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1d-discourseoftheday · 3 years

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Thurs 7 Jan ‘21

Z3 Z3 Z3 Z3 Z3 Z3 Z3!!! Firstly Zayn posted a teaser of a red curtain, labeled 'tomorrow', beginning to rise with a snippet of a song-- it's Vibez! Vibez is HERE! NEW ZAYN MUSIC! And hell yeah that's super exciting (and the curtain is reminiscent of the filming at the theater last month I'm hopeful we're about to get that video) but THAT'S not the half of it-- Z3 listings are UP! 'Nobody is Listening' (friend we are ABOUT TO BE and I CANNOT WAIT) is out Jan 15 and has 11 songs (titles unrevealed with the exception of Better, already released, and Vibez). The cover art is a painting of a bright colorful sea of staring faces; everybody looking, nobody listening? Spotify also has Vibez cover art- a cool blocky noir looking painting- and a new photo of Zayn smouldering in a tank top. Happy almost Zayn's birthday to US, and thank you very much!

Liam did a long live today with an also long BEARD (oh shush on his FACE you guys) to talk about Saturday's show, but then he ends up talking to Ben Winston for most of it which is, as you can imagine, a mixed blessing. I mean all that 1D reminiscing is great for dredging up unknown tidbits for us but otoh Ben: the part where Liam puts manager Steve on to say hi to Ben and it's just the two of them is the worst content I've seen in a minute and I mean... Holivia is current..? ANYWAY, before Ben, Liam has his cousin Ross on and tells us Ross will also have cousin Luke playing drums for him at the show Sat, and snippets of all the openers' music are played. They discuss accents, and Liam, as usual, says that he was just on the phone to Louis (relatable I too immediately think of Louis when discussing strong British accents). And then the Ben chat: they talk about the We Are 1D Family fan project at San Siro and how the band didn't know it was going to happen, Liam talks about not wanting to do the Leroy piece for the BSE video (“haha remember I had a meltdown but you made me do it!”:/), and they talk about the two Midnight Memories videos-- we learn that Ben didn't have anything to do with the scrapped first one so he can't release it sorry, and “you guys didn't like it so we had to make a new one in like a week”. Liam: “no I preferred the first one!”, lol. Ben talks shit about not liking You and I (no wonder he did her so dirty), Liam: “WHAT??” and “didn’t Zayn’s high note turn you on a little bit? It had to!” sksksjfa okay calm down there, and then he turns me into the 'had me in the first half' meme when he says his least favorite 1D song is I Would! CAN YOU BELIEVE. He quickly realizes though that no! He means I WANT! Yeah okay that makes more sense but jeez Liam, don't mess with me like that! He also says (not about I Would or I Want), “when I was younger I didn't really understand the songs as much as I understand them now, they mean so much more to me later on in life than they ever have done before, the feeling, the emotions that come through, the lyric as well for some of them.” Oh and Ben mentions the Grammy awards being pushed to March 14 which btw I forgot to say yesterday so there ya go. New date. And last but not least, new LP Act 4 merch! RAINBOW HOODIE! Omg it's so good! The rest is great too but that rainbow hoodie (uh 'hoody' that is hmm why) is soooo nice.

9 am PST came and went without a single Holivia pap pic, but don't worry (darlings) they were just a little late today, though you'll be excused if you didn't realize there were new ones, as they are simply more of the same batch as yesterday's- it was a very exciting parking lot after all, they needed a lot of documentation! Harry grabbing Olivia's arm SO AWKWARDLY is a gem though, I'm starting to have doubts that they're even really friends now that I'm seeing them interact so much tbh. I think the press time excitement was supposed to be the 'candid' pics of them drinking coffee together with Harry in the spa robe (taken... maybe you can guess... YES! it was over the weekend!) but aside from being memed they didn't seem to get much traction. Even so, the press is still all over Holivia ofc and if you only read one article about it PLEASE make it the Harper's Bazaar one that marveled at today's pics “Wilde happened to be wearing the same outfit from last weekend” oh SO CLOSE YOU GUYS, defensively states that Harry was wearing a mask (in response to the many articles out there about people being mad at him for not wearing a mask which yes are very much still up and not being suppressed by HSHQ, btw) but some enterprising layout person placed a picture of him without a mask right under that line, and tells us twice in a row that their relationship is 'very organic'-- definitely 100% truly oBvIOusLy ORGANIC, 'a source' says so. So you can see that clearly it's all very organic. In case you were wondering! STRONG honorable press mention for Vogue though, who declared that Holivia were “already 2021's most stylish pair” with a picture of Harry in his paint splattered merch hoodie and pushed up sweats; but then they also said the other day that larries were people “who ship Harry with Liam Payne”...hey Vogue I really recommend getting an intern if you're struggling, so helpful!

#liam payne #harry styles #zayn #most of my dash – ugh I have holivia blacklisted I do not see it anyway the chicken #me: ugh actual updates JUST LET ME MAKE FUN OF HOLIVIA PRESS ALL DAY #yeah I know not everyone is an I would stan but I' just prefer to believe everyone appreciates as much as me it's how it should be #I'm in the 'spoiled by Icarus Falls an actual epic work of genius' camp and I'm sad this one is comparatively short #but Z knows what he's doing I'm gonna bet it's perfect as is and I can't wait to hear it #I already love Vibez it's so pretty and soft #Liam to Ross- haha this is first time I've been on the phone to you in a few weeks when I'm not drunk. :/#he also talks about watching the San Siro gig drunk the other day #he does not however say he doesn't have access to any of his accounts he says he DOESN'T KNOW HIS PASSWORDS offhand #that he's just logged in on his phone but can't just tweet from another phone real quick while he's on live #I would say the exact same in that situation and despite tumblr oppressing me rn for the most part no one is controlling my accounts yall #it's NOT THE SAME THING he clearly states that he access to ALL HIS ACCOUNTS on HIS PHONE #Harry Lambert made a flagging joke not relevant to much just a reminder that yeah it's a real thing #and gay people def know about and about the significance of wearing bandanas #I mean the connection of the blue bandana to Louis is a whole other thing ofc but if Harry does mean that by that #he knows very well it isn't the only thing he's putting out there #probably why he steers real wide of ever putting in his pocket lol he truly said fuck your top bottom discourse #7 jan 21

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legoshi-plz · 4 years

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Pretenses (Louis x Reader)

Summary: Royal AU. Louis is a spoiled prince and you are a clumsy maid. Prince!Louis x Canine!Dog!Reader

AN: I’ve been writing this for like ever and I finally started on chapter 2 so I feel it’s time to go ahead and post this. This will be a multichapter series 💕

///////////

You were fired. You were so fired.

You knew damn well you weren’t allowed in the kitchen at this time. Your kind wasn’t allowed to use the kitchen until nightfall. It was the agreement the Royal court made over half a century ago when they first began to let Carnivores staff stay within palace grounds. They were allowed free range of the kitchen before sunrise and after nightfall but never in between. During the day, the kitchen was nearly entirely ran by a staff of Gazelles. They cooked and served the royal family exclusively as it had been for years and they had quite the aversion to all Carnivores. Canines especially.

You knew you were risking one of the best gigs you’d ever happened across going into the kitchen during the day but you were sure the Gazelles were on break and assumed it was a calculated risk. Boy were you bad at math.

You had snuck into the kitchen countless times when the Gazelles took their routine hour break right after serving the royal court lunch. There was a group of younger carnivores (badgers who tended the gardens) who came to you with gripes of hunger, knowing you were easily the best cook amongst the Carnivore staff. You agreed as always and set off to the kitchen to make a quick stew that would hold them over until nightfall as well be simple enough to prepare and clean up before the Gazelles returned from their break.

You had finished the stew and prepared to package it up to sneak out when two Gazelles returned to the kitchen unexpectedly. It hadn’t been the first time someone had come back early but you usually used your keen hearing to get out of dodge before hand. This time you weren’t so lucky.

You hightailed it out of there but not before they saw your face. It was over for you.

As expected you were called into the head of the kitchen’s office. An older, especially rigid Gazelle named Mrs. Stallworth. She was as mean and particular as they come, her disgust towards Carnivores not concealed in the slightest. In her office she was accompanied by an even older alpaca, Madam Peak, the head mistress of all royal staff regardless of division.

“Come in girl and stop loitering by the door!” Mrs. Stallworth snapped. You immediately approached her desk, sitting once she motioned to the chair in front of her.

“Look, I am going to ask you this one time and one time only, Dog, and if you lie to me, you won’t live to tell another,” the Gazelle sneered and you felt your heart drop.

“Were you in the kitchens today while the staff grazed?”

“Y-Yes ma’am,”

“Were you cooking using unauthorized food items not rationed for Carnivores’ consumption?”

“Yes ma’am,”

“Are you aware this is a volatile offense punishable by execution?”

“I- um, execution?”

“Enough of the dramatics, Marta,” The alpaca said gently, placing a hand on Mrs. Stallworth’s shoulder.

“Fine. Did you or did you not make this?” Stallworth produced a jar from behind her desk containing your stew. You nodded hesitantly.

“Thought so. What the hell did you put in this? Be specific,” You listed off the ingredients automatically, the recipe ingrained in your memory.

Once you were finished, Stallworth looked to her left, coming to a silent agreement with Madam Peak.

“You scrub the cobblestones with the rest of the domestic canine, right?” You nodded hastily.

“That’s grueling work, hard on the back and worse on the joints. Murder on the hands and knees as well, yeah?” She didn’t wait for an response.

“Look, you’re lucky you’re a small dog. Domesticated too. Anyone else would have been on the streets by now but I don’t believe in wasting talent when there’s far too little to be found in this world.” Stallworth said, her eyes boring into yours. You began to squirm in your seat under her gaze.

“There’s a position for you in the kitchen, if you want it. It won’t be an easy job, you’ll do all of the grunt work and you will not be treated as an equal. But you will be the first Carnivore to ever hold such a position. What do you say?” She looked at you expectedly and you realized she actually wanted you to speak this time.

“D-do I have a choice?”

“No, your only other option is termination and banishment from the palace. Report to the kitchens in the morning 20 minutes before dawn. You start tomorrow.” Stallworth sneered.

“T-thank-”

“You’re dismissed.”

////////

“Another day in paradise, huh Y/N?” Two Gazelles giggled as you reentered th kitchen in utter exhaustion. You had just been tasked with moving bag after bag of heavy flour from the stock room to the kitchen and you could feel every muscle throb in protest.

It’s effectively been about 2 months since you began your position in the kitchen and it was everything Mrs. Stallworth had warned and more. The work was seemingly never ending and you almost always got stuck transporting ingredients from the storage pantry to the kitchen. When you weren’t doing that, you were doing prep work or being used as a taste tester.

“You canines are pure muscle, it’ll go straight through you. Us Gazelles have to watch our figures or we’ll blow right up,” they’d whine before stuffing whatever dish they were making down your throat.

The job wouldn’t be so exhausting if it weren’t for the fact that after slaving endlessly for the Gazelles all day, you had to turn around and cook for the Carnivores as well. Though you hate to admit it, you had gained quite a bit of knowledge about nutrition during your time in the kitchen and tried to pass it on to your Carnivore brethren. They were less concerned about the actual nutritional aspect and were content with that fact that your food taste good.

“I’m not taking that to him! Find someone else!” One of the Gazelles screeched, pushing a tray of food away from her.

“Well I’m surely not taking it to him! Besides, it’s your own fault for sleeping with him!” Her friend retorted pushing the tray near her and walking off. This kitchen was never short of drama, that was for sure.

“Dog!” The Gazelle turned around to face you.

“My name’s not Dog,”

“Do you know my name?” She prompted. Shit, she had you there.

“Thought so. Now I need you to take the Prince his dinner. He’s under the weather and the food contains his medicine so he’ll probably refuse it. If that happens just show your fangs and threaten to eat him,” she said shoving the tray into your arms.

“I don’t have fan-”

“Better be off before the food gets cold,” She chirped, rushing off. You sighed and began your hike up to the royal chambers.

It took what seemed like an eternity to climb the countless flights of stairs until you reached the Prince’s bedroom, the royal chambers located impossibly far from the Kitchen headquarters. You began to knock on the door when you realized you had never interacted with a royal before. Had never really seen one in person. The Canines were given strict orders to stay out the way of anyone important and the Royals definitely could be considered important.

“Come in,” a raspy voice called. You proceeded to enter what was nothing less than the most extravagant room you’d ever seen in your life. In the middle of an enormous canopy bed was a stag. He looked increadibly small surround by the lush bedding.

“A Carnivore? And to what do I owe this visit? Heard the crowned Prince had fallen ill so they sent you to finish me off? They could have at least sent one of a formidable size, this is just insulting,” he sneered, his voice nasally with congestion.

“I-I’m from the kitchens, here to give you your lunch, my- um- liege?” You didn’t really know how to address a royal since no one ever thought it’d be worth the proper training for Carnivores.

“Dogs don’t work in the kitchen,”

“This one does. I’m.... new,” you said stepping forward.

“Clearly. Leave the tray by the door.” He snarled, turning on his side. You assumed you were supposed to take that as a sign of dismissal.

“I have to make sure that you eat, sire,” you began to walk towards his bed slowly as to not frighten him.

“Can’t you even follow simple instructions?” He glared at you. You remained silent, still holding the tray. Seeing you weren’t going away that easily, the Prince began to examine you.

“Judging by the way you look like death warmed over, I’m assuming they work you to the bone in the kitchens,” he sneered through his congestion. Again, you remained silent.

“Well however bad you think it is now, I guarantee I can make it a million times worse for you. Now get out of my sight,” after his little rant he expected you to flee, which made it that much more awkward when you simply stared back at him completely aloof.

“So be it then,” he huffed, snatching the tray from you.

///////////

You had expected the Prince’s threat to merely be the defiant ramblings of sick, unwilling patient and it seemed to be just that in the weeks that followed your quick interaction.

You avoided being forced to take him his lunch again and things continued as normal. You could even say that you were adjusting to life in the kitchens and the strain it put on you felt as if it began to lessen. Then it all came to a screeching halt one morning.

“Y/N! Stallworth wants ya” One of the Gazelle’s yelled entering the room. You put down the knife you were using to cut vegetables and wiped your hands on your apron as you trudged to her office. A feeling of dread began to creep into you as you felt trouble loom. If Stallworth ignored you that meant that you were doing everything right, so this had to mean something was wrong.

“Yes ma’am,” you said entering the already open door.

“The prince requested you. Said he wanted you to take his meal orders from now on and to bring them to him. I see no reason not to comply,” Stallworth said sharply. You didn’t know if she expected you to speak or not so you remained silent.

“Well what are you waiting for?! Go tend to the Prince,” she snapped and you were gone in a minute. You had no idea where the Prince was at this time so you decided the best place to find him would be where you last saw him, his bed chambers.

Just as you arrived, the Prince was exiting his room looking healthier than ever.

“My liege, the kitchen staff informed me that I was to bring you your meals from now on,” you panted from the sprint to his room.

“Indeed,” Prince Louis confirmed which led to a prominent silence.

“So where is it?” He snapped suddenly causing your ears to shoot up in shock.

“I have to know what you want first, you have to put in the request to the kitchen staff,” you said cautiously. It seemed the Prince was even more volatile in his robust state.

“My dietary schedule has not changed in years. Stop wasting my time and go fetch it, Dog.” He said as if your species was something filthy and detestable.

“My name’s not Dog,” you said in a quiet voice as you turned to leave.

“I’ll call you whatever I like, you pathetic excuse for a maid. It will do you well to learn your place.” Louis snarled. You bowed awkwardly and left to fetch his lunch.

You felt small, oh so small. And worthless. You had never been one of those Carnivores to resent the royal family (or Herbivores in general) for placing Carnivores so lowly in society, but then again you had never came into contact with such an openly contemptuous Herbivore before. The Gazelles ostracized you for the most part and Stallworth was a real piece of work but they never left you feeling so... ashamed. Ashamed of yourself and ashamed of your species.

This was to be the future leader of the Kingdom? A Herbivore who hated Carnivores? The thought was overwhelmingly depressing. Carnivores were barely getting by in society as it was, who knew what things would be like for them once a petty, egotistical asshole like him were to take the throne.

////////

All those months ago when Prince Louis had threatened to make life as hard as possible for you, out of all things you would not have expected to underestimate about him, his dedication was definitely at the top of the list.

He was relentless day in and day out, running you ragged around the palace for obscenely trivial matters, while also putting the burden of his meals solely onto you. He forbade anyone else to touch even a single ingredient of his meals, making you the only one to prep the meals, cook the meals, deliver the meals, etc. even if the exact entree was being cooked in the kitchen already.

He also made sure someone (usually one of his guards) was watching you at all times in case you tried to tamper with his food. It was embarrassing and insulting to have a guard breathing down your shoulder at every possible moment and yet that was something you were simply forced to deal with.

On days he felt like you were a little to compliant and agreeable, he’d make you eat whatever was on his plate with him, even if it was against your own nutritional chart.

“I’m afraid I can’t, my liege. Canine such as myself aren’t supposed to eat [insert food],” you said bowing slightly.

“Will it kill you?” He asked bored as always.

“Well, um, no but we get incredibly sic-”

“Then stop your incessant whining and get over here, Dog! I don’t have all day and this food’s not going to poison check itself!”

Prince Louis was a vile man. You’d even say you hated him and you had never hated anyone before. Every minute you spent in his presence, you felt lower than dirt and he had to know that. Which was why he made sure you saw him more than anyone in the entire palace. He even made you stand by his side and watch him eat, even if some days you were near starving from not having enough time to feed yourself in a rush to tend to him. All this and you still had to do your regular kitchen duties to the best of your abilities and help cook for the Carnivores at night after the kitchens were cleared.

You were beginning to be run to the bone and it was taking a negative effect in your health. Your heart would pulsate at unhealthy, sporadic rates; you found it harder and harder to digest food even when you were hungry; and your eyelids and limbs constantly felt like cement. After months of running you into the ground, you began to see that realistically, as badly as you needed this job, you just couldn’t keep this up if it sent you to an early grave.

The final straw happened in the Prince’s Study. He was taking his lunch there as he usually did. You stood at his side (he would never allow you to sit down) as he languidly ate his soup. He’d sent you back twice now for corrections to the dish but after the last time taking you so long to return (as you had to force your body to take every step), he decided to just begrudgingly eat it as is.

You barely remember what happened. One moment you were willing yourself to keep standing and ward off exhaustion and the next you were on the ground, unable to move. You heard a slight shuffle and then everything went black. The last thing you remembered was trying to get your limbs to move but they refused.

When you began to regain consciousness, the events of falling slowly began to come back to you. It looked like this was the end of the line for you. If you couldn’t do your job properly, you were fired, it was as simple as that.

You sat up slowly, ready to face the music when you opened your eyes to an all too familiar setting. You were in the Prince’s chambers. Even worse, you were in the Prince’s bed. You looked around frantically and saw him sitting in a plush chair in the corner, a book in hand as he languidly turned the pages. Upon seeing your eyes staring at his, he closed the book but made no move to stand up.

“You’re awake I see. Feeling better?” The Prince asked as bored as ever. Somehow you got the feeling that this was somehow worse than being fired, much much worse.

