that explosion to not get some scratches at the very least. +1

Sergeant Cheddar is letting Allison stay in the room while he interrogates Mr. Luntz (the man that survived Vanya’s powers). +1

What kind of person allows themselves to be hired by some guy in order to beat him up in front of his girlfriend? Who does that? Are there people like that who exist in real life? +1

Allison doesn’t get pissed off when Luntz says that they started to hurt the girl (Vanya) too. +1

Sgt. Cheddar finally gets pissed off with Allison after she starts leading Luntz. This took way too long. +1

“What I really need to do is practice,” said every musician ever. Including me. As I’m typing this I’m putting off practicing. Vanya is calling me out. I deserve it. +1

Also, Vanya just got first chair and so far she still hasn’t learned the solo the day before the concert. That is such a mood. -1

The cracks in Leonard’s personality are finally starting to show. If Harold was smart he would let Vanya do this without attempting to manipulate her into more practice. +1

Vanya left her violin propped up in the middle of a sofa. That is a broken violin waiting to happen. +1

Where is her rosin? Don’t tell me she reuses the same rosin and doesn’t clean her instrument. Please. +2

Leonard doesn’t tell Vanya where he will be going. He just sort of leaves without a note. This would be fine if this universe had cell phones, but it doesn’t. Leonard is a dick. +1

Agnes would like to spend her (Hazel tells her it’s hypothetical but we know it’s not) last two days on Earth with Hazel. That is so sweet. But also, they met less than a week ago. +1

This is the turning point that makes Hazel an active character that wants to stop the apocalypse. Finally some character motivation that makes sense! Whoop! -1

They Call Me a Fool by Damon is another one of my favorites from the soundtrack. What can I say, I’m a sucker for jazz. -1

There is a parallel between Five leaving Vanya’s apartment and Leonard leaving her at the cabin. Her brother (whom I assume she loves) and the man she is infatuated with both leave her at some point without warning. The people who Vanya loves keep leaving her. +2

Vanya puts her violin down on a chair and lets the bow fall. Bows are expensive. +1

“I made a secret place just for you. None of your siblings get to play there.” Of course Reggie is framing it this way. He’s scared of her. +1

The further away from Pogo the camera is, the less real he looks. +1

Reggie and Pogo locked Vanya in this cage. +1

Vanya’s violin bow fell down but in the next shot it’s propped on the chair. +1

Sgt. Cheddar tells Allison to stay put but has no way to verify that she actually will. Also, if he’s such a fan then shouldn’t he know that she used to be a superhero? +1

Allison kept her proof about Leonard/Harold in the car again. +1

“I love you. And I wanna be here for you as your sister.” -1

“I love him.” Vanya you met him less than a week ago. +2

If there was ever a wrong time to bring up the fact that you took Vanya’s powers away and left her with a horribly low self esteem due to the poorly worded “I heard a rumor that you think you’re just ordinary”, it would be now! Now is the wrong time to bring this up! +10

Reggie used Allison to make Vanya powerless. Reggie is a dick. An absolute bastard. A complete scumbag. Etc. +20

Reggie has also been drugging Vanya since she was FOUR YEARS OLD. +50

Insert Reggie insults here. Feel free to come up with your own in the tags. Fuck this guy repeatedly with a rusty chainsaw. +20

Vanya is not in the right state of mind to understand that Reggie is the one that made Allison rumor her. +1

The final fight between Allison and Vanya is heartbreaking. Emmy Raver-Lampman and Ellen Page are excellent actresses. -5

Vanya’s skin keeps getting paler and paler. Foreshadowing. -1

This is the only time Allison attempts to use her powers in the show. To save her life. I would say that it is pretty justified. -1

Violin bows are not sharp enough to cut human flesh. Is this another part of Vanya’s power? +1

Gore warning! This is super fucked. Not gonna lie, I gag a little every time I see this.+4

Vanya is freaking out and then Leonard walks in. Vanya’s mental state is completely out the window at this point. +4

Leonard manhandles Vanya into letting her sister die (as far as they know) on the floor of the cabin. +10

Allison has definitely lost enough blood to kill her, yet she survives this. +1

Leonard went out to kill Luntz. +10

Nobody in the car (Five driving, Klaus shotgun, Luther and Diego in the back) is wearing a seatbelt. +1

Also, of these four people, Five is the most qualified to drive right now? Diego is sitting right there! And we saw Klaus drive the ice cream truck! Luther would have some trouble driving because he’s so large. But really?? +2

“Can you go any faster?” “Ask me again and I’ll burn you with the cigarette lighter.” The comic relief doesn’t really land here because the scene before was so dramatic and the music is still playing. To change the mood, the song would also have to change. +2

Independently, that is a pretty funny Grandpa Five line. -1

Including Ben in the scene where they find Allison bleeding out on the floor is a subtle reminder to the audience that if Allison was dead, Klaus would be able to see her ghost. The lack of a ghost means she is still alive. +1

Also, this scene has all the original members of The Umbrella Academy in it. Look how far they’ve come from the bank robbery. +6

No one is checking for a pulse right now. They’re just assuming that Allison is dead. +10

Overall Review: It goes without saying that this episode is fucking brutal. When I first watched it I had to stop and go do something else for a while because of the rumor reveal and the throat thing. That was really, really concerning. Props to Emmy Raver-Lampman. She fucking killed it this episode. If anyone was wondering if she was a good actress (ya know because of all the “come look at this” lines she kept getting) then this episode made it very clear that she can act and she does it very, very well. 

So, Vanya’s sanity is out the window, Allison is down for the count, and no one cares about the apocalypse right now. That last one is understandable because of Allison’s situation, but damn it really isn’t looking good for the Hargreeves siblings. 

Also, I want to talk about something. This is the last episode in which Allison and Vanya are both capable of speech. And in the eight hours we have known these two women, they have had multiple conversations. All of them have been about a man. Their brothers, their father, Patrick, or Leonard/Harold. Seriously, the two women in this show that are main characters never have a conversation that isn’t about a man. There is no excuse. With the fridging and this, you have to wonder if the writers on this show hate women or something? I don’t normally add sins post analysis, but I think I will make an exception for this one. +100

Total: 283

Sentence: Serious gore. 

#The Umbrella Academy #all in good fun #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #leonard peabody #harold jenkins #show warnings apply #this episode is brutal

[avengersassemble-fics]

Fine Line

part 03/?? “i carry it with me”

masterlist

previous part // next part

word count 4k

an: ugh i love sam/bucky interactions. my two doofuses

The quiet humming sound filtered from the small white bathroom and filled the halls of the rather empty apartment. There in the white porcelain bathroom hair flowed down through the air and into the sink, until the skin beneath was stubbled and clear. The humming sound finally came to a stop, leaving a silence in the air that was quite normal for this empty space. Bucky wiped his face clean with a warm moist washcloth and looked up to meet his own gaze in the mirror. He couldn’t help but run his hand over the softer shaven hair on his face, or the now short hair on the back of his neck. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw himself like this.

There was a soft ping that rang from the back of his jeans, and Bucky reached behind him to grab his phone. He swiped open the device and read the message from Sam, and rolled his eyes at the joking message before shoving the phone back into his pocket. He took special care in washing the hair down the sink and tossed the moist washcloth into the hamper before he walked into the hallway and his phone started to ring insistently. Bucky rolled his eyes, and pulled the phone from his back pocket, and put it up to his ear.

“What do you want, Sam?” He asked, making his way down the hallway to his room.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Sam’s voice rang in his ear, but Bucky just sighed. “C’mon man, it’s New Years Eve.”

“I’m not interested in whatever you have planned, Sam,” Bucky told him. He could practically hear the eye roll on the other end of the line.

“Look man, you gotta come out and readjust to the world,” Sam started to explain while Bucky dug around his drawer for a shirt. “You won’t come to group meetings, you won’t go and see a professional, so why not just go out with me tonight? Nothing too big, let’s just go get some drinks and chill for a bit. Who knows when we’ll get another chance like this.”

Bucky gripped a black long sleeved shirt in his fist and fell silent after Sam spoke. He could hear the light chatters of someone on the other end, and Bucky sighed.

“Fine.” He caved in, and could tell his friend was grinning ear to ear on the other end. “But I swear to God, Sam, if I have to carry your drunk ass home-”

“That was one time!” Sam called out on the other end.

“Yeah, one time too many pal,” Bucky rolled his eyes as he spoke. “Just tell me where to meet you.”

“I’ll hit you up later,” Sam ended, and the beeping of the line closed the call. Bucky placed the phone on the dresser and pulled the black shirt over his body. He instinctively rubbed a hand over his shorter hair when another vibration came through on his phone, and he smiled at this notification in particular.

Now that Bucky could put a face to the words he read everyday, and the voice and laugh that still echoed in his mind, he knew he was in over his head. There was no question about it now. The more time he spent in the city the more he looked for you amongst the crowds. Sam had started to take notice when he’d pass by the cafe you populated days earlier and Bucky would slow his stroll to steal a look inside. He then stole his phone and found your contact information. Sooner or later, Bucky would get him back for that. For everything.

After the phone call, it became easier to text one another instead of using the website. But one thing he hadn’t done since that night was call you again. In all honesty, Bucky didn’t know if he would be able to handle hearing that sweet laced voice once more without caving and offering again to meet. Meet for real that is, not just watch you from across the street like.. Well like a spy.

So when your name came up in his texts, he was quick to open the message and read over your words anxiously.

You: NYE always brings out the most obnoxious people sometimes! It’s barely 10 and everything has booze in it.

Bucky chuckled at your words. This was his first New Years since his demise all those years ago. Truthfully, you were right. The parties back in his day were nothing compared to now. The pomp and circumstance was one of the main reasons he did not want Sam to drag him into public tonight. Even the couple of days leading up to now were too much for him. Bucky pressed the text box and began to type away.

Bucky: I don’t even want to imagine what tonight is going to be like, probably 10x as crazy

You: Wait a second hold on, you’ve never seen the ball drop in Times Square?

Bucky chortled to himself as he eased himself onto the edge of his bed.

Bucky: Can’t say I have doll, there’s a first for everything right?

You: Can’t wait to see your reaction haha!

Though you were just joking with him, Bucky frowned at the idea. He hoped to God Sam didn’t have any tricks up his sleeve tonight - though he had yet to see it happen live, he did look up clips from the previous years. The crowds were massive, and what was everyone doing kissing when the clock hit zero?

Bucky: Do you have plans tonight?

You: My sister is dragging me out again somewhere, but it’s top secret apparently.

Bucky: Hopefully in a part of town you’re allowed in.

You: You have jokes today I see.

Bucky: Has it made you smile yet?

A dangerous question. Bucky eagerly watched the three dots that hopped as you typed back a reply.

You: Yes, but that’s besides the point!

Bucky: Nope that’s all I needed to know, doll.

You: Yeah yeah whatever, jokester. Doing anything fun tonight?

Bucky: Just drinks with a buddy of mine.

You: Just two old men having a night out on the town huh?

Bucky: Look who has jokes now!

You: Take what you dish, old man.

Bucky chuckled to himself. You had started to resort to calling him old man regardless of your knowledge of him. Of course it was all in a joking manner, but you chalked it up to his use of the word doll. You said it sounded like something used in the 50’s (it probably was, but he wouldn’t know), and he had asked if it made you uncomfortable at all. Based off the look on your face the night he called and dropped the word a few times, he hoped the answer was no. And you reassured him of that in a message to answer his question.

Bucky: Try not to spit on yourself tonight.

You: You’ll never let me live that down, will you?

Bucky: Not a chance, doll.

The day carried on as most of his normally did. Alone in his apartment, some tunes filled the empty rooms in a low hum, and he either read, wrote in his journal, or texted back to you. This was how he preferred to spend his days. No missions, no life or death situations, no alien invasions, just the sound jazz in the background and.. You.

So this? This was not what Bucky wanted to do.

When Sam opened up the door to the bar, Bucky nearly choked him then and there. People adorning commemorative hats flocked everywhere, and they all greeted Sam like they knew him. Sam shook hands, slapped people over the shoulder, and smiled at a couple of dames.

Bucky was going to murder this man one day.

“Sam,” he warned when he finally got his companion on his own. “What the fuck is this?”

“I’m sorry I lured you here under false pretenses, but the group I’m with wanted to do something together,” Sam explained as he was handed two beers from the bartender. “Come on, man.. Just have a couple drinks with me, and if you want to leave - you can.”

Sam offered Bucky the bottle of alcohol and Bucky shook his head while he retrieved it. “I’m never trusting you again, I hope you know that.”

“I’m shocked and upset, truly,” Sam said and rolled his eyes. Bucky grumbled and rested on a barstool next to his disgraceful friend.

“So tell me,” Sam took a sip of his beer and pursed his lips and tossed a glance Bucky’s way. “When are you planning on meeting this girl? Sorry, officially meeting this girl?”

“Don’t think I ever will,” he answered honestly. Bucky took a swig from the bottle in his hand, even though he knew it wasn’t going to do much. “We’re in a dangerous line of work, Sam.”

Sam shook his head and motioned over to him. “That’s just an excuse.”

“No, it’s a fact,” Bucky replied. “We’re hunting the man who killed the King of Wakanda, you’re telling me that isn’t dangerous?”

“I never said that,” Sam replied and took a sip from the beer in his hands. “I said it’s an excuse. Barton has made it work, Stark did, God rest his soul. You’re obviously smitten with her.”

“Smitten,” Bucky lulled over the world. “And you call me old fashion.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said with a roll of his eyes. “That’s what I get for hanging out with two old geezers for the last few years.”

The sudden mention, minus the name, of the old shared friend made silence fall between them. Sam was working towards forgiveness, Bucky wasn’t to that point yet. He hadn’t spoken his name, nor gone to see him since those days by the lake after Tony’s funeral. Sam knew he soured the mood by the look on Bucky's face, and before he could say something, Bucky was up out of his seat.

“Hey, wait-”

“It’s fine,” Bucky said and tossed a bill down on the bar. “This just isn’t my scene.”

Bucky beelined for the exit. He was nearly out, nearly to freedom when an unknowing body backed up into his path of travel and he knocked right into them. He was quick to catch them from hitting the ground, hands gripping their shoulders, and positioning them back upright. He mumbled apologies as the other steadied themselves with his arms, and his jaw dropped open a bit.

No fucking way was this his luck.

“Geez, I’m sorry,” your familiar silky voice said over the music and chatter. Bucky released his grip on your arms and swallowed the lump in his throat when you looked up to meet his gaze. Your eyebrow quirked up a bit as you seemed to recognize his face and Bucky cleared his throat.

“It’s no problem,” he reassured you. God, were his hands sweating?

“I remember you,” you offered him a smile and Bucky felt frozen in place. “From that club, you got me a couple of drinks.”

“Right,” he nodded and swallowed another lump in his throat. “Rum and Coke.”

“Well that was your choice,” you joked and he finally cracked a smile. “What’s your name?”

“Sam,” he said a little too quickly. He nodded at himself. Fuck. “My name’s Sam.”

“Nice to meet you, Sam,” you offered your hand.

Bucky hesitated for a moment before he gently enveloped your hand with his gloved metal one. “And what should I call you?”

“(Y/N),” you replied and he smiled.

“I like it,” he said before he could stop himself. You smiled and he released your hand. Shit shit shit that was too much-

“Would you like to buy me a drink?” You asked and Bucky blinked a couple times before him. You were flirting with him. He couldn’t help but grin and nod back towards the bar behind him.

“I would like nothing more,” he said. He motioned his hand towards the bar and you moved around him to it. To his dismay, you sat a couple seats away from Sam. Bucky leaned his side against the bar with his back to his previous companion and hoped to God he wasn’t going to look this way. You smiled sweetly at the bartender and ordered something bubbly, and Bucky gave a knowing nod for another beer.

“So Sam,” you said over the music. Bucky could practically feel Sam’s eyes turn and stare at the back of his head, and he wanted nothing more than to hit the smug look off his face. And when Sam realized who and what was going on, he could hear the idiot stifle back laughs. “Are you a part of this.. Thing?”

“The group?” Bucky asked. He heard Sam slam his beer down in a frenzy from laughter and he clenched his jaw. He was going to kill him. He really was. He could just turn around and do it right here, right now. “No, no I’m not a part of it.. Are you?”

You turned a bit over your shoulder, and pointed at your sister who was trying to pry a karaoke mic from another person. “That trainwreck over there is trying to get me to join.”

