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impala-dreamer · 4 months

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Trouble On Set

A Short Story

~Jensen and Jared have a habit of messing with costars, but what happens when one of them fights back?~

Jensen x Reader (ish), Misha, Jared / Dean x Carrie, Sam, Castiel

2,963 Words

Warnings: Pranks and Drama and Adult Behavior. Fluff.

Impala-Dreamer’s Masterlist ~ Patreon ~ Published Works

Dean raised his hand once more, ready to strike, and Carrie cringed in fear, shrinking down into a tiny thing, like a flower retreating from the frost.

“Please, don’t!” Her voice was weak and trembling just like her fragile frame. Blood trickled down from the cut on her lip, bruises blossomed beneath her smooth skin.

Dean froze, his fist hovering in the air above his head. He caught his breath and crumbled inside, green eyes going wide with sadness. “I- I didn’t mean to…”

Sam rushed past his brother, nearly knocking him to the side as he fell to his knees to check on Carrie. She lunged forward into his big arms, finding a bit of comfort as they wrapped tight around her.

“It’s OK,” he whispered, “I got you.”

She looked up from Sam’s shoulder to Dean, her eyes huge with shock and betrayal. “Dean, I-”

A loud, blistering pop of air ripped through the room, accompanied by a rotten smell so foul that Carrie could not hold back her disgust.

“Dean, I- I-” The smell permeated her senses and her gag reflex activated. “Oh god-”

Jared laughed, his giant body shaking, still wrapped around Y/N. She gagged loudly and tried to pry herself out of his grasp.

“Cut!”

“Oh my god!” Y/N held her breath and shoved at Jared’s chest, finally pushing him away.

Above them, Jensen looked down with a wicked smile. “Jesus, dude, what’d you eat!” He waved a hand in front of his face as the smell finally reached him.

“You’re disgusting,” Misha added, standing off to the side on his mark. “So gross.”

Jared stood up and shrugged as he adjusted his jeans, yanking them up back into place. “Hey! Shit happens!”

Jensen burst into a loud cackle that bent him clean in half. “Did you shit yourself?”

Y/N tried to stay calm, keep herself professional, but the smell seemed to be getting worse. “Wow.”

“Think something died in your ass, dude,” Jensen went on, hands on his knees as he laughed.

Jared took it all in like he was winning an award, smile beaming as the crew reset.

“OK! Settle! Let’s go again.”

Dean raised his fist high, his jaw twitching with anger.

Carrie shrank down and away, terrified and aching from his previous blow. “Please, don’t!” Her voice trembled, her hand shot up to hide her face from his wrath.

Dean froze, his fingers unfurling as he looked down at her, pain and sadness filling his freckled face. “I- I didn’t mean to…”

Carrie stared up at him, tears flooding her pretty eyes.

Jensen licked his lips slowly, seductively, and raised an eyebrow at Y/N.

Sam rushed past Dean and dropped down to his knees next to Carrie. She fell forward into his big arms as her breath became labored with heavy sobs.

“It’s OK,” he whispered, “I got you.”

Jensen bared his teeth and ran the tip of his tongue across the edges, licking his chops like a wolf as he stared at her.

Carrie looked up from Sam’s shoulder and a tear fell from her eye. “Dean, I-”

Again, Jensen used his tongue, this time flickering it quickly between his teeth, then rolling it suggestively. He smirked as Y/N shivered, distracted by his movements.

“Dean, I-”

Another slow, long roll of his tongue.

“I, uh…”

“Cut!”

Jared leapt to his feet and went over to Jensen, continuing a conversation from before the first take. Misha pulled out his phone, and Y/N simply stayed on the dirty studio floor, wiping real tears from her face with the hem of her shirt.

“You OK?”

Blue eyes were wide with genuine concern, but Y/N waved Misha off. “I’m fine. Thank you.” Her smile was weak but managed to help calm her frustration.

“OK, people. Let’s go again! Take ten…”

And so it went.

After five days of filming the first of her seven episode run, Y/N had messed up nearly every shot she was in, whether by design or fear of having it ruined. Jared and Jensen were terribly wicked, making her break constantly, tripping her, making faces at each other or her, farting- it was almost unmanageable. Through it all, Y/N tried her best to stay calm and keep going. It was a huge thing- landing a spot on such a great show, but she didn’t know if she could do it for much longer. The frustration was boiling up inside of her, and- not to mention- she felt unwanted and severely disliked. Everyone always talked about how nice Ackles and Padalecki were to guest stars, how playful and loving the set was, how the cast and crew were like family. Y/N sure as hell wasn’t feeling like family. More like the black sheep no one wanted to talk about. Or to.

Dean raised his hand once more, ready to strike, and Carrie cringed in fear, shrinking down into a tiny thing, like a flower retreating from the frost.

“Please, don’t!” Her voice was weak and trembling just like her fragile frame. Blood trickled down from the cut on her lip, bruises blossomed beneath her smooth skin.

Dean froze, his fist hovering in the air above his head. He caught his breath and crumbled inside, green eyes going wide with sadness. “I- I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s OK,” he whispered, “I got you.”

She looked up from Sam’s shoulder to Dean, her eyes huge with shock and betrayal. “Dean, I-”

Jensen looked up at the ceiling, refusing to meet her gaze. He puckered his lips as if whistling, completely ignoring her.

“Dean-”

He tongued his cheek and sighed, seemingly annoyed by her acting.

“I… um…”

Y/N cleared her throat and grit her teeth, determined to make it through the take.

“Dean- I’m so sorry.” Carrie let loose a stream of loud tears, pouring them into Sam’s shoulder. “I’m sorry!”

“And...cut! We got it. That’s dinner, people.”

Y/N stepped out into the cold Vancouver night, totally uninterested in dinner or anything other than collapsing into her bed back at the hotel. She needed a shower, a drink, and a call back home to her best friend. The job she’d been looking forward to for weeks had turned out to be a nightmare.

Finally alone, she closed her eyes and lifted them towards the dark sky, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves. Things were not what they had seemed.

Boots echoed behind her and Y/N startled, turning to see Jensen walking towards her, a kind smile upon his plump lips.

“Hey.” He stopped a few feet away and tucked his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels nervously.

Y/N’s anxiety spiked and her stomach tightened. “Hey.”

He licked his bottom lip slowly, green eyes flashing over her face. “Great job today. Made it through that scene nicely.”

Confused, Y/N swallowed down her annoyance and nodded. “Thanks. You too.”

“It’s not easy to cry like that,” he complimented, voice smooth and sweet. “I’m impressed.”

Her eyes narrowed on him, not sure what was going on. “Thanks?”

“Really,” he pushed with a smile, the apples of his cheeks burning pink under the lot lights. “You did great.”

Y/N couldn’t respond; her thoughts twisted in utter confusion. She stared at Jensen as if he were some alien being sent to drive her insane.

He tipped back on his boot heels and took a deep breath, prepping for something. He cleared his throat and locked his knees. “So anyway… I was wondering if you… wanted to come get a drink with me? We’re pretty much done for the day. I think they’re just reshooting Jared’s scene with Misha next, so you and I could sneak away.” He held his breath and dug his front teeth hard into his bottom lip, waiting for her answer.

It was not what he expected.

Y/N’s jaw dropped and she blinked furiously at him, stunned. “Excuse me?”

Jensen laughed timidly. “There’s a bar we like to go to downtown. We can… go hang out? Get a buzz on?” He shrugged and smiled.

Y/N snapped. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

He jolted. “What?”

“I said, are you fucking kidding me?” she spat, turning towards him with rage pulsing from her form. Jensen took a step back but she came closer. “You… you have been fucking with me all fucking week!” Her voice echoed down the alleyway, giant metal buildings amplifying her rage like a blow horn. “You’re so mean! You… you and Jared have been fucking up every take for me! You tripped me twice, I slammed into a wall yesterday; you’re making disgusting remarks and faces at me while I’m trying to cry. You’re ruining this for me!”

Jensen’s hands lifted from his pockets to surrender, his palms facing her in the dark. “Whoa. It’s not… we’re not-”

“You’re not? You’re not! You’re gonna get me fired! Do you even care about anyone but yourself? This is a huge deal for me and you’re going to ruin it. I’m gonna get fired because you can’t keep be fucking professional and Jared can’t stop eating burritos for lunch!” Y/N caught herself, gasping for a breath while her pulse raged in her ears. “Fuck!”

Jensen shook his head in shock and lowered his hands. “Y/N, it’s… really not what you think. Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

“You’re sorry? Oh, he’s sorry!” She spun around, telling the world. “He’s sorry he’s going to get me fired, everyone! Jensen Ackles is sorry! That makes it all better!”

He stood, dumbfounded and guilty, his shoulders falling low, his eyes filling with hurt. “Wow. I’m… really sorry.”

Y/N took a deep, shaking breath and turned her eyes away, not wanting him to see her cry. “Yeah. Thanks for the apology.” She crossed her arms and spun on her heel, turning her back on him. “Think I’ll pass on drinks.”

Jensen tried to say something, to find some way to smooth things over, but his voice died in the back of his throat, his mind empty and unsure. “Yeah,” he mumbled, backing away. “OK.”

She heard him walk away and she did the same, stalking towards the parking lot.

From the shadows, a dark figure emerged, black hair a mess, trenchcoat flapping gently in the breeze.

“You know he’s just fucking with you.”

Misha’s voice called to her and Y/N turned to see him leaning against the corner of the building, clearly having heard and seen everything.

“You usually lurk in the shadows like that?”

He laughed and shrugged. “No, but I’m usually in the right place at the right time.”

Y/N shook her head. “Not me. I’m clearly in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong profession.”

Misha pushed himself away from the wall. “Nah. You were really good today.”

“Was I?” she snit, sarcasm coating every inch of her. “Sorry. I’m just- they’re torturing me and I don’t know why.” Her voice cracked. “They fucking hate me. What did I do?”

He laughed.

“Oh, that’s funny to you?”

He shook his head. “They don’t hate you, Y/N.”

She huffed. “I highly doubt that, but thank you.”

Misha came closer and lowered his voice. “You know, they only torture those they like. Especially Jensen. He’s only like that with people he… really likes.” He emphasized the last like as if he were the grade school gossip and Y/N scoffed.

“Yeah, right.”

He grinned and shrugged. “Believe me or don’t, but it’s true. At least with you around, I’m getting a break.”

Y/N’s shoulders scrunched up high as she processed the new information. “He… likes me?”

Misha nodded. “Yup. He’s like a kid on a playground,” he told her. “If he dips your pigtails in ink tomorrow, don’t be upset. It’s like his mating call.”

Y/N cracked the first smile in days and hummed devilishly. “Hmm…”

“That’s a scary hmm,” Misha laughed.

“It is,” she agreed, turning to meet his gaze. “Maybe we can use this,” she said, lowering her voice to a harsh whisper. “Maybe we can prank him back.”

He laughed. “Yeah, that never works. I’ve tried.”

Again, Y/N’s brain turned in circles as her plan pieced together. “Hmm…”

Misha leaned back and watched her think. “Oh, this is gonna be good.”

Carrie walked into the kitchen, her face covered in bruises; a tiny butterfly bandage above her eyelid holding together a deep cut. She tiptoed down the steps and skirted the perimeter, eyes ever on Dean who sat alone at the table. He nursed a beer, two empty bottles haphazardly lined up next to it.

“Rough night?” she asked, her voice cracking with nervous emotion.

Dean didn’t look at her. He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long sip, his eyes closing as the brew flooded his tongue. He came up with a heavy breath. “Rough life.”

She nodded and took a step towards him. “Yeah. I don’t doubt it.” Bare feet were sticky on the tile as she went to him, stopping at the edge of the table. “Do you wanna-”

“Talk about it?” he snapped, cutting her off, looking up with pained, red-rimmed eyes. “No. Do you?”

Meekly, Carrie shook her head. “No.”

She started to turn, meaning to leave him alone to wallow, but Dean’s hand shot out to grab her wrist, pulling her down to him. He looked up, a little drunk, mostly guilty.

“Why are you still here?” he whispered, tears choking his deep voice.

Her bottom lip trembled as his grip tightened. “W-what do you mean?”

Dean sat up, drawing closer to her, gaze digging into her soul. “Why are you still here? I almost killed you.”

She swallowed hard and leaned down, breath passing over his lips like a warm breeze. He closed his eyes but the kiss never landed. She pressed her cheek to his and whispered in his ear. “Because I can’t leave you…”

Dean’s eyes welled with tears.

Y/N’s whisper continued as the camera zoomed in over her shoulder on Dean’s reaction. “Because all I can think about is taking you out back and sucking your big, juicy cock over and over until you die of dehydration.”

Jensen choked on his own spit, so shocked by her words. He coughed to clear his throat and the scene was dead.

“Cut!”

Y/N pulled back and stared down at him, daring him to say anything. Jensen was stunned, looking up with wide eyes.

She winked.

He shivered.

“Back it up! Reset!”

Carrie tiptoed down the steps into the kitchen, bruised and battered from the night before. She saw Dean and shivered, body tensing up as she walked the edges of the room

“Rough night?” she asked, voice shaking.

Dean ignored her and lifted the bottle to his lips. “Rough life.”

Carrie took a step towards him. “Yeah. I don’t doubt it.” She floated towards him, nervous but needing to help. “Do you wanna-”

“Talk about it?” he growled, looking up at her.

Y/N let her eyes go soft and parted her lips. The tip of her tongue shot out to slowly drag across her bottom lip. Jensen swallowed hard.

“No,” Dean snit. “Do you?”

Carrie shook her head. “No.”

She started to leave but Dean reached for her wrist, pulling her down to him. He looked up and gasped.

Y/N puckered her lips into a perfect circle and Jensen couldn’t think of anything else but her mouth wrapped around his cock.

“W-Why are you... s-still here?” he whispered, chest heaving, eyes gazing over.

Carrie’s lip trembled “What do you mean, Dean?”

Y/N spoke his name with half a moan and Jensen squirmed in his seat, feeling his dick grow.

“Uh…Um...Why? W-why are-”

“Cut!”

Thrice more, Jensen mucked up the scene. Staring at Y/N, he couldn’t get any words to properly form, let alone a tear to fall. She licked her lips, batted her lashes, sucked her fingers, moaned in his ear. The closer they got to finishing the scene, the harder she teased him, and in the end, he could barely stand.

Dean stood quickly and Carrie backed away, afraid he would strike her again. Her wrist was snagged in his hand, his grip unbreakable.

“Let me go!” she demanded, twisting in his grasp.

Dean walked her backwards until she hit the countertop, her breath pushing out in a shocked huff.

“Dean!”

He kissed her silent, releasing her hand only to hold her cheeks, push his breath into her, his pain, his guilt.

“I’m sorry.”

She licked his kiss from her lips and closed her eyes. “I know.”

“Cut! We got it!”

Jensen dropped his hands from Y/N’s cheeks but didn’t back away right away. She bucked her hips forward and he groaned deep in the back of his throat. He was hard against her, his erection straining in his jeans.

The crew carried on their business and slowly, Jensen backed away, clasping his hands in front of his crotch.

“You figured it out,” he said with a faint laugh.

Y/N tongued her cheek and looked away, over his shoulder. “I had a little help from an angel,” she confessed.

Jensen dropped his head. “Damnit Misha.”

Y/N lifted her eyes to his. “Damnit, nothing.” She cocked her head and leaned close. “Wanna go get that drink now?”

Jensen’s lips puckered and he let out a slow breath. “Hell yes.”

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#spn rpf #spn fanfic #jensen ackles x reader #fluff drama pranks set life #one shot

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whatsnewalycat · 1 year

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Psychomanteum / Chapter 11

Pairing: Dieter Bravo x OFC (2nd POV)

Chapter 11: Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings

Chapter Summary: The first day in LA is a mixed bag.

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Word Count: 11.8k+

Content / Warnings: alternating pov, insecurities, mirror, angst, fluff, acting career things idk, video call, awkward/nervous speech patterns, toxic mother/family of origin issues, food/eating/hunger, argument, mentions of: infidelity, addiction, death, and infertility, crying, comfort sex, dirty talk, eating ass, oral sex (both r) face fucking, deep throating, squirting, anal play and sex, impact play, hair pulling, maybe a hint of degradation

Notes: Chapter title from "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings" by Father John Misty. Oooo a new banner, who is she?! I apologize for how long this is, it really got outta hand. Thank you for reading!!!

[ Tag List ] [ AO3 ] [ Spotify Playlist ] [ Series Masterlist ]

“Holy shit, Dee,” you breathe, squinting as your eyes adjust from the darkness of the garage to the bright, open home.

Dieter walks ahead of you, tossing his keys and sunglasses on a glass console table, kicking his shoes off onto the gleaming hardwood floor. Each noise seems amplified in the jarring silence.

It smells like lemon pine-sol, and, based on how uncharacteristically spotless everything appears, you guess that he has someone come in and clean while he’s away.

“It’s–I mean, wow–” you stammer, shaking your head as you examine your surroundings.

The vaulted ceiling’s stained teak backbone stretches from one end of the house to the other, rafters extending from the beam like wooden ribs. On one side of you lies a dining room and kitchen, on the other, a living room and patio entrance. Light pours in through the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows like giant frames showcasing the greenery of the patio, all lush with palm fronds and waxy-leaved bushes.

The home’s décor is quintessential Dieter.

Eclectic. Moody. Maximalist.

Jewel- and earth-toned furniture, in all different finishes and fabrics, fill the open floor plan. The white walls are cluttered by art, a hodgepodge of creations. Prints and acrylic paintings and black ink illustrations, including some of Dieter’s originals. Plants are scattered around, next to windows and on tables, thriving in their glazed ceramic pots.

Your fingers twitch, longing to experience every texture this buffet of materials has to offer. You feel yourself getting a little moon-eyed as you marvel at the place he calls home. It’s surreal.

And, if you’re being honest, daunting.

When Dieter spends time with you in your domain, you feel you know him at his core. A loveable, chaotic, free spirit, who busies himself sketching and “taste testing” while you bake. Which mostly just means he eats cookies off the cooling rack when he thinks you’re not looking, but sometimes he draws pictures of you while he does it.

You know him as someone who watches shitty TV and shittier movies with you just so you can make fun of them together, someone who theorizes out-loud about existentialism and Garfield in the same breath, who wraps himself around you when you sleep because, even when he’s dreaming, he wants your skin clinging to his.

You don’t know him as Dieter Bravo, Academy Award Winning Actor.

No.

To you, he’s Dee. The man you fell in love with so haphazardly, it sometimes makes you question your own sanity.

The existence of this other part of his life, with film sets and photoshoots and interviews and stylists and red carpet premieres, all these stringent show pony requirements, so paradoxical to the person you know and love… It makes you uneasy.

Is he different when he’s here?

Is Dieter Bravo, Hollywood Movie Star, the same man as Dee, Bubble Bath Connoisseur?

It’s something you’ve largely been able to ignore.

But, since you’re being honest, you can admit that the disparities between his life and yours make your skin crawl sometimes.

Like right now, when you’re standing here in the entryway of his gorgeous home, whose property value is probably greater than your lifetime’s gross income, holding the handle of your ratty old carry-on suitcase. Your piece of shit suitcase, with its broken zipper, and this big tear in the side.

Which, really, has never bothered you before. It’s a goddamn suitcase. It holds things from point a to point b, and this works just fine.

But Dieter has this ridiculous fucking suitcase with a heavy-duty metallic shell, and 360-degree wheels that glide effortlessly through airports, and a fucking phone charger. A fucking phone charger in a suitcase, seriously?

It’s just so… exactly how you fucking feel standing next to him sometimes.

And, as if to prove your point, when you release the handle of your piece of shit carry-on, it topples over sideways against his space-age phone charger on wheels.

All you can do is sigh. Stare at luggage. Try to ignore the voice that bombards your thoughts, telling you he’s obviously out of your league.

Sneering at you, saying, “Get real, this fucking guy is way too rich to be humoring you.”

Saying, “Louella Rose, once he knows you’re trash, he’ll be gone for good, I can tell you that much.”

“Want me to show you around?” Dieter asks, the low timbre of his voice a butter knife cutting through the thick fog of your thoughts. He steps closer and plants his wide palm on the small of your back.

You turn to him with a smile you know is flaccid, but nod, “Lead the way.”

He studies you for a moment, dark eyes darting around your face, no doubt sensing the apprehension you can’t shake, and proves your suspicion true when he asks, “What’s wrong?”

Your throat tightens and you drop your gaze to the colorful entryway rug beneath your feet, shaking your head as you admit, “I—I don’t know. I’m… kind of freaking out, I think,” your voice cracks, and words start to tumble from your mouth, “I just keep thinking that I don’t belong here, like I’m too fucking poor to be doing this, I mean, to be here, and-and I’m so fucking nervous that I’m gonna fuck this up somehow—”

“Hey, come on,” Dieter coos, one hand settling at your waist, the other brushing against your cheek, “Look at me, Lua.”

You do.

His eyes bore into yours, unblinking and sincere, “It’s gonna be ok. I promise.”

Your brows press together and you swallow hard, then nod.

“We’re gonna do this stupid interview, which you’re gonna fucking nail–”

You look away.