“M-my liege, I-, what am I-, how?”

“You passed out in my study, I carried you to my chambers.” He said standing up. He moved towards you like a predator.

“You’re basically a walking corpse. I doubt you’re even registering what I’m saying right now,” He leaned over you and before you could stop him he tore your blouse open.

“Just as I suspected. Your fur quality’s deteriorating as well,” he shook his head in slight disgust. You scrambled out of the bed and tried to cover yourself with what was left from your ruined maid’s uniform.

“I’ve had quite enough of this your highness. I- I- I quit!” you said in a fit of rage which only managed to come off as quiet frustration due to your exhaustion.

Louis rounded the room and stalked towards you. He raised his arms and you thought he was going to strike you, however his hands dipped lower to your waist to throw you over his shoulder. He marched you back to his bed and gently set you down in the center.

“Request of resignation denied. Now go back to sleep, Y/N. You’re not thinking clearly.” He said while he performed a half-attempt at tucking you in. You tried to struggle against him but your flails were weak. He grabbed you by the shoulders and languidly pinned you down until you tired yourself out.

“Finished?” Louis asked. You nodded slowly and he released you.

“Good. Now get some rest, I won’t ask again,” Louis ordered and you felt your heavy lids close as you drifted back to unconsciousness.

////////////

Louis made sure you were actually sleep before grabbing the book he wasn’t actually reading and slinking back into his armchair across from his bed. Okay it wasn’t actually supposed to be in front of his bed, it was supposed to be in his study but he had dragged it in here so he could watch you.

He told himself it was only as a form of protection, that he needed to be alert in case you woke up as an angry Carnivore. In reality, he could easily overpower you in any instance and he had just been watching you for the past few hours for his own reasons. He couldn’t help it, seeing you like this was an enigma to him.

Every time you were in his presence, your guard was up. You were painfully ignorant to the proper ways to address Royals and you knew it, so you constantly held your tongue in fear of offending him and making your situation worse. That only ever served to anger him more, how careful you were around him as if saying the smallest incorrect thing to him would hurt his feelings.

Well, he could kind of see where you got that impression. He had launched a full on personal vendetta against you and you had only been doing your job.

Okay maybe that was what started this but it certainly wasn’t what kept him going for this long. He hated to admit it but he’d hadn’t stopped this little onslaught yet because he wasn’t ready to stop seeing you. He had grown accustomed to being around you constantly, day in and day out, even if you were there slightly against your will.

The fact he found you to be the single most gorgeous creature he’d ever had laid eyes on definitely wasn’t a factor here, or at least that’s the lie he told himself.

He knew he shouldn’t think such things, he was betrothed for goodness sake. But he still couldn’t leave you alone, couldn’t let you out of his grasp just yet. He knew nothing would come of it and he was fine with that, had accepted it even. You were a Carnivore, a commoner, and he was a Prince. He was just occupying his time, nothing more.

Louis, to his own shame, had slept with numerous maids prior, of all walks of life. He was never stupid enough to sleep with a Carnivore, of course, yet he’d never really had the desire to until he met you. With you everything was different. It wasn’t just the urge to get into your pants that drove him, it was actually quite the opposite. Just being in your presence was all he craved, the thought of defiling you not even a factor here.

Whatever incessant crush he harbored on you would simply have to wear itself out but not if he wore you out first. He knew his torment of you to disguise his own feelings was childish to say the least but none of that mattered if you quit. Not that he would actually allow you to quit in the first place.

No, Louis wasn’t ready to go back to being alone just yet. He had decades of loneliness that await him during his Kingship. He would take his fleeting moments of happiness now where he could, before his time ran out.

/////////////

#okay yes I changed the title I didnt like the other one 😭😭😭#beastars #louis x reader #beastars louis #louis x you #beastars louis x reader #louis

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lunawings · 3 years

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Minato’s Birthday PriZoom (8/21/21) commentary/report

Oh geez where to begin.

I originally intended to do two showings this time (which is one more then usual) but due to a last minute decision based on other poor decisions I ended up doing three which was the most I’ve ever done in a row! My translation of the bonus content is in a separate post.

Not only that but like... it kept putting me in the main screen up at the top too!! Like more than I’ve ever been up there! And I’m sure none of this was intentional, but I also happened to be positioned right next to a couple other people who also knew the traditional cyalume cheering stuff so that was really cool!

Heck I even made it onto the Mantan Web article apparently!!? (This is an official event photo.) Am I that recognizable even in blurry pixels? (Haha well I guess there’s the background too...)

I put a lot more concentration into my own cheering this time so I wasn’t clicking around to look at the other people in the room as much and thus I have fewer shoutouts to make.

I happened to catch a guy trying to balance TWO of the giant Shin mochikoros on his shoulders though?

And there was that guy hula-hooping to Kakeru’s entire performance!!??

And the person whose screen was just a cheering piece of celery.

The highlight was probably “Kouji’s Kitchen” though. A Kouji cosplayer who spent the entire show actively cooking.

I really admire the folks who make the actual food for these showings. I’ve been thinking I want to make pudding a la mode (probably the only KinPri food I could actually manage to make) if they do a Taiga showing next year but how would I keep it from melting during the show ahah ha... (Mashed potatoes I suppose?)

In the weeks leading up to the show I’d been wondering if we’d see any Minato cosplayers. I realized I’m not sure if I’ve actually EVER seen one at a showing (PriZoom or otherwise) as he’s not an easy character to do (what with body type and a lot of Kinpri cosplayers being female) but I think I saw at least two!

This was the first showing where I made an honest attempt to keep the soundboard on, largely because of @takadanobaba’s posts on it, but also just because it’s our STYLISH NEW ABNORMAL (...watch Idol Land PriPara). Ever since they introduced it, traditional cheering has gotten quieter and quieter with long periods of silence except for big moments like Over the Rainbow’s prism jumps. (And what is King of Prism when you’re actually able to hear it.)

So I tried it, really I did. And as I was saying, I can somewhat see the appeal. People are finding ways to use it creatively to bring out that same brand of humor that makes traditional cheering so fun. I turned it on and off during Pride the Hero and the first half of SSS Part 2. The best and worst moment I had with it came during episode 5 however, when Ace kabedon’d Miyo and Joji pulls up in the car.

D-DDDDD-D-DDDD-D-DDDDDDD-DD-DDD-DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDEEEETAAAAAAAAAA

“But Joji is my star!”

KKKKKK-KK-KKKKKKKK-KKKK-KKKKKKKKKK-KKKAAAAKKKKKKKKKKOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Imagine that but like too fast and too loud for your brain to actually interpret what’s going on.

So that was... that was... that. (Thinking of how it will be at Joji’s actual birthday next month is giving me chills.)

I did turn it back on briefly during Best Ten while Platonic Sword was on. And for some reason I can’t quiiiite comprehend it was a grand chorus of ORE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Okay, okay on to the meat. This showing had the BIGGEST bonus of all. Masashi Igarashi appeared for a “talk show” at two of the showings.

One of the first things he pointed out was how, unlike traditional theater greetings, he could see all of our faces individually. And then he actually clicked through all of our video feeds and made comments!!!! (Tatsuyuki Kobayashi didn’t do that.)

Throughout the first session he actually directly acknowledged me THREE SEPARATE TIMES. The first time was when he recognized that I had S-Pulse Dream Plaza as my background. (The real life location in Shizuoka where Minato saw Kouji for the first time.) The second time was when I pasted a message into the chat about being his American fan and HE ACTUALLY READ IT! The third time was during the All Stars Playback when they put me on the screen and he thanked me in the chat again for putting up Dream Plaza.

I’m really happy I put in the effort to do a meaningful background!

All of a sudden I’m inspired to do more for each character. It was years before King of Prism existed, but I did go to Okayama once. I’m thinking I might need to sort through some old photos before Joji’s showing.

Anyway.

Masashi-san didn’t really seem to have anything planned out to say. He just kinda played off us when he could and rambled for a while about how great Minato and King of Prism is and all that. I think he’s a bit better when he has someone else to play off of. (Junta usually ends up being his straight man.) I don’t even know if he knew what he was saying half the time hahah.

The part that really stuck with me though was when he was talking about how there was such a large concentration of Minato fans here, but then he corrected himself as that’s not necessarily true since King of Prism fans cheer for everyone. So instead of camps for certain characters, he suggested we should do “club activities” as a fandom and since so many people brought vegetables to the showing we were the vegetable club.

This was followed by a rush of puns in the chat like VegetaBU (”bu” is Japanese for club).

Another official photo from Mantan web. I love it when they show the “behind the scenes”.

I didn’t realize the second session of the greeting would be starting at the beginning of the next showing, even though that is how they usually do it for theater greetings (so the voice actor doesn’t have to wait around through another movie). It’s kind of odd that they had two different sessions actually, since pretty much everyone had the opportunity to do both as the tickets didn’t come close to selling out. But more money for them either way I guess. He actually changed shirts in between hahah. (From one Minato shirt to another.)

But anyway, when he suddenly came up on the screen again I was actually in the middle of trying to change the batteries in my cyalumes ahahah. And it put me up top of the main screen AGAIN! I kinda wanted to switch my camera off so someone else could get a chance but I didn’t want to seem rude for disappearing either!!!

Eventually I did turn my camera off, giving up my space, because my cyalume blades were all DYING from having been on CONSTANTLY since the beginning of Pride the Hero and I didn’t want it to seem like I was checking my phone or something while I was changing the batteries. (One of them ended up cutting out during Best Ten anyway because in my mad scramble to change the batteries I guess I put the old ones back in haha.) That felt like the right decision since I crashed and burned pretty hard during the middle of Best Ten. (Cheering fatigue is rare for me but I was pushing 24 hours being awake at this point...) I also sure heck didn’t want to be up there during Love Graffiti BUT I didn’t do as bad as I thought. The drills I did without the video before the showing paid off! I’m so happy I’m finally learning it after all this time. Take THAT two year depression spiral.

Although this showing was lively, I have to admit it didn’t quite meet my overinflated expectations, though. I don’t think either room broke 200 people at any point during the showing. I could have sworn at least ONE showing I went to in the past did... I think the Shin/Louis one maybe... but looking through my past posts I can’t find a mention of it. ...Wait, even if that’s true I guess it doesn’t count since we only had one room back them. Mmmrhghg.

I do have pretty high hopes for the next few months though because Joji and Hiro are EXTREMELY popular characters.

So you. YES YOU! The person who somehow read this entire post and is now somewhat regretting skipping out on this one. YOU CAN DO IT! I’ll see you are the next one right? RIGHT?? OKAY!!

#king of prism #kinpri #minato takahashi

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soldouthaz · 4 years

Note

Hiiii I don't know if you've already done one like this, but who are your favorite fic writers? I always love your recs and I'd love to know who your favorites are so I can check them out! Also I love your fics!

hii! thank you so much for this ask I can’t believe I hadn’t though of doing this before!

most of these authors are people that I have talked with at least once before, and I can vouch for their character 1000%. reading their writing is so much more gratifying not only because it’s well written, but because of the satisfaction of knowing that they are truly good individuals as well. I am also thinking about doing one of these recs for artists and other content creators as well if anyone would be interested in that!

I'm in the middle of midterms right now so my brain is very scattered and I'm sure I’ve forgotten some people, but know that there is no way I could possibly list all of the wonderful authors that have made a difference in my life. but please check out these authors and leave them some love if you do! as always, please stick to your own interests and don’t spread any hate!

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please let me know if I have used any incorrect pronouns or linked anything incorrectly, or if you'd like me to unlink to something! :)

in no particular order:

✰ falsegoodnight

ao3 | @risthebrave | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, soulmates, uni au’s

personal recs: x , x , x , x

where do I start? the plots she comes up with are 10/10, the writing is absolutely amazing, and she’s just generally a wonderful and considerate person. you can just tell by reading her work how passionate she is about writing when you read her work. each and every one of her fics is a huge yes from me and I'm so excited to for all of her wips! and it definitely doesn’t hurt that she’s an amazing person in general either!

✰ pinkvinyl

ao3 | @pinkvinyl | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, pwp

personal recs: x

they only have one work out as of this date but oh boy it’s so so good!! the imagery here is just on an entirely different level. they make it so easy to visualize the scenes and it makes the fics that much more lovely to read! (+ happy birthday ashley!)

✰ outropeace

ao3 | @outropeace | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, soulmates

personal recs: x , x , x

andy is amazing!! I just finished their most recent fic last night and I'm obsessed. I love the dialogue with their works and they always manage to write raw emotion so beautifully. the angst is wonderful as well! their work is always just the right amount of length and detail to always leave you wanting more :)

✰ faeriestyles

ao3 | @yvesaintlourent | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, trailer park! harry, a/b/o, pwp

personal recs: x

I'm not entirely sure why hayley doesn’t think her fics are anything less than amazing. she only has two out currently but I can’t tell you how excited I am to see some of what she’s been teasing on twitter! she has a gift with her scenes! the way she describes the settings makes you feel like you’re there with the characters, and it’s easy to get lost in the words (in the best way!).

✰ allwaswell16

ao3 | @allwaswell16 | twitter

common work tags/tropes: cowboy au, assassin au, bottom Louis, bottom harry, a/b/o, soulmates, uni au’s, hate to love, vampires, drabbles, football, royal au’s, side ziam

personal recs: x , x , x , x

TONS of awesome fics to choose from! there’s definitely something for everyone here. anitra is a lovely person in general and I, as well as many others, appreciate her dedication to writing consistently lovely fics over and over again. I still haven’t made my way through all of them yet but I have no doubt I’ll love them! she also runs a *podcast* for other fic writers and reviews which spreads so much positivity and happiness in our corner of the fandom :) she’s amazing!

✰ smittenwithlouis

ao3 | @smittenwithlouis | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, fantasy au’s, magic, hybrid Louis, mythical creatures

personal recs: x , x

super super talented! their fics are always well written and they’re probably my favorite fantasy writer in the fandom!! I really like the magic elements and the different takes on popular mythical tropes, and you can really feel the emotion through the dialogue and the settings. despite having a lot of fantasy aspects, every fic feels very realistic which is usually very hard to do with these topics!

✰ lads_laddylads

ao3 | @lads-laddylads | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, pwp, vampires, uni au’s

personal recs: x , x , x

I'm a sucker for literally all of emma’s storylines. I think I've reread her most recent fic about five times now! even after not writing for a bit it’s clear that the talent never left! she’s definitely got some classics in her portfolio and I can’t wait to see what’s coming :)

✰ whoknows

ao3 | @crazyupsetter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, canon elements, dom/sub, a/b/o, supernatural / fantasy elements, drabbles, pwp, hybrid Louis

personal recs: x , x , x , x , x , x

I'm pretty sure everyone already knows about this author but they’re so incredibly talented and their fics are some of my favorites so I couldn’t leave them off of this list! they have thirty two lovely fics as of this day to choose from for this fandom, as well as a few for others as well. they’re another author that has something for everyone! there’s just something about the way they write that lets you get lost in it. I always finish their fics with a smile on my face and feeling fulfilled from another wonderful read!

✰ itjustkindahappened

ao3 | @tequiladimples

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, fluff, mythology, drabbles

personal recs: x

I still need to finish reading the rest of their works but I cannot say enough about ‘collision’! this author’s attention to detail and dedication to accuracy and descriptions in their writing is just incredible! you can tell just how much time and effort went into it, and, in my opinion, it was so so worth it! I admire them so much :) it’s so refreshing when these kinds of tropes are well done and you can just get lost in the writing from the first word down to the last line!

✰ delsicle

ao3 | @eeveelou

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, ‘thick alpha’ verse, pwp, dunkirk inspired works, mpreg, polyamory, some dark themes / horror, Alex from dunkirk, drabbles

personal recs: x , x , x , x , x

another fandom favorite! I've been absolutely obsessed with ‘feeling it out’ since it was first published! they write a/b/o (and everything else!) so well that they make it look easy! the characterizations are so unique and I've never read anything like them before - I can’t get enough! I always look forward to their posts and already know it’ll be one of my new favorites!

✰ jaerie

ao3 | @jaerie

common work tags/tropes: a/b/o, bottom Louis, bottom harry, canon elements, gender swap, drabbles, mpreg, historical au’s, pwp

personal recs: x , x , x ,

I really admire this author because of the way they tend to go against the grain. they write the things they want and it’s obvious that they enjoy it, and I really admire their ability to do so! there are tons of options here as well! (check the tags before reading!)

✰ louizsv

ao3 | @louizsv

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, d/s dynamics, vampires, some fantasy / supernatural elements

personal recs: x , x

their first fic still has me absolutely floored - it’s definitely one of my all time favorites! their writing is usually between 10k - 20k but it’s amazing the amount of detail and plot they can articulate in that length. if you’re looking for a simple, cute, lovely read, you’ve chosen the right author! :)

✰ brooklyn_babylon

ao3 | @brooklyn-babylon

common work tags/tropes: bottom harry, pwp

personal recs: x

I'm not sure if they want me to tag their main account so I'll just tag the one above :) this author definitely has a way with words! I only found their work recently and it hasn’t disappointed throughout the many rereads in the time since. they write tension and emotion beautifully and their characterization is lovely! I'm looking forward to anything else they might publish!

✰ 2tiedships2

ao3 | @2tiedships2 | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, enemies to lovers, fake dating, fluff

personal recs: x , x , x

pretty sure I've already talked about this author several times but I couldn’t leave them off! their fics are written so beautifully and realistically that you cannot put it down until it’s over. the first time I found them I fell down a rabbit hole and read all of their works within the week! I reread their fics on a monthly basis and I have absolutely no regrets.

✰ disgruntledkittenface

ao3 | @disgruntledkittenface

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, bottom harry, drabbles, d/s elements, gender swapping / girl direction, hurt/comfort, fluff

personal recs: x , x

I so much admire the variety in these fics, as well as the time and dedication this author has put forth for readers. it’s obvious how much they love writing! everything from the meet-cute’s to the smut is exceptionally well written and immersive. their work has been and will always be very close to my heart , so if you check them out please leave them some love! :) (also please make sure to check the tags before you read!)

✰ summerwine

ao3 | @smrwine

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, pwp, feminization, dom/sub

personal recs: x , x , x

I'm sure this author is also no stranger! they truly have a gift for writing such aesthetically pleasing and wonderfully worded fics, stock full with dreamy settings and descriptions. their writing is just on a whole different kind of genre and I don’t think I'll ever get tired of reading and rereading their works!

✰ loadedgunn

ao3 | @loaded-gunn

common work tags/tropes: bottom harry, bottom Louis, pwp, dom/sub, gender swap / girl direction

personal recs: x , x , x

reading this author’s fics is almost like you’re being allowed into a private moment between the characters. sometimes I even hold my breath when I'm reading so I don’t disturb the moment! this writing is soft and lovely and every single scene is thick with emotion in the best way. the chemistry between their characters is insane!

✰ edensrose

ao3 | @holdingthornsandroses | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, historical au

personal recs: x

I have yet to read this author’s second work but I have no doubt it will be just as absolutely amazing as the first one was! I am amazed at their ability to twist such a classic storyline and completely make it feel like their own, and to do so effortlessly. I adore their attention to detail and originality in their fics and I can’t wait until I have some time to dig into their latest one! (and it helps that they’re just a very lovely person!)