The bartender was back with the drinks and you thanked him with your pretty smile again. Bucky lifted his beer up and shifted his body so he could send a glare at Sam, who looked like he was going to burst at any moment. With a curled fist, Bucky punched his side, and you didn’t even notice. Sam coughed frantically and you glanced over with a concerned look. Bucky set his beer down and placed a firm solid hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“Woah there man, you okay?” Bucky asked as he neared. Once he was close enough to Sam’s ear he whispered. “Go the fuck away, Sam.”

“Fuck you, Bucky,” Sam said back just as low. Bucky retracted himself back to your side and Sam stood, offered a small nod to the both of you and retreated with his drink. Bucky finally eased himself onto a seat beside you while you watched Sam wander away.

“Is he okay?” You asked and Bucky nodded.

“Yeah, poor guy just can’t hold his alcohol.” Bucky smiled at his own statement and took another swig from his drink. You sipped at your drink, and he could tell from the corner of his eye you were staring at him. Bucky placed his drink down and glanced over at you and you smiled.

“So tell me, Sam,” you started and Bucky turned a bit so he could face you better and just take you in. “Not to be pushy or anything.”

“Push all you want,” he reassured you. He could’ve sworn he saw a hint of rosiness creek over your cheeks.

“What are you doing here if you aren’t a part of this group?”

Bucky had to say his next words very carefully. He knew if he gave too much away you may be able to connect the dots. Your eyes looked his face over as he pondered his thought and he nodded a bit.

“I was dusted, and my pal thinks I should join.. But I don’t think I’m ready.”

“Ah, I see,” you said and Bucky watched as you sipped your drink.

“What about you?” He asked and you glanced over at him as you sipped away. “Gonna listen to your friend and give this a try?”

You let out a little uh uh as you swallowed, and rested your elbows on the bar. “I don’t think it’s for me.”

“Why do you say that?” Bucky asked and you shrugged your shoulders.

“I think I’m doing okay on my own,” you admit to him.

You had a small smile on your face. Bucky couldn’t help but wonder if you thought about him at that moment. But he nodded and glanced up at the tv that hung on the wall. Only a few minutes to midnight. You followed his gaze to the tv and hummed a bit.

“So Sam, are you planning on kissing anyone when the ball drops?” You asked.

Bucky blinked at your question. You were looking at him with curious eyes, and he felt something tingle in his chest. But Bucky fought his thoughts and shook his head.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” he diverted your question and you let out another quiet hmm. You opened your mouth to say something but a hand grabbed onto your arm, and Bucky finally saw your sister up close and personal.

“They won’t let me sing,” she complained and you smiled at Bucky before turning to your sister.

“Good, you’re terrible,” you told her and she rolled her eyes and finally landed her gaze upon Bucky.

“Who is this?” She asked and gave him a nice smile. Bucky could tell you fought back a laugh and stood from your place, wrapping an arm around your sister.

“That’s Sam,” you told her. “And you’re drunk.”

“No just a little bit,” she said and winked at Bucky. He only offered a smile before his eyes locked with yours. “Come on, I wanna be right in the middle when the ball drops.”

“Okay pushover,” you agreed and your sister bounced back to the crowd. You finished your drink and turned to face him and offered Bucky a smile.

“Thank you,” you placed your hand on his and gave it a squeeze. Bucky felt his heart race under his chest and gave you a small nod as you walked away, taking his breath with you. He couldn’t take his eyes off you, not until his worst fears came true. Sam was back at his side.

“So that’s her, huh?” Sam asked as he pulled out his wallet to close his tab. Bucky grumbled and pulled his wallet out as well.

“Yeah.. That’s her,” Bucky admitted. Sam glanced over his shoulder and shrugged a bit.

“She’s cute man, I don’t know why you stole my name.”

“Please just for the love of God drop it,” Bucky nearly pleaded as he put a couple bills down for the bartender in payment and a tip.

“Look,” Sam started as he turned to face Bucky. “I get you want to protect her from this life.. But from what I can tell from the messages, and the flirting, she’s into you.”

Over the tv the sounds of that final countdown started. The crowd in the room began to chant along as well and both men glanced at the tv. Sam turned back to head over to the crowd and looked Bucky over one more time.

“All I’m saying is, don’t be afraid to make the move. We both know how that worked out for Steve.”

Sam wandered off to the group and Bucky stared at the wooden bar before him. The voices that echoed behind him started to count down louder as Bucky got lost in his thoughts.

20! 19! 18! 17! 16!

As much as it physically pained him to admit, Sam was right. But he couldn’t take his word for it if you were “into him” or not. Sam was the absolute worst judge on women. Ladies. Dames-- God damn it that didn’t matter right now!

15! 14! 13! 12! 11!

Just one test. One test and he would know for sure if he would reveal himself to you. If you felt the same way about him. This was his chance to see if what your eyes showed him tonight, and that night outside the cafe were what he was looking for.

10! 9! 8! 7! 6!

Bucky stood up from his chair and downed the remaining liquor in the bottle, even if it didn’t aid him, before he sauntered towards the crowd. He could easily pick you out amongst the other bodies, and had to push through a couple people to get there on time.

5! 4! 3! 2! 1!

Just as the people around started to yell out the fateful words ‘Happy New Year’ Buky grabbed a hold of your hand and pulled you into him. His hands enveloped your face and your expression went from shock to acknowledgment when your eyes met his. In one fluid motion, he leaned down to catch your lips with his.

Your lips didn’t move against his, and Bucky felt defeated. After a couple quick seconds he pulled away and opened his eyes once more to see you staring at him. You looked confused, but he couldn’t tell if you were upset or not. Bucky retracted his hands from your face while others around kissed one another. You held your gaze with him and Bucky was going to just forget this ever happened. Just forget you.

He was pulled back into the moment when you suddenly placed your hand on the nape of his neck, and ran your fingers into the edges of his hair. Bucky was quick to grab a hold of your hips and lean back down to kiss you once more. This time, you moved in sync with him. It was a slow and passionate kiss as you pressed yourself into his body. Your lips parted for him and Bucky eagerly snuck his tongue into your mouth, and you relaxed against him. The almost sloppy wet kisses made his head buzz as he tasted the sweet bubbly drink you consumed with him, and felt your fingers scratch his scalp. His fingers dug into your hips to relieve the pressure he felt in him, and as the cheering died down, you both finally released one another.

Bucky’s lips hovered over yours as your hot breaths mixed with one another. Your skin did indeed look rosy, and the beautiful color in your eyes looked a little darker. You slowly untangled your fingers from his hair, and Bucky took his hands off your hips. He hated to end it like this, but your sister was quick to grab your hand and insist on her tiredness, and pulled you with her to the exit. Bucky didn’t look away as you were pulled out into the snowy night, and he smiled to himself like an idiot.

By the time he got home he had felt his phone vibrate a couple times. As he climbed the stairs to his apartment he ignored Sam’s attempt at a joke on Bucky’s behalf, and fumbled with his keys as he read your message over.

You: Happy New Years, Bucky! Have a good night? Thought about this tonight after all the festivities:

Somewhere there is a place where I belong

Where an orchestra plays my favourite song

Butterflies gather and birds fly high

A beautiful place in a sun-lit sky

I wake and I wonder the land of the free

Where souls dance happy and the shore meets the sea

Mermaids chat and whisper the day

And Gods of hope are not far away

The place where I belong sits right in my hand

It lies in oceans blue and drifts of hot sand

I carry it with me, for my eyes to see

That the place I belong, sits within me

Bucky tossed his keys into the bowl, took his jacket off as usual, and ran his hand through his hair at the thought of tonight. He smiled as he typed back a response.

Bucky: Happy New Years, doll. I did have a good night actually. I’m guessing you had a good night with your sister?

When he didn’t get an immediate reply, Bucky thought he just missed you. He made his way to the bathroom and started to strip rom his clothes when his phone vibrated on the porcelain sink, and he all but rushed to read your message with a stupid grin on his face.

You: It was better than I expected :)

#Bucky Barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fic #bucky x reader #bucky x you #Winter Soldier #winter soldier x reader #winter soldier x you #winter soldier fic

[peace-coast-island]

Diary of a Junebug

Art therapy to deal with life's rotten lemons

Art has helped me in so many ways - and no I'm not exaggerating. It's literally something that keeps me going, helping me get through the day. I wouldn't say that art is my whole life, though it's been kinda more prominent in the past few years, but it's something that gives me a purpose.

That's not to say that I've been creating art all the time. Art blocks happen, lack of inspiration or motivation, or just the need of a break to step back and focus on other stuff. For me, creativity and inspiration are kinda like background apps that are running behind the scenes while I do other things. It's usually open so if inspiration strikes, then I have somewhere to put it to use for later.

Usually when I have an idea, I like to sit on it a bit before getting started - I don't know why, but that's how my brain works, though part of it's probably because I tend to procrastinate. That kind of creative process may not be practical if I plan to run a shop like Daisy Jane - who's usually consistent when it comes to creative output - but for me, it works out perfectly.

Since college, I've gotten into art journaling and now it's become kinda my thing as I've been doing it consistently for a long time. And by consistently I don't mean every day or on a regular basis, but it's something that's stuck with me throughout the years, even more so since I started running the camp. Even when there are days when I don't feel like journaling, it's still in the back of my mind, something to use for later when I do have the motivation to create something. Although I'm not creating content all the time, I'm always open to ideas and inspiration, and that's what keeps me going.

From going on adventures, getting into a new show or movie, reading something interesting, to just hanging around and not doing much - I find inspiration in all these things. I like trying out new and different things because it opens my mind to more ideas, more ways I can express my creativity. I guess that's why I've been journaling a lot more over the years - because there's so much I want to explore and expand on. It'll be interesting to look back on my journal entries in the far future to see how much has changed.

I wonder how future me will look back on these years. Hopefully it'll be mostly good memories.

The reason why I've been thinking so much about how art has helped me is because we've been making a lot of art at the camp. A friend of Daisy Jane has come to visit along with their sister and they're both in need of a break and some art therapy.

I've been following Ken at quillinkstudio since about last year thanks to Daisy Jane and I really enjoy their speedpaints and studio vlogs. Turns out that Daisy Jane knows Ken from college, which was why they gave a shoutout to Happy Floral Mail during a stationery haul video a while ago - and that was how I found out they know each other.

In recent vlogs, they've been opening up about mental health and emotional neglect following the death of their mother a few months ago. They have a complicated relationship with their parents and siblings, which was why they pretty much ran off after finishing college. The only family member Ken has the least antagonistic relationship is Carol, the one who has been constantly left to deal with everyone else's shit, resulting in her putting herself last.

Basically their family life's a mess. Their parents argued constantly - father was neglectful while mother was abrasive, and the siblings were selfish and snobbish - it's hard to believe that Ken came from a family like that. Being the youngest as a latecomer, Ken was probably spared most of the abuse as the father died when they were young and all the siblings except for Carol had moved out.

Carol's basically the neglected middle child who desperately seeks to please, only to be stepped on. Since the father's death, Carol stepped in to care for the mother in hopes of earning her love. While the other four siblings have their own lives, Carol was stuck trying to earn the approval of people who constantly put her down. It's pretty fucking sad and it's no wonder why she has all these problems now.

Ken says that they have mixed feelings about their mother. On one hand she kinda doted on them because they were the baby, often to the point where she forced them to fit into her image of what she wants them to be. They only visited her out of obligation because no matter how far they were, the mother still has strings attached. While she would brag about their success as an illustrator and writer, she also undermined them, pitting them and the siblings against each other.

After the mother died, Carol became lost. All five siblings were in the same room for the first time in years and as expected, it was a disaster. Later Carol and Ken got into a big argument in which Ken told her that if she continued with her self destructive behavior, then the next time they visited home it would be for her funeral. The two "had it out" as they described it, and it made them truly realize how fucked up their family was.

At least some good came out of the whole blow up seeing that Carol's here with us now. The day after, Carol admitted that she wasn't okay and hasn't been for years. So Ken suggested that she come along with them, to leave home and start over. She had always spoke about leaving for as long as they could remember, only to be saddled with the responsibility of taking care of the mother.

Like her sibling, Carol aspired to be an artist. She also dreams of being an actress and singer. And of course, the mother shot her down, forcing Carol to suppress her creativity. At least now, she's slowly finding herself again.

It wasn't easy, but Ken managed to convince Carol to get away. She basically took off without a word, which was really the only way she could've left. There's a lot of unfinished business Carol has to deal with, but for now she has to distance herself, which she's still struggling with.

For now Carol's living with Ken, which admittedly hasn't been easy. They worked out a contract with each other, like promising to keep up with therapy and learning how to communicate in a healthy way instead of letting things blow up. Ken wants to help her as much as they can as long as Carol's willing to do her part. There's a lot to unpack as we can't undo years of trauma, but at least we can put the past behind us and move on to a better future.

Art therapy has been super helpful for Ken and Carol. Along with filming a vlog, Ken's also working on their graphic novel, which is about the stuff they've been talking about on the vlogs regarding their family life. It was something Ken had been working on and off for a while before shelving it because at the time it was too difficult to write about. Now with the mother gone, a weight's been lifted off their shoulders, thus giving the novel a more hopeful message as the initial reason why they shelved it was because it ended up being too bleak.

Carol's been trying out different art mediums, figuring out what calls to her the most. So far it's painting and art journaling, the former which she hasn't done in years, the latter being something new. She's also learning digital art, which she's picking up quickly and seems to be getting into. It's good to see that making art has been helping her a lot.

In between art sessions we've been enjoying the scenery as usual. Carol has been practicing digital art by drawing sceneries, something she found out she enjoys a lot. Having spent most of her life in the suburbs, being out here in nature has been a refreshing change of scenery for her. Seeing her and Ken fascinated by their surroundings feels like watching baby birds taking flight for the first time. The two have a tendency to wander so it's been kinda fascinating to see them get lost in nature.

It's sweet but also kinda sad, especially for Carol. I can't help but feel bad for her, for her wings have been clipped for so long that she's unable to find her way now that the strings holding her back have been cut. At least Ken's there to guide her as she tries to find her footing, to finally take back her life after giving everything to uncaring people who just take, take, take from her.

Healing's a difficult process - they will probably drag each other down more than lift each other up. Ken's been open about how hard things have been for both of them, and while it fucking sucks sometimes, they knew exactly what they signed up for by taking Carol in. Ideally, they want to save their sister, but realistically it's not gonna work out like that. Getting her away and giving her the help she needs won't magically make all her problems go away, but it's a start.

Today, we took a walk along the mountain trail, where we collected berries, moonstones, and maple fern leaves. I've never seen maple fern leaves before as they only bloom every few years according to Isabelle. Since they're rare, we decided to collect a bunch to save for a later project. I have no idea what to do with the leaves yet but I'm sure we can come up with something great.

We wound up staying on the mountains all day as we kinda got lost a bit at that fork in the trail where things kinda get confusing. There's a peak up there I haven't explored until today as whenever I try to look for it, I can't find it. The trail only shows up if we get lost but by then it's getting late so we have to put off exploring for another time. Finally, after years of trying, we finally got to explore the peak!

Getting up there was tricky as the slopes are super steep. We had to take the long way around so we could take short breaks and not risk anyone getting injured. It's a daunting climb, but the view was so totally worth it! Not only the view is breathtaking, I can see even more places to explore. That's what I love about exploring new areas - it's like unlocking a door leading to something bigger.

Since we worked so hard to get up here, it made sense for us to spend the rest of the day making the most out of our discovery. Now that I know how to get there, I now have to find a way to make this area more accessible with things like trail markers and ladders. Ken documented the whole trek for the vlog, an impressive feat as, like I said, the climb wasn't planned. As fun as the whole thing was, don't expect something like that again - in other words, don't try this at home, kids.

(Will that stop me from doing something like that again? Knowing how I tend to be a poor planner, probably not. Then again, I guess it's good to be aware because if things go wrong at least you knew beforehand.)

At the peak, we found a field of colorful pinwheel astras. The light breezes caused the petals to spin, which was fascinating to watch. Normally I don't like looking at spinning things for too long because I'm kinda prone to getting headaches but looking at the pinwheel petals was surprisingly calming. It was kinda funny when the four of us immediately pulled out our tablets/sketchbooks to draw the flowers. We also took a bunch of pics too and they turned out great.