He tilts your chin towards his face again, refusing to let you hide, repeating, “Which you’re gonna fucking nail. You know why?”

You just stare at him, half-expecting him to say because you have to or I won’t love you anymore, but instead, he says, “Because you are fucking amazing, Louella. You are brilliant, and gorgeous, and genuine, and hilarious, and capable of fucking anything. Ok?”

His words, so sure and earnest, soothe your inflamed sense of worthlessness.

A burning sensation works up your throat, then spreads behind your eyes. Hot tears roll down your cheeks. You wipe them away with the back of your hand and croak, “Don’t say things like that to me, it’s too sweet and makes me cry.”

“Listen here, doll,” he cups your face and raises his eyebrows, a mischievous grin playing on his lips, “I’ll compliment you as much as I goddamn please.”

You let out a wet, nasally chuckle and link your hands behind his neck, then sniffle, “Fine. I guess. If you say so.”

“That’s what I thought,” he mumbles. His thumbs work against your damp cheeks as he brings his lips to yours, gentle and soft.

When he pulls back, he clears his throat and turns back to the vacant house, “Alright, sweet cheeks, let’s give you the official tour.”

The term of endearment makes you laugh and shake your head, “Dieter, I swear to god–”

He grabs your hand and tugs you onward, ignoring your feigned protest.

At the tail end of the tour, Dieter swings open the door to his spacious bedroom. You recognize the tall, chartreuse walls and the puffy white linens tucked around his bed.

Of all the rooms in his house, including the art studio set up down the hall, this is the one that feels the most like Dee. It’s a little messy, but in a lived-in way you expect from him. Relatively no-frills. Comfortable. Homey. It smells like him, not like lemon pine-sol.

You gravitate towards a chest of drawers that sits opposite his bed, grinning at a pile of rings, lighters, coins, and crumpled up cash. A big, rectangular mirror mounted on the wall above it catches your attention.

All kinds of paper mementos are stuffed into the mirror’s frame. Your eyes wander along the edge, stopping to study a picture of him, much younger and more angular than he appears now, with a woman whose bright, dimpled smile matches his.

“Is that your mom?” you ask, pointing to it.

“Yeah,” he walks behind you and wraps his arms around your middle, tucking your shoulder under his chin, watching you through the mirror as your eyes leapfrog to each little piece of him.

A ticket stub to a Prince concert at Madison Square Garden in July 2004.

An old polaroid of two dark-haired young boys roller skating.

“Tomás?”

“Mhmm.”

You tilt your head and frown, “Can I ask you something?”

“No,” he deadpans, blinking at you through the mirror.

“Shut up,” you snort, then ask, “Why the fuck are you named Dieter?”

He laughs at this, throwing his head back to boom at the ceiling before returning to your reflected gaze.

“I mean, I’m sorry—It’s just so…”

“White?” he smirks.

“Yes!” you laugh, covering your mouth, “Is that your real name?!”

“No,” he grins, then shrugs, “Well, legally it is. But my parents named me Manuel Diego Soto Flores. Diego is what everyone called me.”

“Stop it, oh my god. You are blowing my fucking mind right now,” you shake your head at the whiplash this information gives you, then pause, “Wait, why did you change it?”

“My agent suggested I use a stage name way back when. Dieter Bravo sounded cool,” he explains, and chuckles a little as he tells you, “I got in an argument with my folks about it when work started picking up, and legally changed it just to piss them off.”

“Wow,” you raise your eyebrows and laugh, “That is… truly petty.”

“That it is,” he sighs, his smile faltering.

“So, what am I supposed to call you? Diego? Dieter?” you smirk, meeting his gaze in the mirror.

“Dee,” he answers, “I like Dee.”

“I can do that.”

You hold his gaze for a few moments, relishing the heat that swells in your chest, then resume your study of his artifacts, squinting to read the faded black ink of a few movie stubs lined up together: Eyes Wide Shut, Donnie Darko, The Departed, Fight Club, Whiplash, Titanic, Toy Story 3.

Next to them, you spot a wrinkled brown paper square, etched with unruly black ink strokes into a blueberry branch. You tilt your head at it, then glance down at the blueberry branch tattooed on your forearm.

Your eyes flick to the reflection of Dieter’s face and find him already staring at you. A question creases your forehead, and he answers with a shrug. Tingles spread across your belly. You smooth your hand against his and leave it there.

“Look, I printed the ones from the elevator,” he chuckles, pointing to a picture of the two of you stuffed into one side of the mirror’s frame, stone-faced, black grease paint and mascara co-mingling with red lipstick, smudged all over your mouths and cheeks. Below that, the shot Dieter took a second later when you both broke, faces lit up with laughter, eyes bent up into barely visible crescents.

“Oh my god,” you laugh, hand flying to your mouth, “Come on, we have way cuter pictures than those.”

“Those are my favorite, though,” he smiles, kisses your cheek, then tucks your shoulder back under his chin.

You shake your head and sigh, grinning as you tell him, “Fuck, I like you.”

“Yeah?” he snorts, “You think so?”

You nod, rubbing your thumb against his.

“I like you, too,” he murmurs.

“Thank god, or this would be really awkward,” you joke as you return your gaze to the relics framing his mirror.

A snapshot of him, a generation younger, all gaunt and baby-faced, leaning against a high top table crowded with half-empty cups, ice cube islands rising from brown mixed drinks. Two young men across the table from him, his arm draped around a young woman’s shoulders. All four of them glow with a boozy shine, wide and carefree smiles stretched across their faces.

“Who’re these people?”

“Old friends from my theater days in New York,” he murmurs, “I don’t talk to them much anymore. There’s Glenn, you might’ve met him.”

He points to a tan guy with a brown pompadour and a very punchable face, who’s wearing a baby blue polo shirt and holding up his middle finger.

You sift through your memory for someone who might have looked like that fifteen or twenty years ago, but come up blank and shake your head, “I don’t think so.”

“He was at Katie’s party that one night, and, uhh… actually, I almost brought him up to your apartment the first time I met you, but he was being an asshole and wouldn’t get out of the car.”

“Not ringing any bells,” you frown, “Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve met any of your friends.”

His tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth, then he mutters, “Well, I would certainly introduce you to them. If I had any.”

You try to think of a contradiction to this statement, racking your brain for an instance of him at least hinting at the existence of a friend.

“What about all the people you party with?”

“Haven't done much of that lately. Besides,” he cocks an eyebrow and curls his lip, “Those aren’t friends. Never were. And, uhh… I did a solid job alienating my real friends a long time ago.”

You look at him through the mirror.

His eyes are all dull and forlorn. Far away.

A sharp pain splits your sternum.

You wriggle around to face him, cupping his cheeks, brushing your thumbs against his patchy beard until he meets your eyes again. Then you tell him, “I’m your friend. Parker’s your friend. You’re not alone anymore, ok?”

His shoulders slump and eyebrows thread together, molding his features into this tender expression that makes your stomach flip and chest ache.

He doesn’t say anything, just pulls you into a hug, squeezing you tight. You slide your hands to the back of his head to comb your fingers through his soft curls.

A commotion erupts at the other end of the house. The front door opening and closing. Rustling and conversation. A feminine voice echoes down the hall, calling, “Hello?”

“That must be them,” he murmurs, and starts away, but you pull him back. You wrap your arms around his midsection and bury your face against his t-shirt.

“Wait, just… a little bit longer,” you say, closing your eyes to soak up the warmth from his body. It seeps into your bloodstream and feels like sunshine in your veins. He rests his head against your hair, taking a deep breath in, and you feel his body relax again.

The clack-clack-clack sound of heels against the hardwood floor draws closer, but the two of you just stand there, all wrapped up in the other, until someone crosses the threshold to his room, comes to a stop, and says, “Oh, you are here.”

You part and turn towards the intrusion: A neatly made-up, petite, brunette woman wearing a fitted navy blue pantsuit.

“Darlene,” Dieter greets, crossing the room to envelop her in a one-armed hug. They press a chaste kiss into the other’s cheek. He returns to your side, palm sliding against the small of your back, and introduces you both, “Darlene, Louella, Louella, Darlene.”

You meet her meticulous hazel eyes and smile wide, outstretching your hand to shake hers, “Hi, so nice to meet you.”

She reaches out and accepts the invitation. Both your gazes drop to study the contrast of your hands. Hers are dainty, soft, blemish-free; adorned with shiny, blush pink fingernails smoothed to rounded tips. Yours bear the scars and calluses earned by over a dozen years of baking, your naked, short fingernails hosting jagged edges from nervous biting.

When you step back, heat creeps up the back of your neck. She looks so… unimpressed. Annoyed, even. The barely perceptible twitch of her thin eyebrow cocking, lip curling, eyes flicking around your person like she’s identifying weak spots. Then she plasters on a polite smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and asks, “Do you prefer Louella or Lua?”

“I don’t care,” you chuckle nervously, “Lou, Lua, Louella, whatever you want.”

You glance at Dieter, swallowing hard. He smooths his thumb against your spine.

“I’ll call you Louella,” Darlene decides with a quick nod, then looks from you, to Dieter, “Should we get started? We have a lot of work to do.”

On your way to the dining room, you cross paths with a short, curvy woman whose brown, tightly coiled hair bounces around her round face as she hauls two thick garment bags into a bedroom. She peaks over the luggage and calls, “Oh, hi!” when she spots you.

She spins on the heel of her beige pumps to face you, shifting the bags to one hip, “Louella, right?”

“Yeah,” you smile and wave at her.

“Kelly,” her hot pink lips stretch into a bright smile and she shakes your hand, looking you up and down before diverting her dark eyes to Dieter, “Nice catch, Bravo.”

Dieter smirks at the comment, eyeing her tenuous grip on the bags, “Need some help?”

She just scoffs and raises an eyebrow at him before spinning around and starting down the hallway. Dieter shrugs after her, then ushers you into the dining room, where a frantic looking young man is setting out three labeled mint green to-go boxes on the stained oak table, assigning seats to you, Dieter, and Darlene.

“Lua, this is Lincoln, my PA,” Dieter gestures between the two of you, “Lincoln this is Lua, my girlfriend.”

“Hi,” Lincoln tucks a strand of dark blonde hair behind his ear and leans his tall frame across the table, extending his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Lincoln,” you meet his ocean blue eyes as you take it in yours and shake it. Dieter settles into his assigned dining room chair, leaning back against the burnt orange suede. You take your seat next to him.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Lincoln flashes a quick smile, then glances from Dieter, back to you, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Oh yeah?” you grin over at Dieter, who’s crossing his ankle over his knee, watching you with amusement, and tell Lincoln, “Good things, I hope.”

“Terrible things,” Dieter teases, letting his head dangle to one side.

“Nothing but the utmost praise,” Lincoln insists.

A nutty aroma wafts up from the box with your name on it. You recognize the briny sharpness and name it, “Oh, fuck, did you get us pad thai?”

“It’s from that place you wanted to try,” Dieter tells you.

You wiggle and clap your hands together, reaching for the box as Darlene approaches the table. Lincoln scurries into the kitchen and makes himself look busy. She sits down with a sense of urgency that makes you fold your hands in your lap and sit up straighter.

“Here’s the plan,” she pushes the takeout box away, leaning over her open notebook, “Interview with DIRT at 4:00 today. Louella, we’ll practice your answers for a bit, then Kelly will help you pick some clothes,” her eyes flick from the notebook, to you, then to Dieter, and she says, “While you’re in town, I think it’ll be good for the two of you to be seen in public together, but I have some ground rules—”

“Jesus Christ, Darlene,” Dieter groans, scrubbing his hands over his face as he leans his elbows onto the table, “What are we, teenagers?”

“Well, Dieter, play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” she blinks at him.

“What the fuck does that mean?” he scoffs.

“It means,” she snips, zeroing in on him, “With all the bullshit you’ve pulled in the past year, you’re not exactly rolling in prospects, are you?”

He doesn’t say anything in response, just clenches his jaw.

She continues, “It’s a goddamn miracle you managed to land that Mike Flannigan job—”

You turn to him and gasp, “You got it?!”

This big, giddy smile spreads across his face when he meets your eyes and nods, “Yeah.”

“But he could lose it if this doesn’t go right,” Darlene advises, pulling your attention to her. She shoots a glare from you to Dieter, “So we’re going to follow my direction, right?”

Your face falls and you clear your throat, then stammer, “Y—yeah, of course.”

Dieter shifts in his seat, pressing his mouth against his clasped hands.

“As I was saying,” Darlene continues, raising an eyebrow as she drops her gaze to the notebook, “You’re both to be on your best behavior while in public. No drugs, no parties, no more than a glass of wine, no public fornication. We’re going full Disney rules of conduct, ok?”

When Darlene blinks up at you, you nod, “No problem.”

“Alright, let’s rehearse some Q&A,” she sighs, turning her attention back to her notebook.

She runs through questions the interviewer might ask, reconstructing your answers from nervous ramblings into practiced statements. It’s like a mental boot camp the way she attacks this, and, honestly, it’s quite impressive.

When Darlene is confident you won’t respond to questions like: “How did you and Dieter meet?” with answers like: “We dropped acid in a closet with my best friend,” the drills cease. Just when you think you’re safe to open that mint green box with your name on it, Darlene stands from the table, “Alright, let’s go see what Kelly has for you.”

You have to physically restrain yourself from pouting as she starts off down the hall.

“Here, quick,” Dieter shoves his open container of pad thai in your hands. You manage to take a few bites before Darlene comes back to see where she lost you.

“Coming, sorry,” you swallow and give it back to him.

Darlene and Kelly decide you’re wearing a balloon-sleeved white silk blouse and a high-waisted, billowing, floral skirt that comes down to your ankles.

Once your makeup and hair are styled, and you're all done up and presentable, not unlike a feral mutt turned show dog, Darlene holds her hand out to you, palm facing the ceiling, and says, “You’ll have to take off your wedding ring.”

“Oh,” you frown at her, then at the simple gold band on your left hand’s ring finger. With a heavy blue sigh, you slide it off your finger, and drop it in her extended hand.

When you emerge from the bedroom, Darlene trailing behind you, Dieter is pacing the length of the living room, dressed in a short-sleeved white button-up and navy blue slacks. He spots you and stops in his tracks. A grin spreads across his face, “Oh wow, look at you.”

“Look at you,” you counter, matching his smile as you look him up and down.

He wipes his hands on his pants, then strides over to you and kisses you. His lips are eager when they meet yours. You link your hands at the nape of his neck and arch your back into him, losing yourself momentarily. When he pulls back, he presses his forehead against yours and murmurs, “You look like… a sexy kindergarten teacher. I like it.”

You laugh and shake your head, “Oh yeah, this is doing it for you?”

“Fuck yeah it is,” he rumbles, then grips your waist and kisses you again.

“Alright, it’s almost time,” Darlene prods impatiently from a few feet away, “Where’s your laptop?”

Dieter mutters something under his breath, then steps back from your embrace and tells her, “I’ll go get it.”

As he goes off down the hall, you plop down on the overstuffed couch. Its deep, rich brown leather feels buttery soft against the small sections of your exposed skin. You cross your legs, smoothing the soft fabric of your skirt over your knees, “Is it a video call?”

Darlene takes a cursory glance in the direction Dieter went, then sits down next to you, her words hushed and serious as they flee her lips, “Louella, his career is teetering on the edge of a cliff right now. One more blow could send the whole thing crashing down. Do you understand how important it is that this goes well?”

An icy rush of panic floods your veins. You meet her hazel eyes and nod.

“Good,” she says, searching your face, “Don’t fuck it up.”

Lincoln and Kelly leave for the day once everything is set up. Darlene stages you and Dieter hip-to-hip in the middle of his couch, then starts pacing behind the laptop, occupying a strip of the living room’s black- and white-striped rug between the glass top coffee table and a black brick-faced wood fireplace.

Pixelated face pops up on Dieter’s laptop screen. You can make out David Alterman’s egg-shaped bald head and thick-rimmed glasses. He says, “Hello hello, how are we doing today?”

“Pleasure to see you,” Dieter gives a nod and drapes his arm over your shoulders. You flash a smile to the computer and wave.

David continues, “I just want to start by saying thank you for meeting with me today. On the phone earlier, Darlene said that there were some things you wanted to discuss regarding your new friend.”

“Girlfriend,” Dieter corrects, glances at you, then back at the screen, “There was an article by your, uhh… publication speculating who she is. We wanted to go on record and introduce her, get it all out in the open.”

“Fantastic. Well, the floor is yours.”

Dieter clears his throat and squeezes your shoulder.

“Oh, ok—um, hi, my name is Louella,” your voice comes out too loud, and your heart starts pumping heat through your body, up your neck, across your face. You wriggle in your seat and explain, “Sorry, I’m really nervous, I’ve never done anything like this before.”

David chuckles, “That’s ok, dear. Why don’t you start by telling me how the two of you met?”

Your eyes flick to Darlene in the background, following her moving form. She gives you a nod of encouragement. You take a deep breath.

“We met at Katie’s party in February. My best friend, Parker, convinced me to go, and, yeah, I ended up meeting Dee there,” a big smile stretches across your face as you explain, “I remember meeting him, and I felt this connection to him like,” you snap your fingers, “right away. It was fucking bananas—er, sorry, regular bananas. But. It was like I had known him my whole life or something, you know? We—me, Parker, and Dee—spent the night together,” at this, you see David’s bushy brown eyebrows perk up, and your cheeks start burning, “N-not like that, like sexual or anything, we just talked and joked around. Instant friends. It was so much fun. And, you know, it’s funny, because I didn’t even know he was an actor—”

“You didn’t?” David frowns.

“No,” you chuckle, “The next morning when we were all getting breakfast there was this guy taking pictures of us eating pancakes, which I thought was fu—um, weird, but then Dee and Parker explained… Well, y’know. Paparazzi and all that.”

“Is that when you started dating?”

“No,” you shake your head, glancing down to your hands, “We were just friends for a few months before that started. My, um… my husband died about a year ago in a car accident, so I was… not in a hurry to start any kind of romantic relationship.”

Your thumb rolls along the seam of your finger that’s usually covered by your wedding band.

“And yet, here we are. What changed?”

“I fell in love with him,” you explain, flicking your gaze from Dieter, who squeezes your shoulder, then straight into the camera, “You know when you meet someone and it’s like… they vibrate on the same frequency as you or whatever? Like they were made to be in your life? It was like that. I don’t know, it was fucking crazy. Shit, sorry for swearing—”

“It’s fine,” David says, “I’ll edit it out.”

You release a relieved sigh, “Ok. Well, anyway, I wasn’t—I mean, neither of us were expecting this to happen. But it did. So I took a chance on him, on us, and… yeah. I’m so glad I did.”

“That’s great,” David smiles at the camera, then looks down at his notes, “So you said the two of you met at Katie’s party—Is that Katie Wainwright?”

“Yes,” you answer. It takes all your energy to remain neutral. To keep your body from twitching in discomfort at the mention of her.

“Are the two of you friends? Do you run in those circles?”

“Oh, no,” you snort and shake your head, “Parker is a drag performer, under the stage name Jackie Lantern, and knows quite a few theater folks in New York. It’s all him. I was just tagging along.”

“I see. And what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a baker.”

“Pastry artist,” Dieter interjects, leaning forward, “She makes some of the best goddamn pastries I’ve ever had in my life.”

You beam at this. He gives you an encouraging little wink that makes your heart skip a beat.

“Oh, you have a bakery?”

“No,” you say with a little too much haste, then stammer, “Well, not really. It’s not a brick and mortar store or anything. I run it out of my apartment. But, I’d love to—you know, someday, open a bakery.”

“Sounds like a good investment for your boyfriend to make,” David hints.

“Oh, no, I’m not,” you clear your throat and shake your head, “I want to do it myself.”

“Independent,” David observes, then looks down to his notes, “Dieter has had a lot of big changes in his personal life this past year as well, with his divorce to Anika, and the scandals surrounding it. Do you worry that those patterns are bound to repeat themselves?”

Dieter’s body tenses beside you.

You furrow your brow and frown slightly, then glance up to Darlene, whose stare can only be described as a warning.

Downshifting your face from confusion to thoughtfulness, you answer, “I think… We both have pasts that present challenges in our relationship. It’s not exactly easy-breezy all the time, but that’s the thing with love, right? You take the person, demons and all, and choose to love them anyway?”

David jots down some notes. Your guts twist when you recognize the opportunity to do what you came here to do.

“And, you know, speaking of which, one of the things I wanted to bring up during this interview is that I—um, I have a criminal record,” you swallow hard and turn to look at Dieter.

He takes his arm from your shoulder and closes his hands into fists, thumbs pointed upward as he presses them together and draws a circle with them.

Together.

Warmth washes over you and you smile at him. He slides his palm against yours and interlaces his fingers with yours.

“Oh?”

You turn back to the laptop and sigh, “Yeah. I was arrested in 2018 on drug trafficking charges. I was convicted of a felony—and, you know, I didn’t have to serve any hard time or anything, just probation, thank fucking god, and I’ve changed a lot since then, but it’s still… still a factor,” you drop your gaze to your lap and shrug, “And, of course, the dead husband thing is a considerable amount of baggage. We live across the country from each other. There’s—there’s a lot that’s difficult about this. But I still think that what we have together is so fucking worth it.”