✰ angelichl

ao3 | @angelichl

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, bottom harry, uni au’s, a/b/o, dom/sub, supernatural elements, drabbles

personal recs: x , x , x

reading this author’s work is like getting immersed in another world. I have yet to find another author that can so beautifully write this melancholic and yet morally satisfying type of aura through their words. this is another person that writes dialogue and emotion very tactfully, and it really resonates when reading. (check the tags!)

✰ istajmaal

ao3

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, bottom harry, phone sex operator fic, pwp, dom/sub, gender swapping

personal recs: x , x , x , x , x , x

oh boy I'm already sweating! I really really enjoy the way that this author describes and I hope they come back at some point! all of their storylines are so unique and very refreshing. not to mention how they have a way of writing smut that literally has me so hooked into the story that I forget to breathe sometimes! truly a fantastic writer!

✰ mercutionotromeo

ao3 | @mercutionotromeo

common work tags/tropes: bottom harry, pwp, daddy kink, dom/sub, fluff, drabbles, gender swapping, light age play

personal recs: x , x , x , x , x , x

one of my all time favorite authors!!! I've been reading their works for years now and I still can’t get enough. it’s soft and lovely and warm and just very very comforting in general. they have a way of making their fics seem like an entire little world no matter how short or long they are. they haven’t written in a bit but I'll continue dutifully waiting on a notification!

✰ sunflowerstyles

ao3 | @sunflowerstyles

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, hurt/comfort, daddy kink,

personal recs: x , x

this author is kind of like the b!L version of mercutionotromeo, at least in my opinion. their last fic was published in 2016 but I've reread their work so many times since then in hopes they'll come back at some point! this person does a wonderful job with angst & hurt/comfort and when I'm in the mood for those tropes these fics are definitely some of my first contenders! (make sure to check the tags! some of the hurt/comfort aspects may be triggering for some readers). lots of emotion and very soft, loving fics!

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please let me know if you need any more! happy reading and I hope you find some more lovely authors to choose from! :)

#ask #fic recs #this took me 84 years I hope you like it!

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twentiethcenturymoviesandtv · 4 years

Text

Casablanca: The Story

Whether you enjoy a timeless love story, heart-wrenching interpersonal drama, gritty film-noir, thrilling spy action, edge-of-your-seat suspense, or war stories, Casablanca has it all, and in spades. Everything from classic lines to familiar story beats comes together to tell this story of a tragic romance embroiled in the midst of an oncoming war, and what a ride it is. Let’s take a look.

So what’s the setup?

It’s December of 1941, and War is coming. The Nazis have already taken most of Europe, and are looking to march on what’s left, with no signs of stopping. The refugees, fleeing the Nazi forces, search for transportation to America, and most end up in the city of Casablanca.

The problem is, then they can’t get out of Casablanca. As a result, the city becomes somewhat of a way station, full of people waiting for visas to enable them to cross the Atlantic, and the officials profiting from the people’s desperation. As it turns out, a few German officials, carrying important documents, have just been murdered, and their documents stolen. Casablanca is on the alert, and the German forces in the city are taking it quite seriously, rounding up suspects and marching them into custody.

In short, Casablanca is not an easy place to live.

A plane full of Nazi officials arrives in the city, bringing with it Major Strasser, who is introduced to Casablanca’s Police Prefect, Captain Louis Renault. (Claude Rains)

Renault assures Strasser that they are doing everything in their power to solve the murder case, and explains that he knows who the murderer is, and expects to arrest him tonight. You see, Renault believes that the killer will be at Rick’s.

How does he know this, you may ask? Simple. Everyone comes to Rick’s.

Thus we are introduced to the hub of activity both in the city, and in the film, Rick’s Café Americain, a popular nightclub and gambling den. It’s a busy place, full of people who want to leave the country and their hushed conversations, all set against the soothing background noise of piano player Sam.

It is here that we are introduced to the owner of Rick’s Café Americain, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart).

Right off, we learn a few things about him: He never drinks with customers, and he’s got a dry wit that’s sharper than a brand-new razor.

Rick sits, playing chess by himself (an element inspired by Bogart) at his own private table when he is interrupted by a man named Ugarte (Peter Lorre).

Ugarte tells Rick that his specialty is helping refugees (for a price), and that he himself intends to clear out of Casablanca that very night. He gives Rick something for safekeeping: an envelope that contains valuable letters of transit. An interesting choice, since it’s rather obvious that Rick doesn’t exactly like him very much, but Ugarte seems to trust him quite a bit, even if there isn’t any friendship between them.

“You know, Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca, but somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.”

Interestingly enough, as Rick points out, letters of transit are what was stolen from the murdered German couriers. He tells Ugarte that he’s ‘a little more impressed’ with him, and leaves it at that, hiding the papers inside the piano. A few moments later, he is approached by Signor Ferarri, the ‘head of all illegal activities in Casablanca’ and the owner of another nearby club, The Blue Parrot, who wants to buy Rick’s, or at the very least the piano player, Sam.

Rick’s having none of it, and tells Ferarri that he’s not selling the club, nor does he sell human beings, period. After this discussion and a brief incident ending with Rick calling a cab for a lady patron, the stoic club owner ends up in a conversation with none other than Captain Renault, who, ironically, seems to be on almost friendly terms with him.

The pair exchange witty banter, with Renault guessing reasons Rick has not returned to his home country, America. Rather than provide the true reason, Rick is content to let his Friendly Enemy guess, remaining very closed-mouthed on the reasons he remains in Casablanca.

Eventually, Renault gets to the point of his visit: He intends to make an arrest in Rick’s club tonight, and that Major Strasser of the Third Reich will be there to watch. Renault also mentions that there is a certain individual who has just come to Casablanca who will likely be in search for an exit visa much like the ones that were recently stolen. This individual’s name is Victor Lazlo, and the German army is quite keen on catching him before he gets overseas, and of course, Rick can’t, and won’t do anything about it, right?

After all, Rick sticks his neck out for no one.

Rick and Renault decide to make a bet on the outcome of Victor Lazlo’s stay in Casablanca. Renault wagers that he shall be captured, Rick that he shall escape. There’s a catch though, as Renault explains to Rick; Lazlo will probably be looking for two exit visas, as he’s traveling with a woman that he’s quite fond of.

Moments later, Major Strausser arrives, and Renault commences the arrest operation. His men move in on the suspect: Ugarte, the man who entrusted the important papers to Rick earlier. Ugarte, makes a pretense of going quietly before making a run for the door, firing a few shots behind him. He spots Rick on his way, pleading with him to help him hide, but it’s no good: he’s caught and dragged away, to the satisfaction of both Renault and Strasser.

Strasser isn’t completely satisfied, however. He wants to ask Rick a few questions.

He asks, all right, but doesn’t get much by way of answers. Rick’s just as tight-lipped with Strasser as he was with Renault, and the only information anyone comes away with is that Rick is from New York, and has brown eyes (apparently).

“Richard Blaine, American. Age, 37. Cannot return to his country. The reason is a little vague.”

Strasser is concerned that Rick might help Victor Lazlo, the man previously mentioned by Renault. Apparently Lazlo has been getting the word out on some of the nasty things that the Third Reich is responsible for, and as a result, the German military really want him arrested.

Why bring this to Rick? After all, he sticks his neck out for no one.

As it turns out, Rick has a history with lost causes. And speaking of history, it’s about to come back and bite him. Hard.

You see, Victor Lazlo (Paul Henreid) has just walked into Rick’s Cafe, with a woman on his arm. This woman is named Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), and Sam (Dooley Wilson), the pianist, recognizes her immediately.

Victor and Ilsa get a table, and are apparently going to meet with someone to help them, when they are interrupted by none other than Captain Renault, who cordially sits down to share a drink with them rather than arrest them. How nice.

Ilsa, for her part, is returning Sam’s recognition, and asks Renault about him. The captain informs her that Sam came from Paris, traveling with the owner of the establishment, Rick. Ilsa seems interested in this ‘Rick’ character, but before she can really start asking questions, Strasser sits down at the table as well, clearly hostile towards Victor, but unwilling to do anything just yet, with Victor on French soil. Strasser arranges to meet with Victor the following day in Renault’s office to discuss why Victor’s here, and with that, leaves him to his drink.

No sooner are Victor and Ilsa alone than Victor immediately heads to the bar to inquire about his contact. You see, he and Ilsa were supposed to meet with someone who would provide him with the letters of transit to get out of Casablanca. They were, in fact, to meet with the recently-arrested Ugarte.

Left alone at their table, Ilsa begins a conversation with Sam, the piano player, and it’s obvious they know each other. Ilsa has a song request: she wants Sam to play ‘As Time Goes By’. Sam, while reluctant to at first, eventually gives in and begins playing the tune just in time for Rick to barge in, shouting at Sam for playing that song. Before he can really lay into him, Rick and Ilsa spot one another, and Rick recognizes her, instantly.

Sam grabs the piano bench and gets the heck out of Dodge.

Renault and Victor arrive at Ilsa’s table again, meaning that whatever history is between the pair will have to be ignored for now. Rick, breaking his own rule, joins them for a drink, to Renault’s surprise.

After an evening of small talk, Victor and Ilsa leave in a cab and Rick heads to a private room in his club to recover.

Later that night, Rick is sitting by himself in his club, drinking and remembering old times, and not in a fond way.

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

As he sits, hoping Ilsa comes back, Sam comes in, trying to get him to leave. Rick isn’t budging, instead making a song request, the same song that Ilsa requested earlier.

“Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.'”

And so Sam does, albeit reluctantly. As he plays, Rick continues remembering, an entire relationships worth of remembering of he and Ilsa in Paris. Apparently the two were an item, and Rick was a considerably happier looking guy. During this time, the pair knew very little about each other, except that there had been another man in Ilsa’s life who was now dead.

Despite this, the two seem quite happy together, until something interrupts it. The War.

The German army is moving in on Paris.

The night before the Gestapo are to invade, Sam plays ‘As Time Goes By’ on the piano as Rick and Ilsa plan to escape Paris the following morning together by train.

The next morning, Rick stands at the train station, alone, waiting for Ilsa, who never shows. Sam approaches with a note from Ilsa, a note which explains that, while she loves Rick, she can’t go with him, and she can never see him again. Rick is left on the train station with a broken heart and a new cynical edge as Sam pulls him onto the train that will eventually take him to Casablanca.

In the present, Rick looks up to see Ilsa in the doorway. By this time, he is good and drunk, and isn’t really interested in hearing her explanation of what happened in Paris. Eventually, his snark and hard edge, reinforced by the alcohol, drive her off before she has a chance to tell him her side of the story.

So, before we get any further, let’s take a look at where we’re at.

Right now, we’ve got a handful of major players that we’re getting to know pretty well, all wrapped up in the affairs of Casablanca. First, there’s Rick.

Rick is a cynic, a bitter man who’s been kicked around by life a bit too much. While having a history of fighting for the underdog and being a romantic, something happened to him along the way that changed his way of thinking to: “I stick my neck out for no one.”

That event was, of course, Ilsa’s leaving, and the heartbreak that ensued.

As a result, Rick is a changed man, a hard man who now claims that he never gets involved, and who certainly wants no part of his sentimental roots. He’s really an interesting choice as a protagonist, as the audience does like him and root for him, but he’s not the heroic type. No, that’d seem to be Victor Lazlo, wouldn’t it?

Victor is the opposite of Rick in just about every way. He’s a good, honest and upright man, idealistic, brave, and patriotic to a fault, and wanted by the Nazis (which is a recommendation in and of itself). In any other movie, he’d seem to be the obvious choice for the hero of the story. Not in Casablanca.

Between the two is Ilsa. She’s with Victor, and was in love with Rick, and is the one person Rick ever truly loved. She is currently stuck in the middle, the balancing act between the idealism and the cynicism, and the bridge between the characters. She’s a strong woman who’s been through a lot of pain that she keeps under wraps, and it shows in her interactions with both Rick and Victor.

Three different characters, all stuck in Casablanca for their own very good reasons, and of course, all end up in each other’s lives, under the pressure of the Gestapo. This leaves very little room for coincidence, and serves as an excellent setup for the situation and the characters involved. Even more showcased are the contrasting characters, all falling on different sides of a moral chart ranging from the upright Victor to the neutral Rick, to the corrupt Renault, to the evil Strasser.

Speaking of which, let’s get back to the story.

Victor and Ilsa arrive in Captain Renault’s office the next morning for their appointment, just moments after Strasser informs Renault that he believes that Ugarte left those important letters of transit with Rick. Strasser, upon seeing the couple, informs Victor that there is exactly one way he can get out of Casablanca: if Victor gives up the names and locations of the leaders of the underground movement rising against the Third Reich.

Victor, being the stone-cold patriot that he is, doesn’t talk, and he and Ilsa leave Renault’s office, but not before being told that Ugarte is dead.

Meanwhile, Rick decides to pay Signor Ferarri a visit at Ferarri’s club, The Blue Parrot, to pick up a shipment that’s due. Ferarri tells Rick that he’ll send the shipment to him when it comes in, and knowingly remarks that he’d pay a lot of money for the missing letters of transit. Rick lets on that he definitely knows something, but leaves it at that, and goes on his way, meeting Ilsa in the market on his way out.

Now in a sober state of mind, Rick tries to persuade Ilsa to explain to him what happened in Paris, but Ilsa refuses, preferring to think of older, happier times than the recent barbed encounter. She does however, impart a very large bombshell:

Victor Lazlo is her husband. Not only that, he has been her husband, and she was married to him during her romance with Rick in Paris.

She leaves him with that information and leaves, with her husband, for the place Rick just left: The Blue Parrot.

Once inside, the two attempt to bargain with Ferarri to get them out of Casablanca. Ferarri explains that he can’t get Victor out, but he might be able to arrange for a way to get Ilsa out. Ilsa, unwilling to leave her husband, turns him down. Rejected but not bitter, Ferarri tells the couple that the missing letters of transit were not with Ugarte during his arrest, and that they are probably with Rick.

It doesn’t exactly seem to be a secret.

Back at Rick’s Café Americain, Renault still hasn’t found the transit papers, even after searching Rick’s place. The Captain has a conversation with Strasser, who is worried about the level of influence Victor Lazlo might have on the people.

“It is too dangerous if we let him go. It may be too dangerous if we let him stay.”

Just then, Victor approaches Rick and says that he wants to talk to him, in private. Rick agrees, and they move to his office, where Victor tries to convince Rick to give him the letters of transit. Rick refuses, flat-out stating he won’t let them have them at any price. When Victor asks why, Rick tells him to ask his wife.

Confused, Victor heads back to the main room, where a bunch of German officers are exuberant playing and singing a patriotic German song. Victor springs into action, getting the club’s band to play the “Marseillaise” over them. Around the room, the refugees in Rick’s Café Americain stand, singing the French National Anthem as loudly as they can. It’s a powerful moment, but unfortunately, it catches Strasser’s attention.

Now certain that Victor’s presence is a disturbance, inspiring the populace against the Third Reich, Strasser orders Renault to close down Rick’s, and get everyone out. As the place is clearing, Strasser tells Ilsa that she and her husband are in danger, and will be until they allow Strasser to take them back to German-occupied France.

Back in Victor and Ilsa’s hotel room, Victor confronts Ilsa, telling her about Rick’s response to his attempt to get the letters. Ilsa doesn’t really tell him anything, but he pieces it together anyway, and forgives her for drifting away while he was in a concentration camp, before leaving to attend an underground resistance meeting.

Meanwhile, Rick heads home to his apartment above his club, and realizes he’s not alone. Ilsa snuck in the back, and has been waiting for him. She pleads with him to get over his bitterness towards her, and think about the bigger picture. Rick, however, doesn’t really want to.

Ilsa isn’t willing to let it go at that, and pulls a gun on him. Rick calls her bluff, knowing she won’t actually shoot him, and Ilsa tells him that he has no idea what she’s been through, and that she did love him, and still does. After a brief reconciliation, Ilsa begins to explain what happened in Paris.

Before she met Rick, Ilsa had been married to Victor, who, she was told, had been shot and killed. She wasn’t lying when she said the other man in her life was dead, she’d legitimately thought that, and that’s why she let herself fall in love with Rick. As it turns out, Victor wasn’t dead (obviously) but in a concentration camp. The day he escaped was the day Ilsa was to meet Rick on the train station platform to escape Paris. Ilsa, finding this out, stayed with her husband, and sent the note to Rick, explaining that they couldn’t be together.

Ilsa in the present says that she can’t bring herself to leave Rick again, but pleads with him to at least get Victor out of Casablanca, telling him to do the thinking for all of them.

As it happens, Victor enters the club downstairs, led by one of Rick’s employees who was at the same underground resistance meeting with him. Rick calls his employee upstairs, has him sneak Ilsa back home out the back, while he goes downstairs to talk to Victor.

No sooner does Rick join Victor at the bar that Victor begins to try to get the letters of transit from Rick again, this time saying that, if he won’t give Victor one, at least give Ilsa one so she can get out. Rick seems impressed by this show of love, but before he can give a definitive answer, a group of French officers barge in and arrest Victor.

The next morning, Rick enters Captain Renault’s office, and tells him that he and Ilsa are running away to America, and that the last person they would want to run into would be Victor. Rick explains that, instead of holding Victor on a flimsy, fictional charge, it would be a better idea of Renault released Victor, and catch him in the act of trying to get the letters of transit off of Rick. This way, Renault can put Victor away as accessory to the murder of the German couriers, for good. Renault, liking the sound of this, agrees. After this, Rick drops by The Blue Parrot to sell Rick’s Café Americain to Signor Ferarri, on the condition that all of his employees keep their jobs.

That night, at Rick’s club, Renault shows up to help with the plan to get Victor arrested, and hides as Ilsa rushes in, worriedly telling Rick that Victor thinks that Ilsa’s going with him, not Rick. Rick assures her that everything’s going to be fine, and Victor enters. Rick hands over the letters of transit, and Renault springs from hiding, arresting Victor.

A lot happens at once.

Ilsa rushes to Victor, and all of a sudden, Rick has a gun out and trained on Renault. He orders Renault to sit down (hands where he can see them) and call the airport to tell them that two people are leaving for Casablanca for Lisbon, and to not give them any trouble.

Renault pulls a fast one on Rick’s fast one, though, and calls Strasser instead, unbeknownst to Rick.

Strasser, being unfortunately intelligent, figures out what’s going on and orders a police squad to meet him at the airport, and heads out to stop them before they can get out.

Rick, Renault, Ilsa and Victor arrive at the airport, and Rick tells one of the orderlies to put Victor and Ilsa’s baggage on the plane. Ilsa, realizing that Rick is planning to stay behind, is heartbroken, reluctant to leave him again.

“You’re saying this only to make me go.”

“I’m saying it because it’s true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”

“But what about us?”

“We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.”

“When I said I would never leave you.

“And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.”

Rick finally puts the big picture ahead of his own little one, and does the right thing. Knowing Ilsa belongs with Victor, he lets her go, and rushes them both onto the plane, which starts down the runway at the exact second Strasser pulls in.

Strasser tries to put in a call to the radio tower to stop that plane, but is abruptly interrupted by Rick shooting him in the chest. Strasser falls, dead, as all of the cops show up.