After exploring around the peak for a while, we rested underneath a giant lemon tree. The tree was full of perfect lemons - it was like nothing I've ever seen before. Lemons are kinda hard to come by as they don't grow at the camp, so they're only accessible at the market box for me. Finding a perfect lemon is like striking gold, so to see so many at once is like hitting the jackpot. So of course, we collected a bunch and later made lemonade when we got back to the camp.

Speaking of lemons, Ken and Carol are taking the perfect lemons as some kind of a sign. Something about them growing up with a neighbor who always gave them crappy lemons from their tree that end up sitting in the fridge until they get thrown away. Ken says it's a really long story that's funny and interesting so it looks like they'll have to cover it in the upcoming vlogs about the camp. Seeing how the lemons seem to be a sign of hope for the two, I'm intrigued.

#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

[make-it-mavis]

Homesick (Entry #20)

01/07/88  11:56 PM

Hey.

That first night was rough.

The following six would not be much better.

Honestly, most of my time spent in the dump has excused itself from my memory, on account of being so profoundly unremarkable and entirely unpleasant. I’m pretty sure I know what I did, but a large sum of the details are basically gone. Thankfully, none of it’s all that important, but I still feel like I should write down what I can recall. It’s kind of weird -- it feels like the more I write, the more I remember. Maybe once all’s said and done, I should try keeping a journal or some corny crap like that. A real one.

‘Dunno if I could stay regular on it without the added benefit of pretending to talk to you.

Anyway. Seven-ish days, I stayed there, and each day, relations with Wreck-it stayed just as strained, clipped, and awkward as the day before. I found out on the first morning that he had a strike system in mind -- I break three rules, that’s three strikes, that’s my ass hitting the road. Of course, I found out about this shortly after making my first strike. Literally seconds into the first day. 

I hadn’t slept at all, being too sick and anxious and plagued by a snoring gorilla. So, when he woke up, before he could even stand, he was greeted by a violation of Rule #2:

“Hey, Maestro, what’s it like havin’ an entire brass section lodged in your nose?”

Then he, let’s say, ‘explained’ that I’d just struck one of three.

The second strike was not long for this world, either. Just hours later, I’d break Rule #5, completely by accident.

Business was pretty slow that day, being so early in the School Year (I heard some things here and there about so-and-so’s throwing First Day of School parties, but there was no festival this year -- not in the climate for it, I guess). Fix-it had a fair amount of free time between gamers, and made the incredibly ill-advised decision to try to talk to me. I was curled up on my pillows trying very hard to sleep when I heard him climbing up the bricks, calling out cautiously, “Mavy? Are you here?”

I didn’t say anything. I just grabbed a brick and tossed it in the direction of his voice. I then heard a yelp, a handful of Nicelander gasps, those tumbling sound effects, and that morbid little funeral drone. I didn’t expect to actually hit him, let alone K.O. him. He’s so damn easy to K.O., it’s like cracking an egg.

Regardless of it being an accident, regardless of the fact that Fix-it was assuring everyone he was fit as a fiddle seconds later, regardless of the fact that Wreck-it wasn’t even in the dump at the time, but watching from the roof of Niceland, it was a strike. So I had one left until I was out on my ass. I really had to pull it together in that regard. And I did, sort of.

I spent each day more or less the same: Looking for distractions that didn’t break any rules, puking, and trying to sleep.

I wandered around when I could. I took sporadic catnaps. I took very, very cold baths in the river, which I did not miss doing at all, but I certainly couldn’t use the showers in your game anymore. I drew sketches of the gamers’ faces as they played. I spent lots of time hugging a bucket. I very quietly played my guitar, more for the motion than the music. I snuck into the building from behind and raided apartments during gameplay, stockpiling food and water as my appetite slowly came back. It was all repetitive, futile, and not nearly enough to distract me the way I needed. I wanted buffs so, so bad. Even a drink. But for the life of me, I could not leave the game.

I tried many times, often several times in a day. I’d go stand at our dinky little train station, staring at the dinky little train I’d have to use as a newfound ground-dweller, and shiver. I’d pace. I’d kick the train, usually. It was so demeaning and frustrating. Nobody can keep me locked up. Yet there I was, too afraid to leave my own Dev-damned game out of fear that I’d be murdered. That had to be exactly what my attacker wanted me to feel. Just crippling, paralyzing fear. She may not have killed me, but maybe she was counting on other ways to make me disappear. And there I was, giving her what she wanted.

Wreck-it, on the other hand, left the game nightly to go to Tapper’s, right after closing. He’d check in with me beforehand, and it’d be the same each time.

He’d say, “Hey. Holdin’ up okay?”

I’d say, “Yup.”

He’d say, “Think you might leave soon?”

I’d say, “Hopefully.”

He’d say, “I’m going to Tapper’s, if you’re interested.”

I’d say, “No, thanks.”

End scene.

Word for word, the same every night. Those were really our only brief windows of communication, right up until the fifth night, after he had come back from Tapper’s and settled in. 

The withdrawals had cleared up by then, but, needless to say, I still didn’t feel too good. I’d been stuck in there for nearly a week, feeling more broken and pathetic than I’d ever felt in my life. Everything was weighing down so, so hard, it was like I could barely breathe. Being unable to find you, nearly being murdered, being villainized, practically losing my brush -- it all had me cornered. There was nowhere to run. I was wishing so deeply for a way out. So, like I’ve done countless times before, I stared out into the arcade through the screen, trying to imagine a reality where I could break out and leave all of this behind.

The thing is, though, I’d only ever dreamed of that when no one else was around. This time, I was peering over the mound of bricks that I’d been sleeping behind, barely ten feet from Wreck-it’s stump. I was lying there for Devs know how long before, completely by accident, a question slipped from my mouth.

“What do you think it’s like out there?”

Wreck-it jumped. “Huh?”

I jumped. “What?”

“What’d you say?”

I felt my face burn up. I couldn’t have that conversation, not with him. I slipped back down the bricks to my privacy, and instinctively grabbed my guitar. “Forget it. Doesn’t matter.”

Wreck-it didn’t press, but I didn’t expect him to. It was the heavy, awkward silence after that I was worried about, so, without a second thought, I started playing my guitar. I’d played quietly while Wreck-it was around a few times before, and he didn’t seem to mind. Up until that point, though, I’d been silent on the vocals, because… y’know, I guess I just didn’t feel much like singing since you’d left. But in my panic, I started singing the first thing that popped into my head. It was this song I’d started writing about a concrete world and a neon storm. It wasn’t done. I’d forgotten most of it. It was a freakin’ mess -- eventually, I just gave up. I sighed and started plucking no tune in particular. Me and my unpredictable mouth.

That’s when Wreck-it piped in again, casually.

“Was that a new one?”

I cringed. “Yeah. It’s... not done.”

He paused. “It was nice. When it’s done, you should play it at Tapper’s.” He paused again. “...Y’know, after… things die down a bit.”

“...Yeah, right. As if I’ll ever play there again. Certainly not at Qix, either.”

“No?”

“No. Sprites at Qix are there for a good time, and I’m not super conducive to those anymore, so… even if it ever opens up again, I’m off the setlist.”

Qix had, indeed, been barred from the public not too long after the incident. It had become even more of a hotspot for buff use and dealing. Hardly stopped users and dealers from finding new places for it, but, still, the arcade lost its one and only nightclub. So that was grand.

“And, as for Tapper, I kinda doubt he wants the arcade’s most hated sprite playing at his bar.”

“Tapper still likes you,” he said. “I mean, he even talked about you the other night, said he’d run into you at the memorial. Wanted to know how you were doing.”

It was true -- I had met Tapper briefly at the memorial, and I remembered that he said that I was always welcome in his game if I needed company. It really was a sweet thing, looking back. But I didn’t take him seriously at the time, ‘cause I still thought it was a big joke. And after that, I definitely made him regret his offer. All I’d done at Tapper’s was drink myself violent and end up throwing punches and breaking glass. I was certain that he’d changed his mind and started hating me like everyone else. That thought really stung.

I waited, for a moment. “...What did you tell him?”

“I just told him I wouldn’t know.”

“Good,” I nodded, “good.”

We were both quiet for a long while, before words slipped out of me again. “I’m gonna miss that bar.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… whether Tapper likes me or not, I’m… bad for business, now. I could draw sprites in with my music, before, but, now… Even if he says I’m welcome there, I’m not really. It’s not entirely up to him.” I sighed, and felt my voice drop so low, it practically dragged. “I’m not welcome anywhere, anymore, so… that’s great.”

“Nowhere at all?”

I said, “Nope. Didn’t you say yourself that I’m trouble? Big trouble? Everyone seems to think that. Bigger trouble than anyone can deal with nowadays.”

Once again, we were both silent for a moment. I’d stopped playing, reduced to flicking one string with my thumb, just enough to hear it.

I heard Wreck-it take a deep breath behind me. He paused, and then, in a slow, awkward voice, said, “Well… Yeah, maybe, but… You don’t scare me, kid.”

I wished that could have made me feel better. It was, objectively, a pretty decent thing to say, and another sprite probably would have been very comforted by the chance of an ally in this mess, or at the very least, someone with something resembling loyalty. But it just made me feel worse. I felt too smart to believe any of that crap could last. He didn’t know it yet, but he’d change his mind. I’d always figured that sooner or later, everyone would decide I’m too much. That was just the way of things. 

However, given my bleak circumstances, I had little choice but to accept his… tolerance while it lasted. Having someone on my side, even for just a little while, seemed like it could have proven helpful.

So, after a long, sullen silence, I just went back to plucking idly on my guitar. “Good to know you’re not as dumb as you look, then.”

His breath caught in disbelief for a second, before he dropped right back into growling, “Name-calling. Watch it.”

“It was a compliment, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, a super backhanded one.”

I closed my eyes, trying to play myself to sleep. “Just take it, pal. I don’t got that many kind words to share, so I gotta ration them out wisely.”

He grumbled. “You would call that kind.”

“I do. Now, can we cut the yammerin’ and sleep?”

“Fine. Yeesh.”

He slept. I didn’t. Not ‘til midday the following day, anyway. I fell asleep during gameplay hours, and woke up just after closing when Wreck-it stomped his big ol’ stumps up the bricks. We had the usual pre-Tapper’s exchange, ending, of course, with me refusing his offer to come along. I was tired as hell, and I still wasn’t ready to go out there.

But, as I quickly discovered, it didn’t matter if I was ready or not.

I’d been in a fitful sleep for what must have been barely half an hour when Wreck-it’s feet woke me up again. This time, he came around behind my bricky knoll to stand next to me, towering with this look on his face that I didn’t like at all.

He said, “Hey kid, guess what.”

“I’m being evicted?”

“No,” he grinned in a way I couldn’t read -- don’t really see him smile that often, honestly, “but you are leaving. You’re going to Tapper’s!”

I was not following. “Uh… ‘kay, you do know that I said ‘no thanks’, right? That’s a thing you remember?”

“Yup, yup, I do. But listen to this -- I talked to Tapper for you, and all that stuff you said about him hating you or -- or, y’know, all that --” he shook his head, “-- not true. He misses you, kid. You gotta get out there and show him you’re alive.”

I felt my face burn up.

“You-- You--” I sprung to my feet, “You TOLD HIM I’M STAYING WITH YOU!?”

He put his hands on his hips nonchalantly. “Yeah, maybe I did.”

“HOW-- WHEN I SPECIFICALLY SAID NOT TO?! THAT WAS RULE NUMBER ONE!!”

“Ah, ah,” he pointed, “polite request number one, and, request denied.”

I’d have throttled his fat neck if my fingers could fit around it.

“WHY’D I WASTE MY TIME BEING POLITE, THEN, LARD-FACE!?”

He seemed thoroughly unimpressed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m gonna let that one slide, because you can bellyache all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been in here way, way too long, kid.”

“QUIT CALLING ME KID! I’M GONNA LEAVE, OKAY! SOON! ON MY OWN!”

“Uh huh, I’m sure you were going to,” he nodded in a condescending sort of way that made me want to hurl a brick between his eyes, “but now you get to leave with me, right now.”

“NO, I DON’T!”

“You said you’re here ‘cause you had nowhere else to go, right? Well, now you’ve got somewhere else to go, so get up off my bricks, and come go to the bar like I know you’ve been dying to do all week.”

He wasn’t wrong. But I was so angry. And I was still so scared.

“I DON’T WANT TO GO, AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”

His eyebrows raised for a second, and he shrugged. “Alright, I guess we’re doing this.”

Then the colossal bastard grabbed me. Me, as in, my entire body, in one of his huge, meaty paddles he calls hands. It’s not that he’s never done that before, but it’s always been to throw me, and lasted only a second. This time, he started walking down the bricks, with the clear intention of just carrying me the entire way to Tapper’s. His code is still less dense than that of Fix-it, but that prolonged contact still made my binary crawl. Devs, did it crawl.

So, after a quick burst of threats and shrieking, I conceded. I agreed to go with him if he would just put me the hell down. He dropped me, I ran back to grab my book bag, and we trudged to the train. The way he walked behind me made me feel like he was marching me to some grim fate. Some grim, unnatural, unspeakably awkward fate.

As much as I lamented being reduced to riding the train like a chump, seeing the way his massive ass just barely fit into one of the cars was pretty rewarding.

Once we started rolling, he told me, “You know it’ll do you good to get out. You’re just not coded for life in a box, kid.”

I don’t remember if I sighed or gave the flattest laugh of my life. “Yeah, tell that to the Devs. And for cuss’ sake, quit calling me kid.”

In all truthfulness, as scared as I was, I really was so relieved at a chance to finally leave. And as much as I hated not being able to do it on my own, I was, admittedly, glad to have a second pair of eyes. It was probably a pretty decent thing of him to do, scouting out a safe place for me to go. Even if I really, really didn’t want or ask for it.

But I’m still pissed at him for denying my incredibly polite request.

#fanfiction #fanfic #wreck it ralph #make it mavis #turbo #original character #homesick

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

Frankenstein: The Story

Before Frankenstein even starts, the movie wants you to know that it isn’t messing around.  This isn’t a horror-comedy, or a mildly spooky drama.  This is a horror story, make no mistake.

The film opens up in a rather unconventional way.  Edward Van Sloan, who plays Dr. Waldman in the film, appears from behind a curtain in order to directly address the audience:

“How do you do? Mr. Carl Laemmle feels it would be a little unkind to present this picture without just a word of friendly warning. We’re about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God. It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation: life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now is your chance to, uh… Well, we’ve warned you.”

After this genial warning, Mr. Van Sloan steps back behind the curtain, and the music starts over the credits.  (This is the only time music will play during the film.)

The film opens proper this time, appropriately enough, in a graveyard.

The scene is a funeral, a sad occasion over which church bells are heard ringing.  Fittingly enough, the story of Frankenstein already is focused on death, and so is our possible main character.

Enter Dr. Henry Frankenstein. (Colin Clive) (Spoilers below)

Frankenstein waits outside the graveyard, alongside his hunchback assistant, Fritz (Dwight Frye), for the mourners to leave, and for the gravedigger to finish up.  As soon as the cemetery is deserted, the gruesome twosome move in, using their own tools to dig up the grave again, removing the coffin.  As they do, Frankenstein manically murmurs this:

“He’s just resting. Waiting for a new life to come.”

With that, the pair put the coffin on a wheelbarrow, and head off.  They stop at a gallows, where Frankenstein tells Fritz to clamber up and cut the body down.  Reluctantly, Fritz obeys.  The doctor examines the body, before proclaiming it useless.

“The neck’s broken. The brain is useless. We must find another brain.”

He’s 2 for 2 on the ominous foreshadowing, despite the fact that that’s not how neuroscience works.

Fritz, in a quest to find another brain, hides outside a medical college, where he listens to Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan) teaching a seminar about brains.  He has two specimens: one, a perfect example of a model brain, and the other, the brain of a criminal.

After class is dismissed, Fritz sneaks into the classroom, intending to steal the well-adjusted brain.  At first, it looks like success, but a loud noise startles him, and he drops it.  Panicked, Fritz grabs the brain labeled: ‘Abnormal Brain’ and takes off.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to a few new characters: Elizabeth (Mae Clark), Henry’s fiancee, and Victor (John Boles), friend of Henry and Elizabeth.  Elizabeth has just received word from Henry for the first time in four months.  She reads the letter out loud to Victor, who explains that he is in the middle of an amazing discovery, and is working on his experiments in hiding in an abandoned watchtower, where they can remain secret.  