“It is,” Dieter confirms, giving your hand an encouraging squeeze.

“Thank you for being so open about this, Louella. This must be hard for you to do,” David says in a monotone voice, not looking up from his note taking.

“You have no idea,” you release a big, elated sigh, “But, like mentioned Dieter earlier, we don’t want people to think we’re trying to hide any of this, because we’re not. We’re just trying to move forward together.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” David says mildly, looks down to his notes, then squints up at the computer, clicking around as he tells you, “Now, after DIRT published the article questioning your identity, we received a call. I’m going to play that for you now…”

You glance from Dieter, to Darlene. Their confused expressions match yours.

“My name is Hannah—”

Your stomach drops to the floor. You whisper, “Fuck.”

“—I hear you’re trying to figure out who this woman is with Dieter Bravo. Well, I can tell you, that’s my daughter. Her name is Louella Rose Friedman. Now I don’t know what the hell she thinks she’s doing with this man, but I do not approve. I mean, really now, her husband died less than a year ago!”

Static tingles in your ligaments and fills your lungs. Your head shakes back and forth in protest, but her shrill voice continues to project across the room, scraping against your eardrums.

Dieter releases your hand and leans forward, trying to speak over the recording, warning, “Ok, David, that’s enough—”

“And this man? Dieter Bravo? Just like him from what I can tell. And I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but—”

Everything moves far away in an instant as your mind disconnects from your body. A high-pitched ringing noise dulls the noises around you.

From far away, your mom says, “He had a problem with drugs, you know, big problem, had other women, too.”

“Stop,” Dieter grinds out over your mother’s recorded voice.

“Lost his goddamn mind, tried to kill them both—”

Darlene scrambles over to the laptop and turns it towards her, “David, this is Darlene—”

“I just don’t understand what that girl thinks she’s doing getting involved with someone like this again, especially so soon?”

“No, nope,” Dieter stands, then booms, “This ends right FUCKING now!”

The sudden snap of him slamming the laptop shut and the dead silence that follows jolts you like a cattle-prod.

You flee the living room, down the hallway, into Dieter’s bedroom, then dial her number.

She picks up on the second ring.

“Louella Rose, what in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” your mother’s heavy midwestern accent pierces your eardrum.

“Are you fucking kidding me, mom? What do I think I’m doing? What the fuck are you doing?!” your teeth grit and and hiss, “Calling a fucking tabloid, really?”

“I only wanted them to know the truth—”

“That is fucking bullshit and you know it,” you growl, crossing an arm over your belly, pacing the floor, “You wanted fucking attention. Well, you’ve got it, congratu-fucking-lations!”

“I’m just looking out for your best interest. That man is bad news, Louella.“

“How the FUCK would you know?!”

“I know he has a cocaine habit, and that he cheated on his wife, does that sound like anyone else?”

You clench your jaw and shake your head.

“I’m sorry for caring—”

“You don’t fucking care! You have never fucking cared! If you cared, you would have talked to me, not a fucking tabloid. That shit you told them—” your voice cracks, but you swallow the lump in your throat and continue, “Mom, that’s not your story to tell. It’s mine.”

An exasperated sigh crackles in your ear, then she says, “You shouldn’t get tangled up in his world, Louella—”

“What I do, who I date, is none of your fucking business. It’s not your decision. I am a grown ass woman.”

“You might be a grown woman, but you’re still my baby girl, and I don’t want you to wind up dead this time,” she clicks her tongue against her teeth, “I’d say you’ll understand someday when you have your own kids, but that’s just another thing Ethan ruined, isn’t it?”

Your entire field of vision floods with red.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“When I hang up the phone, do not contact me ever again. You are fucking dead to me. Do you understand?”

“Oh, come on, Louella, don’t be dram—”

You end the call.

Dieter hovers a few feet from his open bedroom door. His nerves tingle with anticipation. Hushed sobs call out to him and grip his heart.

How long does he wait before going in to comfort you? Would you rather have time alone?

Part of him feels terrible for eavesdropping. Well, eavesdropping might not be the right word, considering how your heated words reverberated from one end of his home to the other effortlessly. It’s not his fault the goddamn place is like a resonance chamber.

Dieter hears Darlene in the living room chewing someone out over the phone. The words “so fucking unprofessional” echo down the hall, filled with venom. She’s in full tirade mode. Out for blood.

It gives him a smug sense of satisfaction hearing her wield this rage towards someone else.

If he knows anything about Darlene, it’s that this will take a while. She won’t stop until she’s had her fill, until her belly is swollen and ripe with vindication. Then she’ll lap the sticky blood from her hands, smoke a cigarette, and say, “Here’s what’s next.”

He raps a knuckle against the doorframe and asks, “Can I come in?”

“Yeah.”

The word is soggy and muffled. He enters the room, closing the door behind him, and finds you sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed, face buried in your hands. You don’t look up at him.

He crawls onto the bed behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist, pressing his forehead against the nape of your neck. Warm notes of vanilla and macadamia nuts waft off your hair. You feel so rigid under his touch.

“Talk to me, baby,” he murmurs, tugging you closer.

“Did I fuck it all up?”

Your voice comes out in a squeak, like you squeezed the words from your throat. Wet sobs bubble up your throat and shake your shoulders.

“No,” Dieter frowns, “Do you really think that?”

You shrug and release a shattered breath.

“Absolutely fucking not,” he assures you, “Hey, listen to me. You were fucking amazing.”

“But—”

“No, no buts. You were perfect. And—and brave, so fucking brave,” he nuzzles into that perfect space between your shoulder and neck and says, “I’m so proud of you, Louella.”

“Really?” you sniffle and wipe your eyes on the sleeve of your shirt, smearing black makeup onto the luxurious white silk.

“Holy shit, yes,” he chuckles, pulling you closer, relishing the way your hunched up muscles seem to slacken, “Before the bullshit that rat fuck pulled, you were perfection. Killed it, I swear to god, doll. And—and none of that last part was your fault. David shouldn’t have sprang that on us, and your mom,” he scoffs and shakes his head, gnashing his jaw back and forth as he tries to choose his words carefully, then finally says, “I’m sorry, but that was fucking despicable. You didn’t deserve that.”

“You didn’t deserve that,” you sniffle.

“No, I definitely deserved that,” he mutters, glancing up to the mirror, meeting his own eyes only for a moment before diverting his gaze.

Your hand slides over his and you move your thumb in gentle strokes against his skin, “She’s the fucking worst, Dee.”

He hums in acknowledgment, then inquires, “Was that her on the phone?”

“Yeah,” you answer, and your voice comes out all quivering and squeaky, “I, um… I told her to never talk to me again.”

“I heard,” he confesses.

“Oh,” you breathe.

His pulse jumps and he stammers, “I—I wasn’t trying to or anything, I swear, the noise just carries—”

“I know,” you squeeze his hand, “It’s ok.”

Your crying wanes in intensity, but the air around you is still dense and stormy. Dieter kisses your shoulder and asks, “What can I do to help you right now, baby?”

You ponder this for a long moment. When your response comes, it jolts his insides. Sucks the air from his lungs.

“Fuck me.”

He’s not sure he heard you right, and shakes his head, “Wait, what?”

Then you reach back and run your fingers through his hair. Unravel against his chest. Let your head roll back on his shoulder.

Dieter cranes his neck to search your face. It’s all tear-drenched, your makeup smeared, eyes puffy and red. He reaches up and squee-gees the mess with his thumb, wiping the excess onto his white comforter as you quietly tell him, “I need to get out of my head. I want—I want you to fuck me. Hard. I want it to hurt. Use me. Please.”

His insides coil and twitch. Your lips part as you scrape your nail along his jawline, beckoning him closer.

He smooths his palms along your torso, drinking in the heat of your body through your silk shirt. Your mouth draws him in closer: a bright flame, and he’s just a moth.

That’s how it is with you, Lua, you have to know that by now. He’s just a bug, and you’re this all-consuming fire that could burn him alive and he’d say thank you, my love, thank you for your light.

When your lips meet, his vocal chords crackle. Your mouth, plush and pliable, so delicate, he almost feels bad for the force he uses in response.

Almost.

You have to understand how difficult it is for him to restrain himself with you. How the tether between his humanity and deprivation pulls taut when you writhe beneath his touch.

What you’re asking, to make it hurt, use me, please… it electrifies him. Calls to the part of him that bucks against the restraints. Is that what you really want? For him to unchain that beast?

His teeth catch your lip and you gasp, but you don’t stop kissing him. In fact, you ball his shirt in your fist and kiss him harder.

You fucking love it.

He palms your breast and tastes the sweet whimper on your breath when he grips your flesh. Digs his fingers in, squeezes harder. You moan down his throat. Arch your back. Roll your tongue along his, soft and wet and hungry.

“Fuck,” he growls through grit teeth. Grabs your jaw and licks the gasp from your mouth. You grind back against his cock and an intoxicating rush of heat rolls through his body, clinging to his bones, sinking into the folds of his brain, tinging his vision with this thick scarlet fog that makes his heart pound in his chest.

Dieter buries his fist in your hair and sits up on his knees, ushering you to do the same. His lips hover at the shell of your ear and he murmurs, “Is this how you want it? Want it fucking rough?”

“Yes,” you breathe, and he slides a hand to your neck, spreading the webbing between his thumb and index finger on your esophagus.

“I wanna pull up your pretty little skirt, and bend you over—wanna play with that tight little asshole—”

You let out this throaty moan that vibrates against his palm. It makes his cock jump.

“Would you like that?” he rumbles. Clamps down on your earlobe. Grinds the flab between his teeth.

“Oh my fucking god, Dieter, please,” you whine, hips rolling against him, urging him to make good on his word.

He shoves your face into the mattress and you just prop your ass up for him, pushing back as he rucks your skirt up to your waist. His hands slide up the soft, warm flesh of your thighs, feeling the weight of your ass in his palms.

You arch your back, presenting yourself to him, whimpering for attention, silk underwear all damp with want, clinging to your cunt.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he rasps, hooking a fingertip around the wet patch of fabric, dragging his knuckle through your arousal, “You fucking love this, don’t you?”

You let out a throaty, delirious laugh that quickly morphs into a moan when he rubs the knuckle against your clit, then slaps your ass with a sharp smack.

“Fuck yes,” you gasp. Your hips roll against his touch, seeking stimulation. But he doesn’t want you to have it yet. Not like that.

He pulls away, and you whine, going to get up on your hands in protest, but he closes a fist around your hair and pushes you back down, grinding out, “Don’t you fucking move.”

Another airy, depraved laugh.

Dieter grips your hair tighter, explaining in a whisper as he tugs your underwear down your legs, “You’re gonna stay right here, ass in the air like a bitch in heat, and let me do whatever the fuck I want to you. How’s that sound, love? Hmm?”

“Please,” you breathe. He hears the wet gulp of your throat. The hair between his fingers pulls taut when you nod.

“Perfect,” he murmurs, releasing your hair, tossing the underwear from around your ankles across the bed.

He slides his palms over your ass cheeks. Parts them just long enough to gather a pool of spit on his tongue and let it land on your asshole with a wet splat. Rolls his thumb through the spit, smearing it around, making you gasp, “Fuck, that’s good—”

His cock twitches. Electricity writhes around his insides. He licks his lips, then purrs, “Yeah? It feels good when I touch your asshole, hmm? You fucking like that, princess?”

“Yes—”

Dieter spreads you apart, brings himself closer, throat rumbling at the scent of your heat. At the way your swollen, needy cunt is just fucking dripping, coated in a shiny layer of your slick.

Fucking beautiful.

He drags his tongue through the arousal pooling at your entrance with a depraved groan.

You unleash a moan and try to wriggle around on his tongue, still trying to exert control, still not letting go.

He raises a hand and lowers it on your ass cheek with a smack, talking at your cunt as he holds your hips steady, “Stop trying to run this, doll, let me fucking use you like you need me to.”

The response that comes is a whimper, but your muscles stop working under his grip.

“Good, that’s it, baby,” he coos, then returns to your cunt, licking along all the soft ridges and valleys of you, savoring your nectar gathering slick on his tastebuds.

“Oh my fucking god,” you croak, but you don’t rock against his tongue. Doing just as he asked. Heat surges through him, all that pride commingling with lust and love and need.

He licks up your middle, painting you with short, broad strokes, all the way up to your tight, puckered asshole. Saliva pools as he laps away, rubbing back and forth, in a circle, flicking his tongue against you in wet little slaps.

All the while, you’re whimpering and moaning, legs trembling, sweat coating your hot skin, damp against his palms.

He brings the tip of his index finger to the center of your asshole, wriggling and applying pressure until the tight ring gives and allows him entrance. Your choked moan fills his ears and he moves slowly, carefully, letting you adjust to the sensation.

One knuckle disappears, then another, and when buried as deep as he can go, he ruts it in and out, the hot pool of spit lubricating his movements.

You start to slacken, your sharp little gasps for air drawing out longer, surrendering to pleasure, whimpering and nodding, eyes fluttering.

Dieter pauses and wiggles another thick digit against your tight hole, panting, “Fuck, you’re doing so good, baby. Fucking amazing. That’s it, baby, just relax for me—”

It slides past the barrier and he moans in unison with you, burying his fingers again and again, spitting thick, gooey wads of saliva where he fuses with you, making his movements easier, more fluid, while the hot, smooth inside of you grips around his fingers.

“Fuck me,” you beg, “Please—please fuck my ass.”

“Take your clothes off for me, baby,” he sits up straight and begins to unbutton his shirt. You roll over onto your back and start to strip down while he throws the shirt on the floor, then lays back and takes off his pants.

He reaches into drawer of his nightstand and pulls out a bottle of lube, then squirts a dollop of it into his hand and glances up at you. You're laying on your back, propped up on your elbows, lust-blown eyes glued to his cock. When he spreads the slick along his length, your pink tongue rolls across your lips, stoking the hot coals in his core.

Dieter crawls across the bed to you, murmuring, “Open your mouth for me, baby.”

Your gaze locks onto his as your jaw drops open. He moves up your body and straddles your chest, holding his throbbing, aching cock out to you, “Wanna fuck that pretty face of yours, is that ok with you?”

You nod, threading your brows together, batting your lashes, eyes all half-lidded and hungry, and purr, “Use me like a fuck doll.”

The request makes his cock pulse in his fist. You curl your tongue against a bead of pre-cum hanging off the tip of him and wiggle it around. His head falls back when the delicate touch floods his body with pleasure and he groans, “Holy fucking sh—”

The words evaporate from his throat when your lips pull taught around his girth, the wet heat of your mouth engulfing him. His lubed-up hand falls to the wayside and he snaps his gaze back to yours. You hold eye contact and move at a slow, steady rhythm, taking more and more of him with each renewed bob.

Dieter moans at the sight of you, lips all shiny and stretched out around him, eyelids fluttering. He brushes the sweat-dampened hair from your forehead, gathering what he can reach in his fist. Tightens his grip. Pushes his hips forward.

When he breaches your throat, you gag. A hot rush of spit pours from your mouth. Twitching muscles squeeze around him, protesting the intrusion. A wave of ecstasy rushes up his spine and pulls a moan from his stomach.

“Are you ok?” he rasps, meeting your watery eyes.

You pull off of him, panting, strings of saliva hanging between your reddened lips and his glistening cock, and nod, “Don’t fucking stop,” before taking him in your mouth again.

So he thrusts forward again, carefully, every muscle in his body tensing with restraint. Your palms slide up his thighs, around to his backside, where you dig the tips of your fingers into his skin, urging him forward, and he knows now that you fucking meant it: Use me like a fuck doll.

He nods with understanding, “You want more, hmm?”

The hum of approval from your throat ripples across his body and makes him groan. You bat your lashes up at him, eyes creased like you’re smiling but your mouth is all crammed full of his cock so it’s hard to be sure, but he can tell you’re just fucking loving this shit. Jesus fucking Christ, it’s almost more than he can handle.

“Want me to fuck that pretty fucking face?” he growls, closing his fist around your hair tighter, rolling his hips, dragging his cock in and out of your mouth.

You moan and it makes him moan, the vibration of your throat writhing beneath his skin.

He adjusts his angle, releasing your hair to grab both sides of your head and plunge deeper, down past the back of your mouth, letting out a sharp groan as the firm ridges slide tight around him. His hips work forward in a quick, short burst of wet thrusts that light up every nerve in his body, then he pulls from your mouth. While you gasp for breath, he grips the base of his cock with one hand while the other grabs your spit-covered chin, “Is that what you fucking want? Fuck your face just like that?”

“Fuck yes, just like that,” you choke out, voice all gritted and airy.

“You pinch me when you need to breathe, ok?” he instructs, searching your flushed, messy face, “Pinch me right now so I know.”

This big smile spreads across your swollen lips and you squeeze a chunk of his ass between your fingers, “Like this?”

“That’s it, baby, do that and I’ll let you come up for air,” he nods, “Now stick out your tongue.”

Your tongue stretches down to your chin, and he slaps his cock against it with a smack-smack-smack before sliding it back into the hot cavern of your mouth. He cradles your skull in his palms and thrusts forward, cramming himself down your throat. Your vocal chords buzz against him, and your mouth emits this sick, wet glug-glug-glug that sets him on fucking fire. You pinch him and he pulls out, both of you gasping and moaning.

“So fucking good, fuck,” he rasps, waiting a moment for your breathing to be less desperate, then asks, “Ready?”

You hum a little mhmm and open your mouth, welcoming him back to fuck your throat. He can barely fucking stand how hot you look with your face all shiny with sweat and tears and spit, how your eyelids flutter then snap open to meet his gaze, how your body wiggles around beneath him, hips bucking against nothing, thighs rubbing together.

If he didn’t have you pinned down like this, you’d be touching yourself, he just fucking knows it.

The ecstasy tingling at the base of his spine starts to spread and you pinch him just before he loses control. He pulls out, but doesn’t dare grab himself this time, for fear that any stimulation will push him over the edge.

He gets on his hands and knees and leans down to press his lips to yours. You throw your arms around his neck and arch your back into the kiss, pulling him closer, rolling your tongue against his as soft whimpers flutter from your mouth. One of his hands trails down your body, between your legs, and he groans at how fucking wet you are.

You gasp against his lips, throwing your head back as he plays with your clit, working you at a rapid rhythm that makes your face twist and flush, nodding in approval, quick little gasps and squeaks escaping your throat.

He grins when he realizes how close you are. So fucking worked up from sucking him off, already coiling up, ready to burst.

“That’s it, baby,” he husks, kisses you, then presses his sweaty forehead to yours, “That’s it, let me see you fucking cum, baby.”

“Fuck fuck fuck, Dee, don’t stop—fuck—”

Your words disappear with a sharp inhale, muscles tensing up, hips arching against his hand. He continues to move against you, fast and steady and firm, until you find your voice and release a choked sob. You collapse into yourself, body shaking violently, legs clamping shut, gasping for air.

“Holy fuck,” you breathe, and your body starts to slacken, but jumps like a live wire at his slowing touch.

Dieter slides down your crease, through your arousal, propping himself on one arm to watch how your cum clings to his fingers in thick, heavy strands as he draws his hand away.

“Fuck, you’re amazing,” he murmurs, licks you from his fingers, then drags them along your warm, gooey seam again, “But I’m not done with you yet.”

Your eyebrows press together and lips part with a whimper, but you don’t appear adverse to the suggestion. In fact, you bring a hand to your chest. Cup your breast. Pinch your nipple and gasp.

His body surges hot with want. He grazes his nose against your face, rumbling into your ear, “How’d you put it? Like a fuck doll?”

Your throat lets out a little whine and your lips pout out into an O as he sinks two thick fingers into your cunt. You prop yourself up and watch him slide in and out, whimpering and nodding, “Fuck that’s so good, Dee—oh my god, yes—”

The hunger roiling at his core grows. He adds another finger, stretching you wider, and you release a choked moan.

“Is this what you want, Lua? Want me to fuck you like a little slut, hmm?” he pants, shifting himself to hover above you, pumping his arm, cramming his fingers into your tight, wet heat over and over again.

“Yes yes yes yes yes,” you babble, and start moving your hips against him, “Do that thing—”

Dieter smirks, knowing exactly what thing you’re referring to, and pulls his hand up towards the ceiling, rubbing the pads of his fingers hard against your g-spot, “That?”

“Fuuuuuuck yes, baby, just like that,” you moan, “That’s so good, baby, such a good fucking boy, fuck me so good—”

He lets out a groan and wiggles his fingers faster, “Yeah? You like when I make you squirt all over the place? Wanna soak my fucking bedsheets?”

Your response is a strangled noise, but you nod your head frantically, and your limbs start to tremble. And, fuck, the sight of you all shaking and whining, skin slick with sweat, makeup running down your pretty, flushed, contorted face, it’s enough to send his insides fluttering, barreling towards oblivion once again.