It looks like it’s curtains for our hero. Renault tells the officers that Strasser has been shot, and after a tense moment, the corrupt Captain decides not to turn Rick in.

“Major Strasser has been shot…..Round up the usual suspects.”

The plane takes off, and Renault advises Rick to leave Casablanca for a while. He also suggests that perhaps they could leave together and do some good. The pair walk off into the fog, as Rick drops the final, iconic line:

“Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Thus ends one of the most beloved films of all time.

At first, the end of this movie can seem a little abrupt. After spending so much time building up the story, it almost seems like the ending comes rushing in, changing everything in the last twenty minutes. Rick’s last-minute gambit can seem almost as though all of his development was done in the last third of the film. It’s clear that he’s a changed man, alright, but it can seem kind of rushed, if you don’t look carefully at the entire film.

You see, throughout the movie, Rick regularly declares: ‘I stick my neck out for no one,’ but the fact is, that isn’t really true.

While Rick presents a bitter and cold demeanor, the fact is, throughout the entire film, he does little else than stick his neck out for other people. If all he cared about was his own security and success, he’s doing a terrible job at it.

From refusing to sell his club to rigging the roulette tables for a refugee couple, Rick’s tendency to fight for the underdog never really dies down. His most selfish actions are as a direct result of a broken heart, a bitter edge grown after the only woman he’s ever loved left him without explanation.

Rick is obviously a changed man by the end, but it has less to do with his morals, and more to do with his duty.

You see, Rick serves as both a character and a picture of America. With a story set during December of 1941, a ‘neutral’ American character who must decide whether or not to take a stand in the war. It’s no coincidence that his ending comes about when he lets go of his own selfish desires and looks at the big picture, and puts the world first, over what would make him happiest. For Rick to grow into a better person, he has to let Ilsa go.

He’s not the only one sacrificing, though.

Throughout the film, the number of sacrifices characters are willing to make are staggering, and it’s quickly obvious that the ones who are willing are heroic, the ones who aren’t are villains. Strasser is very concerned about the risks of having Victor around, but plays it safe. Renault, originally content to do anything to save his own skin, eventually sacrifices his safety in Casablanca for the greater good.

The character who is willing to sacrifice the most is, of course, the most heroic character. Victor Lazlo, having escaped a concentration camp and been pursued by the Third Reich, is willing to give up his wife and his freedom, safety, and life to make sure that Ilsa is safe. He is unaware of Ilsa’s past, and doesn’t feel the need to be. His love and his duty mix together, his goals blend, and therefore, as the most heroic character, the character that might traditionally be the protagonist, he is also the least conflicted character. As a matter of fact, the honor of most conflicted character goes to his wife.

Ilsa’s sacrifice is on both sides. Torn between her husband and the man she fell in love with years prior, Ilsa has little choice in who she boards that plane with, and is uncertain of which man is going with her until the very end. She is willing to sacrifice her life of freedom with her husband to stay with Rick, initially choosing gratification over duty, but in the end, comes to the same conclusion that Rick does: The right thing for her to do is to go with her husband, to freedom.

It’s a bittersweet ending, but it’s also one that ties up all the loose ends, and the only possible satisfactory ending for the characters. The audience feels the same pull as the characters, the same division between duty and desire, but we know, as does Rick, that in the end, he has to look at the big picture. That’s the genius of Casablanca. It asks the audience to consider the same moral questions it asks of its characters:

Are you willing to sacrifice for the greater good?

Rick, like America, is waking up and realizing that he has to do something to fight injustice, and that to do that, he has to be willing to give up his personal happiness, to allow himself to be an idealist, and to keep fighting for lost causes.

The ending is heartbreaking, yes. But unlike heartbreaking endings where we rage against the disservice done the characters, this bittersweet ending is the only possible ending for all of the characters to maintain their integrity, the only way they can all do the right thing.

And we applaud them for it. It’s a perfect ending to what’s pretty darn close to a perfect story. But of course, there’s more to a movie than a story.

In the articles ahead, we’re going to be taking a look at some of the other important elements to the story of Casablanca, 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.

#Casablanca #Casablanca 1942 #1942 #40s #Film #Movies #War #Drama #Romance #PG #Humphrey Bogart #Ingrid Bergman #Paul Henreid #Claude Rains #Dooley Wilson #Sydney Greenstreet #Conrad Viedt #Michael Curtiz

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luckywilliams · 4 years

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APPRECIATING PAINTINGS

Paintings can be complex things to appreciate in an informed fashion. Such informed appreciation can be undertaken via a number of different methods:

Firstly, the artistic methods and techniques undertaken can be examined. Thus, Jan Van Eyck was famous for his oil painting technique, which produced a characteristic luminous finish. Michelangelo was renowned for his fresco technique, and for his skill with anatomy and male nudes. Leonardo da Vinci was famous for his sfumato, and Rembrandt for his chiaroscuro. Titian and Matisse (amongst others) were distinguished by their colourism, Caravaggio for his Tenebrism, and Frank Auerbach for his impasto. These techniques, and many others, are an important feature of informed art appreciation.

Secondly, COLOUR has always been a very important aspect to consider, and often, throughout history, the use of colour has been subject to certain rules and conventions. For example, Ancient Egyptian paintings only made use of 6 colours – red, green, blue, yellow, white and black. Red was the colour of power and authority. Green was used as a colour to indicate new life and fertility. Blue was the colour of rebirth, while yellow was used to represent eternal things like the sun, and gold. White was indicative of purity, and black was the colour of death. As an extension of some of these principles, male bodies were painted in darker colours than female bodies.

Byzantine icon paintings followed similar conventions: Blue was the colour representing human life, while white became the colour used to represent the resurrection and transfiguration of Christ. In icons of Christ and the Virgin Mary, Christ was usually depicted wearing a red undergarment, together with a blue outer garment (symbolising the idea of God becoming a man). Conversely, Mary was usually depicted wearing a blue undergarment, and a red outer garment (indicative of someone starting off entirely human and mortal, but moving closer to God).

During the Renaissance, burgeoning European art academies restricted the use of bright colours, which were only to be used in the most appropriate contexts. It is only much later in European history, with the advent of the French Impressionists and the Fauvists, that colour really became utilised independently, and without restriction. Of course, the development of new colour pigments also had a significant impact on the tonal range available to painters. – After all, a Renaissance colour palette was a very different thing to the palette available to a 19th century artist.

The narrative content of a painting (How to appreciate it).

In order to make an informed judgement, we can subdivide the narrative content of a painting into 4 parts: a) The main message. b) Subsidiary messages. c) Symbolism. d) References and analogies. (At the end of this section, under Activities, you will be given the opportunity of carrying out some research, and completing an initial assessment of the narrative content of a famous Renaissance painting, using these 4 subheadings).

Interpreting Western art (c.500 – 1700).

Byzantine art, and its icons, together with other hieratic styles such as the Gothic, was packed with narrative meaning and symbolism – but all of a Christian kind. This exclusive focus on Christian symbolism makes the art somewhat easier to decode, though the fantastic imagery of Renaissance alterpiece art of the sort produced by Bosch and Pieter Brueghel the Elder can be more difficult to work out. Much baroque painting was more straightforward, as (during the era of the Counter Reformation) its focus was mostly just on the promotion of Catholicism. Its best works consisted of trompe l’oeil ceiling frescoes and other monumental religious works. Even here, there were some exceptions, such as the Realist School within Dutch Baroque art, which possessed much complex imagery and symbolism.

Dutch Realism 1630-90.

Some exceptional schools arose in the newly independent (from Spain) protestant areas of the United Provinces, such as those in Amsterdam, Delft, Utrecht and Haarlem. Dutch realism really developed as a result of the historical context. – The 17th century was the period of the Dutch ‘Golden Age’ in which trade grew with the East Indies, and other areas of the world, and Dutch merchants grew rich on the profits. These merchants were a new type of art buyer, requiring a new type of painting, and they commissioned some of the most complex still life paintings ever produced, by the likes of Vermeer, Rembrandt, Willem Kalf, van Hoogstraten and others.

The Decline of Religious Paintings from 1700.

Religious art declined elsewhere (not just in the United Provinces) because of the decline in the number of ecclesiastical patrons available, and the rise of the secular, middle class/professional patron, who wanted – and paid for – small scale portable paintings which could be displayed in their homes. Moreover, these new buyers wanted portraits, landscapes or genre paintings (rather than massive religious allegorical works) which showed off their newly acquired power and status. As a consequence, this ‘new’ type of painting lacked obscure religious symbolism, and can be easier to interpret.

Interpreting paintings from 1700 onwards.

For analytical purposes, these can be divided into 5 main types: i) HISTORY paintings ii) PORTRAITS iii) GENRE paintings (of everyday scenes) iv) LANDSCAPES v) STILL LIFE.

History Paintings:

This category of paintings can include mythological, religious and historical works with a ‘narrative’ which can be difficult to interpret when designed to convey inspirational or philosophical sentiments.

Portraits:

This category of painting is generally easier to interpret, though it must be remembered that the buyer of a painting often prefers to purchase a ‘manipulated’ image showing him/her at their best (e.g. Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portraits of the Prince Regent during the Regency period).

Genre:

These can be relatively straightforward to interpret, when the artist is focused, principally, upon portraying the social history of a particular scene. However, a genre painting can also be used to convey a philosophical message, making the interpretation more complex to determine.

Landscapes:

In the hundred years between 1700-1800, many landscape paintings were commissioned by landowners who wanted a pictorial record of their estates. Thus, such paintings can be relatively straightforward to understand and interpret. However, in the later 18th Century, as the Romantic movement began to take hold, many painters went into the countryside in order to ‘capture’ the essence and beauty of nature – adding considerably to the meaning and purpose behind such works. Impressionists like Pisarro and Monet can fall into this category. There are also landscapes with more of a philosophical message, which can be quite difficult to interpret fully.

Still Life:

Some of this type of painting can look very static when looked at in a superficial manner. Nevertheless, the best of Still Life painting can still be loaded with symbolism, and influenced by artistic traditions going back to at least the 17th Century.

How to appreciate abstract paintings.

The key principal behind a proper appreciation of abstract paintings is the realization that FORM is just as important as REPRESENTATION. Thus, a picture of a human face could be a very anatomically inaccurate, ‘bad’ one, but it could have a very effective and striking use of colours or shapes, and might therefore be adjudged to be a ‘beautiful’ picture/painting.

Thus, form is everything, and we need to look at colours, shapes and surface textures (and their relationship to each other) when assessing and interpreting a particular piece of work.

ACTIVITIES

Now that you have completed this introductory section, please have a go at the following activities. You can either talk to your tutor about the possible answers on the telephone, or via skype, or send written responses via email or post. Please enjoy thinking about your answers, and the initial research that this entails!

Task 1: Try and find out more about the artistic techniques of sfumato, chiaroscuro, colourism, Tenebrism and impasto. What did these techniques/skills actually involve?

Task 2: Try and have a look at the painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymous Bosch (1500-05) either on-line or in a suitable textbook, which is one of the great Renaissance paintings. Once you have looked at a copy of the painting, and maybe read a little about it, try and complete a brief assessment of the painting’s narrative content, using the 4 subheadings described earlier in this Section.

Task 3: Using the information supplied above about the 5 main types of paintings produced from 1700 onwards, say whether you think the following 11 paintings are either history, portrait, genre, landscapes or still life works of art: Some are more straightforward than others!

Death of Marat (1793) by Jacques-Louis David.

The Third of May 1808 by Francisco Goya

The Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy (1881) by Vasily Surikov.

Arrangement in Grey and Black: Whistler’s Mother (1871) by James Whistler.

Portrait of Madame X (1883-4) by John Singer Sargent.

Man with a Hoe (1862) by Millet.

Marilyn (1967) by A. Warhol.

At the Moulin Rouge (1890) by Toulouse-Lautrec.

Ennui (1914) by Walter Sickert.

Mr and Mrs Andrews (1750) by T. Gainsborough.

Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812) by JMW Turner

Adrian L. Bridge

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ericsonclan · 4 years

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How to Curry Favor

Summary: Omar meets some trainers on his Pokemon journey who show him camping with others isn't always a bad thing.

Read on A03:

Omar felt the weight of his pack grow heavier on his back with each step. He knew that it would probably be for the best if he looked for a campsite for the night. Being alone had always suited Omar more or at least that’s what he told himself whenever he came across other trainers. Whenever he reached a campsite he always got filled with dread, the memories of the few times he had joined crashing into his mind. The far and few times he had joined a site, the other trainers always seemed to brush him off or get upset based on his beliefs in certain topics.

Omar shifted the pressure on his left leg to his right leg, looking out towards the field of tall grass that stood between him and the route that would eventually lead to Marsh Town. There was rumoured to be rustic classics just waiting to be added to his collection of recipes. His eyes looked towards the sky that was turning from the calming blue into a bright orange.

I can’t stay on route 20 for long. Not when it gets dark. He was drawn out his thoughts when his Applin shuffled in the open palm of his hand.

��Sorry, I’ll find us a place to rest,” He gave a small smile towards his Pokemon who seemed happy by the news.

“Applin!” it cried before settling down in his hand once more. Omar focused back on finding a camping spot. This route had been reported to contain dangerous Pokemon. If he was lucky there would be others here if not… He would just have to spend another night camping alone and keep watch.

He walked down the trail for a few more minutes when he spotted a campsite off in the distance where a few trainers were staying. Omar took a deep breath, preparing for the worst but hoping for the best when he walked forward. When he came closer towards the camp a redhead with slicked back hair looked up from her camping chair where a Cleffa cuddled comfortably in her arms.

The redhead said something to the brunette man by her side who turned towards her before looking up from his task of setting up a tent towards Omar. Before Omar had even reached the site, a man with dreadlocks ran forward with a huge grin on his face.

“Hey there! Come to join our campsite? ”His smile disappeared for a split second when he saw Omar’s surprised expression on his face. “Only if you want to.”

“That would be great if you have the space.” Omar replied, looking down at the sleeping Applin in his hand. He hadn’t met anyone so friendly at a camp before.

“Of course!” His dreadlocks swayed when he extended his hand. “I’m Louis!”

Omar shook the man's hand with a firm handshake. “Omar.”

“Well, Omar, come on over,” Louis turned around sharply causing his coat tails to flutter in the wind. “We happen to have a great spot left if you want to claim it.” He motioned over to a grassy spot on the left corner of the site.

“Thanks,” Omar looked towards Louis before starting on setting up for the night. After he gently set down Applin on top of his jacket he began to set up his tent and sleep bag. When that was finished he decided to let his Drowzee out for a bit to stretch his legs. Drowzee seemed more than happy to be out of its Pokeball. Omar then moved onto setting up his cooking pot and prepping station for dinner. It was just at that moment when he noticed a girl walk over with an Absol walking calmly by her side.

“Hey there, I wanted to give you a few minutes to set up before introducing myself. I’m Clementine.” The girl gave a warm smile towards Omar who once again felt a feeling of surprise wash over him.

“Omar,” he paused when he saw Clementine’s eyebrow quirk at his Drowzee. Omar’s eyes traveled down to see his Pokemon standing more defensively, its nose swaying slightly as it stared at the Absol. “Drowzee, relax, that’s a friendly Pokemon,” Omar looked back at Clementine. “Is your Absol alright if I pet it? My Drowzee can be a bit of an anxious Pokemon, but usually if he sees that I get along with the Pokemon he’s fine.”

Clementine was taken aback by Omar’s question. Usually people were wary of her Absol and wouldn’t really like being near it. “Sure,” Clementine gave a few pats to her Absol before gesturing for it to step forward. The Absol’s red eyes stared into Omar’s who seemed unfazed by it. Slowly he moved his hand forward, waiting for the Pokemon’s approval. When the Absol seemed fine with it, Omar brushed his hand on the top of the Pokemon’s head who seemed happy with the affection.

“I usually don’t see many Absols on my travels,” Omar glanced up at Clementine who seemed touched by his acceptance of her Pokemon.

“Not many trainers want one. Usually people say they’re doombringers but that couldn’t be farther from the truth,” Omar could tell there was a story behind Clementine’s words, but he knew it wasn’t his place to pry.

“I also came over to ask if you wanted to join the others and myself at the center of the campsite. Brody has started a fresh pot of MooMoo milk,” Clementine motioned over to the redhead who was stirring the contents of a pot when the brunette man came up from behind and wrapped her in a warm hug. The girl seemed surprised for a moment before smiling back at him.

“I’d like that. My Drowzee is a bit anxious around new trainers. Is it alright if he stays back with my Applin?” Omar scratched the top of his Drowzee’s head who seemed pleased with itself.

“Sure,” Clementine smiled at Omar.

With reassuring words that he’d be back in a little bit, Omar walked alongside Clementine to the center of the campsite where five chairs had been set out. Louis was busy talking to the other two when he noticed Clementine, a bright smile playing on his lips as he motioned her over.

“Hey, Omar! Come to join us?” Louis intertwined his fingers with Clementine’s when she had sat down in the chair beside him. A Bellsprout was nuzzling against Louis’ leg under his coat.

“That was the plan,” Omar sat down in a chair and was immediately struck with how unusual this camping experience had been so far for him. Rarely did he meet people like this. “Thanks for letting me stay at the campsite.”

Louis waved a hand dismissively. “Think nothing of it. Oh! You haven’t met these two, have you?” Louis looked over at the pair who were busy preparing mugs of warm MooMoo milk for the others.

“Hi there, my name’s Brody,” The redhead smiled shyly at Omar before handing him a mug which he accepted gratefully. “And this is my boyfriend Mitch,” She put a hand on Mitch’s arm who looked over Omar and gave a small nod.

“Hey.”

“Hello,” Omar took a quick sip of his drink when Louis spoke up again.

“So tell us Omar, what brings you to the likes of Route 20?” Louis leaned forward, clearly intrigued to find out the answer. The others also seemed interested as well.

“I was on my way to Marsh Town to find some new recipes,”

“Oh, you’re a chef?” Clementine’s voice made Omar look over towards her.

“That’s my dream, but for now I’m traveling with my Pokemon to find new recipes and…” Omar’s voice faltered for a moment. Should he share the next part of his sentence? It was usually the part that people didn’t care for. He studied the group’s eyes for a second before deciding to go for it. “And to find healthy and delicious alternatives to recipes to make sure that no Pokemon lose their lives for our meals.”

The group seemed amazed by his statement.

“That’s amazing!” Brody wrapped her arms around her Cleffa once more while carefully holding her hot drink.

“Yeah, sounds cool,” Mitch pushed aside his Golbat that was trying to sneak some sips from his drink.

“Do any of you cook much?” Omar looked around at the group.

“I only know about five curry recipes,” Clementine stated. “It’s enough to get by so it works out well.”

“I know one,” Mitch grumbled, annoyed by his own lack of skill when it came to cooking.

“I know two curry recipes,” Brody leaned back in her chair and took a long sip from her cup. Louis looked proud when it was his turn to answer. “I know a whopping dozen recipes! They are all safely tucked away right here,” Louis tapped the side of his head with his index finger.

“Most burn to shit though,” Mitch looked over at his friend with a smirk.

Louis’ face fell at the comment.

“Mitch,” Brody scolded, whacking the side of his arm in disapproval.