Elizabeth explains that she sent for Victor because she is worried about Henry, saying that he’s talking as though he’s crazy.  She also says that she’s heard him talk about these experiments before, and that when they were first engaged, Henry was happy to tell her about them, but now acts as though everything is a great mystery.  

Victor agrees that Henry’s acting strangely.  He tells Elizabeth that the last time he ran into Henry and asked to see the lab, Henry got very defensive.

So far, the movie really isn’t selling the audience on Henry.  Not many good traits for this guy if we’re being honest.

At this moment, Victor tells Elizabeth that he is in love with her, which doesn’t help the situation at all.  This is not the first time he has done this, but Elizabeth is already engaged to aforementioned mad-scientist.  

Victor also says that he will go track down Dr. Waldman (remember him?) who was Henry’s mentor, to see if he knows anything about Henry’s behavior.  Elizabeth runs after him, determined to go along, and the two set off.

The two arrive at Waldman’s office and begin discussing Henry and his odd behavior.  Waldman admits that Henry is brilliant, but he’s also erratic, possessing an “insane ambition to create life”.  Waldman also explains that Henry had wanted actual human corpses for his experiments

“You do not quite get what I mean. Herr Frankenstein was interested only in human life. First, to destroy it; then, recreate it. There you have his - mad dream.”

The university obviously wouldn’t allow the use of human corpses, and so Henry left, in order to pursue graverobbing for his experiments.  More worried than ever, Elizabeth convinces Waldman to accompany them to find Henry and bring him to his senses.

Henry, as it turns out, is inside his watchtower where a mighty storm is brewing.  It’s dark, there’s a thunder and lightning storm growing, and inside, Henry is busy about his laboratory, full of crackling electric gadgets and a table, on which lies a figure, with a cloth lying over it and bandages wrapped around its head, inside which is the brain that Fritz had stolen.

“The brain you stole, Fritz. Think of it. The brain of a dead man waiting to live again in a body I made with my own hands! With my own hands.”

As Henry prepares his experiment (powered by electricity, hence the storm), there is a knock at the door, interrupting him at his work.  Irritated, he sends Fritz down to send whoever is there away.  Upon realizing that Elizabeth is at the door, Henry changes his mind, and lets her, Victor, and Waldman in, albeit reluctantly.  He tries to persuade them to leave, but is stopped short when Victor accuses him of being crazy.

“Crazy, am I? We’ll see whether I’m crazy or not.”

Taking the accusation as a challenge, Henry brings his unexpected guests upstairs to the lab to witness his experiment.  He forces Victor and Elizabeth to sit, chases Waldman away from the hidden body, and describes his experiment.

In short, Henry has discovered a ray that is the foundation of life, and that he has created a body, stitched together from other corpses, super large, super strong.

Without further ado, Henry launches into the most famous scene of cinema history.  He starts up the equipment as the storm begins to rage, and the table holding Henry’s creation rises up the tower towards a skylight, where the thunder and lightning crash and flash.  Slowly, Henry brings the body back down, and the hand of his creation begins to move.

Say it with me:

“Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE!”

In his euphoria, Henry compares himself to God, and in shock and horror, the others restrain him.

Weirdly enough, at this point, the movie decides to put itself on hold.

After an emotional, tension filled high point, one of the most famous scenes in movie history, the film decides that, rather than show you Frankenstein’s creation, to take you instead to the home of Baron Frankenstein, Henry’s father, and a conversation with Elizabeth and Victor.

The movie has been moving at a pretty good clip up to this point, albeit with rather sparse ‘monster’ action.  We don’t see Frankenstein putting his creature together, we only see the before and after, and now we don’t even get to see the after.  The sequence interrupting the ‘good stuff’ seems to come in, interrupting a continuous flow.

Henry’s father is also worried about him (it seems to be a pattern), but refuses to believe Elizabeth’s claims that he’s just tired.  The Baron believes there’s something legitimately wrong with him, and that he’s involved with another woman.  At this point, the Baron isn’t sure if there’s even going to be a wedding between his son and Elizabeth, which is unfortunate, since the whole town is preparing for it.

The Baron makes a decision: he’s going to go visit Henry now, too.

See, as it turns out, Henry hasn’t left the watchtower.  He’s still with his experiment, and so is Waldman.

Waldman, for his part, isn’t in the slightest happy about Henry’s experiment.  He explains that the ‘monster’ is dangerous, but Henry isn’t buying it.

“Dangerous? Poor old Waldman. Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if no one tried to find out what lies beyond? Have you never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn’t care if they did think I was crazy.”

Waldman explains that the brain that Henry used was a criminal brain.  Henry looks disconcerted for a moment, but brushes it off, ignoring Waldman’s pleas to stop experimenting.

“I’ve got to experiment further. He’s only a few days old, remember. So far he’s been kept in complete darkness. Wait till I bring him into the light.”

As he finishes speaking, heavy footsteps are heard in the hallway.  Henry shuts off the light, casting the dark room into further shadow, as a towering figure steps, backwards, through the doorway.  It turns, slowly, facing the camera, with a dead, blank expression.

You already know what he looks like.

Henry tells the creature (Boris Karloff) to come in and sit down.  The creature, although mute, seems to understand him, obeying as Henry rolls back the skylight.

The monster stands, looking up, and raises his hands to the sky, trying to touch the light.  The expression comes to life, full of curiosity-

And Henry closes the light again.

The monster halts, looking dejected, as Henry gleefully brags about his creation.

Right here, we as an audience have been told a lot of information about a lot of people.

There’s Elizabeth, the loving fiancee, Victor, the concerned friend, Waldman, the dismayed mentor, and Baron Frankenstein, blustering father, but when you boil it right down, the audience’s concern lies with two characters: Henry and the monster.

We know that Henry is a raging egomaniac, who is determined to make his mark on scientific discovery.  He is proud of what he has done, to the point of hysteria, and has become so absorbed with his work that he has neglected family, friends, and his fiancee, to the point where he has driven them all to worry about him.  He’s obsessed with his creation, with his apparent success.

And the creature?

As famous and magnificent as the laboratory scene is, the scene where the monster first sees the light is almost as well-known, and with good reason.  Arguably just as important, this sequence gives the audience some very important information about the creature: he is not inherently a ‘monster’.  His expression is not that of a vicious beast, but a curious child.  His backwards lumber into the room and straining to touch the light stirs an emotion out of the audience: not fear, but pity.

Hold onto that, we’ll be coming back to that shortly.

After the monster sits back down, Fritz comes tearing into the room with a lighted torch, brandishing it at the creature.  The creature, naturally frightened, goes into a bit of a frenzy, barely restrained by Henry and Waldman.  The two scientists tie him up, and Waldman, more resolute than ever in his stance that the creature is dangerous, tells Frankenstein that he must destroy the monster.

The two scientists move the creature to the cellar, where Fritz continues to torment him, beating him with a whip and antagonizing him with the torch.

Upstairs, Henry and Waldman hear a bloodcurdling shriek, and rush downstairs, where they discover the monster, free, and Fritz, strangled.

The pair manage to get out of the cellar and close the door behind them, but it won’t hold for long.  The monster’s superior strength comes to bear as he struggles to smash down the door.

Henry, horrified at his own creation, reluctantly agrees with Waldman’s assertion that the monster must be destroyed, and allows Waldman to go up for a needle for a hypodermic injection.  After Waldman returns, the pair open the door, and as the creature attacks Henry, Waldman injects the monster in the back with the needle.  After a tense moment, the drug takes effect, and the monster slumps to the ground, unconscious.

Waldman and Frankenstein hide the body of the creature as they hear a banging on the door: Victor, warning Henry that Elizabeth and Henry’s father are on the way, right behind him.  Henry goes upstairs to clean the blood off of him.

When Elizabeth and Baron Frankenstein do arrive, they find Henry, collapsed from exhaustion in his lab, muttering mournfully about Fritz.  They decide to take him home, and Waldman promises Henry that he will preserve Henry’s research, and destroy the monster.

While Henry is taken home and helped to recover, Waldman sets about dissecting the creature.  Before he can get started, the sedative wears off, and the creature wakes up.  Seeing the doctor bending over him with sharp tools, the creature strangles Waldman, gets up, and wanders out of the watchtower, now loose across the countryside.

The story takes a little bit of a skip now.  Henry is recovered, and it is the day of his wedding to Elizabeth.  His father, the Baron, hands Henry and Victor orange blossoms, family tradition for weddings, and toasts the wedding, remarking about his hope for a future son of Frankenstein.

An interesting comment.  More on that later.

Meanwhile, the creature’s wanderings have taken him to a forest, relatively close to civilization.  There, he stumbles upon a girl named Maria, who is playing by the side of a lake.

Instead of being frightened at his appearance, the girl approaches the creature and invites him to play with her, bringing him down by the water as well.  She gives him a flower, which he reacts to with a look of genuine happiness.

Maria offers up an interesting look at how people approach the creature.  Up until this moment, he has been contained, tortured, and treated as an experiment at best, and a monster at worst.  This is the first time that anyone has treated him as anything close to ‘human’, and it’s a touching moment.

Unfortunately, this is a horror film, and we have to take a sharp left turn into disaster.  Or at least, tragedy.

See, Maria teaches the creature a game where they toss flowers into the water, demonstrating how they float.  Once the creature runs out of flowers, he tosses Maria in, not really understanding why that’s not acceptable.  As it turns out, Maria can’t swim.

Her floundering in the water frightens the creature, and, clearly upset, he runs away.

The scene switches once more to wedding preparations.  Elizabeth, already in her wedding gown, asks to speak to Henry privately, as she’s feeling rather uneasy.  As a matter of fact, she’s downright afraid.  She explains to Henry that she’s not sure why she’s afraid, but she is concerned for Waldman, and asks why he’s late.  She adds that she’s very afraid of losing Henry, but he reassures her that he’s not going anywhere.

The touching moment is interrupted by Victor, banging on the door, shouting about Waldman.  He’s been found, dead, in the watchtower where Henry had been working.  Henry locks Elizabeth in a room and rushes out, knowing that the monster must be loose.  He and Victor begin searching the house for the creature, all the while thinking that at least Elizabeth is somewhat safe.

Elizabeth is pacing the room, very nervous.  I can’t blame her.

As she paces, the monster comes through the window of the house, stalking her down.  Elizabeth screams, and tries to escape, but of course, Henry locked the door in his most brilliant move since reanimating the dead.  The monster gets out the way he came in, and Henry bursts in to find Elizabeth unhurt, but hysterical.

Henry proclaims that he cannot get married until his creation is destroyed, and leaves Elizabeth in Victor’s care while he leaves to track down the monster.

“I made him with these hands, and with these hands I will destroy him. I must find him.”

Meanwhile, interrupting the wedding festivities outside, a grief-stricken father carries the body of his little girl, Maria, into the town.  The townspeople, now subdued, follow him as the father approaches the Burgomaster, proclaiming that his daughter has been murdered.  (This is perhaps the one plot hole that I have the hardest time getting around, as if she’d been drowned, there’s no way the father could have figured she’d have been murdered.)

Still, it’s enough to get the townspeople in a riot.

The Burgomaster organizes the mob, splitting it into three groups and putting Henry in charge of one.  The mob storms off, armed with torches and pitchforks (what else?).

Henry’s group spots the monster, and stumbles upon an injured man who points them in the direction of the creature.  

Naturally, Henry gets separated from the rest of the group while up on a mountain, and, of course, runs into his creation.

Frankenstein tries to scare the creature with his torch, but the monster is well past the fear of fire by now.  He lunges at Henry, they struggle, and the monster knocks him unconscious, dragging him away.  

The creature takes Henry into a windmill, pursued by the mob of angry villagers.  As the monster lugs Henry up to the second story, the search party tries to break the door down.

Henry wakes up, and narrowly escapes another attack by the creature, hiding behind mill machinery before entering another losing grappling match with the creature.  After a brief struggle, Henry falls from the mill, unconscious.

Some of the search party stop to take Henry home, as the rest light the mill on fire.

The monster remains trapped in the flaming building, under a fallen beam, terrified and alone.

With the monster presumed dead, Henry begins recovering again, under the care of Elizabeth at his home.  His father, the Baron Frankenstein, breaks out the old wine for the wedding and makes another toast: a toast to the son of Frankenstein.

Cue closing credits.

The story of Frankenstein is not a long one, clocking in at just over an hour and ten minutes.  On a rewatch, it can seem like there isn’t even that much of the monster.  Instead, we spend a lot of time with the creator of the creature, watching him prepare for his wedding.  We even get a few scenes with Elizabeth and other supporting characters.  

At first, these scenes really seem to slow the story down.  The odd placement of a few scenes with Henry’s friends and family worrying about his sanity sprinkled in-between the monster’s creation sequences can seem to abruptly grind the movie to a halt as the audience is forced to sit back from the edge of their seats.  I mean, what is this story about, anyway?  Reanimating the dead or Henry’s wedding?

More specifically, who is this story supposed to be about?

That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it?  

The easy answer is to say that Frankenstein as a film is focused on Frankenstein as a man.  The scientist, bent on playing God, creating a monster and forced to destroy it.  Frankenstein, the son, the fiance, the student, the friend.

By the same token, it’s equally as simple to claim that the focus of the story is on the monster.

The mute creation of a madman, the childish brute who never asked to be made, who was never shown any kindness.  The lonely monster, tortured and brutalized for being ugly, condemned for the sins of his creator.  The monster, the son of Frankenstein.

Typically, finding the protagonist of a film isn’t that hard.  Luke Skywalker, Rocky Balboa, Dorothy Gale, are all easily presented as who the story is about, the person who pushes the action forward.  But unfortunately, protagonists aren’t as easy to spot in every case.

Protagonists, as it turns out, aren’t always at the center of the story.  In our study of Ladyhawke (nearly a year ago!), we discovered that sometimes, the protagonist and the character that the audience spends the most time with aren’t necessarily the same person.  In Running Scared, there are two protagonists, but only one major one.  In our analysis of Psycho, we discussed the fact that the protagonist doesn’t even have to be a hero.  

That’s certainly the case with Frankenstein.

Whichever way you slice it, there is no ‘hero’ in Frankenstein.  Neither monster nor man saves the day.  The climax, presented as a victory to the townspeople, is a tragedy: the creature, beaten and hated for his entire short life, is seemingly burnt alive, trapped, rejected by his creator.

This is not a happy ending.  But then again, it’s not a happy story.  It started with digging up corpses in a graveyard, remember?

It turns out, when you think back over the events of the film, it’s actually pretty easy to spot the protagonist.

When it comes to ‘spotting’ the protagonist in Frankenstein, it’s less an analysis of the actions taken by specific characters, and more the ‘blame game’.  Who’s fault is most of the story?  Is it the monster, for killing?  Is it Fritz, for antagonizing him unprovoked?  Waldman’s, for mentoring Henry in the first place?

Rather grimly, looking back over the course of events in the story and determining who is to blame gives us our protagonist.  It is, of course, Henry Frankenstein.

Henry Frankenstein is far from heroic, but he is responsible for nearly every action taken by every character in the story, from his friends checking up on him to his creation wreaking havoc.  It is his blind arrogance and refusal to take into account the consequences of his actions that lead to so much suffering, and, ironically, death.  Henry is bent on achieving the impossible, and in doing so, nearly dooms much of the main cast.  He digs up the graves.  He creates the monster.

Worst of all, he’s the one who won’t give the creature what he needs most: love.

For all intents and purposes, the creature is the son of Frankenstein, his creation.  Henry has been nothing but an active character up until the point where he creates the monster, and after that, he suddenly becomes passive.  His goal accomplished, he doesn’t treat the monster like a person, but a successful experiment.  He halfheartedly scolds Fritz for tormenting him, but doesn’t actively try to stop him.  Through his carelessness, he gives the monster none of the attention he needs, and as a result, the monster is treated terribly at worst, and with indifference or scientific curiosity at best.

Once people start dying, Henry wakes up a little bit.  His growth, his character arc, comes in the form of self-realization, of owning up and accepting blame for what he’s done.  After he realizes his guilt, he does something about it, going after the monster and trying to ‘right’ his wrong by destroying it.  

While still not exactly a heroic figure, at the very least, Henry does change by the end of the story.  And isn’t that what protagonists are supposed to do?