Dieter has to close his eyes, swallowing hard as he tries to reign himself in, forcing himself to fill his mind with mundane thoughts about what to eat for supper, how this disaster of an interview will get resolved, whether or not he’ll wake up early to attempt making breakfast for you, all while trying to ignore the liquid hot squeeze of your pussy around his wiggling fingers.

When he feels he finally has a grip on his pleasure, he snaps his eyes open and moves between your legs. Buries his face in your cunt. Rolls his tongue on your swollen clit.

“Yes, fuck,” you breathe and anchor your hands in his hair, pulling his curls into tight fists. Your breathing starts to come in shallow gasps. The muscles of your thighs tense and twitch.

“Don’t stop, baby, don’t fucking stop,” you whimper, and he works you faster, moving his tongue in a circle, tickling the inside of you, groaning as you rub yourself against him, smearing your juices all over his face. You moan when the sound hits you, so he continues, humming from the back of his throat, and it’s just the push you need.

Your hips stutter and still. A wild, ragged noise tears from your chest. You convulse around his fingers, and he pulls them out, sliding his mouth down to your opening just as a hot wave of pleasure gushes out. It splashes against his face, and he tries to catch as much as he can on his tongue, moaning at the taste of you. Grabs your waist and holds you there, lapping away at your cunt as you gasp for air, body jerking at the stimulation, but unable to move from his vice grip.

He climbs your body and kisses you, hard and messy, letting you taste yourself. You rake your fingers through his hair, whining into his mouth when his tongue slides across yours.

His cock aches with neglect. The steady inflow of pleasure burns between the layers of his skin and begs to be released.

He pulls away from your lips and pants, “Flip over for me, love. I wanna fuck your ass.”

And, you… fucking hell, Lua, you smile at this like he told you he’s buying you a brand new car. He sits up and you roll over onto your belly, then stick your ass up into the air, “Is that good?”

“Fucking perfect.”

Dieter grabs the abandoned bottle of lube, squeezes some into his palm, then requests, “Spread for me, baby.”

You reach back, pulling your ass cheeks apart. He squirts some of the lube on your puckered hole and you yelp, then giggle, “It’s so cold.”

He chuckles at this as he strokes his cock, smearing the slick lube along his length, then he asks, “Have you done this before? Anal sex?”

This isn’t the first time he’s ventured into ass play with you, but only with tongues, toys, fingers. You look back at him and shrug, “Well, yeah, but,” then you drop your gaze to his dick, “You’re, um… a lot bigger than anyone else…”

The comment makes his ego swell, and he can’t help but grin, spreading the lube across your tight hole with his middle finger. Then he applies pressure to its center until it allows him access. Your eyelids flutter and you whimper, licking your lips, pulling your cheeks apart further.

“I’ll go slow, but if it’s too much, tell me and I’ll stop, ok?”

“Ok,” you nod.

He wriggles another digit inside you. You gasp and nod, “Fuck, that feels really good.”

“Good,” he purrs, rutting into you slowly, flicking his gaze between your face and ass, watching the way your lips part and eyelids drift closed, feeling the muscles inside you start to relax.

You arch your back into the stimulation, breathy little whimpers and moans floating from your mouth like music to his fucking ears. Lust pools hot and needy at his center, making his heart thud and his cock ache.

“Are you ready?” he asks, studying your face as you open your eyes and look back at him.

“I’m ready,” you confirm, holding his gaze as he pulls his fingers out and brings the head of his cock to kiss the tight, lubricated hole.

Dieter pushes forward cautiously, pausing when your asshole surrenders to the very tip of him and you let out a sharp cry. After a moment, you nod, “Keep going.”

So he does. The tight ring squeezes the ever loving fuck out of him as he slowly, tediously, makes his way inside you. His forehead breaks out in a sweat, muscles quivering from the effort it takes to move at this pace. Your face pinches up with what could either be pleasure or pain, he’s not quite sure, but it’s accompanied by whimpers and nods, signaling your approval.

Once the head of his cock is fully engulfed, though, and you adjust to his width, acclimate to the feeling, things start to go faster. He pushes your hands away and spreads your cheeks himself, hissing, “Fuck, this looks so good, baby. Love seeing your sweet little asshole stretched out around my cock—”

“It feels so fucking good,” you breathe, propping yourself up on your elbows, “Give me more.”

The request squirms around inside him and makes his throat rumble. He drives his hips forward steadily, and it’s a fucking vacuum of suction, pulling him in, swallowing him whole. You sputter and moan in reaction, croaking out quiet little whines of “oh my fucking god” over and over again.

“Fuuuuck, you’re so fucking tight, holy fuck, Lua,” he groans, throwing his head back, then starts to roll his hips, still moving at a languid pace, sliding his length along that ring that, even when your muscles loosen slightly, grips him so fucking tight it makes every ounce of sanity flee his brain.

“Do you like that? Like when I fuck your ass with my fat cock?” he asks through grit teeth.

You whimper and nod, “Yes yes yes yes—”

“Tell me,” he demands, snapping his hips, heart jumping at the moan you choke out.

“I like it wh—when you fuck my ass—” he snaps his hips again and you gasp, then continue, “with your big, fat cock—”

“Yeah you fucking do, don’t you?” He increases the tempo, moaning at the squeeze of you, how fucking good you feel wrapped around him, and grinds out, “Little fuck doll likes being used, hmm? Just like this?”

“Holy fuck, Dee,” you groan, raising yourself up onto your hands, pushing back against his thrusts, “I fucking love it, yes.”

The force of your body moving with his, burying him to the hilt inside you again and again, fills him with fire. Sweat drips from his forehead onto your back, heart fluttering in his heaving chest, hands tingling, limbs trembling, ecstasy pooling thick and hot at the base of his spine.

“Fuck, you’re gonna make me fucking cum,” he warns, but doesn’t let up his pace.

“Cum in my ass, baby, please please please,” you moan.

The request tugs at the edges of him, and he wants you closer, wants to feel the heat of your skin against his.

“Get up here,” he grunts, leans forward and hooks an arm around your torso, pulls your back against his chest, cradling your neck in his palm. Your head falls back onto his shoulder and your mouth is hanging open slack, frantic little moans fleeing your throat as he fucks your ass deep and hard, rumbling into your ear, “Cum in your fucking ass, hmm? My little slut wants her ass filled with cum?”

You bring your hand to the back of his head and grab a fistful of hair, breathing, “Fuck yes, please, Dieter, please—”

“Anything for you, love,” he pants, then you pull his hair tighter, and you start to rock your hips against his, and your whines get all high-pitched and airy, and he babbles, “I mean that, I really do, fucking anything you want, baby—fill your ass with cum, buy you whatever the fuck you want, fucking anything, I swear to god—”

Your lips cut him off, and you’re fucking trembling now, muscles all tight and coiled, squeezing around his cock, and he kisses you back with fire, groaning against your mouth as you whimper, then your breath disappears completely, you let out a strangled moan, and your body shutters from the force of your orgasm. The static buzzing in his center grows wider, deeper, tingling up his backbone, through his limbs, until it washes over him completely.

He thrusts into you one, two, three more times, spilling his load inside you.

His labored breathing puffs hot against yours. You bring your touch to his cheek and draw a circle into his beard with your thumb. He kisses you again, gentler, lips lingering on yours, then murmurs, “I fucking love you.”

A bright, wide smile spreads across your face. You let out this breathless little giggle, kiss him, then say, “I fucking love you, too.”

Dieter pulls out and falls back onto the bed, stretching out, catching his breath. You follow suit and cuddle up to him, laying your head on his heaving chest. He curls his arm around your shoulders and rests his cheek on the crown of your sweaty head.

The silence that settles is comfortable, and he notices that the rest of the house is quiet, too. Darlene must have fled sometime while he was fucking you, no doubt disgusted by the noises that were probably not muffled at all by the barrier of his bedroom door.

His attention draws back to you when you whisper, “Am I doing the right thing? By cutting her out of my life?”

It takes a moment for him to understand what you’re asking. When it clicks, he frowns, “I don’t think that’s a question I can answer.”

You’re quiet in response, so he inquires further, “What’s your relationship like with her?”

“We, um… we butt heads,” you shrug and bring your fingertips to his sternum, start drawing little swirls against his skin, “She’s always been so… I don’t know, self-centered? Childish?” you pause here, and he can hear the gears in your busy mind turning. You lay your palm flat over his heart and say, “It’s always about her. She didn’t come see me when Ethan died, or try to console me, or anything. She fucking—”

A frustrated huff of air blows across his chest. You shake your head, then sigh, “She fucking called me all the time crying about it, and posted all this bullshit online about how sad she was, and—and she fucking hated him. It’s like she expected me to comfort her. She never asked how I was doing. It was… fuck, it was just like when Dad died.”

Dieter smooths circles into your skin with his thumb. Studies the ceiling, waiting for you to say more. Then you do.

“When I would try talking to her about how much I missed him—my dad, I mean—she would get fucking mad at me. Say shit like, ‘Well, how do you think I feel?’ or—or, ‘You’re not the only one who lost him,’ or—this one’s my favorite, the uses it all the time, ‘It’s not all about you, Louella Rose,’” you pause and scoff to yourself, shaking your head, “So I stopped trying to her about it, and then she would get mad at me for not talking about it, so then I would talk to her about it, and she would either get mad all over again or squirrel the things I told her away to use as fucking ammunition against me the next time I made her upset, and—and, I don’t know. That’s just how it is with her.”

Dieter’s mind whirs as he sifts through the million thoughts pouring through his brain, trying to find the right one to tell you. It feels like finding the hay in the needlestack, and when his mouth opens, all that comes out is, “Fuck that.”

“Yeah,” you snort, then comb your fingers through his hair and murmur, “I love your curls, they’re adorable.”

He almost takes the subject change you dangle in front of him, but something lingers at the base of his throat, begging to be known.

“Look,” he starts, shifting to meet your gaze, and sighs, “I really don’t think you’re making a mistake by cutting her out of your life, Lua. And-and not because she said those things about me, but because she treats you like shit. And, I know it’s not my place to say shit like this, but,” he shakes his head, searching your face, watching the tears pool in your eyes, “She might be your mom, but that’s not family, you know?”

Your face crumples up.

He starts to fumble out an apology, “Fuck, I’m–”

You kiss him.

When you pull back, you whisper, “Thank you.”

“Of course,” he breathes, brushing his hand against your cheek, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” you scoot closer, and he wraps his arm around your shoulder. A few peaceful moments go by before your stomach growls so loud it makes both of you start laughing.

“Let’s get you some fucking food, huh?”

#dieter bravo x you #dieter bravo #dieter bravo smut #dieter bravo x ofc #dieter bravo x oc #dieter bravo fic #pedro pascal character #pedro pascal character fanfiction #pedro pascal character fanfic #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #psychomanteum

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bugsnax-community-questions · 7 months

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Bugsnax Community Questions ~ Poll #25

Put filbo, eggabell and the others in one option because there aren't enough slots to fit everyone.

FILBO: Basic Furniture, Dandelion, Cot (secret), Grumpy Baby Mayor, Pawprint rug, Cloudy paws print, painted hut, Group Photo, Streamers, Garden gnome, snaxburg flag, Golden Strabby, Certificate of completion

WAMBUS: Scarecrow, beechwood, Sauce plant seedlings, Sauce rug, Rustic Bed, Mini Cactriffy, Grow light nursery, Wood panel print, cowboy hats, ceiling fan

BEFFICA: Sleeping bag, Ladder Shelf, bestie print, Bestie (exterior), Fuzzy heart rug, Privacy curtains, Bulletin board, glowing stars, purple lupin, befficas journal, Kiddie pool (technically from floofty)

WIGGLE: Hanging lights, Luxury bed (secret), Gilded (Secret), record player, Palm tree, Platinum Award, Beach Chair + Umbrella, Armoire, Music print, Rock club sign, Psychedelic rug

TRIFFANY: Map of Snaktooth, Drafting Table, Prehistoric Floorcloth, Grumpus Skull, Giant skeleton, Barrel cacti, Dig site print, hanging pots, ancient bugsnax statue 1 (pinkle), ancient bugsnax statue 2 (incherito), Bone and Stone (exterior), Bone and stone bed

GRAMBLE: Lantern, Pink oleander, Weather Vane, Knit Sprout Mat, Hay bales, knit bed, Strabby Hat, Doily Table, knitted (exterior), knit baskets, Strabby print, Bunger bed

CROMDO: Tulips, Police tape (Secret), Bug juice dispenser, Big safe, A single hanging bulb, boombox, money print rug, worn mattress, billboard, Motivational poster, Antique print

SNORPY: Loose Newspaper, Conspiracy board, Blueprint print, Protective coat hangers, Metal plating (exterior), Metalworks flower, Satellite dish, deprivation tank, bookshelf, HAM radio, hot tub

CHANDLO: Red Cedar, Framed jersey, Rock climbing holds, Strong trophy, Hammock, Bean bag, Orange bloodroot, Home gym (secret), Sports print (secret), Gym mats, chandlolier,

FLOOFTY: red ti plant, lab bench (secret), Specimen jar, Pirate ship (exterior), Beheading machine, ecience poster, chemistry rug, test tube lights, science print, Chalkboard

SHELDA: Hanging Planter, Herbology station, Primitive grass, Salt crystal, ebony stained wood, zen garden, Meditation cushion, Prairie grass, wind chimes, desert print, torch

EGGABELL: Family Photos, Eggshell print, medical egg rug, Medicine cabinet, Emergency bell, First aid kit, Draped fabrics, igloo (exterior), snow grump, medical bed

OTHER: Cowboy hat roof (Cactriffy), Planted snak (Cactriffy), Snak print (L), Strabby Shelf (L), Snakgoyle (Snaxsquatch), Matilija Poppy (Snaxsquatch), Eyes (exterior ~ B), Legendary snak rug (B), Snak mobile (C), Sodie Fountain (C)

#this is a hard one for me. i really like a lot of the furniture #i really like the grumpy baby mayor and the chandlolier #as well as the beheading machine of course #and pink oleanders from gramble #but honestly... im going with the blueprint print from snorpy 🥰#bugsnax #bugsnax community questions

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anger-ey · 7 months

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What year does NSR take place in, anyway? (theory)

I've had this question for a bit, and I came up with a theory, like, nearly 2 years ago by now, so I figured I'd share it here......

There are MULTIPLE OPTIONS I came up with.... here goes,,,

For starters: how do we even start? There's no indication of a year anywhere in the game! Nuh uh... there is!

Let's start by process of elimination: in one of the AMAs, one of the devs (I think it was Haz?) said that NSR does not take place in 2020, and in not in a post-pandemic world. So the maximum year is 2019. (They've also refused to actually answer on another occasion, though, so I'm not sure which is accurate.)

And, in one of the areas near the Mamak, Zuke notes how there hasn't been a specific music award since the 90s

So we know for certain (ish) that the game takes place between 2000 (if Zuke was referring to the early 90s) and 2019.

There's also a canonical date that the audition took place:

Monday, on the 7th of August. Because 2023 also has this date, we can see the previous years this specific day and date fell on.

The only years this date falls on are 2000, 2006, and 2017. (Now, I know that this is probably some random date, but I'll do what I can bro!!)

There's another clue to the setting: Neon J. He specifically mentions having served in the military in "'67", which can be from any century or millennium, but if we assume he meant 1967, we have to possible outcomes: 2000 or 2017.

We have little to no information about Neon J, but we do have some facts that can help us: the minimum age for serving in the military in Malaysia is 17. Let's say that Neon J was referring to his first serious mission when ranting to b2j about the azkar faction. That would mean he was 17 in 1967, making him 50 in 2000. Now, I know the devs said he was around his 40s, so we can use birthday logic and cay that maybe he is 49 now, and turning 50 later in the year. Kind of shaky, but I do like how it reflects the rise of EDM over Rock in the 2000s, and it fits with the fact the game is based on lots of early/mid 2000s media. As for the technology being so advanced for 2000, they have a giant nuclear reactor that turns sound into power in the middle of the city. I'm pretty sure they're much more technologically advanced than we were back then. As for the 2017 theory, we can also say that maybe Neon J died or was comatose for a very long time starting in his 20s, and was resurrected as a cyborg shortly before NSR was founded. That means he'd have been born over 40 years ago, but wasn't alive for a lot of it, so he was frozen in time for bit, like Aang in the iceberg. That, or he died in his 40s and it stuck in that mentality. Who knows!

There's also the possibility that Neon J meant, like 2264 or something and NSR takes place in the very far future, but idk I don't like that as much for some reason.

(p.s., just remembered that this is on those toy frame thingies in sayu's boss fight. this either means sayu was made in-universe in 2018, or this was simply when the modellers/painters worked on this specific model)

TAKE WHAT YOU WILL FROM THIS..... THANK YOU FOR READING MY THEORIES....

(Edit: thinking it over, I could see it being 2006, as a compromise between 2000 and 2017)

#no straight roads #nsr #angerey talks

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waitmyturtles · 3 months

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As this film will be getting much more coverage during awards season, I thought that this analysis and reflection of Leonard Bernstein's queer sexuality, and how it was rendered in the film, was worth reading.

Certain emphases in the article below are mine. As an East-Coast American, in many ways, I feel like Leonard Bernstein is musical family; that a Hollywood-driven film about him would leave out important details of the context of his sexual and emotional life is... to be expected in the Hollywood West.

****

The film celebrates Leonard Bernstein’s musical duality, but fails to seriously engage with his bisexuality.

By Jennie Livingston

There’s a heartbreaking scene in Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” about the marriage of the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) to the actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), in which, as the couple argue in the bedroom of their Upper West Side apartment, Macy’s parade inflatables glide past the windows. A giant Snoopy echoes a Snoopy we saw in a family scene; it also gestures at the awkward gulf between Bernstein’s private and public lives, as if the musician himself were yet another helium-propelled icon from the Thanksgiving pantheon. Montealegre’s accusation, “Your truth is a [expletive] lie!” nails Bernstein’s privilege, condemning the habits and appetites he expects his family to tolerate and support.

The film gets right so much of who Bernstein was, allowing us to take in how he was, all at once, ahead of his time, a victim of his time, a gay man, a bisexual, a father, a nonconformist, a narcissist. “Maestro” is full of heart and craft, with riveting lead performances. It’s a film about a musician that doesn’t exaggerate or glorify the creative process, or suggest artists are either superhuman or subhuman.

The film drops you into the heart of creation so that you feel the excitement of the new, particularly in eras (the 1940s through the ’70s) in which Leonard Bernstein revolutionized how the public experienced classical music. As the decades shift, so does what we see: Early scenes use an aspect ratio (4:3) and color world (black and white) from the ’40s; then the film almost imperceptibly brings in color, before finally stretching the frame out to widescreen — all without banging you over the head with its cinematic cleverness. The cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, deserves special applause for his command of light, space and movement. An opening scene in which the young Bernstein leaps onto a bed, slaps his partner’s butt like a timpani, then runs right into Carnegie Hall in his bathrobe and boxers, is as thrilling as any time-compression or dream sequence I can name.

Although it’s clear that Cooper’s directorial hand is nothing less than breathtaking, the film becomes increasingly disquieting. In the first third of the film, the script sets up an intoxicating premise: a queer Jewish man inhabiting the already-antisemitic world of classical music falls in love with a woman. It can happen. It particularly could happen in a world in which gay artists were always in danger of being exposed and ejected from the institutions they depended on. In the ’40s and ’50s, when Bernstein and Montealegre met and married, psychiatry still considered homosexuality a disorder to be treated or cured. (A note on my language describing Bernstein’s sexuality: In an early letter, Montealegre tells Bernstein “you are a homosexual and may never change.” More recently, his daughter Jamie has referred to him alternately as gay and bisexual.)

Early on, the script follows Bernstein from dating the clarinetist David Oppenheim (the man in bed in that opening scene, played by Matt Bomer) to his courtship with Montealegre, an actress with high cheekbones and an intelligence and warmth that are just as sharply defined. One day Lenny’s walking alone in Central Park and runs into Oppenheim, who’s strolling with his wife, Ellen Adler (Kate Eastman), and baby in tow. By now Bernstein’s also married. Addressing the child, Bernstein jokes that he has slept with both of her parents! And adds with a kind of wild glee, “but I’m reining it in.” The mother and child go one way; Bernstein and Oppenheim head downtown. Soon Oppenheim is clasping Bernstein’s face, and they are both feeling, regretting, reliving what couldn’t have been.

If only the film itself weren’t an exercise in “reining in” Bernstein’s sexuality. Granted, the movie primarily concerns the relationship between Montealegre and Bernstein. It’s about two people creating a family, a family that has issues, partly because the wife spends years tolerating, resisting, commenting on, accepting and suffering from her husband’s dualities. But about a third of the way in, the queer characters all but fade out. They’re there as a light visual presence, but not as people with stories and interior lives.

After Oppenheim and Bernstein’s intimate stroll, Lenny and his lovers are reduced (in Montealegre’s eyes) to a series of obstacles to respectability, and (in the audience’s eyes) to a series of outfits, mannerisms and even clichés, like a coke-fueled party during which Bernstein talks on the phone to his daughter Jamie. Did some gay men in the ’70s skate on the surface of drugs and anonymous sex? Yes, and if the film tells me Bernstein was there to witness and experience it, I believe it. What I don’t believe is that he never experienced relationships with men built on conversation, intellectual intimacies and sustained physical contact. It wouldn’t have taken much — one or two scenes — to suggest that the gay relationships that Bernstein cultivated were in fact love affairs. That may have been worth noting, including in the service of telling the story of the marriage.