“What? It’s true.” Mitch looked over at his girlfriend.

“Well, Louis’ curries are getting better each camping trip,” Clementine added to which Louis’ warm smile appeared once again. “What about you, Omar? How many curry recipes do you know?” Omar thought for a minute, trying to recall how many he had obtained over his six years as a trainer. “If it’s just curries, I would guess around 151.”

“151!?!” Mitch’s eyes were large at Omar’s words. “How are there that many fucking types of curry?”

“It all depends on the ingredients and the imagination of the person,” Omar stated simply.

“You gotta cook for us tonight!” Louis nearly jumped up on the spot at his own suggestion.

“Only if you want to,” Clementine added, hoping that the suggestion hadn’t stressed out Omar, but when she looked over at him she saw the biggest smile yet appear on his lips.

“I’d love to.” Omar suddenly was struck with realization, “But I didn’t bring nearly enough for this many people and Pokemon.”

“No need to worry about that,” Louis got up to his feet, carefully placing the sleeping Bellsprout onto his camp chair. “Just tell me what you need and Mitch and I can grab it at the nearby town.

Omar looked shocked by the offer. “I don’t have the funds right now to pay for it,”

“Don’t worry about that. I got it covered,” Louis flashed a charismatic smile.

“Alright: lum, sitrus, mago, kelpsy and hondew berries, fresh cream and some veggies like-”

“Hold on, there is no way those two will remember that,” Brody reached in her pack to grab a piece of paper and pencil.

“She’s right, it would be better to write a list for them.”

“Hey!” Mitch stood up in a huff. “We’re not dumbasses.”

“Well,” Louis scratched the back of his head, “When it comes to this, Mitch, we sorta are. We’ve totally forgotten things in past shopping trips.”

Mitch tried to come up with a comeback but fell short, tapping his foot impatiently while Omar jotted down the list of ingredients.

“Thanks, Omar,” Louis took the list and planted a quick kiss on Clementine’s cheek. “We won’t be long,”

“Okay,”

“Be safe,” Brody held onto Mitch’s hand for a second. Mitch gave a small smile to Brody before kissing her.

“I will,” With that the two were off, promising to be back within the next half hour or so. The three sat around the center of the campsite in silence, each of them focusing on finishing up their drinks.

Clementine was the first to rise up, brushing some dust off her pants before taking out two Pokeballs and tossing them in the air. A sound emitted from each Pokeball and a faint light as a Luxray and Leafeon appeared. “You want to join us in some games?’ Clementine looked over at Omar with a smile.

He didn’t know exactly how to respond. This was this first time he had been offered to join in with playing with other people’s Pokemon. Brody got up as well, releasing a Spinda from its Pokeball.

“Sure, let me just check on Drowzee and Applin,” Omar got up and walked over to his two Pokemon who happily greeted him when he showed up.

“Applin!” The Pokemon cried, its eyes popping out from the apple and looking up at Omar with adoration.

“Hey there,” Omar picked up the Pokemon in his hand again. “How would you two like to join the others in some games?”

His Drowzee seemed still unsure by the suggestion while Applin seemed perfectly content with staying his hand. “Okay, you two can stick by me, but I’m sure Sizzlipede would love the friends,” Omar unclicked the Pokeball from his belt and threw it in the air; a tiny red Pokemon emerged in front of him. “Want to make some new friends?” Omar kneeled down in front of his Pokemon.

“Sizzli!” The Pokemon closed its eyes, swaying its head back and forth in agreement. Omar flashed a quick smile before making his way back towards the others who had pulled out all their Pokemon toys. An old, worn-out rubber ball in the style of a Pokeball laid by Absol’s feet while a mirror ball was stared at curiously by the Spinda who stumbled on its feet with each step.

“Oh, you have another Pokemon?” Clementine asked, a feather play toy in her hand that Luxray was already trying to get to.

“So cute,” Brody smiled down at the Sizzlipede who gave a happy cry at the new face. “Are your other Pokemon going to want to join in?” She looked over at Drowzee who was clutching onto Omar’s pant leg.

“No, they’re shy with new people,” Omar lifted a finger and rubbed the top of Applin’s head.

“My Cleffa is the same way,” Brody lifted up her arms that had the Cleffa in it who looked at Omar for a second before turning its gaze downward. Suddenly Omar felt something brush up against his leg. Looking down he saw Clementine’s Leafeon who seemed to have already taken a liking to him.

“Leafeon,” it purred as the leaf on its head blew in the wind, causing the scent of fresh morning grass to overwhelm Omar’s senses. If the Leafeon had that smell, then it must be a fairly young Pokemon.

“Looks like Leafeon is already becoming friends with you,” Clementine pulled up her hands, causing Luxray to let out a whine while she stretched her paws towards the feather toy.

“Looks like it,” Omar smiled down at the Pokemon and gave it a few scratches which seemed to help his Drowzee calm down.

Soon the games started first with a fun game of fetch. Clementine tossed the old rubber ball as far as she could. Luxray was off like a shot, tearing up grass and dirt when she ran forward. Sizzlipede wasn’t going to let her competition get away with it though. The Pokemon moved its tiny legs as fast as she could, leaving a thin layer of dust while it tried to catch up. Spinda on the other hand was going the wrong way, stumbling and tumbling over, getting once again distracted by the mirror ball.

“Spinda, Clem threw it that way,” Brody blinked her eyes a couple of times, trying not to get dizzy just looking at her Pokemon. Luxray returned within seconds, causing Sizzlipede to stop, slowly turning around and jetting off after her. Omar chuckled while he watched his Pokemon. Even though throughout the rounds Luxray and Leafeon would end up getting the ball, Sizzlipede would never give up. A small, joyful glint played in her eyes whenever she tried to chase after the other Pokemon. In one heated round Spinda had actually gone the right way, stumbling around and looking more like it was dancing than trying to get a ball. Luxray immediately got distracted by the Pokemon and jumped around it, barking excitedly while arching her back playfully.

“Lux! Lux!”

“Spiiiiiinda,” The Pokemon fell on its feet once more but didn’t seem to mind as it got right back up again. Absol watched from the sidelines, seeming to pay particular attention to Luxray before resting his head once more. The games continued for some time until Louis and Mitch came back.

“We come bearing many gifts!” Louis exclaimed, placing the bags down on one of the camping tables. Omar looked up from waving the feather toy back and forth for Luxray and Sizzlipede.

“Thanks, I can get started right away,” Omar placed aside the feather toy and started to make his way to his supplies to prep.

“Oh, we can help,” Brody offered with a kind smile.

Omar looked up and nodded. “That would be great, if you could just cut up those vegetables,” He gestured over to the array of veggies besides him. Brody and Clementine immediately started helping out while Louis and Mitch took a break, receiving much love and attention from the different Pokemon. Omar started on the cooking, getting a good base for the curry while the rice cooked. Once the base was set and at the right consistency he added some of the berries, making a rich, flavorful sauce. Once the rice was done he placed it to the side and reseasoned a pan before placing veggie patties on it. The patties sizzled and popped from the heat. A warm, comforting flavor filled the air which made Mitch’s stomach growl while he tossed one of the toys for Golbat to catch.

Once enough of the patties were done, Omar set out to layer the plates. First with the soft, fluffy rice seasoned with mild spices, then he added the berry-filled curry sauce that the rice soaked in on contact. Lastly he added two veggies patties on each plate, ladling another small serving of the sauce on its side before presenting the dish. The other four looked in awe at the presentation of the dish.

“Holy shit!” Mitch wiped his mouth when drool started to appear on it.

“It looks amazing,” Clementine looked at it, the aroma of it overpowering her nostrils and causing her stomach to growl. Suddenly she felt a paw whack against her leg. Luxray looked up at her with large eyes.

“Don’t worry, I made enough for all your Pokemon too,” Omar moved back, revealing the different Pokemon bowls he had asked them to bring over. Each of them was filled with the same mouth-watering meal. “It should be the right amount based on what I know of your Pokemon’s usual weight and metabolism.”

“Whoa, you really thought of everything,” Brody looked at the food with a level of disbelief in her eyes. “I can’t believe you can make it look this good,”

“There is no need to wait: grab a seat and enjoy,” Omar motioned before sitting down himself. The others didn’t need to be told twice. Immediately they started to dig in along with their Pokemon. Some tried to take their time like Brody and her Cleffa while others struggled to maintain any manners like Louis and his Trubbish. The five sat around the table talking about some of their adventures along the way.

“Oh, you gotta camp with us again when we’ve got some of the others with us,” Louis spoke, a grain of rice shooting across the table.

Omar flicked aside the grain before looking at Louis who had an apologetic look on his face. “You don’t just travel together?”

“No, we usually only meet up here and there. Louis and I actually met Brody and Mitch one night when they needed a camp to crash at.” Clementine looked over at Brody.

“It was really sweet of them. That was the first time we met Marlon and Violet too. You remember that, Mitch?” Brody smiled at her boyfriend who swallowed his mouthful of food before responding.

“We also met Prisha there too,”

“You know a lot of other trainers.” Omar took another bite of his curry.

“Well, if you wouldn’t mind exchanging contact info you can join us again sometime,” Clementine’s offer shocked Omar who sat in silence considering it.

“I’d like that, but first,” Omar snatched up his bowls along with his Pokemon. “We should get the dishes done so we can move to dessert.”

“Holy shit, there’s more?” Louis’s eyes danced with excitement. Everyone helped out with the dishes. Even some of the Pokemon tried to as well, although some like Spinda were thanked for their offer but didn’t end up helping out.

Soon the pots and dishes were clean and Omar started once again, first getting the rice started off again then the base with sweeter spices to bring out the brighter, fruitier notes hidden with the berries.

When the sauce was done Omar asked each of them to take a turn whipping the cream, figuring it would be a nice way to have them help out. “You use your arms and position the bowl like this,” Omar demonstrated before passing off the bowl to Clementine who only took a few seconds to catch onto the gist of things. Omar put his focus back on the dish at hand and incorporated some more ingredients into the mix and after a few minutes of letting its stew, the juices formed together into a flavorful sauce he took off the heat.

Once again he gave special attention to detail when plating the dishes. The sweet rice was placed first then the bittersweet sauce was added next. Last but not least he added the whipped cream that each of the trainers had helped make. When it was done, everyone dug in once again.

“Fuckin’ A!” Mitch’s eyes brightened. “This is fucking delicious,” He scarfed down his dessert within seconds. Omar shook his head at how fast Mitch had inhaled the food. He didn’t even bother to savor it. But a small smile crept up onto Omar’s lips, happy for all the compliments his dishes were getting.

After the meal was done, the five of them sat around and talked for a bit longer. They shared some funny stories with their Pokemon, some of which seemed to not care while others seemed to understand their trainer’s words and took some offense to it.

“Come on, Bellsprout, it was cute!” Louis pleaded but the Bellsprout had jumped off his lap and after a few seconds of struggle had plopped itself onto Clementine’s lap.

“Bell,” it huffed, turning away from Louis’ face.

“I should probably head to bed. My Pokemon seem pretty tired,” Omar’s head tilted to his arms where all three of his Pokemon had fallen asleep.

“Oh, before we forget, here!” Louis hands shot forward, holding his phone. “ Your info!” Omar took the phone and one by one the others handed theirs forward until everyone’s contact info had been inputted. With that Omar got up, wishing the others a good night sleep before dipping into his tent.

After a few minutes he was settled into his sleeping bag, the warmth slowly covering his body as a smile appeared on his lips. This had easily been the best campsite he had ever been to. Not only were the people nice, but their Pokemon had gotten along with his. Omar’s eyes fell upon his phone which laid beside his sleeping bag.

His smile grew as he thought of the prospect of another campsite night. For the first time on his journey he was excited to have run into other trainers.

#fanfic #twdg omar #twdg louis #twdg clementine #twdg moody #twdg bitch #twdg mitch #twdg brody #clouis #i want to be the very best au #pokemon

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oscopelabs · 5 years

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Paris sans Agnès by Andrew Lapin

It was morning in Paris when news of Agnès Varda’s death reached the world. On a hunch, I left the apartment I shared with my girlfriend in the city’s 5th arrondissement and walked the 30 minutes, past the hordes of tourists cramming into the skull-stacked Paris Catacombs, to reach Rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse neighborhood, where Varda had lived since 1951.

This is where Varda and her husband, fellow French New Wave filmmaker Jacques Demy, had purchased a derelict pink storefront and turned it into the production house Tamaris Films, later renamed Ciné-Tamaris, so they could produce Varda’s first film La Pointe Courte in 1954. The pair moved into the tucked-away apartment/studio complex and quickly became fixtures of the neighborhood, spreading art, whimsy, and cats around their tiny world (although the building’s exterior remained in poor shape, with paint perpetually peeling and the roof leaking). For the next nearly seven decades, Varda sightings on Rue Daguerre were an everyday occurrence: “the funny little woman in the red-and-white hair,” as one Parisian described her to me. It was fitting that Varda had inherited the spirit of this street from its original namesake Louis Daguerre: inventor of the daguerreotype, the first commercially available form of photographic imagery and the predecessor to the medium that Varda changed forever.

So Ciné-Tamaris seemed like the natural spot for a spontaneous Varda memorial. I arrived around 2:30 and a small crowd was beginning to gather, much of them reporters like myself, prowling the block for grieving soundbites. Flowers and handwritten notes already lined the sidewalk. Occasionally someone, usually a woman, would gingerly approach the display bearing flowers of their own; the person would pace along the length of the building for a few minutes, searching for the ideal spot, and then kneel down to place their offering among the others, so that it was visible but not too ostentatious.

Sometimes a person would reach the entrance of Varda’s sacred place and, instead of leaving flowers, ring the doorbell; immediately a young man or woman would answer the door, size up the greeter to determine if they were a close relation, and then beckon them inside, and you could make out just a glimpse of the entryway, the same one that all the lucky folks who interviewed Varda here over the years love to describe, with the prowling cats and the assorted found objects and the maze of different rooms connected by that entryway.

Others were drawn to the crowd but didn’t know what had brought us all here. “What’s going on?” one man asked me, and I answered that Agnès Varda had died. He gave a blank look; no idea who that was. I tried to explain, with my horrible French, that she was a famous Nouvelle Vague filmmaker, one of the last of her generation, but this too prompted no reaction. So I named the first title that came to my mind, which also seemed the most likely one for a Frenchman unfamiliar with the Nouvelle Vague to have seen – “Visages Villages” (Faces Places), the quirky 2017 documentary she had made with the muralist JR, in which the two had toured the countryside making art installations out of the folks they met in small French towns. It was a surprise worldwide hit, although it divided hardcore cinephiles I knew, some of whom thought the film was too cutesy and JR too posturing. At any rate, the man didn’t recognize the name. But he solemnly nodded all the same, to show he recognized someone monumental had passed, and that seemed enough, and he went on.

JR, as it happened, was presenting a massive new art installation at the Louvre that weekend. He’d covered the entire expanse of the museum’s outdoor Pyramide structure with his trademark screen-printed tarp to create an optical illusion of it rising out of a deep ravine. The effect was short-lived. Within 24 hours the tarp was being ripped up, both intentionally and not, by tourists, reminiscent of the scene in Faces Places where JR pastes a photo of Varda’s friend Guy Bourdin onto the side of a beach bunker and the tide washes it away.

Unlike her very young cohort, who often creates tactile public displays he knows will fade from view in short time, Varda herself was committed to something like the opposite: using her camera to make impermanent things permanent, to capture unusual people and their dissonant dreams on film before they faded away for good.

***

Another passerby, an older woman, was a longtime neighbor of Varda, having lived on Rue Daguerre for decades. She would see the filmmaker around all the time, she said. She most fondly recalled Varda’s 1975 documentary Daguerréotypes, in which she wandered her own street interviewing various shopkeepers and artisans, with a camera and microphone tethered back to her own house. Varda was interested in not only what these folks did for a living, but also what brought them to Paris and what they dreamt about at night. It was the ultimate “good neighbor” act, and also a convenient way for Varda to try to keep up her filmmaking output while raising young children at home.

The artisans of the type Varda profiled 44 years ago—the perfume maker, the magician, the accordion seller—have all but vanished from Rue Daguerre. And though Daguerréotypes never deviates from its pleasantly curious tone to reflect on their vanishing ranks, Varda seemed to be aware even when she was making the film that they were not long for this world. The artisan was a dying, hopelessly outclassed breed in Paris, a city that’s embraced mass-market goods and priced-out real estate like any other. Perhaps, as many critics smarter than I have noted, Varda saw a kinship in her neighbors because she, too, had devoted her life to a craft with no obvious commercial future, one that struck many outside observers as fundamentally useless.

Of all the commerce on the street today, including a comics vendor and a vegan bakery, I honed in on the most Daguerréotypes-like operation: a tiny frame shop with chipped, weathered exteriors, run by an older woman who kept the front door locked even during business hours. She opened the door for me, but when I asked her if she’d ever heard of Agnès Varda, she gave me the same blank look the man on the street had. “No, sorry,” she said, and shut it again.

Yet there was hope that Varda’s impact will be felt on generations of creative people to come. A young Parisian film student named Valentine brought a carton of seven potatoes to her house. Bending down, Valentine took out a Sharpie and scrawled one letter on each vegetable: “A-G-N-È-S.” She drew a heart on a sixth potato and laid it on top of the others, carefully propping up this tableau in the carton against the wall. The seventh potato was already shaped like a heart, and this one she let stand on its own.

Valentine had been sobbing as she did her work, but she soon grew excited to explain what she’d done. The potatoes, she said, were a tribute to Varda’s 2000 documentary The Gleaners and I, which was the first of her films that Valentine had seen and the one that made her want to make her own. In the movie, Varda had befriended various gleaners across the French countryside, communities of people who scoop up the leftover yield of a crop once it’s been abandoned by the commercial harvesters. More gleaners prowl urban centers looking for discarded food, clothes, and other scraps of life.

A rubber boots-clad dumpster diver proclaims people are “stupid” for throwing so much food away, but Varda’s never been the type to shame an audience. She’s content to open herself up to her subjects’ experiences, to glean what she can from their lives as well as her own (when she trains the camera on her own wrinkled hands and ponders the strangeness of having lived in her skin for so long). There’s a scene where Varda, delighted, gleans her own heart-shaped potatoes and holds them up for the camera: objects which no one else wanted, but which she has endowed with new purpose and clarity. After that film, “my little potato” became a common expression among the Varda family.

All three ethnographies came at very different stages of Varda’s life. She made Daguerréotypes at age 46, Gleaners at 71, Faces Places at 88. But they all concerned Varda’s efforts to ingratiate herself among the people of France, to learn more about life in her country outside of film circles. She was certainly an accomplished crafter of narrative films, as well, but it was with this unplanned trilogy that she enriched her deep bond with fans and ensured her own immortality in the French popular imagination. Besides the obvious fact of Varda’s gender, the strength she derived from simply being around other people might be what most distinguished her from Nouvelle Vague contemporaries like Godard and Truffaut, who only care(d) about the outside world inasmuch as it could be related back to their own vision of cinema. (And in Godard’s case, if that final passage of Faces Places is to be believed, the last one of the originals left standing has become impenetrable to even his oldest friends.)