Yes, it is.

But there’s another character we’re leaving out of this equation.

The idea of the monster being a reflection, or another side, of Frankenstein is not a new one.  It’s an idea that’s frequently discussed and analyzed by plenty of experts.  Right now, though, we’re not looking at the monster as a reflection of Frankenstein.  We’re looking at him as a creation, as a son.

See, Henry isn’t the only person that changes throughout the story.  While Henry goes from mad monster to man, the creature has a reverse progression.

Throughout the first part of his existence, the creature is a passive character.  He is acted upon, created through no will of his own, and then tormented for no good reason.  He is a curious creature, a being that demonstrates a childlike joy at the world around him.

The creature doesn’t truly become a ‘monster’ until more than halfway through the film.  He kills Fritz, only because he tormented him.  He kills Waldman while the doctor is trying to dissect him.  In his early moments, the monster reacts to people trying to harm him, rather than lashing out, unprovoked.  His interaction with light, and people who aren’t cruel to him, demonstrate the monster’s potential true nature: a gentle giant.

When the monster breaks out of the tower and meets Maria, there is no hostility.  He is genuinely happy, enjoying interaction with the first person to show him genuine kindness.  Her death is an accident, the result of his misunderstanding, causing him great distress.

After that, a switch is flipped.  It is here that he goes after Elizabeth, (though not harming her) and attacks Henry after Henry pursues him.  At this point, it can be argued that the creature truly becomes the monster…but it’s hard to say that it’s his fault.

We as an audience don’t know what’s going on in the monster’s head at this point.  He can’t speak to tell us.  But it’s not a large leap of logic to wonder if the monster might be blaming his misery on Henry and the others in his life as well.  And in the end, he is seemingly killed, abandoned by his uncaring creator and shunned by a world who mistreated him without cause.

No matter who Frankenstein is about, it’s a sad story.  It’s also a good story.

Frankenstein learns his lesson, repents from playing God, and fixes his mistake.  The monster dies.  All of the human, ‘non monster’ characters live happily ever after.  (Until Bride of Frankenstein.)  Good…wins?

There’s no line drawn, no sides of ‘good or evil’ in Frankenstein.  The story is not good guy vs. bad guy, no good vs. evil, just a creator and his creation, the tragedy of a man too arrogant to realize the blasphemy of his actions, and the creature he made, turned into a monster due to mistreatment and misunderstanding.  

It’s sad, yes.  It’s also a satisfying ending.

It ties up loose ends.  It answers the questions.  It gives everyone an ending, happy or not.

While Frankenstein does have some plot holes, overall, it’s a tight story.  More importantly, it’s an emotional story, and a smart story.  It brings up questions of morality, of nature vs. nurture, and of what we perceive as monstrous.  It’s a gripping story with a great atmosphere, an iconic look, and immortal characters, setpieces, scenes and dialogue that have been remembered for almost ninety years for a reason.  It’s an iconic film, a memorable masterpiece of simple, but smart, storytelling, constantly driving at an emotional core that still holds up to this day.

A toast to the son of Frankenstein.

In the articles ahead, we’re going to be taking a look at some of the other important elements to the story of Frankenstein, so if you enjoyed this one, stick around and join us!  Don’t forget that my ask box is always open for questions, requests, comments, or just a conversation.  Thanks so much for reading, and I hope to see you in the next article.

#Movies #Film #Frankenstein #Frankenstein 1931 #1931 #30s #Horror #Sci-Fi #Science Fiction #Drama #PG #Boris Karloff #Colin Clive #Mae Clarke #Dwight Frye #Edward Van Sloan #James Whale

[teaandatale]

forgotten first meeting and either space au or roommate au for steggy?

57. forgotten first meeting & 22. Space AU or 12. Roommate AU

Well…  How about all three???

Sorry this took so long! Given my last two, I wanted to makesure this one was a decent ficlet length, and I realized I’ve had a sci-fi/spacedrought in the last year so it took a bit to get myself into the zone. This ismore of a collection of scenes, but I hope it gives you the gist of this ficmash up! Um… It’s quite long for a meme thing… So there’s a cut.

He’s not sure what he had exactly expected out of the Servicewhen he first joined up, but Steve sure hadn’t been expected to be halfway tothe outer belt aboard the most protected, secretive ship in the known galaxy, the U.S.S. SHIELD. He hadn’t expected an Earther like him would be tapped for a highly classified secret mission with the SSR. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was working his standard circuit between Earth, Moon Colony II & Mars Colony, patrolling for the usual contraband when the call came. A prepped mission just lost one of their crew members, and he was requested at behalf of the Service’s highly elite trained SSR squad to report for duty. Steve made his last stop, brought his second-in-command and best friend Bucky up to speed, and boarded the first transport ship out towards the Service base on Ganymede.

He also sure as hell hadn’t expected to be paired up with the woman that he had been half in love when they were just recruits nine years ago.

Peggy Carter hasn’t changed much in his eyes, at least not in her stature and attitude. Her hair was longer than it had been back then, worn loose unlike the pulled back regulations of recruit days. But those eyes, the quirk of her brow and the perfect red lips, he remembered them just like yesterday, when his breath hitched and he never quite recovered it.

The moment he locked eyes with her, he gets a giddy feeling in his stomach, both excitement and something like nostalgia.

“Agent Peggy Carter, Agent Steve Rogers, welcome aboard,” CommanderPhillips, an old familiar face, greeted them on the Command Deck. “You’ll be getting to know each other very well over the course of this mission, but we’ll start with the high-level objectives and schematics.”

There doesn’t seem to be any recognition in Peggy’s eyes, and she quickly turns away to focus on Phillips.

“The target of course is Hydra, as you’ve both crossed paths with them in the System.”

He tries not to dwell on it as Phillips pulls up the relevant mission documents. They’re joined by Howard Stark who Peggy does seem to recognize.

An hour later, preliminary brief under way, they are giving initial prep assignments aboard the ship.

“I look forward to working with you Agent Rogers,” Peggy says without any ounce of familiarity as she sticks her hand out to him. He tries not to take it personally, after all, why would she remember him from that night they properly met all those years ago.

Steve swallows his disappointment and shakes her hand back. “I look forward to it also, Agent Carter.”

“Now if someone could point me to my quarters, it’s been a long journey here,” she says.

Howard taps several times on his command screen then clicks his tongue. “We’re running a full crew right now given the situation. The mission team was paired in the same bunk room before you two got assigned to this in their stead. Looks like you’ll have to make due with bunking together. It’s at least private quarters, unlike all the juniors manning Comm stations. They’restill in the general barrack bunks.” He shrugs. “Good time as any to get toknow each other real well before you two go off on your own.”

He notices Peggy make a face for a moment, but she doesn’t comment. Bunking with a girl. Bunking with Peggy. Maybe he should offer to take a spot in the bunks.

“Fine,” she responds in a clipped tone. “Now if you please Howard, point us to our quarters.”  

The quarters are small, as to be expected, though he supposes he’d been a bit spoiled having decent quarters on his usual circuit ship. The two bunks are built into opposite walls, with a small workstation under each. The privacy away from the crowded bunkrooms was a privilege. And Stark was right. He and Peggy were really going to need to get to know each other if they were going to make the covert mission work.

“Do you have a preference?” he asks her of the bunks.

“I’ll take the right wall if you don’t mind.”

He nods. “Of course,” he replies and they both get to work unpacking their personal effects in silence.

Steve contemplated saying something to break the silence, but he wasn’t sure if that would be more awkward than just saying nothing. He’d shared bunkrooms with women before, but he’d never shared private quarters withone, and definitely not one he had a crush on.

He decides not to make the situation anymore awkward for Peggy, who he is sure is not thrilled about sharing with him, and decides to give her as much privacy as one can in a tiny space.

“I apologize if I’m a bit short,” he hears from across the room. He turns and sees Peggy holding her blanket. “It’s been a long and wild journey here for me, so I’m on hour 34 without sleep.”

“You’re kidding!”

She shrugs. “Duty calls, but we hit an uncharted asteroid field which had been a pleasure to map out until we discovered it was one of the forgotten mine fields from the War.”

He’s impressed. Not surprised. But still… Impressed. “Wow,” ends up as his response.

“I just mean that the last few days have been particularly stressful.”

“Of course,” he agrees quickly. “That is one hell of a voyage to manage on a good day. Well you should probably get some shut-eye while you can. I was gonna scope the ship out. I can bring some food back in a couple of hours.”

He’s rewarded with a sleepy smile from her, and he can feel his heart thump against his ribcage. “That would be lovely. Perhaps some coffee if you can find it?”

He smiles back. “You got it.”

*

That first night, alone in their quarters together is awkward, even though Peggy seemed to warm to him when he had delivered on his promise of coffee and food. She asked him about his work on the patrol route, and he gets to hear about the more lengthy intense covert ops that had led her to stints on pretty much every occupied planet and various lunar colonies. He asks her a lot of questions about undercover work, having only done a few of his, and mostly out of necessity than direct order from above. He keeps waiting for an organic moment where their shared past will come up, but it doesn’t. They have a stilted conversation about turning the lights off, and then in the darkness, hyper aware that she is only several feet away, Steve can’t sleep. He stares up blankly, listening to the sounds of Peggy tossing and turning to get comfortable. He wonders if she slept well during her nap, or if like him, found that so much space travel made his brain so dizzy it wouldn’t easily relax.

He thinks about Bucky, and considers sending him a message just to check up on him. He thinks about how he spent the long voyage her missing his mother. It had been a long time since he had so many uninterrupted hours to just think. He misses her every day, but he had missed her so intensely the farther he got away from Earth, in a way he hadn’t felt since her funeral.

The morning alarm comes to early, but he’s out of bed and doing his usual routine or stretches and warm-up before he remembers that he has a roommate. He had so easily pulled off his t-shirt as he normally would have for exercise, but he feels so suddenly naked without it.

A sleepy Peggy Carter is a sight to behold, her features so soft. But even sleepy, her eyes roam his chest and he flushes. He grabs for the shirt on the floor and pulls it on, not daring to look in Peggy’s direction until he’s done his pull-ups. She joins in his stretches, and when she lifts her arms high up, he has to look away from her as a sliver of skin at her stomach becomes visible, before he says or does something embarrassing.

It’s been a long time since he’d been on a long voyage like this. He was used to his shorter cycles, never in the same place for more than a week, not going longer than three or four days without a docking. They’re still a while out before their passenger ship is outfitted and ready to go. It gives them plenty of time to strategize and to catch the other up on their knowledge and run-ins with Hydra.

They spend most of their days together. Compiling notes on known Hydra assets. Visiting Stark to confer about the specs needed for their mission. They run flight simulations together, Peggy as the lead pilot, the role she will be taking, and Steve as both navigator and lead engineer. They work on their cover, and keep up physical exercise, and weapons training, all together. By the end of their third week in transit, they’ve developed a genuinefriendship. Steve still listens carefully every night as she gets comfortablein her bed, listening for the sound of her breathing evening out before hefalls to sleep.

*

Two weeks after the success of their first covert trip, the test run Stark insisted upon before they flew off toward the Outer Belt alone, as goes to hell onboard the U.S.S SHIELD. They backtracked to Jupiter as the upheaval at Mars Colony played out. Phillips was apparently concerned about the powers at play, and was called back in the event a true skirmish arose. Which was perfect time for their main comm system to go down. As the Command Deck scrambled to boot up secondary and tertiary systems without compromising their position, Steve jumped below deck with Stark to try to recover the main system.

“Steve? Any progress?” he hears Peggy ask on their local two-way.

“Slow going Peggy,” he says with a sigh.

He hears her sigh too. “It’s not looking good. Phillips’ is navigating blind and the Mars situation seems to be getting worse.”

“Riots?”

She hums. “We’re picking up gun ships on the long-range. No accurate reading though with the system so intermittent.”

“Shit.”

He and Stark exchange a look. They have Peggy confirm output levels as they work, hearing as the situation gets more and more tense, with a three-gunship fleet sent out ahead to make better assessment. She gives them updates as she assists the crew upstairs. The repair takes hours, but they get it done.

“Peg we got it! Should be live any second!” He doesn’t wait for her response before rushing back over to her.

There’s a cacophony of noise on the Command Deck when Stevefirst reaches it, followed up a sudden eerie silence as the newsfeeds come back up, and the screens report the live images. He gasps along with the rest of them with the fiery images of ships under fire. The distress calls of one ofthe fleet’s gunships comes too late. He feels Peggy’s hand on his arm, but hecan’t even focus on it when he sees another disturbing image. A patrol ship, with an emblem of a star encased in concentric circles. Destroyed. His patrol ship. Bucky. Destroyed. The Honorary First Avenger patrol ship destroyed as it made a play to intercept fire at civilian passenger ship bound for Earth. Bucky…

“Steve.”

He doesn’t recognize that he’s the one hyperventilating until she calls his name. He looks at Peggy but sees nothing. Her hand is still onhis arm.

“Steve.”

“That’s my…” He can’t breathe. He wants to scream. “Bucky.”

The look she gives him is too painful to look at.

“No! No!”

Something squeezes his arm. “Steve, please! Please. Stay with me here. Breathe please. Please.”

He tries to follow her breaths, but between the chaos in his head and the tears streaming across his face, he can’t be here. He should have been there. It should have been him not Bucky. He pulls away and runs. He runs all the back to their quarters. He starts to scream into the void of the empty room, pounding his fist into the wall. He’s never so wished he had private quarters until this very moment. How can he have a breakdown and scream and cry and mourn and hate when he has to share a room with someone? How is he supposed to keep this all in check? How is his best friend dead?

Steve’s lost track of everything. Time. Space. His own body. Everything hurts so much that at this point his muscles feel numb. He jumps when the door opens. Peggy looks at him mournfully. He wipes his hand roughly across his face, clenches his jaw and wills himself not to show further emotion. She comes and sits down next to him on the floor. He doesn’t remember getting there. Was he not in his bunk?

Peggy puts her hand in his and pulls him close to her. He feels like she’s waiting for something, but Steve doesn’t move or say anything. Neither does she. After a while, he feels her hands slide up his arms. He blinks away more tears that have formed and watches her look at him. His shoulders are still heaving when her hands come up to touch them. He tries to still his uncontrollable body.

She comes close and without warning, her lips are on high on his cheekbone. The next moment she’s ushering him into his bunk. He feels like a scolded puppy sent to its cage. He turns over towards the wall with a frown. But then he feels something warm behind him.

“I’m so sorry Steve,” Peggy murmurs into his ear, pressing her lips again his jaw. She curls into him, her arm around his waist, her head resting against his shoulder. The rest of his defenses fall and he lets her hold him, turning so that they’re facing each other. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats as he sobs again, this time against her chest. “I’m here for you. I’m right here with you Steve.”

They spoon all night. She doesn’t leave in the morning. Peggy continues to weaver her fingers through his hair, and rub her hands down his back. But she doesn’t leave. They get up to clean themselves up, to force food into him, and for Peggy, a brief check-in up at Command where things have cooled significantly. Steve worries he’s all alone again.

But then Peggy comes back and climbs into bed with him. He doesn’t give a shit anymore. He presses his fingers into her hips and pulls her against him. When she curls her hand around his neck, he shudders and buries his face against her shoulder. Their bodies twist close together in the tiny bunk, warmth pooling between them. She lets him grip her close like his life depends on it. He thinks it might.

He dreams of the night they met.

It was at the canteen late one night after a long day of training simulations and ship duties. She’s one of three women on the ship. She’s been there for two weeks longer than the rest of them. So when Hodge, a brick head of a bully at the best of times, makes a pass at her and then tells her she can serve under him once he’s Captain of his own ship real soon because trust him, his dad’s got money so he’s sure of a promotion in a hurry, she gives him a calm request of an apology. He snorts and reaches for her ass. He’s barely made contact when she grabs his wrist, twists and then lands a punch to his jaw so quick and clean Steve’s mouth drops in wonder and quite honestly adoration. Hodge stumbles with the force of the hit and falls flat on his ass. A couple of his friends try to help him out, while the rest mostly look away not wanting to get involved. Hodge pushes his friends hands away, and red-faced marches towards her. She doesn’t look fazed but Steve finds himself there blocking his way before he can realize what’s happening.

 “Easy there Hodge you don’t want to embarrass yourself a second time huh?”

 “You stay out of it you pipsqueak Earther.”