“Heterosexuals have never known what to do with queer people, if they think of their existence at all,” Carmen Maria Machado writes, in a memoir tracing the invisibility of certain narratives. I don’t want to believe that the director and his co-writer are incapable of writing well-rounded gay characters, but paradoxically, the failure to render Bernstein’s male lovers as three-dimensional people distracts from the central couple’s romance. I longed for more insight into the nuances of Bernstein and Montealegre’s conundrum, and details of his queer life could have provided it. Flattening Bernstein’s gay relationships to a series of knowing glances and brief encounters seemed to underline the main couple’s essential heterosexuality, rather than emphasizing their relationship’s complexity.

Because, in life, Bernstein kept seeing men — and not only at the events the film allows us to briefly glimpse. Ultimately, he left Montealegre for a younger man, Tom Cothran (Gideon Glick), who worked in classical radio. If included, this risky decision could have been a great turning point in the film. Scenes of Bernstein attending the dying Montealegre are moving; they could have been more meaningful if we had understood the drama and sacrifice behind his loving presence at her bedside. He didn’t just drop out of one or two coke-fueled soirees; he left a relationship.

The film ends with Montealegre’s death and suggests Bernstein never recovered from the loss. In life, after his wife’s death, Bernstein reconnected with Cothran, as a friend. Soon after, Cothran himself died, of AIDS, the plague that claimed the lives of so many men of his and Bernstein’s generations. It must have been a cavalcade of griefs for Bernstein; it must have been so complex for this artist to have struggled — with his desire to honor his desires, with his realization that the world was becoming increasingly open to “out” queer artists as viable public figures — and with the divisions between his queer worlds and his family. I wonder if Bernstein longed for Montealegre more acutely in the 1980s. Perhaps, together, they could have absorbed the horror of the AIDS pandemic.

The decision to leave out AIDS feels as if the filmmakers simply don’t know, or mark as significant, what happened in the world during the years between Montealegre’s death in 1978 and Bernstein’s own death in 1990. What viewers get instead is a near-final sequence of Bernstein grinding with his young conducting student to Tears for Fears’s “Shout,” then wildly dancing on his own. That these flashes of ecstasy occur in a room full of other young men, many of whom will die soon, is an odd understatement from a film obsessed with the passage of time.

Jennie Livingston directed and produced the award-winning documentary “Paris Is Burning,” and the shorts “Who’s the Top?” “Through the Ice” and “Hotheads.” Other work includes directing for the TV series “Pose” and creating an original projection for Elton John’s show. Livingston is currently at work on a nonfiction feature film, “Earth Camp One.”

#maestro #maestro the movie #bradley cooper #carey mulligan #2024 movies #leonard bernstein

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andnowanowl · 3 months

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Since "Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation" is suspiciously not available in the US in the form of an e-book, I purchased a physical copy and wanted to share it here for anyone else also unable to get access.

EBTIHAJ BE'ERAT

Homemaker, 52

Born in Kafr Malek, West Bank

Interviewed in Kafr Malek, West Bank

We first visit Ebtihaj Be'erat at her house in the hilltop village of Kafr Malek in 2010. Her house is easy to find: a giant banner in honor of her son, Abdal Aziz, hangs against a whitewashed wall above red geraniums. Two years before our visit, just up the road from the house, Abdal Aziz was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. Inside the house, there is a room devoted to him, with pictures and plaques on the walls and more pictures piled on the floor.

Ebtihaj is a warm woman with oval frame glasses, a gold heart necklace, and deep dimples that appear when she smiles. Her name, in fact, means "joy." Yet, the death of her son is clearly still part of her everyday life. As we ask her about her childhood in Kafr Malek, her experiences during the First Intifada, and her family tree, her answers circle back again and again to the loss of her son and the day he was shot. Still, evidence of her five other children also covers the walls, including photos of them dancing in a well-known dance troupe, framed university degrees, and various awards. Throughout our interview, her house is bustling with family members and neighbors coming and going. And although she downplays her skill as a host, she offers us an impressive spread of food, including homemade bread, jam, pickles, as well as local eggs and herbs.

When we come back to the house two years later, the banner honoring Abdal Aziz has been moved further up the street to the place where he died. Ebtihaj is now able to tell the story of his death without being completely overcome with grief, and she's more willing to talk about the life that continues in his absence. Besides telling us of her son, Ebtihaj shares stories about the changes she remembers in her home village since the Six-Day War in 1967, a conflict that led to Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Though Ebtihaj and her family had the opportunity to join the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who emigrated from the West Bank following the Six-Day War, she decided to stay in Kafr Malek and raise her children in a Palestinian community.

OUR WEDDING PARTIES ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL

My name is Ebtihaj, and I'm from Kafr Malek, which is a very social village where everyone knows everyone else.¹ I was born in the spring of 1962.

All my family is from the village. My grandfather and my great-grandfather were born here. The people of this village have always been known for their hospitality, and anyone who comes to Kafr Malek loves it here. It's beautiful. We receive visitors with hospitality, male or female. We're more moderate than some nearby villages. We're more civilized. We're not like the other villages where a man can't enter a woman's house when she's alone. Our wedding parties are the most beautiful in the area because all of us wear traditional dresses, even the small girls. Also, many people in our village have lived in the United States or Latin America,

they can speak English or Spanish. I don't know the exact numbers, but approximately 20 to 40 percent of the people born in this village are living abroad at the moment, mostly in the U.S., but also in Colombia and Brazil. A number of families emigrated during the First Intifada, but they come back for visits.²

I was the sixth of seven children. I have four sisters and two brothers. My father worked for the post office in the village. It was his job to go to Ramallah and pick up the mail, and then to deliver it to everyone in Kafr Malek. He also had a second job as a butcher in the market. When I was a young child, Kafr Malek was surrounded by farms. Many villagers had farms on top of Al-Asur Hill behind the village, and many farmers grew grapes.

Then in 1967, Israeli soldiers invaded the village.³ I remember fleeing with all the other villagers to a grove of almond trees. Some villagers fled to their fields. My family lived under almond trees for two weeks while the war was going on, and I remember we each had just enough food and water rations to last two weeks.

Later that year, the Israeli military moved in and built a base on top of the hill. They cleared a lot of the farms on the hill and demolished the homes of some farmers as well. We got used to seeing soldiers in the village. There weren't any Jordanian policeman anymore, just Israeli soldiers. We got used to hearing about homes being raided as well. Soldiers would take men and boys in the middle of the night, from young children to the oldest men.

I met my husband when I was very young, when I was fifteen years old and he was twenty. He fell in love with me. He's my cousin, a relative from my mother's side.⁴ We were engaged that same year we met, and we married when I was seventeen. Nowadays, it doesn't happen like that. Mostly now, women wait until they finish university and then they get married. I was sad because I wanted to finish my studies. But my father told me, "No, you have to get married." I didn't even finish high school.

I moved into my in-laws' home right after our marriage in 1979. Before the war in 1967, my husband's family had farmed at the top of Al-Asur Hill. After the war, soldiers ordered his family out of their home and blew it up, so they moved to another house in the village. When I married my husband, he was still a farmer and also worked as a stone cutter.

In 1980 we had our first child, my daughter Maysa, when I was eighteen. By then I'd settled into my husband's home as a housewife. I did the housework along with my mother- and sisters-in-law, I cooked, and if any visitors came, I welcomed them. Over the next few years I had two more daughters and a son—Haifa, Rafa, and Fadi. Every day I would cook lunch for my children and for my husband. I'd buy my own groceries. And I'd tend the garden—we planted wheat and olives. During Eid, I'd make cookies, you know, ma'amoul.⁵ Everyone would ask for them.

During this time, in the early eighties, many villagers were leaving to live abroad. I had two older brothers and an older sister get visas to work in the United States, and my brothers encouraged our family to fill out the paperwork to do the same. There was more opportunity to work there, and more freedom. In the U.S. we wouldn't have to worry about soldiers coming to our house. So we filled out the paperwork and applied,and when we didn't get a visa the first year, we kept reapplying every year.

Finally, in 1986, my family was granted visas to live in the United States. But by this time, I had three daughters, and I wasn't sure I wanted to raise them in America. My sister had brought two daughters to the U.S., and they had ended up marrying foreigners. I wanted my daughters to grow up and marry Palestinians—hopefully, young men from the village. So we reconsidered it and decided to stay. My husband found work as a taxi driver in Ramallah, so he was able to support our family.

THE SOLDIERS FORBADE US TO LIGHT CANDLES

I gave birth to my middle son, Abdal Aziz, on December 5, 1987, in Ramallah, when the First Intifada had just broken out.⁶ He was born nine pounds, blond, and with green eyes. The nurse who was on shift, she held him and said to everyone, "Come and see the child from Kafr Malek. He is so beautiful." I named him Abdal Aziz after his grandfather—his father's father.

When I got out of the hospital, Israeli soldiers were closing the shops because they said that the Intifada was moving from Gaza to the West Bank. I couldn't even find a pharmacy to buy vitamins or a bottle, the basic things we needed with a new baby in the house. The soldiers imposed a curfew, and it was forbidden for anyone to be outside, even in our own yards, for over a month. We had to stay inside our houses, and we couldn't open a window to look outside. The soldiers even forbade us to light candles. If they saw the light of a candle in a house,they would come and break the windows. During this time we ate mostly bread, olive oil, and za'atar.⁷ When we were able to find other kinds of food, my mother-in-law would have to hide it well in the house, because if soldiers searched our home, they would know we had broken curfew if we had fresh food.

Sometimes they'd arrest someone every month or two, sometimes it seemed like every night. Checkpoints were set up, so we couldn't travel to the top of the hill anymore, where the base was, and there was only one entrance into and out of the village. Sometimes, depending on what was happening during the Intifada, they would set up a checkpoint at the main entrance of the village, and they wouldn't allow anyone to enter or leave except to go to neighboring villages. Even when someone was sick, or even if a pregnant woman was having a baby, they'd go to Taybeh, the next village, instead of to the hospital in Ramallah because when the soldiers set up the checkpoint, they wouldn't allow anyone to leave.⁸

All the men in the village had left their houses, because if the soldiers came in and saw a man in the house, they would sometimes beat him so badly. So all the men stayed in the fields, and they would go to Ramallah to look for food. During the night, they'd sneak home with food and basic supplies like sugar, and then go back to the fields.

My house is in the center of the city, so the soldiers would come often. Once, when my Abdal Aziz was two months old, I was sitting outside with him because I was cleaning the bread oven. My mother-in-law was at a neighbor's house and my husband was in the fields. A few soldiers saw me from the street, and they chased me into my house. I ran into the kitchen where the rest of my children were at the time—I was holding Abdal Aziz in my arms. The soldiers had these batons, and one soldier tried to hit me with one. I moved my head just in time to avoid the blow, and he struck the refrigerator instead. But he was aiming for my head. All my kids were screaming and crying, including Abdal Aziz in my arms. I think that made the soldiers back off. My children protected me.

Then the soldiers closed the kitchen door on me and locked me inside with my kids. They left the key on the outside of the door, and we were locked in the kitchen for around two hours until my mother-in-law came back. At that time, there weren't any mobile phones like today, not even house phones. If my mother-in-law hadn't been at the neighbor's house, she would have been with me inside, and who knows how long it would have been before someone unlocked the door. When she returned and let me out of the kitchen, I just collapsed. I was so scared, I fainted. She didn't know what to do, and there wasn't any way to call a doctor or nurse. So she got the idea of throwing open all the windows and turning on a lamp in the window. It attracted the attention of the soldiers, and when more came to see what was going on, she begged them to get me a nurse or doctor. That was the only way she had to get me medical attention.

I believe Abdal Aziz always remembered that day. He had an image of it burned in his mind. At two months, he was too young to form memories. But the memory was like an inspiration from God, at least that's what I think.

WHAT HE FELT THROUGH THE STONE

As a child, Abdal Aziz was unique. There wasn't anyone like him. He was kind and beautiful. Abdal Aziz had a lot of friends, and he was a leader among them from a young age. Part of it was that he was just so affectionate and generous. I remember he us to come up to me when was washing dishes or something and give me a big hug. He was the same way with his friends. If one of his friends mentioned that he saw a shirt in the market that he wanted, Abdal Aziz would save his money until he could buy the shirt for his friend. I had another child, Muhammed, in 1990, and Muhammed always looked up to Abdal Aziz. Abdal Aziz was thirteen at the start of the Second Intifada in 2000.

During the Second Intifada, the Israeli military closed the village for a month, and we couldn't leave our homes. They even cut the electricity and water for a month. When the soldiers came, we'd close everything, all the windows, and we'd stay inside. I can remember two occasions when we forgot to close a window, and teargas got inside the home. We felt like we were suffocating.

Abdal Aziz was born when the First Intifada started, so it was in his blood to be active.⁹ But Abdal Aziz wasn't affiliated with any political party. He wore one bracelet that said "Fatah," another one that said "PFLP," and another one that said "Hamas," all together on one hand.¹⁰ I used to ask him, "Which one are you?" He'd say, "I'm Palestinian." That's another reason why everyone loved him.

Ever since he was a kid, he always talked about how much he wanted to throw stones at the jeeps and tanks when they passed our house, to drive them away. The kids don't have any weapons to defend their country, they only have stones—a stone versus a tank. I knew my son loved to throw stones at soldiers when they came at night, and I knew that he was in danger. The soldiers arrested so many teenagers and they injured others. My cousin is now spending twenty-five years in jail for throwing stones, and another one was put in jail for fifteen years. One of my neighbors has been in jail for eighteen years now, just for throwing stones at the soldiers.

The soldiers usually come into the village at two or three a.m. That is their normal time. Every time they enter the village, the youth have an agreement to start whistling to let everyone know. It's a signal for others when they are on the streets to go back home so the soldiers don't catch them and beat them. I'm always so afraid whenever I start to hear whistling.

There were many nights when I would hear whistling, wake up, and put on my clothes to go out and search for Abdal Aziz. I would go to his friends and ask them where he was. When Abdal Aziz came home in the early morning, I'd go hug him as soon as I saw him on the stairs outside of the house and tell him, "Thank God, you're okay and nothing has happened to you." I would make him sit and talk to me because he wouldn't listen. I used to tell him, "When the soldiers come, they have armor, they have weapons, and they are much stronger than us." I asked him if throwing stones would make them leave the village. He always said, "This is our village. Why did they come to our village?" I would ask him, "Can you forbid the soldiers or the tanks from coming into the village?" I would tell him that if they killed him, I would go crazy. He would say that if a patrol came into the village and he didn't throw a stone at it, it would hurt his conscience. He wanted to protect his country. He wanted to express what he felt through the stone, that this is our country and not theirs. I was angry with him because I knew that something bad would happen to him.

Once, I left the house and all my neighbors were asking me, "Where are you going? The patrol is near." And I told them, "Let them shoot me. I want to go find Abdal Aziz." He was at the neighbor's house. I stood in the street and called to him, and I told him, "If you don't come to the house now, I will go to the patrol and make them shoot me." If they saw anyone at night in the village, there was a chance they would shoot.

It didn't matter whether it was a woman or a man. He told me, "I'm coming, I'm coming," and he came back with me. We snuck home safely. He came back with me, but when I went to sleep, he snuck out again.

WHY DO YOU THINK EVERYONE WANTS PALESTINE?

It was difficult living in Kafr Malek during the Second Intifada. I was so worried about my children. But still, I wasn't tempted to move.

In the summer of 2002, I visited my older brothers, who were still in the United States. They'd been there since the early 1980s and were living in Chicago, I loved America, I loved the people there. I liked how organized everything was in the city. In general, the people were welcoming to me. My brothers' neighbors were very nice. And people are free there. You don't have soldiers coming into your house at two a.m. and ordering you out into the streets.

But Palestine is so beautiful—why do you think everyone wants Palestine? When I was in Chicago, I remember telling my brother, "I like America, but I haven't seen anything in the U.S. that I like as much as sitting on the front steps of my own home when there's a breeze, or being able to go into the yard and pick fresh grapes and figs." So my brother went out and bought me some grapes and figs, all the things I had named. But they didn't taste the same to me. I didn't like the grapes at all! Everything was imported, nothing fresh. I was supposed to stay in Chicago for four months, but I could only make it for a month and a half. I was homesick. Also, it was so hot!

A few years later, in 2006, my husband ended up going to the States to work with some family and neighbors who had a store in Miami. My husband would ask a lot about Abdal Aziz when he called home. He didn't ask about the other sons as much as he asked about Abdal Aziz.He was worried. When he talked to Abdal Aziz on the phone, my husband would preach to him, "Calm down, don't throw stones."

It was hard to be alone with my children, but by that time my sons were all grown-ups and they were working. Only Abdal Aziz and Muhammed, the youngest, were still at school. My three daughters were already married. Abdal Aziz finished high school in 2007, did the tawjihi exams,¹¹ and wanted to apply for Al-Quds Open University,¹² He didn't like school so much, but he liked everything else: soccer, dabka,¹³ and all his other after-school activities. After the tawjihi, he spent one year not studying, but he wanted to eventually study business I have a cousin who runs a supermarket, and Abdal Aziz spent a lot of afternoons helping him out there, learning about how to run a small business.

I FELT I WOULD LOSE HIM SOMEDAY

Abdal Aziz was a soccer player, and he was the goalkeeper for the Al-Bireh Institute team in Ramallah. He was also a coach in Kafr Malek for younger boys. In early October 2008, he was twenty years old and getting his passport ready, because his team had an opportunity to go play in Europe.

During that time, Abdal Aziz was still going out every night to be with his friends. On the night of October 16, I went to sleep at around eleven-thirty. Abdal Aziz called at one a.m. He had a habit of asking me when I answered the phone, "How are you, Ma?"

I told him, "I'm going to sleep now. Do you need anything?" He told me, "I'm coming with friends, so please make us some dinner to eat?" I told him, "I don't sleep very well because of you, and you want me to prepare dinner for you now?" So he asked me to speak with Muhammed, and he told his younger brother to prepare dinner for him, all his favorite things. My room is just beside the kitchen, so when Abdal Aziz came back with his friends, he'd close the door so they wouldn't bother me, and they'd sit outside to eat dinner.

Still, that night I heard him come in with his friends, so I got up and put on my dress. I looked at him through the door eating dinner with his friends outside. I looked at my watch, and it was around three a.m. I thought, It's late. Abdal Aziz won't go out again. His friends will leave, and he'll go to sleep in his room. And because I was comfortable that Abdal Aziz was at home, I went back to bed.

Not long afterward, I woke up again and opened the window. Although it was October, it was still hot. When I opened the window, I realized my son Muhammed was outside, crying and calling for a car. He told me that there had been a shooting. I went to Abdal Aziz's room and saw that he wasn't there. I put on my clothes and started screaming that Abdal Aziz had died. I knew then. I felt it immediately that he was dead. My heart dropped.

I went to our neighbors' house. I told Abu Adel, our neighbor, that Abdal Aziz died. He told me no, but I insisted that he was the one that had been shot. I told my neighbor's son to take me to the hospital because he had a car, but he reassured me that it wasn't Abdal Aziz who was injured. But I insisted. I wanted to be with my son. That was that. My son Fadi showed up at the house, and he and Muhammed tried to comfort me and told me it wasn't Abdal Aziz. I told them, "No, it is your brother. It is Abdal Aziz." They told me that Abdal Aziz was with his friends, and I told them that if that was so, to bring him to me. Then some of Abdal Aziz's friends came and told me that he'd run away with some of the others. I asked if there were any more soldiers in the village, and they told me there was a patrol nearby. And so I asked them, "Why did Abdal Aziz run away? Abdal Aziz doesn't run away if there's a soldier in the village, so I don't believe you."

When my three daughters heard that someone had been killed, they came running to my house with their husbands, asking, "Where is he?" They too felt that it was Abdal Aziz who had been killed. The women from our neighborhood came to my house for an hour and tried to calm me down, to tell me that it wasn't Abdal Aziz, or that he was just injured. I told them, "No, it Abdal Aziz. I know that he is dead." Then finally someone else from the village came to the house and told me, "The thing that you've suspected is true." She had witnessed the scene.

In a few moments, a huge crowd showed up at the house, and they were all crying because they loved Abdal Aziz, and he was not there anymore. No one would take me to see him at the hospital because they felt would be a shock for me. Finally, at around ten a.m., the Red Crescent ambulance brought his body back to the house.¹⁴

I learned the story from Abdal Aziz's friends who had been with him that night. They said that after I went to sleep, Abdal Aziz got a phone call from a friend who told him that a patrol of soldiers was coming. Abdal Aziz used to stand on a particular roof and throw stones from there, so that's where they both went to wait for the soldiers. But on this night, the soldiers were down below in the garden hiding between the trees, waiting for him. He was with his friend on the roof, and when they threw the first stone, the soldiers opened fire on them. His friend was shot in the shoulder, and Abdal Aziz was shot in the leg.