Varda was 90 when she died, and much of her output at least since Gleaners centered in one way or another on her own impending death. Hell, as far back as 1962’s Cléo From 5 to 7, which centers on a pop star who awaits a possible terminal diagnosis, death and its effect on the everyday has been a major theme of her work. Thus, most of the gleaners now gathering at her residence were in agreement that today’s news, though heartbreaking, did not come as a surprise. But it did surprise Valentine. “I just saw her last week,” she said. Varda had attended the Paris premiere of her last feature, the career retrospective Varda par Agnès, and Valentine’s film class had been there to see her. The film had held its world premiere at this year’s Berlinale in February, perhaps because Varda knew even then she wouldn’t have made it all the way to Cannes in May.

How did she seem, I asked. “She looked very… tired,” one of Valentine’s friends volunteered. And now, a week later, she was gone. “I thought she was eternal,” Valentine said, shaking her head as though she knew how ridiculous that sounded. “I just wanted to thank her, I guess.”

***

Montparnasse Cemetery is situated just a few blocks north of Rue Daguerre, the final gathering spot of the French intellectual elite. Charles Baudelaire, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are all buried here. Varda is now here, too, buried alongside Demy, as per her wishes. Their headstone now reads “Famille Demy-Varda.” It’s topped with a collection of sunflowers, another crop of significance to Varda: her 1964 drama Le Bonheur had a sunflower motif, and one of her final art projects was “The Greenhouse of Happiness,” in which she constructed a shack out of 35mm prints of the film and placed fake sunflowers within it.

The gravesite is absolutely choking on flowers, notes, and trinkets. Bouquets hail from the French elite film school La Fémis, cinema giant MK2, various museums, the Paris mayor’s office. Another from the modern tradespeople of Rue Daguerre – today’s daguerreotypes, inspired by her portraits of yesterday’s. The love is so massive it has overflown the cemetery. On a stretch of road just over the wall, the Varda grandchildren had painted every sidewalk post on the block – more than 100 – with her trademark red-and-white bob.

And along the headstone, a ring of potatoes. Varda’s harvest is over. Now it’s time to glean.

#Agnes Varda #paris #filmmaker #film director #french new wave #nouvelle vague #jacques demy #faces places #jr #cleo from 5 to 7 #Daguerréotypes #oscilloscope #oscilloscope laboratories #o-scope labs #film writing #musings #film essay

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maybemitch · 5 years

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WHAT IT MEANS TO LOVE [2/3]

Description: “The love between a mother and daughter is forever”

Warning: brief events of episode 1&2. (I changed up the timing for episode one events. Clementine and AJ were at Ericson for around 2 weeks before Y/N and Beth showed up and the events played out from then) and swearing.

Word Count: 3,493

————

“the love between...”

The new location which the duo now held a residence had almost instantaneously became a sort of home to them. Neither of the two didn’t really mind the fact that the other students didn’t exactly trust them 100%, they both knew - Y/N more than Beth - if it was them in this situation, they would be feeling the same exact way. The main reason the other teenagers were taking a long time adjusting to the two of them was because they were practically strangers, who could potentially kill them in their sleeps.

Yet, Marlon was very persuasive when it come to reasoning with the rest of the group. He had used the examples about if it was one of them out there with the child, they would want to be let in. Therefore, everyone eventually came to terms with it and just got on with their horror filled lives.

On the night of their arrival, Brody had been the one to guide them to their room which would now be their’s permanently, after dinner. As soon as the brunette approached the door and swung it open, revealing the two bunk beds, she swivelled on her heels and left the two, though Y/N and Beth didn’t really care.

The main reason they didn’t really care, was because before they stepped inside, AJ came sprinting around the corner and into the door besides them, notifying the two new comers that they were one of their neighbouring rooms, the other still unknown. Though, with this information of them being neighbours, Clementine smiled while Y/N mirrored it, the same thought in their heads; the two children can play in the hallway until late.

Over the course of the next few days, the girls dormitory began to look more homey, from the decorations hanging around; all down to Y/N. Beth did help with them, she sorted out the desk which was in the room and covered it with stickers which she found in one of the abandoned rooms, which Marlon let them go too for a few things.

Y/N was the happiest she had been in a long while, she could have a break from being a parental figure all day long. She could either watch Beth draw on the courtyard steps or benches with Tenn and AJ, with a small smile on her lips or help Omar with cooking the meals, when he wanted help.

Yet, paradise doesn’t stay paradise for long, because everything has a downfall. No matter how you try for it not to happen.

On the night of Marlon and Brody’s murder, Y/N and Beth had only been at Ericson for a week. They had been woken up alongside Clementine and AJ, the two older girls meeting in the hallway, yet the girl in the ‘D’ hat advised her to stay in her room. So she listened.

However, things were taking too long for her liking. Therefore, she grabbed ahold of her gun, tucking it behind her in the waist band and pulled her shirt down over it. Y/N held out her hand, Beth timidly taking it while she held tightly to the small blanket she held onto ever since she was a baby.

The two walked into the courtyard together, Beth hiding behind her mother figure. The group of Ericson teenagers stood in the rain, listening back and forth between Clementine and Marlon who were equally bloody. Y/N tightened her hand which was holding Beth’s, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

The moment Marlon backed down, Beth rounded her mother figure and stood besides her. Y/N took the opportunity to kneel down, pulling her daughter into a side hug, but froze the moment a gun echoed around the area.

Beth gasped, pointing out at the sight before her. Y/N’s hand flew up, shielding her eyes, while whispering reassurance in her ears.

That was the night that Ericson changed.

————

A FEW WEEK LATER

“a mother and daughter...”

Y/N tapped her foot against the floor, nervous, cold, bored. She constantly rubbed her hands together, trying to use the flames from the fire to warm it. She shivered, Omar - the chef - passing a cardigan which was draped across the back of a chair.

Omar stirred the contents in the bowl, shaking his head as he witnessed the girl wrap the overly big cardigan around her small figure in his peripheral vision. His mouth twitched up into a smile, “You know, if you’re just going to stand there and shiver, is much rather have Louis here. Least he says words rather than mumbles and chatters his teeth”

Y/N chuckled, Omar was only joking, he would always seemed annoyed when she would accompany him cooking; it was their unique friendship. “Oh, we all know how you would love to hear more jokes about stew with Lou”

The sound of the front gate creaked open, Y/N peering over her shoulder seeking the noise. She smiled widely when she saw the supply runners slip into the premises; Mitch, Louis, Clementine, AJ and Beth.

Louis ruffled the young girls hair, making her frown and pout her lip out. She shoved his legs slightly, Louis acting as if it was hard enough to topple him over as he took a step back. Y/N giggled at the interaction, until she saw Louis crouch down and point into her direction. The dreadlocked boy laughed the moment Beth bounced up and down in her place and than ran leaving Louis with nothing but a daisy she pulled out her hair.

Beth reached the two which were cooking, Omar holding out an arm to protect the girl from running into the hot cooking material. Beth apologised but Omar let it side, as he pinched her cheeks.

“What’s for dinner, mar?” Beth asked using the nickname she had for the chef. The male looking around the court yard, before fishing out a small spoon for her and took the contents of the pot onto it and cooled it down before handing it over. Beth hastily took the spoon, spilling a small bit before putting the rest into her mouth and smiled, “Whats this? It’s nice”

Y/N bit her lip awaiting his response. Omar also ruffled her hair, pinching out one of the daisies which was slipping from her head, “That little lady was rabbit stew. And you said you didn’t like that”

Beth coughed, acting as if she didn’t like it. She stuck out her tongue, pointing at it and pulled down on Y/N’s sleeve. “Water. It’s taste vile”

“You’re contradicting yourself,” Omar pointed out, resulting in a baffled look from the small girl, “It means you said something but then said something else. So you said you liked it and then you didn’t. You’re contradicting yourself”

“Con-tra... contra... what?” Beth asked as she laced her hands with Y/N.

The older girl squeeze her daughters hand, “Omar is just being an nerd. Saying fancy words to confuse you. Okay?” Beth nodded before cuddling into Y/N legs so the cardigan wrapped around her slightly, “So you gonna tell me what happen outside and who put these daisies in your hair?”

“Louis did them,” Beth said instantly, picking at the fray edges of the cardigan, “We did our area, so i wondered around. I held onto his belt on that coat”.

“What’s he say to that?” Omar questioned, causing Beth to glare at him, “Only asking. He hates people touching his jacket”

Beth continued to glare at him until Y/N nudged her causing her to continue, “He was alright with it, thank you very much” she sassed to Omar, causing him to hold up his spoon in defensive, “I found a patch of daisies and begged him to put them in hair. He enjoyed doing it but Clem told us off”

“Why?” Omar asked and Y/N nodded wanting an answer.

“I think she’s stressed. With everything happening. The preparation?” Beth ended her turn of speech with a question. The older two teenagers hiding their head in shame, “Preparation for what?”

“You know Beth, ive told you” Y/N muttered, showing a small smile to Omar and took her daughter for a small walk to the benches located by the dorm. “When Clementine left almost two weeks ago she ran into people which wanted the school. They’re coming, so she wants to keep us safe”

Beth slumped down a bit, her shoulders shaking slightly, she was crying. Not because she didn’t like being told something but because she was scared. Everyone was, heck, Y/N was scared. She knew how to fight, but against people which didn’t know she was there or the dead.

Y/N pulled Beth into a close hug but removed her arm so she could tugged off the cardigan from her shoulders and drape it over the younger girls shoulders, “Bethany, are you okay?”

“I’m scared Y/N,” Beth muttered, lifting up her head showing the tears which stained her pale face, “What if something happens?”

“Like what?”

“Like you leave me. Something happens to you,” Beth cried harder. Y/N’s heart was breaking piece by piece. Y/N’s eyes brushed upon the courtyard, Omar locked eyes with her, pointing to the small girl but she shook her head not wanting him to worry. Omar had been the one which looked after Beth a lot of the time, he had been the one which taught her things which Y/N couldn’t, the older girl had been really thankful for him. Beth looked up to Y/N once again, her lip wobbling, “What if something happens to you like my Dad?”

Y/N held back a sob, her throat aching as she held it, “Nothing is going to me. I promise alright. I’m not leaving you, we’ve made it this far together haven’t we?”

“I’d miss you if you weren’t with me,” Beth mumbled. Her hand clicking lacing with Y/N’s, “I love you Y/N”

“And I love you too, Beth”

————

“is forever”

The night finally came of the next downfall of Ericson. They had been playing cards earlier, asking questions which were suitable for all ages. Y/N had never laughed as much as she did at that game, she totally had forgotten about the raiders which were coming to attack the school. She felt like a normal teenager for a split moment.

However, that all came to an end the moment Clementine and AJ jumped down from the watch tower, meeting up Louis to walk with the rest of the group. Y/N was nervous her nails were bleeding with the constant picking at them. Her hands were shaking and that was noticeable when she was putting up Beth’s hair into pigtails to prevent it from being grabbed. Beth held onto Y/N’s hand, preventing her from joining the rest of the group. Beth opened her mouth to speak, “What shall i do?”

“You. Stay with me. Alright.” Y/N demanded, Beth smiling with a small nod, “Good now let’s join the oth-“

Omar was shot. He fell back, cradling her leg in the process. Beth gasped, her little feet trying to take her to Omar but Y/N instantaneous grabbed ahold of Beth’s hand. She shot Omar a painful glance but the male nodded and the two female went to cover. Y/N placed Beth in the corner away from the action. Y/N was greeted by Violet and Louis who were joining her at the side. Her hands were shaking around the bow, the arrows lay besides Beth, her small hands holding them in place.

Violet almost noticed her heavy breathing straight away, giving her a side eye, “You okay?” she whispered, Louis also looking at her while Lilly and Clementine were shouting at one another.

“I’m fine. It’s just,” Y/N discreetly jagged her thumb backwards, indicating Beth, “She’s a kid”

Louis held out his hand, gently pushing Y/N, “Listen, when they run to the admin building, hop over the wall and follow. Vi and I will have your back alright? Clem will understand”

“Alright”.

Then everything happened slowly in the world. Mitch and Willy had placed the bomb which soon exploded, Mitch being the good friend ran to protect Tenn which lead to him being slashed in the throat. Y/N gasped the sight was something she knew she wouldn’t be able to get out of her head now. Eventually, Clementine shot an arrow, as a group of people fled to the admin building. Y/N hopped over the wall, lifting Beth up over also and ran. Bullets were being shot at the pair but Louis kept his promise and protected them, shooting arrows — even if they missed most of the time. Y/N shoved open the door, Clementine quickly rushing them up the stairs to the very top.

“Come on,” Beth guided her into a room which was not in use anymore. They pushed the door open revealing a small office which had a small desk which a broken computer monitor and a swivel chair.

The girls hid behind the desk in time for the door to be swung open, causing the pictures in the walls to dance slightly. Y/N clamped a hand over the young girls mouth, the person didn’t miss it though. They stalked over to the desk, sliding everything off the desk in one angry motion. There dirt hands gripped in the part where the gap was, Y/N trying to hide more into the corner with Beth close in her chest.

The unknown person yanked the desk backwards, Y/N’s back hitting the floor at the sudden loss of support. Beth screamed loud the moment she was torn from her mother’s grasp. A gun place to her temple, the unknown person smirked.

“You,” the barked, the gun pushed to Beth’s head, the cold metal making the small girl shiver, “Whats your name?”

“Beth,” she cried out. The gun making her uncomfortable. The person pointed down to Y/N which was starting to push herself up, “She’s Y/N”

The person shoved back Beth, the girls back hitting the wall at an impact causing her to sink down to the floor. Y/N witnessed it all, a yell admitting from her lips as her foot connected with the person knee, causing them to sink to the floor, losing the grip of their gun.

Y/N pushed herself up, her feet slipping in the floor as she rushed over to Beth’s side. She placed her fingers where her pulse should be, sighing in relief when she felt it. The unknown person got back up, holding the gun in their hands pointing it to the two somewhat defeated girls.

“Hand Beth over,” the person ordered, finger twitching on the gun. Y/N raised an eyebrow but did nothing, “Now”

Y/N removed Beth from her body and stood up slowly using the wall as support. The person took a step back letting a gap between them. Y/N’s lip twitched up, “Don’t touch my fucking daughter, you bitch”

The person was startled at the sudden outburst, the gun lowering for a split second. Y/N took the opportunity to lunge herself forwards, knocking the gun from the persons hand and onto the floor near the door. Y/N ripped out her knife from her boot, an pushing it up against the raiders throat. The raider squirmed underneath the the blade, causing it to cut themselves slightly.

“You don’t have the guts,” the raider spat, their hands patting down the floor in urge to find something to defend themselves. Y/N pushed the blade closer, the raider chuckling, “Do it. Lilly will take you before you could say shit”

Y/N grunted, her hand flying up to grab the hand the raider through and slammed it down to the floor, “Don’t you underestimate me. I’ll do it you know”

The raider struggled, the blade now becoming a pain to them. Coughing they spoke, “Lilly will take either of you. She doesn’t care about the fucking age. It’s you or the toddler”

Y/N pushed the blade again, this time blood started to puss it from the neck at a dribble. The raider closed their eyes at the pain and Y/N just smiled and laugh, “Hurts doesn’t it?” she pushed it closer, a cry of pain emitting from the raiders lips, “You’re not taking my daughter and your not taki-“

The sentence didn’t get finished because the door swung open, Y/N peered over her shoulder, another raider - male - stood with their gun held high. The raider beneath Y/N once again, lifted up their hand and collided it with the girls jaw, sending her down to the ground in pain. The male raider held out his hand, helping the other up and turned to receive the small girl.

“Wait,” the original raider ordered. The males did as told and turned facing them, his eyes locked onto the blood which acted like a necklace around their neck and the cut on their eyebrow which resembled an eyebrow piercing, they were going to speak up but didn’t want to face the consequences of it. The original raider pointed down to the unconscious Y/N, “She’s a fighter. She would do anything to get back to her. Its obviously she loves her dearly”

The male scoop up the girl, throwing her over his shoulder as he handed his gun to the other. The other held the gun high, shooting the silhouettes of the other teenagers running.

“How’d you know?” The male raider asked as he tightened his grip on Y/N.

The original raider peeked out the door, noticing everyone in a battle and dipped out the door, running to the cage which already had in 2 teenagers. Their lips curled, “She risked her life for her. Y/N loved her so much, she did what we more a less wanted. To give herself up willingly”

The raiders walked out of the gates, meeting up with the others which were hanging back while the rest fought the Ericson. The male pulled out a cigar from his pocket, handed it over to the other and lit it up, “Wouldn’t really call it willingly, would ya?”

Sniggering the other raider shrugged, “Willingly, forced. Sounds the same to me”.

Eventually, Lilly ordered everyone out. The horse with the cage running away down the woodland path. Lilly threw a molotov, fire engulfing the front of the school, preventing the remainders from following them.

Beth came stumbling out of the admin building, dropping to her knees. A hand placed itself on her shoulder, the sound of knees clicking made her shiver but the familiar scent made her relax; Louis.

“You okay, Kiddo?” He asked, his eyes glancing down to her and then out to look for Y/N or Clementine. Beth shook her head, her pigtails wobbling at the base of her hair. Louis gave her a squeeze and pulled her close, “Talk to me, Beth”

“They took her,” Beth cried. Louis held as she cried into his shoulder. He didn’t mind the that this would stain his jacket for a moment, the small girl was hurt, he knows how it is to lose someone, someone close to him. Beth sniffed as she pulled back. The look on her face made Louis heart break, the tear ran down her face, her eyes were puff and nose runny. Louis ran his thumb pad over a tear, as he pulled a face to make the girl chuckle slightly, “Is she going to die?”

“What?” Louis instantly replied his face twisted in confusion. Then it soften as he processed what she asked and shook his head, dreadlocks shaking, “No. Y/N won’t die. We’ll get them back. Vi, Aasim, Omar and Y/N. Especially Y/N for your sake, okay?”

Beth stuck out her lip and then pushed her pinkie out, “Promise?”

Louis hooked his pinkie with the girl, nodding “Promise”.

Louis knew that Beth loved Y/N and Y/N loved Beth. And that their love was strong, like anyone else’s love. Louis knew that Y/N would do anything to get back to her daughter, he knew that Y/N would rebel - even in the short time they knew one another - he knew that Y/N wouldn’t give in and convert herself to a member of Delta.

Beth also knew that Y/N would do anything to get back. Beth understood that Y/N went through hell to get them to where they were, to a place which they could call home, a place which could be their safety blanket. Beth knew that Y/N would go to them ends of the earths to make her way back to her, because at the end of the day, that’s what it means to love.

————

i’m not saying that i prefer the clouis route over the violetine. the reason i allowed violet to be captured is because this way no one is harmed (you guys know what i mean if you’ve played/watched epsiode 3)

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ALIVE (this can be read separately, but if you want more backstory with this Y/N then read it and if you want more Beth content, read this)

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purkinje-effect · 5 years

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The Anatomy of Melancholy, 41

Table of Contents. Second Instar, Chapter 8. Go to previous. Go to next. In a wasteland survival fic, does this chapter constitute schmoop?

________________________________

Locked up in his head as they walked along the modular concrete hallways of the Research and Development wing, ‘Choly had just shared with Angel what Olivia had described of the base, and their plans for the next day. He wanted to avoid this building as much as possible.