 It stings, like those comments always have, but he’s used to it. Had nineteen years of the like.

“That’s really original. No wonder they haven’t promoted you yet. Or is that just because your dad doesn’t have connections to Commander Phillips so your stuck proving your worth the same as they rest of us? Now if you’ll excuse me, now that your seat is vacated I wanted to get a drink.”

 Hodge’s buddies talk him out of causing trouble and he walks out. Beating Steve up in front of plenty of witnesses at the canteen won’t earn him any favors. Everyone knows Phillips is a hard ass with no humor for nonsense. And Steve bets if Hodge did get in trouble, Steve would be right there with him for instigating it. It would have been worth it for the amused look Peggy Carter gives him alone.

 “He’s a fun one isn’t he?” He finds himself commenting. It’s odd for him because he’s never really been able to talk to girls before. And here’s the most gorgeous one he’s ever met and he can’t stop his mouth.

She arches her brow, the amused look still present. He feels heat at the back of his neck and to avoid further making awkward motions, hefiddles with the drink he didn’t really want but felt compelled to get.

They sit there side by side in silence.

 “Don’t listen to him,” he hears her say after a moment. He’s not sure what this advice is in reference to. To his harassment of her? “Not all of us come from the high life of Mars Colony.”

 He’s surprised, pleasantly so, feeling a tug of connection with her already.

 “You’re an Earther?” he asks excitedly. She’s the only other Earth-born that he’s met in his almost year with the service.

 She nods. “Yes. I was born in London. Where are you from?”

 “Brooklyn,” he tells her.

 “That’s lovely. I’ve only been to Brooklyn proper once myself but visited New York frequently as a young child. My father was based there for a while.”

He dreams of how they talked for hours before they had to get shut-eye before morning duty. He dreams of how he had been so excited to talk with her again.

When he wakes up, after their third night of sleeping together, Steve kisses her once. Soft, gentle, quick. He feels too raw for anything more. Her closeness and her caring of him is a gift. They turn until they face each other, Peggy playing with his hair.

“We’ve met before,” he tells her, his voice rough with disuse. Her eyebrow quirks but she lets him continue. “On the U.S.S. Valkyrie. We were both recruits. At the canteen. You punched Gilmore Hodge. Remember him?”

She bites her lip as she thinks. “Yes, though it’s a little hazy. There have been a lot of assholes in my path.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I understand. It was almost ten years ago.”

She bites her lip as she thinks some more. “Wait. The canteen. We talked about Earth. I told you about my brother Michael.”

He nods, and the first small smile in days forms on his lips. “Yeah, your fighter pilot brother Michael.”

“You told me about your Mum. A nurse making ends meet. Why didn’t you come find me again?”

He sighs. “Two days later I got a call from the hospital Maworked at. She was dying. The Service granted me a leave of absence. She died three months later. I came straight back to the Valkyrie. You were already gone.”

Peggy kisses him, so gentle, so full of warmth it makes him cry again. She doesn’t seem off put by the tears. “The stars are not always inour favor. But I’m so glad they found us here together despite all things.” Henods numbly in response. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember you Steve Rogers.”

He shrugs. “We’re here now.”

Peggy laces their fingers together. “We are here together. And I won’t leave you alone for anything. Not for all the galaxies inthe universe.”

#thesokovianaccords #steggy au mashup #my fic #maybe this will become a real fic one day #thanks for sending me these guys #they've really sparked my inspiration to write!! #steggy

[lumikinetic]

*flops down on sofa*

*exhales*

Tumblr gives me a lot of wild shit every now and again. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's disheartening. And then yesterday came along and gave me the one-two punch of:

Captain Marvel being dolled up by the Russos instead of a jacket, S.H.I.E.L.D baseball cap and a Nine Inch Nails shirt, which is how she should be (not gonna talk about this, just want it out there that I'm pissed about it)

One Day At A Time being cancelled

ODAAT I'm gonna kind of touch on because it's not really what I want to talk about, but it did help me finalize the words for what I do, and that's capitalism in entertainment.

The most annoying goddamn trend in filmmaking (and of course in TV and Netflix/Prime originals) is companies caring more about their bottom line and less about making good content, and yeah I know this dead horse isn't just beaten, it's thrown into an active supervolcano but it really pisses me off and it's why I hate the new Star Wars stuff (well OK hate is a bit strong but they're uh Not Good) but I'll get to that. What corpos can't seem to get into their bloated skulls is that one cannot exist without the other. You need to put out good, quality content with value so that fans like it so they give you money so they increase your profits so you can make more content and so on. But somewhere down the line some fuckhead went "what if we just pushed out what we have?" and just kinda expected us to not take notice.

Now before the comments section gets all hot and bothered because I know some people on this site don't have the gift of reading comprehension, I know profits are important, I'm saying when companies shun good filmmaking for more money, they get lazy and all they can think about is profit and not how they make that profit, they don't care at all about using that money to make more good, valuable content.

One Day At A Time

I've never watched One Day At A Time but the fact Netflix just outright cancelled it knowing damn well what it meant to the people the characters are representing is just disgusting. And they have the fucking audacity to blame it on the viewership? I've seen hundreds of artworks, gifs and a video clip here and there of this show. I've seen precisely one (1) meme of 13 Reasons Why and that is literally it. I'm not following the tags for either. Plus, #saveODAAT has, last I checked, 350k tweets on trending or thereabouts?

So obviously the viewership isn't the problem, it's the racism and homophobia of cancelling a Spanish (? - again, never seen it), LGBT+ focused show that a lot of people quite happily and positively connect with when a crap show about suicide and Friends gets to stay on. It's just ugh. Cancelling a show like this then paying something like $100mil to keep Friends. I was going to expand on the shitty capitalism here but tbh that's it, Netflix are making bad decisions and like I say, I'm only going to touch on it because it's not the main part.

Star Wars

Go watch the original trilogy and it's clear George Lucas was trying to create and do. He was trying to make art. The key difference between that and modern SW to me is BB8. Look at C3PO and R2D2 and already you can see they belong. C3PO is a translator droid and I'm not sure what exactly R2's job description is but it's obvious he does some kind of pilot assistance for X-Wing fighters. I never understood people who said R2 never did anything, because they obviously haven't seen Star Wars. You get that this is an R2 unit, right? Like, there's more than one out there and they have a job they were specifically built to do, it's just this one particular R2 unit who had to carry the message? Anyway, I'm derailing. R2 and C3PO have functions and they're clearly not new, they've been used for a long time. Then you look at BB8 and instantly it's like "this is a toy. This so called character was designed to sell toys". And then he was. He's a toy, he's on bags, notebooks, pens, clothes, everywhere. Disney is less concerned about making a Star Wars movie and more about making money off of the Star Wars name.

Into The Spider-Verse VS YA Movies

YA movies tend to suck because they were adapted from books and we all know how that pans out but the reason I'm using YA books specifically is because my mind jumped to The Hunger Games. I couldn't tell you a single fucking thing that happens in those movies. They're so dull and dead and forgettable and the characters are borderline unlikeable but you know which one I do like? Catching Fire, for one reason and one reason only: Jena Malone as Joanna Mason. Save for Haymitch, she's the only character I liked because those two are the only characters with any kind of charisma or life to them. They made an at most halfway decent attempt overall at recreating some otherwise really great books and they made a big show out of it, hiring some pretty well known names. And I'm not disparaging their performances, it was just what I call, ever since Suicide Squad came out, the Harley Quinn effect, in which good actors get given a good character and perform them really well and, through no fault of their own, fuck it up because the character was written poorly and no matter how well they act, if the script doesn't change, the performance will always be shit. The same for Divergent. And Percy Jackson. And Fault In Our Stars.

Then outside all of that you have Perks Of Being A Wallflower which is just a great, heartwarming movie because the characters feel like people and the brightness isn't turned way the fuck down in post and you actually want to be invested, and they're not afraid to have a colour palette beyond a splash of pink here and blue there and red there. Plus, Ant-Man as an English teacher. THEN you go watch Spider-Verse and oh hey. I can actually see the movie now. And I mean see it. They do not slack off when it comes to visuals. Even by animation's standards, everyone is so expressive and alive and... animated. Sorry, I couldn't get a better word but they are! When you look at Miles in comparison to Katniss in terms of writing and performance, the difference is just startling. The only times I can think of where Katniss shows any kind of emotion in the first movie is when she slams the knife in the table and Rue's funeral and I had to think about that. Without thinking for Miles, already I've got "who's Morales?", the scene where Uncle Aaron teaches him the shoulder touch, the scene where Miles spray paints in the subway, that scene in the alley, the moment in Olivia's office when he just freezes after she says she can't wait to watch Peter in immense pain Like That and made all the wlws melt in their seats. You get the idea. So what's the point for this section? Well, as simply as I can put it, Hunger Games was made with money, for money. Spiderverse was made with love, for love. Spiderverse cared about people who read comic books and paid more than enough tribute to the art forms people think of as lesser for no goddamn reason other than elitism and proved for the thousandth time that it is something that can be used in filmmaking. They were trying to make art. Hunger Games and most other YA novel movie adaptations saw a preestablished fan base they could exploit for money. They were trying to make money.

Rambo

This was a weird one, yeah. Don't worry I was confused too when it popped into my head. I saw the original Rambo a while back and what I liked about it (and Apocalypse Now) is it wasn't a war film where the USA charge in and hooray everything's all right, this movie grabs your shirt and says "hey. Vietnam did something to these guys and they're not OK. Probably they'll never be OK". Then I watched the Rambo reboot that came out in like 2011 or something and I remember thinking "OK so now he's just this dude? Who lives in Thailand... And what, that's it?" There was no scene to show his psychological state today. Nothing to acknowledge his PTSD. They just thought "hey! Let's make Rambo but this time, just give him guns and and yelling and spray some blood!" The reason I kind of ended this train of thought quickly is because I realised that, let's be real, the main body of Rambo's audience just want to see Sly Stallone kill some fools. But yeah, the fact that they just ignored John's mental state in place of mega violence is such a glaringly obvious move to just appeal to violent teenage boys.

The Auteur

My favourite director is Wes Anderson and my favourite movie is The Grand Budapest Hotel (though Panos Cosmatos seems to be eyeing these titles with Beyond The Black Rainbow and Mandy, I haven't watched them yet). Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Wes Anderson, auteurs always stand out even though their movies are all the same, and I think the reason they're so successful is because that specific style is so much better than most other mainstream cinema. I'm not saying that those other movies are bad, I love them and will watch them again and again but I'm saying Wes Anderson could make a short movie and it would be better than most Marvel movies put together (don't talk to me about Captain Marvel, I haven't seen it yet. Gonna see it this Sunday). No matter what you think of these directors, you can instantly tell the difference between these movies that they care about and the passion and hard work they put in and Disney pumping out their 400th reboot.

It Keeps Working

You guys wanna know the thought that keeps me up at night? Someday they're going to make a Fortnite movie. You guys wanna know why it keeps me up at night? Because it's going to be popular. Yeah, obviously not at the box office, because it'll be a videogame movie and those are worse than book movies, but it will be popular for no apparent reason. And what pisses me off is that Fortnite's popularity is only because of the battle royale mode, which has now essentially become synonymous with dying franchises and it just adds another layer to the lack of creative effort and the movie will just be Hunger Games with guns. Exactly the same as what I said at the start of this rant, there's a really noticeable shift from making content to jumping on whatever bandwagon is passing by because you know it'll make you money. Yeah, you have to spend money to make money but that doesn't mean you get complacent in what you spend your money on or if you spend money at all because when you cut corners, consumers can see that shit.

Anyway I'm done complaining thanks for having the willpower to pay attention to my dumb opinions.

#discourse #odaat #one day at a time #capitalism #star wars #into the spiderverse #rambo #long post #hunger games #hunger games: catching fire #ya fiction #young adult fiction #netflix #eat the rich #corpo #captain marvel #marvel #disney

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-florida-groveland-four-20190108-story.html?outputType=amp&__twitter_impression=true

Nearly 70 years ago, a group of young black men were victims of one of the ugliest episodes of the Jim Crow era in the South.

Although none of them are alive today, the Groveland Four were pardoned Friday.

Nearly 70 years later, Florida redresses one of its ugliest episodes of racial injustice

By JOHN CHERWA | JAN 11, 2019, 1:00 PM GROVELAND, Fla. | L. A. Times | Posted 12, 2019 |

From the time she was a girl, Vivian Shepherd was haunted by the World War II photograph of her uncle Samuel, stern-faced with his Army cap slightly cocked. She asked her father about him, but he never wanted to talk.

One day, when Shepherd was in her late 30s, she saw a picture of her uncle in a PBS documentary on the battles of the civil rights movement. It was the photograph she knew so well.

She called her mother: “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Samuel Shepherd was one of the Groveland Four, a group of young black men who were victims of one of the ugliest episodes of the Jim Crow era in the South.

In 1949, they were accused of raping a white 17-year-old and variously subjected to mob attacks, beatings by officials and summary execution by the Lake County sheriff.

The story of the four men made national news but soon became a distant memory. “Groveland did not want anyone to know about it,” said Vivian Shepherd, now 57. “They just wanted it to go away and move on.”

Now it has been thrust back into the public consciousness. On Friday, in one of the first acts of newly elected Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, he and the other three members of the state clemency board unanimously granted pardons to the Groveland Four.

“I don’t think there is any way that you can look at this case and see justice was carried out,” DeSantis said at the hearing.

The incident began nearly 70 years ago on July 16, when Norma Padgett and her husband said that their car broke down and that they were accosted by four black men. Willie Padgett said he was beaten by the side of the road.

Norma wandered into Okahumpka, 15 miles north of Groveland, the next morning and told a man she had been abducted. She later claimed she had also been raped.

The Padgetts led police to Shepherd and to Walter Irvin, who told authorities they had tried to help the couple fix the car but gotten into a minor scuffle and left. Two other young men were named by authorities, who described them as known troublemakers.

As word of the allegations got out, the Ku Klux Klan descended on Groveland, shooting at the houses of black people or burning them down.

“The Klansmen came looking to kill my whole family,” Vivian Shepherd said. “They had to run for their lives, spending days hiding in the orange groves and never returning home again and moving to Orlando. My grandfather not only lost their home, but he lost his son.”

John Griffin, who was 5 at the time, said his father took the family to nearby Montverde when the Klan started to arrive.

His dad “said he was coming back to our house and if any white man strikes a match to burn his house down, he was going to kill him,” said Griffin, who is now 74 and recently retired from the Groveland City Council.

Howard King, whose family settled in the area in the late 1800s and brought black workers from Baltimore, remembered the chaos as “a bunch of rednecks who went crazy.”

“They had the power, they had the support of the sheriff,” he said. “They were waiting for one incident.”

When one of the suspects, 25-year-old Earnest Thomas, fled north, Sheriff Willis McCall appointed a posse, which chased him down and left his bullet-riddled body in the woods 200 miles away.

The fourth suspect, Charles Greenlee, 16, was beaten until he confessed and was sentenced to life in prison — even though he had been in custody for a gun violation at the time of the alleged attack.

Shepherd was tortured into making a confession and tried with Irvin. Jurors were never told that a doctor who examined Padgett was unable to conclude that she was raped.

The two men, both 22, were convicted and sentenced to death. Thurgood Marshall — then a lawyer working for the NAACP, later the first black justice on the Supreme Court — took up their case and persuaded the Supreme Court that they had not received a fair trial and to order a new one.

The sheriff picked up the two men at the state prison to drive them back to Lake County for the retrial. They were handcuffed together when, according to McCall, he stopped the car to check a tire and they tried to escape, so he shot them.

Shepherd died at the scene of a gunshot wound to the head.

Irvin played dead to avoid more gunfire. He had to ride to the hospital in a car provided by a black-owned funeral home because an ambulance refused to transport black people.

Irvin was eventually retried, convicted and again sentenced to death.

In 1955, after the prosecutor said he had doubts about the conviction, the governor commuted the sentence to life in prison. Irvin was paroled in 1968 and died a year later of what were determined to be natural causes. He is buried in one of Groveland’s all-black cemeteries.

Vivian Shepherd wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard this sordid piece of local history.

Many who grew up in this small central Florida town, originally built on the industries of citrus, lumber and turpentine, didn’t know for decades.

Then in 2013, the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction went to the author Gilbert King for his account of the saga, “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America.”