Abdal Aziz's friend told him, "We're being ambushed! Let's hand ourselves over to the soldiers." Abdal Aziz's reply was, "I would rather die than hand myself over." Because Abdal Aziz was injured in his leg, he couldn't run, but his friend was able to run away. He wanted to help Abdal Aziz, but he couldn't. According to my son's friends, when the soldiers came up to the roof and saw that it was Abdal Aziz, they kept him there. The bullet had entered the back of his left leg and come out the front. They left him to bleed, and they wouldn't allow a doctor to see him. They surrounded the area, and only after he died did they let the Red Crescent ambulance come and take him. The neighbors all came outside to check on him, to help him, but the soldiers told them, "If you come near us, we will shoot you, too."

He didn't die among his family or his friends. That's what hurts me the most. That's the most painful thing. The soldiers handed him over to the ambulance with the cuffs on his hands.

The day after Abdal Aziz died, my husband was in a café in Miami, playing cards. A relative had gone there to tell him the news, but before he even said anything, my husband saw the look in his eyes and told him, "Stop. I know Abdal Aziz just died." He came back to Palestine as soon as he could—he was home within two weeks. For two days after he returned, I couldn't speak to my husband. He did all the talking. And then he decided to stay in Kafr Malek.

The boy who was with Abdal Aziz survived. He's married now, his wife is pregnant. That night he ran away, he was treated for his injury, and he was arrested and put in jail for two years. Many of my son's other friends have been arrested since. They were brought to trial on so made-up charges and all sentenced to five and a half years. I wish they some had arrested Abdal Aziz and not killed him.

It was what God wanted. I always advised my son to stay at home, not to endanger himself. I would tell him that I felt I would lose him someday. Two weeks before his death, Abdal Aziz was with his friends in a car and he was hanging out the window. It was the night of Eid.¹⁵ And the guys told him, "Come inside, you don't want to get killed on a holy night." He told them, "I won't be killed. I won't die like this. I will die a martyr." He knew.

I'VE DECIDED TO LIVE

If you ask anyone in the village, they can tell you about Abdal Aziz. The day he died, seven satellite channels came to the village here to document what was going on. When they brought him in the hearse, there were hundreds of cars following behind. His funeral was so big. I didn't expect so many people.

After a death, we have three days for people to come and pay their respects, but for Abdal Aziz it took three weeks. His friends from all over came to the house and called me to go outside. We have a tradition where you kiss a person's hand and hold it to your own forehead as a sign of respect. One by one, they all kissed my hand, held it to their foreheads, and told me they were my sons now instead of Abdal Aziz. Even now, they always come visit me, and I go visit them. There was also a bus of girls who were friends of Abdal Aziz from the dabka team, and they came crying and searching for Abdal Aziz's mother.

They even put a tent near the hall in the village center, and thousands of people came. The student senate at Birzeit University suspended classes because of Abdal Aziz's death.¹⁶ Usually they don't suspend classes if someone dies, not even a student at the university. Even though he wasn't a student, everyone knew Abdal Aziz, even the teachers, and they put upposters with his photo inside the university. One year after his death, one of his friends had to present his graduation thesis, and he invited me to come. I went to the university and everyone, all the students were saying, "That's Abdal Aziz's mother. That's Abdal Aziz's mother." I didn't know what to do—to cry, or to feel proud, or to smile.

When someone loses a son, what do you expect? I raised him for twenty-one years, and I used to look at him when he went out and think to myself, Is it possible that this is my son? And I lost him overnight. And he was so beautiful, my son. He is now with his God in heaven. Whenever I go outside now, there's a banner with his photo on it hanging in the place where he died. Whenever I see it, I feel guilty because I couldn't hold him and hug him during the last minutes before he died.

After he died, life was complicated. For one whole year, I didn't sleep at night. I drove everyone crazy after his death, especially at two or three a.m. It's the time when Abdal Aziz died, and I would always be awake then. I'd wake up and feel like I needed to leave the house. I either went to one of my daughters' houses or even my cousins. I was so tired, and my daughters were so worried about me.

I went to the doctor, and he found my blood pressure to be at very dangerous levels. He told me, "You will have a heart attack if you continue living like this." It was so scary. For three whole years, they gave me sedative shots, sometimes every day and sometimes twice a week.

Since Abdal Aziz died, I stopped doing embroidery. I used to make traditional dresses, but now I've stopped. I don't see 100 percent, and I need good vision to embroider. I used to sell the dresses to help my husband, as our financial situation now is very hard. My younger son, Mohammad, studies journalism at Birzeit University. He wants to continue and get his master's, and Birzeit University is more expensive than the other universities. My husband only works as a taxi driver. Even the taxi that he drives belongs to someone else. He only covers the university tuition and Muhammed's daily expenses. I can't ask my other son for help because he wants to build his future. My oldest son is a teacher. Now he should start building a new house, but there are no good jobs. He wants to get married, but it all depends on the money.

My second daughter once came and told me that Abdal Aziz is alive. In Islam, in our religion, we consider martyrs to be alive in heaven. She told me, "You are crying every day for Abdal Aziz, and he's only one person, and he's alive with God." She told me that there are fifteen people in our family, including the cousins and the grandchildren. She asked, "Do you want to die and leave us all too?" Since then, I've decided to live my life for my daughters and sons who are still alive, and my grief is only in my heart now.

Sometimes one of my daughters comes and sees my eyes are red and asks me if I was crying, and I deny it and say, "No, why would I cry?" I do it to make them feel stronger because they were affected by the death of their brother also. It's been four years now, and I feel every day that it was like yesterday, and I always see him and always remember him. In Palestine, we often say that problems that start so heavy begin to disappear with time. But this weight stays. It's not fading. I am honored that my son is a hero who defended his land. He defended his country and his village. But I don't want my other sons to get killed. Abdal Aziz is enough.

---

Footnotes

¹ Kafr Malek is a village of about 3,000 people located nine miles northeast of Ramallah.

² The First Intifada was an uprising throughout the West Bank and Gaza against Israeli military occupation. It began in December 1987 and lasted until 1993. Intifada in Arabic means "to shake off."

³ 1967 was the year of the Six-Day War that culminated in Israel occupying the West Bank.

⁴ Marriage between cousins was once considered an ideal match in Palestine and throughout the Middle East, especially in rural areas.

⁵ Ma'amoul are shortbread pastries filled with dates or nuts and pressed in a wooden mold with an intricate design, and are commonly made during Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha, the major Muslim holidays. Palestinian Christians also make them for Easter.

⁶ The protests, clashes with Israeli military, boycotts, and other acts of civil disobedience that marked the beginning of the First Intifada started in December 1987. Most of the organized action began on December 9, two days after Abdal Aziz's birth.

⁷ Za'atar is the name of both a spice similar to thyme that grows wild in Palestine and a blend of spices. Za'atar is a staple of local cooking in Palestine and much of the Middle East.

⁸ Taybeh is a neighboring Christian village of 1,500 people about one mile away from Kafr Malek. It's locally famous for a brewery that makes Palestine's only beer.

⁹ In Palestine, saying someone is "active" is shorthand for saying the person is involved in protests, to throwing stones, to more militant activity.

¹⁰ Farah, PFLP, and Hamas are political parties within Palestine.

¹¹ An exit exam for high school.

¹² Al-Quds Open University is a mixed on-site and distance-learning university system with campuses in the West Bank, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. There is also a separate university system in the West Bank called Al-Quds University, which isn't affiliated with Al-Quds Open University.

¹³ Dabka is a traditional Palestinian dance.

¹⁴ From the glossary -

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement: A group of international humanitarian organizations founded in 1863 with the purpose of assisting victims of disasters and providing developmental aid to strengthen communities in crisis. The movement is made up of three distinct organizations: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which safeguards human rights in conflict zones; the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) which coordinates relief assistance missions around the globe; and National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which address humanitarian needs and are organized on the national level. The Palestine Red Crescent Society is one of the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. It was formed in 1968 and has over 4,000 employees and 20,000 volunteers. Because the Palestinian Authority administers only a patchwork of territory within the West Bank, the Palestine Red Crescent Society provides some essential services to Palestinian citizens, including ambulance service and some medical care.

¹⁵ Eid Al-Fitr is a major feast that marks the end of the month of Ramadan.

¹⁶ Birzeit University is one of the most prestigious universities in Palestine. It's located just outside Ramallah, not far from Kafr Malek.

#palestine speaks #palestinian voices #book exerpt #palestine #strike for palestine #part 7 of 16 #i couldn't find a picture of ebtihaj or abdal aziz

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mochiswifey · 2 years

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THE BLAME IS ON YOU PAL

~REPOST FROM ANOTHER ACCOUNT~

SOUTH'S PART

He abandoned you and your child for his mistress. And now he suddenly wants to show up.

South didn’t just break your heart. He murdered you. You were left in a dark hole of rage and confusion after he left you for a woman he found more attractive and exciting. You spent your early pregnancy days depressed and you almost went through an abortion. But after you felt her and him kick for the first time you fell to your knees and apologized to the children growing inside you. You despised yourself for blaming the innocent fellows within you. That was 16 years ago. Money wasn’t a problem for you but it took you years to become a good mother. Now you watched proudly as your daughter and son perform. As much as you hate it your daughter and son got their love for classical music from their father. Your daughter is singing a classical opera while your son plays the piano. They remind you of South and the days you’ve spent together. The ones where he plays the piano while you hummed. But unlike the past, it doesn’t leave a bitter taste on your memory anymore.

Mina & Migo’s performance.

“You raise them well.” A familiar scent hits your nostrils and the rough hands you knew well landed on your shoulder. Your body stiffs and you knew it was the day you never wanted to come.

“South. Sit down you’re too big to be standing up in here.” He was surprised that you weren’t lashing out on him and you were surprised as well. Guess 6 years of therapy worked out. He went around and sat beside you. And for the first time in your life. You felt nothing for him. No rage even though you prefer to not be close to him.

“How are you?” He asks casually like he didn’t inflicted pain to you. But it’s on the past. You shrugged and continue to watch your daughter and son who noticed the giant man beside you.

“You wanna know their names?” You asked him and his eyes lights up thinking you have some feelings for him.

“I named my daughter Mina and my Son Migo. Mina is just like you but worst. Very competitive. Gets everything she wants. A competitive opera singer and a ballet dancer uh…. She’s a bad bitch. Migo is uh…. Your nice part. But don’t anger him. He’s violent and huge just like you.” He chuckles and took your hand. You let him wanting to know if he still feels the same and if you still longed for him. But nothing. No butterflies no desire. You pulled your hand away from him and you turn your attention back to your daughter and son. Your eyes glisten with pure joy as you watch your children and South though looks like his normal self is dying on the inside. Only if he weren’t dumb enough to pick pleasure over true joy.

“They are gonna win.” He says and you look at him with a smirk.

“Of course, they’ve never lost.”

The two of you was overjoyed when they announced that your children won. Mina was unfazed she knew she would win. After they received the award the four of you met on the after party.

“My babies! The two of you did very well!” You kiss your daughters cheek before hugging your son.

“We know. Plus there wasn’t really anyone who can be considered our competition.” Your daughter smirks as she waves her trophy. You laughed at her cockiness and pinched her cheek.

“And why is he here?” Migo points at the man whom can be considered as his twin. Their huge frame and blond hair are perfectly matching. The only difference they have is Migo has your eyes.

“Yeah mom. I mean. Is he lonely or something for coming back to us? Heard your gang got fucked up.” Mina says while she folds her arms in front of her chest with her eyebrow arched.

“You know that South is your-”

“We watch the news. And Migo being a carbon copy solves the puzzle. Plus, you always say “oh….. he’s still alive?” Whenever you saw him on TV doing street stuff and we were like SUS! Then I look at my brother and was like yeah he’s our father.” Mina explains while Migo takes a champagne from the server and taking a sip.

“Migo! You’re not old enough.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He says before handing it to his sister. She took a sip finishing the glass. You frowned and pat South on the shoulder.

“Well, you could try but lemme warn you. You’re gonna need therapy too.”

“BRUH! HIS HAIRLINE IS RECEIDING! THAT’S YOUR FUTURE!” Mina laughs as she points to South’s hair. Migo touches his hairline in panic making South flinched. He can’t believe that his children that he abandon are trolling him.

“Mina shut up or else I’ll tell mom-“ Mina punched her brother in the stomach making him groan.

“Mina…. What did you do now?”

“Look. Mom. It wasn’t my fault that my boyfriend cheated on me. I kinda was almost caught for starting a fire on his house but again. Not my fault.” You burst out laughing they are definitely insane. South on the other hand was enrage because his little girl’s boyfriend cheated on her.

“Is he still alive?” He asked ready to make the boys life miserable.

“None of your business. And- goddamn look at that ass heeeeeeyyyyy hottie.” Mina trails off as her eyes went to a hot guys ass passing by.

“And that’s my cue to go.” She says dropping the glass on the floor shattering it before going after the hot guy.

“And yeah. Fuck you for hurting my mom and my hairline ain’t gonna be like yours.” Migo calmly says before kissing you on the cheek.

“Congratulations babies!” You waved them goodbye before turning to South.

“Yeah. We don’t really need you South.”

“But I do.”

“Well that’s not our goddamn problem is it?” You raised your eyebrow as you place your hands on your hips. For the first in his life, he was out of comebacks.

“That’s what I fucking thought.” You spat out before leaving him on the entrance of madness like he left you.

THANK YOU FOR READING Reblogs&Replies are greatly appreciated.

Don’t copy

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londonspirit · 7 months

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December, 2022. At Kumeū Film Studios, just outside Auckland, an amusingly contrasting combination of high and low-tech filmmaking methods are being employed on the set of pirate series Our Flag Means Death.

Inside a massive soundstage, atop the gargantuan, full-scale pirate ship Revenge, Taika Waititi, as Ed “Blackbeard” Teach, performs a scene with co-star Con O’Neill, who plays Ed’s surly first mate Izzy.

Surrounding the ship is a giant “volume” wall comprised of 1700 LED monitors displaying a photorealistic ocean background with rolling waves. As a crane-mounted camera weaves around, the images on the digital display move with it, creating a seamlessly integrated backdrop.It’s about as cutting-edge as filmmaking gets these days (the Star Wars shows rely upon this technique), but just out of frame, a crouched stagehand is manually wiggling the ship’s sails to indicate the wind. The human touch still has a role to play amid all the expensive technology.On the day the Herald has visited, it’s near the end of a long, exhausting shoot for the second season of Our Flag Means Death. But you wouldn’t know it from the upbeat vibes on set, which bustles with craftspeople and technicians. At one point, Waititi leads everyone (including visitors) through a quick set of squats to keep the energy levels high.In addition to starring, Waititi is directing this particular episode, having been drafted in when the intended director was felled by Covid-19. The Kiwi Oscar-winner is famous for the loose, improvisational touch that shines through in all his work, and it’s fascinating to witness his process first-hand. Throughout the scene being performed, Waititi tries out endless versions of every single line. Even in the same take. O’Neill, clearly used to this method, waits patiently to deliver his dialogue as Waititi cycles through options within the scene. Some of his improvised bits are obviously just to get a laugh from the crew, while others seem to involve him working through the point of the scene in his head. Sometimes, the scene resolves on a light note. At others, it is dramatic. It keeps everyone one their toes.

But this show has been full of surprises from the get-go.

Based on the true story of Stede Bonnett (Rhys Darby), who abandoned British society and his family to embrace the pirate life in the early 18th century, the series initially presented as a gentile comedy with an impressively diverse cast. But throughout the first season, which was filmed in Los Angeles, it quietly became one of the queerest shows on television.

Although there was nary a mention of the possibility in the advance press, Stede and Ed ended up in a surprisingly tender - well, sometimes - romantic entanglement with each other throughout season one. There are other queer relationships, and one character, Jim (Vico Ortiz), was revealed to be non-binary.

Unlike some shows that feature LGBTQIA+ representation, Our Flag Means Death didn’t trumpet its progressive values - it simply let the characters and the story lead the way, and is all the richer for it. It has received much acclaim for these elements, garnering Glaad Media and Peabody Award nominations.

It’s also partly why Madeleine Sami was so excited to join the series in season two, playing a pirate named Archie.

“I think that’s the brilliance of this show,” Sami tells the Herald later that afternoon. “Because it is a funny, silly comedy, but then there’s some really important stuff happening underneath. The progressive stuff is incidental in a way that makes it feel more revolutionary. Just being able to see queer characters as lead characters in comedies is a cool thing.”

Sami originally met with creator David Jenkins about directing an episode, but it was eventually decided to stick with season one’s roster. Then the opportunity to audition for Archie came up.

“Archie’s a very happy-go-lucky pirate,” says Sami. “She has a bit of a mysterious backstory, which you get little tastes of, but she’s pretty chill. She likes to party, she likes to pirate.”

All acting can be tied back to childhood play on some level, playing a pirate especially so.

“Honestly, I pinch myself so many times on this job,” says Sami. “It’s the role you dream about when you’re a kid, to get to play a pirate.”

Sami says it’s the biggest production she’s ever worked on in New Zealand, but the expensive trappings don’t impact the process.

“It’s a workplace comedy about pirates. So it never feels like that stuff overwhelms it.”

She’s also relishing the chance to muck around with her old mates Waititi and Darby.

“I’ve known those guys for a really long time, and I think they’re both doing really incredible work on this show. This group of actors are just bloody idiots, and so lovely and playful.”

Another Kiwi comedy staple, David Fane, has been part of the show since season one as Fang, a member of Blackbeard’s crew.

“It was just fantastical,” he tells the Herald of originally getting the role. “The best part was meeting all these other people from all over the world and finding the comedy in all these different communities; people of colour and also the rainbow community. Just the best buzz. I felt like a kid in a candy shop.”

Seeing the show move to New Zealand for season two (thanks in part to the NZ Screen Production Rebate for International Productions) only enriched the experience.

“To be here, and to actually do it back home, was just the biggest buzz,” enthuses Fane. ”To have people like Samba [Schutte] and Joel [Fry] and all the others come to see this part of the world and do some work here. The overseas cast are in love with Whittaker’s chocolate, as all good people should be.”

Fane, who also appears in Waititi’s upcoming comedy movie Next Goal Wins, reckons the second season is next-level.

“In the first season, everyone was finding their feet. And in the second season, people are walking assuredly. It just gets betterer - story-wise, and also honesty-wise and fun-wise.”

#our flag means death season 2 #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #spoiler #our flag means death #ofmd #article #nz herald

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k-martins · 10 months

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N.A - This only came about because I found this list, from @creativepromptsforwriting of prompts and couldn't get Itafushi out of my head. And of course I'm not addicted to California Gurls!

“Hey, Megumi!” Yuuji exclaimed. "Look at me! How I am?"

Megumi should get an award – a shiny gold trophy, preferably – for not choking on his iced mocha when Yuuji turned towards him, sporting the most hideous and tacky thing Megumi had ever seen in his entire existence. A few people also stop their shopping at the convenience store to stare at the boy with the pink hair, a mixture of amused smiles and wide-eyed surprise.

In another situation, Megumi would have been embarrassed by all the attention they are attracting, but the shock prevented any other feelings from getting through to him.

Giant heart-shaped glasses covered Yuuji's eyes, the blinding red of the frames meeting the pink wires and standing out against the yellow sweatshirt open for the world to see the boy's tan chest. Yuuji looked like the very union of all the warm colors of the chromatic cycle, reflecting the heat of summer. And he was also terribly tacky and, shit, he looked so adorable.

Shaking off the daze that the terribly bright sight of Yuuji caused, Megumi went back to slowly sipping his mocha , the cloying sweetness of chocolate touching the back of his throat. It's not the drink he would normally order, but wanting hot coffee at a kiosk in midsummer, just a few meters from the beach, was a demand that even he couldn't insist on.

After a few seconds of silence, with Yuuji still with open arms waiting for an answer, Megumi replied:

“You look like a tasteless 90s women's fashion ad.”

Yuuji lets out an offended yelp, clutching his chest. If he noticed Megumi staring at the place, I don't comment, preferring to follow his talk about heart glasses, defending them as if it were his divine mission in life.

“Just so you know, heart glasses are very fashionable in the west. Kugisaki told me it's a very versatile vintage model . You can wear it with any outfit, anywhere. It saw? They are practical!”

Megumi shrugged.

"It's still too shameful."

Nothing could convince him to change his mind. Not fashion facts – that he didn't care, why, who did? Just use what you fucking like ! – nor how cute Yuuji was with them.

Yes, he was firm in his decision.

“Come on, Guumi …” Yuuji whimpered.

"Do not start. And return it soon.”

“But they look so good on me.”

"Give it back."

"I already know! I'll buy you one too." Yuuji laughed out loud, mocking Megumi's horror. “With both of us using it, it will be less embarrassing.”

“If you dare, I will kill you.”

The threat only served to intensify the boy's laughter, making his entire body tremble with amusement against Megumi's shoulder. More eyes turned toward them, and for a fleeting moment, he caught two girls pointing at them and exchanging giggles. It was instinctive to lower his head to his chest, though that did little to hide his flushed cheeks without his school uniform.