“Sir, allow me to take you across grounds,” Angel insisted alongside him. “You just installed these handles and footrests on me, and you should--”

“--I’m fhhine,” he slurred, waving a hand at the Handy. “Just trying to draft the order of... how to go about settling back in. How to cover the least distance. Optimize the path to a bed, if I can.”

“You don’t seem fine, but I won’t press it... Perhaps you’d like to start with the enlisted barracks, and work your way over to the officers’ barracks? You could... start things off with a nice, hot shower? Hm-hm?”

He stuttered awe under his breath in Russian, and tried to ignore any suggestion that he looked as inebriated as he felt.

“They have hot water?” he mouthed at Angel.

“Deenwood hosts so many things! Come along now. It’s already past nineteenth hour, and you’ve told Miss Olivia that we’ll rejoin at sixth tomorrow. We must get you washed and dressed and fed.” It chortled anxiously. “Thank you, for at least letting me escort you.”

“There’s just something about being on base again that’s making me feel... right,” he defended, implicitly begging that it let him enjoy the moment. “You’re more than just my mobility, Angel. So much more.”

Halfway across the courtyard, a Mister Gutsy intercepted them.

“Captain,” it grunted in affirmative. “I’ve been tasked with running errands for you tonight. Give the order.”

“Ah, yes... Green Three?” he fielded, gauging by the white lettering on its dull green side. He’d never really noticed non-personnel G.A. robots went by designations, but it made sense. “I... I suppose it’s gauche for me to be on base in anything but uniform, all things considered. Could you outfit me fresh?”

“Yes, Sir!” G-3′s triplicate golden ocular lenses scrutinized his form before stiffening in place. “Measurements taken.”

“That’s all for now. Angel and I are headed to the showers at the enlisted barracks.”

“Deliver the uniform to Mister Handy nicknamed Angel, at the enlisted barracks’ baths. Roger.” It sped off toward the storage building which stood between the R&D wing they’d just exited and the Robotics wing--the only three hangar-like concrete structures on the property.

The two of them arrived at the enlisted barracks at the North end of the property. To the left lay the soldiers’ quarters, while to the right lay the community showers. The enlisted mess hall stood separate from this building behind it. Without hesitation he turned right, then right again into the men’s side, and handed Angel his cane so that he could disrobe. He deposited his Pip-Boy, visor, orthotics, hairpins, and clothing on a bench in the changing area. The notion of a working shower possessed him, carrying one step in front of the last, and before he knew it, he was turning the handle and standing directly under the water without even testing the temperature first, or checking that he was, in fact, all alone with Angel keeping watch.

Soon both the water and his relieved bliss ran hot down his cheeks. He shut his trembling eyes and lifted his face to the apparent water pressure. He left his mouth open a moment to trap water, which he squirted out for effect. After some time his head dipped, to let the hot water stream down his aching neck and back. Angel eventually interrupted his detachment from reality. Being handed his toiletries got him crying like at a wedding.

Lathering his hair, ‘Choly thought to his initial impression to encountering Olivia again like this. Her smart style with one side shaved that apparently compensated for a balding patch, her thick phlegmatic voice, her exposed turbinates, her... her... He really was attracted to ghouls now, wasn’t he? He remembered his promise to Angel--use Rad-X--and ribald notions of both Olivia and Hawthorne alike melted him apart where he stood.

He stood. Angel was right. He didn’t remember standing this much in a day, in months. His blood pressure didn’t feel like it had dipped or spiked. His posture didn’t feel especially infirm. He still ached, and the cane still made the going easier... but he didn’t quite feel himself.

I should be crumpled over by now, bathing on a folding chair, he reasoned. I spent my morning repairing Bogey. It told me about the Rust Devils. I blew an hour on a bucket of golf balls. I traveled nearly two hours atop Angel without stopping, and avoided a Rust Devil attack right when we got to Chelmsford. I found out one of my coworkers survived and is still alive, and we got drunk... “And now I’m standing in the first hot shower I’ve had in two hundred years, waiting for the water to run cold and slap me in the face so I wake up. Too much for one day. Too much in so many ways.”

When he finally turned the water off, he dried himself and sat on the bench in the changing area. The Gutsy had brought a folded khaki uniform and a set of skivvies to match, combat boots in his size, and also a navy bathrobe. He slipped on the tee, underwear, and robe once his skin was dry enough, but didn’t tie the waist. His eyes widened as he toweled at his hair.

“Or maybe the problem is, I feel exactly like myself.”

He favored the ankle stability of a boot, over low quarters like his oxfords. Lacking confirmation that any living persons but Olivia and himself existed on this base, he remained in the bathrobe for the rest of the night. As he put his Pip-Boy back on, he noticed his orthotics, Vault Suit, and Pharm Corps coat had gone missing, only because his nameplate and bars lay on the bench atop the folded fresh uniform.

“Did G-3 take my effects, Angel?” he called.

“G-3 said that it waited until you had a convenient time to change clothes, to take them. It boasted that it knew a thing or two about getting out blood stains. As do I ! I tried to tell it that I could operate laundry equipment with my sensors disabled, but it insisted that I stay by you, as your escort.” Angel reentered the baths to hover before him. “My word, Sir. I... I have to say how good it is to be back at Deenwood. We robots might have our exceptions with one another, but we were a complex and thriving network of chums. Just as you befriended your colleagues.”

‘Choly stared at the rectangular brooch of metal and brightly dyed embroidered ribbon, signifying ten years of stripes and pips mounted together. What did he really have to show for his decade of service? His throat caught at length, until he pinned his nameplate and bars to the robe in lieu of his coat.

“I... didn’t have friends,” he finally said in passing, starting toward the front door. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Finally hungry enough to do something about it. Shall we see if the officers’ mess hall’s furnished?”

They crossed South to the officers’ side of the property in the brisk night air. Entering the mess hall, he encountered a modestly cozy arrangement of vinyl-upholstered chrome chairs in sets of four at eight round tables. Large fake potted plants tucked themselves to each corner, and beside each support column. To one side of the space, he’d have found the beverage offerings, while to the other, he found an à la carte window winged by a pair of Eat-O-Tronic machines. In one, he found MREs, and in the other, he would have found desserts. After his experience with the pharmacy break room, it relieved him to find no moldy remains in the vending slots; in the same stroke, he praised the base’s stockpile of perfectly preserved rations. He eagerly selected the beef tips and mashed potatoes package, but before he could get it open, the Mister Handy at the window hemmed and held out a pincer.

“Monsieur, if I could get that for you,” it began, in a French accent.

“...Yes, of course.” He handed it over dumbly. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure!” In a flash, it produced a tray with the now-heated contents of the MRE on a plate, including the instant cocoa packet. “Bon appetit!”

“...I could have... Oh, no matter.” Angel zipped over to at least pull the chair for ‘Choly. “Sir, while you dine, I’d love the chance to catch up with Louis, if I may. I’ll be within earshot.” It didn’t await confirmation before darting behind the swinging door in the far corner.

The potatoes couldn’t help tasting like cardboard two hundred years later, but the beef tendered up like it had never been preserved in a jerky-like state, and the gravy had him lolling back in the chair to savor it. The soy-based cocoa struck him as an innocent indulgence amid the options he’d had in prior months. The hot mug in his hands comforted him, and he couldn’t help but smile dopily at hearing the two Mister Handies in the kitchen chatting and laughing unintelligibly.

Angel’s not lonely here.

'Choly took his tray back to the window once he was done, and he and Angel thanked Louis and bid it goodnight. The walk from the mess hall was short, but was incumbent of the most anticipated part of the night for him. The officers’ residential block was a set of three identical rows of twelve two-story rowhouses apiece. Habitually, he walked up the three steps of the second row’s third door, like always, and opened the front door on bated breath. Standing in the entryway, he flicked on the light switch to find the electricity worked, and he smiled in distraction as he took in the thick layer of dust on every surface. The dark green velour couch and armchair were still there, as were the hanging floor lamp, the coffee table, and the kitchen table and chairs.

“I have my work cut out for me,” Angel beamed. It shut the door behind them and immediately set to dusting off the living room.

Compulsion seized him again, and he mounted the creaking stairs at a persistent, lurching pace until he stood in the doorway of what had once been his bedroom. The queen size mattress lay bare before him, in tact. His throat caught again, aghast, and he slumped against the door frame to gawk. It took a few tries before he successfully swallowed. Angel came up behind him after a spell.

“Oh Sir, are you all right?”

He looked to it with a haunted desperation.

“Nothing has felt this right since I thawed.”

He sniffed, and leveraged with his cane to stand fully again. He requested a canister of water, his toothbrush and toothpaste, mouthwash, and hairbrush, which Angel obliged, and he vanished into the upstairs bathroom closing the door behind him.

As he brushed his teeth, he stared at himself in the hoary glass mounted on the wall. A single crack ran from one corner to the other, right through the middle, but for the most part, the mirror functioned like a mirror. He nearly felt like the whole base had been transfigured by some perverse stasis just like he had, all but sheltered from the end of the world and here awaiting him all this time. He shivered and cinched his robe, then spat and moved on to the mouthwash.

Simple hygiene really is a luxury now, isn’t it? he thought to himself as he rinsed his face.

He came out of the bathroom to find that Angel had made his bed with the hospital blanket and pillows before vanishing back downstairs. He sat on the edge of the bed to remove his boots and socks, and brushed out his hair which had finally dried by then. The brush went to the nightstand, and he hung the robe on the hook on the bathroom door. He turned out the lights, and passed out face-down in anticipation of the first quality sleep he’d gotten in two hundred years.

Go to Next »»»

#fallout 4 #fallout 4 fanfic #fo4 fanfic #fo4 #chase r&d #sole survivor #mister handy #mister gutsy #louis sounds like rene auberjonois fight me #melancholy #angel #louis #g-3 #the anatomy of melancholy

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darcyckennedy · 5 years

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☆— HEY UPPER EAST SIDERS, SPOTTED: d who looks just like kendall jenner. according to an anonymous source she is perfect contour, wild after parties, & teddy coats to make up for a lack of cuddles. she was last caught listening to miss you by louis tomlinson. the cisfemale is from the upper east side and attended constance billard. DARCY COX KENNEDY still lives in the city at twenty three and is currently a socialite & philanthropist. let’s see what she is going to do next. xoxo, gossip girl. ( admin tamia. nineteen. est. she/her. )

WOW okay, hi there ! i’m tamia, the admin of the group...can i just say i love you all already for applying and applying with such amazing character’s that i cannot wait to start plotting with. a little about me i guess, i’m a nineteen year old college student who lowkey doesn’t wanna be a college student...the dream is the be an actress but my mom’s all “go to college” “the only way to make something of yourself is through college” so yeah. i’m a part-time waitress at the OG aka olive garden so i make alot of Bread jokes that are really bad, i get them from the guests honestly. but that’s enough about me, let’s get to my lil peanut here who is truly a mess, i apologize in advance for her guys.

darcy was born to two elite heavy weights. her mother, georgina cox, is a american billionaire heiress the great-granddaughter of james m. cox the founder of cox enterprises. her father, john f. kennedy jr, was a american lawyer and the son of president john f. kennedy. yes, she’s a kennedy guys.

one month old. her parents broke up after a six year relationship. staying amicable to co-parent although she mostly lived with her father. staying with her mother a couple days of of the week. as her mother was often off in atlanta, with darcy’s grandmother. it was clear from infancy that she was daddy’s little girl, so the fact that she was with him more only made sense.

one year old. her father and carolyn bessette got married. darcy was the flower girl, and truly adored carolyn. the wedding is one of the few days she vividly remembers with her father.

four years old. her mom decided to bring her down to georgia with her for a family event. her dad and carolyn decided to go out to martha’s vineyard during this time where they inevitably crashed the plane and were lost at sea. she was supposed to be picked up by her father three days after but was instead brought back to manhattan by her aunt caroline.

two months later. her aunt kept what happened to her parents a secret for months, initially telling her they couldn’t leave massachussetts due to bad weather conditions, then they suddenly went to africa for philanthropic work. before she knew it darcy had become a completely different child, starting to project her her anger and fear that her father had abandoned her onto others.

the truth. during this time her mother finally stepped forward, brought darcy on a trip to martha’s vineyard and told her about her father and stepmother’s death. it became clear that the trip was specifically meant for darcy to say goodbye to them at their burial.

the aftermath. darcy was distraught for months, it was hard for a young child to wrap her head around the sole person she had attached to being gone forever. her mom immediately found her a psychiatrist who darcy saw twice a week. instead of moving back in with her aunt she moved in with her mom, the two never got close but her mom was the only person that darcy felt she could trust because she was the only one who told her the truth about her father.

ten years old. her attitude became worse. she had truly turned into the stereotypical ues child. it had become too much for her mother to bear and so darcy moved in with her great uncle ted kennedy at the kennedy compound in cape cod. he was possibly the best thing to ever happen to her, he told her endless stories about her father and grandfather which helped her feel closer to both of them. this was when she really started to grow back into the young women her father would have wanted her to become.

thirteen years old. ted and darcy set up a memorial service for her father, at the same cathedral in washington d.c that her grandfather’s service was held. the whole family was invited and because of this it became extremely publicized but darcy didn’t care, this was meant for her to say a proper goodbye to her father and nothing could ruin that for her.

fourteen years old. her great uncle had been diagnosed with brain cancer fifteen months prior, she had stayed with him throughout the whole journey, refusing to leave his side, he had become the closest thing to her father over the years that she lived with him. he died at the kennedy compound in the summer and darcy reluctantly had to move back to manhattan and live with her mom. his death affected her nearly as much as her father’s and it’s a death she carries with her everyday.

psychiatric state: upon her return to the ues her mom once again immediately put darcy into counseling a different and more renowned psychiatrist this time. darcy quickly started to feel like her mother stuck her with a psychiatrist so she wouldn’t have to talk to her daughter about everything that’s gone on, her mother instilled this idea that you don’t talk to anyone about your troubles but a psychiatrist, to everyone else you need to come off happy and content with life no matter how hard it gets. her psychiatrist dr. hill has helped her through alot but she still struggles everyday feeling like she’s a victim of the infamous kennedy curse.

return to the ues. darcy’s return to the upper east side was a whirlwind to say the least. she came back right in time four the first day of highschool. it was a big day to say the least as no one expected her arrival. she reuniting with old friends, was swarmed by paparazzi once again, and made new friendships. she was different this time though, poised, friendly, and charismatic unlike the blair waldorf-esque self she was as a child.

constance billard. during school she was very academic. history was possibly her favorite, maybe because her family was apart of it. she participated in debate team and lacrosse, which she became captain of both by her senior year. she graduated constance with a 3.9 gpa and was accepted into columbia, harvard, and brown. she was tempted to attend brown just to feel a bit closer to her dad but decided to opt out of college all together.

socialite & philanthropy. coming out of school she decided to dive head first into some charity work, from working with unicef to the national brain tumor society. by twenty she became a unicef ambassador and started her own foundation, the darcy kennedy foundation, a nonprofit organization focusing on finding better treatments for cancer patients as well as helping children who have lost their parents due to any sort of fatal event. and of course being who she is she’s been paid to attend events, galas, and parties since she was about fifteen years old, a true american socialite lol.

publicity. as much as everyone tried, it was an impossible feet for a kennedy to stay out of the lime light, especially when you’re the daughter of jfk jr. despite the attempts made by her parents and other family members darcy was often spread across magazine covers, and webpages. as she grew older it only seemed to get worse.

personality. today, darcy is kind, caring, and charismatic. she’s the girl who walks around with a resting bitch face but will walk up to you with a bright smile and compliment your head to toe and genuinely mean every word. to piggyback off that she is extremely genuine and because of this she is also rather loyal, if she cares for you, you never have to worry about her doing something to hurt you or that could hurt you int he slightest. she is rather mature due to everything she’s gone through in life and because of this is often the voice of reason, a total mom friend but don’t think for a minute she doesn’t know how to have fun, because darcy can truly be the life of the party and is always down for an adventure; she is loud, witty, and just overall a good time think, imari stuart.

romantic life. when it comes to relationships the girl is a mess. she dated a brooklyn boy during sophomore year, but she never got past the lust phase with him and so she broke things off with him six months later (wanted connection *cough* *cough*). during junior year she started dating a guy who was everything she was looking for in the last, she fell head over heels for him almost immediately, which was really her downfall in the end. he’s broken her heart more times than one, but she can’t seem to let him go even six years later. she’s had hook ups and short lived relationships sprinkled in between while her and sawyer aren’t together but no one compares in her eyes; she’s been with girls, guys, and everyone in between in an attempt to find someone to get her mind off of her ex but nothing works.

fun facts. her first car was a used 1994 saab that was not in style or cool by any means it was her dad so she didn’t car, but now she owns a few cars that could genuinely put most cars to shame lmao (found here), loves all kinds of music and you never want to put her on aux unless you want to listen to a whole lot of classics/throwbacks like queen, frank sinatra, usher, the beatles, and britney spears, she’s slept with leonardo dicaprio (weird flex i know), she moved out when she was 18 and currently lives at 12 east 88th street (found here), if you’re ever looking for her you can probably find her at a bar with a burger in one hand and a glass of sangria in the other, she is 5′10″ and has a tendency of wearing high heeled boots with give her even more height, she’s never done a narcotic a day in her life but will drink anyone and their father under the table, her great-uncle left most of his belongings to his widow but he did leave darcy 50million dollars for her trust fund, while her father left her everything from material assets to 100million dollars that also went to her trust, when she was 18 she was given her trust found including 100million from her mother.

#upper:intro #death tw #cancer tw #« 𝕒𝕓𝕠𝕦𝕥. // become stronger and you wont need an easy life »

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mariebenz · 3 years

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Study Results Show How to Help Vets with Signature Injury of Recent Wars

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr. Mahncke Henry Mahncke, PhD Chief Executive Officer Posit Science Dr. Mahncke earned his PhD at UCSF in the lab where lifelong brain plasticity as discovered. At the request of his academic mentor, he currently leads a global team of more than 400 brain scientists engaged in designing, testing, refining, and validating the computerized brain exercises found in the BrainHQ app from Posit Science, where he serves as CEO. This week, MedicalResearch.com interviews Dr. Mahncke about a new study, with breakthrough results for service members and Veterans grappling with the signature injury of recent wars. MedicalResearch.com: What makes this study newsworthy? Response: As the last troops come home from Afghanistan, the battle is not over for many who served and continue to grapple with the signature injury of recent conflicts — mild Traumatic Brain Injury (or mTBI). Typically, such injures were caused by blasts or concussions, and they’ve been diagnosed in more than 300,000 service members. Most recover within a couple days or weeks, but for many — some estimate fifteen percent — physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive problems persist for years. Such injuries often go untreated, because treatments focus on in-person, customized, cognitive rehabilitation, which can be helpful, but is costly, time-consuming, requires travel for treatment, and relies on the craft and expertise of the healthcare provider. Up until now, there’s been no effective intervention that’s highly-scalable and that can be delivered remotely. This study showed that remotely-administered BrainHQ computerized exercises improved overall cognitive performance in a population with very persistent cognitive issues. On average, patients in this study had cognitive issues for more than seven years. That means we finally have a tool shown effective in a gold-standard study that practitioners can employ in treating this large and underserved population, who sacrificed so much to serve our nation. MedicalResearch.com: Who funded and ran the study? How was it designed?