For some in the town, the book was a call to action. Two years ago, the Groveland City Council made a proclamation apologizing for what happened to the four men.

Greenlee, who had survived the longest, almost lived to see it. He was paroled in 1962, moved to Nashville and died in 2012.

The Florida Legislature called for the exoneration of the Groveland Four in 2017, asking then-Gov. Rick Scott to put the issue on the clemency board docket. In his remaining time in office, Scott never did.

When asked for an explanation early this month, Scott’s press secretary said they were “reviewing our options,” and then never got back to the Los Angeles Times before Scott left state office Tuesday.

The population of Groveland has grown from 1,000 to 14,000 since 1950, and today the city is 47% white, 25% Latino and 23% black. In some ways, the town is still coming to terms with its past.

Despite the publicity, the Groveland Historical Society, a cramped building of clippings, mementos and sports trophies, has no mention of the Groveland Four in any of its displays.

“To not have it in the museum is like trying to hide a rotting corpse,” said Griffin, the former councilman. “You can try and keep dirt on top of it and keep it hidden from the public, but you’ll eventually start to smell it.”

The larger Lake County Historical Society in nearby Tavares features one small exhibit.

“The Groveland Four is a part of Lake County history, and we want to cover it, good and bad,” said Marli Wilkins-Lopez, who works there. “I think that there are so many new people that unless they were history buffs, they probably didn’t even know this happened.”

At the same time, she said, “a lot of old-timers in Lake County want to say that this is history, it’s over, it’s done, we don’t need to talk about it.”

The exhibit is housed in the same building as the sheriff’s department, where one wall features portraits of all the former sheriffs, including McCall.

In 1972, he was serving his seventh term as sheriff when he was indicted for the murder of a mentally disabled black prisoner while in custody. The indictment said McCall kicked and beat the man, causing his death.

McCall, who had bragged about having stayed in office so long despite being investigated dozens of times, was acquitted by an all-white jury. He was defeated in the next election.

The county named a road for him in the late 1980s but renamed it in 2007, 13 years after his death at age 84.

Norma Padgett, 86, is the only one involved in the Groveland Four saga who is still alive. She lives in Georgia and had not spoken publicly about what happened since Irvin’s second trial — until Friday.

“I am the victim,” she told the clemency board. “I was 17 years old and it never left my mind. … You all just don’t know what kind of horror I’ve been through for all these many years.

“I do not want them pardoned — no, I do not.”

#u.s. news #politics #racism #u.s. department of justice #blm #black lives matter #civil rights

[geneticandunattainable]

We’ve finally come to the top ten songs of 2017, and it’s been quite a ride.  My apologies for the delay in getting these published, but I remain convinced these next ten songs are well worth the wait.  Surprising no one, women dominate the top of this year’s list, with seven of the top ten songs featuring or led by female artists.  A surprise to many, including myself, is that four of the ten songs also come from artists with ties to North Carolina.  It would not have been possible for me to survive 2017 without these songs, and I’ve listened to all of them hundreds of times. You may have different reactions to this batch, but I have a hunch you’re going to be blown away.

10. Now, Now – “SGL” Minnesota is underrated as an incubator for music, but Now, Now is an exciting duo coming out of Minneapolis.  Cacie Dalager handles the vocals, guitar, and keyboard, while Bradley Hale focuses on the drums and backing vocals, but this is just the latest iteration of a band that’s been around for fifteen years.  Dalager and Hale famously met as classmates in high school marching band, but the sound on this record is light years beyond the work of teenagers.  They hadn’t released any new material in five years before last May, so music blogs were excited to have this slice of musical brilliance come out of nowhere.  “SGL” was a burst of fresh air right in time for summer last year, and it’s pop music at its absolute purest.  This is the kind of music that gets your heart pumping, music that’s meant for summers at the lake or bonfires on the beach.  The acronym from the title refers to “Shotgun Lover,” and has nothing do with marriage or firearms; Dalager is looking to put some heat on a relationship that started off as a simple fling.  Many of the elements on display here likely come across as familiar, like the clipped acoustic guitar progression, the slowly-building layers of atmospheric effects, and the subtle vocal manipulations. But when the drums kick in and she hits the chorus, you can’t help but find yourself swept along for the ride - perhaps sitting shotgun?  

9. K. Flay – “Blood in the Cut” Talk about the unlikeliest path to music - rapper/artist K. Flay started life as Kristine Meredith Flaherty in Wilmette, Illinois, a wealthy commuter suburb of Chicago before heading off to Stanford for undergrad.  While she was there, Flaherty cracked a joke to a classmate about how the hip hop songs she heard on the radio were all "simplistic, misogynistic and formulaic,” and that she could easily write similar songs without any issue.  Once she got on stage, she realized that she really enjoyed performing, and started shifting toward a full-time focus on music.  She’s been releasing music for years, but my favorite track by far has to be “Blood in the Cut” from last year’s Every Where Is Some Where.  Featured prominently during the end titles of a season four Bojack Horseman episode, the menacing lyrics practically growl at the audience, and there’s an incredibly cinematic tone to the entire song.  This track doesn’t sound it was crafted for television, but there’s a drama inherent in Flay’s lyrics - “Say a word, do it soon/It’s too quiet in this room” - show the boiling tension inherent in her vocals.  Every chorus is such a release, but she builds that tension to a raucous ending that captures you, heart and soul.  This is an angst anthem, a textbook entry for your workout playlist, and one of the best damn songs in years.

8. Sylvan Esso – “Die Young” When you grow up in North Carolina, you have a special place in your heart for artists from the home of Cook Out and Cheerwine.  This duo from Durham consists of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, and they took over my phone, my car, and my brain this year with “Die Young,” an epically lush tribute to unexpected love.  As Meath coos in the lyrics, she had “it all planned/You ruined it completely;”  you see, she was going to die young in a blaze of glory so people would remember her forever.  Now that she’s fallen in love, her next chapter has been replaced and she wants more time with her partner rather than become a member of the 27 Club.  Make no mistake, Meath has written a love song, but there’s a funereal quality to the proceedings that syncs up flawlessly with the detached, synth-heavy production from Sanbord.  The looped samples work so well with the moody keyboards over the chorus, and you know I’m a sucker for a song that builds to a truly cathartic bridge.  At no point does “Die Young” disappoint; it’s the kind of instant classic that feels familiar the first time you hear it.  If Kesha hadn’t placed higher on my list, I’d make a snide comment about her own song “Die Young” being left in the dust.  If you’ve known me long enough, you know the thought remains regardless.  Ten years from now, we’ll still be listening to this haunting Southern banger.

7. Sampha – “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano” If you’re going to make a long-awaited debut, you might as well lead with a hauntingly gorgeous song like this. London-based musician Sampha built his career for years behind the scenes as a producer, songwriter, and backing vocalist for artists like Kanye and Jessie Ware.  As he shifted toward fronting his own music, he sat down to craft an ode to the power of music itself, and knocked it out of the goddamn park.  There’s an entire narrative at work here, as Sampha spills his heart out about using music - and his mother’s piano specifically - to navigate through tough times.  As the song progresses, beyond the austere keys and euphonious vocals, a low key beat emerges, and he shifts into subtle electronic tinges, eventually closing out the song with the sounds of birds chirping in the forest.  Clearly he’s using the song to step into the spotlight, so to speak, but I think it’s more than that; this song brings peace, serenity, and a calming nature unlike anything I’m used to hearing.  What an amazing accomplishment.

6. Kesha – “Praying” I’m not exactly one to drop names, but I was living in Nashville around the same time as Kesha, as she grew up in the suburbs of Music City.  I’d heard some not so pleasant rumors about her behavior and the way she treated other people in the local scene, so when her debut single “Tik Tok” took over the world, I made a decision to sit her career out. I simply couldn’t understand why such a strong and intelligent woman - she was accepted to Barnard, people - was singing about getting black out at a club with the truly misogynist 3OH!3.  My heart went out to her when she sued Dr. Luke, though, and I quickly became riveted with the story.  As a fellow survivor of sexual assault, I found myself rooting for Kesha and eagerly anticipating new music.  While her latest album Rainbow was scattered, it could brag some absolute jams with “Woman” and “Learn to Let Go.”  That said, few songs in 2017 had the emotional impact for me of “Praying.”  This Grammy-nominated lesson in forgiveness is blistering, still bringing me to tears after hundreds of listens.  Kesha knows how to write her own songs, and it’s a thoroughly documented fact she’s been doing it for other artists for more than a decade.  That killer lyrical mind is on display here, too, but the background leading up to the song and the vulnerability on display here is nearly too much to handle.  I’ve heard mixed reviews of that whistle note, but you’re a total robot if you don’t respond when those drums kick in about two thirds of the way through “Praying.”  2017 was a year we’re all desperate to forget, but I’ll leave you with this: consider listening to “Praying” again, but imagine it’s Hillary Rodham Clinton delivering those lyrics instead.  I dare you not to weep.

5. Rhiannon Giddens – “At the Purchaser’s Option” Who knew that a guest star from Nashville was going to release one of the best songs from last year?  Even more surprising?  It’s a heart-wrenching tale of a slave woman’s refusal to fall apart in the face of some truly traumatic experiences.  For Giddens, an alumna of Oberlin’s Conservatory of Music, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and the New Basement Tapes, it’s never really been a question of whether she has the talent.  At the ripe young age of 41, she’s already been inducted into the North Carolina Hall of Fame.  Some of us have been following her career for years, and were just waiting for that one break out song.  In a more ideal world, this exquisite nod to slave songs would have resulted in massive recognition for Giddens.  According to Giddens herself, the song comes from reading an advertisement for a 22-year-old slave woman, whose 9 month old baby comes with her “at the purchaser’s option.”  Her reaction to something so ghastly inspired her to write the song.  She recounts the life of a woman abused by the world of slavery who refuses to lose her soul in the process.  Again, for those of us who listen to the lyrics, she takes you through some heavy shit, including the rape of a young child.  If you’re one of those people who doesn’t really notice lyrics, though, there’s still plenty to love.  Guitar, banjo, percussion, vocals - everything is at the top of the game here.  In a song that could have easily been a theme for Lupita N’Yongo’s Patsy from 12 Years a Slave, Giddens proves she’s an artist that wants her career to mean something.  She’s already earned such an incredible legacy, and “At the Purchaser’s Option” shows she’s just getting started.

4. Rostam – “Gwan” It’s no secret to anyone who read these lists in years past that I have a massive crush on Rostam Batmanglij.  You may not agree that he’s a handsome fella, but I don’t really care, because so much of my crush originates in his musical genius.  Rostam’s career - starting as a core member of Vampire Weekend and moving on to producing artists like Carly Rae Jepsen or collaborating with Hamilton Leithauser - has been nothing short of phenomenal.  It almost seems like the man cannot stumble.  “Gwan” feels like a song that cannot be classified; some people hear Irish influences in the second half’s string breakdown, while others swear he’s alluding to more Eastern sources.  The Iranian-American artist, born in the D.C. area, has intentionally alluded to various cultures throughout his career.  As long as his music sounds this gorgeous, I have no horse in the race when it comes to the cultures he’s referencing.  Rostam’s lyrics reference an unspeakable connection, a relationship that defies explanation.  Ever since I first heard this song, it’s made me think of my best friend.  It certainly doesn’t hurt that said friend lives in New York, given the obvious Manhattan references in Rostam’s lyrics.  “Gwan” could be the soundtrack to a cinematic montage, it could be the first dance at a wedding, or it could accompany you for a walk downtown.  Regardless of how it infiltrates someone’s life, there’s little argument to be had here that Rostam remains at the absolute top of his game.

3. Kate Rhudy – “I Don’t Think You’re An Angel (Anymore)” Just because the top ten has a third act from North Carolina doesn’t mean I’m playing favorites here.  Kate Rhudy is only starting her career with the album Rock N’ Roll Ain’t For Me, but you wouldn’t be able to tell when you listen to this stunning track off of her debut.  She’s a recent graduate of Appalachian State University in Boone, a town known for its particularly crunchy hippie scene.  Despite the psychedelic tinges that signal the local sound, Kate stayed true to her roots, describing her own music as “sad river folk.”  People seem awed by the fact that Taylor Swift writes some of her own songs, but I prefer an artist who can write her own songs, sing them well, and even accompany herself on an instrument or two.  Rhudy puts Swift to shame with a slowed down Southern ballad about losing trust in your partner.  Do you want crystal clear vocals? Check.  How about a truly beautiful showcase for guitars and mandolin? She’s got that, too.  The entire album is jaw dropping as a debut, but “Angel” buries itself within you, it burrows deep into your soul in a way that few songs do.  As Rhudy herself has said about folk music, “It’s music that’s meant to be felt, not heard.”  She’s clearly accomplished that goal with this achingly bewitching song; in a weaker year, it easily could have been the best song overall.  For now, though, it will have to settle for years of inclusion on my favorite playlists.

2. Rose Cousins – “Freedom” Canada strikes again.  I have a deep-seated love for Canada that stretches back for eons, but I never really expected to find the Great White North’s answer to Patty Griffin.  Rose Cousins, who calls Halifax, Nova Scotia home, has a more soothing voice than Griffin, if not quite as distinctive. Her songwriting skills, though, are evidently on par with the folk/Americana legend, and I find myself blown away by the sheer scope of what Cousins has achieved with “Freedom.”  Every moment that you think you have your head wrapped around this song, it shifts from beneath you, transforming in real time.  It shifts from a slow tempo acoustic jam to a raucous breakdown, from Cousins’ lower register to true vocal fireworks.  She’s always been known for her clear-eyed melodies and the poetry of her lyrics, but I find “Freedom” to be a new height in her achievements.  It’s about the double-edged sword called choice that we navigate all too often, as she realized in a relationship, we often must give something up to achieve what we truly want.  Whether that means compromise, or leaving something behind entirely, the lyrics here are enthralling: “Well I pride myself in letting go/I'm better off and stronger alone/I've got my freedom from choices made/And freedom from being brave/Freedom.”  Yet her tone throughout is bittersweet.  I can acknowledge with far too much experience of my own that being on your own can vacillate between crushing loneliness and exhilarating levels of autonomy.  What Cousins has achieved here is a song that speaks to both sides of that coin at the same time.  There is acceptance here; acceptance that your choices have consequences, and that you’ll likely be fine in the long run anyway.

1. Ryan Adams – “To Be Without You” There are few memories from last year that I cherish more than the 14 hours or so I spent in Nashville on my cross-country move from Houston to Boston.  I was so excited to catch up with my good friend Maggie over sweet tea and queso at SATCo, and felt right at home in the town of my graduate school alma mater.  It had been far too long, and one of the most vivid parts I remember is pulling away from Maggie’s house the next morning. Facing down a stretch of winding mountain roads and another ten or eleven hours on the way to Richmond, I thought about my soundtrack.  With a cool, foggy November morning soaking my bones, I put on the one man I knew could keep me company over the next several hours of driving through autumnal Tennessee: Ryan Adams.  There’s something truly incredible about his consistency; the man’s released over a dozen albums, whether it’s solo work or paired with groups like the Cardinals or Whiskeytown.  His latest album follows quickly on the heels of 2015’s full-album cover of 1989 and his eponymous album in 2014, completing an arc of sorts with Prisoner’s clear 80s inspiration.  It was easily one of the year’s best LPs, and Adams’s first album of original material to follow his publicly painful divorce with actress Mandy Moore.  Without a doubt, “To Be Without You” jumped out of the speakers on my first listen back in February.  The song is deceptively uptempo since the lyrics are heartbreaking, leaning into the despair Adams felt after the dissolution of his marriage.  His arrangement is relatively subdued and radio friendly, utilizing guitar, percussion, and little else to focus on the true heart of the song: his pain.  “I feel empty/I feel tired/I feel worn/And nothing really matters anymore” are not the lyrics you’d expect from a song so melodious, but Adams is an expert at crafting songs and subverting expectations at this point in his career.  “I think the theme of this record is that we’re all prisoners of some desires, in that the very things we love are the things that hold us hostage and keep us trapped,” he told NME. “Either we are the cage or we’re in the cage and it’s trying to figure out in every situation which of those things is real.”  The themes work perfectly for life, love, and surviving 2017, and he created another instant classic with “To Be Without You.”  Hundreds of listens later, I still get completely sucked into it; clearly, that’s the true mark of the best song of the year.