As if to chastise Megumi for some past sin, Yuuji leaned further into his personal space, his bare chest pressing against his shoulder, his forearm resting on the shelf full of stuffed animal keychains, showing off the black bracelet that's tied to the one tied to his shoulder . Megumi's pulse. Yuuji's breath blows across his hot cheeks, the aroma of the strawberry frappuccino he was eating filling the air. The heat becomes increasingly abrasive as Megumi becomes more aware of Yuuji's presence against his side.

He eagerly drinks his own cold drink .

"Megumi..." Yuuji calls out, drawing Megumi's attention. There's the shit-eating smile of someone who's about to transfer a fatal blow to his face, which leaves Megumi torn between punching him in the head and kissing him out of any arrogance.

It is a very complex decision.

Using just one finger, Yuuji tilts those ridiculous glasses down to the tip of his nose, revealing eyes crinkled with humor whose caramel irises gleam anxiously. At this point, Megumi's breath is already caught in his throat, because, fuck , Yuuji is incredibly hot doing this.

Then, using his softest, most seductive tone, he lashes out at Megumi:

“Please.”

And how can Megumi say no to that?

“Okay, you win.” He blusters, putting his hands on his hips and pointing his index finger at Yuuji's stupid chest. “But you better get the blue ones.”

It's humbling the way his voice comes off, tamed and condescending, but it's worth it when Yuuji's teasing countenance grows to one of pure joy and satisfaction, cheeks flushed with excitement and eyes narrowed by the size of his smile. The pink-haired boy turns his back on him, chanting something about “getting the best heart sunglasses Megumi has ever seen”, which Megumi barely pays attention to, too focused on sinking into his own social embarrassment.

Why did he agree to date this idiotic ray of sunshine anyway?

In an unexpected gesture, Yuuji turns around and presses his smiling lips to Megumi's cheek, squeezing him in a kiss that's more tender and childish than anything truly romantic. The ridiculous glasses press uncomfortably against the corners of Megumi's eyes, the hard, smooth material contrasting with Yuuji 's gentle, soft touch . Taken aback, Megumi can only stutter uselessly, his face hot and his heart doing crazy acrobatics inside his chest.

“You're amazing, Gumi ” Yuuji hums, kissing him one more time before returning to his search for the stupid pair of glasses, leaving Megumi to deal with his feelings.

Ah, he thinks as he touches his cheek where the ghost of Yuuji's lips still hangs over, that's because.

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wifetomegatron · 5 months

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I have no other idea on how to put this but here it goes: you are ridiculously good at writing about the turning-points and peaks of emotions and I think I could just read it all all day long. You can make these giant robot men show wonder and astonishment and the kinds of instinctual parts of typically like longer? (i guess? I'm bad at these descriptors bare with me) emotions and moods like fear and doubt and worry like the prickle you get when those emotions do a heel turn. you're really good at writing that and I wish i could bippity boppity an award of some kind into your possession for it, but I really can't, so here I am telling you you write super bonkers well and I hope you write to your heart's content. 100/10, good shit yo

anon you don't know how much i needed to hear this...🥺 thank you for taking time out of your day to write such a poignant and lovely compliment, it warms my heart to know that my writings are appreciated. this will be my fuel to continue, honestly i might even print this and frame it so i don't forget just how much of a joy writing these gigantic metal men are ! i try my best always, so to have you write this is just *sobs* once my final exam tomorrow is done with i'll dive back into writing because this just fired me up ! thank you thank you thank, sending my love to you anon and hope you have a wonderful day <3

#anon #sweet anon #asks

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carmodance · 26 days

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Hello, I’ve always been curious. I know that when a dancer wins for example jump or radix they get those plaques that they hold in pictures, does the studio also get one or is it just like solos are separate from studios which is why some dancers compete at competitions where their studio is not? And what about larger comps like TDA like some studios have the big TDA frames that they get at the gala for best dancer on their walls so so dancers not get to keep them or did the studio pay extra/is there two made?

at regionals when you get the plaque, just the dancer gets one

If your group wins a special award at tda that gets one of those giant frames then the studio gets those.

If you win bd or get runner up you also get a giant frame. I imagine most of the indv dancers keep those themselves

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siriuslytproblem28 · 1 month

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upon finishing past lives

okay, so, as the final credits of past lives showed upon my laptop at around 4AM last night, i felt a giant urge to simply sit and write. i didn't do it right then, deciding to let the feelings and thoughts simmer for a while longer. then, i decided to read the reviews on letterboxd and came across a beautiful story. i went to bed promising myself to go back to what i wanted to write, so as not to lose momentum which is a very big motivator for me. otherwise, i'd simply let the moment slip and this is most definetely not something i wanted to happen with this beautiful piece of media.

i was opening my notes app rn and then decided to write here, for some reason. i've often been feeling the need to share some of my experiences with narrative fiction here, since i started with posting only about jegulus fics, but ended up talking about a movie or whatever. since no one reads here, it's basically my journal and my archive. i have terrible memory so i love to have all kinds of records and archives for things that moved me.

after this enormous introduction, let's talk about past lives.

i had such huge expectations after seeing one of the people in whose opinion i trust the most having loved it, and the general vibe i felt seeing the promo pics and the poster (i just don't like watching trailers for movies), that as i pressed play i was afraid it might turn to disappointment. what i wasn't expecting was the extent it actually surppassed the meeting of them, becoming most definetely my favorite movie i watched for the award season (very late in the game, i know).

something about it felt so familiar and yet so intriguing, i loved the pacing and the dialog. but especially the subtext. i've seen some reviews talking about how much they felt a lack of connection on a deeper, personal level, and my experience watching it could not have been more different.

not all parts of it clicked immediatey with me, i've later read reviews from people who immigrated to the US and realized i totally missed some details about this particular aspect, being a brazillian who never left Brazil. Though i think that, as a latina, there are some cultural aspects that i could absolutely relate to, probabbly from the perspective of a non north american and that was really interesting.

i don't wanna dwell much on the technicalities of the movie, though i believe it so beautifully shot and placed, i loved how much the scenarios add to every frame that appears on screen, the meaningfullness of the backgrounds that add to the subtext. Which is exactly the point i want to dwell on: the subtext. For me, it's one of the strongest aspects of the movie. Unfortunately, i haven't had the best experience on watching to analyze the writing properly, since i watched it via the jack sparrow way (it's not available in brazil ok) and the portuguese subs were kind of botched. Still, the content of every single conversation and it's weight was not lost on me. Though sometimes simple, it was always majestically written (and obviously i can detail better my opinions the english parts, the language i do, in fact understand without needing translation) and powerful.

i've had multiple experiences in my life with people that seem to come and go, but when i take a closer look i come to realize they have never really left. so i connected to the story sooo much, i even dreamt about of of my biggest crushes in middle school, and my first love, who i spent my whole adolescence loving and still is one of my best friends.

timing and the passing thereof, has always been a complicated thing for me to deal with. i remember writing about changes and my loathing of them from a very young age. now, in my early adult life, i find myself seeking those narratives more than i did as a kid. still kinda fearing the absence they'll leave inside me, but also yearning for the reflections they might bring.

i was around 12 years old when i watched boyhood. it was probabbly one of the first movies to ever cause me a hint of an existencial crisis. not in a way you'd expect, though. not in a "omg i need to get a career and wtf am i doing", but in a sense of how it portrayed relationships, the passing of time, etc etc.

as i grew older, focusing on the past 3 years, then came normal people and just this last january, before sunrise.

I re-read np in late 2023 as i felt the need to, when i realized i was falling really in love for the first time ever since my first love, which had a hold on me for almost 7 years (and i'm 20, that's a lot haha). i found that, somehow, it had meant even more to me the second time around.

january, this year, i caved in and watched before sunrise. i also had super high expectations but nothing could ever prepare me for what i received. it became one of my favourite movies ever, and it spoke to parts of me that i had either left uncared for.

to me, past lives came and fed that specific part. all of these pieces of media i spoke a lot on, they talk to and help me understand a feeling i've had in my heart ever since i can remember.

i always had a fascination with something i've come up with, to explain basically the foundation of everything i love, in art, in myself, in life, "the unsaid".

my definition of it, is that the unsaid lies within the dialog, the text, the spoken word, the writing itself. in media and in life. it's like subtext, but maybe even deeper. it's the look you give to your best friend across the room. it's the goodbye that gets trapped inside your throat the last time you talk to someone. it's the touch that never reaches itself out. it's the i love you you don't dare to let slip. it's the look you give someone when you stopped kissing them to just look at them. it's how your eyes light up whenever you see one of your favorite persons in the world. it's when you stop in your tracks in the middle of a party and gaze at your friends, and realize that life can be, in deed, beautiful, and how lucky you are. it also kinda relates to frances ha definition of what she looks for in a relationship, that really stuck with me.

i live for the unsaid. either be it in the art i consumme, or how i experience it in my life. it's what makes existing worth anything, personally. as past lives dialogs sm with this notion. all the scenes where hae sung and nora don't say a word to each other, their look speak millions. that reminded me of one of my favourite scenes from before sunrise, the famous booth scene. in all of the above, i sat unsable to shake a small laughter, or maybe a sly tear, in response to the volume of what was being communicated there.

i consider myself really lucky with the people i have in my life and this movie spoke to this, too. i have a childhood best friend who remains close to me, a sister, really, for over 10 years. i have another childhood friend, who was my first big crush and baby love i ever had, who i used to think i was gonna marry and have children with, to the extent i have drawings of it, still be my best friend to this day. i have friend since middle school, who i fell deeply in love with at the tender age of 13 and who remained my muse very well util my 19th year of being alive, and she was my first girlfriend, the first girl i kissed, and remains my best friend. i've also been lucky to experience such a short but beautifully loving experience with a close friend i made in college, in the latter part of 2023. i haven't really gotten over him, but it's fine, cause ever since watching before sunrise, i realized i had multiple - and i can't believe i'm refferencing tfios in the year of the lord, 2024 - infinities with. though i had grieved what seems to be the ending of our never named, never labelled, situationship, and i still feel a lot of things for him, i've become gratefull for having experience such interesting and soul touching things with him. for opening myself up for it. for admiting my feelings to him. for the leap of faith i took, even if i ended up stranded or hit by rocks at the bottom of the cliff. i'm grateful it happened, even if i still cry about it and have written many songs for him. no matter how long it'll take me to get "over" him, i'll live. and i'm happy it happened. he's become one of my favorite people in this life and this is something i don't say lightly and don't take for granted.

i think to me, the "meaning of life", is to collect this feelings and experiences that turn you into the person you are at the moment. i have no idea of who i'd be without all my influences. i've written mysel, but i was only able to, with the refferences and quotes of every friend i had, every person i loved, everyone who became my family or stopped being it. maybe it's my cancer moon and venus. but i'm really nothing more than a mosaic, a reflection of every single person present in my life (real or parassocial), a collection of words, spoken or not.

and yeah, i barelly spoke directly on past lives, but it's what i always tend to do anyways. i'm not here to make a detailed runthrough, analysis over the cinematography and the script, i might be an acting major but i lack the knowledge (or maybe just doubt i do). but this is, still, my journal, to track my experiences and thoughts. so that's what i did. and i don't think, at least right now, that this movie can really fit into aything i could try to say.

#past lives #celine song #before sunrise #you dream in a language i can't understand #left unsaid #in-yun #this is not a review

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enbysiriusblack · 3 months

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my five go-to fun facts to get to know me that i use when someone makes me say a fun fact about myself:

i have a framed certificate hung up on my wall for positive behaviour that i got when i was eight in primary school. it is the only award i ever won and the first item i would grab if my home was on fire.

i once lost a giant ass copy of the complete works of william shakespeare on the train to london and i'm very much under the belief that david tennant is the one who found it and is now in possession of my giant ass copy of the complete works of william shakespeare.

my love for parma violets stems from a trip to france in year 7 where i was forced to eat a croissant with ham in (i hate ham)

i get lost about fifteen times per day on average. even with google maps

once i got really drunk and cried because i was sad batman wouldn't adopt me since i don't have naturally black hair. i then made a powerpoint presentation about how nicolas cage is not god. this was in fact in the middle of a wetherspoons.

#enbysiriusblack lore

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cartoonfanaticmonsterrobotalien · 4 months

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Solar Opposites: Solar Monsters (by @avaveevo)

Ch. 12

Later that night, Beverly and her gang snuck in the ship as they began stealing stuff.

Beverly: whispering Okay guys. This is it. Tomorrow night, we’re ending this once and for all.

Shelby: whispering Pfft. Yeah. Right.

Tyler: whispering But Bev, this doesn’t feel right. The man acted like a lunatic. He might be hiding something.

Beverly: whispering No he isn’t. This man is gonna help put an end to Korey and his violently protective husband once for all. Now come on.

Unknown to them, Beverly unknowing drop something for her bag, it was a taser from FBI. The next day, Terry went up to the ship to get something, only for him to see the ship a mess.

Terry: What the fuck?

As he looks around, Terry gasp in horror upon seeing the stuff that Korvo worked so hard on gone. Korvo comes up and gasp.

Korvo: Holy shit! Where’s the stuff I invented from the laboratory.

A few seconds later, the police came to the Solars later, where Human Korvo and Human Terry told the officer what happened.

Human Terry: Come on. You have to do something. My husband worked so hard on this stuff. That won him the award.

Police Officer: Sorry sir, but we have no confirms who did this. Plus there is no evidence on who took it. So, I’m sorry. I don’t think there is anything we can do.

Human Terry: Oh. So they can just break into our house, trash the place and you don’t even care?!

Police Officer: Watch the attitude! I haven’t forgot about the Giant Funbucket!

The police then left as Human Korvo and Human Terry look at each other. Then, Human Terry sees the taser as he picks it up and gasp. He then recognize it and grows very enraged. Later, Terry flips the table in fury upon seeing everything in the ship gone.

Terry: That bitch! Dammit! How she could've done this!

Principal Cooke: What is it, Terry?

AISHA: Terry, calm down.

Terry: sighs I’m sorry guys. But, I’m afraid we’ll gonna have to move to another planet.

Korvo: But, Terry. This is our home, we can't leave this place for nothing.

Terry: You don't understand it, Korvo. David has been manipulating Beverly and now she has stolen your designs. Your inventions related to monster, the scanner, everything!

All: WHAT?!

Montez: That lying bitch!

Yumyulack: That explains how they have got your technology!

Nova: You mean she...

Principal Cooke: Did that all along? We're in trouble! We gotta leave! We have to find a place to hide!

Kevin: We can't. Beverly framed you, Cooke! They’re gonna put you on an electric chair, to force you to look for us!

Terry: This… this is all my fault. I shouldn’t have never attacked that poor child.

Jesse: Aww, Terry...

Principal Cooke: Maybe it's his fault that he attacked that child.

Korvo: Principal!

Principal Cooke: shrugs What? He’s to blame.

Korvo: I know, but Terry didn't know! It was an accident!

Cherie: What we can do? We must leave and get ourselves and our children in a safe place.

Korvo: Don’t worry, I have a plan! Everyone, pack your things! We’re leaving in four hours!

All: Right!

As soon the rest of the gang left, the children look worriedly at their dads, who comforts them and gives them a reassuring smile, which made Yumyulack, Jesse, Sonya and Pupa smile at them back. Meanwhile, Darcy was drawing a picture until, she sees Beverly and her gang going down a hole.

Darcy: Hmm?

Jamie: Darcy, what is it?

Darcy: Okay. Jaime, let’s go down there and confront these assholes once and for all.

Jamie smiles. Later, the couple sees the door and opens it when the hole is in. The two heads down there as they got out some flashlights and turn them. Darcy and Jamie look around the cave as they see footprints.

Jamie: Okay, that must be theirs. Let’s just follow to where they lead.

Darcy: Olay got it.

The couple then follows the footprints as they quietly sees Beverly heading up, only for Shelby to almost see them. Quickly, Darcy and Jaime hid behind a rock as they quietly peek.

Jaime: Holy shit. They have lost their minds.

Darcy: Let’s not panic. We just need to get to Terry and Korvo before-

Suddenly, Jamie feels a shot on his leg as he cries out in pain and then looks down and sees a needle with a blood drop on it. Jaime and Darcy grow terrified at this moment. Then, they turn to see Beverly and her gang looking at them.

Beverly: So, you trying to stop us. Huh? Nice try! Shelby, take care of them.

Shelby: With pleasure. Come on Nat.

Nat: On it!

Shelby and May got out monster viles and then they injected them into themselves.

Darcy: No no no no! Wait! Don’t do this! No!

Shelby and Nat starts screaming as they began to transform. Jaime starts breathing in and out as Darcy helps him lay down.

Darcy: Just lay down honey, I’m sure we’ll-

Just then, Shelby has turn into an alpha hellhound and Nat has transformed into a mutant lizard as they roar. Darcy gasp in horror as she tries to reach for a gun, only for her to see Jaimie’s skin turning light pale as he grew vampire bangs and starts growing bigger and muscular.

Darcy: Sweetheart?

Jaimie roars as his clothe stone to shreds back his muscle grow except for his pants, his half of his body develop blood vessels, his ears turns into vampire ears, his voice deepens and his eyes starts glowing red. He even develop bat claws on his finger nails.

Darcy: Oh my God. Jaimie! You’re a v-va-

Now a Mutant Vampire, Jaimie lets out a roar as Darcy starts to blush by her husband’s monster form as she slowly backs away. Mutant Vampire Jaime then pummel on Mutant Lizard Nat as the two monsters started fighting. Mutant Vampire Jaimie tries to bite down on Nat but Mutant Lizard Nat punches him away. Mutant Vampire Jaimie then grabs a beam and swings at Mutant Lizard Nat as he gets hit by the wall. Just before Mutabt Vampire Jaime could finish him off, Hellhound Shelby pummels on him, much to Darcy’s horror as she suddenly feels a headache.

Darcy: Ugh! What’s wrong with me?!

As Darcy kept groaning, her eyes suddenly turns into a hound’s yellow hunting eyes. Back with Mutant Vampire Jamie, he tries to get Hellhound Shelby away from biting him and clawing, when suddenly, another Hellhound, who is a female Mutant, appears and pummels on Shelby as she screams in pain. The Beta hellhound started to attack Hellhound Shelby as she tries to fight back, but instead got knocked out unconscious thanks to the Hellhound throwing her to a wall. Jamie then turns back to normal as he falls to his knees. The Beta Hellhound then approaches Jamie as she licks off a bleeding scar from his back from Nat. She then licks his face as Jamie grows shock.

Jamie: What the?

Suddenly, the Beta Hellhound lies down as she starts shrinking down to her real form who turns out be none other than… Darcy!

Jamie: Darcy?

Darcy falls down on the floor as Jamie approaches her and wraps a towel around her as she looks up to him lovingly.

Darcy: Hey honey.

Jamie: What happened to you? How did you transform?

Darcy: It must’ve been the bite one of the hellhounds gave me. It turn me into a hellhound.

Jamie: What?! Oh my God, we better get you to the others.

Darcy: Okay.

Jamie picks Darcy bridal style as she smiles at her husband. Back with the Solars, they got all of their luggage inside the bus along with everyone else’s. Human Korvo shuts down the back door as the gang heads on the bus, except Darcy and Jamie are not here.

Ms. Perez: Wait, where’s Jamie and Darcy?

Mia: They’ll meet up with us at the motel. We just have to make sure no follows us…

Suddenly, Human Terry hears beeping.

Human Terry: What the fuck?

Human Korvo: What is it? What’s wrong?

Human Terry heads outside and gets out a trench. He then sees tracking device form the engine as he takes it off and destroys it with his feet.

Human Korvo: Holy shit! Did Beverly sent that?!

Human Terry: Yes! So, she can locate where we are.

Montez: We have to move now!

Human Terry heads back inside the bus as he sits down with Human Jesse.

Human Terry: Okay! We’re all good now!

Human Korvo: Well, thank our Shlorpian Gods. Come on, guys! Let’s get the fuck out of here before they find us!

Human Korvo starts the engine and the bus takes off as a road trip begins. But then, Human Korvo revived a notification from Tik Tok which shows a video of Human Terry getting harassed by Brett before getting thrown in the water. Enraged and disgusted, Human Korvo stops by Brett’s house.

Human Korvo: Sorry guys. Hang on a second.

Human Korvo leaves the bus as he furiously and heads towards the house.

Principal Cooke: Where are you going? You can’t leave me here! We’re out almost out of town! Without my IZod!

Human Korvo opens the door and heads upstairs with Brett’s mother seeing him.

Brett’s Mother: Korey! What a surprise!

Human Korvo: Hi Mrs. V!

Human Korvo heads towards Brett’s room and opens the door, furiously which shows Brett listening to music until he sees Human Korvo and takes off his headphone.

Brett: Hey-

In fury, Human Korvo, with a powerful leg swing, kicks Brett to the wall as he leaves and shuts the door behind him.

Brett: MOM!

Human Korvo then heads downstairs with Brett’s Mom handing out cookies in tins.

Mom: Here! Take my cookies sweetie.

Human Korvo: Thank you ma’am!

Brett: offscreen MOM!