Response: The US Department of Defense funded the BRAVE study with a research grant from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program to examine the use of a brain-plasticity-based cognitive training program (BrainHQ) as an intervention for service members and Veterans suffering from cognitive impairment following mTBI. The study was conducted through a nationwide network of five military and Veterans’ medical centers (NICoE/Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda; Schofield Barracks/Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu; Baylor/Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston; Yale/VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven; and Harvard/VA Boston Healthcare System in Boston); with Posit Science in San Francisco serving as the study coordination center. In terms of design, this was a multi-year, multi-site, prospective, parallel-armed, double-blinded, randomized controlled trial, with an active control group. It’s a gold-standard design. BRAVE enrolled 83 participants with a history of mTBI and diagnosed with cognitive impairment, and randomized subjects into a treatment group (BrainHQ) and an active control group (computer games). Both activities were plausibly expected to have some positive impact due to their demands on cognitive realms, such as attention, memory, and reasoning. Each group self-administered training in their own homes, with telephone supervision from trained coaches, and were asked to train for one hour per day, five days per week, for twelve weeks. Comprehensive cognitive assessments were performed before training, after training, and after a twelve-week, no-training, follow-up period. MedicalResearch.com: Who was in the study? Response: Participants had an average age of 33 years and were 81% male. Before training, they showed meaningful cognitive impairment, testing about 2 standard deviations below normal scores on the ANAM (a standardized cognitive test used by the military to screen for cognitive impairment). Typically, they had been deployed to combat areas and, on average, had their most recent mTBI more than seven years earlier. Across a standardized set of emotional and psychological health measures (including depressive symptoms, PTSD symptoms, and cognitive symptoms), participants scored in the mild-moderate impairment range. On the whole, these participants were representative of service members with a history of mTBI who seek treatment for their cognitive issues so they can re-integrate with, and contribute to, society. MedicalResearch.com: What did the study show?

Response: The BrainHQ group had a statistically and clinically significant improvement on overall cognitive function compared to the computer games group, and this benefit persisted for at least twelve weeks after training ended. Cognitive function improvements were nearly four times larger in the BrainHQ group than the computer games group, as measured immediately following training, and nearly five times larger when measured again 12 weeks later (with no further training). Twice the percentage in the BrainHQ group showed reliable improvements compared to the computer games group – with 77% in the intervention group experiencing clinically significant change compared to 38% in the active control; and with 37% in the intervention group experiencing a full standard deviation of change compared to 18% in the active control. On average, participants in the BrainHQ group improved on the cognitive performance composite measure by 24 percentile ranks – as though they went from the 50th percentile to the 74th percentile. While results on the primary cognitive measure were significant, analysis of functional and self-report measures did not show significant between group differences. However, on many measures both groups showed improvement, suggesting general benefits of cognitive engagement and study inclusion. MedicalResearch.com: What are the implications? Response: Treatment of mTBI is complex, and patients typically manifest distinctive sets of physical, mental, emotional and cognitive symptoms that require individualized courses of treatment. This trial provides significant evidence that this specific form of self-administered brain-plasticity-based cognitive training can be incorporated as part of an evidence-based treatment plan to improve cognitive function in people with cognitive symptoms following mTBI. This is the first broadly-applicable and highly-scalable approach in mTBI shown effective in a randomized controlled trial. This is the first such approach applicable even in remote location – meaning that trained clinicians who currently can only see patients in-person once or twice a week can extend their reach and supervise patients over the internet doing daily brain training anywhere in country – or in the world. This means that any service member or Veteran in need of help could have the opportunity to receive evidence-based treatment, remotely supervised by a trained clinician. MedicalResearch.com: When will this be widely available as a treatment for service members with mTBI?

Response: BrainHQ has been used in dozens of military and Veterans’ facilities for cognitive rehabilitation, under the supervision of healthcare professionals; however, that has not made it broadly available to service members and Veterans. With the publication of these results, Posit Science, the maker of BrainHQ, has indicated it intends to work with clinicians, payors, and regulators to make this widely available, as quickly as possible. MedicalResearch.com: What was most surprising about the study? Response: I suppose for many practitioners and policymakers it will be a surprise that these brain exercises can drive this kind of change — even when administered remotely. To me — and probably to the relatively modest number of scientists closely following studies of BrainHQ — these results were not surprising. After all, a very convincing case (based on prior studies) had to be made to win the highly competitive CDMRP grant that funded the study. Back then, there were dozens of peer-reviewed studies of BrainHQ; now, there are hundreds. Even though it is well known among brain scientists that running a study among brain-injured patients can be challenging and time-consuming, I was somewhat surprised how long it took to complete this study. However, I suppose what is most surprising to me — after spending years and millions of dollars to get to this result, which addresses a large unmet need of our military and Veteran is t — is that an even longer, steeper road lies ahead in getting this evidence-based solution into the hands of those it can help. I very much welcome the support we seem to be getting from policymakers, since the announcement of the results, and am resolute in my resolve to work with like-minded supporters of our troops to make this widely available. Citation: Henry W Mahncke, Joseph DeGutis, Harvey Levin, Mary R Newsome, Morris D Bell, Chad Grills, Louis M French, Katherine W Sullivan, Sarah-Jane Kim, Annika Rose, Catherine Stasio, Michael M Merzenich, A randomized clinical trial of plasticity-based cognitive training in mild traumatic brain injury, Brain, 2021;, awab202, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awab202 The information on MedicalResearch.com is provided for educational purposes only, and is in no way intended to diagnose, cure, or treat any medical or other condition. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health and ask your doctor any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. In addition to all other limitations and disclaimers in this agreement, service provider and its third party providers disclaim any liability or loss in connection with the content provided on this website. Read the full article

#braininjury #mentalhealth #@medresearchnews #BrainHQ #concussion #DeptVetAffairs #TBI

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soldouthaz · 4 years

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hii! thank you so much for this ask I can’t believe I hadn’t though of doing this before!

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please let me know if I have used any incorrect pronouns or linked anything incorrectly, or if you'd like me to unlink to something! :)

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in no particular order:

✰ falsegoodnight

ao3 | @risthebrave | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, soulmates, uni au’s

personal recs: x , x , x , x

✰ pinkvinyl

ao3 | @pinkvinyl | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, pwp

personal recs: x

✰ outropeace

ao3 | @outropeace | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, soulmates

personal recs: x , x , x

✰ faeriestyles

ao3 | @yvesaintlourent | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, trailer park! harry, a/b/o, pwp

personal recs: x

✰ allwaswell16

ao3 | @allwaswell16 | twitter

common work tags/tropes: cowboy au, assassin au, bottom Louis, bottom harry, a/b/o, soulmates, uni au’s, hate to love, vampires, drabbles, football, royal au’s, side ziam

personal recs: x , x , x , x

✰ smittenwithlouis

ao3 | @smittenwithlouis | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, fantasy au’s, magic, hybrid Louis, mythical creatures

personal recs: x , x

✰ lads_laddylads

ao3 | @lads-laddylads | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, pwp, vampires, uni au’s

personal recs: x , x , x

✰ whoknows

ao3 | @crazyupsetter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, canon elements, dom/sub, a/b/o, supernatural / fantasy elements, drabbles, pwp, hybrid Louis

personal recs: x , x , x , x , x , x

✰ itjustkindahappened

ao3 | @tequiladimples

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, fluff, mythology, drabbles

personal recs: x

✰ delsicle

ao3 | @eeveelou

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, ‘thick alpha’ verse, pwp, dunkirk inspired works, mpreg, polyamory, some dark themes / horror, Alex from dunkirk, drabbles

personal recs: x , x , x , x , x

✰ jaerie

ao3 | @jaerie

common work tags/tropes: a/b/o, bottom Louis, bottom harry, canon elements, gender swap, drabbles, mpreg, historical au’s, pwp

personal recs: x , x , x ,

✰ louizsv

ao3 | @louizsv

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, d/s dynamics, vampires, some fantasy / supernatural elements

personal recs: x , x

✰ brooklyn_babylon

ao3 | @brooklyn-babylon

common work tags/tropes: bottom harry, pwp

personal recs: x

✰ 2tiedships2

ao3 | @2tiedships2 | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, a/b/o, enemies to lovers, fake dating, fluff

personal recs: x , x , x

✰ disgruntledkittenface

ao3 | @disgruntledkittenface

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, bottom harry, drabbles, d/s elements, gender swapping / girl direction, hurt/comfort, fluff

personal recs: x , x

✰ summerwine

ao3 | @smrwine

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, pwp, feminization, dom/sub

personal recs: x , x , x

✰ loadedgunn

ao3 | @loaded-gunn

common work tags/tropes: bottom harry, bottom Louis, pwp, dom/sub, gender swap / girl direction

personal recs: x , x , x

✰ edensrose

ao3 | @holdingthornsandroses | twitter

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, historical au

personal recs: x

✰ angelichl

ao3 | @angelichl

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, bottom harry, uni au’s, a/b/o, dom/sub, supernatural elements, drabbles

personal recs: x , x , x

✰ istajmaal

ao3

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, bottom harry, phone sex operator fic, pwp, dom/sub, gender swapping

personal recs: x , x , x , x , x , x

✰ mercutionotromeo

ao3 | @mercutionotromeo

common work tags/tropes: bottom harry, pwp, daddy kink, dom/sub, fluff, drabbles, gender swapping, light age play

personal recs: x , x , x , x , x , x

✰ sunflowerstyles

ao3 | @sunflowerstyles

common work tags/tropes: bottom Louis, hurt/comfort, daddy kink,

personal recs: x , x

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please let me know if you need any more! happy reading and I hope you find some more lovely authors to choose from! :)

#ask #fic recs #reposting this because it took me all day and I don't like the way the other one posted

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swordsandrayguns · 3 years

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Science Fiction And Fantasy Fans Should Write Reviews

Writers, especially indie authors like yours truly, always ask for reviews. Why? Is it just to be annoying? Truth is, on ebook retailers, reviews = increased visibility. Even Google has indicated reviews affect search engine returns. So that is honestly a big part of why authors ask. Some of us also ask because we really want the feedback. I know I do, but I can’t pretend like that is why all authors ask. Because of that, I always feel kind of sleazy asking for them. It is like a waiter not so subtly reminding you to tip as they present the bill. However, I think there is a good reason we (all of us) should write reviews for books we read. I believe it helps the overall science fiction and fantasy community.

Hear me out; I know this sounds like me trying to justify asking for reviews but I really mean it is for the good of us all. See, I am old enough to remember the fan organized science fiction newsletters and fanzines, although I was too young to actually participate in that culture. I do, though, distinctly remember when conventions and other fan gatherings were the only time you could see obscure science fiction and fantasy shows/movies and find certain books, magazines, etc. Back when “anime” was “Japanimation,” for example, the 24 hour viewing room at the local convention was your best, maybe only, chance to see stuff like Vampire Hunter D, Fist of the North Star, Macross or Dirty Pair. If you were lucky, there was a club in your area that gathered monthly and crowded around a TV to watch untranslated VHS tapes traded with other clubs or laserdiscs purchased through friends in Tokyo. I was in one that met monthly at the Pantera’s in Webster Groves. Pizza and Captain Harlock in Japanese makes for a great Saturday afternoon!

Today, there are thousands of anime options out there… you don’t even have to buy them. They are on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, etc… How do you decide? How do you cut through the madness? Same thing with books. Actually, it is even worse with books because you have all the independent authors and small presses available, too. Back in the day, if you were a science fiction and fantasy fan, you were a “science fiction and fantasy fan;” there were no distinctions and Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain books sat to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation titles and nobody even thought about putting them in separate sections! You read what was at the library or on the paperback rack at the bookseller of your choice because that was all there was! Hardback science fiction was pretty much just from the Science Fiction Book Club (if you had that kind of money/were old enough to enter a mail order contract). I don’t even remember if there was a dedicated fantasy book of the month club; you probably just had to hope the Science Fiction Book Club would throw you the odd bone. If you were lucky, you had maybe a dozen titles in that spinning paperback rack (because science fiction and fantasy probably shared the real estate with Louis L’Amour westerns, spy and detective thrillers and romance novels) and whatever you hadn’t already read at the library. That was it! That was all you could get unless you had spare cash for expensive mail order or could swap books with friends. If you were really lucky some selfless fan would donate a paper grocery sack of their paperback cast-offs to your library and keep you going for weeks!

But in 2021 Amazon alone dumps about 18 bajillion-million books in your lap (bajillion-million is really a word; they had to invent just to describe Amazon’s book catalog). There are physical books, ebooks, web only stuff and audiobooks. At the same time, the science fiction and fantasy meta-community is now fragmented into at least a thousand distinct fandoms. You do not have to be a science fiction and fantasy fan anymore; you can get very, very specific about your tastes. You only like martial arts stories framed with video game conventions? It’s a thing. Prefer historical novels told from an extraterrestrial point of view? It’s a thing. Female driven tales of magic set in the modern day as a metaphor for larger social problems? It’s a thing. Robots versus dinosaurs? Stories of Elvish warriors with a well defined and unique culture? Belgian post-apocalyptic comic books set in America? They already made that into a TV show.

How do you cut through the noise and find what you really want? How do you figure it all out? You only have so much time you can read and you have to budget it as carefully as your money… maybe even more carefully. After all, even if you are not buying, most libraries participate in e-book lending systems that still dump thousands of titles in your lap for free. How do you choose between the 400 books with spaceships, lasers and/or dragons on the cover published since you started reading this article? Reviews are your answer. Scratch that; good reviews, written by other fans, are your answer!

I used to shy away from writing reviews for two reasons: one, I always felt like I should write a dissertation on a book and two, I kind of didn’t want to admit to how many Star Trek books I end up reading because Simon and Schuster sells a new group of Star Trek ebooks every month for 99¢*! And even as I started to adjust my attitude and realize why book reviews are good for the science fiction and fantasy reader communities, it isn’t like anyone needs a review to discover Star Trek, right?

Let’s be real, that is probably fair. It is really, really hard to imagine someone stumbling across Star Trek, Star Wars or Game of Thrones in book form without any previous knowledge of the franchise… and I imagine things for a living! If you are pressed for time or nervous about writing reviews, it seems reasonable to not worry about the big franchises so much. On the flip side, if you are a serious Star Trek or Star Wars reader, for example, you could post reviews mentioning if a story felt true to the series, where the book would fall in the chronology of the overall series, which characters from the shows/movies appeared and the like. Some readers want to know these things and that is really what I think reader reviews should address!

Some of you are nervous about posting a review because you are nervous about sharing your thoughts and writing. I get that (for me it is that I feel obligated to write a dissertation as a matter of respect to the author and the work they put in). I suggest you just write a review as if you were telling a friend about the book. That is essentially what you are doing anyway; true, you probably haven’t met a single person who will read that review but just the fact they are considering reading that book with spaceships and lasers and dragons on the cover makes them part of the big science fiction and fantasy community, so they certainly could be a friend!

When it comes to writing a review, the only rule is no spoilers! You are not trying to re-tell the story, just help potential readers figure out if it is what they want in a story. I honestly suggest answering any questions you wanted answered when you were choosing the book. I think it is fair to mention other, possibly better known, properties the story brought to mind. Not necessarily compare, but more in terms of categorization. “The title suggests this book would be something like Doctor Who, but it made me think more of Blake’s 7 with a dash of Space: 1999,” or “This story reminded me of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar stories and Greek mythology.” Would you read either of those books? Would you not? That is what I am suggesting we try to do with reviews.

I think it also might be a good idea to mention any content concerns. “This seemed kind of R-rated for the Star Wars universe,” “The author does not shy away from violence,” and a simple “Contains adult language” could all be tremendously helpful to other readers. This is the only time you might bend (not break) the no spoilers rule... If there is something in the story you believe could truly upset a reader (a racist character, sexual assault, the bad guy kills dogs), mention it if you must. Just try to respect the no spoilers rule to the best of your ability.

Some people might not want to speak negatively of a book. Maybe you realize just because it was not your cup of tea this does not keep it from being the story that will change someone else’s life or maybe you just believe if you don’t have anything nice to say, be quiet. That is 100% okay. You could only review books you truly like. That is still going to help the community of readers. Or, you can stick to reviews that do not pass judgement. I am advocating reviewing books as a kind of crowd sourced categorization method for the overall and heavily segmented science fiction and fantasy community. With that in mind, I do not believe a “review” has to offer an opinion or judgement about a book, only information to help other readers decide if it is something that may be of interest to them.

This leaves one big question: where do you post a review? That is a good question and I believe the answer is wherever you would look for information about what to read next. The logical place to start is wherever you got the book. Pretty much every book retailer, be they online or brick and mortar, has a web presence that will let readers post reviews. Some will even automatically ask you for one. That seems a perfectly logical place to post a review, but if you are reading library books there may not be an opportunity to review titles (although my library system does post reader reviews, yours might not). There are social media options, Goodreads springs to mind, but there is no reason you could not post your thoughts on books to Facebook, Twitter, whatever. There are also websites and blogs which take reader reviews. You can post on as many or as few as you want (but please post a review somewhere!)… Personally, I guess I would think about the level of privacy and anonymity I want. As a reader, I did not really think that way but as a writer I do. I will admit I am afraid some Goodreads members, for example, may permanently discount my own writing because I read comic books or assume because I posted reviews of the 1950s Tom Corbett, Space Cadet novels my books are going to be of that shiny silver rocket ship brand of science fiction. I have actually kind of abandoned Goodreads for review platforms were I am anonymous. I do not use my name on Amazon, for example, so I post reviews there. In setting up profiles in other platforms I am careful now to stay generic. Goodreads requires a name, so if that bothers you find another place to post reviews.

I mentioned the fanzines and conventions earlier in this article. Sometimes I hear people kind of mourning those days, when the science fiction and fantasy community felt like more of a community because it was so much harder to get access to materials and merchandise. Maybe this is the complaining that all generations start as they decide the next generation has it so much easier, but I can say as someone in on the tail end of things, back in the day the science fiction and fantasy community did kind of feel more like a community. Whether you went all in and organized a club, convention or fanzine or just participated by attending or subscribing, fans had to go out of their way to participate and find the things they loved. Nobody was accidentally a science fiction and fantasy fan. Writing reviews, making that little commitment, means you are participating and contributing.

I hope I have convinced you to start reviewing books (or podcasts or movies or whatever part of science fiction and fantasy you love) because it is going to help us all find the next things we love. And also, despite our thousand fandoms today, I personally would love to see the science fiction and fantasy meta-community become a little more of a community again.

Thanks for reading. It really does mean a great deal to me just to get some other people thinking about this… if you have enjoyed this little article, if you find yourself agreeing with me please take a couple minutes out of your day and review the next book you read. Let me thank you in advance for the person you are going to end up helping to find their next read!

* If you are unaware of Simon and Schuster’s monthly selection of 99¢ Star Trek ebooks, you can find them here, I don’t get a piece of this or anything, just sharing: https://www.simonandschuster.com/startrekbooks

#science fiction #fantasy #readers #fandom #indie publishing

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