#Music #Best of 2017 #Best Songs of 2017 #Now Now #K. Flay #Sylvan Esso #Sampha #Kesha #Rhiannon Giddens #Rostam #Kate Rhudy #Rose Cousins #Ryan Adams

[gleeksfreaksandwannabes]

So I’m rewatching some Marvel clips, and I think I figured out something.

I figured out why Natasha’s death hit me so hard. When I first watched Endgame, the one shot I couldn’t stop thinking about, no matter how hard I tried, was Nat lying on the ground after she fell at Vormir. It wouldn’t get out of my head for so long, and I figured out why her death got me more than anyone else’s so far.

So Tony’s death was kinda foreshadowed way back in Avengers one, for me anyway, like looking back and watching everything it just felt like this was a long time coming. Tony was always going to make the sacrifice play, like Steve said. When Thanos stabbed him in Infinity War I honest to god gasped and my entire theatre was dead silent for a solid few minutes, just waiting to see what would happen. I think he was always meant to have that tragic hero ending, and his death scene did break me a lot, but it hasn’t stuck with me the way Nat’s has, even though I was just as sad.

There’s 3 reasons why Natasha’s death got me the most. Firstly it was Clint’s (and the team’s) reactions. Watching that whole sequence on Vormir the first time, I don’t remember if I guessed who was going to go, but I do remember completely being blindsided because I forgot the Soul Stone needed a sacrifice, and then I remember hoping neither of them died. Seeing Clint practically lose it over the idea of losing Nat broke my heart (I had grown to like him this movie, even though I understand why people don’t) and I really bought into their relationship. Him being so desperate to keep holding on to her and sobbing when she fell just felt so raw, as did the reactions of the rest of the team. That moment of realization Steve has, while Bruce is still desperately asking where she is, god it kills me! She deserved more of a funeral, but putting that aside seeing Steve silently weep and Thor and Clint arguing (we never really saw Thor and Nat so it was nice to see he still cared about her too) reminded me that they really did lose a family member.

The second reason is that I just genuinely enjoyed Nat in this movie - not that I didn’t in the others. Seeing her more vulnerable side after the snap really made me feel for her, and I realized that she really did lose everything this time around, except for the core 6 and Rhodey. She lost a solid chunk of her family after having nothing. In the time heist she was really quippy and funny, and I think I just missed the whole team dynamic, with her and Steve bantering or her and Clint reminiscing, it was just really lovely. I think one of the moments where I really felt for her more than I had in any of the other movies is when she talks about this being what she has to do, she feels like she owes it to everyone to be the one to do it, after everything she’s done. Those moments with Clint are so genuine and raw, they really made me love her before we lost her.

The biggest reason, though, is that shot of her on the ground when she falls, where you can see the blood from the back of her head. It still gives me a little chill every time I see it. We’ve definitely had deaths (or near death) in the MCU before, but they’ve never felt as graphic as this one (except Gamora, having the same fate). From what I remember (and it’s been a while since I’ve watched any of these) I don’t think we’ve really seen all that much blood or anything too gruesome when characters die or almost die (Bucky’s arm was pretty gross, Tony got stabbed so I imagine there was some blood but I don’t remember, Loki’s neck cracked which still grosses me out, and that’s all I can remember apart from Tony’s burns). I think Nat’s death got me the most because it would’ve been an awful way to die too, and the thought of it plus the blood is just really unsettling in a way that won’t go away.

I don’t know where this rant came from, or where I was going with it, all I know is I miss Nat, that shot of her dead is awful and I really miss her making fun of the boys and being an unofficial mother hen, as well as a kickass hero. I can’t wait to see her again in Black Widow, but I really will miss her going forward.

#tw: blood #tw: death #i miss her #i honestly didn’t think anything of nat to start with like she was cool and badass #but steve and tony were my favourites #but as the movies went on i got attached to everyone #and losing her like that wasn’t fair #i miss seeing her keep the boys in line #or making fun of steve for being a dork #or kicking butt because she can #i hope black widow is good #but i just feel like without her and tony and steve everything’s just going to feel empty #it won’t be the same #my babies #natasha romanoff #black widow #endgame spoilers #i mean are there people who haven’t seen endgame yet? #avengers endgame #marvel

[duchesscambridges]

'I can feel the hugs she used to give us': Prince Harry remembers Diana

The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry have spoken as never before about Diana, Princess of Wales, in an interview designed to teach a new generation about their mother.

The brothers, now aged 35 and 32, have given the most intimate insight yet into their childhood, as they opened their family photo album for the nation. In a 90-minute documentary, featuring the Princess's closest family and friends, the Duke and Prince will bring their mother's memory to life, detailing her efforts to give them a normal childhood, her final letters and phone call, and her love of pranks.

They share her own photograph album, found earlier this year and containing pictures of the brothers as children, as the Duke speaks of how he felt her presence as a source of comfort before his 2011 wedding to Catherine Middleton. It will reveal how their parents' divorce left them constantly travelling between houses, that their mother's death was like an "earthquake", and how the Queen was at one point so concerned she took friends aside to check on the Princess.

Introducing the film at a Kensington Palace screening, the Duke said he and his younger brother had never spoken so frankly in public before, explaining that the 20th anniversary of the Princess's death in August felt like an "appropriate time to open up a bit more".

"We won't be doing this again," he said. "We won't speak as openly and publicly about her again, because we feel that hopefully this film will provide the other side: from her closest family and friends, that you might not have heard before, from those who knew her best, and those who want to protect her memory and want to remind people of the person she was; the warmth, the humour, and what she was like as a mother.

"Harry and I feel very strongly that we want to celebrate her life, and this is a tribute from her sons to her."

Sitting with Prince Harry to look at photographs and talk about memories had been "cathartic", he added.

As well as her sons, the film also features the Princess's brother, Earl Spencer, who speaks frankly about how the bitter divorce of their parents affected her; Sir Elton John, who sang at her funeral, and a host of friends. The Duke and Prince have also taken part in a BBC documentary, due out later this year and focusing specifically on the week following the car crash that killed the Princess in Paris in 1997. They marked what would have been her 56th birthday last month by rededicating her grave at Althorp, the Spencer family home, and will commemorate the anniversary of her death in August.

"We want her legacy to live on in our work, and we feel this is an appropriate way of doing that," said the Duke.

The ITV film opens with the Duke and Prince leafing though the Princess's photograph album. Prince Harry tells his brother: "Part of me never really wanted to look at them and part of me was waiting to find the right time where we could sit down and look at them together." One shows him on his first day of school, while another captures a beach holiday, where he is hugged tightly by his mother.

"She would just engulf you and squeeze you as tight as possible," he recalls, speaking to camera. "And being as short as I was then, there was no escape, you were there and you were there for as long as she wanted to hold you. Even talking about it now I can feel the hugs that she used to give us and I miss that. I miss that feeling, I miss that part of a family, I miss having that mother to be able to give you those hugs and give you that compassion that I think everybody needs."

The Queen was so concerned about the Princess in her low points that she took a friend aside quietly at Balmoral to talk about her.

Harry Herbert, whose father was the 7th Earl of Carnarvon and racing manager to the Queen, says: "After a lunch at Balmoral and going [on a walk] up high and looking down on to this beautiful setting of heather and castle, [we had] an incredibly important chat. A very personal chat. And the Queen wanted to know how was Diana feeling, and was it as bad as it was? It was a sad discussion, a sad moment really because that was everything at its worst."

But he said he had visited the Princess when she was struggling, and even then her face would "light up" when her sons came "thundering" into her room.

Before the trauma of the Princess's death, Prince William and Prince Harry endured the fall-out from their parents' divorce, finalised in 1996 after a long and public battle.

"The two of us were bouncing between the two of them... we never saw our mother enough or we never saw our father enough," Prince Harry says.

"There was a lot of travelling and a lot of fights on the back seat with my brother, which I would win. So there was all of that to contend with. And I don't pretend that we're the only people to have to deal with that, but it was an interesting way of growing up."

Exploring the Princess's main causes, from HIV awareness to homelessness, the film also reveals her final, incomplete challenge: landmines.

Prince Harry tells how he found a "whole series" of letters around a month ago; dated Aug 31, 1997 and waiting for her signature.

"She knew exactly what needed to be done," her youngest son says. "And it's only recently over the years that I've actually really understood the effect that she was having in those areas and on an international scale as well."

In the film, he speaks with two young victims of landmines in Bosnia, telling them they had seen his mother more recently than he had, as she had made the visit before going on holiday to Paris just a few weeks later.

In a light-hearted moment, Prince Harry speaks with mock fury about the outfits he was compelled to wear as a child. The two young boys were photographed regularly in an array of elaborate and old-fashioned clothes.

"I genuinely think that she got satisfaction out of dressing myself and William up in the most bizarre outfits," he says. "Normally matching. It was weird shorts and, like, little sorts of shiny shoes with the old clip on. I just think, 'how could you do that to us?'"

Eventually, the princes began to rebel, with William first refusing to match his brother and then Harry taking a stand. "I like to think that she had great fun in dressing us up," Prince Harry says. "I'm sure that wasn't it, but I sure as hell am going to dress my kids up the same way."

The Princess, her sons say, tried valiantly to teach them about a normal life, despite their privileges.

"She made the decision that no matter what, despite all the difficulties of growing up in that limelight and on that stage, she was going to ensure that both of us had as normal a life as possible," says Prince Harry.

"And if that means taking us for a burger every now and then, or sneaking us into the cinema, or driving through the country lanes with the roof down of her old-school BMW listening to Enya, I think it was... all of that was part of her being a mum."

Described as a "total kid through and through" by Prince Harry, the Princess attempted to embarrass her sons at every opportunity, from sending rude cards to them at school to roping in models to help her.

Prince William tells how he once returned home, aged 12 or 13, to find Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell, the fashion models, waiting at the top of the stairs.

"I went red and didn't quite know what to say and sort of fumbled, and I think I pretty much fell down the stairs on the way up," he says. "I was completely and utterly sort of awestruck. But that was a very funny memory."

At other times, he says she would post him "the rudest cards you can imagine" to boarding school, leaving him in fear of being spotted by a teacher.

Prince Harry recalls how she would smuggle sweets into their socks when she came to watch them playing football. He says: "One of her mottos to me was 'you can be as naughty as you want, just don't get caught'."

If she excelled as a mother, the Princess would have been an "absolute nightmare" as a grandmother, the Duke jokes. Saying he is "constantly" mentioning "Granny Diana" at home, he has also mounted photographs so Prince George and Princess Charlotte learn about her. "It's hard because obviously Catherine didn't know her, so she cannot really provide that level of detail," he says. "So I do regularly put George or Charlotte to bed, talk about her and just try and remind them that there are two grandmothers - there were two grandmothers - in their lives."

He adds: "She'd love the children to bits, but she'd be an absolute nightmare. She'd come and go and she'd come in probably at bath time, cause an amazing amount of scene."

The Princess's death, the Duke says, was like an "earthquake". "There's not many days that go by that I don't think of her, you know - sometimes sad, sometimes very positively," he notes.

"You know, I have a smile every now and again when someone says something and I think, that's exactly what she would have said, or she would have enjoyed that comment. So they always live with you, people you lose like that. My mother lives with me every day."

Prince Harry says: "There's not a day that William and I don't wish that she was still around."

He concludes: "You know, and of course as a son I would say this, she was the best mum in the world."

Source

#news #article #I LOVE THIS SO MUCH #Princess Diana #Duke of Cambridge #Prince Harry #OurMotherDiana17

[marshmallowgoop]

Thank you for your ask! Now, for yours: 1, 7, 8, 14, 45?

1: What was your first fic and could you stand to reread ittoday?

First posted fic? Or first fic ever?

My first posted fic was ashort story written as a response to the prompt “Graveyard” for day 1 ofEctober Week, a Danny Phantom fan event, back in 2013.

I can definitely stand toreread the story. There are some sentence constructions that are overused and comeoff as annoying rather than effective (using commas and a repeated verb ratherthan just using “and”), and there’s a definite problem with pronoun clarity(particularly that scene with the make-up), but conceptually? It’s probably farmore interesting than a lot of fics I write now, because an attempt to flesh out the standard “mean popular kid” cartoon character is something that’s probably just kindacompelling out the gate. I could probably say that the fic’s better than anyoriginal stories I made during that time.

And that’s the thing—itactually took me a long time to writeany fanfiction. My first fic ever (as far as I can remember?) was written just amonth before, in September 2013, even though I’d written the drafts (or partial drafts) for at least sevennovels at that point and had also tried my hand at screenplays and othercreative writing endeavors.

I never actually posted thatfirst fic, but same story there: I can stand to reread it, and while thewriting isn’t exactly the greatest, the concept is probably more compellingthan a lot of my stories now (even if it’s a common concept that people haveexplored a lot, probably).

In fact, I don’t even mindposting it here!

Valerie cut her finger rippingthe sheet from the wall. The blood welled up in a big shiny sphere, and shelaughed a bitter, disturbed laugh as it began racing down into her palm. Howperfect.

She smeared his face with thered, pressing her stinging finger down harder and harder against the crinkled oldnewspaper, as if that would be enough to cover up the image entirely. As ifonly blocking out the pictures could erase the reality.

What remained continued tofall to the ground in a flurry. Bunched up tape, blurry photographs, all theold clippings she’d put up on her wall. She crushed the next one she took offinto a pitiful ball, its sharp corners pushing into her cut.

Only one photo was different.It separated itself from the rest, sitting on the wall neatly aligned with notape running haphazardly across it. It held no ethereal eyes (why couldn’t shestop seeing them blue?) and none of that arrogant face, with those stupid,“look-at-me-I’m-so-badass” scowls. Instead it captured the image of a beautifulwoman, her smile filled with warmth. Valerie dropped the pages clasped betweenher fingers and stared.

She didn’t remember thefuneral. Sometimes she would imagine what it would be like, to see the womanshe so desperately wanted to love but couldn’t, lying restless with her handsclasped over her chest, gaudy make-up on her face without her permission. Whatwould she say, if she could have been there not wrapped up in her father’sstrong arms? What would she think, as she saw her shoved in a box and buried inthe ground, never to be seen again?

Never again? No, that wasn’ttrue.

This picture she didn’t tearoff the wall. Gingerly, she slipped her good fingers under the corners andlifted until it rested in her palm. She looked more closely, now, gazing deepinto carefully photographed face.

They really looked nothingalike, she found herself thinking. But that way she held herself, how shesmiled, so self-assured, determined…wasn’t that what she saw in her ownphotographs?

Slowly, Valerie strode acrossher room towards her shabby vanity. Her reflection stared back, red-eyed andtrembling like a child in the cold. She laughed through the tears. How couldshe have forgotten?

Valerie pushed her fistagainst the mirror, looking herself straight in the eye and smirking in a wayshe knew she did best. It wasn’t too late to set things right. It couldn’t be.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said.

7: What’s the fic you most want to continue (unfinished orno)?

That Kill la Kill fairytale AU that started as a short story in 2015 andthat I tried to expand into a novel in 2016 and that I’m trying now to make into a halfway-decent novelin 2017.

I’m not sure this totallycounts because I’ve never really officiallyposted any of this story, but. I reallywant to get this fic continued/finished/worked on.

I’d also appreciate any feedbackon the rough-draft old short story (even though a lot has changed since that version)! I’m a bit in a place of “Ihave no idea what I’m doing”…

8: What’s the oldest (longest since last update) fic youmost want to continue (unfinished or no)?

I guess “everything could havebeen different”? It’s supposed to be a collection of three stories with asimilar idea, but I’ve only posted one of those stories, and I posted that wayback in 2016…

I’ve had part 2 fully draftedsince 2015, and I did work on a final draft in 2016, and I really do like the ideabehind it, but…

It requires so much research. AndI’m also concerned about the floweriness.

Maybe someday…

14: What’s the biggest change in your taste between whenyou started in fandom and today?

Hm, I don’t know?

I think I’ve become more andmore attracted to really poetic prose, which has ended up hurting my ownwriting when I focus too much on the prose and not enough on the actual story.

I just really dig some goodpurple prose, yo.

45: If you had to call yourself an author of a single genre(besides fanfic) what label would you give yourself?

Pretentious. With a capital “P.”

#aguagi #replies #long post #really long post... #shut up goop #phanfic #klk fic #i guess #writing #camp nanowrimo let you pick your own genre if you wanted #so i did and wrote in 'pretentious' lol #klk fairytale au