Human Korvo heads back in the bus he starts it scuba and the bus drives off. The others look at Human Korvo ins shock and surprise while Human Terry can’t help but blush lovingly.

Human Yumyulack: Damn dad, who taught you those lessons?

Human Korvo: Try handling a long line back on Shlorp and see what happens!

Human Korvo then speeds the bus ahead as it heads toward the other side of town. Later, Beverly tries to get track down Human Korvo and his family, only to see the tracking device on the ground destroyed as she growls!

Beverly: No! Grrr! That fucking bitch! Don’t worry David, we’ll catch them in no time soon.

Later, Alice arrived at the hospital where she sees Brandy recovering her head wound. Then, Nova and Sherbet arrives and sees Alice as they smile.

Nova: Hey. How’s your boss doing?

Alice: I’m sure she’s doing well.

Nurse: Alice, your boss Brandy would like to see you.

Alice: Okay.

Alice, Sherbet and Nova heads in while Janice arrives and follows them suite. They head in the room where Brandy is as she smiles at Alice.

Brandi: I’m so glad you’re okay turning towards Nova Thank you for taking care of Alice while I was recover from the hospital. She’s lucky to have people like you.

Nova: You’re welcome Mrs. Brandy

Brandy: Alice, I’m afraid I have to let you go. Apparently this whole thing has prove too much for you.

Alice: What? But Mrs. Brandy-

Brandy: You did nothing. But, you have a much better place and I think Nova would love to have you as her maid.

Sherbet: gasp in joy

Nova: Really? You mean it?! Thanks.

Alice: Thank you Brandy! I would love that… I’ll see you again someday…

The four ladies then left the hospital as Alice smiles at her new people and they all head outside. She then sees the Solars and the gang waiting for her.

Alice: You guys? What happened here?!

Later, at the motel, the gang have each assigned rooms while Human Terry looks up the stars and sighs. Then, he heads back upstairs. Meanwhile in their assigned room, Sonya starts drinking a big apple juice bottle while Jesse starts playing with Pupa.

Jesse: Pattycake! Pattycake! Bakers man! Bake me a cake as fast…. sees Sonya drinking the bottle… uh Sonya, why are you drinking a huge bottle of apple juice and acting like acting like you have a G-rated drinking problem?

Sonya: drunkingly I feel like the world is burning up around me! falls down asleep

Korvo: Yeesh. Too much cider.

Yumyulack: I know, right? drinks a huge bottle of Mountain Dew

Korvo: Uh…?

Just then, Human Terry opens the door while closing it and turns back into his Shlorpian self while he looks at the kids.

Terry: Okay guys, let’s not panic. Beverly can no longer track us, because I destroyed the tracking device. So, what the worst that could happened?!

The scene then cuts to Miss Frankie putting on makeup, until she notice something in her teeth. She lifts her lips open and gasp. She saw her a gang on her upper teeth part and then noticed the outside of her face and cheek bones is turning different shades of blue and purple. She then feels a headache as she groans in pain.

Miss Frankie: Wh-what’s happening to me?!

Then, Wolverine claws pop out of her palms as she screams in horror once they smashed a mirror.

Miss Frankie: screams in horror

Later, the scene cuts Cherie playing with Pezlie until she sees boot camp below as she gasp.

Cherie: What the? Montez, be right back!

Montez: offscreen Got it honey.

Seconds later, Cherie and Pezlie sneaks into the camp while overhearing Beverly, Rina and Tyler discussing their new plans as she peaks through the curtains.

Cherie: whispering What the fuck are they up to?

Beverly: Okay, let’s go over this again. Tomorrow at sunset, that fucking loser principal will be put on the chair. There, after David turns himself in, he can break him.

Rina: What does that have do we anything?

Tyler: Yeah?

Beverly: After he comes in, David will try to break him and he finally be forced to tell him where those two monster aliens are, and we’ll get rid of them. Permanently.

Tyler: Oh. Right on.

Cherie gasp and Pezlie whimpers as they try to sneak away, until Tyler grabs Pezlie away from Cherie as she gasp.

Cherie: Pezlie! Hang on Mommy’s coming for you

Cherie then sees Beverly about to inject something into Pezlie which made her gasp, but she runs up and takes the needle shot herself as she screams in pain.

Cherie: groaning What’s happening to me?!

Pezile is scared. Cherry Red Spikes then pop out of Cherie’s arms and back and legs as she starts growing bigger and muscular, as her clothes rip apart. Pezlie then stops being scared and began giggling as she grows amazed her mother’s transformation. Cherie’s hair then grows longer as her voice deepens and she roars while Pezlie starts giggling and cheering for her mama.

Pezlie: Mama! Mama!

Cherie calms down when seeing Pezlie. Goliath Cherie smiles as Pezlie comes up happily cooing and hug her.

Beverly: Stop her!

Goliath Cherie then kicks the three members as she leaps up and heads back to the motel without any looking like, like a stealth ninja as she smiles at Pezlie. She heads back to her motel room where Montez sees her and yelps a little before recognizing her and blushing.

Montez: Wow. Cherie you look so hot in that form.

Cherie chuckles. Then the scene cuts to Principal Cooke arriving back into his motel room.

Principal Cooke: Honey, I’m back and-

He then only sees Miss Frankie gone and her clothes on the floor. They were even torn to shreds. He then sees a makeup item and looks closely at it.

Principal Cooke: What in the?

Suddenly, her heard a loud metal clingy sound.

Principal Cooke: Honey? Is that you?

Suddenly, Principal Cookr looks up and sees a pair of glowing orange pair of looking down on him with a blue and purple long tongue trying to lick him as he back away slowly.

Principal Cooke: Who are you?

Principal Cooke then grabs the lamp to shine a light and as puts the lamp up high, it turns out to be a Mutant Miss Frankie!

Principal Cooke: Oh shit! Honey?

Miss Frankie roars as she lands on the floor and approaches Principal Cooke.

Principal Cooke: Oh my god…. You have never looked more beautiful!

Hearing this, Mutant Miss Frankie stops and blushes as Principal Cooke kiss her on the forehead as she whimpers.

Principal Cooke: Hey. It’s okay baby. I have an idea but we are gonna need our friends’ help on this. Because, if Beverly wants me to turn in, they we have something in mind that turn her, her Fuck Thugs and David in once and for all!

Mutant Miss Frankie smiles. Then, the scene cuts to the hotel room where the Solars are in. After putting on their sleep clothes, they are now watching the news.

Terry: Oh boy. This is not good. What have they done?!

The then news then plays about the past monster attacks as it shows a video of Principal Cooke getting unfairly fired, because of Beverly framing him.

Korvo: Shit!

Yumyulack: Oh boy. So it’s true. Principal Cooke did get framed by Beverly!

Jesse: She's gonna pay!

Sonya: I hope she doesn’t find us soon

Terry: Don’t worry, she won’t! We just need to come up with a plan before….

Suddenly, Terry sees something through his Mundane vision, swirling around like a wind as he grows amazed and curious.

Terry: What in the...?

Korvo: Terry?

Terry: Korvo, I think I’m seeing another Mundane spirit!

Korvo: What?! You are?! How?

Terry: Through my vision! I just don’t know where it’s heading towards-

Yumyulack: Then figure it out!

Sonya: Yumyulack!

Yumyulack: Sorry geez. crosses his arms

As Terry sees the Mundane spirit flying, it chose its eyes and inside of mouth color pink and it flies towards the Solars as it shines as the Solars, except for Jesse who is asleep, shield their eyes as it heads towards his unlikely host… Jesse!

Terry: JESSE!

As the spirit heads into Jesse as it shines a light throughout the whole room, then scene then cuts to Jesse, who gasp and finds herself in a midnight pink void as she starts to grow alarmed. Jesse looks around and grows amazed by the void.

Jesse: What is this place?

Suddenly, Jesse sees something shining ahead as she heads over there. She approaches a tree and it turns blossom into a swirling dark shades of pink light and then into another Mundane Spirit, but it doesn’t speak.

Jesse: Whoa.

Jesse approaches the spirit slowly as she slowly soothed the spirit’s face and suddenly, a sees a vision of her past when she saw Mundane Terry keeping her safe when Jesse was a baby, which made Jesse smile as she shed a single tear and wipes it away.

Jesse: Terry...

Jesse then sees the vision as it shows Mundane Terry turning back to his normal Terry self on the day the Shlorpians pushed him to far and the monster attack as he approaches Baby Jesse and comforts her when she was still crying, which made Jesse smile and hug the vision, while her tears turn midnight pink. The vision fades away as Jesse looks up at the Mundane Spirit and she smiles but wonders about something.

Jesse: I’m not gonna regret this… am I?

The Mundane Spirit smiles. The spirit then puts its hand on Jesse’s right hand and then they slowly walk around as Jesse began to dance around as a music box music plays in the background. The spirit then slowly flies up while Jesse holds its hand and then she finally see the light Terry was telling her about as she smiles. She then did a soft nose kiss with the spirit as it merges with her permanently and the whole void shines as it fades to light. The scene then heads back to reality as Jesse slowly floats down Terry caught her softly.

Terry: Jesse! Are you okay?!

Jesse wakes up slowly as she hugs Terry, much to his surprise.

Jesse: Thank you, dad.

Terry: Dad?

Jesse: I mean Terry.

Terry cries tears of happiness as he hugs Jesse once Korvo enters.

Korvo: Sweetheart?

Terry: Korvo...she called me "dad".

Jesse: Well, you are not gonna believe it but I-

Suddenly, Jesse’s vision goes midnight pink as she gasp and starts breathing in and out while holding her head.

Terry: Jesse! No no no! Hold on!

Terry takes Jesse outside while holding her as Korvo watch.

Korvo: Well, at least you two have manage to master those….

Yumyulack: offscreen Korvo? What's wrong?

Korvo then turns and see Yumyulack, who was awake, Sonya and Pupa sleeping and cuddling with each other. Korvo then smiles, sighs while rolling his eyes and approaches them quietly.

Korvo: I love you both so much...

Korvo smiles and kiss Yumyulack, Sonya and Pupa on the foreheads as they head back to bed and puts the kids’ each specific blankets as he smiled. Then, the scene cuts to Terry making it outside as he lightly puts Jesse down.

Korvo: What happened?

Terry: Korvo, can you please keep an eye on the rest of the three while I calm down Jesse.

Korvo smiles.

Korvo: Of course darling

Korvo heads back to the room as Terry looks down at Jesse having a panic attack.

Terry: It's gonna be okay, Jesse...

Jesse’s eyes starts flashing midnight pink as she starts snarling but Terry gasp and hugs her.

Terry: Sssh. Sssh. It's okay.

Jesse then cries into Terry’s chest as she grows scared over what happened a second ago.

Jesse: tearfully; quietly I'm sorry, daddy.

Terry then continue to sooth her as Jesse kept crying as he pulls her close while feeling her father’s love all over again the first time in 13 years ever since she was a baby. Jesse then starts choke sobbing as Terry smiles and wipes away the tears from his daughter’s eyes.

Terry: Oh. My poor little Jesse… you must be so scared… pulls Jesse into a loving hug

Jesse: Yeah, I am.

Terry: Hey. It’s okay. I was scared too. But then, I got better. I’m sure you will too…

Jesse: But what if I lose myself?

Terry: Because… I see you Jesse… all me and your father see in my eyes is a brave sweet kind hearted teenage girl, who is a good sister, a brave young woman who take care of a bunch of tiny people, an independent teenager and a wonderful daughter, who always out the people she loves before herself, because she’s got a big heart and a kind soul that helps keeps this family together. No matter what, because she is one of the bravest people that I have ever known ever since the day she was sprouted…

Jesse then begin to overwhelmed as she sniffles but Terry smiles and wipes away her as he kiss her on the forehead.

Jesse: weeping But what if I’m not the girl anymore… once I transformed for the first time…

Terry: I'll still know you're in there...

Jesse: Why? How do you know that I’ll still be in here…?

Terry: Because… you’re my daughter… and I’ll always be with you… no matter what…

Jesse: Aw...

Jesse then hugs Terry as he smiles and hug her back.

Jesse: whispering I love you daddy…

Terry: I love you too...

The Father and daughter aliens kept hugging. Then, a few seconds later, Terry tucks Jesse to bed with her siblings as he kiss her on the forehead and Korvo smiles at him.

Korvo: You're a good dad.

Terry: So are you.

Korvo blushes but then smiles. He then looks down with a worried look while Terry walks up to him.

Korvo: sighs I just hope we’re not too late tomorrow.

Terry: We won’t because Korvo, tomorrow! We’re ending this nightmare. Together. As a family.

Korvo surprises Terry with a kiss, which made blush and smitten.

Terry: Wow! What was that kiss for?

Korvo: For being there for me, darling...

Terry: smiling as he soothes Korvo’s face up and down with his left hand softly And I always will be…

Korvo and Terry smiled and the two alien husbands Makeout with French kisses while collapsing in their hotel bed and starts having sex. The next morning, Korvo wakes up only to see Terry gone and a note on Terry’s pillow as he gasp. He picks up the note and it says, “We have Terald! Turn Yourselves in or Else!”

Korvo: Oh no Terry!

Yumyulack: waking up Huh?

Jesse: What?!

Pupa: Terry?

Sonya: Wh-what’s happening?!

Later, after everyone had breakfast and got dressed, the Solar Opposites meet up with their friends as they start discussing the plan.

Nova: You sure they have Terry?

Korvo: Hell yeah they do! But, we need to think of something quick before they something horrible to him.

Principal Cooke: Um, I have a solution!

Korvo: Really? What is it?! Principal Cooke whispers it in his ear Really? You’re willing to do this? Well, if that’s the plan to beat, that actually might be able to help us. Some of you guys sneak in while the kids, Nova, Sherbet, Cherie, Montez and I go look for Terry.

All: Right!

Korvo: Solars, minus Terry, move out!

A few hours later, Beverly is discussing her plan to Python.

Sam Python: Sorry, but I don’t think your friend here is gonna help us.

Beverly: Oh shut up! I met him and he had been very helpful. He has done the Ritchie things by sending those monster attacks on other people, and we’re getting rid of Korey once and for all. Also, I don’t think your stupid government is gonna-

Suddenly, she gasp because David came in first when Principal Cooke was supposed to come in first.

Beverly: Shit!

Sam Python: What now?!

Beverly: That was not the plan?! That stupid-ass Principal is supposed to be here first! Where the fuck is he?!

Later, Principal Cooke and Mutant Miss Frankie have just finished having sex as Principal Cooke puts on his clothes and get ready.

Mutant Miss Frankie: Good luck. kisses Principal Cooke

Principal Cooke: Thanks honey

Then, Principal Cooke willing come sun with bravery in his face as he gave David a death stare and sits down. Meanwhile, Jaime and Darcy then arrived and sees Korvo with the kids, Cherie, Nova and Montez and Pezlie and Sherbet as they meet up with them.

Jaime: Guys! What the fuck is happening now?!

Darcy: What is it?!

Korvo: It's Terry. He's...

Korvo starts crying.

Jesse: Terry’s in trouble! We have to get there before-

Suddenly, Nova gets hit by DNA dart on her leg as she cries out in pain and kneels on her feet and takes out the dart. She then started to feel bunny as she suddenly starts turning furry with Cupid’s blush fur and she starts growing bigger and muscular with her rabbit ears popping out of her head as she moans.

Korvo: Huh? NOVA!

Sherbet: Mom!

Cherie: What’s happening to you?!

Nova: I don't know but...I feel gooooood...

Nova’s clothes get ripped into pieces, she develops fangs and rabbit teeth, her eyes starts glowing purple, her feet becomes human size-rabbit feet and a tail pops out as she roars.

Korvo: HOLY SHIT!

Sherbet: Damn mom! You look very tough, even for a rabbit!

Wererabbit Nova then leaps up and destroys the lock as she growls. Sherbet then pay her on the back to calm her down as she smiles at her daughter.

Wererabbit Nova: Hey, sweetie.

Sherbet: You did great mom. kisses her on the forehead as Nova turns back, with her clothes back on

Korvo: What the hell happened?

Nova: I don’t know. But I am guessing Beverly might be onto us now! We have to hurry and find Terry before he gets hurt! Or worse…

Korvo: Killed...

Jesse: Oh shit! Come on guys, let’s go save our dad!

Everyone except Korvo who is looking like he's having a panic attack: YEAH!

Korvo: Holy shit! That scared me!

The scene then heads back to the base where Principal Cooke is giving David a death stare as he began to confront him. Mia, Alice, Randall, Miss Frankie, Kevin and Ms. Perez sneaks in quietly while hiding so no one can see them.

Randall: The coast is clear! Come on!

Ms. Perez: Ooh. Let’s watch. Principal Cooke is ready to talk to David!

Principal Cooke: Hello most wanted. I should have known you were manipulating Beverly into destroying us.

David: Yeah? I should have killed your friends.

Principal Cooke: You wish you had. You saw Korey last night of the award ceremony. Didn’t you?! You heard about his work. And you got crazy jealous. That is why you snuck in the laboratory last night. To get close to him. And when that didn’t work, you made a deal with Beverly, who hates him the most.

David: Her own enemy.

Principal Cooke: Then, you started going after the people he loves, including his family!

David: It's alright. Go ahead and scream. Go ahead and scream. Scream. Screaming will do you good.

Principal Cooke: HOW DARE YOU?!

David: Oh, is that so? Well, I've got news for you. I didn't come here to see you. I came here to see my new destiny. My real destiny. The one inside of Beverly. Beverly is nothing but a superficial shell, a husk of flimsy consciousness ready to be torn off at a moments notice. So, I roped her in like a dumbass fool. Beverly gasp in shock

Beverly: What?! No!

Principal Cooke: You can think what you like. I don't care, just go!

David: Now, Principal, listen to me. I've found a cure... for me. My cells can transform, too. Absorb enormous amounts of energy, but unlike you, they're unstable, I need that beast’s strength. I gave him life, now he must give it back to me! Only a million times more radiant, more powerful!

Principal Cooke: Oh Stop! You’re fucking crazy and you know it!

David: Stop what? STOP WHAT! Think about all those men out there, in their uniforms! Barking and swallowing orders! Inflicting their petty rule over the entire globe! Think of all the harm they've done! To you, to me! To humanity! And know this, that we can make them, and their flags and their anthems and their governments disappear! In a flash, me and those fucking alien beasts!

Principal Cooke: They’d fucking rather not!

David: Oh, that's your answer and indeed that stupid Mundane shall die and be reborn a hero! Under my control! Of the kind that walked the Earth long before the pale religions of civilization infected humanity's soul!

Principal Cooke: No Terry is not a monster! He’s a good person and loving father and great husband to Korey, and you and Beverly know it you evil psycho!

David : stops and shortly mocks Principal in a calm manner Stop your bawling, you weak little speck of human trash. gets up from his chair, yelling I'll go! You just watch me go!

Sam Python: Hit it.

One of the soldiers hit the electric chairs, but Beverly refusing to believe this, runs out of the base and heads to Mundane Terry.

Kevin: Holy shit! Turn it off!

Suddenly, Principal Cooke starts to feel something as he suddenly grows fur and begins to grow bigger and muscular.

Miss Frankie: What’s wrong with my boyfriend?!

Mia: Holy shit!

The electric hits David as he finally transforms into his new monstrous form, a chimera! The whole lights go out through our town as everyone starts to panic, except for the Solar Opposites gang. Principal Cooke then grows sharp teeth and his finger nails became claws and his whole clothes get torn into shreds. Suddenly, Principal Cooke roars as he has finally transformed into a Werehog and grabs onto Chimera David as he flies off and the others transforms into their monster forms and follows them through the base. There, Chimera David crashes near the lake as Werehog Cooke growls.

Werehog Cooke: GET AWAY FROM ME!!!

Mutant Frankie lands and is surprised to her boyfriend a Werehog while Werewolf Perez, Mutant Octopus Mia, Werelizard Alice, Werefox Kevin, Weredragon Randall and Medusa Alice meets up with her

Mutant Frankie: Honey?!

Werehog Cooke: So....how do I look?

Mutant Frankie: You look hot honey! And gasp and sees Chimera David Behind you!

Chimera David smirks but to his horror, he didn’t absorbed Werehog Cooke’s powers as he still stay a chimera. Mutant Frankie then uses her Wolverine claws to attack David but he flies before she could catch him.

Mutant Frankie: Damn it!

Chimera David then flies to town as the other monsters watch

Weredragon Randall: Aw shit! We gotta hurry and tell Korvo!

Suddenly, they see Mundane Terry, in a glass cage, his hands and feet tied up and a muzzle on his face as he wakes up and gasp.

All: Terry?!

Mundane Terry: Get me outta here!

Werelizard Janice: On it! punches a hole which breaks the glass and frees Terry as he turns back into his normal Shlorpian self

Terry: Thanks guys, but what happened here?! How did I get here?!

Mutant Frankie: You got captured by David!

Medusa Alice: Long story, but we have to get you outta here! Let’s get back to your husband, kids and the others!

Terry: What?! That fuck! That’s it! Come on, guys! Let’s go catch with the others

Terry then grabs the keys and gets in the bus as he drives and his fellow monsters follow him.

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